[ExI] Political correctness consequences

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Tue, Aug 2, 2016 at 4:43 AM, Anders <anders at aleph.se> wrote:

> The basic intellectual problem with political correctness (in a
> generalized sense) is this:
>
> 1. We strive to uphold some noble value (equality, patriotism, purity of
> math...) X
> 2. We use argument A (among others) to argue for the value.
> 3. You point out argument A is invalid.
> 4. Hence you must be against X, and you are a *bad* person!
>
> Sure, there is more sociology and psychology to it than that, but I think
> this is what makes political correctness truly problematic in academia.


### I would think that the most problematic (oops, the language of the
enemy infects my diction) issue of political correctness is the power
imbalance it is associated with. Political correctness is another name for
the ideological orthodoxy that since about 1970 has been slowly accepted by
the power elites in most Western nations, replacing previous national,
religious and other orthodoxies. It is a set of claims about the world and
a set of norms to guide and judge behavior.

Since the factual claims of political correctness are often actually
incorrect, and the norms are often odious to most reasonable people,
political correctness is potentially harmful. Since it was accepted by
power elites worldwide, the harms are in fact widespread and hard to escape
from.

Lack of ideological diversity among elites, the almost complete takeover of
positions of power by politically correct cadres in a number of countries,
is therefore a major flaw of the current global political system.

Rafał
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20160803/520f4982/attachment.html>