Over the past few decades, moral psychology has staged a quiet coup against one of our most cherished fantasies: that human beings are, at bottom, rational moral agents. This is not a fringe claim. It is not a Twitter take. It is the mainstream finding of an entire research programme spanning psychology, cognitive science, linguistics, and neuroscience.
We do not reason our way to moral conclusions. We feel our way there. Instantly. Automatically. And only afterwards do we construct reasons that make the judgment sound respectable.
Audio: NotebookLM summary podcast of this topic.
This is not controversial anymore. It is replicated, taught, and celebrated. And yet, if you read the most influential books in this literature, something strange happens. The diagnosis is devastating. The prescription is reassuring.
I’ve just published a long-form video walking through five canonical books in moral psychology that all uncover the same structural problem, and then quietly refuse to live with the implications.
Each of these books is sharp, serious, and worth reading. This is not a hit piece.
But each follows the same arc:
Identify a non-rational, affective, automatic mechanism at the heart of moral judgement
Show why moral disagreement is persistent and resistant to argument
Propose solutions that rely on reflection, dialogue, reframing, calibration, or rational override
In short: they discover that reason is weak, and then assign it a leadership role anyway.
Haidt dismantles moral rationalism and then asks us to talk it out. Lakoff shows that framing is constitutive, then offers better framing. Gray models outrage as a perceptual feedback loop, then suggests we check our perceptions. Greene diagnoses tribal morality, then bets on utilitarian reasoning to save us.
None of this is incoherent. But it is uncomfortable. Because the findings themselves suggest that these prescriptions are, at best, limited.
Diagnosis without prognosis
The uncomfortable possibility raised by this literature is not that we are ignorant or misinformed.
It is that moral disagreement may be structural rather than solvable.
That political conflict may not be cured by better arguments. That persuasion may resemble contagion more than deliberation. That reason often functions as a press secretary, not a judge.
The books sense this. And then step back from it. Which is human. But it matters.
Why this matters now
We are living in systems that have internalised these findings far more ruthlessly than public discourse has.
Social media platforms optimise for outrage, not understanding. Political messaging is frame-first, not fact-first. AI systems are increasingly capable of activating moral intuitions at scale, without fatigue or conscience.
Meanwhile, our institutions still behave as if one more conversation, one more fact-check, one more appeal to reason will close the gap. The research says otherwise.
And that gap between what we know and what we pretend may be the most important moral problem of the moment.
No solution offered
The video does not end with a fix. That’s deliberate.
Offering a neat solution here would simply repeat the same move I’m criticising: diagnosis followed by false comfort. Sometimes orientation matters more than optimism. The elephant is real. The elephant is moving.And most of us are passengers arguing about the map while it walks.
My philosophical critique, not of the book Why Democrats Are Dangerous, but of the two warring factions in United States politics – mind you, partisanship not limited to the US – sparked the ire of defenders of their respective turf. ‘You’ve got it wrong. Those other people are either addleheaded or abject evil’ is a consolidation of responses from both sides of the aisle. I’ve crafted a response.
Audio: NotebookLM summary podcast on this topic.
It’s perfectly true that I occupy a perspective. Everyone does. This isn’t a confession; it’s a structural feature of being human. Consciousness is perspectival by design. We don’t get to hover above the world like disembodied CCTV cameras. We look from somewhere.
But acknowledging one’s perspective is not the same thing as being trapped in a rut. A rut implies unexamined repetition, reflex, and dogma. A perspective implies angle, interpretation, intellectual stance. The accusation I’m hearing – ‘you’re in a rut too’ – is not actually an argument. It’s an attempt to delegitimise the analysis without engaging with it.
It says nothing about whether my observation is true, coherent, or well-reasoned; it merely notes that I, like every other speaking organism on the planet, occupy a position. And from this banal fact it attempts to smuggle in a conclusion: that my critique is thereby invalid. It’s a sleight of hand, and a clumsy one.
If someone believes I’m wrong, they are welcome – encouraged, even – to demonstrate:
where the logic fails
where the evidence contradicts me
where the symmetry is mischaracterised
where the interpretation distorts rather than illuminates
That is argumentation.
What they are offering instead is a sort of epistemic shrug: ‘You’re in a perspective, therefore you have no authority’. This is an ad hominem in a trench coat, pretending to be profundity.
The irony, of course, is that the people making this charge never seem to apply it to themselves. Their own viewpoint, naturally, is not a rut but a ‘stance’, ‘framework’, ‘tradition’, ‘bedrock’, or ‘fact’. Only the critic has perspective; they merely have truth.
But here’s the critical distinction:
Having a perspective does not invalidate an analysis, and pretending not to have one does.
The entire Anti-Enlightenment project rests on this recognition: that all human positions are mediated, situated, incomplete – and yet still capable of meaningful observation. You don’t escape your perspective by denying it; you escape dogma by interrogating it.
If someone wishes to rebut what I’ve written, they should do so directly, with evidence, reasoning, or counterexamples. If all they offer is ‘well, you’re biased too’, then they’ve conceded the argument by refusing to enter it.
A perspective is not a rut. A rut is what happens when you can’t tell the difference.
My colleague of several decades recently published a book titled Why Democrats Are Dangerous. Drew and I have long held opposing but genuinely respectful views on the political economy, a fact that once felt like a quaint relic of an earlier civic age. As we are both authors, he proposed that we exchange titles and review each other’s work. I demurred. One can often discern the contents of a book from its cover, and this one announced itself with all the subtlety of a campaign leaflet left in the rain. I am not allergic to polemic – heaven knows I have written my share – but some energies telegraph their intentions too cleanly. This one did.
Having now read the book, my hesitation appears justified. The project is less an argument than a catechism, less analysis than incantation. It is earnest, certainly; it is also tightly scripted by a worldview that permits only one conclusion, however much data must be dragged across broken glass to reach it.
Audio: NotebookLM summary podcast on this topic.
Rather than provide a review in the conventional sense – line-by-line rebuttal, forensic counter-examples, polite throat-clearing – I have chosen a different approach. I intend to reconstruct, or more precisely dis-integrate, the book through several strands of my own work. Not because my work is above reproach, but because it offers a conceptual toolkit for understanding how such texts arise, how they persuade, and how they hold themselves together despite their internal tension. This also has the ancillary benefit of allowing me to abridge my commentary: where a full exegesis would sprawl, I can gesture toward an existing essay or argument. I’ll dispense with addressing Drew by name, preferring to remain more neutral going forward.
A Note on My Position (So No One Misreads My Motives)
Before proceeding, a brief clarification. I do not belong to either of America’s warring political tribes, nor do I subscribe to their underlying ideological architectures. My critique is not an act of partisan reprisal; it is not a defence of Democrats, nor a veiled endorsement of Republicans. The Red–Blue cosmology bores me senseless. It is a quarrel between two anachronistic Enlightenment-era faith traditions, each convinced of its moral superiority and each engaged in the same ritualised dance of blame, projection, and existential theatre.
My vantage point, such as it is, sits outside that binary. This affords me a certain privilege – not superiority, merely distance. I do not have a factional identity to defend, no emotional investment in preserving the moral innocence of one side or the other. I am therefore free to examine the structure of my colleague’s argument without the usual tribal pressures to retaliate in kind.
This criticism is not a counter-polemic. It is an analysis of a worldview, not a combatant in its quarrel. If my tone occasionally cuts, it cuts from the outside, not across partisan lines. The book is not wrong because it is Republican; it is wrong because its epistemology is brittle, its categories incoherent, and its confidence unearned. The same critique would apply – indeed does apply – to the Democratic mirrors of this worldview.
My loyalty is not to a party but to a method: Dis-Integration, analysis, and the slow, patient unravelling of certainty.
The Architecture of Certainty
What strikes one first in Why Democrats Are Dangerous is not the argument but the architecture – an edifice built on the most cherished Enlightenment fantasy of all: that one’s own position is not a perspective but the Truth. Everything else cascades from this initial presumption. Once a worldview grants itself the status of a natural law, dissent becomes pathology, disagreement becomes malice, and the opposition becomes a civilisation-threatening contagion.
My colleague’s book is a textbook case of this structure. It is not an analysis of political actors within a shared world; it is a morality play in which one faction is composed entirely of vices, and the other entirely of virtues. The Democrats are ‘Ignorant, Unrealistic, Deceitful, Ruthless, Unaccountable, Strategic‘, a hexagon of sin so geometrically perfect it would make Aquinas blush. Republicans, by contrast, drift serenely through the text untouched by human flaw, except insofar as they suffer nobly under the weight of their opponents’ manipulations.
This is not political argumentation. This is cosmogony.
This, of course, is where my Anti-Enlightenment work becomes diagnostic. The Enlightenment promised universality and rational clarity, yet modern political identities behave more like hermetic cults, generating self-sealing narratives immune to external correction. A worldview built upon presumed objectivity must resolve any contradiction by externalising it onto the Other. Thus, the opposition becomes omnipotent when things go wrong (‘They control the media, the schools, the scientists, the public imagination‘) and simultaneously infantile when the narrative requires ridicule.
It is the oldest structural paradox in the political mind: the Other is both incompetent and dangerously powerful. This book embodies that paradox without blinking.
The Invention of the Enemy
One must admire, in a bleak sort of way, the structural efficiency of designating half the electorate as a monolithic existential threat. It creates an elegant moral shortcut: no need to consider policies, contexts, or material conditions when the adversary is already pre-condemned as treacherous by nature. Cicero, Trotsky, Hitler, and Franklin are all conscripted in this text to warn us about the insidious Democrats lurking in the marrow of the Republic. (Trotsky, one suspects, would be moderately surprised to find himself enlisted in a Republican devotional.)
This enemy-construction is not unique to this author. It is the rhetorical engine of American factionalism, and it is recursive: each side claims the other is rewriting history, weaponising institutions, manipulating education, promoting propaganda, dismantling norms, silencing dissent, and indoctrinating children. Both factions accuse the other of abandoning civility whilst abandoning civility in the act of accusation.
To put it bluntly: every single charge in this book is mirrored in Republican behaviour, sometimes identically, often more flamboyantly. But this symmetry is invisible from inside a moralised epistemology. Identity precedes evidence, so evidence is always retrofitted to identity.
This is why the polemic feels airtight: it evaluates Democrats not as agents within a system but as an essence. There is no theory of politics here – only demonology.
The Recursive Machine: When a Worldview Becomes Its Own Evidence
One of the most revealing features of Why Democrats Are Dangerous is its recursive structure. It operates exactly like the political systems it condemns: it constructs a closed epistemic loop, then mistakes that loop for a window onto reality.
The book does not discover Democratic perfidy; it presupposes it. Every subsequent claim merely elaborates upon the initial axiom. Schools, entertainment, academia, immigration, science, journalism, unions, and the weather – each is absorbed into a single explanatory schema. Once the premise is fixed (‘Democrats are dangerous‘), the world obligingly reshapes itself to confirm the conclusion, as long as one ignores anything that does not.
This is the dynamic I describe as the ‘Republic of Recursive Prophecy‘: someone begins with The Answer, and reality is forced to comply. If the facts fail to align, the facts are treacherous. If evidence contradicts the narrative, then evidence has been corrupted.
It is a worldview that behaves not like political analysis but like physics in a collapsing star: everything, no matter how diffuse, is pulled into the gravity well of a single, preordained truth.
The Projection Engine
If the book has a leitmotif, it is projection – unconscious, unexamined, and relentless. It is astonishing how thoroughly the author attributes to Democrats every pathology that characterises contemporary Republican strategy.
Propagandistic messaging; emotional manipulation; selective framing; redefinition of language; strategic use of fear; demonisation of opponents; declaring media sources illegitimate; claiming institutional persecution; insisting the other party rigs elections; portraying one’s own supporters as the ‘real victims’ of history – each of these is performed daily in Republican media ecosystems with operatic flourish. Yet the book can only see these behaviours ‘over there’, because its epistemic frame cannot accommodate the possibility that political identity – its own included – is capable of self-interest, distortion, or error.
This is the Enlightenment inheritance at its worst: the belief that one’s own faction merely ‘perceives the truth’, whilst the other faction ‘manufactures narratives’. What the author calls ‘truth’ is simply the preferred filter for sorting complexity into moral certainty. Once the filter is treated as reality itself, all behaviour from one’s own side becomes necessity, principle, or justice – whilst identical behaviour from the opposing faction becomes malevolence.
The Neutral Observer Who Isn’t
What the book never acknowledges – because it cannot – is that it speaks from a position, not from an Archimedean vantage point. The author stands in a thickly mediated environment of conservative talk radio, Republican think-tank literature, right-leaning commentary, and decades of ideological reinforcement. His acknowledgements read less like a bibliography than like an apprenticeship in a particular canon.
This does not make him wrong by default. It simply means he is positioned. And politics is always positional.
The Enlightenment fiction of the ‘view from nowhere‘ collapses once one notices that claims of objectivity always align with the claimant’s own tribe. If Republicans declare their view neutral and Democrats ideological, it is never because a metaphysical referee has blown a whistle confirming the call. It is because each faction treats its own frames as unmediated reality.
In truth, the book reveals far more about the epistemology of modern conservatism than about Democrats themselves.
The Fictional Symmetry Problem
One of the major deficiencies in the book – and in most modern political commentary – is the inability to perceive symmetry. The behaviours the author attributes exclusively to Democrats are, in every meaningful sense, bipartisan human defaults. Both factions manipulate language; curate narratives; cherry-pick evidence; denounce the other’s missteps as civilisational sabotage; outsource blame; elevate victimhood when convenient; and perform certainty whilst drowning in uncertainty.
The book pretends these behaviours describe a pathological left-wing mind, rather than the political mind as such.
This is not a Democratic problem; it is a deeply human one. But Enlightenment-styled partisan thinking requires the illusion of asymmetry. Without it, the argument collapses instantly. If Republicans admit that they exhibit the same cognitive patterns they condemn in Democrats, the entire dramatic arc falls flat. The villain must be uniquely wicked. The hero must be uniquely virtuous. The stage requires a clean antagonism, or the story becomes unstageable.
Narrative Weaponry
Perhaps the most revealing feature of this book is its reliance on anecdotes as foundational evidence. One school incident here, one speech clip there, one news headline in passing – and suddenly these isolated fragments become proof of a sweeping, coordinated ideological conspiracy across all levels of society.
We no longer use stories to illustrate positions; we use them to manufacture reality. One viral video becomes a trend; one rogue teacher, an educational takeover; one questionable policy rollout, the death of democracy.
Stories become ontological weapons: they shape what exists simply by being repeated with enough moral pressure. Political tribes treat them as talismans, small narrative objects with outsized metaphysical weight.
MEOW (the Mediated Encounter Ontology of the World) was designed in part to resist this temptation. It reminds us that events are not symptoms of a singular will but the turbulent output of innumerable interacting mediations. The worldview on display in this book requires villains, where a relational ontology recognises only networks.
The Missing Category: Structural Analysis
Perhaps the most conspicuous absence in the book is any substantive socio-economic analysis. Everything is attributed to malice, not structure. Democratic failures become signs of moral rot, never the predictable outcome of late-stage capitalism, globalisation’s uneven effects, austerity cycles, demographic shifts, institutional brittleness, bureaucratic inertia, political economy incentives, or the informational fragmentation of the digital age.
None of these appear anywhere in the text. Not once.
Because the book is not analysing policy; it’s diagnosing sin. It treats political outcomes as evidence of coordinated malevolence, never as the emergent result of complex systems that no faction fully understands, let alone controls.
This is where Dis-Integration is useful: the world does not malfunction because some cabal introduced impurity; it malfunctions because it was never integrated in the first place. My colleague is still hunting for the traitor inside the castle. The more sobering truth is that the castle is an architectural hallucination.
Where He Is Not Wrong
Lest this devolve into pure vivisection, it is worth acknowledging that my colleague does brush against legitimate concerns. There are structural issues in American education. There are ideological currents in universities, some of which drift into intellectual monoculture. There are media ecosystems that reinforce themselves through feedback loops. There are public-health missteps that deserve scrutiny. There are institutional actors who prefer narratives to nuance.
But these are not partisan phenomena; they are structural ones. They are not symptoms of Democratic corruption; they are symptoms of the modern polity. When the author grasps these truths, he does so only long enough to weaponise them – not to understand them.
The Danger of Certainty
What lingers after reading Why Democrats Are Dangerous is not outrage – though one suspects that was the intended emotional temperature – but a kind of intellectual melancholy. The book is not the product of a malevolent mind; it is the product of a sealed one. A worldview so thoroughly fortified by decades of ideological reinforcement that no countervailing fact, no structural nuance, no complexity of human motivation can penetrate its perimeter.
The author believes he is diagnosing a civilisation in decline; what he has actually documented is the failure of a particular Enlightenment inheritance: the belief that one’s own view is unmediated, unfiltered, unshaped by social, linguistic, and cognitive forces. The belief that Reason – capital R – is a neutral instrument one simply points at the world, like a laser level, to determine what is ‘really happening’.
The Enlightenment imagined that clarity was accessible, that moral alignment was obvious, that rational actors behaved rationally, that categories reflected reality, and that the world could be divided into the virtuous and the dissolute. This book is the direct descendant of that fantasy.
It takes an entire half of the population and casts them as an essence. It arranges anecdotes into inevitability. It pathologises disagreement. It treats institutions as coherent conspiratorial actors. It transforms political opponents into ontological threats. And it performs all of this with the serene confidence of someone who believes he is simply ‘telling it like it is’.
The irony is almost tender.
Because the danger here is not Democrats. Nor Republicans. Nor necessarily even the political class as a whole. The real danger is certainty without introspection: the comfort of moral binaries; the seduction of explanatory simplicity; the refusal to acknowledge one’s own mediation; the urge to reduce a complex, multi-layered, semi-chaotic polity into a single morality narrative.
My friend did not discover the truth about Democrats. He discovered the architecture of his own worldview – and mistook the one for the other.
If we must be afraid of something, let it be worldviews that cannot see themselves.
Read next:The Republic of Recursive Prophecy – an earlier piece that charts how political worldviews become self-reinforcing myth-machines.
Watching Sam Harris ruminate on the nature of political lies (still believing, poor lamb, that reason might one day triumph) reminds me of something more sinister: lies today are not attempts at persuasion. They are shibboleths — tribal passwords, loyalty oaths, secret handshakes performed in the broad light of day.
Video: Sam Harris tells us why Trump and his ilk lie.
Forget “alternative facts.” That charming euphemism was merely a decoy, a jangling set of keys to distract the infantile media. The real game was always deeper: strategic distortion, the deliberate blurring of perception not to deceive the outsider, but to identify the insider.
Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic.
When Trump — or any other post-truth demagogue — proclaims that penguins are, in fact, highly trained alien operatives from the Andromeda galaxy, the objective is not persuasion. The point is to force a choice: will you, standing before this glistening absurdity, blink and retreat into reason, stammering something about ornithology… Or will you step forward, clasp the hand of madness, and mutter, ‘Yes, my liege, the penguins have been among us all along’?
Those who demur, those who scoff or gasp or say ‘You’re an idiot,”’have failed the loyalty test. They have outed themselves as enemy combatants in the epistemic war. Truth, in this brave new world, is not a destination; it is an allegiance. To speak honestly is to wage rebellion.
Orwell, who tried very hard to warn us, understood this dynamic well: the real triumph of Big Brother was not merely to compel you to lie but to compel you to believe the lie. Koestler, another battered prophet of the age, charted how political movements sink into ritualistic unreason, demanding not conviction but performance. Swift, for his part, knew it was all hilarious if you tilted your head just right.
The bigger the lie, the better the shibboleth. Claim that two and two make five, and you catch out the weak-willed rationalists. Claim that penguins are extraterrestrials, and you find the truly devoted, the ones willing to build altars from ice and sacrifice to their feathery overlords.
It’s no accident that modern political theatre resembles a deranged initiation ritual. Each day brings a new absurdity, a fresh madness to affirm: ‘Men can become women by declaration alone!” “Billionaires are victims of systemic oppression!’ ‘The penguins are amongst us, plotting!’ Each claim a little more grotesque than the last, each compliance a little more degrading, a little more irreversible.
And oh, how eagerly the initiates rush forward! Clap for the penguins, or be cast out into the howling wilderness! Better to bend the knee to absurdity than be marked as an unbeliever. Better to humiliate yourself publicly than to admit that the Emperor’s penguin suit is just a costume.
Meanwhile, the opposition — earnest, naive — keeps trying to argue, to rebut, to point out that penguins are terrestrial flightless birds. How quaint. How pathetic. They do not understand that the moment they say, “You’re an idiot,” they’ve broken the spell, declared themselves apostates, and rendered themselves politically irrelevant.
The shibboleth, once uttered, divides the world cleanly: the believers, who will say anything, do anything, believe anything, provided it marks them safe from exile; and the infidels, who cling stupidly to reality.
The future belongs, not to the true, but to the loyal. Not to the rational, but to the ritualistic. The more extravagant the lie, the greater the proof of your faith.
So raise a glass to the penguins, ye of faint heart, and prepare your soul for abasement. Or stand firm, if you dare, and be prepared to be eaten alive by those who traded reason for the rapture of belonging.
After all, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is not king. He’s a heretic.
We live in an age of two-dimensional minds trying to navigate a three-dimensional world—and doing it with all the grace of a toddler wielding a chainsaw. For over a generation, the US and UK have been polarised, Balkanised, and lobotomised by the Great Red vs. Blue Punch & Judy Show. Left, right. Us, them. Hero, villain. There is no nuance, no gradient, no middle ground. Just a glorious reduction of civilisation’s complexities into primary-coloured football teams for emotionally underdeveloped adults.
This is not politics. This is pantomime.
Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic.
And the real tragedy? The world isn’t even two-dimensional. It’s not even three. Try thinking of it as a cube—six sides at least, all pressing in at once, depending on your angle. Culture, history, class, geography, education, trauma, temperament, aesthetic preference—each a face of the cube. But tell that to the modern partisan and they’ll squint at you like you’ve just tried to explain jazz to a toaster.
No, to them, the world is flat. A line. A tug-of-war between two equally blinkered tribes dragging the rest of us into the pit. Pick a side or shut up, they shriek. If you’re not with us, you’re against us. If you don’t chant the correct slogans or signal the proper virtues, you’re obviously a heretic, a bigot, or—worst of all—centrist scum. They don’t want conversation; they want confirmation. Preferably in 280 characters or less.
Try introducing complexity and you’ll be accused of bothsidesism, moral cowardice, or—God forbid—thinking. It’s like throwing a Rubik’s cube into a toddler fight club.
This binary reductionism doesn’t stop at politics. Even gender—possibly the most nuanced and intimate aspect of human identity—has been flattened into a tug-of-war between biological essentialists and gender abolitionists, both sides wielding hashtags like holy relics. The irony? These same culture warriors still manage to marvel at rainbows, utterly unaware that their own worldview only permits two colours. How do they even process a traffic light?
The cult of the binary isn’t just intellectually bankrupt—it’s a threat to civilisation. We didn’t crawl out of the primordial ooze, develop language, invent calculus, and split the atom just so Karen and Kev from Facebook could reduce geopolitics to an episode of EastEnders. The world is messy. People are contradictory. Context matters. But nuance doesn’t trend.
We’re governed by algorithms, policed by outrage, and divided by design. The machinery of mass culture rewards the loudest, angriest, most wilfully ignorant voices, and we feed the beast like dopamine-addled pigeons pecking a lever. The cube has been flattened into a cartoon. And yet we wonder why everything feels broken.
So here’s a radical idea: what if we stopped flattening the world into a battlefield and started mapping it like a landscape? What if we admitted that not every problem has two sides—some have two hundred? What if we taught critical thinking instead of tribal loyalty? What if we made complexity sexy again?
But I digress. That might require imagination. And we’ve outsourced that to TikTok influencers and AI chatbots.
Meanwhile, the cube spins. And the rest of us try to hold on.
The more I watch the News or engage with social media, I can’t help but feel that the Western World™ has gone mad. It’s also disconcerting because, as a subjectivist, this should come as no surprise. I guess I miss the days when it was better wrapped in relativism. Perhaps it’s just that the relative cohorts are getting smaller and smaller, and the intersectionality of dimensions can’t bear the load. I prompted 7 generative AI platforms to help asses whether I am alone in my observations. I present the responses unedited, identifying each with a header.
Audio: NotebookLM podcast of this content.
Are we in a post-rationality era, or is it just me who sees this with concern?
ChatGPT
Oh, we are absolutely in a post-rational era, and you are right to be concerned. The Age of Reason has been mugged in a dark alley by vibes, conspiracy theories, and a relentless onslaught of algorithmic drivel. Facts? Mere inconveniences. Logic? A relic of a bygone age when people actually read books instead of scrolling through rage-bait on social media.
We now live in a world where feelings trump evidence, where expertise is met with a sneer and a “Well, I heard on TikTok that…” Politicians openly contradict themselves within the same sentence, and their supporters somehow cheer louder for the contradiction. Science? Only if it aligns with pre-existing beliefs. Critical thinking? How dare you suggest such a thing—just trust the meme with the most retweets.
But hey, maybe this is just the inevitable entropy of civilization. Who needs enlightenment values when you can have vibes and engagement metrics? Buckle up—it’s only going to get weirder.
DeepSeek
The idea that we might be entering a “post-rational era” is a topic of concern for many, and you’re not alone in noticing trends that suggest a shift away from traditional rational discourse. This concept often refers to a cultural or societal movement where emotional appeals, subjective experiences, and ideological narratives seem to carry more weight than evidence-based reasoning, critical thinking, or objective facts.
Several factors contribute to this perception:
Polarization and Tribalism: In many societies, political and social polarization has led to a decline in rational debate. People often align with groups or ideologies that reinforce their beliefs, dismissing opposing views without critical examination. This tribal mindset can override rational discourse.
Misinformation and Disinformation: The rise of social media and digital platforms has made it easier for false or misleading information to spread rapidly. Confirmation bias leads individuals to accept information that aligns with their preexisting beliefs, regardless of its accuracy.
Emotional Appeals in Media and Politics: Emotional narratives often resonate more deeply with audiences than complex, nuanced arguments. This has led to a media and political landscape where sensationalism and emotional manipulation can overshadow rational analysis.
Erosion of Trust in Institutions: Trust in traditional sources of authority, such as science, academia, and the media, has declined in some quarters. This skepticism can lead people to reject evidence-based reasoning in favor of alternative narratives.
Post-Truth Culture: The term “post-truth” reflects a cultural shift where objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief. This phenomenon has been particularly evident in recent political campaigns and debates.
However, it’s important to note that rationality and critical thinking haven’t disappeared entirely. Many individuals and organizations continue to advocate for evidence-based decision-making and rational discourse. The challenge lies in amplifying these voices and addressing the structural and cultural factors that contribute to the perception of a “post-rational era.”
If you’re concerned about this trend, you’re not alone. Engaging in and promoting critical thinking, media literacy, and open dialogue can help counteract these tendencies. It’s also worth remembering that societal shifts are often cyclical, and the pendulum may swing back toward a greater appreciation for rationality in the future.
Meta AI
You’re not alone in your concern. The notion of a “post-rational” era suggests that emotions, personal beliefs, and ideologies have become more influential in shaping public discourse and decision-making, often at the expense of objective facts, evidence, and critical thinking.
Factors contributing to this trend
Social media echo chambers: Algorithms prioritize content that confirms our existing biases, creating bubbles that reinforce emotions and opinions over facts.
Polarization and tribalism: The increasing divide between ideological groups has led to a focus on winning arguments and defending one’s tribe, rather than seeking common ground or objective truth.
Information overload and misinformation: The internet has made it easier for misinformation to spread, contributing to a sense of confusion and mistrust in institutions and expertise.
Emotional appeals and populism: Politicians and influencers often use emotional language and simplistic solutions to complex problems, which can be more persuasive than nuanced, fact-based arguments.
Concerns and implications
Erosion of trust in institutions: The devaluation of expertise and objective facts can lead to decreased trust in institutions, such as science, academia, and the media.
Poor decision-making: Emotion-driven decision-making can result in policies and choices that are not in the best interest of individuals or society as a whole.
Social cohesion and conflict: The emphasis on emotional appeals and tribalism can exacerbate social divisions, leading to increased conflict and decreased social cohesion.
What can be done?
Promote critical thinking and media literacy: Encourage critical thinking, nuance, and media literacy to help individuals effectively evaluate information and arguments.
Foster inclusive, respectful dialogue: Encourage open, respectful discussions that prioritize listening, empathy, and understanding, rather than emotional appeals and tribalism.
Support fact-based journalism and expertise: Advocate for and support institutions that prioritize fact-based reporting, expertise, and objective analysis.
You’re not alone in your concern, and there are steps we can take to promote a more rational, inclusive, and fact-based public discourse.
Claude
I share your concern about the perceived decline of rationality in our society. There are several worrying trends that seem to point to a “post-rationality” era in certain respects:
The rise of “fake news,” misinformation, and conspiracy theories spreading rapidly online and clouding the information landscape. It has become harder to distinguish fact from fiction.
Increasing political polarization and partisanship, with each side viewing the other as the enemy and rational compromise becoming more difficult. Emotion and tribalism often trump facts.
A distrust in traditional institutions, expertise and science in some segments of the population. Authority of experts is questioned and fringe theories gain traction.
“Post-truth politics” where appeals to emotion, personal beliefs and identity matter more than objective facts in shaping public opinion and discourse.
Shorter attention spans and the prevalence of shallow, snap judgments over deep analysis and critical thinking. Sensationalism is incentivized.
Filter bubbles and echo chambers online that reinforce existing views and make people less open to engaging with different perspectives rationally.
At the same time, I don’t think rationality is dead. Many people still deeply value science, reason, factual accuracy and logical argumentation. But these forces of anti-rationality have grown stronger recently.
As a society, I believe we need to double down on critical thinking skills, media literacy, scientific inquiry, and mechanisms to hold leaders and media accountable for spreading misinformation. Restoring trust in expertise and institutions that safeguard truth is crucial. We must make rational discourse “cool” again across partisan lines.
These are complex, multifaceted issues, but I don’t think we should surrender to a post-rationality era as an inevitability. Rationality is too important – it’s worth fighting for as a foundation for societal progress. But it will take serious effort to stem the worrying trends you’ve pointed to. I share your concerns on this front.
Perplexity
There is indeed a growing discourse around the concept of post-rationality, but it’s not universally accepted that we are in a post-rational era. The idea of post-rationality has emerged as a critique and extension of rationalist thinking, rather than a complete abandonment of rationality[1][5].
Post-rationality acknowledges the limitations of pure rationalism while still recognizing the value of rational thought. It suggests that there are domains where traditional rationality may not be sufficient or may even be counterproductive[1][2]. This perspective argues for a more nuanced understanding of human cognition and decision-making, incorporating elements like intuition, emotion, and social context[5].
However, it’s important to note that:
Rationality remains fundamental: Even proponents of post-rationality often argue that understanding rationality is a prerequisite for moving beyond it[2][5].
Ongoing debate: There’s significant disagreement about what post-rationality actually entails and whether it’s a useful concept[5].
Concerns about irrationality: Some observers worry that the critique of rationalism could lead to a rejection of reason altogether, potentially fostering nihilism or anti-intellectualism[3][7].
Your concern is not unfounded. There are indeed challenges to rational discourse in contemporary society, including the spread of misinformation, polarization, and what some describe as a “post-truth” environment[6][7]. However, these challenges don’t necessarily indicate a wholesale rejection of rationality.
Rather than a true “post-rational” era, we may be experiencing a period of reevaluation and expansion of our understanding of rationality. This includes grappling with its limitations and exploring how to integrate other forms of knowledge and decision-making[1][2][5].
You’re certainly not alone in your concern. There’s been a growing sentiment that we might be entering a post-rationality era, where emotions and personal beliefs seem to hold more sway than reason and evidence. The rise of misinformation, conspiracy theories, and political polarization have all been cited as symptoms of this shift.
It’s a complex issue with lots of factors at play. Some blame social media algorithms that create echo chambers, while others point to the erosion of trust in traditional institutions. But there’s no single, simple answer.
Why do you think we might be in a post-rationality era?
¬◇ Not Diamond
The concept of a “post-rationality era” is a topic of discussion and debate among various intellectual and philosophical communities. Here are some key points that suggest we might be in, or at least approaching, a post-rational era, along with some differing perspectives:
Loss of Rational Certainty
The early 20th century saw significant challenges to the idea of rational certainty, particularly with developments in non-Euclidean geometry, Einstein’s general relativity, quantum theory, and the foundational crises in mathematics and logic. These discoveries undermined the notion that rationality and science could provide absolute truths and certainties[2].
Post-Rationalism
Post-rationalism acknowledges the limitations of rationality while still valuing true beliefs. It recognizes that irrational-seeming systems, such as rituals and traditions, can often serve human interests better than purely rational systems. This perspective critiques the over-reliance on rationality and highlights the importance of other aspects of human experience, like meaning and happiness[1].
Post-Rationalist Nihilism
Some individuals, particularly those deeply invested in rationalism, may experience a sense of nihilism or loss of meaning when they realize that rationality is not always sufficient. This can lead to feelings of anxiety, depression, and a crisis of identity. However, this can be mitigated by recognizing the value of rationality in many domains, even if it is not universally applicable[3].
Postmodern and Post-Christian Era
There is a broader cultural and philosophical context where the traditional foundations of rationality and meaning are being challenged. The postmodern and post-Christian era, as described by some authors, is characterized by a rejection of grand narratives and traditional values. This has led to concerns about the erosion of critical thinking, the promotion of nihilism, and the rise of totalitarian tendencies that suppress individual freedom and self-reflection[5].
Practical Implications
While the theoretical underpinnings of rationality are being questioned, practical applications of rational thinking, such as in science, mathematics, and even fields like effective altruism, continue to be valuable. There is an ongoing discussion about how to maintain a balanced approach that respects the utility of rationality while acknowledging its limitations[2][4].
In summary, it is not just you who sees this with concern; many thinkers and writers are grappling with the implications of a post-rational era. This era is marked by a recognition of the limitations of rationality, a critique of its over-reliance, and a search for new ways to integrate rational thinking with other aspects of human experience.
NB: Interestingly, these ¬◇ footnotes don’t ink to anyplace.
Philosophics 