9 tweets · June 2021 · 28 likes · 0 retweets · read on Twitter
I've noticed a useful shape recently which is when my own thinking is doing this "found a way to feel superior to both" thing. It seems to be a great response to false dichotomy questions that try to get you to take sides; by being playfully arrogant, it avoids both-sides-ism
Huh, this is actually even better than I thought. It avoids sounding both-sides-y, and it also avoids sounding like a whatever-sympathizer, because, well, you're not being sympathetic to either side 😎
This feels like an excellent metamodern move. It's satisfying in part because by (self-)owning your own sense of feeling superior (rather than just talking from a feels-superior frame) you're clearly not taking your own thinking too seriously.
It's also metamodern in that it acknowledges a sense that viewpoints can be superior to others. @HFreinacht writes in depth about how po-mo has a paradox of using a "po-mo is best" frame while simultaneously flatly rejecting all claims of superiority in the name of relativism
Of course, another key piece of metamodern thinking is being able to listen to people you disagree with, and steelman their perspectives. It's just... the time to do that is not when a frame needs busting and a question needs unasking.
In general basically everyone has something to contribute to understanding what's broken, and it's honestly pretty easy to discern as long as you can remember that someone being able to point at a problem doesn't mean that their solution is any good
(your interlocutor may ofc not understand this)
anyway, this got super political but seriously you can use it on any question "are you a cat or a dog person?" "do you think facebook or google is more evil?"
anyway, separate from *saying* it out loud, I've been finding it rather useful to be able to also notice this thinking pattern in my own mind