Astral Codex Ten

gay rights

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gay rights

Article

gay rights is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between March 10, 2021 and May 12, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as ""When a Democrat talks about ‘gay rights’, it doesn’t mean letting people marry the people they love""; “certain ideas everyone knew were off limits - atheism, communism, marijuana legalization, gay rights”; “You’re now allowed to promote gay rights”. It most often appears alongside 1950s, 1950s American consensus, 1990s.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: March 10, 2021
  • Last seen: May 12, 2021

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Trapped Priors As A Basic Problem Of Rationality
March 10, 2021 · Original source
Maybe this kind of thing is real sometimes. But think about how it interacts with a trapped prior. Whenever the party you don't like says something seemingly reasonable, you can interpret in context as them wanting something horrible. Whenever they want a seemingly desirable thing, you secretly know it means they want a horrible moral atrocity. If a Republican talks about "law and order", it doesn't mean they're concerned about the victims of violent crime, it means they want to lock up as many black people as possible to strike a blow for white supremacy. When a Democrat talks about "gay rights", it doesn't mean letting people marry the people they love, it means destroying the family so they can replace it with state control over your children. I've had arguments with people who believe that no pro-life conservative really cares about fetuses, they just want to punish women for being sluts by denying them control over their bodies. And I've had arguments with people who believe that no pro-lockdown liberal really cares about COVID deaths, they just like the government being able to force people to wear masks as a sign of submission. Once you're at the point where all these things sound plausible, you are doomed. You can get a piece of evidence as neutral as "there's a deadly pandemic, so those people think you should wear a mask" and convert it into "they're trying to create an authoritarian dictatorship". And if someone calls you on it, you'll just tell them they need to look at it in context. It’s the bitch eating cracker syndrome except for politics - even when the other party does something completely neutral, it seems like extra reason to hate them.
Theses On The Current Moment
May 12, 2021 · Original source
If we zoom out a little, we find that most of human history involved enforced ideological conformity, censorship, and repression. Maybe the most available reference point for this sort of thing is the US in the 1950s. There were certain ideas everyone knew were off limits - atheism, communism, marijuana legalization, gay rights. If you supported those things, you might not go to jail, but you'd be excluded from most good careers and most of polite society. This system was very stable - everyone knew the limits, and people generally didn't push against them unless they really wanted to and knew what they were getting into.
This isn't to say the 1950s US was good! I think atheism, marijuana legalization, and gay rights were correct! It was an ethical disaster that their progress was held back for decades, and immensely unjust that the few people who spoke out for them got punished! My point is that the 1950s cultural regime was good at censoring things quietly and through general social pressure, with a minimum of Red Guards breaking people's kneecaps. This is good, insofar as getting your kneecaps broken sounds painful, but bad insofar as the repression was so subtle that it was hard to convince anyone that anything was wrong.
If cancel culture is the equivalent of the 1950s American consensus, we should remember the fact that that consensus eventually failed. You’re now allowed to promote gay rights, cite scientific research showing marijuana isn't a deadly poison, campaign as a socialist, et cetera.