Greg Lukianoff: belief

Transcript context

…Yeah, because of that at the scale of the virality allows you to never get to the actual discussion of the point, but it’s not just the left, it’s the right. It’s also a efficient rhetorical fortress, so something to be proud of on the right, it’s more efficient so you don’t have to listen to liberals, and anyone can be labeled a liberal if they have a wrong opinion. I’ve seen liberal and left and leftist all used in the same kind of way. That’s leftist nonsense. You don’t have to listen to experts, even conservative experts, if they have the wrong opinion. You don’t have to listen to journalists, even conservative journalists, if they have the wrong opinion, and among the MAGA wing, there’s a fourth provision. You don’t need to listen to anyone who isn’t pro-Trump. Yeah, and we call it efficient because it eliminates a lot of people you probably should listen to at least sometimes. We point out sometimes how cancel culture can interfere with faith and expertise, so we get kind of being a little suspicious of experts, but at the same time, if you follow that and you follow it mechanically, and I definitely… I think everybody in the US probably has some older uncle who exercises some of these. It is a really efficient way to wall yourself off from the rest of the world and dismiss at least some people you really should be listening to. The way you laid it out, it made me realize that we just take up so much of our brain power with these- … is that we just take up so much of our brain power-…

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