"Right now, I believe you are simply deluded."

This might be meaningful if you contrasted it with any other state of mind when it comes to making sex-positive choices.

But your attitude towards the laws and "dangers" reveals that if you even entertain the notion that sexuality can be healthy you consider it too dangerous too often to treat it as if it were.

Clearly the number of "deluded" are so high that they ultimately characterize the whole convo about human sexuality.

Meanwhile I cannot help but notice that there appears to be no observable mechanism at work. No system for evaluating anyone as not being "deluded." And that the only pattern is one of disagreeing with you about any least thing.

That you won't credit others with being undeluded is due to your Naive Realism.

You have taken this to its ultimate extension. You assume that were all rational people examining the same evidence, that they would be compelled to agree. But you no longer assume that those who don't are uninformed. You now assume that those who fail to be persuaded are either deranged or lying.

Of course the two are mutually exclusive, and you seem to flip a coin to determine whether the party agrees with you in secret and lies about it publicly, or whether they are too far removed from reality to ever agree with you.

And as of late you have also alternated this rationalist assumption with a contempt for logic whereby you argue that ANYTHING can be supported with logic in the right hands, That logic is meaningless, or terms like "misanthrope" are meaningless because they can be applied to all things.

I cannot allow myself the Naive Realist assumption because of the circumstances of my birth; being an identical twin. One of Derek's GFs seeing me argue politics with him in college tellingly said that it was like watching one mind argue with itself using the same standards and assumptions.

Logic and evidence can get us very far indeed. They can eliminate the internal contradiction. They can promote a more consistent vision. They can be powerful persuaders of those who are blocked only by the irrational or false from agreeing with you. The attempt to pretend that its all sophistry and meaningless rhetoric is the tactic of the one who fears that the rational and grounded argument may lead away from their conclusions.

But they are not the end of everything. Ultimately our views are also shaped by the anecdotal and the personal in ways that two people who share a common experience will not see it the same way.

Where the risk aversive person sees fear in the unknown, the risk seeker sees excitement, This has a lot more to do with biochemistry prior to birth than with the experience itself or the logic of the reasoning used to drive the choice to retreat or engage with the unknown.

And yet, this basic difference of temperament must necessarily inform political choices.

Assuming hostility or delusion without any evidence cuts off the possibility of, if not persuading the other party, then persuading any allies they have who are still reachable.

Dante







• ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naïve_realism_(psychology)   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naïve_realism_(psychology)   )