Anti-factual tactics normatively rebound hardest onto the vulnerable they were meant to protect

Evidence

What a complete misfire of the original politics that motivated postmodernism, which was to protect the poor and vulnerable from being exploited by those in authority. It is now the poor and vulnerable who will suffer most from climate change. Sokal’s prediction is close to being fulfilled, for how does the left fight back against right-wing ideology without using facts? This is the cost of playing with ideas as if they had no consequences. It’s all fun and games to attack truth in the academy, but what happens when one’s tactics leak out into the hands of science deniers and conspiracy theorists, or thin-skinned politicians who insist that their instincts are better than any evidence? — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 295

Categorization

• XREF: Moral-cost argument mirrors the claim that ideals detached from effects can devastate those they aim to help. — connects to: Fact-challenging arises from motive to protect beliefs and enables political domination — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 49; People threatened by their group’s moral failures deny, relabel, and relativize the facts — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2084
• SEED: Essay angle: intellectual history of how emancipatory epistemologies turn self-destructive when their tools leak into power’s hands.

Broader Connections

• People threatened by their group’s moral failures deny, relabel, and relativize the facts #exemplifies (0.88) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2084
• Fact-challenging arises from motive to protect beliefs and enables political domination #expands (0.80) — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 49