Rex Kerr
1 min readJan 25, 2023

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What would be the problem with including postmodern views, as long as they stay as views? Obviously, having a discussion while someone is trying to enact revolutionary emancipation from oppressive ideals like "evidence" and "reason" is at best a pointless waste of time and at worst dangerous.

But postmodern ideas are, from what I've seen, really bad but subtly so, so it makes sense to invite people who have that perspective to both put on the best face that the topic can manage, and also to encourage potentially thoughtful people to actually be thoughtful which would, on balance, I think, draw them away from the more destructive aspects of postmodern critical theory.

One of the biggest problems with postmodern critical theory is that its advocates don't seem particularly interested in serious conversation with anyone who doesn't already broadly adopt the same framework.

This lets them avoid annoying questions like, "If this aspect of behavior were largely biologically determined, how would you know?" or "Can you estimate the relative harms of systemic racism vs. stereotype threat under different situations?"

Being part of a conversation where such questions would get asked would, it seems to me, be good for them, and things that postmodern critical theorists care about are often important issues.

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Rex Kerr
Rex Kerr

Written by Rex Kerr

One who rejoices when everything is made as simple as possible, but no simpler. Sayer of things that may be wrong, but not so bad that they're not even wrong.

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