Escaping The “Outside Criticism” Trap
I. Here’s a fun argument you can use to discredit anyone at any time. Start by calling them an arrogant fanatic with a totalizing ideology, someone who thinks they personally have solved all problems and can’t possibly learn from anyone who disagrees. If they have friends who agree with them, they’re a cult who collectively work to shelter themselves from any dissenting viewpoint. Then your victim responds by presenting one hundred notarized affadavits describing times when they have engaged with their critics, spent years studying books by their critics to see what they could learn from them, and even changed their beliefs in response to criticism. Then you spring the trap: “Ah, but you cherry-picked critics who operate within your worldview, a sort of loyal opposition. You continue to dismiss and exclude genuine critics who challenge your smug assumptions.” This always works. If your victim protests that they do like and appreciate many critics with worldviews different to theirs, you object that no, those guys are also within the system. You meant a different guy, even further away from their own view. Oh, they read that one too? You meant an even more different guy. Eventually, no matter how cosmopolitan they are, you will reach someone they actually don’t respect - let’s say a Stalinist pedophile who believes the Papacy is a Jewish plot - and then you go ha! I told you that you rejected everyone outside your little bubble! Everyone has people close to their ideology who they respect, and people far away from it who they don’t respect. Professionally, I work from a tradition of medicalized psychiatry influenced by figures like Kraepelin, Kline, and (sigh) Stahl. When I operate within that tradition - let’s say by prescribing escitalopram to a depressed patient -…