A taxonomy of projected ideas

[skyecaptain]

From Paul Krugman's blog:

One thing Chait doesn’t mention, though, is that the willingness of right-wingers to believe this particular myth has a lot to do with projection. On the right, people are for smaller government as a matter of principle - smaller government for its own sake. And so they naturally imagine that their opponents must be their

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[koganbot]

Quoting here from what I said near the start of the Thomas Kuhn thread:

People mistakenly believe that Kuhn has something significant and unsettling to say about The Nature Of Truth, and want to assimilate his ideas to "Nothing is true; everything is permitted" and then get all upset or excited by this and use it in battles for and against "relativism" and "diversity."

But the situation is more complex than simple "mirror imaging" here. Think of people in the room, two of whom are in an argument and a bunch of other people are conversing as well, saying various things. It would be as if the two people assumed that anything anyone else said was part of the argument they were having, was aligned with either one side or the other, when in actuality the other people are mostly carrying on altogether different conversations, except a few of these people tangentially address themselves to the arguers by saying, "Not only aren't the two positions you two are taking the only possible ones, both positions are based on a premise that we fundamentally reject." But the two are unable to hear this.