this discourse highlights an interesting rhetorical pathology, wherein certain parties, afraid of being forced to accept a specific path of action, refuse to accept a true a statement they almost certainly believe, & instead split on the question, arguing for the opposite stance
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RT @finnonthegin
Dipping my toes again into the discourse by saying you’re delusional if you think it’s normal and good for people to inject heroin and be…
https://twitter.com/finnonthegin/status/1391864690133803010
an example:
person 1: thing A is bad!
person 2 (thinking): its kinda bad, but they're probably going to say that we should impose policy B to guard against thing A! but B is bad & I don't want it
person 2: no, actually, thing A is perfectly ok & you're bad for saying otherwise
this is a form of the mind reading fallacy, wherein an interlocutor tries to front-run their discursive partner's response by responding to it preemptively, in the process confusing everyone, as they're not stating their beliefs, but instead being reactionary
this is suboptimal