Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on How long a chain of logic do you have to use?

…but one thing I think matters is: how long a chain of logic do you have to use to reach the conclusion that this affects someone’s ability to do the job?

Of course, if the reasoning is sound, and the premises are solid, even a long chain of logic can lead to a justified conclusion. Too often, however, the conclusion is simply claimed to follow while the actual premises and inferences are best left unspecified.

It’s very similar to the way “worker’s rights”, “egalitarianism”, “solidarity”, “anti-imperialism”, “anti-colonialism”, “anti-fascism” etc. in the Soviet Union or Mao’s China were basically just synonyms for “whatever the party/the leader does” (e.g. living like emperors while the workers were living off scraps). It’s easy to be in favor of, say, “worker’s rights”, but how do you get from that to uncritical support for autocracy, the one party state, leader worship, forced orthodoxy and intellectual conformity, thoughtpolice, endless purges and show trials, political arrests, torture, executions, forced collectivization, mass-starvation, genocide etc. etc.? How does criticism of the latter translate into rejection of the former? Of course, you might as well forget hoping for an answer. Just by asking the question you would have marked yourself as “anti worker’s rights”, as well as “pro-fascism”, “pro-colonialism” etc. No need to spell out the intermediary steps.

Likewise, it’s easy to be in favor of “trans rights” (e.g. there isn’t a single “right” – properly formulated* – that I’m granting myself that I’m not also granting every trans-identified person on the planet), but how do you get from that to uncritical support for sex denialism, biological males in women’s sports/bathrooms/changing rooms/showers/jails/domestic abuse and rape shelters, forced teaming, the idea that it’s bigoted for lesbians to not be into “lady-cock”, automatic “affirmation” and medicalization of children etc. etc. etc.? How does disagreement with the latter translate into denial of the former? Once again, all the major premises are unstated, and all the critical inferences are left unspecified.

* By “properly formulated” i mean formulated in the most generally applicable way possible. E.g. I don’t recognize any universal right to use the “men’s room”, although I do claim that right for myself. Nor do I recognize a universal right to use “the bathroom appropriate to one’s gender identity”. What I do recognize is the right of everyone to use the bathroom intended for their biological sex. My own right to use the men’s room is just what follows from this more general right.