I'm reminded of a metaphor of @mgurri's for a procedure presented as meritocratic but used for specifically political ends: the treadmill.

— Adam Gurri (@adamgurri) November 17, 2015

The idea is the treadmill is egalitarian; anyone can get on it and have their baseline health tested to qualify for <fill in the blank>

— Adam Gurri (@adamgurri) November 17, 2015

In practice, those who run the test make it more relaxed when they have someone they've pre-selected to qualify.

— Adam Gurri (@adamgurri) November 17, 2015

When a political enemy gets on the treadmill, they crank it up and keep it going until the person has died of a heart attack.

— Adam Gurri (@adamgurri) November 17, 2015

Classically, and perniciously, this was the Literacy Test in the history of American voting.

— Adam Gurri (@adamgurri) November 17, 2015

Culture Warrior types do this to one another in terms of the standards they publicly hold ideological enemies to.

— Adam Gurri (@adamgurri) November 17, 2015

The quest for neutral standards is fruitless. It all boils down to whether you trust the person applying the standard.

— Adam Gurri (@adamgurri) November 17, 2015

Without trust, there can be no standards. Only cynical rule-gaming. There is no shortcut for trust. There's no silver bullet.

— Adam Gurri (@adamgurri) November 17, 2015

Trust is a leap of faith. It always is. No matter how much someone has "proven" themselves. Without trust, no amount of proof suffices.

— Adam Gurri (@adamgurri) November 17, 2015

Arguing in good faith is about trying to be trustworthy, assuming good faith is about extending trust.

— Adam Gurri (@adamgurri) November 17, 2015

(I've been obsessing about the role of trust in discourse and politics lately, can you tell?)

— Adam Gurri (@adamgurri) November 17, 2015

UPDATE: Adam Gurri informs me that he extrapolated these tweets into a post:

Increasingly I’ve come to believe that trust is the most important aspect of faith in this respect. How is coordination and cooperation among millions of strangers possible? A widespread trust. How are we able to learn anything? By trusting in certain authorities and in the authority of certain sources. How has science advanced? By creating specialized communities of inquiry who trust each other enough to learn from each other, and develop standards of evidence that they believe will be employed in good faith.

What you believe is, I think, much less a factor of your theoretical pre-commitments, or your religion, or your politics, than of who you trust. Indeed, your pre-commitments, religion, and politics are largely determined by a combination of who you trusted in the first place and your own judgment.