Was I too harsh on the concept of an ideological middle ground in my previous post? Was I too harsh on those who lay claim to the middle ground, like Sam Altman did with respect to pessimistic and optimistic views on generative AI?
I received a couple of very insightful comments that raised these questions. In this post, I’ll explore the idea of an ideological “middle” and the rhetorical act of claiming it.
The following are very different statements about a pair of logically opposed ideological positions:
- “There exists a third position that reconciles the two.”
- “My own position represents such a reconciliation.”
Statement 1 could be the beginning of a search for third position. It’s an open invitation to deliberate. The reconciliation may take different forms. It may turn out to be a synthesis of thesis and anti-thesis à la Hegel. It may be an uneasy compromise that both sides can tolerate, though not love. Or it may offer a quantitative scale on which the two opposing views take different values, and define a midpoint between them.
Statement 2 is a rhetorical power move.
In most cases it may be an inadvertent power move. I try to make a point of not judging intentions, and always assuming the best. But the effect of claiming the middle – intended or unintended – is to label the original two opposing views as unreasonable and extreme.
The “middle” has powerful moral connotations. The Aristotelian virtues lie in a moderate middle between destructive extremes. In a world characterized by the normal distribution, the arithmetic mean and its immediate surroundings enjoy a kind of democratic legitimacy. We experience the world as an alternation of intense passions and calm refractory periods, and we’ve been taught to believe – through ideology and experience – that dispassionate interpretations of a situation are closer to the truth.
One reader-friend disagreed with my argument that “staking out a position in the middle is a cop-out.” We’re not in actual disagreement: I’m not arguing it is a cop-out. It’s the opposite. It’s taking a stand while fortifying it with the moral authority of “moderation” and “reasonableness.”
We say things like Altman did all the time: “I’m in the middle on this issue.” Most of the time we are not intentionally performing the power move. Instead, we are trying to express something else. What? Here are some candidates:
- “I simply do not know or care enough to choose either side or to contribute to the search for a third position. So I’m withholding my judgement.” That is a very respectable position to take. I, for one, would do better to adopt it much more often. But “I don’t know/care” would be a better way to say that than “I’m in the middle.”
- “I see the merits of both sides and have not yet found a reconciling third position. The search is still on.” That is also a very respectable and underutilized perspective. I think the charitable interpretation of Altman’s “in the middle” is this one. But again, “I’m in the middle” is not really an accurate way to describe this position. Better would be “I’m torn” or “I’m withholding judgment because I see the merits of both sides’ arguments.”
- “The rhetoric of the opposing sides is unnecessarily emotional, and I want to reframe the debate using less fraught language.” This is not the same thing as establishing a third, reconciling position. It can be a respectable position to take. But “taking the emotion” out of the debate easily becomes a power move in itself. Using a word with relatively little emotional valence in an emotionally charged context is also an ideological statement. American-English “enhanced interrogation” and Nazi-German verschärfte Vernehmung mean the same thing: torture.
- “I have no skin in this game, so my view should be understood as a ‘middle ground.’” Sounds reasonable, but sorry, no dice. To truly have no skin in the game means you also have no view. The second you adopt a view, you’re fooling yourself at least, and probably others, to think you are not emotionally invested.
It’s a commonplace that no single person sees the world from a “neutral” nowhere, even as we imagine the idea of a neutral point of view and strive for it. But there is no reason to assume that a God’s Eye Perspective comes from any sort of “middle.” Even when opposing positions can be quantified onto a quantitative metric, the decision of how to define the numerical “middle” itself is highly ideological. See my example of inheritance tax in the previous post: Between a) total state confiscation of property at death, and b) zero inheritance tax, is “50%” the middle? Or is the middle the average of everyone’s opinion on the matter?
At what speed – including zero speed – and in which direction to develop AI is a political question. Our best, if imperfect, tools for resolving political questions are to:
- apply consistent, rule-based deliberation processes that are framed independently of the content of the question, and
- take the pragmatic leap of faith to attribute to others the same motives that you wish others would attribute to you.
The “middle” is a mirage, and claiming it as your own does nothing to improve the tone of the debate. At best, it’s a misleading way to say “my mind isn’t made up yet;” misleading because it suggests that the two opposing camps surrounding the middle are equally wrong.
At worst, claiming the middle is a power play: rolling your heavy rhetorical artillery onto the commanding heights of the debate.
The Ruminathans 
These are very different statements about a pair of logically opposed ideological positions:
1) “There is a third position that reconciles the two.”
2) “My own position represents such a reconciliation.”
To 1)
Such positions exist for phenomena that can be depicted on a single scale: I want to jog at speed A, my trainer thinks B would be better. There can be a middle ground here, somewhere between A and B.
However, most phenomena cannot be depicted on a scale: The party program of party XY: I like many points of the program, but I also don’t like many of them. I can’t define a middle ground here. It’s like holding one hand in ice water and the other in hot water, and then I would talk about a medium temperature sensation. The poles cannot be reconciled.
BUT: But if decisions are required that manifest themselves in actions, then that can still work at my jogging speed, but no longer in the voting booth. Many decisions require an either/or choice. I can only tick the box or not. I don’t think the concept of reconciliation would fit here.
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