Epistemic Advantage's support of Polarization

       Here's my summary of epistemic advantage. People who have access to greater evidence or greater ability to use that evidence, have greater knowledge in the area to which their evidence and skills apply. It's not irrational to defer to people who have greater knowledge within society (though I don't think Toole outrightly says this). Marginalization can be a source of a greater pool of evidence and more instances to practice using that evidence through the process of consciousness-raising. So it is not irrational to defer to people with a marginalized identity that has gone through consciousness-raising when dealing with questions surrounding that identity. Despite it not being irrational, I think the presence of echo chambers and polarization leads me to believe that people don't empirically act in a way that recognizes epistemic advantage. Instead, we search out opinions that validate our own, leading to polarization. Epistemic advantage, could be seen as leading to polarization as it (in practice) leads to feelings of invalidation. Since I tend to agree with Toole's account of Epistemic Advantage, I'm going to argue that we can't get rid of polarization. 

       Take the example of calculating a tip. If every time you go out to dinner, your friend always calculates the tip, and when you offer, your friend says, "oh I'm better at math, don't worry about it." You might feel pretty shitty about your math skills, possibly invalid. Even if your friend is a math major, your high school algebra skills are perfectly adequate to calculate a tip so in this case deference to the epistemically advantaged person is unnecessary. This unnecessary use of epistemic advantage could lead to separation into echo chambers where people don't need to defer to anyone with an epistemic advantage because everyone's opinions are the same, so even if someone is "advantaged" they are just valuing your own thoughts more by confirming them. 

    This might be a bit of a jump, could be how you get to the Jan 6th attacks on the capital. You have a group that feels marginalized or invalid within the mainstream. They have a strong belief that the election was stolen. They believe they have a standpoint of epistemic advantage by being able to see behind the ideology of the "deep state".  Because they have the epistemic advantage, they don't feel the need to listen to others, and their feelings of marginalization mean they think that others won't listen when they share their beliefs. Their opinions are invalidated in the mainstream so they turn to others with their opinion, who then affirm and intensify, the process of polarization. 

      This can lead to the question: do they actually have an epistemic advantage? Their values of traditional gender roles, family values, and white supremacy are vilified in mainstream media (my opinion is rightly so).  They view their history as being erased through the replacement of Confederate Statues (cause of the Unite the Right protests organized by Jason Kessler, a Proud Boy). This could be considered marginalization, placing them in a more likely position to be epistemically advantaged. There is also evidence that they have gone through a consciousness-raising-like process as they identify patterns of "oppression" through DEI, affirmative action, LGTBQ topics being taught in schools, etc. They draw connections to past regimes of racial oppression in affirmative action when labeling it as reverse racism. I don't think this consciousness-raising-like process is truly consciousness-raising because I don't believe they've developed double consciousness and there has to be some level of truth to your "training". If we take the example of a doctor and a patient reading the same chart and throw in a traditional medical healer, the doctor and the healer might come to different conclusions, and typically we defer to the doctor because we place slightly more stock or "truth" in that training than traditional medicine. 

    Some people might view traditional medicine as more epistemically advantaged than modern medicine. This connects back to the tip example too, where I noticed that deferring to the epistemically advantaged person was unnecessary. We have different views on when deference is necessary. If you have back pain, certain people might view both traditional and modern medicine similarly, if you have cancer they might view it differently or vice versa. Either way this disconnect in when deferring is necessary is what leads to invalidation and polarization. But since it's impossible to always agree on the necessity of deference, we will always have this problem of polarization, unless everyone decides to feel very confident in their position in society and stop feeling invalidated. This leads me to the conclusion that will we just always have some level of polarization since I am definitely not going to make an argument against deference to experts, which looks to be the only other option. 

    For a bit of empirical evidence, I turn to the presidential pardon. Trump recently pardoned many of the perpetrators of the Jan 6th attack saying "This proclamation ends a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years and begins a process of national reconciliation." This reminded me of how Ford pardoned Nixon, citing the punishment Nixon had already undergone, the inability of the justice system to give him a fair trial in a timely manner, and the need for the nation to move on. Both cited national unity as a motivation, an act of trying to combat polarization. Both decisions, however, just went to separate echo chambers and were viewed as bad or good, supporting polarization. So I think presidential justification of lessening polarization is somewhat performatory -- at least in practice if not in theory. Because lessening polarization is very hard to do when you grant the presence of epistemic advantage.