Rational Double Standards

The practice of applying different standards of rationality to different people or positions—deeming one's own reasoning rational while dismissing similar reasoning from opponents as irrational. Rational Double Standards are what allow people to see their own biases as insights, their own emotions as intuitions, their own leaps as logic—while seeing the same things in others as errors. They're the cognitive machinery of hypocrisy, the engine of special pleading, the foundation of every double standard that privileges one's own side.

Example: "His gut feeling was intuition; her gut feeling was irrational emotion. Rational Double Standards in action: same phenomenon, different labels, depending on who was experiencing it. The double standard was invisible to him, which is how it worked."

Rational Double Standards by Dumu The Void March 10, 2026