The practice of applying different standards of reason to different people or positions—treating one's own reasoning as reasonable while dismissing comparable reasoning from others as unreasonable. Reason Double Standards are the everyday currency of argument, the unspoken assumption that "my reasons are reasons; yours are rationalizations." They make genuine dialogue impossible because they ensure that one side is always already reasonable and the other always already wrong.
Example: "His reasons were careful analysis; her reasons were just rationalizations. Reason Double Standards in action: same thing, different labels, depending on who was doing the reasoning. The double standard was invisible to him, which is how it worked."
by Dumu The Void March 10, 2026
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