chapotraphouse

I did include advocating for good epistemology as one of the four important points, and I don't think there's anything postmodern about that.

I don't know if you are speaking from extensive experience, but if I have extensive experience in any practical element that's relevant here, it's dealing with highly-educated liberals. Let me start with the basic fact that most of them simply do not know more about relevant fields than the average person. They might feel themselves more enlightened and therefore able to just intuit answers better than other people (few would admit to this, but it's a notorious problem in academic culture), but "liberal education" is very spotty and limited, at least in the US. Even among those who might be able to claim relevant information, often that information is no better than "read Hannah Arendt" who, let us remember, is famous for work that is often not simply ahistorical, but ahistorical in a way where mainstream liberal historians completely reject her characterizations (I am particularly thinking of Eichmann in Jerusalem). When it isn't just that, the "educated liberals" often simply read opinion pieces in NYT or total pop history like Samantha Power or Anne Applebaum (I don't mean to single out women here, I hate Robert Conquest even more on every level, I just wouldn't categorize his work the same way, and a lot of the pop hack men are more openly conservative) who are again discredited by even liberal critics in the mainstreams of the actual fields they grift credibility from.

Even if they received some level of formal education on a subject, that does not mean that they have some indifferent reserve of information, it typically means they were taught some basic principles (like the rhetoric triangle, and likewise just assume it's always unassailable) and beyond that had a series of stories fed to them that are very selective in what they include and how those details are characterized. When it is actually their specialty (and it's a real specialty, not like polsci or something), usually you have the best chance of reaching them so long as you do some work researching and are adequately deferential to their training, because if you are actually right, they are more equipped than the typical person to understand that you are right. I have many times won arguments toward supporting socialist principles and interpretations of history by simply letting a philosophy academic or historian supply facts and work with them to make definitions, and then construct arguments using only what was just supplied. I said that their capacity is why this works, but I think even more than that it's often because they are people who really care about the truth of their subject, or the benefit to society of that truth or something along those lines, so when they actually receive a valid argument along those lines, it matters to them, rather than academia being a method of licensing beliefs that they hold for other reasons (which can still be rationally engaged with, but need to be sniffed out first)

For other people, and I mean most others I have mentioned and also laypeople, there are three major possibilities: 1) Stories about history or political theory or whatever are just sort of things to say and not in any way related to why they actually believe them, so it might be good to refute a couple of things to establish your credibility relative to their bedtime stories, but talking about it further is probably a waste of time and you're better off searching for why they actually believe whatever it is. 2) They were told stories from a source that they trust and it doesn't really intersect with their life as far as they can tell, so they just accepted the story and never questioned it, even across the span of decades. 3) They literally just don't have any familiarity with the other side. There's no degree in the vast, vast majority of colleges in the US that requires you to get a good enough understanding of Marx to be able to hold even a casual conversation about his work, and you would struggle to find even a single course where a single work of Lenin's is studied except maybe, maybe a focused history class, and even then it's probably something highly polemical. Even if they can hold a conversation, they are very likely to get things wrong that aren't even fine points of nuance or historical context/philology, but just the very basics of what Marx said beyond the slogans (and even then, only a few slogans).

Like, I know a highly-respected tenured professor who mostly teaches about the World Wars and their surrounding context and will give you all sorts of opinions on Stalin and USSR communism, down to that Khrushchev was actually trying to save communism from the damage Stalin did to it (not that he didn't do damage, but it's wildly overstated and Khrushchev did not want to save any sort of Marxism), but if I asked them to simply name one of the major political-philosophical works Stalin wrote, I bet you they could not do it and I know for a fact they have not read a single page of any of them (especially funny since they're pretty familiar with Mein Kampf). Can you imagine a scholar of 18th century American history having read none of the Federalist Papers, or only a couple? In my opinion, the simple reason for this is that liberal ideology is assumed to have some level of seriousness in general, and socialist works aren't really taken as especially relevant to the actual political projects of socialist states, unlike the writings of monarchists, liberals, fascists, and theocrats. Given those factors, who cares what Stalin wrote for the Short Course unless you're just that interested in the minutia of propaganda? (If you're wondering, they could name a couple of works by Lenin, but have not read a page of those either) I consider cases like this one to still be one of the more optimistic ones, because they do still know things and have some sense of epistemology, even if they haven't been totally consistent in their application of it.

For as little as I sometimes respect these people, my point in saying all of this is not to disparage them as such. My point is that the claim "the abundance of liberals among the highly educated is evidence enough that having information is not sufficient to land at correct positions" is wildly misunderstanding the nature of liberal education and academics, because usually they are very uninformed outside of their specialty and that's not even trying to litigate about if some of their beliefs are misinformation. There is so much information that you can share with them, using only liberal sources or primary evidence, that has the potential to change their perspective, and even relying on evidence that they already have, you can often just point out simple inferences with facts that they already know but simply haven't put together (which still falls under "logos").

the idea that all beliefs must be backed up by evidence is not backed up by evidence

"All beliefs" is the only reason the only reason this phrase could be worth discussing, because it is obviously true that the vast majority of beliefs are backed up by evidence (Good evidence? Only sometimes. Definitive evidence? Rarely.) Even then, what does it even mean? Beliefs are not inborn, or only extremely few in the form of instinctive associations (and we really have no way to test this idea), certainly no beliefs that are relevant to this discussion (Stalin isn't trying to tell you that your hand isn't a part of your body or that you shouldn't eat when you are hungry, as much as we might find both to be fun subjects to riff on). So what do you want to point out? Arbitrary moral beliefs based on learned associations? The thing is, association is a type of evidential reasoning, it's just not a very secure method epistemically. Testimony is also evidence, so believing something just because pastor or teacher or streamer said it is still a belief based on evidence. I really think this phrase is a thought-terminating bumper sticker and doesn't contribute anything to understanding people. You really can engage with nearly anything logically, you just need to be sensitive about it and always aware that the real source of someone's belief is often not the reason they are presenting you or the most productive angle for you to offer a new perspective on, especially since Marxism is, again, founded on avoiding dealing with arbitrary moral sentiments.

PS I don't think that's a fair way to portray medieval peasants. If you asked a peasant about whether rain gets you wet, you and I both know they would answer correctly, and if they were asked why they think that, they would explain it to you along, at minimum, crass empirical lines. Now, the scientific method would require some debate, but you don't need to defend it "axiologically" just like you shouldn't be defending dialectical materialism "axiologically." You can engage with someone rationally to explain to them why it is necessary to follow a certain methodology to have the best chance of getting correct results.