Would people hold the views they do if they understood the first principles those views rest on?
I suspect many would at least pause. Not necessarily abandon their position, but slow down long enough to ask what exactly they are affirming. This is not a universal pattern, but it shows up often enough in public discourse to be worth paying attention to.
What I am describing is a kind of reverse percolation. Ideas that begin in highly abstract settings move downward into activism and identity, where they are simplified, moralized, and widely adopted. Something is lost in that movement. The underlying logic—the structure that gave the idea its shape in the first place—does not always make the trip.
Take a common example.
One influential strand of queer theory makes a striking claim: that identity need not be grounded in any stable essence, but instead takes shape in relation to what is considered normal or legitimate. At the level of theory, this is an attempt to examine how norms are constructed and how they operate, often in ways that are invisible to those who benefit from them.
But when that framework moves out of the seminar room and into everyday political identity, it tends to arrive in a thinner form. The scaffolding is gone. What remains is the posture.
“Ideas move downward into mass use, losing fidelity as they go, and return upward not as refinement, but as reinforcement—positions hardening around ideas that have already shed much of what made them coherent.”
That shift creates a tension that is easy to miss. If an identity is defined in relation to norms, then friction with those norms is not an accidental byproduct; it is part of the structure. Yet many who adopt the language of queer politics encounter that friction as if it were imposed entirely from the outside, rather than something partly generated by the logic they have taken on.
This is where the gap begins to open—between first principles and lived adoption.
What makes the dynamic more interesting is that it does not run in a single direction.
A similar distortion can be seen in conservative responses, where disparate strands of progressive thought are often folded together under the single label of “liberalism.” In doing so, distinctions that matter are blurred or lost altogether. Classical liberalism, with its emphasis on individual rights, pluralism, and limits on power, is not interchangeable with theoretical frameworks that aim to critique or unsettle those foundations.
Once those categories collapse into each other, critique starts to rest on unstable ground.
The result is less a clash of well-formed positions than a kind of mirrored simplification. On one side, ideas are adopted without much reference to their internal logic. On the other, they are opposed without being clearly identified. Whether the greater loss happens in adoption or in response is difficult to say, and in a sense it does not matter; each process feeds the other.
This is where the reverse percolation effect completes its cycle.
Ideas move downward from abstraction into mass use, losing fidelity as they pass through each layer. They are then taken up again, interpreted, resisted, or amplified by others working from similarly partial models. What comes back is not refinement. It is reinforcement—positions hardening around ideas that have already shed much of what made them coherent.
At that point, disagreement becomes inevitable, because the participants are no longer operating within the same conceptual frame. Understanding does not so much fail as it is quietly set aside.
Glossary
Queer Theory
A body of academic thought that examines how categories like sex, gender, and sexuality are constructed, regulated, and experienced. It often challenges the idea that these categories are fixed or natural, instead emphasizing their fluidity and relationship to social norms. The field is not monolithic, and different strands place different weight on these elements.
Classical Liberalism
A political philosophy centred on individual rights, equality before the law, freedom of expression, and limits on state power. It forms the foundation of many modern democratic systems and emphasizes pluralism within a shared legal framework.
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Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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April 20, 2026 at 7:54 am
tildeb
Because liberal democracies have given in to the progressive illiberal extremism found on the political left, we see this reverse percolation take firm hold: it has become a slur deserving of contempt to be called a ‘liberal’ based on its current illiberal iteration.
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April 20, 2026 at 8:37 am
tildeb
For example, this percolation shows up not just in various social science areas involving public discourse and the institutions that supposedly serve the public but at the heart of science. As Dorrian Abbot (geophysicist) points out, “liberal epistemology prizes free and open inquiry, values vigorous discourse and debate, and determines the best scientific ideas by separating those that are true from those that are likely not. […] In contrast, identity-based ideologies seek to replace these core liberal principles, essential for scientific and technological advances, with principles derived from postmodernism and Critical Social Justice, which assert that modern science is “racist,” “patriarchal,” and “colonial,” and a tool of oppression rather than a tool to promote human flourishing and global common good.”
And so this percolated version is what replaces the western cannon that now earns validation through vilifying what ‘came before’ (science, in this case) and replaces it in practice by championing what has ‘come after’ (pseudo-science).
This is not a trivial concern to replace knowledge and its pursuit within an ideological straightjacket and call it ‘liberal’ when it is in fact and practice and effect authoritarian at best and all too commonly fascist as thousands of punished professionals can attest.
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April 21, 2026 at 10:40 am
tildeb
You may be interested in the moral inversion study out of Rutgers here.
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April 21, 2026 at 10:45 am
tildeb
“our study also finds that anti-Zionism and moral inversion correlate with “left-wing authoritarianism”—attitudes aimed at dismantling established hierarchies and norms in order to impose ostensibly “progressive” ends.”
Why does this matter?
Well, “among Democrats under 50, Iran is viewed more favorably than Israel—a data point that would have been unthinkable a generation ago, and one that demands explanation. The Iran war has revealed that a surprising contingent on both the left and right express sympathy—or even open support—for the Iranian regime. Even professors of anthropology, such as Alireza Doostdar at the University of Chicago, have intoned that “the best and only hope for peace is the power and durability of Iranian missiles.”
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) harbors explicit genocidal intentions against both Israel and the United States, famously branding these allies as the “Little Satan” and the “Great Satan.” It pursues nuclear weapons in service of those aims and presides over one of the world’s worst human-rights records.”
So the important question is:
“How is it possible that a regime defined by repression of freedoms at home—subjugating women, dissidents, LGBT, and others—and genocidal incitement abroad, could become an object of admiration among people who claim to advocate for human rights?”
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April 22, 2026 at 7:48 am
The Arbourist
I took a look—appreciate you sharing it.
There’s definitely something worthwhile in the paper. The idea that people can apply moral standards unevenly, especially when judging different countries, is real and worth examining.
That said, I think the study stretches its conclusions a bit. It bundles together a range of things—criticism of Israel, antisemitism, and authoritarian attitudes—and treats them as one coherent pattern. That’s a bigger leap than the data really supports. Some of the measures also rely on contested political claims, which makes the conclusions less clean than they first appear.
So I’d say it’s an interesting contribution and raises a valid concern, and I think the authors should continue to dig deep in this area.
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April 22, 2026 at 7:49 am
The Arbourist
I need some more time to look at the study again, and continue to refine my thoughts on the points raised.
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