It’s a false dichotomy to assume that the presence of “objective” thought is equal to the absence of subjective/empathic thought.
Yes. But when women like Alicorn intuitively solve the signaling and negotiation game represented in their heads, using their prior belief distributions about mens’ hidden qualities and dispositions, their beliefs about mens’ utility functions conditional on disposition, and their own utility functions, then their solutions predict high costs for any strategy of tolerating objectifying statements by unfamiliar men of unknown quality. It’s not about whether or not objectification implies oppressiveness with certainty. It’s about whether or not women think objectification is more convenient or useful to unfamiliar men who are disposed to depersonalization and oppression, compared with its convenience or usefulness to unfamiliar men who are not disposed to depersonalization and oppression. If you want to change this, you have to either change some quantity in womens’ intuitive representation of this signaling game, improve their solution procedure, or argue for a norm that women should disregard this intuition.
Change what? Your massive projection onto what “women like Alicorn” do? I’d think that’d be up to you to change.
Similarly, if I don’t like what Alicorn is doing, and I can’t convince her to change that, then it’s my problem… just as her not being able to convince men to speak the way she wants is hers.
At some point, all problems are our own problems. You can ask other people to change, but then you can either accept the world as it is, or suffer needlessly.
(To forestall the inevitable analogies and arguments: “accept” does not mean “not try to change”—it means, “not react with negative emotion to”. If you took the previous paragraph to mean that nobody should fight racism or sexism, you are mistaken. It’s easier to change a thing you accept as a fact, because your brain is not motivated to deny it or “should” it away, and you can then actually pay attention to the human being whose behavior you’d like to change. You can’t yell a racist or sexist into actually changing, only into being quiet. You can, however, educate and accept some people into changing. As the religious people say, “love the sinner, hate the sin”… only I go one step further and say you don’t have to hate something in order to change it… and that it’s usually easier if you don’t.)
Yes. But when women like Alicorn intuitively solve the signaling and negotiation game represented in their heads, using their prior belief distributions about mens’ hidden qualities and dispositions, their beliefs about mens’ utility functions conditional on disposition, and their own utility functions, then their solutions predict high costs for any strategy of tolerating objectifying statements by unfamiliar men of unknown quality. It’s not about whether or not objectification implies oppressiveness with certainty. It’s about whether or not women think objectification is more convenient or useful to unfamiliar men who are disposed to depersonalization and oppression, compared with its convenience or usefulness to unfamiliar men who are not disposed to depersonalization and oppression. If you want to change this, you have to either change some quantity in womens’ intuitive representation of this signaling game, improve their solution procedure, or argue for a norm that women should disregard this intuition.
Change what? Your massive projection onto what “women like Alicorn” do? I’d think that’d be up to you to change.
Similarly, if I don’t like what Alicorn is doing, and I can’t convince her to change that, then it’s my problem… just as her not being able to convince men to speak the way she wants is hers.
At some point, all problems are our own problems. You can ask other people to change, but then you can either accept the world as it is, or suffer needlessly.
(To forestall the inevitable analogies and arguments: “accept” does not mean “not try to change”—it means, “not react with negative emotion to”. If you took the previous paragraph to mean that nobody should fight racism or sexism, you are mistaken. It’s easier to change a thing you accept as a fact, because your brain is not motivated to deny it or “should” it away, and you can then actually pay attention to the human being whose behavior you’d like to change. You can’t yell a racist or sexist into actually changing, only into being quiet. You can, however, educate and accept some people into changing. As the religious people say, “love the sinner, hate the sin”… only I go one step further and say you don’t have to hate something in order to change it… and that it’s usually easier if you don’t.)