Or are they saying this in some venue that records what they say, where A might come across it later?
Well, they are saying this on the ’net. That qualifies, right? But they are not addressing Alice directly. It’s third-person, not second. Alice might or might not stumble on their remarks.
B<C<D in aggression
Yes, but will you call Charlie “aggresive”? Duncan?
And let’s throw in a parallel example. As you well know, Christians expect atheists to burn in hell forever. Would there be an “aggressive” and a “non-aggressive” way of pointing this out on the ’net? Still talking in third person, not saying “you”.
there most certainly is a difference
It’s a difference is specificity. “Delusional and hallucinating” is a specific kind of “mentally ill”. Unless you are talking metaphorically, I don’t see why a specific description would be more aggressive than general. If I believe, for example, that Alice is a schizophrenic, both sentences—“Alice is mentally ill” and “Alice is a schizophrenic” sound very similar to me from aggression point of view.
and mostly what it indicates is hostility
Is “hostile” necessarily “aggressive”? These are somewhat different things to me.
I also notice that you haven’t mentioned the word “intent” yet. Do you think intent matters?
I invite you to imagine the roasting that the residents of that “wrong Tumblr neighbourhood” would get if they turned up on LW
Ah, but that’s the consequence of a the anti-stupid tilt :-) Neo-reactionaries, by and large, are not stupid at all. You may object to their value system, but they are capable of reason. Most of the inhabitants of the relevant Tumblr neighbourhoods are stupid and prone to form large screaming lynch mobs. There are good reasons why LW would reroute them to the woodchipper :-)
Christians expect atheists to burn in hell for ever.
Some Christians do. I know some [EDITED: previous word was “one” before; don’t know why I did that] who don’t. Anyway: yes, there are more and less aggressive ways for someone who believes that to say it. Of course however you say it it’s a much much nastier thing than anything VoR has ever said about transgender people (“these guys are likely to suffer worse torture than a million Auschwitzes, and it will be exactly what they deserve”), and contrariwise in many cases the person saying it will only half-believe it and will be deliberately avoiding thinking about it too much. But yeah, there’s a huge difference between “unfortunately temporal sin has eternal consequences, and the only way to escape eternal damnation is to put one’s faith in Christ” and “those godless suckers are going to burn in hell, and I look forward to watching them do it”, and again a large part of the difference is that the latter seems hostile and the former (if sincere) doesn’t.
Is “hostile” necessarily “aggressive”?
The two aren’t quite equivalent (e.g., I think you can be hostile purely inwardly, whereas aggression is necessarily an outward action) but they’re closely related.
I don’t see why a specific description would be more aggressive than general.
It wouldn’t be. If someone is acting oddly, then “Alice is suffering from depression” would be not at all aggressive and “Alice is fucking crazy” would be (if expected to reach Alice’s ears) quite aggressive.
you haven’t mentioned the word “intent” yet
Should I have? Yes, in general intent matters; to take an extreme example, if I am a speaker of a foreign language and some perfectly innocuous sentence in that languge happens to sound exactly the same as “I’m going to kill Lumifer and eat his brains” then there’s nothing aggressive about my saying that (unless e.g. I know full well how it sounds and say it with the intention that you should hear it and be intimidated, while preserving plausible deniability for me).
(Hostility implies intent, doesn’t it? It’s not as if nothing I have said so far addresses the question of whether intent is relevant.)
I’m pretty sure there are circumstances where it doesn’t matter whether something was intended aggressively but only whether its effect is the same as if it had been. But for the purposes of determining, e.g., whether “the left is the aggressor” here on LW, the actual intent is more important. Of course the effect may be easier to determine than the intent.
Most of the inhabitants of the relevant Tumblr neighbourhoods are stupid
I think you’re probably right that neoreactionaries tend to be intelligent. I don’t think Tumblr-SJWs are at all uniformly stupid, though (in fact my guess is that they’re less stupid than the population average in terms of raw brainpower), and I know some people who are both very clever and quite Tumblr-SJW-y. I think LW would probably route them to the woodchipper almost as directly as it would the stupid ones.
I know some people who are both very clever and quite Tumblr-SJW-y. I think LW would probably route them to the woodchipper almost as directly as it would the stupid ones.
And why do you think this would be the case? Purely because of the ideological bias?
I think one of the defining characteristics of Tumblr-SJW-y people is that they are highly aggressive, both by your and my definitions. I suspect that it is their intolerance which would make them not welcome here.
Some are highly aggressive and would get flayed for that here. Some are not at all aggressive … and would also be made very unwelcome here, I think. Still, at this point we’re just trading conjectures...
Well, they are saying this on the ’net. That qualifies, right? But they are not addressing Alice directly. It’s third-person, not second. Alice might or might not stumble on their remarks.
Yes, but will you call Charlie “aggresive”? Duncan?
And let’s throw in a parallel example. As you well know, Christians expect atheists to burn in hell forever. Would there be an “aggressive” and a “non-aggressive” way of pointing this out on the ’net? Still talking in third person, not saying “you”.
It’s a difference is specificity. “Delusional and hallucinating” is a specific kind of “mentally ill”. Unless you are talking metaphorically, I don’t see why a specific description would be more aggressive than general. If I believe, for example, that Alice is a schizophrenic, both sentences—“Alice is mentally ill” and “Alice is a schizophrenic” sound very similar to me from aggression point of view.
Is “hostile” necessarily “aggressive”? These are somewhat different things to me.
I also notice that you haven’t mentioned the word “intent” yet. Do you think intent matters?
Ah, but that’s the consequence of a the anti-stupid tilt :-) Neo-reactionaries, by and large, are not stupid at all. You may object to their value system, but they are capable of reason. Most of the inhabitants of the relevant Tumblr neighbourhoods are stupid and prone to form large screaming lynch mobs. There are good reasons why LW would reroute them to the woodchipper :-)
Some Christians do. I know some [EDITED: previous word was “one” before; don’t know why I did that] who don’t. Anyway: yes, there are more and less aggressive ways for someone who believes that to say it. Of course however you say it it’s a much much nastier thing than anything VoR has ever said about transgender people (“these guys are likely to suffer worse torture than a million Auschwitzes, and it will be exactly what they deserve”), and contrariwise in many cases the person saying it will only half-believe it and will be deliberately avoiding thinking about it too much. But yeah, there’s a huge difference between “unfortunately temporal sin has eternal consequences, and the only way to escape eternal damnation is to put one’s faith in Christ” and “those godless suckers are going to burn in hell, and I look forward to watching them do it”, and again a large part of the difference is that the latter seems hostile and the former (if sincere) doesn’t.
The two aren’t quite equivalent (e.g., I think you can be hostile purely inwardly, whereas aggression is necessarily an outward action) but they’re closely related.
It wouldn’t be. If someone is acting oddly, then “Alice is suffering from depression” would be not at all aggressive and “Alice is fucking crazy” would be (if expected to reach Alice’s ears) quite aggressive.
Should I have? Yes, in general intent matters; to take an extreme example, if I am a speaker of a foreign language and some perfectly innocuous sentence in that languge happens to sound exactly the same as “I’m going to kill Lumifer and eat his brains” then there’s nothing aggressive about my saying that (unless e.g. I know full well how it sounds and say it with the intention that you should hear it and be intimidated, while preserving plausible deniability for me).
(Hostility implies intent, doesn’t it? It’s not as if nothing I have said so far addresses the question of whether intent is relevant.)
I’m pretty sure there are circumstances where it doesn’t matter whether something was intended aggressively but only whether its effect is the same as if it had been. But for the purposes of determining, e.g., whether “the left is the aggressor” here on LW, the actual intent is more important. Of course the effect may be easier to determine than the intent.
I think you’re probably right that neoreactionaries tend to be intelligent. I don’t think Tumblr-SJWs are at all uniformly stupid, though (in fact my guess is that they’re less stupid than the population average in terms of raw brainpower), and I know some people who are both very clever and quite Tumblr-SJW-y. I think LW would probably route them to the woodchipper almost as directly as it would the stupid ones.
And why do you think this would be the case? Purely because of the ideological bias?
I think one of the defining characteristics of Tumblr-SJW-y people is that they are highly aggressive, both by your and my definitions. I suspect that it is their intolerance which would make them not welcome here.
Not just that. It’s their intolerance backed by no rational arguments and lots of anti-epistemology.
It’s a veritable embarras de richesses as to why they wouldn’t do well here :-D
Some are highly aggressive and would get flayed for that here. Some are not at all aggressive … and would also be made very unwelcome here, I think. Still, at this point we’re just trading conjectures...