How do you feel about the practice of advising LW newbies to read the sequences?
The analogy would be if someone didn’t understand some well-defined and useful concept that is discussed in the sequences, and you directed him to read the relevant sequence material, which presumably contains an accurate explanation. The assumption is that the concept is useful and well-defined, rather than an incoherent ideological buzzword, and that the sequences contain a correct explanation of it. (And to the extent that these assumptions don’t hold, the advice would be bad.)
However, as a different example, suppose someone is confused about some incoherent ideological concept, like, say, the Marxist notion of “dialectic.” Now if you direct this person to read Marxist authors persistently until the idea starts to make sense, you’re effectively instructing him to submit to ideological propaganda until he is successfully propagandized. (Especially if this person is already familiar with a significant body of Marxist literature and asks a cogent question that seems to expose some flaws in the concept.)
Now, the question is whether the notion of “objectification” and the feminist authors of the linked blogs are more similar to the first or the second example. Clearly, I believe that the latter is a closer analogy, which I don’t find surprising, considering that this is an area of intense ideological warfare and the authors in question in fact represent a more radical wing of one side in this conflict.
Honestly, I don’t see what exactly I wrote that is contrary to my original statement. The content is relevant insofar as the recommended reading represents the output of one side in an ideological struggle, and my original comment is consistent with that.
Could you clarify what precisely you mean by ” approach per se” here?
There’s a tension in your original statement between value-laden phrases such as “ideological” and “successfully propagandized” and the very general remark about the approach not leading to “an unbiased understanding of any subject” (emphasis added). What I’m driving at is that your objection was really to the recommended content; you didn’t quite address this head-on in the original statement but rather made an incorrect fairly general counterargument to reading widely on a given subject (or “simmering”, as Alicorn put it). (The italicized phrase is my reply to your request for clarification.)
Your reply to my question about the sequences did address this head-on. At this point I’m just trying to clarify my rhetoric.
“Go read the Sequences” : “Go read a bunch of Feminist Blogs” :: “Go read ‘Circular Altruism’” : “Go read a particular article about ’Objectification.”
“Objectification” and “Shut Up and Multiply” are buzzwords. They are important concepts that you need to understand in depth, even if you disagree with the ramifications and phrasing of them, if you want to discuss particular issues in a meaningful way.
“The Sequences” and “A bunch of a feminist blogs” are large collections of work that include essays of varying quality and importance. “Go read the sequences” is something I’ve definitely heard a lot here. Outsiders sometimes assume we mean “I don’t feel like talking to you until you’re part of our cult” when we say it. When in fact, they contain a lot of useful information that will change your mind about some things—but you are unlikely to start updating if you just read one particular article, especially if you’ve previously been biased against its topic.
Cyan:
The analogy would be if someone didn’t understand some well-defined and useful concept that is discussed in the sequences, and you directed him to read the relevant sequence material, which presumably contains an accurate explanation. The assumption is that the concept is useful and well-defined, rather than an incoherent ideological buzzword, and that the sequences contain a correct explanation of it. (And to the extent that these assumptions don’t hold, the advice would be bad.)
However, as a different example, suppose someone is confused about some incoherent ideological concept, like, say, the Marxist notion of “dialectic.” Now if you direct this person to read Marxist authors persistently until the idea starts to make sense, you’re effectively instructing him to submit to ideological propaganda until he is successfully propagandized. (Especially if this person is already familiar with a significant body of Marxist literature and asks a cogent question that seems to expose some flaws in the concept.)
Now, the question is whether the notion of “objectification” and the feminist authors of the linked blogs are more similar to the first or the second example. Clearly, I believe that the latter is a closer analogy, which I don’t find surprising, considering that this is an area of intense ideological warfare and the authors in question in fact represent a more radical wing of one side in this conflict.
Yup, that was what I was getting at: contrary to your original statement, your true objection isn’t to the approach per se but to the content.
Honestly, I don’t see what exactly I wrote that is contrary to my original statement. The content is relevant insofar as the recommended reading represents the output of one side in an ideological struggle, and my original comment is consistent with that.
Could you clarify what precisely you mean by ” approach per se” here?
There’s a tension in your original statement between value-laden phrases such as “ideological” and “successfully propagandized” and the very general remark about the approach not leading to “an unbiased understanding of any subject” (emphasis added). What I’m driving at is that your objection was really to the recommended content; you didn’t quite address this head-on in the original statement but rather made an incorrect fairly general counterargument to reading widely on a given subject (or “simmering”, as Alicorn put it). (The italicized phrase is my reply to your request for clarification.)
Your reply to my question about the sequences did address this head-on. At this point I’m just trying to clarify my rhetoric.
Thanks for the clarification. In retrospect, I agree that my original comment was poorly worded.
There’s two separate issues to be compared:
“Go read the Sequences” : “Go read a bunch of Feminist Blogs” :: “Go read ‘Circular Altruism’” : “Go read a particular article about ’Objectification.”
“Objectification” and “Shut Up and Multiply” are buzzwords. They are important concepts that you need to understand in depth, even if you disagree with the ramifications and phrasing of them, if you want to discuss particular issues in a meaningful way.
“The Sequences” and “A bunch of a feminist blogs” are large collections of work that include essays of varying quality and importance. “Go read the sequences” is something I’ve definitely heard a lot here. Outsiders sometimes assume we mean “I don’t feel like talking to you until you’re part of our cult” when we say it. When in fact, they contain a lot of useful information that will change your mind about some things—but you are unlikely to start updating if you just read one particular article, especially if you’ve previously been biased against its topic.