If you believe that other human beings are a useful source of insight, you would do well to make some effort not to offend.
Trouble is, this goes both ways. If one wishes to get genuinely novel insight from others, one would do well to make some effort not to react with protestations of offense before first giving some rational consideration to the supposedly offending claims and arguments, and without considering the possibility that one’s instinctive triggers for offense might be a source of insight-precluding bias.
We can of course dispute what exactly went wrong in each particular problematic situation, but I don’t think it can be plausibly denied that the problem I described above was behind at least some incidents that have prompted this discussion.
Trouble is, this goes both ways. If one wishes to get genuinely novel insight from others, one would do well to make some effort not to react with protestations of offense before first giving some rational consideration to the supposedly offending claims and arguments, and without considering the possibility that one’s instinctive triggers for offense might be a source of insight-precluding bias.
Oh yes, I absolutely agree. But to be offended is only to experience an emotion; it is not to reject a claim or to act aggressively.
If I tell you that I am uncomfortable, and explain (what I believe are) the reasons for my discomfort, there is no need to defend yourself. I am not making an accusation. The appropriate response is to express concern, or to propose a solution. If you tell me that I am wrong to feel the way I do, you only escalate the conflict.
I think Vladimir_M would say that people can hack society by taking offense at anything counter to their own values, and remain agnostic about whether or not it is “fake.” Fake offense might not even serve one’s interests as well as real offense, or be as powerful a signal. So it could be in one’s interests to be biased to take real offense at distasteful speech.
We all want to believe that our positions are so well established that others are being bad people for questioning them, or committing some sort of error, and that we are justified in taking offense because they should know better. See also: every cause wants to be a cult.
If these are the only options, then I can hack society by faking offense at every opportunity.
Not really. If you tell me that you’re offended by the letter “s”, I would express regret at having offended you, but also point out that for all of us to give up using words with “s” in them is really quite onerous, and suggest that you give up reading, or use some kind of hack to replace “s” with another letter. I would also be very curious to know why a single character offends you, but I wouldn’t expect to make things better by disbelieving your explanation.
Most of us have probably known people who seem to constantly use fake offense as a rhetorical weapon, and in my experience the result tends to be that these people have few friends. People may defer to them in the short run to spare themselves a nuisance (which is a good idea), but they also avoid further interactions.
Just to clarify, are you talking about incidents here on LW, or over on OB? If here, could you provide a couple examples of that which cannot be plausibly denied? I’d like to take a shot at plausibly denying.
I’d rather not get into discussions of individual cases, since it would get too close to mounting a personal attack. Yes, this does weaken my argument somewhat, but I hope you understand that I honestly believe that it wouldn’t be worth it.
Well, I guess you were right. I simply cannot plausibly deny them.
I guess I can understand a wish not to engage in something that might be interpreted as a personal attack. It is far safer to attack groups. But I would appreciate an attempt to answer my first question:
Just to clarify, are you talking about incidents here on LW, or over on OB?
Because Robin steps in it often enough over at OB that he does frequently collect reactions that are long on emotion but a bit short on logic. I see that only rarely here. And to be honest, I see it more frequently from the male side than from the female side.
It’s not about “safety” (whatever you might precisely mean by that), but about genuine desire not to upset people. Being singled out as a bad example is always unpleasant and inherently looks like a personal attack. Even if we were talking about uncontroversial errors of scientific fact, I would still be reluctant to start singling out concrete instances of people committing them here, for fear that it might look like I’m trashing their intellectual abilities in general.
Because Robin steps in it often enough over at OB that he does frequently collect reactions that are long on emotion but a bit short on logic. I see that only rarely here. And to be honest, I see it more frequently from the male side than from the female side.
You’re right that it’s much more frequent on OB, but that’s because OB is often linked from all sorts of more mainstream blogs, and also because it requires no registration for commenting. Out of all places on the internet that present genuine contrarian views, OB is among the most visible ones for people who otherwise stick to mainstream venues.
As for such incidents here, I agree that they happen on all sides. Unfortunately, I don’t think it would be feasible to settle the question of their relative frequency by concrete numerical comparisons.
Unfortunately, I don’t think it would be feasible to settle the question of their relative frequency by concrete numerical comparisons.
I don’t find that especially unfortunate, because I don’t see what purpose it would serve. If we found it came more often from men, or more often from women, it wouldn’t make us any more or less interested in avoiding the problem.
Molybdenumblue:
Trouble is, this goes both ways. If one wishes to get genuinely novel insight from others, one would do well to make some effort not to react with protestations of offense before first giving some rational consideration to the supposedly offending claims and arguments, and without considering the possibility that one’s instinctive triggers for offense might be a source of insight-precluding bias.
We can of course dispute what exactly went wrong in each particular problematic situation, but I don’t think it can be plausibly denied that the problem I described above was behind at least some incidents that have prompted this discussion.
Oh yes, I absolutely agree. But to be offended is only to experience an emotion; it is not to reject a claim or to act aggressively.
If I tell you that I am uncomfortable, and explain (what I believe are) the reasons for my discomfort, there is no need to defend yourself. I am not making an accusation. The appropriate response is to express concern, or to propose a solution. If you tell me that I am wrong to feel the way I do, you only escalate the conflict.
If these are the only options, then I can hack society by faking offense at every opportunity.
I think Vladimir_M would say that people can hack society by taking offense at anything counter to their own values, and remain agnostic about whether or not it is “fake.” Fake offense might not even serve one’s interests as well as real offense, or be as powerful a signal. So it could be in one’s interests to be biased to take real offense at distasteful speech.
We all want to believe that our positions are so well established that others are being bad people for questioning them, or committing some sort of error, and that we are justified in taking offense because they should know better. See also: every cause wants to be a cult.
Not really. If you tell me that you’re offended by the letter “s”, I would express regret at having offended you, but also point out that for all of us to give up using words with “s” in them is really quite onerous, and suggest that you give up reading, or use some kind of hack to replace “s” with another letter. I would also be very curious to know why a single character offends you, but I wouldn’t expect to make things better by disbelieving your explanation.
Most of us have probably known people who seem to constantly use fake offense as a rhetorical weapon, and in my experience the result tends to be that these people have few friends. People may defer to them in the short run to spare themselves a nuisance (which is a good idea), but they also avoid further interactions.
Just to clarify, are you talking about incidents here on LW, or over on OB? If here, could you provide a couple examples of that which cannot be plausibly denied? I’d like to take a shot at plausibly denying.
I’d rather not get into discussions of individual cases, since it would get too close to mounting a personal attack. Yes, this does weaken my argument somewhat, but I hope you understand that I honestly believe that it wouldn’t be worth it.
Well, I guess you were right. I simply cannot plausibly deny them.
I guess I can understand a wish not to engage in something that might be interpreted as a personal attack. It is far safer to attack groups. But I would appreciate an attempt to answer my first question:
Because Robin steps in it often enough over at OB that he does frequently collect reactions that are long on emotion but a bit short on logic. I see that only rarely here. And to be honest, I see it more frequently from the male side than from the female side.
Perplexed:
It’s not about “safety” (whatever you might precisely mean by that), but about genuine desire not to upset people. Being singled out as a bad example is always unpleasant and inherently looks like a personal attack. Even if we were talking about uncontroversial errors of scientific fact, I would still be reluctant to start singling out concrete instances of people committing them here, for fear that it might look like I’m trashing their intellectual abilities in general.
You’re right that it’s much more frequent on OB, but that’s because OB is often linked from all sorts of more mainstream blogs, and also because it requires no registration for commenting. Out of all places on the internet that present genuine contrarian views, OB is among the most visible ones for people who otherwise stick to mainstream venues.
As for such incidents here, I agree that they happen on all sides. Unfortunately, I don’t think it would be feasible to settle the question of their relative frequency by concrete numerical comparisons.
I don’t find that especially unfortunate, because I don’t see what purpose it would serve. If we found it came more often from men, or more often from women, it wouldn’t make us any more or less interested in avoiding the problem.