I do agree with her that some of the posts went a bit overboard—in particular, the ones about manipulating people (‘jerkitude’). But, for example, Roko’s comment about ‘manipulation’ seemed benign—it seems to me that it’s used in the sense of ‘interaction’ rather than ‘trickery’.
But, as you suggest, I did not agree with the ‘objectification’-part, and I saw (albeit) tacit support for that in Elizier’s and Wei_Dai’s posts, as I have been trying to show.
I couldn’t see much difference from (with regards to their ‘objectification-value’) between:
“Women are attracted to rich men, so if I were rich I would get attractive women”
and some of the comments about beggars—which jajvirta has already explained much better than I can.
Note, that my point is not that these comments are somehow inappropriate, but really that they are can be seen as similarly ‘objectifying’. And furthermore, that you can disagree with some of the comments, but you can do so on rationalist grounds, for example by challenging unsupported statements (esp. generalizations).
Unfortunately I still don’t feel as though I’ve gotten an explanation of your position as much as another restatement of it. You seem to have just reiterated that you can’t see much difference between the cases, rather than actually explaining how they are relevantly similar.
I’ve tried to explain why I don’t see the comments about beggars and women as equivalent according to my (perhaps idiosyncratic) definition of objectification. The discussion about beggars seemed to me to assume that beggars are people with interests, and that we are generally concerned to further those interests—the question was how best to do that. This stands in stark contrast to talk about “getting” women, which (I think) promotes thinking about them as prizes whose main value is their instrumental value to the men “getting” them.
This seems to me to provide a clear distinction between the two conversations. You seem to disagree, but I still can’t tell exactly why. Is it that:
you do not think the distinction I am drawing is tenable, either because:
(a) you disagree that the sort of language Roko used tends to promote treating women as prizes of primarily instrumental value; or
(b) you think the the discussion of begging did in fact neglect the fact that beggars have interests or tended to promote viewing them as objects without interests; or is it that
you think that my definition of objectification is wrong (or at least differs from that relied on by others, such as Alicorn), and that on the “correct” definition there is no difference between the two cases?
In order to try to make some progress here, could you perhaps tell me (a) which of these you believe, and (b) why you believe it? (Alternatively, if you don’t think any of these is the source of our disagreement, then perhaps you could let me know what you think the actual source is.)
Thanks!
ETA: I realise that you appear to state at the beginning of your previous comment that it’s 1(a), but the rest of your comment suggests to me that it might actually be something else, and in any event, I’m still not sure why you think 1(a) (if you do).
well, i think some of the posts about women were considered offensive because they discussed how you could ‘get’ them, or manipulate them with some tricks; then here i saw some somewhat generalizing comments here about beggars (some were written after my first post of course), about how they don’t necessarily want to work, have mental problems but, given the right incentives, might be pushed in the right direction—or the idea that you understand what they think. I felt that in a few posts, and that is why I wrote the comment in the first place.
Regarding my definition of objectification… I would say that it includes your definition, but has some more components, such as the assumption that people have no own opinion, that they lack self-determination and so on. I think the Wiki definition is pretty good. This is also what jajvirta referred to, I think.
Thus, my definition of objectification is a bit wider than the one you use; but I assume (maybe incorrectly) that it is the more common one.
But reading all over this—in can see now why my writing was confusing. Why was apparently pointing out cases of ‘objectification’ but also disagreed there was any problem. I think my point is there is a fine line between writing about people abstractly, in terms of wants and needs… and objectifying them. Some people were quite eager to point at that line in previous discussions. And I wondered where that fine line lied for beggars.
So, to answer your questions:
1a: while Roko’s language could may have been improved, I found there was not really a problem with it. But I can imagine people thinking differently.
1b: yes, it seemed to me that in some posts beggars were treated as an out-group of which you can make sweeping statements about what they think/do. See above.
my definition is a bit wider.
Hopefully this clears things up. I want to commend you for being so persistent and pointing unclarities etc. in my statements. This is really the rationalist spirit—and it sharpens my mind to make clearer statements.
Thanks again for bearing with me on this. I think I’ve now got a much clearer idea of where you’re coming from, and even if we don’t completely agree, I’m not sure we’re all that far apart.
Like you, I suspect that your definition of objectification is probably more common (although, to be honest, I suspect that many people do not have a clear definition in mind when they use the term). I prefer mine because I think it more clearly focuses in on what (from my perspective) is especially problematic: as you allude to, broadening the definition too much can sometimes make it difficult to talk abstractly about anything. (Though actually, I do think some of the begging-related statements that were made after your original comment were getting close to what I would consider problematic anyway.)
That said, it’s worth emphasising that I do not think that all instances of “objectification” (even in my narrower sense of the term) are necessarily problematic: whether they are or not still depends quite crucially on context. In that sense, I would agree with you that a rule against all objectification isn’t sensible. I do however, tend to think that (a) there are some contexts where it quite clearly is a problem; and (b) it’s something we should be careful about in general, even outside the clearly problematic contexts.
ah, great, it seems we have cleared things up. so part of the discussion was really about having a different definition of the term ‘objectification’. I should be more careful in defining such terms before using them...
now, about the ‘non-problematic’ use cases for the term… literally, the term is not necessarily negative at all of course, but maybe we should try to reserve it for negative cases. most of the cases (including most of the once in this discussion) are relatively benign, and i think people should not be too sensitive. And as I said before, things like prejudice and sweeping generalizations can be countered with mere rationalism and pointing to biases, without accusations of ‘objectification’ at all.
Thanks for persisting with me. I appreciate it! However, with all due respect, it seems to me that you’ve once again simply restated your position without explaining it. Sorry for not getting it! Saying “I couldn’t see much difference” doesn’t really explain your position.
I’ve tried to explain why I don’t see the comments about beggars and women as equivalent according to my (perhaps idiosyncratic) definition of objectification. The discussion about beggars seemed to me to assume that beggars are people with interests, and that we are generally concerned to further those interests—the question was how best to do that. This stands in stark contrast to talk about “getting” women, which (I think) promotes thinking about them as prizes whose main value is their instrumental value to the men “getting” them.
This seems to me to provide a clear distinction between the two conversations. Given this, I can see a few possible sources of our disagreement:
You do not think the distinction I am drawing is tenable, either because:
(a) you disagree that the sort of language Roko used tends to promote treating women as prizes of primarily instrumental value;
(b) you think the the discussion of begging did in fact neglect the fact that beggars have interests or tended to promote viewing them as objects without interests; or
You think that my definition of objectification is wrong (or at least differs from that relied on by others, such as Alicorn), and that on the “correct” definition there is no difference between the two cases.
Could you perhaps tell me (a) which of these you believe, and (b) why you believe it? (Alternatively, if you don’t think any of these is the source of our disagreement, then perhaps you could let me know what you think the actual source is.)
Indeed, it’s the ‘Or’-paragraph in your comment.
I do agree with her that some of the posts went a bit overboard—in particular, the ones about manipulating people (‘jerkitude’). But, for example, Roko’s comment about ‘manipulation’ seemed benign—it seems to me that it’s used in the sense of ‘interaction’ rather than ‘trickery’.
But, as you suggest, I did not agree with the ‘objectification’-part, and I saw (albeit) tacit support for that in Elizier’s and Wei_Dai’s posts, as I have been trying to show.
I couldn’t see much difference from (with regards to their ‘objectification-value’) between:
and some of the comments about beggars—which jajvirta has already explained much better than I can.
Note, that my point is not that these comments are somehow inappropriate, but really that they are can be seen as similarly ‘objectifying’. And furthermore, that you can disagree with some of the comments, but you can do so on rationalist grounds, for example by challenging unsupported statements (esp. generalizations).
Thanks for persisting with me. I appreciate it!
Unfortunately I still don’t feel as though I’ve gotten an explanation of your position as much as another restatement of it. You seem to have just reiterated that you can’t see much difference between the cases, rather than actually explaining how they are relevantly similar.
I’ve tried to explain why I don’t see the comments about beggars and women as equivalent according to my (perhaps idiosyncratic) definition of objectification. The discussion about beggars seemed to me to assume that beggars are people with interests, and that we are generally concerned to further those interests—the question was how best to do that. This stands in stark contrast to talk about “getting” women, which (I think) promotes thinking about them as prizes whose main value is their instrumental value to the men “getting” them.
This seems to me to provide a clear distinction between the two conversations. You seem to disagree, but I still can’t tell exactly why. Is it that:
you do not think the distinction I am drawing is tenable, either because: (a) you disagree that the sort of language Roko used tends to promote treating women as prizes of primarily instrumental value; or (b) you think the the discussion of begging did in fact neglect the fact that beggars have interests or tended to promote viewing them as objects without interests; or is it that
you think that my definition of objectification is wrong (or at least differs from that relied on by others, such as Alicorn), and that on the “correct” definition there is no difference between the two cases?
In order to try to make some progress here, could you perhaps tell me (a) which of these you believe, and (b) why you believe it? (Alternatively, if you don’t think any of these is the source of our disagreement, then perhaps you could let me know what you think the actual source is.)
Thanks!
ETA: I realise that you appear to state at the beginning of your previous comment that it’s 1(a), but the rest of your comment suggests to me that it might actually be something else, and in any event, I’m still not sure why you think 1(a) (if you do).
well, i think some of the posts about women were considered offensive because they discussed how you could ‘get’ them, or manipulate them with some tricks; then here i saw some somewhat generalizing comments here about beggars (some were written after my first post of course), about how they don’t necessarily want to work, have mental problems but, given the right incentives, might be pushed in the right direction—or the idea that you understand what they think. I felt that in a few posts, and that is why I wrote the comment in the first place.
Regarding my definition of objectification… I would say that it includes your definition, but has some more components, such as the assumption that people have no own opinion, that they lack self-determination and so on. I think the Wiki definition is pretty good. This is also what jajvirta referred to, I think.
Thus, my definition of objectification is a bit wider than the one you use; but I assume (maybe incorrectly) that it is the more common one.
But reading all over this—in can see now why my writing was confusing. Why was apparently pointing out cases of ‘objectification’ but also disagreed there was any problem. I think my point is there is a fine line between writing about people abstractly, in terms of wants and needs… and objectifying them. Some people were quite eager to point at that line in previous discussions. And I wondered where that fine line lied for beggars.
So, to answer your questions:
1a: while Roko’s language could may have been improved, I found there was not really a problem with it. But I can imagine people thinking differently. 1b: yes, it seemed to me that in some posts beggars were treated as an out-group of which you can make sweeping statements about what they think/do. See above.
my definition is a bit wider.
Hopefully this clears things up. I want to commend you for being so persistent and pointing unclarities etc. in my statements. This is really the rationalist spirit—and it sharpens my mind to make clearer statements.
Thanks again for bearing with me on this. I think I’ve now got a much clearer idea of where you’re coming from, and even if we don’t completely agree, I’m not sure we’re all that far apart.
Like you, I suspect that your definition of objectification is probably more common (although, to be honest, I suspect that many people do not have a clear definition in mind when they use the term). I prefer mine because I think it more clearly focuses in on what (from my perspective) is especially problematic: as you allude to, broadening the definition too much can sometimes make it difficult to talk abstractly about anything. (Though actually, I do think some of the begging-related statements that were made after your original comment were getting close to what I would consider problematic anyway.)
That said, it’s worth emphasising that I do not think that all instances of “objectification” (even in my narrower sense of the term) are necessarily problematic: whether they are or not still depends quite crucially on context. In that sense, I would agree with you that a rule against all objectification isn’t sensible. I do however, tend to think that (a) there are some contexts where it quite clearly is a problem; and (b) it’s something we should be careful about in general, even outside the clearly problematic contexts.
ah, great, it seems we have cleared things up. so part of the discussion was really about having a different definition of the term ‘objectification’. I should be more careful in defining such terms before using them...
now, about the ‘non-problematic’ use cases for the term… literally, the term is not necessarily negative at all of course, but maybe we should try to reserve it for negative cases. most of the cases (including most of the once in this discussion) are relatively benign, and i think people should not be too sensitive. And as I said before, things like prejudice and sweeping generalizations can be countered with mere rationalism and pointing to biases, without accusations of ‘objectification’ at all.
Thanks for persisting with me. I appreciate it! However, with all due respect, it seems to me that you’ve once again simply restated your position without explaining it. Sorry for not getting it! Saying “I couldn’t see much difference” doesn’t really explain your position.
I’ve tried to explain why I don’t see the comments about beggars and women as equivalent according to my (perhaps idiosyncratic) definition of objectification. The discussion about beggars seemed to me to assume that beggars are people with interests, and that we are generally concerned to further those interests—the question was how best to do that. This stands in stark contrast to talk about “getting” women, which (I think) promotes thinking about them as prizes whose main value is their instrumental value to the men “getting” them.
This seems to me to provide a clear distinction between the two conversations. Given this, I can see a few possible sources of our disagreement:
You do not think the distinction I am drawing is tenable, either because: (a) you disagree that the sort of language Roko used tends to promote treating women as prizes of primarily instrumental value; (b) you think the the discussion of begging did in fact neglect the fact that beggars have interests or tended to promote viewing them as objects without interests; or
You think that my definition of objectification is wrong (or at least differs from that relied on by others, such as Alicorn), and that on the “correct” definition there is no difference between the two cases.
Could you perhaps tell me (a) which of these you believe, and (b) why you believe it? (Alternatively, if you don’t think any of these is the source of our disagreement, then perhaps you could let me know what you think the actual source is.)