she’s more calling into question “why has this complaint become a common talking point? what unstated assumptions does it perpetuate?” I am not sure whether this is a valid approach that’s alternate to the forms of argument I’m more used to, or a sign of weakness
It is good to have one more perspective, and perhaps also good to develop a habit to go meta. So that when someone tells you “X”, in addition to asking yourself “is X actually true?” you also consider questions like “why is this person telling me X?”, “what could they gain in this situation by making me think more about X?”, “are they perhaps trying to distract me from some other Y?”.
Because there are such things as filtered evidence, availability bias, limited cognition; and they all can be weaponized. While you are trying really hard to solve the puzzle the person gave you, they may be using your inattention to pick your pockets.
In extreme cases, it can even be a good thing to dismiss the original question entirely. Like, if you are trying to leave an abusive religious cult, and the leader gives you a list of “ten thousand extremely serious theological questions you need to think about deeply before you make the potentially horrible mistake of damning your soul by leaving this holy group”, you should not actually waste your time thinking about them, but keep planning your escape.
Now the opposite problem is that some people get so addicted to the meta that they are no longer considering the object level. “You say I’m wrong about something? Well, that’s exactly what the privileged X people love to do, don’t they?” (Yeah, they probably do. But there is still a chance that you are actually wrong about something.)
tl;dr—mentioning the meta, great; but completely avoiding the object level, weakness
So, how much meta is the right amount of meta? Dunno, that’s a meta-meta question. At some point you need to follow your intuition and hope that your priors aren’t horribly wrong.
The more you dig into the details, though, the more you realize that “let’s live together in peace and make concessions to Palestinians as necessary” has been the mainstream Israeli position since before 1948. It’s not a symmetric situation.
The situation is not symmetric, I agree. But also, it is too easy to underestimate the impact of the settlers. I mean, if you include them in the picture, then the overall Israeli position becomes more like: “Let’s live together in peace, and please ignore these few guys who sometimes come to shoot your family and take your homes. They are an extremist minority that we don’t approve of, but for complicated political reasons we can’t do anything about them. Oh, and if you try to defend yourself against them, chances are our army might come to defend them. And that’s also something we deeply regret.”
It is much better than the other side, but in my opinion still fundamentally incompatible with peace.
It is good to have one more perspective, and perhaps also good to develop a habit to go meta. So that when someone tells you “X”, in addition to asking yourself “is X actually true?” you also consider questions like “why is this person telling me X?”, “what could they gain in this situation by making me think more about X?”, “are they perhaps trying to distract me from some other Y?”.
Because there are such things as filtered evidence, availability bias, limited cognition; and they all can be weaponized. While you are trying really hard to solve the puzzle the person gave you, they may be using your inattention to pick your pockets.
In extreme cases, it can even be a good thing to dismiss the original question entirely. Like, if you are trying to leave an abusive religious cult, and the leader gives you a list of “ten thousand extremely serious theological questions you need to think about deeply before you make the potentially horrible mistake of damning your soul by leaving this holy group”, you should not actually waste your time thinking about them, but keep planning your escape.
Now the opposite problem is that some people get so addicted to the meta that they are no longer considering the object level. “You say I’m wrong about something? Well, that’s exactly what the privileged X people love to do, don’t they?” (Yeah, they probably do. But there is still a chance that you are actually wrong about something.)
tl;dr—mentioning the meta, great; but completely avoiding the object level, weakness
So, how much meta is the right amount of meta? Dunno, that’s a meta-meta question. At some point you need to follow your intuition and hope that your priors aren’t horribly wrong.
The situation is not symmetric, I agree. But also, it is too easy to underestimate the impact of the settlers. I mean, if you include them in the picture, then the overall Israeli position becomes more like: “Let’s live together in peace, and please ignore these few guys who sometimes come to shoot your family and take your homes. They are an extremist minority that we don’t approve of, but for complicated political reasons we can’t do anything about them. Oh, and if you try to defend yourself against them, chances are our army might come to defend them. And that’s also something we deeply regret.”
It is much better than the other side, but in my opinion still fundamentally incompatible with peace.