Suppose you and I are scheduled to debate some topic. Suppose further that my supporters have defined the rules of the debate, and have done so in such a way that I have a number of concrete advantages.
In that hypothetical scenario, I would say that me requesting that you follow the rules, and you requesting that I follow the rules, are not symmetrical acts. And they are asymmetrical precisely because of the power imbalance between my supporters and your supporters, and how that power applies to the specification of the rules in the first place.
Would you agree or disagree? (Note, I am not asking whether the above is a reasonable characterization of real-world situations involving civility and power-differentials. Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn’t. Right now I’m just trying to establish what your position is with respect to a simpler problem.)
Can you provide examples of what the rules are? If my method of ‘debate’ is to pound the podium and compare you to infamous people, then a rule against that provides you with concrete advantages while being symmetrical.
In fact, any rule that applies equally to both of us but has asymmetrical results implies that a difference in the debaters, and that they are trying to debate on different terms.
In fact, any rule that applies equally to both of us but has asymmetrical results implies that a difference in the debaters, and that they are trying to debate on different terms.
Sure, that’s absolutely true.
So, just to be clear: if the rules in question apply equally to both of us, but have been selected so as to constrain you more than they constrain me because they prevent behaviors you are more likely to engage in than I am, you would call that situation symmetrical?
No. The situation is asymmetrical because I will use different behaviors than you. The fact that a rule benefits one of us while being symmetrical shows that the situation is asymmetrical. Eliminating areas from the realm of discussion (you can’t discuss the economic impact of the proposal) is likely to be a symmetrical rule which illustrates a difference between the debaters.
Other rules could simply apply equally but be targeted: For example, the rule could be that both debaters have poor lighting, no access to makeup, and will have their clothing crumpled, or know the subject of the questions but not their phrasing or order. The first set would favor the person who was less likely to convince people based on his appearance, while the last would favor the one who could think faster and be perceived as better prepared.
Then there are rules which are clearly biased, and only appear to apply equally: ‘Only brown-eyed people may talk’. I don’t think those were ever in serious discussion, and I only mention them to dismiss them.
I will agree, under the terms that any advancement in your argument applies to the following reformulation:
The rules forbidding thievery aren’t symmetrical in terms of thieves versus non-thieves, and the rules are asymmetric precisely because more people support non-thievery than support thievery.
(Which is to say, if you extend your argument in such a way that it doesn’t apply to the reformulation, my agreement may no longer apply. This stabilizes our mutual understanding of our metaphors.)
I agree that the rules forbidding thievery are asymmetric, in that they are intended to impede thieves more than non-thieves.
It’s not quite as clear to me that in practice they are differentially imposed by non-thieves, but I’m willing to posit that for the sake of argument. That is… if I steal a bunch of property, I immediately have an incentive to support rules that prevent the stealing of that property, rules that a moment earlier I had incentive to oppose, while still having incentive to oppose rules that prevent the stealing of other property, and while still being a thief. But I don’t think that matters for our purposes; if we assume for simplicity that all rules are either pro-thievery, anti-thievery, or thievery-neutral and no rules are pro-some-thievery-and-anti-other-thievery, then what you say is true, and I’m willing to assume that for simplicity. (There’s a reason I picked a simple toy example to start with; real-world cases tend towards distracting complexity. But, OK, if you prefer to use thievery as our working example, I’m willing.)
Positing all of that, it seems to follow that if I’m a thief, the rules therefore don’t favor me, and if I’m a non-thief, the rules do favor me. Agreed?
It seems to follow in turn that if I say “Hey, the rules against thievery are a good thing!” that means more if I’m a thief than if I’m a nonthief, since it’s less likely that I’m just arguing for whatever benefits me. Agreed?
This seems generalizable: if the rules benefit me more than you, then when I endorse the rules I’m doing so in support of my interests but when you endorse them you’re doing so against your interests. And that’s a legitimate ground upon which to evaluate our endorsements differently, even if they seem superficially identical. Which seems to me to apply just as well to rules of “civility” as rules of debate as rules of theft. Who is doing the endorsing, and how much they benefit from the rules, matters when I’m figuring out how much weight to afford the endorsement.
Can we call “Thievery” either a non-revocable lifestyle choice, or posit that thievery laws will be ex-post-facto in any case (so if a thief in a thief society steals, he would have no incentive to switch sides later), in order to maintain our metaphors? (Alternatively, we can drop the metaphors altogether. I believe I see where your line of argument is going, and I don’t think it strictly requires them.)
I agree that my line of reasoning does not require any particular metaphors regarding theft, and I’m happy to adopt any simplifying assumptions that allow us to talk usefully about it. (As I say, there’s a reason I started with a much simpler toy example in the first place.)
So, OK. Returning to the line you dismissed as ad-hominem:
“The key to understanding whether a request for civility is sincere or not is to ask whether the person asking for civility has more power along whatever axes are contextually relevant than the person being called “incivil”, less power, or equal power.”
What the above quote seems to be saying is that when evaluating X’s endorsement of a rule of discourse, one significant factor is the extent to which X has contextually relevant power. Agreed? (1)
We’ve agreed that when evaluating X’s endorsement of a rule, one significant factor is the extent to which X benefits from that rule.
If it were true (which it might not be) that power differentials between X and Y as they apply to discourse correlate with differential benefit between X and Y from obeying the rules of discourse, then it would follow that power differentials between X and Y are relevant evidence when evaluating X and Y’s endorsement of those rules. Agreed?
If we agree so far, I’m content. For my own part, I do believe that power differentials between X and Y as they apply to discourse often correlate with differential benefit between X and Y from obeying the rules of discourse. I don’t think I could provide significant reason to believe it in the context of this comment-thread, though, so if we disagree about that I’m content to agree to disagree.
(1) This is admittedly modulo some rhetorical hyperbole; what the quote actually seems to say is that this is the only significant factor, which is absurd on the face of it. I very much doubt the author would stand by that literal reading… for example, I expect they would agree that the requester’s previous history of lying through their teeth was also relevant, at least sometimes, to understanding whether their request was sincere.
When evaluating the merits of a rule, it matters very little what X stands to gain from the rule. X’s evaluation is only relevant to you if you are trying to support or oppose the rule because of what X thinks. You have enough information to evaluate whether controlling the tone of a discussion is primarily a power play by the person trying to control the tone or primarily an attempt to improve communication by reducing the amount of noise in the channel. More important than identifying the motives, you can also figure out the likely result based on direct observation, without giving much weight to someone else’s conclusion based on their direct observation.
Whether evaluating the merits of a rule is a better thing to spend my time doing than evaluating the motives of the speaker is a value judgment completely orthogonal to what I was talking about.
If it were true (which it might not be) that power differentials between X and Y as they apply to discourse correlate with differential benefit between X and Y from obeying the rules of discourse, then it would follow that power differentials between X and Y are relevant evidence when evaluating X and Y’s endorsement of those rules. Agreed?
I was talking about evaluating the motives of the speaker, because that’s what OrphanWilde’s comment, which I was responding to, was talking about. That there exist other topics that would be more valuable to talk about is undoubtedly true, but rather beside my point.
It’s still an ad-hominem response. This is not to say it is wholly invalid—it’s proper in Bayesian reasoning to weigh the source of evidence in addition to the evidence itself, and I presume this may extend to arguments as well—but it is the weakest possible response to a criticism.
A potentially tangential continuation:
That caveat carries costs; it runs the very real risk of alienating sympathetic parties. I am no longer sympathetic to gnostic atheism, for example, as my attack on Dawkins may reveal. Indeed, Dawkins is quite possibly single-handled responsible for converting me from gnostic atheism to agnostic atheism, as my reactions to The God Delusion resulted in my re-evaluation of my own behavior, and then my re-evaluation of my own reasoning. While this is probably a plus, on the whole, for my rationality, Dawkins and other gnostic atheists might prefer to count it a minus.
To use my politics as another example, I used to count myself among the Democrats. The anti-Bush rhetoric did more than anything else in pushing me away from them, however. I can’t find the Overcoming Bias post describing Benjamin Franklin’s use of eliciting favors from others as a mechanism to make them like him, but a post somewhere else: http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/10/05/the-benjamin-franklin-effect/ makes a similar point. In retrospect, spending so much time defending Bush against undeserved/dishonest attacks probably had a pretty significant impact on my politics of the time; I cannot recall a deliberate reconsideration of my political policies, so I cannot claim any kind of win for rationality on this point. But this bias (whatever it’s called) does suggest a particularly high cost of hostile rhetoric among even rational people: You’re inviting the intellectually honest to do your mutual enemy a favor.
It’s still an ad-hominem response. This is not to say it is wholly invalid
Sure. If, when you wrote “Seriously? It’s advocating ad-hominem.” you meant to suggest that it was advocating a response that was valid but not as strong as other possible responses, then I agree with you completely. I had understood your rhetoric to be conveying a stronger objection.
Also agreed that hostile or otherwise extreme rhetoric can alienate people who might not be alienated by different rhetoric.
That said, while I often find reactive anti-Blue rhetoric offputting in much the way you describe, I also consider myself to have some responsibility for actually evaluating the positions involved, rather than allowing myself to be reactively alienated by it.
It was more that it didn’t advocate anything else at all. (As you observed, it’s hard to believe the author would endorse the literal understanding.)
I’m actually considering writing a “Defense of Ad-Hominem” post, if a search doesn’t turn any similar posts up in the past. I may take too much entertainment out of this. :-)
Suppose you and I are scheduled to debate some topic.
Suppose further that my supporters have defined the rules of the debate, and have done so in such a way that I have a number of concrete advantages.
In that hypothetical scenario, I would say that me requesting that you follow the rules, and you requesting that I follow the rules, are not symmetrical acts. And they are asymmetrical precisely because of the power imbalance between my supporters and your supporters, and how that power applies to the specification of the rules in the first place.
Would you agree or disagree? (Note, I am not asking whether the above is a reasonable characterization of real-world situations involving civility and power-differentials. Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn’t. Right now I’m just trying to establish what your position is with respect to a simpler problem.)
Can you provide examples of what the rules are? If my method of ‘debate’ is to pound the podium and compare you to infamous people, then a rule against that provides you with concrete advantages while being symmetrical.
In fact, any rule that applies equally to both of us but has asymmetrical results implies that a difference in the debaters, and that they are trying to debate on different terms.
Sure, that’s absolutely true.
So, just to be clear: if the rules in question apply equally to both of us, but have been selected so as to constrain you more than they constrain me because they prevent behaviors you are more likely to engage in than I am, you would call that situation symmetrical?
No. The situation is asymmetrical because I will use different behaviors than you. The fact that a rule benefits one of us while being symmetrical shows that the situation is asymmetrical. Eliminating areas from the realm of discussion (you can’t discuss the economic impact of the proposal) is likely to be a symmetrical rule which illustrates a difference between the debaters.
Other rules could simply apply equally but be targeted: For example, the rule could be that both debaters have poor lighting, no access to makeup, and will have their clothing crumpled, or know the subject of the questions but not their phrasing or order. The first set would favor the person who was less likely to convince people based on his appearance, while the last would favor the one who could think faster and be perceived as better prepared.
Then there are rules which are clearly biased, and only appear to apply equally: ‘Only brown-eyed people may talk’. I don’t think those were ever in serious discussion, and I only mention them to dismiss them.
I will agree, under the terms that any advancement in your argument applies to the following reformulation:
The rules forbidding thievery aren’t symmetrical in terms of thieves versus non-thieves, and the rules are asymmetric precisely because more people support non-thievery than support thievery.
(Which is to say, if you extend your argument in such a way that it doesn’t apply to the reformulation, my agreement may no longer apply. This stabilizes our mutual understanding of our metaphors.)
I agree that the rules forbidding thievery are asymmetric, in that they are intended to impede thieves more than non-thieves.
It’s not quite as clear to me that in practice they are differentially imposed by non-thieves, but I’m willing to posit that for the sake of argument. That is… if I steal a bunch of property, I immediately have an incentive to support rules that prevent the stealing of that property, rules that a moment earlier I had incentive to oppose, while still having incentive to oppose rules that prevent the stealing of other property, and while still being a thief. But I don’t think that matters for our purposes; if we assume for simplicity that all rules are either pro-thievery, anti-thievery, or thievery-neutral and no rules are pro-some-thievery-and-anti-other-thievery, then what you say is true, and I’m willing to assume that for simplicity. (There’s a reason I picked a simple toy example to start with; real-world cases tend towards distracting complexity. But, OK, if you prefer to use thievery as our working example, I’m willing.)
Positing all of that, it seems to follow that if I’m a thief, the rules therefore don’t favor me, and if I’m a non-thief, the rules do favor me.
Agreed?
It seems to follow in turn that if I say “Hey, the rules against thievery are a good thing!” that means more if I’m a thief than if I’m a nonthief, since it’s less likely that I’m just arguing for whatever benefits me.
Agreed?
This seems generalizable: if the rules benefit me more than you, then when I endorse the rules I’m doing so in support of my interests but when you endorse them you’re doing so against your interests. And that’s a legitimate ground upon which to evaluate our endorsements differently, even if they seem superficially identical. Which seems to me to apply just as well to rules of “civility” as rules of debate as rules of theft. Who is doing the endorsing, and how much they benefit from the rules, matters when I’m figuring out how much weight to afford the endorsement.
Agreed?
Can we call “Thievery” either a non-revocable lifestyle choice, or posit that thievery laws will be ex-post-facto in any case (so if a thief in a thief society steals, he would have no incentive to switch sides later), in order to maintain our metaphors? (Alternatively, we can drop the metaphors altogether. I believe I see where your line of argument is going, and I don’t think it strictly requires them.)
Agreed, at any rate.
I agree that my line of reasoning does not require any particular metaphors regarding theft, and I’m happy to adopt any simplifying assumptions that allow us to talk usefully about it. (As I say, there’s a reason I started with a much simpler toy example in the first place.)
So, OK. Returning to the line you dismissed as ad-hominem:
What the above quote seems to be saying is that when evaluating X’s endorsement of a rule of discourse, one significant factor is the extent to which X has contextually relevant power. Agreed? (1)
We’ve agreed that when evaluating X’s endorsement of a rule, one significant factor is the extent to which X benefits from that rule.
If it were true (which it might not be) that power differentials between X and Y as they apply to discourse correlate with differential benefit between X and Y from obeying the rules of discourse, then it would follow that power differentials between X and Y are relevant evidence when evaluating X and Y’s endorsement of those rules. Agreed?
If we agree so far, I’m content. For my own part, I do believe that power differentials between X and Y as they apply to discourse often correlate with differential benefit between X and Y from obeying the rules of discourse. I don’t think I could provide significant reason to believe it in the context of this comment-thread, though, so if we disagree about that I’m content to agree to disagree.
(1) This is admittedly modulo some rhetorical hyperbole; what the quote actually seems to say is that this is the only significant factor, which is absurd on the face of it. I very much doubt the author would stand by that literal reading… for example, I expect they would agree that the requester’s previous history of lying through their teeth was also relevant, at least sometimes, to understanding whether their request was sincere.
When evaluating the merits of a rule, it matters very little what X stands to gain from the rule. X’s evaluation is only relevant to you if you are trying to support or oppose the rule because of what X thinks. You have enough information to evaluate whether controlling the tone of a discussion is primarily a power play by the person trying to control the tone or primarily an attempt to improve communication by reducing the amount of noise in the channel. More important than identifying the motives, you can also figure out the likely result based on direct observation, without giving much weight to someone else’s conclusion based on their direct observation.
Whether evaluating the merits of a rule is a better thing to spend my time doing than evaluating the motives of the speaker is a value judgment completely orthogonal to what I was talking about.
What were you talking about?
I was talking about evaluating the motives of the speaker, because that’s what OrphanWilde’s comment, which I was responding to, was talking about. That there exist other topics that would be more valuable to talk about is undoubtedly true, but rather beside my point.
I agree on all points with one caveat -
It’s still an ad-hominem response. This is not to say it is wholly invalid—it’s proper in Bayesian reasoning to weigh the source of evidence in addition to the evidence itself, and I presume this may extend to arguments as well—but it is the weakest possible response to a criticism.
A potentially tangential continuation:
That caveat carries costs; it runs the very real risk of alienating sympathetic parties. I am no longer sympathetic to gnostic atheism, for example, as my attack on Dawkins may reveal. Indeed, Dawkins is quite possibly single-handled responsible for converting me from gnostic atheism to agnostic atheism, as my reactions to The God Delusion resulted in my re-evaluation of my own behavior, and then my re-evaluation of my own reasoning. While this is probably a plus, on the whole, for my rationality, Dawkins and other gnostic atheists might prefer to count it a minus.
To use my politics as another example, I used to count myself among the Democrats. The anti-Bush rhetoric did more than anything else in pushing me away from them, however. I can’t find the Overcoming Bias post describing Benjamin Franklin’s use of eliciting favors from others as a mechanism to make them like him, but a post somewhere else: http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/10/05/the-benjamin-franklin-effect/ makes a similar point. In retrospect, spending so much time defending Bush against undeserved/dishonest attacks probably had a pretty significant impact on my politics of the time; I cannot recall a deliberate reconsideration of my political policies, so I cannot claim any kind of win for rationality on this point. But this bias (whatever it’s called) does suggest a particularly high cost of hostile rhetoric among even rational people: You’re inviting the intellectually honest to do your mutual enemy a favor.
Sure. If, when you wrote “Seriously? It’s advocating ad-hominem.” you meant to suggest that it was advocating a response that was valid but not as strong as other possible responses, then I agree with you completely. I had understood your rhetoric to be conveying a stronger objection.
Also agreed that hostile or otherwise extreme rhetoric can alienate people who might not be alienated by different rhetoric.
That said, while I often find reactive anti-Blue rhetoric offputting in much the way you describe, I also consider myself to have some responsibility for actually evaluating the positions involved, rather than allowing myself to be reactively alienated by it.
It was more that it didn’t advocate anything else at all. (As you observed, it’s hard to believe the author would endorse the literal understanding.)
I’m actually considering writing a “Defense of Ad-Hominem” post, if a search doesn’t turn any similar posts up in the past. I may take too much entertainment out of this. :-)