Some of the examples that we haven’t disccused yet were
you have a deranged suburban woman wanting a black man in the neighborhood to be arrested, for no discernible reason besides that he is black and she is crazy
Similarly, a deranged parent calls up a school superintendent wanting a principal to be fired because their child was exposed to Michaelangelo’s David, and the superintendent laughs and gently communicates “No, we are not doing that.”
(not part of the LW post, but linked to indirectly) A professor was suspended for racism for giving an example with a Chinese word that is pronounced like “nigger”.
The school had a rule that parents should be notified of controversial subjects.
The school leadership had previously been dissatisfied with the teacher for her conflicts with some of the parents.
The students were not just exposed to a statue of a nude man, but also a painting of a nude man, and a painting of a nude sex goddess. This might sound pedantic but I am not really sure why paintings of nude sex goddesses aren’t pornographic. The painting literally depicts someone attempting to cover her up, I assume because her nudity is considered inappropriate.
Michaelangelo’s David has also been controversial in the past, e.g. when it was originally set up, its penis was covered up by golden leaves because it was considered inappropriate.
So basically, first of all it is not clear to me that it is a lizardman opinion to consider the things the teacher taught to be pornographic. Maybe it is a lizardman opinion, but at least I can’t immediately think of any coherent reason why it would be. (If you believe that it would be harmful for children to view a nude picture of Aella, but not to view a nude painting of Venus, then I would love to hear your explanation! Actually even if you believe that both would be harmful, I would also be interested in hearing your explanation, because I don’t have a good model of this harm.)
And second of all, there seems to have been a conflict in the school, where some parents were concerned about the school being woke, and the school tried to assure them by promising them that their concerns would be addressed, but the teacher in question was resistant to addressing their concerns and sought to find provocative corner-cases.
I’m less sure about the case of the professor with the case of the professor. I haven’t found as convenient sources as I did for the Michaelangelo’s David situation. It seems plausible that it is an example of what Duncan describes, but I am not 101% sure.
So I propose a count of 4 examples contradicting Duncan, 1 example supporting Duncan, and 1 example being underspecified.
I think that Duncan is correct that society generally has fairly clear categories of valid and invalid complaint topics, along with recognized justifications for the categorization scheme.
Then there are edge cases and grey zones, both about what the categories are and how we establish them.
If we select for complaints that are in turn motivated by focused activism on redefining these categories—a teacher who seeks out edge cases—then the idea that “there are valid and invalid/Lizardman complains, we know which is which, and authority figures should insulate against Lizardman complains” is the point specifically in contention.
So the Lizardman heuristic will look decidedly unhelpful in arbitrating these cases. Similarly, you probably shouldn’t lean too hard on the argument that “minors don’t have the capacity to judge laws” when legislating the specific issue of what the voting age ought to be.
On the other hand, I think we can expect that the complaint categories deemed clearly valid or invalid/Lizardman will more often correspond to the types of complaints encountered most commonly outside of the world of activism. In these cases, the Lizardman heuristic will be more helpful.
“This guy’s not an activist, he’s just a Lizardman and I can ignore him” is a thought pattern that I use to decide that my neighbor, who likes to scream at bicyclists for going to fast or cars for idling on the corner for too long, is a Lizardman and not a Citizen With A Valid Complaint.
Yet if there was a tendency for bikers to ride too fast through the neighborhood or for cars to idle too long on our block, and the neighbors gathered together to have a cogent discussion on their concerns, I’m more inclined to listen to their concerns. Maybe there are kids playing in the street that the bicyclists aren’t watching out for. Maybe the people in the idling cars seem like they might be casing houses to burglarize.
I think what I’m trying to do in a Bayesian sense is decide if the person with the complaint is worth listening to. Have they recognized a problem that deserves a higher priority than it gets right now? Are they seeking the right kind of attention, a productive solution? Do they have some awareness of context, some flexibility and responsiveness to other issues? Do I need to be involved?
If so, I’m happy to listen with respect. If they’re too far in the other direction—as many people are—I’m happy to dismiss them as Lizardman/trolls and block/ignore/divert attention away from them.
There’s a danger in this approach, which is miscategorizing activists as Lizardmen and vice versa, either because you made an honest mistake or because you got tricked by the political opposition/other Lizardmen. That’s what we see to some extent in the “Rainbowland” example, although I’m firmly on the pro-diversity side in that argument and am unlikely to take anti-diversity activists seriously for other reasons. I don’t think they’re “lizardmen” (complaining about potentially valid issues in an invalid way) I just think they are wrong (complaining about invalid issues in a more or less valid way).
Some of the examples that we haven’t disccused yet were
you have a deranged suburban woman wanting a black man in the neighborhood to be arrested, for no discernible reason besides that he is black and she is crazy
Similarly, a deranged parent calls up a school superintendent wanting a principal to be fired because their child was exposed to Michaelangelo’s David, and the superintendent laughs and gently communicates “No, we are not doing that.”
(not part of the LW post, but linked to indirectly) A professor was suspended for racism for giving an example with a Chinese word that is pronounced like “nigger”.
I don’t know which situation the suburban woman story refers to, however I think I know what situation the Michaelangelo’s David situation refers to, and from my research there are several missing facts to the story:
The school had a rule that parents should be notified of controversial subjects.
The school leadership had previously been dissatisfied with the teacher for her conflicts with some of the parents.
The students were not just exposed to a statue of a nude man, but also a painting of a nude man, and a painting of a nude sex goddess. This might sound pedantic but I am not really sure why paintings of nude sex goddesses aren’t pornographic. The painting literally depicts someone attempting to cover her up, I assume because her nudity is considered inappropriate.
Michaelangelo’s David has also been controversial in the past, e.g. when it was originally set up, its penis was covered up by golden leaves because it was considered inappropriate.
So basically, first of all it is not clear to me that it is a lizardman opinion to consider the things the teacher taught to be pornographic. Maybe it is a lizardman opinion, but at least I can’t immediately think of any coherent reason why it would be. (If you believe that it would be harmful for children to view a nude picture of Aella, but not to view a nude painting of Venus, then I would love to hear your explanation! Actually even if you believe that both would be harmful, I would also be interested in hearing your explanation, because I don’t have a good model of this harm.)
And second of all, there seems to have been a conflict in the school, where some parents were concerned about the school being woke, and the school tried to assure them by promising them that their concerns would be addressed, but the teacher in question was resistant to addressing their concerns and sought to find provocative corner-cases.
I’m less sure about the case of the professor with the case of the professor. I haven’t found as convenient sources as I did for the Michaelangelo’s David situation. It seems plausible that it is an example of what Duncan describes, but I am not 101% sure.
So I propose a count of 4 examples contradicting Duncan, 1 example supporting Duncan, and 1 example being underspecified.
I think that Duncan is correct that society generally has fairly clear categories of valid and invalid complaint topics, along with recognized justifications for the categorization scheme.
Then there are edge cases and grey zones, both about what the categories are and how we establish them.
If we select for complaints that are in turn motivated by focused activism on redefining these categories—a teacher who seeks out edge cases—then the idea that “there are valid and invalid/Lizardman complains, we know which is which, and authority figures should insulate against Lizardman complains” is the point specifically in contention.
So the Lizardman heuristic will look decidedly unhelpful in arbitrating these cases. Similarly, you probably shouldn’t lean too hard on the argument that “minors don’t have the capacity to judge laws” when legislating the specific issue of what the voting age ought to be.
On the other hand, I think we can expect that the complaint categories deemed clearly valid or invalid/Lizardman will more often correspond to the types of complaints encountered most commonly outside of the world of activism. In these cases, the Lizardman heuristic will be more helpful.
“This guy’s not an activist, he’s just a Lizardman and I can ignore him” is a thought pattern that I use to decide that my neighbor, who likes to scream at bicyclists for going to fast or cars for idling on the corner for too long, is a Lizardman and not a Citizen With A Valid Complaint.
Yet if there was a tendency for bikers to ride too fast through the neighborhood or for cars to idle too long on our block, and the neighbors gathered together to have a cogent discussion on their concerns, I’m more inclined to listen to their concerns. Maybe there are kids playing in the street that the bicyclists aren’t watching out for. Maybe the people in the idling cars seem like they might be casing houses to burglarize.
I think what I’m trying to do in a Bayesian sense is decide if the person with the complaint is worth listening to. Have they recognized a problem that deserves a higher priority than it gets right now? Are they seeking the right kind of attention, a productive solution? Do they have some awareness of context, some flexibility and responsiveness to other issues? Do I need to be involved?
If so, I’m happy to listen with respect. If they’re too far in the other direction—as many people are—I’m happy to dismiss them as Lizardman/trolls and block/ignore/divert attention away from them.
There’s a danger in this approach, which is miscategorizing activists as Lizardmen and vice versa, either because you made an honest mistake or because you got tricked by the political opposition/other Lizardmen. That’s what we see to some extent in the “Rainbowland” example, although I’m firmly on the pro-diversity side in that argument and am unlikely to take anti-diversity activists seriously for other reasons. I don’t think they’re “lizardmen” (complaining about potentially valid issues in an invalid way) I just think they are wrong (complaining about invalid issues in a more or less valid way).