You’ve made a lot of really good points about how these kinds of copy-paste responses can help identify trolls and build community solidarity, many of which hadn’t really occurred to me. I hope you’ll forgive me for not spending more space laying out where we agree; I don’t like posts which could be summed up entirely with an upvote.
I do have to quibble with one point though;
(On that last point, I tried to imagine what Less Wrong would feel like if we had the same level of outright hostile outsider behavior that outspoken feminists regularly receive. “You dorks think belief has something to do with math? What you need is a real Christian to beat you senseless and drag you to church. Then you’d find out what belief is really about!”)
The issue here isn’t whether feminists (or anyone else for that matter) are morally/emotionally justified in using these sorts of thought-terminating cliches, but whether these types of cliches lower the quality of discourse and make their users more resistant to genuine counter-argument/counter-evidence.
In that vein, I’d have to say that thick skin is not always an asset; you can “win” arguments by endurance, but you’ll never find truth or allies that way. Most of the discussions I’ve had with feminists online could be mapped 1:1 to arguments I’ve had with fundamentalist Christians IRL, where you realize halfway through that you’re speaking to someone who is scanning everything you say for keywords without ever actually thinking about it. It’s exhausting and in the end both people are angrier without having achieved anything.
I realize it’s much easier to say “be rational” than to do it when your back is up, and I certainly don’t want to dismiss anyone’s emotional pain, but ultimately giving in to the urge to irrationality is not something to be celebrated. Not everyone is a Sage with pure Apatheia, able to resist any temptation through will alone, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to be reasonably objective. Objectivity is a dirty word in some circles, but if we don’t at least try to overcome our biases we are ruled by them.
(Thanks for acknowledging the common ground; this response likewise deals only with the small area of disagreement.)
The issue here isn’t whether feminists (or anyone else for that matter) are morally/emotionally justified in using these sorts of thought-terminating cliches,
Oh, I agree. My point in concocting the imaginary scenario of an embattled Less Wrong was to provide an alternative to the notion that feminism is fundamentally disposed to semantic stopsigns; namely that feminists find themselves in a situation) where semantic stopsigns are unusually cognitively necessary (as opposed to morally or emotionally).
That is, it’s not possible to usefully understand the cognitive situation of public feminism without thinking about the death threats, the rape threats, the “you just need a good fucking” responses, the “feminists are just ugly women” responses, and so on. It’s not that these morally justify the dismissive attitude represented by bingo cards, nor that they emotionally explain (i.e. psychoanalyze) it; but that they make it cognitively and dialectically a necessary tool.
but whether these types of cliches lower the quality of discourse and make their users more resistant to genuine counter-argument/counter-evidence.
If the situational interpretation applies, then reducing the use of semantic stopsigns would mean less available cognitive power to respond to meaningful counter-evidence, not more.
If the situational interpretation applies, then reducing the use of semantic stopsigns would mean less available cognitive power to respond to meaningful counter-evidence, not more.
I think situation plays a role here as well though.
If I’m reading the comments section on Shakesville and see some rando come in with a basic question and get hit with the “I’m not your sherpa” card and a link to 101 materials, that’s fine. You can’t drop everything to debate every random dude who expresses a disagreement; I certainly don’t appreciate it when people wander into the bio department and start up debates about irreducible complexity (yup, true story).
On the other hand, if I’m on GiantITP having a fun conversation about the best way to generate ability scores in Dungeons and Dragons (3d6 down the line, BTW) and someone goes full RadFem and derails the thread into talking about “biotruth” and privilege until it has to be locked, my jimmies get considerably rustled. Especially when I recognize a lot of the same rhetorical techniques I saw up in the first example.
That’s the general point I was making; these tools are useful for defense, but unfortunately just as useful for offense.
You’ve made a lot of really good points about how these kinds of copy-paste responses can help identify trolls and build community solidarity, many of which hadn’t really occurred to me. I hope you’ll forgive me for not spending more space laying out where we agree; I don’t like posts which could be summed up entirely with an upvote.
I do have to quibble with one point though;
The issue here isn’t whether feminists (or anyone else for that matter) are morally/emotionally justified in using these sorts of thought-terminating cliches, but whether these types of cliches lower the quality of discourse and make their users more resistant to genuine counter-argument/counter-evidence.
In that vein, I’d have to say that thick skin is not always an asset; you can “win” arguments by endurance, but you’ll never find truth or allies that way. Most of the discussions I’ve had with feminists online could be mapped 1:1 to arguments I’ve had with fundamentalist Christians IRL, where you realize halfway through that you’re speaking to someone who is scanning everything you say for keywords without ever actually thinking about it. It’s exhausting and in the end both people are angrier without having achieved anything.
I realize it’s much easier to say “be rational” than to do it when your back is up, and I certainly don’t want to dismiss anyone’s emotional pain, but ultimately giving in to the urge to irrationality is not something to be celebrated. Not everyone is a Sage with pure Apatheia, able to resist any temptation through will alone, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to be reasonably objective. Objectivity is a dirty word in some circles, but if we don’t at least try to overcome our biases we are ruled by them.
(Thanks for acknowledging the common ground; this response likewise deals only with the small area of disagreement.)
Oh, I agree. My point in concocting the imaginary scenario of an embattled Less Wrong was to provide an alternative to the notion that feminism is fundamentally disposed to semantic stopsigns; namely that feminists find themselves in a situation) where semantic stopsigns are unusually cognitively necessary (as opposed to morally or emotionally).
That is, it’s not possible to usefully understand the cognitive situation of public feminism without thinking about the death threats, the rape threats, the “you just need a good fucking” responses, the “feminists are just ugly women” responses, and so on. It’s not that these morally justify the dismissive attitude represented by bingo cards, nor that they emotionally explain (i.e. psychoanalyze) it; but that they make it cognitively and dialectically a necessary tool.
If the situational interpretation applies, then reducing the use of semantic stopsigns would mean less available cognitive power to respond to meaningful counter-evidence, not more.
I think situation plays a role here as well though.
If I’m reading the comments section on Shakesville and see some rando come in with a basic question and get hit with the “I’m not your sherpa” card and a link to 101 materials, that’s fine. You can’t drop everything to debate every random dude who expresses a disagreement; I certainly don’t appreciate it when people wander into the bio department and start up debates about irreducible complexity (yup, true story).
On the other hand, if I’m on GiantITP having a fun conversation about the best way to generate ability scores in Dungeons and Dragons (3d6 down the line, BTW) and someone goes full RadFem and derails the thread into talking about “biotruth” and privilege until it has to be locked, my jimmies get considerably rustled. Especially when I recognize a lot of the same rhetorical techniques I saw up in the first example.
That’s the general point I was making; these tools are useful for defense, but unfortunately just as useful for offense.
In fact I suspect much of the feminists’ need for defense comes from the highly aggressive ways they tend to go on offense.
I guessed the “fundamentally” link would be to this.