People who describe themselves as Democrats, for example, span a much wider range of views than people who describe themselves as “Republicans.”
And yet it was NPR who fired Juan Williams for appearing on Fox, not Fox for appearing on NPR. Now, one theory is that NPR is admirable, Fox is disreputable, so of course NPR has good reason to be more concerned about Fox cooties than Fox does to be concerned a out NPR cooties. But another theory is that NPR is much more ideologically narrow and intolerant of dissent than Fox. Which is the truth? Well, if we ask an academic, who is probably on average to the left of Chavez, he will probably tell you that the big problem with NPR is that they are just way too broad-minded and that it is high time they got rid of that bigot. So, what sources are telling you that democrats are more diverse than republicans? Are you talking about academic studies?
Who said that Democrats were more tolerant? And who said anything about a news network of any kind being reasonable?
Even if the “wider range of views” I wrote about was absolutely, authoritatively true, it wouldn’t have to do what you’re talking about. And in fact I don’t believe it’s authoritatively true—I think I’ve seen a study somewhere, that’s all. It’s a vague memory. Call it false if you want.
Do you believe there is no relationship between whether a group tolerates dissent from a narrowly defined ideology within the group, and how wide a range of views one finds within the group? Really? Let’s consider an example.
Suppose you encounter a group that tolerates no dissent from big-endianism, a group which expels members who dissent from big-endianism. Do you believe that this group contains both big-endians and little-endians? Really? How so? It does not tolerate—in the sense of expels—non-big-endians.
It seems to me to be pretty obvious that there is not only a connection, there is a strong relationship between tolerance and variety. Maybe not a necessary one, but then, hardly anything is necessary. if you point a loaded gun at my head and pull the trigger, it is not logically necessary that I will be killed. An extremely unlikely quantum event might occur which intervenes, rendering your action harmless. Nevertheless, the lack of absolute logical necessity hardly means there is no connection.
And who said anything about a news network of any kind being reasonable?
Well, that’s a new one. So out of the blue you are going to throw in the idea that news networks are somehow peculiarly unreasonable, all so that I can’t use an example of a Democrat-aligned and a Rebublican-aligned news network as evidence for questioning your view. Because unless there is something peculiarly unreasonable about news networks, then you have given no argument for rejecting my evidence. Since you have objected to my evidence, I can only interpret this as presupposing that there is something special about news networks which makes them inapplicable to the question.
I don’t see it. I don’t see any reason to think anything other than that a Democrate-aligned news network and a Republican-aligned news network will exhibit, more often than not, in microcosm, the behavior of their respective groups. So unless you give me a better answer than that, I can’t accept your rejection.
There are, of course, objections you can make. For example, it is after all just one event, an anecdote. However, I think it’s significant that NPR firing Juan Williams seems intuitively quite expected, and Fox firing Juan Williams seems intuitively unlikely. So we have not just the event itself, but our intuitive feeling, which the event serves to elicit and to highlight. Now, one view of this is that we expect liberals to be intolerant of the slightest dissent, and we expect conservatives to be tolerant of significant dissent. The anecdote, then, serves primarily to elicit this intuition, which I feel and which perhaps some readers will feel, and this intuition in turn goes against the gist of what you were saying—does so despite the distinctions you have made (between tolerance for dissent and variety of views, between a network and the population at large) for the reasons that I have given.
And in fact I don’t believe it’s authoritatively true—I think I’ve seen a study somewhere, that’s all. It’s a vague memory. Call it false if you want.
Call it false if I want? I don’t even know what to make of that. I gave an argument for X, and your response is “believe X if you want”? That sounds like saying “whatever”—it’s a brush-off, rather than a genuine response. But if what you want to do is brush me off, why respond at all?
Maybe you’re right. Maybe you’re wrong. I don’t know who’s more tolerant. I agree that firing Juan Williams is pretty intolerant.
Look, I wrote a shitty little post and blasted it off into the ether. There wasn’t any research to it, I made statements without justification, etc, etc. Who’s more tolerant was not the point—hell, I don’t even know if I had a point. It just sounded cool.
So I’m not super-invested in my claims, that’s all. I’m not going to spend a bunch of time dredging up evidence to show that Democrats are tolerant—because honestly, I don’t necessarily believe they are. And honestly I’m not interested in the issue. If you want to think of this as “conceding the point” then I concede the point.
This was a “noise” post. I basically secrete long, ranty essays the way a spider secretes spiderweb. Sometimes I make the mistake of showing them to other people. Jesus Katy, people get touchy about the topic. So sue me, I’m neurotypical, I’m a product of my time and class, and I rant about politics just like everyone else. It’s just shooting the shit.
I can’t tell how you were feeling at the time you wrote something. I am going to respond to what you wrote, not to how you were feeling at the time you wrote it. And I am going to take however long of a comment to respond to it that I feel is needed to fully make the point. Sometimes that takes a brief comment, sometimes a long one, depending on the difficulty and subtlety of the subject matter.
There is nothing “touchy”—oversensitive, easily offended—about rebutting a claim per se. In calling me “touchy” for rebutting a claim, you seem to be implying that anyone who rebuts that claim is easily offended. Really? You claim that Democrats are more diverse than Republicans, and anyone who rebuts that claim is easily offended?
That hardly makes any sense. But what’s left, in determining whether a response to something you wrote is a symptom of oversensitivity? Is the topic so unimportant that making any claim at all about it one way or another is itself a sign of oversensitivity? But you made a claim about the topic yourself. Does that make you oversensitive?
Or is it the fact that you made the claim while in a state of mind of uncaring, and then I responded, that shows that I am too easily offended? So to avoid being classed as having a chip on my shoulder requires that I (a) read your mind, and (b) avoid rebutting claims if my mindreading powers have discerned that you were not serious when you made the claims.
There is nothing “touchy”—oversensitive, easily offended—about rebutting a claim per se. In calling me “touchy” for rebutting a claim, you seem to be implying that anyone who rebuts that claim is easily offended.
There’s an alternate reading of SarahC’s reaction.
Your comment addressed 2 percent of her article that was not essential to the main thrust of article and interpreted this portion of the article in a way that made it look as though you suspected her of partisanship. Your choice of focus suggested to me that her comparison of Democrats and Republicans put you on the defensive.
Miscommunication is common on the internet as the communication aids of body language / facial expression / tone of voice that humans evolved are absent. I recognize that my initial reading of your comment may have been inaccurate.
Since statements made on the internet are easily misinterpreted, I think it’s a good idea to probe as to whether one’s initial interpretation is correct when responding to somebody’s statement.
In particular, I think that you would have been more likely to provoke a positive reaction from the poster if your initial comment had been something like
“Do you have a strong belief about Democrats being more diverse than Republicans or was your reference just an offhand comment? If so, can you give supporting references?”
On the flip side, I think that she could have better communicated with you in her response to your comment. Concretely, I would guess that she would have been more likely to receive a favorable response from you had she responded with:
“I was not claiming that Democrats are more tolerant than Republicans. My remark that Democrats are more diverse than Republicans is based on a vague memory of a study which I can no longer find. I will cut out the reference accordingly as my evidence on this point is very weak and is not crucial to the main thrust of the article.”
Your comment addressed 2 percent of her article that was not essential to the main thrust of article
It hardly seems unusual or wrong for tangential discussions to form.
and interpreted this portion of the article in a way that made it look as though you suspected her of partisanship.
I stated almost straight out that I believed her source was probably academic and therefore probably biased in a way that flattered Democrats. Academics contribute to Democrats over Republicans by something close to 90% to 10%. They are an amazingly heavily Democratic bunch of people. I said nothing about her.
The bias is not a matter of dishonesty. Look at the Juan Williams example. If you think that NPR is more reputable than Fox, are you being dishonest? If you think that NPR is more intolerant than Fox, are you being dishonest? I don’t see any obvious dishonesty either way. But it’s a hugely different perspective, which interprets the same event—the firing of Juan Williams—in two very different ways.
She objected that tolerance is not variety, that networks are not the population at large. But the point is a very general point. Bias greatly affects what we measure. Suppose you are trying to measure relative tolerance at NPR and Fox. If you think that NPR is reputable and Fox is disreputable, then you have no reason to interpret Juan Williams’s firing as an indication that NPR is more intolerant than Fox. It makes sense that disreputable Fox should seek out reputable people, and that reputable NPR should disassociate itself from disreputable people.
So your perspective is going to greatly affect your result when you attempt to measure degree of tolerance. Yes, tolerance is not variety, but it’s a general point. (And anyway, tolerance is closely related to variety.)
Your choice of focus suggested to me that her comparison of Democrats and Republicans put you on the defensive.
I don’t even know what to make of this. “On the defensive” means, what? Any action in either a military conflict or a intellectual disagreement could be called a “defense” (e.g. of one’s own position). Do you mean that my choice of focus suggested to you that I am touchy about the topic? That I am overly sensitive (the meaning of touchy)? Is that what you mean by “defensive”?
Well, I don’t really see why the choice of topic would suggest to you that I am overly sensitive to the topic. That I am sensitive enough to respond—sure. But is that over sensitive? Maybe it is being more sensitive than she is. She does, after all, say she doesn’t care. If she’s the model of the correct degree of sensitivity, then I am over-sensitive. But what if she is under-sensitive and I am just right?
In particular, I think that you would have been more likely to provoke a positive reaction from the poster if …
I would guess that she would have been more likely to receive a favorable response from you had she...
I’m not sure what to make of this. If I take issue with something, then I will take issue with it. Is this what you call an “unfavorable response”? Are you saying that, had she refrained from saying something that I took issue with, then I would not have taken issue with it? I suppose so. But where’s the fun in that? And anyway, how can she possibly know what I will take issue with and what I won’t? Isn’t the point of discussion to discover what other people take issue with?
Are we supposed to avoid argument? Avoid disagreement?
As it happens, she said something I took issue with. In your revision of her comments, you eliminated stuff I took issue with. But you’re doing this with hindsight. That’s cheating. You already know that I don’t take issue with it, because I didn’t take issue with it.
She didn’t say “more diverse”, she said “span a much wider range of views”. These are not the same. When you say “more diverse”, people think of ethnic, racial, gender, religious and geographic diversity, which people love to cheer for, but which are all irrelevant to the topic of this article. “Wider range of views,” as used here, means more different positions advocated. That’s neither inherently good nor inherently bad.
One common characterization of the liberal/conservative spectrum is that conservatives favor stability, and liberals favor change. In the space of possible answers to a question, the status quo is one answer, and change is every other answer. So liberals span a wider range of views, and the Democratic party identifies as liberal.
The rest of what you wrote on this thread seems to flow from this bit of confusion. You also talk a bit about “tolerance”, which is an orthogonal issue; a group may all agree and be tolerant of disagreement, or all disagree and be tolerant, or all agree and be intolerant, or all disagree and be intolerant. SarahC made no claim as to which of these categories either party falls into, and neither will I.
And yet it was NPR who fired Juan Williams for appearing on Fox, not Fox for appearing on NPR. Now, one theory is that NPR is admirable, Fox is disreputable, so of course NPR has good reason to be more concerned about Fox cooties than Fox does to be concerned a out NPR cooties. But another theory is that NPR is much more ideologically narrow and intolerant of dissent than Fox. Which is the truth? Well, if we ask an academic, who is probably on average to the left of Chavez, he will probably tell you that the big problem with NPR is that they are just way too broad-minded and that it is high time they got rid of that bigot. So, what sources are telling you that democrats are more diverse than republicans? Are you talking about academic studies?
God, am I doomed to be misunderstood?
Who said that Democrats were more tolerant? And who said anything about a news network of any kind being reasonable?
Even if the “wider range of views” I wrote about was absolutely, authoritatively true, it wouldn’t have to do what you’re talking about. And in fact I don’t believe it’s authoritatively true—I think I’ve seen a study somewhere, that’s all. It’s a vague memory. Call it false if you want.
Do you believe there is no relationship between whether a group tolerates dissent from a narrowly defined ideology within the group, and how wide a range of views one finds within the group? Really? Let’s consider an example.
Suppose you encounter a group that tolerates no dissent from big-endianism, a group which expels members who dissent from big-endianism. Do you believe that this group contains both big-endians and little-endians? Really? How so? It does not tolerate—in the sense of expels—non-big-endians.
It seems to me to be pretty obvious that there is not only a connection, there is a strong relationship between tolerance and variety. Maybe not a necessary one, but then, hardly anything is necessary. if you point a loaded gun at my head and pull the trigger, it is not logically necessary that I will be killed. An extremely unlikely quantum event might occur which intervenes, rendering your action harmless. Nevertheless, the lack of absolute logical necessity hardly means there is no connection.
Well, that’s a new one. So out of the blue you are going to throw in the idea that news networks are somehow peculiarly unreasonable, all so that I can’t use an example of a Democrat-aligned and a Rebublican-aligned news network as evidence for questioning your view. Because unless there is something peculiarly unreasonable about news networks, then you have given no argument for rejecting my evidence. Since you have objected to my evidence, I can only interpret this as presupposing that there is something special about news networks which makes them inapplicable to the question.
I don’t see it. I don’t see any reason to think anything other than that a Democrate-aligned news network and a Republican-aligned news network will exhibit, more often than not, in microcosm, the behavior of their respective groups. So unless you give me a better answer than that, I can’t accept your rejection.
There are, of course, objections you can make. For example, it is after all just one event, an anecdote. However, I think it’s significant that NPR firing Juan Williams seems intuitively quite expected, and Fox firing Juan Williams seems intuitively unlikely. So we have not just the event itself, but our intuitive feeling, which the event serves to elicit and to highlight. Now, one view of this is that we expect liberals to be intolerant of the slightest dissent, and we expect conservatives to be tolerant of significant dissent. The anecdote, then, serves primarily to elicit this intuition, which I feel and which perhaps some readers will feel, and this intuition in turn goes against the gist of what you were saying—does so despite the distinctions you have made (between tolerance for dissent and variety of views, between a network and the population at large) for the reasons that I have given.
Call it false if I want? I don’t even know what to make of that. I gave an argument for X, and your response is “believe X if you want”? That sounds like saying “whatever”—it’s a brush-off, rather than a genuine response. But if what you want to do is brush me off, why respond at all?
Constant, I really don’t care.
Maybe you’re right. Maybe you’re wrong. I don’t know who’s more tolerant. I agree that firing Juan Williams is pretty intolerant.
Look, I wrote a shitty little post and blasted it off into the ether. There wasn’t any research to it, I made statements without justification, etc, etc. Who’s more tolerant was not the point—hell, I don’t even know if I had a point. It just sounded cool.
So I’m not super-invested in my claims, that’s all. I’m not going to spend a bunch of time dredging up evidence to show that Democrats are tolerant—because honestly, I don’t necessarily believe they are. And honestly I’m not interested in the issue. If you want to think of this as “conceding the point” then I concede the point.
This was a “noise” post. I basically secrete long, ranty essays the way a spider secretes spiderweb. Sometimes I make the mistake of showing them to other people. Jesus Katy, people get touchy about the topic. So sue me, I’m neurotypical, I’m a product of my time and class, and I rant about politics just like everyone else. It’s just shooting the shit.
I can’t tell how you were feeling at the time you wrote something. I am going to respond to what you wrote, not to how you were feeling at the time you wrote it. And I am going to take however long of a comment to respond to it that I feel is needed to fully make the point. Sometimes that takes a brief comment, sometimes a long one, depending on the difficulty and subtlety of the subject matter.
There is nothing “touchy”—oversensitive, easily offended—about rebutting a claim per se. In calling me “touchy” for rebutting a claim, you seem to be implying that anyone who rebuts that claim is easily offended. Really? You claim that Democrats are more diverse than Republicans, and anyone who rebuts that claim is easily offended?
That hardly makes any sense. But what’s left, in determining whether a response to something you wrote is a symptom of oversensitivity? Is the topic so unimportant that making any claim at all about it one way or another is itself a sign of oversensitivity? But you made a claim about the topic yourself. Does that make you oversensitive?
Or is it the fact that you made the claim while in a state of mind of uncaring, and then I responded, that shows that I am too easily offended? So to avoid being classed as having a chip on my shoulder requires that I (a) read your mind, and (b) avoid rebutting claims if my mindreading powers have discerned that you were not serious when you made the claims.
There’s an alternate reading of SarahC’s reaction.
Your comment addressed 2 percent of her article that was not essential to the main thrust of article and interpreted this portion of the article in a way that made it look as though you suspected her of partisanship. Your choice of focus suggested to me that her comparison of Democrats and Republicans put you on the defensive.
Miscommunication is common on the internet as the communication aids of body language / facial expression / tone of voice that humans evolved are absent. I recognize that my initial reading of your comment may have been inaccurate.
Since statements made on the internet are easily misinterpreted, I think it’s a good idea to probe as to whether one’s initial interpretation is correct when responding to somebody’s statement.
In particular, I think that you would have been more likely to provoke a positive reaction from the poster if your initial comment had been something like
“Do you have a strong belief about Democrats being more diverse than Republicans or was your reference just an offhand comment? If so, can you give supporting references?”
On the flip side, I think that she could have better communicated with you in her response to your comment. Concretely, I would guess that she would have been more likely to receive a favorable response from you had she responded with:
“I was not claiming that Democrats are more tolerant than Republicans. My remark that Democrats are more diverse than Republicans is based on a vague memory of a study which I can no longer find. I will cut out the reference accordingly as my evidence on this point is very weak and is not crucial to the main thrust of the article.”
Is this right?
It hardly seems unusual or wrong for tangential discussions to form.
I stated almost straight out that I believed her source was probably academic and therefore probably biased in a way that flattered Democrats. Academics contribute to Democrats over Republicans by something close to 90% to 10%. They are an amazingly heavily Democratic bunch of people. I said nothing about her.
The bias is not a matter of dishonesty. Look at the Juan Williams example. If you think that NPR is more reputable than Fox, are you being dishonest? If you think that NPR is more intolerant than Fox, are you being dishonest? I don’t see any obvious dishonesty either way. But it’s a hugely different perspective, which interprets the same event—the firing of Juan Williams—in two very different ways.
She objected that tolerance is not variety, that networks are not the population at large. But the point is a very general point. Bias greatly affects what we measure. Suppose you are trying to measure relative tolerance at NPR and Fox. If you think that NPR is reputable and Fox is disreputable, then you have no reason to interpret Juan Williams’s firing as an indication that NPR is more intolerant than Fox. It makes sense that disreputable Fox should seek out reputable people, and that reputable NPR should disassociate itself from disreputable people.
So your perspective is going to greatly affect your result when you attempt to measure degree of tolerance. Yes, tolerance is not variety, but it’s a general point. (And anyway, tolerance is closely related to variety.)
I don’t even know what to make of this. “On the defensive” means, what? Any action in either a military conflict or a intellectual disagreement could be called a “defense” (e.g. of one’s own position). Do you mean that my choice of focus suggested to you that I am touchy about the topic? That I am overly sensitive (the meaning of touchy)? Is that what you mean by “defensive”?
Well, I don’t really see why the choice of topic would suggest to you that I am overly sensitive to the topic. That I am sensitive enough to respond—sure. But is that over sensitive? Maybe it is being more sensitive than she is. She does, after all, say she doesn’t care. If she’s the model of the correct degree of sensitivity, then I am over-sensitive. But what if she is under-sensitive and I am just right?
I’m not sure what to make of this. If I take issue with something, then I will take issue with it. Is this what you call an “unfavorable response”? Are you saying that, had she refrained from saying something that I took issue with, then I would not have taken issue with it? I suppose so. But where’s the fun in that? And anyway, how can she possibly know what I will take issue with and what I won’t? Isn’t the point of discussion to discover what other people take issue with?
Are we supposed to avoid argument? Avoid disagreement?
As it happens, she said something I took issue with. In your revision of her comments, you eliminated stuff I took issue with. But you’re doing this with hindsight. That’s cheating. You already know that I don’t take issue with it, because I didn’t take issue with it.
She didn’t say “more diverse”, she said “span a much wider range of views”. These are not the same. When you say “more diverse”, people think of ethnic, racial, gender, religious and geographic diversity, which people love to cheer for, but which are all irrelevant to the topic of this article. “Wider range of views,” as used here, means more different positions advocated. That’s neither inherently good nor inherently bad.
One common characterization of the liberal/conservative spectrum is that conservatives favor stability, and liberals favor change. In the space of possible answers to a question, the status quo is one answer, and change is every other answer. So liberals span a wider range of views, and the Democratic party identifies as liberal.
The rest of what you wrote on this thread seems to flow from this bit of confusion. You also talk a bit about “tolerance”, which is an orthogonal issue; a group may all agree and be tolerant of disagreement, or all disagree and be tolerant, or all agree and be intolerant, or all disagree and be intolerant. SarahC made no claim as to which of these categories either party falls into, and neither will I.
I love the idea of thinking of this in terms of “cooties”.