Sexism is both discrimination based on gender and the attitudes, stereotypes, and the cultural elements that promote this discrimination. Given the historical and continued imbalance of power, where men as a class are privileged over women as a class (see male privilege), an important, but often overlooked, part of the term is that sexism is prejudice plus power. Thus feminists reject the notion that women can be sexist towards men because women lack the institutional power that men have.
This is a fairly mainstream feminist blog, a popular site for feminists to redirect critics if they feel the critics have little to offer. Google sexism + “power plus prejudice” and you can see other sites explaining why, according to the feminist definition of “sexism”, it’s impossible for men to be victims of sexism.
Many readers may expect that an “-ism” refers to a belief, as in “fundamentalism”, “theism”, or “Darwinism”. However, “-ism” can also refer to a social institution or practice, as in “capitalism” or “communism”. A capitalist economy isn’t just one whose participants have capitalist beliefs — it’s an economy that is structured in a particular way, with people actually playing the economic roles of investor, entrepreneur, employee, etc.
Similarly, terms such as “sexism” or “racism” can refer not only to biased beliefs about sex or race, but to sorts of social institutions in which some people exercise political power over others on the basis of their sex or race. Since there is a clear answer to the question, “Historically, which sex has exercised political power over the other in human culture?” the question “Who can be sexist?” seems to be dissolved and there is no need to argue definitions.
(Yes, some folks do use “sexist” as a near-synonym for “evil”, just as some libertarians use “socialist” as a near-synonym for “evil” — I’ve heard it asserted that monarchy is “socialist” because it doesn’t respect individual liberty, for instance. But we don’t have to take that kind of silliness seriously.)
First, you didn’t clearly answer my question, but i assume that you now imply that you indeed did imply that you think it would pass.
Second, it wasn’t stated in my previous comment, but i was and am aware of the power plus prejudice definitions. You seem to assume here that i was not.
Third, and most importantly, i still believe that it would not pass, as i noted in my parens remark. This is because i think that none of “[institutional] power” or “prejudice” [against a group] can adequately be described as “historical disadvantage” alone. When they write “institutional power” as well as “power plus prejudice”, they decidedly are not referring to something that lies purely in the past (indeed the present-day components are arguably the most important, though not the only interesting, ones) . The adjective “historical” in your usage seems to me to be incompatible to that.
So if I work in an office where men are required to wear ties and a specific type of business shirt, both in specific variants that are particularly uncomfortable to wear, but women are free to dress as they want...
...the standard feminist argument is that there is no sexism here, because the men are the ones who historically had the power, and this is a perfectly valid and moral situation? Does the gender of the person imposing these rules (AKA The Boss) change the game? Does it suddenly become sexism if it’s a woman imposing the rules and they all live in an isolated tribe that cut off all links with the history and past of the rest of the world?
That’s without even broaching the sensitive subject of the apparent complete lack of Schelling point for where exactly women start becoming capable of sexism towards men once/if they overturn the current “institutional power that men have”. I can’t reasonably discuss that point with a feminist woman, because she’s a woman and I’m a man, so I am a priori wrong and attempting to subjugate her by broaching that subject.
the standard feminist argument is that there is no sexism here, because the men are the ones who historically had the power, and this is a perfectly valid and moral situation?
I usually model the standard feminist position as saying that the net sexism in a system is a function of the differential benefits provided to men and women over the system as a whole, and a sexist act is one that results in an increase of that differential.
On that model, the question then becomes whether your office’s dress code serves to narrow the differential, to widen it, or neither.
Using that model gets me:
The gender of The Boss almost certainly doesn’t matter.
Cutting off all links with history (including those links implemented in the habits and preconceptions of the people working in your office) would change the equation, but it’s hard to predict in what direction; in any event it’s hard to imagine people continuing to show up for work, and I’m not quite convinced they’d continue to wear clothes either.
If we assume for convenience that the only effect of the dress code is to increase the freedom of women compared to men, then implementing that dress code is not a sexist act.
It’s not necessarily moral or valid, it’s just not sexist. There exist immoral non-sexist acts.
I expect it would not be difficult to find self-described feminists who would agree with all of that, if I presented it properly. (I also expect it would not be difficult to find self-described feminists who would disagree with all of that.)
On the one hand, the people that would agree with all of that make me bash my head against a wall while wishing said head was a selective neural disruptor that would fry their brains.
On the other hand, lots of people make me do that for many reasons. Including my past selves, sometimes.
This seems like it could be an example of someone picking the wrong fight if they wrongly used categories and definitions and then ended up in an anti-epistemic spiral after rationalizing a wrong move the first time the question came up. This would explain the scenario(s) I refer to in the last paragraph of the grandparent.
Suppose, hypothetically, that I agree with all of that. Can you summarize what it is about that agreement that makes you, hypothetically, commit violence against yourself and/or wish to kill me?
What we choose to measure affects what we choose to do. If I adopt the definition above, and I ask a wish machine to “minimize sexism”, maybe it finds that the cheapest thing to do is to ensure that for every example of institutional oppression of women, there’s an equal and opposite oppression of men. That’s...not actually what I want.
So let’s work backwards. Why do I want to reduce sexism? Well, thinking heuristically, if we accept as a given that men and women are interchangeable for many considerations, we can assume that anyone treating them differently is behaving suboptimally. In the office in the example, the dress code can’t be all that helpful to the work environment, or the women would be subject to it. Sexism can be treated as a pointer to “cheap opportunities to improve people’s lives”. The given definition cuts off that use.
I certainly agree that telling a wish machine to “minimize sexism” can have all kinds of negative effects. Telling it to “minimize cancer” can, too (e.g., it might ensure that a moment before someone would contract cancer, they spontaneously disintegrate). It’s not clear to me what this says about the concepts of “cancer” or “sexism,” though.
I agree that optimizing the system is one reason I might want to reduce sexism, and that insofar as that’s my goal, I care about sexism solely as a pointer to opportunities for optimization, as you suggest. I would agree that it’s not necessarily the best such pointer available, but it’s not clear to me how the given definition cuts off that use.
It’s also not clear to me how any of that causes the violent reaction DaFranker describes.
If you can unpack your thinking a little further in those areas, I’d be interested.
“Sexism” is a short code. Not only that, it’s a short code which has already been given a strong negative affective valence in modern society. Fights about its definition are fights about how to use that short code. They’re fights over a resource.
That code doesn’t even just point to a class of behaviors or institutions—it points to an argument, an argument of the form “these institutions favor this gender and that’s bad for these reasons”. Some people would like it to point more specifically to an argument that goes something like “If, on net, society gives more benefits to one gender, and puts more burdens on the other, then that’s unfair, and we should care about fairness.” Others would like it to point to “If someone makes a rule that applies differently to men and women, there’s a pretty strong burden of proof that they’re not making a suboptimal rule for stupid reasons. Someone should probably change that rule”. The fight is over which moral argument will come to mind quickly, will seem salient, because it has the short code “sexism”.
If I encounter a company where the men have a terrible dress code applied to them, but there’s one woman’s restroom for every three men’s restroom, the first argument might not have much to say, but the second might move me to action. Someone who wants me to be moved to action would want me to have the second argument pre-cached and available.
In particular, I’m not a fan of the first definition, because it motivates a great big argument. If there’s a background assumption that “sexism” points to problems to be solved, then the men and the women in the company might wind up in a long, drawn-out dispute over whose oppression is worse, and who is therefore a target of sexism, and deserving of aid. The latter definition pretty directly implies that both problems should be fixed if possible.
Well, I certainly agree that a word can have the kind of rhetorical power you describe here, and that “sexism” is such a word in lots of modern cultures.
And while modeling such powerful labels as a fixed resource isn’t quite right, insofar as such labels can be applied to a lot of different things without necessarily being diffused, I would agree with something roughly similar to that… for example, that if you and I assign that label to different things for mutually exclusive ends, then we each benefit by denying the other the ability to control the label.
And I agree with you that if I want to attach the label to thing 1, and you want to attach it to mutually exclusive thing 2, and thing 1 is strictly worse than thing 2, then it’s better if I fail and you succeed.
All of that said, it is not clear to me that caring about fairness is always strictly worse than caring about optimality, and it is not clear to me that caring about fairness is mutually exclusive with caring about optimality.
Edit: I should also say that I do understand now why you say that using “sexism” to refer to unfair systems cuts off the use of “sexism” to refer to suboptimal systems, which was the original question I asked. Thanks for the explanation.
I think one possible answer is that your model of sexism, while internally consistent, is useless at best and harmful at worst, depending on how you interpret its output.
If your definition of sexism is completely orthogonal to morality, as your last bullet point implies, then it’s just not very useful. Who cares if certain actions are “sexist” or “blergist” or whatever ? We want to know whether our goals are advanced or hindered by performing these actions—i.e., whether the actions are moral—not whether they fit into some arbitrary boxes.
On the other hand, if your definition implies that sexist actions very likely to be immoral as well, then your model is broken, since it ignores about 50% of the population. Thus, you are more likely to implement policies that harm men in order to help women; insofar as we are all members of the same society, such policies are likely to harm women in the long run, as well, due to network effects.
EDIT: Perhaps it should go without saying, but in the interests of clarity, I must point out that I have no particular desire to commit violence against anyone. At least, not at this very moment.
If your definition of sexism is completely orthogonal to morality, as your last bullet point implies
It does? Hm. I certainly didn’t intend for it to. And looking at it now, I don’t see how it does. Can you expand on that? I mean, if I X isn’t murder, it doesn’t follow that X is moral… there exist immoral non-murderous acts. But in saying that, I don’t imply that murder is completely orthogonal to morality.
you are more likely to implement policies that harm men in order to help women
This seems more apposite.
Yes, absolutely, if my only goal is to reduce benefit differentials between groups A and B, and A currently benefits disproportionately, then I am likely to implement policies that harm A.
Not necessarily, of course… I might just happen to implement a policy that benefits everyone, but that benefits B more than A, until parity is reached. But within the set S of strategies that reduce benefit differentials, the subset S1 of strategies that also benefit everyone (or even keep benefits fixed) is relatively small, so a given S is unlikely to be in S1.
Of course, it’s also true that within the set S2 of strategies that benefit everyone, S1 is also relatively small, so if my only goal is to benefit everyone it’s likely I will increase benefit differentials between A and B.
What seems to follow is that if I value both overall benefits and equal access to benefits, I need to have them both as goals, and restrict my choices to S1. This ought not be surprising, though.
I must point out that I have no particular desire to commit violence against anyone
I didn’t think you did. DaFranker expressed such a desire, and identified the position I described as its cause, and I was curious about that relationship (which he subsequently explained). I wasn’t attributing it to anyone else.
And looking at it now, I don’t see how it does. Can you expand on that?
You said,
It’s not necessarily moral or valid, it’s just not sexist. There exist immoral non-sexist acts.
This makes sense, but you never mentioned that sexist actions are immoral, either. I do admit that I interpreted your comment less charitably than I should have.
Yes, absolutely, if my only goal is to reduce benefit differentials between groups A and B, and A currently benefits disproportionately, then I am likely to implement policies that harm A.
Yes, and you may not even do so deliberately. You may think you’re implementing a strategy in S1, but if your model only considers people in B and not A, then you are likely to be implementing a strategy in S without realizing it.
DaFranker expressed such a desire...
I think he was speaking metaphorically, but I’m not him… Anyway, I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t accidentally threatening anyone.
I think he was speaking metaphorically, but I’m not him… Anyway, I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t accidentally threatening anyone.
Only in part, actually. It is a faint desire, and I rarely actually bang my own head against a wall, but there is real impulse/instinct for violence coming up from somewhere in situations similar to that. It’s obviously not something I act upon (I’d be in prison since long ago, considering the frequency at which it occurs).
You may think you’re implementing a strategy in S1, but if your model only considers people in B and not A, then you are likely to be implementing a strategy in S without realizing it.
Well, “without realizing it” is a confusing thing to say here. If I care about group A but somehow fail to realize that I’ve adopted a strategy that harms A, it seems I have to be exceptionally oblivious. Which happens, of course, but is an uncharitable assumption to start from.
Leaving that clause aside, though, I agree with the rest of this. For example, if I simply don’t care about group A, I may well adopt a strategy that harms A.
If I care about group A but somehow fail to realize that I’ve adopted a strategy that harms A, it seems I have to be exceptionally oblivious. Which happens, of course, but is an uncharitable assumption to start from.
True enough, but it’s all a matter of weighing the inputs. For example, if you care about group A in principle, but are much more concerned with group B—because they are the group that your model informs you about—then you’re liable to miss all but the most egregious instances of harm caused to group A by your actions.
By analogy, if your car has a broken headlight on the right side, then you’re much more likely to hit objects on that side when driving at night. If your headlight isn’t broken, but merely dim, then you’re still more likely to hit objects on your right side, but less so than in the first scenario.
Indeed, many feminists make an analogous argument for why feminism is necessary… that is, that our society tends to pay more attention to men than women, and consequently disproportionately harms women without even noticing unless someone particularly calls social attention to the treatment of women. Similar arguments get made for other nominally low-status groups.
That’s true, but, at the risk of being uncharitable, I’ve got to point out that reversed stupidity is not intelligence. When you notice a bias, embracing the equal and opposite bias is, IMO, a poor choice of action.
That said, at the risk of getting political, my usual reaction when I hear people complain about legislation that provides “special benefits” for queers (a common real-world idea that has some commonality with the accusation of having embraced an equal-and-opposite bias) is that the complainers don’t really have a clue what they’re talking about, and that the preferential bias they think they see is simply what movement towards equality looks like when one is steeped in a culture that pervasively reflects a particular kind of inequality.
And I suspect this is not unique to queers.
So, yeah, I think you’re probably being uncharitable.
I’m not arguing against any specific implementation, but against the idea that optimal implementations could be devised by merely looking at the specific subset of the population you’re interested in, and ignoring everyone else. Your (admittedly, hypothetical) definition of “sexism” upthread sounds to me like just such a model.
I usually model the standard feminist position as saying that the net sexism in a system is a function of the differential benefits provided to men and women over the system as a whole, and a sexist act is one that results in an increase of that differential.
You’re suggesting that this definition fails to look at men? I don’t see how. Can you clarify?
Granted, this definition does look at men, but only as a sort of reference:
If we assume for convenience that the only effect of the dress code is to increase the freedom of women compared to men, then implementing that dress code is not a sexist act.
It seems that, like MBlume said, your model is designed to reduce the difference between the benefits provided to men and women. Thus, reducing the benefits to men, as well as reducing benefits to women, would be valid actions according to your model, if doing so leads to a smaller differential. So would increasing the benefits, of course, but that’s usually more difficult in practice, and therefore a less efficient use of resources (from the model’s point of view). And, since men have more benefits than women, reducing those benefits becomes the optimal choice; of course, if the gender roles were reversed, then the inverse would be the case.
A better model would seek to maximize everyone’s benefits, but, admittedly, such a model is a lot more difficult to build.
Granted, this definition does look at men, but only as a sort of reference
OK, thanks for the clarification.
It seems that, like MBlume said, your model is designed to reduce the difference between the benefits provided to men and women.
Yes, insofar as “sexism” is understood as something to be reduced. It’s hard to interpret “sexism in a system is a function of the differential benefits provided to men and women over the system as a whole” any other way, really.
As for the rest of this… yes. And now we’ve come full circle, and I will once again agree (as I did above) that yes, if anyone defined sexism as I model it here and sought only to eliminate sexism, the easiest solution would presumably be to kill everyone. And as I said at the time, the same thing is true of a system seeking to eliminate cancer, but it’s not clear to me that it follows that someone seeking to eliminate cancer is necessarily doing something wrong relative to someone who isn’t seeking to eliminate cancer.
TL;DR: Some evidence points, and the rest my mind fills in by type 1 / pattern-matching / bias / etc., towards hypothetical you being fundamentally broken somewhere crucial, at BIOS or OS level to use a computer metaphor, though probably you can be fixed. I feel very strongly that this hypothetical you is not even worth fixing. This is something about myself I’d like to refine and “fix” in the future.
Well, the type 1 processes in my brain tell me that the most expedient, least “troublesome” way to solve the “problem” is to eliminate the source of the problem entirely and permanently, namely Hypothetical::TheOtherDave. This implies that there is a problem, and that it originates from you, according to whatever built-in system is screaming this to my consciousness.
Tracing back, it appears that in this scenario, I have strong beliefs that there is a major systemic error in judgment that caused “sexism” to be defined in that manner, and if the person is a “Feminist” that only applies techniques to solve “that kind” of “sexism”, without particular concern for things that I consider sexism beyond “they might be bad things too, but not any more than any other random bad things, thus as a Feminist I’m not fighting against them”, then I apparently see it as strong evidence that there is a generalized problem—to make a computer metaphor, one of the low-level primary computing functionalities, perhaps even directly in the instruction set implementation (though much more likely to be in the BIOS or OS, since it’s rarely that “hardwired”), is evidently corrupted and is spreading (perhaps virally) wrongful and harmful reasoning throughout the mental ‘system’.
Changing the OS or fixing and OS error is feasible, but very rarely happens directly from within the system, and usually requires specific, sometimes complex user input—there needs to be certain contexts and situations, probably combined with particularly specific or strong action taken by someone other than the “mentally corrupted” person, in order for the problem to be corrected.
Since the harm is continuous, currently fairly high in that hypothetical, and the cost of fixing it “properly” is rather high, I usually move on to other things while bashing my head on a wall figuratively in my mind and “giving up” on that person—I classify them as “too hard to help becoming rational”, and they get this tag permanently unless something very rare (which I often qualify as a miracle) happens to nudge them sufficiently hard that there appears to be a convenient hack or hotfix that can be applied to them.
Otherwise, “those people” are, to my type-1 mind, worth much less instrumental value (though the terminal value of human minds remains the same), and I’ll be much less reticent to use semi-dark-arts on them or otherwise not bother helping or promoting more correct beliefs. I’ll start just nodding absentmindedly at whatever “bullcrap” political or religious statements they make, letting them believe they’ve achieved something and convinced me or whatever they’d like to think, just so I can more efficiently return to doing something else.
Basically, the “source” of my very negative feelings is the intuition (very strong intuition, unfortunately) that their potential instrumental value is not even worth the effort required to fix a mind this broken, even if I had all the required time and resources to actually help each of those cases I encounter and still do whatever other Important Things™ I want/need to do with my life.
That is my true reason. My rationalization is that I have limited resources and time, and so must focus on more cost-effective strategies. Objectively, the rationalization is probably still very very true, and so would make me still choose to not spend all that time and effort helping them, but it is not my original, true reason. It also implies that my behavior is not exactly the same towards them as it would be if that logic were my true chain of reasoning.
All in all, this is one of those things I have as a long-term goal to “fix” once I actually start becoming a half-worthy rationalist, and I consider it an important milestone towards reaching my life goals and becoming a true guardian of my thing to protect. I meant to speak much more at length on this and other personal things once I wrote an intro post in the Welcome topic, but I’m not sure posting there would be appropriate anymore or whether I’ll ever actually work myself up to actually write that post.
Edit: Added TLDR at top, because this turned into a fairly long and loaded comment.
Regardless that i’m not extensively answering your entire comment, i still wanted to point out just a little peculiarity:
I can’t reasonably discuss that point with a feminist woman, because she’s a woman and I’m a man, so I am a priori wrong and attempting to subjugate her by broaching that subject.
I think this seems to imply that for “reasonable discussion” to occur, you must be the one to broach the subject. Is this correct; did you mean to imply that? (I could imagine that either way.)
Thanks for pointing that out—that wasn’t my intention. What I mean is that I can’t even participate in any such conversation, regardless of circumstances—only feminist women are even allowed to participate and speak of this (AKA only the informed, righteous victim-saviors have any say in the matter).
Being a man forbids me to say anything. If I disagree on any point, I’m evil. If I agree on any point, I’m attempting to trick them and I’m evil. I’m an enemy soldier and I cannot be allowed, at any cost, to be perceived as even remotely close to anything else than The Enemy. In many cases, even staying silent, nodding, or going away from the discussion is still grounds to condemn me; I’m trying to pretend it doesn’t concern me, or showing contempt, or running away to ignore the subject, respectively, in their views.
Obviously this is not the omnipresent case for all feminists. It’s just the most common situation (>50%, actually) that occurs whenever I end up in some kind of social setting where it becomes established as common knowledge that one of the women is a Feminist.
going away from the discussion is still grounds to condemn me
I find with certain types of people, particularly those inclined towards judgement and control, this going away can prompt the most vigorous condemnation—at least while they are in vocalization range. It is taking their perceived power over you away from them. Fortunately this approach has the side effect that once out of earshot they are condemning you somewhere you don’t have to listen to them!
Fortunately this approach has the side effect that once out of earshot they are condemning you somewhere you don’t have to listen to them!
So, so true. I used to think it was the “least bad” / optimal choice until I figured out that it was much more Fun™ to just mess with them (and/or break their mind, if you’re so inclined).
So, so true. I used to think it was the “least bad” / optimal choice until I figured out that it was much more Fun™ to just mess with them (and/or break their mind, if you’re so inclined).
You have more patience than I.
Courtesy note to others for DaFranker’s benefit: the parent was (probably) written in response to a version of the grandparent that contained only the final sentence. “So, so true” would best be interpreted as applying only to the second (and more important) of the two points I made.
I’ve also often noted, watching certain types of people responding this way to third parties disengaging, that the vigorous condemnation is frequently dropped as soon as the party is no longer in earshot.
Perhaps unrelatedly, I’m told the same thing is often true of small children throwing tantrums.
I’ve also often noted, watching certain types of people responding this way to third parties disengaging, that the vigorous condemnation is frequently dropped as soon as the party is no longer in earshot.
That’s good to know. I wasn’t there to hear (the instances from the same class that I have experienced in an entirely different part of the world) and directly inquiring usually seems crass.
Perhaps unrelatedly, I’m told the same thing is often true of small children throwing tantrums.
Perhaps unrelated, yes, but do either of us really think them being unrelated is likely? I model them as more or less the same social move.
Cf earlier comment about mixing your Ask-culture specificity with my Hint-culture ambiguity. Two great tastes that, well...
I may have missed your earlier comment. I implement Ask-culture? That’s not something I would identify with. I seems to find some aspects of “Ask-culture” appropriate in some situations but definitely not in others. In fact, a the main times I have seen “Ask-culture” described explicitly the prescribed practices made me viscerally squeamish a the awkwardness and inappropriateness involved.
By the way, I wouldn’t have said the quoted excerpt contained much in the way of “ask culture” at all. The question is entirely rhetorical, albeit not the stereotypical “Rhetorical Question(TM)” kind of persuasion tool. Question mark aside there isn’t any actual asking going on. It just equivalent to the overt declaration “I agree with what you are hinting at you and feel like explaining the concepts without technically violating violating the ‘hint’ role-play”. So it is certainly being specific but I’d actually call it a violation of ask-culture principles. (I must admit I’m no expert on what ask-culture is so if my impression of what ask-culture is is invalid my conclusion that this doesn’t qualify could be wrong.)
The comment I’m referring to is here. It was a rather specialized context, and somewhat tongue-in-cheek to boot, as was this reference to it.
Ahh, that kind of ‘earlier’. I remember the exchange. There is certainly a -culture difference regarding specificity, even if there doesn’t seem to be much ‘asking’ going on on the wedrifid side of things.
The thing with ‘tongue-in-cheek’ is that in <wedrifid’s>-culture recognizing that something is tongue in cheek doesn’t entail an obligation not to make a straight up reply, nor does it prohibit tongue-in-cheek responses. In fact, it encourages both at once if possible. Unfortunately my creativity doesn’t suggest any such reply that would fit in this case (the potential ironies are one inferential step too long to fit).
I endorse the lack of an obligation not to make a straight-up reply
Hearing that spoken back I wish it used words with a much more subtle and mild connotation that ‘obligation’. Unfortunately none sprang to mind either then or now. “Expectation” didn’t quite fit either. I mean that thing where the natural flow of the conversation makes a certain kind of response seem like it is the thing that fits.
Out of curiosity, where do “I’m a humanist” and “I’m a transhumanist” scale?
But yes, outright claiming membership gratuitously for pretty much any wide group without further descriptors or evidence that this affiliation is somehow relevant to the discussion is usually not something to look favorably upon.
I wouldn’t quite say it in itself lowers my opinion score of someone, but it might give me some light evidence towards adopting a lower-opinion-estimate model of that someone, which effectively would reduce the “expected opinion for that expected mental model”.
It’s just the most common situation (>50%, actually) that occurs whenever I end up in some kind of social setting where it becomes established as common knowledge that one of the women is a Feminist.
Yes. Meatspace-only for what I describe in this particular thread.
I’ve only had three cyberspace interactions with “ID’d-as” female feminists, or so they claimed, and two of these were both trollish and obviously a one-sided preacher throwing regular rage at The Internet with whatever topic they had in mind, while the other was, well, at the time already a much better rationalist than I was, wasn’t primarily a “feminist” so much as having that as one of her colors, and is otherwise a subject I’m not quite ready to discuss on LessWrong (a melancholy story of grief and loved ones).
Basically, they’re not even valid data points as far as I can tell, for reasons that might not be clear or obvious for the third case but would probably require much more detail than I’m willing to go into to explain why.
With the exception of a certain professor, all the feminists I’ve met in meatspace have been friendly people who are open to discussing their beliefs with skeptical men. If a man describes how he’s been hurt by gender prejudice, they will listen sympathetically. On the other hand, the anti-feminists I’ve met are far less likely to listen to women talk about misogyny, and will often try and shut down debate. It’s kind of infuriating actually. This is why I refer to myself as a feminist whenever there is an anti-feminist in the room.
FWIW, were I a moderate feminist who ordinarily does not treat men as The Enemy and is interested in maintaining discourse with both men and women, and I heard someone express these sentiments the way you express them here, my emotional reaction would be to treat that speaker as The Enemy.
That’s not to say, of course, that your observations are being significantly influenced by your own behavior… it may be that you don’t in any way express this attitude in the social settings you’re making the observations in, for example, or it may be that the hypothetical reaction I describe above is atypical, or various other things might be true.
Yes, I’ve unfortunately fallen into that “trap” at least once.
However, the observations persist after modifying the behavior I attempt to output. Either I fail in a somewhat spectacular manner and there’s a hard denial-of-denial bomb preventing me from noticing that I’m always acting in such a manner (though I would expect this mechanism to be much more widespread and not restricted specifically to “feminism”, which is far from a particularly important point of focus for me among other possible points of focus).
My observations point to a strong causal link between such behavior and the response, but it seems like a sufficient cause, and by far not a required one. The example things I’ve mentioned (agreeing, disagreeing, nodding, staying silent, going away) are things I’ve actually tried in separate occasions, as my very first reaction to the topic, if my memory isn’t being blurred, and they had the results described. My memory suggests two or three of those might have happened with the same person simply at separate times, but I’m not certain.
Overall, I think the hypothetical reaction you describe might pass a turing test, but I’m throwing that at my own mental emulator, so it’s not much of a confirmation. Your mental model seems better detailed than mine, too.
Your mental model seems better detailed than mine, too.
I mostly start from my actual, real-life reactions around low-status groups I’ve been part of, and ask myself how I would react in analogous situations.
For example, I’m queer, and I’ve many times had the experience of being in a room full of (nominally) straight guys talking about queers. I’m Jewish, and I’ve a few times had the experience of listening to Gentiles talk about Jews. I’m Hispanic, and have had the experience of listening to a White community discuss Hispanics. Etc.
That’s not at all the same thing as being female in a room full of men talking about women, but there are some illustrative similarities.
One thing I think generalizes, for example, is that after a few traumatic experiences along those lines it’s emotionally difficult to keep giving people the benefit of the doubt, and emotionally easy to treat new people as homophobic or antiSemitic or racist or sexist or what-have-you until and unless they do something active to demonstrate that they aren’t.
Another thing I think generalizes is that one does get better at identifying non-verbal cues. For example, I’ve had the experience several times of thinking that someone was uncomfortable with my sexuality despite them seeming to do all the right things superficially, and later having them confirm that yes, at the time they had been uncomfortable. (Of course, I’ve also much more often had the experience of thinking that and not having it confirmed. I merely claim that correctly reading nonverbal cues is possible, not that my reading of nonverbal cues is reliable, let alone infallible.)
One thing I think generalizes, for example, is that after a few traumatic experiences along those lines it’s emotionally difficult to keep giving people the benefit of the doubt, and emotionally easy to treat new people as homophobic or antiSemitic or racist or sexist or what-have-you until and unless they do something active to demonstrate that they aren’t.
This pattern-matches very gracefully with my experiences and observations. As I mention in another response, it seems likely that I’ve encountered almost only a certain kind of feminists that has a very personal near-mode emotional reaction to men.
Besides being a “geek” with slight social disregard from social circles I had no interest in during high school, I fortunately never had those situations you describe. I happened to have all the right skills to avoid being marginalized for what few outlier qualities I had. Thus, despite pattern-matching with many of the qualities of the stereotypical bullied frail school nerd, I don’t particularly identify well with them and my mental model of them is much worse than people would expect.
My own mental model of feminists was derived mostly from my generalized mental model of “people”, with the “ideologist” module added, and whatever empathic cues and type-1 intuitions I’ve had during interactions with them. Recent events on LessWrong allowed me to update this model quite a bit with a lot more evidence, but it still feels very incomplete and vague.
(nods) Makes sense. Certainly, my own level of compassion for and understanding of people experiencing various levels of post-traumatic response increased enormously after I went through traumatic experiences of my own. I don’t think it’s necessary, nor is it sufficient, but it helps.
I suppose the question is, is it worth it to you to do the work to develop analogous properties in the absence of those “advantages,” or not?
If it isn’t and you don’t, that’s of course a choice you’re free to make, but it ought not surprise you that your subsequent interactions with certain classes of people won’t go as smoothly as they would if you did.
(Sorry for the reply being so long rather than more concise, i’m aware my texts almost routinely get out of hand.)
What I mean is that I can’t even participate in any such conversation, regardless of circumstances—only feminist women are even allowed to participate and speak of this [...]
I am not opposed to principles like these if they are applied in such contexts that it appears “sensible”. And in most social settings (you didn’t mention any specific kinds apart from “where it becomes established [...]” and i don’t want to speculate) it is probably what i would deem sensible. But this does not extend to all circumstances.
From the little i have read so far i think the conversations that you want to have could be both interesting and fruitful, maybe even for all participants, in an apt context. (Note this as A.) But this context might need to be, from a feminist perspective, expressly intended as reaching out to you-as-a-man. (I didn’t write “you”, because it does not only concern/consider you personally. I didn’t write “men”, because in this case the topic is centred on you.)
And such a context must be either offered to you (this would probably be the better case), or you have to ask for it diffidently. You are probably aware of how feminists (as in “feminist women”) typically reject what they feel to come across as a (social) demand from a man. (Note this as B.)
It follows that while i consider it desirable to actualise the conversation you wish for (see A), no one in particular is responsible for ever actualising it (see B). This is unfortunate (more for you than for me) but i don’t know a better solution, working from my premises.
(As you’re aware, alternatives that might be easier to implement exist, for instance carrying out the conversation with men other than you which are (pro-)feminist, but this wasn’t the topic here.)
I’m an enemy soldier and I cannot be allowed, at any cost, to be perceived as even remotely close to anything else than The Enemy.
In my personal (social) experiences, feminists overall are not as vicious most of the time =)
But i don’t know how well you personally know how many feminists of which kinds of feminism, so that impression might well be useless to you. I still include it because i’m optimistic like that sometimes.
Well, some recent hindsight analysis (during the eridu radical-feminist debacle) allowed me to notice that it seems highly likely that nearly all female feminists I’ve encountered in person with common knowledge of such were mostly of the kind that had one or few strong very bad near-type personal experiences with men, or many small but memorable such near-type experiences. The kinds you’d probably expect from a stereotypical scenario of “The Father is Master and Law of the House” or a poor waitress working late shifts at a café on the same street corner as a strip club.
So in my case I probably wasn’t dealing only with “feminists”, but at the same time with individuals taken with a widespread personal fear or anger towards men, in nearly all the cases that produced these kinds of strong reactions. This might be due to statistical coincidence (not that particularly unlikely) or to some behavior that causes other types of feminists to not identify themselves as such when dealing with me, or to some other cause.
It may very well be that the A scenario you describe actually does happen to me sometimes, but with the other participant(s) simply not identifying themselves as feminists at all. If so, I either never ran them through my mental model of feminists for a pattern-matching, reverse-ideological-turing-test thinghy, or my model is sufficiently incorrect/imprecise that they actually failed said test.
In my personal (social) experiences, feminists overall are not as vicious most of the time =)
I kind of suspected this to be the case, because if the contrary were true, the feminist movement as a whole would be spectacularly self-hindering and shooting itself in the foot constantly, since such behavior as I’ve observed would basically cause very destructive conflict and wouldn’t actually help further their goals.
allowed me to notice that it seems highly likely that nearly all female feminists I’ve encountered in person with common knowledge of such were mostly of the kind that had one or few strong very bad near-type personal experiences with men, or many small but memorable such near-type experiences.
Depending on how bad you consider “very bad” and how memorable you consider “memorable” as to make this “kind” be applicable to a woman, it might be the case that a significant part of all women (regardless whether feminist) are of this kind. There might even be studies or what backing such claims up, though right now i’m not inclined to search for any.
I actually do vaguely remember two studies which, if memory serves, did back this up. One of them was attempting to establish a correlation between the frequency + ‘strength’(?) of these experiences and the ability to have or frequency of having female orgasms—as an apparent follow-up to an earlier study that had established certain “impressive” statistical numbers for the latter.
If I interpreted the numbers correctly, it would imply that it’s usually on the order of 30% to 50% (depending on geographical location as correlated to social customs and culture).
I note that the above is probably not a very accurate picture of reality, since it’s all from memory and I’m most likely applying all kinds of biases and heuristics to it subconsciously before accessing said memories.
I don’t know that ‘debacle’ and there seems to be a lot of content that could be part of it (you meant something in the comments of this same article apparently). If you think it is very relevant, i’d be grateful for one or several specific links to start from.
allowed me to notice that it seems highly likely that nearly all female feminists I’ve encountered in person with common knowledge of such were mostly of the kind that had one or few strong very bad near-type personal experiences with men, or many small but memorable such near-type experiences.
Where can i find out what “near-type” means here? This appears important enough to postpone my reply to this part.
because if the contrary were true, the feminist movement as a whole would be spectacularly self-hindering and shooting itself in the foot constantly, since such behavior as I’ve observed would basically cause very destructive conflict and wouldn’t actually help further their goals.
I didn’t mean it in that way. And i think the feminist movement, as a whole or in part, doesn’t necessarily want to be lightly told by men what behaviour is or is not “furthering their goals” =P
(This instance seems to me like one in which you did so lightly, because it didn’t seem highly relevant / on-topic.)
It refers to “near-mode,” which is jargon in construal-level theory for “construed concretely.” So in context, it means direct and involving personal experience, as opposed to reading or discussing abstractly.
i’d be grateful for one or several specific links to start from.
It’s difficult, because many of eridu’s comments were “deleted” by site mods who very much wanted that discussion to stop. I suspect your best bet is to browse their user page (where the comments remain visible) if you’re really interested, but roughly speaking: eridu self-identified as a radical feminist who endorsed dismantling patriarchy, and ended up in a very confrontational series of exchanges with several LW contributors that were widely considered low-value.
and ended up in a very confrontational series of exchanges with several LW contributors that were widely considered low-value.
I certainly considered them low value but to be fair the reception was mixed. Some went as far as to say it was the best and most informative discussion of any related concepts that they had seen on lesswrong. This confused some people but there was definitely a non-trivial minority who valued it.
Where can i find out what “near-type” means here? This appears important enough to postpone my reply to this part.
Near mode, Far mode—In rough vulgarization, Near mode is immediate observation and sensation, Far mode is abstract knowledge of something.
As for that last, yeah. I was merely spelling out my own reasoning. Saying something like that is exactly the kind of behavior I’d expect to cause the kind of reactions / treatment / behavior I’ve described in earlier posts.
In rough vulgarization, Near mode is immediate observation and sensation, Far mode is abstract knowledge of something.
Thanks.
Saying something like that is exactly the kind of behavior I’d expect to cause the kind of reactions / treatment / behavior I’ve described in earlier posts.
It’s good to know that you know that. Your wording here might mildly suggest that you disagree with such reactions to that behaviour on some level, but i might just be imagining that. And either way it’s not of much relevance.
Your wording here might mildly suggest that you disagree with such reactions to that behaviour on some level, but i might just be imagining that.
Nice catch there.
Yes, I do believe that the reaction is sub-optimal, and that there are better ways to handle these cases that would apparently further their cause faster. However, my model of all this is incomplete, so I’m most likely not entirely right, and I’d probably never voice that opinion outside of a context like this one.
Note that I don’t think the reaction is “wrong” or “negative”, but ISTM that there are probably other alternatives with similar cost and better utilitarian results.
Your own reaction seems like a good example of a much more productive reaction, but it does have some rather limiting contextual requirements.
Took me until after i’d read it the second or third time, but once it’s recognised, it seems fairly intuitive to me that it might have been intended.
Your own reaction seems like a good example of a much more productive reaction, but it does have some rather limiting contextual requirements.
I’m not sure i understand which reaction you mean. And my best (only?) guess on the contextual requirements is the context of this conversation on this platform (or: community), but i’m even less certain here, so i would like to ask you to please make both points more explicit.
Well, some recent hindsight analysis (during the eridu radical-feminist debacle) allowed me to notice that it seems highly likely that nearly all female feminists I’ve encountered in person with common knowledge of such were mostly of the kind that had one or few strong very bad near-type personal experiences with men, or many small but memorable such near-type experiences. The kinds you’d probably expect from a stereotypical scenario of “The Father is Master and Law of the House” or a poor waitress working late shifts at a café on the same street corner as a strip club.
More generally, I’m starting to suspect that most extremists might be Generalizing from One Example, e.g. that antinatalists are unhappy with their lives and kind-of assume that everyone else is.
If I disagree on any point, I’m evil. If I agree on any point, I’m attempting to trick them and I’m evil. I’m an enemy soldier and I cannot be allowed, at any cost, to be perceived as even remotely close to anything else than The Enemy. In many cases, even staying silent, nodding, or going away from the discussion is still grounds to condemn me; I’m trying to pretend it doesn’t concern me, or showing contempt, or running away to ignore the subject, respectively, in their views.
My reaction to that would likely be to stop worrying about them thinking that I’m evil, and possibly to start pissing them off on purpose just for the fun of it.
Hehe. Once you realize that someone has condemned you guilty a priori, there’s all kinds of nifty semi-Dark Arts tricks you can do.
My favorite is to begin agreeing with them more and more anyway, granting them authority and righteousness inch by inch even though it fuels their knowledge that I’m Evil, until I’ve lured them all the way into a fanatical position that is obviously absurd even to them.
At which point a simple “Yes, you’ve been right all along!” with a smile is usually all it takes for them to shut up and start agreeing with me instead—their mind is too busy trying to figure out what went wrong to protest, and the autopilot tells them to comply with whatever authority happens to bother telling them anything.
Of course, the effect is temporary, but you usually manage to slip in a few positive beliefs into their subconscious during that window of opportunity.
I’m curious what other LWers think of behaviors like this. I don’t trust myself enough yet to ask myself the question (i.e. do a proper crisis of faith), and I fear more rationalization might make me sink into a very dangerous hole if this happens to be a Very Bad™ thing to do. It’s something I’ve been doing (and enjoyed doing) since my early teens, after all. I even have a ‘nickname’ for it: Shadowdancing.
I’m curious what other LWers think of behaviors like this.
Roughly, I think it’s usually an example of using other people for my own entertainment at a sometimes marginal, sometimes significant cost to them. There are many worse things I can do, and it’s not worth a lot of drama, but on balance I don’t endorse it, I tend to disengage with people I perceive as trying it on me or people I care about, and I tend to think less of people I perceive as habitually doing it.
That said, I think the skill can be extremely valuable as a teaching technique under the right circumstances, if one chooses to (and is able to) use it that way.
A variation of this is to start with a more radical position to begin with, such as “all men should be segregated and kept in stud farms, with the sperm artificially extracted as needed”. This helps them define the far boundary of their own radicalism.
A variation of this is to start with a more radical position to begin with, such as “all men should be segregated and kept in stud farms, with the sperm artificially extracted as needed”.
Oh my… I don’t think I’ve ever intentionally done anything like that, though something similar might have happened by accident (e.g., because I had failed Poe’s law and had people not recognize my sarcasm as such).
From Finally Feminism 101:
This is a fairly mainstream feminist blog, a popular site for feminists to redirect critics if they feel the critics have little to offer. Google sexism + “power plus prejudice” and you can see other sites explaining why, according to the feminist definition of “sexism”, it’s impossible for men to be victims of sexism.
Many readers may expect that an “-ism” refers to a belief, as in “fundamentalism”, “theism”, or “Darwinism”. However, “-ism” can also refer to a social institution or practice, as in “capitalism” or “communism”. A capitalist economy isn’t just one whose participants have capitalist beliefs — it’s an economy that is structured in a particular way, with people actually playing the economic roles of investor, entrepreneur, employee, etc.
Similarly, terms such as “sexism” or “racism” can refer not only to biased beliefs about sex or race, but to sorts of social institutions in which some people exercise political power over others on the basis of their sex or race. Since there is a clear answer to the question, “Historically, which sex has exercised political power over the other in human culture?” the question “Who can be sexist?” seems to be dissolved and there is no need to argue definitions.
(Yes, some folks do use “sexist” as a near-synonym for “evil”, just as some libertarians use “socialist” as a near-synonym for “evil” — I’ve heard it asserted that monarchy is “socialist” because it doesn’t respect individual liberty, for instance. But we don’t have to take that kind of silliness seriously.)
First, you didn’t clearly answer my question, but i assume that you now imply that you indeed did imply that you think it would pass.
Second, it wasn’t stated in my previous comment, but i was and am aware of the power plus prejudice definitions. You seem to assume here that i was not.
Third, and most importantly, i still believe that it would not pass, as i noted in my parens remark. This is because i think that none of “[institutional] power” or “prejudice” [against a group] can adequately be described as “historical disadvantage” alone. When they write “institutional power” as well as “power plus prejudice”, they decidedly are not referring to something that lies purely in the past (indeed the present-day components are arguably the most important, though not the only interesting, ones) . The adjective “historical” in your usage seems to me to be incompatible to that.
Fair point, the feminist definition is more detailed then how I described it.
So if I work in an office where men are required to wear ties and a specific type of business shirt, both in specific variants that are particularly uncomfortable to wear, but women are free to dress as they want...
...the standard feminist argument is that there is no sexism here, because the men are the ones who historically had the power, and this is a perfectly valid and moral situation? Does the gender of the person imposing these rules (AKA The Boss) change the game? Does it suddenly become sexism if it’s a woman imposing the rules and they all live in an isolated tribe that cut off all links with the history and past of the rest of the world?
That’s without even broaching the sensitive subject of the apparent complete lack of Schelling point for where exactly women start becoming capable of sexism towards men once/if they overturn the current “institutional power that men have”. I can’t reasonably discuss that point with a feminist woman, because she’s a woman and I’m a man, so I am a priori wrong and attempting to subjugate her by broaching that subject.
I usually model the standard feminist position as saying that the net sexism in a system is a function of the differential benefits provided to men and women over the system as a whole, and a sexist act is one that results in an increase of that differential.
On that model, the question then becomes whether your office’s dress code serves to narrow the differential, to widen it, or neither.
Using that model gets me:
The gender of The Boss almost certainly doesn’t matter.
Cutting off all links with history (including those links implemented in the habits and preconceptions of the people working in your office) would change the equation, but it’s hard to predict in what direction; in any event it’s hard to imagine people continuing to show up for work, and I’m not quite convinced they’d continue to wear clothes either.
If we assume for convenience that the only effect of the dress code is to increase the freedom of women compared to men, then implementing that dress code is not a sexist act.
It’s not necessarily moral or valid, it’s just not sexist. There exist immoral non-sexist acts.
I expect it would not be difficult to find self-described feminists who would agree with all of that, if I presented it properly. (I also expect it would not be difficult to find self-described feminists who would disagree with all of that.)
Thanks for the critical analysis!
On the one hand, the people that would agree with all of that make me bash my head against a wall while wishing said head was a selective neural disruptor that would fry their brains.
On the other hand, lots of people make me do that for many reasons. Including my past selves, sometimes.
This seems like it could be an example of someone picking the wrong fight if they wrongly used categories and definitions and then ended up in an anti-epistemic spiral after rationalizing a wrong move the first time the question came up. This would explain the scenario(s) I refer to in the last paragraph of the grandparent.
Suppose, hypothetically, that I agree with all of that. Can you summarize what it is about that agreement that makes you, hypothetically, commit violence against yourself and/or wish to kill me?
I’ll take a shot.
What we choose to measure affects what we choose to do. If I adopt the definition above, and I ask a wish machine to “minimize sexism”, maybe it finds that the cheapest thing to do is to ensure that for every example of institutional oppression of women, there’s an equal and opposite oppression of men. That’s...not actually what I want.
So let’s work backwards. Why do I want to reduce sexism? Well, thinking heuristically, if we accept as a given that men and women are interchangeable for many considerations, we can assume that anyone treating them differently is behaving suboptimally. In the office in the example, the dress code can’t be all that helpful to the work environment, or the women would be subject to it. Sexism can be treated as a pointer to “cheap opportunities to improve people’s lives”. The given definition cuts off that use.
I certainly agree that telling a wish machine to “minimize sexism” can have all kinds of negative effects. Telling it to “minimize cancer” can, too (e.g., it might ensure that a moment before someone would contract cancer, they spontaneously disintegrate). It’s not clear to me what this says about the concepts of “cancer” or “sexism,” though.
I agree that optimizing the system is one reason I might want to reduce sexism, and that insofar as that’s my goal, I care about sexism solely as a pointer to opportunities for optimization, as you suggest. I would agree that it’s not necessarily the best such pointer available, but it’s not clear to me how the given definition cuts off that use.
It’s also not clear to me how any of that causes the violent reaction DaFranker describes.
If you can unpack your thinking a little further in those areas, I’d be interested.
“Sexism” is a short code. Not only that, it’s a short code which has already been given a strong negative affective valence in modern society. Fights about its definition are fights about how to use that short code. They’re fights over a resource.
That code doesn’t even just point to a class of behaviors or institutions—it points to an argument, an argument of the form “these institutions favor this gender and that’s bad for these reasons”. Some people would like it to point more specifically to an argument that goes something like “If, on net, society gives more benefits to one gender, and puts more burdens on the other, then that’s unfair, and we should care about fairness.” Others would like it to point to “If someone makes a rule that applies differently to men and women, there’s a pretty strong burden of proof that they’re not making a suboptimal rule for stupid reasons. Someone should probably change that rule”. The fight is over which moral argument will come to mind quickly, will seem salient, because it has the short code “sexism”.
If I encounter a company where the men have a terrible dress code applied to them, but there’s one woman’s restroom for every three men’s restroom, the first argument might not have much to say, but the second might move me to action. Someone who wants me to be moved to action would want me to have the second argument pre-cached and available.
In particular, I’m not a fan of the first definition, because it motivates a great big argument. If there’s a background assumption that “sexism” points to problems to be solved, then the men and the women in the company might wind up in a long, drawn-out dispute over whose oppression is worse, and who is therefore a target of sexism, and deserving of aid. The latter definition pretty directly implies that both problems should be fixed if possible.
Well, I certainly agree that a word can have the kind of rhetorical power you describe here, and that “sexism” is such a word in lots of modern cultures.
And while modeling such powerful labels as a fixed resource isn’t quite right, insofar as such labels can be applied to a lot of different things without necessarily being diffused, I would agree with something roughly similar to that… for example, that if you and I assign that label to different things for mutually exclusive ends, then we each benefit by denying the other the ability to control the label.
And I agree with you that if I want to attach the label to thing 1, and you want to attach it to mutually exclusive thing 2, and thing 1 is strictly worse than thing 2, then it’s better if I fail and you succeed.
All of that said, it is not clear to me that caring about fairness is always strictly worse than caring about optimality, and it is not clear to me that caring about fairness is mutually exclusive with caring about optimality.
Edit: I should also say that I do understand now why you say that using “sexism” to refer to unfair systems cuts off the use of “sexism” to refer to suboptimal systems, which was the original question I asked. Thanks for the explanation.
I think one possible answer is that your model of sexism, while internally consistent, is useless at best and harmful at worst, depending on how you interpret its output.
If your definition of sexism is completely orthogonal to morality, as your last bullet point implies, then it’s just not very useful. Who cares if certain actions are “sexist” or “blergist” or whatever ? We want to know whether our goals are advanced or hindered by performing these actions—i.e., whether the actions are moral—not whether they fit into some arbitrary boxes.
On the other hand, if your definition implies that sexist actions very likely to be immoral as well, then your model is broken, since it ignores about 50% of the population. Thus, you are more likely to implement policies that harm men in order to help women; insofar as we are all members of the same society, such policies are likely to harm women in the long run, as well, due to network effects.
EDIT: Perhaps it should go without saying, but in the interests of clarity, I must point out that I have no particular desire to commit violence against anyone. At least, not at this very moment.
It does?
Hm.
I certainly didn’t intend for it to.
And looking at it now, I don’t see how it does. Can you expand on that?
I mean, if I X isn’t murder, it doesn’t follow that X is moral… there exist immoral non-murderous acts. But in saying that, I don’t imply that murder is completely orthogonal to morality.
This seems more apposite.
Yes, absolutely, if my only goal is to reduce benefit differentials between groups A and B, and A currently benefits disproportionately, then I am likely to implement policies that harm A.
Not necessarily, of course… I might just happen to implement a policy that benefits everyone, but that benefits B more than A, until parity is reached. But within the set S of strategies that reduce benefit differentials, the subset S1 of strategies that also benefit everyone (or even keep benefits fixed) is relatively small, so a given S is unlikely to be in S1.
Of course, it’s also true that within the set S2 of strategies that benefit everyone, S1 is also relatively small, so if my only goal is to benefit everyone it’s likely I will increase benefit differentials between A and B.
What seems to follow is that if I value both overall benefits and equal access to benefits, I need to have them both as goals, and restrict my choices to S1. This ought not be surprising, though.
I didn’t think you did. DaFranker expressed such a desire, and identified the position I described as its cause, and I was curious about that relationship (which he subsequently explained). I wasn’t attributing it to anyone else.
You said,
This makes sense, but you never mentioned that sexist actions are immoral, either. I do admit that I interpreted your comment less charitably than I should have.
Yes, and you may not even do so deliberately. You may think you’re implementing a strategy in S1, but if your model only considers people in B and not A, then you are likely to be implementing a strategy in S without realizing it.
I think he was speaking metaphorically, but I’m not him… Anyway, I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t accidentally threatening anyone.
Only in part, actually. It is a faint desire, and I rarely actually bang my own head against a wall, but there is real impulse/instinct for violence coming up from somewhere in situations similar to that. It’s obviously not something I act upon (I’d be in prison since long ago, considering the frequency at which it occurs).
Well, “without realizing it” is a confusing thing to say here. If I care about group A but somehow fail to realize that I’ve adopted a strategy that harms A, it seems I have to be exceptionally oblivious. Which happens, of course, but is an uncharitable assumption to start from.
Leaving that clause aside, though, I agree with the rest of this. For example, if I simply don’t care about group A, I may well adopt a strategy that harms A.
True enough, but it’s all a matter of weighing the inputs. For example, if you care about group A in principle, but are much more concerned with group B—because they are the group that your model informs you about—then you’re liable to miss all but the most egregious instances of harm caused to group A by your actions.
By analogy, if your car has a broken headlight on the right side, then you’re much more likely to hit objects on that side when driving at night. If your headlight isn’t broken, but merely dim, then you’re still more likely to hit objects on your right side, but less so than in the first scenario.
Right, absolutely.
Indeed, many feminists make an analogous argument for why feminism is necessary… that is, that our society tends to pay more attention to men than women, and consequently disproportionately harms women without even noticing unless someone particularly calls social attention to the treatment of women. Similar arguments get made for other nominally low-status groups.
That’s true, but, at the risk of being uncharitable, I’ve got to point out that reversed stupidity is not intelligence. When you notice a bias, embracing the equal and opposite bias is, IMO, a poor choice of action.
Sure, in principle.
That said, at the risk of getting political, my usual reaction when I hear people complain about legislation that provides “special benefits” for queers (a common real-world idea that has some commonality with the accusation of having embraced an equal-and-opposite bias) is that the complainers don’t really have a clue what they’re talking about, and that the preferential bias they think they see is simply what movement towards equality looks like when one is steeped in a culture that pervasively reflects a particular kind of inequality.
And I suspect this is not unique to queers.
So, yeah, I think you’re probably being uncharitable.
I’m not arguing against any specific implementation, but against the idea that optimal implementations could be devised by merely looking at the specific subset of the population you’re interested in, and ignoring everyone else. Your (admittedly, hypothetical) definition of “sexism” upthread sounds to me like just such a model.
Hm. So, OK. What I said upthread was:
You’re suggesting that this definition fails to look at men?
I don’t see how.
Can you clarify?
Granted, this definition does look at men, but only as a sort of reference:
It seems that, like MBlume said, your model is designed to reduce the difference between the benefits provided to men and women. Thus, reducing the benefits to men, as well as reducing benefits to women, would be valid actions according to your model, if doing so leads to a smaller differential. So would increasing the benefits, of course, but that’s usually more difficult in practice, and therefore a less efficient use of resources (from the model’s point of view). And, since men have more benefits than women, reducing those benefits becomes the optimal choice; of course, if the gender roles were reversed, then the inverse would be the case.
A better model would seek to maximize everyone’s benefits, but, admittedly, such a model is a lot more difficult to build.
OK, thanks for the clarification.
Yes, insofar as “sexism” is understood as something to be reduced. It’s hard to interpret “sexism in a system is a function of the differential benefits provided to men and women over the system as a whole” any other way, really.
As for the rest of this… yes. And now we’ve come full circle, and I will once again agree (as I did above) that yes, if anyone defined sexism as I model it here and sought only to eliminate sexism, the easiest solution would presumably be to kill everyone. And as I said at the time, the same thing is true of a system seeking to eliminate cancer, but it’s not clear to me that it follows that someone seeking to eliminate cancer is necessarily doing something wrong relative to someone who isn’t seeking to eliminate cancer.
TL;DR: Some evidence points, and the rest my mind fills in by type 1 / pattern-matching / bias / etc., towards hypothetical you being fundamentally broken somewhere crucial, at BIOS or OS level to use a computer metaphor, though probably you can be fixed. I feel very strongly that this hypothetical you is not even worth fixing. This is something about myself I’d like to refine and “fix” in the future.
Well, the type 1 processes in my brain tell me that the most expedient, least “troublesome” way to solve the “problem” is to eliminate the source of the problem entirely and permanently, namely Hypothetical::TheOtherDave. This implies that there is a problem, and that it originates from you, according to whatever built-in system is screaming this to my consciousness.
Tracing back, it appears that in this scenario, I have strong beliefs that there is a major systemic error in judgment that caused “sexism” to be defined in that manner, and if the person is a “Feminist” that only applies techniques to solve “that kind” of “sexism”, without particular concern for things that I consider sexism beyond “they might be bad things too, but not any more than any other random bad things, thus as a Feminist I’m not fighting against them”, then I apparently see it as strong evidence that there is a generalized problem—to make a computer metaphor, one of the low-level primary computing functionalities, perhaps even directly in the instruction set implementation (though much more likely to be in the BIOS or OS, since it’s rarely that “hardwired”), is evidently corrupted and is spreading (perhaps virally) wrongful and harmful reasoning throughout the mental ‘system’.
Changing the OS or fixing and OS error is feasible, but very rarely happens directly from within the system, and usually requires specific, sometimes complex user input—there needs to be certain contexts and situations, probably combined with particularly specific or strong action taken by someone other than the “mentally corrupted” person, in order for the problem to be corrected.
Since the harm is continuous, currently fairly high in that hypothetical, and the cost of fixing it “properly” is rather high, I usually move on to other things while bashing my head on a wall figuratively in my mind and “giving up” on that person—I classify them as “too hard to help becoming rational”, and they get this tag permanently unless something very rare (which I often qualify as a miracle) happens to nudge them sufficiently hard that there appears to be a convenient hack or hotfix that can be applied to them.
Otherwise, “those people” are, to my type-1 mind, worth much less instrumental value (though the terminal value of human minds remains the same), and I’ll be much less reticent to use semi-dark-arts on them or otherwise not bother helping or promoting more correct beliefs. I’ll start just nodding absentmindedly at whatever “bullcrap” political or religious statements they make, letting them believe they’ve achieved something and convinced me or whatever they’d like to think, just so I can more efficiently return to doing something else.
Basically, the “source” of my very negative feelings is the intuition (very strong intuition, unfortunately) that their potential instrumental value is not even worth the effort required to fix a mind this broken, even if I had all the required time and resources to actually help each of those cases I encounter and still do whatever other Important Things™ I want/need to do with my life.
That is my true reason. My rationalization is that I have limited resources and time, and so must focus on more cost-effective strategies. Objectively, the rationalization is probably still very very true, and so would make me still choose to not spend all that time and effort helping them, but it is not my original, true reason. It also implies that my behavior is not exactly the same towards them as it would be if that logic were my true chain of reasoning.
All in all, this is one of those things I have as a long-term goal to “fix” once I actually start becoming a half-worthy rationalist, and I consider it an important milestone towards reaching my life goals and becoming a true guardian of my thing to protect. I meant to speak much more at length on this and other personal things once I wrote an intro post in the Welcome topic, but I’m not sure posting there would be appropriate anymore or whether I’ll ever actually work myself up to actually write that post.
Edit: Added TLDR at top, because this turned into a fairly long and loaded comment.
Thank you for the explanation.
Regardless that i’m not extensively answering your entire comment, i still wanted to point out just a little peculiarity:
I think this seems to imply that for “reasonable discussion” to occur, you must be the one to broach the subject. Is this correct; did you mean to imply that? (I could imagine that either way.)
Thanks for pointing that out—that wasn’t my intention. What I mean is that I can’t even participate in any such conversation, regardless of circumstances—only feminist women are even allowed to participate and speak of this (AKA only the informed, righteous victim-saviors have any say in the matter).
Being a man forbids me to say anything. If I disagree on any point, I’m evil. If I agree on any point, I’m attempting to trick them and I’m evil. I’m an enemy soldier and I cannot be allowed, at any cost, to be perceived as even remotely close to anything else than The Enemy. In many cases, even staying silent, nodding, or going away from the discussion is still grounds to condemn me; I’m trying to pretend it doesn’t concern me, or showing contempt, or running away to ignore the subject, respectively, in their views.
Obviously this is not the omnipresent case for all feminists. It’s just the most common situation (>50%, actually) that occurs whenever I end up in some kind of social setting where it becomes established as common knowledge that one of the women is a Feminist.
I find with certain types of people, particularly those inclined towards judgement and control, this going away can prompt the most vigorous condemnation—at least while they are in vocalization range. It is taking their perceived power over you away from them. Fortunately this approach has the side effect that once out of earshot they are condemning you somewhere you don’t have to listen to them!
So, so true. I used to think it was the “least bad” / optimal choice until I figured out that it was much more Fun™ to just mess with them (and/or break their mind, if you’re so inclined).
You have more patience than I.
Courtesy note to others for DaFranker’s benefit: the parent was (probably) written in response to a version of the grandparent that contained only the final sentence. “So, so true” would best be interpreted as applying only to the second (and more important) of the two points I made.
I’ve also often noted, watching certain types of people responding this way to third parties disengaging, that the vigorous condemnation is frequently dropped as soon as the party is no longer in earshot.
Perhaps unrelatedly, I’m told the same thing is often true of small children throwing tantrums.
That’s good to know. I wasn’t there to hear (the instances from the same class that I have experienced in an entirely different part of the world) and directly inquiring usually seems crass.
Perhaps unrelated, yes, but do either of us really think them being unrelated is likely? I model them as more or less the same social move.
Cf earlier comment about mixing your Ask-culture specificity with my Hint-culture ambiguity. Two great tastes that, well...
I may have missed your earlier comment. I implement Ask-culture? That’s not something I would identify with. I seems to find some aspects of “Ask-culture” appropriate in some situations but definitely not in others. In fact, a the main times I have seen “Ask-culture” described explicitly the prescribed practices made me viscerally squeamish a the awkwardness and inappropriateness involved.
By the way, I wouldn’t have said the quoted excerpt contained much in the way of “ask culture” at all. The question is entirely rhetorical, albeit not the stereotypical “Rhetorical Question(TM)” kind of persuasion tool. Question mark aside there isn’t any actual asking going on. It just equivalent to the overt declaration “I agree with what you are hinting at you and feel like explaining the concepts without technically violating violating the ‘hint’ role-play”. So it is certainly being specific but I’d actually call it a violation of ask-culture principles. (I must admit I’m no expert on what ask-culture is so if my impression of what ask-culture is is invalid my conclusion that this doesn’t qualify could be wrong.)
The comment I’m referring to is here. It was a rather specialized context, and somewhat tongue-in-cheek to boot, as was this reference to it.
Ahh, that kind of ‘earlier’. I remember the exchange. There is certainly a -culture difference regarding specificity, even if there doesn’t seem to be much ‘asking’ going on on the wedrifid side of things.
The thing with ‘tongue-in-cheek’ is that in <wedrifid’s>-culture recognizing that something is tongue in cheek doesn’t entail an obligation not to make a straight up reply, nor does it prohibit tongue-in-cheek responses. In fact, it encourages both at once if possible. Unfortunately my creativity doesn’t suggest any such reply that would fit in this case (the potential ironies are one inferential step too long to fit).
(nods) I endorse the lack of an obligation not to make a straight-up reply. (Also, that sentence should be taken out and shot.)
Hearing that spoken back I wish it used words with a much more subtle and mild connotation that ‘obligation’. Unfortunately none sprang to mind either then or now. “Expectation” didn’t quite fit either. I mean that thing where the natural flow of the conversation makes a certain kind of response seem like it is the thing that fits.
“norm”? “convention”?
“Cue”? Or “obligation of a certain X-culture heuristic where that X-culture is itself not obligatory”.
Lately I automatically lower my opinion of anyone who self-identifies with a broad enough group without reservation.
Examples, in roughly descending order of opinion drop:
I’m a Democrat/Republican
I’m a feminist
I’m a patriot
I’m a LWer
I’m a consequentialist
I’m Eliezer Yudkowsky! Do you have any idea how many distinct versions of me there are in Tegmark Levels I through III?
Don’t anthropomorphize humans, and don’t identify with yourself.
37. Precisely 37. If you disagree then your conception of the identity “Eliezer Yudkowsky” is either too broad or too narrow. (So there!?)
I just want to say that it was hilariously confusing to see “I’m Eliezer Yudkowsky!” coming from you out of context in the Recent Comments Bar.
Sounds like it would be an improvement to skip blockquotes when producing that summary.
ℵ1?
Am I the only one seeing a Hebrew letter here? Does א have some numerical significance I’m not aware of?
No and yes.
/shudder
I’m a human. (IOW, I agree with what I think you’re thinking of, but I don’t think “broad enough” is the actual criterion you’re using.)
You are right, the idea of a group becomes meaningless at the two extremes. I need to rethink this. Thanks.
I got the same impression. ‘Broad’ can actually make the identification issue less significant (sometimes).
I’m meta-contrarian
hipster!
HIPSTERRRRRR
Out of curiosity, where do “I’m a humanist” and “I’m a transhumanist” scale?
But yes, outright claiming membership gratuitously for pretty much any wide group without further descriptors or evidence that this affiliation is somehow relevant to the discussion is usually not something to look favorably upon.
I wouldn’t quite say it in itself lowers my opinion score of someone, but it might give me some light evidence towards adopting a lower-opinion-estimate model of that someone, which effectively would reduce the “expected opinion for that expected mental model”.
Prediction: Either immediately above or immediately below “feminist”.
You’re referring to meatspace situations?
Yes. Meatspace-only for what I describe in this particular thread.
I’ve only had three cyberspace interactions with “ID’d-as” female feminists, or so they claimed, and two of these were both trollish and obviously a one-sided preacher throwing regular rage at The Internet with whatever topic they had in mind, while the other was, well, at the time already a much better rationalist than I was, wasn’t primarily a “feminist” so much as having that as one of her colors, and is otherwise a subject I’m not quite ready to discuss on LessWrong (a melancholy story of grief and loved ones).
Basically, they’re not even valid data points as far as I can tell, for reasons that might not be clear or obvious for the third case but would probably require much more detail than I’m willing to go into to explain why.
I guess I’ve had the opposite experience you had.
With the exception of a certain professor, all the feminists I’ve met in meatspace have been friendly people who are open to discussing their beliefs with skeptical men. If a man describes how he’s been hurt by gender prejudice, they will listen sympathetically. On the other hand, the anti-feminists I’ve met are far less likely to listen to women talk about misogyny, and will often try and shut down debate. It’s kind of infuriating actually. This is why I refer to myself as a feminist whenever there is an anti-feminist in the room.
FWIW, were I a moderate feminist who ordinarily does not treat men as The Enemy and is interested in maintaining discourse with both men and women, and I heard someone express these sentiments the way you express them here, my emotional reaction would be to treat that speaker as The Enemy.
That’s not to say, of course, that your observations are being significantly influenced by your own behavior… it may be that you don’t in any way express this attitude in the social settings you’re making the observations in, for example, or it may be that the hypothetical reaction I describe above is atypical, or various other things might be true.
Yes, I’ve unfortunately fallen into that “trap” at least once.
However, the observations persist after modifying the behavior I attempt to output. Either I fail in a somewhat spectacular manner and there’s a hard denial-of-denial bomb preventing me from noticing that I’m always acting in such a manner (though I would expect this mechanism to be much more widespread and not restricted specifically to “feminism”, which is far from a particularly important point of focus for me among other possible points of focus).
My observations point to a strong causal link between such behavior and the response, but it seems like a sufficient cause, and by far not a required one. The example things I’ve mentioned (agreeing, disagreeing, nodding, staying silent, going away) are things I’ve actually tried in separate occasions, as my very first reaction to the topic, if my memory isn’t being blurred, and they had the results described. My memory suggests two or three of those might have happened with the same person simply at separate times, but I’m not certain.
Overall, I think the hypothetical reaction you describe might pass a turing test, but I’m throwing that at my own mental emulator, so it’s not much of a confirmation. Your mental model seems better detailed than mine, too.
I mostly start from my actual, real-life reactions around low-status groups I’ve been part of, and ask myself how I would react in analogous situations.
For example, I’m queer, and I’ve many times had the experience of being in a room full of (nominally) straight guys talking about queers. I’m Jewish, and I’ve a few times had the experience of listening to Gentiles talk about Jews. I’m Hispanic, and have had the experience of listening to a White community discuss Hispanics. Etc.
That’s not at all the same thing as being female in a room full of men talking about women, but there are some illustrative similarities.
One thing I think generalizes, for example, is that after a few traumatic experiences along those lines it’s emotionally difficult to keep giving people the benefit of the doubt, and emotionally easy to treat new people as homophobic or antiSemitic or racist or sexist or what-have-you until and unless they do something active to demonstrate that they aren’t.
Another thing I think generalizes is that one does get better at identifying non-verbal cues. For example, I’ve had the experience several times of thinking that someone was uncomfortable with my sexuality despite them seeming to do all the right things superficially, and later having them confirm that yes, at the time they had been uncomfortable. (Of course, I’ve also much more often had the experience of thinking that and not having it confirmed. I merely claim that correctly reading nonverbal cues is possible, not that my reading of nonverbal cues is reliable, let alone infallible.)
This pattern-matches very gracefully with my experiences and observations. As I mention in another response, it seems likely that I’ve encountered almost only a certain kind of feminists that has a very personal near-mode emotional reaction to men.
Besides being a “geek” with slight social disregard from social circles I had no interest in during high school, I fortunately never had those situations you describe. I happened to have all the right skills to avoid being marginalized for what few outlier qualities I had. Thus, despite pattern-matching with many of the qualities of the stereotypical bullied frail school nerd, I don’t particularly identify well with them and my mental model of them is much worse than people would expect.
My own mental model of feminists was derived mostly from my generalized mental model of “people”, with the “ideologist” module added, and whatever empathic cues and type-1 intuitions I’ve had during interactions with them. Recent events on LessWrong allowed me to update this model quite a bit with a lot more evidence, but it still feels very incomplete and vague.
(nods) Makes sense. Certainly, my own level of compassion for and understanding of people experiencing various levels of post-traumatic response increased enormously after I went through traumatic experiences of my own. I don’t think it’s necessary, nor is it sufficient, but it helps.
I suppose the question is, is it worth it to you to do the work to develop analogous properties in the absence of those “advantages,” or not?
If it isn’t and you don’t, that’s of course a choice you’re free to make, but it ought not surprise you that your subsequent interactions with certain classes of people won’t go as smoothly as they would if you did.
(Sorry for the reply being so long rather than more concise, i’m aware my texts almost routinely get out of hand.)
I am not opposed to principles like these if they are applied in such contexts that it appears “sensible”. And in most social settings (you didn’t mention any specific kinds apart from “where it becomes established [...]” and i don’t want to speculate) it is probably what i would deem sensible. But this does not extend to all circumstances.
From the little i have read so far i think the conversations that you want to have could be both interesting and fruitful, maybe even for all participants, in an apt context. (Note this as A.) But this context might need to be, from a feminist perspective, expressly intended as reaching out to you-as-a-man. (I didn’t write “you”, because it does not only concern/consider you personally. I didn’t write “men”, because in this case the topic is centred on you.)
And such a context must be either offered to you (this would probably be the better case), or you have to ask for it diffidently. You are probably aware of how feminists (as in “feminist women”) typically reject what they feel to come across as a (social) demand from a man. (Note this as B.)
It follows that while i consider it desirable to actualise the conversation you wish for (see A), no one in particular is responsible for ever actualising it (see B). This is unfortunate (more for you than for me) but i don’t know a better solution, working from my premises.
(As you’re aware, alternatives that might be easier to implement exist, for instance carrying out the conversation with men other than you which are (pro-)feminist, but this wasn’t the topic here.)
In my personal (social) experiences, feminists overall are not as vicious most of the time =)
But i don’t know how well you personally know how many feminists of which kinds of feminism, so that impression might well be useless to you. I still include it because i’m optimistic like that sometimes.
Well, some recent hindsight analysis (during the eridu radical-feminist debacle) allowed me to notice that it seems highly likely that nearly all female feminists I’ve encountered in person with common knowledge of such were mostly of the kind that had one or few strong very bad near-type personal experiences with men, or many small but memorable such near-type experiences. The kinds you’d probably expect from a stereotypical scenario of “The Father is Master and Law of the House” or a poor waitress working late shifts at a café on the same street corner as a strip club.
So in my case I probably wasn’t dealing only with “feminists”, but at the same time with individuals taken with a widespread personal fear or anger towards men, in nearly all the cases that produced these kinds of strong reactions. This might be due to statistical coincidence (not that particularly unlikely) or to some behavior that causes other types of feminists to not identify themselves as such when dealing with me, or to some other cause.
It may very well be that the A scenario you describe actually does happen to me sometimes, but with the other participant(s) simply not identifying themselves as feminists at all. If so, I either never ran them through my mental model of feminists for a pattern-matching, reverse-ideological-turing-test thinghy, or my model is sufficiently incorrect/imprecise that they actually failed said test.
I kind of suspected this to be the case, because if the contrary were true, the feminist movement as a whole would be spectacularly self-hindering and shooting itself in the foot constantly, since such behavior as I’ve observed would basically cause very destructive conflict and wouldn’t actually help further their goals.
Depending on how bad you consider “very bad” and how memorable you consider “memorable” as to make this “kind” be applicable to a woman, it might be the case that a significant part of all women (regardless whether feminist) are of this kind. There might even be studies or what backing such claims up, though right now i’m not inclined to search for any.
I actually do vaguely remember two studies which, if memory serves, did back this up. One of them was attempting to establish a correlation between the frequency + ‘strength’(?) of these experiences and the ability to have or frequency of having female orgasms—as an apparent follow-up to an earlier study that had established certain “impressive” statistical numbers for the latter.
If I interpreted the numbers correctly, it would imply that it’s usually on the order of 30% to 50% (depending on geographical location as correlated to social customs and culture).
I note that the above is probably not a very accurate picture of reality, since it’s all from memory and I’m most likely applying all kinds of biases and heuristics to it subconsciously before accessing said memories.
Sorry, there was some sort of malfunction that made me not appreciate the worth of that study in an overt way any longer after reading this part.
I don’t know that ‘debacle’ and there seems to be a lot of content that could be part of it (you meant something in the comments of this same article apparently). If you think it is very relevant, i’d be grateful for one or several specific links to start from.
Where can i find out what “near-type” means here? This appears important enough to postpone my reply to this part.
I didn’t mean it in that way. And i think the feminist movement, as a whole or in part, doesn’t necessarily want to be lightly told by men what behaviour is or is not “furthering their goals” =P
(This instance seems to me like one in which you did so lightly, because it didn’t seem highly relevant / on-topic.)
It refers to “near-mode,” which is jargon in construal-level theory for “construed concretely.” So in context, it means direct and involving personal experience, as opposed to reading or discussing abstractly.
Robin Hanson applies construal-level theory speculatively in numerous posts at Overcoming Bias. A concise summary of construal-level theory can be found in my posting “Construal-level theory: Matching linguistic register to the case’s granularity.”.
Thank you. For now i’ll work with your explanation for this context specifically.
It’s difficult, because many of eridu’s comments were “deleted” by site mods who very much wanted that discussion to stop. I suspect your best bet is to browse their user page (where the comments remain visible) if you’re really interested, but roughly speaking: eridu self-identified as a radical feminist who endorsed dismantling patriarchy, and ended up in a very confrontational series of exchanges with several LW contributors that were widely considered low-value.
I certainly considered them low value but to be fair the reception was mixed. Some went as far as to say it was the best and most informative discussion of any related concepts that they had seen on lesswrong. This confused some people but there was definitely a non-trivial minority who valued it.
(nods) Yes, this is absolutely true, and worth saying explicitly. Thanks.
Thank you. This contains some very interesting parts.
Near mode, Far mode—In rough vulgarization, Near mode is immediate observation and sensation, Far mode is abstract knowledge of something.
As for that last, yeah. I was merely spelling out my own reasoning. Saying something like that is exactly the kind of behavior I’d expect to cause the kind of reactions / treatment / behavior I’ve described in earlier posts.
Thanks.
It’s good to know that you know that. Your wording here might mildly suggest that you disagree with such reactions to that behaviour on some level, but i might just be imagining that. And either way it’s not of much relevance.
Nice catch there.
Yes, I do believe that the reaction is sub-optimal, and that there are better ways to handle these cases that would apparently further their cause faster. However, my model of all this is incomplete, so I’m most likely not entirely right, and I’d probably never voice that opinion outside of a context like this one.
Note that I don’t think the reaction is “wrong” or “negative”, but ISTM that there are probably other alternatives with similar cost and better utilitarian results.
Your own reaction seems like a good example of a much more productive reaction, but it does have some rather limiting contextual requirements.
Took me until after i’d read it the second or third time, but once it’s recognised, it seems fairly intuitive to me that it might have been intended.
I’m not sure i understand which reaction you mean. And my best (only?) guess on the contextual requirements is the context of this conversation on this platform (or: community), but i’m even less certain here, so i would like to ask you to please make both points more explicit.
More generally, I’m starting to suspect that most extremists might be Generalizing from One Example, e.g. that antinatalists are unhappy with their lives and kind-of assume that everyone else is.
My reaction to that would likely be to stop worrying about them thinking that I’m evil, and possibly to start pissing them off on purpose just for the fun of it.
Hehe. Once you realize that someone has condemned you guilty a priori, there’s all kinds of nifty semi-Dark Arts tricks you can do.
My favorite is to begin agreeing with them more and more anyway, granting them authority and righteousness inch by inch even though it fuels their knowledge that I’m Evil, until I’ve lured them all the way into a fanatical position that is obviously absurd even to them.
At which point a simple “Yes, you’ve been right all along!” with a smile is usually all it takes for them to shut up and start agreeing with me instead—their mind is too busy trying to figure out what went wrong to protest, and the autopilot tells them to comply with whatever authority happens to bother telling them anything.
Of course, the effect is temporary, but you usually manage to slip in a few positive beliefs into their subconscious during that window of opportunity.
I’m curious what other LWers think of behaviors like this. I don’t trust myself enough yet to ask myself the question (i.e. do a proper crisis of faith), and I fear more rationalization might make me sink into a very dangerous hole if this happens to be a Very Bad™ thing to do. It’s something I’ve been doing (and enjoyed doing) since my early teens, after all. I even have a ‘nickname’ for it: Shadowdancing.
Roughly, I think it’s usually an example of using other people for my own entertainment at a sometimes marginal, sometimes significant cost to them. There are many worse things I can do, and it’s not worth a lot of drama, but on balance I don’t endorse it, I tend to disengage with people I perceive as trying it on me or people I care about, and I tend to think less of people I perceive as habitually doing it.
That said, I think the skill can be extremely valuable as a teaching technique under the right circumstances, if one chooses to (and is able to) use it that way.
A variation of this is to start with a more radical position to begin with, such as “all men should be segregated and kept in stud farms, with the sperm artificially extracted as needed”. This helps them define the far boundary of their own radicalism.
You had me up until “artificial”.
Oh my… I don’t think I’ve ever intentionally done anything like that, though something similar might have happened by accident (e.g., because I had failed Poe’s law and had people not recognize my sarcasm as such).