Remember, this discussion started by discussing whether evolutionary psychology is sexist.
If LW were being honest with itself, I’d expect the discussion to stay there, rather than drifting to “is patriarchy real,” which is where it almost immediately went to.
It’s easy to see how that happened, since in your original comment you equated sexism with “perpetuating patriarchy”. At that point, the only options are (1) agreeing with you; (2) arguing that evolutionary psychology reduces patriarchy; or (3) denying that patriarchy exists.
EDIT: In other words, the topic you describe as “is patriarchy real” was the topic you brought up, whether you realized it or not.
It’s easy to see how that happened, since in your original comment you equated sexism with “perpetuating patriarchy”. At that point, the only options are (1) agreeing with you; (2) arguing that evolutionary psychiatry reduces patriarchy; or (3) denying that patriarchy exists.
Well, there’s also (2.5) arguing that evolutionary psychology neither contributes to nor reduces patriarchy.
I think that would be an uncharitable interpretation, since it would lead one to infer that Eridu regards such activities as, say, eating oranges or opening refrigerators as sexist, and even knowing that Eridu considers many things sexist that most people do not, I find that doubtful.
Well, I prefer to avoid getting too close to an object-level discussion of eridu’s views, but suffice it to say that I would want to check with eridu before making any such assumption about what he does not consider sexist.
In any event, my point was that eridu’s views on patriarchy are a crucial premise of his argument that ev psych is bad, so a discussion of them was inevitable.
I’ll reply to this comment by replying to a later comment (I hope you’ll excuse this, I can only post once every ten minutes now):
The word he used was “perpetuate”, rather than “contribute”; so leaving patriarchy invariant, so to speak, counts.
Patriarchy is an oppressive system that faces opposition at every turn. It only exists because humans continue to fuel it. Perpetuating or furthering patriarchy means contributing to it; being patriarchy-neutral is the same thing as reducing patriarchy (albeit in a smaller quantitative sense).
Earlier arguments were along the lines of “evolutionary psychology is patriarchy-neutral because evolutionary psychology is true and the truth has no politics,” but that line of argument ended rather quickly, being replaced with “feminism is bad.”
I’d like to point out also that replacing the harder issue of “does evolutionary psychology oppress women” with “are eridu’s feminist politics good” is a form of ad-hominem attack—“feminist politics” are a conceptual attribute of “eridu,” and they provide a nice proxy for “ur dumb,” which is what you would see on another site.
If you present a conclusion, and other people disagree with it, then if they’re doing things right, they must disagree with either your premises or the inferences you draw from those premises. If you identify your set of premises and the inferences relating to them from which you draw the conclusion that evolutionary psychology is sexist as “feminism,” then naturally if other people disagree with your conclusion then the discussion will fall back to the topic of feminism, which appears to me to be exactly what happened.
I disagree that the discussion here has ever taken the line that “feminism is bad,” although if you interpret your own faction of feminism as the only “real” feminism, and nobody else in the discussion is aligned with that faction, I can understand how it might seem that way.
I’d like to point out also that replacing the harder issue of “does evolutionary psychology oppress women” with “are eridu’s feminist politics good” is a form of ad-hominem attack—“feminist politics” are a conceptual attribute of “eridu,” and they provide a nice proxy for “ur dumb,” which is what you would see on another site.
Your politics are a set of ideas, and if we didn’t disagree with them then obviously we wouldn’t be having this discussion in the first place. You can identify any idea as a conceptual attribute of yourself, and thereby frame any disagreement with you as an an hominem, but this is in complete opposition to the goal of safeguarding productive discussion.
If you identify your set of premises and the inferences relating to them from which you draw the conclusion that evolutionary psychology is sexist as “feminism,” then naturally if other people disagree with your conclusion then the discussion will fall back to the topic of feminism, which appears to me to be exactly what happened.
But then the arguments I’d be responding to would be on the topic of evolutionary psychology, not on an unrelated topic of human relationships.
Making the statement “feminism is wrong about relationships, so it must be wrong about evolutionary psychology” (with the value of “feminism” in your post, which is probably accurate for most people who aren’t liberal feminists in this thread) is a common fallacy that the Sequences take some time to elucidate.
Your politics are a set of ideas, and if we didn’t disagree with them then obviously we wouldn’t be having this discussion in the first place.
This is a prediction that I think is falsified in the early stages of this thread, wherein the first comments were about whether scientists could be responsible for journalist’s sexist misreadings of their findings, and whether the findings of evolutionary psychology were misread.
After I posted a comment that outlined my political beliefs, the discussion turned to them at the exclusion of all else.
Making the statement “feminism is wrong about relationships, so it must be wrong about evolutionary psychology” (with the value of “feminism” in your post, which is probably accurate for most people who aren’t liberal feminists in this thread) is a common fallacy that the Sequences take some time to elucidate.
I would, instead, phrase the statement as follows:
1). eridu’s premises lead to incorrect conclusions about relationships. 2). eridu’s reasoning is valid. 3). Therefore, eridu’s premises must be unsound. 4). eridu applied valid reasoning to his premises to reach conclusions about evolutionary psychology. 5). Since his premises are unsound, we cannot say whether his conclusions about evolutionary psychology are correct, based on his reasoning alone.
This is a nice way to see it, but the question “Are heterosexual relationships *(sexist)” and the question “Is evolutionary psychology *(sexist)” can have different factual answers.
As such, getting me to field questions on unrelated aspects of feminism is little more than a way to apply the Worst Argument in the World to “feminism,” or a way to attempt to be anti-reductionist by asserting that “feminism” is a property of predictions, and all predictions that have that property are false.
It’s easy to see how that happened, since in your original comment you equated sexism with “perpetuating patriarchy”. At that point, the only options are (1) agreeing with you; (2) arguing that evolutionary psychology reduces patriarchy; or (3) denying that patriarchy exists.
EDIT: In other words, the topic you describe as “is patriarchy real” was the topic you brought up, whether you realized it or not.
Well, there’s also (2.5) arguing that evolutionary psychology neither contributes to nor reduces patriarchy.
The word he used was “perpetuate”, rather than “contribute”; so leaving patriarchy invariant, so to speak, counts.
I think that would be an uncharitable interpretation, since it would lead one to infer that Eridu regards such activities as, say, eating oranges or opening refrigerators as sexist, and even knowing that Eridu considers many things sexist that most people do not, I find that doubtful.
Well, I prefer to avoid getting too close to an object-level discussion of eridu’s views, but suffice it to say that I would want to check with eridu before making any such assumption about what he does not consider sexist.
In any event, my point was that eridu’s views on patriarchy are a crucial premise of his argument that ev psych is bad, so a discussion of them was inevitable.
I’ll reply to this comment by replying to a later comment (I hope you’ll excuse this, I can only post once every ten minutes now):
Patriarchy is an oppressive system that faces opposition at every turn. It only exists because humans continue to fuel it. Perpetuating or furthering patriarchy means contributing to it; being patriarchy-neutral is the same thing as reducing patriarchy (albeit in a smaller quantitative sense).
Earlier arguments were along the lines of “evolutionary psychology is patriarchy-neutral because evolutionary psychology is true and the truth has no politics,” but that line of argument ended rather quickly, being replaced with “feminism is bad.”
I’d like to point out also that replacing the harder issue of “does evolutionary psychology oppress women” with “are eridu’s feminist politics good” is a form of ad-hominem attack—“feminist politics” are a conceptual attribute of “eridu,” and they provide a nice proxy for “ur dumb,” which is what you would see on another site.
If you present a conclusion, and other people disagree with it, then if they’re doing things right, they must disagree with either your premises or the inferences you draw from those premises. If you identify your set of premises and the inferences relating to them from which you draw the conclusion that evolutionary psychology is sexist as “feminism,” then naturally if other people disagree with your conclusion then the discussion will fall back to the topic of feminism, which appears to me to be exactly what happened.
I disagree that the discussion here has ever taken the line that “feminism is bad,” although if you interpret your own faction of feminism as the only “real” feminism, and nobody else in the discussion is aligned with that faction, I can understand how it might seem that way.
Your politics are a set of ideas, and if we didn’t disagree with them then obviously we wouldn’t be having this discussion in the first place. You can identify any idea as a conceptual attribute of yourself, and thereby frame any disagreement with you as an an hominem, but this is in complete opposition to the goal of safeguarding productive discussion.
But then the arguments I’d be responding to would be on the topic of evolutionary psychology, not on an unrelated topic of human relationships.
Making the statement “feminism is wrong about relationships, so it must be wrong about evolutionary psychology” (with the value of “feminism” in your post, which is probably accurate for most people who aren’t liberal feminists in this thread) is a common fallacy that the Sequences take some time to elucidate.
This is a prediction that I think is falsified in the early stages of this thread, wherein the first comments were about whether scientists could be responsible for journalist’s sexist misreadings of their findings, and whether the findings of evolutionary psychology were misread.
After I posted a comment that outlined my political beliefs, the discussion turned to them at the exclusion of all else.
I would, instead, phrase the statement as follows:
1). eridu’s premises lead to incorrect conclusions about relationships.
2). eridu’s reasoning is valid.
3). Therefore, eridu’s premises must be unsound.
4). eridu applied valid reasoning to his premises to reach conclusions about evolutionary psychology.
5). Since his premises are unsound, we cannot say whether his conclusions about evolutionary psychology are correct, based on his reasoning alone.
This is a nice way to see it, but the question “Are heterosexual relationships *(sexist)” and the question “Is evolutionary psychology *(sexist)” can have different factual answers.
As such, getting me to field questions on unrelated aspects of feminism is little more than a way to apply the Worst Argument in the World to “feminism,” or a way to attempt to be anti-reductionist by asserting that “feminism” is a property of predictions, and all predictions that have that property are false.
The question of whether X is “sexist” seems like a Worst Argument In The World waiting to happen. Taboo “sexist”: is X bad? Why?
(really. Sexist has been used so many different ways by so many different people that it doesn’t mean anything to me anymore.)
That was the intent of my “dereferencing” of the word sexist above, but I guess that was too idiosyncratic.