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).
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).