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I suspect this was completely honest. You will not believe what comes out of the mouths of some of these students. Straw-manning is necessary; do you think eith
by wfo 11y ago
I suspect this was completely honest. You will not believe what comes out of the mouths of some of these students. Straw-manning is necessary; do you think either participant or the audience has the patience to sit and thoughtfully and carefully consider all sides of any issue in any debate? If that debate were publicized nobody would watch it. And it's a prisoner's dilemma. If you try to be respectful and thoughtful and the other person screams and yells and abuses and strawmans then you will lose the 'debate' by any metric not implemented by a philosophy professor. Look at the presedential debates. Nasty quips and attacks win, thoughtful consideration and long policy dialogue loses. It's not a coincidence.
This is a classic trap. Some positions are simply not worth discussing thoughtfully. Not all positions are equal. When you say "both sides" you have already lost; plenty of people use this tendancy to give both sides to every issue equal credence and carefully consider both, so they inject some absurd ridiculous view as the other side and abuse your tendancy to respect them to gain credence for it. Then the overton window is shifted and they have already won before the debate begins. If you even accept the premise that a student should be able to tell a professor what they are and are not allowed to discuss in their class you have already lost the debate, there's no use respecting that view, it's far too extreme.
- giltleaf 11y ago>plenty of people use this tendency to give both sides to every issue equal credence and carefully consider both, so they inject some absurd ridiculous view as the other side and abuse your tendency to respect them to gain credence for it. >And it's a prisoner's dilemma. If you try to be respectful and thoughtful and the other person screams and yells and abuses and strawmans then you will lose the 'debate' by any metric not implemented by a philosophy professor. Absolutely, and it's one of the most frustrating things I think a lot of reasonable, polite people come up against.
- silentplummet 11y ago>Some positions are simply not worth discussing thoughtfully. Who decides which is which? I guess you?
- nightspirit 11y agoEveryone is making such decisions on his own, obviously. It's bullshit to expect that people will seriously consider all ideas out there, no matter how weird or outright stupid they sound.
- jasonkostempski 11y agoI don't think there's any reason to assume honesty or good intentions. If the hostility publicly expressed by the president of the university is common amongst the staff during class I wouldn't be surprised if there was something legitimately offensive in the sermon. He even said that's the point of it: "An altar call is supposed to make you feel bad. It is supposed to make you feel guilty." Kids probably expected the school to be a more modern, peace and love christian style and less ancient, hate yourself style.
- sago 11y ago> Straw-manning is necessary Well, if you're going to advocate that everybody just believe whatever they want without facts or reason, don't be surprised if people tl;dr your comment and ignore you.
- conceit 11y ago> Straw-manning is necessary Take the high road, will ya > Some positions are simply not worth discussing thoughtfully Like yours? Very humble. > there's no use respecting that view, it's far too extreme ideals, you should know what those are