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> "When I say that Professor Lindzey’s left shoe is an “introvert,” everyone looks at his shoe as if it were something the shoe was responsible for. ...or perh
by geezerjay 9y ago
> "When I say that Professor Lindzey’s left shoe is an “introvert,” everyone looks at his shoe as if it were something the shoe was responsible for.
...or perhaps people look at the shoe due to the claim, and they do so in order to evaluate for themselves if Professor Lindzey's statement has any merit or is in fact just bullshit.
After all, either the shoe is "introvert" or it isn't, and the veracity of that claim does not depend on who stated it.
There's a very good reason why the Royal Society's motto is "Nullius in verba" ( literally "take nobody's word for it").
Advocating that the message should be ignore and instead the focus should be shifted to the messenger is just absurd and goes against basic concepts of rational reasoning and even the scientific process itself.
If militants of a particular social cause feels compelled to attack rational reasoning to even be in a position to make a case for their cause then that speaks volumes about the cause.
- zaptheimpaler 9y agoYou missed the point entirely. There is no hard definition of introvert or feminine. There are no hard definitions and eternal truths when it comes to people evaluating other people. Only perceptions and judgements made by other people. The closest thing to a truth in this scenario is consensus. You can point to a test that grades someone 1-10 between introvert and extrovert. That test, too was made based on someones subjective idea of extraversion/introversion, formed by direct perception of people before they converted it into a set of questions with objective answers. One of the measures of the validity of the test will be inter-rater reliability, that is, how much do different people rating a person agree on the score they assign - consensus. If people are unable to broadly agree when rating the same person, it would not even be accepted as valid test. I'm honestly clueless what social cause you think I'm advocating for - i wasn't really advocating for any, just pointing out an idea I find interesting that seemed relevant here. Of course, your perception of how political my statement is may differ, informed by your own interpretations. But surely that is not objective reality and must be rejected by the rational thought you espouse.