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Here is a concrete thought experiment you can try at home: simply use the opposite pronoun that would be applicable. Watch people's reactions to your incorrect

by cjslep 8y ago

Here is a concrete thought experiment you can try at home: simply use the opposite pronoun that would be applicable. Watch people's reactions to your incorrect usage. Feel the power and wrath of individuals collectively trying to correct your usage. Now take all that effort from all those other folks trying to correct you, and imagine it's all bundled up into one person. One person corrects each of those strangers. Because that person's pronoun may not be the one correctly used by the others. That power and wrath you were subjected to still applies to this one individual, of course. It's not reversed. That's a shit ton of effort and resistance against power and wrath for one person. Every day. For the rest of their life. So maybe it is a little less about politics, and being a little more empathetic to people who have to struggle daily through this.

luckylion 8y ago
But that's not actually what it's about, is it? "They" isn't to be used instead of calling a female doctor "him" when you know she is female. I've noticed that more and more authors have just started to randomly (or by some pattern that I don't know) use "she" instead of "he" in about half the examples (as in "a user visits our home page. She might be annoyed when she has to wait for multiple seconds"). It works flawlessly and I find it much easier to read than "they" personally. I've talked to multiple people about content that I know includes that and nobody mentioned it in a negative way (but two people liked it).
ThrowawayR2 8y ago
The hole in your argument is that applies to anyone outside of the mainstream: goths (ones who dress up in their daily lives), furries, or viewpoints well beyond. Do we have empathy for all of them, no matter how extreme, or is there some limit at which we are allowed to say "This is where our empathy ends"? Can we say, for example, that a furry is less deserving of empathy than a LGBTQ individual? And if so, then why?
- cjslep 8y ago
  The hole in your argument is that it is trying to generalize my opinion as if it were some sort of Kantian categorical imperative, to then twist my words to mean an extreme form of what I am proposing: that everyone must have their extreme wishes honored because "empathy" and who am I to stop a cannibal from eating me? I am talking about using pronoun words. That's it! I'm not here to discuss my deeply personal world view philosophy. I am simply trying to show how gendered pronoun misuse sucks and is really easy to fix. No ulterior motives. I am not open to the very common internet trope of "criticize by reducto ad absurdum with no alternative proposal". It's an online game of faux intellectualism I abhor and refuse to play. I prefer it staying on Reddit and not leaking here.
  - AlexB138 8y ago
    I think this sort of response is really unfortunate. I don't think their reply was at all out of order, they simply extended your argument, and I would have very much liked to read a genuine reply.
    - cjslep 8y ago
      Mine is a genuine reply. The fact you think not is very hurtful. Not every single thing people vouch for is meant to be taken to a philosophical extreme and evaluated at boundary conditions to check for contradictions. I don't view it as "an extension" of my argument because it's not my place to defend it. I didn't come up with it. It's not my argument. It's not theirs either. They aren't defending the goths and furries. Neither one of us have a stake in the matter. It's a waste of everyone's time. I'm not a follower of Kant's second formulation of the categorical imperative. Please don't take the arguments I say and extend them to an extreme degree and evaluate at boundary conditions just to prove that yes, my philosophy must have contradictions at the fringes, thus my moral framework is flawed and not the right one. I'm not a follower of utilitarianism. Please don't take the arguments I say and take an assumed utility function and declare that it also evaluates to "eat poor people to solve world hunger and overpopulation" just to illustrate that my philosophical view must be a cold and heartless one at the fringes, thus my moral framework is flawed and not the right one. When it comes to moral philosophy, once can't be too rigid in following this practice, otherwise you wind up in a boring absolutist-nihilism or a boring absolutist-relativism world. The depressing fact is that we are all hypocritical creatures, the real "living" (in my view) in life is each of us coming to terms with that. The world is full of color, where people apply different moral frameworks for different kinds of problems. Using the extreme fringes of moral philosophy to evaluate more mundane problems of morality is not the only line of ethical reasoning. Edited to add: So this is why I don't engage in these kinds of online discussions anymore where someone extends my argument without my input and now I am expected to defend it. I fundamentally view them as a different and unproductive kind of discussion that doesn't lead to insightful reasoning. I used to engaging on the internet in this way, but it's taken me about a decade to fully realize the relative unproductiveness of it all.

by cjslep 8y ago

luckylion 8y ago

But that's not actually what it's about, is it? "They" isn't to be used instead of calling a female doctor "him" when you know she is female. I've noticed that more and more authors have just started to randomly (or by some pattern that I don't know) use "she" instead of "he" in about half the examples (as in "a user visits our home page. She might be annoyed when she has to wait for multiple seconds"). It works flawlessly and I find it much easier to read than "they" personally. I've talked to multiple people about content that I know includes that and nobody mentioned it in a negative way (but two people liked it).

ThrowawayR2 8y ago

The hole in your argument is that applies to anyone outside of the mainstream: goths (ones who dress up in their daily lives), furries, or viewpoints well beyond. Do we have empathy for all of them, no matter how extreme, or is there some limit at which we are allowed to say "This is where our empathy ends"? Can we say, for example, that a furry is less deserving of empathy than a LGBTQ individual? And if so, then why?

cjslep 8y ago
The hole in your argument is that it is trying to generalize my opinion as if it were some sort of Kantian categorical imperative, to then twist my words to mean an extreme form of what I am proposing: that everyone must have their extreme wishes honored because "empathy" and who am I to stop a cannibal from eating me? I am talking about using pronoun words. That's it! I'm not here to discuss my deeply personal world view philosophy. I am simply trying to show how gendered pronoun misuse sucks and is really easy to fix. No ulterior motives. I am not open to the very common internet trope of "criticize by reducto ad absurdum with no alternative proposal". It's an online game of faux intellectualism I abhor and refuse to play. I prefer it staying on Reddit and not leaking here.
- AlexB138 8y ago
  I think this sort of response is really unfortunate. I don't think their reply was at all out of order, they simply extended your argument, and I would have very much liked to read a genuine reply.
  - cjslep 8y ago
    Mine is a genuine reply. The fact you think not is very hurtful. Not every single thing people vouch for is meant to be taken to a philosophical extreme and evaluated at boundary conditions to check for contradictions. I don't view it as "an extension" of my argument because it's not my place to defend it. I didn't come up with it. It's not my argument. It's not theirs either. They aren't defending the goths and furries. Neither one of us have a stake in the matter. It's a waste of everyone's time. I'm not a follower of Kant's second formulation of the categorical imperative. Please don't take the arguments I say and extend them to an extreme degree and evaluate at boundary conditions just to prove that yes, my philosophy must have contradictions at the fringes, thus my moral framework is flawed and not the right one. I'm not a follower of utilitarianism. Please don't take the arguments I say and take an assumed utility function and declare that it also evaluates to "eat poor people to solve world hunger and overpopulation" just to illustrate that my philosophical view must be a cold and heartless one at the fringes, thus my moral framework is flawed and not the right one. When it comes to moral philosophy, once can't be too rigid in following this practice, otherwise you wind up in a boring absolutist-nihilism or a boring absolutist-relativism world. The depressing fact is that we are all hypocritical creatures, the real "living" (in my view) in life is each of us coming to terms with that. The world is full of color, where people apply different moral frameworks for different kinds of problems. Using the extreme fringes of moral philosophy to evaluate more mundane problems of morality is not the only line of ethical reasoning. Edited to add: So this is why I don't engage in these kinds of online discussions anymore where someone extends my argument without my input and now I am expected to defend it. I fundamentally view them as a different and unproductive kind of discussion that doesn't lead to insightful reasoning. I used to engaging on the internet in this way, but it's taken me about a decade to fully realize the relative unproductiveness of it all.