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Ask HN: After Slate Star Codex, where are the nuanced discussions?

253 points by iamdamian 6y ago

Hi Hacker News, We see a lot of nuance in Hacker News discussions, thanks to how the community has shaped up and to the tireless efforts of our moderators. And I want that level of discussion elsewhere, too. (Hacker News isn't the right place for every discussion, given its focus on tech.) In particular, the recent takedown of Slate Star Codex has me thinking about nuance and truth, and how little space there is for it in online discussions today. Without getting into any specific politics here, which platforms do you go to for nuanced, rational discussions? And, more broadly, how can we (as technologists) foster that sort of collegiate culture online, given the global scope of the Internet, the permanence of anything we post, and the inherent anonymity of the Internet stack. I have a strong desire right now to 1) be a part of and reinforce existing communities with this ethos and 2) advocate for technology and culture that could make this the norm.

happytoexplain 6y ago

Calling the hatred, gleeful love of violence, racism, and misogyny that characterises Voat "hard right" is a disservice to the right. And implying there is an equally awful and opposite thing on the left, and that Reddit will become it, is unrealistic. So their content rules are too strict - that's not an abominable evil.

nindalf 6y ago
We are so used to viewing the world in binary that we need to find binary systems even when they don't exist. GP is one example of this - Voat is a cesspool of hate, the users mostly lean right. Therefore there has to be a counterpart on the left. Second example - Even though non-partisan metrics show that the Republican party have become more extreme with time, the need to be "neutral" makes it impossible to recognise that. Our need for binary means that we have to consider both sides as mirror images of each other even if they might not be. This video explains more - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mICxKmCjF-4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mICxKmCjF-4
- JohnBooty 6y ago
  Even though non-partisan metrics show that the Republican party have become more extreme with time, the need to be "neutral" makes it impossible to recognise that. Yes. Most of us generally have some sort of impulse to build consensus and seek some sort of middle ground. It's just a foundational aspect of social animals in general, I believe. That breaks down when you throw bad actors -- either because they are intentionally behaving in antisocial ways, or because they are profoundly detached from reality -- into the mix. For an example of the former, our impulse for consensus-building and compromise doesn't work if your buddy says "let's go murder ten people for no reason." It would not be a sane compromise to murder five people, or perhaps find ten people and beat them precisely halfway to death. For an example of the latter, there can be no compromise with certain pseudoscience beliefs. We can't compromise with flat-earthers and agree that the earth maybe is sort of an oblong, oval shape halfway between a sphere and a disk.
  - imperfect_blue 6y ago
    But we can in fact have a conversation about whether we should murder 10 people for no reason, it might even make an interesting discussion on ethics and moral philosophy. We can agree to conduct adversarial studies with flat-earthers and examine the evidence together. All of this is possible as long as everyone is discussing in good faith and open to the possibility that they might be wrong. That should be the only requirement, rather than fixed boundaries for what's acceptable to discuss.
    - happytoexplain 6y ago
      >we can in fact have a conversation about whether we should murder 10 people for no reason >interesting discussion on ethics and moral philosophy >as long as everyone is discussing in good faith The parent didn't mean "as a hypothetical", e.g. in a "would you rather" way. They are referring to somebody who is actually a proponent of the killing, in which case it is impossible, or at least moot, for that person to be arguing "in good faith". This seems obvious to me, so maybe I'm missing something else you're trying to say.
      - imperfect_blue 6y ago
        I interpreted the parent to that assume his hypothetical individual is advocating for the murder of some people for what they believes to be good reasons, since nobody short of the mentally ill will actually ask for random people to be killed for literally no reason. I can list 10 people that the world would be better without — the likes of Kim Jong-un and Ayman al-Zawahiri. That's not too different from wishing for their death. Plausibly we can discuss whether it's a good idea for them to be assassinated, and whether the power vacuum would just cause another worse despot to replace them. So it seems quite conceivable to me that a discussion could be had about the reasons, feasibility, ethics or geopolitical implications, or about why they believe that someone does or does not deserve killing.
        JohnBooty 6y ago
        There could certainly be many scenarios where killing somebody might make ethical sense - self defense, the "Trolley problem", etc. I meant to describe a situation decidedly not of that nature. Imagine our friend wants to kill ten people for no remotely defensible reason. Perhaps our hypothetically murderous friend is high on hypothetical PCP and is clearly suffering some kind of psychotic breakdown.
        imperfect_blue 6y ago
        ...then it's great that at least they're talking about it on some forum, giving us a chance to persuade them otherwise and to call the police. If we didn't have such a forum, they might already have started their murder spree.
  - slavik81 6y ago
    > We can't compromise with flat-earthers and agree that the earth maybe is sort of an oblong, oval shape halfway between a sphere and a disk. This is kind of amusing, as "an oblong, oval shape" describes a more accurate model of the Earth: an ellipsoid. The Earth is ~1/300th of the way between a sphere and a disk.
  - deleted 6y ago
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AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> And implying there is an equally awful and opposite thing on the left, and that Reddit will become it, is unrealistic. It isn't an opposite ideology, it's just the same violence and hatred but against the opposite tribe. It's tribalism. Whether reddit becomes it remains to be seen, but censorship has a strong tendency to produce extremism, because it's a ratchet. It shifts the composition of the population, which shifts what's considered extreme enough to be censored, which shifts the composition of the population, and so on. I hesitate to post this because it's almost a cliche at this point, and because in the original context the method of censorship was obviously different, but it still seems relevant enough to the point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...

IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago

I agree in regards to cynicism/fatalism, but I fear everyone's cynicism is someone else's obvious ill-that-must-be-named. For example, I consider the relentless attacks on "mainstream journalism" coming from tech people to be repetitive, superficial, ignorant of history (journalism today is leagues ahead of the past), and misguided (phonebook-style "just the facts" neutrality is neither possible nor has it ever been the goal). The same goes for "every politician is corrupt", etc. But I can sort-off see that, to someone with the unfortunate flaw to wrongly entertain believes different from mine, my insistence to criticise every new low of the current US administration, might, in a certain light, also subjectively feel like tired, repetitive cynicism. That's a logical paradox and it has its roots in our discourse no longer being grounded in a shared, objective reality.

squiggleblaz 6y ago
> misguided (phonebook-style "just the facts" neutrality is neither possible nor has it ever been the goal) > That's a logical paradox and it has its roots in our discourse no longer being grounded in a shared, objective reality. Don't you contradict yourself? (Nb. I don't know anything about SSC. But I also think some kind of curated discussion is doomed to failure; although it may be interesting to its subscribers, it will never make a dent what is generally read and contributed to. Even if it is moderately successful, those who say "social media discussions are terrible" will continue to say "social media discussions are terrible", since those who want to use Twitter will continue to use Twitter, and that will always be more than those who use Curato. Just for the simple reason that people want to contribute. Probably split agreement/quality moderation is desirable and then crafting individual feeds so that you see quality posts you will probably disagree with more so than low-quality posts that you will probably disagree with. Threaded forums like HN also seem to get better contributions than person-based social media.)

a-nikolaev 6y ago
I think, if anything, deleting the blog only raised the stakes. It definitely increased the publicity of the blog and the interest of the general audience to read his writing, which is still readily available through Internet Archive, and NYT can link it in their article. Far from becoming an irrelevancy. Also the more drama, the more interest NYT will have to publish a piece on it. So, his explanation that no blog = no story does not convince me. This is why I think that his action had a different goal, if he was rational in it. (Well, I think, his real goal was to make it maximally public, and make his followers and bystanders to go mobbing against NYT, or something like that.)
- scarmig 6y ago
  It's unclear to me what the best course of action for him actually was, given the Streisand effect. I tend toward thinking that taking down the blog was an emotional outburst at the NYT not respecting his request, and that he could have probably gotten a good outcome, both for his community and real career, if he accepted the press and maybe tried to negotiate the use of his real name down to a single instance, e.g. Scott Alexander, born Scott Alexander Scott. But I see it more as a fit of pique than anything else, not an intentioned effort to cause an internet freakout.
  - a-nikolaev 6y ago
    Yeah, I agree with you, I think.
- ShorsHammer 6y ago
  I was originally quite supportive of the choice made but it really has a smell after some reflection. He seems quite open on twitter in front of 50k followers about his real name. His twitter bio: Scott Alexander @slatestarcodex 54.5K Followers I have a place where I say complicated things about philosophy and science. That place is my blog. This is where I make terrible puns. https://twitter.com/slatestarcodex https://twitter.com/slatestarcodex
  - Ghjklov 6y ago
    That's not his full name. IIRC Scott Alexander is just his first and middle name or something, and the journalist was going to lay out his full name for everyone to know.
  - Smaug123 6y ago
    Even if he did broadcast his full name regularly on @slatestarcodex (which he doesn't), the main problem is in the other direction, as he and others have repeatedly noted. The worry is that people (i.e. patients) can go from Scott LastName to SlateStarCodex, not the other way round.
  - fredoliveira 6y ago
    You clearly didn't (and probably should) read his post explaining why he took the blog down. It literally says right there, that Scott Alexander is part of his name, but that the NYT would expose his _full name_ instead.

lvs 6y ago
Yes, and I believe that's consistent with my point. It generally fits your bias, so in your view the range of discussion seems comfortable and optimal. That's precisely what I'm saying. So, for example, I could make an anticapitalist statement, or say something about how I don't think Paul Graham (or some other HN prophet) has ever uttered a philosophically novel or interesting idea, and I'd be downvoted to hell because dissent on those topics is verboten.
- iamdamian 6y ago
  That may be true (although there may be a constructive way of phrasing an idea such that that doesn't happen, I don't know), but I don't think anyone would try to doxx you or have you fired for saying so. Do you agree?
  - lvs 6y ago
    That seems like a reasonable threshold? I should feel like this is a forum for nuanced discussion so long as nobody seeks to harm me personally? I hadn't even thought of that, but now that you raise it, I think I'll sign off.
    - iamdamian 6y ago
      I didn't intend to say that it's a reasonable threshold. I think of it more like Maslow's hierarchy, and IMO Hacker News is significantly higher than, say, Twitter.
- amanaplanacanal 6y ago
  So the worst thing that might happen if people disagree with you is that you get downvotes? This doesn’t seem terrible to me. If the mods banned you for saying those things, maybe I would agree with you, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. It sounds like you are looking for a forum without a voting mechanism.
  - lvs 6y ago
    Yes, perhaps that's part of the fatal flaw here, aside from the disagreeable people. But I have indeed had comments removed by a moderator that were nothing more sinister than dissent.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  agreed on the anti-capitalist part but to the credit of HN the last time I commented on something related to Paul Graham I think I wrote a pretty harsh comment (IIRC it was about haters) and people weren't downvoting and the entire thread in fact was pretty dismissive of it, because it honestly was a pretty bad piece in an awful tone. It's somewhat better here than say, on an average subreddit.
- kortilla 6y ago
  You would be downvoted because you wouldn’t be saying anything of value. I don’t care at all about pg and I care even less if an armchair philosopher who doesn’t like capitalism doesn’t like YC or it’s founder (shocker!).
  - lvs 6y ago
    Thanks for making my point.

scarmig 6y ago

I'm curious about the exact mechanism for this. Is it typically a single short-duration event that has lasting effects that destroys the community (e.g. a news article that drives traffic 100x what's normal to the site)? A permanent change in the environment (eternal September)? Or just the steady, accelerating accretion of new members, which at some point overwhelms the ability of the community to incorporate them to existing norms? Or is it more that once a community gets to a certain size, it's subject to a kind of broadcast storm? I wonder if a technical solution could mitigate against those risks. You could limit the number of public access tokens that can be issued at any one time, and have strategies in place to allow more long-lived tokens and registration for regular visitors.

brianyu8 6y ago
lobste.rs is a site similar to HN where users must be invited by another user and the public tree of invites is kept as a sort of reputation map. Might be similar to what you’re envisioning.
- Siira 6y ago
  Yet I do not see an observable effect in their quality ...
sillysaurusx 6y ago
I’ve been on HN since it was around 500 active users. Probably earlier than that. Quality decreased as numbers increased. Pg spent much time worrying about this. Ultimately bookface is where the interesting discussions are now, I would imagine. Not that HN isn’t interesting — it is — but it’s different than it was. I think few people would argue the opposite (partly because there are few people left from those early days). It’s no coincidence that you have to be a founder to access bookface. One YC founder commented with surprise when he saw me on HN, saying it looked exactly like bookface. Presumably he spends his time there and not here.
- michaelt 6y ago
  There's something ironic about a forum closing down because the author's pseudonymity was threatened, endangering his IRL business dealings; and as an alternative people talking about a forum you can only get into with specific IRL business dealings, and without pseudonymity...
imtringued 6y ago
Probably all of those. Small core group founds a community about X -> people who like X a lot join -> people with no prior experience with X join (X is cool now and they want to learn) -> people who care more about the community than about X join The problem is that the lowest common denominator keeps getting lower as you increase the size of the community. If you want a tight knit community then you need some kind of entrance criteria or at least ensure that new users are moderated (basically impossible with open registration).
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alexandercrohde 6y ago
I've heard this hypothesis that groups tend to go down in quality for this reason -- 1. Group has an average quality. 2. People who have a much higher quality tend to avoid the group (e.g. that discussion is fallacious) 3. People who have lower quality are incentivized to join the group. 4. Eventually, the best performers of the group have less incentive to stay in that community

schoen 6y ago

I'd seen this once before and then forgotten about it. Thanks for mentioning it here again! Are you aware of any kind of backlash, where non-parties to a letter exchange harshly criticize one or both participants, or your platform, for engaging in the exchange at all? One thing that I notice in your platform somehow is a sort of I-Thou dynamic (maybe just because people are addressing each other cordially, or even affectionately, in the second person?) and not an I-It ("look at that losery loser over there with the super-dumb beliefs!"). Surely that militates against tribalism -- and surely some people are mad that some of the conversations are happening at all? ("Why is this person/platform legitimizing this terrible person by having this letter exchange?" or something.) Are you afraid that you'll be tempted to refuse certain letter exchanges because their topics are too intense or too taboo somehow, or because you're not sure the participants are interacting in good faith? Are you sort of at peace with the prospect of having to make that judgment? How are people finding the platform and finding each other? Are you reaching out to them based on their prior reputations? Is someone suggesting your site to pairs of people who've been in social media fights, or seemed to be on the verge of them? Are people finding it themselves by word of mouth? How many of the participants do you think have some kind of celebrity or substantial following outside of your site? Do you think that makes things better or worse in some way? How do these exchanges compare to, say, a podcast video interview? (I did an SSC adversarial collaboration last year and my collaborator, and now friend, later interviewed me for his podcast, which felt like a pretty nice format too.)

DayneRathbone 6y ago
Thanks for your kind words and insightful questions, schoen. Are you aware of any kind of backlash, where non-parties to a letter exchange harshly criticize one or both participants, or your platform, for engaging in the exchange at all? Yes, on rare occasions. Helen Pluckrose and Kathleen Stock both experience a backlash on Twitter for participating in their dialogue on trans/gender issues. Interestingly, they both reported that the backlash was predominantly from their own audience/tribe. Neither of them were particularly bothered by it. A criticism I’ve heard with regards to the platform is that it appears to be aligned or associated with the Intellectual Dark Web. This is true to the extent that we strongly value free speech and good faith dialectic, but we don’t have loyalties to any particular group, and we welcome (and are actively trying to host) conversations with people from all sides of the ideological and political spectrum. One thing that I notice in your platform somehow is a sort of I-Thou dynamic… Surely that militates against tribalism” Thanks for noticing. We’ve put a lot of effort into nudging writers to engage in good faith. Little things seem to have a big effect. For example, the default text on the letter writing page is “Dear NAME,”. surely some people are mad that some of the conversations are happening at all? ("Why is this person/platform legitimizing this terrible person by having this letter exchange?" This hasn’t been a significant issue, but I’m sure we’ll see more of this as we grow. It’s not something we’re particularly worried about; my co-founders and I are happy to defend the primacy of free speech and the importance of dialogue. Are you afraid that you'll be tempted to refuse certain letter exchanges because their topics are too intense or too taboo somehow, No. In fact, we’ve actively worked to foster difficult conversations - https://www.impossibleconversations.info https://www.impossibleconversations.info ...or because you're not sure the participants are interacting in good faith? Are you sort of at peace with the prospect of having to make that judgment? We fully support writers' freedom of speech, and we do not censor content or ban users unless legally or ethically necessary (child porn, doxxing, fraud, and direct & credible threats of violence). If we’re convinced that a writer is acting in bad faith we’ll flag their account, and their content will only appear on their own profile. How are people finding the platform and finding each other? Are you reaching out to them based on their prior reputations? Is someone suggesting your site to pairs of people who've been in social media fights, or seemed to be on the verge of them? Are people finding it themselves by word of mouth? It’s a mix of all of these. When we launched, a little over a year ago, all of the conversations were initiated by me or someone on my team reaching out to writers. Now, the vast majority of our conversations happen organically: writers typically discover Letter via conversations shared to Twitter, and they invite other writers by starting conversations with them. We still do outreach, but limit our attention to high status writers. How many of the participants do you think have some kind of celebrity or substantial following outside of your site? Do you think that makes things better or worse in some way? The majority of our most popular writers have a following on Twitter, but our average writer doesn’t. Popular writers help with distribution, and the quality of their writing tends to be higher. As you might guess, there’s a strong correlation between the quality and expertise of a writer, and their popularity. How do these exchanges compare to, say, a podcast video interview? Good question. There are pros and cons to both formats. Audio is great because a lot of meaning is conveyed in tone, inflection, etc, and you often get a better sense of a speakers’ personality. The cons are that the conversation comes at you at the speed of mouth, and there’s a pressure to respond promptly. Podcast guests often feel a performative pressure, and they might misspeak, or convey an idea or argument less eloquently than they might’ve otherwise. Letter conversations, being asynchronous and written, provides writers the time to fully consider and understand their interlocutor’s position before responding, and enables them to present their best possible argument. I did an SSC adversarial collaboration last year and my collaborator, and now friend, later interviewed me for his podcast, which felt like a pretty nice format too. We’re currently exploring this format: a Letter conversation followed by a moderated, digital live event, which is live streamed and recorded. Our vision for Letter is to be the best place for conversation in any medium. FYI, two of our writers, Buster Benson and BJ Campbell used Letter to flesh out their SSC Adversarial Collaboration submission on gun policy: https://letter.wiki/conversation/129 https://letter.wiki/conversation/129 Edit: fixed formatting & typo
- tomjen3 6y ago
  Since you are the creator of the site, I just wanted to ask you to reconsider your position on anonymity. There are so many interesting ideas to be had, but bad actors could take quotes out of context and end up wiping out a twitter storm, or people could fear that this happens (or may happen, people have been canceled for things they said years ago) and so not use the site. Anonymity has a bad rep, so we could just consider it the Chatham house rule online - you could require a real name account but only show letters under pseudonym.

pjc50 6y ago

How are the interlocutors selected? The "gender critical" discussion, for example, contains Helen Pluckrose, one of the originators of the "grievance studies" paper, and Kathleen Stock, who got fired from being a philosophy professor for being anti-trans. Both of them take the anti-trans position.

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mst 6y ago
If you consider Helen Pluckrose to be anti-trans, I worry that means you haven't actually read any of her writing on trans people, and rather only heard her opinions filtered through her very vocal and vitriolic critics from the critical theory swathe of twitter - and I certainly doubt you've seen the vast amount of vitriol thrown at her on a regular basis by gender crits either. I'm not going to link any of the vitriol because it's mindless and horrible, but she gets called "a traitor to women" and told she wants her daughter to be raped on a fairly regular basis by such people. To understand Helen's actual position, I recommend people read this: https://areomagazine.com/2017/09/27/an-argument-for-a-liberal-and-rational-approach-to-transgender-rights-and-inclusion/ https://areomagazine.com/2017/09/27/an-argument-for-a-libera... It's somewhat long and somewhat nuanced, which means most extreme activists at both ends of the argument hate it, but I'd claim that it is, overall, very much more pro-trans than otherwise and the majority of trans people I'm aware of who've read it came away with the same impression.
- damnyou 6y ago
  That's a shockingly ignorant article, particularly when it comes to nonbinary people — it even uses "transtrenders" to try and separate the good, gender-conforming trans people from those icky blue-haired weirdos. Thank you for confirming that Pluckrose is in fact deeply transphobic. If you think that is "nuanced" you are seriously mistaken. Consider re-evaluating your priors, in SSC speak.
  - mst 6y ago
    The complete failure to understand enbies is, indeed, unfortunate. I stand by my estimate that it gets a lot more right than it gets wrong, however. My priors are based on conversations with a bunch of trans people; a mere assertion of "shocking ignorance" and "transphobia" largely leaves me thinking that you're so certain of your correctness you don't believe arguments need to even be made, which is not a position I can really rebut. However, I shared the article, unfortunate parts and all, such that people can draw their own conclusions, and I'd continue to invite people to read and decide for themselves.
    - damnyou 6y ago
      It is not just "unfortunate", it betrays their actual views, which is that we should be ready to sacrifice people's lives on the altar of patriarchal gender norms. A lot of the more polite bigots will be comfortable making concessions to the trans people who conform to patriarchal roles (and hey, good on Pluckrose for being slightly less bad than charlatans like Stock) but will have knives out for anyone whose existence challenges them. This is a problem. The only way to true gender liberation is through abolishing the patriarchy.
      - mst 6y ago
        > It is not just "unfortunate", it betrays their actual views, which is that we should be ready to sacrifice people's lives on the altar of patriarchal gender norms. Helen is hardly gender role essentialist and in fact quite substantially non-conforming to many female gender norms and visibly proud to be her. To assume that her failure (as of the time of writing, at least) to comprehend non-binary identities "betrays" anything except a lack of comprehension is ... unfounded, at best.
        damnyou 6y ago
        The entire idea of "transtrenders" is a made up one designed to perpetuate oppressive gender roles and work against solidarity within the trans community. The fact that she takes it seriously is pretty goddamn founded, as far as evidence goes.
        mst 6y ago
        Not precisely true. IIRC it first came about during one of the iterations of the tumblr trans wars to describe people who identified as things like "AFAB demigirl" and kept claiming that people who wanted to medically transition "just wanted to be able to pretend they were cis" and therefore "weren't really trans", which understandably went down about as well as a shart in a spacesuit with the people with severe physical dysphoria. There was a stupendous amount of circular firing squad style stupidity to go around back in those days.
Veen 6y ago
This comment would appear to be a paradigmatic example of non-nuanced. Neither of those people is anti-trans except according to a narrowly doctrinaire definition. Pluckrose is a left-liberal who writes against critical theory and identity politics from a universalist liberal perspective. She has repeatedly written in defense of trans and gay rights, although she does not believe that "trans women can be accepted straightforwardly as women in every situation". Stock is a feminist philosopher who regards gender self-identity as potentially harmful to the interests of women. Both of these are reasonable and nuanced positions that can't be adequately summarized as "anti-trans" whether or not you agree with them.
- pjc50 6y ago
  So where's the trans person in the discussion, or would a trans person be non-nuanced by definition?
  - Veen 6y ago
    I don't know how to respond to this: I have not said anything that would support either horn of the dilemma you have so cleverly tried to trap me in.
  - mst 6y ago
    If you can think of a trans person who would be interested in having such a discussion with Stock, letter.wiki doesn't gatekeep signups.
    - newacct583 6y ago
      The question isn't whether or not a representative discussion "could" be held, it's whether it happens or not. Letter was held up as an example of nuanced discussion, the specific example given was one-sided.
      - mst 6y ago
        No justification of it being one-sided has actually been given, merely assertions of that. The conversation in question was, in fact, an expansion of an extended disagreement on twitter that got derailed by a bunch of gendercrits deciding to scream at Helen until she had to lock her account. If you're curious as to the actual conversation, I'd suggest reading it on letter for yourself.
DayneRathbone 6y ago
Letter is open and free for anyone to use, and writers typically choose their own interlocutors.

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
We've never had a truly open agora. That's very much the point. But it's also a distraction, because the Englightenment idea that politics somehow operates on the basis of disinterested rational persuasion and public debate is clearly nonsense. Politics operates on the basis of applied force and leverage between competing interests. The terrible thing about cancel culture is that it makes this explicit. Groups who are not usually allowed political leverage suddenly act as if they're no longer willing to stay in their usual place of political impotence. This isn't entirely a good thing, for various reasons, most of which will be familiar. It also isn't an entirely bad one. But it is unarguably a reminder of how power dynamics really work in this culture, as opposed to the rather self-congratulatory narrative of how we're supposed to believe power dynamics work. It's also a reminder of what happens when political and business leaders ignore the rule of law and basic standards of representational social justice. Cancel culture and wokeness wouldn't be necessary - and wouldn't even be happening - if there was a general sense that the culture was fundamentally ethical. Of course it isn't. Given that, there's no need to feel surprised that pushback is happening.
- pjc50 6y ago
  This is an excellent comment from somebody who understands Hobbes :) > It's also a reminder of what happens when political and business leaders ignore the rule of law and basic standards of representational social justice. Cancel culture and wokeness wouldn't be necessary - and wouldn't even be happening - if there was a general sense that the culture was fundamentally ethical. Exactly. #metoo exists because reporting sexual assault to employers or the police is often ineffective, so the only resort is the court of public opinion. "Black lives matter" exists because of a number of incidents where a black life was lost and no consequences attached to those responsible nor was any attempt made to prevent it happening again.
- prepend 6y ago
  > Englightenment idea that politics somehow operates on the basis of disinterested rational persuasion and public debate is clearly nonsense. This is the ideal to work toward than a law. The enlightenment has helped us progress toward this so politics isnt just a wrestling match with divine rule forever after.
- deleted 6y ago
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pjc50 6y ago
I would like you to define what you're against in more detail here. There are also things much worse than mere "cancellation" going on; murder and deportation, for example. We don't normally have to say we're against "murder culture", but somehow there are hugely controversial street protests against it.
- radu_floricica 6y ago
  > I would like you to define what you're against in more detail here. Among other things, I'm really irritated by the pattern of forcing the conversation partner to properly define his position (likely to be able to poke holes in it) while your original position is floating on air and walking on clouds. You original comment says absolutely nothing, to the point there's a long thread in the subsequent conversation on what you're actually advocating. This happens often enough to be a pattern, and one I keep associating with things I don't like. (well, you asked). For the record, I did take a quick peel in your comment history and I definitely, emphatically, don't dislike you as a person. Which I guess makes it easier to take swings at this ideology. And to be a bit more ontopic, I'm against cancel culture, aka the idea that one of the first tools in our toolset to reach for is some form of silencing people (forcefully, by shaming, by deplatforming and so on). It can be a tool in the toolset and as it happens there was a use-case I agreed with this very winter - my local government closed down a few denialist websites early in the pandemic. But that's pretty much the level I see necessary to get as far as silencing or punishing speech - spreading wrong information in a national emergency situation, or falsely yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. Anything less should be solved with other tools, even if it's much more difficult. To me, seeing cancel culture used to solve day to day problems shocks me just as much as seeing somebody use an angle grinder in the kitchen. They can keep telling me all day how much faster it is at cutting, it's still an idiotic idea, to the point I actually have to think for a minute before saying why. Except for the obvious "you're definitely going to cut something you don't want, sooner or later". Which applies to our conversation as well.

Veen 6y ago

> how much of this nuance is achieved by having discussions about issues which have real life-or-death impacts on people but without having any of those people inconveniently present I find this comment difficult to understand. On an uncharitable reading, you would seem to be implying that non-white people are incapable of nuanced discussion about race, which I'm sure isn't what you meant. Or are you saying that what we take to be nuanced discussions about race are only considered nuanced because there are no non-white people? Or that it is impossible for white people to have a nuanced discussion about race unless there are black people present?

brnt 6y ago
While not impossible, discussion on problems as they play out in practice rather than in theory (in theory we don't have racism after all), we tend to not have statistics or not the right statistics (we're not measuring the things that would show the issue). Then, the best way to be informed is first hand accounts, which white people naturally wont have. First hand accounts serve as a ground truth when statistics are insufficient, and as such, I don't see how you can have a very informed exchange without them. Now you may read up on those account, but far more often than not, I see white people point to the absence of racism in a statistic and take it as proof it does not exist, or is so uncommon it doesn't show up. That is the problem that is avoided when including (people who telling their) first hand accounts.
- pjc50 6y ago
  > in theory we don't have racism after all I boggle at what description of "in theory" this could conform to, other than simply defining it out of existence.
  - brnt 6y ago
    In the legal sense I meant (it is not allowed). And very few people are intentionally of consciously discriminating. I wanted to contrast that to practice: human features that gatekeep people of color and so on. Hope its clear now.
    - pjc50 6y ago
      Today's twitter row is the "cancellation" of a history broadcaster for using the phrase "so many damn blacks" in a video, which is probably not a criminal offence Mark Meechan notwithstanding, but is definitely unambiguously racism. Employment discrimination and the set of things covered by equalities law is the _beginning_ of tackling racism, not the end.
      - brnt 6y ago
        Yet it is my experience that many whites think the law forbidding it is the end of the problem. Which is the issue I was trying to raise.
- toyg 6y ago
  > I see white people point to the absence of racism in a statistic and take it as proof it does not exist I agree, and often I see it the other way around, with statistics used as the basis to build a racist discourse. The classic example is prison population statistics, and the even more classic one is Lombroso. Plus, it's not like white people don't rely on personal experience and prejudices. There are psychological mechanisms to isolate "otherness" out of people you witness as "bad", you will just use the easiest one to pinpoint. So if you witness a bad guy who is white but from another town, you'll form a prejudice against people from the other town; if the guy is black, the prejudice will "scale up" to skin tone. The only way to offset that problem is to ensure everyone in the room comes from significantly different experiences and can somehow balance them out.
pjc50 6y ago
"Nuanced" is a description of tone; it says nothing about how well informed the participants are. Someone who comes in saying "I am part of this group, and you're completely misrepresenting me" is not nuanced.
- Veen 6y ago
  Perhaps our misunderstanding is just one of definition then. I understood nuance to mean something like this from Merriam-Webster: "sensibility to, awareness of, or ability to express delicate shadings (as of meaning, feeling, or value)". A nuanced discussion according to that definition would be one that takes into account the various complexities and positions involved in a topic, rather than papering over them with political rhetoric, partiality, or fallacious reasoning.
  - JohnBooty 6y ago
    "Nuanced" can refer to understanding or tone. For example, I can have a nuanced understanding of how fire works, the fire code in my area, and so on. But I'm not going to be very "nuanced" when I'm trapped in a burning building and screaming for help because I'm about to burn to death. Both meanings are relevant here. To the parent poster's point... Certainly, nuanced discussion is in general a good thing. We want that understanding, that openness to new ideas, the understanding of others' perspectives, the acknowledgement of complexity, the reliance upon facts and not rhetoric or emotion. However, an insistence on nuanced discussion necessarily excludes folks who do not have the luxury of nuance. If I am trapped in a burning building, I would not have the luxury of nuance. Folks being rounded up for transport to concentration camps do not have the luxury of nuance. A person being stalked by a jealous ex-lover with a history of violence does not have the luxury of nuance. So if we exclude those whose tone lacks nuance, we also tend to exclude those with a truly nuanced understanding of the issue at hand.
    - Veen 6y ago
      I wouldn't advocate holding any sort of discussion in a burning building or when exigent circumstances demand urgent action. Pausing for a chat while people are, at that moment and in that place, being "rounded up for transport to concentration camps" seems irresponsible. If someone interrupted a conversation to tell me they were having a heart attack, I wouldn't tell them off for lacking nuance. But conversations don't take place in those circumstances. Those circumstances stop conversations, which can only take place when people have the space to talk or write, making and critiquing arguments, and so on. To return to my original point: there seems to be an underlying worry that the people we should be listening to about race, who should be part of those conversations, are incapable of nuanced conversation, either nuance of tone or nuance of content, which strikes me as deeply patronizing and nakedly racist. Either that or it's an attempt to shut down conversation in case the "nuance" tends to show one party's arguments to be false.
Blahah 6y ago
I am pretty sure that the last of your interpretations is closest to the truth, and it is really clear exactly what the parent is saying: people who are directly affected by or involved in the issue under discussion should be involved in the discussion of the issue. A room full of rich white people discussing problems affecting poor people of colour is doomed to fail to capture the nuance of the situation. Not because white people are inherently too stupid to understand things, but because nobody can completely understand and articulate someone else's lived experience. It's not like this is a new or mind-blowing idea - representation is a key tenet of democracy, and should cover all the ways of segmenting society that are clearly differentiating.
- radu_floricica 6y ago
  Uh. Excuse me. <foreigner raises hand>. How is 95% of the globe population supposed to discuss black people in America? Are we just simply not allowed to? And to take the reductio ad absurdum even further - do we move towards a society where you need a token black person to be able to discuss certain subjects? Because, statistically, there's going to be quite a lot of rooms without one. Like I said in another comment, this is a hell of an Isolated Demand for Rigor. We don't use this kind of strict standard for absolutely anything else. People cook without being chefs, raise children without diplomas in parenting, and make travel plans without a travel rep by their shoulder. But apparently certain subjects can't even be discussed without a representative? > It's not like this is a new or mind-blowing idea - representation is a key tenet of democracy, and should cover all the ways of segmenting society that are clearly differentiating. Actually, this is a very new and mind blowing idea. In two ways. First, "all the ways of segmenting a society" part is new, and I can't help but notice that the people doing the gerrymandering... sorry, I meant deciding which segments are clearly differentiating are having a hell of an advantage. Speaking of, I'm going to say that being an introvert is a pretty big thing, and I really don't feel my needs are properly represented in politics. And second, the idea that we need to take the kind of rules made for governing and apply them to citizen's everyday life. This is not a normal extension - it's a reversal. Rules made for governing have the very important purpose of curtailing the power of those in power, so that we, the citizens, have more freedom.

roenxi 6y ago

I'll throw out a perspective in opposition: Anyone can assess evidence. Opinions formed after a best-as-you-can assessment of the evidence are better than the alternatives. A group of black people are perfectly capable of empathising with, understanding and having a nuanced opinion of the concerns of disabled people. Swap adjectives around as you like. This is because everybody has the ability to weigh evidence. Opinions formed on things that aren't evidence based are exceptionally bad ideas, so I'm more than happy for them to fall by the wayside. I'm not talking peer reviewed evidence, but the ordinary stuff where there is reason to believe something is true and it has to passes all or at least most tests of authenticity that are thrown at it. To have a nuanced discussion of politics, pushing partisans out of the room or at least quietening them down is the first step. "An X needs to be in the room to discuss topics related to X" is fair and necessary for decision making but not at all required for nuanced discussion.

newacct583 6y ago
> To have a nuanced discussion of politics, pushing partisans out of the room or at least quietening them down is the first step. There's the fallacy though. How do you tell the difference between "pushing partisans out the room" and "pushing one side out of the room"? They have the same effect. A 100% "partisan" discussion looks calm and "nuanced" if no one is there to disagree. You say you want a nuanced discussion, but how do you know you're not just sitting in an echo chamber?
- ryukafalz 6y ago
  Here's how you tell, I think. If you're in a room with partisans from opposite sides, more often than not they'll be shouting over each other and not really having a discussion. If you're in an echo chamber, you'll find that generally everyone is agreeing with you. If you're in a room without partisans and you're not in an echo chamber, you can have a discussion, some people will disagree with you on pretty major issues, and you may even change your mind, at least to some degree. These are wonderful spaces to be in.
  - newacct583 6y ago
    And again, I think you're just fooling yourself. The people you label as "partisans" are not a representative sample. What you're really doing, whether you realize it or not, is pushing out, not the people who "disagree most strongly", but the people who "disagree most strongly with you". Those people in the wonderful spaces who disagree with you on pretty major issues and cause you to change your mind to some degree? Those are just the people you're willing to listen to.
    - ryukafalz 6y ago
      I don't think I agree. I'm perfectly willing to have conversations with people who disagree strongly with me, if they're actually willing to have a conversation. The people I'm labeling as "partisans" are those who bash others with opposing views (or even views that are similar but not identical to their own) rather than having a conversation. Debate the idea, not the person; be charitable in your interpretation; etc. Which is not to say that every space needs to be like this; disagreements are exhausting after all. But I think there need to be spaces where this kind of reasoned discussion is the norm if we're ever going to escape the tribalism in our society. You're right in one sense: the people who disagree with me that communication and building bridges with people you disagree with is something to be valued... those people I'm pushing out, yes.
      - newacct583 6y ago
        And again, because I don't think you're getting the point, I argue you're assessment of "communication and building bridges" and and "bashing rather than having a conversation" are fundamentally subjective. You routinely forgive passionate and edgy behavior by people who agree with you, where you view the same kind of debate from your enemies as "partisan". I don't need to find examples, I know this is true for you because it's true for everyone. And that adds up. So, fine, you sincerely want a forum for dispassionate debate. But it doesn't work. You end up driving away the actually diverse viewpoints and your forum ends up an echo chamber. And it's worse than that: it's an echo chamber you think is telling you how the world works. So you get forums like the letters.wiki site being discussed elsewhere, which is filled with sincere and high-minded discussion from minds drawn from (heh) across the spectrum from "center-left technocrat" to "right-leaning libertarian".
        ryukafalz 6y ago
        >You routinely forgive passionate and edgy behavior by people who agree with you Yes, I am guilty of this at times. I would hope and expect to be called out for it in such spaces. >I argue you're assessment of "communication and building bridges" and and "bashing rather than having a conversation" are fundamentally subjective No, I disagree. If someone comes into a discussion space and dismisses someone else's points by simply calling them a (libtard|fascist|fraud), that's just a textbook ad hominem attack. This is objectively decidable - the person is not engaging with the contents of the other person's view, but is rather attacking the speaker themselves. This is one example, but there are others: threats and other forms of verbal abuse, for example. They're pretty evident to anyone who's not emotionally involved in the conversation. I would like to keep all of this behavior out of such spaces, and I think it's possible to build a culture that discourages it. I would ask you this: what's the alternative? Simply accept the vitriol between opposing sides of our political arguments and give up on any hope of connecting with people with significantly differing views? (In the US) we have a two-party political system, should we just accept the endless back-and-forth power struggle between the two sides? We all have a vote, and if we can't reach across the aisle to those we disagree with, how can we ever hope to make progress?
JohnBooty 6y ago
Opinions formed after a best-as-you-can assessment of the evidence are better than the alternatives. Sure, agreed. A group of black people are perfectly capable of empathising with, understanding and having a nuanced opinion of the concerns of disabled people. Swap adjectives around as you like Absolutely not. Nobody will have as much evidence on the experiences of a group as those within the group. Have you ever worked closely with disabled folks? Been one? Had them in your home? As somebody with minor disabilities myself, it is absolutely humbling when my friend with different disabilities visits, because various things in my home and the surrounding environs affect her in ways that I could not imagine without her help. Am I discussing anecdota, rather than hard evidence? Certainly, but most of the truly hard decisions in the world are not the sort that lend themselves to purely evidence-based approaches. There is no conclusive study or collection of studies that can, for example, tell us how to resolve the Israel/Palestine matter, whether allowing women to abort their pregnancies is a good idea, etc. We can not establish proper control groups, etc, to study these issues. Much purported "evidence" is biased. We need to lean on the evidence as much as possible, but there is also no substitute for the voices belonging to those being discussed.
- radu_floricica 6y ago
  There is a post on SSC about Isolated Demand for Rigor which, well, I can't link you to because it's down. But I think it is relevant to many points made in this conversation. Is it better to have representation when making policy decisions? Pretty much everybody is saying yes. And somehow, this "yes" gets interpreted as "can't have an opinion on any topic as long as I'm not part of a certain group". That's identity politics taken to the extreme. I'm going to put common sense on the table and say that yes, I can have opinions on various topics. Including, among many others, disabled people. Are my opinions equally valid, given that I'm not part of that group? And here we start to see how things get confused - because absolutely nobody deigns to give a definition of "valid". Are my opinions correct? good? useful? - that's damn easy to judge, comparatively. But "valid"? Hell, I could have the best damn idea in the whole wide world, and it still wouldn't make it "valid" - in the climate we're moving towards. Are opinions of people not of that group, on average, equally good as those in the group? That's a completely different question, and now the isolated demand for rigor becomes clear: we move from a statistical bias to being allowed to do something. Being less likely to be right is not a criteria for being allowed in the public discourse. Nor should it be.

bobthechef 6y ago

> without having any of those people inconveniently present? Actually, the very presence of the people involved can actually be counterproductive because of personal emotional investment, so it depends on circumstances. > it's an academic exercise to those involved, not something with real impact on their lives. A benefit of academia, even if it often fails to keep to this standard, is that it provides a setting for dispassionate discourse. And you can be sure that it has affects. If you want to see what society will look like in 20 years, look no further to what students are being taught at universities today. -- It is my general observation that what some people call "dialogue" actually amounts to surreptitious coercion. You mention having a trans person present at the table. However, if you're a psychologist and you're characterizing mental disorders like gender dysphoria, you don't invite a trans person to the table as an equal with whom you're going to come to some compromise pleasing to both (in practice, pleasing to the trans person). This is not political negotiation, it's an attempt at knowing the truth. Sadly, we've made truth a kind of "what's the narrative we can all agree on" (in practice, "that the loudest bully is willing to accept"[0]). Conversation is ultimately about trying to get to the truth. By bringing the trans person to the table as an equal and not as a patient presumes the legitimacy of trans beliefs which are precisely that which is at issue. If someone, trans or not, wishes to make arguments in favor of their position, by all means, but one's, shall we say, identity does not take the place of reasoned argument. [0] This is what happened with the DSM and same-sex attraction. There was no reasoned debate, only political coercion and acquiescence.

toyg 6y ago
The problem is that you assume there is such thing as an objective truth that can be "reached" or "discovered". That is definitely not the case for social sciences like psychology.
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damnyou 6y ago
Using standard truth-seeking tools is in fact bad and harmful when it comes to people's identities. The ultimate goal of society should not be to seek out objective truth! It should be to minimize harm to human beings. Seeking truth is merely a means to that goal, and is powerful when it works. But it often doesn't!
- prepend 6y ago
  > The ultimate goal of society should not be to seek out objective truth! It should be to minimize harm to human beings. I disagree with this statement as I think objective truth is much more useful and important than minimizing harm. I don’t think humans should be sacrificed, but I think in 1000 years objective truth in science, math, art will be more important than whether my air conditioning was always pleasantly at 74. I boil this down to “reals > feels.”
  - damnyou 6y ago
    Indeed, we have a disagreement there. I consider the rationalist truth-over-everything-else philosophy to be profoundly, deeply unjust and immoral.
    - prepend 6y ago
      I think it’s natural to have disagreements and share OP’s search for sites like SSC where we can discuss and learn from each other.
pjc50 6y ago
> You mention having a trans person present at the table. However, if you're a psychologist and you're characterizing mental disorders like gender dysphoria, you don't invite a trans person to the table as an equal with whom you're going to come to some compromise pleasing to both (in practice, pleasing to the trans person) So you presume they're an unequal? This is exactly the problem. > By bringing the trans person to the table as an equal and not as a patient Your medical ethics license has been revoked for treating patients as subhumans. People were executed for that at Nuremberg. > This is what happened with the DSM and same-sex attraction. There was no reasoned debate, only political coercion and acquiescence. Are you arguing that the DSM ending characterising homosexuality as a mental disorder was wrong? Is this based on anything other than raw homophobia?

damnyou 6y ago

One of my closest friends is an AFAB demigirl. Despite the bad ideas of a subset of trans people (morphological liberation is very important to me), the idea of "transtrenders" is bogus and oppressive.

mst 6y ago
My point is that it's entirely possible to encounter the term in a context where the people being described by the term were being bogus and oppressive, so it's impossible to know a priori whether somebody using that term is an enemy or merely an imperfect ally. Successful activism generally requires forming as large a coalition as possible, and insta dismissing somebody as a bigot for not getting everything right first time is not an effective way to do that.
- damnyou 6y ago
  From the article: "Rather than coming off as a legitimate attempt to help legitimate problems, then, this form of gender activism appears to many like an unappealing combination of ideologizing and attention-seeking and raises the question of whether everybody who says they are trans is sincere or correct. It seems likely that some people have jumped on the train due to an ideological commitment to gender non-conformity and many trans people themselves have complained of this and coined the term “transtrender” to describe it." This is pretty clearly "gender-conforming trans good, icky weird attention-seeking trans bad". The thing about "many trans people" is mentioned without any evidence and probably refers to people like Debbie Hayton and Buck Angel. My demigirl friend microdoses on testosterone for the facial hair and voice deepening effects, though she would rather be read as a woman than a man. I know cis men who take the standard spironolactone and estradiol HRT combination. Sorry, forming coalitions with people that seek to divide a marginalized community rather than work towards unity and solidarity is not a good idea.
  - mst 6y ago
    > This is pretty clearly "gender-conforming trans good, icky weird attention-seeking trans bad". That's a reductive view and doesn't fit with my understanding of their position. > Sorry, forming coalitions with people that seek to divide a marginalized community rather than work towards unity and solidarity is not a good idea. I'm the one suggesting unity and solidarity here. You're the one suggesting dividing people based on your guesses as to their motivations. But, whatever. I'm going to keep working towards a world where "trans people choosing bathrooms most suitable for the gender they are commonly perceived to be and everybody else accepting that trans people just need to pee" is just an obvious and comfortable thing and nobody gets beaten up for doing that. You keep doing ... whatever it is you're doing. If you ever decide that trans people not getting the shit kicked out of them matters more to you than ideological purity, we can pick the conversation up again then, I guess.

zo1 6y ago

That is why we have discussions and a good chunk of why we as humanity have so much literature outside of technical and entertainment reasons. Putting down your "lived experience" and conveying it so that others can understand it is very important and should be happening everywhere. There is nothing magical about "lived experience" if you articulate its effects clearly and others can understand it. People can, of course, choose to dismiss them but that is their own failing. Personally, I think the "lived experience" argument is currently being used more as a way of discounting/dismissing opinions just by virtue of who is saying them rather than the content and value that said experiences convey/express. It's equally dismissing of the "lived experience" of the other group as well because they bring a unique perspective as an outsider if the issue pertains to just one group. Right now, the "lived experience" of white-people (and some other groups) is being dismissed and ignored. There is currently racial discrimination against white people, double-standards against pro-white opinions, all-round blaming of white people for grand historic things that they are not the sole perpetrators of, downright hatred against them that is ignored and celebrated, demonization of them expressing pride in their identity, historic slavery and oppression of white people is swept under the rug, human-rights abuses against white minority groups around the world are ignored, predominantly white nations are being demonized for racism for wanting national sovereignty, etc. These are all "lived experiences" currently affecting the white population group. So if we want to bring emotion to the discussion, then I'm all for having the "lived experience" discussion with any group, so long as all groups' experiences matter. Side note: Another "lived-experience" affecting white people: Having to tip-toe and be afraid of voicing our opinion on racial topics such as this one.

Blahah 6y ago
There are obviously situations where one might have a discussion without the person being discussed being present. The point is that if the discussion might affect those people, they should be represented. That could be by the people having the discussion actively seeking out resources to genuinely learn the perspective of the people in question, but where at all possible it should involve them. > Having to tip-toe and be afraid of voicing our opinion on racial topics such as this one. I'm a white person and am not at all afraid of voicing my opinion on racial topics, but that's often not important to do. Far more important is to listen or actively seek out and learn from other (affected) people's perspectives. If you're afraid of voicing your opinion it's because you haven't made a good faith attempt to learn about the subject, and have formed an uninformed opinion. Learn and then think and then maybe speak. Everyone doesn't have to have their stupid opinions respected.

imperfect_blue 6y ago
To add, personal experience can be useful, but is not the end-all in decision making. It's useful in the ways anecdotes are useful, that is to say, good as an illustrative example but may not be statistically representative. In general, you do not need to have personally experienced X to have a useful or "valid" opinion on X. As a reductio ad absurdum, nobody would be allowed to have an valid opinion on murder.
- simlevesque 6y ago
  No one advocates that you should only speak if you lived it, we say that those who lived it must have a say if that is in any way possible.
  - imperfect_blue 6y ago
    The original question was > how much of this nuance is achieved by having discussions about issues which have real life-or-death impacts on people but without having any of those people inconveniently present? Followed by an assertion that > A group of X people is [not] capable of of empathising with, understanding and having a nuanced opinion of the concerns of !X people So I think there are people advocating that you should be speaking only if you lived it. Of course, anecdotes and personal experiences are valuable and including people with personal experience is helpful, but the central claim here is that you can have productive discussions about X without anyone with personal experience with X.
    - JohnBooty 6y ago
      You can have a discussion about X, as long as you recognize that the discussion is going to be flawed without anybody from X there. Sometimes this is a necessity. In history class we learn about ancient Sumerians without inviting them to the discussion, because they have all been dead for a long time. So we make do. Certainly, if we had the chance, we'd love to have them there. (A useful thought experiment: what if a bunch of ancient Sumerians fell out of a time machine and were available for discussion? Would we not think poorly of people who wanted to discuss ancient Sumerians did so without the Sumerians, who were standing like... right outside the room?) Can a bunch of e.g. men sit around and have a meaningful discussion about women? It... really depends. Certainly a group of male gynecologists could usefully discuss some procedure, although the history of gynecology also certainly suggests that for many years the profession surely suffered from a lack of female perspective. Men can usefully discuss gender relations, because they are a part of the group that experiences gender relations, although again this discussion will be a lot weaker if it involves exclusively male perspectives. A room full of men can probably not very usefully discuss issues highly specific to women, unless they were indirectly drawing upon female experiences (e.g., two men could certainly learn from a discussion about an article written by a female author about childbirth or male-on-female sexual assault, etc)
      - imperfect_blue 6y ago
        I reject that discussion will be inherently flawed without representation. I further submit that representation can cause flaws in discussion. To use your thought experiment as an example, say if we are critically examining Sumerian religion and their creation myths, we may not want the Sumerians in the room even if they were readily available, since they may well take offense at us disrespecting and dissecting their beliefs. If we are discussing Sumerian religion with Sumerians and we don't want to cause them offense, we would have to tiptoe around the fact their gods well, aren't real, and subjects like "what might have inspired the Sumerians to ascribe this trait to that god" can't be discussed at all. And to use a example more grounded in reality, a group of men can't have properly conduct a discussion on how to attract women with women in the discussion. I am well aware that this sort of discussion has pejorative connotations with how infamous the PUA community has become, but the fact is that young men do need to social spaces and groups where they can learn this, since it is skill that needs to be learned and practiced. Or to use an even more absurd example, a group of rape victims can't have a discussion with a rapist, even though the rapist would be able to add their side of the story to the discussion.
        JohnBooty 6y ago
        if we are critically examining Sumerian religion and their creation myths, we may not want the Sumerians in the room even if they were readily available, since they may well take offense at us disrespecting and dissecting their beliefs. I would agree with this specific example. Religion is a special case when it comes to rational discussion. It is explicitly a belief in the irrational, and is not compatible with rational thought. When the "out group" decides to exclude the "in group" from a discussion, we should be very very sure that there's some highly specific reason why the "in group" is simply incapable of rational discussion. For example, we exclude my car from discussions about his medical care because he is a cat and he can't speak or understand medicine. If we do that with people, we need to be very careful. And to use a example more grounded in reality, a group of men can't have properly conduct a discussion on how to attract women with women in the discussion. This is completely opposite to my experiences. I certainly think it's healthy and good for men to discuss sex, attraction, etc, without women as well. Heterosexual men are a part of the group that experiences dating and sex with women. (I wonder how many hours of my life I've spent on this? Thousands? Tens of thousands?) This is markedly different than, say, a panel of men discussing/deciding things for women, i.e. a panel full of men deciding what women can and cannot do with their bodies. a group of rape victims can't have a discussion with a rapist, even though the rapist would be able to add their side of the story to the discussion. I agree with caveats. (Some victims find power and closure by confronting their rapists, etc.) To generalize this specific example into something broadly applicable, the reason why this example works is because in this case the rapist has done something highly transgressive - essentially, they have broken anything that might reasonably be considered a social contract - and it would certainly be reasonable for a rape victim to find it highly upsetting to see their rapist, much less listen to them. So again, I would say the validity of excluding a person from a discussion relevant to them would highly depend upon some explicit evidence or reasoning that productive discussion simply cannot occur if they are a part of it. This would not apply to, say, a room full of white people deciding things about the Black experience.
  - jeherr 6y ago
    I think given the context of this thread, it’s fair to mention that there are plenty on the internet who use that kind of rhetoric to invalidate any out-group opinions they don’t like. Not everyone of course, but it happens. These are some of the conversations that are lacking nuance. Sometimes the out-group has something to offer. Sometimes you just need to make them feel heard before you explain to them what they’re not getting. It’s about having the conversation. Why should anyone listen to someone if they don’t get the same respect back?
    - JohnBooty 6y ago
      Sometimes you just need to make [the out group] feel heard before you explain to them what they’re not getting. When you listen to groups of affected issues, what you often hear is that they have been explaining forever, it hasn't worked, and frankly they're exhausted. Often, the folks who ask them for "explanations" are doing so in bad faith. Perhaps you're doing so in good faith, but they have a right to be wary and/or weary. Understand that a group being oppressed or affected by some injustice is already bearing an undue burden. Why should anyone listen to someone if they don’t get the same respect back? In some cases, you may be the one being incredibly disrespectful by expecting some sort of explanation, because tons of explaining has already been done. To name one example, there is an incredibly rich history of African-American writing, art, and other forms of expression regarding the African-American experience. To use the mildest possible word I can bring myself to type, it would be rude to expect any individual to owe me some sort of explanation. Why should they do the work of explaining (yet again, most likely) when I haven't?
      - jeherr 6y ago
        Look, I get where you're coming from, but this post was specifically about places to find nuanced discussion on the internet, and in the context of that, responding to > No one advocates that you should only speak if you lived it, we say that those who lived it must have a say if that is in any way possible. I stand by what I said. If you're coming to the table for nuanced discussion, I don't think it makes much sense to shout down your opponent with ad hominems simply because others have argued against you in bad faith before. If you're weary of explaining something, I get that, but I don't think coming to a place full of people looking for a nuanced discussion and calling them names when they may basically be on your side already does your cause any good. I understand it, and it's a completely human reaction, but it's alienating.
  - radu_floricica 6y ago
    Oh, "they" don't advocate. "They" are very careful not to advocate. But ask questions? Suggest? Leave historical links to wikipedia? God, I'm starting to hate this whole thing with a burning passion. Not the poster, mind you - clicked through its history and he's a decent fellow. Or fellowette. Rather like him, actually. But the whole memeplex that seems to grow and grow to the point it actually has rules on how to breach topics on public forums... that I do begin to really hate.
JohnBooty 6y ago
Is it better to have representation when making policy decisions? Pretty much everybody is saying yes. And somehow, this "yes" gets interpreted as "can't have an opinion on any topic as long as I'm not part of a certain group". That's identity politics taken to the extreme. I would encourage you to think holistically. Here's (part of) my thought process. I don't know your demographics so I'll share mine. As a white man living in America... 1. Will I still have plenty of power and agency in my life, if I have the humility to refrain from forming opinions and/or exercising authority over matters in which I have no personal experience? 2. From a purely selfish perspective, won't I learn more and therefore become a better person if I do much more listening than talking when it comes to matters that affect groups I'm not a part of? 3. What are my odds of having better ideas on a given topic than the subject matter experts themselves? As a Ruby programmer, I basically don't have opinions at all on Python or how the Python community should run things. Why wouldn't I extend the same courtesy to women, or people of color? 4. Are there already a lot of areas in my life where I practice this kind of humility? When I step onto a plane, do I assume my opinions about flying the plane are on par with those of the pilots?
JohnBooty 6y ago
I can have opinions on various topics. Including, among many others, disabled people. Are my opinions equally valid, given that I'm not part of that group? There's a distinction here that I'm struggling to put into words. As largely non-disabled people, there is a lot we can and should be doing. If you have an idea for a better sort of wheelchair or walking aid, is that something you should pursue? Yeah! It's not that you should shut up and stay far, far, away from disabled people who are doing disabled things. But, each step of the way, we've got an obligation to make sure we're not overruling them. Pragmatically, this makes sense as well - we're unlikely to design some kind of gamechanging next-gen wheelchair without some serious collaboration from folks who are actually confined to wheelchairs. There are parallels when it comes to race relations. As a white man in America, should I largely (or entirely) shut up when it comes to the Black experience in America? Yes. I am not going to understand that experience by any means other than some voracious listening. But there is plenty of work to be done from the white side of things as well. My thoughts and actions are needed there. In fact, considering we have the majority of economic and political power in this country, most of the work needs to be done by us if the situation is to be improved.

cousin_it 6y ago

That's fair, though also note that in a discussion whether Alice or Bob should get $100, Alice and Bob will be the most biased voices, not the least. So by all means, listen to the testimony of interested parties, but treat it with as much skepticism as other evidence.

JohnBooty 6y ago
This obviously works well when it comes to Alice and Bob's little dispute, assuming we don't have a personal connection to either. This approach doesn't scale up to meet most of the world's difficult and interesting questions and problems. Issues of society, race, gender, economy, and so forth affect all of us. How can there ever be a disinterested party when it comes to matters of national or societal importance?
- cousin_it 6y ago
  If we can't have an impartial judge, the next best thing is impartial standards of evidence.
  - JohnBooty 6y ago
    Even in the ridiculously hypothetical case of Alice and Bob, how would we apply impartial standards of evidence to decide who gets the $100?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- noch 6y ago
  > How can there ever be a disinterested party when it comes to matters of national or societal importance? The scientific method doesn't require that I be a disinterested party, but it does require that I evaluate evidence, to the best of my ability, in a disinterested manner.[2] E.g. I might believe women are discriminated against in academia and locked out of opportunity; my heart might beat out of my chest because of all the horror stories my friends tell me. However, the data seems to indicate that 57%[0] of university degrees in the U.S. are awarded to women, and that this proportion is increasing. I am emotionally invested in my belief in the former injustice, but I have to evaluate the data as though I weren't and update my beliefs accordingly.[1] > This approach doesn't scale up to meet most of the world's difficult and interesting questions and problems. Issues of society, race, gender, economy, and so forth affect all of us. Anecdotally, I've heard many social justice advocates recently assert that dispassionate analysis of evidence and data can't lead to solutions for social problems. "Other ways of knowing" or different "epistemological frames" such as "lived experience" are emphasised. I find this misguided: Indeed mathematics and the scientific method are _the only_ tools that can help us find the truth about social problems. Why would the intellectual tools that build homes, bridges, hydroelectric dams, energy grids, the internet; that find surgical methods, discover medicines, design microchips, and so on, be somehow less effective than lived experience in the social realm? No, these are humanity's most powerful tools. We must not abandon them. [0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/20/u-s-women-near-milestone-in-the-college-educated-labor-force/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/20/u-s-women-n... [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/11/gender-education-gap/546677/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/11/gender-... [2] "What is Science?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJZUiQnBtBg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJZUiQnBtBg
  - pjc50 6y ago
    > my heart might beat out of my chest because of all the horror stories my friends tell me. However, the data seems to indicate that 57%[0] of university degrees in the U.S. are awarded to women, and that this proportion is increasing Both of these are true; women face substantial gendered barriers in academia, and numerically women are doing well. You can't say "you weren't sexually assaulted because some other women got degrees". It is also fair to ask "are men facing structural barriers in access to university?" Or are they choosing not to, or experiencing barriers further down the pipeline, and so on. The problem with using aggregate statistics on humans is that they tell you nothing about whether a particular case was dealt with justly or unjustly. (In fairness, there's also a problem going the other way, of over-extrapolating from a single example). Then you encounter the problem that there are no average humans: https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-force-discovered-the-flaw-of-averages.html https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-... > Why would the intellectual tools that build homes, bridges, hydroelectric dams, energy grids, the internet; that find surgical methods, discover medicines, design microchips, and so on, be somehow less effective than lived experience in the social realm? This is Le Corbusier style high modernism, the idea that living should be mechanised and human life subjected to statistical process control.
    - noch 6y ago
      > Then you encounter the problem that there are no average humans [sigh] In statistical modelling at the population level, we don't make conclusions about "average humans". We derive conclusions based on distributions. And the average is rarely indicative; the median is often more useful. Simple conclusions can be derived through power laws e.g. the divergence in income of the median male since 1970 relative to GDP growth. > This is Le Corbusier style high modernism, the idea that living should be mechanised and human life subjected to statistical process control Is this an argument of some kind? I'm sorry but I can't parse what point you're trying to make or the relevance of the statement in determining the correctness of concepts and policies that affect a society.
  - JohnBooty 6y ago
    I find this misguided: Indeed mathematics and the scientific method are _the only_ tools that can help us find the truth about social problems. I love "analysis of evidence and data" as much as the next guy, and quite possibly more. That's why I am extremely wary of lending too much credence to data when it comes to something as messy as a society of human beings. What's one of the very first things we learn when we learn about "the scientific method" as schoolkids? For an experiment to be valid, we need control samples. This can rarely, if ever, be practically or ethically achieved with human beings. There are, to put it mildly, an overwhelming number of confounding variables at play in any statistical study of human beings. That doesn't mean data is useless when it comes to social sciences, but it is rarely if ever sufficient. (This is also resoundingly true for "lived experience", of course)