4 ms·

andrewprock already found an example and I agree with his assessment. If you have snippets that you think are worthwhile then feel free to post them. Associatin

by memexy 6y ago

andrewprock already found an example and I agree with his assessment. If you have snippets that you think are worthwhile then feel free to post them. Associating assassination with people, even as a question, is sinister. A polite and kind person would not make that association or even ask the question because it implants the idea in the reader's mind and they start thinking antagonistically towards certain groups that he's suggesting should be "assassinated". It's terrible and dreadful writing (it elicits terror and dread in the reader). Should people ask taboo questions? Yes, they should ask such questions in private conversations with people they trust. When the interpretation is out of your hands then you need to be really careful what information you are making available to the public / audience. It's clear he doesn't think through the logic and wants to come across as smart. It's juvenile. Adults speak with intent and they address people directly and respectfully. I have never seen any adult conversations on SSC, I've only ever seen people that are peacocking their intelligence.

CompanionCuuube 6y ago
> andrewprock already found an example and I agree with his assessment. But do you have a dispute for the counterpoint from mst? If so, what is it?
- memexy 6y ago
  Which counterpoint? Several such points have been made already. Do you have a specific one in mind?
  - CompanionCuuube 6y ago
    You apparently know which one it was, and can look up the response. It isn't a very long response either. I'm not going to quote it here, because it gives you a chance to talk about it at me rather than with the original person who brought up the counterpoint.
    - memexy 6y ago
      So then you weren't asking the question in good faith. When I asked you to clarify you dodged the question. I wouldn't ask if I knew, I asked because I didn't know what you were referring to. If you want me to talk to you then make a direct point instead of confused remarks about what I know and don't know and conversations I had with other people that were unrelated to you.
      - CompanionCuuube 6y ago
        > So then you weren't asking the question in good faith. Yes, I was. > When I asked you to clarify you dodged the question. I wouldn't ask if I knew, I asked because I didn't know what you were referring to. If you didn't know what I was referring to, then you didn't know who you were referring to when you said the following: >> andrewprock already found an example and I agree with his assessment. > If you want me to talk to you I have no desire for you to talk to me: that was exactly why I asked you to respond to the other person and not me.
mst 6y ago
Let me quote perhaps the most important part of the essay and the part that I believe truly defines this ethos. -- begin quote When I was young and stupid, I used to believe that transgender was really, really dumb. That they were looking for attention or making it up or something along those lines. Luckily, since I was a classical liberal, my reaction to this mistake was – to not bother them, and to get very very angry at people who did bother them. I got upset with people trying to fire Phil Robertson for being homophobic even though homophobia is stupid. You better bet I also got upset with people trying to fire transgender people back when I thought transgender was stupid. And then I grew older and wiser and learned – hey, transgender isn’t stupid at all, they have very important reasons for what they do and go through and I was atrociously wrong. And I said a mea culpa. But it could have been worse. I didn’t like transgender people, and so I left them alone while still standing up for their rights. My epistemic structure failed gracefully. For anyone who’s not overconfident, and so who expects massive epistemic failure on a variety of important issues all the time, graceful failure modes are a really important feature for an epistemic structure to have. -- end quote I read the humility and desire to not to harm even when you're wrong inherent in that passage as the exact opposite of "peacocking intelligence" - and I find your choice to use PUA terminology to describe the behaviour to be either unintentionally gross or deliberately unkind depending on whether or not you were aware that was what you were doing.
- memexy 6y ago
  Yes. I was aware of my characterization and the word peackocking (to make a vainglorious display; strut like a peacock) was used before it was co-opted by PUA community (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/peacocking https://www.dictionary.com/browse/peacocking). Let's rewrite that paragraph and use fewer emotionally charged words. -- As a younger person I thought transgenderism was about seeking attention. But being trained in the liberal arts I decided to question this assumption and not act antagonistically towards them because of my personal interpretation of their situation. As I got older I realized my initial assumption about attention seeking was incorrect and I took responsibility for and corrected my beliefs. I guess it could have turned out differently if I hadn't been trained in the liberal arts. So I'm glad my training included keeping an open mind and accepting people different from me and with different life circumstances. -- Same exact content, none of the emotional baggage and vainglory. Notice all the words I took out because I knew they would elicit negative reactions in the reader: stupid, dumb, mistake, very very angry, upset, homophobic. He repeated those words enough times that a perceptive reader would have picked up on the subtext of him trying to distance himself from those negatively valenced words. He's not trying to educate the reader, he's trying to put distance between himself and certain associations. That's why it's not good writing. It's about him, it's not about the reader. And in his attempt to "peacock" he's putting associations into the reader's mind that are detrimental to the reader's thought processes all the while elevating himself as a paragon of goodness. As the term "peacock" suggests, his writing is vainglorious.

by memexy 6y ago

CompanionCuuube 6y ago

> andrewprock already found an example and I agree with his assessment. But do you have a dispute for the counterpoint from mst? If so, what is it?

memexy 6y ago
Which counterpoint? Several such points have been made already. Do you have a specific one in mind?
- CompanionCuuube 6y ago
  You apparently know which one it was, and can look up the response. It isn't a very long response either. I'm not going to quote it here, because it gives you a chance to talk about it at me rather than with the original person who brought up the counterpoint.
  - memexy 6y ago
    So then you weren't asking the question in good faith. When I asked you to clarify you dodged the question. I wouldn't ask if I knew, I asked because I didn't know what you were referring to. If you want me to talk to you then make a direct point instead of confused remarks about what I know and don't know and conversations I had with other people that were unrelated to you.
    - CompanionCuuube 6y ago
      > So then you weren't asking the question in good faith. Yes, I was. > When I asked you to clarify you dodged the question. I wouldn't ask if I knew, I asked because I didn't know what you were referring to. If you didn't know what I was referring to, then you didn't know who you were referring to when you said the following: >> andrewprock already found an example and I agree with his assessment. > If you want me to talk to you I have no desire for you to talk to me: that was exactly why I asked you to respond to the other person and not me.

mst 6y ago

Let me quote perhaps the most important part of the essay and the part that I believe truly defines this ethos. -- begin quote When I was young and stupid, I used to believe that transgender was really, really dumb. That they were looking for attention or making it up or something along those lines. Luckily, since I was a classical liberal, my reaction to this mistake was – to not bother them, and to get very very angry at people who did bother them. I got upset with people trying to fire Phil Robertson for being homophobic even though homophobia is stupid. You better bet I also got upset with people trying to fire transgender people back when I thought transgender was stupid. And then I grew older and wiser and learned – hey, transgender isn’t stupid at all, they have very important reasons for what they do and go through and I was atrociously wrong. And I said a mea culpa. But it could have been worse. I didn’t like transgender people, and so I left them alone while still standing up for their rights. My epistemic structure failed gracefully. For anyone who’s not overconfident, and so who expects massive epistemic failure on a variety of important issues all the time, graceful failure modes are a really important feature for an epistemic structure to have. -- end quote I read the humility and desire to not to harm even when you're wrong inherent in that passage as the exact opposite of "peacocking intelligence" - and I find your choice to use PUA terminology to describe the behaviour to be either unintentionally gross or deliberately unkind depending on whether or not you were aware that was what you were doing.

memexy 6y ago
Yes. I was aware of my characterization and the word peackocking (to make a vainglorious display; strut like a peacock) was used before it was co-opted by PUA community (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/peacocking https://www.dictionary.com/browse/peacocking). Let's rewrite that paragraph and use fewer emotionally charged words. -- As a younger person I thought transgenderism was about seeking attention. But being trained in the liberal arts I decided to question this assumption and not act antagonistically towards them because of my personal interpretation of their situation. As I got older I realized my initial assumption about attention seeking was incorrect and I took responsibility for and corrected my beliefs. I guess it could have turned out differently if I hadn't been trained in the liberal arts. So I'm glad my training included keeping an open mind and accepting people different from me and with different life circumstances. -- Same exact content, none of the emotional baggage and vainglory. Notice all the words I took out because I knew they would elicit negative reactions in the reader: stupid, dumb, mistake, very very angry, upset, homophobic. He repeated those words enough times that a perceptive reader would have picked up on the subtext of him trying to distance himself from those negatively valenced words. He's not trying to educate the reader, he's trying to put distance between himself and certain associations. That's why it's not good writing. It's about him, it's not about the reader. And in his attempt to "peacock" he's putting associations into the reader's mind that are detrimental to the reader's thought processes all the while elevating himself as a paragon of goodness. As the term "peacock" suggests, his writing is vainglorious.