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That phrase is often used to move goalposts when someone is using an anecdote to justify actions they've taken, or policy they're advocating. This can include l

That phrase is often used to move goalposts when someone is using an anecdote to justify actions they've taken, or policy they're advocating. This can include leveling accusations at other people. It is a linguistic tactic that attempts to bypass debate through appeal to emotion. "You can't tell me I don't feel this way!" Correct, you feel that way, but your feelings don't magically turn assertions into fact. The objection of "invalidating lived experience" is the notion that one's feeling are facts when they are not. They are subjective impressions unsuitable as the sole grounds for action.

kelseyfrog 4y ago
Really good example. Thank you. This is precisely the type of thinking that goes into invalidating lived experience. The mechanism behind invalidating lived experience is fundamentally a reality construction mechanism. It's goal is to construct a reality, namely by the person doing the invalidating. The reality being constructed is absent bigotry and abuse as a way of avoiding the task of confronting them directly. In short it says, "My reality is objectively true and yours is not" when the person doing the constructing hasn't the same personal encounters as the person being invalidated.
- MockObject 4y ago
  Invalidation of Lived Experience is also what we do, and should do, to Targeted Individuals [0], people who boast of having diseases cured by crank medicine, and con game victims certain that they're beloved by overseas supermodels. Skepticism is a rational and healthy habit. [0] https://www.wired.com/story/mind-games-the-tortured-lives-of-targeted-individuals/ https://www.wired.com/story/mind-games-the-tortured-lives-of...
  - kelseyfrog 4y ago
    Great. In agreement, but help me understand how we went from lived experiences involving bigotry and abuse to crank medicine and con game victims? I added that boundary specifically so that cases like this wouldn't be brought up and used to counter-example. > Skepticism is a rational and healthy habit. Agreed. Veiled-skepticism is, however in the case of invalidating lived experience, a powerful gaslighting tool. Discerning between the two is an additional hurdle targets of bigotry and abuse see layered on top of them.
    - MockObject 4y ago
      > help me understand how we went from lived experiences involving bigotry and abuse to crank medicine There's no bright line between the two. Someone claims some experiences, and someone else disputes the claims. Bigotry isn't necessarily a factor, or, there might be disagreement on whether it is. "Invalidating lived experience" seems like a thought-stopping cliche, rather than any sort of argument at all. It is a fancy way of saying "you're wrong, and I'm right!" or "you're not allowed to say that I'm wrong."
      - kelseyfrog 4y ago
        That's so interesting. For me, it's a reminder to "pause twice before telling someone how they should be interpreting their experiences relating to bigotry and abuse. Get curious instead." I guess for some people it gets translated into "You're not allowed to say I'm wrong." I feel like I have something to learn from asking, is this something that has happened to you? As an aside, the inability to draw a clear line between abuse and other topics isn't so much of a problem for me. It is a form of Sorites paradox that we deal with in other topics all the time.
        fao_ 4y ago
        Honestly? Don't bother. You're not going to get through to a place that doesn't instaban people who have posts like: > frontman1988 7 days ago | on: On Aging Alone > 40 is the prime age for men. You can easily get a younger gf from > Thailand/Vietnam/Philippines with minimum effort. And you never know > you might find true love (if it exists) as well. > reply or > frontman1988 16 hours ago | on: Can growth > continue? > The solution to tackling declining population can be by generating > Genetically modified babies. This new race of humans will be smarter > and stronger than the current lot due to eugenics. CRISPR will make it > possible and it's already happening in China. The west needs to look at > it instead of ramping up immigration and importing instability from > third world countries. > reply I mean, the person you're responding to hasn't taken the time to understand the base concept of "cultural appropriation", or relative disparity of experience: > MockObject 3 months ago | parent | context | > prev | next [–] | on: The Casio employee > behind the “Sleng Teng” riddim ... > This speaks to a fatal flaw with the concept of cultural appropriation. > Ok, so a "white" person can't "speak for Native Americans", but > a Native American can? Can any, or just certain ones? Who wins if they > disagree? > reply I'm not really sure why they would show more ability to empathize here with you than they do in other threads! What's funny here is that these people would be probated or in the case of frontman1988, banned, on SomethingAwful these days. How times have changed!
- sbarbarian 4y ago
  It appears that the end point of debates around this end in both parties having their own "lived experiences" based on fundamentally different "truths". How can anyone reach agreement on anything under these rules? Could the element of "personal experiences" be the cause? Limiting proof points to established facts rather than subjective experience helps tremendously. Someone claiming whatever has a much more powerful voice (and is less likely to be silenced as a vocal one-off) when citing research. Similar to how academic papers don't reference the author exclusively, but rather peer papers. Everyone has a unique and relevant perspective - lived reality is reality! But with so much noise, its far easier to dismiss individual voices than reporting on the aggregated voices of others. This filters out confounding variables and roots the hypothesis in fact (e.g. Consider an individual reporting of a nearby road keeping them awake at night. It could be they have an uncomfortable mattress, a light on in the room, or any other factor. Only when other neighbors report the same issue is the proposed cause worth a serious look). Obviously this is more difficult in lower incident / harder to measure areas - e.g. bias, harassment, etc. Don't have a good answer here other than the burden of hard proof is unfortunately on the accuser, which leads to so many of the troubles society is grappling with today. Things like police bodycams seem to help, but resolving all disputes based on 'lived experience' doesn't seem like the best outcome.
  - kelseyfrog 4y ago
    It's rather frustrating that I specifically added in cases of "bigotry and abuse" and we're detouring into abstract epistemological discussions and trying to back fill those generalizations into the specific. Invalidating lived experience is overwhelmingly used to describe a pattern of behavior which occurs in the realm of bias, harassment, and interpersonal conflict, not arriving at scientific or universal truths through debate. This is much more about "Your Dad didn't hit you. That never happened," than "In my experience the Earth is flat." The suggested change in behavior also isn't "You're never wrong." It's merely the suggestion to get genuinely curious, and pausing to listen before framing someone's experience. Maybe the body cam shows otherwise, great. Getting curious tends to have a humanizing effect - the body cam evidence can wait 15 minutes.

kelseyfrog 4y ago

Really good example. Thank you. This is precisely the type of thinking that goes into invalidating lived experience. The mechanism behind invalidating lived experience is fundamentally a reality construction mechanism. It's goal is to construct a reality, namely by the person doing the invalidating. The reality being constructed is absent bigotry and abuse as a way of avoiding the task of confronting them directly. In short it says, "My reality is objectively true and yours is not" when the person doing the constructing hasn't the same personal encounters as the person being invalidated.

MockObject 4y ago
Invalidation of Lived Experience is also what we do, and should do, to Targeted Individuals [0], people who boast of having diseases cured by crank medicine, and con game victims certain that they're beloved by overseas supermodels. Skepticism is a rational and healthy habit. [0] https://www.wired.com/story/mind-games-the-tortured-lives-of-targeted-individuals/ https://www.wired.com/story/mind-games-the-tortured-lives-of...
- kelseyfrog 4y ago
  Great. In agreement, but help me understand how we went from lived experiences involving bigotry and abuse to crank medicine and con game victims? I added that boundary specifically so that cases like this wouldn't be brought up and used to counter-example. > Skepticism is a rational and healthy habit. Agreed. Veiled-skepticism is, however in the case of invalidating lived experience, a powerful gaslighting tool. Discerning between the two is an additional hurdle targets of bigotry and abuse see layered on top of them.
  - MockObject 4y ago
    > help me understand how we went from lived experiences involving bigotry and abuse to crank medicine There's no bright line between the two. Someone claims some experiences, and someone else disputes the claims. Bigotry isn't necessarily a factor, or, there might be disagreement on whether it is. "Invalidating lived experience" seems like a thought-stopping cliche, rather than any sort of argument at all. It is a fancy way of saying "you're wrong, and I'm right!" or "you're not allowed to say that I'm wrong."
    - kelseyfrog 4y ago
      That's so interesting. For me, it's a reminder to "pause twice before telling someone how they should be interpreting their experiences relating to bigotry and abuse. Get curious instead." I guess for some people it gets translated into "You're not allowed to say I'm wrong." I feel like I have something to learn from asking, is this something that has happened to you? As an aside, the inability to draw a clear line between abuse and other topics isn't so much of a problem for me. It is a form of Sorites paradox that we deal with in other topics all the time.
      - fao_ 4y ago
        Honestly? Don't bother. You're not going to get through to a place that doesn't instaban people who have posts like: > frontman1988 7 days ago | on: On Aging Alone > 40 is the prime age for men. You can easily get a younger gf from > Thailand/Vietnam/Philippines with minimum effort. And you never know > you might find true love (if it exists) as well. > reply or > frontman1988 16 hours ago | on: Can growth > continue? > The solution to tackling declining population can be by generating > Genetically modified babies. This new race of humans will be smarter > and stronger than the current lot due to eugenics. CRISPR will make it > possible and it's already happening in China. The west needs to look at > it instead of ramping up immigration and importing instability from > third world countries. > reply I mean, the person you're responding to hasn't taken the time to understand the base concept of "cultural appropriation", or relative disparity of experience: > MockObject 3 months ago | parent | context | > prev | next [–] | on: The Casio employee > behind the “Sleng Teng” riddim ... > This speaks to a fatal flaw with the concept of cultural appropriation. > Ok, so a "white" person can't "speak for Native Americans", but > a Native American can? Can any, or just certain ones? Who wins if they > disagree? > reply I'm not really sure why they would show more ability to empathize here with you than they do in other threads! What's funny here is that these people would be probated or in the case of frontman1988, banned, on SomethingAwful these days. How times have changed!
sbarbarian 4y ago
It appears that the end point of debates around this end in both parties having their own "lived experiences" based on fundamentally different "truths". How can anyone reach agreement on anything under these rules? Could the element of "personal experiences" be the cause? Limiting proof points to established facts rather than subjective experience helps tremendously. Someone claiming whatever has a much more powerful voice (and is less likely to be silenced as a vocal one-off) when citing research. Similar to how academic papers don't reference the author exclusively, but rather peer papers. Everyone has a unique and relevant perspective - lived reality is reality! But with so much noise, its far easier to dismiss individual voices than reporting on the aggregated voices of others. This filters out confounding variables and roots the hypothesis in fact (e.g. Consider an individual reporting of a nearby road keeping them awake at night. It could be they have an uncomfortable mattress, a light on in the room, or any other factor. Only when other neighbors report the same issue is the proposed cause worth a serious look). Obviously this is more difficult in lower incident / harder to measure areas - e.g. bias, harassment, etc. Don't have a good answer here other than the burden of hard proof is unfortunately on the accuser, which leads to so many of the troubles society is grappling with today. Things like police bodycams seem to help, but resolving all disputes based on 'lived experience' doesn't seem like the best outcome.
- kelseyfrog 4y ago
  It's rather frustrating that I specifically added in cases of "bigotry and abuse" and we're detouring into abstract epistemological discussions and trying to back fill those generalizations into the specific. Invalidating lived experience is overwhelmingly used to describe a pattern of behavior which occurs in the realm of bias, harassment, and interpersonal conflict, not arriving at scientific or universal truths through debate. This is much more about "Your Dad didn't hit you. That never happened," than "In my experience the Earth is flat." The suggested change in behavior also isn't "You're never wrong." It's merely the suggestion to get genuinely curious, and pausing to listen before framing someone's experience. Maybe the body cam shows otherwise, great. Getting curious tends to have a humanizing effect - the body cam evidence can wait 15 minutes.