4 ms·

I agree that bad-faith weaponization of discourse norms is a real problem these days. Unfortunately, unapologetic closed-mindedness is also a real problem these

I agree that bad-faith weaponization of discourse norms is a real problem these days. Unfortunately, unapologetic closed-mindedness is also a real problem these days. I would like to see more analysis that acknowledges both of these points and carefully considers how to thread the needle. Masnick obviously means well and is making reasonable points, but I think we're past the point in the discourse where it's possible to make progress while bringing up just one side of the tradeoff.

tremon 1y ago
Isn't both-sidesing also a bad-faith weaponization of discourse? Make your own argument rather than demanding someone else makes it for you.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- bawolff 1y ago
  I think its fine to be unconvinced by something without necessarily having a better argument. Usually when people say "both siding", its more refering to an ad hominem falacy where someone tries to counter an argument by pointing to something bad the other side does that is separate (and hence irrelavent) to the original argument. I dont think that is what the person who you are responding to is doing because what they are saying is directly applicable to the issue at hand.
  - tim333 1y ago
    When I've seen "both siding" used it usually is about treating both sides of an argument equally when one is obviously rubbish.
    - rocmcd 1y ago
      "obviously rubbish" is doing a lot of work here. How do you gauge whether something is obviously rubbish?
      - palmotea 1y ago
        > "obviously rubbish" is doing a lot of work here. How do you gauge whether something is obviously rubbish? If it defies orthodoxy, in most cases. At least that's my observation. Most of the cases where I've seen complaints of "both-sidesing" is about mainstream media coverage that did not dismiss one major faction's position out of hand. Basically, a demand the journalist put on a judge hat and rule for the speaker's side. And it happened in the context of the cultural moment described here: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-bluesky-ization-of-the-american https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-bluesky-ization-of-the-ame....
      - bawolff 1y ago
        As a case study, Wikipedia does the following: "Neutrality requires that mainspace articles and pages fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in those sources. Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means articles should not give minority views or aspects as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views or widely supported aspects. Generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all, except perhaps in a "see also" to an article about those specific views. For example, the article on the Earth does not directly mention modern support for the flat Earth concept, the view of a distinct (and minuscule) minority; to do so would give undue weight to it." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view#Due_and_undue_weight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_vie...
    - bawolff 1y ago
      Ah, i guess that is a common usage of "both sides" that is different than what i was thinking. Usually i would describe it more as giving equal air time to opposing views despite the views not having equal prominance (e.g. In a news article about an eclipse you don't have to give equal air time to a flat earther)
- evanjrowley 1y ago
  >Isn't both-sidesing also a bad-faith weaponization of discourse? Great question. Are there logical arguments for why both-sidesing/whataboutism is bad, backed up with evidence, and a comparative analysis against arguments that claim it is good? Surely there must be a rational basis for the claim so often made.
- ameliaquining 1y ago
  If I thought I knew how to solve the problem, I'd have said so. What I'm doing is pointing out that this style of argument isn't really helpful, because everyone already knows that "debate me, bro" is bad and a problem, so pointing it out as though it were a novel consideration doesn't advance the state of the discourse. What we haven't figured out is what to do about it; in particular, we need to invent discourse norms that are vulnerable neither to "debate me, bro" nor to just contemptuously ignoring counterarguments. Which is hard! But probably not impossible. Is pointing this out as helpful as coming up with a real solution? No, of course not. But I don't have a real solution, so I'm sharing what I do have, which I think is at least slightly better than nothing even if it's not much better. I don't think false balance is relevant here, because that's about the question of how to present a controversy to less-informed audiences, which isn't at issue in this case; if you're reading an internet argument then you probably have a decent understanding of how internet arguments tend to go and what makes them go wrong.
  - danaris 1y ago
    > because everyone already knows that "debate me, bro" is bad and a problem No. They don't. There are plenty of people—some of them right here on HN—who have bought into the idea that these debate-bros are just rationalists persuading people through good-faith argumentation. That's why the debate bros do this: because it works on a lot of people. So spreading awareness that they are bad-faith actors actively seeking to spread misinformation and cloud the truth for fun and profit, without any reference to some "other side" that is "just as bad", is very, very necessary.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
AnimalMuppet 1y ago
I think that closed-mindedness is the issue. I think bad-faith weaponization of discourse is closed-mindedness that wears a disguise. "No, really, I'm a reasonable person!" The unapologetically closed-minded at least is honest. So I see the axis between the two as one of honesty, not one of closed-mindedness. The actual problem is to move both of them to a more open-minded position, not to balance honest vs. dishonest.
- ameliaquining 1y ago
  The thing I'm getting at here is not really about what's inside people's hearts. You can never know for sure whether your interlocutor is a saboteur. This is about what kinds of discourse norms society adopts, and what kinds of behavior participants are allowed to get away with. The problem with having an oversensitive trolling detector is that then people can spew arbitrary nonsense and dismiss counterarguments as trolling, and observers don't get a chance to find out that what's being said doesn't withstand scrutiny. The problem with an undersensitive trolling detector is that discourse becomes an endurance contest rather than a test of who's actually right. Hence the need for a well-calibrated trolling detector, or rather, for norms that weight speech according to some reasonable proxy of whether it's the kind of contribution that stands or falls on its merits. This is the challenge.
- TrnsltLife 1y ago
  I don't think it's helpful to be open minded, if you've already become truly convinced of something. I think it is good to stand firm in one's moral convictions. It is also good to try to persuade others through debate of the truth if those convictions. If other people are not as clear or as firm in their own convictions, they might be interested in listening and being persuaded. It's part of America's constitution and freedom of speech and belief. Unlike France, for example, where religious speech in public (proselytizing) is an arrestable crime.
hackeraccount 1y ago
There's a complaint I've seen against "sea-lioning" I think that's the term? Anyway it's apparently seeming reasonable while actually being unreasonable. Or something like that. This seems to me to be a problem very low on the list of problems. Imagine we lived in a world filled with reasonable sounding people. Some of those people were in fact un-reasonable they just acted reasonable. Would that world be better or worse then the reality we find ourselves in?

tremon 1y ago

Isn't both-sidesing also a bad-faith weaponization of discourse? Make your own argument rather than demanding someone else makes it for you.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
bawolff 1y ago
I think its fine to be unconvinced by something without necessarily having a better argument. Usually when people say "both siding", its more refering to an ad hominem falacy where someone tries to counter an argument by pointing to something bad the other side does that is separate (and hence irrelavent) to the original argument. I dont think that is what the person who you are responding to is doing because what they are saying is directly applicable to the issue at hand.
- tim333 1y ago
  When I've seen "both siding" used it usually is about treating both sides of an argument equally when one is obviously rubbish.
  - rocmcd 1y ago
    "obviously rubbish" is doing a lot of work here. How do you gauge whether something is obviously rubbish?
    - palmotea 1y ago
      > "obviously rubbish" is doing a lot of work here. How do you gauge whether something is obviously rubbish? If it defies orthodoxy, in most cases. At least that's my observation. Most of the cases where I've seen complaints of "both-sidesing" is about mainstream media coverage that did not dismiss one major faction's position out of hand. Basically, a demand the journalist put on a judge hat and rule for the speaker's side. And it happened in the context of the cultural moment described here: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-bluesky-ization-of-the-american https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-bluesky-ization-of-the-ame....
    - bawolff 1y ago
      As a case study, Wikipedia does the following: "Neutrality requires that mainspace articles and pages fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in those sources. Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means articles should not give minority views or aspects as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views or widely supported aspects. Generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all, except perhaps in a "see also" to an article about those specific views. For example, the article on the Earth does not directly mention modern support for the flat Earth concept, the view of a distinct (and minuscule) minority; to do so would give undue weight to it." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view#Due_and_undue_weight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_vie...
  - bawolff 1y ago
    Ah, i guess that is a common usage of "both sides" that is different than what i was thinking. Usually i would describe it more as giving equal air time to opposing views despite the views not having equal prominance (e.g. In a news article about an eclipse you don't have to give equal air time to a flat earther)
evanjrowley 1y ago
>Isn't both-sidesing also a bad-faith weaponization of discourse? Great question. Are there logical arguments for why both-sidesing/whataboutism is bad, backed up with evidence, and a comparative analysis against arguments that claim it is good? Surely there must be a rational basis for the claim so often made.
ameliaquining 1y ago
If I thought I knew how to solve the problem, I'd have said so. What I'm doing is pointing out that this style of argument isn't really helpful, because everyone already knows that "debate me, bro" is bad and a problem, so pointing it out as though it were a novel consideration doesn't advance the state of the discourse. What we haven't figured out is what to do about it; in particular, we need to invent discourse norms that are vulnerable neither to "debate me, bro" nor to just contemptuously ignoring counterarguments. Which is hard! But probably not impossible. Is pointing this out as helpful as coming up with a real solution? No, of course not. But I don't have a real solution, so I'm sharing what I do have, which I think is at least slightly better than nothing even if it's not much better. I don't think false balance is relevant here, because that's about the question of how to present a controversy to less-informed audiences, which isn't at issue in this case; if you're reading an internet argument then you probably have a decent understanding of how internet arguments tend to go and what makes them go wrong.
- danaris 1y ago
  > because everyone already knows that "debate me, bro" is bad and a problem No. They don't. There are plenty of people—some of them right here on HN—who have bought into the idea that these debate-bros are just rationalists persuading people through good-faith argumentation. That's why the debate bros do this: because it works on a lot of people. So spreading awareness that they are bad-faith actors actively seeking to spread misinformation and cloud the truth for fun and profit, without any reference to some "other side" that is "just as bad", is very, very necessary.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

AnimalMuppet 1y ago

I think that closed-mindedness is the issue. I think bad-faith weaponization of discourse is closed-mindedness that wears a disguise. "No, really, I'm a reasonable person!" The unapologetically closed-minded at least is honest. So I see the axis between the two as one of honesty, not one of closed-mindedness. The actual problem is to move both of them to a more open-minded position, not to balance honest vs. dishonest.

ameliaquining 1y ago
The thing I'm getting at here is not really about what's inside people's hearts. You can never know for sure whether your interlocutor is a saboteur. This is about what kinds of discourse norms society adopts, and what kinds of behavior participants are allowed to get away with. The problem with having an oversensitive trolling detector is that then people can spew arbitrary nonsense and dismiss counterarguments as trolling, and observers don't get a chance to find out that what's being said doesn't withstand scrutiny. The problem with an undersensitive trolling detector is that discourse becomes an endurance contest rather than a test of who's actually right. Hence the need for a well-calibrated trolling detector, or rather, for norms that weight speech according to some reasonable proxy of whether it's the kind of contribution that stands or falls on its merits. This is the challenge.
TrnsltLife 1y ago
I don't think it's helpful to be open minded, if you've already become truly convinced of something. I think it is good to stand firm in one's moral convictions. It is also good to try to persuade others through debate of the truth if those convictions. If other people are not as clear or as firm in their own convictions, they might be interested in listening and being persuaded. It's part of America's constitution and freedom of speech and belief. Unlike France, for example, where religious speech in public (proselytizing) is an arrestable crime.

hackeraccount 1y ago

There's a complaint I've seen against "sea-lioning" I think that's the term? Anyway it's apparently seeming reasonable while actually being unreasonable. Or something like that. This seems to me to be a problem very low on the list of problems. Imagine we lived in a world filled with reasonable sounding people. Some of those people were in fact un-reasonable they just acted reasonable. Would that world be better or worse then the reality we find ourselves in?