Metablog

Implications

Having participated in a couple of discussions in the past day or two, my experience has really driven home, once again, my belief that most people are really terrible at arguing. So I decided to write an article about the biggest problem I saw. (I co…

When you follow this advice, the actual result in my experience is that the person whose words you are using gets upset that you are being “picky” and “hyper-logical”.

Hmm. I’ve never been accused of that. Seems like an odd thing to say, anyway. I would imagine the person was really fuzzy on their own ideas, but wasn’t smart enough to see that when you pointed it out. I do need to write more about what is involved in sticking to explicit things while still keeping things moving along congenially. There are ways to phrase things and approaches to take to overcome defensiveness and provoke someone to really being thoughtful about their position. (I have a draft on the subject.)

Excellent points. Nice work, pdf.

Thanks! I’m clarifying and expanding the last section as we speak; maybe you’d like to come back in a couple hours.

OK, that turned out to be more of a rewrite.

Well, maybe I’m more picky and hyper-logical than you are :-)

If you have a link to such a conversation, I’d like to read it. It might give me ideas for additions to the article.

I like it even better after the rewrite. One thing that’s sort of counter to the spirit of the piece, but is I think worth saying. Arguing honestly and charitably, as you suggest, is the best way to actually have a productive argument. It does also, however, open the door for someone who is intentionally arguing in bad faith to jerk you around — classic trolling — and at that point it’s neither productive nor pleasant to keep trying to argue honestly and charitably.

I think the sensible thing to do, when you think you’re being trolled, is to keep up the charitable argument until you’re too annoyed or whatever to go one with it, and then stop arguing. Either just quit, or announce that you’re certain the person you’re talking to is a jerk and move to straight abuse, or start being silly, but don’t try to continue a substantive argument that you can’t handle under the assumption that your interlocutor is behaving reasonably. Make a clean break that makes it clear that you are no longer engaged in substantive argument.

If you’re right, you’re right, and if you’re wrong, it’s the sort of thing that can shock someone into behaving more reasonably much more effectively than slowly getting more and more hostile and heated.

Heh. I just added a section to say what you just said. Pwnd!

Mind if I put a link up at Unfogged?

Mind? I’d love it.

I would say that the crack at feminists appears undeserved. Linking to Pandagon as a self-evident example of bad argumentative technique rather than linking to an argument you’re going to specifically disapprove of is at best lazy, and at worst an example of the sort of behavior you’re arguing against.

Eh, you’re right that it’s lazy and unsubstantiated. I wouldn’t say I’m arguing against the sort of cheap shot I made, though, since I’m not trying to engage with her. And I don’t think she’s even trying to engage with those she criticizes — I doubt she would take offense to my saying so. But I might try to deconstruct one of her deconstructions sometime and make a solid case that she’s guilty of these things. But, really, is it not self-evident?

“The biggest thing by far that happens, in my experience, is that people see implied assertions (implied positions) in others’ posts that the posters didn’t see, and attack the others based on those perceptions.”

Good lord, there pretty much hasn’t been a day in the past 11 years that I’ve written more than three things on the internets that this hasn’t happened to me.

It rarely fails to drive me bananas. Too many people assume,as you say, and far too many people don’t know how to read carefully.

There are certainly times I’m unclear, but more often than not, I’m afraid I’m unable to convince myself that the problem was me, rather than that the other person is engaging in some sort of reading problem.

The fact that I have this experience so frequently and consistently means, of course, that I must doubt myself and constantly re-examine what I say on a more or less daily basis. It’s that feeling of being an alien, that it must, therefore, be me at fault in the way I express myself, that’s so unnerving and what drives me crazy. Particularly when I can’t convince myself that it was my fault, which would be far more comforting to believe. I’d much rather think “oh, darn, put that badly,” than “god, I’m a fucking alien, what is my problem here that I can’t see it?!”

It’s, of course, utterly possible that I simply consistently fail to see that I’ve been unclear. However, I relatively rarely have a problem realizing after the fact when I’ve been offensive, and I almost never have a problem after the fact recognizing when I’ve been condescending (which is an utterly common fault of mine, and, of course, the being offensive thing isn’t horribly uncommon on my part, either).

But I’ve also spent many years of my life editing other people’s writing for clarity, and making a living off that skill. And, as well, generally, most of the time, I seem to manage to get my thoughts across fairly clearly to most people when I write.

So, combined with one’s normal ability to not be objective about one’s self, and the fact that all my life I’ve constantly observed that, in fact, most people tend to have difficulty reading anyone’s words carefully — let alone write carefully — which is part of why, in fact, the number of professional writers and editors, and skilled amateur writers and editors, is distinctly limited — tends to convince me that all too often, yeah, I’ve run into someone who simply isn’t correctly parsing, for any of a number of possible reasons, what I’ve said, which was, in fact, adequately written.

This has been your Farber Burst Of Frustration Moment for the hour. (I had two crap experiences with this yesterday, each in an entirely different place, which left me considerably unhappy and bothered all day today.)

And in case the implicit thought isn’t clear from the above: good job, pdf23ds. (Say, you’re not related to thx1138, are you?)

“But, really, is it not self-evident.”

There are a couple of reasons I stopped reading Pandagon, and took it off my blogroll, after Jesse left. The blog became not to my taste, shall we say.

Thanks. thx1138? Hadn’t even heard of the movie before.

It’s funny. I remember a time when I really liked Amanda’s writing. And it was before Jesse left. But then I was trying to defend Amanda over at Gene Expression one time, and one of the posters asked me in comments if I could find one post that had defensible feminist observations of the sort I was saying I enjoyed reading from Amanda. And I went back through the last two months of posts, and couldn’t find a single one. That’s about when I stopped reading Pandagon. I don’t know if my tastes changed, or if Amanda’s writing changed.

I’ve constantly observed that, in fact, most people tend to have difficulty reading anyone’s words carefully — let alone write carefully

Especially so in as fast moving a forum as a busy comment thread.

people see implied assertions (implied positions) in others’ posts that the posters didn’t see, and attack the others based on those perceptions

This is why I don’t call myself a feminist, or any flavor of -ist, for that matter. I’d rather discuss what I believe about a specific issue, rather than sign onto some amorphous term of abstraction. This in itself causes the same problem, though. Both at Unfogged and at home, saying that I don’t consider myself a feminist has caused some raised eyebrows and heated responses because that’s a rhetorical staple of active anti-feminists, whose beliefs are quite a bit further from mine on gender issues than those held by the self-identified feminists. Same with liberal and conservative, which as you note, have broadened to the point of diminishing returns on their usefulness.

A slightly more precise form of political classification.

“Especially so in as fast moving a forum as a busy comment thread.”

That doesn’t help. And there are plenty of other reasons why generally good, or excellent, readers can misread at a given time, or a given person, or on a given issue.

But I also do bring my broader background to this, as I said; truly horrendous reading problems are clear when one reads slush, for instance; people write that badly because they read that badly, and can’t read their own writing well enough to tell what’s wrong.

Then, as an editor of mass-market stuff, you talk to innumerable readers, and pick up a lot about how people read; and there are levels of how carefully people read, and what distinctions they are and are not capable of understanding.

But, certainly, the heat of fast-moving discussion isn’t helpful to even highly skilled readers’ comprehension, much of the time.

pdf2rds: “That’s about when I stopped reading Pandagon.”

I’m not a fan, in general, of folks whose rhetorical style is bashing and agressive. This is why I also don’t think much of DailyKos, Atrios, Firedoglake, and a slew of popular blogs on (more or less) My Side.

I’m kind of the anti-Emerson in this, I’m afraid. Put simply, I’m a big fan of facts and nouns; not so much with the adjectives.

And I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed — probably not — the three “Fundamentals of Blogging” I put in the sidebar of my blog back in 2001 — they seem deeply quaint now, and even I wouldn’t write #2 the same today, or in recent years — but I still tend to stand by #1.

“Both at Unfogged and at home, saying that I don’t consider myself a feminist has caused some raised eyebrows”

Here’s a suggestion to consider: why point it out? So don’t call yourself a feminist: I don’t notice frequent interrogations on self-labeling, though you may travel in different circles than I do on this (I also gave up on Alas, A Blog a long time ago) — but why would you have to proclaim it to the world, or even ever mention the point to anyone?

But if you go around saying “I’m not an X,” it’s hardly should be surprising if people think you’re bringing it up to make a point.

I’m not a whole bunch of things. You’re not going to argue with me about any of them if I don’t bother pointing them out to you, are you?

The axes are interesting, but my primary reaction is that anything that needs to use the phrase “the first eight axes” is far too complicated to be very handy.

Sorry I didn’t identify in my previous comment that I’d switched to responding to Apo, by the way, all.

Eh, you’re right that it’s lazy and unsubstantiated. I wouldn’t say I’m arguing against the sort of cheap shot I made, though, since I’m not trying to engage with her.

You know, if you write an essay on charitable argument, and in it call out ‘mainstream feminists’ as the only group particularly guilty of dishonest argument, and call out a feminist blog with a cheap shot like the one you made (which has very little to do with the point of your essay. Your defense of your cheap shot applies equally well to Marcotte’s writing, in that she’s often not arguing as such), it’s really, really hard not to read it as having an anti-feminist axe to grind.

If you envision yourself linking this essay in an attempt to explain to people you’re talking to how you would prefer they argue with you, I wouldn’t expect it to have much impact with anyone who thinks of themself as a feminist. If I didn’t know you reasonably well online before reading it, I would have hit that point, thought ‘Oh. One of those people’ and dismissed you as a troll from there on out.

If you’re good with being dismissed like that, then leave it as is. If not, I’d suggest editing out the shot at feminists generally and at Marcotte particularly (particularluy given that neither adds anything to your argument).

Of course, you’re right. I’m not sure why I’m so reluctant to remove it. But I guess I will go ahead and do that.

Everyone’s reluctant to correct mistakes. It’s human. Correcting them despite reluctance is cool, though.

I think a lot of my reluctance is that I’m personally so disappointed in the feminist parts of the blogosphere. For a while, I was really enamored with the ideology. Seeing what poor form so many of them use was a sort of disillusionment. And as Pandagon was the only feminist-topics blog I read every day, and also the most snarky, I sort of resent them. Amanda, in particular, because I never liked any of the other authors. I guess you could say it’s an identity crisis. Lashing out, and what have you.

[...] This post by Chris Capel is a detailed exposition of rules for civil debate. I especially like Chris’s list of guidelines, starting with what he calls the Golden Rule: Treat the person’s position as if it were your own. [...]

Hrm. I don’t know that I should be defending the feminist blogosphere generally, but you’re talking about a lot of people who have dealt with a lot of jerks, and so who have developed a low threshold for tossing people into the jerk pile. While Alas, for example, is certainly somewhat holier-than-thou, I can’t say as I’ve disagreed with Amp often at all about who gets moderated — the people who get stepped on really do seem, generally, to deserve it.

As I said over at Unfogged, it isn’t so much who gets moderated (at Alas and other places) as much as who doesn’t.

But it’s not really so much about the comments for me, either. It’s about a lack of rigor in the main posters arguments. Many feminist positions talk about structural issues causing inequality, hidden oppression, etc. Those are fairly serious claims, and they deserve consideration, but they are very hard to support well, and I’ve never seen it done. In fact, I’ve never seen any of them even attempt a semi-rigorous justification. Maybe I’m not well-read enough, but if that’s a requirement to be able to understand feminist bloggers, then feminist bloggers have problems.

Or you aren’t their intended audience, which isn’t necessarily a problem. There’s a value in discussing issues with people who don’t need basics explained, because explaining basics is timeconsuming and tedious. Now, that kind of discussion isn’t going to convince anyone who doesn’t share your understanding of the basics, but if convincing people in that category isn’t your goal, then there’s no problem.

If there are no feminist bloggers that have skeptical but openminded people in the intendend audience, then that’s a problem for feminsts. Now, Bitch is good at making strong arguments, but could she even defend the sort of views I was talking about? She doesn’t make nearly the sort of claims that, for instance, Twisty or Jill do, at least that I’ve seen.

If there are no feminist bloggers that have skeptical but openminded people in the intendend audience,

(Cough, cough) What am I, chopped liver? I’m not a single issue blogger, but I’m a feminist who blogs, and I argue feminist stuff to skeptical people fairly often. Alas is a place for feminists to talk to feminists, and they’re not focused on convincing people who don’t share their assumptions — if you don’t, you can pick up a fair amount from reading there, but you’re not an intended part of the conversation. If you want to be convinced as a skeptic, you need to look for someone like me or Bitch, who’s less about the internal conversation within the feminist movement, but is still talking about feminism.

You’re a feminist who blogs, certainly, but by “feminist blogger” I meant there “single-issue blogger”. And I haven’t seen you defend the radical positions I’m talking about, either.

You might be surprised. I read Alas pretty regularly, and while I’m not going to wholeheartedly endorse everything anyone writes, I don’t spend a lot of time disagreeing with the posters. I can’t argue ‘radical positions’ generally without a specific position to engage with, but I’d bet I’m closer to the Alas posters than you’d think. (Oh, not on everything, but on a lot of stuff.)

Socially, I’m not much of a gender issues activist — while my friends are mostly feminists, they aren’t feminist activists. And my technical grasp of internal feminist issues is weak — you can lose me really quickly on the distinctions between third-wave, liberal, or whatever other kind of feminist. But this is a social gap, not really an ideological one.

Yeah, I’m aware that people like you and Bitch could defend those ideas if asked. Hell, the other day I was defending Jill to TangoMan over at Gene Expression. (And a few days before that, siding with Gene Expression against Bitch and some of her commenters.) Maybe I’ll put a post up sometime if I find an example of the thing I’m talking about.

Nice writing!

Michael, you’re using the wrong link to your blog.

And thanks.

people see implied assertions (implied positions) in others’ posts that the posters didn’t see, and attack the others based on those perceptions

As a feminist blogger (and I have and will defend both Twisty and Amanda), I have to ask: what is wrong with this? Being attacked is uncomfortable, but if you believe something that contains an implied position that you are unaware of, isn’t it valid to point out “hey, your belief in X implies Y, and Y is fucked up”? And isn’t the right thing to do in that case, not to continue to defend X by simply saying, “well, I don’t *intend* to imply Y” but rather, to say either “shit, that implication is horrendous, I have to rethink X” or else “I don’t see the connection, can you spell it out?”

In all honesty, I think it’s revealing that the one specific (apparently now removed, so I don’t know if I’m understanding this correctly) example offered is feminism, and that you say you were reluctant to remove it. And that feminists get held up so often as the ones that do this sort of unfair thing.

Because here is how I see it. Feminists who are putting forward a *different perspective* on the world—i.e., one in which women’s lives and experiences, e.g. childbirth or pregnancy, are considered central to the human condition—often get criticized for being unfair. But that often indicates a lack of imaginative empathy on the part of our critics. Insisting that *your* world view be the one that everyone takes as foundational is an act of power, and when the specific point is that that world view is unfair to others, then people should try to take that argument seriously. So, for instance, a world view that sees having children as a “choice” that one has complete control of is implicitly sexist: not only because men don’t have children, but because historically, yes, they have had the choice to cause pregnancies and then walk away from them. So, realistically speaking, for men fatherhood is a choice. But for women, it isn’t. And when a feminist points that out, telling her that that’s not what you *intend* doesn’t in any way change the fact that that viewpoint *is* implicit in the children = choice argument.

Admittedly being able to see this can take some very hard thinking; changing our paradigms is not easy. But refusing to even try to see that is at least as unfair as what it is you’re accusing your interlocutors of doing, i.e, it’s assuming that the person you’re arguing with is arguing in bad faith and that their point of view has no validity, and not trying to see things with an open mind. Moreover, in the specific case of feminism, this refusal is an implicit power move. It’s true: people do not have to try to view the world through feminist eyes. And women/feminists *do* have to try to view the world through non- or anti-feminist eyes—because that’s the way the world is, and we need to negotiate within reality. But insisting that that *practial* truth is the right way to do things is far more damaging and unfair that any of the rhetorical moves that Twisty or Amanda use.

Seriously, it really burns me that otherwise intelligent men see “feminism” as this unfair world view, or too amorphous to be useful, or whatever. It feels personally insulting, because the implication under it is that those of us who *do* take feminism seriously are unfair. And I’d like to think that I deserve at least as much credit that my world view makes sense as you all expect me to extend to you.

And. It’s one thing to say that you haven’t found a feminist blog that you like. It’s another thing to say that feminist blogs should do what *you* think they should do, or that because you haven’t found a feminist blog that you like, that there’s something wrong with feminism.

“As a feminist blogger (and I have and will defend both Twisty and Amanda), I have to ask: what is wrong with this?”

In my experience, because it’s usually wrong.

Not that I’m not discussing feminism. I’m discussing my experience with people making assumptions about what they think I’m really saying.

It doesn’t seem helpful to have the nothing-to-do-with-each-other issues of “how to argue” and “feminism arguments” tangled here; which, of course, is the point I believe some have been trying to make to pdf23rds.

Myself, I was highly involved in arguments about feminism, from the pro-feminism side, back when I was in A Women’s Apa, and other feminist apas, in 1977 and that era. Don’t have anything to add to what I wrote back then.

But people who are bad at arguing, or reading: that’s always fresh.

Having omitted the quote, let me be very clear: “people see implied assertions (implied positions) in others’ posts that the posters didn’t see, and attack the others based on those perceptions”

What’s wrong with that (which has nothing whatever to do with feminism, or ice cream, or clam shells, or any specific thing on planet earth) is that attacking what someone believes are implied assertions without first checking if the other person actually remotely holds what the first person is using their mind-reading skills to deduce that the second person is “implying” usually turns out to be in error, in my experience. They’ve misread and misjudged and misassumed, and made an attack without basis.

Whereas asking questions will actually get one somewhere in determining what the other person actually thinks.

“but if you believe something that contains an implied position that you are unaware of, isn’t it valid to point out “hey, your belief in X implies Y, and Y is fucked up”?”

What kind of implication is it? Is it the kind of implication I talk about with the “I wish Bush had never been born” example? Or is it the kind of implication where a postion is, e.g., incompatible with gender egalitarianism? If it’s the latter, then it sounds more like a logical deduction than a conversational implication, and of course it’s valid to bring it up. Your example seems to be of the latter variety as well.

“a world view that sees having children as a “choice” that one has complete control of is implicitly sexist: not only because men don’t have children, but because historically, yes, they have had the choice to cause pregnancies and then walk away from them.”

No, the worldview is sexist because it’s wrong, and wrong in a way that leads to harm to women. Even if men did have children, the worldview would be wrong. For any hypothetical history that led to the current state, the worldview would be wrong.

It’s wrong because having a child isn’t a completely free choice (for most values of “free” and “choice”). It’s hard for many men to see that because men don’t have children, and because historically they have had the choice to cause pregnancies and then walk away from them, and other cultural and biological reasons.

“And when a feminist points that out, telling her that that’s not what you *intend* doesn’t in any way change the fact that that viewpoint *is* implicit in the children = choice argument.”

Well, I would say that the viewpoint (that women make a completely free choice to conceive and bear a child) is a necessary assumption of the wider argument, of the statement being made. It follows logically, and so is independent of the intentions of the person. And so it’s valid to criticize the person’s position based on that. My rules don’t apply there. Do you think this distinction is unclear in my article?

“otherwise intelligent men see “feminism” as this unfair world view, or too amorphous to be useful”

I don’t see the core of feminism—as I’ve seen you articulate it on occasion (and I agree with)—as being unfair or too amorphous. It’s particular analytical techniques that I think are ultimately invalid, but not necessary to feminism. In fact, I think they’re harmful, being invalid and all.

“or that because you haven’t found a feminist blog that you like, that there’s something wrong with feminism.”

Oh, but I never said that. I said I haven’t found a feminist blog that has made a convincing case on this particular (albeit pretty central) issue. I read your blog, and Happy’s, and occasionally others. And depsite my distaste for Ampersand’s community (and most of his co-bloggers,) I enjoy his own writing a lot. I think he personally tries hard to debate charitably. And have you seen how long Happy has put up with TangoMan? (I should really read more of their discussions.)

I think it’s a problem when a position or viewpoint that is generally accepted by a community of bloggers, a position that is regularly challenged by many of their most coherent opposition voices, is rarely if ever strongly articulated and justified by that community. Do you not think that’s a problem?

I just updated mind reading and people aren’t evil. And I moved the latter up. Any better?

” ‘people see implied assertions (implied positions) in others’ posts that the posters didn’t see, and attack the others based on those perceptions’

As a feminist blogger (and I have and will defend both Twisty and Amanda), I have to ask: what is wrong with this? Being attacked is uncomfortable, but if you believe something that contains an implied position that you are unaware of, isn’t it valid to point out “hey, your belief in X implies Y, and Y is fucked up”?”

Ironically for a post about understanding what people are saying, rather than what you think they are saying, I think you are talking about something slightly different to what he meant.
He wasn’t (as I understand) talking about seeing “implied positions” that they actually believe, in their posts, but when people see an apparently “implied position” that the poster doesn’t believe.

If I said “The Christian way of life leads to a harmonious society” on a secular blog, it could easily be assumed that I was Christian, and I might be attacked for that. But if I’m actually a Buddhist who just has some random appreciation for Christian social rules, or a wierd Evolutionist who believes that religious belief evolved because of the recognisable benefits it offers, then that’s unfair.
Over the internets there’s a huge range of people from all walks of life, and all frames of mind, and all of them see different implications in certain statements.
Calling people on these statements, or better yet, politely asking them if this implication is what they really believe, is reasonable, but mostly, people from all sides, take the implication they’ve seen and disliked and go for the throat! And this isn’t a civilised or useful way of having a conversation/debate.

In the case of someone believing X that does imply Y, (say I believed that keeping pets was akin to animal slavery, and thus by implication think that having farm animals must also be animal slavery), I agree that you can point it out, and even call it fucked up if you like, but if I were to say ‘ah but it’s not because blah blah blah’, it would be pointless to continue suggesting that I did think that. Though you could criticise whatever I put in the ‘blah’ as being inconsistent.

Basically what I’m very clumsily saying (it’s very late) is that when you read something into what someone is saying, and they say you’re wrong, unless they’re just being randomly inconsistent (and remember that perspectives change everything, what seems silly from one view could be very logical in context) it’s a waste of time to use this ’straw-man like’ view of their opinions, and conversations become increasingly long and distracted.

AW

And have you seen how long Happy has put up with TangoMan? (I should really read more of their discussions.)

I’m not exactly sure how you meant this but I do want to go on record as stating that Happy’s blog is my favorite feminist blog and since discovering her my blogosphere travels have been measurably reduced for I have a great time arguing with her, and from my perspective, I think we’re unique foils for each other on the topic of feminism, in that I’m not repeating the tired old anti-feminism tropes fielded by MRAs or religious conservatives. A blog like Pandagon is perfectly suited for being the counterpart to pronouncements of religious anti-feminists and her bombast serves her audience well. There’s little to gain from the Pandagonions engaging with the religious conservatives for they’re moving in opposite directions to each other. Therefore there need not be any semblence of respect given to the opposition because no one really desires dialogue and it’s more fun to point out, or mock, how the opposition violates dearly held feminist principles. You go there for a pep-talk from the coach just before you play the big game. What you don’t get is nuance or depth of analysis but then again you shouldn’t expect that from that market niche.

What makes Happy’s blog interesting to me is that though our fundamental axioms differ we tend to move in the same direction and her commentators are more engaging, or comport themselves differently at her blog, than what I found at other feminist blogs. This, in my opinion, creates an environment that is more conducive to debate and it certainly isn’t an echo-chamber.

As to the main topic of your post, Happy and I had a nice go round the last few days and it was a perfect illustration of your point, though rather than me as the commenter reading too much into her writing, I was charging that she was reading too much into a quote that she used to kick-off an otherwise interesting point. At this point I’ll second Robert’s observation that the tactic of “literalism” can often be viewed as being hyper-logical and I know that many of her commenters were completely bored with my POV. In the end no one budged from their starting point, but that’s really par for the course for most of us and what matters is that good arguments, hopefully, get fielded, that they resonate with readers, and maybe over time there will be ideological movement or fuller understanding of the opposing point of view. If you’re expecting an instance of debate to change a participant’s mind I think that that is hoping for too much. In my opinion, we should be looking for movement after debaters become more familiar with each other and the movement will most likely, though not exclusively, come from those not engaged in the debate, in that they’re not ego-invested.

Lizardbreath wrote that Arguing honestly and charitably, as you suggest, is the best way to actually have a productive argument and I agree, however we should all be prepared to modify our tactics in response to the debate terrain. A dash of sarcasm, scorn, praise, tactical concession, etc are often the grease that allow an impass to be crossed, or serve to dislodge a weak argument from its cover. There’s little to gain from being unwaveringly honest and charitable if your opponent doesn’t return the favor, that is unless you want to reach the silent audience, rather than your opponent.

Bitch is good at making strong arguments, but could she even defend the sort of views I was talking about? She doesn’t make nearly the sort of claims that, for instance, Twisty or Jill do, at least that I’ve seen.

I’ve never read Twisty, I’ve occasionally read Bitch, and I used to read Jill frequently. The impression that Bitch left upon me, and I concede that I saw only snippets because of the infrequency of my visits, was that her arguments were focused, the premises built upon each other towards the conclusion and that the arguments were not riddled with internal inconsistencies. That makes for a great argument and for critics that mainly leaves them an opening to focus their rebuttals on either the initial premises or the axioms, and those are much harder to dislodge than are weak arguments.

Jill, on the other hand, embodies a pro-feminist, pro-multiculturalist, pro-economic egalitarian outlook that often manifests itself in her arguments in contradictory ways. You can’t hold all of the “fashionable” positions all of the time and hope to maintain intellectual coherence. For someone like me, it’s great fun to read the intellectual contortions that are necessary to cover-up the ideological inconsistencies.

Maybe I’m completely off-base with this assessment, but it appears to me that Bitch has derived her ideology whereas Jill has slipped into hers. Principle versus posture.

“I’m not exactly sure how you meant this”

It’s meant in a purely positive sense.

“And that’s a huge misfortune, for everyone. When the majority of people become unable to hold rational conversations with those in the opposing ideological camp, the effectiveness of society-wide (or subculture-wide) dialectical processes that can lead to consensus on issues, and that can make effective coalitions possible, and that can lead to real intellectual progress at a cultural level, drops proportionately. (That’s not to say that it’s ever been any better, just that if it were…)”

There appears to be an assumption in this paragraph of the posting that the purpose of debate is to reach consensus eventually. Is that the only purpose of debate? Should it be?

Insofar as people have mutually exclusive positions, debate is usually (nominally) about seeing which one appears to be true. And insofar as people don’t understand their own positions that well, debate is about understanding them well enough to know if their opponents’ ideas are in fact exclusive of their own.

Of course, there are all sorts of power-based explanations that are true in various circumstances, but people wouldn’t usually admit to these being true. (Indeed, people would usually be quite insulted if you told them they were only arguing to get attention or something.) I’m not interested in debate in itself, though, only its usefulness in helping people to find truth, so I think these other uses of debate are worth avoiding as much as possible.

Huh. “Mutually exclusive” appears to be redundant, since exclusivity of propositions is a reflective property. I wonder why it’s the standard phrase.

[...] 25, 2007 Cast out the heretic Posted by teageegeepea under Blogosphere soap opera , Moral posturing   Those of youwho’ve been reading my blog already know about Robert Lindsay. If you haven’t I could explain here who he is, but just that is a subject of contention at this time. My analysis (which I was surprised to find he agreed with) was that he is simply what might have been common yesteryear, a Stalinist, but is today an oddity. Many of the things he says might be considered offensive, just as Stalinism should be to bourgeois sensibilities, but after the Old Left got replaced by the New Left, which was more concerned with culture, attitude, identity (of the non-class sort) and so on a great many normal ideas from the past became heresy. I just received an e-mail from him about a campaign on the Marxmail mailing list to get the lefty sites on his blogroll to remove links to him. No word on whether his mug is to be airbrushed out of photos or if thugs with ice-picks are to be dispatched to his residence though. If there are any lefty bloggers reading this, consider linking to him or advising your friends against casting him out into the cold of the non-left blogosphere. Alternatively, if you think he really is an unredeemable racist reactionary not deserving of the title “leftist”, leave a comment. If you are a rightie I suppose you can enjoy the irony (well, perhaps anti-irony) and schadenfreude, but remember that Bob has only spoken well of the dictatorship of the proletariat rather than participated in it and that the blog world would be a less interesting place without folks like him. Imagine the other side consisted of nothing but sensitivity police unwilling to admit the costs that the enactment of their plans would have on the unwilling. As Samuel Huntington put it in Clash of Civilizations, a capitalist and a communist can at least discuss the merits of their respective systems, but with the transition to conflicts based on identity, that conversation is much less feasible. Good luck trying to talk to an islamist, or for that matter the echo-chambers on the internet today. So here’s to charitable debate and unthinkable thoughts. At least as long as it stays on the internet. Mouth-off offline and you deserve to get tazed.   [...]

This was extremely helpful to me.

Hi there. Thank you for writing this. I think it’s generally well-done and I agree that it would be awesome if everyone tried to be very charitable debaters. I even agree that it is common in sex / gender circles for people NOT to be charitable debaters, and this has frustrated me in the past, too. I may link to this in the future.

I will say, though, that I think part of the divide you are tangentially articulating — the one between rationalist sites (largely populated by, let’s face it, white upper-middle-class men) vs. feminist & non-normatively sexed/gendered ones — is a matter of slight culture clash between the two blogospheres.

I think it is very, very common for the privileged classes (I am using the phrase generally and loosely) to be huffy, defensive and/or unwilling to accept/examine their privilege even when they are confronted with it gently, e.g. by asking questions. I think this is part of why oppressed groups (I am using the phrase generally and loosely) tend to develop more in-your-face tactics. Given the emotional space to ignore an argument that makes a given person feel like a “bad person”, s/he will very frequently choose to ignore it. Being overtly aggressive and passionate is an approach that, I think, evolved to counteract this effect. It is useful and, now, the norm for the feminist culture to be aggressive and overtly emotional. In contrast, rationalists haven’t really needed to evolve this approach, because — to put it bluntly — you guys are usually in a position of power and suffer no actual consequences if your opponents decide not to bother with your arguments, even if they are uncomfortable to contemplate, which they frequently aren’t.

Now maybe all this is obvious to you. But I am pointing it out because, while you appear perfectly happy to critique our community, you do not seem inclined to give us credit for the fact that our particular tendencies are endemic to our subculture or (more importantly) to consider why that cultural perspective is useful for us. I would argue that in the rationalist blogs I’ve seen, there is a marked unwillingness to address or examine a huge array of cultural assumptions — usually the ones based on privilege. When one person points out a given privilege-based assumption behind a given post, the answer is more likely to be “Well, I didn’t mean to say that! Of course I don’t think that!” or “Fine, I’ll edit the language so that it doesn’t seem like I’m saying that,” rather than “Wow! You are so correct, that assumption is problematic and I am glad to realize that I had such a gross privileged bias lurking in my brainmeat.” I think that the coolness of your language and the willingness to give people space to shift their apparent opinions — while, in some ways, laudable and reasonable — contributes to this effect.

As a “case study”: I replied to a post a while back over on Less Wrong that was titled, “Is Masochism Necessary?” I’m not sure whether this comment field will accept the A tag, so I’ll just paste the raw link: [ http://lesswrong.com/lw/ac/is_masochism_necessary/ ]

The original post contained some pretty gross anti-BDSM biases. I called them out in the comments. There was a spat in which the original poster said that I had “jump[ed] in … with moral accusations, and threaten[ed] people with social rejection unless they discuss it the way you want them to”. I assert that if the same exchange had occurred in the feminist blogosphere, I would not have been accused of moral accusations or told that I was threatening social rejection. I also assert that the original poster, if more accustomed to the feminist subculture, would have been more willing to honestly examine his obvious biases, rather than saying: “I changed it. I think it’s weaker and less interesting this way, but it’s not in my advantage to repell people who have the expertise necessary for this conversation.”

(As a side note, the original post has been thoroughly edited without noting the edits. If that’s common behavior in the rationalist blogosphere, then I think it backs up my argument: it allows people to gloss over and conveniently “forget” any biases they may have exhibited, while apparently conforming to rationalist values about how clear/accessible writing should be.)

There was even one commenter, JulianMorrison, who noted that the reason our interchange blew up so much might be more cultural than we thought: “I think people here are used to being more “clinically detached” than you’re used to. It’s a bit of a clash of styles.”

To wind up this comment: I am not saying that either culture is better; just trying to make some observations about the advantages of “mine”. And again, thanks for writing this post. It’s generally great, even if your obvious anti-feminist-culture axe is kind of annoying.

[...] and How to Debate Charitably Chris Capel has written a short essay about “why and how to debate charitably,” and I’m struggling to find anything significant to disagree with him about.*  You should [...]

Clarisse—you must be referring to the comments when you say that I’m articulating a divide between cultures or critiquing your community, because my article itself hasn’t mentioned feminism or minority groups since like a couple days after writing it.

rationalist sites (largely populated by, let’s face it, white upper-middle-class men)

I’m not sure about the “upper” part, but ok.

you do not seem inclined to give us credit for the fact that our particular tendencies are endemic to our subculture or (more importantly) to consider why that cultural perspective is useful for us

Do you mean to say “endemic”? I’m perfectly aware that those tendencies are endemic to your subculture, but it’s not the type of thing one gives credit for if one doesn’t approve of those tendencies. Anyway, I’m willing to grant that aggressiveness is a natural, justified emotional reaction to marginalization and defensive/willful ignorance and whatnot, and even that it’s possibly useful to further the subculture’s aims. Further, I have no problem at all with emotional writing.

Perhaps my position has changed a bit since I wrote the above comments. My objection to the feminist bloggers I mention is much more about an abysmal lack of rigor, extravagant claims given with no good evidence, and just plain being wrong, than it is about style or snark or lack of charity. (You can be 100% correct and as rude as you want. I wouldn’t criticize them like I have if I thought they were correct.) And I think you might be using “emotional” as a cover for that—others certainly do. Which would be pure bullshit.

Chris, I really liked your essay. So much so that I’ve shared it with friends and excerpted it for my first post at a new group blog founded by some mathematical sociologists. I returned to this site to see if the trackback worked and ended up reading the recent comments.

I thought my position is closer to yours than Clarisse’s, but reading your last comment raises some questions for me.

I read you as arguing that debates are more productive when people do not to use highly-charged emotional language. This seems the natural result of focusing on understanding your opponent’s position first and slowly walking through your refutation to see where the disagreement really lies.

Therefore, I was left confused when you said “(You can be 100% correct and as rude as you want. I wouldn’t criticize them like I have if I thought they were correct.”

I prefer rude correct people to rude incorrect people, but do you really want to argue that being correct always excuses being rude?

To me, your last two sentences sound accusatory, violating another one of your guidelines. Perhaps I’m misinterpreting you, or perhaps you’ve changed your philosophy. Either way, I’d love to hear from you.

Clarisse, upon re-reading my essay, I see bits where I do talk about feminism-related stuff as examples, and I’ve changed bits of the language (about emotional investment, particularly) to bring it into accord with my previous comment to you.

Therefore, I was left confused when you said “(You can be 100% correct and as rude as you want. I wouldn’t criticize them like I have if I thought they were correct.”

I’m not completely sure about the nature of your confusion.

do you really want to argue that being correct always excuses being rude?

Not at all. I only argue that my criticism would have been moderated a lot if they were consistently correct. For instance, I don’t criticize Sadly, No! for their extreme rhetoric/snark, because I happen to agree with them most of the time. (Neither do I expect anyone on the right to engage them in the least.)

To me, your last two sentences sound accusatory, violating another one of your guidelines.

Which one? I just skimmed over my essay again and didn’t see anything about being accusatory (or using profanity, for that matter). Note that the first sentence doesn’t directly accuse Clarisse, and the second is in the subjunctive.

I read Clarisse’s response at the LW thread about masochism she linked, and her approach really annoyed me, so I didn’t feel like being quite as polite as I might have otherwise been. But did I say something uncharitable?

Under “Rule: People aren’t evil,” you wrote “But don’t be accusatory. Just because the implication is distasteful, and you think their argument leads to it, doesn’t mean they don’t share your distaste for it.” But I’m not particularly concerned about whether you technically violated something you said in your essay. If I’m to continue, I’d like to refocus discussion on what the best guidelines for debate in what contexts and why.

@Clarisse, You acknowledge that debating charitably, as defined by Chris’s essay, has at least some advantages, at least in some contexts but you seem to be claiming:

1. That a more in-your-face emotional style is a reaction to the fact that people often ignore the substantive content which threatens their worldview.
2. That this style succeeds in engaging or convincing people who would not be engaged or convinced by a more detached style.

The first claim is interesting, and worth discussing, but I’m going to skip to the second, because while it may be true in some cases, my intuition is that more often than not it is false.

What are the goals we are trying to achieve in settling on guidelines for debates?
I would nominate enjoyment of the debate, willingness to enter and continue the debate, and honest agreement. (Am I missing anything?)

How could we study the effect of debate guidelines on these outcomes? I think it would be hard to trust observational data, because the people that select into these debates are probably very different. But it wouldn’t be that hard to do genuine experiments.

In brief, we would randomly assign people to groups and the groups would be given different instructions. Some would be taught how to debate “charitably,” some, how to use an in-your-face style, and some given no instructions (alternatively, subjects could be primed with examples rather than given any instruction). Then the groups would be given a topic to debate. Surveys given out before and after the debate would allow us to measure changes in beliefs, opinions of other debaters, enjoyment of the debate, and anything else we might be interested in.

Other experimental conditions we might vary include face-to-face vs. blog, number of debaters, and debate topics. This experiment wouldn’t answer all our questions about guidelines for debates, but I think they would do a tremendous amount to inform the discussion.

Sorry about taking a while to get to this. I currently live and work in Africa, and my Internet access is unreliable.

@Michael — Responded at your original post.

@Chris — I was actually surprised when I read the comments and found out that you had already edited your post to be more “feminist-friendly” — because it had already rather set my teeth on edge. That said, yes, I think most of the culture clash was kindasorta described in the comments. And let me just reiterate that I really like the substance of your post; it reminds me of things I’ve been tempted to write, and it also reminds me of qualities that I myself need to work on. (Looking back, I’m not happy with my comment on the LW post, either. But, well … the original poster’s approach really annoyed me.)

You write, “I’m perfectly aware that those tendencies are endemic to your subculture, but it’s not the type of thing one gives credit for if one doesn’t approve of those tendencies.” By “give credit”, I meant “cut some slack”, and I also meant “assume that people have reasons for acting the way they do, step back, and think about what those reasons are.” If you’re coming upon an unfamiliar or even disturbing cultural perspective, then the first question you should ask yourself is: “What does that buy them?”

I think that current feminist / alt sex culture is pretty good at certain things, including but not limited to: acknowledging and examining privilege; examining emotional reactions; picking up on cultural biases. In fact, I think members of the subculture tend to be better at those things than members of other subcultures.

I think that it’s hard to be rigorous or produce evidence for claims about subtle cultural issues, although it’s obviously possible, and I myself try to do it when I can — if only to make my arguments airtight (for instance, I think that my post “Evidence that the BDSM Community Does Not Enable Abuse” is superior to many of my posts because I did a lot of research before writing it, and it provides scans, links and citations of BDSM community anti-abuse initiatives). I also think that it’s hard to be rigorous or produce evidence when you’re not making the rules about what’s worth studying (for instance, there is very limited research on BDSM out there).

Of course, it seems obvious that the point of the most aggressive, passionate rhetoric is to get people excited and provide a rallying cry rather than any convincing argument. I’m more interested in discussing the potential argumentative advantages of the overall approach. What is it buying us in that regard — if anything? If the entirety of current feminist / alt sex culture restricted itself from discussing problems that it couldn’t produce evidence about, I wonder if it would dramatically impoverish its commentary. I also wonder if some of these advantages — for instance, being awesome at examining emotional reactions — are interlinked with passionate aggression, which inspires emotional reactions.

I’d like to think that it’s possible for feminist culture to shift away from being aggressive / accusatory / etc. while still retaining the advantages purchased by that style, but I’m not sure.

I think that current feminist / alt sex culture is pretty good at certain things, including but not limited to: acknowledging and examining privilege; examining emotional reactions; picking up on cultural biases.

At its best, certainly. I’ve encountered many bloggers who do a great job of those things and offer solid, compelling, charitable yet incisive arguments. Often, though, I think bloggers and even authors simply go too far in their analyses.

I think that it’s hard to be rigorous or produce evidence for claims about subtle cultural issues

Oh, yes, certainly. I myself am extremely lazy about this sort of thing.

If the entirety of current feminist / alt sex culture restricted itself from discussing problems that it couldn’t produce evidence about, I wonder if it would dramatically impoverish its commentary.

To clarify, I’m not really talking so much about hard, scientific evidence, but rather about Bayesian evidence—anything that you can validly use to update posterior probability. When I complain about lack of evidence, I think mainly it’s that the evidence they’re presenting is not quite valid for the purpose they’re using it for—usually, they don’t give people enough benefit of the doubt. And I certainly understand why. (Benefit of the doubt often does serve to protect privilege and excuse misogyny.) But again, I just think they take it too far.

And that’s about all I have to say. I pretty much agree with your other points.

[...] agree with Toy Soldier that this may not have been the best tactic. In general, I try to support debating as charitably and with as reasonable a tone as possible, which is something I did not succeed at in Part 3. And yet I think that I did succeed at the goal [...]

[...] agree with Toy Soldier that this may not have been the best tactic. In general, I try to support debating as charitably and with as reasonable a tone as possible, which is something I did not succeed at in Part 3. And yet I think that I did succeed at the goal [...]