So it was a suite party at a con and this guy sits opposite to me, tells me we’ve met before. I apologize, tell him about my crazy inability to recognize faces that I don’t encounter on a regular basis, to the point of not being able to remember relatives, former students, and old friends.
He nods, not quite believing. “I just wanted to tell you how much I loved your books.”
“Cool. Cool. Have you had a chance to read Neuropath yet?”
He makes a face, pokes his glasses against the bridge of his nose. “Yeah…”
“And?”
“I’m afraid I didn’t like it.”
“You’re not the first to say that! What put you off?”
He scans the crowded room. “Well… Horror is a tricky thing… There’s a fine line between being frightening and being… sordid, I think…”
This took me by surprise. “Sordid?”
It’s funny, encountering criticisms that stick at these things. I never get offended, just… intent.
“Yeah… Hey, do I mind if I ask you if you have any kids?”
“I think you just did! But, ah, no.”
A nod screwed too tight to really signal agreement. “I knew it.”
“How?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“I just didn’t think anyone who had kids could have written that book.”
Now I’m intent times two.
“Am I allowed to take that as a compliment?”
“Now, maybe. But when you have a kid, not so much.”
This is a reconstruction: all I remember clearly are wire-rim glasses, the gist, and the way crowds of people can fence an illuminated conversation in dark. But it stuck, and I’ve thought about it more than once since I’ve become a father…
Like him.
Because the fact is, I totally agree. There’s no way in bloody hell I could’ve written Neuropath now.
Why? Because some experiences are arguments. The difficulty lies in discovering just what that argument is…
I still can’t get over the amount of traffic TPB has received over the past week. I’m still processing everything. It’ll probably take a week or two before I feel confident enough to draw any solid conclusions. As it stands, I’m probably most troubled by the role life experience and reasoning plays in all this, and how the two evolved into antagonists as the debate progressed.
This world is a hard one – certainly harder than any one life. And in this sense we’re all victims. The pivotal question, given all the sound and fury that we’ve witnessed, is one of what this legitimizes. I was a victim, growing up, the victim of–you guessed it–another victim. We grow into our power, and time is prone to rob us of our retribution, but we hold onto that empty place, don’t we? the place where our actual victimizer, the one raw with whiskey and an unshaven jaw, once stood. So we fill it with others, with groups or children or anything safe, so that the circuit might be complete. We laugh. We sneer. We shame and we strike. We pass piety around like a joint. We become as ugly as we are. This is the cycle, isn’t it? great and miserable and so very sordid, playing across the generations, along all our degrees of separation.
And here we are playing it out. Again.
This post reminds me of a notion a friend of mine has, that all imprisonment decisions should be made on the basis of removing societal threats rather than imposing punishments. His actual argument (not far off from yours, if it’s off at all) is that we are nothing but exceedingly complex stimulus-response machines, and therefore no one is truly responsible for anything that they do, good or bad. Dangerous people should be removed from society before they cause it more harm, but purely as a preventative measure, not for any sort of rehabilitation. Of course, the concept of “punishing the wicked” is important to the stability of societies. If free will truly is an illusion, one could argue the necessity of maintaining that illusion for one’s mental health, if nothing else.
It’s funny, I bought this same friend a copy of The Darkness that Comes Before as a gift some years back. He started it, enjoyed it early on, then stopped. He never said as much, but I wondered if it was just a little TOO much like his own belief to be tolerated. If that makes sense.
It’s funny though, how people making this argument always flinch from following the rabbit-hole all the way down. I knew a nihilist who laughed at these arguments, at the whole impulse to mime morality after you’ve abandoned it. He thought defective machines should just be shut off.
But how many people could function in a (mostly) peaceful society without at least the illusion of morality? So many people tie it to religious belief and ONLY religious belief. Is it a necessary crutch to avoid us all howling at the moon and butchering each other, or is it a method of manipulating the masses, Kellhus-style? Is some level of moral manipulation warranted, even needed? Or does it not matter, because the stimulus-response machinery does what it does regardless of what we think of it or the society we construct around it?
If your predictions are correct, I guess we’ll be finding out the answers, as much of them as we can grasp, soon.
My prediction is that society will bifurcate, become even more bipolar, with our culture of denial becoming more hysterical, more disconnected from social facts, and therefore easier to manipulate, while the administrative powers that be ruthlessly exploit the science and technology to their advantage. I mean, look at this debate. I’m soft-selling some pretty basic stuff – pretty nonthreatening, I should think – and yet a good chunk of observers see only what they need to see to preserve their sense of moral superiority, etc – in other words, do the very thing the science suggests they are prone to do, witless to any irony or inconsistency. Ignorance is invisible, and we’ve evolved a keen set of cognitive skills to make sure we remain ignorant, anything to hold onto our sense of sham certainty. That’s the way our species rolls.
Buckle up!
Don’t worry, once we finish mapping the wiring in our heads and start actively screwing with it, as you’ve also predicted a la NP, we’ll just engineer all these unpleasant little evolutionary leftovers away in a manner that is freely distributed to everybody! Instant Utopia! Humanity 2.0!
Right?
On a less sarcastic note, and totally off-topic, do you have any idea where you plan to go, writing-wise, after The Second Apocalypse concludes?
Hollywood. Vegas. Some place sane!
Hopefully some more Disciple Manning! I think he could be a great gateway drug!
Tell me about it. That might make for a funny post, answering in the guise of Disciple…
I have to say, Callan, I tend to think I’m a tough nut when it comes to these things, but you’re made of teflon, brother!
It’s somewhat belated, and after all my tooth-gnashing it’s still *not enough*, and I’m sure I’ll be crafting another attempt in my head the moment I’ve posted this link–but here you go. For what it’s worth.
http://caitlinsweet.com/?p=478
Thank you, Caitlin! I know I’ve been a hermit. I apologize. I honestly don’t know how you did it with TWO little one’s running around – although I imagine they’re not so little anymore!
I’ve actually been thinking about you because I’ve been reading Valente, and her prose so reminds me of yours. I need to get your new book!
Three data points, then. Basically an extended referral to Caitlin’s post, but there’s still this contingent in the comments getting all het up because I described rabies as a “disease” and not an “illness”.
http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=2787
Thank you, Peter! You could say the whole bloody species lives in the space between ‘disease’ and ‘illness.’ I like to think we’re on the illness side, ugly, but entirely curable. Pass the ointment, brother!
My two “little ones” are 12 and nearly 10 (I remember being large with the latter at World Fantasy ’01 and positively vast with her at Ad Astra ’02)–and while I could definitely cite having to attend to their daily needs as the reason I wasn’t writing much, way back when, I can’t blame them for why I’m not writing much now. Goddammit.
You’re the second person to mention Valente to me, this past week! I obviously have to get reading.
Well, that’s one more data point for the “not misogynist” hypothesis…
Make that two data points. I’ve known Scott for over ten years now. As I said in a comment on Caitlin’s blog, he’s a big noisy know-it-all barbarian, but he’s got a heart of gold.
Fuck, Roger! How many times do I gotta tell you. Not gold. Polyester.
Ehh, I’d avoid saying asserting this. It buys into the measurment tool ROH uses, which is whoever has the most shouting voices just has to be correct.
Though it would be awesome that if everyone said that the sun orbits the earth, then it is the case! Now that’d be a schoolman like choir dispensing magic!
+1
Love when authors post. Buying The Pattern Scars. Woot.
Hi Scott!
First time poster, long time lurker here.
I’m probably one of the few people who loved Neuropath and really, really did not like Disciple of the Dog.
However, I read Neuropath before I became a father. Even though I feel it’s a book that will benefit from a re-read, I probably won’t, because of exactly that reason. I don’t want to read it, now that I have a daughter.
And about “social inheritance”, one of my biggest fears is passing on some of the things my father passed on to me, to my daughter.
I love your books about the Second Apocalypse. I think you are doing important work for the entire SF genre. I am very excited to see where you go with it.
Cheers!
Thanks, Roland. The way these things daisy chain through generations really is freaky as all get out – and as a parent, cause to be mindful. I’ve actually stopped recommending Neuropath – probably because having a kid has turned me into a sentimental sap! I can remember hating human interest pieces featuring children or ‘young people’ on the news, say things like, ‘They just sound like miniature stupid people!’ to my frowning wife. Now I lap them up!
No worries about sapping out on SA though. I am locked in, even if it hurts.
hey.
as the father of a one month old, i wanted to agree with this sentiment on sappy-fication.
hell, during my wife’s pregnancy i sometimes worried that i might be as uninterested in my baby as i had always been in other people’s babies.
now, it’s laughable how interested i am in EVERYHTING she does (in fact, my background in neuroscience and sensory systems adds another dimension to my interest in her development).
as an escaped former philosopher, i would think you’d also appreciate child development for what it says about “intentionality” and the like (e.g., smiling but not smiling ‘at’, or ‘for’, or even ‘because’ in the conventional sense, etc. even knowing that very early on, it’s just muscles moving, means little. i’m the target of a plot going back millions of years…).
i also think the way we react to our children gives the lie to certain kinds of moral nihilism – from an evolutionary standpoint, it’s fairly obvious that we should love our children. what’s funny is that knowing this is so in no way allows us to “transcend” what it feels like to do it.
this is partly what i meant by the solace of the “we are things…” rant a while back.
i am also reminded of a psychology professor who listed the principal “skill” of babies as “being really, really cute.”
it was phrased provocatively on purpose, and i didn’t really grasp it until i became the abject servant of my own daughter’s monstrous cuteness.
it’s a more narrowly focused version of attractiveness in general, or as a good friend of mine likes to say, “the closest thing there is to having a superpower in real life is being really, really good looking.”
‘Monstrous cuteness’ sums it up perfectly. Just think, your testerone levels have plunged, and your brain is furiously rewiring itself to be more nurturing. You testicles will be hanging from your earlobes before all is said and done, believe you me.
It’s not that it gives lie to moral nihilism as it gives lie to the ability of reason to make a dent in these things – just as good old papa Hume said.
And CONGRATULATIONS! Brace yourself. The monster owns you now!
ochlocrat, yeah, I think and operate by quite a few similar principles. Although I guess saying it that way isn’t as upbeat as a fuck yeah, so instead I’ll say: Fuck yeah!
Scott wrote:
“Because the fact is, I totally agree. There’s no way in bloody hell I could’ve written Neuropath now.”
Well, I enjoyed how ‘sordid’ the book was. I enjoyed finding thematic connections between it and PoN. I enjoyed that you actually ‘went there’, and I think you’re doing yourself a disservice if you’re somehow silencing the part of you that wrote the most wicked parts.
Indeed, I have to ask: if you had to write Neuropath NOW, which part would you not have written? The whole thing, or just the victimization of Bible’s children?
What would hold you back?
This is interesting stuff.
I think Neuropath is actually a tremendously important book precisely because of those final scenes with Frankie. There is NOTHING holding us back from being able to implement these kinds of technologies in the near future (sometimes I worry it’s already possible and been done).
And… come on… aren’t there some people you wish you could Horror-lock or Pain-lock and watch suffer for a few decades? *evil grin*
The creepy thing is that I haven’t ‘silenced’ anything – evolution has. Because of this episode, and others like it (my wife and I are basically 10 years behind our peers on the kid front), I’ve tried to keep close track of how I’ve changed… and I have, in a multitude of ways. I’ve even become more conservative politically! – something I swore up and down I would never do. All of a sudden stability arguments make a whole helluva lot of sense to me.
Don’t get me wrong. I actually think Neuropath (for all it’s flaws) is my best book on a number of different levels. I just don’t think it’s a book some people need to read. Friends of mine have blamed their depression on it…
The thing that terrifies me about it is just how quickly certain things, as you say, seem to be coming true. As soon as you post a link announcing the first scalable low-field MRI technology, I’m heading for my bunker in the Canadian Shield!
Heh, Triskele is gonna be pissed haha but:
Scott, this is going to sound very new-agey, but have you ever taken Psilocybins? Or really any hallucinogenic?
(I’ll admit I never have, I don’t even drink, but my friend wants me to take part in an ayahuasca ceremony and I’m considering it…)
I wonder because I think I’m one of the few people who felt *liberated* upon reading all the conditioning stuff in PoN. I even remember remarking to people that I didn’t quite get why you found the whole thing so depressing.
I was quite happy when, upon reading the introductory chapters of Breaking Open the Head, Pinchbeck noted his own revelation about conditioning upon taking ibogaine, that he felt he could see the machinery of forces that made him, but still found buried within the self that freed him. It excited me so much I actually wrote a comparison of his experience to Dante’s (used to work for a Dante Scholar as an r.a.) when he drinks from the Lethe then the Eunoe, how this allows him to see his “sin” with “innocent” eyes and then become “disposed to mount the stars” at the end of Purgatorio…
( I was supposed to go to one of Neil Goldsmith’s Poetry Science meet ups where the presenter was someone using ibogaine to treat heroin addiction, but sadly missed it.
)
ANYWAY, I realize this a tangent of sorts, but I just wonder about how, in the proper context, such drugs might aid in dealing with some the issues you’ve discussed and raised – especially in light of an old classmate helping with the Psilocybin Cancer Anxiety Study.
Er, Neil Goldsmith being a shrink I think you’d get along famously with: http://www.nealgoldsmith.com/
I’m really glad you wrote Neuropath when you did, then. It sucks that we can’t look forward to a perhaps even more unflinching treatment of children from you, because I thought maybe you were one person who wouldn’t put on the kid gloves, as it were, when dealing with them fictionally. Also, I’m never having kids.
Don’t lose faith. The fantasies have some dark places yet to go!
Yes, I recall a previous blog post in which you made just such a promise for TUC…
Heh, I promised Triskele I would let you get on with writing TUC, so I’m going to give something akin to a conclusion and shut up:
First off -> I’m a little sad about losing the default bolding, the emphasis placed on anything and everything I wrote was a nice ego stroke.
“As it stands, I’m probably most troubled by the role life experience and reasoning plays in all this, and how the two evolved into antagonists as the debate progressed.”
I’m not sure this is what happened, though I think I’ve already discussed at length my perceptions on these posts….*but* I have an addiction to my own voice so…
I think what bothered me, and still does, is the chasms between sides and how they view things. The TPB Fallacies Game is an example about how even who is on the side of reason is in contention.
I’m not saying who’s right and who’s wrong, I think the realization I’ve had is how the lenses through which people see the world are so varied.
Having seen what understanding conditioning can do for someone who needs to put past abuse into manageable context, I think the thread of compassion that weaves through your works is important. Ideally you’ll find a way to reach across the gaps to share it.
-Sci
I think its great! Hilarious. But you do understand how it works? Everyone simply is their own ‘baseline yardstick’ for what makes sense – for what’s ‘reasonable.’ That’s why it’s so bloody hard to get through to anybody, including me. For people with training in practical reasoning, ROH epitomizes the absence of reason, and many of the claims that you and Kal have made here look, well, absurd. If you were to bring forward credible scientific evidence, for instance, of the effectiveness of shaming tactics, my desire to be right would make me more critical of the study that I would be otherwise, I’m sure, but I would concede that you had the better evidence (because all I have is a speculative guess based on certain scientific evidence). If you were to catch me out on any faulty inference or fallacy, I would also concede. I know this because I’ve done so more times that I can count! It’s not as though I started out wanting to be a skeptical naturalist: I was literally shown the shortcomings of my arguments again and again and again. I was battered into it by better reasons (and it still makes me pissy thinking about it).
And this, if you look at how intractable debate seems otherwise, is almost a miraculous thing. I know you can’t see the distinctions I refer to, that all you have are your baseline intuitions of what makes sense, so when I engage you I try to do what Socrates did: ask questions that force you to confront apparently incompatible intuitions – what Kal mistakenly thought were ‘leading questions’ (which actually have a very distinct logical structure and are very easy to identify once you know what to look for).
Seen through this lense, the positions you see on ROH are largely incoherent. They just want to be right, and so they resort to all the dirty tricks you’re taught to avoid in practical reasoning classes.
Now I think this shit all the time, but you’ll notice I rarely reference it, because the fact is, absent the kind of authority gradient you find in the classroom it simply has to sound like pompous bullshit, a kind of argument from authority. The same goes with too much name-dropping (in this case, all the feminist authors I’ve read over the years), which really amounts to another kind of argument from authority absent any knowledge of the authors I’m referencing (I’m starting to second guess this, though, given the impact LTP had). I rely on the science, something which most people respect – as well they should! – and the most straightforward, forceful inferences I can find. And for some people it works! But for most? I’m not sure.
TPB is far from perfect, but it is a place where reason has a voice and rationalization is called a rascal. The degree that you think ROH is also such a place is simply the degree to which you share her moral intuitions. In my practical reasoning classes I would actually use sites like hers for ‘find that fallacy’ assignments.
By all means remain skeptical of what I’m saying: the important thing is that you investigate for yourself. You’ll see.
I think the problem is the absurdity comes, in part, from derangement of queries/rebuttals.
Example: Regarding special pleading, I felt we were talking about different things much of the time. Personally, LTP was a godsend, because it at least got me to understand one side’s expectations about communication. I actually like someone telling me, sans accusation, that they are confused/suspicious about my motives. Classy.
Really though, I find it darkly humorous how ineffective these posts have been – seems like Elodie’s story was the thing most people cared about.
Relating to science, I think a heuristic for your claims, with a decent sampling of RoH’s content, would have worked better. There’d still be contention, but there’d be meat to chew on.
Especially since the ineffectiveness is what the posts were about! It’s every bit as sad as it’s humourous, even tragic when you look at history. Sneering, mockery and the like have always had the upper hand.
Although it can feel like name dropping is an argument from authority, in my experience (if you do it the right way) it actually just lets people know where you’re coming from as long as you’re treating it like journalistic disclosure. For some reason it can also strike people as really humble – its harder to come off as an arrogant know it all when you’re letting people know that other people have influenced your ideas and you’re grateful to them for so doing.
Agreed with LTP. I’ve been surprised by the name dropping thing at times when I simply wanted to be honest, that these ideas were not simply my own.
Alot of it has to do with context as well. I’ve been amazed that the debate I had with Vandemeer ten years ago has come up as often as it has as some kind of proof, because I actually made the attempt to be more Socratic precisely because of that fracas (which I entirely don’t regret). I apologized more than a few times, shocked at the furious outbursts I was getting. But that said, I’m not so sure Jeff has the same attitudes regarding ‘Truth’ in literature now. One of the things it taught me was the power of persistence. We humans are hairless for a reason!
The TPB drinking game link…I laughed, I cringed and end up asking myself WTF?
It seems to have been a popular idea – that Bakker doesn’t use earth logic, that arguing with him would be like “arguing with Creationists about evolution”. This just seems like a bonus for the number of people who found Elodie’s story to be a spot-on impersonation.
I found it a lesson for both sides – even Reason is up for grabs. Heh, takes me back to Plato/Socrates’s fear of sophistry.
I choose Hemlock!
that arguing with him would be like “arguing with Creationists about evolution”
Did it strike a point with you, Saajan? Or that someone would say it at all is a data point toward it being the case?
Did they say how they came to that conclusion, what criteria are needed to meet it? Or did they just assert it vehemently?
I mean, that’s part of why it’s hard/pointless to argue with a creationist – they don’t use any criteria for their vehemently asserted claims. I hope they weren’t simply doing the same thing as a creationist themselves.
@Callan: I don’t remember the tone. I attempted to get a few self-identifying female feminists involved, they pretty much all expressed it would be a waste of time to even bother as, in their opinion, TPB is a ‘no-reason’ zone (they used varied other words).
As I said, I think it speaks to the importance of communication and clear delineation of claims followed with evidence, as Kalbear notes below and LTP suggested to me in comments of the last post. I plan to be much more clear in the future.
I think the appeals to science might have actually hurt, as it came off as just links to favorable evidence sans considerations of where conclusions such as Haidts were applicable. Better to engage fully on that front – with data, a demonstration of heuristics/algorithms, or at least some textual samples/analysis. The lack of these things over four posts is why I think the “like Creationists” complaint was made.
Caveat: Alex MacFarlane did offer to answer my variant of the Criteria Question when she had a chance, and was nice enough to let me know that my queries were not spamming and she was chewing on it.
Oh, and the funny thing was I was making up my own drinking game prior to this (really!). But it was a bit more emperical – every time Scott says ‘doom’ or ‘gaming ambiguity’, you take a shot! These events definately do occur! PS: Nor am I disagreeing when these things are said – taking a shot over these things is certainly not an indication of disagreement with them!
Cross post!
Saajan,
Better to engage fully on that front – with data, a demonstration of heuristics/algorithms, or at least some textual samples/analysis. The lack of these things over four posts is why I think the “like Creationists” complaint was made.
Going back to reason type X, the way that paradigm works is that the party making the claim provides their criteria for making the claim as well. Otherwise all the demonstrations of algorithms in the world wont address anything – precisely because there is nothing/no criteria to address.
Maybe reason type X is a load of ass to them, but on the other hand they are staring at products of reason X, typing on products of reason X and sending to servers derived from reason X.
Sadly with reason type X, there is no wriggle room. Provide criteria for the claim, or your not using type X. Type X being the one that provides their computers and internet to begin with.
There’s no reason they have to use reason type X that I can see, but I’m pretty sure scientists pitched against creationists, like Richard Dawkins, are using type X.
Maybe they are against creationist due to some other reasoning type, perhaps.
Caveat: Alex MacFarlane did offer to answer my variant of the Criteria Question
I’m a bit skeptical of your variant. Honestly it just says “Hey, you decide what happens – I put my head in your noose, to do with as you alone decide”. Atleast for myself, even if she answers favourably, I couldn’t accept the reply because I wouldn’t submit to that “Do as you will, m’ lord/lady” approach. Yeah, I’d even ditch an answer that lands in my favour, because I’m not genuinely going to put my head in the noose to begin with.
Oh, and I think my excuse to Treskele is that I spend most of my time speaking with you, Saajan! Surely can’t be holding up Scott by doing that!
Sci,
After going to the link you sent vis a vis the dickwagging of informal logical fallacies post, I just laughed and dismissed it. That cite gave the illusion of making good points, but it’s more of a performance than anything else. It gives the vibe “We Can Do it, Too!” but then they don’t do it terribly well.
I’d be shocked in Scott replies; it was as unserious a blog post as I’ve seen when it comes to trotting out logic.
I used to not mind stuff like that, but hanging out with logicians changes one’s opinions about properly applying this stuff.
Oh, as I (hopefully) made clear above, I didn’t say I agreed or disagreed with the site. I remember the bare bones of logic from old math classes, but I haven’t thought hard about fallacies in awhile.
If comments had been allowed I would have asked for references to the actual text of Scott’s site. Would have been interesting as it would be the first meaningful reference of text over the last week.
My only point was that this has been, as Larry notes, a trainwreck – though I was happy to be pointed toward the information you sent and relayed to me.
(Well, I do remember people saying they wanted to buy Elodie a drink, so maybe she also achieved a net gain? ;-P)
If any of you are interested, I recommend “The brain that changes itself” by Norman Doidge, M.D.
thanks, will buy soon.
Already read it. It’s fantastic.
Sometimes, I forget how differently people’s Weltanschauungen are (I’m using this German word because it encompasses much more than the English “world view”). Scott, I think a large part of what has been going on here for the past couple of weeks (months? years?) comes down to intent/understanding issues. I look at what you’ve written here on this blog since “Misanthropology 101″ and I cringe. For me, it’s like witnessing a trainwreck, in that an apparently intense form of introspection is clashing with others’ reactions to your books, your interviews, and your comments here. I suggested back then that you take some time to reflect on it without talking because I sensed what would happen is that there would be a regression of engagement in spite of the hundreds (almost a thousand?) comments in the interim.
You know that I’m a more optimistic and outward-looking person (if I focus too much inward, I do seem to get depressive for a while) and what interests me most is not the possible neuro-psychological reasons (which I consider with a healthy amount of skepticism) but a more “functionalist” approach that takes into account cultures. True, many of the arguments you’ve raised about confirmation biases, group dynamics, etc. also occur in this (and it is not surprising to see those who have met you in person responding rather fiercely in your defense). That much I think we hold in common.
The main point of contention here as I see it is that you are trying to puzzle out the appeal of a “performance rage” approach to social/textual commentary. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you are seeing approaches like ROH’s through a binary contrasts of pro/con, helpful/hurtful, etc. I think that is too limiting of an approach. Engagement can be fleeting, it can be substantial, or it can be deflected. What I’ve seen from you in regard to this particular issue is that you are internalizing only part of what she does. You seem to see this from the vantage point of “this isn’t what I’m trying to do” and “what she is about is foreign to how I conceive discussions on this issue.” It is all “me” centered and I think that is not conducive to having a debate. So far, these posts read too uncomfortably close to “well, yeah, well here’s is where s/he’s wrong!” and not enough “we” to it.
Critics don’t make the best of buds for authors. Some of us can be quite callous as we shred a text. Sometimes, the author is conflated with the text (whether or not that is “right” is a matter of contention for many; I prefer to “kill” the author early on before partially resurrecting his/her corpse, if necessary). I know you’ve conceded in the past that the misogynistic reading of the text is a plausible reading of the partial text available to the reader, but it seems when the personal charge is made, you are taking it personal. Why isn’t a simple “the text supports multiple readings and further revelations may shift perspectives” enough? If someone finds fault with how the text is constructed (and I am one; I think sometimes you are too stark with the characters and their situations and that there aren’t enough nuances, but I am a fairly forgiving reader who is withholding final judgment until the overarching series is complete), why lecture the reader? Some will get your intent, some will not, and others will understand the thrust of it and disagree with the intent because the text itself supports other plausible conclusions.
Are you trying to work out things here in public, hoping that comments will help? That’s what puzzles me most about all this, as these posts feel more and more confessional in tone (even though I knew a bit about what you described in the last paragraph based on a previous conversation) without there being a real dialogue. This latest round started with you reacting to what I said in passing about an unrelated issue. Apparently, my answer embedded there (that causing me to re-evaluate how I parse matters related to gender, sexuality, and race is a major reason why I value blogs such as ROH) was not “good enough.” Nor were the others who said something similar in defense of blogs such as acrackedmoon’s. Is this near the core of all of these posts, trying to decipher why others have a different take on blogs who have as part, if not all, of their purpose the exposure of problematic elements in fiction?
What I’ve seen lately is not so much an attempt to consider how such strident views can spark re-evaluations of beliefs as much as an apologia of intent and an exploration of the fallacies of group Weltanschauungen. For myself, this is navel-gazing of the worst sort, as it does not help facilitate any positive solutions or syntheses of ideas. It just serves to provide ammo for those who think you dwell too much on the internalization process to the point where you look like you are continually dismissing others’ concerns and view points. If you don’t find anything of value from approaches like ROH’s, then why not just move on and engage elsewhere? If there is something of value to be gained, why not engage it with a more extraverted view of trying to relate to her arguments/others’ arguments? That’s what I truly do not understand about all this. Perhaps it’s just how I’m more of an extravert when it comes to things; I want to see if I can relate to others’ PoVs.
That being said, I do think the more positive aspects of human life and interaction have been downplayed here, but then again, I would say that, n’est ce pas?
Heh. Really well said, Larry. Wish I had said it that well.
His argument is, ‘We like you, but we’re all just embarrassed for you, now, so please shut up.’ Isn’ it? You said you liked my post; he said it was more ‘navel gazing.’ Given this, why shouldn’t I assume that it’s ONLY the conclusion you’re interested in, Kal? That you don’t give a damn about the justifications? In other words, why shouldn’t I assume that you are simply rationalizing through and through?
This is the way it works: Shaming isn’t an argument, it’s a weapon, an argumentum ad baculum or ‘appeal to the stick.’ The point of these tactics is to INTIMIDATE individuals or groups into assenting to some claim or to behave in some way. A gentler form of terrorism. In this case, they’re literally holding my reputation hostage, beating and degrading it with all the nasty, mean-spirited ingenuity they possess. For my part, I just don’t care. The thing about jeering and mocking and name-calling is that they have a limited shelf-life – you can only do it so long before your reputation begins to suffer. I’ll keep this up and up and up until all the laughing faces begin to ache, and all the negativity and toxicity begins to taste, and I will say, ‘Okay. I’m glad you got that out of your system. Are you ready to have a real discussion?’
The fact is, this hasn’t even been the source of my focus these past days. I’ve been whipping through these responses as best I can, still finishing my 1000 words a day, and actually arguing consciousness elswhere on the web!
I don’t think that’s his argument. That’s certainly not how I read it, at least not the whole thing. The more profound part to me is the inclusion of Weltanschauungen as a way to describe what’s been going on to me, because that is a very good way to describe the situation and the arguments going around in my mind. That, and the notion that ROH is either really awesome or really horrible and there is no room for any compromise in view.
Which is funny, since that’s the thing you object to about your works so much as well.
How do you reason when one side is hellbent on using terminology that you associate entirely with hatred and they treat it like it’s a prepositional phrase? When words connote something so completely different that it is fundamentally alien? And this apparently goes on both sides, given your vitriolic reaction to words like neckbeard.
How do you reason when language itself impedes?
You’re confusing me with someone else on the ‘neckbeard’ thing. I see it as bigoted, but not in the ‘racial slur’ sense (which requires entrenched social authority gradients). But it’s not Weltanschaunngen at all – this is what makes it so depressing from a second-order perspective. We’re all well-fed Westerners with predictable liberal democratic views, who simply happen to find ourselves roped into competing coalitions on this one particular issue. At a con, we could all sit down and have a wonderful dinner at Appelbees. It really underscores how difficult things like, say, negotiating with the Taliban must be. And, I know I’m belabouring the point, it shows the impact of coalition psychology on perception and argumentation. It’s really quite profound, if you think about it, and equally visible from either side of the fence.
As to your last question, I’ve actually corresponded with Hugo Mercier on this very point. Ambiguity strikes me as absolutely crucial, and curiously overlooked in much of the literature (Dunning is a blessed exception). I catch myself gaming them all the bloody time – more than anything else.
“But it’s not Weltanschaunngen at all – this is what makes it so depressing from a second-order perspective. We’re all well-fed Westerners with predictable liberal democratic views”
Ah – that’s a good example of being wrong.
RoH isn’t. She’s a lesbian Thai woman.
Sci isn’t. He’s from India.
I understand your point, but it’s also interesting that one of the people with the most vitriol towards you is also the one least culturally connected with you. At least I think so.
Heh, sadly I was born in no place more interesting than New Jersey. The ‘rents are from India.
Lived in Texas, and Taiwan though, and have visited a few interesting places.
+1.
So far, these posts read too uncomfortably close to “well, yeah, well here’s is where s/he’s wrong!” and not enough “we” to it.
I find it interesting that you would make this reading. Perhaps one time I would have been amazed by how uniquely wrong you are, but now I’m just amazed at such universal displays of how the brain works when it flips on the confirmation bias. I have a much higher opinion of Scott than the critics who have slagged him for the last four posts, so it’s easy for me to see the occasions where he has repeatedly turned to the “we’re all idiots” refrain. This confirmation is so easy, in fact, that it feels “natural.” How can anyone who’s read the last four threads with their innumerable occasions where Scott has had to clarify he wasn’t singling anyone out still not see how much he’s already talked about “we”? I mean, just look at his responses towards that Godwin’s Law shitstorm. I mean, really?
Just like that, my brain has sorted the people who disagree into the camp of mole blind idiots. People have concerns with the book, and praise for the book, and any such views can feel so natural once reached that conceeding any ground to people who disagree actually become really hard work. We even use the criteria of give and take to parse people into the idiot camp. Once someone is proficient at considering alternate interpretations and tolerating the “agree to disagree” mentality, anyone who doesn’t do this to their satisfaction can start looking like an obstinate blowhard. Pointing out commonplace cognitive shortfalls? Navel gazing. Claiming to want a conversation? Navel gazing. Pondering the social effects of “rage performances” under the rubric of feminism? Now that’s just plain butthurt. &c
Why isn’t a simple “the text supports multiple readings and further revelations may shift perspectives” enough? If someone finds fault with how the text is constructed, why lecture the reader?
This obviously isn’t enough for RoH, since she outright rejects any counterargument to the point of defacing dissenting responses on her own blog. Why should the RoH rants be tolerated, even celebrated, while the TPB rants should be argued into the ground or dismissed as unproductive? “One shifted my perspectives while the other looks like navel gazing” isn’t going to be a universal experience, so why bother defending acrackedmoon or trying to correct any dissenting readings of RoH on Scott’s part?
I sometimes wonder if it whether I should’ve just gamed this from the beginning: come blasting out of the gate with the same tactics she uses, then catch myself, and fall back into this engagement position. But it’s hard not to shake your head in wonder: I began by saying the problem is that these tactics are all about sorting, picking sides, and rendering us immune to reason. As a result, she shows us how these tactics are all about picking sides and rendering us immune to reason. It really is surreal.
Scott, I mean this with the greatest of love: stop being Inrilatus and start being Kellhus.
Do you have a craving for mystery meat?
I think you’re mistaking Kellhus for Kelmomas, Frank. Otherwise…I have no idea what you’re talking about.
Kellhus convinced me sranc tastes like
lovechicken.why lecture the reader?
I don’t think he does it in order to change that reader’s opinion. I think he’s smart enough to know that these kind of reactions are actually detrimental toward his possible readers.
He knows that he’s breaking all rules about how a writer “should” react to some criticism coming from readers. That this won’t help him making a better impression, quite the opposite.
But this is also why I admire him. I think he’s showing he’s more dedicated to his argument than to play the common hypocrite who would rather write to flatter and please the reader, keep a blog just to publicize his works, and show a benign face even at the harshest, unfounded criticism. He engages without restraints, even if this isn’t going to be useful for him in practical ways.
Why lecture the reader? I think because he isn’t not interested in the specific reader AT ALL. For him it’s just an opportunity, could be anyone. He lectures when he think he’s struck a vein. So he digs. His blog posts aren’t justifications for what he does, but digs in order to understand certain things he deems critical.
It seems to me that all this interests him solely in proportion to how it engages with his argument. So it’s extremely significant for him writing about this. He writes as a form of exploration, that only looks like a lecture.
Convincing some reader about the true nature of his books is not his “intent”.
On the button.
When I decided to continue with the blog, I decided, quite literally, to drop out of the game the way it’s ‘supposed’ to be played. I’ve always fucked myself by doing this, and I’m likely fucking myself now – but we’ll see where it leads in the long run. So I’ll keep crying, ‘It’s not so simple! It’s not so simple!’ – left, right, centre, I don’t care. At the very least, TPB will be an interesting place!
And as honest as I can possibly make it.
This is nowhere so dramatic as a Weltanschauungen, Larry. Not even close.
As far as dialogue, it’s been endless over here. Several of her supporters have been pressing her case. You just seem to want the whole thing to go away!
Just what do you think she’s trying to accomplish with all the personal name-calling and ridicule, Larry?
Discussion provocation is what I thought (which has happened, it seems, just not a highly elevated one). I just don’t like seeing you agonizing over this in a way that may hurt you without any tangible benefit. I think there are lessons to be learned, but first there might be the need for quiet contemplation away from others. That applies as much to myself as to others. I’ll be stepping aside, but if you want to talk privately, there is my email that you can find in my address/blog profile.
Don’t worry about me. I was raised on this shit – literally.
That and beans.
No wonder why it’s loud and stinky over here so much!
On a much more serious note, I’m waiting for a formal refutation of one of my claims, namely the one dealing with acculturation and I guess the “software” that can override the “hardwiring.” I distrust determinism when it seems to be described in nigh-absolutist terms, even though I did imbibe some of the Maslovian theories on psychological/behavior development. I wonder if that’s another thing that will be addressed in more detail in your fiction, if not here on your blog.
I had thought about saying more direct things about victimization, but I’m legally bound by confidentiality laws not to share revealing details about what I’ve witnessed over the past eight years, so all I can note is that it is a vicious cycle, but one that can be modified to some extent, depending on support structures and individual traits. Percentages aren’t too good for full recovery, though
Wait till you see my next post!
You’re never going to find any reductionism over here – at least on my part. Once you appreciate that cartoons are really the best we can do, it all comes down to the comparative adequacy of claims, degrees of commitment, and so forth. It seems clear there’s no chasm between nature and nuture, just a sliding scale.
In other words, I may find myself wanting to react, only to realize that I can partially override that and then that’s where the “fun” will be?
I’m open to see what’ll be discussed, but I wonder what form the language will take. I sense skepticism may be in my future
A couple things since I don’t have a lot of time.
This is a really nice post. I’m glad to see it.
The book Liars and Outliers by Schneier looks to be fantastic.
I’m happy to find some leading questions you’ve made, Scott. I didn’t realize it was that problematic for you. I’ll see if I can do that some time after the funeral. I think one of the first things you ever said to me was “Do you smell a rat, Kalbear” – which was about as leading as they come. It was also implying something about me – that my goal was to rat you out and show that you were doing something wrong, and clearly I had ulterior motives. Now that I explain it, I’m not sure that falls under the classic case of leading question. Mostly it insinuated something about me that wasn’t true. Perhaps that’s ad hominem more than a leading question?
One point I’d like to make is that not everyone who is victimized turns to make others victims. The cycle definitely breaks.
Also, one of my central points was that types of victimization create very similar results in people. I think this is one of the central points of racism and sexism in general; these things wouldn’t hurt (and would patently be absurd) in a rational world (why would anyone think that anyone’s better or worse because they have a dick?), but they do hurt because of shared, common, specific experiences. My suspicion is that the world is geared towards some of these experiences (or at least many societies are) to the point where arguing whether or not a person is sexist or misogynist is somewhat like arguing whether or not they are breathing.
To some people, simply creating something that triggers those kinds of misogynistic responses makes you a misogynist, since the corollary would be that if you weren’t you wouldn’t have created it in the first place. Why would you draw images of child pornography if you weren’t a child pornographer? And there are reasons there that could exist, but at the same time it’s very easy to confuse by using those triggers.
I don’t think that’s objectively wrong. It seems like you’re getting that here – that some forms of depiction are a type of endorsement – or more importantly some forms of depiction are obscene, especially when certain experiential categories (like having a kid yourself) come into play.
More importantly I think it’s very crucial to understand some of these shared experiential frameworks if any kind of consensus or shared worldview is to be achieved. To me this is an analogy to philosophical terminology; if someone uses the phrase ‘ad hominem’ that means something to a philosophy major that it doesn’t to others. Dismissing their claims or arguing past them using your own terminology to show why you’re right doesn’t help this. This is as much a cultural or societal stand as it is anything. It’s pavlovian at the core.
Finally, on starting discussion: do you think it’s at all interesting that the biggest groups of traffic you’ve had have been because of RoH. You had significantly more commentary on those topics than virtually anything else. In addition to that, she spawned multiple 100-plus posts on various topics at Westeros and got a reply back from another author. I bring this up as a form of validation; you mentioned that one of the nice things about TPB is its fostering discussion, but to me the only time that it fosters a lot of discussion is when you’re responding to someone else bringing something up about you or the books. By comparison, when you’re discussing something you bring up the traffic is significantly less.
Actually, on her blog she talked to Valente (my understanding is they are friends, as I’ve also had the good fortune to converse a little with Valente on RoH), Elaine Cunningham, and I think I’m forgetting one other person.
So 3-4 positive discussions with authors. Those discussions on RoH were pretty insightful.
Welcome back, Kal. I’m not saying I haven’t hit you with fallacies or leading questions or what not, only that I know what they are and try not to, and would happily bite the bullet if you brought them to my attention. The rhetorical question you reference actually isn’t leading, but it is prickish. We’ve had our moments in the sun! I’ve been hot before for sure.
Your description of the contextual importance of experience is spot on. I agreed then, and I agree now.
But again the questions are, 1) What do victim experiences warrant? and 2) What do shaming tactics accomplish?
My argument is, If victim experiences warrant shaming tactics, then whoever is using them better well exercise some diligence. You do not throw someone under the bus on the strength of 6 pages and hearsay, not if you’re a credible anything, let alone critic or feminist. The name-calling, the jeering, those things speak for themselves. But the larger question is, Just what do shaming tactics accomplish? Terrorism, for instance, is the most effective way to get publicity possible. Does that mean it’s warranted? Of course not. Here we’re talking about murdering reputations instead of people, but the structure is largely the same. And again, since what I’m trying to do is problematize the issue, to say, ‘Hey! You need to take a serious, critical look at your practice,’ all I need is a forceful possibility to make my point.
Your overarching argument (as far as I can tell) is that, given the experiences of those involved, I have brought this all on my self. Now I completely understand (if not entirely agree with) this claim as an explanation of what happened, but you seem to think this counts as a justification, that I somehow deserved to be mocked, called a ‘roach’ and on and on and on.
Your defence of the ‘rationality’ of ROH I find incomprehensible – and I think serves to undermine your credibility. It’s a bullet you really need to bite.
Otherwise, what we have here is a classic internet food-fight effect, don’t you think? Given that my baseline blog traffic was 3 or 4 time higher before this last round, the debate with Vox was actually larger, proportionally speaking – the difference there was that I was being lampooned and slagged in a completely different subculture (the one I’m sure is laughing at all this).
“But again the questions are, 1) What do victim experiences warrant? and 2) What do shaming tactics accomplish?”
The first is interesting. What do victim experiences warrant? As you mention later you think my thought is that you bring this on yourself. Which is pretty close to what I think. I don’t think that you deserve it, but I’m not surprised by it. When a large contingent of readers read the book as a promotion of misogyny, it’s not hard to understand that those that hate misogyny would also respond negatively to the book. When your first six pages have the rape of a child and you understand what kind of trigger that can be to people, it’s not hard to see why they’d respond a certain way.
I think you understand that. I think it disappoints you, but I think that makes sense to you. Sometimes I think that that was your overarching goal – to put in hot-button items you knew would be misinterpreted (or at least interpreted against your intent, which is different) just to tweak and alienate and discomfort. This goes against what you said about being fine with writing a work that primarily appeals to men, but I still wonder about that. Especially since you thought about doing the same sort of thing with racism that you did with sexism but decided that you couldn’t publish it and shelved it for that reason.
But anyway, back to the point about victim experiences and what they warrant – I think quite a bit. Especially when said victims have been downtrodden for most of written history and its societal institutions that they rail against. The Schneier book would call those the defectors, and I happen to think that you being able to write a book about the worst misogynistic fantasy world to come around in a long time and it is acceptable and not obscene to publish is a good example of what they’re defecting from. Why is it okay to do something like that but not do racism? Because society says ‘whatever, women, eat shit and like it’.
And yes, from a certain reading it’s very clear that you intended this to be fundamentally read as a Bad Thing. At the same time, it’s still one more facet of society that says it’s okay to even pretend to oppress women. So yes, I think that if you don’t want to be called a misogynist, one great way to go about it is not write books that have massive misogyny in them, and don’t be surprised if you do get called a lot of names because you did write that book.
Let’s get to the other part – the one where you say I think this is justification for being slammed. Nope! It’s an explanation. Where I justify RoH is in the responses she gets. From purely looking at the volume of posts she’s generated about many famous authors, she’s doing a good job. From starting two separate discussions here (one about you specifically, another about why Larry likes her when she’s so ‘obviously’ bad), to the Abercrombie set of posts on Westeros to her discussions about the Windup Girl – she gets a lot of people talking. And not just people patting her on the back and saying ‘well done’ – the Westeros conversation didn’t have much of that at all and ended with a number of people seeing what she was talking about.
So to me, her slamming you? That’s justified by the results.
And yes, I’m totally fine with terrorism and asymmetrical warfare to meet goals. I am shocked that you aren’t, actually. One man’s terrorist is another man’s hero.
Now, where I fundamentally disagree with you is the idea that RoH is only about shaming tactics. I think this is a part that Larry and sci disagree on as well, and is a central problem of communication. (you’ll be amused to know that binging “Shaming Tactics” brings up Dumpyourwifenow as the first link. This is what I think of when I think you mention shaming tactics – that RoH is only appealing to emotion, pleading for special consideration as a woman, etc.
And that’s just not how I see it.
So no, I don’t think someone screaming about how your dick is so small is a good way to win an argument. Someone reading the first 6 pages of your book and referencing specific parts of books and interviews to make points against you? Not the same. I mean, how much research does she need to do in your case to call you a misogynist? When she reads that you created a world where women are objectively worth less than men, then reads a few pages and has a child getting raped – how much more would you like her to research? We talked about this before and I got no real answer – what is the irresponsibility here? Where is the harm being caused? As far as I can tell the ‘harm’ that has happened is something like 10 times the normal amount of traffic you get, a number of writers chiming in on your defense and a long discussion about the nature of philosophical discussion, conditional biases and speaking on the internet. Should she be blamed for this or should she be lauded?
I don’t think it’s right to be proud that you’re problematizing gender roles and sexism and then complain when someone actually has a problem with it.
Also, would these be called shaming tactics if she were a man? If someone took the first 6 pages of your books and select interview snippets and judged you an asshole or a sexist, would you call that shaming tactics? I’d be careful here; I don’t know how much you know about feminist and antifeminist terms, but you using this (to some people) is pretty much akin to saying that she’s a hysterical bitch.
As to RoH’s rationality, I suspect this is another issue of language and honestly one I’m probably in the wrong in. I’m willing to bite the bullet that I don’t see her perfectly unbiased. I’ll still try to explain. Her articles are entirely internally consistent. She uses the same terminology the same way towards everyone. She is willing to slag an author one minute and commend them the next based entirely on evidence (her recent review of Hobb’s book comes to mind, where she liked the first couple of books but found the latest one problematic, as does her statement about Abercrombie’s response). She is willing to give people multiple chances and is willing to visit evidence again. The feminist doctrine she uses for judging is used correctly and consistently as far as I can tell. To me this is as close to rationality as any of us get – having an internally consistent worldview and applying that worldview evenly and correctly. Her ability to reason and be reasonable, in my view, comes from this point of view. You likely mean something completely different as far as rationality, and I’m totally wililng to believe I use it incorrectly – but that’s how I view it.
And really, that’s one of the reasons I think RoH and Sady and Alissa Rosenberg are great – they give me a window into that internal worldview that I would not normally have and realistically can’t ever have. If we all have conditioned and conditional bias, if we all have rationalities piled on everything we do, then what makes one better than another? Science and math are it, right? But philosophy? Not so much.
That Schneier book does look very interesting.
@Callan S:
I do feel bad that dharma is forced to be notified by our replies, so I’m hoping you’ll see this at the bottom.
“Going back to reason type X, the way that paradigm works is that the party making the claim provides their criteria for making the claim as well.”
I think this is what people felt was missing from the original and subsequent blog posts here. What criteria, what pages exactly (one review, the site entire?), in what specific instances does the RoH content conform to what Scott condemns?
Cue instant lines drawn. A rebuttal of the specific review would have centered the conversation though I agree with Larry even in that regard -> This whole thing, rightly or wrongly, feels like Boehner demanding Jon Stewart answer for sketch comedy.
“Honestly it just says “Hey, you decide what happens – I put my head in your noose, to do with as you alone decide”
While not might intent, I suppose from a litigious perspective it is watered down. But as stated by Gourmet in Mis 101, there can difficulty articulating exactly why something is offensive. It requires discussion, one that doesn’t lend itself to a one-size-fits-all set of criteria. Hence my revision that asks how to seek dialogue.
In any case, the original question was worthless from the point of engagement beyond being fodder for more ridicule so I felt a variant that seemed less hostile was applicable. (Especially given that Ms. MacFarlane isn’t under any obligation to participate in the conversation TPB might wish to have.)
-Sci
“Going back to reason type X, the way that paradigm works is that the party making the claim provides their criteria for making the claim as well.”
I think this is what people felt was missing from the original and subsequent blog posts here. What criteria, what pages exactly (one review, the site entire?), in what specific instances does the RoH content conform to what Scott condemns?
I’m not sure if I read this right, but you’ve/they’ve just flipped the entire claimant role around? It’s not they claiming Scott/his text is so and so. It’s actually Scott claiming X about ROH?
From my perspective Scott’s skipping out on giving criteria for as long as they reverse the cronology of who claimed first.
Reminds me of red dwarf and the reverse time world, where Santa is one of the most horrible people. Just have to turn time around.
But as stated by Gourmet in Mis 101, there can difficulty articulating exactly why something is offensive. It requires discussion, one that doesn’t lend itself to a one-size-fits-all set of criteria.
Sounds like a request for sympathy on how that can be difficult to work out.
Which sounds reasonable if sympathy is offered in return.
BTW, some may find texts offensive but the prince of mysogony was a joke piece by moon, wasn’t it?
“It’s actually Scott claiming X about ROH?
From my perspective Scott’s skipping out on giving criteria for as long as they reverse the cronology of who claimed first.”
Not sure if I understand the last sentence, but I was referring to unclear claims (“everybody else just agrees and pats each other on the back”) leading to hostility from people who might not have otherwise been offended.
As to the evidence in the posts, better to make the hypothesis/evidence/etc more at the forefront with a clear expression of what data (All of RoH? A sample of its reviews? Just “Prince of Misogyny?”) is under consideration and how, for example Haidt’s work, applies and the limits of such application.
Otherwise it reads like something one of my family members would complain about -> humanities majors attempting to play in the science department.
“BTW, some may find texts offensive but the prince of misogyny was a joke piece by moon, wasn’t it?
Was Prince of Misogyny a ‘joke piece’? I think it was written as a humor piece for her readers but I think she found it to fit a pattern of behavior she doesn’t approve of.
Like a Daily Show sketch, or Elodie’s piece, it relies on one responding to the interview the same way she did. I’d say both suggest shifts in communication style are necessary.
Saajan,
I don’t get it, I’ve said the process of reason type X is the person who first made the claim and that was moon. Now you focus on Scott supporting his claims? Moons at the front of the que or otherwise your not talking about reason type X.
Was Prince of Misogyny a ‘joke piece’? I think it was written as a humor piece for her readers but I think she found it to fit a pattern of behavior she doesn’t approve of.
I’ll be honest – this is why I don’t ask. She’s having a laugh…but then it’s really about something she doesn’t approve of. I just find it a shifting narrative.
I get sometimes such a shifting thing asks some sympathy to work out and I get that, that can work out. But as I’ve said, sympathy is a two way thing or not at all (except in the case of dealing with children). Hell, if you like you can say she read his books and assumed from them he wouldn’t be sympathetic to what she has to say, so she severed sympathy because of that perception. I can get that.
Again a harmless word, ‘joke.’ But it becomes something quite different when you pair it with ‘hate.’
One of my more shameful memories as a young man has to do with a gay friend of mine: he asked if he could borrow my fanny pack, and I said, “Oh, you mean my fag bag?” When he looked at me with shock, I said, “O, come on. I’m just joking ya!” That’s the thing: you don’t even need to feel the hate for a joke to be hateful.
That’s the thing, acrackedmoon says hateful, injurious, deeply bigoted things – she all but admits as much. But it’s okay, as far as she’s concerned, so long as the individual belongs to the group in question. This is a very human thing for her to do – and its the reason racism/sexism/classism have been with us since the beginning.
Well, to read once again from Bakker’s Holy Bible of Fallacies, Two wrongs don’t make a right. ‘I’m just joking ya!’ is an insipid rationale.
“Moons at the front of the que or otherwise your not talking about reason type X.”
I’m confused -> I don’t see what having reasoned dialogue with proper referrals to other studies has to do with a queue.
I think for most people encountering Miso 101 the claims were simultaneous, regardless of chronology.
I think a lot of this goes back to that instinct to avoid sophistry, to not get “played”. Why it’s good to keep the brush narrow.
I’m confused -> I don’t see what having reasoned dialogue with proper referrals to other studies has to do with a queue.
That’s why I say reason type X, repeatedly. It’s not using your ‘reasoned’, which is reason type Y, as I said awhile ago.
If you keep trying to compare what I say about type X against your notion of type Y, yeah, you’ll be confused.
I think for most people encountering Miso 101 the claims were simultaneous, regardless of chronology.
I think a lot of this goes back to that instinct to avoid sophistry, to not get “played”.
That describes part of their particular reasoning method, yeah.
I don’t think Prince of Misogyny is a joke piece, but I think one of RoH’s schticks is to be funny. Some of it is in-jokes, but it’s still aiming to rant on a funny level. You can see this in her posts and her comments style.
@Callan: “That’s why I say reason type X, repeatedly. It’s not using your ‘reasoned’, which is reason type Y, as I said awhile ago.
If you keep trying to compare what I say about type X against your notion of type Y, yeah, you’ll be confused.”
I’m sorry, I don’t understand this at all.
You’ll have to refresh my memory on what X and Y are and how one might distinguish one from the other. My concepts of reasoning revolve around math proofs for the most part.
@Callan: Sorry, I found what you’re talking about. I see the thing about the queue now.
“This whole thing, rightly or wrongly, feels like Boehner demanding Jon Stewart answer for sketch comedy.”
Funny, the tactics we use. Those sympathetic reach for laudatory concepts – Who doesn’t like ‘sketch comedy’? – whereas those unsympathetic reach for despicable ones – Who doesn’t hate ‘gentle terrorism’?
But there is a simple way to test the analogy: Does Stewart call Boehner a ‘shit-eater,’ ‘roach,’ etc.? (No) Does Stewart actually do real research before lampooning his targets? (Yes) Does Stewart argue for the importance of civil discourse? (Yes) And so on.
Trolling is not satire.
Perhaps Bill Maher would be a better example then?
I’m curious – ultimately, with all the problematic readings, all the potential to feed rape culture, and given the…interesting fan comments we’ve seen about racism/sexism/feminism, your central belief is that what the books do is important yes?
What stops Moon from making the same claim – that in spite of the negative reaction to her blog, her central belief is that the discussions she engenders (of which we have direct evidence) and confrontations she forces people to have with privilege is important?
Also, curious on your thoughts about Pinchbeck, ibogaine, psilocybins.
That is the question, isn’t it? What stops Moon from making the same claim, from saying, as I do, ‘I may be fucking up, but here’s why I think my gamble is worthwhile’?
Which plops us right back into the lap of my original post: The mindset she’s milking has no patience for gambles or questions – and what’s worse, it’s infectious.
You have to understand the irony here: My books are all about the way certain combinations of desire and belief fuck humans up. And she pinches a coil on them, doing what? Acting out all the things the books problematize.
Really. In a sense, this is a golden opportunity. Sweet Manna.
And I forgot: I actually dislike Maher to the extent he waxes ‘Moonish.’ Always have. But he’s nowhere near a troll. These comedy analogies don’t work.
“Which plops us right back into the lap of my original post: The mindset she’s milking has no patience for gambles or questions – and what’s worse, it’s infectious.”
Your brushes are overly broad. Do you think people who laugh at Bill Maher’s bold claims have all shut down their thinking?
As I said, it is hard not to read that interview without coming to the same conclusion she does. In a world of “speed dating” between authors and readers, had I not already (thankfully) read your books I probably would have put you in the OSC, John C. Wright pile of never going to read/buy.
C’mon, Sci. She admits she’s making a gamble?
As for the interview, you can make anyone look like an idiot by gaming selection and context. Anyone. And I have an unpopular message to boot: people bristle at the implication of incompetence, and my message is that we’re all incompetents. But either way, I just don’t see the relevance of this. Again, ‘You could have communicated more effectively,’ is an explanation, not a justification. Just because you hand someone ammunition, doesn’t mean you deserve to be shot, does it?
The question is, was she doing her best to present my views in an even-handed way (like any credible critic would at least attempt to do) or was she simply trying to make me look like a pompous, misogynistic idiot?
Maher has conservative guests on every show, remember. There’s no credible grounds for comparison. She’s a troll – self-described.
“Maher has conservative guests on every show, remember.”
And Moon lets people disagree. There’s guideline in her About page.
Again, it’s hard for me not to squint when you make broad claims from a mountaintop. What basis are you using when you say the readers are not using reason beyond them laughing at Elodie’s story and “Prince of Misogyny”?
At least present your sample of the site’s documents/comments/etc and the heuristic you used to conclude that it is a ‘no-reason zone’.
Right now it feels like the claim to science is like the one in Army of Darkness: “Come on guys, we can beat them with science!” rather than actual science.
Don’t be one of those humanities majors who incites groans when they take a science class. ;-P
Ridley’s Origins of Virtue is a good place to start. Boyer’s Religion Explained was what first turned me onto this idea. I’m assuming Haidt’s forthcoming book will have a good roundup of the most recent theory and research. As for ‘no reason zone’ evidence, aside from the dismally low number of people who even bothered with the Haidt link, or the use of shaming tactics (name-calling, mocking, etc.), the lack of any response to the criteria question (at least for the first several days when I bothered checking), the complete disregard or outright ignorance of any number fallacious inferences, the innumerable instances of outright assertoric condemnation…
To be honest, Sci, at this point I feel like I’m wasting my time. If none of these things seem contrary to rational discourse to you, then there’s literally nothing I can adduce to convince you otherwise. As it stands, I’m having a hard time not seeing you as a signature example of the way moral agreement shuts down the possibility of rational self-critical appraisal. My-side bias, with the volume cranked. Things are reasonable or unreasonable to you the degree they conform to your preexisting moral intuitions.
Here’s a question: What would count as a no-reason zone for you? For the majority of the people, disagreement is the primary criteria. Here’s a good test: How often do you find yourself thinking an argument with a conclusion you agree with is irrational? You know your toolkit is getting stronger the more you find this happening.
Actually, Stewart has called people assholes and shitheads before. Quite often. I think the last one he did was Gingrich, and I know he’s done it with Santorum. He did it with Palin too.
“As it stands, I’m having a hard time not seeing you as a signature example of the way moral agreement shuts down the possibility of rational self-critical appraisal.”
Ah yes, by asking for your method and your sample it proves I’m deluded. Ever are men deceived right?
Really Scott? – Come on now.
My question is limited, if you noticed, to asking about ‘no reason zones’ and how to spot them. As an RoH reader, your claim just made me wonder as to your heuristic and the extent of RoH’s content that you read.
BTW -> That no one clicked on your link or answered your question isn’t necessarily indicative that people were fleeing the truth of your claims. When you say things like this I cringe because I can see you setting yourself up to not be taken seriously.
I just think your brushes are broader than necessary, and you turn more people off than you need to.
-Sci
“As it stands, I’m probably most troubled by the role life experience and reasoning plays in all this, and how the two evolved into antagonists as the debate progressed.”
It is easy to see the two becoming antagonists when they are separated from one another. Each is a rudder for the other. Either one absent the other likely leads to a black and white viewpoint. Enter stage right the mobius strip that is the aforementioned debate. ‘Round and ’round, both sides, up and down.
“This world is a hard one – certainly harder than any one life. And in this sense we’re all victims. The pivotal question, given all the sound and fury that we’ve witnessed, is one of what this legitimizes.”
Are you asking “what does being a victim legitimize”? If yes, my answer is being a victim legitimizes nothing, especially in the context of saying we all are victims. If we all are, doesn’t that mean none of us are? That would form at least part of an answer to your criteria question. If by “pivotal question” you meant something else, could you please rephrase?
Being a victim legitimizes nothing? Really? So if an assailant rushes at someone and that person sprays them with mace in the eyes, that wasn’t legitimate?
Personally I give up on some sort of inherent morality and start off by A: agreeing, it legitimised nothing. But then B: Fuck it, by the moral system I’ll enact/be part of enacting, I’ll support it as legitimate. But in doing so I take a certain personal responsibility for enacting that (I can’t just pretend some group is a victim and so I have no responsibility in what I do to avenge them. Sometimes owlbears act like that…)
Sub note: For ease of writing, the example conveniently assumes it is an assailant, when you can never be certain. It could just be a guy with curly hair who wants to talk philosophy – but then again in that case, probably best to mace, just to be sure! Mace him from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure!
Callan…… I’d be deliberately missing your point if I said your victim didn’t act much like a victim. To your point: I guess I was thinking of situations/judgments/debates/accusations/actions after whatever made the victim a victim.
Nice Aliens quote, by the way. Game over man, game over.
Oh, do you mean kind of after the fact/kind of ‘in cold blood’ legitimisations? Hmm, it’s an interesting distinction, isn’t it?
Now I must ged to da choppa…oh wait, that’s not quite…
We’re not all victimized equally, certainly in a larger social sense. The irony I was trying to raise is that you would think a victim would, more than anyone else, be disinclined to victimize in turn, when in fact the precise opposite seems to be the case.
Speaking of kids, time to sell you stuff.
Fuck me. One more reason to boycott Target, I suppose.
I gotta learn how to knit socks.
Target does this well. But everyone does this. If you want to avoid it you need to be off the internet completely, never buy anything from anyone with an online presence and never sign up for any magazines.
I also don’t see the problem with it. So they’re using your personal information to make it more likely that you buy things that you think you need. So what? Oh gods, I don’t want advertisers to actually show me advertisements for things I want – that sounds horrible.
Do you have a craving for Mystery Meat®?
“Oh, and the funny thing was I was making up my own drinking game prior to this (really!). But it was a bit more emperical – every time Scott says ‘doom’ or ‘gaming ambiguity’, you take a shot! These events definately do occur! PS: Nor am I disagreeing when these things are said – taking a shot over these things is certainly not an indication of disagreement with them!”
I tried to do a smoking game with White Luck Warrior — take a hit every time every time I encoutered something “hoary.” I don’t know why I keyed in on that particular word, but once I keyed in on it, it seemed to show up very frequently.
Certain words catch like a burr with me sometimes. It’s like they just get cycled and recycled and I’m completely blind to it. Drives me batshit.
A good word to occasion a toke, though. Apt.
I’m still trying to restrain myself from doing this every time I come across the word “problematize” in an academic paper. (Hey, he’s problematizing a non-problem being argued by nobody. That’s like… 9 shots). Drinking games are no fun alone, and drinking that much probably isn’t healthy either.
Word ‘overuse’ is fine… it almost seems to legitimize a piece of writing as a certain author’s.
You know you’re reading Lovecraft when something is gibbous, squamous, or rugose.
Do you have me under surveillance or something? How many times is this now. Fuck, you give me the sychronicity willies sometimes, jorge.
I’m staring at Bloodcurdling Tales as I type this very moment.
I agree, by the way, and there’s a number of terms I use that I categorize this way, but some just feel lazy…
I’ll be pretentious (moreso!); some words feel more like I catch in them. Like they’re anchors, stopping me from spinning off into space. Kind of like a balloon on a string tied to a weight, thrashing around on it’s teather in a strong wind. Groundings. Just for awhile, atleast. Just some respite.
“I also don’t see the problem with it. So they’re using your personal information to make it more likely that you buy things that you think you need. So what? Oh gods, I don’t want advertisers to actually show me advertisements for things I want – that sounds horrible.”
So supine.
Advertising is annoying.
Targeted advertising is less annoying, and there’s an occasional chance that it’ll actually be offering something I want – or offering something I already wanted at a discount. Not the worst thing ever. To me it’s akin to deriding Amazon recommendations or Match.com.
I’m sure you’re completely anti-consumerist and are writing replies using your neighbor’s stolen wifi connnection on an apple laptop that doesn’t have the latest OS upgrade.
“To me it’s akin to deriding Amazon recommendations or Match.com.” Which I do. In the near future, if not already, I think people will be hooked up with a “match” who is actually just someone paid to spend a few days pushing products that your profile suggests you might like. Most people wouldn’t like being exploited like that, but it seems like you’d be ok with it. I envisage you pointing to your empty open mouth, imploring them to sell you more. To me, targeted advertising is quite sinister.
As to your doubts about my anti-consumerism: if it was possible to avoid consumerism altogether, there wouldn’t be a problem, would there? So that was silly of you.
saajan, you posted the following after Scott discussed reason:
“Ah yes, by asking for your method and your sample it proves I’m deluded. Ever are men deceived right?
“Really Scott? – Come on now.”
Really, saaajan. You still don’t get it. I don’t mean that in a bad way, or in a condescending way, or anything like that. But after the past few days I thought we’d moved past this sort of thing given the amount of time I and others spent trying to communicate our position. It’s now obvious that a little bit more must be said. Methods and samples are scientific terminology, frequently used in statistics and the social sciences; in philosophy, we adhere to arguments conducted under the auspices of rationality (i.e., non-fallacious charitable debate) as the standard for philosophical communication and as the means of resolving disputations in discourse.
To ask for our sample doesn’t make a lot of sense, to me at least. We’re not measuring stuff, or talking about gradients and standard deviations. We’re talking about things in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions (universals, some people would call them). The evidence you want for RoH being a no-reason zone isn’t a sample or methodology in the way that you’re thinking – for someone like me (and Scott), it’s a function of the way in which the author chooses to communicate (and whether that communication is necessarily an argument and thus rational, or something else) and as such is obvious from the author’s approach to discourse as seen in the original post.
Necessity is where things get interesting for philosophers. Think of a necessary condition as something that simply has to exist for a given thing to be that thing: a necessary condition to be a bachelor is to be an unmarried male. This is how we think about arguments: for a statement to be an argument, it has to meet necessary (and sufficient) conditions. A necessary condition for an argument (i.e., something that absolutely has to be in place for an argument to be an argument) is that it MUST obey certain conventions: the principle of charity; premises that lead ineluctably to a conclusion by use of evidence; an open-ness to being wrong (or to having one’s claims be demonstrably false); it derives its force of conclusion through the deliberate and rigorous application of reason; and so on.
Arguments working through the application of reason (or rationality) is the key, here. Now, rationality (or a thing being reasonable) isn’t an “I win” button that Scott and I can press because we’re philosophers and only we are reasonable because we’re philosophers. That’s clearly bullshit. Rather, think of reason as the rules that govern how reality works. Just because something is rational doesn’t mean it’s right; it just means that everyone is aiming for truth using the same consistent rules. It helps us be wrong in better ways, and collectively aim towards truth in discourse because we understand HOW things mean.
So the question, to me, is simple: was the RoH post by acrackedmoon that was the impetus for discussion here at TPB an argument? This isn’t like in the sciences, where you need to determine a threshold because 60% of the sentences were mean or something like that. This is an either/or: either the writing is an argument, or it is not an argument. I say “No, it wasn’t.” It stridently communicates the author’s feelings, but saying “I’m offended” isn’t something that results from the rigorous and deliberate application of rationality. And although I’m the one saying this right here, in my experience the vast majority of philosophers with whom I’m acquainted would say the same thing.
And that’s why we just don’t freaking get why you keep demanding “proof” about RoH being a “no reason” zone. The post in question is, perhaps by design, not an argument. It’s a performance of anger. The choice to write a rant or a rage-post is a choice that is certainly emotionally valid – but it’s a choice that disqualifies the writing from being an argument, because the medium of the message affects the message and the message’s reception. An argument is an invitation to discuss, an opportunity to get at truth, with everyone understanding (for the most part) how terms are going to be used and open to the possibility that at least one of the participants in said discussion could be wrong. That’s not what’s going on in the post that started all of this at RoH. As I’ve stated before, the only “arguments” that can charitably be said to be contained within these sorts of things is that the author of such a text is presumably angry about the thing they say they’re angry about. Respect their feelings, move on.
Now, YOU might still find rants and such convincing, or not a terribly big point against what’s being communicated. That’s fine – but your personal preferences don’t make the post an argument in any traditional sense of the word, they just indicate that the emotion expressed coheres with your foundational beliefs or is a sentiment to which you have an affinity. But this doesn’t work for me, or for Scott (I imagine).
I am swayed by reason, not emotion, when it comes to discourses – this is a foundational belief of my own, and a function of my training. But it’s also the only way we can short-circuit things that all-too-often lead to problems in the human condition: demagoguery; in-group reinforcement; etc. I am absolutely willing to grant to you that perhaps other posts on RoH don’t proceed like the post that started the conversations we’re having over here at TPB – and if so, that’s great! But I’m not interested in putting in the hours of work necessary to see if there are other (potentially rational) discourses going on at RoH given the “argumentative” tactics on display in the original post. Maybe RoH is Mecca for feminist philosophers who are into logic like me – but from my point of view this is monumentally unlikely given that someone trained in philosophy would never do the sorts of things that the RoH post does and expect to a) be convincing and b) be taken seriously as a partner in that conversation.
Now, that being said, that doesn’t mean that a rant or performance of rage has not had a positive effect (if you can call it that) – in this case, RoH has been the impetus for several rational conversations to begin on TPB. But having this effect doesn’t mean the post/site in question was a good argument (or even an argument) – just that something reasonable followed from it, in spite of its irrationality. This is consonant with the history of art: DaDa art in post-WWI Europe generated (and generates) countless reasonable conversations about the nature of art, the worth of art, and so on. But DaDa was also a “No-Reason” zone given that it’s entire purpose was to be irrational – and in so doing, be the impetus for rational conversations.
Look, this stuff is why Scott and I have run out of patience with the “I need more proof” stuff. We’ve done our best to outline the necessary conditions for argumentation to occur (as we understand it), although it’s obvious now that this was never explicitly stated nor made clear to anyone who hasn’t had our specialized training. I know that I had just assumed everyone was starting from where I stand on the way reason and discourse interrelate – it’s sort of an unspoken universal that really needed to be spoken prior to now. I suspect that these beliefs are foundational for both Scott and I, given that these standards have been in place for the past 2500 years and have not faced serious challenge. But that’s why, I suspect, neither of us understand your constant demands for more and more proof about the absence of reason in the original post on RoH: the author disqualified herself from making an argument (and thus engaging in rationality) by choosing the medium of polemic.
Now, all of that being said, perhaps there are numerous benefits to RoH choosing to use rants instead of reasoned discourse. I’m willing to allow that, especially given the hostility of the academy towards women throughout its existence. But by choosing to write polemics and rants rather than arguments, the author is also choosing to deny her criticisms the force of reason – and, for those of us who are convinced by reason and not tantrums, has subsequently chosen to speak in a language that we cannot understand and, in so doing, has indicated that she does not want to be part of any conversation that follows. We know how she feels. We’ve processed that. But I could care less how acrackedmoon feels – I want to have a discussion about WHY the text works in the ways that it does.
I empathize with acrackedmoon being angry about reading Scott’s stuff. Really, I do. But that’s really all I can charitably get from her post, and that’s all I (or anyone else) should have to offer in response to it. Now, the stuff Scott’s saying about criteria, his feminist argument in PoN, and in-group criticism affecting responses? That shit’s interesting, it’s something to which I can respond, and it’s something that merits reflection because, as best as I can tell, Scott seems to want to hear what people have to say about his positions. Why else spend countless hours responding to people on this blog, and refining his arguments? Had acrackedmoon invited a discourse rather than communicated her anger there’s a good chance we’d be having this conversation at her blog rather than at TPB.
But she didn’t. And that’s why calling RoH – or at least the post in question – a “no reason” zone seems eminently fair to me, and why I’ve been having trouble understanding what more proof you require given the above!
LTP, as before, thanks for this – I feel bad for irritating you with my (somewhat) deliberate obtuseness!
I am familiar (though have forgotten a good bit) with necessary and sufficient conditions, we used them often enough in math and even econ but wasn’t sure how it applied in philosophy. Was just reading about necessary/sufficient relating to some proofs regarding graphs.
I enjoyed reading your explanation as a refresher, thanks for that.
As I read more – I promise you I am greatly appreciate these notes – ideally it will be clearer to me.
“But she didn’t. And that’s why calling RoH – or at least the post in question – a “no reason” zone seems eminently fair to me, and why I’ve been having trouble understanding what more proof you require given the above!”
Actually, this is the thing I was curious about, the heuristic and sample. One post, a subset, or all of them?
Your claim “Moon didn’t use reason when she wrote the post ‘Prince of Misogyny’” seems like a much more limited, and thus far more, if I may, ‘reasonable’ claim than a criticism of all the site’s content and readers is circumscribed in some kind of zone.
When I see the application of the word zone I think that a sample of text (perhaps all of it) from the site, including both author and commenters, has been read through and not met a standard (heuristic) of some kind (such as the one you gave).
I realize/respect our expectations differ here.
“That’s fine – but your personal preferences don’t make the post an argument in any traditional sense of the word, they just indicate that the emotion expressed coheres with your foundational beliefs or is a sentiment to which you have an affinity.”
Oh, I don’t agree with the conclusion. I’m more curious as to the explanation (rather than justification) for why it is convincing. Hence my harping on communication – though you’ll be relieved to know I don’t have anything else to say about that.
thanks again,
-Sci
My intuition is that it’s fairer to call the post in question a no-reason zone than the site as a whole. That being said, that one post reflects so poorly on the site for me that I’ve just written it off, you know? There aren’t enough hours in the day to deal with yet more Web reading, especially when the blog’s proprietor has indicated that her thing isn’t my thing.
Understandable. There was definitely aspects of tone I disagree with, less so once I understood the performance nature.
I’ll admit it was my aversion that drew me in, almost in an let’s-see-how-angry-this-makes-me fashion, and I did find a lot of surprisingly interesting stuff. The articles about depictions of women forced me into some less-than-flattering self-criticism.
Other things, like narratives about women helping women rather than existing for the men, I’d never really considered before.
I mean, look. I don’t judge your for finding something of worth over there. Seriously. If you’re learning from that Web site then that’s a good thing for you.
As a matter of taste, I really, really don’t like what I’ve read at that Web site because I think it’s injurious to the cause of correcting global injustice. I’m pretty open that I’m a first world materialist feminist, but I’ll also confess that the only truly unpleasant interactions I’ve had with other feminists have come from post-colonial or non-Western feminists (and only a small subset of post-colonial, non-Western feminists at that). Frequently, in my experience, their lived experiences of oppression have caused them to abandon rational discourse in favor of shaming tactics, ranting, and things like that so that “attention will be paid” or something.
For me, acrackedmoon’s blog is a symptom of stuff I find extremely unprofessional within the academy, damaging to persuasion, and (quite frankly) old news. If you find her clarifying, though, that’s great. Different strokes for different folks.
But the older I get, the more I want there to be a dialogue and an argument, you know? I want to persuade people, I want people to persuade me. And I’m now old enough to know that appeals to emotion and brow-beating don’t get the job done for me (or most people with whom I’m acquainted), so I avoid that stuff like the plague.
“but your personal preferences don’t make the post an argument in any traditional sense of the word”
Sure it does. It just doesn’t fit with the very specific, very sheltered version that philosophers use as building blocks. Just like your specific definition of reason and rationality.
It certainly fits the connotation of ‘argument’.
At this point, LTP, I think you’re on shaky grounds fundamentally; you’re talking about everyone on the internet using and understanding correctly the foundational values of philosophical argument and also stating that anything that doesn’t fit that specific definition is not an argument and is something else. This is so narrow as to be useless. If RoH claimed she was a philosopher that might mean something; she doesn’t. Claiming that it’s not an argument? Come on.
You are right that sci’s personal preferences don’t make a post an argument; the actual post did. Her bringing up examples of text and interviews then reaching a conclusion based on those things did. Now, you can reasonably claim it’s not convincing of an argument or that it’s not well-written or any number of things – but when you become the sole arbiter of how the English language is used and use it in a specialized way you’ve stopped caring about what points a person makes, what they think, listening to them at all – and instead are essentially a grammar nazi.
Which can be useful! But it’s not good for conversation.
“I empathize with acrackedmoon being angry about reading Scott’s stuff. Really, I do. But that’s really all I can charitably get from her post, and that’s all I (or anyone else) should have to offer in response to it.”
And here’s the real problem. We have people who have been conditioned to see words as weapons – or more accurately, as a sign of an impending threat or attack. That’s what those words mean to them. And it’s not just one person; it’s a whole host of people, because that conditioning is institutional and systemic. Then we have another group of people that refuse to listen to that view at all because it is an emotional reaction to those words and not a rational response. And even then, they define rational in a way that means something only a small subset of people use regularly.
tell me, LTP – is it reasonable for a dog to bite a human it doesn’t know if all it knows is humans kick it? Is that rational behavior?
It’s a lot more interesting when you starting seeing that acrackedmoon represents a nontrivial portion of people out there. Not always in the rage performance case, but in the underlying views. That there are millions of women who see these things not as depiction or endorsement but as actual pain points. That simply writing a text that is this obscene to their sensibilities (in the same way that Neuropath is obscene to parents) reinforces those systemic parts of the system that allow people to write things like this – and much worse than this – without categorical dismissal.
And there are plenty of men who read the same text and see absolutely nothing special about it at all – or even better, see it as A Good Thing.
I don’t really know where to start with this response; where someone like saajan actually seems to want to listen or think about what I and others have said, a response like this strikes me as being written in bad faith or deliberate trolling. That being said, I sense that this could be a learning/teaching moment to people in this thread to see how someone like me sees the world, so I’m going to go with that and hope that this results in people actually getting a feel for that.
In response to my explanation of why it’s impossible to consider a rant an argument in the proper use of the word Kalbear responds:
“Sure it does. It just doesn’t fit with the very specific, very sheltered version that philosophers use as building blocks. Just like your specific definition of reason and rationality.
“It certainly fits the connotation of ‘argument’.”
So I provide how I’m using the word, and Kalbear’s response to this is “You’re wrong, because you’re using the word precisely and not taking connotations of the word that I have into account because you’re a philosopher.”
This is a bold move, because it is a response that appears to be an argument to a casual observer but actually contains no argumentation – just assertions. I say “How you feel about a piece doesn’t affect its status as an argument”; Kalbear responds with the intimation that her feelings denote argumentative status on a thing because I’m too sheltered to understand that my definition of reason is bad.
Again, bold move. It doesn’t set up alternative criteria for how we should determine whether a post is rational; it doesn’t state why arguments do not have to be rational; in fact, all it does is restate the poster’s opinions (presumably from years ago) and insist that my viewpoint is problematic because I haven’t defined things in such a way that I have to concede the argument to Kalbear.
Perhaps the above is uncharitable – a charge to which I’m sensible, given that I’m trying to have a rational conversation here, so I must respond further to ensure that I’m being internally consistent. Perhaps what you’re saying is that connotations of the word argument suggest my definition is overly-stringent. But if what you’re actually saying is that all definitions should take connotations of words into account to reflect usage, then you’re on shaky ground. Consider the word “literally”, which is connotationally used to mean “figuratively”. There are other words like this, of course. But my point is that people get stuff wrong all the time, and their errors of usage doesn’t justify agreement or changing the way things mean. If people start calling all cows kittens, then I’m not obliged to contend that kittens and cows refer to the same thing – only that usage has changed. The “essences” remain the same of both kittens and cows, even if we call them something different.
I’d say the same holds true when we see two people yelling on the street. In such an event it’s common to say “They’re having an argument” – but they aren’t, not really. They’re having a disagreement or are mad at each other – but to say that they’re engaging in a rational act of persuasion is frequently incorrect, as anyone who’s argued with their significant other about cloud cover or whether The Beatles are better than The Rolling Stones can state with a great degree of certainty. Alternatively, when we see two people debating the merits of a thing – like at work when discussing the merits of two different approaches to a marketing initiative, or in a political strategy meeting, or over drinks – and engaging in a dialogue, what they’re doing is arguing in the traditional sense of the word. This isn’t a narrow, sheltered philosophy-centric usage: it’s just precise language that explains and coheres with reality.
As such, my response to the post in question at RoH isn’t me being a grammar nazi, or any of the other unflattering things you’ve said. This is me trying to constrain my comments to reflect what exists in reality such that I don’t presume to do violence to someone else.
I happily grant that your points about words as weapon is a good one – indeed, unlike your first three incoherent paragraphs, it’s an actual argument that merits consideration! But the original post at RoH did not condescend to make that argument – rather, it resorted to namecalling and strident language to communicate the author’s displeasure.
My interpretation of the situation is that doing what you’ve done – creating arguments where there were none – is an immoral and unfeminist act because you’ve presumed to provide intellectual content not present in acrackedmoon’s post. I would go so far as to say that it smacks of imperialism as well: acrackedmoon, as a Thai woman, is so poor at knowing her own mind and choosing her words that a first world interpreter is required to say “what she really meant to say” rather than respecting her autonomy enough to assume that what she actually said was what she meant to say and nothing more, and that this is an intentional choice on her part because she’s intelligent enough to understand the difference between media of discussion. Perhaps you’re entirely comfortable presuming to take acrackedmoon’s feelings and tell someone like me or Scott that she was trying to say something different than what she actually said: my position is that doing so – even if well intentioned – is an act of appropriation, of speaking for the subaltern, of denying her agency. As such, it’s profoundly unethical from my perspective – far better to hold that acrackedmoon chose to abandon reason as an intentional and deliberate choice, and thus bestow upon her the charity that I expect from those I discuss things with.
If you disagree with the way I’ve attempted to define my terms, or the way I approach this debate, then that’s fine. I’m not losing sleep about it. But in so doing you’re revealing that not only is an actual discourse impossible between us (because we disagree on what rationality is, and thus what the terms of any rational discussion could possibly be), but that any exchange between us is unfruitful because our foundational beliefs are incoherent. This seems to cohere with my reaction to your posts (as compared to saajan and Larry): I can actually follow their reasoning and understand what they’re saying, so I suspect my frequent reaction to your prior comments is a function of us having oppositional understandings of reality that prohibit communication.
There is one point you raise that I think is a good one, however – but it’s not a philosophical question (and, as such, saajan’s questions about methodology and sample would be quite useful). In fact, it’s a question I’ve explicitly raised in prior comments this week. You note:
“It’s a lot more interesting when you starting seeing that acrackedmoon represents a nontrivial portion of people out there.”
This is conjecture. I’ll repeat what I said in a prior post:
What percentage of women have to recognize this [misogyny] for it to be a legitimate issue? Why are we totalizing women into one body politic that can unequivocally recognize these things, when such a large part of feminism is moving away from the totalization of femininity into a unified thing rather than a collection of disparate and individuated voices? What percentage of women who’ve read this book agree with acrackedmoon, and what percentage would have to agree for this to be an “objective” assessment? Is this a case of the squeaky wheel getting the grease? Why is the Internet feminist community of women being privileged above those women with alternative, non-unitary understandings of feminism (and who don’t congregate online into self-selecting communities)? In other words: why do we have to include [or privilege] this particular group of feminists, and not others? What happens if a materialist feminist like myself, a post-structuralist feminist, a second-wave or radical feminist, and a first wave progressive feminist recognize the codes in this text differently (not to mention a citizen of the first world as opposed to a postcolonial feminist)?
Moreover, I’m concerned with the idea that you’re willing to appropriate acrackedmoon’s individual response and then try to use her – either willingly or unwillingly – as a token or symbol of a purported widespread feminist reaction to the book. I don’t believe acrackedmoon is a symbol, or an archetype, or a representative of something other than herself – I believe she is an autonomous person who had had a response to the book in question, and that her rant was her attempt to speak for herself (and not for others). I’m not comfortable doing the imperialist injustice of turning a real person with real critiques into a symbol of a nascent, anti-Scott Bakker groundswell movement – rather, I’m interested in constraining my reactions in such a way that I grant acrackedmoon autonomy (even if I find the medium she chose and the message that medium suggests distasteful or ineffective).
First off, this whole ‘this isn’t an argument’ thing is about as silly as the argument sketch. I keep laughing whenever you state it. Just FYI.
“but that any exchange between us is unfruitful because our foundational beliefs are incoherent”
I disagree. As long as you refuse to accept or understand any definitions or understandings other than your own, you’re absolutely right; you are choosing to willfully disregard all other cultural or societal or other viewpoints in favor of your view and refuse to talk about the substantive points in favor of correcting the frame.
Which isn’t fruitful. And that’s your choice, not mine.
Here’s the thing, LTP – I understand where you’re coming from. From a philosophical point of view what ROH does isn’t arguing. There’s no reason there for the same points Bakker made above. I get this. I just don’t agree with it, but I get where you’re coming from. I just don’t see a lot of value in telling someone that they’re not arguing and as such have no intrinsic value in their statements and dismissing it entirely because of the tone or the specific statements they make (or the way they make it).
Also, I made no value statements about what you stated as far as good/bad: I said they were sheltered and insular. Which you admit they are. In that respect my assertions are in agreement, so I guess we can move on.
“creating arguments where there were none – is an immoral and unfeminist act because you’ve presumed to provide intellectual content not present in acrackedmoon’s post.”
Ah, then that’s a misreading of my intentions, and I apologize. I never said, not once, that acrackedmoon ‘means’ something. In fact the only thing I mentioned about her directly was that there are a lot of people out there that think and feel like her – which is empirically measurable and is statistically valid. I don’t pretend to know what she feels because I can’t. That being said, the reason she doesn’t add arguments is stated by her – the arguments about privilege and white male power have been stated many times by many other people, and she needs not to restate it any more than you need to rewrite Kant. They’re out there en masse; searching for white male privilege will find oodles of information. That’s what she’s stated.
I understand that her performance rage comes entirely from this intellectual basis just as much as you understand that PoN and other Bakker works come from neuroscience and Derrida. In that respect I’ll state it this way: I’m referencing this basis, not acrackedmoons’ arguments. I hope that makes sense. Though I can see how I come off as a White Knight in that respect. But stating that she’s unreasonable or is a ‘no reason zone’ for her performances is akin to saying that Bakker believes that women are worth less than men because he wrote about it in a fantasy novel.
“I believe she is an autonomous person who had had a response to the book in question, and that her rant was her attempt to speak for herself (and not for others).” I think she can be both. Moreover, I think whether she was attempting to do so or not there are enough people out there who comment that they agree with her, that back her views and her performances, that comment in similar ways on similar places, that use the same terminology and beliefs – that it’s fairly obvious that this is a shared view. Again, you have thousands of people using the same terminology in the same way with the same internally consistent behavior. How is this fundamentally different than philosophers using words in a specific connotation with a specific meaning? When you say ‘this is how philosophers use the words’ should I correct you and say ‘no, this is how you use the word and you’re now speaking for all philosophers?’ That’s silly. It takes zero effort to see acm’s basis.
“What percentage of women have to recognize this [misogyny] for it to be a legitimate issue?” Ah, we get back to this notion. Some kind of ‘legitimate issue’. Some ‘responsibility’, like Scott’s on trial or he’s committed some crime.
You tell me, LTP – why is it that Scott explicitly mentioned that his book would have been unpublishable if the series had the same themes about race instead of gender? Why is it acceptable in literary and societal terms to write a book where women are objectively less valued than men? Why wouldn’t you expect women (or really, everyone) to recognize the misogyny when the author specifically and deliberately intended to write a book where the world was explicitly misogynistic?
“What happens if a materialist feminist like myself, a post-structuralist feminist, a second-wave or radical feminist, and a first wave progressive feminist recognize the codes in this text differently (not to mention a citizen of the first world as opposed to a postcolonial feminist)? ”
I’d imagine you’d have a talk about it. I’d imagine all of you would recognize that the book contained massive misogyny; whether that was a desire to glorify it, to condemn it, or to wack off to it would be entirely based on your arguments, but I think all of you would recognize that it contained a lot of it. As such, i would also think all of you would understand (if not agree) if someone viewed that as a person promoting misogyny.
Which has been my argument all along.
Here’s another bit of fanning the flames, Scott.
You’ve mentioned as early as 2004 that one of the things you were gunning for when writing PoN was writing something that challenged the reader – not just in figuring out what was going on, but challenged their assumptions and their views, caused them to reconsider and think. That you were going to offend people and that was part of your goal. Some quotes:
“Given the right beliefs, we humans seem to be capable of damn near anything, be it demonic or divine.”
“The tendency in much fantasy fiction is to cater to readers’ moral expectations, to depict ideologically correct worlds and so avoid all the kinds of trouble I seem to get into with my fiction. In other words, the tendency is to be apologetic rather than critical (and then to be critical of those who refuse to apologize). My interest lies in the glorious ugliness that is a fact of traditional world making. Bigoted worlds. Biased worlds. Human worlds expressed through fantastic idioms.”
“From the very beginning, I’ve looked at The Second Apocalypse as an experiment in bringing criticism, writing that actually challenges, back to mass commercial culture
”
There were a couple others similar to that on the Bakker and Women thread posts too; I can try to dig them up.
My question on this is how this is fundamentally different than RoH’s goal? The means are certainly different – and it’s clear you don’t respect RoH’s means, and that’s fine. The actual goal of what you’re trying to challenge is also clearly different. But the actual thing you’re both doing is challenging without flinching. You’re both attemping to make something a big, open sore that won’t go away nicely and won’t politely hide, right? This was one of your arguments a while back – that you could have added more women, or made Conphas a woman but you felt that it would have lessened the blow, made the misogyny more palatable, and that wasn’t acceptable to do so.
You wanted the hard truths and the hard facts. You wanted to confront from the start to the end.
And that’s what you say you want on this blog as well – that you want to be honest, even if it hurts you or doesn’t win you friends.
How is this fundamentally different than what RoH is doing? To me, she’s confronting. She isn’t politely stating her claims in a way that can be easily ignored; she’s challenging readers. She’s challenging people to look at certain things in (often) a completely different way. I realize you’ve stated that this is just a bunch of people who already believe in this view taking her side once again and having a nice circle jerk of self-affirmation, but this appears to be at least anecdotally wrong; many commenters say things like this:
“This blog is not made for white people like you or me to feel liberal and cool!
Seriously, that took a bit of time for me to recognise but… This blog isn’t about making white liberals feel happy. And that is why I love this blog. It challenges me a lot. And it makes no excuses.
”
Larry’s said as much directly to you. I’ve said as much earlier in these conversations. I believe that Sci has as well.
Now, that doesn’t mean that I’m a firm believer in every single thing she says or that that form of feminism is the Whole Truth – but I can recognize quite clearly that the reason she’s confrontational is so that she cannot be ignored easily. That you don’t get to dismiss her by talking over her; either you confront yourself and become a bit more self-aware or you get angry and call her names, but neither is the easy out.
(as an example of not agreeing with her: I don’t like her recent tweet about Watts’ not getting permission from a person he knew (who happened to be a victim of abuse) to model her as a character; the important detail left out by her was that he thought for 25 years that she was dead. Poor form that)
I enjoy your works and your writings because they are a perspective and analysis into aspects of the world that I don’t process in the way you do – though I’m starting to think that this may be incorrect, and that we’re more alike than different in thought processes. Some of my favorite writers and bloggers are folks like that – people that don’t think like me, don’t write like me and have massively different experiences than I do. And I disagree with them all the time – but I still read them because of the perspective they give me into that means of thinking. They challenge my base assumptions.
And that’s how I see RoH.
I’ve actually already responded to this at quite some length, Kal. To LTP himself, in fact.
I still think these issues LTP raises are some bullets you would be better off biting – you really don’t see how far out on a limb you are, not even as a possibility, and it makes arguing about it with you seem futile. (Your intelligence is your biggest enemy sometimes, I think). Just entertain the possibility for a while, revisit it.
Yeah, what Scott said. I have no idea on how or where to begin responding, so I think I’ll just stick to talking to Sci from here on out because at least we’re speaking the same language and learning from each other.
Not sure why responding to LTP about talking about RoH matters, Scott. Were you replying to another topic by accident?
How about this, Scott – instead of telling me how completely wrong I am without explanation – much like talking to a child as a parent – how about you assume my intelligence and explain to me why I am incorrect?a
Or how using philosophical framing improves discourse amongst a wide audience instead of limiting it to those who know and understand philosophical reasoning?
Or how your version of challenging, provoking and being honest at all costs is especially different from the school of feminism that acrackedmoon views? (if the answer is ‘I’m less rude’, I’d like to know how writing a book where women are viewed as less than men from the point of view of the universe is less rude than calling someone a misogynist)
I’m sorry if that’s the impression I gave. I’m just running out of steam on this particular topic. I’ve offered you the best disinterested standards argumentation has to offer outside science, ones accepted in universities the world over as legitimate, and you’ve rejected them, and in so doing you’ve managed to turn a self-proclaimed troll and obvious bigot – and a website that any practical reasoning instructor could turn into an easy in-class assignment – into examples of the ‘rational.’ What else can I say? You’ve bricked yourself in.
You can keep playing the ‘No-you game’ if you want. I honestly don’t have the energy to pursue this any further.
I can live with you believing otherwise.
lessthanpleased, congrats on confirming your coalition mindset. I’m sure that that’s a great way to approach communication – when difficulty is raised, make sure to only talk to those who confirm your biases and viewpoints.
You realize that you’re just as set in your ways and views and just as much part of the problem as someone like acrackedmoon, right? That by simply refusing to even communicate with another human being who disagrees with your point of view you’re essentially choosing ignorance and antipathy.
I was wrong to use the argument sketch with you, lessthanpleased; clearly humor wasn’t the right approach with you. I’ll get back to you with a more philosophical standpoint to refute your statements; at least that way you’ll understand that you’re choosing ignorance in words and framing of your own making.
Hi Saajan,
“As it stands, I’m having a hard time not seeing you as a signature example of the way moral agreement shuts down the possibility of rational self-critical appraisal.”
Ah yes, by asking for your method and your sample it proves I’m deluded. Ever are men deceived right?
Really Scott? – Come on now.
My question is limited, if you noticed, to asking about ‘no reason zones’ and how to spot them. As an RoH reader, your claim just made me wonder as to your heuristic and the extent of RoH’s content that you read.
I was going to reply to this but then you said to me you saw the thing about the queues, so I thought reiterating it would be dog piling. Yet it seems to continue in discussion with LTP.
You think your doing the same thing as Scott, in asking for a sample for his claim. You are not doing the same thing. As far as I can tell, the paradigm he’s operating from is that the person who first made a claim gives their criteria. That person is first in line. Rather than cut off communication until that’s given, Scott’s continued to try and keep in contact.
For yourself, you’re requiring criteria for any claim made (well, actually, not for any claim, but the claim you feel is the important one to provide for) – regardless of whether it was in responce to someone else previously making a claim and giving no criteria. This is something else entirely – your not using the same paradigm as Scott. Your not using reasoning type X, it’s something else that you’re using.
Maybe you think the reasoning type you’re using is kick ass better (if so, okay), but what is definitely true is that you’re are not using the same thing as Scott. There is no “Ah, I use the same method as you and it pertains moreso to you than it does ROH!”. You are not using the same method/not using reason type X. In reason type X, moon is first in line to give criteria. In terms of people who use that paradigm, we are still waiting.
Reading your explanation – I understood what you meant…though I think LTP has covered this?
-Sci
LTP probably has – I didn’t mean to dogpile!
Except acm is referencing a fairly well known set of criteria.
Would you expect a philosopher to reference what they meant by ‘reason’ or ‘argument’ or ‘ad hominem’ or ‘strawman’ every time they used it?
I still fail to understand why one side gets that standard and the other doesn’t. I mean, it’s on her ‘about’ page what she’s talking about. She links to it constantly, including in that about page. This seems like pedantry at its finest.
In any case, you’re not going to get it from her, as one of the central tenets of her belief system is that she is not your magical feminist spirit guide that is required to explain to you every detail of her thought process or the system that she is referring to – especially when such explaining has been done repeatedly and is easily found. And in fact, asking for it is such a common tactic that it’s referred to in derailingfordummies as the first link!
Would you expect…
Yes.
I still fail to understand why one side gets that standard and the other doesn’t.
Because you keep mentally editing it that your using the same standard.
Gnash and wail in front of the steel gates of the fitness test.
Then stomp your feet and return to your own steel gates, which are atleast as equally high.
Outside of the brilliance of the book, and me freaking out friends / family by sending it to them, it was one of the most “subtle” forms of dystopian descriptors on society. No “hitting over the head” just small references to EU, Russia, the environment, the “Nets”, etc. Scarily, its just eaking towards that direction regardless
Everyone who has read Neuropath says “the fuck, did you send me.” But, they couldn’t put it down. Like me, after the first chapter, you Must finish. Love it. Plus, were seeing more weird neuroslicing type technology coming about. Keep it up Bakker, your work is inspirational.
Ha, I didn’t know Bakker’s supposed “misogyny” was still an issue. Unsure where this is coming from. Never got the sense from any of the readings. Being a former misogynist myself (women as objects) and knowing others of the same ilk. I just find Bakkers writing “honest” and “apt” when approaching men and women, painting flaws and realities (ala, a Whore becoming an Empress, and the past that continually rises).
Etc.
Thanks, fsalemh. When Jaynes published his research on free will, I was amazed that this particular little ‘future fact’ arrived so quickly. Then not long after I stumbled across a capsule story about a Japanese retailer testing face recognition technology to make sure their employess continually smiled. Now part of me doesn’t even want to know!
You just know that the NSA does have a Neuromanipulation Division…