Also, any sentence with "it should be obvious" raises a red flag with me - usually it is uttered by people don't actually want to reflect on whatever they are asserting to be true.
> The US has a long history of using the "rational discussion" argument to shut rational people up:
The chancelor in the article you cited is arguing in favor of censorship. I am arguing against it. I don't understand why you think there are similarities, unless you are comparing us because we both use the word rational.
> Also, any sentence with "it should be obvious" raises a red flag with me - usually it is uttered by people don't actually want to reflect on whatever they are asserting to be true.
If you have an actual argument to present I would have happy to "reflect" on it, but this sort of meta-argument usually raises a red flag for me because they are usually made be people who are unwilling to discuss the content of the argument being made.
You're responding to a comment that almost literally says "opposing sides of any discussion always consider themselves the rational half" and you don't see the connection?
You imply that it is obvious to decide who is rational or irrational. It is not - everyone is biased to be blind to their own irrationality.
People are not as rational as they think, and the more someone is in denial of having an irrational side to them, the more irrational their behaviour; people who admit they are wrong more often are the least wrong on average.
Nobody here is claiming that irrationality trumps rationality, so your response is tautological, akin to "obviously the side who is wrong is wrong." It doesn't add anything to the discussion, other than implying that one camp is clearly the irrational one as a counter-argument to the problem that it is hard to decide who is rational and who isn't, without actively trying to overcome your own biases and comfort zones.
First off, when you quote something, please actually quote it, or at least be specific. I had a quite a time trying to figure what "a comment" and "Your statement" were referring to.
> You imply it is obvious to decide who is rational or irrational. It is not - everyone is biased to be blind to their own irrationality.
Yes, that is why having a discussion is important. So that people can be exposed to arguments that challenge their irrationality. It is only obvious that one side is being irrational when they refuse to have a discussion (and by extension refuse to consider the possibility that they are wrong).
> Your statement is tautological, akin to "obviously the side who is wrong is wrong."
And yet some people are still against having the discussion. If you believe that my post is a tautology, then it follows logically that anyone who disagrees with it is trivially wrong.
It's possible to disagree with your post as in "this post adds no information and doesn't make the point that it thinks it makes" in contrast to "this post is logically invalid".
Or at least not if we're talking about having public rational discussions about it. The validity and correct interpretation of evidence is extremely hard for a lay audience to judge.
Putting a climate scientist and a climate science denier on a podium to have a rational discussion is not likely to lead the audience to a more rational decision. Ditto for creationists.
Does this concrete case fall into this category? My initial guess would have been no, and that a more rational engagement would have been the better way to go about it.
But after reading parts of the memo, and skimming the rest, I am not sure any more. There is an overwhelming scientific consensus that most of the gender structure we see today is cultural. This is not in contradiction to the existence of innate differences. The problem of the memo isn't that it differs from this consensus, the problem is that it doesn't acknowledge it (and rather treats it as a misguided "extreme and authoritarian" ideology).
I believe there are many things in the academic consensus worth criticising, I also believe that there are many more things in the political consensus built around it to criticise. But that's not really what this memo does.
For example, it selectively cites a tiny corner of the research literature, conveniently ignoring the mountains of evidence that don't fit the stated thesis.
As a (relative) laymen, I think he makes a good effort. And he doesn't even seem to assume his conclusions, instead inviting further discussion on the topic.
There is a difference between not wanting to participate in a discussion because you believe it to be unfruitful/counterproductive, and trying to actively shut down other peoples discussions. I was criticizing people who do the latter. Does that address your issue with my assertion?
Maybe. I am arguing that one shouldn't participate in "rational discussions" with people who don't adhere to the standards of rational discussion themselves, especially in public.
If you disagree with me, and want to enter into such discussions, I obviously can't stop you (and might aid you). But if I had a platform, I might not lend it to you to have your discussion in public. Would you count that as shutting down other people's discussion? If not then we have no significant disagreement.
And for the record, I think shaming people into being silent about their opinions, even if they are demonstrably incorrect, instead of trying to change them, strikes me as a big mistake.
So there is a difficult balancing act between not allowing people to propagate irrational believes that don't engage with the available evidence (and promote views that are actively harmful to a part of the population), and engaging with people to convince them of the evidence and the rational view.
> views that are actively harmful to a part of the population
Unless explicit clarified, these are too open to abuse and scope creep.
Consider - one of the few "loopholes" to free speech is speech considered "hateful"; As such we see an active effort to expand what is considered "hateful", and any call to censorship will now begin with a justification of applying the label to its target, however contrived that link might be.
First of all, this has nothing to do with free speech. Rational discussion is a very specific form of speech. It's a great cultural achievement that needs to be defended, it is not a natural or even inevitable outcome of free speech.
Habermas for example studied in depth the conditions for speech to produce reason:
Secondly, yes, drawing the line is difficult, there are grey areas, and we should be careful, but refusing to draw a line is the opposite of being careful or rational.
And it's not like free speech is the only value humanity ever came up by which to judge things. Taking for example the human rights declaration, freedom of expression is one of the basic rights. But sometimes rights are in conflict with each other. Then we have to make a choice how to weight the various rights.
That's why we have libel and defamation laws everywhere.
> It's a great cultural achievement that needs to be defended
I agree, but in the context of an opponent capable of censoring you that doesn't appreciate this, all you can do is fall back on legal protections. In this case, the potential for a rational, productive discussion was cut short.
A level of freedom to speech is required to promote rational debate. It's a necessary, bedrock requirement, even if not a sufficient one.
> refusing to draw a line is the opposite of being careful or rational
I don't think a line was drawn. The google rep alluded to "false assumptions" but didn't specify what they where, and even refused to link the memo. They clarified nothing but an atmosphere hostile to open discussion.
> we have to make a choice how to weight the various rights
True, but the rights are somewhat solidified. There is a longstanding right to "freedom of speech". There is no such right "freedom to not be offended". Whatever right is being asserted here (by the offended parties) appears to be something new.
> libel and defamation laws
I think the author has been defamed - there are plenty articles "summarizing" the memo in ways that are not representative of it's content - even the label "anti-diversity". I was shocked to find a fairly sober article on the issue in the Atlantic, of all places: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/the-mos...
There'll no doubt be many responses along this line but...
> There is a longstanding right to "freedom of speech"
...is only true in certain limited circumstances, all pertaining to the government (fed, state, local), I believe.
You do not, generally, even in the USA, have a right to "freedom of speech" wherever you are. And you definitely don't have "free (from consequences) speech" anywhere.
Then I'm not sure what your point is. "freedom" in this context usually relates to the law. As such "freedom to X" usually implies the legal framework to support X.
If you are saying "freedom to X doesn't mean no legal consequences" then the phrase would be meaningless.
> "freedom" in this context usually relates to the law.
Then where is the "a right to freedom of speech" enshrined in the law? The USA doesn't have that - only limited protection from the government. The UK certainly doesn't.
Yes, a certain level is required. I see no indication that freedom of speech _in the legal proper sense_ is restricted to anywhere near the level that it would be threatening rational discourse.
Indeed the types of speech targeted by laws typically is far removed from rational discourse.
And I am not aware of any laws, real or proposed, that would grant a "freedom to not be offended". So again, in this context, that's a red herring.
In this branch of the thread I was replying to the discussion whether anyone arguing against rational discourse is automatically irrational (not in the "subtle and qualified opinion" camp). A stance I disagreed with.
The whole freedom of speech issue is a complete distraction, as far as the discussion I was answering to was concerned, as well as as far as the case of the memo is concerned. Nobody was threatening legal actions against the author of the memo, were they?
So please, clean up your argumentation. I agree that there is too much shaming for unpopular opinions going on, but stop going to war under the free speech banner.
Admit that this is above all a cultural issue, not an issue of constitutional principles. There are all sorts of things that you are allowed to say (freedom of speech) while you definitely shouldn't say them, and you certainly can't expect a company, or anyone else for that matter, to not shun you for what you say (no freedom from consequence of speech).
If you argue that slavery should be reinstated, and Hitler did nothing wrong, he just wasn't thorough enough, then the consequences of this are on you.
I do believe that there is definitely a culture of shaming people into silence going on that has gone to far. I find the concrete case hard to adjudicate. It definitely at least straddles the boundary. The memo is ill informed and naive, but it's also not evidently written by someone immune to reason, and it does take some effort to minimize harm/offense to others.
If somebody on my team would write something like that I would ask them to come in for a discussion. I would force them to read the Pinker/Spelke discussion.
So by all means, let's push back against shaming people into silence, but let's not do it under an utterly naive banner that says "I should be allowed to say whatever I want". We all want to build a society that works for everyone. What the correct attitude to certain speech acts (like this memo) is, is not a matter of legal principle. It is a matter for rational debate.
> For example, it selectively cites a tiny corner of the
> research literature, conveniently ignoring the mountains
> of evidence that don't fit the stated thesis.
You really should provide some sort of reference on that claim.
I would say, that the consensus among psychologists in academia is the opposite of what you suggest:
A majority of those people would admit that genes have a significant influence on differences in human behaviour, interests, capabilities etc.
Ceci & Williams (2011). Understanding current causes of women’s underrepresentation in science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108, 3157-3162.
http://www.pnas.org/content/108/8/3157.full
Wang et al (2013). Not lack of ability but more choice: Individual and gender differences in choice in careers in science, technology, engineering and math. Psychological Science, 24, 770-775.
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797612458937
Williams & Ceci (2015). National hiring experiments reveal 2:1 faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112, 5360-5365.
http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract
> A majority of those people would admit that genes have a significant influence on differences in human behaviour, interests, capabilities etc.
This is in no way in contradiction with anything I said. I specifically said the majority of the gender patterns we see are cultural. Not anything else.
I did not say either that "All human differences are cultural." nor that "All gender differences are cultural."
If you enjoy The Blank Slate, then you might be interested in reading Pinker debate with Spelke:
So given the "consensus" that "genes have a significant influence on differences in human behaviour, interests, capabilities etc.", you're basically saying that a significant and spontaneous, yet undetected, mutation appeared in the human female population, during the '80s [1] ?
Nobody is arguing against rational discussion. The problem is, you can not have a rational discussion about what rational discussion means, since all parties would need to agree on a position in the first place to have a rational discussion.
Is it wrong to be against a rational discussion of the benefits of race-based slavery?
Is it wrong to be against a rational discussion of the benefits of child-slavery?
Is it wrong to be against a rational discussion of the benefits of childhood labor?
Is it wrong to be against a rational discussion of the benefits of racial discrimination?
Is it wrong to be against a rational discussion of the benefits of gender discrimination?
For some things, allowing that rational discussion is a reasonable option legitimizes things that should not be legitimized because they are against the very nature of human rights. For example a rational discussion of race-based slavery is something that legitimizes it as something within the bounds of reasonableness.
I don't know where the boundary is, but I'm sure that is isn't obvious that anyone arguing against having a rational discussion.
> Is it wrong to be against a rational discussion of the benefits of X
Yes, it is wrong for any topic, no matter how immoral you consider it.
If someone of "the other side" is willing to engage in discussion then this in itself already is a huge win since you're not at each other's throats or creating bubbles lined with strawmen blocking the view of the other side.
And maybe you consider the chance small, but they might be willing to concede a few points, even if you're not going to overturn their entire worldview. And you might gain a little better understanding of them so you don't have to attack a strawman and might be able to address whatever underlying issue actually drives them.
Even in actual wars - you know, where people are busy killing the other side - you can still have negotiations. Why not consider rational discussion a negotiation of viewpoints long before you start murdering each other?
This is an equivocation. There's such a thing as an is/ought distinction. The fact that there might be some rational description of morally abhorrent behavior doesn't lead to the conclusion that that behavior is acceptable. Understanding doesn't mean accepting. Darwinism, for instance, doesn't imply Social Darwinism. Neither do theories of criminal behavior attempt to legitimize crime.
And if anything, anyone who's appalled by these things should actually be interested in studying the conditions under which these things might happen, or under which they might be beneficial, so as to insure that these conditions are never met.
And if anything, anyone who's appalled by these things should actually be interested in studying the conditions under which these things might happen
I agree with this very strongly.
I'm not sure if (or why) this leads to the requirement to have a rational discussion with proponents of abhorrent ideas.
It's interesting. I used to believe that abhorrent ideas should be confronted. But I'm not longer convinced - it seems to me that attention is adequate in many cases to allow abhorrent ideas to spread.
>I'm not sure if (or why) this leads to the requirement to have a rational discussion with proponents of abhorrent ideas
Besides the difficulty of working alone, how can anyone challenge something they aren't willing to talk about? If anything is to be done about it, then people will have to start talking eventually, even if only for the purpose of political coordination.
I get that there's the issue of trying to present anything to an uninterested or uneducated audience in a way that they won't get the wrong idea. But assuming beforehand that they will get the wrong idea regardless of what you might do is just assuming failure. If everyone thought this way, nothing would ever be done: slavery, serfdom and child-labor wouldn't ever have ended.
Besides, ideas don't spread like that. Specially morally abhorrent ideas, because being "morally abhorrent" usually implies being politically unfeasible. Even the most terrible regimes tried to whitewash themselves because they knew what they were doing wouldn't fly with the populace.
> I'm not sure if (or why) this leads to the requirement to have a rational discussion with proponents of abhorrent ideas.
Who decides what is abhorrent? In what sense? Rational, yet undesirable?
> abhorrent ideas should be confronted
This is an entirely different think. A constructive (cooperative), rational discussion is different from an adversarial debate.
> to allow abhorrent ideas to spread
Again, who decides which ideas are to be silenced? And without discussion, in this case.
You are essentially advocating restricting individual choice, by restricting available information; pushing individuals towards the "correct" viewpoint by banning advocacy of any other. The US, in particular, and many other western countries, were founded on opposition to this philosophy.
I'm reluctant to get drawn into a discussion of who decides what ideas are abhorrent because it's a pretty big topic on its own.
BUT, I do think (hope?) we can agree that there are some ideas that are abhorrent. I use the example of race-based slavery above.
Why should I have a rational discussions about the economic benefits of race-based slavery? The cost/benefit analysis just doesn't seem to make sense - the cost is increased visibility of the arguments for race based slavery, and I'm unsure what possible benefits there are.
> BUT, I do think (hope?) we can agree that there are some ideas that are abhorrent. I use the example of race-based slavery above.
Well, if you feel confident that race-based slavery is in no way justifiable then it should be relatively easy to find arguments why it is not justifiable, no?
An obvious one would be pointing out largely overlapping intra- and inter-race variances in genetics.
If your race-based-slavery-advocate could actually show that specific races have attributes that make it the utilitarian choice to choose them then they would be making a valid point - on the assumption that it is necessary to have slaves in the first place - and you might want to shift to finding arguments against slavery in general instead of the slaver's specific choice of slaves.
Or you could argue that merit-based slavery is superior to using race as a proxy. E.g. genetic testing or performance evaluations of individuals.
And you believe that a paper arguing that "black people are genetically suited to being slaves and therefore we should not expect them to become managers at google in a demographically representative proportion" is a reasonable statement to make about Google promotion practices and should not lead to the speaker being fired, so long as he adds references to the Bell Curve and the lack of black executives America?
If he can back his arguments with research and they don't contain any logical flaws then one should at least entertain them for a few minutes. After all he might be (partially) right and do his employer a favor.
If he is wrong in ways that could be honest mistakes then one should first try to point out the mistakes so he can retract his document until he can find stronger evidence or truly see the error of his ways. For that to happen people need to respond with rational arguments, not with outrage.
If he is wrong and does not respond to counter-arguments and -evidence, then some HR response would be appropriate. And note that I say "HR response", not dogpiling and not necessarily firing.
Argument-by-firing will only harden the ideological frontlines and further extremes.
It appears that my words must be doing a terrible job at conveying my intent.
My point is that you should engage in rational discussion even if you think the other side holds an abhorrent, immoral, inhumane viewpoint. And there are many good reasons to do so. And just one of those many reasons is that the other side might be right about some things. Another is that engaging them in discussion is a much better approach of showing them where they are wrong, just punishing someone for holding unpopular views is unlikely to achieve that goal. Another one that I have not mentioned yet is simple reciprocity, you want others to extend that kind openness to discussion towards you when they think you're holding some view that is abhorrent according to their moral value system.
I'll be honest - I think your example is contrived and/or a strawman, because you chose a "topic" that already seems to have assumed its conclusion e.g Can we have a "rational discussion" on "The benefit that 2 + 2 = 5"?
> Why should I have a rational discussions..
I think the question here is whether you can censor other people who want to have that discussion, not whether they can force you to participate.
> I'm unsure what possible benefits there are
But you want to veto the topic anyway? It sounds like you want to win the game without playing. To be considered "right" you must bear the burden of the argument.
> Is it wrong to be against a rational discussion of (.+)\?
Yes, it is.
The rest is the discussion why - in particular by pointing out that rational discussion does not automatically imply that abhorrent conclusions will be reached or accepted. The primary thing about rational discussion is that some (or all) participants may be wrong. It's also the difference between discussion and shouting through each other.
> legitimizes things that should not be legitimized
But how can you come to the conclusion things "should not be legitimized"? The topics "tolerance of homosexuality" or, "that god might not exist" both fell into that category. In absence of rational discussion, there is just sentimentality and bias.
I also think you've biased/unbalanced you topics with specific conclusions: "The benefits of X" - why would you insist on only discussing the benefits? It's a topic that makes certain assumptions.
> they are against the very nature of human rights
And atheist is against god, and homosexuality against nature. I think "human rights" is a more subjective concept than you might think.
> a rational discussion of race-based slavery is something that legitimizes it
How? What do you mean by "legitimize"? It only does so in a society that considers only "legitimate" topics to be up for discussion. If anything can be discussed, there would be no such perception that talking about something assigns it validity.
To summarise; Why is it harmful to discuss the above, unless you expect the outcome to be desirable. There is a difference between assuming a rational discussion, when the participants are incapable of a reasonable level of discourse; and an actual rational discussion. I would gladly hear Hitchens, Fry, Harris etc talk on the above topics.
I won't say whether it's 'right' or 'wrong', but it does suggest that you believe rationality is flimsy and elusive, and therefore censorship is required as a first line of defense, lest people think dangerous thoughts.
Your comment was marked as "dead" and I just vouched for it, so does that count as not trying to censor every idea that disagrees with me? ;)
But I'm not convinced. There have been plenty of racists with arguments they consider rational. I think they are factually wrong, but surely the real point is "what you are saying is offensive and immoral" rather than try to argue that (eg) the costs associated with keeping black slaves is too much for the income the bring.
If a viewpoint is censored (or controversial), it is human nature to seek it out, end even compensate it with more "weight" than it might otherwise be given. This is why the latest in rhetoric is not to censor something, but to explicitly acknowledge it and damn it with faint praise (or claim it is mediocre, boring, denounced etc).
Furthermore, another way to damn a viewpoint is to associate it with poor arguments; or to strengthen a claim surround it with strong (or at least battle-tested/accepted/familiar) arguments. You should be happy that a true claim is discussed, creating stronger arguments, and making those better known; and that false claims are also discussed, explicitly demonstrating the poor arguments used to defend them.
Now, whether a poor/strong argument is recognised as such, that is another issue, and goes to the "rational literacy" of the general public, which certainly is an issue (on both sides).
Not all subjects are amenable to "rational discussion", since it's inherently a restricted format which has implicit rules about what does and does not count as "rational". It also tends to presume its own weightlessness. Men seem very unwilling to recognise that the memo and the discussion itself is harmful.
> Not all subjects are amenable to "rational discussion", since it's inherently a restricted format which has implicit rules about what does and does not count as "rational".
I don't see how this follows. Are you suggesting that some topics can only be discussed if the discussion includes a non-sequitur.
> Men seem very unwilling to recognise that the memo and the discussion itself is harmful.
On the balance it seems like trying to censor the discussion causes way more harm than having it. Particularly since trying to prevent the discussion inevitably produces a significantly more intense discussion.
No, the claim is that you cannot have context-free universally true premises for every type discussion.
Most of this discussion outrage is based on people on all sides not realising they start from different, inherently subjective premises, and then believe they can build a universally true objective claim on that card house.
EDIT: This is why I believe people in STEM fields would really benefit from spending some time learning about the qualitative sciences and the philosophy of science it builds on. Because unlike physics or maths it is not based on the often implicit notion of an objective external truth - it cannot be. In some ways it is much more challenging to do good science it in.
To me, appeals to "rational discussion" represent an unwillingness to accept that humans are messy, irrational creatures, and that rationality itself is but a tool, not an end-goal (and by extension, a denial of one's own irrationality). We're not modelling our society on Skinner-boxes for a reason.
> No, the claim is that you cannot have context-free universally true premises for every type discussion.
A core part of "rational discussion" (as I understand it) is separating premises from arguments, so that when someone comes to a conclusion you disagree with, you point out whether you disagree with the premises or the argument (or both) and then you can go into more detail to pinpoint where exactly the disagreement comes from.
The statement "Because Jews are possessed by mind-eating demons from Xzdrgs, the Holocaust was justified." is probably both too absurd in its premise and too abhorrent in its conclusion to warrant serious consideration, and yet if someone wanted to engage it in a rational discussion, they could do so, e.g. by stating that mind-eating demons from Xzdrgs don't exist or that assuming they did exist, you couldn't defeat them by killing the host, or any number of other arguments. Those arguments themselves are then subject to counterclaims based in the same principles of rational discussion, and so on.
Now I wonder whether you could turn "absurdist rational discussion" into a game and whether it would be any fun to play.
> No, the suggestion is that you cannot have context-free universally true premises for every type discussion.
This is not a prerequisite of all discussions.
> Most of this discussion outrage is based on people on all sides not realising they start from different, inherently subjective premises, and then believe they can build a universally true objective claim on that card house.
This is easy to discover and correct for if both parties approach the discussion without being disingenuous. Building a universally true objective claim is not the only possible end goal of discussion.
I'm not reversing my position at all. I am arguing that some topics can be discussed with context-free universally true premises and some cannot. Nothing I have said is inconsistent with that.
> This is not a prerequisite of all discussions.
is equivalent to:
Some discussions do not have this as a prerequisite.
if you throw out the concept of objective truth (a staple of postmodern philosophy) then there is no debating at all, because the whole point of debate is to get to the truth at the heart of a matter. With postmodernism all you have is interest groups waging war on each other to pursue their own benefit.
This implies discarding how people feel about subjects, because feelings are inherently subjective.
It also leads you into certain kinds of blindness about gender, because of the search for objective metrics. You end up measuring less relevant things - chromosomes - rather than more relevant things - gender presentation and socialisation - simply because they're easier to measure.
> This implies discarding how people feel about subjects, because feelings are inherently subjective.
If you believe, as I do, that the nature of reality is an objective matter, and people's subjective feelings are part of this objective reality, then the following are true:
- That certain people feel a certain way is an objective matter.
- Why people feel a certain way is also an objective matter.
Both of these things can be either very difficult or impossible to determine (at present at least), but that's a separate issue - it's epistemological not ontological.
that's true, people will always have their own feelings towards subjects and we humans don't have the ability to cleanly separate our rationality from our emotions. However, denying an objective truth just because we find it hard to get to is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We have tools available to us to get to the truth (science, logic, reason, open debate, etc), and to discard these tools leaves us with nothing but subjectivity and tribalism.
if you lay out which viewpoints you think are both objective, true and need to be discarded then I'll tell you. At a guess, I think the idea of tabula rasa has proven to be untrue and there are biological roots to some gender differences.
>To me, appeals to "rational discussion" represent an unwillingness to accept that humans are messy, irrational creatures, and that rationality itself is but a tool, not an end-goal (and by extension, a denial of one's own irrationality). We're not modelling our society on Skinner-boxes for a reason.
Whoever told you Skinner-boxes were the end-point of rationality was... deeply wrong, and probably doing such damage to public discussion that they should be reprimanded.
I'm genuinely curious as to how rational discussion about the contents of the memo is harmful.
If reasonable people are having a rational discussion (difficult on the Internet, I know), surely we can still talk about disagreeable facts and theories without causing harm.
if you have a norm where people don't discuss certain things because it will cause offence to a group then having a discussion about things that will cause offence to that group is massive slight against that group. not only will it offend that group but it also shows that no-one cares about offending that group. i know this is a tautological argument. but i feel we do have a norm of not discussing things that will cause an offence to a group and even if you think this norm is wrong it is very difficult to change because the initial breaks in the norm are going to be resisted very heavily by those who feel they are being unfairly targeted.
The problem is that they are being seen as one and the same. Words that people don't like are being seen as causing material injury. That's why professors are giving warnings before class that certain topics may be "triggering" and that students don't have to have their fragile minds assaulted by differing opinions.
By regular definition of "rational discussion", subjects not amendable to it are, frankly, not worth discussing. Because the opposite of the "restricted format" of rational discussion is just talking out of one's ass and using one's emotions as arguments. Which, I guess, may be a fine social activity for some, but is otherwise not very useful for the society as a whole.
> Men seem very unwilling to recognise that the memo and the discussion itself is harmful.
...you realize where this goes, right?
Like -- suppose you're right; and suppose you're given the power to suppress all such harmful discussions. You apply it. No more such discussion. Great.
Now suppose this occurs but in fact you're wrong. We must then ask: How would you find out that you're wrong?
Well, in such a case, you probably wouldn't. I guess you might find out when the chickens, whatever they are, finally came home to roost. But ideally one wants to find out before then. Better hope the chickens are merely bad rather than catastrophic, seeing as you've been doing absolutely no planning for this case. And hopefully they come sooner rather than later.
(And that's assuming you're a reasonable person who would actually admit error at that point; see below.)
I mean, really... illiberalism, it always goes the same way. You think it's discussion that's harmful? Have you seen the alternative? Because, I mean, examples abound, and how it goes is pretty clear. You're talking about going down a path dominated by humanity's worst tribal instincts. I should hope that's not what you want -- but that's where that path leads. By the time the far-off disaster occurs, do you think it'll be people like you, who are capable of thinking clearly but just think certain discussions should be suppressed, who are going to be running the show? No, it'll the people who are the least reflective, the most tribal, the most doublethinky.
Liberalism, free speech, when working properly, is supposed to work as a negative feedback loop. If you're wrong, you find out. Someone contradicts you, supplies arguments, and then you can consider them and see whether they might be right. As a lot of people have noted, it... doesn't exactly always succeed at this. But suppression of speech... hoo boy, that fails so much harder. That's how you get positive feedback loops. As the professed beliefs of the group get further and further from reality, simultaneously the requirements that you agree, the punishments for disagreeing, get stricter and harsher. You sure as hell don't find the truth that way.
Truth, now... I notice that's something you didn't even mention at all. Because some of the points made in that memo, are, as best as people can currently tell, true. You haven't made any claims about to truth or falsity, only about harmfulness. But do you think the harmfulness of the claims in that memo exceed the harmfulness of shitty civilizational epistemic practices? (Nature can't be fooled, as they say!)
Like, OK, bad epistemic practices might not seem that bad, might seem like a worthwhile tradeoff, if you imagine suppression of specific facts or claims or discussions as an isolated thing. Maybe we don't need to know literally everything. But that's not how it goes. Free speech, liberalism, these are ideas that are unnatural to people, they had to be learned, and they are constantly seeking ways to slip them off or and go back to full-on tribalism (or pervert them in service of it). You may want suppression of particular claims... you will get the bad old days. The positive-feedback loop of doom.
Claims don't exist in isolation, after all; claims have relations between them. You can't just suppress one claim, because people will rederive it from other claims. And if the claim you suppress happens to be correct? Then people will definitely rederive it. So either surrounding claims have to go, or the process of inference itself has to go. Likely both. In fact definitely the latter; you can peel off surrounding claims all you want but eventually you'll have to attack inference itself. And hey, it happens already that people are constantly eager to do that anyway! They only need a little push... and then oops, there's your positive feedback loop. Once you encourage people to use bad methods, they'll use them to reach all sorts of bad conclusions... I expect many of them will surprise you!
(And what is the scope of this suppression? Shall the hidden truth be kept alive in the academy, say, with a strict cordon, so that the facts may be known by the chosen few but never applied outside where it might be necessary? Shall those who wish to learn a subject have to first learn only the public parts, and then apply to join, to learn the hidden secrets? Or shall it extend even to them? Is the pursuit of truth itself something that must simply be forbidden?)
It's a dark road you're suggesting here -- and not a new one; an old one, an ancient one, one whose failures we know very well. I'll take whatever harmfulness the truth might pose over that any day. I don't think it can really hold a candle to that.
I wish I could upvote this comment multiple times, you've laid out very accurately the common underpinnings between all these anti-free-speech ideologies and what they end up as (hint: it's Nazism/Stalinism).
they are the extreme case in that they're the result of walking this line right to the end. Here's hoping that the tide can be turned long before it gets to that - there's already mass brawling between the left and right in places like Berkeley and that's too far as it is.
The idea that some groups of humans are intrinsically inferior to others is one of these "banned" "facts" that has been excluded from civilised discussion for a reason, and that lies in the history of so-called "scientific racism" that was used to justify genocides in the 20th century.
The idea that "some groups of humans have a statistical average of some attribute that is higher than some other attribute" is an idea that people are basically incapable of not turning into "all X are inferior to Y". The idea that women are statistically less likely to be programmers gets used as justification for itself.
Let alone trying to distinguish between "wrong" (morally) and "wrong" (factually incorrect with relation to the observable universe).
Also, at no point did I mention suppressing the discussion. But you've simply turned your own argument around: you're arguing that saying "this discussion is harmful" is itself a harmful discussion!
And indeed we're also back to the question of whether being fired by your employer actually is a free speech question or not. There's no suggestion of government involvement in this speech, is there? Are you going to say "employees should be protected by the state from fear of being fired for any statements they make in the workplace, no matter how offensive their co-workers find them"?
I agree that trying to make statistical arguments to someone who isn't capable of correctly interpreting the statistics can be harmful.
However, I disagree with your original claim that `Not all subjects are amenable to "rational discussion"`, since this is not independent of with whom you are discussing a subject. I am fairly sure that for any possible subject, there is someone you can rationally discuss it with, without causing any harm.
> you're arguing that saying "this discussion is harmful" is itself a harmful discussion!
I don't interpret Sniffnoy as calling the discussion itself harmful, rather they thought you were the kind of person who'd advocate preventing harmful things; thus they argued that a policy of suppressing "harmful discussion" would be harmful. (As opposed to just discussing such a policy.)
If you are not in favor of suppressing harmful discussion, then the free-speech issue also becomes moot; if it's just you saying "I really don't like this discussion." then that's an opinion you are entitled to, but everyone else is free to ignore it.
> The idea that some groups of humans are intrinsically inferior to others is one of these "banned" "facts" that has been excluded from civilised discussion for a reason
Have you ever heard the quote "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it"?
I think it's much better to be able to discuss bad ideas, and discuss why they are bad, rather than to prevent (or apply strong pressure against) anyone from publicly bringing them up.
If we make it difficult to discuss about certain topics, who decides which ideas can't be talked about? What if a bigoted group comes into power? Won't this norm to hinder certain discussions hand them a powerful weapon for oppression?
So in your first three paragraphs you are listing out more explicitly what the harms are. OK. I don't disagree with you much here. Further suggestion that we don't actually disagree as much as I thought is what you say next:
> Also, at no point did I mention suppressing the discussion.
Indeed -- strictly speaking, no you did not!
So it looks now like what you intended to convey, when you wrote that discussing such things is harmful, is that discussing such things has downsides. I.e. it is not all-upside. I'm in agreement there! I just think that the downside is so much vastly smaller than the upside.
Whereas I took you as meaning that it is net harmful; and yes, I'll admit I implicitly read in there a call to suppress such things. Given the context, I think that was a reasonable inference for me to make? That is to say, the original question this came up under related to the firing of James Damore. If you didn't intend people to infer that you meant that, I think you should have been more explicit there. Similarly you should have been more explicit that by "harmful" you merely meant "has downsides" rather than "is net harmful". (Note that "has downsides" is a very weak statement -- everything has downsides! If you've been having to argue who won't even acknowledge that discussing such things has downsides, well... sorry you've had to deal with that!)
Anyway, one way or another, while I don't think you were the most clear, we do both seem to agree that the discussion has both upsides and downsides. I'm just arguing (as I've said above) that the upside is much, much bigger than the downside.
> But you've simply turned your own argument around: you're arguing that saying "this discussion is harmful" is itself a harmful discussion!
This is why one needs to distinguish the object level from the meta level. Yes, the rules need to be different between the two. (Although, in a world where everyone understood that discussion is not to be suppressed, I wouldn't have any problem with people merely saying that discussion should be suppressed, so long as they took no action to do so!)
> And indeed we're also back to the question of whether being fired by your employer actually is a free speech question or not. There's no suggestion of government involvement in this speech, is there? Are you going to say "employees should be protected by the state from fear of being fired for any statements they make in the workplace, no matter how offensive their co-workers find them"?
...OK, I hate to say this, but this part reads like you didn't actually read my comment above. The point of free speech here, so far as I'm concerned, is to prevent the awful default human tribal positive feedback loop of posturing and wrongness. Whether the government is involved is irrelevant. What's relevant is, is this going to deter people from contradicting the consensus when they think something's wrong? Is this going to damage the negative feedback loops we need, and strengthen the positive feedback loops that have destroyed so many groups? I'd say yes, this is.
I'm not making any claims as to whether Damore should have been protected by the state! I didn't make any claims about the government at all. And honestly state protection might be helpful to Damore himself but it wouldn't do very much to alleviate the real problems in this situation anyway. It wouldn't really do very much to defuse the deterrent.
And that's what I'm concerned with here -- are the negative feedback loops that we need working? Or are we headed for unseen disaster?
