thomblake comments on Sayeth the Girl - Less Wrong

47 Post author: Alicorn 19 July 2009 10:24PM

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Comment author: thomblake 20 July 2009 12:31:35AM -1 points [-]

I mostly agree with your comment, but:

There's a touch of hypocrisy in that.

I'm not seeing it. There doesn't seem to be any contradiction between "expressing absolute moral judgements" and "adding qualifiers and disclaimers". Perhaps you can point it out more clearly?

Comment author: topynate 20 July 2009 01:42:14AM 4 points [-]

It was specifically the idea that generalisations of women are bad and shouldn't be used without overwhelming evidence, because they're very harmful, that got me. There are exceptions. Robin expresses well what I think about this.

The hypocrisy lies in the lack of what I consider adequate qualification of this statement, and maybe the "fawning admiration" one too, in an article that requests qualification of "opposing" statements, i.e. ones that could be construed as anti-feminist. Phrasing things in an absolute, i.e. unqualified, fashion is just an extension of that argumentative style. An apologia for the PUA community or for some sort of "men's rights" position would have to be written in a much softer manner than this article, in order to satisfy this article's requests.

Comment author: yeynfv 20 July 2009 08:49:46PM 2 points [-]

In my experience, demands for qualifications and disclaimers are almost always a way to hold different sides to different standards (not that this is hypocrisy, per se).