SoullessAutomaton comments on Sayeth the Girl - Less Wrong

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

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (486)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: SoullessAutomaton 20 July 2009 02:12:10AM *  3 points [-]

Usually it's considered eminently rude (but not strictly false) to say that the members of your own ingroup are too dumb/biased to discuss a given topic fairly.

Isn't social acceptance of saying rude but not false things exactly what you're arguing in favor of?

In general I do carry a strong presumption against restricting speech. But I have a lot of prior experience that, for "gender difference observations not backed by data", the value of the speech approaches nil in the average case, and is only marginally better on LW, so counterarguments carry a lot more relative weight.

Comment author: Peter_Twieg 20 July 2009 02:26:14AM *  -1 points [-]

Isn't social acceptance of saying rude but not false things exactly what you're arguing in favor of?

I don't think so, unless you're implying that the armchair theorizing in this community is always rude. I'd prefer to presume that not to be the case unless there's evidence otherwise... and I conceded in my top-level reply to this thread that there sometimes is (in my view.)

Comment author: SoullessAutomaton 20 July 2009 02:30:48AM 2 points [-]

Well, all else equal, speculations about other people based on their intrinsic demographics seems fairly rude to me; your mileage may vary.

I am, as I said, willing to accept rudeness when stating facts, though tact is always appreciated.