anonym comments on Why I'm Staying On Bloggingheads.tv - Less Wrong

25 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 07 September 2009 08:15PM

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

Comments (96)

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

Comment author: Peter_Twieg 08 September 2009 01:13:48AM 3 points [-]

I don't know enough about all the BhTV participants to argue that it is actually the case

I'm quite sure that there are political participants who would fare worse than Behe on any of the dimensions you'd offer. I guess one could lack the expertise to evaluate more than a subset of participants, however, in which case one could apply the principle consistently..

People find creationism more disturbing than ghost hunters because (among other reasons) creationism is making inroads in the educational system in USA, which could have very serious effects. I'm not sure why I even have to mention this

You have to mention this precisely because it's disingenuous to hide behind the purely non-political justifications of the boycott - you end up trying to draw up a non-political dividing line which just so happens to exclude the viewpoints you have political objections to. This is precisely why I expressed skepticism that there's a non-arbitrary principle for the unique objection to Behe, because if the political considerations are a necessary factor in the boycott, there isn't one, unless one wants to get into a broader defense of one's particular political sympathies... which most people will avoid because they realize that "people who I dislike sufficiently shouldn't be given platforms to speak on" is a principle that isn't going to sway one's opponents.

Comment author: anonym 08 September 2009 02:53:44AM 0 points [-]

You have to mention this precisely because it's disingenuous to hide behind the purely non-political justifications of the boycott - you end up trying to draw up a non-political dividing line which just so happens to exclude the viewpoints you have political objections to.

Except that it doesn't exclude viewpoints I have political objections to. It excludes people who are willfully ignorant and who refuse to engage with arguments and follow standard rules of intellectual discourse, regardless of what they happen to believe. It applies to atheists just as impartially to creationists, if they happen to engage in the same kinds of intellectual sleaziness. I never suggested that it would only damn creationists, just that it would be especially damning to creationists. And for what it's worth, I've had this personal test for distinguishing between people worthy of debate/discussion and people who are a waste of my time for much, much longer than I've had a distaste for creationism.