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FeministX comments on Open Thread: November 2009 - Less Wrong
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Hi, I have never posted on this forum, but I believe that some Less Wrong readers read my blog, FeministX.blogspot.com.
Since this at least started out as an open thread, I have a request of all who read this comment, and an idea for a future post topic.
On my blog, I have a topic about why some men hate feminism. The answers are varied, but they include a string of comments back and forth between anti feminists and me. The anti feminists accuse me of fallacies, and one says that he "clearly" refuted my argument. My interpretation is that my arguments were more logically cogent that the anti feminists and that they did not correctly identify logical fallacies in my comments, nor did they comprehensivly refute anything I said. They merely decided that they won the debate.
Now, the issue is that when there is an argument between feminists and anti feminists on the internet, the feminists will believe that other feminists arguments include more truth and reason while anti-feminists will believe that anti-feminist arguments include more truth and reason. The internet is not a place where people are good at discussing feminism with measured equanimity.
But I wondered, who could be the objective arbiter of a discussion between feminists and anti feminists? Almost anyone has a bias when it comes to this issue. Everyone has a gender, and gender affects a person's thinking style, desires and determination of fairness in assessing behaviors between genders. Where in the world could I find intelligent entities that would not be swayed by gender bias and would instead attempt to seek out objective truth in a "battle of sexes" style discussion.
Well, I am not sure if unbiased people can exist regarding the issue but the closest thing I could think of was Less Wrong. Thus, I invite readers of Less Wrong to contribute to the admittedly inane thread on my blog, Why so much hate?
http://feministx.blogspot.com/2009/11/why-so-much-hate.html
I read through a couple of months worth of FeministX when I first discovered it...
(Because of a particular skill exhibited: namely the ability to not force your self-image into a narrow box based on the labels you apply to yourself, a topic on which I should write further at some point. See the final paragraph of this post on how much she hates sports for a case in point. Most people calling themselves "feminist" would experience cognitive dissonance between that and their self-image. Just as most people who thought of themselves as important or as "rationalists" might have more trouble than I do publicly quoting anime fanfiction. There certainly are times when it's appropriate to experience cognitive dissonance between your self-image and something you want, but most people seem to cast that net far too widely. There is no contradiction, and there should be no cognitive dissonance, between loving and hating the same person, or between being a submissive feminist who wants alpha males, or between being a rationalist engaged on a quest of desperate importance who reads anime fanfiction, etcetera. But most people try to conform so narrowly and so unimaginatively to their own self-image that there is little point in reading anything else they say, because it is all predictable once you know what "role" they're trying to play in their own minds. And among people who are unusually good at not conforming to their own images, their blogs often make for good reading because it is often surprising reading.)
...and I still don't know what is meant by the "feminist" in the title, so I have to agree with all the commenters who asked for a definition of "feminism". Definitions are oft overrated but in this case I literally do not know what is being talked about.
If it were me, I'd probably be saying something to myself along the lines of: "So long as such a large flaw exists in my own work, which I can correct myself without waiting for permission from anyone else, there is no point in asking whether others have done worse." This is by way of encouraging myself to do better, for which purpose it is unwise to focus on other people's flaws as consolation.
EDIT: Finished reading through the comments. Some commenters did better than you, some commenters did worse, e.g. Aretae's separate post gave you good advice. Definitely you've got more to learn about which arguments and evidence license which conclusions at what strength. None of the arguments including yours were noticeably up to LW standards and so there's not much point in trying to figure out who "won". The winners were the commenters who said "I don't know what is meant by 'feminism' here, please define". Some of the others could have carried part of their argument if they had been a bit more careful to say, "Here is something that 'feminism' could be taken to mean, or that many/most men take the label 'feminism' to mean, now I am going to talk about how many/most men react to this particular thing regardless of whether it is what you call 'feminism', and if it isn't, please go ahead and define what you mean by it." That would have been Step One.
I hate to say it, but your analysis seems rather thin. I think a productive discussion of social attitudes toward feminism would have to start with a more comprehensive survey of the facts of the matter on the ground - discussion of poll results, interviews, and the like. Even if the conclusion is correct, it is not supported in your post, and there are no clues in your post as to where to find evidence either way.
Agreed. The post is almost without content (or badly needed variation in sentence structure, but that's another point altogether) - there's no offered reason to believe any of the claims about what anti-feminists say or what justifications they have. No definition of terms - what kind of feminism do you mean, for instance? Maybe these problems are obviated with a little more background knowledge of your blog, but if that's what you're relying on to help people understand you, then it was a poor choice to send us to this post and not another.
I'm tickled that Less Wrong came to mind as a place to go for unbiased input, though.
Indeed. And even more so that she seems to be getting it.
I now have a wonderful and terrible vision of the future in which less wrong posters are hired guns, brought in to resolve disagreements in every weird and obscure corner of the internets.
We should really be getting paid.
How would you stop this from degenerating into a lawyer system? Rationality is only a tool. The hired guns will use their master rationalist skills to argue for the side that hired them.
Technically, you cannot rationally argue for anything.
I suppose you could use master rationalist skillz to answer the question "What will persuade person X?" but this relies on person X being persuadable by the best arguer rather than the best facts, which is not itself a characteristic of master rationalists.
The more the evidence itself leans, the more likely it is that a reasonably rational arbiter and a reasonably skillful evidence-collecter-and-presenter working on the side of truth, cannot be defeated by a much more skillful and highly-paid arguer on the side of falsity.
A master rationalist can still be persuaded by a good arguer because most arguments aren't about facts. Once everyone agrees about facts, you can still argue about goals and policy - what people should do, what the law should make them do, how a sandwich ought to taste to be called a sandwich, what's a good looking dress to wear tonight.
If everyone agreed about facts and goals, there wouldn't be much of an argument left. Most human arguments have no objective right party because they disagree about goals, about what should be or what is right.
One obvious reply would be to hire rationalists only to adjudicate that which has been phrased as a question of simple fact.
To the extent that you do think that people who've learned to be good epistemic critics have an advantage in listening to values arguments as well, then go ahead and hire rationalists to adjudicate that as well. (Who does the hiring, though?) Is the idea that rationalists have an advantage here, enough that people would still hire them, but the advantage is much weaker and hence they can be swayed by highly paid arguers?
If the two parties can agree on the phrasing of the question, then I think it would be better to hire experts in the domain of the disputed facts, with only minimal training in rationality required. (Really, such training should be required to work in any fact-based discipline anyway.)
If there's a tradition of such adjudication - and if there's a good supply of rationalists - then people will hire them as long as they can agree in advance on submitting to arbitrage. Now, I didn't suggest this; my argument is that if this system somehow came to exist, it would soon collapse (or at least stop serving its original purpose) due to lawyer-y behavior.
Parties to the dispute can split the cost. Also, if the hired guns aren't seen as impartial there would be no reason to hire them so there would be a market incentive (if there were a market, which of course there isn't). Or we have a professional guild system with an oath and an oversight board. Hah.
Actually, here's a rule that would make a HELL of a lot of sense:
Either party to a lawsuit can contribute to a common monetary pool which is then split between both sides to hire lawyers. It is illegal for either side to pay a lawyer a bonus beyond this, or for the lawyer to accept additional help on the lawsuit.
And you don't see any issues with this? That would seem to be far worse than the English rule/losers-pay.
I pick a random rich target, find 50 street bums, and have them file suits; the bums can't contribute more than a few flea infested dollars, so my target pays for each of the 50 suits brought against him. If he contributes only a little, then both sides' lawyers will be the crappiest & cheapest ones around, and the suit will be a diceroll; so my hobos will win some cases, reaping millions, and giving most of it to me per our agreement. If he contributes a lot, then we'll both be able to afford high-powered lawyers, and the suit will be... a diceroll again. But let's say better lawyers win the case for my target in all 50 cases; now he's impoverished by the thousands of billable hours (although I do get nothing).
I go to my next rich target and say, sure would be a shame if those 50 hobos you ran over the other day were to all sue you...
How is this different from how things currently are, beyond a factor of two in cost for the target?
Surely that only works if the probability of winning a case depends only on the skill of the lawyers, and not on the actual facts of the cases. I imagine a lawyer with no training at all could unravel your plan and make it clear that your hobos had nothing to back up their case.
Also, being English myself, it hadn't dawned on me that the losers-pay rule doesn't apply everywhere. Having no such system at all seems really stupid.
It also occurs to me that hiring expensive lawyers under losers-pay is like trying to fix a futarchy: you don't lose anything if you succeeded, but you stand to lose a lot if you fail.
If the defending party is only required to match the litigating party's contribution, the suits will never proceed because the litigating bums can't afford to pay for a single hour of a lawyer's time. And while I don't know if this is true, it makes sense that funding the bums yourself would be illegal.
I would contribute nothing to the pool, hire a lawyer privately on the side to advise me, and pass his orders down to the public courtroom lawyer. If I have much more money than the other party, and if the money can strongly enough determine the lawyer's quality and the trial's outcome, then even advice and briefs prepared outside the courtroom by my private lawyer would be worth it.
Then your lawyer gets arrested.
It sometimes is possible to have laws or guild rules if the prohibited behavior is clear enough that people can't easily fool themselves into thinking they're not violating them. Accepting advice and briefs prepared outside the courtroom is illegal, in this world.
That is frelling brilliant.
Have a karma point for using Farscape profanity.
I would totally join a rationalist arbitration guild. Even if this cut into the many, many bribes I get to use my skills on only one party's behalf ;)
Perhaps records of previous dispute resolutions can be made public with the consent of the disputants, so people can look for arbitrators who have apparently little bias or bias they can live with?
What are you talking about, we have our first customer already!
Please see my reply to wedfrid above.
More or less, because both sides have to agree to the process. Then the market favours those arbiters that manage to maintain a reputation for being unbiased and fair.
This still doesn't select for rationality precisely. But it degenerates into a different system to that of a lawyer system.
Yes, but if a side can hire a rationalist to argue their case before the judge, then that rationalist will degenerate into a lawyer. (And how could you forbid assistance in arguments, precisely? Offline assistance at least will always be present.)
And since the lawyer-like rationalists can be paid as much as the richest party can afford, while the arbiter's fees are probably capped (so that anyone can ask for arbitration), the market will select the best performing lawyers and reward them with the greatest fees, and the best rationalists who seek money (which is such a cliched rational thing to do :-) will prefer being lawyers and not judges.
Edit: added: the market will also select the judges who are least swayed by lawyers. It still needs to be shown that the market will have good information as to whether a judge had decided because the real rational evidence leaned one way, or because a smart lawyer had spun it appropriately. It's not clear to me what this will collapse to, or whether there's one inevitable outcome at all.
Would a lawyer by any other name still speak bullshit? Yes. But why are we talking about lawyers and judges?
You have explained well the reason that capping is a terrible idea. Now it is time to update the 'probably capped' part.
It's not clear to me either. I also add that I rather doubt that the market, even with full information, would select for the most rational decisionmakers. That's just not what it wants.
Because I think that in the proposed scenario, where people hire master rationalists to arbitrate disputes, these arbitrators and other rationalists who would be hired by each side independently for advice would start behaving like judges and lawyers do, respectively. (Although case law probably wouldn't become important.)
I didn't mean they would be capped by guild rules or something like that, but rather, that the effective market prices would stay low. I've no proof of this, economics is not my strong suit, but here are the reasons I think that's likely to happen:
I see, so rationalist arbitration of a dispute raises the stakes in status and neutral-party persuasion and that would lead to a market for lawyers? In what sense would this be damaging/ harmful?
Edit: Obviously it would be really bad if lawyers were causing the arbitrators to make bad decisions. But presumably the arbitrators are trained to avoid biasing information, fallacies etc. If you want to persuade and arbitrator you have to argue well-- referencing verifiable facts, not inflaming emotions or appealing to fallacies. If all online disagreements did that than the internet would be a much better place! If arbitration leads to better standards all the better. Now, the system might be unfair to those who couldn't afford a lawyer and so can't present as much data to further their cause. But 1) presumably the arbitrator does some independent fact checking and 2) there are already huge class barriers in arguments. Arguments an average high school drop outs and an average Phd are already totally one sided. The presence of arbitration wouldn't change this.
If that's so then there's no point to arbitration. He with the best lawyer wins.
Put it this way: take, in the general (average) case, any decision made by an arbitrator. For simplicity, suppose it's "A is right, B is wrong." Now suppose party B had employed the services of the very best rationalist ever to live as a lawyer. What is the probability the arbitrator would have given the opposite judgment instead? How high a probability are you willing to accept before giving up on the system? And how high a probability do you estimate, in practice?
Did Robin make a post on how free market judicial systems could work or am I just pattern matching on what I would expect him to say, if he got around to it?
I don't know if Robin has said anything on this but it is a well-tread issue in anarcho-capitalist/individualist literature. Also, there already are pseudo-free market judicial systems. Like this. And this!
Also, the irony of a feminist coming to an overwhelmingly male community for advice. :)
Oh, sorry. To clarify, I know my original post was never substantiated with any evidence based analysis for the true motivations behind anti-feminism. What I was referring to was the latter part of the comment thread between a commenter, Sabril and a few other commenters and me.
I think their attacks on my capacity for objective reasoning are a bit hypocritical.
You should rectify that as soon as possible.
Hypocrisy doesn't make one wrong. An assertion that murder is wrong is not falsified by it being said by a murderer.
Especially if you catch a hint of a sinister, sadistic pleasure in his eyes.
" An assertion that murder is wrong is not falsified by it being said by a murderer."
No, but saying that there is no point in arguing with a woman because women are not capable to discerning objective truth is an instance of making an assertion which is not based on objective truth (unless you can provide evidence that being female necessarily prevents capacity for objective reasoning in all cases and subsequently prevents the ability to arrive at objective truth).
It is like saying, "you rely on personal attacks, therefore your perspective on the environment is not correct"
What I'm saying is that you should make sure you're right before calling other people wrong lest you be a hypocrite just like them.
That's not an argument against anyone even if it is true. The relative liklihood of one person vs another arriving at a correct outcome is irrelevant when you see the actual argument and conclusion before you. At that point, you must evaluate only on the merits of the argument and the conclusion.
Secondly, that's not a reasonable interpretation because it is too vague to determine whether it is true or not. Less capable or reliable on average? At the extreme ends of capability? Less capable or reliable in what percentage of endeavors? What kind of endeavors?
I would not define this behavior as hypocrisy. Being wrong does not make an accusation of a logical fallacy erroneous, nor does it make it hypocritical. And being wrong does not mean the opponent is correct, so calling them wrong is truthful and perhaps a demostration of superior rationality.
What I call hypocrisy is relying on the very logical error you accuse another person of when you accuse them. The merit of the ultimate conclusion is not what I am discussing. I am only referring to the argumentation.
... Actually, forget the whole hypocrisy thing. Forget about the commenters. Correct your mistakes, learn the facts, put more effort into writing clearly. If you do all that, your next post will be much more persuasive and will consequently attract comments of higher quality.
Heck, it might even attract us! :)
Just out of curiosity, were you familiar with this post before you wrote the above? (And who wrote "This is a bit strong: a more reasonable interpritation..." ? It doesn't currently appear in the parent to your post.)
Cyan, the poster Larks wrote that response. I had not read that post before I made the comment.
Eliezer says that authority is not 100% irrelevent in an argument. I think this is true because 100% of reliance on authority can't ordinarily be removed. Unless the issue is pure math or directly observable phenomena. But removal of reliance on a particular individual's authority/competence/biological state etc. is one the first steps in achieving objective rationality.
This is a bit strong: a more reasonable interpritation is that women are simply much less capable or liable to discern the truth than men.
tu quoque, it's like ad hominem light.
*finds name "sabril" and reads from there*
This first comment, and the later ones, betray a repulsive attitude, and I wouldn't blame you for being furious and therefore slightly off your game thereafter. That said, Sabril makes several moderately cogent points - the numbered items in particular are things I've noticed with disapproval before. I'm about to go to bed, so I'm not going to delve too deeply into the history of your blog to find an exhaustive list or lots of context, but it looks like he also has a legitimate complaint or three about your data regarding the Conservative Party in the UK, your failure to cite some data, the apparently undefended implication about war, the anecdote-based unfavorable comparison of arranged marriage versus non-arranged, and your tendency to cite... uh... nothing that I've run across so far.
Also, this seems to beg your own question:
And now I've gotten to this part of the page and I've decided I don't want to read anything else you have to say:
"And now I've gotten to this part of the page and I've decided I don't want to read anything else you have to say:
I am a female supremacist, not a true feminist "
Why does this bother you so much? Why would it invalidate everything I have to say or render everything I say uninteresting?
It is indeed impossible to find someone who will remain detatched from the issue of feminism.
May I ask the moral difference between a female supremacist and a male supremacist?
Your pre-existing bias against males calls into doubt everything you say afterward. If you have already decided that men are oppressive pigs and women are heroic repressed figures who would be able to run the world better (I assume that is what female supremacist means, correct me if I'm wrong), you will search for arguments in favor your view and dismiss those contrary to your opinion. Have you ever seen an academic article discussing gender and dismissed it as "typical of the male dominated academic community?"
These articles might explain further:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/js/the_bottom_line/
http://lesswrong.com/lw/ju/rationalization/
http://lesswrong.com/lw/iw/positive_bias_look_into_the_dark/
"May I ask the moral difference between a female supremacist and a male supremacist?"
What I call female supremacism does not mean that females should rule. I feel that the concept of needing a ruler is one based on male status hierarchies where an alpha rules over a group or has the highest status and most priviliges in a group.
To me, female supremacism means that female social hierarchies should determine overall status differences between all people. In my mind, female social hierarchies involve less power/resource differentials between the most and least advantaged persons. A "leader' is a person who organically grows into a position of more responsibility, but this person isn't seen as better, richer, more powerful or particularly enviable. They are not seen as an authority figure to be venerated and obeyed. I associated those characteristics with male hierarchies.
I think you overestimate the differences between male and female interpretations of status. Can you provide an example of one your female social hierarchies?
Also, what is a leader other than an authority figure to be obeyed?
"
Also, what is a leader other than an authority figure to be obeyed? "
In our world, that is what a leader must be. In the general human concept of an ideal world, I do not know if this is the case. I actually think that humans have some basic agreement about what an ideal world would be like. The ideal world is based on priorities from our instincts as mortal animals, but it is not subjected to the confines of natural experience. I think the concept of heaven illustrates the general human fantasy of the ideal world.
I get the impression that almost everyone's concept of heaven includes that there are no rich and poor- everyone has plenty. There is no battle of the sexes, and perhaps even no gendered personalities. There is no unhappiness, pain, sickness or death. I personally think there are no humans that hold authority over other humans in heaven (to clarify, I know that a theological heaven cannot actually exist). What this means to me is that to have a more ideal world, the power differential between leaders and the led should be minimized. I understand that humans with their propensities for various follies aren't as they are necessarily suited for the ideal world they'd like to inhabit, but striving for an ideal world would to me mean that human nature would in some ways be corrected so that the ideal world became more in tune with human desires for that state.
" Can you provide an example of one your female social hierarchies?"
Say a nursing floor. There is such a thing as a nurse with the most authority, but the status differential between head nurse and other floor nurses is sometimes imperceptible to all but the nurses that work there. The pay difference is not that great either. Sometimes the nurse who makes the most decisions is the one that chooses to invest the most time and has the longest experience, not necessarily one who is chosen to be obeyed. This is entirely unlike a traditionaly male structure like an army where the difference between general and a corporal.
And I should add that it was foolish of me to present that post, which was possibly my most biased, as an introduction to my blog. Actually, my blog gets more insightful than this. Please don't dismiss my entire blog based on the content of that post about the motivations for a visceral reaction against feminists as indicative of what my blog is usually about. That particular post was designed to spur emotional reactions from a specific set of readers I have.
Of what use is rationality, then?
Eh, just say "Oops" and get it over with. Excuses slow down life. Never expend effort on defending something you could just change.
Hi! Feel free to introduce yourself here.
There are a couple general reasons for disagreement.
I think that is more or less complete. As you can see, some disagreements can be resolved, others can't. Talk to the people you can make progress with but don't go in assuming that you're going to convince everyone of your view.
Edit: Formating.
*winces* So, I agree that no one is competent and everyone has an agenda, but it's not as if everyone sides with "their" sex.
No, historically we suck at this, too. Got any decision theory questions?
"winces* So, I agree that no one is competent and everyone has an agenda, but it's not as if everyone sides with "their" sex."
I didn't mean to imply that they did always side with their physical sex.
Why do you think of the discussion of gender roles and gender equality to necessary break down into a camp for men and a camp for women? By creating two groups you have engaged mental circuitry that will predispose you to dismissing their arguments when they are correct and supporting your own sides' even when they are wrong.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/lt/the_robbers_cave_experiment/
http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/
"Why do you think of the discussion of gender roles and gender equality to necessary break down into a camp for men and a camp for women?"
I don't personally think this. I don't think there are two genders. There are technically more than two physical sexes even if we categorize the intersexed as separate. I feel that either out of cultural conditioning or instincts, the bulk of people push a discussion about gender into a discussion about steryotypical behaviors by men and by women. This then devolves into a "battle of the sexes" issue where the "male" perspective and "female" perspective are constructed so that they must clash.
However, on my thread, there are a number of people that seem to have no qualms with the idea of barring female voting and such things. I think that sort of opinion goes beyond the point where one could say that an issue was framed to set up a camp for men and a camp for women. Once we are talking about denying functioning adults sufferage, then we are talking about an attitude which should be properly labelled as anti-female.
On the internet, emotional charge attracts intellectual lint, and there are plenty of awful people to go around. If you came here looking for a rational basis for your moral outrage, you will probably leave empty-handed.
But I don't think you're actually concerned that the person arguing against suffrage is making any claims with objective content, so this isn't so much the domain of rational debate as it is politics, wherein you explain the virtue of your values and the vice of your opponents'. Such debates are beyond salvage.
I saw that Eliezer posts that politics are a poor field to hone rational discussion skills. It is unfortunate that anyone should see a domain such as politics as a place where discussions are inherantly beyond salvage. It's a strange limitation to place on the utility of reason to say that it should be relegated to domains which have less immediate affect on human life. Poltiics are immensely important. Should it not be priority to structure rational discussion so that there are effective ways for correcting for the propensity to rely on bias, partisanship and other impulses which get in the way of determining truth or the best available course?
If rational discussion only works effectively in certain domains, perhaps it is not well developed enough to succeed in ideologically charged domains where it is badly needed. Is there definitely nothing to be gained from attempting to reason objectively through a subject where your own biases are most intense?
One of the points of Eliezer's article, IIRC, is that politics when discussed by ordinary people indeed tends not to affect anything except the discussion itself. Political instincts evolved from small communities where publicly siding with one contending leader, or with one policy option, and then going and telling the whole 100-strong tribe about it really made a difference. But today's rulers of nations of hundreds of millions of people can't be influenced by what any one ordinary individual says or does. So our political instinct devolves into empty posturing and us-vs-them mentality.
Politics are important, sure, but only in the sense that what our rulers do is important to us. The relationship is one-way most of the time. If you're arguing about things that depend on what ordinary people do - such as "shall we respect women equally in our daily lives?" - then it's not politics. But if you're arguing about "should women have legal suffrage?" - and you're not actually discussing a useful means of bringing that about, like a political party (of men) - then the discussion will tend to engage political instincts and get out of hand.
There's a lot to be gained from rationally working out your own thoughts and feelings on the issue. But if you're arguing with other people, and they aren't being rational, then it won't help you to have a so-called rational debate with them. If you're looking for rationality to help you in such arguments - the help would probably take the form of rationally understanding your opponents' thinking, and then constructing a convincing argument which is totally "irrational", like publicly shaming them, or blackmailing, or anything else that works.
Remember - rationality means Winning. It's not the same as having "rational arguments" - you can only have those with other rationalists.
It's not so strange if you believe that reason isn't a sufficient basis for determining values. It allows for arguments of the form, "if you value X, then you should value Y, because of causal relation Z", but not simply "you should value Y".
Debates fueled by ideology are the antithesis of rational discussion, so I consider its "ineffectiveness" in such circumstances a feature, not a bug. These are beyond salvage because the participants aren't seeking to increase their understanding, they're simply fielding "arguments as soldiers". Tossing carefully chosen evidence and logical arguments around is simply part of the persuasion game. Being too openly rational or honest can be counter-productive to such goals.
That depends on what you gain from a solid understanding of the subject versus what you lose in sanity if you fail to correct for your biases as you continue to accumulate "evidence" and beliefs, along with the respective chances of each outcome. As far as I can tell, political involvement tends to make people believe crazy things, and "accurate" political opinions (those well-aligned with your actual values) are not that useful or effective, except for signaling your status to a group of like-minded peers. Politics isn't about policy.
I agree with your assessment, but applying our skills to the political domain is very much an open problem--and a difficult one at that. See these wiki pages: [Mind-killer] and [Color politics] for a concise description of the issue. The gist of it is that politics involves real-world violence, or the governmental monopoly thereof, or something which could involve violence in the ancestral environment and thus misleads our well-honed instincts. Thus, solving political conflicts requires specialized skills, which are not what LessWrong is about.
Nevertheless, there are a number of so-called open politics websites which are more focused on what you're describing here. I'd like to see more collaboration between that community and the LessWrong/debiasing/rationality camp.
Yes, those who would deny women suffrage are anti-female. But in order to feel they deserve suffrage, one need not be pro-female. One only need be in favor of human rights.
The discussion here helped me reanalyze my own attitude towards this kind of issue.
I don't think I ever had a serious intention to back up my arguments or win a debate when I posted on the issue of why men hate feminism. I am not sure what to do when faced the extreme anti feminism that I commonly find on the internet. I have a number of readers on my blog who will make totalizing comments about all women or all feminists. Ex, one commenter said that women have no ability to sustain interest in topics that don't pertain to relationships between individuals. Other commenters say that feminsm will lead to the downfall of civilization for reasons including that it lets women pursue their fleeting sexual impulses, which are destructive.
i suppose I do not really know how to handle this attitude. Ordinarily, I ignore them since I operate under the assumption that people that expouse such viewpoints are not prone to being swayed by any argument. They are attached to their bias, in a sense. I am not sure if it is possible for a feminist to have a reasonable discussion with a person that is anti feminist and that hates nearly all aspects of feminism in the western world.
Personally I'd say you shouldn't "be a feminist" at all. Have goals (whether relating to women's rights or anything else) and try to find the best ways to reach them. Don't put a political label on yourself that will constrain your thinking and/or be socially and emotionally costly to change. Though given that you seem to have invested a lot of your identity in feminism it's probably already hard to change.
Shouldn't? According to which utility function? There are plenty of advantages to taking a label.
Yes, there are obvious advantages to overtly identifying with some established group, but if you identify too strongly and become a capital-F Feminist (or a capital D-Democrat, or even a capital-R Rationalist) there's a real danger that conforming to the label will get in the way of actually achieving your original goals.
It's analogous to the idea that you shouldn't use dark side methods in the service of rationality - ie that you shouldn't place too much trust in your own ability to be virtuously hypocritical.
Advantages to outwardly signalling group loyalty, perhaps, but to internal self-identification?
As mentioned above, this particular person does seem unusually good at not being so constrained.
Ban them.
It's almost certainly not possible for you to have a discussion about feminism with such a person.
I haven't read your blog, but perhaps you should reconsider the kind of community of readers you're trying to build there. If you tend to attract antifeminist posters, and you don't also attract profeminist ones who help you argue your position in the comments, that sounds like a totally unproductive community and you might want to take explicit steps to remodel it, e.g. by changing your posts, controlling the allowed posters, or starting from scratch if you have to.
If these commenters are foolish enough to disparage and denigrate any political role to women generally, then do them a favor and flame them to a crisp. If that's not enough to drive them off your site, then feel free to ban them.
These are thinly-veiled attempts at intimidation which are reprehensible in the extreme, and will not be taken lightly by anyone who cares seriously about any kind of politics other than mere alignment to power and privilege--which is most everyone in this day and age. Especially so when coming from people of a Western male background--who are thus embedded in a complex power structure rife with systemic biases, which discriminates towards all kinds of minority groups.
Simply stated, you don't have to be nice to these people. Quite the opposite, in fact. Sometimes that's all they'll understand.
Let me be the first to say: welcome to Less Wrong! Please explore the site and stay with us - we need more girls.
I'd quite strongly suggest deleting everything after the hyphen, there.
No.
Verbal symbols are slippery things sometimes.
Explain.
No, at least not right now.
When, if I may be so bold? (Bear in mind that it is not necessary to explain your remark in full generality - just in sufficient detail to justify its presence as a response to CannibalSmith in this instance.)
Fair enough!
Even the bit before the hyphen sounds a little on the needy side.
And while we're at it, it should really be an em dash, not a hyphen.
En dash - it's surrounded by spaces. And I don't think the reddit engine tells you how to code it. A hyphen is the accepted substitute (for the en dash - two hyphens for an em dash).
An en dash is defined by its width, not the spacing around it. In fact, spacing around an em dash is permitted in some style guides. On the internet, though, the hyphen has generally taken over from the em dash (an en dash should not be used in that context).
Now, two hyphens—that's a recipe for disaster if I've ever heard one.
Hey, I like double-hyphens as em-dash substitutes!
...but yeah, you're right otherwise.
Why?
Because advertising your lack of girls is not viewed by the average woman as a hopeful sign. (Heck, I'd think twice about any online site that advertised itself with "we need more boys".)
Also, the above point should be sufficiently obvious that a potential female reader would look at that and justifiably think "This person is thinking about what they want and not thinking about how I might react" which isn't much of a hopeful sign either.
I'm probably non-average, but I'm ambivalent about hearing "we need more girls" from any community that's generally interesting. The first question that I think of is "why don't they have any?", but as long as it's not obvious to me why there are not presently enough girls had by a website and it's easy to leave if I find a compelling reason later, my obliging nature would be likely to take over. Also, saying "we need more girls" does advertise the lack of girls - but it also advertises the recognition that maybe that's not a splendid thing. Not saying it at all might signify some kind of attempt at gender-blindness, but it could also signify complacency about the ungirly ratio extant.
I hear "we need more girls" from my female classmates about our philosophy department.
We also hear this kind of thing online, in the atheism community.
To sum up the convo, then, it seems like:
the "too many dicks on the dance floor" attitude isn't particularly attractive, but
the honest admission that there aren't many female regulars, and that we'd like the input of women on the issues which we care about, is perfectly valid.
The rest of it is our differing levels of charity in interpreting CannibalSmith's remarks.
As with so many other remarks, this carries a different freight of meaning when spoken by a woman to a woman.
I think I don't hear it from my male classmates because they aren't alert to this need. I would be pleased to hear one of them acknowledge it. This may have something to do with the fact that I'd trust most of them to be motivated by something other than a desire for eye candy or dating opportunities, though, if they did express this concern.
"I think I don't hear it from my male classmates because they aren't alert to this need. I would be pleased to hear one of them acknowledge it."
Why do you feel there is a need for more female philosophy students in your department?
I think a more balanced ratio would help the professors learn to be sensitive to the different typical needs of female students (e.g. decrease reliance on the "football coach" approach). Indirectly, more female students means more female Ph.Ds means more female professors means more female philosophy role models means more female students, until ideally contemporary philosophy isn't so terribly skewed. More female students would also increase the chance that there would be more female philosophers outside the typical "soft options" (history and ethics and feminist philosophy), which would improve the reception I and other female philosophers would get when proposing ideas on non-soft topics like metaphysics because we'd no longer look atypical for the sort of person who has good ideas on metaphysics.
What did you think when you first saw my "we need more girls" remark?
I found it flattering.
Inapt.
That's five divs, which means it is a reply to, let's see...
What exactly is an anti-feminist? I've never actually met someone who identified as one. Is this more of a label that others apply to them and if so, what do you mean when you apply it? Is it a manner of 'Feminism, Boo!' vs 'Yay! Feminism!' or is it the objection to one (or more) ideals that are of particular import?
Does 'anti-feminist' apply to beliefs about the objective state of the universe, such as the impact of certain biological differences on psychology or social dynamics? Or is it more suitably applied to normative claims about how things should be, including those about the relative status of groups or individuals?
I think it's only applied by the feminists. Take a look at National Review, a bastion of anti-feminism if ever there was any, and notice how all the usages are by the feminists or fellow travelers or are in clear scare-quotes or other such language: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&num=100&q=anti-feminism+anti-feminist+site%3Anationalreview.com