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army1987 comments on Can the Chain Still Hold You? - Less Wrong
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I either disagree or ADBOC depending on what exactly is meant by "respect". People didn't stop printing copies of Mein Kampf, did they?
Mein Kampf is a pretty good example. In many countries buying and selling it is banned except under special circumstances, or requires specific notes, or is legal if you don't look like you endorse it. The Bavarian government controls the rights, and usually forbids reprints.
Most people would certainly be very suspicious of someone distributing Mein Kampf unless they did a whole annotated song and dance about how it's an absolutely horrible book but they have a duty to preserve historical evidence, disgusting as it is. "Here's a person whose conclusions I disagree with" implies that the arguments are worthy of consideration, not just evidence about the person's psychology. As opposed to "Here's what goes on in the head of a freaking rapist ew ew".
Wasn't the point of publishing the article (and the other articles they're getting flamed over) to aknowledge the fact that rapists are not necessarily Evil Mutants?
The most useful function of such an article would be if readers approached it as "evil rapist thoughts ew ew" but not "rapist mutant." (Obviously neither of these implies the other, even if they do suggest them.) Then they might be able to notice rapey thoughts when they appear and stop them with a disgust reaction. I suspect this is how most moral edification works, even.
I would argue that approaching them as "ew ew" interferes with our understanding of these thoughts, but actually I had interpreted the comment as meaning "ew a rapist" not "ew rapist thoughts".
Yes -- and that's indeed what most commenters to those articles other than "how dare you point out rapists are human" said they would be doing.
Aren't you confusing "We should empathize with rapists, because someone with their whole life history would probably also rape" and "We should sympathize with rapists, because someone in the situation they chose to rape would probably also rape"?
No. We should empathize with people - of whom rapists are a subset - because this gives us a more accurate model of them than loud declarations that the Hated Enemy is pure evil.
"We should sympathize with rapists, because someone in the situation they chose to rape would probably also rape" is an interesting notion, but I do not espouse it and the essay in question does not actually claim that it is true, although the author does admit to considering the notion.
Okay, so we are trying to do the former but not the latter.
It's pretty important to understand the psychology of racism. It's always a big social problem, with cyclical increases, one of which is currently affecting most of Europe, and whose extreme supporters are very dangerous. Would you be okay with the Forward running an article by a neo-Nazi who admits he committed at least one hate crime but thinks that occasionally beating up someone is justified by how fun Nazi Party rallies are?
If so, doesn't the increase of anti-Tutsi sentiment in Rwandan media in the years leading up to the genocide kinda bother you?
By "the latter", I assume you mean sympathize with rapists.
Well, I doubt that any actual racist thinks like that. But I would be OK with, say, a movie portraying a Nazi as a sympathetic character while showing them gassing Jews, as long as they didn't show this as a good thing to do. Helping people understand how people - not monsters, people with hopes and dreams and children - can become so confused as to kill someone without realizing they have done something wrong is a valuable service and I would absolutely support anyone doing it. Of course, they should avoid inadvertently furnishing actual racists with arguments to defend their racism when they show racist rhetoric, but that's hardly a unique problem - any sufficiently charismatic villain could risk persuading viewers (or strengthening their beliefs) and it is the responsibility of any author to avoid that while still portraying a convincing villain; this is usually accomplished by having the the hero or some other sympathetic character lecture the villain, pointing out why the villain is, in fact, evil.
... I'm sorry? That doesn't seem relevant to our discussion; if it is, could you please explain why?
That's not a fair comparison! The movie handles the framing. Show the Nazi eating cream with his children on Christmas, cut to him herding children into the gas chamber, be praised for the powerful point you make through contrast by an easily impressed critic who hasn't been to the movies since 1909.
Here, the rapist really exists, and is writing the article himself. He's very much portraying his decisions as good, even though they imply rape.
Definitely. But helping people understand how people thus confused excuse themselves after the fact is a much less valuable service.
Well, yeah, exactly. Noah Brand's note didn't say why the article was wrong, or even that the author was a rapist at all. It said he disagreed with the author. Near telling Light "I disagree with your assessment that Kira should rule the world" wouldn't carry much punch.
People advocate bad things, are allowed to keep advocating bad speech because of explicit anti-censorship reasons, other people are convinced and do the bad things.
I was thinking of a movie that shows how the Nazi was mislead into gassing people, not simply one that makes the bald statement "this man is an ordinary human, yet also kills people".
Re-read the article. He doesn't claim his actions were the correct decision.
That was just an aside, TBH. But IIRC the author of the essay does criticize his own reasoning where it lead him to rape, although obviously not enough to stop. And he doesn't offer any defense of rape at all, he just assumes it to be bad (which seems reasonable.)
... which is relevant how? We're not discussing someone advocating bad things and it being defended for anti-censorship reasons.
The article doesn't show how he was misled into thinking that someone flirting with him while they're both drunk is consenting to any sex act, or into thinking that he gets to weigh the damage rape does to his victims against his fun. It just says that he thinks that, then adds "But I don't wanna feel like a bad person, waaaah!".
It's right there in the title. Also at the end
Yeah, but that's like our Nazi character saying "Sure, it's sad when we kill Jews. But if we don't they'll destroy the Aryan race, so it's worth it.".
He's advocating laxer social punishment for people who rape at parties. You're defending it because you think people should know about his reasoning.
Mein Kampf was aimed at people in Wiemar Germany, so I'm not sure it retains much persuasive power for modern, say, French.