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MixedNuts comments on Can the Chain Still Hold You? - Less Wrong
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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.
I think you need to re-read the article. It describes, from the inside, someone who raped without believing that rape is OK. Most people in our society are aware that rape is Bad. Obviously rapists are more likely to believe that rape is OK, but here we have a rapist who acknowledges that what he did was wrong, and thus is able to give significantly less biased account. That's valuable information for most people.
Saying "I'm going to do this" is different from providing arguments why that's the correct decision. He admits he can't justify it;
Deciding someone is an inhuman monster is not a punishment, it's an error of rationality.
Lots of people believe "rape is bad, rape is a stranger leaping out of the bushes, rape isn't sex with someone too drunk to know who you are". That isn't news. This guy believed that, then learned better, then shrugged and kept on raping. I guess the valuable info is "Telling people what rape is might not convince them to stop".
He doesn't even admit it's bad. ("And maybe finding it livable-with condemns us all to hell. I don’t know.") The reaction he's going for is "Yeah, it's more complicated than I thought, we shouldn't be so harsh on you.". In particular he's telling that to himself, and hoping to get external validation for that.
It'd be a very different story if he was saying "This is horrible, but I can't bring myself to stop. Where can I get help?".
Aren't you reading too much into the denotation of insults? He's a specimen of H. sapiens with normal psychological development given his environment. He's also a person whose actions are harmful, and who should be pressured to stop through guilt and shunning. (And removed from society, but we don't know who to jail; if Brand has info he's not saying.)
It's possible that you know so much on the subject that this essay genuinely doesn't contain any information you can use.
He admits, repeatedly, that it's bad. He also admits that he's conflicted, and a mixture of akrasia, uncertainty and plain old hypocrisy means that he's not modifying his behavior as a result of this fact. But he doesn't claim that this is in any way the "right choice". Furthermore, he doesn't claim we shouldn't punish him or whatever - although clearly he's not exactly turning himself in - he claims (more or less) that we should stop modelling him, and others like him, as The Enemy and more as, well, people. People who have done things with some horrific consequences, but nonetheless people, not "predators" hiding beneath a human skin. To model our political enemies as Evil Monsters is a persistent fault in human rationality, for obvious evopsych reasons. It may not do all that much damage when it deals with rapists (although it's harder to stop something you don't understand.) But this is nonetheless a bias that should be fought, because in other, less forgiving circumstances it can produce horrific results (including some rapists more dangerous than this guy, ironically.)
It would be happier ending, sure, and obviously I wish that's how it had ended. But the virtue ethics of the author does not tarnish the information in the text, as long as it's not biased (it's a hell of a lot less biased than most such essays.)
Once again, there is a difference between deciding, for the good of the tribe, to treat this man like a demon that crawled into your friend's skin if you meet him on the street. (Although I suspect that's suboptimal, somehow.) But in terms of rationality - y'know, the thing this site is about? - it is factually wrong to be modelling him as one. And it's dangerous, judging from history, to start demonizing those who don't demonize.