= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Viliam_Bur comments on Conspiracy Theories as Agency Fictions - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (115)
Friends can help only if they are present at the debate. If they are absent, and people are primed to see you as an X-hater, then it seems like you are talking about "imaginary friends". That obviously does not help.
For example in a debate like this, only your friends active on LW would be relevant. And only if they had time to participate in this discussion now.
In real life, the best defense against being labeled as an X-hater is to actively label other people as X-haters, and to act offended every time someone speaks about X.
It's all about signalling.
On a second thought, having an X friend and making them a part of your identity (e.g. having a photo with them as your avatar, mentioning them often), that would also help. That would give you the first move in the priming combat. (Though it would not work for "X = female", because that could be reframed as you exploiting the given person.)
Mentioning X friends works best if I'm not perceived as doing so with the intention of establishing my credibility as a non-(X-hater). But with that proviso, it can work pretty well.
Also, for iterated discussions, it can sometimes help to establish a practice of preferentially using groups I'm actually in as examples of negative traits, and only using groups I'm not in as examples when I genuinely am claiming that my groups don't have those traits. (It's important when using this approach to avoid being seen as "self-hating" though.)
Of course, if I'm in the position of genuinely believing that group X is either generally inferior to my group, or inferior in certain specific ways that I genuinely consider more important to discuss than other group traits, that's less available as an option.