OrphanWilde comments on LW Women Submissions: On Misogyny - Less Wrong

27 [deleted] 10 April 2013 07:54PM

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Comment author: DaFranker 11 April 2013 07:14:57PM *  5 points [-]

OrphanWilde: [Factual, empirically-testable claim that:] For Set A: X > Y
OrphanWilde: [Query:] (For Set A) Does X > Y imply f(X) > f(Y)?
(got downvoted)

Response: I don't find X acceptable. (Edit: Or perhaps: "I don't find (X > Y) acceptable.")
(got upvoted)

Someone is being misread and uncharitably misinterpreted here.

Edit: Here's a translation of my pseudologic above:

[Factual Claim] For some culture: Social acceptability of female-to-male violence ("X") > Social acceptability of male-to-female violence ("Y")
[Query, perhaps rhetorical?] Does the social acceptability of gender-to-gender violence ("X" and "Y") correlate with the actual frequency of corresponding gender-to-gender violent actions ("f(X)" and "f(Y)")?
[Implication] If so, we should expect that X > Y ==> f(X) > f(Y) ; that is, we should expect that there are more female-to-male acts of violence than the reverse, by this logic.

[Response] I don't find the fact that (female-to-male violence is socially acceptable) acceptable. (Or perhaps that it's more acceptable than the reverse, but I doubt that would be the intended meaning. )

( Anyone else notice that the response, while probably true and definitely admirable, does not engage in any way with the point? Anyone else notice that the one that points to a flaw in the earlier logic gets downvoted, while the other that responds with something barely related but applause-lighted gets upvoted? Anyone else notice that I got downvoted at first for attempting to point this out (the last two sentences)? )

Comment author: OrphanWilde 11 April 2013 08:20:14PM 3 points [-]

I don't think my interpretation was uncharitable; I think TimS indicated that reducing social acceptance/increasing social stigma for male-on-female violence would result in less violence, and if this didn't work, his model would be challenged. (Or are you saying I was being uncharitably read? Having reread my comment; my point wasn't very explicit at all, and kind of begged for an uncharitable reading. So I don't hold the uncharitable reading against anybody.)

(Incidentally, don't worry too much about the upvotes/downvotes in this post, they're not necessarily indicative of the reasonableness of your position. There are definitely people who have very firmly taken sides, and are upvoting/downvoting anything they perceive to be on or supportive of the opposing side. Environmental hazard of touchy social issues, not much you can do.)