buybuydandavis comments on [LINK] Two Modes of Discourse: Taking everything personally v. debate as sport - Less Wrong

6 Post author: Vaniver 10 December 2012 07:46AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (61)

Comments (61)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: buybuydandavis 10 December 2012 02:50:20PM *  11 points [-]

One point which stuck out to me:

Within the first form of discourse, if you take offence, you can close down the discourse in your favour; in the second form of discourse, if all you can do is to take offence, you have conceded the argument to your opponent, as offence is not meaningful currency within such discourse.

So when discourse_1 argues with discourse_2, discourse_1 takes offense and closes down the discussion, leaving both sides interpreting themselves as the victor in the discussion.

One obvious problem I see for discourse_1 discussions - when you can score points by taking offense, there is a natural death spiral of taking more and more and more offense.

Managed to find an old Bloom County cartoon: Offensitivity http://www.explorerforum.com/photopost/data/503/medium/4156bloom.jpg

Comment author: bogus 10 December 2012 02:58:39PM *  7 points [-]

when you can score points by taking offense, there is a natural death spiral of taking more and more and more offense.

Yes. Either that, or it empowers martinets to come up with petty etiquette norms and declare that someone's approach is "rude" or "trollish", regardless of their actual merits. This is especially ironic when the debate itself involves important issues in ethics, empathy or similar: the person with the most ethical or empathetic position in the debate can nonetheless end up being silenced.

Comment author: acephalus 10 December 2012 05:02:27PM 4 points [-]

the person with the most ethical or empathetic position in the debate can nonetheless end up being silenced.

Can you provide an example?

Comment author: handoflixue 11 December 2012 12:22:12AM 4 points [-]

"Autism Speaks" is the best known Autism charity in the US.

It routinely silences actual autistic voices, and shows basically no empathy for it. Any autistic person who can empathize with someone mislead by Autism Speaks is showing more empathy than it does.

Autism Speaks also tends to advocate a eugenics approach to "curing" autism, which many autistic people find unethical.

Hopefully useful as an example despite being a bit controversial / political on the ethical axis (I can't imagine any clear cut example that wouldn't be, aside from historical examples)

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit