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handoflixue comments on Don't Get Offended - Less Wrong
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Taboo, "racist, homophobic, sexist". In my experience these words, especially when spoken by the offended, frequently mean "you are making an argument/stating a potential truth that I don't like".
For example: is it racist/sexist to point out the differences in average IQ between the people of different races/genders? Does it become racist/sexist if one attempts to speculate on the cause of these differences?
"Gay people shouldn't marry because it will undermine the very fabric of civilization" "Women shouldn't vote, because they don't understand male concepts like War and Empire" "Everyone knows Irish people get drunk on St. Patrick's day!"
This is the sort of stuff that frequently arises in the world.
I would suggest you probably live in a very filtered environment. It's cool, most people do. I've been trying to re-filter my own environment. But, trust me, these things are all still alive and kicking out there. Following the news, activist blogs, or just having friends who are oppressed in their daily life and talk about it, will quickly draw this sort of racist, homophobic, sexist comments to your attention.
If you really think this qualifies as "stating an unpleasant truth" then... wow.
Is your claim that these statements are obviously false or that they're so offensive that they shouldn't be stated even if they're true?
I ADBOC with the last of them (except the “everyone knows” part -- my mother didn't know what the significance of St. Paddy's was until I told her a few years ago).
The last one should be read as "ALL" Irish people, my bad :)
BTW, this is something I've recently noticed -- the vast majority of statements I'm offended by is of the form “All [people from some group that comprises a sizeable fraction of the human population, and doesn't include the speaker] are [something non-tautological and unflattering].” (I am more offended if the group happens to include me, but not very much.) But remove the universal quantifier and, no matter how large the group is and how unflattering the thing is, the statement will lose almost all of its offensiveness in my eyes.
Internally I am generally the same, but I've come to realize that a rather sizable portion of the population has trouble distinguishing "all X are Y" and "some X are Y", both in speaking and in listening. So if someone says "man, women can be so stupid", I know that might well reflect the internal thought of "all women are idiots". And equally, someone saying "all women are idiots" might just be upset because his girlfriend broke up with him for some trivial reason.
And the belief in question acts more light "some/most X are Y" then "all X are Y", i.e., the belief mostly get's applied to X's the person doesn't know, when it makes sense to use the prior for X's.
Yes, people who say “all X are Y” usually do know at least one person who happens to be an X and whom they don't actually alieve is Y -- but I think that in certain cases what's going on is that they don't actually alieve that person is an X, i.e. they're internally committing a no true Scotsman. Now, I can't remember anyone ever explicitly saying “All X are Y [they notice that I'm looking at them in an offended way] -- well, you're not, but you're not a ‘real’ X so you don't count” (and if they did, I'd be tremendously offended), but I have heard things that sound very much like a self-censored version of that.
I generally avoid criticizing reasoning that reliably reaches correct conclusions.
What exactly do you count as a self-censored version of that? Pointing out that you're an exceptional X, that you have characteristic Z, which correlates negatively with Y, or some such thing? If so, the answer is: well, of course, what do you expect?
If people make a generic generalization along the lines of "(all) X are Y", then naturally, you have to be an exceptional X in order to be Y. One could say that it's enough that you are Y, because then you are an exceptional X in virtue of that. But that's not how generic generalizations work. People make such generalization usually not purely on the basis of statistical data, but because in their model, something about X causes Y (or they have a common cause). So if you're X, but not Y, chances are you have additional characteristic Z, which is rare among Xs, and which counteracts X's influence on Y.
It's just like saying "dogs have four legs - well, not Fido, obviously, but he's had an accident and one of his legs had to be amputated". This kind of thing might sound a bit like a self-censored version of "but Fido isn't a true dog", but what it really says is "but Fido isn't an ordinary dog", which is entirely correct!
Maybe you're aware of all this anyway, but I just thought it'd be worth pointing out.
Obviously false. I just stated them, so they're not de-facto offensive; they're offensive when you assert such an obvious falsehood as TRUE.
Can I here the evidence that caused you to assign such low probability to them.
I don't think frequently means ‘more than 50% of the time’, so it is possible for both of you to be right.