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TimS comments on Open Thread, July 1-15, 2013 - Less Wrong
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I noticed a strategy that many people seem to use; for lack of a better name, I will call it "updating the applause lights". This is how it works:
You have something that you like and it is part of your identity. Let's say that you are a Green. You are proud that Greens are everything good, noble, and true; unlike those stupid evil Blues.
Gradually you discover that the sky is blue. First you deny it, but at some moment you can't resist the overwhelming evidence. But at that moment of history, there are many Green beliefs, and the belief that the sky is green is only one of them, although historically the central one. So you downplay it and say: "All Green beliefs are true, but some of them are meant metaphorically, not literally, such as the belief that the sky is green. This means that we are right, and the Blues are wrong; just as we always said."
Someone asks: "But didn't Greens say the sky is green? Because that seems false to me." And you say: "No, that's a strawman! You obviously don't understand Greens, you are full of prejudice. You should be ashamed of yourself." The someone gives an example of a Green that literally believed the sky is green. You say: "Okay, but this person is not a real Green. It's a very extreme person." Or if you can't deny it, you say: "Yes, even withing the Green movement, some people may be confused and misunderstand our beliefs, also our beliefs have evolved during time, but trust me that being Green is not about believing that the sky is literally green." And in some sense, you are right. (And the Blues are wrong. As it has always been.)
To be specific, I have several examples in my mind; religion is just one of them; probably any political or philosophical opinion that had to be updated significantly and needs to deny its original version.
Yes, like moving-the-goalposts, this is an annoying and dishonest rhetorical move.
Suppose some Green says:
Yes, intellectual precursors to the current Green movement stated that the sky was literally Green. And they were less wrong, on the whole, then people who believed that the sky was blue. But the modern intellectual Green rejects that wave of Green-ish thought, and in part identifies the mistake as that wave of Greens being blue-ish in a way. In short, the Green movement of a previous generation made a mistake that the current wave of Greens rejects. Current Greens think we are less wrong than the previous wave of Greens.
Problematic, or reasonable non-mindkiller statement (attacking one's potential allies edition)?
How much of that intuition is driven by the belief that Bluism is correct. If we change the labels to Purple (some Blue) and Orange (no Blue), does the intuition change?
If, after realizing an old mistake, you find a way to say "but I was at least sort of right, under my new set of beliefs," then you are selecting your beliefs badly. Don't identify as a person who iwas right, or as one who is right; identify as a person who will be right. Discovering a mistake has to be a victory, not a setback. Until you get to this point, there is no point in trying to engage in normal rational debate; instead, engage them on their own grounds until they reach that basic level of rationality.
For people having an otherwise rational debate, they need to at this point drop the Green and Blue labels (any rationalist should be happy to do so, since they're just a shorthand for the full belief system) and start specifying their actual beliefs. The fact that one identifies as a Green or a Blue is a red flag of glaring irrationality, confirmed if they refuse to drop the label to talk about individual beliefs, in which case do the above. Sticking with the labels is a way to make your beliefs feel stronger, via something like a halo effect where every good thing about Green or Greens gets attributed to every one of your beliefs.
There's a further complicating factor: often when this happens, both modern Blues and Greens won't exactly correspond to historical Blues and Greens even though both are using the same terms. Worse, when the entire region of acceptable social policy has changed, sometimes an extreme Green or Blue today might be what was seen as someone of the other type decades ago.
Yes, the first wave of a movement may have many divergent descendents, which end up on different sides of a current political dispute. And the direct-est descendent might be on the opposite side of the political divide from what we would predict the first-wave proponents would adopt. But for that to happen, there needs to be significant passage of time.
By contrast, if the third wave of a movement cannot point to an immediately prior second wave that actually believed the position criticized (and which the third wave has already rejected), then Villiam_Bur's moving-the-goalposts criticism has serious bite, to the point that an outsider probably should not accept the third wave as genuinely interested in rational discussion or true beliefs.
And here we were having a very nice discussion without pointing out any potentially controversial/mindkilling examples. Using the phrasing of second and third wave doesn't make it less subtle or less potentially mindkilling.
In the specific case which you are not so obliquely referencing, there's a pretty strong argument that much of thirdwave feminism has strands from first and second wave, while also agreeing on the most basic premises.
It is also worth noting in this context, that movements (wherever they are politically) aren't in general after rational discussion or true beliefs but at accomplishing specific goal sets. You will in any diverse movement find some strains that are more or less interested in rational discussion, but criticizing a movement for its failure to embody rationality is not by itself a very useful criticism.
Um, I had not linked the parent of your comment to any specific movement until you pointed out the possible existence of such a link ...
I'm pretty sure that's what TimS was talking about given his use of the phrases "second wave" and "third wave". It is especially clear because if one was going to be talking about a generic example and using the term wave, one would in the same context have likely discussed the first wave v. the second wave. The off-by-one only makes sense in that specific historical context.
Oppositely, the second and third waves immediately screamed 'feminism' to me, but I couldn't assemble the rest of the analogy. The third wave has plenty of legitimate differences and similarities with both the first and second waves. I'm still not sure what TimS was getting at.
It is the big obvious current example where the ideological battle is between "second wave" and "third wave" and the first wave is barely mentioned. I encounter it in relation to the UK social justice Twittersphere, which is tangential to the more Kankri Vantas stretches of Tumblr. (Or, more accurately, the Porrim Maryam stretches.)
Edit: Can anyone think of another field described as having numbered waves where the battle was between second and third?