bogus comments on "3 Reasons It’s Irrational to Demand ‘Rationalism’ in Social Justice Activism" - Less Wrong

9 Post author: PhilGoetz 29 March 2016 03:16PM

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Comment author: Alia1d 29 March 2016 09:07:57PM 16 points [-]

I think there is another reason SJWs (and others) may dislike “rationality” that is getting buried here:

  1. The author is not a good reasoner, and while arguing over these experiences, often says stupid things, and gets told ze is irrational

There is a difference between an argument not being phrased in a reasonable way and the argument itself being stupid. When my husband and I were first married I would win must of the arguments NOT because I was necessarily right (as later came to realize) but because I was a better rhetorician. I could lay out my case in an orderly fashion. I could work commonly agreed statements into my arguments. I could anticipate counter arguments and set-up to counter them. I could model possible external circumstances and present those that supported my view. This lead to a situation where my husband constantly felt steam rolled. He might not be able to articulate logical fallacies but he could feel the effects of his preferences constantly being overruled by mine. I needed to learn to back off and respect his views even if they weren’t phrased as elegantly as mine. Even though I could use a rationality is winning approach to maneuver the situation so that “we spend all the entertainment money on sci-fi books and none on cable” looked like the “rational” decision, I eventually came to realize that, to serve my overarching goal of a flourishing marriage, our hedonic preferences needed to be weighted equally and split the money between our preferences “I really, really want X,” is never stupid or irrational in and of itself. It’s just a preference. To the extent that some SJWs seem to want to say “I really, really want X,” and leave their argument at that, then rationality is irrelevant to them.

Comment author: bogus 01 April 2016 05:38:19AM *  2 points [-]

This is the difference between simple epistemic rationality (having good arguments) and the virtue of actuzlly being a good negotiator (and 'good' encompasses both a narrowly instrumental and an ethical viewpoint, as you've learned. Norms of all sorts and at all scales tend to align incentives - who would've thought!). But to the extent that good negotiation skills lead to good consequences for oneself, being a good negotiator is rational in an instrumental sense. Politics is really just the real-world art of negotiation writ large, so this sort of instrumental rationality (what some people would perhaps call 'the art of the deal') is nearly as important there.