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smk comments on In Defense of Tone Arguments - Less Wrong Discussion
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Potential scenarios:
1: Alfred and Bob really do support the same agenda, but Alfred thinks Bob's tone makes him unpersuasive.
Alfred pretends to support Bob's agenda, but is just a concern troll.
Alfred is open about disagreeing with Bob's agenda, and directs his criticisms at Bob's tone rather than engaging with Bob's actual argument.
I interpret the opening sentence of that page as referring to scenarios 2 and 3, in that order:
Here's some more stuff from that page which seems to describe scenario 3:
And:
On that page I don't see much reference to scenario 1, which is what you seem to be talking about.
In my experience scenarios 2 and 3 are where tone arguments most often come up and are objected to.
I'm a male who has commented on feminist thought which I agreed with, but found so hostile as to be antipersuasive - the attitude demonstrated seriously made me reconsider whether or not I even agreed with them - and was promptly called a concern troll, among other invectives.
(I will add that that particular post rapidly turned into a shitstorm which resulted in several readers, including myself, ceasing to read the blog in question. I've seen commenters on unrelated blogs link to it as an example of why the author shouldn't be taken seriously.)
"Derailment" and "concern trolling" are rationalizations; they're an author seeking a mechanism by which to justify ignoring criticism.
Concern trolling is definitely real, though.
No doubt; trolls will utilize any behavior effective in eliciting a reaction. The grown-up thing to do is to realize the trolls are a fact of the internet and deal with them on an individual basis; categorically eliminating every troll behavior in turn doesn't lead to an end in trolling, only an end to honest debate. I've seen requests for clarification being treated as troll behavior, for an example of where that leads.
Fair enough. I think the way I was thinking about it was this: the tone argument as such is the claim that some argument would be more effective if it were presented with a different tone. I think you're right that the tone argument is typically given either disingenuously or as a distraction from the real issues. But those are motivations or tactics or something for making a tone argument. I suppose there is a preliminary question of whether a tone argument can ever be made sincerely. Assuming that a tone argument can be made sincerely, I think we get the original question. Does it matter whether that question is about typical tone arguments? Should we use a different term instead of "tone argument"?