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Decius comments on In Defense of Tone Arguments - Less Wrong Discussion
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Often what is called a "Tone argument" is someone who is saying "I have trouble considering your argument because of factors which are irrelevant to your content. If you wish to communicate with me, stop including things which impair communication."
It comes out more along the lines of "Did you really need to compare the comparing opinion to Stalinism to make your point? That's just rude.", or "You really should provide a warning when you are likely to trigger PTSD.", which can be rejected as tone arguments even though they identify specific failures of communication that could be remedied by the previous speaker.
It's also tied up in status. Often, when someone is protesting their condition of lower status, any argument they put forward will initially be interpreted as rudeness and bad tone, without regard to the content. This is what the protest "that's just a tone argument" conventionally refers to.
Any examples?
The geekfeminism page has a ton of examples.
...I see two. Both of which look like "my kind" of tone arguments; i/e, arguments that tone is detracting from a common purpose. I see two posts about the tone argument. And I see one comment with the extremely amusing implication that tone moderation is only valid when discussing certain topics. The closest thing to an example is somebody praising an argument for moderation in discussing a sensitive topic.
It lacks any examples of bad tone arguments at all, much less protestations of lower status being treated as rudeness as a product of their content. It is in fact exactly what I'm arguing against, in terms of discarding tone argument.
As a political aside which I'll probably regret bringing up, it argues that relative privilege should be used as the primary basis in determining whether or not a call for civility is genuine; i/e, I should be taken seriously because I'm a bisexual, but shouldn't because I'm male, but should because I'm an atheist. This is the kind of crap which has led me to stop taking most self-describing feminists seriously, and is also why most people take "Privilege" arguments as offensive at face.
"The key to understanding whether a request for civility is sincere or not is to ask whether the person asking for civility has more power along whatever axes are contextually relevant than the person being called "incivil", less power, or equal power."
Seriously? It's advocating ad-hominem.
Suppose you and I are scheduled to debate some topic.
Suppose further that my supporters have defined the rules of the debate, and have done so in such a way that I have a number of concrete advantages.
In that hypothetical scenario, I would say that me requesting that you follow the rules, and you requesting that I follow the rules, are not symmetrical acts. And they are asymmetrical precisely because of the power imbalance between my supporters and your supporters, and how that power applies to the specification of the rules in the first place.
Would you agree or disagree? (Note, I am not asking whether the above is a reasonable characterization of real-world situations involving civility and power-differentials. Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn't. Right now I'm just trying to establish what your position is with respect to a simpler problem.)
Can you provide examples of what the rules are? If my method of 'debate' is to pound the podium and compare you to infamous people, then a rule against that provides you with concrete advantages while being symmetrical.
In fact, any rule that applies equally to both of us but has asymmetrical results implies that a difference in the debaters, and that they are trying to debate on different terms.
Sure, that's absolutely true.
So, just to be clear: if the rules in question apply equally to both of us, but have been selected so as to constrain you more than they constrain me because they prevent behaviors you are more likely to engage in than I am, you would call that situation symmetrical?
No. The situation is asymmetrical because I will use different behaviors than you. The fact that a rule benefits one of us while being symmetrical shows that the situation is asymmetrical. Eliminating areas from the realm of discussion (you can't discuss the economic impact of the proposal) is likely to be a symmetrical rule which illustrates a difference between the debaters.
Other rules could simply apply equally but be targeted: For example, the rule could be that both debaters have poor lighting, no access to makeup, and will have their clothing crumpled, or know the subject of the questions but not their phrasing or order. The first set would favor the person who was less likely to convince people based on his appearance, while the last would favor the one who could think faster and be perceived as better prepared.
Then there are rules which are clearly biased, and only appear to apply equally: 'Only brown-eyed people may talk'. I don't think those were ever in serious discussion, and I only mention them to dismiss them.
I will agree, under the terms that any advancement in your argument applies to the following reformulation:
The rules forbidding thievery aren't symmetrical in terms of thieves versus non-thieves, and the rules are asymmetric precisely because more people support non-thievery than support thievery.
(Which is to say, if you extend your argument in such a way that it doesn't apply to the reformulation, my agreement may no longer apply. This stabilizes our mutual understanding of our metaphors.)
I agree that the rules forbidding thievery are asymmetric, in that they are intended to impede thieves more than non-thieves.
It's not quite as clear to me that in practice they are differentially imposed by non-thieves, but I'm willing to posit that for the sake of argument. That is... if I steal a bunch of property, I immediately have an incentive to support rules that prevent the stealing of that property, rules that a moment earlier I had incentive to oppose, while still having incentive to oppose rules that prevent the stealing of other property, and while still being a thief. But I don't think that matters for our purposes; if we assume for simplicity that all rules are either pro-thievery, anti-thievery, or thievery-neutral and no rules are pro-some-thievery-and-anti-other-thievery, then what you say is true, and I'm willing to assume that for simplicity. (There's a reason I picked a simple toy example to start with; real-world cases tend towards distracting complexity. But, OK, if you prefer to use thievery as our working example, I'm willing.)
Positing all of that, it seems to follow that if I'm a thief, the rules therefore don't favor me, and if I'm a non-thief, the rules do favor me.
Agreed?
It seems to follow in turn that if I say "Hey, the rules against thievery are a good thing!" that means more if I'm a thief than if I'm a nonthief, since it's less likely that I'm just arguing for whatever benefits me.
Agreed?
This seems generalizable: if the rules benefit me more than you, then when I endorse the rules I'm doing so in support of my interests but when you endorse them you're doing so against your interests. And that's a legitimate ground upon which to evaluate our endorsements differently, even if they seem superficially identical. Which seems to me to apply just as well to rules of "civility" as rules of debate as rules of theft. Who is doing the endorsing, and how much they benefit from the rules, matters when I'm figuring out how much weight to afford the endorsement.
Agreed?
Can we call "Thievery" either a non-revocable lifestyle choice, or posit that thievery laws will be ex-post-facto in any case (so if a thief in a thief society steals, he would have no incentive to switch sides later), in order to maintain our metaphors? (Alternatively, we can drop the metaphors altogether. I believe I see where your line of argument is going, and I don't think it strictly requires them.)
Agreed, at any rate.
I agree that my line of reasoning does not require any particular metaphors regarding theft, and I'm happy to adopt any simplifying assumptions that allow us to talk usefully about it. (As I say, there's a reason I started with a much simpler toy example in the first place.)
So, OK. Returning to the line you dismissed as ad-hominem:
What the above quote seems to be saying is that when evaluating X's endorsement of a rule of discourse, one significant factor is the extent to which X has contextually relevant power. Agreed? (1)
We've agreed that when evaluating X's endorsement of a rule, one significant factor is the extent to which X benefits from that rule.
If it were true (which it might not be) that power differentials between X and Y as they apply to discourse correlate with differential benefit between X and Y from obeying the rules of discourse, then it would follow that power differentials between X and Y are relevant evidence when evaluating X and Y's endorsement of those rules. Agreed?
If we agree so far, I'm content. For my own part, I do believe that power differentials between X and Y as they apply to discourse often correlate with differential benefit between X and Y from obeying the rules of discourse. I don't think I could provide significant reason to believe it in the context of this comment-thread, though, so if we disagree about that I'm content to agree to disagree.
(1) This is admittedly modulo some rhetorical hyperbole; what the quote actually seems to say is that this is the only significant factor, which is absurd on the face of it. I very much doubt the author would stand by that literal reading... for example, I expect they would agree that the requester's previous history of lying through their teeth was also relevant, at least sometimes, to understanding whether their request was sincere.
I'd suggest you look up "intersectionality". This issue is actually widely discussed in the very same communities that talk about "privilege". In gist, the same person can exercise privilege in some contexts and have it exercised against them in others; and different kinds of privilege can be synergetic.
Are you explaining a thing, or naming it?
I'm familiar with the concept. I acknowledge it refers to a real phenomenon, but grant it no merits; the use of it in argument always minds me of a Douglas Adams quote:
"If we find something we can't understand we like to call it something you can't understand, or indeed pronounce. I mean if we just let you go around calling him a Rain God, then that suggests that you know something we don't, and I'm afraid we couldn't have that.
No, first we have to call it something which says it's ours, not yours, then we set about finding some way of proving it's not what you said it is, but something we say it is."
In particular, the second part. There was already recognition of the fact that "privilege" was a fragmented concept, and in response to constant objections on that ground, the fragmentation was named, and thereby claimed. (And yes, arguments on this matter long predate that particular name, which arose in the late 80's.)
The reason I mock that concept, however, is that it is -always- a categorical error to treat me as a collection of my labels. Trust me when I say that you have no idea what my life has been like as an atheist living in a particularly religious small southern town. (Seriously. I had a minister apologize to me because a student was proselytizing at me; the student later apologized as well, and we got on on good terms.) Nor do you have any idea what my life has been like as a bisexual male. All you can do is make assumptions. I don't particularly care if you assume I've had a tough life, a sinful life, a hedonistic life, or a boring one; none of these is any more right than any others.
The only labels which matter in relation to me are those I have chosen for myself. Anybody arguing otherwise is on the same side of the categorical error fence as racists and homophobes.