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Lumifer comments on Open thread, July 29-August 4, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: David_Gerard 29 July 2013 10:26PM

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Comment author: pragmatist 04 August 2013 07:02:17PM * 2 points [-]

I think a lot of the disagreement between the left and the right boils down to disagreement about the appropriate form of the social welfare function. I think this applies not just to economic issues but also issues of gender and race.

While there quite likely is some degree of resolvable factual disagreement about the extent of certain inequities, and maybe-somewhat-resolvable disagreement about how those inequities might be lessened, there is also disagreement about how much those inequities should matter to us and affect our behavior, both political and personal. This is not the sort of disagreement I expect to see someone resolve in a blog post.

Now for a more blatantly left-wing argument: It is hard to get people to realize the extent and import of their privilege, to acknowledge that certain social inequities that are of minor significance when viewed from a privileged position are in fact deeply oppressive from the perspective of the marginalized. This is not the sort of thing that can be communicated by presenting scientific studies, because such studies may establish the existence of an inequity, but they do not fully convey the impact of that inequity on the lives and psyches of the population affected. The best way to acquire that sort of information is to listen to anecdotes from a number of marginalized people, a difficult thing to do on a website with demographics like LW has.

Comment author: Lumifer 06 August 2013 11:55:59PM 8 points [-]

It is hard to get people to realize the extent and import of their privilege, to acknowledge that certain social inequities that are of minor significance when viewed from a privileged position are in fact deeply oppressive from the perspective of the marginalized. ... . The best way to acquire that sort of information is to listen to anecdotes from a number of marginalized people

Heh. Well, there was a period in my life when I was very very poor. No money to take public transportation (so I walked), no money to buy a can of soda (so I drank water), etc. I lived in a mostly-black area of the city with gunshots heard at night every week or so.

Unfortunately for your argument I'm not a leftist or a progressive, I do not get hysterical about social inequities and you probably would say that I don't realize the extent and import of my current privilege (I'm not very poor any more).

Belief update time? :-D

Comment author: pragmatist comment score below threshold [+] (8 children)

Comment author: Lumifer 07 August 2013 05:14:31AM 7 points [-]

Your argument was

It is hard to get people to realize the extent and import of their privilege, to acknowledge that certain social inequities that are of minor significance when viewed from a privileged position are in fact deeply oppressive from the perspective of the marginalized. ... The best way to acquire that sort of information is to listen to anecdotes from a number of marginalized people

I have been a marginalized person. I did not acquire a realization of "the extent and import" of my privilege, neither do I acknowledge that certain social inequities (you didn' t specify which ones, so I can't be sure) are "deeply oppressive".

Comment author: pragmatist 07 August 2013 05:35:14AM * -1 points [-]

Ah, I see. My intent was not to suggest that all (or even most) marginalized people experience inequity as oppressive, although I can see how I could be read that way. I should also note that I believe there's something to the idea of false consciousness. Oppressed people often do not acknowledge the fact of their own oppression, although I'm not saying that's the case for past-you. Note that I didn't say the best way to acquire information about the impact of privilege is to be a marginalized person.

Also, the impact of marginalization along some axis (economic status, say) can be considerably mitigated by privilege along other axes (race/education/gender/etc.). I've been quite poor too -- while I was a grad student -- but my experience of poverty was, I'm pretty sure, qualitatively different from that of an inner-city African American single mother (even one with the same income I had) or a Dalit in rural India.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 09 August 2013 04:30:34AM 3 points [-]

I should also note that I believe there's something to the idea of false consciousness.

"False consciousness" seems suspiciously like an excuse to protect one's social theories from conflicting evidence.

Comment author: pragmatist 09 August 2013 06:41:33AM * -1 points [-]

Perhaps the concept does have that role in Marxism, but I'm not a Marxist. I don't buy "false consciousness" because it is an integral part of some rickety theoretical superstructure that I need to preserve. I think "false consciousness" is a useful concept because there is evidence that various groups that are provably disadvantaged according to certain indicators either underestimate their disadvantage or deny it entirely when asked. There is also evidence that in many of these cases the cause of this is a social system that either hides relevant information from the disadvantaged group or molds their outlook on the world so that they are motivated to deny (or ignore) the evidence.

As such, it's no more an excuse to protect against conflicting evidence than, say, the claim that people in general dramatically overestimate their relative performance at everyday tasks.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 09 August 2013 07:37:48AM * 7 points [-]

I think "false consciousness" is a useful concept because there is evidence that various groups that are provably disadvantaged according to certain indicators either underestimate their disadvantage or deny it entirely when asked.

As opposed to being evidence that you're looking at the wrong indicators. At best this amounts to "the people don't care enough about the things I think they should, therefore there's something wrong with the people".

Edit: Also up-thread you said regarding the basis of your argument:

This is not the sort of thing that can be communicated by presenting scientific studies, because such studies may establish the existence of an inequity, but they do not fully convey the impact of that inequity on the lives and psyches of the population affected. The best way to acquire that sort of information is to listen to anecdotes from a number of marginalized people, a difficult thing to do on a website with demographics like LW has.

And yet you're perfectly willing to dismiss those same anecdotes as "false consciousness" if they don't support your ideas about how much impact there should be on the "lives and psyches of the population affected".

Comment author: pragmatist 09 August 2013 11:19:10AM * 0 points [-]

At best this amounts to "the people don't care enough about the things I think they should, therefore there's something wrong with the people".

It could amount to this, I guess. But I don't see why you'd think this is all it could amount to at best. Do you really consider it outside the realm of possibility that people could be genuinely better off with certain social changes and yet fail to acknowledge this fact due to conditioning?

And yet you're perfectly willing to dismiss those same anecdotes as "false consciousness" if they don't support your ideas about how much impact there should be on the "lives and psyches of the population affected".

Just because I think an anecdote reflects false consciousness doesn't mean I'm dismissing it's evidentiary value. A marginalized person doesn't have to be saying "Look how I oppressed I am" in order for us to listen to them and realize they're oppressed. Judgments of oppression are judgments about the objective conditions of people's lives, not subjective facts about how they feel.

A personal example: I've volunteered to conduct surveys in rural India in the past, and this involved talking to women in Indian villages. Virtually none of these women explicitly referred to themselves as oppressed, and I doubt most of them consider themselves oppressed, because they have a host of bullshit religious and traditional beliefs that prevent that realization. But hearing about their lives, it was evident to someone who does not share those bullshit beliefs that they were in fact oppressed.

So when I said that one needs to listen to marginalized people in order to fully appreciate the impact of a lack of privilege, I wasn't just referring to marginalized people who're yelling about oppression. The only thing I'm "dismissing" (although this is probably not the right word) when I talk about false consciousness is the idea that people's subjective judgments about their oppression are a reliable guide to the objective facts.

And just to be somewhat even-handed, let me acknowledge that I think there are certain social justice communities where the unreliability runs in the opposite direction, where people are conditioned to view everything through a framework of oppression, and they overestimate the extent to which various practices are oppressive.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 10 August 2013 04:08:08AM 7 points [-]

Being "oppressed" is starting to seem like an XML tag with no connection to reality. At the very least can you give a definition of being "oppressed" that doesn't cash out as "whatever pragmatist says it is".

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 11 August 2013 03:11:38AM 0 points [-]

Libertarian Feminism: Can This Marriage Be Saved-- an essay which I value because it drew parallels between the way libertarians think most people kid themselves about the value of government and the way (most?) feminists think most people fail to notice patriarchy.

Lumifer comments on Open thread, July 29-August 4, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion

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