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Lumifer comments on Open thread, July 28 - August 3, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Don't think that'd work. Traditional practices and attitudes are a sacred category in this sort of discourse, but that doesn't mean they're unassailable -- it just means that any sufficiently inconvenient ones get dismissed as outliers or distortions or fabrications rather than being attacked directly. It helps, of course, that in this case they'd actually be fabrications.
Focusing on feelings is the right way to go, though. This probably needs more refinement, but I think you should do something along the lines of saying that exercise makes you feel happier and more capable (which happens to be true, at least for me), and that bringing tangible consequences into the picture helps people escape middle-class patriarchal white Western consumer culture's relentless focus on immediate short-term gratification (true from a certain point of view, although not a framing I'd normally use). After that you can talk about how traditional cultures are less sedentary, but don't make membership claims and do not mention outcomes. You're not torturing yourself to meet racist, sexist expectations of health and fitness; you're meeting spiritual, mental, and incidentally physical needs that the establishment's conditioned you to neglect. The shock is a reminder of what they've stolen from you.
You'll probably still get accusations of internalized kyriarchy that way, but it ought to at least be controversial, and it won't get you accused of mansplaining.
I don't think reinforcing stupidity is a good idea.
“Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.” ― Mark Twain
This is that level:
That line was somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I wouldn't go that far over the top in a real discussion, although I might throw in a bit of anti-*ist rhetoric as an expected shibboleth.
That being said, these people aren't stupid. They don't generally have the same priorities or epistemology that we do, and they're very political, but that's true of a lot of people outside the gates of our incestuous little nerd-ghetto. Winning, in the real world, implies dealing with these people, and that's likely to go a lot better if we understand them.
Does that mean we should go out and pick fights with mainstream social justice advocates? No, of course not. But putting ourselves in their shoes every now and then can't hurt.
This makes some sense. I think part of the reason my contribution was taken so badly was, as I said, that I was arguing in a style that was clearly different to that of the rest of those present, and as such I was (in Villam Bur's phrasing) pattern-matched as a bad guy. (In other words, I didn't use the shibboleths.)
Significantly, no-one seemed to take issue with the actual thrust of my point.
Of course, but only somewhat :-)
"These people" are not homogenous and there are a lot of idiots among them. However what most of them are is mindkilled. They won't update so why bother?
Because we occasionally might want to convince them of things, and we can't do that without understanding what they want to see in an argument. Or, more generally, because it behooves us to get better at modeling people that don't share our epistemology or our (at least, my) contempt for politics.
So, um, if you really let Jesus into your heart and accept Him as your personal savior you will see that He wants you to donate 50% of your salary to GiveWell's top charities..?
True, but you don't do that by mimicking their rhetoric.
The point isn't to blindly mimic their rhetoric, it's to talk their language: not just the soundbites, but the motivations under them. To use your example, talking about letting Jesus into your heart isn't going to convince anyone to donate a large chunk of their salary to GiveWell's top charities. There's a Christian argument for charity already, though, and talking effective altruism in those terms might well convince someone that accepts it to donate to real charity rather than some godawful sad puppies fund; or to support or create Christian charities that use EA methodology, which given comparative advantage might be even better. But you're not going to get there without understanding what makes Christian charity tick, and it's not the simple utilitarian arguments that we're used to in an EA context.
There is a price: to talk in their language is to accept their framework. If you are making an argument in terms of fighting the oppression of white male patriarchy, you implicitly agree that the white male patriarchy is in the business of oppression and needs to be fought. If you're using the Christian argument for charity to talk effective altruism, you are implicitly accepting the authority of Jesus.
Yes, you are. That's a price you need to pay if you want to get something out of mindkilled people, which incidentally tends to be the first step in introducing outside ideas and thereby making them less mindkilled. Reject it in favor of some kind of radical honesty policy, and unless you're very lucky and very charismatic you'll find yourself with no allies and few friends. But hey, you'll have the moral high ground! I hear that and $1.50 will get you a cup of coffee.
(My argument in the ancestor wasn't really about fighting the white male patriarchy, though; the rhetoric about that is just gingerbread, like appending "peace be upon him" to the name of the Prophet. It's about the importance of subjective experience and a more general contrarianism -- which are also SJ themes, just less obvious ones.)
Maybe it's the price you need to pay, but I don't see how being able to get something out of mindkilled people is the first step in making them less mindkilled. You got what you wanted and paid for it by reinforcing their beliefs -- why would they become more likely to change them?
I am not going for radical honesty. What I'm suspicious of is using arguments which you yourself believe are bullshit and at the same time pretending to be a bona fide member of a tribe to which you don't belong.
And, by the way, there seems to be a difference between Jesus and SJ here. When talking to a Christian I can be "radically honest" and say something along the lines "I myself am not a Christian but you are and don't you recall how Jesus said that ...". But that doesn't work with SJWs -- if I start by saying "I myself don't believe in while male oppression but you do and therefore you should conclude that...", I will be immediately crucified for the first part and no one will pay any attention to the second.