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Eugine_Nier comments on Don't Get Offended - LessWrong
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But if I pick a more controversial example from history, shouldn't I predict that you will blow off that evidence by saying something sarcastic like: Because anthropology is not at all full of people doing shoddy work and using it to justify pre-concieved beliefs. <\sarcasm>.
In short, a reasoned discussion needs a more concrete rule for what counts as evidence than "I know it when I see it."
Something that is more likely to occur if the theory is true than if it is false. (Given the current state of cultural anthropology, this doesn't include the writing of modern cultural anthropologists.) As for what an appropriate filter to use in this context is, analogous to the filter of scientific evidence used in the hard sciences, I'm not sure. This is itself a hard problem, which probably deserves to be discussed somewhere more prominent than below the fold on a week old thread.
I read that second link, and I am confused. He criticizes cultural anthropolgy for using concepts he believes are politically infected. On of his examples is "heteronormativity." As I understand that word, it means something like:
I understand if you don't think that type of social pressure is bad, but do you deny it exists? What should we call it?
Khan's complaint is that "heteronormativity" is used as a boo light, just like the other words on his list: "Privilege. Oppression. Colonialism. Patriarchy."
Yes, he thinks heteronormativity is fine. I don't.
I asked you if it occurs, not if you disapprove of the phenomena of heteronormtivity.
Because if it occurs, then your argument that anthropology is unconnected to reality needs a better justification. Biased != unconnected with reality. Even biased evidence should have the potential to change a Bayesian reasoner's probability estimate in the direction that the producer of the evidence suggests.
I mean boo light in the technical LW sense. I don't know whether Khan approves of heteronormtivity, I'm more sure he doesn't approve of oppression, which is in the same list.
I'd add that 'heteronormativity' and the other words on the list are also sometimes used as spammable boo lights, sometimes leading to rather word-salad-like philosophies of condemnation, and that 'privilege' sometimes (but usually does not) forms part of an anti-epistemology.
I'd also add that specifically 'colonialism' and 'patriarchy' (also 'capitalism' when used as a quasi-boo-light) are occasionally treated as almost Platonic properties attached to society at large that automatically color every interaction, even among people who should be able to resist their influence or do not have a concrete reason to care.
That said, I think that all of these things have a very real meaningful existence and all of them are, usually, actually bad.
I think it's pretty dangerous to describe terms from other fields of study as merely being applause or boo lights. Consider how frequently LW-newbies use "rational" as an applause light until corrected by others. Instead of taking terms from other fields as merely being applause or boo lights, we should consider that the terms might be frequently misused by novices or in popular culture, in just the same way that terms like "rational" or "rationalist" are. (TVTropes link.)
Take "privilege", for instance.
It seems to be widely assumed that when social critics or activists attribute "privilege" to someone, that they are calling that person evil, arrogant, irresponsible, or something of the like. Because "privilege" is used in sentences that are spoken angrily, it is taken to be not merely a boo light but something akin to a swear word. And indeed it is sometimes used that way, because, well, people get angry sometimes when discussing starvation, rape, police brutality, and other things that activists talk about.
"Privilege" has a pretty specific meaning though. It means "social advantages that are not perceived as advantages but as the normal condition". In other words: Some people have X, while others don't; and those who do have X think that having X is unremarkable and normal.
To make up an artificial example:
Suppose that there are blue weasels and red weasels working in an office. For whatever reason, blue weasels are comfortable in a temperature range of 18–28C, while red weasels are comfortable in 22–32C. The office thermostat is set to "room temperature", the normal temperature, of 20C. So the red weasels are always cold and have to buy expensive sweaters (at their own expense) to avoid shivering, while blue weasels frolic about in the nude.
When anyweasel proposes turning up the heat, they are reminded that running the heater is expensive and that 20C is the established normal room temperature — it even says so on the Wikipedia article "room temperature"! That some weasels complain about the cold and how expensive sweaters are is their own problem — maybe if they frolicked about in the nude more, they would feel better? Besides, if we started turning up the heat, before too long it would be much too hot for anyweasel! 20C is normal, and if some weasels are unhappy with that, well, that's actually fortunate for the sweater-knitters, isn't it?
Note that noweasel is doing any cost-benefit analysis here — and they also aren't really treating all weasels' interests as equally worthwhile. They're just assuming that being cold is a fact about red weasels' deviation from the temperature sense that they should possess (a normative claim targeted at the underprivileged), as opposed to being about the differences between red and blue weasels and the historical control of the thermostat by certain blue weasels (a descriptive claim about the history and structure of weasel society).
Not only does the temperature setting of 20C advantage some weasels over others, but the way that weasels talk about temperature — the discourse — contains assumptions about what is normal that advantage some weasels over others.
For a while now, this has been my number-one example of a word that's useful to taboo. Since the definition is that succinct, and the word "privilege" has a tendency to derail what could have been a good conversation, we're probably better off simply not using the word.
I've occasionally been given definitions of "privilege" by activists, and each time the definition is different. A more common one is "an unfair advantage that people have by virtue of being in certain groups".
It is perhaps worth noting that the word "status" often gets used on LW to describe position in a social structure, with the understanding that individuals with higher status get various benefits (not always obvious ones), and that a lot of human behavior is designed to obtain/challenge/protect status even if the individual performing the behavior doesn't consciously have that goal. I suspect that talking about the blue weasels as a high-status subgroup would not raise any eyebrows here, and would imply all the patterns you discuss here, even if talking about the "privilege" possessed by blue weasels raised hackles.
Somewhat to my amusement, I've gotten chastised for talking about status this way in communities of social activists, who "explained" to me that I was actually talking about privilege, and referring to it as status trivialized it.
When in Rome, I endorse speaking Italian.
Upvoted for pretty good description, and I agree that all of these are actually usually used in a meaningful (if not optimal) way.
It might be added that in some privilege cases, the experience of not having the privilege is totally alien and leads to things like lonely men envying sexual harassment.
By the way, if you're interested in what I consider a better analysis of your weasel example, I recommend looking at Thomas C. Schelling's Strategy of Conflict, particularly chapter 3. (I don't think I can do justice to his analysis in this comment.)