I think we might be imagining slightly different situations. I’m imagining, for example, situations like while riding the bus or out shopping where a stranger has the power to talk to you and you do technically have the power to like, call security or the police if they are harassing you, but they aren’t really harassing you and that would make the situation worse for you. They don’t have real or enduring power but in that situation they do have that power to force an interaction. It would feel incredibly wrong to call what they are saying the “dominant discourse” but I suppose in that context maybe that’s what it is. Also, I like to avoid ignoring people who engage with me unless I have a compelling reason not to. That may be a personal quirk.
The idea of an epistemic community like you describe sounds nice, though it seems unfortunate that the focus has to be on transgression and accusation rather than a system that focuses on identifying particularly good epistemics and just… ignoring the epistemics that aren’t identified, which may be because they involve lying with data or just poor use of statistics and analysis… But since lying with statistics seems common, it probably would be good to make a point of identifying and cataloguing it.
I think we might be imagining slightly different situations. I’m imagining, for example, situations like while riding the bus or out shopping where a stranger has the power to talk to you and you do technically have the power to like, call security or the police if they are harassing you, but they aren’t really harassing you and that would make the situation worse for you. They don’t have real or enduring power but in that situation they do have that power to force an interaction. It would feel incredibly wrong to call what they are saying the “dominant discourse” but I suppose in that context maybe that’s what it is. Also, I like to avoid ignoring people who engage with me unless I have a compelling reason not to. That may be a personal quirk.
The idea of an epistemic community like you describe sounds nice, though it seems unfortunate that the focus has to be on transgression and accusation rather than a system that focuses on identifying particularly good epistemics and just… ignoring the epistemics that aren’t identified, which may be because they involve lying with data or just poor use of statistics and analysis… But since lying with statistics seems common, it probably would be good to make a point of identifying and cataloguing it.