Humanize your political opponents, think about their normal human lives outside of this one heinous thing they believe. See if you can steelman their position or pass their ideological Turing test
When a few paragraphs earlier you discuss DiAngelo’s form of antiracism and refer to it as “it’s the most retarded one”.
a) readers should know the art of charitable reading, sometimes even steelmanning;
b) writers sometimes write stupid texts, though.
I think it would be bad to conclude something like “an enlightened reader treats all texts as equally smart, because any failure of the text is always a failure of the reader to be sufficiently charitable”.
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You should be able to steelman DiAngelo’s book. That doesn’t change the fact that it is a very stupid book. So it depends on what kind of debate we have.
If we have a debate on racism… and we are so unluckly that DiAngelo’s book is literally the only source we have available… then we should try to steelman as much value out of it as possible.
But if we have a debate on “antiracism”… it is perfectly valid to observe that the most popular book on the topic is extremely stupid. One could even wonder whether that was on accident or reflects some deeper truth. For example, if the true goal is loyalty signaling, one signals loyalty better by recommending a stupid book than by recommending a smart one. (Anyone can like a smart book, but only a true “antiracist” will like a stupid book.)
You should be able to do so, doesn’t mean you should always actually do so. In this post for example, which is a review of Tim Urban’s book and DiAngelo’s book is only mentioned in passing, there’s no need for that.
There is a contradiction between you asking me to
When a few paragraphs earlier you discuss DiAngelo’s form of antiracism and refer to it as “it’s the most retarded one”.
I am afraid this is mixing together two things:
a) readers should know the art of charitable reading, sometimes even steelmanning;
b) writers sometimes write stupid texts, though.
I think it would be bad to conclude something like “an enlightened reader treats all texts as equally smart, because any failure of the text is always a failure of the reader to be sufficiently charitable”.
*
You should be able to steelman DiAngelo’s book. That doesn’t change the fact that it is a very stupid book. So it depends on what kind of debate we have.
If we have a debate on racism… and we are so unluckly that DiAngelo’s book is literally the only source we have available… then we should try to steelman as much value out of it as possible.
But if we have a debate on “antiracism”… it is perfectly valid to observe that the most popular book on the topic is extremely stupid. One could even wonder whether that was on accident or reflects some deeper truth. For example, if the true goal is loyalty signaling, one signals loyalty better by recommending a stupid book than by recommending a smart one. (Anyone can like a smart book, but only a true “antiracist” will like a stupid book.)
You raise some good points but I have to point out that the OP didnt make any effort to steelman anti-racism either.
You should be able to do so, doesn’t mean you should always actually do so. In this post for example, which is a review of Tim Urban’s book and DiAngelo’s book is only mentioned in passing, there’s no need for that.