I think that this is a blatant misrepresentation of my position,
Do you claim that you didn’t make this thread to argue that gwern is wrong?
and I think that I have corrected you on multiple occasions.
And I correct you ;) My sentence describes your behavior. If you wear a green shirt and tell every one it’s blue that doesn’t mean the shirt actually is blue. If you want you can think about why other people might see your shirt as green but of course you aren’t obliged to do so. Learning to understand other people just makes life easier. Everybody has the freedom to suffer as much as they want.
I feel that you are, however, being rather uncharitable towards me using certain labels to be able to communicate clearly.
You both complain that I don’t make it easy for you to understand me and you claim that I use language that’s too direct. You can’t have both.
The most salient characteristic that I saw was that it was an accusation of incivility. I asked whether you were indeed saying that this was what was uncivil about it, and you said yes.
You confuse labeling with obligations. I’m perfectly capable of identifying someone’s behavior as rude or uncivil without claiming that they have an obligation to act otherwise.
I also didn’t simply say “Yes” I wrote quite a long paragraph to speak about the sentence and it doesn’t boil down to calling other people uncivil being the primary factor.
I reserve the right to identify aspects of gwern’s future posts that I consider to be in error.
You again switch into a notion of “rights” as if “rights” would matter in this context. This just illustrates that you for some reason don’t get very far in understanding what I’m arguing.
I’m perfectly capable of identifying someone’s behavior as rude or uncivil without claiming that they have an obligation to act otherwise.
This applies somewhat to both sides here, but I’m reminded of Arbcom on Wikipedia. Arbcom has a rule which says that Arbcom cannot make policy.
The result: most Arbcom discussions end up as people trying to get Arbcom to make policy, and Arbcom making policy, only specially phrased so as to sound like nobody is making policy or trying to do so.
Calling someone rude is a defacto claim that they have an obligation not to be so. You can rephrase it as “I’m not claiming they have an obligation not to be rude, I’m just claiming it’s in their own self-interest”, but you end up saying exactly the same things you would say if you claimed they had an obligation, just with extra clauses tacked onto your sentences to rephrase everything in terms of self-interest.
Calling someone rude is a defacto claim that they have an obligation not to be so.
No.
If I say that it’s not in your own self interest to not bang your head against the wall I’m not saying that I forbid you from banging your head against the wall. I’m not creating an obligation for the other person. If the like getting their head hurt they can continue banging their head against the wall and I don’t want to take that freedom away from them.
I follow the moral principle of giving people information about how they are hurting themselves, I’m not forbidding them from hurting themselves.
I have also no problem with someone making an expected utility analysis and finding that being rude is having the most utility to pursue that course of action. In the case of rudeness ends can completely justify means.
Furthermore you ignore a bunch of emotional effects that come along with putting obligations on other people. It makes you feel bad when they don’t follow your dictates. If someone bangs their hand against the wall after I told him that it’s not in his self interest and he continues, I might feel pity but not anger.
Getting rid of shoulds is one of the CBT exercises of identifying distorted thinking that David Burns described in the Feeling Good Handbook. It’s not just about changing around a few words.
You think that Alice should meet Bob and Alice. You feel bad and get angry at Alice. Then you want to be an asshole to Alice but you think you shouldn’t, so you suppress your anger. That’s a strategy you can use to live your life and it can make you depressed.
If you would get rid of the “should’s” in the first place, then you wouldn’t feel bad about the situation.
But of course you are free to bang your head against the wall and suffer. If I want to be cynic I can add that sometimes it needs a lot of suffering till people see that there a different way that doesn’t involve suffering. Maybe a person hasn’t suffered enough from banging their head against the wall and they still need a few rounds till their head hurts enough that they will stop. It’s their issue not mine.
It might be true that most people you interact with want to put an obligation on the other person to change their behavior when they use the word “rude”.
In my case I do separate factual descriptions of behavior from obligations.
Nothing I said in this discussion comes from a place of enforcing some norm.
At skeptic.stackexchange I do engage in telling people to stick to norms and vote for closing of questions that I consider to a norm violation. I’m engaging in this conversation in a different spirit.
I don’t think people who feel a desire to kill another person can go ahead to make a learning experience. With rudeness I don’t have any issue if people who feel that desire act on it and learn their lessons.
People generally distinguish between such cases as “You shoplifted, and now there will be negative consequences” and “You failed to pay protection money to the mob, and now there will negative consequences”. You can say that there is no essential difference between them, and in both cases you feel quite comfortable with telling the person in question that their actions are not in their self interest, but most people accept the idea that there are standards for behavior other than mere self-interest. Furthermore, if you merely intended to state that my behavior would have negative consequences, then you could have said so. There are plenty of behaviors that result in negative consequences, that are not rude. By applying the word “rude” to my behavior, you were asserting some attribute beyond merely negative consequences, and that attribute is generally considered to be a moral one.
Do you claim that you didn’t make this thread to argue that gwern is wrong?
Yes.
And I correct you ;) My sentence describes your behavior.
No, it described what you believe my internal mental state to be. You assert that you know better than I what that state is, yet you give no argument in support of that position.
You both complain that I don’t make it easy for you to understand me and you claim that I use language that’s too direct.
It would help if you would specify what statement of mine that you’re talking about.
You confuse labeling with obligations. I’m perfectly capable of identifying someone’s behavior as rude or uncivil without claiming that they have an obligation to act otherwise.
I really feel like you are not arguing in good faith. The quote you responded to made no mention of obligations. I feel like you’re arguing in circles, saying that my behavior is rude, but then when I argue that the same logic condemns your actions as rude, you then start with this “I don’t believe in shoulds” stuff.
I also didn’t simply say “Yes” I wrote quite a long paragraph to speak about the sentence and it doesn’t boil down to calling other people uncivil being the primary factor.
[me]Now, as for the statement that you quoted, is it uncivil to point out someone else’s incivility?
[you]Yes. It raises the emotional tension of the discussion in a way that not beneficial.
That’s the entirety of your response to my question. It is not “a long paragraph”, and it does boil down to calling other people uncivil being the primary factor.
Do you claim that you didn’t make this thread to argue that gwern is wrong?
And I correct you ;) My sentence describes your behavior. If you wear a green shirt and tell every one it’s blue that doesn’t mean the shirt actually is blue. If you want you can think about why other people might see your shirt as green but of course you aren’t obliged to do so. Learning to understand other people just makes life easier. Everybody has the freedom to suffer as much as they want.
You both complain that I don’t make it easy for you to understand me and you claim that I use language that’s too direct. You can’t have both.
You confuse labeling with obligations. I’m perfectly capable of identifying someone’s behavior as rude or uncivil without claiming that they have an obligation to act otherwise.
I also didn’t simply say “Yes” I wrote quite a long paragraph to speak about the sentence and it doesn’t boil down to calling other people uncivil being the primary factor.
You again switch into a notion of “rights” as if “rights” would matter in this context. This just illustrates that you for some reason don’t get very far in understanding what I’m arguing.
This applies somewhat to both sides here, but I’m reminded of Arbcom on Wikipedia. Arbcom has a rule which says that Arbcom cannot make policy.
The result: most Arbcom discussions end up as people trying to get Arbcom to make policy, and Arbcom making policy, only specially phrased so as to sound like nobody is making policy or trying to do so.
Calling someone rude is a defacto claim that they have an obligation not to be so. You can rephrase it as “I’m not claiming they have an obligation not to be rude, I’m just claiming it’s in their own self-interest”, but you end up saying exactly the same things you would say if you claimed they had an obligation, just with extra clauses tacked onto your sentences to rephrase everything in terms of self-interest.
No.
If I say that it’s not in your own self interest to not bang your head against the wall I’m not saying that I forbid you from banging your head against the wall. I’m not creating an obligation for the other person. If the like getting their head hurt they can continue banging their head against the wall and I don’t want to take that freedom away from them.
I follow the moral principle of giving people information about how they are hurting themselves, I’m not forbidding them from hurting themselves.
I have also no problem with someone making an expected utility analysis and finding that being rude is having the most utility to pursue that course of action. In the case of rudeness ends can completely justify means.
Furthermore you ignore a bunch of emotional effects that come along with putting obligations on other people. It makes you feel bad when they don’t follow your dictates. If someone bangs their hand against the wall after I told him that it’s not in his self interest and he continues, I might feel pity but not anger.
Getting rid of shoulds is one of the CBT exercises of identifying distorted thinking that David Burns described in the Feeling Good Handbook. It’s not just about changing around a few words.
You think that Alice should meet Bob and Alice. You feel bad and get angry at Alice. Then you want to be an asshole to Alice but you think you shouldn’t, so you suppress your anger. That’s a strategy you can use to live your life and it can make you depressed.
If you would get rid of the “should’s” in the first place, then you wouldn’t feel bad about the situation. But of course you are free to bang your head against the wall and suffer. If I want to be cynic I can add that sometimes it needs a lot of suffering till people see that there a different way that doesn’t involve suffering. Maybe a person hasn’t suffered enough from banging their head against the wall and they still need a few rounds till their head hurts enough that they will stop. It’s their issue not mine.
“Is” and “Is, defacto” aren’t the same thing. Two things can be different, yet for practical purposes be the same.
It might be true that most people you interact with want to put an obligation on the other person to change their behavior when they use the word “rude”.
In my case I do separate factual descriptions of behavior from obligations. Nothing I said in this discussion comes from a place of enforcing some norm.
At skeptic.stackexchange I do engage in telling people to stick to norms and vote for closing of questions that I consider to a norm violation. I’m engaging in this conversation in a different spirit.
I don’t think people who feel a desire to kill another person can go ahead to make a learning experience. With rudeness I don’t have any issue if people who feel that desire act on it and learn their lessons.
People generally distinguish between such cases as “You shoplifted, and now there will be negative consequences” and “You failed to pay protection money to the mob, and now there will negative consequences”. You can say that there is no essential difference between them, and in both cases you feel quite comfortable with telling the person in question that their actions are not in their self interest, but most people accept the idea that there are standards for behavior other than mere self-interest. Furthermore, if you merely intended to state that my behavior would have negative consequences, then you could have said so. There are plenty of behaviors that result in negative consequences, that are not rude. By applying the word “rude” to my behavior, you were asserting some attribute beyond merely negative consequences, and that attribute is generally considered to be a moral one.
Yes.
No, it described what you believe my internal mental state to be. You assert that you know better than I what that state is, yet you give no argument in support of that position.
It would help if you would specify what statement of mine that you’re talking about.
I really feel like you are not arguing in good faith. The quote you responded to made no mention of obligations. I feel like you’re arguing in circles, saying that my behavior is rude, but then when I argue that the same logic condemns your actions as rude, you then start with this “I don’t believe in shoulds” stuff.
That’s the entirety of your response to my question. It is not “a long paragraph”, and it does boil down to calling other people uncivil being the primary factor.