If it’s so tiny, it shouldn’t be such a struggle to get people to accommodate the wish. I have less trouble getting my roommate to drive me to another city an hour away and back.
You probably don’t ask your roommate in such a way as to imply that it’s his or her fault that you have no way to get to the city, and that their failure to comply will be considered unethical and/or harm-causing by you. Nor, I presume, have you called upon other residents of your building or block to denounce any other incidents of non-ride-offering, and professed surprise that they have not already repudiated such incidents.
Many people, including myself, do not object to what you’re asking nearly so much as to the way in which you asked it. By depersonalizing the issue from being about you and your hurt feelings to some sort of ethical issue, you created a perceived requirement for people to start taking sides—i.e., signaling their ethical position.
But if you look back to previous calls for inclusive language on LessWrong, I didn’t object to them; in fact, I argued in favor of one of them. (I remember it because some of my comments in that thread brought rather large doses of karma.) I believe in being reasonably considerate to people who reasonably request it.
Thus, I find myself in the bizarre-to-me position of being grouped with “masculinists”, as though I’m somehow against politeness or in favor of sexist language. This is not the case, and framing my disagreement with your flawed logic (or with your inconsistent and terminally vague definitions) as being something to do with sexism is behavior unbecoming a professed rationalist.
That having been said, I will certainly say that there are plenty of other people in these threads who’ve said what I was thinking, much better than I was able to say it, and have been able to bring up some of the same points I made with more tact and less directness. I hope that continues.
However, had you said to Roko, “I was put off by this statement, did you mean to imply that I’m an interchangeable commodity? No? Oh, what did you mean then? Ah, I see. Would you mind phrasing it like that in future then? Thanks.”… Then I never would’ve opened my trap in the first place, and everybody would’ve been much happier. (And yes, I do see the irony in my jumping on you for you jumping on Roko. At least, I do now, and will try to follow my own advice on this point in future.)
You probably don’t ask your roommate in such a way as to imply that it’s his or her fault that you have no way to get to the city, and that their failure to comply will be considered unethical and/or harm-causing by you. Nor, I presume, have you called upon other residents of your building or block to denounce any other incidents of non-ride-offering, and professed surprise that they have not already repudiated such incidents.
Many people, including myself, do not object to what you’re asking nearly so much as to the way in which you asked it. By depersonalizing the issue from being about you and your hurt feelings to some sort of ethical issue, you created a perceived requirement for people to start taking sides—i.e., signaling their ethical position.
But if you look back to previous calls for inclusive language on LessWrong, I didn’t object to them; in fact, I argued in favor of one of them. (I remember it because some of my comments in that thread brought rather large doses of karma.) I believe in being reasonably considerate to people who reasonably request it.
Thus, I find myself in the bizarre-to-me position of being grouped with “masculinists”, as though I’m somehow against politeness or in favor of sexist language. This is not the case, and framing my disagreement with your flawed logic (or with your inconsistent and terminally vague definitions) as being something to do with sexism is behavior unbecoming a professed rationalist.
That having been said, I will certainly say that there are plenty of other people in these threads who’ve said what I was thinking, much better than I was able to say it, and have been able to bring up some of the same points I made with more tact and less directness. I hope that continues.
However, had you said to Roko, “I was put off by this statement, did you mean to imply that I’m an interchangeable commodity? No? Oh, what did you mean then? Ah, I see. Would you mind phrasing it like that in future then? Thanks.”… Then I never would’ve opened my trap in the first place, and everybody would’ve been much happier. (And yes, I do see the irony in my jumping on you for you jumping on Roko. At least, I do now, and will try to follow my own advice on this point in future.)