Certainly, few people would mock someone to their face. I agree that mockery is usually harmful and counterproductive, and I’m sorry if I implied that you, personally, have a habit of going around mocking people. I was referring to so-called “nerds” in the collective—I think the stereotype that exists within nerdy circles of nerds being virtuous, put-upon victims of others’ mockery is largely untrue. I saw that reflected in the article, and I was pointing out that in my experience, supposedly intelligent, sensitive “nerds” are no more or less likely to engage in vicious mockery.
Edit: I also don’t think mockery is by definition bad—it goes back to the article on Diseased Thinking. If mocking someone for dangerous or irrational beliefs significantly increases the probability that they’ll abandon those dangerous beliefs (even considering knock-on effects), why should we hold back in order to be more virtuous? Social disapproval in many forms has been a tool to moderate beliefs for tens of thousands of years. Jokes putting down others’ beliefs, habits, customs, and decisions seem to be pretty universal—that’s what I meant when I said “we” didn’t refrain from mocking our out-group. Sorry, I should have phrased it better.
I think the stereotype that exists within nerdy circles of nerds being virtuous, put-upon victims of others’ mockery is largely untrue.
I believe you are right, unfortunate though this fact is.
As for the second part, mocking is a form of violence, and it can be used both by people with healthy beliefs and people with dangerous ones. Saying that we should allow ourselves to mock other people to correct them through negative reinforcement is like a softer way of saying we should allow ourselves to gang up on them on the street and beat the shit out of them, because there’s no other way of getting the truth through their thick skulls.
As a matter of fact, many violent groups preach this exact concept. And when they meet, each one of them believes they are entitled to use violence on the other in the name of what they understand to be the truth. The winners, however, aren’t the ones that have truth on their side, but those who have the biggest sticks or best bodies or better training or lower combat inhibitions or other stuff that has nothing to do with whether they’re right. And there’s no guarrantee that the losers will integrate the winners’ ideology.
The same is true for a duel of mockeries; the winner is the quick and witty one, not the one with the most truth backing them up, and the defeated is more likely to feel resentful and grab onto their position than to try to join the winner under the light of truth.
Mockery is verbal violence. It may be useful or necessary sometimes; to keep the violence simile, you’ve got to shoot the Nazis, there’s just no way around it. But it’s still bad, achieves victory at a terrible price for both you and your victim, and also, let’s be honest, runs the risk of you losing and truth being set back in the public eye because you couldn’t think of a witty comeback in time.
What I believe should be done when faced with the ridiculous is to gently point it out. Put the facts together, in such a way that the question is obvious. O’Reily’s opponent during the “You can’t explain that” episode did an exemplary job of that I think.
Saying that we should allow ourselves to mock other people to correct them through negative reinforcement is like a softer way of saying we should allow ourselves to gang up on them on the street and beat the shit out of them, because there’s no other way of getting the truth through their thick skulls.
I really don’t think this is a fair comparison—it’s true that a “battle of wits” results in the wittiest person winning, not necessarily the most correct. But then again, any contest involving verbal argument tends to go to those who are best at verbal argument—why is mockery a special case just because it tends to hurt people’s feelings more than other strategies? People who come up with the most evocative metaphors, the more pertinent examples, the most confident supporters, they all tend to win arguments regardless of how true their beliefs are. Yet you can’t go after every single argumentative strategy just because argument winning tends to correlate more with effective rhetorical strategies than with truth. You can only try to help those who have true beliefs better publicize them.
Even if we were to put emotional and physical harm on the same scale and say that mockery is a form of violence, the fact remains that physical violence contributes to a norm of people beating each other up (which could lead to political instability, civil unrest, a disintegration of the rule of law, etc) while mocking people contributes to a norm of people exchanging cutting retorts (which is, in my opinion, much less harmful). Therefore, you might have the ethical injunction to never, ever respond to a bad argument with a bullet but might permit yourself to make your verbal counterargument more punchy.
You can only try to help those who have true beliefs better publicize them.
It’s true that if the truth of a belief were sufficient to spread it, it wouldn’t matter if one were nice or polite. However, I believe that, as a long term strategy, mockery is not the best way to spread beliefs (though it might be a good way to destroy them), because no matter how right one happens to be, people don’t want to listen to a dismissive douchebag. Satire, sarcasm and irony are therefore weapons to be wielded with rather more care and precision than I have seen most of their users display.
Therefore, you might have the ethical injunction to never, ever respond to a bad argument with a bullet but might permit yourself to make your verbal counterargument more punchy.
It certainly is a matter of orders of magnitude. There’s a point from which quantitative changes take a qualitative character, and causing death is one such point.
Satire, sarcasm and irony are therefore weapons to be wielded with rather more care and precision than I have seen most of their users display.
I’m definitely in agreement there; I was just under the impression that you thought they should hands-down never be used (as I would say for physical violence in a verbal argument.) Sorry for the misunderstanding.
I think it’s plausible to make an ethical injunction to abstain from using them. It’s not like they’re required or necessary to convey one’s message, and I estimate that on the whole and between one thing and another they do more harm than good, on average.
Certainly, few people would mock someone to their face. I agree that mockery is usually harmful and counterproductive, and I’m sorry if I implied that you, personally, have a habit of going around mocking people. I was referring to so-called “nerds” in the collective—I think the stereotype that exists within nerdy circles of nerds being virtuous, put-upon victims of others’ mockery is largely untrue. I saw that reflected in the article, and I was pointing out that in my experience, supposedly intelligent, sensitive “nerds” are no more or less likely to engage in vicious mockery.
Edit: I also don’t think mockery is by definition bad—it goes back to the article on Diseased Thinking. If mocking someone for dangerous or irrational beliefs significantly increases the probability that they’ll abandon those dangerous beliefs (even considering knock-on effects), why should we hold back in order to be more virtuous? Social disapproval in many forms has been a tool to moderate beliefs for tens of thousands of years. Jokes putting down others’ beliefs, habits, customs, and decisions seem to be pretty universal—that’s what I meant when I said “we” didn’t refrain from mocking our out-group. Sorry, I should have phrased it better.
I believe you are right, unfortunate though this fact is.
As for the second part, mocking is a form of violence, and it can be used both by people with healthy beliefs and people with dangerous ones. Saying that we should allow ourselves to mock other people to correct them through negative reinforcement is like a softer way of saying we should allow ourselves to gang up on them on the street and beat the shit out of them, because there’s no other way of getting the truth through their thick skulls.
As a matter of fact, many violent groups preach this exact concept. And when they meet, each one of them believes they are entitled to use violence on the other in the name of what they understand to be the truth. The winners, however, aren’t the ones that have truth on their side, but those who have the biggest sticks or best bodies or better training or lower combat inhibitions or other stuff that has nothing to do with whether they’re right. And there’s no guarrantee that the losers will integrate the winners’ ideology.
The same is true for a duel of mockeries; the winner is the quick and witty one, not the one with the most truth backing them up, and the defeated is more likely to feel resentful and grab onto their position than to try to join the winner under the light of truth.
Mockery is verbal violence. It may be useful or necessary sometimes; to keep the violence simile, you’ve got to shoot the Nazis, there’s just no way around it. But it’s still bad, achieves victory at a terrible price for both you and your victim, and also, let’s be honest, runs the risk of you losing and truth being set back in the public eye because you couldn’t think of a witty comeback in time.
What I believe should be done when faced with the ridiculous is to gently point it out. Put the facts together, in such a way that the question is obvious. O’Reily’s opponent during the “You can’t explain that” episode did an exemplary job of that I think.
Also, sorry for misunderstanding.
I really don’t think this is a fair comparison—it’s true that a “battle of wits” results in the wittiest person winning, not necessarily the most correct. But then again, any contest involving verbal argument tends to go to those who are best at verbal argument—why is mockery a special case just because it tends to hurt people’s feelings more than other strategies? People who come up with the most evocative metaphors, the more pertinent examples, the most confident supporters, they all tend to win arguments regardless of how true their beliefs are. Yet you can’t go after every single argumentative strategy just because argument winning tends to correlate more with effective rhetorical strategies than with truth. You can only try to help those who have true beliefs better publicize them.
Even if we were to put emotional and physical harm on the same scale and say that mockery is a form of violence, the fact remains that physical violence contributes to a norm of people beating each other up (which could lead to political instability, civil unrest, a disintegration of the rule of law, etc) while mocking people contributes to a norm of people exchanging cutting retorts (which is, in my opinion, much less harmful). Therefore, you might have the ethical injunction to never, ever respond to a bad argument with a bullet but might permit yourself to make your verbal counterargument more punchy.
It’s true that if the truth of a belief were sufficient to spread it, it wouldn’t matter if one were nice or polite. However, I believe that, as a long term strategy, mockery is not the best way to spread beliefs (though it might be a good way to destroy them), because no matter how right one happens to be, people don’t want to listen to a dismissive douchebag. Satire, sarcasm and irony are therefore weapons to be wielded with rather more care and precision than I have seen most of their users display.
It certainly is a matter of orders of magnitude. There’s a point from which quantitative changes take a qualitative character, and causing death is one such point.
I’m definitely in agreement there; I was just under the impression that you thought they should hands-down never be used (as I would say for physical violence in a verbal argument.) Sorry for the misunderstanding.
I think it’s plausible to make an ethical injunction to abstain from using them. It’s not like they’re required or necessary to convey one’s message, and I estimate that on the whole and between one thing and another they do more harm than good, on average.