Note that one doesn’t need to be actively bigoted in order to do harm. The vast majority of those who are slowing down the spread of rational thought aren’t religious fundamentalists out to stop rationality; no, they’re the completely innocent ones who unthinkingly pass on cached thoughts.
It’s no different when it comes to attitudes concerning, say, BDSM. I don’t for a moment think that Goetz was actively bigoted when he wrote that. That doesn’t mean that he shouldn’t have worded it differently. More generally… it’s often dangerous to think “but (he isn’t / I am not) bigoted”, as if only active bigots could say harmful things. Once the harmfulness of what they’re saying is pointed out to them, they automatically go on the defensive—after all, only bigots say bad things, and they’re not a bigot, so the other person must simply be oversensitive.
What exactly do you mean by ‘saying harmful things’? How are they harmful? If I firmly believe that someone should be allowed to pursue any activity they wish to as long as it doesn’t cause injury to any non-consenting individuals, how is it harmful if I continue to consider that behaviour unusual, or even continue to view it negatively?
I believe there’s are implicit assumptions underlying the claim that speech is ‘harmful’ that you need to make more explicit if you are going to expand this into a top level post. You may find that not everyone shares your assumptions.
Well, the “Indeed, it’s often dangerous...” wasn’t referring to Goetz anymore, but was on a more general level (edited to make that clearer).
But anyway, by ‘saying harmful things’ I refer to saying things which propagate potentially close-minded attitudes which can do real harm to people. I’m by no means saying such speech should be banned—I am quite a strong advocate of freedom of speech, myself—but that doesn’t mean it should be socially accepted, either.
For instance, if I read the comments below correctly, the original version of this post apparently said “socially acceptable behaviors” instead of “socially accepted behaviors”. Saying that something “isn’t socially acceptable” sounds pretty condemning. clarissethorn’s criticism also has some merit. I don’t really think that Goetz’s post was very bad, but it did bring to mind the general phenomenon.
But yes, I will make the related assumptions more explicit if I get around expanding this. It’s getting rather late here now, so I’m too tired to type up a much longer explanation right now.
I think a top level post would be useful. If less wrong turns out to be the sort of community where I have to worry about ‘accepted’ vs. ‘acceptable’ when posting for fear of hurting the feelings of someone on the Internet then it’s not going to be a community I want to be a part of. That would be useful information.
IMO, Less Wrong should be a community that encourages you to worry about precise expression, which includes the distinction between ‘accepted’ and ‘acceptable’.
FWIW, Nick pointed it out in a non-accusatory way, and I appreciate having it pointed out, and will be more careful about that particular distinction in the future.
Let me try and explain why I find the kind of discussion over the precise connotations of speech here frustrating.
It seems that people who strongly believe in the importance of eliminating implicit negative connotations in language are often coming from a position where they implicitly accept the premise that it is ok for society to make laws governing activities that individuals choose to partake in that do not impinge on the rights of third parties.
They see some activity that they wish to be permitted either being restricted or under threat of being restricted and they desire to influence the set of permitted activities to match their preferences. The proposed cure is to police language in order to influence the thoughts and preferences of others in a direction that increases acceptance of the favoured activity.
I see this as a mis-diagnosis of the problem. The thought police would not be necessary if we all agreed to allow people to conduct their lives as they choose without threat of interference. I suspect that at some level many of those seeking to control the use of language do so because they ultimately do want to restrict the choices of others and so must fight the battle to control the set of restricted behaviours rather than fighting to remove all restrictions.
To be honest it’s more an elaboration on the ongoing discussion which I was mulling over and posted in reply to your comment because it happened to be the most recent response to one of my posts.
It is an attempt to explain why I don’t think the overall discussion about precise language in this context is fruitful. I’ve clearly passed my previously mentioned tolerance threshold for this sort of thing though so I should probably walk away and think calming thoughts for a while.
Opinion about the fact that I wouldn’t want to be part of a community where that kind of self-censorship was necessary? I know that it winds me up/hits my buttons/irritates me enough that discussions become a negative emotional experience. While I have found much of value here there are other ways I can attempt to improve my rationality that have less negative expected emotional utility for me.
Right, but it’s a negative emotional experience for me to open an article that describes me as a sexual pervert something like a chronic loser, don’t you think?
Taking care to be polite to each other is not some foolish ritual of mundanes; it serves a real purpose in facilitating discussion. It isn’t always the right thing, but it’s the right side to err on.
By and large people take notable care over their words here in a variety of ways, and it makes the site a better place.
I’d like one of the many people criticizing how I wrote the second sentence to suggest a better way to write it, that would still point out the contrast between social attitudes towards sexual masochism, and social attitudes towards the other things on the list.
Ciphergoth did this.
ciphergoth, there were a lot of other things on the list besides Bruce. I don’t think it’s fair to you pick out the one bad thing from a long list of good things, and then complain about that one.
By and large people take notable care over their words here in a variety of ways, and it makes the site a better place.
I took notable care; yet it wasn’t good enough for you.
I’ve said much more inflammatory things to other people that didn’t get jumped on by anybody. I’ve said much harsher things to EY. I’ve repeatedly said things about classical music that drive komponisto up the wall. Should I refrain from criticizing Schoenberg because it upsets him?
These are bad examples. Yes, I should have been more polite in all those cases.
I don’t see the difference. I didn’t even say anything bad about masochism. I wrote a post saying that maybe masochism is an essential part of everyone’s ordinary, healthy human nature; and you were still offended by it.
I’ve repeatedly said things about classical music that drive komponisto up the wall. Should I refrain from criticizing Schoenberg because it upsets him?
Well, a matter of fact...
There’s a difference between criticism and taking potshots. If you wanted to write a post explaining in detail why you think Schoenberg’s music is flawed, that might be one thing (provided it was on-topic). By contrast, merely stating a negative opinion (repeatedly, as you note) in an authoritative tone that suggests it is akin to a widely-accepted fact (particularly when you have no authority in the matter), after you have already been called on it, is just a form of aggressive behavior that I don’t think should be welcomed.
It might be that Schoenberg is good music to people with specialized musical training. I have said that his music is bad, but I don’t have high confidence that it is “bad” in an absolute, moral realist sense.
I do have high confidence that the relentless pursuit of novelty rather than quality caused most arts to become inaccessible to most people around the turn of the 20th century. And I regard that as bad. The elite forgot that they need us. We, the unwashed, untrained masses, provide the money to build the concert halls and the universities that the elite sit in; and instead of remembering their obligation to us, they take our money and use it to get their special training and then sit in their ivory towers and look down their noses at us.
So we abandoned them; and their art shriveled without us. Everybody defected. Game over.
Physics is so specialized that ordinary people can’t understand it, but they can still use it. Music, on the other hand, once moved beyond the point where we ordinary people can appreciate it, is useless to us.
I do have high confidence that the relentless pursuit of novelty rather than quality caused most arts to become inaccessible to most people around the turn of the 20th century
What makes you so confident that the pursuit of “quality” was being abandoned? The fact that you don’t find it appealing?
Mere novelty could have been accomplished by much cheaper means than those employed by composers in the “Schoenbergian” tradition, whose music tends to be very precisely and delicately constructed. Contrast, for example, Milton Babbitt (whose works are often so intricate that they take me several hearings to “get”) with John Cage (who was capable of “composing” the most trivial case of a piece of music—one with no sound at all). Cage is arguably an example of the extreme case of pure novelty-seeking (though I think people are too hard on him -- 4′33″ is not his only work); but this sort of thing is completely divorced from what the mainstream of “post-tonal” composers were going for.
We, the unwashed, untrained masses, provide the money to build the concert halls and the universities that the elite sit in; and instead of remembering their obligation to us, they take our money and use it to get their special training and then sit in their ivory towers and look down their noses at us.
Where does this attitude come from? There is no conspiracy going on. Nobody is forcing you to listen to Schoenberg, or—still less—preventing you from listening to Mozart. The public funding of advanced music in the U.S. is negligible to nonexistent. I defy you to explain how the existence of a few people (of whose existence you are barely even aware) pursuing this esoteric line of work could possibily result in negative utility for you.
Physics is so specialized that ordinary people can’t understand it, but they can still use it. Music, on the other hand, once moved beyond the point where we ordinary people can appreciate it, is useless to us.
What makes you so sure? What about cosmology, or high-energy physics? String theory? Pure mathematics?
The point here is that you want to have the sort of culture where advanced creative achievement—formidabilty, awesomeness—in all domains is encouraged and rewarded, not suppressed. (Tsyoku Naritai!) A culture that would place limitations on the permissible complexity of musical thought is not one in which we should want to live.
(And beware the treacherous weapon of populism; it’s easy enough when you think you’re on the side of the masses—but the time may come when they show up at your own gates with their torches and pitchforks...)
Some people (well,
komponisto at
least) may get a chuckle out of hearing that when I read
this I had a little twitch in my brain that corrected it
to “drive komponiston up the wall”.
I imagine it might be a negative emotional experience for a theist to see theism described as “the maddest thing you can believe without being considered mad.”. There’s being polite and there’s being constrained in what you are able to discuss for fear that it might be construed as offensive by someone. I think the majority of the discussion here strikes a good balance, certainly better than the average for an Internet forum (admittedly a pretty low bar). Any individual might suffer a negative emotional response to certain specific posts that address topics that are ‘hot button’ issues for them but I would hope that if the general character of the discussions remains high we could all be thick-skinned enough to suffer the occasional slight.
I would suggest that a good rule of thumb for everyone would be to attempt to apply the most generous interpretation to language that could be considered offensive rather than the most negative. If someone says something that could be interpreted as describing you as a pervert and a chronic loser without any clear intention to actually describe you that way, perhaps it would be best to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Note that one doesn’t need to be actively bigoted in order to do harm. The vast majority of those who are slowing down the spread of rational thought aren’t religious fundamentalists out to stop rationality; no, they’re the completely innocent ones who unthinkingly pass on cached thoughts.
It’s no different when it comes to attitudes concerning, say, BDSM. I don’t for a moment think that Goetz was actively bigoted when he wrote that. That doesn’t mean that he shouldn’t have worded it differently. More generally… it’s often dangerous to think “but (he isn’t / I am not) bigoted”, as if only active bigots could say harmful things. Once the harmfulness of what they’re saying is pointed out to them, they automatically go on the defensive—after all, only bigots say bad things, and they’re not a bigot, so the other person must simply be oversensitive.
This probably deserves a top-level post.
Yes. Exactly. This comment says everything I would have said, and probably more eloquently.
What exactly do you mean by ‘saying harmful things’? How are they harmful? If I firmly believe that someone should be allowed to pursue any activity they wish to as long as it doesn’t cause injury to any non-consenting individuals, how is it harmful if I continue to consider that behaviour unusual, or even continue to view it negatively?
I believe there’s are implicit assumptions underlying the claim that speech is ‘harmful’ that you need to make more explicit if you are going to expand this into a top level post. You may find that not everyone shares your assumptions.
Well, the “Indeed, it’s often dangerous...” wasn’t referring to Goetz anymore, but was on a more general level (edited to make that clearer).
But anyway, by ‘saying harmful things’ I refer to saying things which propagate potentially close-minded attitudes which can do real harm to people. I’m by no means saying such speech should be banned—I am quite a strong advocate of freedom of speech, myself—but that doesn’t mean it should be socially accepted, either.
For instance, if I read the comments below correctly, the original version of this post apparently said “socially acceptable behaviors” instead of “socially accepted behaviors”. Saying that something “isn’t socially acceptable” sounds pretty condemning. clarissethorn’s criticism also has some merit. I don’t really think that Goetz’s post was very bad, but it did bring to mind the general phenomenon.
But yes, I will make the related assumptions more explicit if I get around expanding this. It’s getting rather late here now, so I’m too tired to type up a much longer explanation right now.
I think a top level post would be useful. If less wrong turns out to be the sort of community where I have to worry about ‘accepted’ vs. ‘acceptable’ when posting for fear of hurting the feelings of someone on the Internet then it’s not going to be a community I want to be a part of. That would be useful information.
IMO, Less Wrong should be a community that encourages you to worry about precise expression, which includes the distinction between ‘accepted’ and ‘acceptable’.
FWIW, Nick pointed it out in a non-accusatory way, and I appreciate having it pointed out, and will be more careful about that particular distinction in the future.
Let me try and explain why I find the kind of discussion over the precise connotations of speech here frustrating.
It seems that people who strongly believe in the importance of eliminating implicit negative connotations in language are often coming from a position where they implicitly accept the premise that it is ok for society to make laws governing activities that individuals choose to partake in that do not impinge on the rights of third parties.
They see some activity that they wish to be permitted either being restricted or under threat of being restricted and they desire to influence the set of permitted activities to match their preferences. The proposed cure is to police language in order to influence the thoughts and preferences of others in a direction that increases acceptance of the favoured activity.
I see this as a mis-diagnosis of the problem. The thought police would not be necessary if we all agreed to allow people to conduct their lives as they choose without threat of interference. I suspect that at some level many of those seeking to control the use of language do so because they ultimately do want to restrict the choices of others and so must fight the battle to control the set of restricted behaviours rather than fighting to remove all restrictions.
What does any of that have to do with what I said?
To be honest it’s more an elaboration on the ongoing discussion which I was mulling over and posted in reply to your comment because it happened to be the most recent response to one of my posts.
It is an attempt to explain why I don’t think the overall discussion about precise language in this context is fruitful. I’ve clearly passed my previously mentioned tolerance threshold for this sort of thing though so I should probably walk away and think calming thoughts for a while.
You sound very confident that you have the right position about this; I’d be interested to know more about where that confidence springs from.
Opinion about the fact that I wouldn’t want to be part of a community where that kind of self-censorship was necessary? I know that it winds me up/hits my buttons/irritates me enough that discussions become a negative emotional experience. While I have found much of value here there are other ways I can attempt to improve my rationality that have less negative expected emotional utility for me.
Right, but it’s a negative emotional experience for me to open an article that describes me as a sexual pervert something like a chronic loser, don’t you think?
Taking care to be polite to each other is not some foolish ritual of mundanes; it serves a real purpose in facilitating discussion. It isn’t always the right thing, but it’s the right side to err on.
By and large people take notable care over their words here in a variety of ways, and it makes the site a better place.
I’d like one of the many people criticizing how I wrote the second sentence to suggest a better way to write it, that would still point out the contrast between social attitudes towards sexual masochism, and social attitudes towards the other things on the list.
Ciphergoth did this.ciphergoth, there were a lot of other things on the list besides Bruce. I don’t think it’s fair to you pick out the one bad thing from a long list of good things, and then complain about that one.
I took notable care; yet it wasn’t good enough for you.
I’ve said much more inflammatory things to other people that didn’t get jumped on by anybody. I’ve said much harsher things to EY. I’ve repeatedly said things about classical music that drive komponisto up the wall. Should I refrain from criticizing Schoenberg because it upsets him?
These are bad examples. Yes, I should have been more polite in all those cases.I don’t see the difference. I didn’t even say anything bad about masochism. I wrote a post saying that maybe masochism is an essential part of everyone’s ordinary, healthy human nature; and you were still offended by it.
Well, a matter of fact...
There’s a difference between criticism and taking potshots. If you wanted to write a post explaining in detail why you think Schoenberg’s music is flawed, that might be one thing (provided it was on-topic). By contrast, merely stating a negative opinion (repeatedly, as you note) in an authoritative tone that suggests it is akin to a widely-accepted fact (particularly when you have no authority in the matter), after you have already been called on it, is just a form of aggressive behavior that I don’t think should be welcomed.
It might be that Schoenberg is good music to people with specialized musical training. I have said that his music is bad, but I don’t have high confidence that it is “bad” in an absolute, moral realist sense.
I do have high confidence that the relentless pursuit of novelty rather than quality caused most arts to become inaccessible to most people around the turn of the 20th century. And I regard that as bad. The elite forgot that they need us. We, the unwashed, untrained masses, provide the money to build the concert halls and the universities that the elite sit in; and instead of remembering their obligation to us, they take our money and use it to get their special training and then sit in their ivory towers and look down their noses at us.
So we abandoned them; and their art shriveled without us. Everybody defected. Game over.
Physics is so specialized that ordinary people can’t understand it, but they can still use it. Music, on the other hand, once moved beyond the point where we ordinary people can appreciate it, is useless to us.
What makes you so confident that the pursuit of “quality” was being abandoned? The fact that you don’t find it appealing?
Mere novelty could have been accomplished by much cheaper means than those employed by composers in the “Schoenbergian” tradition, whose music tends to be very precisely and delicately constructed. Contrast, for example, Milton Babbitt (whose works are often so intricate that they take me several hearings to “get”) with John Cage (who was capable of “composing” the most trivial case of a piece of music—one with no sound at all). Cage is arguably an example of the extreme case of pure novelty-seeking (though I think people are too hard on him -- 4′33″ is not his only work); but this sort of thing is completely divorced from what the mainstream of “post-tonal” composers were going for.
Where does this attitude come from? There is no conspiracy going on. Nobody is forcing you to listen to Schoenberg, or—still less—preventing you from listening to Mozart. The public funding of advanced music in the U.S. is negligible to nonexistent. I defy you to explain how the existence of a few people (of whose existence you are barely even aware) pursuing this esoteric line of work could possibily result in negative utility for you.
What makes you so sure? What about cosmology, or high-energy physics? String theory? Pure mathematics?
The point here is that you want to have the sort of culture where advanced creative achievement—formidabilty, awesomeness—in all domains is encouraged and rewarded, not suppressed. (Tsyoku Naritai!) A culture that would place limitations on the permissible complexity of musical thought is not one in which we should want to live.
(And beware the treacherous weapon of populism; it’s easy enough when you think you’re on the side of the masses—but the time may come when they show up at your own gates with their torches and pitchforks...)
Some people (well, komponisto at least) may get a chuckle out of hearing that when I read this I had a little twitch in my brain that corrected it to “drive komponiston up the wall”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto#Grammar
I imagine it might be a negative emotional experience for a theist to see theism described as “the maddest thing you can believe without being considered mad.”. There’s being polite and there’s being constrained in what you are able to discuss for fear that it might be construed as offensive by someone. I think the majority of the discussion here strikes a good balance, certainly better than the average for an Internet forum (admittedly a pretty low bar). Any individual might suffer a negative emotional response to certain specific posts that address topics that are ‘hot button’ issues for them but I would hope that if the general character of the discussions remains high we could all be thick-skinned enough to suffer the occasional slight.
I would suggest that a good rule of thumb for everyone would be to attempt to apply the most generous interpretation to language that could be considered offensive rather than the most negative. If someone says something that could be interpreted as describing you as a pervert and a chronic loser without any clear intention to actually describe you that way, perhaps it would be best to give them the benefit of the doubt.
How would you rewrite the second sentence?
Combining the second and third sentences:
“Many associate the term masochism with sexuality, but there are plenty of masochistic, non-sexual behaviors:”