I don’t see what good option you’re offering Zack, given the discursive environment.
If everyone is unreflectively endorsing harmful nonsense A and referencing a canonical case for A, it makes sense to FIRST argue against the canonical case. But if people keep behaving as though they hadn’t read the argument and endorsing A anyway, the options are:
1 Assume good faith, treat this as evidence of ignorance, and try to point them to the correction.
2 Infer bad faith and try to recruit others to invalidate this vice-signaling.
3 Give up and go away.
Seems like Zack’s doing 1, and I’ve done a mixture. I understand that 3 is the rational option in most contexts these days, but this is the RATIONALITY forum, what exactly is Zack supposed to do here? What’s the point of any of this if Zack’s behavior is unwelcome?
While there really are hobbyhorses in the sense you describe, they are mild inconveniences (trivial in a written medium) like a bore talking about train schedules on the flimsiest pretext. The use you’re making of the idea here just seems like a projection. There’s some shared sense of entitlement to speak without being accountable to certain sorts of criticisms, and the perceived injury of accountability is being projected onto those trying to hold members of this class accountable.
The use you’re making of the idea here just seems like a projection. There’s some shared sense of entitlement to speak without being accountable to certain sorts of criticisms, and the perceived injury of accountability is being projected onto those trying to hold members of this class accountable.
Can you clarify about this “entitlement to speak without being accountable” that I supposedly have?
Are you tracking that I’ve repeatedly said there’s nothing wrong per se with making nitpicks, tangential comments, criticisms, etc.?
You banned Wei for articulating what to all appearances was a good-faith objection, and wrote a blog post advertising this as though you expected people to side with you.
You reported the impression that you had the subjective sense it ought to have been easy to find an example of Zack behaving badly, but had some difficulty finding an example you found satisfactory. My impression is that this is a pretty common response to Zack’s criticism: there’s no specific complaint on Gricean or similar grounds (it’s not actually irrelevant, untrue, or unimportant), but there’s a sense that one ought to have standing to nonspecifically complain about him because one expects others to share a sense that his criticisms are unwelcome, and to side with the complainer.
It seems like because Scott’s politically central in the local social cluster, people feel entitled to approvingly cite his blog post on categories no matter how clearly someone politically marginal explains the problems with it, and for this to be considered a free, default, noncontentious action, like referring to the clear daytime sky as blue, or 2+2=4. But taken literally this behavior is making an important false claim, so objecting to it is always justified on Gricean grounds.
For people who feel entitled to accountability from other speakers, and obliged to account for their own claims, the obvious remedy to these annoyances is for people to stop approvingly citing bad arguments. The sense that instead Zack ought to stop complaining seem like it reflects a (presumptively shared) sense of entitlement not to be bothered when you’re being normal, regardless of the literal implications of what you say.
This seems inconsistent with your explicit statement that criticisms and even nitpicks are “okay.” I was trying to explain the behavior I observed, not the different preferences described.
You banned Wei for articulating what to all appearances was a good-faith objection
No, I banned him for the pattern I described in this post, which is fabricating a disagreement and ignoring clarification about that false disagreement in order to talk about his thing.
You reported the impression that you had the subjective sense it ought to have been easy to find an example of Zack behaving badly, but had some difficulty finding an example you found satisfactory. My impression is that this is a pretty common response to Zack’s criticism: there’s no specific complaint on Gricean or similar grounds (it’s not actually irrelevant, untrue, or unimportant), but there’s a sense that one ought to have standing to nonspecifically complain about him because one expects others to share a sense that his criticisms are unwelcome, and to side with the complainer.
...But I did find an example fairly easily, and described it, it just wasn’t the first couple top-voted comments.
I don’t see what good option you’re offering Zack, given the discursive environment.
If everyone is unreflectively endorsing harmful nonsense A and referencing a canonical case for A, it makes sense to FIRST argue against the canonical case. But if people keep behaving as though they hadn’t read the argument and endorsing A anyway, the options are:
1 Assume good faith, treat this as evidence of ignorance, and try to point them to the correction.
2 Infer bad faith and try to recruit others to invalidate this vice-signaling.
3 Give up and go away.
Seems like Zack’s doing 1, and I’ve done a mixture. I understand that 3 is the rational option in most contexts these days, but this is the RATIONALITY forum, what exactly is Zack supposed to do here? What’s the point of any of this if Zack’s behavior is unwelcome?
While there really are hobbyhorses in the sense you describe, they are mild inconveniences (trivial in a written medium) like a bore talking about train schedules on the flimsiest pretext. The use you’re making of the idea here just seems like a projection. There’s some shared sense of entitlement to speak without being accountable to certain sorts of criticisms, and the perceived injury of accountability is being projected onto those trying to hold members of this class accountable.
Can you clarify about this “entitlement to speak without being accountable” that I supposedly have? Are you tracking that I’ve repeatedly said there’s nothing wrong per se with making nitpicks, tangential comments, criticisms, etc.?
You banned Wei for articulating what to all appearances was a good-faith objection, and wrote a blog post advertising this as though you expected people to side with you.
You reported the impression that you had the subjective sense it ought to have been easy to find an example of Zack behaving badly, but had some difficulty finding an example you found satisfactory. My impression is that this is a pretty common response to Zack’s criticism: there’s no specific complaint on Gricean or similar grounds (it’s not actually irrelevant, untrue, or unimportant), but there’s a sense that one ought to have standing to nonspecifically complain about him because one expects others to share a sense that his criticisms are unwelcome, and to side with the complainer.
It seems like because Scott’s politically central in the local social cluster, people feel entitled to approvingly cite his blog post on categories no matter how clearly someone politically marginal explains the problems with it, and for this to be considered a free, default, noncontentious action, like referring to the clear daytime sky as blue, or 2+2=4. But taken literally this behavior is making an important false claim, so objecting to it is always justified on Gricean grounds.
For people who feel entitled to accountability from other speakers, and obliged to account for their own claims, the obvious remedy to these annoyances is for people to stop approvingly citing bad arguments. The sense that instead Zack ought to stop complaining seem like it reflects a (presumptively shared) sense of entitlement not to be bothered when you’re being normal, regardless of the literal implications of what you say.
This seems inconsistent with your explicit statement that criticisms and even nitpicks are “okay.” I was trying to explain the behavior I observed, not the different preferences described.
No, I banned him for the pattern I described in this post, which is fabricating a disagreement and ignoring clarification about that false disagreement in order to talk about his thing.
...But I did find an example fairly easily, and described it, it just wasn’t the first couple top-voted comments.