I'm open to constructive criticism, but I'm not seeing much here. Would you care to try again? I think I said some very specific things.
That you come in arguing is likely part of the problem.
There is no such thing as an idea that is above criticism.
The problem here, the one highlighted by the article, is that the radicals being complained about disagree with both of these concepts - things which are the cornerstone of an open dialogue, which is the cornerstone of a healthy society.
With that in mind, how can you simultaneously hold the dissonant beliefs that rationality is important, and that one of its primary tenets should be ignored?
This is all. Either you understand arguments stand for themselves, or you are a relativist that thinks arguments vary in validity depending on whose mouth they're coming from.
If I find out someone is a relativist I never discuss anything with them ever again. Those people are sophists without knowing - they just think "if I talk a lot I must be having a debate!". They have much reading in front of them, which they usually don't get to ever do. Those are the people that had rather die than think. I ignore them but I make sure they know it's because they are a relativist. If we all ostracized relativists we would be able to better tell the extremists from those that have something to say.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/163697/approve-marriage-blacks-wh...
Note that the content of the idea hasn't changed, but the evaluation has. Look in particular at the second graph, where black people came to the now-correct answer long before white people. Black people on average had it right 25 years before white people.
So it would seem to me that on topics of race, identity of speaker can be helpful in evaluating views.
As for the example you've given - a Gallup poll - there is no right or wrong answer to a poll. Nobody ever "got it right". If people are simply expressing an opinion, there isn't any right or wrong answer. Opinions are what they are, and they change over time.
Most of what is discussed falls into the latter category, opinion. That includes things very relevant to people's lives, like who enjoys equal protection under the law. Approaching a conversation about a topic of social justice as if it's as simple, clear, and verifiable as Newtonian mechanics is the wrong approach. XKCD lampooned that here:
I'd add that even science isn't as clear as you make it out to be. Newtonian mechanics weren't really true; they were just an approximation adequate to the time. As Box writes, "all models are wrong, but some are useful." It took us a few hundred years to understand their limits. Out that struggle came quantum mechanics and relativity. Of that transition, Max Planck wrote, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
So as much as we'd like to pretend that science proceeds differently, it is also a social process. Kuhn's, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" is the standard place to start reading about that, but there's now a large body of literature on the anthropology of science.
Going back to your opinion poll example, there is no opinion about mixed marriages which is more "true" than any other. Even if scientific facts are approximative, they are at least rooted in physical reality; whereas opinions and norms simply relate to preferences and conventions. So I continue to maintain the truth of any assertion is independent of the identity of whoever formulates it, or more generally of the psychological and social context within which it arises. To deny this would be to deny that such a thing as truth exists. In which case any position, your own included, becomes indefensible.
E.g., when a programmer and a manager both make statements about the technical merit of a particular approach, I will in practice be more likely to trust the programmer. Or if a real scientist and a bible-thumping young-earth creationist make assertions about the history of life on earth, I'm more likely to trust the scientist. This is a necessary heuristic for getting much done in the real world; we just don't each have time for evaluating all claims from first principles.
But again, social policy is mainly determined by things that, in your construction, are opinion, not fact. So it would seem by your own model the sort of scientific give and take we are both fond of is mainly irrelevant to how mere opinions, and therefore our societies, get shaped with regard to social justice for groups who are currently disfavored by majority opinion.
I would certainly agree that matters of social policy fall firmly into the realm of what I would call opinion (doxa, to use Plato's terminology). But then our language should reflect that. Let's not talk about true and false, or even right and wrong. We can set up some kind of goal (for example, the utilitarian goal of the greatest happiness for the greatest number), and define good or bad, just or unjust, in relation to that predefined goal. But there is no epistemological basis here for truth.
I have no objection to people using opinion as a basis for public policy - it could hardly go otherwise in a democracy - but then, let's recognize opinions for what they are and avoid turning certain currents of opinion into moral crusading that shuts down debate. If we are in a democracy, in the realm of pure opinion, then all opinions deserve a hearing, however much they clash with what seems obvious to us and to the group we identify with. To deny one group the right to articulate their opinion undermines the foundations of democracy.
> all opinions deserve a hearing
If you believe that, then I'm sure you're out working for making sure the voiceless and downtrodden get their opinions heard. In addition to your time here arguing to make sure socially dominant groups get their already-familiar opinions heard yet more.
I don't believe it, though. Here are some people expressing opinions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Eckford#/media/File:L...
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WBC_20051202_sacco-to...
I don't think racist or homophobic opinions need to be heard more. That is not to suggest taking away their right to speak or publish. But their rights do not override the rights of other people to speak in response, or their right to freely assemble.
To think otherwise is to confuse the standards of a particular kind of academic discourse with a much broader set of dialog. Major social change doesn't happen only through polite disagreement. That's especially true when the social changes are about the relative power of groups, and the way powerful groups maintain dominance through silencing people they don't like.
America isn't free because we petitioned the king and he said, "Gosh, your points are reasonable." We fought. The slaves aren't free because the American South said, "Oh, now we see that these folks are equal." We fought. Women's suffrage, the civil rights movement, the gay rights movement: all of it involved a lot of shouting and major social unrest.
Whatever you intend by it, applying your argument to any of these would have aided the continuance of oppression. And that's exactly how many people apply your argument today. So you can keep making it, but it's not going to convince me; as much as I like civil dialogue, I like civil rights more.
This: as much as I like civil dialogue, I like civil rights more.
If that's the way you actually think, to the letter, if this wasn't just a turn of phrase or perhaps not worded correctly on accident, you've very well scared the hell out of me.
You've described your mindset as it's people on your side in one corner, and "civil dialogue" in the other, with the latter given short shrift because, as you well know, you are In the Right, and all of those people who want civil dialogue must therefore necessarily be In The Wrong because they are necessarily against $good_thing.
This is fundamentally irrational, and the fact that you treat that as a badge of honor is hardly admirable.
I'm archiving this thread.. perhaps someone else will be able to respond to this line of reasoning, because it's fundamentally alien to me.
Given that, the rest of your comments don't seem to apply.
Also, the "I am seizing the final word" thing is kinda lame.
If you like civil dialog more than civil rights, then you're basically saying people should be oppressed so you don't have to deal with unpleasantness.
On the other hand, you could be saying that the two are never in conflict. But that's an empirical claim that under every possible circumstance civil dialog is the absolute best way to achieve civil rights. That is bold claim for which you've presented no evidence. I've given plenty of historical examples that suggest otherwise.
Is there some other construction you could possibly mean?
Society does not work that way.
And you again dodge the hard questions: How much oppression are you willing to tolerate so that dominant groups never have to feel uncomfortable? On the other hand, if you believe that civil rights are always achievable through polite dialog, where are you examples? Where is the demonstration that the US's revolutionary war was just a big stupid mistake?
I believe you don't have them because you don't actually have a functioning theory of social change or a big interest in ending oppression. Whether you like it or not, the only real effect of your behavior is to maintain oppressive social structures. You may say that you want something else, but the first rule of working therapists is that when words and behavior conflict, always believe the behavior. Why shouldn't I believe your behavior here?
You seem to have fallen into your own trap. You've assumed that I belong to a particular social group (wrongly, as it happens, but that's irrelevant), and consequently dismissed my argumentation out of hand, without effectively countering it.
And regarding your historical arguments, they rely on a somewhat naïve view of the process of history, as driven by exceptional individuals such as civil rights campaigners, rather than by large-scale currents. It would be just as easy to argue that such movements as enfranchisement and feminism succeeded when they did (after failing so many times in the past) because the social and ideological climate was ripe for change. Which would mean that social action movements are a lot less relevant than you would like to believe.
You're in the domain of irrationality. You "know" you're right, and I should just shut up because I'm affiliated to the "wrong" social group, while your own group can shout down and bully into submission everybody else. You're taking democracy for granted, and undermining the very system that is giving you the freedom to express yourself. Do you think that the slavers of the past thought that they were wrong? No; they "knew" they were right, and it was "obvious" that the white man was superior. Beware of the obvious; common sense is not your friend.
I'm talking about your behavior. You could be an AI or an uplifted dog for all I know. But an argument that demands that change only happen through meek, polite statements is in effect arguing for the status quo.
I also disagree that my view of historical change requires exceptional actors. I think it happens mainly on the individual-to-individual level. But I don't think it can happen politely.
That's a caricature. Change should happen through dialogue between the various parties involved, and that dialogue should be based on rational argument, until some kind of consensus or majority decision can be reached. Nothing revolutionary here; I'm describing how democracies work. I didn't say anything about the tone of the dialogue itself.
What you seem to be arguing for is that certain parties be shut out of the dialogue altogether, because their opinions deviate too far from those of your group; and also that your opinion does not necessarily require rational underpinnings, so long as you feel certain enough of the righteousness of your cause.
> What you seem to be arguing for is that certain parties be shut out of the dialogue altogether, because their opinions deviate too far from those of your group
Mostly incorrect. It's not mainly about opinion for me; it's about behavior and intent. For example, the Westboro Baptist Church and the Aryan Brotherhood aren't writing carefully reasoned position papers. I'm ok with other people using their right of free speech to shout down their garbage. The problem is not their deviance from mainstream opinion, but the dangerousness of their propaganda and their drive to intimidate vulnerable groups. But if I discovered that a young cousin had come across some of their propaganda and wanted to talk it through, I'd be perfectly happy to do so, because it would be an actual discussion.
The problem you're not acknowledging is that speech has other purposes than carefully reasoned dialog. To the extent that people come open-minded to a topic and truly seek the truth, I think that's great. But that's a pretty small percentage of actual dialog.
I also think this objection is a little rich in that one of the major ways social injustice happens is by dominant groups suppressing minority voices. If you're all that concerned about people not being heard, it's not the voices of dominant groups that need such dogged protection from you.
> your opinion does not necessarily require rational underpinnings, so long as you feel certain enough of the righteousness of your cause.
Also mostly incorrect. I'd agree a bit in that our moral sense is prerational (see, e.g., deWaal's work on moral sense in animals), and values can't be established through pure reason. But I think it's important to have a reasoned understanding of those values and how to make them happen in the world. That said, I also don't think it's necessary to have a complete understanding before taking action; when someone is bleeding, the paramedics don't wait for the detectives to finish their work.
What I am saying (over and over) is that rational discussion is not enough to change unjust social structures. It would be nice, sure, but we are made out of meat, and we have to deal with our consequent lack of conformance to ideals.
I think you should also note the false objectivity in the "you seem" phrase. Unless you've shown what I wrote to a few thousand people and carefully measured responses, then I think you mean, "I interpret you as saying". That's not a minor nit here; a lot of the way social injustice happens is false conflation of personal or dominant-group views with objective truths.
You don't have a comprehensive theory of the nature and uses of discourse. You have a cobbled-together collection of experiences and values and notions, just like the rest of us.
Unfortunately, because of your personal experience, you know some things more than others. That's just the nature of the beast. Identity informs understanding; understanding shapes identity. Because I spend every day dealing with computers I have a better understanding of computers than people who don't. Because I don't spend every day dealing with racism, I have a poorer understanding of racism than people who do.
> There is no such thing as an idea that is above criticism.
Sure. And in the privacy of your own home, you can criticize any idea you want. But when you are talking to other people, you have no right to be heard. Freedom of speech is important, but it does not trump freedom of association.
That doesn't imply the non-existence of objective reality. A fact is a fact regardless of the identity of the speaker.
> Because I don't spend every day dealing with racism, I have a poorer understanding of racism than people who do.
It is possible for a PhD to learn something from an undergrad. Moreover, it isn't strictly less understanding anyway, it's a different perspective. Which is all the more reason why people should try to hear each other.
> But when you are talking to other people, you have no right to be heard. Freedom of speech is important, but it does not trump freedom of association.
Not listening to someone (i.e. ignoring them) is not the same thing as attacking them because they said something you don't want to hear.
Sure. And facts are extremely hard things to find. With all the money we spend on science, we have a relatively small number of them. What individuals have is mainly opinions about facts.
That's why discussions seeking truth are such hard and subtle work. It's also why facts are frequently irrelevant to people's behaviors in this realm. See, for example, this graph:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/149390/record-high-approve-black-...
It isn't a graph of people coming to reasoned understanding on a topic. It's a graph of people with old opinions dying off.
> It is possible for a PhD to learn something from an undergrad. Moreover, it isn't strictly less understanding anyway, it's a different perspective. Which is all the more reason why people should try to hear each other.
I strongly believe it is less understanding. As a member of various dominant groups, my understanding of things like race and gender was very coarse. That's because I didn't have to pay any attention to those things; they almost always worked in my favor. When that's not the case, people are forced to pay more attention.
If you want to argue that generally attention does not lead to better understanding, you're really arguing that discussion is futile, because a major function of discussion is to turn people's attention to a topic.
> Not listening to someone (i.e. ignoring them) is not the same thing as attacking them because they said something you don't want to hear.
I agree with that, but don't see its relevance to the discussion. Could you say more?
I don't think talking about "opinions" is interesting. That word lumps so many things together that it doesn't mean anything useful. People have facts, logic, assumptions and priorities. The last two aren't objective. You can prove or disprove an assumption but it's commonly expensive to do it, and until somebody does, it remains something that reasonable people can disagree about.
But the real trouble is priorities. Should we imprison an innocent man or let ten guilty people go free? The answer to that question has objective consequences but they aren't uniformly distributed, so those more likely to be victims of criminals who go unpunished and those more likely to be innocent people falsely convicted will rationally prioritize different things without either of them being wrong in any objective sense. But that's politics. People have to come to terms with each other without attacking each other or we end up in a civil war.
> I strongly believe it is less understanding. As a member of various dominant groups, my understanding of things like race and gender was very coarse. That's because I didn't have to pay any attention to those things; they almost always worked in my favor. When that's not the case, people are forced to pay more attention.
But now you're talking about generalities when we're dealing with individuals. Using the color of someone's skin to make stereotypical assumptions about them is the thing we're supposed to be doing away with. You can't tell by looking at someone how much thought they've put into something.
And even if the stereotype is often correct, perspective is still a different axis than quantity. It is useful to know when and to what degree proposals will create a backlash and resentment that may do more harm than good, especially when there are less adversarial paths to the same result.
None of which addresses the original point in the article, which is that many of the statistics driving headlines (women are paid 77 cents on the dollar, one in six women are sexually assaulted) are misleading or false, and people have been unjustifiably attacked for pointing that out.
> I agree with that, but don't see its relevance to the discussion. Could you say more?
The context of the discussion is that people are attacking speakers for saying true things inconvenient to the attackers' causes, even to the point of trying (and sometimes succeeding) to destroy their careers and reputations. Your counterargument seems to be that people have no obligation to listen to the speaker; but the speakers' complaint is not that they're being ignored, it's that they're being unjustifiably attacked.
Are you talking about physical attacks or mere vigorous disagreement? If the former, I agree, but that seems off topic. If the latter, then could you please name some major societal changes that happened without disagreement so vigorous that people felt attacked?
I also think that for topics of social justice, your standard is one-sided. Historically oppressed groups are attacked, and not just verbally. Look at America's long history of lynching, for example. Or gay bashing, both physical and verbal. A standard that requires people pursuing social justice to be forever meek but doesn't as vigorously require that of those sustaining injustice is in effect a standard that helps maintain injustice.
> But now you're talking about generalities when we're dealing with individuals.
The article is about general patterns, so perhaps our best compromise is that we are talking about general patterns of individuals. If you want to talk about an individual case, we could certainly do that. But that would be a change of topic.
> Your counterargument seems
I was addressing the discussion here. If it appears to relate to one of the many points in that article, I apologize; that was not my intention.
There is a distinction to be drawn between vigorous disagreement and intentionally causing harm to the other party. Trying to get someone fired or similar is not a "physical" attack but it is certainly an attack.
> I also think that for topics of social justice, your standard is one-sided. Historically oppressed groups are attacked, and not just verbally. Look at America's long history of lynching, for example. Or gay bashing, both physical and verbal. A standard that requires people pursuing social justice to be forever meek but doesn't as vigorously require that of those sustaining injustice is in effect a standard that helps maintain injustice.
It isn't a double standard. Neither side should be engaged in any such thing and anyone who does is wrong regardless of which side they're on.
> The article is about general patterns, so perhaps our best compromise is that we are talking about general patterns of individuals. If you want to talk about an individual case, we could certainly do that. But that would be a change of topic.
It's not about a specific individual case, it's about the concept of applying generalizations to individuals. "There is more variation within a race than between races."
My point isn't about the standard. It's about selective enforcement. That is, the people I see telling people interested in social justice that they're just too darned strident don't obviously demonstrate an equal desire to police the people causing the injustice.
> It's not about a specific individual case, it's about the concept of applying generalizations to individuals.
I think that can be done poorly, but I think it's a generally useful first-pass heuristic. Especially so the way I'm applying it here, which is to say that my fellow white dudes should spend more time listening to voices they would not otherwise hear before holding for on topics which they are much more likely to be ignorant. Those who have already done the listening are not harmed by that.
Then you're trying to fix the end that isn't broken. The problem is not that people are objecting to bad behavior in the one case, it's that they're not objecting in the other.
> I think that can be done poorly, but I think it's a generally useful first-pass heuristic.
So is not interviewing black job applicants because they are more likely to have received a poor education. But we ought not to do that because the heuristic is often wrong and the individuals have no ability to control what box you put them in when it is.
>So is not interviewing black job applicants because they are more likely to have received a poor education. But we ought not to do that because the heuristic is often wrong and the individuals have no ability to control what box you put them in when it is.
No, we ought not to do that because it reinforces a major societal oppression of black people. If you've ever run a hiring process, you'll know you use all sorts of possibly-unfair heuristics. The point of hiring isn't to be maximally fair to every individual; it's to get good people while not contributing to negative externalities like, say, America's centuries-long history of being shitty to various minority groups.
E.g., all people have opinions on race. But as a white person I try to recognize that my opinions have been shaped by a system that unfairly favors me, and part of the way it does that by limiting the amount I hear about the experience of non-white people with respect to race. (By the way, I don't think this involves much conscious malice; it's just one of the bugs you get when primates have to build a civilization from scratch.) So to the extent that I want to have informed opinions on race, I have a lot of work to do.
I'd add that even accounting for the learning value of listening, I think there's another value to it. Black people are already generally aware of what white people think about racial issues; they have to be. So I try to separate when I want to be heard from when I think I have something to say that is actually helpful to the people I'm talking with. In the former case, I try to favor silence. There are other ways I can feel heard, and helping other people feel fully heard is a great way to create some willingness for them to listen when I actually do have something possibly helpful to say.
I see. Thanks for the explanation.
If you don't mind I have a follow-up question -- actually two related ones. The approach you are suggesting is essentially about ethics and epistemology at an individual level. What I wonder is, how, if at all, should it extrapolate to government action? I.e., to what degree should government decisions about aiding people who are at a disadvantage be informed by listening to them versus dispassionate observation and statistics?
I ask because "listening" is inherently hard to "scale" to a national level in a large nation. In a Western liberal democracy the usual answer on how to do this seems to be "voting." In practice besides voting the supposed public voice of any disadvantaged group is also shaped by self-appointed spokesmen for the disadvantaged, typically journalists and academics. Personally, I have little faith in either doing more good than harm.
My second question is, how should it be determined who is considered advantaged and who is considered disadvantaged?
I think that both people and governments should work from both stories and statistics. Statistics help us understand one way. As narrative creatures, stories help us differently. In particular, I think empathy is much easier to find with stories than raw data, and empathy is vital for functioning societies.
As to noticing privilege, I think we have good ways to measure some sorts of privilege. E.g.:
http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873
http://www.nber.org/papers/w5903
http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474
But I think it's incumbent on all of us to understand what power we have and use it wisely. For me, both stats and stories have been useful. The stats are widely available, but here are some collections of stories:
http://projectunbreakable.tumblr.com/
And I also really benefited from Project Implicit, which helped me understand how my own subconscious biases were contributing to various societal problems:
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
For me, privilege checklists have been helpful in seeing how I got lucky, what advantages I happen to have:
http://danilocampos.com/2013/02/unpacking-my-knapsack-the-pr...
http://amptoons.com/blog/files/mcintosh.html
I also really benefited from seeing these issues as the tail end of long historical imbalance. E.g.:
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case...
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Does-He-That-Controlling/dp/042519...
I definitely agree with your point that spokespeople and media gatekeepers are often part of the problem. That's what makes me hopeful about things like Twitter. There I can make a decision to seek out individual voices and add them to the mix of what I see every day.
Is that helpful?
One thing that is still unclear to me is how the government should work from stories. If you mean a write-your-congressperson kind of approach I am very sympathetic to that. However, nearly all other means of aggregating stories I think are prone to distortion by the middleman is involved (not necessarily deliberate).
I'm not sure I understand your question about government. To my mind, a government isn't really a coherent actor. The individuals within it should have a good understanding of the problems they're working on, and for me that should include a personal, empathetic understanding of the individuals affected. Which I think is mostly what happens. I think a lot of our problems happen where government actors (officials and staff alike) are not representative with respect to the problem. E.g., Ferguson was such a mess because there was a strong race/class differential between the government and the governed. That not only created problems, but kept them from getting solved and prevented an effective response when things boiled over.
So if I understand the question correctly, I think that everybody should collect stories and that the aggregation should mainly be internal and via trust relationships. E.g., a congressperson can't meet everybody, and they'll have a particular set of biases depending on how they grew up. But their can cultivate a diverse selection of staff and advisors, and they can encourage those people to seek out broad contact with society.
That said, I think statistics-driven checks on things can help point out holes in that aggregation of stories. I recently heard about a city that was working on their long-term housing plan. Their main means for citizen contact was through public meetings about the plan. But a little looking at stats showed that the people at the public meetings were all homeowners, while the city was half renters. I'm sure city officials were disproportionately homeowners as well, and also more likely to know homeowners.
I'm also excited to see to what extent the Internet lets us avoid the various filtering biases. Even today a St. Louis politician could have manually used Twitter to get a semi-random sampling of stories as a check on what they were learning officially. I have a lot of hope for how technology shifts can help us transform citizen engagement in government.
Since you mention Ferguson, the theory I currently hold is that tensions between the police and the policed are, in practice, inevitable if the two differ in race, ethnicity, language or religion. Through their sheer visibility these differences have more weight than any difference that otherwise exists between the government and those it governs. The only plausible way to resolve this tension that I see is by ensuring the police force of a community is recruited from that community and represents its ethnic and cultural makeup.
I agree that the truth isn't influenced by race or gender. But one's perception of truth is influenced by one's experiences, and those experiences currently have heavy race and gender components. So if getting at the truth is the true goal, then one must be enormously careful to discover and work against one's own biases.
If you're looking for a way to get started on that, try Harvard's Project Implicit: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/index.jsp
I used to think that I wasn't biased. But instead I just didn't want to be biased. There's a big difference, and seeing that helped me see how wrong I was to think that my experiences didn't influence my opinions.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/149390/record-high-approve-black-...
Is that a graph of people being convinced by rational argument? No, it's mainly people with old ideas dying off. It would be great if the world worked like you say, but it doesn't. Even science doesn't. Max Planck wrote, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."