Hacker News Reader

Comment by yummyfajitas | Hacker News Reader

Well, have you been raped...

I know this is a popular anti-intellectual position, but it's simply wrong. It's possible to reason about the world even without having experienced a specific phenomenon.

I've never experienced life at the nanoscale, but that doesn't mean I can't reason about semiconductor physics. I've never experienced outer space, but I can still reason about it.

The fact that some people have a negative emotional reaction to certain ideas is unfortunate, but ultimately the onus is on those people to avoid centers of intellectual discussion like HN.

View on HN

Being able to reason about matter is another thing entirely to being able to reason about what it is like to have a particular (very negative) personal experience.

We're not talking about an abstract negative emotional reaction to an idea we're talking about a concrete emotional reaction to an experience.

Why do you feel like you have to show people the door because they don't agree with your particular concept around 'intellectual discussion'?

Enimodas is discussing people's reaction to it, in entirely objective and measurable terms. His specific, empirically checkable claim: some people respond differently than topoligel.

The emotional reaction I was referring to is to enimodas ideas. Specifically, if some people are unable to handle certain ideas (such as the ones enimodas expressed), it's not the responsibility of the world to suppress those ideas.

Yes, he was. But you're not. You're labeling those that challenge him to verify he has that particular experience as either anti-intellectual and/or simply not welcome here.

Yes. The people challenging whether he has had a specific experience are attempting to distinguish a privileged group of speakers/thinkers, and and wish to deny the right of anyone not part of this privileged group to use their intellect on this topic.

I don't know how else to categorize that as anti-intellectual.

See also, "only priests/prophets/etc can reason about theology" or "only muslims suffering the shame of being related to a rape victim can reason about honor killings". Same idea - if you aren't part of the privileged group, your intellectual reasoning is somehow suspect.

No, that's not the same. You can reason about it all day long but you can't simply pretend that not having the experience puts you on an equal footing with someone who has that experience. So it helps to know whether or not the person speaking has the experience or not. Just like talking to an astronaut about experiencing space flight is probably going to give you a better SNR than talking to someone who has been stuck in a mine all their lives long.

As for priests and prophets, they're all talking to themselves and on that front everybody is equal.

The honor killings bit is related to the ethics of killing which is something we all have way too much experience with and touches on the 'you have the right to extend your arm as far as my face' bit so that also doesn't apply.

A person with experience may have some specific piece of knowledge, but no one claimed enimodas was incorrect for that reason. Nor did enimodas claim his knowledge was coming from a particular experience that he lacked.

As for priests and prophets, they're all talking to themselves and on that front everybody is equal...The honor killings bit is related to the ethics of killing...

Wait - are you using reason without having the specific experience or being a member of the privileged group? How does that work?

> I've never experienced life at the nanoscale, but that doesn't mean I can't reason about semiconductor physics. I've never experienced outer space, but I can still reason about it.

None of those things are subjective experiences.

There's a famous Bush Sr debate moment when someone asks him how the economy has affected him personally.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBrW2Pz9Iiw

It was considered a turning point in the debate, from what I understand.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com