Controversial Asides

[anonymous105]

@anonymous45

Like the genocide tangent: I don’t actually think that christians are being genocided in the west (and we can determine this ‘by inspection’; normal intuition is enough). What was interesting to me was that there might be a technical argument for it under the definition, since that would have implications for when the term is used in other contexts (eg the trans ‘genocide’; which I’d also argue we can dismiss by inspection… did I just do the aside thing? Is it relevant enough to justify in this case?[2]).

Yes, I would say that dismissing the possibility of a trans genocide is another controversial aside. The existence of a trans genocide is pretty straightforwardly controversial. Lots of people think it is happening, and trans people are in significant danger, and are losing rights. While lots of other people think it is all made up and trans people are not being persecuted at all and are instead just mentally ill, and their gender identity should not be recognized as legitimate and they should be banned from receiving gender affirming care (and that calling it “gender affirming care” is an evil lie that nobody should be allowed to say). And then there are lots more people who think trans people are in danger and losing rights but aren’t sure that rises to the level of “genocide” per se.

It’s a hot button issue about which many politicians constantly shout and ring alarm bells. Highly controversial.

However, I actually think this inadvertently reveals another distinction that I did not recognize explicitly or mention in my first post. Because in the context of this post, you dismissing the possibility of a trans genocide is basically irrelevant. It has nothing to do with the topic at all. So I can ignore it if I want to, and that doesn’t really mean anything. I’m not implicitly agreeing to your framing, because it has no bearing on anything we’re discussing.

Irrelevant asides are still a problem, because people are often going to want to argue about them. That is basically expected because they are controversial. Controversial stuff, hot button stuff, gets people fired up. It predictably leads to more engagement, which is not necessarily what you want on an irrelevant tangent.

But I think your controversial asides are even more problematic when they are a bit more relevant to the topic. Often you make them as a sort of minor related point. Like they are a relevant fact that you thought you ought to share.

I think I have both kinds in my post.

Irrelevant aside:

@anonymous45

all romance is self serving, so an action being self serving doesn’t exclude it from being romantic; and pragmaticness feels orthogonal

This was like, barely relevant to the topic of whether or not Lily Allen thought something was romantic, which itself was already a tangent, albeit a more relevant one (you cited her calling it romantic as an argument, so that part was a relevant aside).

I disagree that all romance is self serving, and I think I did argue with this claim. But it was ultimately not important to anything else I was saying. I didn’t dwell on it. I didn’t care that you never replied to that tangential thread.

Relevant aside:

@anonymous45

The Annunciation Catholic Church shooting was a product of lefty ideology, among other things, too.

This one, by contrast, was directly relevant. Whether or not that shooting was a product of lefty ideology is basically the entire point. You brought this up as an example to illustrate your point. So it being a controversial claim presented as fact without argument is a much bigger problem. I basically have to engage with this if I want to continue the discussion, because you’re citing it as a fact for your argument and I don’t think it is a fact.

So this one is a case where you not realizing it was controversial is a bigger problem. You probably should have realized that and provided more argument and context for your position (or, maybe better: picked a less controversial example)

Relevant aside:

@anonymous45

I think there’s another thing that is important too which is otherwise unstated: the left hates the west

I did not reply to this one, but I think it is another “relevant fact” example. It informs your position in a meaningful way. You are helpfully sharing this fact so that people understand why you are assuming a social media content creator hates the west.

But it’s a controversial claim. I would say that “the left” does not hate the west, that is basically a common smear against left leaning people by members of their opposing political tribe. So to continue that discussion the other anon had to make a choice of arguing with this, or just brushing past it to stay focused and running the risk of being seen as implicitly agreeing.

@anonymous45

Anyway one of the reasons I bring that up is because I don’t like people (myself included) arguing for things that they don’t actually believe. It can be okay in a devil’s advocate / exploratory context, but it should be clear that that’s what it is. Also it’s probably better if I do the first round of that privately because often topics that initially appear interesting turn out to be boring or a waste of time.

Interesting.

Depending on what you mean, I might do that constantly on this forum. It is a bit muddied by the fact that I don’t always know for sure what I believe anymore, I suppose.

But in general I argue stuff when I think the other person is wrong, not when I think that the position I am arguing “for” is right. For example, I am not necessarily convinced that there is a trans genocide going on (though I think we are getting closer to one every day right now).

But I think if you put forth arguments for why there definitely isn’t one, I would be inclined to argue against you. Based on our previous related discussions I suspect I would see straightforward mistakes/confusion in your argument, regardless of my own beliefs. I probably did this sort of thing a few times with you during the previous arguments about feminism and LGBT stuff, without disclosing it.

It could be that I can think of criticisms of all related ideological positions and I remain kinda ambivalent about them all. So if you stake out one of those positions, I will argue about it and criticize your position. Even though I do not necessarily agree much more with your opponents in the tribal war.

IDK if you’d consider this devil’s advocate or something else.

@anonymous45

In this case, by synecdoche i mean identifying a property of a subset and applying it to the whole. eg, some leftists hate the west becomes leftism hates the west. Arguably it should work in reverse too, but I think the reverse is less common and mostly used defensively (eg not all X, .

There is an argument in favor of using synecdoche like this sometimes: if a party/coalition AB have two subgroups A and B, and A want to do X, and B want to do Y, and A is indifferent to Y and B indifferent to X, then it’s fair to say AB believe XY is good or similar, esp as shorthand, but it introduces a thinking-liability in that attributing belief in XY to any particular member of AB is impossible, so some lines of reasoning that might normally work will not work here.

Well, if I followed this right, then a claim like the left hates the west is not attributing XY beliefs to AB group, it is specifically attributing Y belief to AB group, which is false. Right?

Also, I am skeptical that you actually do this consistently For example: do you apply this reasoning to all tribes and coalitions? For example, if groups ABC all support leader D, then when leader D says X or Y or Z then it is fair to say ABC agrees with XYZ, right?

I think you run into a significant problem if you did this, given your tribal affiliation. You seem pretty comfortable smearing all left-of-center people with the extreme positions of far left communists. But I think it requires way less convoluted thinking to smear all Republicans and Republican-sympathetic centrists with the public statements of their chosen leader. And that would mean that all right-of-center people believe in… suspension of due process, disregarding the Constitution and the rule of law, executing political opposition, illegal taxation, and a huge list of other authoritarian abuses.

This might seem like a controversial aside of my own, but those are all ideas taken directly from Trump actions, tweets/truths, and public speeches. And sadly, I don’t really think most of them even will be controversial. Many of the relevant actions/tweets were pretty high profile.

In general I think that this line of thinking does not work that well when applied to political tribes, though. People often tolerate a large range of dissent within a political tribe if it helps them get elected and get a few things they care about done. And I think it makes more sense to smear a group for the behavior of the leader that the group supports, vs. the behavior of a niche subgroup that the main group tolerates and occasionally appeases in order to be large/stable enough to remain a viable group.

So I’m not convinced this is a principled position of yours that you apply consistently. This seems more like a justification for you making generalizations about a tribe you dislike.

@anonymous45

Anyway, I’m off topic, hopefully that aside was a bit more interesting at least.

Sure. I didn’t start this topic because I personally hate the asides. If I find something boring I just won’t reply. But did you find it valuable? I argued with it… are you interested in continuing that tangent now? Or is it just going to add to a bunch of stuff you feel kinda compelled to reply to but may not have energy for?

@anonymous45

Maybe I should try connecting things back to foundational reasons too. Like with the abortion stuff, part of it is that I just don’t like it. It’s hard for me to feel supportive outside of conception via rape. Partly that’s because of where I see it going (ultimately post-birth abortions if we set the threshold at personhood). … Am I doing it again?

Yeah, you did it again I think.

I’ll leave this one unanswered since you seem to have rethought it after writing it. I think you left it in to demonstrate the behavior and ask that question, not to get into an abortion argument.