"The Psychology of Progressive Hostility"

[James Clark]

Couldn't find a pic for whataboutism so you just threw up a straw man instead, eh?   

(He's got a point though, considering your whole original post was basically "the left does this, but the right doesn't."  So once one acknowledges that yes, there are some shrill babies on the left, then what?  Assuming that's meant to be a condemnation of some unique trait of lefties, then pointing out that it's a *human* condition, not a leftie one, seems reasonable, no?)

[amolitor]

Right on cue. Accusations of "strawman!" so that we can start arguing about the argument. Yawn. Have we already had "ad hominem!" "no, that's not an ad hominem" "well, here's what wikipedia says!" or was that another thread?

Arguing about the argument is a brilliant rhetorical strategy intended to draw the discussion away from the actual point, so that the original assertion can stand there as unchallenged as possible while people argue over details that have nothing to do with it. By letting the assertion stand with as little actual challenge as possible, you make it appear stronger than it actually is.

The proper thing to do is to ignore the attempts to lead things astray and to knock over the assertion. Repeatedly, if necessary.

Like this, for instance:

The original article, quotes a tweet (what an absurdity THAT habit is)  in  which Michael  Shermer is clearly comparing a radical fringe "far left SJWs" with centrists of all stripes (the phrase "far right" appears nowhere in the tweet) and then willfully misreads it. Articles that quote tweets are, almost invariably, terrible, and I simply assume that they're all wrong and move on the moment I spot the first embedded tweet. You can find a tweet that says literally anything, and if you can't, you can knock up a twitter account and MAKE one in a few minutes. Quoting tweets is the opposite of scholarship.

Also, this insane habit of embedding them rather than just retyping the content inline is bizarre. Are you hoping to lend "weight" to your piece by linking directly to "the source"? That's simply idiotic, and it makes your stupid essay load even more slowly and use screen space even less efficiently than it might have. Ugh.

Matthew Blackwell is not illustrating anything here that resembles scholarship or even cognition. While he may be capable of one, or even both, he has not elected to share either with us today.

[amolitor]

Or This:

The piece quoted originally is manifestly a circular argument, taking this structure:

"I and some other people have spoken to some leftists noted for their closed-mindedness, as well as some other people selected more or less at random. Our conclusion is that leftists are closed minded."

Which is logically identical "I weighed some very heavy rocks, and a few other items around the house, and concluded the rocks are heavier than anything else"

The conclusion is planted in the setup, making it a circular argument. Which is irrelevant anyways, because we need not look far to find closed minded people on either side of the debate. Anyone with any actual experience in the world has no trouble whatsoever proving the conclusion false, and therefore we need not even examine the argument, we know that the argument must be flawed because it produced a conclusion that is trivially proved false.

One cannot help but wonder why anyone would bother to quote such a silly piece here, or anywhere else.

[amolitor]

I will say that, in general, right wing fringees in the USA, while not open minded, are open-skulled. They generally conclude their statements by blowing their own brains out, after all.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... One cannot help but wonder why anyone would bother to quote such a silly piece here, or anywhere else.

In contrast, the progressive hears the conservative and thinks, “I have no idea why you would believe that. You’re probably a racist.”

[amolitor]

Your ability to find rhymes and cadences is noted, DJ Slobodan, I look forward to your upcoming rap album!

[JoeKitchen]

Right on cue. Accusations of "strawman!" so that we can start arguing about the argument. Yawn. Have we already had "ad hominem!" "no, that's not an ad hominem" "well, here's what wikipedia says!" or was that another thread?

Arguing about the argument is a brilliant rhetorical strategy intended to draw the discussion away from the actual point, so that the original assertion can stand there as unchallenged as possible while people argue over details that have nothing to do with it. By letting the assertion stand with as little actual challenge as possible, you make it appear stronger than it actually is.

The proper thing to do is to ignore the attempts to lead things astray and to knock over the assertion. Repeatedly, if necessary.

Like this, for instance:

The original article, quotes a tweet (what an absurdity THAT habit is)  in  which Michael  Shermer is clearly comparing a radical fringe "far left SJWs" with centrists of all stripes (the phrase "far right" appears nowhere in the tweet) and then willfully misreads it. Articles that quote tweets are, almost invariably, terrible, and I simply assume that they're all wrong and move on the moment I spot the first embedded tweet. You can find a tweet that says literally anything, and if you can't, you can knock up a twitter account and MAKE one in a few minutes. Quoting tweets is the opposite of scholarship.

Also, this insane habit of embedding them rather than just retyping the content inline is bizarre. Are you hoping to lend "weight" to your piece by linking directly to "the source"? That's simply idiotic, and it makes your stupid essay load even more slowly and use screen space even less efficiently than it might have. Ugh.

Matthew Blackwell is not illustrating anything here that resembles scholarship or even cognition. While he may be capable of one, or even both, he has not elected to share either with us today.

This makes no sense and is something that a confidence man would portray.  The fact is that straw man and ad hominem arguments, along with plenty of others, are fallacies.  They should be called out so people know how to spot them and ignore them. 

Now my intention had nothing to do with trying to make the original argument stronger.  I stated I did not care.  I also have no idea whether or not what Slobo was pointing to was a straw man since I have yet to really read it. 

But, as a whole, people tend to be pretty easy to fool sometimes, and your desire to have people ignore whether or not an argument is valid only makes that problems worse. 

[JoeKitchen]

Or This:

The piece quoted originally is manifestly a circular argument, taking this structure:

"I and some other people have spoken to some leftists noted for their closed-mindedness, as well as some other people selected more or less at random. Our conclusion is that leftists are closed minded."

Which is logically identical "I weighed some very heavy rocks, and a few other items around the house, and concluded the rocks are heavier than anything else"

The conclusion is planted in the setup, making it a circular argument. Which is irrelevant anyways, because we need not look far to find closed minded people on either side of the debate. Anyone with any actual experience in the world has no trouble whatsoever proving the conclusion false, and therefore we need not even examine the argument, we know that the argument must be flawed because it produced a conclusion that is trivially proved false.

One cannot help but wonder why anyone would bother to quote such a silly piece here, or anywhere else.

So, it is fine for you to point out a fallacy, arguing about the argument, but not others? 

[amolitor]

As a former mathematician I can tell you exactly how these things go.

Someone proposes a theorem. in order to test the theorem, do we first check the proof line by line?

No. We do not. We first see if the conclusion makes sense. Then we try to break the conclusion. You can try to prove
the negation of it, or you can try to find a counter-example. If you can do either of those, then you don't need to check
the argument, you know it's wrong. Checking the argument becomes the original mathematician's problem.

The fact is that the conclusion in the original piece is completely silly. We don't even have to examine the argument,
except for fun (which, if you pay attention, I did, not only is the conclusion silly but the argument itself is absurd
and obviously so).

If you can't knock down the conclusion, they you check the argument. If you find a weak point in the argument, then you
head back to the previous step with new information about what counter-examples and counter-proofs might look like.

The trouble with argument-checking is that you end up in an endless regress of argument-patching and, in the case of political
discussions, meta-arguments about what a strawman is and so on, distracting (deliberately, natch) from the original. It's much
much stronger to show that the conclusion is simply false, because then there's no patching the argument and we don't have to
spend a long boring interval talking about meta-arguments.

[amolitor]

Anyone can point out the fallacies, but we should not be distracted by them, and we ought to focus on
working out whether or not the conclusions are true first. Anyways, Slobodan wasn't even pointing out a fallacy,
he was simply saying "strawman" to divert the conversation away from his original, discredited, post.

[RSL]

LMGTFY

Pieter, I can come up with a list much longer than that one, with sources one actually can believe -- the WSJ for instance -- on the other side of the question. But I'm not going to convince you, and you're not going to convince me. So we're both wasting our time indulging in this absurd discussion.

I'm outta here.

[JoeKitchen]

Anyone can point out the fallacies, but we should not be distracted by them, and we ought to focus on
working out whether or not the conclusions are true first. Anyways, Slobodan wasn't even pointing out a fallacy,
he was simply saying "strawman" to divert the conversation away from his original, discredited, post.

First, considering how easy it was to point what you feel Slobodan did, I can't help but think that you wasted a lot more time in telling us why we should ignore arguing on arguing for the sake of saving time. 

Second, regardless if the conclusion is true, arguments need to be sound.  It's not what you know, it's what you can prove.  A prosecutor would be in a lot of trouble if he could not put together a sound argument regardless if the defendant was guilty. 

(I hate autocorrect!)

[amolitor]

You're missing the point.

If the conclusion is true and you want to be believed, you should have a convincing argument. Sure.

If the conclusion, however, is false, and demonstrably so, we need not even glance at the argument
to know that it is a bad argument.

So, faced with an argument and a conclusion, about which we know nothing, we should first test the conclusion.
If it be false, we are done, except for amusement or curiosity. Unless we MADE the argument, in which case
we probably have a personal interest in addition to curiosity.

[amolitor]

A parable.

Suppose that someone tells us "I have performed extensive experiments, detailed <here>, and determined that adding baking soda to
vinegar invariably produces, immediately and without any gas production, a blue gel."

We can simply add some baking soda to some vinegar and observe that no such thing happens. At this point we know that the experimental
procedures are flawed.

So, we should start by saying: "No, you are wrong, what happens is this:" with evidence if you want to get fancy.

Then, if you like, you can go through the no-doubt several pages of experimental procedures and point out that in fact what it
being added to the vinegar is actually salt, not baking soda, and that the experiment calls the addition of both blue food coloring
and gelatin.

If you start with the second step, then the intrepid would-be-chemist is likely to start in on why the blue food coloring is irrelevant,
and how salt is basically the same thing as baking soda in this context, or whatever. So, start with "your conclusion is wrong",
before you go into debugging the experimental procedure. And, frankly, the latter step is optional.

That's the strong position, anyways. You can go the other way around if you like, but it leads to trouble and more random quoted bits
and pieces.

[JoeKitchen]

You're missing the point.

If the conclusion is true and you want to be believed, you should have a convincing argument. Sure.

If the conclusion, however, is false, and demonstrably so, we need not even glance at the argument
to know that it is a bad argument.

So, faced with an argument and a conclusion, about which we know nothing, we should first test the conclusion.
If it be false, we are done, except for amusement or curiosity. Unless we MADE the argument, in which case
we probably have a personal interest in addition to curiosity.

Yes, but what if an argument is correct, or you feel so?  Then it is important that the argument be sound. 

Farmer's conclusion was something I agreed with, more or less, however his first paragraph was not sound.  It had nothing to do with why the article would be wrong, all it dealt with was the author's personal attributes. 

[amolitor]

Well, sure, if the conclusion is correct then you won't be able to break it. Then you can check the argument.

Slobodan's "strawman" picture was in response to PeterAit's reply to Russ, and in that context PeterAit's reply was
very much not a strawman at all, it was a direct and specific response to something Russ had said. So,  Slobodan
was engaging in rhetorical distraction, simply throwing "strawman" into the mix to create chaos. Which, it is worth
noting, he has succeeded in doing, because to my irritation, we're nor arguing about the argument.

So, to re-iterate, the original cited quillette piece is wrong, and obviously so, see above for a variety of discussion
conclusively demonstrating that.

[pegelli]

Pieter, I can come up with a list much longer than that one, with sources one actually can believe -- the WSJ for instance -- on the other side of the question. But I'm not going to convince you, and you're not going to convince me. So we're both wasting our time indulging in this absurd discussion.

I'm outta here.

Again attacking the source and losing the argument Russ. I can understand you want out but wish you well in your echo chamber.

Google hits for "Right wing violence"= more than 28 million
Google hits for "Left wing violence" = less than 1 million

So are you really sure you can come up with a longer list?

[pegelli]

...conservatives don’t tend to express the same emotional hostility as the Left; a deeper grasp of the world’s complexity has the effect of encouraging intellectual humility.

But a picture tells more than a thousand words, these right-wingers are clearly demonstrating they have fully grasped the above principle 


This will also be my last post here, I think I made my point which is that any side claiming superiority over the other in the way they act (be it "silencing" or "violence") is living in his own echo chamber. In the real world both these extremes are equally bad.

[Bob J]

So what we have is an assertion, based on local observation and experience that progressives (those who would describe themselves as politically on the left) show more hostility than conservatives (those who would describe themselves as right wing).

So far we have a bunch of people saying ‘this matches my experience so it is true’ and a few of us saying that the hostility thing is not tied to political leanings at all and is just as likely to come from the right as the left.

In an effort to step back and look at things from a different perspective, I would ask you to compare the USA to Europe. Politics from far right reactionary to far left radical exist everywhere, however, in general politics in Europe sits to the left of those in the US: Governments in Europe generally regard themselves as centre right or centre left and are often made up of coalitions, but the system in Europe is generally one of big government, relatively high taxes and stuff like benefits and universal healthcare – this puts them firmly in the area described as ‘progressive’ in posts above.

If progressives are inherently more hostile, one would expect to see this reflected in the politics of 21st century Europe. If this were the case, then surely the Swedes should be constantly rioting in the streets (from the Swedes I know, they would do this very politely, in a thoroughly orderly manner and would reconvene the next day to tidy up).

If you don’t find the European example satisfactory, compare the USA to Canada. Canada appears to have rather more progressive politics than the US, but they don’t have an international reputation for hostility for all that.

I would also like to point out that hostility doesn’t work for social change (which is probably why the extremely pragmatic Scandinavian types don’t go in for much of it, despite being very progressive). The most effective movements for change are non violent – I point to Ghandi’s efforts for Indian independence and on Martin Luther King’s civil rights work.

In truth, people get hostile where they think there is an injustice (that is a reason for the hostility, not an excuse for it). People get passionate over injustice, be it a belief that people do not think that black lives matter, or that someone is trying to take away their constitutional rights. A hostile minority can be very visible, this does not mean they are representative of the majority of people with either progressive or conservative views.

If we find more people getting passionate about social injustice, maybe there is more social injustice than there should be; if there is an injustice, maybe something should be done to correct it.

[RSL]

Again attacking the source and losing the argument Russ. I can understand you want out but wish you well in your echo chamber.

Google hits for "Right wing violence"= more than 28 million
Google hits for "Left wing violence" = less than 1 million

So are you really sure you can come up with a longer list?

Pieter, you overlooked one simple phrase: "with sources one actually can believe." "Google hits" isn't much of a measuring stick. Damn right I'm attacking the sources. That's the guts of the problem.