24
votes
On making a fresh start
Am I the only one who isn’t noticing much of a difference between reddit and tildes at the moment? The random alt right talking points popping up in the most innocuous of places is skeeving me the fuck out.
To a certain extent, yes, I do notice many people from the far left dismissing critical thinking as "alt right", or calling everyone who disagrees acting in bad faith, and just refusing to engage in civil discussion altogether. That said, I've recently had a decent discussion, so I know that not everyone wants to make this yet another echo chamber.
I don't want to get bogged down in equivalence arguments but let's notice for a moment:
I'm sympathetic to the idea of not wanting ideas dismissed through ad hom accusations of certain political affiliations. But where's the dividing line between dismissing somebody on shaky ground and just calling a spade a spade?
What even is the "far left" in this instance?
I think I agree with you that the assumption that any accusation of being "alt right" must be coming from someone who is "far left", and vice versa, is something we should endeavor to stamp out. it's not conducive to discussion.
I am noticing this too. It's cheap strawman rhetoric that's difficult to defend against.
But what can you do? This is an anonymous internet forum, after all.
It hurts to be dismissed as "alt right" or bad faith because I bring up a contentious opinion that may not even be my own. I'm worried that as the site grows the maturity level in being able to address uncomfortable opinions in a productive way may hurt the actual discourse that we want to have turning it into an echo chamber.
I find it really discouraging in general that people can't, or won't, engage in thought experiments or look at anything that doesn't completely align with their views.
It makes it very difficult to talk about "big" stuff, because any point you bring up is immediately and unequivocally taken as being your undying opinion, and gets you dismissed as a troll or worse.
You raise an interesting difference here. Is it that they can't engage, because they simply don't know how, or that they won't, because they don't want the possibility to come to the conclusion that they might be wrong? And yes, I cut of that quote on purpose.
There's a difference between the two. In the former, it could be that people have been raised or schooled in such a way that they simply don't understand that it is okay to sometimes disagree. They may have had very controlling parents making them unable to actually engage in discussion, or went to a certain school that may have "beaten" that out of them.
Not wanting to enter in a discussion out of fear of being wrong is also a possibility. Many people, certainly on the Internet, are of the opinion that they are smart. People who they disagree with, are not very smart. Entering in a discussion could lead to the result that you realize that you are wrong, and thus less smart than the other person, who was "not very smart", thus you are now incredibly not very smart, so to say. Even worse is if it happens in a public forum, because now everyone can see that you were wrong, and thus incredibly not very smart. This will hurt someone's ego dramatically if they were of the opinion that they were highly educated people.
I personally consider myself relatively intelligent, but I always keep in mind that I am still human, and therefore often wrong. But I also have noted instances of myself thinking I was absolutely correct, only to be proven wrong, and feeling pretty bad about it. Nowadays I've learned that being proven wrong is actually learning something new, and make it a positive experience. I'm not sure if this is something many people mentally do (or have a need to do).
Indeed it does, and I think this is the biggest reason that groups of people are so (politically) divided nowadays.
Wow you bring up some interesting points that while I considered I never really thought too much about. I think a fear of finding out they were actually wrong in certain circumstances leads to people attacking the person rather than the argument. Finding a way to discredit them and make themselves feel better rather than tackle the argument that requires logic, understanding, and an effective attempt at conveying ideas, often through text, which is overwhelming especially when it seems that you are wrong.
It's important for us to keep in mind that ad hominem attacks aren't actually discussion, but the exact opposite. We shouldn't accept calling others "alt right" or "racist" just because they don't agree.
I was once heavily downvoted on Reddit just because I tried to explain a contentious opinion when some people weren't understanding it. I even explicitly said I didn't agree with it - but I still got downvoted.
As I understand it, that's actually what spawned this whole thread haha. A contentious opinion (several, actually!) taken the wrong way and being reference out of context. It's unfortunate how prevelent stuff like this is.
Yeah, I saw that thread earlier.
And now we're in a thread because "OMG! You people are alt-right racists for even mentioning X!"
It's a bit of an overreaction. :)
Haha, that pretty much sums it up. But I'm glad we had this conversation and am honored my choice of example spawned this whole can of worms. Hopefully we all come out better because of it, though.
Sadly, nobody can do anything about it. A discussion requires multiple parties to be willing to engage. If one side chooses to just call names and attack your person, there's nothing positive to come out of it. This happens at all levels of political discourse, of course. I mostly despise it here because I was under the impression Tildes would be a community based around the idea of civil discussion, yet this is not the average discussion (with regards to politics/justice) that happens here (in my experience).
My hope is that as the site ages it will hold true to its principles and develop some system of moderation to better enforce them. I don't know what that is or what it will entail, but I just wanted somewhere where we could have a legitimate good faith conversation about some uncomfortable and comfortable things and all come out better because of it.
This is exactly why I was interested in Tildes in the first place. I really enjoy a good discussion, especially when it's about "uncomfortable" things. Those conversations really make you think your answer through, and I believe these discussions make you grow as a person. (I also like playing devil's advocate for a similar reason, it requires you to think like the "opposition", forcing you to understand their side.)
I still have good expectations for Tildes, which is why I continue here and try to keep discussing topics that I think should be discussed for society to progress. Time will tell if it is worth it.
I agree, that's what got me so interested in Tildes. And playing devils advocate is the hardest exercise in perspective switching I have had to do sometimes, but it is extremely worth it to really drill down into an issue and really get it.
I hope Tildes ends up delivering what it promises.
I’m not sure if you’re agreeing that black people commit more crime? I’m also not sure if you’re assuming kenyafeelme = Black = far left? If I’m wrong I’ll eat crow and listen to your views.
I am not talking about that at all here. Your weak attempt at trying to make me look like I'm trying to derail a thread, or that I'm trying to make this a racial thing is pathetic and undermines civil discussion. In my humble opinion, you are the problem that makes Reddit unbearable. You even admit right there that you're just looking for an excuse to make it a race thing, so you can dismiss the views of others. You do not belong in a community ment for civil discussion.
Going to have to agree here that things like this infuriate me so much. I am all for being challenged and engaged in a debate respectfully and coming out better because I learned something. But attacks and attempting to derail threads or change meanings from one thing to another in order to dismiss them just kills discussion by making anything the person doesn't like wrong to talk to.
I don't believe ad hominem attacks should be welcome here.
Replying to say that "you are the problem that makes Reddit unbearable" in all bold isn't civil discussion either.
Taking a single part of a comment out of context so you can call someone uncivil isn't helping anyone. If you read the parts around the bold text (which is emboldened to show emphasis), you'll see that I provide context as to why I make that statement.
Now, you can disagree with my point that their behaviour is the reason Reddit is unbearable, but it would do well in a discussion if you could bring some arguments as to why I am wrong here.
By the method of your sign of disapproval I can only get the implication that you would've just downvoted me without saying anything if this were Reddit, since you are not bringing anything worthwhile to the discussion. You're just saying that I'm supposedly wrong, and without argumentation, you hope that I will just believe you and change my ways.
If this is incorrect, feel free to reply again and extend your viewpoint so that we can make progression here. What you've done right now is regressive, and hurtful to discussion. I would like to hear your take on how we can stop OPs behaviour in favour of more civil discussion.
Sure, I just wrote a top-level comment here: https://tildes.net/~tildes/20w/on_making_a_fresh_start#comment-llw
Very well.
I think there's a certain culture that really dislikes debate, because they have no arguments to defend their points. If you are truly correct, and you have actually done research in to the topic and you can inform others why you're correct, there's nothing to "fear". There's nothing more to a discussion, it's presenting your point and arguments as to why you believe it, and then the other party does the same.
It's not some special form of highly educated conversation where you must have at least a couple of PhDs before you're allowed to speak, a discussion is literally as simple as I've just said. It doesn't exclude anyone. Well, perhaps people who are unable to read, write, listen and speak. But I don't think these people have much to add in a discussion regardless (they can't respond, after all).
To me, having back-and-forth arguments are the whole purpose of the discussion. Just saying "I think X because of Y and Z", and then never expanding on them, rethinking your stance or anything like that, makes a discussion a worthless blog post. You're not going in to learn, or discover new aspects to a problem. These arguments are massively productive.
I find it odd that you say that a discussion is a tool for learning, but don't want to go into the scenario where people can actually learn something meaningful from one another.
They can either opt-out of the discussion altogether, or they can opt-out once the other party just keeps repeating itself. Entering a discussion does not make you bound to some holy law that forces you to respond to every comment.
I'd also like to point out that your comment doesn't seem to talk about the sort of thing OP is doing, nor how to stop exactly that.
I guess I'm confused; what is the OP doing that needs to be stopped?
Read the thread leading up to this comment, please.
I originally commented with the intention to show OP that his behaviour is just as toxic to discussion as the behaviour they supposedly don't want to see. The only difference between OP and their opposition is which side they're on.
Next, OP replies to me, trying to trick me in to saying that black people are criminals, and that I am making the assumption that they must be black due to their username, and that I'd call them far left because of that. I did not do any such thing. The entire concept of race was not mentioned at all in my comment. Their toxic behaviour is literally the problem that makes Reddit unbearable (for civil discussion).
Next, you come in, telling me that I'm being uncivil for saying their behaviour is toxic, and doing it in a bold font. Even though I go into some detail as to why I come to the conclusion that their behaviour is a danger to civil discussion, you still say that just that line alone is uncivil. You take it out of context, and try to give a spin as to what I ment with it.
You, however, pose no arguments as to why I would be wrong on my conclusion. Then you refer me to another comment of yours, saying you already made your arguments there. But there are no arguments as to the context this thread was in. If anything, you're arguing against discussion, in a community based around the idea of civil discussion. It does fall in-line with you not bringing any arguments as to why I was supposedly wrong, I guess.
EDIT: FWIW, by "OP" I refer to the "original poster", @KenyaFeelMe, not just the original post that started this thread, all the way up the top.
I appreciate the summary, thanks.
I disagree that the OP's behavior is toxic to discussion. On the contrary, it seems to have started a very active comment thread! The OP is making an observation that the discussion on this site is falling into a pattern they've seen on other sites. This pattern of discussion is often used by the alt-right as a weapon against people they don't like rather than a tool for learning. The particular example OP brought up in a sub-thread was crime statistics by race—this is a classic alt-right talking point used to "win" the argument that black people are intrinsically more criminal.
I don't think this reply:
was a trick; it's made in an inquiring tone, not an accusatory one. It ends with a friendly invitation to be proven wrong. A reply like, "No, sorry if it sounded like I believe that! Here are my views on the subject: …" would have been totally fine and in line with the ideal of civil discussion.
Instead, you reply to call the OP "pathetic". This is an ad-hominem attack. You continue to attack them by saying "you" (personally) are the problem. You could have said "this kind of argument is the problem" instead.
I agree that civil discussion is important, but I think the OP is expressing a real feeling, and I don't think we should brush it under the rug just because we disagree with the way it's being said.
And OP is wrong there. They seem to be actively hunting to find problems so they can be a victim. They are clearly against the alt-right, which is fine by itself, but they seem to be against it for the wrong reasons (the fact that they dare to hold different viewpoints).
Looking at statistics by race is not an alt-right tactic by a long shot. Dividing people based on statistics on race is done by many people, on various parts of the political spectrum. It shows clearly that OP is just as biased as the things they claim to be so much against. OP doesn't want to learn, they just want to be right and be surrounded by people saying they're right.
No, they're quite clearly saying that they are not interested in my view, based on some assumption pulled out of nowhere. If they wanted to clear that up, it'd be up to them, but I see no indication yet that they are interested in viewpoints other than their own yet.
I've looked up the meaning of "eating crow", and it shows that it implies great humiliation. They are so certain of their point that being proven wrong is considered a great humiliation. They didn't say that being proven wrong would teach them anything, just that it would humiliate them. That's no "inquiring tone".
Yes, because I believe they are the problem. I even gave examples as to why I think that. These still haven't been adressed, by the way.
A feeling they have an acquired taste for, the feeling of being a victim. If they were interested in tackling the actual problem, which is not "some one said something I dislike, so I call them alt-right, can we do something about them now?", but something far bigger. Trying to bring it as "their side is wrong, let's do something about it", they could've posed the actual issue they were facing, which they conveniently left out.
OP is not interested in civil discussion, making them, as a person, part of the problem. They divide people, try to bully others into their viewpoints. And that I do not like, and I will call out this behaviour when I see it.
Thank you for so accurately putting into words the problem I have with both sides of the political spectrum. Personally, I feel people like this are no better than children and should not be allowed to continue to post content, but we must uphold free speech. It always annoys me when people like this write off opinions different to theirs as completely and utterly wrong and hurtful. It's sad to see discussion grind to a halt when one party's feelings get hurt or ideas get challenged
Then you haven't been on the receiving end of the OP's behaviour. I have. Twice. And both times it made me end the discussion. I've learned my lesson now. There won't be a third time.
(Mind you, they've also written me off as a waste of time, so the feeling is mutual!)
Hypnotoad was also extremely effective at starting active comment threads. Activity is not a measure of a person's toxicity.
The appearance of friendliness is not a measure of a person's toxicity.
e.g., imagine if I responded to your post, the one I'm responding to right now, with:
if that is the kind of argument that you want to have on this site, I respectfully disagree.
Dude, c'mon, that reply is clearly inflammatory. He drew conclusions that nobody else came to (The race card? Fucking Really?) from nothing more than a disagreement related to dismissing differing opinions as radically different and intentionally hurtful. The dude got legitimate, concerned feedback about the state of debate and discussion on the site and then lashed out at the poster.
@KenyaFeelMe, nothing they said implied what you just accused them of. C'mon now, don't take everything so personally or attempt to make things personal on your end either please. You started this discussion so the least you can do is actually read what people are saying, try to see thing from their perspective and give them the benefit of the doubt. tyil does have a point that many people are being incredibly trigger happy with the "alt-right" accusations on the site IMO.
It seems you've interpreted his/her example in the other thread as a personal attack, which I don't believe to be the case.
Regardless, I don't think your provocateering has anything to do with the discussion at hand here.
It's late and I'm on my phone, so I won't write much, but I just want to say: I haven't been around tonight and just checked in quickly before going to bed, and when I saw this thread I was pretty worried it was going to be a mess. I've seen a lot of threads like this, and if this was reddit I probably would have needed to get out of bed, go to my computer, remove half the thread and ban about 10 people.
But here, look! Sure, there's a little bit of heated disagreement here and there, but overall it's very civil even though some touchy things got discussed. There's still a huge amount of stuff to do, but it's great to see and a really encouraging start. So... thanks! I hope we can keep this up.
That’s a fair point. I certainly haven’t received hate mail or hateful responses in here. I’m used to much more, uhhhh, colorful language during these types of discussions. I’m taking a wait and see approach for the time being. As long as there’s no backsliding in behavior I can live with it for now.
Also, you don't get downvoted to oblivion. You just don't get upvoted as much as everyone else.
The mods are asleep! Let's send invites to /r/gifs !
Not OP, but the closest thing I’ve seen to alt-right talking points is the worship of free speech, as if the slightest infringement of it sets us on the road to tyranny. It seems to be an ideal in tech communities for reasons I don’t understand, maybe to help aid disruption, and of course the darker corners of the alt-right love it as a way to argue that even the most toxic speech shouldn’t be limited.
I'm from "the tech community", and a big proponent of free speech. I'll try to put my thoughts into words to see if it helps you understand where the ideal comes from.
In the tech community, there's a concept known as "free software". This is not about cost, but about freedom of the user to do what they want with it. Free software guarantees that the user cannot be hurt in the long term by the people producing the software. When software is non-free, it has limitations, and is controlled by the producer. It takes away control from the user, which will almost always end up harming them in the long term.
A similar idea easily extends to free speech. It doesn't mean your speech comes without a cost, it comes with a freedom to use it as you see fit. Putting limitations on this takes away control from people, as they can no longer say what they want to say without being required to restrain themselves. By limiting free speech by saying hate speech should be banned, for instance, you're taking away control from people, and giving it to others. Giving a small group such tremendous powers is almost always abused in the long term.
As such, I don't agree with giving up even the smallest bit of free speech, because it takes away control from me, and other people like me, and gives it to a small group of people I don't (and can't) trust.
So then, I have to ask... why are you here? This absolutely isn't a site for unrestricted free speech, and isn't even hosted or run from a country with unrestricted speech.
I am here for discussion, and it seems that's going alright for the most part. You don't need absolute free speech in order to advocate for it, or to discuss most things. If I need to discuss something that does require speech that you do not allow here, I'll take it to another medium.
I disagree with some of your policies, yes. I certainly disagree with Canada's idea on what constitutes "hate speech", and I think they're pretty silly by adopting those. But that's no reason to not discuss anything with people on a given platform. That would be even more silly, and no better than what the groups do that I despise, or what OP is advocating for: blanket bans for people with differing opinions. Civil discourse is often the best way to learn new things or to promote your ideas, so that's what I'm trying to do.
But by being here and participating (especially so early on), you're effectively supporting and helping contribute to a site being built on foundations you claim to strongly oppose. If Tildes is successful in producing higher-quality, more civil discussions, it will be used as evidence that restricting speech is a good approach. Your involvement here is basically signing a petition in support of reducing freedom of speech on the internet.
I disagree, but you do bring an interesting point of view.
I personally think that one should engage with the parties you oppose in order to understand the full picture. If I were to deny this site altogether, because of the fact you oppose something that I think is important, I would consider myself no better than the people here advocating that certain ideas are simply wrong and shouldn't be discussed.
I'm clearly not advocating in favour of reducing free speech on this platform, so I wouldn't say I'm signing a petition in support of it. I'd rather say I even support those who advocate against free speech to be free to say free speech should not exist.
If Tildes is succesful with it's approach, that would show that some platforms can be succesful without free speech (which we already know is true, anyway), it would not deny the idea of free speech as a whole, in my opinion.
I'm sure you can find a justification for it, but that's basically what everyone does. Actually taking a stand would be inconvenient or less enjoyable, so people just continue doing what they want to while convincing themselves, "well, I'm not really supporting it," or "it's just my job," or whatever lets them avoid feeling responsibility.
In the end, the result is the same. An ideal you care about is damaged or lost because everyone's actions—not just their words—showed that it really wasn't that important to them.
What you want in "taking a stand" is for me to deny my own values, and become just like the people I despise. It's not inconvenient, it's the exact thing I oppose.
Did I read the above discussion correctly that Deimos was trying to say that if you believe in free speech, then you should leave and not engage with people here - and if you don't leave then you're a coward?
That's how I would read it, yes. But I also think he was trying to play Devil's advocate to make me consider a new viewpoint. I'm not sure if that part is also correct, though. We'd have to ask @Deimos to be sure of that.
fair point - i should have directed the question to him to begin with.
Do I understand correctly that you believe if someone thinks freedom of speech is a good thing, then it is cowardly or dishonorable to use a platform which has some restrictions on speech, no matter their intentions for doing so?
Very well put. I agree with pretty much everything you said, but I think that as part of this "freedom" a community should be free to regulate itself as it sees fit. I also realize that this is kind of contradictory, but that's how I feel about it.
With access to so many different communities and so many people, we're in no way obligated to be part of any one specific community and I'm sure there's a community out there that will fit a person's needs/wants.
I, too, wish Tildes wouldn't limit free speech at all while keeping the mature userbase and discussions (the possibility of that being questionable), but if this is how the devs want their product to be, it's very much in their right to make it so.
Is that worth it though? You can see how far hate speech is going, just by looking at a newspaper, because people treat freedom of speech as an absolute. Is that really so much better than the long-term abuses you worry about?
Power creep through dealing with short term problems while ignoring long term effects is easy. If people are not careful about what is banned, banning speech can quickly get to the point where there is an acceptable view and speaking against it is illegal.
Yes.
Let's talk about this "hate speech". What constitutes "hate speech" differs greatly per person. There's people that would consider accidentally saying "miss" to someone who's clearly physically female as hate speech, just because "she felt more of a boy today". It's impossible to deal reasonably with many people who advocate for banning hate speech.
Let's say we agree antifa is a "hate group", spreading hate speech. So we ban hate speech. Now they have no public platform to spread their ideas. What do you think will happen? Will they stop existing, will they grow stronger, stay the same? Generally, when aggressive minorities get oppressed, they get more violent. They will use the ban as evidence to show people they're being oppressed. They have less to lose, since they're already being oppressed far enough to not even allow them to speak.
Additionally, you can't hold them accountable for their ideology, since you can't reasonably discover their ideology anymore. They go underground, becoming harder to keep track off. And with today's technology, it's not like you're limiting their means of communication or abilities to form groups. It's incredibly easy to keep in contact via encrypted platforms and share your ideas there.
So by banning "hate speech", you're not effectivily limiting the group you disagree with, you're only showing them that they were right (at least, that's how they will perceive it). You're pushing them in to a dark corner where they're harder to keep track of by law enforcement, making them a bigger threat in the physical public space. All it does is make some people feel good about themselves in the short term.
There's many groups I strongly disagree with, such as the KKK, Antifa or similar violent groups that spread hate. But I would not want to ban their right to speak about their ideas. All that would do is enforce their ideology, and make me just as bad as they are.
I think we're talking past each other here a bit. It sounds like you're saying that restrictions on speech rights definitionally transfer authority to other, usually unaccountable people who will inevitably misuse them. I appreciate that risk. I'm saying real-world considerations suggest we should have some tolerance for that risk.
Let's look at the example you used. Are there people out there who think calling a self-identified woman "miss" on a day when she feels more like a boy is hate speech? I've never heard anything like that, but sure, let's assume some people do. Is that common? I doubt it. More to the point, is it as common as the toxic sludge you see from the racists/fascists/Russian trolls who we know for a fact are polluting our society? Of course not.
To me, a simple risk analysis shows that we face bigger risks by declining to exercise any judgment about appropriate speech. It's like how the United States is awash in guns because of a speculative fear that individual gun owners will someday be the last bulwark against a tyrannical government. Is that a nonzero possibility? Sure. But when you weigh that against the actual people who are actually dying in our frequent mass shootings, it's clear that we have a greater cost from gun violence than we have a benefit from individual gun ownership. Responsible leaders have to do that kind of analysis and go where the results lead them.
Using Antifa in the same breath is exactly what I'm talking about. Here's the conservative National Review talking about how the right-wing labels of Antifa are overblown: https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/09/antifa-terrorism-designation-not-accurate/ In contrast, at least several recent mass shootings have been perpetrated by right-wing zealots. Unite the Right killed someone last year! The KKK has been killing people for over a century! But because private individuals aren't willing to step up enough and say that they're not going to tolerate hate speech, you hear "the KKK is a violent group" and "Antifa is a violent group" and you think they're similar.
That leads into my last, and maybe most important point. This is a private site. It is not possible for a private site to restrict someone's right to free speech. Those who traffic in hate speech can and should go elsewhere. If Tildes wants to have standards, and my understanding is that's the whole idea, then you can't have standards without saying that some forms of speech aren't welcome here. Keeping hate speech off Tildes is the right thing to do.
I don't.
You're changing the narrative of my example to make it look like there's can't be an issue.
A horrible way to compare it. Words don't kill people. Nobody dies from hurt feelings.
On your article, it says this fairly early on
Which roughly translates to "as someone who likes Antifa, I declare them to not be evil". I never said they were a terrorist organisation in the first place, anyway. I called them a "hate group". I'd also like to state that just because there are other bad actors, we shouldn't just allow some of the "lesser evils" to roam free. Clearly you see as Antifa being "not that bad", but you'd still agree they're not the friendliest bunch either, with violent protests when someone wants to speak about an opinion they don't agree with.
It feels like you purposely went out of your way to misrepresent the example I made and act like I said things I didn't. I explicitly called them a hate group, because that's what they are. A group that spreads hate. I don't care whether it's left-wing or right-wing hate, hate is hate.
I am aware. That doesn't mean I shouldn't advocate for free speech. I'd personally state that you're free to say anything so long as that you can bring forward argumentation as to why you would say it, but I don't make the rules. I'm also pretty sure hate speech is not "trafficked".
Possibly. But trying to twist someone's word so you can make a point is not a great way to try to convince people.
I check tildes multiple times every single day but I still have to see what OP is talking about. To be honest I'm not seeing topics about politics (or threads) basically since the first couple we have had...
What are you talking about specifically? I think people here have been making an effort to avoid echo chamber syndrome tbh
Didn’t you say yesterday that black people statistically commit more crime?
You mean the thread where hate speech was being discussed, and someone asked if saying, “Black people are arrested and convicted of more crimes per capita” should count as hate speech?
It was a reasonable discussion about what is and isn’t hate speech in a thread about social media sites being forced to censor it. Not everything you dislike is at-right.
No, I think ContemplativePanda was arguing sincerely that crime statistics were somehow precise and objective measures of racial difference, instead of loose expressions of the effects of socioeconomic difference.
Nope. I actually specified how things can be taken out of context because the statistics I was talking about were true DUE to socioeconomic differences. But, since you didn't read the topic either what I was actually discussing was what types of topics on Tildes should be discussed. That got brought up as a byproduct and the other user started trying to change it to that instead of what types of topics we should discuss on Tildes.
No no, I read the thread. I'm talking about this string where you said that statistics are unambiguous and cannot be racist. As you might imagine, I think that's crap -- but that doesn't mean we have to hash that out here.
I do think I can see how you started in on that conversation, but I dunno about that either. I think your approach to the topic of managing discourse has too much to do with a handful of difficult and loaded opinions.
How are statistics racist? Do numbers have opinions and use those opinions to make racist remarks? No, of course not. People are racist. Statistics are merely facts. Facts are just truths. It's what you say around them is when it becomes racism or not.
My whole point in that topic was that we have to allow diffucult and opposing opinions to truly engage in meaningful discourse. But of course, that's just my opinion - which is what this site is about.
Statistics are collected and presented by people, and embody a particular way of looking at the world. Doing statistics properly is hard even for trained scientists. They're not "merely facts".
I realize this, and I should have specified validated and reliable statistics. The one in question was from a .gov site. And, while they aren't 100% true to life the ones that ARE reliable are quite reliable and paint a fairly accurate picture. This requires random sampling, multiple instances, a high confidence level, proper data collection, etc.
I'm sorry I didn't specify accurate and reliable statistics from good and trustworthy sources the whole time. But, take it as a given when discussing any statistics - they should all of course be reliable.
I completely agree with you, facts and statistics cannot be racist, by definition. But this is not the place to continue that discussion.
Well, facts and statistics cannot be racist in and of themselves, sure. However intentionally cherry picking data, ignoring the context/nuances behind the statistics, conflating correlation with causation and using any other manipulative methods to shelter abhorrent/incorrect beliefs and opinions behind "facts", can most definitely be racist. Intent and context matter.
E.g. African Americans generally scoring lower on IQ tests than European Americans is a "fact". However if someone isolates that "fact" stripping it of context and attempts to use it to justify their belief that African Americans are less intelligent than European Americans or genetically inferior, that is most definitely 100% racist.
Why? Because the additional context of that "fact" which has been stripped out, namely that the gap between the two groups has significantly narrowed in the last 60 years, largely due to the income gaps between the two groups also narrowing, clearly shows racist intent behind stating said "fact" in that particular way. Because the truth is that the gaps seen in IQ scores is a largely a socioeconomic one, not a "genetics" or skin colour one.
p.s. I wish username mentions worked so @ContemplativePanda could see this reply too, since I have seen him use the "statistics/facts can't be racist" line too.
Facts and statistics still can't be racist, but making racist assertions with them can. Is that where we both can find common ground? I am of course going off the assumptions that the facts and assertions are verifiable and reputable. While the facts are hard and cold, devoid of racism, they can be presented in many different lights to tell different stories. But, I don't believe I was making any real claims with my assertions (e.g - all black people are criminals) I wasn't even really trying to engage in a real debate about that.
But, what you say is true, the stories that the facts tell need to be checked to make sure they are being used correctly. Such as trying to imply a cause and effect relationship from correlations, which can't be done. I do appreciate the IQ example shedding light on this by the way. Very definite assertions especially regarding large groups, while sometimes true, is really getting close to racist territory even if it is "backed by facts" and is why we always have to do our due diligence in fact checking and ensuring the picture painted with the data is an accurate one.
Yeah, common ground achieved. What you say sounds about right to me. ;)
And I appreciate the initial disagreement you so eloquently presented, by the way. Thank's for bringing up what I had failed to consider in the beginning, too focused on my own argument haha. It's always good to step back and see things from that perspective.
While I agree here, not all people/jurisdictions do. For example, the United Kingdom disregards intention and context when it suits them, as seen in the trial against Meechan.
You just said context and intent matter. The context we have here is that they score lower on IQ tests, (which stand for intelligence quotient tests), so they are actually (on average) less intelligent. The cause of this is not known, but you can safely and objectively say that this is true. You can call it "100% racist" all you want, but it's not, and calling everything racist isn't helping anyone.
This is arguably racist. We don't really know without more information. It could very well be a genetic part at play here. Don't forget that all humans evolved from apes, which put us through a change in genetics, and that we as humanity are generally more intelligent than those apes. To imply that we now no longer have any genetic differences that could result in differences in IQ would be to deny evolution.
This is adding context that has nothing to do with the original point, which is looking at the current day and age. You can try to spin it into another context for the sake of calling it racist, but that makes you look more silly than the one posing the original statement.
The statistics say nothing on the cause of the difference, which is why I acknowledge that blaming genetics is arguably racist. The statistics tell only about the current state of affairs. You can do more research as to the cause of why they have lower scores, but the numbers on their own tell nothing about that.
You started this by saying "intent and context matter", but you hold yourself to neither of these points. You change the context, and try to find intent which wasn't there to begin with. You also try to make assumptions that have no base in the statistics given.
Stop right there. The cause of the differences is absolutely known. Socioeconomic Status (SES) is the determining factor in outcomes for most intelligence metrics (including IQ). This has been studied extensively:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4641149/
https://prc.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s41155-016-0016-x
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0030320
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/sjop.12324
And there you go, missing the entire point. Now you've added context which wasn't there in the first place. You're extending the scope when nobody else was doing it, just so you can call people a racist.
I'd like to quote part of myself, and then I'll stop replying to you, as you clearly have no intent to read and comprehend my arguments.
(In case it's still not clear, what you're citing there is the "more research" part that I explicitly talked about.)
Missing your point?
^ Your words exactly. I was proving otherwise on both your "points". The cause is known and while genetics plays a small part, SES has been determined to be the more significant factor.
You were extending the scope, or "context" to include more research and additional information. I was talking explicitly about the statistical example you gave me. Nothing more. These statistics weren't racist, and the conclusion you could take just from the statistics weren't racist either. There was one arguably racist point, which I said could only be uncovered if you'd change the context by adding more sources, which is exactly what you did.
You're going out of your way to miss my point, yes.
I never said the statistics themselves were racist. In fact I explicitly stated they couldn't be. However the application and use of those statistics can be under certain condition which I used an example to showcase. Read my first comment again.
Yes, they certainly can be if someone is intentionally ignoring the "extended scope" and "context" surrounding them. Which is my entire point and which you clearly keep missing. And I also don't appreciate you misrepresenting what I have said. Again... read my first comment again.
Fair enough. When applied with your additional context, this could be construed as racist. The original issue you posed, however, with no more information, is not. And certainly your claim that is 100% racist is incorrect, as shown in the researches you posted as well. SES is the largest factor, but not the only one.
My point was that when just taking the statistics, there were no racist statements, which you seem to agree to, as the numbers don't lie. My point was also that it could only be construed as racist when given a certain context which included more research, which also still seems to hold.
I don't think we're in disagreement.
Yeah, TBH, I don't think we actually do disagree (other than on the cause not being known). So... why are we arguing? :P
To learn eachothers viewpoints and to extend our own? Or maybe to kill time. Maybe we'll never know, but I don't dislike having a discussion about it and get a better understanding of your viewpoint. You have been a great pleasure to talk with!
LOL, I don't dislike debate, discussion or even arguing vehemently about something (if it remains civil) either. Even when they go off the rails and so far off topic that we lose track of what we were originally even discussing/disagreeing about in the first place they can still be enjoyable... so we're good. ;)
Of course, I apologize. Responding in my inbox often leads to me not realizing the topic of the thread as I am focused on the reply.
We can have meaningful discourse that allows dissent and opposition without entertaining stubborn ignorance.
Nope, statistics are constructed measures that attempt to capture certain facts. They are not the same thing as the facts themselves. The way the measure is constructed is almost certainly limited and invariably imperfect; the way the measure represents the underlying facts is usually even more limited and imperfect.
Crime statistics, for example, are constructed through specific collection methods, definitions and with the use of certain underlying statistical models (for example, the "per capita" statistic relies on demographic modeling).
They try to offer a perspective on the phenomenon of crime, but this perspective is limited. The publishers of crime statistics themselves will tell you it's limited.
So, when someone comes into a debate on race relations, drops racial crime statistics and then withdraws behind "buuut these are just facts!", they're doing a dishonest operation (and they know it). They're presenting a slice of reality that they know leaves the impression that they want to leave (ie minorities are worse people), and then refusing to engage with the very many criticisms of their presentation by raising up a wall of stubborn "you're just refusing to accept facts".
And, given how absolutely prevalent this behavior is among internet alt-righters, it certainly does give rise to the suspicion that the person in question is not acting in good faith.
Ah but the problem with attributing alt right to me is that I was not actually trying to engage in a racial debate nor make any assertions with my facts. I also am basing my claim you quoted on statistics from reputable sources who conducted their studies multiple times, with a high confidence interval, double blind if necessary, random sampling, etc. making the most accurate data possible. While it is not exact truths, it is enough to be representative of the population and thus be accurate to be compared to fact.
I do agree though that painting pictures with statistics and facts can be racist. If I had said, for example, all black people were criminals. Well even with statistics showing that a lot of them are, I am still spreading a generalization about some of them to all of them. That's exactly what racism is. Now, if I say "White people commit crimes" that is a fact. Same if I said it about black people, Asian people, etc.
It's all about how the facts are used to fuel certain assertions, and the story that they paint. I appreciate everyone's diligence in making sure I am using accurate statistics and painting accurate pictures. That's something we should all strive to do better. However, ad hominem attacks labeling me as "alt right" or "racist" wont really achieve the same effect unfortunately.
I didn't do that though. I explained the mechanism by which insistence that "statistics can be racist" makes people suspicious.
For crime stats? not really. I'm not really sure how double-blind studies would enter into crime statistics collection. These are usually compiled from internal documents redacted by law enforcement agencies, with a pretty wide set of issues in terms of definitions, collection and reporting methods etc.; it's actually a pretty fascinating and complicated subject.
Nope. That's the facet I think you're missing: even when the statistic is accurate (ie it correctly represents the measure it seeks to represent), that doesn't at all imply that the measure in question represents the population you're studying.
For a science example: a friend of mine is a biologist studying the reproductive cycles of two competing species of river weed. She had a very large set of accurately collected data about prevalence of each species, water chemical composition etc etc, and yet she couldn't make heads or tails of it. The data was all accurate, but it didn't explain the observed behavior. Why? because the actual difference was caused by differing sunlight exposure, which her dataset didn't consider.
Looking at just the crime stats to discuss ethnic patterns in crime is similarly flawed. We know socioeconomic status is an immense influence on criminal behavior, for an easy example of a relevant factor that is not captured by crime stats.
It shows that very few of them are, unless you mean that statistics show that a lot of white people and a lot of hispanic people etc are also criminals, in which case I'm not really sure how the qualifier "a lot" even serves to diversify a meaningful quantity.
"And, given how absolutely prevalent this behavior is among internet alt-righters, it certainly does give rise to the suspicion that the person in question is not acting in good faith."
That does sort of imply that my behavior is in line with alt-righters, and that I am not acting in good faith. So, you might not be saying that "Hey, this guy is alt-right" you are certainly hinting at it without saying it out right.
Double-blind doesn't fit into crime statistics obviously, but I am using a bunch of statistical methods as an example to say that the sources should perform these things where possible to ensure the accuracy of their statistics. I'm not sure how crime stats are made, but I would hope they are done so accurately and we can measure this to ensure our sources are verifiable.
If a statistic is done correctly and is accurate, then it correctly represents the measure it seeks to represent. If it correctly represents the measure it seeks to represent, wouldn't that be indicative of the population as long as I was measuring the population? Or, am I misunderstanding what you're trying to say? Of course there are other variables that come into play and so this is always a correlation and not a cause and effect relationship, but if the statistics are accurate then they are accurate. The crime statistic I brought up was to show how out of context these thing gets because I was actually saying it WAS socioeconomic status that influenced criminal behavior. Unfortunately, it was taken out of context on this thread and my whole point was disregarded in favor of attributing alt-right characteristics to me because no one considered what I was actually trying to say with the statistic.
I'm not currently discussing other ethnicities, I'm not even trying to make a point about black people and never was. I know a lot of people from all ethnicities are criminals, I just haven't pulled up the statistics to check. So I don't really know what you're getting at here...
No and no. Once again, I'm describing the mechanism behind suspicion. Someone can describe how something happens without endorsing it. You've spent a good portion of this thread insisting that people should interpret what you say without reading malice into it, don't fall into the same behavior.
Then don't make precise claims about how they're made?
Then what's the point of using a racial statistic?
That it's not true that "statistics show a lot of black people are criminals".
You shouldn't interpret malice because I was never making a claim about racial statistics? I never made precise claims about how they were made either. I was actually making a point about how statistics are taken out of context, citing the racial statistic often taken out of content because it's based on socioeconomic factors. But with how out of context my arguments were taken here I'm not surprised it's been so twisted lol.
I read the comments. There’s presenting a hypothetical, and then there’s arguing the finer points of the hypothetical as if it were a fact.
At a certain point we have to draw the line with the things we say in an open forum. You cannot repeatedly use alt right talking points to prove your stance and expect other people not to think you’re one of them. Because the problem with using their talking points to support whatever argument you’re trying to make, is that their talking points have been disproven already.
It’s not that difficult to find the evidence that shows they’re full of shit. So if someone uses an alt right talking point in a conversation and starts defending it; I know exactly how little effort and research they’ve put into what they’re trying to say. I’m not stupid. The alt right repeatedly twists information to suit their interests and they don’t care if they look like hypocrites. Anyone who starts repeating what they say is not someone I’m interested in being around.
So you're concluding based on a thread in which I used extreme examples to say we should talk about extreme things that I am alt right, is that correct? Based on one discussion you can tell without a doubt my political views?
Why would you use the talking points of a group you don’t agree with? Why not use the talking points of a group you do agree with? Because you were the one who said it was a fact that black people commit more crime. If you don’t believe that why would you say it?
The whole point of my argument was we have to be able to handle uncomfortable opinions and engage in discourse alongside them. If I used a nice cushy opinion like.. the holocaust was real and bad what the hell am I proving? To me, I have to bring up something contentious and showcase both sides of it or else I'm not even supporting my main argument.
Because if I am only allowed to use talking points that no single group agrees with (so I'm not associated with any bad person from any random group), I can no longer talk.
This mentality that if someone says something that someone else said as well, and this "someone else" is a "bad actor", therefore the person in question must agree with everything the other person or the group they affiliate with say, is beyond silly.
they weren't. discussing =/= using.
not liking the way you support your conclusion doesn't mean I don't agree with your conclusion. I can agree that the world is round and not agree with your justification that "it's round because Lord Higgle, my teddy bear, made it that way"
not everything is politically motivated
while I would personally rephrase this as "more black people are convicted of crimes per capita than white people", that is, in fact, a fact. that's just true. you can't argue with the numbers.
What you can,, and @contemplativepanda does, argue is that those statistics are the result of racist behavior (on the part of the system), not a justification for it.
see what I mean? you can admit the truth of a supporting argument brought by the opposition while still disagreeing with their implied conclusion.
it seems to me you live in a world where if someone disagrees with you on, they must also agree with people you disagree with. I don't want to live in your world, and I think your attachment to that behavior is something you need to develop past
Is there some reason we cannot simply address the point itself instead of the "group" it came from? Facts stand on their own merits, not the mouths that air them.
Did you read the topic at all and how I got to that point? I was arguing that most topics should be allowed for discussion on this site...
I read the topic. Of allllllllll the arguments you could have chosen to make you used a racist one. Everybody has a choice with the things they say. They know how they will affect people. It’s clear you don’t care how hurtful and inaccurate the argument was. It was weak and failed to even prove your point so why even bring that subject into an open forum about bad faith of all topics?
Do you think it’s cute to feign ignorance of the impact of the things you say? It’s not. Did you even bother to read the mission statement of the person who created this forum? It’s honestly baffling that you chose to bring up something so controversial and want to respond like it nbd ™
So you didn't read the topic or you'd know the whole point of it was me saying that despite certain things making us uncomfortable I believe they should be discussed on this website since it is a discussion site. So yes, I chose something I thought a lot of people would agree with. Yes, you feel uncomfortable with it but that's part of life - grow up. And no, statistics aren't racist. Don't try to bring that bullshit over here because it won't work.
I'm honored that you created a topic just to point me out. But don't call me alt right just because you disagree with things I say that are taken so out of context that I'm amazed you can even read at all. Lmao, this is the kind of shit I'm talking about we can't let ourselves become an echo chamber just because opposing views feel uncomfortable lol.
You bring up "uncomfortable" issues as though the question of civil discourse is actually a matter of deciding whether they can be brought up at all. Obviously, we shouldn't ban discussion of difficult subject areas. The question concerns broadly how to keep those conversations in a civil context and to what extent they can be allowed to deviate into shittiness like racist or sexist "devil's advocate" nonsense
The topic of the thread was discussion, how to differentiate from trolling and bad faith discussion, and where we draw the line - and that is what I talked about, yes. My point was quality discussion involves both sides of an argument even if that makes us uncomfortable.
I haven't yet seen you make this argument in any context except the ones that allow you to present offensive arguments. Issues can be complicated without necessarily involving a socially-disruptive and oppositional "other side".
The easy option is for me to choose those charged topics. I believe the first one I did was killing babies. I then expanded it to abortion and then used a different example which spawned this whole thread.
Yes I am choosing an easy 2 sided issue, because I want something simple for everyone to see there are 2 sides that should be presented. However, I never stated my side or even said I wanted to cause disruptions. Just made a case for my argument, how exactly is that offensive?
You said it was a fact that black people commit more crime. It’s a racist viewpoint. A racist viewpoint you argued in favor of. Maybe don’t argue in favor of racist viewpoints if you don’t believe them?
"fact
fakt
noun
a thing that is indisputably the case."
If my statistics (.gov I believe) were incorrect - which should always be validated - show me a better statistic and I'll change my mind. Until then, stop calling numbers racist just because you don't like the story they tell. That's not what statistics is about.
Ok, I've been seeing you two argue for a while now, so I'm going to chime in. I believe you are misunderstanding each other.
I think what Kenya is getting at is that "black people are convicted more than white people" is not a valid argument (however objective the statistics) to say "black people commit more crimes". I don't think they are disputing the objectivity of statistics (which of course can be biased, btw), but the inference.
I don't have data, I'm making all of this up, but I think it'd be different if you said: this paper concludes low income people commit more crimes. Black people have, on average, lower income according to this paper. So it is reasonable to think black people will commit more crimes (because being low income, not because being black). Even then, you should take into account other factors (like how black people are prosecuted more often than white people, etc.), so it's not like a crystal clear argument.
Statistics, on the other hand, can be biased if data is not collected carefully, I think that's obvious. And inferences on statistics should be made cautiously.
EDIT: On the other hand, I think that considering Panda's argument and alt-right argument is going to far. They might have just misunderstood Kenya's point or choose that argument for other reasons. So I think there's some prejudice about that argument here as well.
Edit 2: Grammar
The issue here is this whole topic was based off of a statistic I was citing. The caveat is that the topic was all about opposing viewpoint and how we should accept them and when they sometimes get out of hand due to bad faith comments. This led to a few topics such as killing babies and abortion, and then the blackhole crime statistic that led to where we are now.
What you said is what I stated in one of my posts. I was talking about how statements like black people commit more crime can be taken out of context because it is actually lower income people which black people are more likely to be, thus they are more likely to commit crimes. I wasn't even trying to assert anything but discuss propsective opinions and make an argument for why opposing views should stay.
Of course, statistics should be vetted and only from reliable sources. I believe I linked a .gov site before the conversation ended because that wasn't even what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about talking about things, lol.
No, I understand. I just feel like the discussion has already got out of that context and that Kenya here characterizing it as you using an alt-right argument is out of place (because of the context you mention and apparent prejudice) and that you claiming facts are facts (which to me, and maybe Kenya, seems like supporting the truth of your claim) is exaggerated.
Anyway, just trying to give an outsider perspective here to redirect this stuff. Maybe I failed in doing so or maybe it wasn't my place either. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Oh no-no, your opinion is very welcome and it is absolutely your place thank you.
Yeah, I am only trying to support assertions backed by reputable statistics and I haven't even made inferences - at least I never intended to - with the data apart from reading it. I am also assuming that facts are facts only from truly reputable and verifiable sources of course, which I would hope we can all agree on.
But I never intended to stray from facts apart from that time I brought up killing babies in a different topic to explain a part of my argument. Though, that's a different beast entirely haha.
Ok, then, no problem. Glad to participate in that case. I think there might have been an inference somewhere in there or something that could be interpreted as an inference at least, and that's where it seems everything started to go astray.
Yeah I think the issue was definitely an understanding of what I meant. I'll have to take part of the blame there if I could've explained it better. I do my best, but as I've said before on a different topic text communication is sometimes hard to convey ideas and we have to really work on communication in this type of medium haha.
I appreciate your comments, I always love other opinions - especially well thought dissenting ones. And even more so ones that help explain a misunderstanding in a discussion, lol
Yeah, I think communication is such an important thing that we take for granted, it makes me sad. I believe conveying ideas is difficult in through any medium to be honest, speaking is no different imo.
I am baffled at the number of times people don't understand each other because either they're just not trying or they are trying so hard they believe they're talking about the same thing when they're not. And of course that also happens to me all the time.
And I think that sometimes someone having the courage to jump in and straighten things out for the users can help fix these things. Discussions are a 2 way street of communication, and there is always improvements and refinement to be made to help convey points. It's certainly an art that is hard to master, which is why I believe sometimes issues where 2 people can agree but think they disagree occur because of the phrasing and such. Pretty funny if you think about it, lol.
I would agree that, to a certain extent, this site (for now talking more about the culture we have, not moderation) prioritizes civility and productive discussion to the point where it makes awful viewpoints look just as prominent and valid as anything else. I think it can do a lot of harm and put some really icky shit on the same playing field as harmless stuff. It's a bit idealistic to say that, in a place where reasonable debate is always possible, awful opinions will always be shut down. Even if someone gives it a proper response that explains why it's wrong, the very act of peacefully engaging with it changes how people look at the problem. Consider if you saw smart-looking people hanging out in coffee shops outside of universities debating the rights of black people in a very civil and even-tempered manner. Sure, the one saying "black people don't deserve rights" will probably be utterly defeated in conversation, but letting this be a thing that constantly pops up reinforces the idea that this it's even a debate to be had.
Of course, it's a balancing act. The black people having rights extreme almost certainly would be shut down by Deimos without hesitation. But there's a plethora of other cases where it isn't as clear cut, and this kind of culture allows some bad shit more light than I would ever like to give it. To be honest, I don't know the answer. While I would like to see more strict moderation, I don't really think that would solve the problem, as there are always edge cases even closer to said edge.
I suppose threads like this are all we can do. What exactly have you seen that's so awful, for one? Bringing this shit up is at least better than completely ignoring it and letting it be a normal part of the discussion here without any resistance at all.
I don't think it's Reddit-level bad though. Not yet.
I don't get it. All I can read is op pleading for an echo chamber, instead of civil debates.
You at least argue that at some point there are discussions that should not be had. While that makes sense if you try to advance an established perspective, that misrepresents what a debate in contrast to a talk in a public forum is, however.
In a debate, all parties are willing to perceive and talk to each other with not just fact-based, but also logical or rational arguments; or at least in good faith trying to.
The alt-right movement by large is an echo chamber itself, but it would be absolutely incorrect by default to deflect conservative or other right-wing views as contentious, irrational, ignorant or hate-speech.
It doesn't spell well for the future relevance of this forum when everyone reacts so allergically to misdirected views. In the US over 45 or something percent voted Trump in, and in Europe and Russia discriminatory positions have re-gained tremendous power.
Unless there is a good reason for tildes to specialize on a certain style, it's best for us to be as inclusive as possible, and try to make those debates we have useful.
Reading the discussion in question, @ContemplativePanda is obviously hung up on a logical fallacy, but the user was trying to have a fruitful discussion, even if the point by its nature appeared to be trollish. Heck, if that's how the alt-right were, I might've actively visited their forums and debated them.
Yet, there wasn't someone trying to dissolve that fallacy. That is, you cannot indirectly correlate a statistic with another when there is no logical, self-contained explanation to it. Predisposition does not correlate with skin color, and skin color does not correlate with low income.
Technical correlations are meaningless, and thus using them could be justifiably regarded as malicious intent.
If we didn't witness any learning curve at that point, then I could agree there was ill intent from the start.
edit:grammar
I'm glad I'm not the only one. All I can get from the OP is "I don't want to see alt-right opinions". How is that not an echochamber? I think every opinion deserves to be represented (as long as it's respectful and not an obvious troll). If it's a stupid/ignorant/mistaken/whatever argument, then it'll be quickly shutdown in conversation naturally.
The thing that set me off was the “black people commit more crimes” statistic. It’s honestly like putting a Whoopie cushion on your coworkers chair at this point. What fucking decade are you living in that you’d say that unironically?! It’s been discussed to death. And there’s been god knows how many different methods to disprove it now?
I guess when I read the invitation post on reddit and the mission statement for tildes, I thought “fuck! FINALLY!” Still, there’s a certain level of leeway I’m trying to give because the site needs to grow and some branches will need to be pruned along the way. I’m not sure if my post is premature. It might be. I figured I’d put it out there and either I’m a nervous nelly or I’m Cassandra.
I get your point but I can't help but feel that your issue essentially boils down to the fact that somebody doesn't have the same experiences as you, and therefore you condemn their rhetoric as deliberately malicious when it can very well just be plain unintentional ignorance.
Nah, Kenya, I'm with you on all that. It might just be this guy here is a crank and hopefully a moderator will involve, or something. Maybe making a thread like this is bad form? I saw what you're talking about and I chose not to speak up in that or in a new thread. But we also don't have to hash out the dominating social order on the top level of this website right now. It will subdivide a little and we'll cluster off somewhat.
So because you can't actually argue with the fact that statistics aren't inherently racist and I didn't actually take any sides in a debate and thus am also not racist and therefor not alt-right you decide that I'm a crank and need mod intervention?
What exactly have I done that is so politically polarizing and toxic that you have made these snap judgements about me with such confidence? It seems you misunderstood the original context, or my original opinion on the other thread. But that is just unfortunate, maybe re-reading it with a more open mind could help.
I haven't seen you comment anything other than arguments, which is what I mean by crank. I don't necessarily mean that a mod would need to intercept you as a crank -- though you keep telling me I have fundamentally misunderstood you and I don't think I have. If you wouldn't like to be labeled as some sort of regressive I would insist you stay further from regressive talking points.
I would advocate for building away from thread style + approval game structures as the primary infrastructure for this kind of site, so that people who fight have fewer places to do it. I would box off thread-style comment structures into a sub-section of each post and set up alongside it spaces for other kinds of engagement.
This whole thread is a thinly veiled argument against an assertion I didn't even really intend to make as it was apart of a much larger conversation. So you have clearly fundamentally misunderstood my very first argument. And don't just declare things you don't like regressive talking points that's not how this works. Allowing both sides of a topic stops echochambers from forming - but oh, that was what I was saying on the old thread and why both sides of a topic are so important so we don't just attempt to censor opposing views as alt right or agressive. But here we are.
I got that you'd like to be making a point about avoiding censorship. To get there you went the long way through some pretty touchy subjects and you haven't yet made any concession that choice might not have been the most socially appropriate.
Just because an issue can be argued from an uncomfortable angle doesn't mean that angle is a good or necessary point of view, or even constitutes a "side". You aren't responsible for preventing echo chambers, and even if that was your full-time profession it would be better served through some other rhetorical (or as I say, infrastructural) method.
it was probably chosen deliberately because it was socially inappropriate.
the point was, "should we allow people who make this kind of argument, if civilly made, even though it's not socially appropriate? are we more dedicated to civil discussion, or socially appropriate discussion?" Panda wasn't agreeing with the point. Panda has expressed several times over that they disagree with the implied conclusion of the statement. and yet, here Kenya is, purposely misinterpreting the context in order to characterize Panda as a racist.
That's fucked up.
This is combative, don't. I can't vouch for Kenya beyond their conduct in this thread, but I am reading her as asking for help with the very problems this site would attempt to address -- even if in poor form here. I don't think anyone has purposefully misinterpreted anything, and it is inflammatory to say so.
Considering we have (at least) two interpretations of one occurrence, I feel like it's safe to assume someone did. I don't know who it was or what is the correct interpretation, but at least one side of the discussion understood @ContemplativePanda 's message differently than what he meant.
To briefly touch on your second point, of course I'm not responsible for preventing echo chambers. I was engaging in a discussion about discussions on Tildes and brough up my opinion on the matter. To touch on your first point, what would you propose I do? Should I not give an example to help clarify the point I was making? Or should I have gone aganst my point and chosen a nice comfortable topic as my example?
In your original comment in that thread you said dissent is necessary for understanding, and I don't think anyone needed to demonstrate an example of dissent to describe that point. I certainly wouldn't have chosen as an example that particular distinctly controversial theory about racial predisposition toward crime.
I see the major difference here is you think I chose too uncomfortable of a topic when I didn't need one at all. I'm sorry if it came out of nowhere and was a bit uncalled for in that particular discussion, I was simply using some arguments and statistics to try and back up my overarching point with the only goal being that they were clearly contoversial - again, to demonstrate my point.
Yeah. You’re probably right. I’m hoping that some good comes out of this thread even though it might be premature.
Truth be told there’s been other behaviors I’ve noticed that rubbed me the wrong way. I decided not to post about them because I think this place needs time before it finds its groove. I guess there’s certain behaviors I’m not willing to put up with here.
I really hope I’m not wrong but I think it has to be nipped in the bud from the start. I guess we’ll see how it plays out.
So long as we stick together and don't abdicate our responsibility toward social spaces I think we'll be alright. We'll need some infrastructure for people to feel like they can build something out of their opinions and that tries openly to avoid representing the injustices of the world back to us. I understand feeling fatigued toward it already, though -- It is difficult to treat this as some ongoing stoic effort, given how effortlessly social order comes to IRL spaces like classrooms and clubs and such.
I think this is a bigger issue than people realize. Being able to down vote comments and having them hidden somewhat alleviates this problem.
That just facilitates echochambers. By having to actually respond to the post to disagree with it it means you have to be able to formulate an argument and not just click a button.
Facilitating good conversation goes far beyond just trying to avoid "echo chambers." I would argue one big problem with Reddit (and MOST spaces for discussion, as everyone is so deathly afraid of creating echo chambers or looking too biased) is that whenever an in-depth conversation begins, so many people jump in trying to dispute the very basis for that conversation.
Disagreeing is good and it's important, but being able to ignore a certain disagreement for the purposes of an argument is essential if you want to talk about anything other than the broad, surface-level ideas that Reddit and all the places like it excel at bringing out. You're not going to get anywhere in a conversation on how to mitigate the effects of climate change in a specific region, for example, if you're constantly dealing with people who jump in only to say "climate change isn't real".
Of all the problems I have with T_D, I can't even fault them for this. If you're going to have any meaningful conversation about anything positive regarding Donald Trump, it isn't going to happen by letting people pile in and spam why he's awful. Of course, I hate everything else about that subreddit, but the question should be about the content and what they're cultivating through that discussion, not anything about an echo chamber. I assure you each and every user of that sub is exposed to the views of those who are foaming from the mouth about how much they hate Donald Trump on a daily basis, just as the subscribers of /r/Transgender are exposed to people who think it's okay to kill trans people or that we're subhuman on a daily basis.
Back to the point, downvoting has its problems but it at least allows some focus on a topic, as you see in smaller subs. I'm not saying we should have downvotes here, but it isn't necessarily desirable to encourage users to start an argument or long conversation over every disagreement. There are many, many cases where much better conversation comes about if you both say "fuck that guy," get them out of the way, and get back to the point at hand.
Now I do completely agree with what you're saying. Thanks for actually bringing this up as I didn't think through how to get deep level discussion, I was so focused on my initial point. I do believe there is a place for allowing opposing sides, and I believe there is also a time and place for ignoring it in favor of casting it to the side to talk in depth about that particular "side" if you will.
But I think that Tildes shouldn't just censor opposing opinions, and it should be the users who choose what they want to engage with or not. But thank you for reminding me that the other side exists and happens far too often in which we are too tolerant of other opinions and need to cast them out, such as when ad hominem attacks being used.
I don't understand why you need down votes to dismiss an argument. Either ignore the comment you think is irrelevant or reply disproving it. If you can't do that, maybe you should reconsider your assumptions about the viewpoint
So then there should be discussion about it, no? I think even in your example, the discussion itself should be able to be had. If everyone disagrees, people will either not comment or destroy the arguments made by the OP. Of course, this does require all parties to be civil, which is the harder part.
In that case I'm glad you're not part of the moderation team, then. I'm not trying to insult you, although I know this does come across as hostile to many. But I believe that trigger-happy mods are disastrous to community based around the idea of civil discussion. Mods should act to keep discussions civil, not to shut down discussions that touch upon topics they don't like to talk about.
What do you want then? No "Alt-Right" views being allowed anywhere? You shouldn't just ban an entire topic just because it makes you uncomfortable. I'm pretty sure I know what you're referring to and that whole thing only started because we were discussing what should and shouldn't be allowed to be discussed on here.
The point about Black people causing more crime was a perfect example in my opinion. It's a topic that clearly makes some people uncomfortable and upset and yet it still stayed civil. Neither you nor Panda resorted to name calling or anything. That's a big plus don't you think? On Reddit it'd probably would've ended up being a bunch of shit being thrown around only for a mode to nuke the entire chain. So that's a pretty big difference between ~ and Reddit already.
I know it's hard to not become emotional over some topics but really the best thing in those situations is to just walk away. Click the - and hide the post and just continue engaging with other users if you really just can't take it.
I've noticed this too. There's a certain internet culture that (I think) over-values debate. From the point of view of this culture, if you can argue your point coherently and defend it against counterarguments, you've proved your point is right.
The problem is that this kind of discussion tends to exclude people who don't have experience debating or the time to form long arguments in support of their points. You can end up in a back-and-forth argument where you're trying to share a truth or perspective you've learned from personal experience, but you can't seem to get through to the other person, who keeps deploying new rhetorical tactics in support of their point (and against yours). It can be really exhausting, especially around subjects like race, where these rhetorical tactics are often used "in bad faith"—meaning the other person is using debate as a weapon to wear you down and rally supporters, not as a tool for learning. I'm definitely not saying that's what's happening here (I don't think anyone in this thread is arguing in bad faith), but it can be hard to tell the difference. Sometimes it's easier just not to engage than risk wasting your time having a bad-faith discussion.
In general, once people have made their point, I think it's better to avoid long back-and-forth arguments. These arguments are rarely productive, and not everyone enjoys having to defend themselves over and over.
Nothing has been implemented yet that could really differentiate Tildes from other generic community sites. I'm holding out hope that we can develop some more character or at least maintain the fraternal atmosphere as the site develops. Stay with us, let's try it here and see if we can make something nice
There is a rudimentary filter that tends towards selecting higher quality members likelier to submit thoughtful posts— the invite system.
I don't know how sustainable this will be over time because this isn't really a systemic feature of Tildes.
That’s very true. I’m pretty skittish because I’ve reached a saturation point with certain behaviors. Especially after everything that’s happened, how are people still not grasping these concepts? I get frustrated that it takes nothing short of literally putting someone in someone’s else’s shoes for them to get it. I can’t tell if I’m asking for too much anymore. The lack of empathy really bothers me on these topics.
You're not asking for too much. People act this way online because there's nothing stopping them. Reactive, ignorant, and thoughtless speech is prevented in other fraternal spaces. My hope is that our admins will construct something useful to maintaining sociality and not just a parser/taxonimizer for content.
In the meantime, this might be the universe’s way of telling me it’s time to learn more patience and compassion. Actually I think that’s the weed. I’m going to smoke more of that and watch cartoons.
Thanks for the dialogue. It helped more than you know. Cheers
Now forgive me if I am picking on you just because you chose to say that to this commentor as opposed to all the others who commented on your topic, but it seems funny that you enjoyed the dialogue of someone who supported your opinion. That kind of back rubbing opinion was what I thought we wanted to at least partially avoid in favor of organic and productive discussion, no? Or do we want an echo chamber because it makes us feel good?
This comment seems unnecessarily combative.
I did add that first bit in case I was reading into it wrong. But it seems like it was thanking Qis for the "engagement" which was really just agreement which of course everyone likes to agree. That makes you feel good. But that was at the root of a whole different discussion we had here that I was trying to make my point with by saying echo chambers should be avoided even though they make us feel good.
Yo what cartoons sounds great :-)
I decided to catch up on Steven universe and relive the hey day of space invader zim. I’m glad I did. I feel like a new woman 🙌🏾
I completely agree. A bunch of straight white men making the same mistake they always make - "We're not massive racists / misogynists / homophobes / islamaphobes / transphobes / etc., we're just having discussions".
That's both a racist and a sexist remark right there. You're explicitly saying that a group, determined only by their race and sex, is a bunch of "massive racists / misogynists / homophobes / islamaphobes / transphobes / etc.". You are literally no better than the people you're trying to call out for certain behaviour.
If you want to see an improvement, you best start with improving yourself.
I didn't say "all straight white men do this", or even "all straight white men on Tildes do this".
I'm saying that there's a bunch of racist misogynists on Tildes, and that group happens to be straight white men.
This is the simple logic question we expect 12 year olds to understand: "All widgets are red. Are all red things widgets?"
Neither did I, I just pointed out your racist and sexist remark, which you are now trying to defend by twisting my words. Just to make it clear: you're defending sexism and racism here.
I haven't spotted them, but I don't read every comment on here. Why would you go out of your way to find different labels to identify them with than the ones you actually mean, though? You're now explicitly targeting a much larger group that is largely unrelated to the group you want to specify. You're trying to frame a much larger group for the actions of a very small minority, which makes you just as bad, if not worse, than the people you dislike.
If you see this behaviour, you could call them out on it when it happens, and try to set a better example by not behaving exactly as the people you despise.
Great job setting up a strawman buddy.
Oh dear, has CircleBroke arrived already?
And here is the real problem. Kinda ironic when you think about it.
OP, you'll get a far better response -- not in terms of more positive, but more substantive -- if you replace the shorthand "alt right talking points" with a clearer and more fleshed-out description of what you're talking about. As others have noted, it's not a bad thing to simply be exposed to ideas that you disagree with or dislike. If your point is that there are some Trump supporters here, I would argue that that's a very good thing, because the nature of this platform is that we're encouraged to have civil and productive discussions with one another, and we'll be better off as a society if we can return to having discussions with people we disagree with where we're trying to treat our fellow discussants with respect and understanding.
I’m not looking for a “better response.” People are revealing who they are and that information is invaluable to me moving forward on this platform. I’m going to continue being myself. If other people don’t like me, that’s really their business, not mine.
You're not interested in having quality conversation? I was pretty clear that I'm not talking about whether people like you, I'm talking about the quality of conversation.
I asked a question and I got what I was looking for. If that’s not quality conversation to you then I’m really not sure what to tell you.
One of the issues of not being able to down vote comments. But you're right, I'm noticing it more and more.
One of the biggest improvements is not being able to downvote. As mentioned in the docs, and as everyone knows who doesn't have a "progressive" mentality, downvotes are used most often by people who have no arguments, but don't want your argumentation to be seen by others. Tildes forces you to actually respond to the other person to show disagreement, and discuss it. If you can't do this, you're part of the problem that makes Reddit such a terrible place for civil discussion.
I have to say that I just don't get you. Something you said about having had a good conversation upthread sent me searching curiously through your recent post history, so I got a pretty sizable dose of @tyil. While I didn't agree with everything you said, in many places I found you to be thoughtful and able to exemplify the ideals you're espousing in this thread. But every now and then I'd see a comment like this one (which I'm seeing after the fact, reading through more of the thread that sent me reading through your history in the first place) where you "spice up" an otherwise reasonable comment with something like this:
Emphasis mine. I agree with your point, but why make it so needlessly partisan? There are more than enough examples on reddit of libertarians, conservatives, communists, apolitical people, and every other stripe using the downvote as a way to bury things they don't like. You're either making a personal attack, a needlessly broad (not all progressives are like that) and simultaneously narrow (others can be like that) statement for political points, or both.
You can make the argument that you threw the progressive pejorative there because of the context of the post, but what you're doing by including it is extending the culture wars at least one more comment. Take it out and you have a comment that doesn't attack anyone for who they are or what they believe, which makes the lesson you're trying to share more likely to sink in. With that barb, you're stooping to the level you're arguing against, without provocation, and making it more likely that you'll get a combative response rather than a thoughtful one. To end with a quote of yours, "If you want to see an improvement, you best start with improving yourself."
Because not having the "progressive" mentality, which is in quotes for a reason, is being punished in a very severe way by very big powers. It's in quotes because it's only the people with this particular mindset themselves that consider themselves progressive, because their intentions are actually regressive. This can apply to all the groups that you mentioned more explicitly. I guess I didn't make that particularly clear.
The person I replied this to in particular is someone that would most likely consider themselves a progressive, when in fact, they just showed they just want to be able to group-censor people using downvotes, in stead of going for actual discussion. I've also not seen any arguments coming from @syntax in favour of downvotes, whereas I did provide arguments against it in my response.
I'd also like to point out that there is no-one, and I mean that in the more literal sense, that is perfect. This is also true on the Internet. To go out of your way, read through all posts of a person just to find something to call them out on doesn't seem like the attitude of someone interested in reasonable discussion, but of someone looking to smear someone.
I do like seeing a quote of myself being used, though. And I do agree with it still. However, I will call out "progressives" arguing for random things that don't actually bring progression. Especially when they also do not provide any argumentation as to why their view is correct. I will do this because I think it is the right thing to do, to use my freedom of speech to call out those who would harm such rights.
I consider I have improved myself by not staying silent about it, but whether this is considered improvement to you, I don't know. I know many people have similar thoughts like me, but don't speak up about it out of fear. Fear for their jobs, fear for their personal life. I consider having improved myself by standing up for personal rights online, and freedom of the user in technology, and I greatly support others in their venture towards freedom. That is not to say I consider myself a perfect being, or that I am done improving. There is still work to do, and I think this applies to everyone.
And in this particular case, I still think I did the right thing. We can disagree on that, or the reasoning behind it, but that's why we discuss things, and most likely is a big part of the reason we're on Tildes anyway. Most things I say are said with a particular reasoning that I stand by.
[aside: I'd also like to point out that if you read all my comments from late, you'll have seen that I also say that I don't know how to define political groups with strict boundaries, and thus the term "progressive" has no hard definition of who it applies to in my mind.]
In my original comment you'll note that I went through your post history because I was interested in reading some of your good discussions, referenced in another comment of yours that was at the top of this page. I came out of that experience with mixed but mostly positive sentiment toward you; I had no intention of replying to anything you had said. Then I replied to you after returning to reading the original conversation that had sparked my interest in your post history.
You can believe me or not, but I hope you do; if you can't trust someone to be telling the truth on something like this in a forum specifically geared toward constructive and civil discourse, the game is already lost.
I'm not sure if you're referring to your original comment as a whole or just your specific calling out of progressives. I'll reiterate that I agree with the entire rest of your original comment, and agree that it was the right thing to do. I'll also stand by my conviction that calling out progressives in that comment in the way you did detracted from the comment rather than adding to it. I also don't feel that you really addressed the meat of my last paragraph. You confirmed that you felt the use of progressive was justified because you believe @Syntax "would most likely consider themselves a progressive," but I'm more interested in your thoughts about whether it's helpful to push this sort of culture war. Personally I don't think it's conducive to civil discourse to use a political label as a pejorative like you did; not because people can't handle it, but because it inherently reinforces us-vs-them thinking and actively encourages a matching response.
Two things about this. First, I agree with you totally on that; I hate the use of labels in politics (aside from party names) because I don't believe there's anything remotely resembling consensus about what any political label means, and people often get into heated arguments over what amounts to a minor misunderstanding because one person means X but the other person hears Y.
Second, I don't think it matters that there's no "hard definition" of progressive in your head, because you're still using it in a way that's guaranteed to elicit a partisan response. Meanwhile, I realized while reading your comment and writing my reply that I didn't write a similar response to OP for their ambiguous and accusatory use of the term "alt-right," so in the interest of not applying principles unequally based on ideology, I'm going to make that point.
I want to trust you, but previous experiences on other mediums leave me sceptical of people doing this in general. That's not to say you're lying about your intentions, it's just some idea left over from previous encounters with people going through someone's comments.
I'm referring to the entire comment. I think context is incredibly important, and the rest of the comment establishes the context that goes with the sentence you highlighted. I don't think we should take one sentence out of context and then start discussing it's merits.
Generally, and completely objectively, it probably is not. If I were to say that sentence without the context attached to it and the quotes around "progressive", it would certainly not be helpful. I understand many people nowadays do ignore context for various reasons, so I understand why this could be considered harmful even in an established context.
I don't think this appears on my profile anymore, as it was discussed about a week ago now I think, but I believe everything should be ablo te be said, so long as there's context to go with it. I believe I did add this correctly, but I can understand your point in highlighting it here.
To make a long story short: You are correct that the sentence highlighted is harmful to civil discussion, and that I am not always perfect. However, I think it was used correctly in the context you pulled it from, which is why I used it there in the first place.
I hear what you're saying about leftover expectations, and I know it's hard to overcome that ingrained suspicion; it's a deep personal belief of mine that we should always try to give people the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise, but I've called bullshit on more than a few well-meaning people because of the weight of past negative experiences.
As for the context of the original comment, I stand by my conviction that the comment is better without that statement, and that even with the context it's inflammatory. After re-reading the thread, I want to reiterate that I think you did the right thing by commenting, and that you said something that needed to be said. And, importantly, it wasn't the full sentence that I originally quoted that I took issue with; it was the single clause about progressives. Here's your original comment with the single clause about progressives removed:
That's a powerful statement, one that has no cultural particular cultural alignment and applies to all of us. Also, for what it's worth, I did comment on the OP, and got a barely-civil response in return. I doubt they heard much of what you had to say, but keep on saying it. To paraphrase The Stranger from The Big Lebowski, "I like your style, dude. There's just one thing, dude: do you have to use so many political labels?"
I hope we can come up with an alternative to the down vote. I’ve received a 50/50 reception to some of my opinions here so I’ve appreciated not having that extra gut punch after reading an angry inbox reply.
I’m hoping the kinks will work themselves out in time if I’m patient. Hopefully it’s reached its critical mass.
We have, it's called civil discussion.
I'll say this, you sure got a lot of discussion from a few lines. So I looked in on skeeving and it's origin. Either it was named after Skeeve Stevens (a real person) or Italian for disgust (schifo). Of course, this is open to debate and discussion LOL.
😬😂
I’m going with “C”. Final answer.
In all seriousness, if I had to hazard a guess, I’d go with schifo since that closely mimics the emotion. Although maybe I should look up this Skeeve Stevens dude. Wonder what his story is... I’ll report back.
Edit: he’s a futurist. This is already not looking good.
Edit: it’s C. Both. Maybe it was the hacking arrest & conviction. Maybe it was the PowerPoint with “bidirectional disrupters” listed unironically. Mostly it was the warning that his home page might have been hacked.
Yes, I just hadn't seen skeeve before, and it's been awhile since I browsed the urban dictionary. It had both sources and I actually verified them outside of OD. It's amazing what we can learn just by paying attention.
Last month I read this awesome novel about a jazz musician down in New Orleans. He had made one live recording and it was lost, a really cool mystery. Turns out things like that really happen. The book was called 'Tiger Rag'. Sources can get muddled and mixed and there you go, a legend.
I should make more time for these off the beaten path stories/discussions. I forget how cool some of the stuff you find while digging around for something unrelated.