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How can we have a proper debate when we no longer speak the same language?

richarddawkins.substack.com

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Re: How can we have a proper debate when we no longer speak the same language?

#91

Post by polotics »

Animats wrote: post #11

The "accept our shaky premise or else" crowd is annoying. The intimidation has backfired. The first big public controversy for transgender bathroom rights was in 2016. right before the US presidential election,[1] and may have pushed Trump over the top and into the White House. [1] https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/05/timeline-bath...

A lot of the time when I see inflamed rethoric about "Woke" things on the web, I strongly suspect this is the work of a skilled provocateur, making sure anyone who could be radicalized into strongly opposing the presented opinions is reinforced into clear calls to action, in the case of 2016, 2020, 2024(?): """vote for Trump, because very clearly and very explicitly the Wokes want to take away your freedom"""

Re: How can we have a proper debate when we no longer speak the same language?

#92

Post by [deleted] »

polotics wrote: post #91
Animats wrote: post #11

The "accept our shaky premise or else" crowd is annoying. The intimidation has backfired. The first big public controversy for transgender bathroom rights was in 2016. right before the US presidential election,[1] and may have pushed Trump over the top and into the White House. [1] https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/05/timeline-bath...

A lot of the time when I see inflamed rethoric about "Woke" things on the web, I strongly suspect this is the work of a skilled provocateur, making sure anyone who could be radicalized into strongly opposing the presented opinions is reinforced into clear calls to action, in the case of 2016, 2020, 2024(?): """vote for Trump, because very clearly and very explicitly the Wokes want to take away your freedom"""

[deleted]

Re: How can we have a proper debate when we no longer speak the same language?

#93

Post by nvm0n2 »

operatingthetan wrote: post #44
stakhanov wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jordan Peterson has some interesting thoughts on how the psychology behind environmentalism, wokism, social justice warriordom etc. has a lot of overlap with the psychology behind religion. And when he says that, that's not a shallow dismissal of something he disapproves of, because he's actually pro-religion. The problem is the fact that people who hold these viewpoints see religious people as their enemy, so they'r…

>The problem is the fact that people who hold these viewpoints see religious people as their enemy, so they're weirdly blind to how they themselves are religious. And it's a young and immature religion that hasn't yet been through the formative historical chapter of the Spanish Inquisition, the witch hunts etc., and the reckoning that followed. History will repeat itself. First this requires accepting an inaccurate d…

What definition do you use? I don't think people arguing woke = religion are necessarily deriving that conclusion from a rigorous first-principles definition of religion. It's more like a collection of observations that sum up to a suspicion:

1. Woke people think that white people are born into sin due to the deeds of their ancestors, which is the doctrine of original sin.

2. This sin can be cleansed by becoming an "ally", "doing the work" etc, this is a bit like conversion.

3. Related: this notion that people are born pure and it's police/law (society) that corrupts them, so if you get rid of the police then crime will go away, this is like the Christian teaching of the Fall.

4. Trans stuff is an assertion that people have a sort of (gendered) soul distinct from their body.

5. The obsession with the virtue of minorities is similar to the story of the Good Samaritan and how Christian's are supposed to valorize the meek and the mild.

and so on. There's more of these especially when you get into their actions and not just beliefs, which yeah, do start to resemble Spanish Inquisition albeit with less physical torture thank goodness. So it's a walks like a duck quacks like a duck argument.

Re: How can we have a proper debate when we no longer speak the same language?

#94

Post by em-bee »

friend_and_foe wrote: post #86
system7rocks wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, I disagree. Trans folks are not unreasoned. They are open to the immense challenging reality that is their identity. It's different. Go in with humility. Listen. Learn. Ask questions. Be open. All will be well.

I have. Of every trans person I've had conversations with about this, only one ever had a real conversation with me. The rest just didn't want to hear my viewpoints or get asked any substantiative questions because they made them feel bad. Most of my interactions I've been called names, many they just didn't want to have the conversation. I have never, anywhere on the internet or in real life, seen an example of a cl…

part of the problem is that some people can't differentiate between disagreement and rejection.

and that's understandable. how do you show acceptance of someone if you disagree with their understanding of gender.

i don't know what your viewpoint is, or what you would disagree with, so i can't comment on the specifics. but talking with someone who has an opposing viewpoint can be difficult if i don' know that person and i can't trust that they will accept me and love me (in the "love thy neighbor" sense) even if they reject my understanding or belief

Re: How can we have a proper debate when we no longer speak the same language?

#95

Post by ZeroGravitas »

pointlessone wrote: post #79
h11h wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it frustrating when people claim to be upholding science but then make simple, unscientific claims that suggest they actually have the minds of Greek philosophers. Some women do have penises. Some men have XX chromosomes. Some women have XY chromosomes. Some people have XX and XY chromosomes. Science tells us that. This has nothing to do with transgender people. But it does suggest "sex" might not be as simple…

According to Wikipedia 1.7% is the upper bound of all intersex variations in the population. It is important to acknowledge and accommodate these people. However their existence more often used as a weapon in discourse on adjacent topics like gender and identity but not necessarily specifically intersex. As an example, about 9% of population is left-handed. When was the last time someone mentioned violence when talki…

I regularly mention that my grandmother was forced, with violence, to write with her right hand in school, and as a weird side effect would sometimes spontaneously start writing backwards.

I'm not sure what your point was in mentioning left-handedness, so not sure how this adds or detracts from it, but as I said I like to mention that because it's a weird little story from not so long ago.

Re: How can we have a proper debate when we no longer speak the same language?

#96

Post by D13Fd »

system7rocks wrote: post #78
friend_and_foe wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This problem goes beyond Twitter. You simply can't have a reasoned discussion on this topic, anywhere.

Again, I disagree. Trans folks are not unreasoned. They are open to the immense challenging reality that is their identity. It's different. Go in with humility. Listen. Learn. Ask questions. Be open. All will be well.

I think part of the problem is that we all spend so much time online, where we are anonymous and mostly unaccountable. People understandably tend to become hyper-sensitive after years of online discussion, which makes even in-person discussion tough.

I’m honestly amazed that we’ve managed to make so much progress on these issues over the last 15 years. Remember, in 2008 Barack Obama couldn’t even support gay marriage. I don’t know how exactly we’ve done it, but I hope we keep it going.

Re: How can we have a proper debate when we no longer speak the same language?

#97

Post by tim333 »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #28

It's really a shame Dawkins hasn't dipped his toe into social epistemology. It's very clear that this is a grounding issue that's highlighting that different categories have different grounding rules and that within categories, individuals have different grounding rules. Furthermore, grounding rules have cultural-geofraphic territories and change over time. It's how I can get a new job and call myself a Data Scientis…

I'm glad Dawkins has not got into social epistemology. His reasoning seems very clear.

For comparison here is some Asta, where the jargon leaves me unclear at what she is saying:

>Gender is a paradigm case for me. However, even if we assume that my account does justice to the construction of gender, the question remains whether this notion of social construction and social meaning is really adequate for accounting for the metaphysics of all social categories of individuals. Perhaps the two aims pull in opposite direction here: theorizing the type of social construction involved with gender, on the one hand, and offering a general metaphysics of social categories of individuals, on the other.,

Re: How can we have a proper debate when we no longer speak the same language?

#98

Post by flir »

TMWNN wrote: post #45
flir wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “Sarah Jane” Baker Speaking of words, why would “Professor” Dawkins do that? > This is rapidly becoming more and more difficult, as old words with a long history of usage such as "gender" are being appropriated to mean, and refer to, things quite different from the original senses and references of those terms. Like "chaos" in physics, "master" in computing, or, as you point out, "theory" in science as a whole. Wik…

[flagged]

I didn't cite him as an authority on anything, but ok.

My point was that the terminology's been in use for nearly seventy years. It's standard now.

> confirms every negative thing said about transvestites and their propensity to groom/abuse others

I'm trying to figure out what this means. Who is the transvestite in this sentence?

Re: How can we have a proper debate when we no longer speak the same language?

#99

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

JellyBeanThief wrote: post #51
itiro wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Constructive inquiry is different than the whine Dawkins is discussing. He’s saying what you said; people write things, fuck off if you don’t like what they write, trans people, right wing people, liberal people, HN people. And it’s being spun here as if he doesn’t get the point we all just absorbed reading his article. Very “you made this? I made this.” meme.

> Constructive inquiry is different than the whine Dawkins is discussing. Then Dawkins needs to get off Twitter, because it will never give him what he wants. He hasn't found a problem in society, he's found a problem on Twitter. As it stands, he's yelling at the ceiling because it's blocking his view of the sky. He needs to go outside.

> Then Dawkins needs to get off Twitter, because it will never give him what he wants.

Don't we all need to do it?

> He hasn't found a problem in society, he's found a problem on Twitter.

The overlap between the two is large enough, that I don't think you can find a non-technical problem on Twitter that isn't also a problem within society itself.

> he's yelling at the ceiling because it's blocking his view of the sky.

Like everyone else.

Re: How can we have a proper debate when we no longer speak the same language?

#100

Post by paulmd »

stakhanov wrote: post #73
operatingthetan wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>that I bet even the most seemingly iron-clad definition of religion will still have lots of weird and unexpected edge cases. I'm sure there are plenty of edge cases, but this looks like a red herring to me. The OP in question doesn't actually believe people worship wokeism, view it as god, ultimate reality, divinity, or whatever. Their use was purely pejorative and dismissive in nature.

> The OP in question doesn't actually believe people worship wokeism, view it as god, ultimate reality, divinity, or whatever. Their use was purely pejorative and dismissive in nature. Are you referring to me? See sibling comment. It was not pejorative. And I do think wokeism is a form of worship. The sibling comment from "friend_and_foe" seems to reflect the point I was trying to make: > What about believing that yo…

> [ not sure about sanctified places; can't think of any ]

Margaret Thatcher’s grave is anointed daily

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