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ArchangeI posted:I know it is a pretty silly thing to get mad about, but drat if it doesn't get my blood pressure up. Logic (and by extension, rationality) is very much 'garbage in, garbage out'. NRx love to crow about their rationality, and often their logic is fine - but their premises are such rubbish that their conclusions mean nothing. Likewise, Scott is plenty logical, but his total denial of his own biases - or even that he has biases - means his arguments have a boatload of hidden premises that make his conclusions suspect.
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Aug 19, 2015 11:09
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MrRoivas posted:Relatively new post on SSC: http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/08/15/my-id-on-defensiveness/ Cingulate posted:I don't think that's a fair description at all. "This is why I find talking to people like ClarkHat and JayMan so rewarding. They are already closer to the black hole than I am, and so they have no power to load me with negative affect or destroy my reputation." Um, yeah, about that reputation, Scott, which you've already lamented at length - do you read your own posts? Also: neoreactionaries are rewarding to talk to, but feminism, which he considers approximately Voldemort, is nevertheless somehow not close to or in a reputational black hole? The most generous thing to say about this post is that it's incoherent. I'm being slightly amused by the comments. A mix of neoreaction, bad self-defensive arguments and a lot of LW-style amateur philosophy from first principles. EDIT: and some detailed arguments with MIRI staff about why MIRI is a loving terrible charity to donate to if you actually want to be effective, not just Effective, which is sarkeesian-popcorn.gif levels of gold. Oh, I now have a Tumblr, which is literally the fault of my purple-haired Tumblr SJW feminist spouse. I have essayed very slightly upon some lulzmining, though don't get your hopes up. divabot has a new favorite as of 11:58 on Aug 19, 2015 |
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Aug 19, 2015 11:10
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Cingulate posted:I don't think that's a fair description at all. Yeah, it seems to be more: "The reason people make fun of my crackpot beliefs and cultish ingroup is because other people have made fun of my crackpot beliefs and cultish ingroup. This is purely a function of the liberal hivemind and has nothing to do with my beliefs being crackpot or by ingroup being cultish. If only people would debate me with reason and logic then they would see this." He seems to accept that there are lunatic wingnuts in whatever group he's trying to defend here, but he blames the rest of the world for giving them power. You see, if you make fun of the group that gives them a mouthpiece then this drives all the reasonable people out of the group and makes the lunatics more powerful! In short, we should feel sorry for pointing out how dumb he and his ilk are because every time we do it spreads the word of how dumb he and his ilk are. I forget why that is a bad thing.
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Aug 19, 2015 11:11
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Cingulate posted:I need a name for that actually. The next best example I can think of is free will. Philosophers who believe in free will often give you the argument that by debating, you are necessarily presenting yourself as being capable of making decisions (about arguments), which entails you being free.
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Aug 19, 2015 13:28
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Cingulate posted:I don't think that's a fair description at all. Let me expand my words. Based on how SSC writes about Feminism, it seems clear to me that it upsets and unsettles him on pretty deep level. I mean, this is the guy who compared feminism to Soviet Era Russia by implication in a past post. So why would he find feminism threatening but not guys who are wanna-be Nietzsche's, boldly talking about how awesome a country run by white men and the awfulness of women having sexual autonomy? Because all the terrible stuff Nero-Reactionaries say aren't about Scott. White men like him are never the targets of their vile rhetoric. Feminists are a different story though. When they say, "check your privilege," they mean people like Scott. After all, its his status as a white man which gives him the ability to subconsciously discard their horrible ideas as unimportant, oh I'm sorry, "Find their meta level ideas more interesting than their object level ideas." And if and when they declare that his penchant for chatting for shitlords online constantly doesn't reflect well on him, that really upsets him. "Lay down with dogs, wake up with fleas" is a truth that he would really rather avoid. Really, what he is doing is a long and arcane rationalization that under lied Whoppi Goldberg saying what Roman Polanski did wasn't "rape-rape." Any group of people that he hangs with must be objectively interesting, and any terribleness of theirs cannot be splashed on him because his beautiful rationality will wipe it all away.
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Aug 19, 2015 13:47
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For a guy ostensibly interested in reason and logic, Scott has only updated to worse and worse beliefs as time went on. And not through actual rational thought nor through coming across new evidence requiring him to update his priors. He's hated feminists for a long time, for one, and is perfectly fine with "updating" his priors with NRx garbage (supposedly cleansed of object-level racism and sexism, then put towards making arguments in favor of racism and sexism!) and then writing long posts with lovely evo-psych and drawing unwarranted sexist conclusions from inconclusive studies. divabot posted:"This is why I find talking to people like ClarkHat and JayMan so rewarding. They are already closer to the black hole than I am, and so they have no power to load me with negative affect or destroy my reputation." He's not really a true rational thinker (redundant, I know, we've established this over and over) in that his skepticism only ever goes one way. He's never applied any skepticism to his bullshit hereditist beliefs, or looked at the science that doesn't support it. He doesn't understand what "heritability" actually means or what it can tell you, and has never bothered to learn. His skepticism towards NRx has all but disappeared once he realized that they never say anything that personally offends him.
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Aug 19, 2015 14:03
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Cingulate posted:I need a name for that actually. The next best example I can think of is free will. Philosophers who believe in free will often give you the argument that by debating, you are necessarily presenting yourself as being capable of making decisions (about arguments), which entails you being free. Wouldn't that depend on your definition of freedom, ie the thing being debated?
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Aug 19, 2015 14:38
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The Vosgian Beast posted:Please do not take Racist Warmonger Sam Harris seriously on these things. * I'm terrible at my minor. And, fwiw, my major. Jack Gladney posted:Wouldn't that depend on your definition of freedom, ie the thing being debated? MrRoivas posted:Let me expand my words. I can understand an aesthetic dispreference for tumblr-style with hunts. I can understand actual misogyny. But Scott is just weird. He's a not particularly masculine man who doesn't hate women and is a self-declared more-or-less-asexual. In fact, he hates and (rightfully) fears machismo from what i can tell. He should feel right at home with the more inclusive and cuddly strands of feminism, of which there are actually many. How do you get from "a lot of people on tumblr who happen to be particular about feminism are stupid" to letting yourself defined by your opposition so much like Scott does? Is there much reason for him to be anywhere to the right of, uh, Bernie Sanders that is not related to his hatred of feminism? How do you, as a pretty smart and very sensitive person, get from "people on tumblr are dumb" to "maybe the guys who want a literal fascist monarchy aren't so bad after all"?
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Aug 19, 2015 15:10
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Apparently he had a really bad experience in college.
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Aug 19, 2015 15:32
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The Vosgian Beast posted:Apparently he had a really bad experience in college. He also mentions being triggered by feminists on tumblr a lot. I don't remember when he started with this stuff in earnest, but I'm sure it's before he went on about feminists' supposed meta-level genocidal tendencies.
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Aug 19, 2015 15:54
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God help anyone who goes to that idiot as a patient for relationship issues--or anyone who happens to be a woman.
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Aug 19, 2015 16:15
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Cingulate posted:But Scott is just weird. He's a not particularly masculine man who doesn't hate women and is a self-declared more-or-less-asexual. In fact, he hates and (rightfully) fears machismo from what i can tell. You say that like "not particularly masculine man who detests machismo" doesn't describe a huge slice of internet misogynists.
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Aug 19, 2015 16:35
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Jack Gladney posted:God help anyone who goes to that idiot as a patient for relationship issues--or anyone who happens to be a woman. "My first advice is, don't have children. Not with these IQ scores."
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Aug 19, 2015 16:47
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Is there a good explanation of the object-level vs meta-level thinking thing? Is it a real thing (that Scott is probably misusing), or a LW-style "more introspective than thou" concept?
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Aug 19, 2015 16:54
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Nolanar posted:Is there a good explanation of the object-level vs meta-level thinking thing? Is it a real thing (that Scott is probably misusing), or a LW-style "more introspective than thou" concept? It's completely nominal. Don't assume all these LW jargon and neologisms refers to actual things.
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Aug 19, 2015 17:00
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Merdifex posted:It's completely nominal. Don't assume all these LW jargon and neologisms refers to actual things. As far as I can tell "meta-level" means "here is something pretty much anyone will agree with in principle, but which is vague enough that you can use it to defend or attack pretty much anything" Notably you will never get anywhere using these meta-level truths, because anyone can deny that they apply to this particular situation, and the person attacking them with it has no way to shut them down. Furthermore, object level politics are stuff that anyone might actually care about or do something about in the real world. Meta-level politics are a fuckload of jargon vomited into your eyes by a blogger who references things like "schelling fences" and "memeplexes".
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Aug 19, 2015 17:13
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A more charitable reading is that "object level beliefs" are the opinions you actually hold about issues, and "meta-level beliefs" are the opinions you hold about ideas and how do interact with people who have different ideas. So "women should be paid equally to men " is an object level belief. And "ridiculing MRAs is cool and good" is a common feminist meta-level belief. Now obviously drawing a line between these two types of beliefs is tricky and there's plenty of space for overlapping and blurriness between the two, but its not a meaningless distinction.
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Aug 19, 2015 17:33
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The Vosgian Beast posted:As far as I can tell "meta-level" means "here is something pretty much anyone will agree with in principle, but which is vague enough that you can use it to defend or attack pretty much anything" So I looked up "Schelling fence" and I understood all these words separately posted:This is pretty much the same process described above with Murder-Gandhi except that here the role of the value-changing pill is played by time and my own tendency to discount hyperbolically. It makes sense in context. It still sounds like Mad Libs.
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Aug 19, 2015 17:47
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlgW4sgyorg "Against separation of church and state? Nobody on the right wants that. Actually, it is you, the left-wing social justice feminists that want to legislate your morality with third trimester abortions and consequence-free loving" Like, I know he's loving terrible, but Jesus this is just so, so bad. Using a bunch of lovely reasoning while trying to show he's more superior to people that use lovely reasoning. How does this person exist.
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Aug 19, 2015 17:52
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Patrick Spens posted:A more charitable reading is that "object level beliefs" are the opinions you actually hold about issues, and "meta-level beliefs" are the opinions you hold about ideas and how do interact with people who have different ideas. So "women should be paid equally to men " is an object level belief. And "ridiculing MRAs is cool and good" is a common feminist meta-level belief. Now obviously drawing a line between these two types of beliefs is tricky and there's plenty of space for overlapping and blurriness between the two, but its not a meaningless distinction. The way Scott uses the two distinctions is rather arbitrary, and almost disingenuous. You don't really need to prove, and necessarily can't prove, what somebody's meta-level beliefs even are. But once you reify these constructs, you can easily ascribe whatever meta-level beliefs you want as is your wont. It's convenient then to claim NRx as meta-level insightful political scholars, or feminists as people who want think it's good to form "lynch-mobs" and attack "low status men" (That is, white straight males. This is seriously what NRx thinks) by morally debasing them, or whatever you want.
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Aug 19, 2015 17:53
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Nolanar posted:Is there a good explanation of the object-level vs meta-level thinking thing? Is it a real thing (that Scott is probably misusing), or a LW-style "more introspective than thou" concept? It looks like, not having looked all that deeply into it, object level is what you actually believe and meta level is just a style over substance fallacy/tone argument.
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Aug 19, 2015 17:56
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Patrick Spens posted:A more charitable reading is that "object level beliefs" are the opinions you actually hold about issues, and "meta-level beliefs" are the opinions you hold about ideas and how do interact with people who have different ideas. So "women should be paid equally to men " is an object level belief. And "ridiculing MRAs is cool and good" is a common feminist meta-level belief. Now obviously drawing a line between these two types of beliefs is tricky and there's plenty of space for overlapping and blurriness between the two, but its not a meaningless distinction. I guess the instance analogy works - object level is a particular belief with empirical content and existing referents. Meta level is a belief about how such beliefs should be constructed in principle. Classes versus objects. So a meta level belief will have the form "if x, then y", and it becomes object level if you fill in something specific for the variables.
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Aug 19, 2015 17:57
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I think it's also sort of like accusing your opponent of arguing in bad faith? 
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Aug 19, 2015 18:00
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neonnoodle posted:I think it's also sort of like accusing your opponent of arguing in bad faith? It's more like arguing in bad faith yourself through claiming that your opponent has immoral positions based on your ideas of what their meta-level beliefs are.
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Aug 19, 2015 18:06
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Merdifex posted:The way Scott uses the two distinctions is rather arbitrary, and almost disingenuous. You don't really need to prove, and necessarily can't prove, what somebody's meta-level beliefs even are. But once you reify these constructs, you can easily ascribe whatever meta-level beliefs you want as is your wont. It's convenient then to claim NRx as meta-level insightful political scholars, or feminists as people who want think it's good to form "lynch-mobs" and attack "low status men" (That is, white straight males. This is seriously what NRx thinks) by morally debasing them, or whatever you want. The bits about feminists attacking "low status men" is weird to me, because it's also pretty obvious a good deal of the alt-right hates "beta males and omega males" who are generally what Scott seems to mean by "low status men". Furthermore, right-wingers exploiting the undirected rage of low-status men to further their political goals through the use of lies and scare tactics in the form of gamergate is surely a worse abuse of socially awkward outcasts than a feminist on twitter calling someone a fedoralord.
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Aug 19, 2015 18:06
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Merdifex posted:The way Scott uses the two distinctions is rather arbitrary, and almost disingenuous. You don't really need to prove, and necessarily can't prove, what somebody's meta-level beliefs even are. But once you reify these constructs, you can easily ascribe whatever meta-level beliefs you want as is your wont. It's convenient then to claim NRx as meta-level insightful political scholars, or feminists as people who want think it's good to form "lynch-mobs" and attack "low status men" (That is, white straight males. This is seriously what NRx thinks) by morally debasing them, or whatever you want. I would say that the bigger issue with it is that you can't actually determine what someone's meta-level beliefs are unless they have power and authority. Like, the NRx guys aren't going around trying to silence leftist speakers at college campuses, while leftists have gotten Moldburg kicked off of at least one panel. But you have no way of knowing if that's because of a genuine commitment to free speech or because NRx doesn't have the clout. Also, they call themselves reactionaries so..... Woolie Wool posted:It looks like, not having looked all that deeply into it, object level is what you actually believe and meta level is just a style over substance fallacy/tone argument. Not quite. "People shouldn't be fired for being racist outside of work" is a meta level argument, but not a tone argument.
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Aug 19, 2015 18:14
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The Vosgian Beast posted:The bits about feminists attacking "low status men" is weird to me, because it's also pretty obvious a good deal of the alt-right hates "beta males and omega males" who are generally what Scott seems to mean by "low status men". NRx ties themselves in knots to prove that white males are derided by the cathedral and assigned (or have status stolen from you) low status (also explains why they have no jobs, conveniently) but looking through a bunch of their blogs, I didn't find any satisfactory definition of status. But really it's basically looking like the same bullshit that WNs spout about the lamestream media being anti-white, just put into rationalist game theory terms. A lot of it is based off of what Scott wrote about the supposed feminist tactics of shaming and witch-hunting. Oh, and gg is seen as an uprising of men tired of being low status by NRx. And of course, as is convenient for them, all harassment and human cost gg has caused is willfully ignored.
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Aug 19, 2015 18:16
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neonnoodle posted:I think it's also sort of like accusing your opponent of arguing in bad faith? Look it's like this 1: Everything anyone believes that isn't for truth-seeking purposes is because of status-seeking 2: It is not currently popular to say things like "The Holocaust was good". 3: Anyone who does say "The Holocaust was good" is therefore, not seeking status, and must believe what they believe due to pure reason.
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Aug 19, 2015 18:17
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I really think you guys aren't being fair to Scott's meta/object thing. I don't want to defend the concept itself - I think it's not particularly useful, and I particularly don't like how he's using it - but I don't think what's happening here is mocking what he actually believes and say.
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Aug 19, 2015 18:17
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Merdifex posted:Oh, and gg is seen as an uprising of men tired of being low status by NRx. And of course, as is convenient for them, all harassment and human cost gg has caused is willfully ignored. I thought it was about ethics in games journalism 
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Aug 19, 2015 18:17
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The Vosgian Beast posted:Look it's like this It's funny that Pax Dickinson was considered the most low status victim out there, and at the same time sexual and racial minorities who spoke up against Pax's bigotry were high status and status-hungry. Goes back to NRx being convinced that racism and sexism just aren't things unless they're against white males. It's not even something they've tried to argue against, just ignored. Merdifex has a new favorite as of 18:28 on Aug 19, 2015 |
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Aug 19, 2015 18:25
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But if everyone goes up in status, don't other people have to go down? Maybe that's their real objection to feminism etc., if other people are coming up I must be going down!
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Aug 19, 2015 18:29
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Nessus posted:But if everyone goes up in status, don't other people have to go down? Maybe that's their real objection to feminism etc., if other people are coming up I must be going down! DING DING DING DING! Privilege distress 101.
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Aug 19, 2015 18:37
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Cingulate posted:How do you get from "a lot of people on tumblr who happen to be particular about feminism are stupid" to letting yourself defined by your opposition so much like Scott does? Does he have a Something Awful account?
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Aug 19, 2015 18:57
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Letting yourself be defined by the opposition is the SA way of life. It's why mock threads, if they go through enough iterations, eventually turn into a prolonged attack on a weird bizarro entity representing everything contrary to the person posting rather than an actual group of people on the internet.
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Aug 19, 2015 19:00
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Cingulate posted:I really think you guys aren't being fair to Scott's meta/object thing. I don't want to defend the concept itself - I think it's not particularly useful, and I particularly don't like how he's using it - but I don't think what's happening here is mocking what he actually believes and say. For somebody who doesn't agree with these people you spend an awful lot of time defending them.
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Aug 19, 2015 19:02
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DStecks posted:For somebody who doesn't agree with these people you spend an awful lot of time defending them. For those who were wondering "you shouldn't defend people you don't agree with " is a meta-level belief.
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Aug 19, 2015 19:06
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The interesting thing to me about "low status/beta/omega males" in the NRx universe is how it overlaps with PUA/MRA stuff. One of the foundations of PUA/MRA philosophy is that feeeeeeemales in their   way prefer assholes/"alphas" and that patriarchy doesn't real because only alphas have any societal advantage. Since it's impossible to alter the fundamental nature of feeeeeeemales to make them prefer WoW players with full-body peach fuzz, PUA is the attempt to alpha-up in your behavior. MRA and NRx ideology appears to have this tension between two dogmas. On the one hand, they seem to want feeeeemales and society to be nicer to "low-status" males because feminism is so mean to them!  On the other hand, some are disgusted by "low status" males and blame them for being deserving of ridicule. "Man up, you miserable worm!" See also, the weird cuckoldry obsession.
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Aug 19, 2015 19:17
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neonnoodle posted:The interesting thing to me about "low status/beta/omega males" in the NRx universe is how it overlaps with PUA/MRA stuff. It just stuns me that these guys have never heard of the Female Choice research during the 80s and 90s on various primate societies. We have multiple documented examples of female chimps leading the alpha males around in random walks until the male is tired, and then leading him to an area where he has an aggressive competitor, and while those two are fighting, skimps off to the bushes to mate with a "lower status" male primate who grooms her more frequently. Do they not know about basic sexual dimorphism in primates? They can't even get their pet theories right! I've only taken rudimentary bio courses to supplement my psych studies and even I know this. I try explaining this and other basic tenets of evo psych to my almost-TRP brother and he just goes "you don't get it man, evolutionary psychology says I'm hosed! I'm hosed!"
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Aug 19, 2015 21:54
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Coolie Ghost posted:It just stuns me that these guys have never heard of the Female Choice research during the 80s and 90s on various primate societies. We have multiple documented examples of female chimps leading the alpha males around in random walks until the male is tired, and then leading him to an area where he has an aggressive competitor, and while those two are fighting, skimps off to the bushes to mate with a "lower status" male primate who grooms her more frequently. Do they not know about basic sexual dimorphism in primates? They can't even get their pet theories right! I've only taken rudimentary bio courses to supplement my psych studies and even I know this. I try explaining this and other basic tenets of evo psych to my almost-TRP brother and he just goes "you don't get it man, evolutionary psychology says I'm hosed! I'm hosed!" When reactionaries say "science" replace it with "19th century science". There you go.
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Aug 19, 2015 21:55
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