Tom Chivers writes,
According to Paul [Crowley], the thing that distinguishes a cause from a cult is when it becomes taboo to criticise the cult.
From The Rationalist’s Guide to the Galaxy, p. 191
This leads to the following train of thought.
1. Good thinkers engage with ideas that question their beliefs. Bad thinkers instead engage in emotional blackmail against those who would question their beliefs.
2. Of course (1) is an instance of emotional blackmail. The terms “good” and “bad” are emotionally loaded. This is reminiscent of Quine’s point that the claim that “propositions that cannot be tested against logic or observation are dogma” is itself a dogma. I am willing to say that “there is one example of emotional blackmail that is acceptable, and that is the insinuation that it is bad to otherwise use emotional blackmail.”
3. I am not against emotions. You should pay attention to your emotions and choose an appropriate response. Many years ago, I was playing a game in an Othello tournament and noticed myself feeling frustrated that the game was not quickly resolving itself in my favor. Your natural reaction is to become impatient. But instead you need to do the opposite. I noticed my emotions, stopped, thought a long time, and made a course-correcting move.
4. More deeply, I do not believe that we can rationally calculate our daily lives. This point is expressed very well by Moshe Koppel in his book Judaism Straight Up. You can find out more about the book here or here, although I don’t think either article gets quite to the heart of what Koppel is saying.
The way I put it is this: We engage in behaviors and hold beliefs without understanding why we behave the way we behave or why we believe what we believe. This is not a failure of rationality. It is the human condition.
5. If I were asked to reduce the criteria for a fantasy intellectual to just one, it would be something like “the ability to constructively deal with criticism of one’s beliefs.” Part of doing that is anticipating what a critic might say.
6. Unfortunately, colleges nowadays seem to teach the opposite. Countering criticism with rational arguments seems to be “out,” and emotional blackmail seems to be “in.”
This post is a classic from the ASK blog. Thank you, Arnold!
“We engage in behaviors and hold beliefs without understanding why we behave the way we behave or why we believe what we believe. This is not a failure of rationality. It is the human condition.”
So excellent and profound in three easy to understand sentences.
Arnold’s summarizes Koppel’s book: “We engage in behaviors and hold beliefs without understanding why we behave the way we behave or why we believe what we believe. This is not a failure of rationality. It is the human condition.”
This is too thin. Koppel puts it better in the Tablet article: our beliefs are derivative of our virtues and traditions, not the other way around.
Koppel’s is a radical critique of the universalist liberal tradition which he thinks lacks the shared commitments necessary to sustain a culture. I highly recommend his book.
Ah, Rationalism, one of the most interesting religions out there…the faith of its True Believers could challenge most any other fundamentalist religion I can think of.
> 4. More deeply, I do not believe that we can rationally calculate our daily lives.
The typical Rationalist I’ve encountered seems to consider themselves to be an exception to this rule. Not when discussing this abstract idea though – no, in this state of mind they, will *enthusiastically* admit to their fallibility. But as soon as that conversation is over (and the idea out of mind), watch as their ego resumes its position on the throne, evaporating their former self-awareness.
> The way I put it is this: We engage in behaviors and hold beliefs without understanding why we behave the way we behave or why we believe what we believe. This is not a failure of rationality. It is the human condition.
Again, the typical Rationalist I’ve engaged with seems fully willing to acknowledge this when in an abstract state of mind, but then switch the topic to something like Religion, allow their subconscious heuristic beliefs to assert themselves, and then *try to remind them of their prior knowledge* and see what happens. Like Forrest Gump’s mama used to say: “Rational is as rational does.”
From the editorial reviews on Amazon:
> A fascinating and delightfully written book about some very smart people who may not, or may, be about to transform humanity forever.
At the present time, I would quite confidently bet my money on the “may not” outcome.
Why?
> Tom Chivers’ book is like a self-help guide to stop panicking about technology for people who watched Terminator too many times when they were young. The content is completely gripping. But I think the thing I like best is the tone. He has this OK-lets-all-chill-out-and-look-at-this-rationally approach which makes me feel, for whole minutes at a time, that maybe things are going to be OK and we won’t all die in hellfire.
Rationalists seem to have extreme faith in the idea that “OK-lets-all-chill-out-and-look-at-this-rationally approach” is The Way to solve humanity’s problems, that an insufficient proportion of the population having read The Scriptures (https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/sequences) is all that’s holding us back from salvation. Their faith in this idea is so strong that they seem unable to consider the possibility that it might not be a bad idea to have a Plan B (and C, D, E…) under development in case that one doesn’t pan out.
As you can perhaps tell, I am not a fan of Rationalists.. Although, they do have a massive amount of potential, if they could only develop a stronger, more persistent sense of self-awareness. Let’s just hope they achieve this self-awareness well before AGI does.
“1. Good thinkers engage with ideas that question their beliefs. Bad thinkers instead engage in emotional blackmail against those who would question their beliefs.
2. Of course (1) is an instance of emotional blackmail. The terms “good” and “bad” are emotionally loaded.”
This is an impossibly fragile description of rational engagement. Rationality has to be able to deal with the non-rational. Otherwise what good is it?
There is no such thing as emotional blackmail in the realm of rational discourse. It only should have purchase in our most inner personal relationships. Anywhere else, it is just weakness.
“Emotional blackmail… is just weakness” I don’t agree at all. Suppose you wish to increase your status, perhaps even take over a university or a government. You realize that there is no rational argument available for you to do so. Instead, you practice emotional blackmail. Current example: “wokeness.” You use your new ideology to undermine every human enterprise based on reason, even forcing mathematicians to bend the knee. Result? You and your comrades own huge swaths of academia, industry, and government. You have made all objections expressions of white supremacy, even those based on reason. The ideology is the antithesis of reason. But the strategy is reason incarnate.
How is that not weakness? Just don’t bend the knee. End of story.
If you want a job based on flighty fashion, don’t come complaining to me that the cool kids are being mean to you. Get a real job instead, or fight back. Most of America wants nothing to do with this stuff.
In the last few weeks several posts were made here implying that the woke crowd would soon be coming with their knives out. How’d that go? It was a love fest.
This whole thing is absurd. The response is either that they will tear us all apart, or even worse, that we have to get us a much bigger orange colored bully. How about just acting like an adult?
I read your “weakness” statement as on the part of the perpetrator of emotional blackmail. I agree that capitulation to it is weakness, although many corporations have made the judgment, possibly based on rational considerations, that accommodation will make them money.
Even before making them money, and before removing the risk of being boycotted and tarred-and-feathered in the media which is generally bad for PR and revenue, it will keep them from being complained to the EEOC and/or sued for creating an unsafe workplace or whatsisname. It is astonishing how often people tend to forget this little detail, and write as if woke capital just goes for woke on its own initiative and government action is completely irrelevant.
You read it right the first time.
Hopaulius –
I see your explanation and read your response wrong too.
I think you’ve got it right on corporate behavior. Companies now use social media and hype to gain superficial marketing advantage. Universities want kids to like them. This makes them hyper-sensitive to movements in social media. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
This is the marketplace without friction. This is marginal behavior. It just economics. But there are plenty of other marginal choices that just require somewhat more deferred gratification in exchange for more stability.
“Just don’t bend the knee. End of story.”
This approach is naive at best. I mean, there are literal examples of what you’re describing…how’d that work out?
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/jun/04/drew-brees-protest-comments-ignorant-saints
Drew Brees?
Mr. Brees is an NFL quarterback. He was under no obligation to make a political comment about bending the knee, but he did. Good for him.
Unfortunately for Mr. Brees, he still wants more from his circumstances than the few hundred million dollars he has already earned. Unlike 99.9999% of Americans, he makes stupendous amounts of money by riding a massive hype machine which manipulates people into having a fawning opinion of him, which he uses to get them to spend money on stuff.
This fawning opinion is a mile wide and an inch deep. That same hype machine can turn on anyone, and loves to do so.
So, Mr. Brees can make some choices. I could care less which one he chooses, but I do not feel sorry for him, or anyone else that wants to play the mob for money game. No one that does so should complain about free speech.
Drew Brees taking offense at players protesting by kneeling for the anthem was an inadvertently ironic endorsement of the woke standard that if you have offended someone, that is all the proof needed that you have done something wrong. I thought we were supposed to be opposed to personal feelings trumping empirical facts.
The empirical fact is that kneeling is the most universal gesture of respect known to man. The empirical fact is that Kaepernick chose this form of protest at the suggestion of Nate Boyer a former Green Beret and pro football player. He chose it because it was the clearest way to protest while signaling the protest was not meant as a sign of disrespect for the flag or the military.
Of course, anyone is free to still be offended by anything they want to be offended by. When people on the left work too hard at being offended you want to call them snowflakes. When people on the right do that you want to call them patriots. Call them whatever you want. It’s the same thing.
Ok, cool. So here is the rub for me…do you support blacklists? If not, why not?
A blacklist is nothing more than a list of non-preferred providers for some good or service based upon the shared opinions of some group.
In my mind, I firmly support freedom of speech, but I more strongly support freedom of association. And, these two freedoms often conflict. Ergo, I’m ok with blacklists (which have freedom of association as their foundation), but am still troubled by them when it comes to accommodating freedom of speech.
And yes, cancel culture is analogous to blacklists.
I’m not sure what to tell you Hans.
I’m can’t think of any kind of formal or informal blacklist I am participating in now. But occasionally I form an intention to avoid patronizing some business that has chosen to associate itself with a political cause I want to avoid supporting. More often than not I fail to remember to follow through with these intentions. I’m just not inclined to think of being a consumer as a political act when I am in the act of being a consumer. It more often feels like one more invasion of politics into another sphere that would be better off without it.
So I’m neither embarrassed nor proud of my being such an un reliable boycotter. I expect if I made the effort I could make some kind of list of things or businesses that are beyond the pale for me and which I never have and never would support.
So then I support your right to boycott whoever you want to boycott. In some ways I admire your superior personal discipline in acting according to your intentions. In other ways it alarms me. But not that much. There are people on the right who scare me. You are not one of them.
Thanks. So are we ok with a baker denying service to a soon to be married gay couple? How about a book vendor declining to stock a controversial book? Or, how about an employer dismissing an employee for expressing pro communist beliefs?
All of these scenarios are well within the bounds of freedom of association. And, I don’t see anything necessarily wrong with them, but I just wish we could be more tolerant of each other. The environment is toxic and doesn’t bode well for solving our collective problems.
FWIW – my family is not boycotting any businesses. We are just choosing to spend our dollars with companies that aren’t overtly opposed to our values. You may call this semantics if you’d like, but we do see a difference. If you like Amazon, then we say go for it, but we are going to decline.
>—“So are we ok with a baker denying service to a soon to be married gay couple? ”
Depends what you mean by “ok.” I definitely don’t think the baker should be prosecuted but it would make me less likely to shop at that bakery.
>—-” How about a book vendor declining to stock a controversial book?”
That’s an easy one. Nobody stocks everything ever. The book vendor just is who decides that. I was a former retailer. I was never required to stock anything and would have laughed at the idea it was somebody else’s decision. I didn’t even know there were people who advocated such a thing but if you say there really are I’ll take your word for it.
>—” Or, how about an employer dismissing an employee for expressing pro communist beliefs?”
It depends on which of the many definitions of “communist” you are using and what form this “expressing ” took. I can imagine different cases I’d decide different ways.
>—“FWIW – my family is not boycotting any businesses. We are just choosing to spend our dollars with companies that aren’t overtly opposed to our values. You may call this semantics if you’d like, but we do see a difference.”
OK. If you see something I don’t see you should be able to describe that thing to me in some detail.
It seems to me that the word “boycott” is a pejorative to you indicating some left leaning lack of character. That’s the main difference. It’s not a pejorative for me. A boycott is just a tool. It can be used for good purposes, bad purposes or sone complicated mix of the two.
That’s a tautology. Do you really not see that most (almost all) of our discourse is *not* rational? Rationality is really out of fashion these days.
Rationalists will also gladly resort to emotional blackmail if you don’t toe the line of their ideologies or axioms. Rational discourse is a bit of a red herring in this respect, as is critical thinking – like Rationalists, critical thinkers are fine until you think *too* critically.
I don’t really know what you’re talking about, but I firmly believe that rational thought is a much better basis for policy than emotionalism. Don’t really see much of it in most political discussions, though.
My point is that rational thought is a lot harder than it seems – even Rationalists, a community who *pride themselves on rationality*, who have a form of scriptures on the subject (that they refer to on a fairly regular basis), even these people are not very good at it (try legitimately criticizing the logic of someone’s argument on /r/SlateStarCodex in two subsequent posts and see how long until you get a temporary ban).
I propose that the reason you don’t see much of it political discussions is because an extremely small percentage of the population is actually capable of it, and there is no community on the internet that *enforces* rational discussion (you might expect a Rationalist forum would be such a place, but you’d be wrong).
Our colleges, and K12, do not provide education to their victims anymore. They incentivize the emotional response from students. They do provide some, but a diminishing, amount of knowledge, but regulation of the heart is as important as establishment of principles.
“Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.”
–Robert Frost
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
–Aristotle
“Usage: Education, properly a drawing forth, implies not so
much the communication of knowledge as the discipline
of the intellect, the establishment of the principles,
and the regulation of the heart.
Instruction is that
part of education which furnishes the mind with
knowledge. Teaching is the same, being simply more
familiar. It is also applied to practice; as, teaching
to speak a language; teaching a dog to do tricks.
Training is a department of education in which the
chief element is exercise or practice for the purpose
of imparting facility in any physical or mental
operation. Breeding commonly relates to the manners
and outward conduct.”
[1913 Webster]
My experience as a student, parent, and teacher is that schools provide approximately as much education today as they did thirty years ago as they did sixty years ago.
The politics have changed and some of the practices have changed–on balance not for the better–but kids come away with about the same amount of information and skills.
>—“–but kids come away with about the same amount of information and skills.”
I think that’s right Roger but it’s disappointing that we spend so much more now for virtually no improvement.
Perhaps we now are only exposed to the lack of education of the college graduates because of social media. I would say, more do seem to have a lack of awareness of their poor education, regardless of their ability to recite facts as they learned them.
You are likely correct that little has changed, except publicity.
A century ago, in the 1920s, there was a period where the nature of college education as written about quite a lot. You’ve only to review the articles of that time, and earlier, to realize that very little improvement has occurred in the field of education, the overhead projector excepted.
Percy Marks was a professor and author of ‘The Plastic Age’, the ‘Animal House’ of its time, the movie version being the break out role for Clara Bow.
“The idea is, of course, that men are successful because they have gone to college. No idea was ever more absurd. No man is successful because he has managed to pass a certain number of courses and has received a sheepskin which tells the world in Latin, that neither the world nor the graduate can read, that he has successfully completed the work required. If the man is successful, it is because he has the qualities for success in him; the college “education” has merely, speaking in terms’ of horticulture, forced those qualities and given him certain intellectual tools with which to work—tools which he could have got without going to college, but not nearly so quickly. So far as anything practical is concerned, a college is simply an intellectual hothouse. For four years the mind of the undergraduate is put “under glass,” and a very warm and constant sunshine is poured down upon it. The result is, of course, that his mind blooms earlier than it would in the much cooler intellectual atmosphere of the business world.
“A man learns more about business in the first six months after his graduation than he does in his whole four years of college. But—and here is the “practical” result of his college work—he learns far more in those six months than if he had not gone to college. He has been trained to learn, and that, to all intents and purposes, is all the training he has received. To say that he has been trained to think is to say essentially that he has been trained to learn, but remember that it is impossible to teach a man to think. The power to think must be inherently his. All that the teacher can do is help him learn to order his thoughts—such as they are.”
Marks, Percy, “Under Glass”, Scribner’s Magazine Vol 73, 1923, p 47
http://www.archive.org/stream/scribnersmag73editmiss#page/46/mode/2up
Today, there seem to be far more “hothouse flowers” who were not forced to bloom earlier, but rather wilt at the slightest cold wind in the real world.
Really important quote there:
To say that he has been trained to think is to say essentially that he has been trained to learn, but remember that it is impossible to teach a man to think. The power to think must be inherently his.
The IQ test is attempting to measure that inherent power to think. It does so quite imperfectly BUT better than almost any other test. Maybe the US military test is functionally better.
The title of this post may confuse philosophers, to whom ‘rationalist epistemology’ means something different, the opposite of empiricism rather than the opposite of ‘irrationalism.’
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping….
-Poe
Can someone define “emotional blackmail” for me? How does the analogy work?
A lot of comments (here and other posts) make sweeping assertions about “college nowadays.” I’m not saying that the associated critiques are off base (though they do strike me as overly strident). I do wonder, however, what proportion of the criticizers have actual first-hand experience of “college nowadays.”
Much as I dislike revealing personal information, I had experience with college ‘nowadays’ between undergrad and graduate school in the not too distant past, and I felt one could observe the norms changing on campus (for the worse, IMO) in real time. I don’t think that it’s all just old folks not understanding the kids these days.
I agree with your observation of changing norms…and for the worse. And I also agree that it’s not simply a matter of “get off my lawn” finger wagging. However, I do get a sense that many commenters (in the general sense, not just here) have very little first-hand or even reputable second-hand experience of what they are railing about. Rather, I frequently see people picking specific examples of outrageous behavior and broadly applying them to “college nowadays.” To be sure, most of these examples are real and outrageous indeed. And they are seemingly more common (I say seemingly because I have not seen this quantified or tracked over time….availability heuristic and all that). But my sense is that the commenters are frequently ill-informed, at the very least. And more importantly, their rhetoric works against the much-needed reforms that I presume they are in favor of.
Mimai, can you give an example of what you are talking about? How the rhetoric of ill-informed commentators works against much-needed reforms?
I will try to give one from my own experience, though it may fall flat on account of trying to preserve my own anonymity. I will also give an example that scales out from the “ill informed commenters” to hopefully amplify my broader point (though I realize this could be perceived as moving the goal posts). Here goes:
I work in academia. My school (note, I am not referring to my overall university) is currently grappling with whether and how DEI issues should be incorporated in the tenure review process. During these discussions, some faculty paint with overly broad (and harsh and oftentimes ill-informed) brushes when pushing back on some of the options under consideration. The thing is, they have really good points to make (I often agree with them), but their rhetoric sucks all the oxygen out of the points. It also leads the commenters to be readily dismissed (cranky old White men) by faculty who are on the other side of the issue. The end result is that their rhetoric is not just ineffective, it works against them. To be sure, I am not saying this is how it should be, but rather it is how these dynamics play out in the real world…or at least “college nowadays.”
I’m trying to be responsive to your reasonable request but may have missed the mark. I invite you to let me know.
OK, I see where you are coming from. It is very similar to what Arnold talks about in TLP. People fail to communicate because they frame things along different axes.
Yes, I am often thinking of TLP during these discussions. It’s a really useful framework. Sometimes I wish Arnold would channel his former self a little more these days.
It sounds like you, Mark, had recent experience as a student, with (likely older) Mimai as a current teacher / professor.
I’m a parent with one recent college grad, and 2 still in college — but in Slovakia, not the US. We don’t have the wokeness problems yet. There is racism against the Roma (Gypsies), and nationalism against ethnic Hungarian Slovak citizens.
But our college seems similar to 70s – 80s US colleges as I remember.
My reading about US college abuses indicates they’re now a lot worse, in many ways. I’d be very interested in hearing, from Mimai and others, where
critiques are off base.
Tom, I never asserted that the critiques were off base. Indeed, in my first post, I wrote: “I’m not saying that the associated critiques are off base (though they do strike me as overly strident).” And later, I wrote: “I agree with your observation of changing norms…and for the worse.” And further still: “To be sure, most of these examples are real and outrageous indeed. And they are seemingly more common (I say seemingly because I have not seen this quantified or tracked over time….availability heuristic and all that).”
I have two concerns that I have articulated throughout this discussion:
1) See the parenthetical above. I know of no data that supports the notion, nay assertion, that “college abuses” have gotten so much worse. (Quick aside 1, it would be helpful to operationally define “college abuses.” Quick aside 2, the nature of these abuses has certainly changed over time, as a result of changing societal norms about what is “deserving” of abuse)
Knowing a lot about the foibles of the human brain, not to mention the increased availability of information (social media and all that), I’m suspicious of my own “sense” (or what you refer to as “my reading”) on these matters.
2) My second concern is about the rhetoric. I think I’ve sufficiently laid that out in my earlier posts, so I’m not inclined to repeat it here.
Hope this helps clarify my perspective.
Unpacking “emotional blackmail” –
The starting point of “Rationalist epistemology” is that there is an objective, external world that exists and can be discovered through the Enlightment tools of empiricism, rational inquiry, etc. A rational person trying to maximize truth will be aware of confirmation bias, and do their best to avoid it.
We can contrast with with “Emotional epistemology”, that instead begins it’s inquiry with personal experience, and discovers “truth” by describing the outside world as “things that create my emotional experience”. So if a person feels like they are a victim of racism (for example), it must because the world is arranged to make it so, thus the charge of “systemic racism” is valid. Here, confirmation bias is the toolkit, not something to be avoided.
A rationalist will look at an assertion such as “the US is systemically racist” and think “hypothesis to be tested according to the rules of rational inquiry”. And this is where the conflict happens – to even entertain such a notion is to be accused of something like minimizing pain, blaming the victim, apologizing for bad things, erasing identities, and other assorted bad things. This is why rational inquiry is itself labeled as a form of White Supremacy – nothing trumps emotional experience.
The emotional blackmail is embodied in cancel culture. You can play ball by affirming the lived experiences and accepting the conclusions wholesale, or you can be cast out.
Of course, there is a sort of Coase theorem here. Exactly the same logic can be used by a white student who says that discussion of slavery or Jim Crow or white privilege makes him feel unsafe, that it proves minorities are out to get him, etc. If “nothing trumps emotional experience”, all emotional experiences are equally valid.
To say one emotional experience is more important or more real or more earned or more worth taking seriously requires some sort of meta-theory.
Look, I understand what you’re saying, but we’re just sperging out here in good company. When people use words for power, they don’t care about consistency. There’s just no incentive for it. For every one who thinks “oh no that’s a double standard I must seriously consider white students’ complaints about feeling unsafe” there are dozens chomping at the bit to take his place.
Agreed. But people who “use words for power” don’t get that power unless the people who hear them accept their assertions. And here logic (“sperging out” or not) can have an effect.
It does not seem unlikely to me that lots of people will feel, “But what about how *I* feel?” Right now good manners say that white people should respond, “My feelings are wrong, just manifestations of white privilege.” I’m not sure how stable that is. And non-black non-white people may have very different feelings than either black or white Americans.
CRT seems to say that all non-whites should feel the same way. Again, I’m not sure how stable that is.
“And non-black non-white people may have very different feelings than either black or white Americans.”
My hope is that this is the glaring blind spot of the BLM movement. Once other minorities start to digest the implications of the movement, I’m guessing that may not align on the simple binary narrative of white/bad, black/good.
Case in point: Boston Public Schools suspends advanced academic program due to racial ‘equity’ concerns
https://www.thecollegefix.com/boston-public-schools-suspends-advanced-academic-program-due-to-racial-equity-concerns/
The contrasting methodologies just treat emotional responses differently. For rationalists, emotional experience is good for first-person epistemology, and in that sense all emotional experiences are valid tools for learning about yourself. For emotionalists, emotional experience is third-person epistemology, a valid way of learning about the world. What “validity” means depends on what you are using the experience for
It can, but I suspect it happens less often than we would like to think. There are certain milieus and social situations where people accept or reject arguments based on their logic and ignore (or at least substantially demote) social and emotional cues, but such milieus and situations tend to be brittle and don’t occur very frequently. That’s why I wrote about “sperging out”: it’s a shorthand for “people ignoring social and emotional cues and attending to the bare logic of the argument”. Scientific activity is one milieu that is supposed to work like that. I’ll leave it to yourself to judge to what extent that is still a good description of how various scientific disciplines work today. Another example is democratic deliberation: it’s supposed to work like that in theory – voters aren’t supposed to vote for emotional or herd-following reasons – but I think it’s obvious that it seldom works like that in practice even when, in a society where the pressure level is low, it appears to do so, and I don’t think you would seriously defend the assertion that it works like that in today’s America. In moderate and high-pressure milieus other considerations take over. I recommend this review of Leese’s book on the Mao cult for a detailed consideration of one such milieu. Chase it down with this commentary. Key passage:
Mercier’ and Sperber’s The Enigma of Reason says that reason is largely used to defend positions reached by other means. I am suggesting that people who are hurt by “woke” positions will feel bad about that and come up with reasons why woke is wrong–or perhaps why some positions are woke in the wrong way.
E.g., you are a parent with roots in east Asia and you know it is much easier for a black kid to get into a selective college than your son.
After all, right now “woke” doesn’t say that all emotional experiences can be used to shut people up. Only certain ones from certain people. If you aren’t one of those “certain people” and if you don’t have the right emotions, you don’t have that power and you may not even be listened to at all. E.g., if you’re Asian, you can talk about how whites make you feel bad but not how blacks make you feel bad. That may not be stable.
I must correct an oversight. I wrote above about
but the way these milieus work is that their members maintain social cues that reinforce the local norm about accepting or rejecting arguments based on their logic and demoting other social and emotional cues. It is a good question whether people who really do ignore all cues exist. It is certainly much easier to delude oneself into believing that one does so than to actually do it.
In my sports metaphor framework below, unwittingly deviating from the merits because oblivious to distorting social influences or carelessly failing to notice and correct then, is like an “Unforced Error” in tennis. If your opponent persuades you to adopt a belief in this scenario, it is scored as a “hit on error” like in baseball.
There are also *abuses* of elements of the “system of distorting social influences” (in which it is possible for Weinstein’s DISC to manifest), which can be either negligent or intentional. Some of these abuses are typical fallacies and ITFs, others are IPFs, and the worst are both.
I still would like someone to explain why it is “emotional blackmail” and not “emotional extortion” or “emotional bullying.” How does the analogy to blackmail work? It is probably obvious, but I just don’t see it.
You’re right. It’s not really blackmail. I’m not sure where the expression came from. Maybe because it makes the victim feel trapped, like real blackmail, and it involves using the victim’s emotions.
I think the canonical example is a woman not wanting to have sex with a guy she thinks she’s in love with and who she wants to continue a relationship with. To get his way, he says, “If you loved me, you’d make love with me. (If you don’t have sex with me, it means you don’t really care about me.)
You are right that “emotional blackmail” is not quite apt, but at the same time, we know what he’s getting at.
The terms I like to use are “Intellectual Personal Foul” and “Intellectual Technical Fouls”. IPFs and ITFs.
I think when evaluating people for the FIT tournament, each ITF should count -1, but each IPF should count -10, at least. (One could argue that much of the entire western liberal tradition can be boiled down to a ‘ethos’ of fair play – of creating a social order with an organizational principle in which all the fouls – physical and intellectual, technical and personal – are minimized. In what is hard to regard as mere coincidence or sole consequence of power and status, the British also invented a lot of popular sports.)
Let me explain, but first, to hold off the pedants, yes, I am well aware this doesn’t match up with the precise meaning of the terms in basketball, and there are other sports like football from which one could also try to borrow for the sake of naming the metaphor.
I just mean “personal” to be “against the person”, or “unduly personalized” (cf, Alinsky’s Rule 12 advice to ‘go after the person’.) Maybe types could be “Roughing the Opposition” or “Blocking” (that is, benefiting from obstacles which prevent one’s opponent from being able to move his argument forward in a certain productive direction).
The essence of the thing is that there are “rules of good sportsmanship” to intellectual discourse and civil argumentation, just like there are rules of conduct and standards of professional behavior in a court.
An attorney is supposed to argue against the *case* of his opponent, not try to threaten or hurt the opposing counsel himself, which is, among other things, unfair. Even the Catholic Church once allowed for Devil’s Advocates. The legal case is much closer to the matter when talking about good and bad conduct for arguments, and so instead of ‘foul’ I could say, “Contemptuous or Objectionable Movement to *Socially* Disqualify Opposing Counsel”, but most people are much more familiar with sports than with recondite legal terminology.
In general, an IPF is not really “argumentative logical fallacy”, (i.e., an ITF) because one is not making faulty appeals to the target of a third-party audience or judge. Instead, one is making explicit or implicit threats to one’s opponent himself, and what one is guilty of doing is actively threatening harm to his personal interests for expressing certain counterarguments.
Or at least passively enjoying an unfair and undue advantage from society’s framework of taboos that can be reasonably expected to cause that kind of personal harm to anyone engaging in certain kinds of advocacy. That’s like knowing the ref is going to make every call against your opponents while letting you get away with anything, and also, that stadium security is going to kick spectators out for jeering you, while letting them throw broken beer bottles at members of the other team. It’s like being a contestant on “The Running Man”, where everything is rigged against you, which is indeed what a lot of modern discourse feels like.
Just like in sports, there are a wide variety of IPFs.
Classical ‘Blackmail’ is manipulating another’s behaviors by threatening to expose a secret embarrassment. So one variety of IPF is the blackmail version of ad hominem, which is to say, if you try to advocate for a particular cause in a particular way, I will engage in an ad hominem argument, which, ok, is an ITF and kind of nasty, but *deploying* that ITF in a defamatory manner, when reasonably expecting it to seriously harm your reputation, is an IPF. (-11 points!) This is the kind of sword of Damocles that is the looming credible threat over anyone interested in participating in politics.
The Emotional Blackmail version of IPF would be to manipulate one’s opponent into feeling of shame, guilt, insecurity, or disloyalty to the cause as regards his own character. That is, if someone sincerely internalizes the proposition that, “If you are not just being a devil’s advocate, then the only reason a person would make such an argument is because they have bad character.”
Guilt is the G in ‘FOG’, and Disloyalty is a betrayal of the Obligation that is the O. The F is for Fear which is the small fear that your interlocutor will dislike and maybe personally punish you after hearing you articulate a position, and the big fear that if publicized an intimidating mob of people in wider society will do so when learning of your heretical transgression.
What I call ‘Pariah Baiting’ (or “Discourse in the Shadow of the Guillotine”) is a passive IPF based in social fear, in which one’s opponent paints one into a corner for which there is a valid counter but it cannot be used without risking ‘cancellation’. It is at its most aggravated severity when the person using the IPF can be presumed to know of the obstacle and its unfairness, and then to go even further and pile on an argumentum ad ignorantiam as an informal fallacy (ITF) to publicly claim that the fact that his opponent cannot articulate a good counterargument is *itself* evidence that there *is* no good counterargument, since who else would be more likely to know of one?
What I find useful about this scheme is that just like criminals typically have their tell-tale modus operandi, intellectual bad sports tend to keep using the same particular type of IPF, the deployment of which they’ve honed to perfection by both talent and long experience of use, and which becomes part of their competitive advantage in the arena.
Schopenhauer lists many fouls in his Art of Being Right. 36 out of 38 are unequivocal ITFs. #31 is the IPF of “material blackmail”: discourage your opponent from using an argument by indicating that its consequences harm his personal or group interests, or encourage your friendly audience to discount your opponent’s arguments by indicating that their consequences will harm your group interests. Part of #26 is the IPF of playing on the personal insecurity of people who desire to be considered sober and well-adjusted. More types of IPF have been discovered since then, or perhaps came into more widespread use as the logical possibilities of arguments were progressively mined out.
“More types of IPF have been discovered since then, or perhaps came into more widespread use as the logical possibilities of arguments were progressively mined out.”
This is a fascinating “arrow of causation” / “chicken or egg” question which I’ve been pondering lately, especially as an alternative to all the ‘polarization’ talk lately, which I view as mostly full of plain error and deeply misguided attempt to explain the increase in nastiness and acrimony and the deterioration of intellectual standards and discourse.
I think it’s clear we see many, many more IPFs – clear evidence of the existence of a Social Failure Mode – and my impression is a slight increase in ITFs too, and specifically because they being protected by more powerful IPFs, as when shielded by such defenses they are less likely to be called out.
Indeed, it might be reasonable to view the ‘rationalist community’ as “fighting the last war” and one mostly fixated on ITFs just when IPFs started to re-emerge as dominant weaponry.
That raises the question of why such an increase lately, for which they are many possible explanations since so many things are changing simultaneously and in tandem.
For example, did social circumstances change which suddenly increased the power and effectiveness of IPFs, or did the need to break out of a strategic deadlock and entrenched equilibrium built to defend against ITFs create a need for IPFs, the deployment of which was ‘autocatalytic’ is positive feedback as people caught on to the new rules of the new game and lent their “shoulder to the plow”, gradually shifting the social equilibrium to one of increasing intimidation and moralized nastiness.
My view is more along the lines of coevolution in an arms race in which the one side has developed a new tactic for which the other side has no good natural defense. That tactical advantage started out small and weak, but set off a million Manhattan Projects on how to make it bigger and stronger all while the opponent cannot keep up and so remains more or less helpless to resist.
There are many military analogies to this situation. Consider ‘air dominance’. If you have air dominance at the beginning of WWI, well, it’s an advantage, but it’s not even close to being decisive. You maybe have a few biplanes or balloons, and even if the enemy has nothing at all, most of the game is being played on the ground.
Compare that to two adversaries with modern squadrons, but one bigger and superior in most respects. The first phase of the war is the air fight, and the superior air force tries to destroy all of the adversary’s aircraft and anti-aircraft systems as rapidly as possible. Even if they started out close, after air dominance is achieved, it is not only a big advantage, it is completely decisive, the war is already over, it’s just a matter of time. (The ground occupation after taking out the regime is another matter entirely.)
I like the idea of ITFs and ITPs, but more examples are needed in real controversies.
All blackmail and extortion are forms of bullying, but there is some bullying that is not quite blackmail.
“I don’t like you, 4-eyes genius – here’s a way to be more normal” – bully grabs glasses and steps on them.
Extortion: “Give me your lunch money or I punch you/ steal your bike/ unzip & take your pants” – bully gets the money, doesn’t do the bad things. Today.
Blackmail: “Pretend one untrue thing or else I … expose you/ [falsely] accuse you/ ruin your life thru my speech about what you did or who you are”.
Falsely identifying somebody as a “racist” or a “sexist” becomes a blackmail tool.
Michigan Republicans who thought there were election discrepancies were accused of being racists:
https://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/us-politics/republican-election-officials-threatened-during-zoom-call-for-refusing-to-certify-michigan-results/news-story/61cde459c0a60f54289206a87f089cd9
One state rep:
Monica Palmer and William Hartmann, as two people completely racist and without an understanding of what integrity means or a shred of human decency.”
He also threatened Mrs Palmer’s kids as being identified as racist.
It’s a threat, based on the emotionalism behind accusations of racism, with the irrational anti-racist response of the Social Mobsters expected to be very negative for the kids.
Calling it emotional blackmail seems reasonable.
Those “answering” the question without examples are not doing such a good job answering the question – itself a very good question.
As always, all above IMO – but I’m trying to take out my “I think” qualifiers and just say what I think.
I’m pretty sure my retirement won’t be cancelled even if they call me a racist or sexist or homophobe. Over the last 15 years of work, I did have some fears about being work-punished by having non-popular ideas.
1- “Good” and “Bad” thinkers are far too binary. Most thinkers are both, at various times, and often in the same argument about some specific point. Certain arguments can be supported by statements that threaten emotional blackmail. Usually those statements are not supported by the facts as “known” by the one who disagrees.
2- From an intellectual standpoint of looking for Truth, using emotional blackmail is almost always bad – even when it makes “my” side win a particular argument. However, in any power struggle where Winning Power is more important than Truth, “emotional blackmail” will usually be attempted, often by both sides.
3. Emotions/ feelings come first – most “Rationalist” thought can be shown to be equivalent to mere, or even very elegant, rationalizations for the feelings. Nozick’s Anarchy, State & Utopia [a key book for me] was an extremely elegant rationalization for his Libertarian feelings. These feelings later changed, as he married and day to day comfort & Love became more important than “Objective Truth”, which at times seems indistinguishable from intellectual masturbation.
4. Day to day life is seldom fully rational. “Heidi from Princeton” is something we all should read. Koppel is so good in that essay.
5. Astral Codex Ten (& SSC) with the idea of a Steelman argument, from both sides, is excellent. However, there is a point where one argument is belabored so long that it stops being constructive. I think 80% of the strongest argument, in 20% (20 paragraphs) is better than 99% of the strongest argument in 99% of the attention time (99 paragraphs, or maybe 199).
6. Blacks, with practice of AA arguments, have long been leading Whites or others when using emotional blackmail to win
argumentsPower.“We need to do this for equality for Blacks”
“No, I don’t agree this is good to do, for Blacks or for America”
“You a racist! You have no shred of human decency! You probably support SLAVERY. You should be fired from wherever you work!”
Women are using similar, tho weaker, “anti-sexist” emotional blackmail weapons.
6b. Everybody who is against “emotional blackmail” is actually a racist, or a sexist, or both.