Interesting Links for 17-08-2016

[andrewducker]

Women Athletes Gave Up Gonads And More To Continue Olympic Competition (tags: women testosterone mutilation OhForFucksSake olympics sports ) Nice breakdown of costs and profits on a Kickstarter novel (tags: kickstarter business publishing CrowdFunding viaTheFerrett ) My favourite commentary on No Man's Sky (tags: games funny video ) How to lie

Comments

[80hz]

Hi, long-time reader, first-time commenter. (Actually made this account just to comment

[newandrewhickey]

"Bigotry is essentially the opposite of the belief that rational, intelligent people can disagree about all kinds of things."
No it isn't. In many cases, bigotry *is* the belief that rational, intelligent people can disagree about things -- like for example the humanity of people of different races.

"Don't you think, for example, that a rational, intelligent person could, without any malice, argue cogently in favor of capping testosterone levels in female athletes?"
s/capping testosterone levels/forcing people to choose between genital mutilation and infertility or giving up their career. And no, anyone who forces women to make that choice is utterly, utterly, obscenely, evil.

It's not bigotry, and your opinion that Andrew "come[s] off as a bigot" is not one that anyone who *isn't* an anon using a throwaway account has ever expressed, because it's an utterly absurd one.

[80hz]

I didn't come here to start a fight. I'm trying to explain how something comes across to me in the hopes that a small piece of our universe can be made more civil and less divided.

Bigotry is all about refusal to hear and give thoughtful consideration to the other side of an argument. Most dictionaries characterize this as a stubborn and intolerant dedication to one's own opinion. Bigotry is NOT "whatever you find objectionable."

Instead of making an inverted "no true Scotsman" argument about who I am and why I might comment here, please consider the possibility that another person might perceive some of what Andrew says differently than you do.

[snarlish]

'As if you're standing arms crossed and tapping your feet impatiently, waiting for the world to catch up to your enlightened state of moral superiority.'

I generally read the tag as an immediate reaction to some sort of news/statement/study. As in one can in the first instance only state 'Oh for fuck's sake!'. The handy thing about Ducker's links is that some of them are just for the pretty pictures/interesting thing, while others are to think about, and--perhaps--engage others in conversation about them. Often an expert or at least a somewhat informed layman will help set the record straight when the content of a link is wrong or misrepresented, and this sometimes happens with the OFFS tag

[80hz]

I generally read the tag as an immediate reaction to some sort of news/statement/study. As in one can in the first instance only state 'Oh for fuck's sake!'.Why bubble up an irrational knee-jerk response? That's noise, not signal, and is usually discouraged in other contexts. The female athletes article, for example, is actually pretty even-toned despite the clickbait headline, and it'd have been nice to get a sense of that from the tags. Instead, we got "clickbait headline" + "Get a load of this evil craziness! When will they ever learn, amIrite

[andrewducker]

It's my opinion, on my journal. That's at least partially what my journal is for.

If I want to express that I think pushing people into chopping bits of themselves off so that the can take part in a competition is a vile, horrific, act then I'm going to do so.

[80hz]

It's my opinion, on my journal. That's at least partially what my journal is for.

Obviously! I'm not the internet police, and I'm not asking you to change or even hide your opinion. You allow comments and I'm using them to provide feedback, suggesting a change in tone from

- assuming malicious intent behind something you don't like
- positing yourself as obviously morally superior

to

- accurately reflecting the tone of the article you linked to
- accurately framing your response as a statement of emotion rather than a judgmental assessment.

The purpose of this change would be to help reduce, at least in one tiny corner of the universe, the amount of blind hostility flying around out there. You strike me as a thoughtful person who might be down with that goal.

[andrewducker]

I'm not sure how "OhForFucksSake" could be seen as anything other than a statement of emotion.

And I don't believe that morals are anything more than a kind of opinion. So none are superior to any other kind, because that concept seems ridiculous to me. However, this doesn't stop me preferring the world some ways to others, and doing what I can to influence the world towards what I would like.

[80hz]

I'm not sure how "OhForFucksSake" could be seen as anything other than a statement of emotion.

Well like I said, it connotes a sense of waiting impatiently for the rest of the world to catch up to your position of moral superiority. There is of course an emotional dressing there, but the core message, to my eyes anyway, is the moral superiority part. ("Oh for fuck's sake" is the kind of thing I might yell at my router when my internet's acting up: I have a standard it's not living up to.)

So, your own beliefs about morals don't come across from the tag, but I'll get into that more in a response to a different comment of yours below. (I'll put a * there.)

[80hz]

Fair enough, and I think I conceded that already. Now brace yourself, I'm about to get all analytical

[80hz]

And I would hope that my argument in favour of the tag is both cogent and without maliceYes, on both counts, and I appreciate it

[andrewducker]

I'd agree that, for news services, I'd rather have Just The Facts. But I'm not a news service, and if I had more energy then you'd see more commentary from me, rather than less.

Because I also believe that things change because people point out how awful they are, and inspire themselves (and others) to work to change them. I also think that the ability to sit back and say "Here is an interesting snippet, thousands of people have been rounded up and killed because of their race/religion/gender/taste in music." without being upset about it is a very privileged position which, if anything, perpetuates the situation. Black people don't get to have a clinical position on racism, because it affects them - so for me to sit there and report on racism coldly really does feel like I'm on the wrong side.

(And yes, "OhForFucksSake" is the explosive version of "ThisMakesMeVeryCrossIndeed")

[80hz]

I wasn't asking for more commentary--I hope you didn't get that impression. I was only suggesting that one tag be modified