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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   37743 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 8, 2024

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Please refrain from psychoanalyzing other commenters. Or genetically analyzing them.

  • -11

Is it really psycho analysis though?

He's been pretty vocal in expressing his disdain for white people in general and western culture in particular. Are we supposed to just ignore that context when he starts going of about how people different from him desrve to be punished?

Yes and no.

seems motivated by a desire to guard your ego

Where does the conversation go from there? It’s immediately dragged down, because in addition to making it personal, this remark is unfalsifiable. BC can say “nuh uh,” and A can double down, but nothing good is likely to come of it.

Responding on the merits is best. Questioning motives is not recommended, but can be done with tact. I have yet to see someone tactfully and respectfully accuse another user of having a fragile ego.

Fine, but why not? (Psychoanalysing, I didn’t do any genetic analysis, he revealed his ethnicity giddily more than once)

It's a form of bad faith argument known as Bulverism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulverism

The Bulverist assumes a speaker's argument is invalid or false and then explains why the speaker came to make that mistake or to be so silly (even if the opponent's claim is actually right) by attacking the speaker or the speaker's motive.

Or genetically analyzing them.

What does this even mean? Are you saying it’s against the rules to acknowledge another commenter’s racial/ethnic background? Even a commenter like @BurdensomeCount who brings up those same topics all the time and who speaks openly about his own fraught racial/ethnic relationship to his host society?

There is a type of accusation along the lines of "you think this thing X, because you are a Y". These accusations are generally very annoying:

  1. Puts words and opinions in people's mouths that they might not hold.
  2. Turns discussions personal rather than idea oriented. It can become about whether someone is a Y rather than whether X is a good idea.
  3. Implies that the person can't change their mind and thus insures that no discussion can take place, only arguments and debate.

There are good ways to acknowledge someones biases without turning it immediately into shit flinging. "If I was a middle eastern man living in France I think I'd feel this way about things".

There are definitely situations where I wouldn't mind other people shedding some light on my own psychology. Sometimes I can see what my thoughts are motivated by and sometimes I'm stuck in my own blind-spot.

Perhaps the best way to do it is to collaboratively compare and contrast life experiences with one another. I've seen a few people having that sort of discussion on this very page. It seems to shed the desired sort of light with minimal epistemic friction.

Its the difference between solicited and unsolicited advice. Sure, go ahead and ask for solicited advice, we have whole weekly threads for that. Giving that advice unsolicited ... seems pretty rude and like you just want to pick a fight.

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