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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023

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Is a cock closer to a bull than to a hen? Because cocks and bulls are similar in the same way that black men and white men are similar: they share a sex.

  • -29

Either you are deliberately exaggerating for rhetorical effect, which is not the sort of low-effort sneering we want here, or you are literally claiming that white men and black men are not only difference species, but completely different classes of being, which is an extraordinary claim requiring proportional evidence.

Do not post like this. You have a number of warnings for just plain bad posts now. Your last one was almost a month ago, or I'd probably give you a ban as I usually do for a string of crappy comments in a short time. But next time will very likely be a ban.

I don't accept your false dichotomy just any more than I accept the (unsupported, extraordinary, consensus-building) claim I took exception to. There is no either/or, and I'm not sneering, unlike the responses I've gotten thus far. I noticed neither of them warranted a mod-hat brandishing a banhammer, despite being better examples of rule breaking.

Either you are deliberately exaggerating for rhetorical effect

My post is a reductio ad absurdum, which I know you are familiar with. I didn't appreciate @motteburner123 or @FCfromSSC deliberately ignoring that, but they're not threatening me with a ban for using simple logic. Both of them swallowed the absurd at face value in order to call me racist, and my post terrible, which each breaks more rules than the post they replied to (Antagonism, Charity, Consensus, Clarity, specifically "we ask that responders address what was literally said, on the assumption that this was at least part of the intention."). Motteburner didn't even use capitalization, having spent even less effort than my admittedly brief reply.

My post was short, but it was perfectly clear. The argument

A black man is more like a white man than a black women.

is absurd. I demonstrated how absurd it was by taking it to the extreme. This is not sneering, it's rhetoric. I didn't think I needed three paragraphs of text when a simple and straightforward reductio ad absurdum would do the job. My use of a common form of argument was deliberately misconstrued, by you included, in a way that breaks the very rules you're threatening me with. In your own post you clearly understand how absurd it is. You link to classes, but if you followed the logic one step forward, you'd have realized that classes are determined by distance from a common ancestor. Why can't you apply that same logic to the comment I replied to, or even to my own comment which was obviously absurd?

The organisms most like you are not those that share your sex. That is absurd, like saying a cock is more like a bull than a hen. Instead, the organisms most like you are those that share the greatest share of ancestry. The organisms most like you are your parents and your siblings and your offspring. A black man is more like his black mother and black sisters than he is like a white man. He is more like his black grandmother and black cousins than he is a white man. The very same thing that determines classes, shared ancestors of common origin, is what makes the original claim obviously wrong and in need of the proactive evidence in favor. My rebuttal needs no such proactive evidence, as you tacitly admitted by using the very same logic when you ignored my argument.

There was exactly one thing in my post that was genuinely obscure and unstated. I used cock and bull, not stag and ram, for effect. I apologize for not speaking clearly in that regard.

I think if you’re making an “ad absurdium” argument the onus is on you the poster to clearly communicate that with at least one phrase.

Single phrase responses that read like rhetorical smack downs is precisely the kind of thing this site tries to avoid… like literally the whole point of the rules in my perception is to avoid one-liners submerging real content and thought out arguments.

The fact that most people consider your comment racist is an orthogonal issue and not, IMO, ban-related, though the mods can speak for themselves.

I noticed neither of them warranted a mod-hat brandishing a banhammer, despite being better examples of rule breaking.

Neither of them broke the rules. You did.

My post is a reductio ad absurdum, which I know you are familiar with.

That's not how reductio ad absurdums work.

This is not sneering, it's rhetoric.

The two are not mutually exclusive. You do not get to throw sneers and then claim "I was using rhetoric."

I find your disclaimers unconvincing. The warning stands; do not do this again.

They both assumed the worst of me, despite rules for charity. They both called me names, despite rules for kindness. One didn't use capitalization, and referred to me as "u," despite rules for effort. How is that not breaking the rules?

That's not how reductio ad absurdums work.

Yes, it is. You are wrong.

You replied far too quickly to have read my post, so I don't know why I expect you to read this, but here's the definition:

A mode of argumentation or a form of argument in which a proposition is disproven by following its implications logically to an absurd conclusion.

This is exactly what I did. I followed the implication that black men and white men are more like each other than to any woman to its logical conclusion, thus disproving the proposition.

You seem to have it out for me, but that doesn't mean you can simply lie about what I'm doing, or flatly deny my arguments out of hand.

Seriously, you want me to mod someone for a lack of capitalization?

You replied far too quickly to have read my post

I read your post. It doesn't take that long to write a few lines in response.

You seem to have it out for me, but that doesn't mean you can simply lie about what I'm doing, or flatly deny my arguments out of hand.

I don't even notice you except when you pop up in the mod queue.

I don't care how you feel about being modded; I am telling you why you were modded, and what the consequences will be if you post like this again.

You should just ban him -- I don't see how any good can come of this.

I want you to mod someone for low-effort swipes. The lack of capitalization is evidence for how low effort it was.

I want you to mod someone for saying this:

damn u racist.

about me, which breaks the rules. I ignored it because I don't care, but if you're going to mod-hat me, you ought to be doing the same to him.

no, they share sex and they are the same species. what are you talking about? the distance between races is comparable to the distance between mammals and birds? damn u racist.

cocks and bulls are separate species. Black men and White men are not separate species. Racial variation is not speciation in any meaningful sense. This comment is terrible.