No I wasn’t. It’s not just a matter of being in a numerical minority, it’s about the power dynamics. Having beliefs similar to the majority is clearly an advantage on this board. Posters who agree with the ‘majority philosophy’ can freely post their unsupported opinion, insult groups who are ‘acceptable targets’, make jibes that don’t quite break the rules, never bother to say anything substantive, and generally engage in exactly those kinds of ‘behaviours’ that will get someone with minority views pitted. The Pit is almost explicitly a way for a majority that clusters on one side of the political spectrum to try to enforce their viewpoint on anyone else. And it’s exactly being in a numerical majority that makes this so effective. If it was two equal-size groups disagreeing, there would be no pressure for social conformity.
The argument that what the majority thinks is the only thing that matters is a bad one in general. It should at least be qualified by deciding who counts as a minority, and then we can consider that explicitly. In the UK, religious and philosophical beliefs are protected characteristics, so it’s hardly outrageous to think some kinds of political beliefs should be too.
I don’t think we should have a law against them like in Germany, but as long as it’s limited to really extremist views I don’t think it’s a problem. The problem is that this board (not to mention important institutions in the real world) has become so politically skewed that even many moderate views are considered unacceptable, let alone conservative ones.
There was exactly jackshit about “power dynamics” in this post:
That was just you absurdly claiming the same moral high ground as actual victims of real oppression.
So you say. I have several Pittings to my name that say otherwise, as do a lot of other posters to the left.
…not one anyone on my side is making, so that’s a strawman.
Saying particular minority opinions are worthless crap is not the same thing as saying all minority opinions are worthless crap, and it’s definitely not the same as saying they’re worthless crap because they’re minority opinions.
We’re very much not in the UK, and anyway, “protected class” is not the same as “minority”.
And if your minority ‘political’ belief gets protected, how much more so my even more minority ‘political’ beliefs - should I expect a cascade of warnings every time someone belittles anarchism? Should I cry “bullying” every time absolute pacifism gets mocked? No, I should not, and neither should your minority ‘political’ beliefs get any more shrift than that.
And were they for views the majority agrees with? I’m betting not.
I don’t know if wolfpup is on your side, but the post I replied to said that the majority of posters agree the things we are complaining about in this thread are non-existent issues. In other words, the view of the majority is the only one that matters.
There’s at the least a considerable overlap in the concepts.
And I’m certainly not saying UK laws should apply on this message board, but that the idea holding certain philosophical beliefs can be grounds for discrimination and shouldn’t be, similar to other characteristics, is not a ridiculous or extreme one.
No you shouldn’t. Mocking a belief is not the same as mocking a person. Criticising a belief is not the same as insulting a person for holding it. It is the latter I would like to dispense with.
This does seem like a problem. And if the opinions to be so stigmatised were limited to extreme things like Holocaust denial, I’d be inclined to agree with you. But over the years the composition of the board has become so politically skewed, that as I said, many moderate positions as well as conservative ones are now seen as unacceptable by the majority, or at least a loud and influential minority. And as posters leave or get banned as a consequence, the range of opinions expressed and thus seen as acceptable becomes progressively smaller.
Also, you seem to be saying that the existence of the Pit has not been enough to prevent this, or the below:
So it would appear you are not happy with the status quo either. Is there some other option that would address both these problems?
Firstly, just going to note that I see you dropping the defence of your initial minority-claiming post as saying anything about ‘power dynamics’ like a hot potato, and just jumping onto the rest of my reply.
No, but the people pitting me were not a group that “clusters on one side of the political spectrum” by any means.
No. It means they’re just so much of a non-issue. The extreme non-issue-ness manifests as majority, not the other way around.
Very little, actually - even majority race, religion etc is protected.
And yet holding some is and should be. Holding e.g. homophobic or misogynistic beliefs can and should be grounds for certain kinds of discrimination, like public mockery. It would be ridiculous and extreme to expect otherwise nowadays. And we can all think of many more beliefs like that, no doubt.
Shouldn’t cry bullying, or shouldn’t expect pushback and even mockery for my beliefs?
Of course it is - beliefs don’t exist in the aether or Platonic space.
People are in some ways (and especially in the ways that count here, on a messageboard) nothing but a collection of expressions of belief. Mocking that belief itself is the same as mocking the expression by a person , restricting one but not the other (in the proper forum) is a distinction without difference, a polite fiction that I don’t agree with.
This has been asked before by another, but maybe repetition and emphasis will work:
name these “many moderate positions” the majority is supposedly seeing as unacceptable
I thought you were in support of those in a “minority” being heard?
And this is not an entirely accurate description of what is going on. The board continues to be rife with “moderates”, for starters, and if this board has become a more challenging place for some - not all - conservative posters, it is not because the board that has changed but that the wider political landscape has.
We live in a world where a significant percentage of the American right-wing believe that the election was “stolen” due to “massive fraud”. They believe that the Democrats encouraged “cities being burned down” (which didn’t happen) but that the January 6 insurrectionists were just “normal tourists” and “patriots”. They believe the the next investigation will be the one that suddenly reveals all the crime that Obama/Hillary/Biden/etc have been doing all along, even though the umpteen previous investigations came to naught - but they also believe that no connection between the Trump campaign and Russia was found. They believe the left is trying to “cancel Dr Seuss”, that the Democrats are Communists in bed with the Chinese Communist Party and that they want “open borders” and “free stuff” and assorted other nonsense.
How then shall we treat those posters who persist in posting - over and over and over again - blatant mis- and disinformation here? The first few times they get debunked, sure, we can ascribe that to reliance on poor external sources. But when they keep doing in for years on end? What shall we do when it become obvious that they are doing so deliberately and in bad faith? This board’s mission statement, going back to 1973, is about fighting ignorance - what should we do with those that insist on promulgating wilful ignorance?
As I have stated elsewhere, I do believe that this board is all the poorer for rational conservatism, and in past years I have learned a lot from many of the insightful right-wing posters we have had. But what’s the alternative? Should we - and in fact do we already - act more leniently toward bad behavior by conservative posters because we’re trying to maintain a better balance? Or does that also drive away their more reasonable colleagues?
I will also note that it’s not as if we indulge such behaviors in progressives, the footstamping of some board members notwithstanding. There are plenty of Pit threads and banned left-wing members in the history of the board.
I’m not sure how that follows from what I wrote.
I’m not happy with the behaviors of posters who engage in bad-faith arguments, post deliberate disinformation, blatantly misrepresent what other posters have written, or cry persecution when others hold them accountable for their words. The board has gotten better at moderating such things but given that some of those require a subjective assessment from the board moderation and that there is rarely a bright-line distinction between acceptable and unacceptable behavior, there will always be some contention.
So the best option is to have a forum in which the more egregious behaviors can be hashed out amongst posters - a purpose the Pit serves admirably. It has on many previous occasions resulted in the aforementioned disingenuous bigots, purveyors of falsehoods and assorted other assholes being revealed for what they are. Sometimes they ignore it, sometimes they change…and sometimes they get banned.
Getting rid of the Pit would make things a lot worse. As such, it seems like the “status quo” works more or less fine to me.
The idea behind “fighting ignorance” was to provide information where otherwise the information would not be available.
It was not to actually fight against those who promote ignorance, that’s a whole different issue, not one that any of the founders ever intended nor expected. The pit is needed for that fight. Maybe if people would stop promoting ignorance, the pit wouldn’t be needed after all.
I didn’t say that my initial post mentioned power dynamics. But nonetheless I think they do apply to this situation.
Did they disagree with your beliefs for different reasons, then? Or all pretty much agree with each other?
It’s a non-issue for those who aren’t suffering from it. Much as any issue, really…
Sure, and that’s a sensible way to write the laws, but the various characteristics are only included because there is some minority suffering discrimination due to them.
As I said, you shouldn’t expect people not to criticise your beliefs, only not to attack or bully you for them. But as you appear to think these are the same thing, I don’t think there is anything else I can say.
This is an interesting view, one that makes it surprising you would disagree that holding unpopular beliefs can make a group a minority. If people are their beliefs to some extent, and can suffer discrimination for them, how is that different to any other characteristic? It’s not like we choose what to believe in the same way we choose how to act. However, it appears you support discriminating against people for their beliefs, and that is why you are unwilling to consider them a minority in that sense.
Earlier you refused to answer one of my questions because I asked it sarcastically. So I hope you will not be surprised that I am returning the favour now.
That’s not a sarcastic question, that’s just asking you to back up your own statement.
You have a tendency to make vague accusatory statements, and then refuse to actually back them up. This is not a partisan thing, this is a poor debate thing. You do not get pitted for your beliefs or politics, you get pitted for the way you conduct yourself in debates.
I didn’t say that you said anything. I just noted that you didn’t.
It varied from pitting to pitting.
It’s a non-issue, period.
But sure, “suffering”, I understand you are now committed to the cloak of martyrdom…
Nevertheless, they cover majorities too, so the idea that they are close to the same meaning as “minority group” is laughable.
Being a minority has exactly jack to do with the content of the beliefs you hold, and everything to do with how you’ve historically been treated, either for some set of beliefs or some immutable characteristic.
I’m going to merely say I disagree strongly with this, and leave it at that.
When those beliefs are that certain subsets of humanity are inferior/deserving of harm you can bet I do.
No, I don’t consider them minorities because they’re not. Nazis aren’t minorities, homophobes aren’t minorities, etc, etc, et-bloody-cetera
Where’s the sarcasm in my question? Or @kayaker’s for that matter? I mean, I’m not surprised you dodged a question you have no answer for, but I am amused at the hilariously obvious way you’ve done it.
Nonsense. There are tons of large deviations of opinion around here on issues typically stereotyped as part of “current progressive orthodoxy”, including questions of cultural appropriation, accommodation for disability, legalization of drugs and sex work, redistributive taxation, agricultural policy, educational policy, the Middle East, feminist issues, minority cultures, class warfare, fat acceptance, transgender identity accommodations, and innumerable others.
The only “orthodoxy” we’re conforming to, as Cervaise pointed out in post #739, is the basic principle of not being a safe space for oppressive bigotry and hate speech. That still leaves infinite room for all manner of good-faith disagreement.
Specific beliefs are fair game for critique and condemnation in the context of particular epistemological and ontological assumptions about belief. So, for example, if you’re asserting a rational-materialist framework in which the only reality consists of material phenomena which can be explained in a rationally consistent way, then you can whale on any form of religious or other supernatural belief for its rational-materialist inadequacy all day long. (You can’t definitively prove that your preferred rational-materialist framework is objectively the only true interpretation of reality, of course, but that doesn’t mean you can’t adhere to it anyway.)
Indiscriminate condemnation of religious believers as a group is another matter, as we can see from the way posters get jumped on if they attempt it, even in the Pit. The issue is somewhat muddied by the fact that some subsets of religious denominations systematically promote oppressive bigotry and hate speech as part of their official doctrine, but posters here do not shy away from the task of disentangling that can of worms and calling out fellow posters for assigning blame too broadly.
For all the talk about pitting for fighting against social ills, the reality is that people are pitted for anything no matter how trivial. Someone can be pitted because they make too many typos, and that opens the floodgates for almost any insult at all. The thread can be filled with pile on insults of everything that anyone doesn’t like about that person. In addition to people complaining about the typos, there will be insults of other unrelated stuff, like the person also doesn’t understand sarcasm or jokes, takes things too seriously, focuses too deeply on just a few topics, puts pineapple on pizza, and whatever else bugs people, all peppered with lots of freeform profanity and insults, like their mother dresses them funny. It seems like a huge disconnect to say that the SDMB isn’t going to be a safe place for hate speech, yet the SDMB explicitly condones virtually unlimited personal insults in the Pit. I’m sure the pile on insults touch a nerve in the person who has likely experienced the same negative comments in real life. Many of the personality quirks that bug people in their posting style also bug people in real life.
And lets be honest for a moment–lots of people on the SDMB have personality quirks. Lots of misfit toys find their way to the SDMB. The people here are going to have quirks that make them interesting, but they will also make them infuriating. And often, I feel pot-meet-kettle with pitter-pittee. The pitter and pittee may not have the same quirks, but quite often, the pitter has pit-worthy quirks themselves. Even if the pit doesn’t change, it would be nice if the pitters on the SDMB realized that quirks come with the territory and just roll with them. Hopefully that same consideration will be given to their own quirks as well.
It’s absolutely true that Pit threads can be started for pretty much any rant or pet peeve, no matter how trivial. But ISTM that such Pits of trivial peeves almost always involve a general phenomenon rather than a particular poster’s behavior.
You may have a Pit thread about Poster X, and you may have a Pit thread about how much you hate Trivial Peeve Y, but is it really common for people to start Pit threads specifically about the fact that Poster X does Trivial Peeve Y? Do you have any concrete examples of that kind of oddly specific Pitting?
Again, can you show some specific instances of the Pit behavior you’re complaining about here? I do realize that people who start out griping about one annoying aspect of Poster X’s posting behavior can segue into griping about other annoying aspects of it. But are people in Pit threads really seriously attempting to insult things like the Pittee’s pizza topping preference or clothing choices?
ISTM there’s a big difference between just generally damning and blasting things you don’t like about another poster’s posting style, and using that as an opportunity to insult their unrelated personal habits. I’ve seen a whole lot of the former in the Pit, but really not a lot of the latter, so I’d appreciate your pointing to specific instances of what you’re talking about.
Again, I think it depends what you mean by “personal insults”. If you’re really seeing a lot of Pit posters saying that Poster X is a weedy little shrimp and his wife despises him and he spills food on his clothes and his complexion is ugly and so on and so forth, then yeah, I would agree that indulging in that sort of hostility is too aggressive even for the Pit.
But if what’s being Pitted is just various aspects of Poster X’s behavior as an SDMB poster, I don’t see why that shouldn’t be considered fair game for the Pit.