As a matter of etiquette, posters should refrain from accusing others directly or indirectly of dishonesty, outside of the pit. That means you don’t accuse others of “pretending” anything about their or your position, that you don’t accuse posters or their comments of being disingenuous, that you don’t suggest they come right out and say what they mean, etc. Such accusations never ever ever do any good. Either the person is pretending, in which case they’re hardly likely to say, “Ooh, good one, lad, you got me there!” Or they’re not pretending, in which case you’re just pissing them off with your unwarranted accusation.
As a matter of board policy, posters should be prohibited to accuse others directly or indirectly of dishonesty, outside of the pit. Reasons for this are identical to the reasons behind the first proposal
Obviously, the first proposal requires no official position to enact. Each person can enact it, or ignore it, as they see fit. I do think it’s worth considering, however.
The second proposal is a long shot, but I think it’d only serve to improve the quality of Great Debates.
As an addendum, I’d encourage mods to follow these proposals for their own posts, even for their official ones.
Yeah, if there’s one thing this board needs, it’s more rules for mods to enforce. The subjective element of indirect accusations of dishonesty is an added bonus.
Check the link. The problem is, you (being human) are most likely shit at telling when someone is lying. And liars don’t need to be called out at every opportunity, because it very rarely does any good.
The ban on accusing someone of lying already exists in GD.
A ban on declaring that one does not believe another poster is not really workable. There may be any number of reasons to fail to believe another poster and as long as the accusation of lying is not involved, I’m not all that excited about taking on one more rule over which feuding posters can split hairs as to which of them publicly failed to believe the other first.
Hell, they should drop the rule altogether. When someone is deliberately posting false information we should be allowed to expose them as liars without worrying that the jackbooted ones will object to the word.
Disingenuous does not mean that one has stated a falsehood, it means that one is presenting an appearance of open candor when one knows that the issue is complicated or more complex.
Tom, of course you know I’m aware of that rule already–why are you pretending that I’m reinventing the wheel with this proposal?
As opposed to:
Tom, yeah, I know about that rule already. What I’m proposing is an expansion of that rule.
The tone difference between the first and second way of phrasing the same thought is what I’m getting at. For me, at least, I get irritated when people question my sincerity. I don’t mind at all when people question the validity of my claims, but when they suggest that I’m posting disingenuously (yes, j666 ), it’s hard to discuss the point instead of the accusation. It derails otherwise interesting conversations, I think.
And Peter, your ATMB thread is the other thing that got me started. Your accusations against Tom strike me as completely without merit, and moreover aren’t particularly interesting. But that sort of thing crops up a lot. It’s very common for people to think something along the lines of:
I see what appears to be a massive flaw in my opponent’s reasoning.
There’s no chance that I’m incorrectly understanding their reasoning.
They’re generally more intelligent than that.
Therefore they must be debating with less that full candor.
It’s not a good way to argue. It doesn’t clarify anything. Usually step 2 is wrong.
I’ll also refer people to the OP’s two-tiered approach. I know that an expansion of the rule as a rule is unlikely. But I’m also encouraging folks to adopt this approach. If an opponent is debating with anything less than good faith, there’s no reason to continue the debate with them. Take them to the pit, or withdraw, or address only the points they’re making. You’re probably wrong about their lack of good faith anyway.
OTOH, methinks this board could use more guidelines to good form. The ban-stick in practice can only cull the most egregious cases. We should have a series of ATMB threads on best member practices.[sup]1[/sup] Dos may be more important than don’ts.
“Deliberate” involves an aspect of mind-reading. “Liar” implies habitual behavior. The latter is almost certainly non-topical in any given GD thread (though not in the pit). The former is a variant of the ad hominem. And there is nothing oppressive about matching expression to circumstance. We learn this from a young age. The idea that free expression of every fleeting thought is virtuous is misguided.
Problems:
Sometimes I am ironic, which is a variant of disingenuousness. Sometimes I take shortcuts. I try to avoid untruths: I put effort into this. I will even introduce information that conflicts with my main thesis: weighing evidence is part of fighting ignorance. But saying what you mean isn’t necessarily straightforward.
Sometimes I want to keep the GQ thread tightly focused, and I skimp on explaining the motivation. When challenged on this, I elaborate. The motivation is tangential after all.
“The OP may pretend to think that this is a good idea, but really he has to consider limitations of space and concentration.” That is, the previous sentence could be a way of focusing attention on what the claimer knows on some level but didn’t bother to articulate even to himself. Admittedly, something like that will heat up the discussion, but sometimes that is called for. Arguably though, it is subject to overuse.
Conclusion: Even laying down suggestions for best practices is hard. But I still think the discussion is worth having.
[sup]1[/sup]Suggested loadstar: Don’t be a jerk. Oh, and try not to be a pain. Fighting ignorance is hard enough as it is.
Obviously, I would oppose such a rule. “Dishonest” is not synonymous with “disingenuous”.
Furthermore, it is fairly common for people to succumb to a temptation to willfully misunderstand another’s position in the heat of a debate, drowning the discussion in meaningless quibbles. I don’t think it unproductive to draw attention to that.
I think we are all grown-ups here and can tell the difference between a personal attack and a disagreement.
I agree. As I see it, the rule hands a hefty advantage to liars since they can’t be called out on what they are doing, and coerces people into implying that their opponents are stupid or crazy. People have to counter lies by pointing out the contradictions and illogic, but can’t imply the person doesn’t believe what they are saying; which inherently amounts to an accusation that the person is irrational or an idiot for believing such blatant nonsense. And then when the person complains about being called crazy no one is allowed to say that they didn’t mean it that way.
The rule essentially forces people to lie by omission.
Exactly. There are people who believe (or behave as if they believe) that “strawmanning” means the same thing as “debate”. It is, for them, just SOP to attribute to their opponent some grossly twisted mis-statement of what their opponent has actually said and then wilfully ignore any attempt at correction.
There are only so many times that you can point out to some dipstick that you have never actually said what the dipstick is accusing you of saying before you have to conclude that the dipstick either can’t read, or knows what they are doing but also knows that sheer repetition of a lie can (in the minds of others reading the thread) create an appearance of veracity.
I see no reason to prevent people being called out for this sort of thing.
Not to be the dude that pulls out the thesaurus on you, but yes, it is.
I’m unclear what relevant difference folks are drawing between “dishonest” and “insincere” (the latter being the most common definition of “disingenuous” that I’m finding).
In what way is it productive? Especially since, as I keep saying, people have a tendency to impute dishonesty (or insincerity, or disingenuity, or willful misunderstanding, or whatever you want to call it) to an opponent based on the opponent’s unwillingness to accept their brilliant arguments. When you call someone any of those words, you’re speculating on their motives, you’re not addressing their argument, and you’re probably speculating incorrectly.
I would be very happy to get rid of “Poster X thinks”, because again that’s going to motive, and that’s something we’re terrible at doing with debate opponents. “Poster X says/did”, however, seems legitimate. You might be mistaken on what Poster X said/did, but it’s still something that can be discussed intelligently.
This misses the point. The point of pointing out that liars are lying is not to convince the liar to admit it. It’s to clarify things for other readers of (and/or participants in) the exchange.
As Der Trihs points out, the rule in place encourages dishonest debating, since it makes it somewhat more difficult to counter dishonest debating tactics.
[I appreciate that there are also valid reasons for this rule, and it’s not a huge deal either way. But IMHO, on the whole, the negatives of this rule outweigh the positives.]
IMO, it clarifies nothing that wouldn’t equally be clarified by addressing the untruths in the post directly without speculating on the poster’s motives. If it did clarify something when it was a correct accusation, it would equally mystify things when it was an incorrect accusation–and it seems to me that the incorrect accusations of dishonesty far outweigh the correct accusations. (I could be wrong–it could be that most posters on this board are far less honest than I believe them to be–but it seems much likelier to me that most posters are just suspicious of those they disagree with).
), it’s hard to discuss the point instead of the accusation. It derails otherwise interesting conversations, I think.