This is the complaints department. The arguments room is down the hall.
Thanks for this. I’ve been wrestling with this one for a couple of days (I tend toward “all subjects can be discussed”), but this lays it out in a way that I can unequivocally get behind making such a hypothetical discussion verboten on this board. Bravo!
I’m surprised a lot of you seem to be unable to handle the idea that answering an unpleasant hypothetical doesn’t mean that you think the least of two bad options is a good thing.
Like… as a kid, I played the hypotheticals game with my friends all the time, and I think that’s a pretty normal thing to do. Would you rather be deaf or blind? Would you rather chop your dick off or lose a hand? If you had to, would you kill 10 terminal cancer patients or one health adult?
Now, often these were just contests to see who could come up with the weirdest, most disgusting, or trickiest moral dilemmas, But I think they serve a useful purpose in allowing people to explore their own sense of morality and worldview through (extreme) thought experiments, and to see how that relates to the same thing in other people. We even use these as research tools for how the human mind works in psychology, like with trolley problems and all sorts of related experiments.
But it seems to me from time to time that there are people who genuinely do not seem to understand these sorts of hypotheticals or thought experiments. So if you could construct a scenario in which one option - which is undoubtedly bad, and which you don’t want to do - could be less bad than another horrific option - they somehow think you want to do that first option, or that you’re advocating it, or you’re saying it’s okay.
I could come up with a scenario in which gouging a child’s eyes out with my own hands is the least harmful option, but that does not mean that I have a secret desire to gouge out a child’s eyes, nor that I think gouging out a child’s eyes are okay, nor that I have disdain or hatred for children who have had their eyes gouged out. But it seems to me that some of you really have trouble comprehending this.
And I really can’t understand it, because a thought experiment should be one of the most basic cognitive functions that we have. Do you guys really not test the bounds of your worldviews? Do you just refuse to think about uncomfortable things?
We don’t get off on it. It’s clear you get off on it.
I don’t think that’s it, TBH. I think he’s got some serious limitations, but not that.
The “thought experiment” in question clearly carries with it collateral damage that some thing is too high a price to pay.
I didn’t participate in the original thread we’re talking about. I read the OP and like 2 posts and I thought it was not very interesting and didn’t participate. I only came into the thread about the moderation of it to defend the idea that discussions should not be banned because they make people uncomfortable.
But it’s pathetic that you guys still think that my position of “we shouldn’t ban any discussions based on it making feel some people uncomfortable” is somehow just a sham, and cannot possibly be a true position that someone holds, so that I must secretly actually be advocating for my rape fantasies/hate for rape victims or whatever absolute unjustifiable bullshit you want to throw at me.
Well, no. The justification is that you should not casually discuss topics that can traumatize others without doing your best to minimize the harm this may cause to others.
Offense is merely anger that you dared discuss something. It can have something more substantive behind it, but it need not. With nothing behind it, it makes sense not to worry about it too much.
But when there is actually an underlying issue, as there is here, that issue must be addressed before deciding if the offense can be dismissed. And I would say, emphatically, that the possible trauma certain speech can cause to rape victims absolutely cannot be so dismissed.
You must therefore weigh the desire to discuss everything and the utility thereof to the harm such discussion will cause to others. The first step is to try and find what can address both issues. You can try to mitigate the harm by being very clear about what you are discussing, warning people who may be retraumatized to avoid the topic. You can be careful in how you discuss the topic, and stay within the confines of discussing why it is immoral, and not advocating that something traumatizing should possibly be considered moral. Stick with what’s actually important to discuss.
You can also look into whether or not the discussion is necessary. Is there anything under contention? Is there another way you could address what is there? I would say both of these applied to Max’s issue. He could have realized that repopulating the world would not be considered sufficient to override the moral imperative not to rape. He could have instead started with a lesser moral imperative, one less likely to retraumatized. He could get at the fundamental issue in other ways.
It’s not like there is a dichotomy here. In no place on Earth is there 100% free discussion. There are already rules about condoning violence or illegal activities. We already can’t directly insult people. But we can still manage to discuss topics about whether or insulting people is useful, or whether violence is inherently wrong, or whether laws should be changed. We can still have the needed discussion without saying these things that are determined to cause more harm than good.
The argument you are making, where you treat things as being about mere offense, is the same argument I see made by people who wish to condone some form of bigotry. They will dismiss things as merely being people who are offended. octopus has done this before, which is why it was unsurprising he was also trying the same tactic here. It doesn’t affect him, so it’s merely being “offended.” But, if it would affect him, then suddenly people are being too mean and toxic.
To be abundantly clear, I am NOT saying you support bigotry. I’m bringing these people up because we all consider it wrong when they do this. We get that there is an issue beyond offense that is relevant. What I’m arguing is that the same is true here, and that you are at best misunderstanding the actual underlying issue when you make this about offense alone.
Social mores and morality and ethics and taboos and so on: they’re about more than offense. They’re about harm reduction.
Where’s the wall 'o text department?
Right next to the mental masturbation room.
We need a new room, or rather maybe they could get a room?
The “censorship is always bad” position is not something you hold, as have you argued the mods should have stepped in and stopped LHOD from saying what he said about you. Any and all moderation is technically a form of censorship, and the whole reason why insults get moderated is that they offend and hurt others. If you think that’s wrong, then you would have to be okay with all direct insults. You’d have to advocate that no rules are possible.
However, once you allow that there are indeed some things that can be censored, the argument that all censorship is bad doesn’t hold. The argument that other people’s feelings don’t matter doesn’t hold. So you need a new argument, one that argues specifically why we need to be able to discuss rape in the way it was discussed.
No one, as far as I can see, has accused you personally of having rape fantasies. But you are essentially advocating that those should be allowed to be discussed here.
I wouldn’t say you hate rape victims. I would say you are (intentionally or not) dismissive of them. You aren’t listening when they speak, and reducing everything they are saying to “this is offensive to me, so it should not be allowed.” As I pointed out in my previous reply, this is not what anyone is arguing. They are making a harm reduction argument.
No moderated forum is “anything goes,” by definition. Thus none are completely uncensored. There is always some level of censorship that is allowed. The argument comes down to the details of what should and should not be permissible, and those will inherently involve some sort of balancing act between competing ideals.
They still aren’t letting you in the club.
They know the difference. That’s what makes them trolls and troll enablers. TPTB have determined that the original purpose is anachronistic and offensive in order to placate the members of their social club. So in order to shut down debate they lie and engage in character assassination. These are all deliberate features of these boards. It’s intellectual conformity to protect the fragile and damaged.
For me it’s not about being “offended” or “uncomfortable” it’s that these freshman level philosophy “debates” are dull as shit and only serve to attract trolls and other idiots with inflated senses of intelligence.
Well you have the freedom to participate or not. It’s not like there is a limit to the number of threads.
Yes that’s the standard idiot response showing a complete lack of understanding how the modern internet works.
You were doing so well in your other post, but you’re just wrong about this.
I did not ask the moderators to step in and protect me from LHOD’s insults. What I did was simply to state his insult, which he implied, out loud. And then he tried the weasel shit of “I didn’t actually insult you! I didn’t get moderated so what I said wasn’t an insult!” when he was clearly being a weasel, fully and obviously intended to insult me, but carefully did it in a way that was less moddable.
A miss.
I said I was against prohibiting discussions on a topic based on the topics potentially being offensive and hurtful to people who have a trauma related to that topic. That is not the same thing is believing that there can be no moderation or guidelines of any sort. For example, what I’ve repeated over and over again - that I do not believe that any intellectually honest discussion should have topics be banned, has a limiting factor in it. I implicitly support the control/removal of non-intellectually honest discussion, which would include things like trolling, involving other people in your fantasies, that sort of thing.
Could you at least say - could someone on these fucking boards say - they understand that I am advocating that people’s personal traumas, OF ANY TYPE, should not determine which topics are prohibited for discussion? I am not fixated on rape. That just happens to be the fucking topic at hand, but I would make the same fucking arguments whether it be another difficult issue about which people had trauma.
It’s possible that you meant that - but I just want to confirm - that if you replaced “rape victims” in that sentence, with “any victims of trauma” it would be more relevant to my specific arguments, right?
My position is that whether this is an uncomfortable topic because it relates to trauma that people have should not be a determining factor in whether the discussion is allowed.
The chilling effect on discussion is itself a harm. The idea that we must not think about difficult subjects because it’s potentially hurtful is a harm to human intellectual development. The move to turn universities into “safe spaces” instead of places where people are challenged and grow is harmful.
People can have safe spaces, people can have places where they aren’t going to have to deal with things related to their trauma. But there should also be places where we are free to discuss difficult topics, and where the discussion is not shut down because it relates to someone’s trauma. It should, instead, be expected that that person avoids the discussion, rather than having the discussion shut down.
In no way am I downplaying the role of trauma in anyone’s life, or the events that lead to that trauma. But I think that allowing them to dictate what can and cannot be discussed is, itself, a harm. A harm to free and open discussion, to finding our ethical boundaries, to engaging in thought experiments to explore and communicate the limits of our worldview.
Some people think that harm is not significant, and the absolute protection of people with trauma trumps any concerns about any of that. I am not saying that is somehow not a valid position, I simply disagree.
However, I am not afforded the same courtesy. People cannot simply acknowledge that I believe that there should be places to discuss difficult issues without banning any discussion that may trigger someone’s trauma. Which is a totally comprehensible, and consistent position. No, they all have to make unfounded assertions about how I don’t care about victims of trauma or that I secretly get off on hating victims.
Most of the people here cannot seem to understand that they can disagree with me without making unfounded assumptions about my motivations and attacking my character. Assumptions which are unsupportable given that my motives and intentions, as stated, are sufficient and complete to explain the position I’m advocating.
Ironically (ISTM), the topic of this thread is nominally who’s a troll?, and since a consensus has apparently been reached that Max_S isn’t one, maybe the entire subject could be dropped.
Of course you can’t refute the facts. ‘Oh gee, someone opened a thread on hamburger I guess I can’t open one on turnips….’