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On reddit the participation of progressives largely felt like folks dropping by to sneer on themotte for a few comments rather than actual engagement. It felt as if a good number of them wouldn't have minded if themotte got hit by the banhammer.
That said, preaching to the choir on themotte while feeling nice doesn't give you much. But I do not have any ideas for how to improve upon that. People like places that echo their views back at them and enforce the ideological conformity for their worldview. For this use case reddit is strictly better especially if your views are aligned with the current zeitgeist.
A lot of people on themotte may want to convince progressives that their positions are not logically consistent and patently unfair. But progressives have no incentive to engage with you to be convinced or to try to convince you. Their views are already mainstream and platformed by institutions.
It’s difficult to be convinced you’re logically inconsistent and unfair when the people trying to convince you are, in your own view, being exactly that.
Why would I want to debate with facts in a forum that seemed to genuinely approve of the generalized declaration: “Men are funnier than women.” being justified with with the anecdote, “Because the men in my life make me laugh more than the women.” instead of, I don’t know, “Because here is a study that concluded that estrogen affects the part of the brain that creates brevity which is the leading trait for successful comedians, please look at the data and tell me if you disagree with their methods of testing.”?
I can empathize that it's not a nice experience to face positions that you feel are an attack on your person or deeply held beliefs.
I pretty much feel the same in every corner of the internet. To give an example that should hopefully be at some distance from the American Culture War, I definitely do not enjoy people claiming that India being colonised by the British empire was good for us and civilized us unwashed barbarians. It is not fun to be spoken down to by Americans who believe my lived experience of living in my country holds no weight. Nor do I enjoy reading about what Americans say behind our backs about the Indian expats in the Software industry.
But as much as I would love to give objective statistics to prove people wrong, I doubt I will ever be able to satisfy those who disagree.
Now on whether "Men are funnier than women", it is a poorly supported argument since the only thing going for it is anecdata. But given the dumpster fire that is the reproducibility in Sociology, anecdata is probably the best you will get. Besides, how many people even base their social know-how on studies over anecdata from folks they know or can relate to?
Also is it that the argument is poorly supported that bugs you, or is it because you feel that it puts down women?
Would it feel any less offensive if someone gave "objective" proof for this?
It wouldn't be any less painful for me even if someone threw objective proof at my face by ripping open a portal to a parallel universe where India never went through successive stages of colonization and is still a cesspit of suffering.
It’s the poor support that bugs me. This forum claims that conversations here “leave feelings at the door” and deal with the facts, and as far as I see, most users here pride themselves for foster that culture. But anecdotal evidence for generalized inflammatory statements such as, “Women don’t know what they want and are less funnier than me .” are such a poor foundation for debate that I am quite doubtful that it is what most users here actually want.
I would be much less “bugged” if what I perceive to be rampant intellectual dishonesty was not as generally supported as it is here, so yes, I would rather someone here give me objective evidence that men are funnier than women so we can debate the merits of the data.
While I cannot give any point in the support of "Men are funnier than Women" since that's not something I believe to be true.
I think I understand our point of difference better. You expect The Motte to be a forum for perfect rational debate. And I guess that's what many on themotte claim it to be.
But it's not that and that bugs you.
It doesn't bug me since I do not expect The Motte to be a forum for perfect rational debate. While folks here are better at stating and accounting for their biases than other spaces on the internet, I do think a lot of people end up venting their frustrations a bit. And that's fine.
I feel that mainstream progressive (and conservative) spaces impose binaries on topics and rule out discussion on domains that their binaries fail to explain.
The less restricted nature of The Motte helps to find arguments that may offer better explanations and would otherwise be banned. But of course you also get bad arguments that should have received more pushback. We all have our biases, I just see that as a part and parcel of the trying to model the world better.
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She said very clearly that the poor justification for the claim rather than the claim itself is the problem.
Really? So it's just an axiom that everything bad in India is because of the "Britishers"? That certainly helps to understand Indians' beliefs, though it doesn't make me more sympathetic to them.
I don't have a portal to a parallel universe – the only place with technology that advanced was India 3000 years ago – but I can direct your attention to Ethiopia. The country had a long history of written language and a centralized government, and was under colonial rule only for about a decade before and during World War II. After the war, Italy even had to pay reparations, so the damage that did happen during this period was compensated. (The Allies presumably decided Italy's conquest was an illegitimate war of aggression unlike the totally just and lawful conquest of everywhere else by Western countries.)
And yet Ethiopia "is still a cesspit of suffering", with a GDP per capita significantly lower than even that of India. That's because it was a cesspit of suffering before the Italian occupation.
I'm not going to argue that British colonialism was a net positive for India, and the British certainly committed many unjustifiable abuses, but I do strongly object to the common Indian nationalist claim that India was extremely rich and developed in the 18th century before the British showed up and stole everything. It was poor when they came and it was poor when they left. The reason India is still poor is the 75 years of awful economic policy between then and now, and that can be blamed entirely on Indians. The UK didn't instigate the farm bill protests.
You explicitly chose this example expecting it to be unobjectionable, so I apologize if my objection was unexpected. If it helps, I share your distaste for Americans' views on Indian immigrants in software, especially the rhetoric surrounding H1B visas. And I am not American, I'm just constantly exposed to American politics thanks to the internet.
I do not appreciate you trying to strawman my position.
The core argument of Indian Nationalists is that the concept of India is not a colonial construct that only exists due to British Colonialization. They argue that people in the region have been linked by shared culture despite having lived through frequently changing borders.
Indian Nationalists do not make any claims to India's past economic heft. In face they very much accept that they have a long way to go. They feel that the fractured nature of their people works against them and that to accelerate development there is a need to leverage the cultural links to build a shared ethos if you ever want to get things done. For them the British are just one among the many foreign conquerors that have ruled the region since the 12th century. I very much detest it when people try to reduce it to just "Indians think India sucks because of the British". Whether or not it can be proved that India is worse off due to colonization is not at all a part of my argument.
Going back to elaborating on the point I had been trying to make to @justawoman.
What I am saying is even if there is objective evidence that India was destined to be the way it is regardless of past events, that wouldn't make the fact any less painful. And I recognize that some arguments that folks on themotte may throw around casually are actually painful to read depending on what race, religion, culture, gender or background you come from.
The whole segment on my experiences as an Indian on the internet is essentially me trying to say yes, I can empathize with the experience of @justawoman who has to argue with people casually discussing a topic that she cares deeply about and would only accept the highest standards of evidence.
But while I think that folks on themotte can be more careful with how they throw around words, it should not be something that's verboten, since topics when sociological, at best have scant evidence and that's the best we can ever get.
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