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Facebook bans far right groups

Eddie Dane said:
Evidently, I can listen to hours of right-wing podcasts without hating Jews, laugh my ass off at Alex Jones and still not think school shootings are staged, and I doubt I'll find the Flat Earth society convincing.

I don't think I'm very special at all, but this is a numbers game: 5% of us are idiots and therein lies the problem.
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Worse: all of us are idiots in some way or another.
 
JoeMorgue said:
This whole crusade you've started against analogies is the dumbest hill anyone's decided to die defending on this board in a long time, and that's saying something.
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Analogies are bad arguments.

They're good explanations, at a certain (novice) level of understanding.

The problem is this idea that an analogy works as a proof.

This is the form:

1. A is analogous to B.

2. C is true about B.

3. Therefore, C is also true about A.

Instead of actually proving a claim about A, the arguer begs the question of the analogy between A and B, and then relies on the commonplace acceptance of "C is true about B" to prove his claim about A without ever actually having to argue that claim.

If we try to press past the begged question, and find out exactly how A is analogous to B, such that C is true for both, it turns out the arguer cannot or will not explain that.

And if the arguer did explain how A is analogous to B, it would make the analogy redundant anyway. If you can explain how A is analogous to B, you can prove C in terms of A directly.

My hypothesis is that people who use analogies as arguments often don't really understand A in its own terms. They think they understand it - by analogy with B. So instead of arguing in terms of the thing in question, which they don't understand, they argue in terms of something else they do understand and which they imagine to be properly analogous.

There's another problem with arguments by analogy, in that they're ideal for cherry-picking. It's trivial to make an arbitrary comparison between unlike things, constructed in such a way as to lead directly to the desired "therefore, C is also true about A." But when someone asks how A and B are properly analogous for that argument? Crickets. More importantly, when someone asks to prove C directly in terms of A? Also crickets. The analogy is a dodge, designed to foist the desired conclusion about A, without actually having to prove it - or even argue it in its own terms.

There's also another problem with arguments by analogy, in that analogies are didactic tools, not reasoning tools. Their proper use is by experts, to introduce new ideas to novices in a framework they can easily understand to start with. The goal is that once the novice gets used to the general idea, they will set aside the analogy, and get down to the hard work of mastering the subject in its own terms.

Arguing by analogy attempts to set up a didactic relationship between peers. You're no longer trying to prove your claim by reasoning. Instead, you're trying to set yourself up as the teacher, for whom the claim is already proven and beyond question. You're trying to set your counter-party up as the student, who is not yet entitled to reason with you, but must simply accept your analogy. It's dismissive and infantilizing. And cowardly. You're not the teacher here. Ziggurat is not your student. If you can't argue the thing in its own terms, then you don't understand it well enough to argue it by analogy. And if you *can* argue the thing in its own terms, then you don't need the analogy, and you owe Ziggurat nothing less than the argument itself in its own terms.

I think that after colossal chauvinism, the fetish for analogy-as-argument is probably skepticism's biggest blind spot.

I don't intend to die on that hill, but I will continue to hit it with suppressing fire, in the grand Cyril Figgis tradition.
 
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Baylor said:
Please ask one question per post. People reply to me with these-string-of question posts frequently and it gets annoying
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Interesting jabbaesque dodge.

psionl0 said:
It wasn't so long ago that everybody in this forum was condemning a baker for refusing to write a pro-gay message on a wedding cake.
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I'm sure you see some sort of contradiction there. Homosexuality is not an ideology, violent or otherwise, and though I disagree with the baker's decision (just make the damned cake and take your money), I'm not very comfortable with the idea of forcing them to make the cake.

You can certainly condemn Facebook for doing this. What you can't do is say that those groups' free spech is being curtailed.
 
Baylor said:
Craig B said:
Are citizens of The Hague not Dutch if they are Muslims? What is the religious qualification for being Dutch? I didn't know there was one. Do you have to be a Calvinist Protestant, or something like that?
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Please ask one question per post. People reply to me with these-string-of question posts frequently and it gets annoying
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I think I can answer that one for Baylor. We all know him well enough by now.

You'd have to be a white Calvininist Protestant to qualify as proper Dutch in his universe, but even so, if you're a little left-leaning, that's a dealbreaker.
 
Belz... said:
You can certainly condemn Facebook for doing this. What you can't do is say that those groups' free spech is being curtailed.
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Sure you can. Free speech is a broader concept than the first amendment.
 
theprestige said:
Analogies are bad arguments.

They're good explanations, at a certain (novice) level of understanding.

The problem is this idea that an analogy works as a proof.

This is the form:

1. A is analogous to B.

2. C is true about B.

3. Therefore, C is also true about A.

Instead of actually proving a claim about A, the arguer begs the question of the analogy between A and B, and then relies on the commonplace acceptance of "C is true about B" to prove his claim about A without ever actually having to argue that claim.

If we try to press past the begged question, and find out exactly how A is analogous to B, such that C is true for both, it turns out the arguer cannot or will not explain that.

And if the arguer did explain how A is analogous to B, it would make the analogy redundant anyway. If you can explain how A is analogous to B, you can prove C in terms of A directly.

My hypothesis is that people who use analogies as arguments often don't really understand A in its own terms. They think they understand it - by analogy with B. So instead of arguing in terms of the thing in question, which they don't understand, they argue in terms of something else they do understand and which they imagine to be properly analogous.

There's another problem with arguments by analogy, in that they're ideal for cherry-picking. It's trivial to make an arbitrary comparison between unlike things, constructed in such a way as to lead directly to the desired "therefore, C is also true about A." But when someone asks how A and B are properly analogous for that argument? Crickets. More importantly, when someone asks to prove C directly in terms of A? Also crickets. The analogy is a dodge, designed to foist the desired conclusion about A, without actually having to prove it - or even argue it in its own terms.

There's also another problem with arguments by analogy, in that analogies are didactic tools, not reasoning tools. Their proper use is by experts, to introduce new ideas to novices in a framework they can easily understand to start with. The goal is that once the novice gets used to the general idea, they will set aside the analogy, and get down to the hard work of mastering the subject in its own terms.

Arguing by analogy attempts to set up a didactic relationship between peers. You're no longer trying to prove your claim by reasoning. Instead, you're trying to set yourself up as the teacher, for whom the claim is already proven and beyond question. You're trying to set your counter-party up as the student, who is not yet entitled to reason with you, but must simply accept your analogy. It's dismissive and infantilizing. And cowardly. You're not the teacher here. Ziggurat is not your student. If you can't argue the thing in its own terms, then you don't understand it well enough to argue it by analogy. And if you *can* argue the thing in its own terms, then you don't need the analogy, and you owe Ziggurat nothing less than the argument itself in its own terms.

I think that after colossal chauvinism, the fetish for analogy-as-argument is probably skepticism's biggest blind spot.

I don't intend to die on that hill, but I will continue to hit it with suppressing fire, in the grand Cyril Figgis tradition.
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Well said. I realized recently that I use analogies didactically quite a lot in real life, to explain things to people I think are less intelligent than I am. Which may be effective in communicating with them, but it's also patronizing.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Well said. I realized recently that I use analogies didactically quite a lot in real life, to explain things to people I think are less intelligent than I am. Which may be effective in communicating with them, but it's also patronizing.
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Probably. It's hard to avoid, I think. Humans reason primarily by intuition and inference. Evaluating experiences abstractly in terms of other experiences is probably one of our superpowers.

And there are situations where you are legitimately a patron. If you are an expert, and inducting a novice, it's totally reasonable to have that unequal power relationship.

The only time analogies bug me is when they're attempted as an easy proof in place of doing the work.
 
JoeMorgue said:
This whole crusade you've started against analogies is the dumbest hill anyone's decided to die defending on this board in a long time, and that's saying something.
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So what you're saying is that crusades are analogous to dying in the attempt to defend dumb hills? :)
 
theprestige said:
The only time analogies bug me is when they're attempted as an easy proof in place of doing the work.
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I am very grateful to Schrödinger for coming up with that cat! Can I keep it?!
 
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Belz... said:
You can certainly condemn Facebook for doing this. What you can't do is say that those groups' free spech is being curtailed.
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I'm certainly not condemning facebook. in fact, near the beginning of this thread I stated that facebook absolutely has the right to do this.

I was just pointing out that whether refusing to provide a vehicle for a message meets approval in this forum or not depends on the message.
 
psionl0 said:
It wasn't so long ago that everybody in this forum was condemning a baker for refusing to write a pro-gay message on a wedding cake.

Apparently the right to refuse to provide a soapbox for somebody only applies when politically incorrect [inciting violence] views are concerned.
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ftfy
 
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