{"id":336,"date":"2005-05-26T18:59:59","date_gmt":"2005-05-26T13:29:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/2005\/05\/26\/politeness-for-thee\/"},"modified":"2005-05-31T14:44:29","modified_gmt":"2005-05-31T09:14:29","slug":"politeness-for-thee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/classic\/200505\/politeness-for-thee\/","title":{"rendered":"Politeness for thee…"},"content":{"rendered":"

(See update below)<\/em>
\nProf Abi, over at Nanopolitan, has been tirelessly campaigning for politeness in debate<\/a>. Dilip D’Souza in the comments section<\/a> makes a perceptive observation. (See comment #17)<\/p>\n

Abi, I notice you’re running up against the old motto: if I broadly agree with you, you’re arguing reasonably (even if I sometimes have my disagreements with you); if I don’t agree with you, you’re spewing vitriol.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now let me change the subject completely.
\n
\nToday, I find that Prof. Abi has posted two items related to the gender gap<\/a>. The second one is a piece of research which investigates whether women are less competitive than men. That by itself is not new. Research after research has come out indicating the subtle and interesting differences between men and women. <\/p>\n

That reminded me of something. A few months back, Prof. Larry Summers, president of Harvard had speculated on why there is a gap between men and women in Mathematics and the Sciences. He had been as nuanced as can be reasonably be expected in a speech. He had presented three hypotheses,<\/i>, the first (and the most plausible, according to him) of which said that women were not as willing to put in long hours as men. The second was biology, which ensured that at the high end of the curve, women had less aptitude for the sciences. The third is that women are discriminated against. <\/p>\n

There were howls of outrage at this. Many of them were abusive. Most of them misunderstood the remarks and betrayed a complete lack of understanding of statistical nuances like “average”, “standard deviation” and “high end of the curve”. <\/p>\n

Prof. Abinandanan, at that time, had an approving post giving a roundup<\/a> of the reactions to the remarks. One of the reactions calls Prof. Summers a “congenital idiot”. Prof. Abinandanan calls this outrage “justified”. He is not even happy when Summers puts up a “weak apology”, saying that more research is required before validating a claim. Professor Abinandanan, who is on the faculty of the Indian Institute of Science, apparently thought, at that time at least, that there exist empirical claims which are outside the pale of scientific validation. <\/p>\n

So what was I saying? Ah, yes, that I find Dilip’s remarks quite perceptive. It is easier to spew vitriol towards your opponents than towards those on your side. It is easier to tolerate “hard-hitting” remarks when it is directed towards those on the other side than it is to tolerate “vitriol” when it is directed towards you. It is just as easy to dismiss<\/i> criticism directed at you as “vitriol” and therefore, undeserving of an answer. <\/p>\n

Therefore The Examined Life<\/i> hereafter promises to be equally rude towards everyone and equally sceptical towards everything, including claims that it agrees with<\/a>. If I am proved wrong, I will quickly apologise<\/a>, regardless of how much of my ego I have invested in it. If I have vitriol directed at me, I will nonetheless answer any substantive points that the vitriolic criticism makes and ignore the vitriol<\/a>. If the criticism is content-free and consists entirely of vitriol I will ignore it completely and not link to it. As my aim is to focus on issues, I will never let questions of tone, tenor and rudeness to hijack the debate, regardless of how mean they’ve been to me.<\/p>\n

Update:<\/b> Prof. Abinandanan responds <\/a> to my post. As far as I could make out, the argument seems to be that calling some people the names he<\/i> disapproves of, such as “anti-national”, “subversive”, etc. chills the debate, but the name I<\/i> pointed out, viz. “congenital idiot” does not. Why? Only he knows. <\/p>\n

Prof. Summers wasn’t just called a “congenital idiot”. One of the links that expressed the “outrage” that Prof. Abinandanan found “justified” had a headline which went “News Flash: Larry Summers is a Dick”. Not one of the links in Abi’s post argued with Summers with data. Not one. <\/i> I’ve read them all. All of them just make a bunch of assertions. The only remotely cogent argument that I could find said that it was inappropriate to even suggest that it might be innate differences, because it is self-evidently true that it is discrimination that is causing the problems. Ergo, Larry Summers is a “dick” for bringing scientific arguments to dispute what is self-evidently true. But Prof. Abi says that this does not amount to chilling the debate, and Prof Abi is an honourable man. <\/p>\n

Seriously, if Prof “Congenital Idiot”<\/a> Abinandanan thinks that smearing people with names like these does not detract from the debate, then, well… there is a simple way of verifying that claim. <\/p>\n

Update Ends. <\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(See update below) Prof Abi, over at Nanopolitan, has been tirelessly campaigning for politeness in debate. Dilip D’Souza in the comments section makes a perceptive observation. (See comment #17) Abi, I notice you’re running up against the old motto: if I broadly agree with you, you’re arguing reasonably (even if I sometimes have my disagreements […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}