Richard Dawkins opens mouth, inserts foot, mumbles something about “mild pedophilia” again
A young Richard Dawkins contemplates the beauty of the universe.
Apparently Richard Dawkins was worried that people might have forgotten what an asshat he is. So, helpful fellow that he is, he decided to give us all a demonstration of why he’s one of the atheist movement’s biggest liabilities, a “humanist” who has trouble remembering to act human.
Earlier today Dawkins decided, for some reason, that he needed to remind the people of the world of a fairly basic point of logic, and so he took to Twitter and thumbed out this little thought:
However petulantly phrased this is, the basic logic is sound: If I say that Hitler was worse than Stalin, I’m not endorsing either Hitler or Stalin. Unless I add “and Stalin was totally awesome and I endorse him” at the end.
The trouble is that Dawkins didn’t stop with this one tweet. He decided to illustrate his point with some examples. Some really terrible examples.
Yep, that’s right. He decided to do what comedians call a “callback” to some terrible comments he made last year about what he perversely described as “mild pedophilia.” And then he added asshattery to asshattery by suggesting a similar distinction between “date rape” and “stranger rape.”
Anyone seeing these comments as insensitive twaddle designed to minimize both “mild” pedophilia and date rape has good reason to do so. As you may recall, in the earlier controversy about so-called “mild” pedophilia, Dawkins told an interviewer for the Times magazine that
I look back a few decades to my childhood and see things like caning, like mild pedophilia, and can’t find it in me to condemn it by the same standards as I or anyone would today.
He went on to tell the interviewer that when he was a child one of his school masters had “pulled me on his knee and put his hand inside my shorts.” But, he added, he didn’t think that this sort of “mild touching up” had done him, or any of the classmates also victimized by the teacher, any “lasting harm.”
Huh. If Dawkins says that a teacher groping him was no big deal, I guess this kind of “mild” abuse shouldn’t be a big deal for anyone else, either, huh?
I’m pretty sure there’s some sort of logical fallacy here.
Given his history of minimizing these “mild” sexual crimes, it’s not a surprise that his crass tweets today inspired a bit of a twitterstorm.
Dawkins has responded with his typical petulance, and has stubbornly defended his comments as an exercise in pure logic that his critics are too irrational to understand.
If you take a few moments to go through his timeline you’ll find many more tweets and retweets reiterating this “argument.” Dawkins is not the sort of person to admit to mistakes. Indeed, he so regularly puts his foot in his mouth it’s hard not to conclude that he must like the taste of shoe leather.
But these recurring controversies can’t be doing much for his reputation. Indeed, they seem to cause more and more people to wonder why anyone takes Dawkins seriously on any subject other than biology. Even his critics on Twitter are growing a bit weary.
Seems like it. I’m beginning to wonder why any atheists — at least those who are not also asshats — continue to think of Dawkins as an ally of any kind.
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Posted on July 29, 2014, in atheism minus, patronizing as heck, pedophiles oh sorry ephebophiles, playing the victim, richard dawkins and tagged pedophilia, rape, richard dawkins, twitter. Bookmark the permalink. 938 Comments.
I’m amused in a way. After he just recently put out that co-statement with Ophelia Benson and people in the comments who basically said “yeah, this doesn’t really make up for what hes been doing all this time” and got tsked tsked at for not accepting it on its face.
Shocker.
And here I didn’t think I could hate Dickey anymore than I already do.
He’s speaking from his perspective as a victim of child molestation here.
I mean, it’s not clear that “shut up” is quite the right message here.
@davidgerard and yet he doesn’t speak for ALL of us. If he has processed what happened to him, fine. It doesn’t make it any less a terrible offense. There are no levels to this sort of thing and saying so is something we have every right to tell him to play hide and go fuck himself over.
How can someone so smart be so bad at logic?
He’s arguing that people who disagree with his assessment of what constitutes no-big-deal sexual assault and what constitutes “worse” sexual assault are claiming that he is endorsing one and not the other?
Uh, no, there, Dickey. Your assertions are based entirely on anecdotes and evidence-free opinions. Labeling everyone who disagrees with your assessments as dumb-dumb meanies is, well, pretty goddamned illogical.
Example: he claims that “date rape” is apparently not as bad as being raped by a stranger. What metric is he basing this on? Because everything I have read on the subject suggests that being assaulted by someone known and trusted results in more psychological damage than an attack by a stranger. Legally and socially, a woman who is attacked by a stranger with a knife will see loads more support than a woman who is attacked by an unarmed friend or family member.
In fact, one could easily argue here that Dawkins is perpetuating the “legitimate rape” myth, but insisting that it is somehow worse to be raped by a stranger with a knife than by a trusted acquaintance, but why bother? He’ll only retort by telling you what a stupid-head you are for disagreeing with the Great and Powerful Dawkins.
There’s a parody account, https://twitter.com/RlCHARDDAWKlNS, and every so often I wonder if it and the real Dawkins are slowly melding into one, really wacky person.
His logic is sound but his premise is unsupported.
It’s bizarre how often people who claim to be super logical forget that you can have perfect logic and still be wrong.
In fact, from a logical point of vue, Dawkins is perfectly right ; but this is an illustration that we don’t use logic to think, and even that it is impossible to think only in a logical way.
“Hitler wasn’t as bad as Stalin, so let’s try to think less negatively about Hitler.”
“Child labor isn’t as bad as slavery, so let’s try to think less negatively about child labor.”
“Christianity isn’t as bad as Islam, so let’s try not to think so negatively about Christianity.”
“Dawkins isn’t as bad as Hitchens, so let’s try not to…” I can’t even find wish that one.
Disclaimer: I do not think these sort of comparisons are valid. Trying to balance tragedies against each other on a scale is probably one of the most callous and pointless acts of faux-intellectualism.
Why doesn’t he think that ‘mild’ pedophilia (e.g. groping children) is, by its nature, violent? Doesn’t he understand what violence is?
Crap crap crap. I meant to delete the religion one. I wrote it then thought better of it. I meant for it to sound of me some of the bullshit the “New Atheists” would say but realized it would be dumb.
I am very sorry about that. I in no way support that statement. Please excuse me while I chew on my shoe.
The trouble is that he’s also claiming to speak for others as well. In his initial comments, he concluded that the school master’s abuse of other children didn’t do THEM any “real harm” either.
How does he know this? Has he even spoken to any of these people? Even if he has spoken to them, he’s not a trained psychologist and is in no position to evaluate what harm there may or may not have been.
Regardless of his own experience, there’s considerable evidence that child sexual abuse is damaging. He’s using anecdata — and his assumptions about his classmates and other victims of “mild” pedophilia– trump actual science.
What on Earth is even “mild pedophilia”. Pedophilia that he wants to compare favorably to something?
I AM LOGICBOT 3000. I AM HERE TO TEACH YOU THE LOGIC SCALE OF BADNESS. YOU CANNOT DISTRACT LOGICBOT WITH YOUR PATHETIC HUMAN NOTIONS OF NUANCE AND NOT BEING AN INSENSITIVE ARSE.
The only–and I mean ONLY–time it becomes appropriate to speak in such relative terms is when you’re discussing how to allocate scarce resources to address the distinct problems. If you have a limited budget to address both leukemia and the common cold, it’s legit to say, “Well, leukemia is worse, research there gets the lion’s share of the money.”
But that is so very, very not what we’re dealing with here. The only resource feminists are calling for in addressing rape culture is empathy and human decency, which are not actually scarce–except, of course, in Richard fucking Dawkins.
There is no “mild” pedophilia. There is nothing positive about the person who rapes you being known to you. Dawkins is a piece of shit and any atheist organization that still pays him to speak is one that I want nothing to do with. He’s a misogynist asshole and he’s emboldening his fans who are rapists by telling them that what they do to other people isn’t so bad. The man is a blight.
You are personally more afraid of violent sexual abuse. Ok, that’s none of my business. You think everyone should feel the same way you do because logic and reason? Fuck you.
He’s reiterating his “Dear Muslima” and this time he’s applying it to children too. He’s already said that teaching kids there is a hell is worse than molesting them, because as a kid he says being afraid of hell was worse than being molested and it’s clear that his feels are the only feels that matter.
So is he retracting “dear Muslima”? Because by this logic, the fact that the oppression of Saudi women is worse than being hit on in an elevator doesn’t mean being hit on in an elevator is OK. Or is it different when women are talking?
Feh, he’s a misogynist either way.
emilygoddess: He’s not so much retracting “Dear Muslima” as doing the Mansplain Two-step around it. He’s claiming that people who say that DM was a piece of insensitive, callous and demeaning claptrap were misreading it–that he wasn’t trying to claim that street harassment wasn’t bad, just that it’s not as bad as the various forms of persecution that occur in the Middle East these days. He’s still not grasping, of course, that while this is very true, it’s even more irrelevant to the situation he was addressing at the time.
Lurker surfacing for the first time here.
I think some of the commentary about what he said does a disservice by focusing on whether what he said is “true,” “valid,” or “sound.” There are lots of things you can say that are true, but just aren’t worth saying, because human communication involves more than just relaying facts.
It’s like last year, when Dawkins had the blow-up about his comment to the effect of “Fact: There are more Nobel Prize winners at Trinity College than in the entire Muslim world,” and then was surprised that people took offense to it, because after all, he was just innocently relaying a fact. But the issue is that Dawkins was actually communicating, and intending to communicate, a lot more than a fact (by his tone, and things he’s said before, he was implying that Muslims were stupid, or something to that effect). It was the “more” that people were taking offense to.
It’s the same here. Even if what he were saying were true (and the sexual assault one isn’t true, for reasons pointed out above but also because every victim reacts differently to their assualt and you can’t just lump them in categories), the problem is the context. What Dawkins is really saying is “I’m not sorry for the ‘mild pedophilia’ remarks I made a few months ago” and “I’m willing to use sexual assault victims as an example to explain why I’m not apologizing.”
Yeah, I didn’t think he was retracting it, because that would requite admitting he was wrong, which he seems constitutionally incapable of doing. But I thought the two arguments looked pretty contradictory.
The “Dear Muslima” incident was so disappointing. Not just because of his decision that it’s apparently wrong to even discuss harassment of women in the western world, but because, by his line of reasoning, western atheists need to stop being so cranky about fundamentalist Christians trying to teach creationism in school, because there are countries in the world that literally execute atheists. The whole “There’s a bigger problem somewhere else, so these little problems shouldn’t matter, and you’re a crybaby if you bring them up” philosophy ruins everything, because there’s always going to be something worse.
Just taking his argument on their own terms, I don’t think you can easily declare that date rape is less bad than stranger rape at knife point. At a minimum, we know a horrible breach of trust is present in the former and not present in the latter. The emotional damage from the breach of trust could easily outweigh whatever additional horrors are present with the stranger scenario.
I had some lovely personal anecdotes to dispell Mr. Dawkins’ assertions about what kind of abuse is worse (even light pedophila), but then I thought better of it (TMI). I am far too angry right now.
Richard Dawkins, why can’t you shut the hell up about things other than biology? Also, your general asshattery is being used by my creationist relatives to try to disprove evolution (they logic bad). Please don’t help the cause anymore.
Sorry if that was rambly, but I am very cross just now.
There is no such thing as ‘mild’ pedophilia or ‘violent’ pedophilia. Pedophilia is just that, Pedophilia.
“Date rape is bad but stranger rape at knife is worse.”
@Doug:
Right. “Well, I was raped, but at least they didn’t have a knife.” Said no rape victim ever.
Dawkins has evolved into the kind of person that refuses to admit what he says has implications beyond the exact meaning. It may be true you can categorize some tragic events as worse or better, and doing so is not saying the less tragic event is ok, but nobody claimed Dawkins was endorsing the less tragic things. Even with his ghastly “mild pedophilia” thing, everyone knew that he just felt it didn’t do lasting harm rather than saying it was a good thing to happen.
Not only is Dawkins lashing out at straw people, but in doing so he’s just drawing attention back to all the horrid things he did actually say. Like worries about harassment are really petty compared to the things muslim women go through. Or that having a hand shoved down your shorts as a kid was no big deal, and not condemnable from a modern perspective.
I’m amazed this came out so soon after the joint statement… How could he have thought this was a good idea?
Honestly, I’m happy for him that he feels he hasn’t suffered terribly as a result of the sexual abuse he experienced.
Not everyone is him though. How individuals experience comparable able differs.
For a lot of people I’m sure it’s true that child rape is more traumatic than molestation and stranger rape is more traumatic than date rape. Whether that’s the case though can only be determined by the individual who suffered it.
“Speak for yourself” is, I believe, the appropriate expression here, not because he’s universally wrong outside his experience but because he’s imposing his experience on others. Not OK.
Maybe he’s polled a hundred people and put the top six offences on the board – no, wait, that would be Richard DAWSON.
*headdesk*
Yeah, speaking as an atheist, this dude is so not speaking for me and I also think he should stick to biology and leave psychology, sociology, and cultural anthropology to other people.
@twofortyseven,
And I think he’s smart enough to know exactly what he’s doing when he does that, which is what makes this all so terrible.
By the way, have a Welcome Package.
That @somegreybloke tweet is hilarious and perfect.
Did we ever settle in on the best term to describe that subcategory of atheists who are odious, smug, asshats?
I read about this on fb, and instantly headed here, and happily found that Dave had posted about the wtfery. Yay.
My first thought (disgust doesn’t really count as a thought) was ‘citation needed’. Because taking two horrible & related things and judging one as worse than the other really needs a hel of a lot of citations.
Because really, how the fuck does he know which is worse? He’s basically using ‘everyone knows’ beliefs (you know, those things not backed up by logic or fact?) to fill in his logic circuit, without even blinking at the illogic of using ‘everyone knows’ beliefs.
OK, so let’s say I agree with the premise that X is bad and Y is worse. That doesn’t mean that you get to say “BUT Y” whenever anyone complains about X. Well, I mean, it’s not illegal or anything, but it’s still being a fucking asshole.
And even if someone decides to agree that, in a vacuum, “mild pedophilia” is worse than “violent pedophilia”, that doesn’t mean that every victim of “mild pedophilia” is less hurt by victims of “violent pedophilia”. And it certainly doesn’t mean that they’re being illogical. If someone hurts you, you hurt the way you hurt and logic isn’t a part of it. Humans have emotions. It’s part of what makes us human.
Can someone explain to me why emotion is always irrational? I hear my fellow atheists (typically the white straight cis male ones surprise, surprise) say things like this a lot and I strongly disagree.
Emotion can be adaptive and completely rational. Does it not occur to Dawkins and his fan boys that being strongly invested in keeping children from harm is beneficial to the human race? Of course most people have intense emotional reactions to child abuse. It’s a healthy instinct. How is this different than a non-human mother animal behaving nervously and aggressively when she feels that her young are threatened? It would be faulty biology to make the claim that humans are higher and better creatures that don’t operate on animal instinct after all.
Can someone explain the “joint statement” thing? I’, not in the atheosphere and I definitely don’t follow Dawkins’ doings.
FTR, Dawkins is responding to criticism of his rape comparison with “fine, reverse the two, but my point still stands”, completely ignoring the part where making the comparison was fucked up in the first place (and seriously, of all the things he could have compared, why rape? It’s almost like he’s got an axe to grind about feminism…)
As one of my religious studies professors once noted, folks in the “hard sciences” get tetchy when laypeople try to pass themselves off as experts on their subjects, but no one seems to object to laypeople passing themselves off as experts in the social sciences, including religion. All you need is an opinion and a platform and you, too, can be an expert on a vast and complicated phenomenon – I guess all those PhD candidates are wasting their time with all that research and writing.
People are getting emotional about rape and abuse? Gosh, can’t imagine why.
On a more earnest note, I’d rather talk to someone who’s emotional about rape than someone who insists on remaining cool and distant. Caring about people’s pain is not a bad thing.
“Did we ever settle in on the best term to describe that subcategory of atheists who are odious, smug, asshats?”
I had proposed Assholery Among Atheists (AAA for short), but idk, does it cover people who are always assholes?
As for the topic — yeah, no. Gaslighting ex fucked me up more than rapist ex’s did. And I’m sure for some people rape is worse than gaslighting, but I wasn’t one of them. And seriously, I’d be a complete asshole to generalize that — how do you even do that besides in such obscenely precisely defined ways as to be useless? Being stabbed twice is worse than being stabbed once — well, probably, BUT WHO GIVES A FUCK?! What does this add to anything? And the inverse? Two ice creams are better than one! Yeah, but be happy you have one, said everyone arguing with a kid ever. So, be upset, if you are, that you were stabbed once.
…that works in my head, idk if it makes sense outside my head, I’m pre-coffee and cranky at Dawkins (also, I spent yesterday fighting with PHP)
Ol’ Dick Dawkins. The religious fervour of his most devoted fanboys has really gone to his head.
weirwoodtreehugger:
Here’s every argument I can think of to say that emotion is not rational.
Emotion can make people “lash out,” where they aren’t engaging but just trying to hurt the other party somehow. Not conducive to discussion.
Emotion on its own isn’t always a good indicator that something is right. Think of how some people have emotional reactions of disgust towards gay people.
Actually, that’s not quite right. It’s why emotion isn’t “always” rational.
Anger can cut through the bullshit facade that a purely logical argument can put up, reminding people that the topic affects real people and isn’t some philosophical masturbation.
Emotion can be a justified response to some things, like your example with protecting children.
Pathos (argument appeal to emotion) is not logos (appeal to logic). It doesn’t make an argument true, but it does make an argument powerful. People pretend that logic should be the only tool in the box, but when trying to make a convincing argument, you need more.
What’s going on here is different though. When Dawkins says his critics “aren’t debating, they are emoting,” he’s just dismissing his critics by pretending they are just lashing out and not thinking clearly, which they obviously must be because they aren’t swayed by his impeccable logic. And of course, he completely fails to actually listen to what they’re saying.
Kirbywrap,
I agree that emotional reactions can be irrational. I just don’t agree when people say they’re always irrational. Emotional arguments aren’t useful in a formal debate or academic setting of course but that doesn’t mean that emotion is always wrong and irrational. Life isn’t a formal debate.
@argenti and even the stabbing example could have more context. Are they two stabs in the heart, the leg, the pinkie finger? Does the person have a previous injury in that area? Are they fencing? The whole exercise is useless, whether it’s physical or a different kind of abuse/injury. Why is he talking about this again?
Hugs if you want them for past abuse.
Dawkins as usual has nothing worthwhile to say, except “go away”. Gladly! Unless I need to come back and make fun of you!
@emilygoddess:
Link
Basically, Dawkins has been on one side of a divide (or “DEEEP RIFTS”) in the atheist community, and Ophelia Benson (and many others) have been on the other. The divide has been about whether Atheists should care about social justice issues, and also about what to do with all the assholes in the atheist community (Dawkins has been one of those assholes with his condescending tweets).
The joint statement was nice not only as a bridge, but also because it was basically the first time Dawkins has explicitly repudiated the assholes in the community, the ones who harass and are sexists or belittle feminists or other social-justice-minded folks.
And then he goes right back into asshole territory with an indignant defense of his other thoughtless statements.
I want a t-shirt with these words on it.
@weirwoodtreehugger:
I agree with you. Actually, I’d go stronger and say emotions can be useful even in a formal debate. I thought it was pretty well known how important charisma can be in a debate, because debates are not just about finding truth, but about convincing people.
I can think of a few other cases where you can do comparisons. Like, I’ve had arguments with MRAs about male circumcision vs. FGM, and why there’s more activism focused on the latter. He bemoaned the fact that people cared more about FGM than male circumcision. However, most forms of FGM (and the ones that are illegal in the US) are worse than male circumcision, so it’s not “wrong” for someone to be more focused on the one.
The problem isn’t with the idea that some things are worse than others, and that the existence of worse things doesn’t make bad things good. That’s not a terrible argument. The problem is that it’s being made by Dawkins, who effectively said Western women shouldn’t care about how they’re treated because women in Muslim countries have it worse (though you’ll notice he doesn’t say Western Atheists should be okay with their treatment…). He used his own experience as a victim of child molestation to say that others shouldn’t care. He’s dismissed date rape.
When he’s brought up the “worse things,” it’s almost always been in a context of arguing against those who bring up the “bad things.” That’s the issue with the argument. The problem is that he has implied that X isn’t something that people should be worried about, that X really isn’t that bad.
I agree with many here, that Dawkins’ comment is insensitive and he is generalizing from his own experience to experiences of others. But he is referring to an idea in moral philosophy about moral absolutism – there is intellectual history here. If people are equally infuriated about all instances of a bad act, they are not seeing the complexities of analyzing the act. (Another example of this in ethics is the idea that while a miscarriage is a terrible experience, an early miscarriage is not as bad as a stillbirth at 8 months gestation.)
Also, emoting does not seem to be the same as having an emotion.
“My sexual assault example was not at all offensive or misguided. Here are more uninformed examples of sexual assault to prove it”
Smugma was another term someone came up with for smug assholes like Dawkins.
It’s like Dawkins has no idea of the concepts of “context” or “nuance” or “basic human decency.”
people are debating cause Dick makes up new phrases like “mild pedophilia”, or “mild touching up” (this is more of a wrong use of phrase). if you want to communicate with other people you have to use real phrases and real language. it is obvious why Dick inability to communicate lead to debating. Dick go away and don’t come back until you learn some English, or better yet just don’t come back.
Re: emoting vs debating
I think people like to call “rational” the practice of ignoring humans have a very wide range of emotions and react differently to similar situations, and also suffer and face vulnerabilities.
I get this a lot.
This is especially noticeable in debates regarding a country’s (or world’s) economy: you get the “rational” people who want to follow “the market rules” (hey, rules are rational, right?), and then the “irrational people” who would rather see first that no one starves to death.
It’s not a difference in their logic, it’s a difference in acknowledging human suffering… also known as “not being an asshole”?
Dawkins, please, please, please stop being such a…
Just, stop. Please. You give both atheists and biologists a bad name, and that’s obnoxious. You also hurt people, which you’ll discount as emoting, but they’re people and people should try not to hurt people (well, unless you’re a medical person who causes some pain to fix bigger problems or a soldier, in which case…)
Bill Nye is still being awesome, right? We still have one well known scientist who does media appearances who isn’t being a…
Please tell me the science guy is still being okay, and wasn’t a jerk when I wasn’t looking.
I feel like logic and emotion are two different modes of truth. Neither is inherently better or more truthful than the other, and both can (and often are) used inappropriately as a weapon rather than a tool to get at the truth.
You’re pretty clearly crossing the line when you attack emotion (or logic) simply for not being the mode you would rather be using. You’ve got to also have an argument for why emotion (or logic) has no place here. “Your emotions are wrong because they are not logic” doesn’t fly, unless you are writing a mathematics proof or something like that :)
He’s certainly no stranger to logical fallacies. He used the fallacy of relative privation on Rebecca Watson in his infamous “Muslima” letter.
This particular fallacy seems to apply (loosely) here as well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_relative_privation
He must have been worried that after his co statement with Ophelia benson he was coming dangerously close to relevancy again.
@deniseeliza:
I’d say they are two different modes of convincing. You are right that both can be used as a weapon, and it infuriates me to no end to hear people say “that is/you are illogical” when not talking about a logical fallacy… Star Trek was really, really bad at this with Vulcans. Actually, that’s probably played a big role in either reinforcing or creating the notion that emotion is inferior to emotionless logic…
But I don’t know if I could say that they were different types of truth. Emotion is like intuition; you need to double check that intuition through some other means. Then again, logic is worthless for deciding truth if you don’t verify the premises, so maybe they are pretty similar.
Kirbywarp has some good thoughts. As do you!
My answer is: “No, I can’t, sorry, but here’s words anyway”
I can give it a try. It’s not often I get to use relevant parts of my epistemology classes.
TL:DR – essentially, people doing this assume Logical Is Superior, instead of a tool. So conclusion arrived at using logic are SUPERIOR to other kinds of conclusions (heuristically arrived, emotionally sounded up, blind selection, etc). This then allows them to say that anything not 100 % logical is unsound, wrong and worst of all, silly. English languages backs this up by way of accident, because “reason” is used to mean “logic and rational” nine times out of ten.
——————————-
The assumption is that emotions are a naturally obstructive force that interferes with objective analysis of facts as they relate to a case, and then cloud your logical chains of thought. I think the idea is that because they arise from instincts that trigger based on stimuli, that stimuli might be irrelevant to the case at hand or just a subject of transference. False positives, really.
So you get that, and then you add about two millenias worth of ideas relating to stoic willpower being THE MANLIEST THING and rational, distanced observation being so cool you gaiz, and how reason is a fortress built from the bedrock of eternity yet emotions are mere flights of fancy. And suddenly, the kind of asshole who says: “Ah, but you’re just emoting, you’re not looking at this logically” gets a leg up because they are indirectly calling you literally incapable of presenting an argument that ties into the reality of the situation.
You’re letting mere biology and the tricksy interplays of volatile neurochemicals get in the way of Braining Things Out Properly. Since scientist types are often pretty big on empiricism (which makes sense, given the work), you’re essentially subject to having emotions phrased and parsed as an obstructive force between you and some Most Optimal Solution To The Problem that these vile, wily chemicals in your head are preventing you from seeing (an optimal solution that often coincides neatly with exactly what the other speaker wants you to do or agree to).
Ie:
“Stranger rape is worse than date rape”
Is, on its own, just a statement of priorities bereft of any emotional impact on actual people. It’s fucking stupid, too. But that’s what it is to Super Rational People. (hint: this is not correct)
But it’s never on its own, and it’s not a quantitative statement about the exact temperature at which concrete will become brittle and flake into bits like sugar.
(Incidentally, this is usefl information if you, say, play a mage in Shadowrun or intend to make some really interesting urban art )
Because it’s a social problem, he fucks up thinking it’s a quantitative quality he’s trying to mark out in absolute terms relative to each other, and not a normative value judgement he has already made using his emotions and value system.
The exact reasons for that are probably something like minor superiority and the assumption that having your person violated by some uncouth thug is much, much more demeaning than other people you trust touching you inappropriately. That’s the parody version of an Upper Class Nit in my head speaking, but I write it out so you see what logical premises might have gone into arriving at the logical conclusion that logically stranger rape is worse than date rape, logically. But if you then view those premises, you find they’re based on other, emotional values.
So because he thinks he’s speaking in absolute terms about objective reality, emotion gets sideline as being an obstructive force. A film of misconception that is obviously keeping us from understanding his words, because if only we’d listen properly and try to reason it out without getting our emotions rilled up, we’d see that he was completely factually correct:
Emotions are a useful guideline in decision marking processes of all kinds, because without a value system by which to judge our “most fit” criterion on reason, we have no grounds to go on in relation to trying to make a judgement. Logic is a tool for arriving at conclusions, not a superior way of life.
And you arrive at conclusion deemed fit by the case at hand by way of defining certain absolute goals.
There’s all kinds of fascinating research on just how pant-destroyingly, city-crumpling, life-endingly bad decisions human beings make when unable to use emotional cues in their reason. Because emotional causes underpin the reasons we fucking reason in the first place.
It also allows someone trying to do this Argumentum Ad Logic-piss to be exactingly specific in their statements to the great fury of everyone else.
Because they’re trying to treat their statements as single sum no ambiguity statements in a chain of logical premises, they allow themselves to ignore “false” leads like any possible interpretation of their words.
That “noble prize” thing above twofortyseven points out is a prime example.
And because they can then ignore any of these “emotional interpretations of their specific statements”, they can actually go right on to perform an awesome, awesome fallacy, and not have their conclusions flow from their premises, so long as they don’t directly state that conclusion. Let me demonstrate a magic trick.
I have written more poems on this site than the entire Manosphere combined.
Other mammothers have written great and awesome stuff here, more than the entire Manosphere combined.
There are more examples on We Hunted The Mammoth of fantastic cake recipes than in the entire manosphere.
These are all true statements.
My unstated conclusion to all this is that not one soul in the manosphere writes poetry, likes songs or eats cakes. Much to my own chagrin, I know for a fact that all of this is wrong (MRA Poets, my soul weeps).
Bothersome kettle of fish.
It’s not like he works to keep his emotions in check when he proudly does his logic-ing, he just doesn’t care. It’s easy to argue about things you have no stake in. Thats not a skill, thats being a walking logic handbook.
Fibinachi:
Or, to borrow from the “noble prize” example, “MRAs, because of their identity as MRAs or because of the culture of the manosphere, are unable to write poetry, like songs, or eat cakes.”
Its the same as when people make vague threats that aren’t really threats but totally are. Pretending that only most superficial meaning of your words matters when facing criticism, then encouraging the hidden meaning among your friends.
Hey now, kirbywarp. That’s a nice comment you got there.
Going on and quoting me like that. I’d hate to see the blockquote monster somehow manage to get a bite out of your nice comment, though. That’d be a real shame.
Real shame.
[leaves badly parsed html codes with open greater than signs lying around the forum]
———————
Yup. And then so long as you don’t voice out that conclusion, you can just let things fly as if that’s totally not what you meant, no sir, not at all, that’d be all kinds of rude. Why, I was just asking why, logically, there have been more logical people from this logical college than this other entire geographic area. Logically that is a bit odd, logically.
sigh
Well other than pretending to be some kind of internet gangster who apparently runs a protection racket in this commentary forum, I’ve got little else to add for now.
This is actually a great illustration of the “male gaze” as well as one of “oh-I’m-so-logic” assholes.
Fibinachi:
Fool! In my time away, I have spent long weeks secluded in dark caves, preparing both mentally and physically to tame the
I have suffered and wept. I have struggled and fought. I have honed my very soul into a weapon of ultimate
and
Fear has no hold over me. My mind is steel, my fingers are sniper bullets. I defy the laws of
daring it to consume me. No
shall harm me. I am a commenting god!
————————————————————
But yeah. Logic. It is misused.
Naltia — exactly, “relative privation” is itself a logical fallacy. So is “ad hominem” which is what he’s doing when he insults the intellect and character of those who disagree with him.
It’s an insult to both logic and science to pretend that there is some obvious and well-understood objective measure of what activities will cause what degree of psychological and emotional trauma in humans, which other people are simply ignoring because they’re incapable of logic.
For example, it’s very well understood that most people will find it traumatic to have killed someone, even in a combat situation where killing is expected. Sociopaths, however, will not find it particularly traumatic. And why should they? It’s “illogical” to feel remorse for killing an enemy combatant during wartime.
This causes me to assume that when people try to argue that a person shouldn’t find something upsetting because it’s “illogical” to do so, the person making that argument might be a sociopath.
Apparently, he is not wrong in any ways, it’s just us who are unable to understand his superior logic : http://richarddawkins.net/2014/07/response-to-a-bizarre-twitter-storm/
@fibinachi: “Because emotional causes underpin the reasons we fucking reason in the first place.”
So very well said.
I think the general knock on emotion is that it’s so frequently subjective and untestable. That’s an understandable concern, but application of logic to real life so often fails that the concerns about emotion start to fade if “pure” logic is the alternate tool being proposed.
@CerberusXt
Dawkins has no idea what he’s talking about. “But X is worse” is a common derailing and minimization tactic used in arguments. It doesn’t matter whether the claim logically implies that Y isn’t bad. What matters is how that phrase is used in arguments.
Also, HE’S STILL DEFINING PEOPLE’S OWN EXPERIENCES FOR THEM. What a fucking asshole.
@CerberusXt:
Great. He’s gone and made the exact argument that everyone here has agreed is a bad one, pretending his statement was simply one of logic with no implications whatsoever. An argument that every single blog post I’ve read has already considered and dismissed.
*sigh*
From the comments to Dawkins’ response:
I wonder if he’ll get an answer…
@Ally S : Exactly, every time I saw somebody bring up this argument, it was always to imply “your problem is not important/painful enought to be worth considering”.
@kirbywarp : He may be thinking that if he repeats it enough time, he will magically be right, who knows. Anyway, when he says :
“It seemed barely plausible that such an obvious point needed making, but the subsequent tsunami (as one tweeter called it) of agonised attacks, not only on Twitter but in some blogs and even some newspapers, actually demonstrated the opposite.”
He clearly doesn’t understand what’s the problem is and what triggered the “tsunami” (not to say shitstorm).
Applause for kirbywarp!
Does Dick get royalties for the use of Michael Scott (“the office”) – a character based on Dick?