False Friends and Tone Policing

It seemed pretty clear to me at the time that PZ Myers was trolling — in the classic sense of doing something provocative in order to selectively make people who become outraged look stupid in public.

As ESR puts it (with his usual subcultural defensiveness):

The well-constructed troll is a post that induces lots of newbies and flamers to make themselves look even more clueless than they already do, while subtly conveying to the more savvy and experienced that it is in fact a deliberate troll. If you don't fall for the joke, you get to be in on it.

— http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/T/troll.html

Trolling isn't really an attempt to have a conversation or debate with the trolled. It's an attempt to demonstrate power, status, ability to take control of the social situation; to deflate the ego (or self-control) of the outraged victim, and so on. It is a performance for an audience, in which the victims of the trolling are a not-entirely-consenting part of the performance.

IIRC, the political context of that particular troll had a lot to do with religious folks (not particularly Catholics) insisting that non-religious folks should be obliged to express respect or deference to religious symbols. See also Qur'an-burning, "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day", and a long thread here involving British people being offended by salmon. I argued in that thread that one point of "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day" was akin to that of "Banned Books Week" — it is a show of defiance against those who would censor particular expressions.

I'd add that this kind of misunderstanding is frequently mutual; it's generally not the case that one party is sensitive to tone and the other is immune. The version in which someone takes an expression of feeling as an attempt to shame them into silence or otherwise limit allowable discourse is more or less the same failure mode.

Perhaps I say something, unaware that someone with different experiences and perspective might hear it differently, and it makes you mildly uncomfortable (somewhat like your examples). You try to communicate what you're feeling, perhaps intending only to provide me with more detailed information about the kind of reaction I'm provoking and why (some version of the Emotions As Inputs To Rationality approach). There may be good reasons for your reaction: for example, maybe you've heard things like that before from people who caused related harms, and you want to make sure I'm not likely to hurt anyone or normalize harmful behavior in others.

But then I take your expression of feeling as an anti-rational rhetorical move meant to silence me, because that's a thing that some people do using the same language that you used. Then my following plea for dispassionate rationality and a return to the details of the argument gets heard as dismissive/disrespectful and nitpicking, because, well, you know. And so on back and forth.

(It's also, importantly, not always the case that these are mere misunderstandings. Even if I didn't mean something a certain way, you can still be right that it was harmful to say or that it's a sign that I might cause harm. And even if you're not trying to silence me, it could conceivably be the case that by expressing your feelings you weakened our discourse, although I'm not sure I've ever seen that happen.)

false cognate (or, as the French would say, false friend)

Relevant SMBC. It illustrates my political theory that in every political conflict that seems to be between Greens and Blues, there are actually four sides of the conflict, let's call the "Nice Greens", "Nasty Greens", "Nice Blues" and "Nasty Blues". And there is more than one line of conflict.

Officially, "Nice Greens" + "Nasty Greens" and "Nice Blues" + "Nasty Blues" should be the only existing coalitions. But there is also the value of niceness, which somehow connects "Nice Greens" and "Nice Blues", and puts them into often unconscious opposition against the "Nasty Greens" and "Nasty Blues". Being nasty is a personality trait... for a "Nasty Green" it is often easier to become a "Nasty Blue" (different slogans, but generally the same behavior) than a "Nice Green" (different everyday behavior both among the enemies and the allies).

It's probably the Nasty person's greatest fear that one day the Green/Blue conflict will stop being important. Because then they would stop being "a person in service of the great Green/Blue cause, who happens to be a bit nasty, but is a great fighter on our side, so we should support them", and become merely "a nasty person who is better to be avoided".

Specifically in this case, PZ Myers seems to me analogical to those religious people who bring hate banners to funerals of gays. (As oppossed to people like Dawkins who are analogical to priests, that is, legitimate speakers of their movements' beliefs. I am making this contrast to prevent putting both of them to some general category of "militant X". There is a difference between being frank about your opinions, even if it offends those who believe otherwise, and being an asshole.)

Also, I don't like that PZ Myers is hiding behind the banner of "atheism" when doing his nasty things. Because this is not his true banner. As far as I know, he has his own set of values that he is trying to impose on all atheists: the whole "Atheism Plus" stuff. He hates the non-Plus atheists. ("Dictionary Atheists. Boy, I really do hate these guys. You’ve got a discussion going, talking about why you’re an atheist ... and some smug wanker comes along and announces that “Atheism means you lack a belief in gods. Nothing more. Quit trying to add meaning to the term.”" -- source) So I hope he will proudly wave the banner of "Atheism Plus" when doing controversial things, not to be confused with the average boring atheists. Because I certainly don't want to be confused with him.

Have some positive reinforcement - please cross-post again. I thought this was a very good example of how not to shoot yourself in the foot. I think that the example of using Chinese is especially good, because it really is just a mistake that can hinder fruitful conversation, which is the real goal.

I think that's an important point: fruitful discussion is the goal. I know that a good friend of mine got most of his knowledge about atheism from online debates and the like, and so he would talk in unproductive tones of voice when discussing (arguing) it with people face to face. But as fubarobfusco pointed out, the rules of public action and personal conversation are very different. For me the Chinese example really brings it back to that. When you're talking with someone privately, make every effort to communicate optimally to that person.

Are Chinese visitors to the United States repeatedly warned against saying (那个 - nèige)?

If every time someone said "conscience objection," this speaker was appending "to enable genocide," the fervor and horror with which he questioned us made a lot more sense, and didn't feel like personal viciousness.

This, of course, is an effective Dark Arts technique for shifting the terms and the atmosphere of the debate.

It's possible to continue a conversation with someone who's every statement is laced with "nigga" but it takes effort. And no one is obligated to expend their energy on having a conversation with me

Conversely, it also take effort to carry on a conversation when you're constantly trying to avoid saying "um".

It's nice to work to cultivate that trust, and to be the kind of person your friends do approach with requests for trigger warnings and tone shifts. For one thing, I don't want to use emotionally intense false cognates and not know it, any more than I would want to be gesticulating hard enough to strike my friend in the face without noticing.

Reading body language and noticing when someone get's tense can help a lot even if the person is not willing to overtly tell you about the fact that he finds language that you use offensive.

For face to face conversation I take empathy and being aware of the emotional state of the other person over following a bunch of rules about which words are allowed and which aren't. I like to be in social environments where people express themselves authentically and have enough empathy to be aware of the effects of their words instead of social environments that are heavily rule based.

It can be worth it to pause and reconsider your language even if the offensiveness of a word or idea is exactly the subject of your dispute. When I hosted a debate on "R: Fire Eich" one of the early speakers made it clear that, in his opinion, opposing gay marriage was logically equivalent to endorsing gay genocide (he invoked a slippery slope argument back to the dark days of criminal indifference to AIDS).

This is not just about the same word having different meanings. His feeling contains an implicit substantive claim about slippery slopes (not to mention a false narrative of the early history of AIDS).

Thank you