There was a thread the other day of someone maxing out his credit cards to buy GME, and the comments were full of people calling him an idiot (albeit a lucky one), and imploring others not to do the same. I really really think this misreads who is trading on WSB, especially who are making big trades. "Most of these people are in hopeless debt with no clear path out anyway" Similarly, one person might say "everybody hates me, and I can't blame them because I'm worthless" in a deliberately ironic way, to express an emotion and at the same time signal their awareness that what they believe under the influence of that emotion is not true (since their mom is bringing them tendies in the basement.) The next person might say the same thing with no intended irony. (Or it might mean, "I'm making outrageous statements because I know I'm right, and I would relish the opportunity to bully anyone who questions me.") ![]() Now when I hear someone say "broken," it doesn't have the reassuring subtext of "I know this is a gross oversimplification, and I'm open to providing more detail about my reasoning." It might mean the opposite. It could be used when you wanted to gloss over complex questions of what the software is good for and what you need it to do, while at the same time, to avoid lying by omission, drawing attention to what you were omitting.īut then people started calling software "broken" to express, "My gut feeling is that this software sucks, and I think it would be a waste of time for me to question or attempt to substantiate this feeling," and they felt validated in that attitude because there was a perfect means for expressing it in the programming lexicon. For example, calling software "broken" started as a gross oversimplification that drew attention to itself as a gross oversimplification. There are a lot of statements in these subcultures that can't be definitively pinned down as ironic or not ironic. : On the other hand, if our goal is to define an out-group and attack them, then broad strokes and vague insults are really useful and hard to counter ![]() If our goal is to make truthful (as in, accurately representing reality) statements, then we need to be precise and avoid broad strokes when we describe a group. We still have some data problems - a kid is generally going to give you the answer they think makes you happier, and they're probably pretty relaxed about half-truths to annoying uncles/aunts asking them about gaming habits. It'd be more accurate to say something like "About 70% of kids report playing minecraft", or we can keep to anecdotal evidence: "all my nieces and nephews play minecraft". "Kids like minecraft!" is kind of wrong, but it's kind of right and isn't necessarily a straw man. Sometimes we do want to make broad statements. An example of this usually goes: "Well, Christians believe the world was created in 7 days, and since we have good evidence the world wasn't created in 7 days, Christians must be insane." You just took 2 billion different people, who are spread across factions with internal debates and arguments, and simplified them into a straw man that at most represents a small percentage of that slice. By taking a large and diverse group and simplifying it down to a single viewpoint (that's not a tautology) then you're setting up an out group to be attacked under a single characteristic. ![]() So usually a setup of "All Xs are Y" is used to setup a straw man.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |