[StevePerkins]

I'm not sure if you're addressing me, OP, Damore, or just yelling into the aether. I certainly haven't said anything TO address regarding the content of Damore's original paper.

For the record, I found Damore's reasoning to be terribly flawed. However, I happen to also believe that squashing all public discussion in its wake is foolish, cowardly, and entirely counterproductive from a practical standpoint.

If you're afraid to pull bad reasoning out in the open and cleanse it with the sunshine of better reasoning, then it just festers and grows in the shadows.

[pdkl95]

The problem is you're implicitly assuming this (and other recent "culture war topics" is actually about reasoning and legitimate attempt at debate. It isn't. This is about controlling narratives and reframing offensive goals so they become a legitimate political opinion.

Most of these calls for a "debate" are not trying to actually debate anything. They are trying to make enough confusing noise and repeat their talking points as often as possible.

For a much better explanation of how this works - and why it's a trap which educated, well meaning, politically-interested people seem to be particularly vulnerable - see this short video essay:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaPgDQkmqqM

[StevePerkins]

The problem is you're implicitly saying that ANY discussion is a pointless waste. As there will always be people on one more sides who see any other views as illegitimate per se. And there will always be people on all sides using "clickbait"-style tactics to sway people who lack critical thinking skills.

I refuse to accept this premise. Even if some (or even most) discussion is disingenuous or low-quality, I refuse to believe that anything positive can come from declaring any discussion topic forbidden in the public square.

[ThrowawayR2]

> It isn't.

That's not something that you may simply unilaterally declare. I don't recall anyone appointing you final judge of what peoples' motivations are.

Remember "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."? Authoritarian liberals are trying to grab the authority to dictate what we may and may not discuss and we mainstream liberals must prevent that at all costs, lest we lose the soul of the liberal movement itself.

[pdkl95]

I didn't "simply unilaterally declare" my point - I included a link to a video that provides a much better explanation than I can give in a short post.

> appointing you final judge of what peoples' motivations are.

I not claiming such authority. I'm a stranger on the side of the road who thought it would be a good idea to offer warn you the bridge you are about to9 drive over is unstable. You have the freedom to heed my warning and find another route, or you can ignore me and drive over the bridge. Maybe it's time to use Bayes' Theorem if you like that kind of inference?

> [general appeal to emotion using platitudes about free speech]

Is someone's speech being banned? Free speech does not mean you are guaranteed an audience.

This is a nice example of the reframing technique I was talking about. Nobody's speech is being restricted, but countering your points would mean arguing about the subtleties of free speech doctrine, instead of what my post was actually about: the current tactic of endlessly calling for "debate" that never actually becomes a debate.

No, I don't have a lot of evidence on hand at the moment. All I can offer right now is the conclusions from my firsthand observations of this technique over the last ~20 year. You have the freedom to use this information as you wish.

[ThrowawayR2]

> I'm a stranger on the side of the road who thought it would be a good idea to offer warn you the bridge you are about to9 drive over is unstable. You have the freedom to heed my warning and find another route, or you can ignore me and drive over the bridge.

Note the verbal sleight-of-hand pdk95 uses (and I don't mean the obvious false dichotomy): he presents his behavior as a kindness to others, the hidden assumption being that his viewpoint (assessment of the bridge's instability) is an unassailable truth that we should not question. Ironically, he is using the same sort of rhetorical trickery as the kind he condemns his opponents for using.

I don't know about the rest of you but the more frantically someone assures me that their statements are totally correct and that I need not verify them for myself or listen to differing opinions, the more suspicious I get. What exactly are pdk95 and people like him so terrified of? Is it that we are not clever enough in their opinion to recognize bad ideas and reject them ourselves?

Take the third choice. Inspect the bridge yourself and make up your own mind whether it's stable.

> Is someone's speech being banned? Free speech does not mean you are guaranteed an audience.

Odd, I don't recall mentioning banning anywhere in my post.

[oj-lappi]

You wre not discussing this civilly. A democratic process will consider any viewpoint and judge it by its merits. Not dismiss it outright with a handwave "this is just a political technique" that's not how a truly democratic or scientific community responds. This is the response of a tribe afraid of values that do not fit into theirs.

[aaron-lebo]

My point is that downvoting and flagging a dead horse based off of a months old discussion isn't evidence of cowardice. Maybe there's just not much useful there?

[StevePerkins]

The "dead horse" argument is disingenuous, as discussing this subject has been verboten here since it first came out.

Besides, come on. Half of this website is dead horses ("Rust vs. Go"... "JavaScript framework X vs. Y"... "Haskell and/or Lisp is awesome"... etc).