The comment you’re replying to has somewhat sloppy language and reasoning. Unfortunately your comment managed to be even worse.
If white supremacists are by definition non-respectful to non-white people, and Hanania appears fairly respectful to non-white people, perhaps that allows us to conclude that Hanania does not, in fact, qualify for your definition of “white supremacist”?
This line of reasoning is implausible. If having a single nonwhite person over on a podcast without being rude is strong evidence against white supremacy, trusting nonwhite people enough to ally with you in a war is surely even better evidence.
The literal historical Nazis allied in a literal war with literal historical Imperial Japan (a country which is mostly nonwhite). While I don’t personally like to throw around phrases like “white supremacy” very often, I think reasonable people can agree that Nazis are white supremacists.
This line of reasoning is implausible. If having a single nonwhite person over on a podcast without being rude is strong evidence against white supremacy, trusting nonwhite people enough to ally with you in a war is surely even better evidence.
The literal historical Nazis allied in a literal war with literal historical Imperial Japan (a country which is mostly nonwhite). While I don’t personally like to throw around phrases like “white supremacy” very often, I think reasonable people can agree that Nazis are white supremacists.
I think you must have missed the “If” clause at the beginning of my comment, or the reference to ‘your definition’ in my sentence.
I’m not sure how much simpler I can make this, but I’ll give it a try.
Either disrespect towards non-white people is characteristic of white supremacy, or it is not. (Law of the excluded middle.)
If it is, then by conservation of expected evidence, respect towards non-white people is limited evidence against white supremacy.
If it is not, then Yarrow’s original claim “White supremacists are not respectful to non-white people!” would appear to be false.
So, it sounds like maybe you’re trying to argue against Yarrow’s original claim that “White supremacists are not respectful to non-white people!”, by giving the concrete example of Nazis respecting their Imperial Japanese allies? That’s the simplest way for me to read what you wrote.
This entire thread just demonstrates how confused and useless it is to argue “by definition”, or argue about term definitions. Set aside all word-definition disputes for a minute: The relevant question was whether Richard Hanania is a bad person to invite to conferences because he’ll be disrespectful to non-white people. Respectful interactions with a non-white podcast guest are perfectly good, if limited, evidence pertaining to that question. Can we agree on that, at least?
Espousing white supremacist views is in itself disrespectful to non-white people, regardless of whether the white supremacist sometimes has polite and cordial conversations on topics unrelated to race and racism with non-white people.
Well, your original statement was: “White supremacists are not respectful to non-white people!” I suppose I must’ve misinterpreted you—I interpreted it to mean that you thought Hanania would be disrespectful to non-white conference attendees in a conference social setting.
When someone is pushing for our society to destroy, oppress, enslave, or exile millions of human beings, whether they mask their hatred with a veneer of politeness is not really the crux of the matter. It is extremely alienating and hostile to the people they hate and are seeking to severely harm to in any way endorse, promote, normalize, or empower them. That would include inviting them to a conference.
This entire thread just demonstrates how confused and useless it is to argue “by definition”, or argue about term definitions.
You keep inserting words into people’s mouths lmao. Nobody said “by definition” before you did. (Control-F for “by definition” if you don’t believe me).
I did not miss your “if.” I didn’t think it was necessary to go into the semantics dive because I thought the analogy would be relatively clear. Let me try again:
In general, when someone says X group is Y, a reasonable interpretation is that members of X group are more likely to be Y. If you are being Gricean, somebody saying A is a member of X implies that they think A is a fairly central member of X and thus are more likely to exhibit Y.
In colloquial English, “X is Y” almost never means “if X, then Y, for all values of X and Y”. Eg, if somebody said “men are taller than women” you should take this as a claim about statistical averages, not a claim that all men are taller than all women.
Similarly, if you see someone say something like “Nazis are disrespectful to nonwhites” you should interpret this as a claim that Nazis are on average significantly less respectful to nonwhites than other people would be to nonwhites. If you assume someone’s being Gricean when they said that, you might further assume that they believe that the specific Nazi they’re referring to exhibits similar behaviors to other Nazis on at least this dimension.
You should not interpret it as “every single Nazi is disrespectful to every single nonwhite person, in every case and in full generality.” I don’t think this is difficult. I don’t think you’d genuinely object to a claim “Nazis are disrespectful to nonwhites,” despite cases like allying with Imperial Japan, or adopting a swastika from Indian culture, or John Rabe. Even if the Nazis writ large made an entire exception for an entire ethnicity of people (eg suppose they were never disrespectful to the Japanese), I’d still consider the basic claim “Nazis are disrespectful to nonwhites” to be approximately correct, and would not go all out of my way to continuously correct every incidence of that remark with “Nazis are disrespectful to nonwhites who are not Japanese.”[1]
Analogies aside, let’s go back to Yarrow’s original claim:
I find it so maddeningly short-sighted to praise a white supremacist for being “respectful”. White supremacists are not respectful to non-white people!
I think your attempt at a gotcha fails. For the same reason that it’s reasonable for someone to say men are taller than women without being immediately disproven as soon as you find a woman who’s taller than a man, or that Nazis are disrespectful of nonwhites despite allying with Japan.
Before writing angry/inflammatory replies, I recommend reading the actual text.
The comment you’re replying to has somewhat sloppy language and reasoning. Unfortunately your comment managed to be even worse.
This line of reasoning is implausible. If having a single nonwhite person over on a podcast without being rude is strong evidence against white supremacy, trusting nonwhite people enough to ally with you in a war is surely even better evidence.
The literal historical Nazis allied in a literal war with literal historical Imperial Japan (a country which is mostly nonwhite). While I don’t personally like to throw around phrases like “white supremacy” very often, I think reasonable people can agree that Nazis are white supremacists.
I think you must have missed the “If” clause at the beginning of my comment, or the reference to ‘your definition’ in my sentence.
I’m not sure how much simpler I can make this, but I’ll give it a try.
Either disrespect towards non-white people is characteristic of white supremacy, or it is not. (Law of the excluded middle.)
If it is, then by conservation of expected evidence, respect towards non-white people is limited evidence against white supremacy.
If it is not, then Yarrow’s original claim “White supremacists are not respectful to non-white people!” would appear to be false.
So, it sounds like maybe you’re trying to argue against Yarrow’s original claim that “White supremacists are not respectful to non-white people!”, by giving the concrete example of Nazis respecting their Imperial Japanese allies? That’s the simplest way for me to read what you wrote.
This entire thread just demonstrates how confused and useless it is to argue “by definition”, or argue about term definitions. Set aside all word-definition disputes for a minute: The relevant question was whether Richard Hanania is a bad person to invite to conferences because he’ll be disrespectful to non-white people. Respectful interactions with a non-white podcast guest are perfectly good, if limited, evidence pertaining to that question. Can we agree on that, at least?
Espousing white supremacist views is in itself disrespectful to non-white people, regardless of whether the white supremacist sometimes has polite and cordial conversations on topics unrelated to race and racism with non-white people.
Well, your original statement was: “White supremacists are not respectful to non-white people!” I suppose I must’ve misinterpreted you—I interpreted it to mean that you thought Hanania would be disrespectful to non-white conference attendees in a conference social setting.
When someone is pushing for our society to destroy, oppress, enslave, or exile millions of human beings, whether they mask their hatred with a veneer of politeness is not really the crux of the matter. It is extremely alienating and hostile to the people they hate and are seeking to severely harm to in any way endorse, promote, normalize, or empower them. That would include inviting them to a conference.
You keep inserting words into people’s mouths lmao. Nobody said “by definition” before you did. (Control-F for “by definition” if you don’t believe me).
I did not miss your “if.” I didn’t think it was necessary to go into the semantics dive because I thought the analogy would be relatively clear. Let me try again:
In general, when someone says X group is Y, a reasonable interpretation is that members of X group are more likely to be Y. If you are being Gricean, somebody saying A is a member of X implies that they think A is a fairly central member of X and thus are more likely to exhibit Y.
In colloquial English, “X is Y” almost never means “if X, then Y, for all values of X and Y”. Eg, if somebody said “men are taller than women” you should take this as a claim about statistical averages, not a claim that all men are taller than all women.
Similarly, if you see someone say something like “Nazis are disrespectful to nonwhites” you should interpret this as a claim that Nazis are on average significantly less respectful to nonwhites than other people would be to nonwhites. If you assume someone’s being Gricean when they said that, you might further assume that they believe that the specific Nazi they’re referring to exhibits similar behaviors to other Nazis on at least this dimension.
You should not interpret it as “every single Nazi is disrespectful to every single nonwhite person, in every case and in full generality.” I don’t think this is difficult. I don’t think you’d genuinely object to a claim “Nazis are disrespectful to nonwhites,” despite cases like allying with Imperial Japan, or adopting a swastika from Indian culture, or John Rabe. Even if the Nazis writ large made an entire exception for an entire ethnicity of people (eg suppose they were never disrespectful to the Japanese), I’d still consider the basic claim “Nazis are disrespectful to nonwhites” to be approximately correct, and would not go all out of my way to continuously correct every incidence of that remark with “Nazis are disrespectful to nonwhites who are not Japanese.”[1]
Analogies aside, let’s go back to Yarrow’s original claim:
I think your attempt at a gotcha fails. For the same reason that it’s reasonable for someone to say men are taller than women without being immediately disproven as soon as you find a woman who’s taller than a man, or that Nazis are disrespectful of nonwhites despite allying with Japan.
Before writing angry/inflammatory replies, I recommend reading the actual text.
And I certainly won’t say the claim overall is false just because of a class [2]of exceptions! This is very much not how English works.
It’d be even more absurd to rate the claim as false due to a single exception