I’m a white male, and I view my own comfort in debate spaces merely as a means to reach truth, and welcome attempts to trade the former for the latter. Of course, you may be thinking “that’s easy for you to say, cause you’re a white male!” And there’s no point arguing with that because no one will be convinced of anything. But I’m at least going to say that it is the right philosophy to follow.
Consider the possibility that the philosophy you mention is not as easy for everyone to follow as it is for you. When the entirety of society is built with your comfort in mind, it’s very easy to sacrifice some of it as a means to reach truth, especially as as soon as you leave the debate space you can go back to not thinking about any of the discomfort you experienced during the discussion. You are safe putting all of your emotional and intellectual energy into the debate space, knowing that if the conversation gets too much for you, you can opt to leave at any time and go on with the rest of your day.
If, however, someone lives in a world where every day includes many instances of them being made uncomfortable (even if each instance might seem trivially small to someone who only sees one), which they have no option to switch off, that person cannot safely put all of their emotional and intellectual energy into a debate space which asks them to sacrifice their level of comfort. They don’t have the option of participating in a discussion until it becomes too much, because they have to save energy with which to get through the rest of the day. As a result, they are not able to participate in the debate on an equal footing (if they even choose to at all, given the emotional effort involved).
Well that is what I said someone would say, and what I said I wasn’t going to argue about. I am aware of the kinds of arguments you’re making. And I have lived in places where everything around me was very much not built around my comfort, I was in the military where I could not switch off in the slightest.
To be clear, I didn’t make the above point in order to say “you should feel bad because you’re white and male”. I also didn’t make it to say “you should just shut up and defer to the opinions of others here because you’re white and male”. I made it to try to explain why the choice to say “everyone just needs to suck it up and deal with their own discomfort” is not a choice with no downside; it puts the debate on an uneven footing, where people are not able to participate equally. It doesn’t seem a stretch to then say that debates where some people are at an inherent disadvantage from the start are not as self evidently optimal as a truth seeking exercise as it may first seem.
I did not think you were trying to say either of those things. Again, I’m aware of these things that people say. I was just talking about the philosophical basis for judging strategies here.
Consider the possibility that the philosophy you mention is not as easy for everyone to follow as it is for you. When the entirety of society is built with your comfort in mind, it’s very easy to sacrifice some of it as a means to reach truth, especially as as soon as you leave the debate space you can go back to not thinking about any of the discomfort you experienced during the discussion. You are safe putting all of your emotional and intellectual energy into the debate space, knowing that if the conversation gets too much for you, you can opt to leave at any time and go on with the rest of your day.
If, however, someone lives in a world where every day includes many instances of them being made uncomfortable (even if each instance might seem trivially small to someone who only sees one), which they have no option to switch off, that person cannot safely put all of their emotional and intellectual energy into a debate space which asks them to sacrifice their level of comfort. They don’t have the option of participating in a discussion until it becomes too much, because they have to save energy with which to get through the rest of the day. As a result, they are not able to participate in the debate on an equal footing (if they even choose to at all, given the emotional effort involved).
Well that is what I said someone would say, and what I said I wasn’t going to argue about. I am aware of the kinds of arguments you’re making. And I have lived in places where everything around me was very much not built around my comfort, I was in the military where I could not switch off in the slightest.
To be clear, I didn’t make the above point in order to say “you should feel bad because you’re white and male”. I also didn’t make it to say “you should just shut up and defer to the opinions of others here because you’re white and male”. I made it to try to explain why the choice to say “everyone just needs to suck it up and deal with their own discomfort” is not a choice with no downside; it puts the debate on an uneven footing, where people are not able to participate equally. It doesn’t seem a stretch to then say that debates where some people are at an inherent disadvantage from the start are not as self evidently optimal as a truth seeking exercise as it may first seem.
I did not think you were trying to say either of those things. Again, I’m aware of these things that people say. I was just talking about the philosophical basis for judging strategies here.