Comment by netcan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by netcan | Hacker News Reader

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I've been thinking a lot lately about blindspots. They're easy to see in other people, and downright glaring when it comes to politics or other collective opinions. By definition, hard to spot in yourself. Objectively, they're likely to exist.

In any case, I think most of us have felt what the writer here feels, about HN or some other forum. It's hard to know how much of it is internal to us & how much of it is the forum. I mean, as we hang out someplace, it becomes old to us. Cliches become trite. Insights become banal. Patterns become annoyance triggers. All stuff that tends to show up in these "sick of this" endpoints.

What made me think of it here is the first "bad argument:"

"Arguments that reduce to a disagreement about semantics"

While I agree that this is a bad argument, it's a pretty common one anytime anything abstract is discussed. Even professional philosophers exchanging letters, debating on podcasts or publishing in journals succumb to semantics disturbingly often.

To me, I might get drawn into some topic/debate and eventually conclude that it's just boring semantics. At that point, the whole thing annoys me whenever it comes up. This was how I "got sick of philosophy" at Uni.

I don't know if it matters to the individual, but to forum designers it might have opposite implications. If it's the forum that changes for the worse, a cultural defence is the right approach. If it's the person who changes, then the solution is an evolving forum. It's also hard to get feedback on this. I can't imagine many forums ever avoid this sort of sentiment from arising.

..no conclusion.

> I've been thinking a lot lately about blindspots.

I think it works like this:

blindspots are so hard to see, but if they are inconvenient, they will get pushback. great effort will be spent creating counter-arguments i.e. arguments against, but not so much arguments for. Effort will be spent repeating them so these counterarguments will become well-known, and accepted.

Soon enough, there will be a lamp-shade effect; there are so many counter-arguments people will wonder if the value they see is something is real because they only hear talk of the harm of something, not the value; everyone thinks it's harmful, but no one speaks of the value. Soon enough, it becomes harder to defend something, and this means the path-of-least-resistance is to not defend something, or to attack those that try. Anyone defending it has to adopt a "contrarian" style and tone, and sometimes hedge a little with "provocateur" behaviour to give themselves an out in case things come back on them (I wasn't really serious, lol).

I personally hate so-called "identity politics" because it gives people a personal, group-identity stake in things that not only bias their perspective, but often add a strong emotive current to topics that fuels the creation of stigmas and taboos as above.

> This was how I "got sick of philosophy" at Uni.

I did philosophy at uni. OMG stay away from the continental stuff. The (often American aka logical positivists) stuff that intersected with logic and mathematics was great though, although much of it seemed to be a study in semantics/language/meaning.

Check out Rudolf Carnaps "philosophical nonsense" stuff:

  Such metaphysical sentences—into which we can be misled by the logical shortcomings of natural languages—are revealed to be pseudo-sentences by logical analysis. They are nonsense, in the sense of not having any theoretical content; they are not answers to any coherently expressible questions.

TBH, I think the answer to such things might be: revise the traditional list of fallacies. what a task this would be though..

> I personally hate so-called "identity politics" because it gives people a personal, group-identity stake in things that not only bias their perspective, but often add a strong emotive current to topics that fuels the creation of stigmas and taboos as above.

This is why I'll never understand people who are crazy about <insert political candidate here>. No matter who they are, they will do something you disagree with. It's much easier to recognize what they did is wrong if you were never part of their group to start. Instead, I see people twisting themselves in knots to defend positions they would normally denounce.

And not just too single out politics, but I see the same thing with companies (like Apple). I also don't want to sound holier than thou either, since I've recognized it in myself before. This joining a tribe is part of the human condition, so it's something I have to actively fight against.

> Instead, I see people twisting themselves in knots to defend positions they would normally denounce.

This is actually a rational behaviour (in an f-ed up system/incentive).

Any admittance of failure will be used against your candidate, and the opposition will defend their candidate just as strongly. Consider how when celebs get involved in scandals their PR isn't always to admit fault.

Its the same thing of "repeat a lie enough.."; even if the defence itself is not accepted, it can still soften the blow of the scandal by resisting the death-blow of unanimous condemnation. Humans are sometimes herd creatures, visible support is a universal defence in itself, even if only to threaten/dissuade attackers.

In other words, this is how political theatre works.

You’re just rebranding a weakness as a strength.

vague concepts of "weak" and "strong" are closer to the semantics-free/nuance-free iconography of branding than my thoughts about political theatre. One sentence dismissals of a paragraph of text add little value to this thread, it would have been better to represent your disapproval with a downvote.

> To me, I might get drawn into some topic/debate and eventually conclude that it's just boring semantics. At that point, the whole thing annoys me whenever it comes up. This was how I "got sick of philosophy" at Uni.

I would like to take a stab at explaining why an argument being "boring semantics" or "interesting philosophy" is somewhat dependent on perspective.

To be explicit about definitions I take "semantics" to mean "mapping from words/sentences to a concrete meaning" and "arguing semantics" to mean "Arguing what mapping is correct or agreeing on a shared mapping".

To give a concrete example of an argument (from the article):

> Abortion is the canonical example of this type of argument: once you have decided what “life” is, there’s really not much else to discuss. It’s not a political argument, not even in theory. It’s purely a semantic one.

Deciding what "life" is by my definitions a purely semantic argument. As you try to define "life", you will want to keep almost universally agreed upon statements such as "Human life has inherent value" coherent. Some of the simplest definitions will raise issues if you start considering future and past humans. There are some interesting questions that you can try to answer by defining "life" and following the logical consequences. However, if you are only interested in abortion, most of the subtly of a definition of "life" is not relevant.

So if you are interested in only the first question you ask, arguing semantics can be a deep rabbit hole, but if you are willing to entertain new questions as you primary question, it can be interesting as its own study.

I agree. That's likely why philosophy is often so semantics heavy. Your example is apt.

OTOH, I do think that there are different levels of "bogged down in semantics."

Semantics can sometimes interesting in their own right. That's rarely a help though. The semantics are generally not interesting as used to try and win a debate.

Getting back to the original point, I think the semantic arguments are usually the shallower ones. That's not bad in itself, but being a bog, moving past semantics is a rarity once in. That tends to get annoying and boring faster than rehashing a repetitive but substantive discussion.

Say we're discussing the existence of god. "What if I consider god to be the universe itself?" might be interesting on first pass, but it's kind of boring by the third time. Environmental sustainability. It might be interesting to reflect on the etymology or politics of the term "sustainable" in the context it's used today. It rarely gets us to a more nuanced view though. Usually, it just keeps the debate in shallow water. what does the word "really" mean. What words should we use.

As I said, I think it's important to keep in mind that there is no escape. Professional philosophers get stuck in semantics regularly. OTOH, a forum is probably somewhat susceptible to shallowness (semantics are just one type) regardless. After all, it's a casual medium.

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