Civility

by

by hilzoy

I think it might be time to draw our collective attention to the Posting Rules, and especially to the one that says: “Do not consistently abuse or vilify other posters for its own sake.” Consistent abuse or vilification will get you banned. But even a little abuse or vilification is too much.

For one thing, this is supposed to be a blog in which people can disagree, at times vehemently, without crossing the line that separates disagreement from attack. We probably all have our own views about what it’s supposed to be, but I think of it as an experiment one of whose points is to try to illustrate, in action, the proposition that it is possible to disagree passionately, without sacrificing or muting that passion, while still treating our opponents decently and with respect. This cannot work if we feel free to abuse one another, or impugn one another’s motives or character, without very, very, very good reason. And there are always alternatives, like pointing out other people’s mistakes without impugning their characters.

For another, when I am inclined to vilify another person, I am often just wrong about that person and his or her character. We all disagree about all sorts of things. Moreover, we all know about different things. Some of us remember the eighties in detail; others of us were in grade school at the time, or just not paying attention. Most of the readers of this blog know a lot about torture and habeas corpus and the finer points of Social Security; in this respect, we are very, very atypical. (To illustrate: the day after the torture bill passed, before my class started, I asked my students how many of them knew what important piece of legislation had been passed the previous day. Maybe three out of roughly a hundred raised their hands. I then asked how many of them knew what that bill said; none did. My students are good and decent kids, the kind of good and decent kids who would voluntarily decide to take a course in ethics. But I sometimes think that if they showed up here and asked us, in good faith, to explain why we thought the bill was so bad, they’d be absolutely slammed.)

Since we have different beliefs and different pools of knowledge, it is absolutely to be expected that some of us will, from time to time, say things that make others of us wonder: how on earth could an honest person say X? Possibly the reason is that we assume that everyone knows the devastating arguments against X. Possibly it’s that we assume that everyone knows X, or that X is as obvious to everyone as it is to us. But this is not a good reason for me to accuse someone else of dishonesty without first asking myself, in all seriousness, whether the person might not just be mistaken, or have written something too quickly so that it came out wrong, or be badly informed; or whether, dare I imagine, I myself might be overestimating the obviousness of what I say.

Some accusations are extremely serious. Anyone who comments on blogs has probably been the object of some of them. I have been accused, personally, of treason, intellectual dishonesty, straightforward dishonesty, and, most recently, of a complete absence of goodness. All of these accusations are ones that I take extremely seriously; and I tend to think that people who make them too easily must not understand what they mean to someone who does take them seriously. If the people who accuse me of treason really understood how serious an accusation that is, I think, they would not make it so lightly.

We all hate that when other people do it to us. We should therefore try hard not to do it ourselves. It’s easy to hate bad things when other people do them; but each of us has been assigned, as our primary moral task, ourselves; and not being the sorts of people who lightly toss off accusations that are serious is much more important than accurately registering the sins of others.

If someone is, in fact, a genuinely bad person — dishonest, treasonous, or dishonorable — that is always a bad thing; and we should always hope that it is not true — that when we were tempted to think the worst of him or her, we were wrong. Or, as I said in my first ever post here:

“I think C. S. Lewis gets it right.

The real test is this. Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, ‘Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. (Mere Christianity, p. 106)

I think that if one really tries to live by this, one will be inclined to say many fewer harsh things, and those one does say will in general not be said in a way that is needlessly divisive. And if one is aware that really trying to be charitable does not ensure success, then one will also think hard before saying harsh things, in order to be sure that one does not allow oneself to be motivated by the desire to think ill of one’s opponents. One will also try to see even really bad people as both comprehensible and redeemable, and if one is in a position to do so, one will try to reach out to them. And one will take seriously the possibility that one is mistaken about them, and even hope that one is.

That being said, I don’t think that the answer is not to speculate about people’s motives or character. I think I should try to be charitable, to consider seriously the possibility that I am wrong, and to express myself in a way that leaves that possibility open. But I also think that the character of our leaders in particular is extremely important, and that it would not serve us well to stop thinking about this. Moreover, I think that we have enough information to draw some conclusions about their character, and that we can also speculate where we lack conclusive evidence, as long as we are clear that that is what we are doing. But we should always try to remember that politicians are people like everyone else, as liable to confusion and weakness as the rest of us, and that it is no more permissible to say hateful things about them for the hell of it, than it would be to do this to someone we actually know.

At least, that’s what I think.”

91 thoughts on “Civility”

  1. Hil, I don’t disagree that a reminder of the importance of staying on point, and off each other, is worth while. I will say, though, without naming names, that there seems to have been quite the outbreak, on several threads, of ‘can dish it out but can’t take it.’
    I your admonition to keep to the high road isn’t sufficient for some folks, I’ll add this thought: if you go insulting people, or being needlessly over-provocative, don’t be surprised by (a) the negative reaction you get and (b) the passivity with which those who do not actually participate in the negative reaction view it. Shorter: the low road is basically a waste of everyone’s time, and isn’t going to do you any particular good.

  2. I think that the best prescient fictional depiction of The Evil That Calls Itself The G. W. Bush Administration is C.S. Lewis’s _That_Hideous_Strength_.
    “But everyone behaved splendidly. Splendidly!”
    Either that or Catch 22 …
    with Bush playing the bloated colonel.

  5. I remember reading that passage by C.S.Lewis more than twenty years ago, and recognising myself in it: and I remember your quoting it, and thinking, good show, or words to that effect. But after years of watching people react to (for example) news about Guantanamo Bay by coming up with Club Med stories, I read this and I think:

    Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Yes, but then, who owns the media? Of course there will be a story suggesting that the filthy atrocities never happened.

    And this without having the faintest idea what you’re talking about in threads below (or had coffee yet, so I probably shouldn’t look…)
    That said: I think, even online, it’s possible to spot the difference between someone who genuinely doesn’t know what you’re talking about (torture bill? what torture bill?) and someone knows and who is putting on a faux-innocence: torture bill? But we’re not torturing people, we’re just [torture technique of the week]).

  6. This is about me, huh. What’d I say. It’s ok, I can take criticism if I messed up. Whatever I did, it was wrong, and I apologize to whoever I did it to. I won’t ever do it again. Cue Brenda Lee. Cue Randy Newman.
    Guilty baby I’m guilty
    And I’ll be guilty the rest of my life
    How come I never do what I’m supposed to do
    How come nothin’ that I try to do ever turns out right?
    You know you know how it is with me baby
    You know, I just can’t stand myself
    And it takes a whole lot of medicine
    For me to pretend that I’m somebody else

  8. I think your advice is excellent and should be widely read, hilzoy, but I do have a bit of a quibble with regard to attributing dishonesty. It’s entirely possible, the first time you discuss a topic with someone, that they do not know the devastating arguments against their position. Fair enough. However, there’s another scenario that often occurs. That’s when someone repeatedly makes a claim, repeatedly has it demolished, and they continue to make it without any new evidence or arguments in support as though it were established fact. What then? Even if they’re incapable of recognizing how thoroughly their claim had been refuted, they’re still being dishonest by misrepresenting a disputed claim as something beyond dispute.
    That’s the behavior I see on blogs and forums every day, and I don’t think there’s a polite response that works. Silence doesn’t work. Repeating all of the countarguments is a burden both to those who must post them and those who must read them, often derailing the conversation (which is often the intent). There’s really no way to say “your axiom is invalid and therefore your argument is too” without someone complaining about rudeness. In my experience, the only thing that has ever worked is, for lack of a better term, forceful discouragement. People who might not respond merely to being wrong (who might not even realize that they are, no matter how obvious it is to everyone else) do still respond to basic negative reinforcement. If claim X always leads to unpleasantness, they avoid the unpleasantness by avoiding X (which they probably only cling to because of positive reactions they’ve received from a different group and not because truth has anything to do with it).
    I guess what I’m saying is that deliberate unpleasantness has its place. I don’t know how to allow that when it’s justified without also allowing truly abusive behavior as well, any more than I can make a twenty-word-or-less distinction between a justified and an unjustified use of force in other contexts, but I do not believe that civility is always appropriate either. Dishonesty is incompatible with civility. If the “authorities” were as willing to chastise or remove those who are dishonest as they are to do so for people who are uncivil in other ways, that might work, but I have yet to see a forum where that seems to be the case. That being so, it falls to the “citizens” to administer the necessary correction, and to risk being thought uncivil for doing so.

  9. So, do I have to stop using the f-word to refer to the Vice President, or only if he starts posting here? 😉
    Good post hilzoy, I’d hate to see this turn into what the comments at Drum’s place look like, which I rarely read anymore.

  10. As a long time lurker and infrequent commenter, I would like to say that the relative civility here, combined with the remarkable quality of the original posts is why I keep returning.
    That said, I certainly have some sympathy with the position espoused by Platypus. I really doubt that more than a very few of the commenters are intentionally dishonest, but it must be forty years since I read When Prophecy Fails and was stunned. In the years since I have not succeeded in figuring out how to handle people who simply are not open to persuasion by demonstrated fact. I do believe that there are several commenters here who fall into that category. If anyone else has found a method to deal with this, I would be interested in learning it.
    I will resume my lurking now.

  12. Funny incident from life, but there’s no open thread, so here goes:
    My youngest was recently tested by her kindergarten teacher for grade-level abilities. Teacher stopped at the end of kindergarten, but will explore further to see where the kid actually is. She could just have skipped to first grade, most likely, but we’re clearly going to have our hands full with this one.
    Anyway, the teacher has her writing sentences even though Abby’s spelling abilities aren’t all that great (yet) for more than a couple of hundred words. She has Abby drawing pictures and captioning them; one of them has her leading her dog on a leash, captioned “I wok my dog”.
    Which gave me a chuckle, and made me wonder if she was hungry when she drew it.

  14. Yet another point in favor of civility: Blog comments feel like a conversation among a small group of people when you’re actually participating, but that’s not the whole picture. For every commenter there are hundreds (or tens, depending on the blog) of people reading but not commenting. A well reasoned and even tempered response carries much more weight with the silent majority than does a flame. This is also why it’s worth responding to people who consistently post the same debunked argument over and over – you’re not responding to them, you’re reducing the influence of their argument on the readers who haven’t seen it before.
    It is a mistake to think of a blog as solely a community of bloggers and commenters – that’s part of the picture, but not the whole picture. The community includes people we never hear from because they never post, but they read regularly and feel like a part of the club. There is also a penumbra of people who occasionally read, perhaps due to a link from another blog, or random clicks on someone’s blogroll. I’d guesstimate that the average high traffic blog has a penumbra at least as large as the commenteriat, if not substantially larger. Refutations of dumbassery, even if they’re being made for the 17th time, may tick off the regulars, but they also serve to inform the penumbroids.

  15. Your C. S. Lewis post was excellent. I put in my desktop quotes list immediately.
    As a columnist who periodically deals with right-wingers who praise Bush for eliminating the Taliban in Afghanistan, I agree with some of the above commenters that non-reality based people are a problem to deal with. One reason I prefer writing to debate is that in print I have time to suppress the impulse to yell “You’re so stupid!”–I much prefer to point out the errors and leave readers to their own conclusions.

  16. Refutations of dumbassery, even if they’re being made for the 17th time, may tick off the regulars, but they also serve to inform the penumbroids.

    They might, but they might just as well annoy or bore the “penumbroids” too. They might – and in my experience often do – also cause a permanent derailment of the thread as old arguments are rehashed and conflicts revived, preventing it from reaching anything new or interesting. Granted, a curt dismissal is also likely to cause a flare-up of old conflicts, but it’s often briefer and less likely to keep happening after a couple of repetitions.

  17. Well said hilzoy.
    FWIW, this is pretty much the only left tilting blog I bother to comment on anymore. Emotions do run high from time to time, but given the issues under discussion that is understandable. For the most part, the level of civility remains pretty high. I honestly can’t think of another popular lefty blog that compares.
    I think I had my honesty questioned one time here, but even that did not descend into an all out flame war. I used to participate on John Cole’s blog and even FDL, but after a while I just couldn’t stomach it any more. I still occasionally read the main page at Balloon Juice but I no longer venture into the comments (I can’t even take the front page at FDL any more). I almost always read the comments here.
    Anyway, the best compliment I can offer to the bloggers and the commenters here is that not only is ObWi a daily read for me, but I will occasionally take the time to comment. That puts you in about the top 5% of my personal blogosphere.
    Even though I’ll never agree with about 80% of what is said here, I appreciate the manner in which it is said. I can enjoy reading well written and thought provoking commentary without having to agree with it all. And I’ll do my best not to contribute to any flame wars.
    Keep up the good work.

  18. Maybe blogs need a FRA section? Like a FAQ, but Frequently Repeated Arguments instead of Asked Questions? Than you can just link to the appropriate number, so the penumbroids can be informed and the regulars don’t have to scroll trough the list again.

  19. Maybe blogs need a FRA section?
    KOS has one, and i doubt i’ll ever look at it. i get the feeling it’ll present a rather un-balanced view of things.

  20. What Jes said. I’m a C.S. Lewis fan and the remark you quote should always be kept in mind, but Jes’s rewording of it is, I think, more applicable to how American atrocities are actually discussed in this country.
    In my calmer moods, I sincerely wish the best for George W. Bush. And in all sincerity, that would involve him admitting to his war crimes and showing genuine contrition. Hell, I’m a bit of a sucker for even unrepentant sinners sometimes. There was a brief period in the summer of 2004 when I thought it was likely Bush would lose the election and I can remember feeling a little bit sorry for the wretched pathetic man for the pain he would feel when he finally realized he was rejected by the American people. But he wasn’t rejected (even if one thinks the 2004 election was stolen, and I don’t want to start that discussion, the country basically split 50/50 plus or minus a couple of points). And he’s definitely not repentant.

  21. Actually, there was an exchange shortly after the torture bill passed when someone delurked and said he wasn’t aware of anyone who had actually been tortured. He got jumped on. I linked to Dilawar. He came back and said: thanks; that was really disturbing.
    It wasn’t at all clear that he was arguing in bad faith, as opposed to being misinformed. I think I was sensitized by my students, who are, as I said, totally decent, but who, unlike regular ObWi readers, have no idea at all about this stuff.

  22. Dutchmarbel: Yeah. Maybe a wiki, even, where the debate over the merits of each FRA can be tucked away into the item’s ‘discussion’ page.

  23. nb: I shouldn’t have said that the peron ‘delurked’. I have no reason to think he had ever been here before. And if he had been a lurker, it would have lowered the odds of good faith considerably.

  24. That’s when someone repeatedly makes a claim, repeatedly has it demolished, and they continue to make it without any new evidence or arguments in support as though it were established fact.
    This happens a lot in forums about science. What makes it so devastating is that sometimes the repeated claim is phrased in a manner that seems civil and convincing to a new reader who hasn’t already seen the previous six iterations of the argument. When the regulars respond with naked hostility, there are always some newbies who follow up asking why they’re being so mean to this person who is just making some novel, interesting points.
    So I’m not sure that belligerent behavior works even there, if what one is trying to do is educate the lurkers. What’s better is to have something like a FAQ to point to laying out the basic counterargument.

  25. Cleek: I’m not a KOS reader anymore, but would expect a partisan approach there. I was more thinking about “Slarti’s view about the Florida elections / quote 1 / quote 2 / etc.” followed by “Jes’ view on the Florida elections / quote 1 / quote 2”, after which every time the argument comes up people can link to make clear in who’s camp they are on this particular subject. Using the name of regulars is probabely a bad idea though 🙂
    The idea of a wiki appeals, but I doubt it would work if it consists mostly about controversial points (as most FRA’s would).

  26. Hilzoy,
    I’m shocked that you lump together charges of treason with charges of making a dishonest statement. Particularly because mischaracterizing, distorting, and exagerrating an opponent’s position is so rampant in political discussions. It’s actually pretty difficult to give the other side its due. Dishonesty simply abounds in politics and political arguments — I really and truly do not understand why you think it is better to pretend it’s not there.
    I like this blog and will no longer refer to statements that are obvious mischaracterizations, distortions, or exagerrations as “dishonest.” However, I think it’s important to call people out when they give in to temptation dismiss opposing political views by creating straw men.
    And please note, my comments did refer to the statements (or position), not the person who made them or his character (and I did cite facts to support my response – the primacy of entitlements that help the middle class rather than the poor, Clinton’s welfare reform, Ned Lamont being a successful businessman, and my own political views as a Democrat). A generally fair-minded person can make an unfair statement in the middle of a discussion (who hasn’t?) but when called out on a such a statement, isn’t the best response something along the lines of: “Well, yeah, I did go a bit too far there in pressing my point…”
    I didn’t abuse anybody. My political views were unfairly characterized and I objected. If we can all agree that “dishonesty” is too blunt a word and it’s better to use “unfair” or something else to make such an objection, then fine. However, if objecting to that kind of treatment makes ME a bad person, I guess I have to go play elsewhere.
    Cheers,
    Sean

  27. In the past, I’ve toyed with the idea of setting up a blog in which I expose my naivete and ignorance by asking questions like the one Hilzoy assures us would earn her students public scorn for asking. The purpose of such a blog, or a qlog (questions log), would not be to humiliate myself, but rather to get informed on issues that matter to me, and about which I may have naive intuitions but no real expertise. Some people routinely ask questions in their blogs, but it isn’t the most common of practices. I find this regrettable.

  28. Wonderful post. I entirely agree.
    But I do have a tiny quibble with this: “Do not consistently abuse or vilify other posters for its own sake.”
    Does that sentence seem grammatically weird to anyone? The subject of the sentence, referred to by the word “its,” is “consistently abuse or vilify,” but the structure of the sentence makes my mind want “other posters” to be the subject.
    I thinks something like “Do not abuse or vilify other posters for the sake of abuse or vilification” would be better. Another option is to just eliminate the “for its own sake” from the sentence: “Do not consistently abuse or vilify other posters.”

  29. on the topic of civility, FRAs, people who don’t know the history of a certain discussion, and trolls who don’t really care if you refute them or not…
    Political Animal officially jumps the shark with a post which starts off:

      Al asks a good question in the comments…

    (my emphasis)

  30. The “Al” thing at Washington Monthly strikes me as one of the most destructive things to discourse over there. With apparently more than one person parodying/impersonating him (and starting off the comments with inflammatory staments while doing so) things get ugly real quick.

  31. In the years since I have not succeeded in figuring out how to handle people who simply are not open to persuasion by demonstrated fact.
    Unfortunately, it goes well beyond that, because many people willingly trade in demonstrably false “facts,” and keep doing so while disdaining commentary pointing out the false premise.
    Such bvehavior is the literal definition of “intellectual dishonesty,” and when used in that context, is a very fair and appropriate criticism. Unfortunately, like the word “fascism,” the term has become something of an empty epithet.
    Dishonesty simply abounds in politics and political arguments — I really and truly do not understand why you think it is better to pretend it’s not there.
    For better or worse, politics and sex are two areas where fraud is largely unpoliced and frequently without serious consequence.

  32. dmbeaster — Unfortunately, it goes well beyond that, because many people willingly trade in demonstrably false “facts,” and keep doing so while disdaining commentary pointing out the false premise.
    I usually find that when the kids in my writing class do this it is not because they are intentionally trafficking in falsehoods, but because they are using rhetorical frames that use similar language, but assume radically different paradigms underneath. It’s easier to see in them than it is here because their language lacks nuance. It’s less easy to see here because the parties who square off are often quite rhetorically sophisticated. A lot of the time, though, it’s not a false premise at the heart of the argument, but rather a failure of alignment between the rhetorical frames.
    Pesky language.

  34. I’m very glad to see this post. I’ve been a lurker here for perhaps a month, but have refrained from commenting until now. I love this blog, and I’ve read it religiously ever since I stumbled across it.
    I haven’t posted for a couple reasons – partly because I don’t feel my opinions could stand up to the scrutiny here (which is a good thing, because it’s forced me to reconsider a lot of my opinions, and also think about how I would defend them in a discussion). But part of the reason I haven’t posted is because I was worried that even if I did post something, I’d get torn apart. Some of the arguements on here seem pretty rough.
    It’s nice to see so many people chiming in here with ‘it’s not personal’ and things along those veins. I’ve been tempted recently to reply to several different posts, and this post has definately made me feel more confident that I could do so without bringing significant amounts of flame retardant gear to the table.

  36. I still occasionally read the main page at Balloon Juice but I no longer venture into the comments (I can’t even take the front page at FDL any more)
    I find it intensely amusing that, despite our vastly different political stances, I completely agree with this sentence.

  38. I can’t even take the front page at FDL any more
    i never went there. and then that blackface picture happened. and now i make a point not to go there.

  39. Re intellectual dishonesty: I tend to agree with dmbeaster above about the phenomenon of people trading in demonstrably false “facts”, although I’m not sure if we would agree on how widespread it is. Being wrong once or twice is understandable; persistent incorrectness in the face of repeated corrections, though, is what I’d consider intellectual dishonesty. Most of the common examples consist of statements with the nuance rubbed off, e.g. “Democrats favor big government”; some consist of dictionary flames/paradigm shifts/abuse of language, e.g. “Everyone agreed that Saddam had WMD”; and a rare few are simply false on their face, e.g. “Liberals don’t believe in opposing terrorism”.
    [Yes, I’m aware that the latter is usually phrased “liberals don’t believe in fighting terrorism”, which is a tricky one to analyze because it could either be false-on-its-face or the simple result of a differing paradigm, specifically restriction of “fighting terrorism” to “fighting terrorism in the following ways”. This is more analysis than the sentiment deserves, though.]
    Another problem — though I think it’s far more prevalent one from those in power than in the blogosphere per se — is bullshit (again, as almost always, in the Frankfurterian (?!) sense): declaring things to be thus, or things will be thus, without any particular grounding of the sentiment in reality. Sentiments like “We’ll be greeted as liberators!” or “In ten years, you’ll see that Bush was right to invade Iraq”: articles of faith that are somehow supposed to be privileged as rational beliefs and discussed on that basis. [Most mind-reading of Bush falls into this category as well, IMO, and I say this as one who succumbs to that temptation far too often.] This isn’t to say that those sentiments are inherently wrong or inherently false; but without the underlying rational justification (e.g. “We’ll be greeted as liberators because we were greeted as liberators in Germany” or “The Huk rebellion had a lot of violence but ultimately peace and prosperity were restored”) they’re simply bullshit assertions that derail the argument at hand. Again, an individual example of such an assertion doesn’t betoken intellectual dishonesty, but repeated attempts could cross that line IMO.
    The last form of dishonesty I’ve noticed is a subtler form and I’m not sure that I can do it justice right now, but it’s equally disruptive and deserves mention. There’s an implicit understanding on forums like this that the participants are participating in good faith: that they will put forward arguments they believe (or declare themselves to be playing Devil’s Advocate when they don’t), that they will attempt to further the progress of truth, knowledge or understanding, that they are all trying to learn and/or trying to convince people of positions they themselves hold. This doesn’t need to be uniform, mind, and people are clearly capable of falling from the ideal… but nonetheless it is the ideal to which we aspire. There is a certain type of commenter, however — and thankfully I don’t believe this applies to any of the current regulars — for whom this isn’t the case, where their purpose on these threads is essentially one of disputation and disruption rather than of engagement and debate. This manifests itself in many ways: constant sniping at other people’s positions coupled with an unwillingness to put forward one’s own positions; a constant morphing of the presentation of those positions (particularly in deliberately vacillating degrees of skepticism); declaring oneself (explicitly or implicitly) the arbiter of truth in the debate without any justification; and so forth. It’s trollish behavior in its spirit even if it’s not trollish in the limited context of the thread — for example, the person might be raising perfectly relevant objections in two particular threads which, when conjoined, produce gibberish — because it subverts the entire purpose of these conversations, and it is to my mind just as dishonest as the other kinds of dishonesty I mentioned above.
    [As an aside, and please, for the love of all that’s holy, nobody use this as an excuse to start a flame-war: Slarti, one of the reasons why I think you have so much trouble in some threads is that the way you post can sometimes give the impression that you fall into this latter category. I’m not accusing you of this kind of dishonesty — that is, whether I find your responses to be temperate or irksome, I don’t doubt that you’re honestly representing yourself in the thread — just that this might help explain why you sometimes get the reaction that you do. YMMV.]
    The reason I bothered enumerating these types of dishonesty at length is to raise the following question: if one believes that someone else is engaging in this kind of dishonesty, and one has actual cause for doing so — that is, one can point to a specific, long-term pattern of behavior that justifies the allegation — then what is the “civil” way of broaching the subject? What is the civil way of keeping the discussions here honest in this sense? And for that matter, is civility the metric to which we should aspire, or should there be a standard of honesty which we should require of one another and, if so, how should those requirements be enforced?

  40. Back from work: I think the various parsings of dishonesty are all quite interesting. A lot of them, I think, could be dealt with either by explaining why one finds the person’s stated positions odd (the first few times), or just disregarding them (later.)
    I would be fine with accusations of dishonesty given two preconditions: first, that the person who makes the accusations explain both why s/he thinks that the alleged lie is not true and why s/he thinks it’s not an honest mistake; and second, that anyone who makes them spend some time beforehand reflecting on the very great difference between a person who makes a mistake in good faith and a person who deliberately says something s/he does not believe to be true, and considering whether, in fact, the accusation that someone is in the latter camp is actually warranted.
    I mean: I take it for granted that, not being omniscient, I will make mistakes all the time. I also take it foor granted that there are things I’ve been corrected on before, but which somehow haven’t fully penetrated my thick skull, since what I am saying (again) is something I take for granted without noticing it. It’s hard for me to think of an example that I fall into, which one would expect given the nature of the case, but I suspect that a statement like: ‘liberals favor big government’ could fall into this category for conservatives. It’s such a commonplace that it might take several iterations to dislodge it from someone’s mind without that person being in bad faith.
    All these things, as I said, I assume are true of me. But the idea that I am lying — deliberately distorting the truth — implies, to me, something much more serious: that I’m not just immensely fallible, but the sort of person who would knowingly say something I didn’t believe (outside special contexts like jokes, etc.), in order to mislead people.
    That’s a criticism of a different order entirely, I think. I would be fine with accusing people of dishonesty in the sorts of cases Platypus and Anarch have mentioned, if everyone who did so explained their grounds (falsehood plus intent), and also thought long and hard about whether they really wanted to say something so serious, and refrained if they were in any doubt. One reason for making a post like this is to raise the odds that that will happen.

  41. hilzoy,
    Thanks for a post that has elicited several responses like this: “this post has definately made me feel more confident.” Good. The more participants the better.
    I would like to second sean’s 11:06 comment. I was surprised by your reaction to him at “Tribalism and Politics.” I thought he met your two preconditions above, and, based on my impression of Andrew as a reasonable, affable guy with skin thicker than most, I can’t imagine he took offense at sean’s response.
    Sean,
    -“However, if objecting to that kind of treatment makes ME a bad person, I guess I have to go play elsewhere.”
    I hope you don’t.

  42. I hope Sean doesn’t either. Fwiw, this was a post I had been meaning to write for a while; it just kept getting bumped down the list by Foley, NK, my actual job, etc. Sean’s entire role in getting me to write it is this: not recognizing him as one of the regulars made me think: hmm, perhaps I really should get around to writing that post, since there’s no reason to suppose that everyone who drops by will instantly divine all this through telepathy. But his comment wasn’t the only one that made me think that (as I said, this post has been coming on for a while), or even the only one yesterday, nor was this implicitly directed at him. (If it had been just one person, I would have addressed that person directly, by name.)

  43. (If it had been just one person, I would have addressed that person directly, by name.)
    I’ll take the blame. It was me who turned this place into a cesspool after all. I ban myself for the day, or at least until the next time I need to distract myself from work (which may in five minutes).
    More seriously, I note that I was less than generous with bril the other day, I shall endeavor to do better.

  45. Hey alright! Ground rules accepted.
    I’ve been a long time lurker but only posted once or twice (I think).
    I have a thin skin about general characterizations of liberals and Democrats because vile mischaracterizations are so common (e.g., traitors, commies, terrorist loving, pro-Saddam, America-hating, etc., etc.). And, worse, such mischaracterizations have increasingly come from the highest levels of our government. (I readily admit that cries of fascism, etc., are far too common going the other direction.)
    Now to flog one of the dead horse’s flanks a bit: There are a few folks on the left who are genuinely hostile to business as a general matter (and they’re wrong). It’s just not defensible to look at Clinton’s economic agenda or the bulk of policies recommended by most prominent liberal economists and call all of it anti-business. (Unless you think that any regulation is anti-business, in which case we should stop this conversation.) Keep in mind that always doing whatever is easiest for the biggest corporate donors in the short run may not be what is best for U.S. businesses as a whole in the long run. But Democrats wouldn’t even be that hard on the biggest corporate donors because, believe me, the overwhelmingly vast majority of Democrats in Congress are fervently wishing that big business would show them some more love.
    I don’t think Andrew should consider crossing the aisle such a big deal — he obviously doesn’t support the extremists on the right despite voting for “their” party, so how would making a principled vote (or several votes) for Democrats to rein in a failed Republican leadership somehow mean that he would be supporting the extremists on the left?
    I think of myself as a socially liberal pragmatist deficit hawk (I think my tribe may have gone to the UK or Canada — I still have to chase down a few leads), and I would definitely cross back over party lines if Democrats were the ones holding the White House, the Senate, and the House with demonstrably failed leadership in all three places.

  46. I guess one of the most concrete bits of advice in these matters is something you said earlier, hilzoy, “The delete key is my friend.”
    I have found that to be a very useful bit of advice.
    I’ll admit that I sometimes find it difficult to believe that certain commenters are always writing in good faith. On the other hand, I’m also reminded of encounters I’ve both had and observed, in which two quite decent and intelligent people talk to one another but it’s as if they happen to be speaking languages in which the words all have the same semantic content but different pragmatic effects, so that even in a totally trivial conversation about, say, how they use public transportation, they get on each others’ nerves. You can see them getting tenser, for no reason at all. I had such an experience with a woman in college, who was a friend of a friend. Every time I spoke to her, she responded as if she thought, but wasn’t sure, she had heard me mutter “bitch” under my breath. Her responses had a similar effect on me. Or, for instance, there’s a polite register of Korean which sounds to me as if the speaker is being both whiny and patronizing. Every time I hear it, I want to smack the speaker upside the head. But Koreans certainly don’t see, or rather hear, it that way.
    Anyways, just as some people don’t seem to be able to talk to one another, I think there are some people whose writing styles are equally, inherently irritating to certain others, for no reason at all that has to do with content or the personal qualities of the people involved. I find it useful to ask myself if something that gets on my nerves is of the same sort, has the same sort of allergenic effect as my friend’s friend used to when I spoke to her.
    I mention all this because sometimes the character of the rhetoric people use to write with can be quite difficult to parse out from the actual arguments they make. The provoking part may sometimes be the first. It may be a question of taste, if you will, rather than of nutritional content.

  47. “I’ve both had and observed, in which two quite decent and intelligent people talk to one another”
    Allow me to add that I did not mean to sound like I was making claims of these qualities for myself.
    That said, I’ll go back to listening to Billy Ray Cyrus and shooting kittens.

  49. Or, for instance, there’s a polite register of Korean which sounds to me as if the speaker is being both whiny and patronizing. Every time I hear it, I want to smack the speaker upside the head. But Koreans certainly don’t see, or rather hear, it that way.
    Wow, JakeB, you did Korean? I think I know that register, it mirrors one in Japanese that absolutely drives me up a wall.
    And certainly, tics and habits can do that in conversations. Rhetorical questions, especially placed consecutively, really seem to do that to me. I also have a feeling that my habit of referring to argument X without saying who made it might have a similar effect, which I can see because of the strawman potential, has a similar effect, but the alternative, which is to go directly to what someone says, seems to be equally fraught with problems.

  50. I find it intensely amusing that, despite our vastly different political stances, I completely agree with this sentence.
    Hey! Common ground. One sentence, but I’ll take what I can get.

  51. On the topic of dishonesty – I mentioned that I was once accused of it here. I’d love to link the comments but (Uh Hmm) the search engine here seems to be in need of a little help 🙂
    In any case, I saw it as a legitimate disagreement of interpretation, I posted (and linked) some comments and made statements based on my interpretation of them. Another commenter disagreed with my interpretation and accused me of dishonesty. That was kind of a WTF moment, because it was my honest interpretation of what I read.
    In any case – good advice here. Take 5 and think before you accuse someone of something beyond an honest disagreement, be it over interpretation or anything else.
    A troll is a troll and pretty easy to spot. Anyone else, give them the benefit of the doubt.

  52. hilzoy, I agree with your position. Even so, I think it is narrow. We all appreciate good snark here (I hope I am not overstating the facts) and there is NOTHING so devastating as being the butt of a good snark. And snark does not educate, it mocks, and savagely so. Does that make snark verboten? Just because it’s funny to those in the know, does that make it any less a disservice to the snarkee?
    In a way I guess it is another take on the old line “I know what you are, we’re just arguing about the price.”
    Another thing. I read all your posts, most of Katherine’s and some of Andrew’s. I rarely read comments here anymore because the comments, while not generally hateful, are frankly boring. Only rarely are there illuminating comments. Comments on this thread, for example, are interesting because there is much honesty and an expansive conversational space. Most threads are not so fortunate.
    On the other hand, most threads anywhere are virtual deserts, with so little conversation of any value as to be completely ignorable.
    And yet another thought – Jane at FDL is someone I admire deeply. Her passion for justice, for change, is so obvious and so much a part of who she is, and that is what *I* read at FDL. Even including the blackface post, which was stupid. But who among us can say they have never been stupid? And how many among us can say they are as passionate and committed to action as Jane? Not so many, I think.
    And therein lies the crux of the matter. Those who post with passion, with honesty, even including the obvious stupid post, will get read. At least by me.
    So keep posting, hilzoy – not that you were considering stopping. As for the comments, well, there are few flame wars here. I suppose that is a good thing.
    But hey, I usually post to hear myself speak, and so doing I get to see when I am FOS. Which is quite often, but less so than formerly.
    I consider THAT an unmitigated good. At least for me. 🙂

  53. My school decided to use Bess to blobk all websites with the word “blog” in the title, so I can’t catch up with my regular reading during breaks in the day anymore. This makes me very angry and, unfortunately, much less likely to post in a timely manner. So my very late to the party comment is as follows. Someone up above said:
    I guess what I’m saying is that deliberate unpleasantness has its place.
    I always get a little worried when I hear this phrase. One of my closer aquaintances is a pretty insightful guy who believes very strongly in the truth of the above statement. Because of this, he often comes off as excessively combatitive and even those of us who are interested in his ideas usually just don’t have the energy it takes to interact with him on any sensitive subject. It always feels like the above is just his justification for being a jerk. i am sure he doesn’t think of it that way, but that doesn’t make him any more pleasant to be around.
    Second, hilzoy said here I think I was sensitized by my students, who are, as I said, totally decent, but who, unlike regular ObWi readers, have no idea at all about this stuff.
    This really resonates with me. Maybe it is part of being a HS teacher in a heavily red state, but the number of times I have listened to kids bash liberals and then just chatted with them (off school hours) about topics and had them discover, much to their surprise that:
    a)their broad claims about Dems are silly misrepresentations and
    b)their beloved Republicans do a lot of stuff that just doesn’t seem right when you think about it
    is quite large.
    I tend towards simple Socratic method in all instances instead of proactive argument. However, the point is always driven home how many people just don’t really pay very close attention to politics and instead treat it as a big sports team where homerism is encouraged.
    Lastly, sidereal, is that a reference to the most wonderful RPG known to man? And if so, what cast?

  54. Great post Hilzoy (someone linked to it over at the soon to be defunct site that gave rise to this one). I was just going to say kudos, but I made the mistake of reading more on this site before doing so. Not that anyone asked or cares what I think, but it didn’t take long for your fine message to get lost. As an example, in Andrew’s post following this post someone commented:
    “FWIW, Andrew, I don’t consider you dishonest (and didn’t agree with either of the posters who were characterizing your argument as such).
    What I do think is that you have picked up a lot of information from Republican/right-wing distortions of actual events – and, even when the distortions are pointed out to you, you never seem interested in acknowledging/updating the original post.”
    A statement somewhat breathtaking in self-parody. If ObWi is sincere in wanting to create and maintain a civil atmosphere, that kind of stuff has to be recognized as not just myopic, but subtly and deftly hostile. Assuming bad information or confirmation bias in others, while assuming it doesn’t exist for oneself, is really no different that calling someone ‘dishonest’. Or ‘stupid’.
    We all like to think we’re on the side of truth or justice, but… I suppose it would be fine to assume such things if you were certain someone got their info exclusively at FreeRepublic or DemocraticUnderground, but it’s losing perspective if you make the same assumptions about The National Review or The American Prospect.
    At most blogs I don’t think this would be particularly important, but here, given the quality of the writing and argument, I think it rises in importance. Further, this needs to be recognized and called by one’s ideological fellows, rather than moderators or commentators on the “other side”; otherwise, it just becomes another “fact” to argue about.
    Just my 2 cents, and worth probably less.

  55. Mac,
    Pulling up was one person (and that particular person, with whom I often agree but have on numerous occasions, asked to chill) said in another thread is not really helpful and the fact that everyone ignored it (in a thread where the primary purpose is to get Andrew to stay) shouldn’t be taken as indicative of overall civility as you suggest when you say ‘but it didn’t take long for your fine message to get lost’. (And I have to admit that I think the National Review tends to be closer to the first two sites you listed than anyone should feel comfortable with. But that’s a separate thing)
    One of the things that civility demands is declaring certain things off limits. My wife has a way of haranging my oldest daughter about her schoolwork that absolutely drives me up the wall and when I have brought it up, huge fireworks have erupted. So, in deference to her feelings and as a way of avoiding the subject, I try to anticipate when it is going to happen and intercept it by talking to my daughter before my wife can get up a full head of steam. And if I miss the signs and it does happen, I just bite my tongue and wait till things have settled down and talk to my daughter to encourage her to behave in a way that will avoid my wife getting angry. I could just wait until she does it, and then point out how problematic it is, and demand that she stop, but because I value the civility of our home life, I make allowances.
    Now, you may ask what liberals over here have done that is similar and I can only speak for myself in this, but let me list three examples. The first is the setting up of HoCB (now TiO) which was to try and draw slams about Charles to another site so that content could be dealt with here. I’m not going to claim total altruism for buying the domain name and setting it up, I needed to get some experience in site maintenance and wordpress set up as well, but the former reason was not insubstantial. The second is that Sebastian really doesn’t care much for Dave Niewert/Orcinius, so I tend to avoid citing him or discussing the topic after Seb’s feelings were made clear. The third is citing Greenwald, who Slarti doesn’t care much for. If I were really trying to twist the knife, I would drop links and then ask for explanations why they are a problem. This is not to say that we haven’t ended up in discussions on them, but speaking for myself, I avoid them, not to mention dKos or other sites which analyze, in favor of the news stories. Juan Cole and Chomsky are two others. You could say that I am just admitting that all these people are hopelessly biased (as a negative term, I think every position is ‘biased’ in some sense simply by logistical inability to include all the facts), but for me, my avoidance of quoting them is not because they are biased, but because they are waving a red flag and are going to get the conversation started on the wrong foot. Possibly part of it is out of self-defense as I don’t want the conversation to devolve, but to completely discount the fact that part of not referring to them is out of respect for those who violently disagree with them, or at least a desire to maintain a civil atmosphere is mistaken, I think.
    We liberals are probably too brutal with newbie rightish posters here, but when someone comes by and treats the site as a unitary entity, I’m not sure how we are supposed to reply without irritation. Frex, here was bril’s first (I think) comment
    You and many others at this site have bought into the crap that’s been sold numerous times only to find out that later it turned out not to be true.
    I think hilzoy was right to calm things down (and I think that was part of the reason for this post), but a comment like that lays down a marker that is going to get cashed in.
    Civility is creating a boundary around what can be discussed. Things like no mind reading (even though every time we try to understand what people write, we are mind reading), no sockpuppets, invoking Godwin, not attacking people for what they didn’t write, assuming that everyone has the same goals in mind from the get go rather than demanding that they prove their good intentions, not invoking where a person is resident or what job they have are all limits and in a sense, artificial. We create this boundary because we believe that leaving this stuff out gets us closer to the ‘truth’. But, as Picasso said about art, civility is a lie that helps us see the truth and, to extend this, when you start picking at it, it becomes apparent that it is a lie (does anyone come to a discussion with a totally neutral frame of mind and completely open to all evidence? On what planet?)
    OT, I hope plans for the the Apres Deluge site are going well, please drop a line as I’m sure there are a number of lurkers here who would like to take a look.

  56. Just came across this while reading Zygmunt Bauman’s “Liquid Modernity” on public versus civil places:
    “The main point about civility is . . . the ability to interact with strangers without holding their strangeness against them and without pressing them to surrender it or to renounce some or all the traits that have made them strnagers in the first place.”

  57. Assuming bad information or confirmation bias in others, while assuming it doesn’t exist for oneself, is really no different that calling someone ‘dishonest’.
    Nothing — quite literally, nothing — in the comment you cite amounts to the way how you characterize it here.
    Telling Andrew that — as he himself admits — his insulation among primarily right-wing points of view may have led him to predicate arguments on inaccurate views of liberalism is not in any way a denial of similar bias in oneself. The only reason to suppose that it is is . . . heck, I don’t know. Why would you suppose it?
    What’s more, if someone brings to Andrew’s attention — or anyone’s attention — that the facts underlying their arguments are, um, not as portrayed, and that his or her presentation of them conforms to an opposing political narrative, that’s not assuming confirmation bias, it’s recognizing it. There’s a nontrivial difference.
    In any case, the larger point is not whether Andrew, or the unnamed poster whose comment you excerpted, or you, or me, or anyone else is subject to mistaken predicates and confirmation bias. It’s whether they’re willing to be corrected. If they are, great. If they aren’t, and prefer to carry on with misinformation after having been corrected, it’s a problem.
    . . . but it’s losing perspective if you make the same assumptions about The National Review or The American Prospect.
    Is that the National Review from where Jonah Goldberg writes a book calling liberals totalitarian fascists, tying them to Mussolini and including a smiley face with a Hitler mustache on the cover? Yeah, conservatives are probably getting good information from there. No worries.

  58. I always get a little worried when I hear this phrase. . .It always feels like the above is just his justification for being a jerk.

    I know that phenomenon well. I work with a lot of techies who use “just being honest” as an excuse for just being rude. The conundrum is this: dishonest behavior is real, and it ruins debate, and someone needs to do something about it, but who? It’s completely true that a lot of conflict comes from people playing vigilante, giving themselves license to be rude in the name of enforcing norms. It’s also true that it’s not reasonable to expect that the proprietors assume the work and risk of enforcing those norms themselves. What then? Leave those who play by the rules of civilized discourse at a permanent disadvantage relative to those who do not feel so constrained? I think the only even semi-workable solution is to allow but discourage pointing out others’ dishonesty. That’s all that “has its place” means. That place is not large, but it does exist.

    The second is that Sebastian really doesn’t care much for Dave Niewert/Orcinius, so I tend to avoid citing him or discussing the topic after Seb’s feelings were made clear. The third is citing Greenwald, who Slarti doesn’t care much for.

    That sounds a lot like submitting to censorship, or like letting ad hominem rule the day. Ruling out certain prolific sources of strong argument is exactly what some people want, and we shouldn’t let them have their way. Maybe it would be OK if there were also a reciprocal agreement not to cite “red flag to liberal” authors either, but even then I’d have reservations. In any case, no such reciprocity seems forthcoming. Unilateral disarmament might help to keep the peace, but IMO it’s not a just peace.
    If you got an idea from someone else, I think citing them is the right thing to do, both as a matter of respect to the idea’s originator and to avoid the near-sockpuppetry of appearing to present that idea as something you came up with independently. If somebody objects to the source, I think they should be asked (politely) to address the point rather than its maker.

  60. That’s a fair point, Platypus, but civility is a form of censorship. Hopefully, it is a form of censorship that we agree with, in that ‘the delete key is your best friend’ is a chance to let our better angels step in, but civility has to be partly built on censorship.
    I’s also add that the people I list above are ones who I think give ample evidence for their reasoning and bringing them in merely encourages the debate to be about them rather than about the issue at hand. The impression I get of those folks is that they would prefer that, if it came to a choice between dealing with the issue they raise or dealing with the appropriateness of citing them, they’d take the former in a heartbeat. FWIW

  62. The third is citing Greenwald, who Slarti doesn’t care much for.

    I don’t have much in the way of feelings about Greenwald, one way or the other. Haven’t met him, and had perhaps two conversational exchanges with him.
    I do think he should stick to commenting on the law (because I think he’s really awful when commenting on politics), but I don’t expect that me thinking and saying so will have much effect. Being human, though, I say it anyway.
    So, I’m not too wound up about it.

  63. In any case, the larger point is not whether Andrew, or the unnamed poster whose comment you excerpted, or you, or me, or anyone else is subject to mistaken predicates and confirmation bias. It’s whether they’re willing to be corrected. If they are, great. If they aren’t, and prefer to carry on with misinformation after having been corrected, it’s a problem.
    What this ignores Phil is the concept of “been corrected” is very much in the eyes of the beholder. It’s a phenomenon one sees repeatedly in online debates. What people assume is a just devastating takedown is too often only devastating in their own eyes, and that they’ve been completely unconvincing to everyone except the choir never occurs to them. They assume that everyone who hasn’t bought into their “facts” is therefore dishonest.
    It is a rare occurrence when there aren’t countervailing facts, and one’s assumption of “correction” is often nothing more than how much weight was given to the various contradicting facets of the facts. When things are obviously black and white, nobody really bothers to debate them.

  65. When things are obviously black and white, nobody really bothers to debate them.
    Ahem. Evolution. Vaccination. Etc. When you pull out the devastating arguments (and there’s nothing more devastating than actual occurrence of an event), it doesn’t make that much of a difference to a lot of people.

  66. Ahem, good point. I feel the same way about 9/11 conspiracies. However, bringing up those types of things in this context strikes me as a bit of a fallacy.

  67. Ahem, good point. I feel the same way about 9/11 conspiracies. However, bringing up those types of things in this context strikes me as a bit of a fallacy.
    Well, it’s a bit off the point. However, I bring it up only to point out the common rhetorical devices people are apt to receive and see (from all sides of the spectrum). Denialist rhetoric/argumentation is a large part of what we see nowadays (and we should be careful that we ourselves don’t dip into it).

  68. Ahem. Evolution. Vaccination. Etc.
    Torture. Republicans have just passed a bill legalizing a short list of torture techniques. You’d think it wouldn’t be possible after that to argue that the Republicans aren’t pro-torture, but I don’t doubt that there are Republicans who are arguing just that.
    Mass deaths in Iraq; two peer-reviewed reports published in a highly-respected scientific journal have provided a good estimate of the number of Iraqis killed because the US invaded Iraq: while there might still be arguments about whether the invasion of Iraq was “worth it”, if Macallan’s claim were true, there wouldn’t be people bothering to argue that there really have been hundreds of thousands of people killed.
    As bob mcmanus would say: When things are obviously black and white, nobody really bothers to debate them.
    “There goes the blogosphere.”


  70. What this ignores Phil is the concept of “been corrected” is very much in the eyes of the beholder. It’s a phenomenon one sees repeatedly in online debates. What people assume is a just devastating takedown is too often only devastating in their own eyes, and that they’ve been completely unconvincing to everyone except the choir never occurs to them. They assume that everyone who hasn’t bought into their “facts” is therefore dishonest.
    In the immortal words of Rev. Lovejoy, “Short answer yes with an ‘if,’ long answer no with a ‘but.'” If we’re talking about things that are largely matters of opinion, or can be fairly characterized differently depending on one’s political bent, then sure, you’re correct. (Mostly.)
    But sometimes, well, facts is facts, and if someone has been subjecting themselves to a steady diet of one-sided spin, then presenting that spin as fact, then they are either willing to be corrected on it or they aren’t. Hilzoy is. Andrew is, as far as I can tell. Charles was too, eventually. Other people, not so much.

  71. Macallan: Sometimes I could swear you’re a javascript designed to write posts that only prove my point Jes.
    Ah, the Argument Ad Hominem Tu Quoque. How ironic for Macallan to use it in a thread entitled Civility!

  74. OK, let me see if I can follow. My comment was prompted by your assertion that Andrew:
    when the distortions are pointed out to you, you never seem interested in acknowledging/updating the original post
    You then incorrectly claimed I used Ad Hominem Tu Quoque. When that distortion was pointed out to you, rather than showing any interest in acknowledging your error, you instead tried to infer I wasn’t bright enough to know how to create a hyperlink. OK, Got it.
    Thanks, I’ll have a terrific weekend. I hope you have one as well.

  75. Macallan,
    “My comment was prompted by your assertion that Andrew:
    when the distortions are pointed out to you, you never seem interested in acknowledging/updating the original post”
    Is that what you call a comment reading in its entirety “Sometimes I could swear you’re a javascript designed to write posts that only prove my point Jes.”?
    I would have called it indecipherable snark posing as meaningful comment. Your mileage differs, I guess.

  76. Ampersand:

    But I do have a tiny quibble with this: “Do not consistently abuse or vilify other posters for its own sake.”
    Does that sentence seem grammatically weird to anyone?

    You’re correct, but the meaning is nonetheless clear. However, for those of us bugged by bad writing, a rewrite would be preferable.
    Interesting note that this thread on civility trailed off (by this point) into not quite so much.

  78. Correction noted. Given how poorly I constructed the sentence, it wasn’t clear that I was referring to the conclusion she jumped to based on the evidence I didn’t use a hyperlink, rather than the implication of my lack in wattage.

  79. Oh, I was just being a jerk. Given that the conversation was a little tense, I thought jumping in with a snotty correction would be funny.
    And the infer/imply thing does irritate me.

  81. OK, let me see if I can follow. My comment was prompted by your assertion that Andrew:
    Ah. You see, I assumed that your comment at 01:19 PM was a response to my comment at at 01:15 PM. I assumed this because it’s customary to quote a portion of the comment you are responding to, unless you are making a comment immediately following the comment you are responding to, in which special case quoting a portion of the comment is often considered gratuitous rather than helpful.
    As you can see, not quoting a portion of the comment you are responding to often causes confusion. (I know Redstate has blog software that makes it clear which comment you are responding to, and I suppose you must be used to that.)
    I found your posting of an unHTML’d link without further explanation completely inexplicable, I’m afraid.

  82. Ah. You see, I assumed that your comment at 01:19 PM was a response to my comment at at 01:15 PM.
    That assumption was correct Jes, so I can’t see how there was any confusion.
    (I know Redstate has blog software that makes it clear which comment you are responding to, and I suppose you must be used to that.)
    Really, why do you suppose such a thing?

  84. But I assure you, there’s no need to explain your reasoning now. Trying to explain obscure snark downthread always has an air of esprit d’escalier, don’t you think?

  87. Jes/Mac –
    I think the point has been reached where the parent steps in and sends each of you to your room regardless of “who started it” “who’s fault it is” or that “it’s unfair.”
    But it’s the “Civility” thread, so I suggest a martini and a blunt instead.

  91. here’s a tricky case.
    Your teenage niece is a red-diaper baby–she has been raised to believe that Soviet Russia was a worker’s paradise, that there were no Stalinist purges, that the Five Year Plans all succeeded wonderfully, or would have if the International Capitalist Conspiracy had not attempted to thwart the will of the workers.
    She’s a nice kid, so you try not to argue with her, but after an evening of listening to this you say to your wife on the way home, “I get so annoyed listening to her repeat all of those lies.”
    Have you just accused your niece of lying?
    I don’t think so.
    In particular, you have not said (and in this case do not believe) that she is saying things that she believes to be false, with the intention of deceiving.
    And I’m inclined to believe that “A lied in saying P” requires that
    1) P is false
    2) A knew that P is false
    and
    3) A said P with the intent to deceive, i.e. to cause people falsely to believe P
    Here, only 1 is met. Your niece is not lying. She’s just deeply deluded.
    But what she is repeating, it seems to me, are fairly characterized as “lies”, i.e. falsehoods that are generally propagated in order to deceive, although this speaker is not doing so.
    So my feeling would be that “I get really annoyed by those lies” is not an accusation that someone is lying. It is a complaint that someone is repeating lies, whether they know it or not.
    It’s a slightly non-standard use of the noun “a lie”, since it it not the direct nominal counterpart of the verb “to lie”. But I think it’s fairly common.

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