Like Halloween 3 wrong

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

White Teen In Blackface Responds To Black Critics: ‘Worry About Finding Your Dad’

If this question comes up again, here's a handy reference: Should I Dress in Blackface This Halloween?
Not really getting into the spirit of the holiday: Racist Craigslist post: No black trick-or-treaters

How to do Halloween right:

Comments

[madscience.livejournal.com]

And you should resist the urge to label every point you're too lazy to address a straw man. I wouldn't promote the exact outcome of this survey (http://www.debate.org/opinions/should-there-be-legal-curbs-on-offensive-language) as scientific, but it's strong evidence that a significant percentage of the population adheres to the belief you just called a straw man.

[oslo.livejournal.com]

And you should resist the urge to label every point you're too lazy to address a straw man.

Says the guy citing a shite internet poll to "prove" his point.

What needs to be demonstrated, here, is that either I or the people with whom I share an affinity on this point are really claiming "that someone else's reaction to your behavior should always be the only consideration in determining its merit." Your link points to a poll that only asks whether "offensive" language should be subject to legal curbs. Its irrelevance to the point requiring demonstration ought to be self-evident, but it can be seen plainly enough once we note that nothing about the poll examines what counts as "offensive," or how "offensiveness" is to be determined. In other words, a person could adopt exactly what you would perceive to be an "appropriate" standard for determining the content of "offensive speech" (for example, one employing objective standards that are rationally defensible) and still come down on one side or the other in that poll.

I don't think that other people's reactions to my behavior are the only relevant considerations in determining its merit. I also don't think that most people who would reject modern "blackface" would take that view. You haven't demonstrated that anyone does. So, yeah - I think it's pretty fair to describe your initial response to me as presenting a strawman.

Now stop wasting my time.

[madscience.livejournal.com]

Wrong. What needs to be demonstrated is that anyone, anywhere, at any time, has taken the view you are calling a straw man. Since someone, somewhere, has probably said just about anything you can think of, I set the bar higher by requiring that a significant number of people take that position. And the link I provided demonstrated exactly that, despite your wholly unsubstantiated claim of its irrelevance.

[oslo.livejournal.com]

Wrong. What needs to be demonstrated is that anyone, anywhere, at any time, has taken the view you are calling a straw man.

No. A "strawman" is a misrepresentation of an argument that you present and criticize as though it were your opponent's actual position. A poor argument's being espoused by someone, somewhere, has nothing to do with whether the person you're engaging (i.e., me) has employed that same argument. That's not changed by "setting the bar higher" to require that a "significant number" take that position. If those other arguments being made by someone are to have any relevance to this discussion, you have to relate them back to what I've said - which is just that other people's reactions can be a relevant consideration in determining the merit of my own behavior.

Basically, you don't seem to understand what a strawman argument is. Go google it or something. When I (correctly) described your response to me as a "strawman," I wasn't saying that literally no one espoused that position, because that's not what a "strawman" is. I was saying that you were ascribing to me a position that I do not in fact hold and that cannot be properly inferred from anything I'd said - a position that happened to be easy to reject as absurd. Hence, a "strawman."

And the link I provided demonstrated exactly that, despite your wholly unsubstantiated claim of its irrelevance.

I quite clearly did substantiate my claim that your internet poll was irrelevant to the point you claimed it supported - which, remember, was itself irrelevant to whether your claim was a strawman in the first place. You may not buy that substantiation, but normally that means you have to explain why you don't - you're not entitled to just dismiss it out of hand as inadequate.

Personally, I think that my substantiation was quite elegant. To repeat: We can't infer from the way one responds to a poll that asks whether "offensive speech" ought to be subject to "legal curbs" their views on how one is to determine what "offensive speech" is; and a person who follows what you would view to be an acceptable standard for "offensive speech" could consistently be either "for" or "against" legal curbs of such speech. If that's so, then the poll you've cited just doesn't tell us anything about whether anyone believes that the sole criterion for determining whether speech is offensive is how someone else reacts.

[madscience.livejournal.com]

"A 'strawman' is a misrepresentation of an argument that you present and criticize as though it were your opponent's actual position."

Agreed. And that's why it wasn't a strawman: I never represented it as your position. We're talking about social norms, not your personal opinions.