show me one great father and I’ll show you 10 great mothers who did the same and more
(via is-there-a-future)
We don't tolerate intolerance
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• Anonymous FAQ
• Goals
• The Plan
• Official Twitter
• HOAX WARNING
• Ask me anything
• Submit a post #ShutDown4chan
On arguments–and how to win them
I have plenty of experience with arguments. Maybe it has something to do with obsessing over Mock Trial. More likely it has something to do with being a sister.
Whatever the reason, arguments are something I enjoy. There is something pure about feeling my face heat up until it’s emitting UV radiation from frustration. I’m also competitive by nature, so it’s just *fun* to pick apart and demolish people’s arguments if I can. I’m also obscenely happy whenever I win a case in the courtroom.
But the real world doesn’t work like a courtroom, and often arguing is about the worst thing you can do when you differ in opinion with someone. Not everyone will believe you’re right just because you have the best evidence. Nor will they agree with you because you argue well and critique their beliefs flawlessly. In fact, if you do that they’ll often just think you’re an ass and their opinions won’t change one iota. Debate is about the most ineffective way of resolving disagreements in the real world. Remember the Creationism debate between Ken Ham and Bill Nye? It dragged on and on, yet only confirmed the beliefs the attendees already had.
Laying down a line of social retreat is one of the most important things you can do if you’re trying to change someone’s mind on a topic. (Read Less Wrong’s “How Not To Lose an Argument”). This means you have to allow someone to be wrong without having lost, without being stupid, and without being a bad person. When people don’t have a line of social retreat, opposition to their viewpoint will cause them to cling harder to their beliefs. They will reject what you say out of hand. It’s human nature.
So what is a line of social retreat? Less Wrong used Sun Tzu’s The Art of War to illustrate this idea. One of Tzu’s strategies for winning a fight was to allow the enemy to retreat. He saw that without an escape route,the enemy would fight with more fervor, causing more damage to his own armies. Yet, eliminating lines of retreat for his own army encouraged his warriors to fight more effectively.
Let’s look at some examples. My Seminary class examined how Nephite believers purportedly behaved around the time of Christ’s birth. Samuel the Lamanite had promised them hundreds of years earlier that there would be a sign when Christ was born. The non-believers mocked these Nephites, and said that the time for the sign had already passed. The believers were just being stupid and wasting their time—Christ would not be born.
“What would you have done, if they were mocking you? Would you have felt tempted to fall away from the faith?” my teacher asked.
“No, I would have believed more than ever,” I said. I wasn’t being sarcastic, either. I remembered the Seekers Cult of 1956. Even after the date for their apocalypse passed, the member of the cult clung to their beliefs. They altered the date and hung on, because they couldn’t bear to think that they had sold all their possessions, lost their jobs and devoted their lives to a hoax. In other words, they had no social line of retreat. If they were wrong, they were stupid, so they COULDN’T be wrong.
I don’t want to draw any false equivalencies with supposed Nephite groups and cults. Still, a popular conception in the LDS church is that these particular Nephites felt pressured to conform, and were demonstrating great faith by continuing to wait for the sign. In reality these “pressures” were doomed to be counterproductive. The Nephites already had a social group which agreed with their views, so they felt less pressure to conform. Besides that, the mocking of the non believers eliminated the social line of retreat of those Nephites. If they didn’t believe, they were not only wrong, but also stupid, and had wasted their time for over 400 years. Of COURSE they clung to their beliefs.
Now, I’ll use a more personal (and still LDS, sorry) example. It’s terrifying for me to think of leaving the Church because I have no social line of retreat. If I leave, I lose the approval and respect of my family and friends. If I leave I have wasted 17 years of my life. And if leaving is the wrong decision? THEN I suffer in the afterlife. Doesn’t it sound more appealing to stay, considering the circumstances? Other communities, such as the Amish, have even more severe consequences for disagreement.
Even Christ had a bad habit of eliminating social lines of retreat to hold on to his followers. To paraphrase, he said “You are either with me or against me. If you are lukewarm, I spit you out of my mouth.” Not a lot of wriggle room in that statement.
So what does this mean? When you want to change someone’s mind, you need to give them a social line of retreat, allowing them to be wrong, yet not humiliated. Otherwise, they’ll fight you like a cornered rat on PCP, and you won’t change their opinion no matter how superior your points are. If you want to prevent people from changing their minds when they already agree with you, eliminate their social lines of retreat. Once the thought of being wrong becomes unbearable, someone’s opinions on a topic are unlikely to change.There’s usually two forces that change someone’s mind: evidence or social pressure.
Evidence can be personal experience, or credible sources, or evidence presented in a digestible fashion - for example a common sense point of view (“If this thing really cured cancer, how is it all these people who use/do this thing still get cancer?”). That said, this works only when the person is open to listening and considering to begin with .
Social pressure on the other hand, is about what will gain/lose you esteem in the your social circles. Just as often the shitty views people have were developed by this same pressure and are undone by it.
Consider the support for marriage equality… it’s not like the country was all silently waiting for the laws to change, most of this shift in attitude has been over the last 10 years, really, and a lot of it being based in the fact it’s “no longer cool” to be a homophobic piece of shit.
Of course, the key problem with this is that it’s not actually based directly in “you are a human, therefore your safety and rights matter” as much as popularity of a trend… but that said the environment of the latter does allow of the former to develop… some, anyway.
People assume the only two reasons to argue are to either change an individual’s mind, or to score social points. A third reason exists: to convince third parties by showing how the flawed thinking operates. The nice thing about deep close-mindedness is that it shows itself so easily, the contradictions and ridiculousness becomes so obvious - and it becomes easy to point out the underlying assumptions which make it work.
And for everyone else witnessing, because they’re not in the heat of the moment, more people can see the kind of thinking and go, “Oh, wait… maybe I think that way too… I never thought of it that way”. In other words, the point is for the fence-sitters to learn something, and those are the people most likely to shift attitudes.
Of course, face to face, with family, in work situations, etc, this only creates a great deal of animosity and social repercussion without much benefit - in those places I find it’s more useful to try to mitigate or deflect harmful actions, rather than try to address the poor thinking directly, especially since a lot of times backlash to calling it out can leave folks harassed, demoted, or assaulted.
As I often say: people will show you what they are committed towards. If someone has decades of believing something easily disproven with 30 minutes of research or 10 minutes of thought, consider how much effort goes into sticking WITH that set of ideas…
(via wretchedoftheearth)
i will never understand the white people who make arguments along the line of “everyone has personal troubles” because yes, that’s exactly the point. everyone has personal troubles, but only people of color experience racism on top of them.
happy “fathers” day to all the single mothers who raised their child/ren alone, sometimes without even any financial help from other people, yet get shamed by society more than all the shitty fucking fathers who abandoned them.
solidarity to everyone who has a shitty dad.
(via is-there-a-future)
Let’s take a moment to talk about this. I mean, because first off, “Tell cars not to hit kids.” Well, yeah, we do that all the fucking time, idiot. Ever seen signs like these?
We have classes and signs and laws about it, and people are constantly reminded. So your argument only works if we put up signs everywhere reminding assholes not to rape. But you’d rather talk about how rape victims have it coming to them.
But the dumbest part of this crap? Roads exist for cars to drive on. Children need to be careful to cross the street because they’re entering into an environment that exists specifically for something that is dangerous to them. The only way this shit is a valid comparison is if you think that bars, parties, and the world in general exists specifically for men to have sex with women. And I gotta break it to the guys who support this stupidity- your dicks are not that important. So knock off this bullshit and stop excusing rapists.
A+++ Commentary!
In addition, people don’t hit children on purpose. Tragic accidents happen, a driver looks away for a second, a child darts out into the road after a ball. Rape is not an accident. You choose to disregard someone’s “no”, you choose to coerce, or you choose to have sex with someone unable to consent (or rape in any other way). Accidents happen, but rape isn’t one of them.
Also, legally, pedestrians have the right away. Whether or not they are in crosswalks.
Hey want to know the best part?
The image is literally true.
At the beginning of the age of cars, PEDESTRIANS had the right of way on roads. Legally speaking it is still ALWAYS mostly the driver’s fault if they hit a pedestrian.
Then one day in the 1920s car companies came up with the term “jaywalking”. They was a concentrated, corporation-led effort to place the blame in these accidents on the victims of them instead of the drivers who hit them. In most places jaywalking is not an offense, in England even though there are signs telling pedestrians not to walk on roads there’s no actual laws. So… yeah, actually the idea of jaywalking IS pretty much victim blaming, only it’s even more ingrained in our culture than rape culture
(via frothingvagina-blog)
Everyone should watch this great video about the harassment that’s in the Brony fandom
Great video, it sums 4chan and Anonymous up perfectly.
Things the internet doesn't know about 4chan
4chan is the original internet boogeyman. The site that seemed to exist in some dark corner of the internet, where only the most evil people gathered to plan hateful things. The den of the infamous Anonymous, hackers on steroids! They fought Scientology! They drove people to suicide! They refined DDOSing into a art! They invented trolls and memes and reaction images!…And despite having this legendary status, the average person knows fuckall about 4chan. Even people who spend an exorbitant amount of time on the internet only have the vaguest understanding of the site. Because of this, people get away with saying a lot of dumb shit and making a lot of assumptions about 4chan.
So here’s what you need to know:
The 4chan you think you know is nearly a decade out of date
The “fresh and modern” 4chan you’re dealing with today is as vile and misogynistic as it ever has been. The worrying thing that people have to realise are that children are being indoctrinated and encouraged to be absolute racist shitheads by older absolute racist shitheads.
Their behavior can no longer be considered “just a joke”
You act as if 4chan’s main goal is to oppress women and be racist… But I’m also still pretty sure you’re a joke blog, meant to parody hyperbolic, misinformed SJW bullshit.
At any rate, 4chan isn’t indoctrinating children (who aren’t meant to go to 4chan anyways) because 4chan doesn’t have an ideology to spread. It only exists for the purpose of having a place for 18+ people to go and discuss anime, video games, porn, older video games, cartoons and comics, porn, food, guns, business, porn, board and card games, porn, monster girls, waifus, spooky skeleton stories, dickgirl porn, lgbt issues, and other topics.
There’s no agenda. There’s no grand scheme for the millions of multicultural, multiracial, male and female posters to take part in. 4chan exists for the sake of 4chan.
Besides, if you want to talk about hateful content contained within a website, tumblr has tons of blogs run by and for neo-nazis, white supremacists, radical feminists (the kind that think terrorism is good), as well as blogs for your garden variety racists, sexists, and psychopaths.
Guess you should work on invading and shutting down tumblr next. I eagerly await your results.
You act as if the patriarchy constantly requires people to consciously enable and support it. Here’s news for you, it doesn’t. It gets perpetuated by people staying quiet and ignorant with no interest in checking their privilege because they don’t want to be upsetting the status-quo. Everything that 4chan & Anonymous says and does suits the patriarchy perfectly. Encouraging misogyny and racism, even as a joke, will breed more misogyny and racism.
The site may say “18+” but come on, it’s a fact that a large percentage of the users are underage. Even 4chan’s owner, “moot”, was underage when he started the site. Children are impressionable and 4chan are bigoted role models. These children are being praised for hating colored people and vulernable minorities. They’re getting praised for reading nazi material and are practically being shuffled into being the new generation of digital Hitler Youth
(via throw-away-opinions)
goalittlebitcrazy asked: How can I help?
- Spread the word and remember to come with us to 4chan on July 4th.
- Save all of your favorite tumblr content; images, texts, videos etc to a convenient place so you have it all ready on hand to share with Anonymous on the big day.
- Brush up on your facts and prepare for any arguments and discussions you would like to have. Remember, interaction is a good thing. We want to correct them and make them think.
If we can save even just one person from falling victim to their ignorant and quite frankly dangerous ways then that counts as a massive victory for humanity.
You will be criticised, you will have people argue against everything you say and you will probably make people angry but that’s a good thing. When they’re angry then you know that you’re right and it’s working, they know it too. Don’t be alarmed, it’s a natural response.
When people are exposed to an uncomfortable truth, something that challenges and conflicts with what they think is right and wrong, they will act to resist it at all costs and often express themselves with anger. Even if they’re staring at the hard facts of something they will continue to argue because they’re not yet comfortable with the idea that they’re wrong.
under communism there are no sugar mamas or daddies, but everyone is the sugar comrade of everyone else
i’m really shocked this post blew up like it did but i hope everyone who reblogs this knows that i’m actually a communist and this post was only partially a joke
(via frothingvagina-blog)
destroy the idea that everyones parents are cishets
destroy the idea that all parents are good parents
destroy the idea that everyone needs to love their parents
just destroy it
We’re going to a 70s themed party. I put the idea out there and we all executed beautifully, if I don’t say so myself. The Black Panther Party reincarnated.
WOAHMMYGOSH
here for it. so so here for it
(via frothingvagina-blog)
I need feminism because 4chan started another fucking hoax and women are getting shit on for it now
What even is 4chan and reddit?
I am so confused….
I’ve put together an introduction to 4chan so people can become quickly aquainted to what it is.
http://shutdown4chan.tumblr.com/post/88873101483/a-brief-introduction-to-what-the-4chan-website-is
Things the internet doesn't know about 4chan
4chan is the original internet boogeyman. The site that seemed to exist in some dark corner of the internet, where only the most evil people gathered to plan hateful things. The den of the infamous Anonymous, hackers on steroids! They fought Scientology! They drove people to suicide! They refined DDOSing into a art! They invented trolls and memes and reaction images!…And despite having this legendary status, the average person knows fuckall about 4chan. Even people who spend an exorbitant amount of time on the internet only have the vaguest understanding of the site. Because of this, people get away with saying a lot of dumb shit and making a lot of assumptions about 4chan.
So here’s what you need to know:
The 4chan you think you know is nearly a decade out of date
The “fresh and modern” 4chan you’re dealing with today is as vile and misogynistic as it ever has been. The worrying thing that people have to realise are that children are being indoctrinated and encouraged to be absolute racist shitheads by older absolute racist shitheads.
Their behavior can no longer be considered “just a joke”
(via throw-away-opinions)