For the record, the following was posted to the PM3B an hour ago:
Dear readers,Null's observation is consistent with what we've seen at the PMMB in previous months of activity.
I am voluntarily closing PM3B today. This has taken too much time away from other important projects.
I leave you with the following remark.
It will be helpful in future discussions of online polarization to note that, at least in the case of PM3B, a single individual, active day and night, was responsible for the vast majority of comments critical of feminist philosophers and practices supportive of women philosophers.
Null
Look, if this little foray into the open discussion of stuff that's otherwise verboten in the discipline is going to be of any use, we need to keep the femtroll in line. Anyone paying attention to these conversations has to be aware, as Null informed us with his/her 'farewell' at PM3, that the femtroll's is a voice that's been dominating these conversations. And that's not a good thing. So I urge all of you interested in supporting this space to gently, but forcefully, keep that asshat in line.
ReplyDeleteAnd to the asshat--lighten the fuck up.
On the contrary, it is completely irrelevant whether one person or many people are critical of feminsist philosophers demands for female privilege. All that matters is whether those criticisms are true.
DeleteNote also the contradiction between the desire for open discussion and for keeping 'the femtroll', whoever that is, in line. Which is it to be: open discussion or keeping opinion in line? You can't have both.
It is not relevant whether or not one person or many people are making the same argument. But a great many of the criticisms of feminist philosophers etc. were not attempts to engage substantively with the issues, but rather criticisms of the people themselves.
DeleteAlso, one of the reasons I (for one) gave up engaging when there were actually substantive points being made is that those conversations almost always became incredibly frustrating - there was at least one person who would continually quote small snippets of a previous post then follow it up with a total non sequitur, just for one example. There was at least one person who would always assume that if you defended anything even vaguely related to Feminist Philosophers then you must also agree with everything anyone even vaguely connected to that site has said ever, and so would attempt to turn the discussion into a discussion about who is and who is not a hypocrite, rather than focus on the substantive issues.
So from my perspective, 'open discussion or keeping opinion in line' is a false dichotomy (if by 'keeping opinion in line' you mean 'keeping the 'femtroll' in line). Because the sensible people who wanted to engage in open discussion of the actual issues haven't really been able to do so on PM3, because of the behavior of the 'femtroll.' There is no contradiction between the desire for open discussion and the desire to keep people in line. This is why we have conventions in seminars like 'don't abuse people' 'raise your hand if you have a question, and wait to be called upon by the chair'. It's a necessary condition for useful open discussions to happen that we 'keep people in line' in certain ways.
There's an obvious difficulty in (1) maintaining a site where people can truly openly discuss matters in the profession, and (2) not getting overwhelmed by one or two obsessives on a mission. I think that extremely light moderation might be the only way to go: otherwise everything falls apart.
ReplyDeleteIs anyone else concerned that this is effectively an "outing" on an unmoderated blog? Even if the moderators were tracking IP addresses--which they obviously are, given the revelation--is it appropriate for them to reveal posting data like this? I'm kinda sketched about it, but interested in what others have to say.
ReplyDelete(All that said, it's annoying that a single person keeps posting all this bullshit. I wonder if something like IP limits would be useful--e.g., not more than 5/day from same place.)
Yeah, I'm also a little concerned. I've tried at various points to contribute to these discussions and I've told some of my friends and colleagues about doing so. I'd hate to be associated with that vitriol, and I don't much appreciate having demographics (even anonymized ones) broadcast. Still, if it keeps the nutcases in line then maybe it's for the best.
DeleteI'm of two minds on it. Basically, I like no moderation and anonymity because together they afford the opportunity to have discussions based on merits. There are a lot of poor arguments here, but that's easy enough to see for ourselves.
DeleteBut if people are trying to use anonymity to manipulate the conversation, that's harder to see. So, when we learned that a commenter was basically arguing with themself, that was useful to know.
Now, if we have a topic that just one person wants to post on, that may or may not be manipulative. For example, the ascii pics may have all been posted by one guy, but who cares? So I wouldn't want anything done to expose that.
But the FP critiques were often presented as if they were coming from a significant group of people, so that feels more manipulative, like the arguing with oneself person. I wouldn't want anyone actually outed, but I don't at all mind having it revealed that they tactic was in play.
ok, but what difference does it make? Who cares who is making the point? It's either a dumb argument or a good one. The trouble with the person (I think) we are talking about is that the points became tedious from repetition and that is neither entertaining nor enlightening
DeleteBy the way, I am you. I am everyone.
It doesn't seem like "outing" in any meaningful sense. The person in question is still *more* anonymous than anyone using a pseudonym, since no specific posts were attributed to him/her. Maybe it's a breach in trust, but it's really hard for me to see how anyone was "outed."
Delete@BS, it seems obvious why it makes a difference whether something is general consensus or one person talking to themselves. Not sure how to explain it if you really don't see it.
I'm 7:51.
DeleteI just reread the PMMB post, in particular this bit: "Some commentators would post incendiary (mean-spirited, misogynistic, racist, homophobic, transmisogynistic) remarks about Philosopher X, only to reply in the next comment with a spirited defense of Philosopher X. Comments of this sort often originated from the home institution or city of Philosopher X. "
THIS does seem very much like an attempt at outing, and I guess I should have realized it's what you were talking about. There weren't that many people who came up by name.
Interesting, I read that as evidence that someone's colleagues or friends from the same city were talking crap about them (and also praising/defending them). But you think that someone was sockpuppeting about himself?
DeleteWho cares? Nobody should care about this- not even the alleged sock-puppetmaster. Do do other things- get some hobbies maybe. If you're one of those people who have a ton of hobbies, publish all the time, are a really great teacher, and still have energy to burn, and want to burn it here, can you stick to less gossipy topics please? PLEASE!? It's just a better world that way- and it just makes our corner of academia that much less unpleasant. please. PLEASE! k. bye.
DeleteWhy is no one considering that that post was quite possibly false or even a lie?
Delete@624 hi to the asshat.
DeleteThat makes me feel bad 1:27. But it's better than weird loser gossip shenanigans.
Delete12:16, why do you think that no-one's considered that, rather than that people have considered that explanation but rejected it as highly implausible? Because the mods here are saying exactly the same hing. So you have two options: either there is one person making the vast majority of those comments,or there is some kind of conspiracy involving the mods of both blogs. So the mods of both blogs are both repeatedly starting blogs,making lots of troll-ish posts, and then writing posts calling out the troll, closing blogs and then starting new ones, rinse and repeat. Is that your hypothesis? Because it seems pretty implausible.
DeleteTRIANGULATING
DeleteOh shit, thatkid's back! Where you been 6:24? We let the femtroll psychodrama get out of hand...
Delete6:20 Not that claim: the claim that the people being attacked were either attacking themselves or it was people in their same city doing it. I seriously doubt that that's true. I think that claim is completely full of shit, and everyone has bought it hook and line.
DeleteDo people really believe that "BL" doesn't edit his own wikipedia page? He really is delusional....
ReplyDeletequestion said...
So in your April 03, 2015 at 06:11 AM post on Critchley you correctly note that one is not supposed to edit one's own wikipedia page, yet this is something you are widely believed to engage in obsessively. Do you deny ever editing your own wikipedia page?
BL COMMENT: Are you for real? If my Wikipedia entry looked like Critchley's, I could imagine someone reasonably believing that, but my entry doesn't, does it? Once about 7-8 years ago, I tried to correct a factual mistake, which was promptly reversed by some editor, so I gave up. Last year, I corrected Noelle McAfee's vandalism of the entry, and reported that I had done so to Wikipedia and asked the editors to intervene, which they did. And that's it. But seriously, outside of some anonymous idiots like you in the bowels of cyberspace, no one believes I spend my time editing Wikipedia, whereas it's pretty transparent that Critchley and his student Kesselman write his entry in its entirety.
Who cares?
DeleteAgreed (with 4:17).
DeleteFor some reason I dislike "asshat". Not sure why. Maybe because it makes me think of a top-hat and monocle... Am I alone in this? It's an important topic.
ReplyDeleteMe too. I have never liked that word. But I'm not sure why. I think it's that I don't understand it. It doesn't make me think of a top-hat and a monocle. My imagination just doesn't conjure up anything at all to tell a story about the meaning or genesis of the word. It's just a really confusing bad word.
DeleteO.K. New Topic.
ReplyDeleteWhat did everyone think of the Pacific APA?
OK, so, is it just me, or do other people have a recollection of the PM3B starting with a claim by its moderator that there wouldn't be IP tracking? Also, how does running an unmoderated blog take much time? (I'm genuinely asking, not accusing here.) I think it's great that these blogs have existed and thought it was clear that there were many people contributing. But now we are being told that the vast majority of comments is coming from one person. Really? Given that we have no idea who is running these metablogs and what their motives are (given that they themselves post nothing other than sporadic comments about moderation issues), we are supposed to believe this why? Why should we think that the moderators of the last two metablogs have not simply been feminist philosophers who want to collect IP addresses and ultimately discourage dissenting voices by claiming that, with the exception of one freak, nobody is really criticizing the feminists?
ReplyDelete4:14 AM--Hahahahahaha. Good one!
ReplyDeleteI'm always puzzled about the worry about collecting IP addresses. All you'll find out from me is the city and maybe the café I'm writing from. (Likely not the latter, unless you get a subpoena or something.)
ReplyDeleteYeah but if you're in a smaller town, maybe at a small school with only a few philosophers, it might be easy-ish to figure out who you are. A lot of IP addresses will even explicitly say what university it is.
DeleteFair enough. I'm in a big city with many universities, and probably over 100 philosophy-types, including grad students and undergrad students. If you're in a small town, make a point of posting from a café and don't say anything that would reveal your identity, There are, I gather, ways to further cover your tracks, but I've never used them -- I don't even know how they work. It's also probably a good idea not to say anything that might generate legal issues: don't defame anyone, for example. Discuss ideas and not individuals. Etc.
DeleteOK, New Topic.
ReplyDeleteWhat kinds of effects are there on communication where an audience is anonymous? Is it possible to actually ask a question, make a statement, issue a command or perform any kind of conversational implicature in the case where one's audience is unknown? What would Grice say?
I think that communication is very different when both the speaker and the audience are anonymous than it is otherwise, but you can also obviously ask a question (you asked some questions that I'm trying to answer) and make a statement like the one I'm making now. I'm not sure that you can issue a command, because commands require authority which requires recognition. But you can use meaningful imperatives to do other things that imperatives do, e.g., issue an invitation. As for conversation implicature, I've seen plenty of sarcasm on this blog: sarcasm requires a difference between what is said and what is implicated.
ReplyDeleteWell, thanks very much for taking the time to write. I see that I was thinking a bit sloppily. I was thinking of an anonymous audience (or speaker) as being someone about whom the other knew nothing, and had no basis therefore for forming the sorts of intentions that are required according to Grice and people working in his tradition for communication to happen. My assumption is that for the speaker to form the requisite intentions, the intentions would have to have some minimal level of rationality to them -- the speaker would have to have some beliefs about the hearer that would in some way provide a rational ground for his intentions. But... of course my mistake was that anonymity does not in practice mean that the speaker and hearer can have no rational beliefs and form no rational intentions with respect to each other. If they are both frequently a putative philosophy blog for example, good guesses can be made about some of the beliefs the would have. So I have to change my question to be one about participants attempting to communicate in the case where at least one of them has no clue about the beliefs of the other. Perfect anonymity.
ReplyDelete*frequenting
ReplyDeleteFamously, sarcasm is often not picked up when text instead of voice is used, especially if it is short bits of text.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to imagine a situation where you really know nothing about the audience. If you are writing in English, do you get to assume that the audience understands English? I'm imagining a scenario where random people are chosen to participate in a conversation behind veils, with sound altering mechanisms so that the sounds of people's voice are undectable, or only using text without capitals (so that that all caps can't be used for emphasis). It seems obvious, if everyone speaks English and everyone knows that everyone speaks English, to ask a question, for example, "What is 2+2?", or make a statement. Sarcasm, etc., get way harder to effect, I think. What if we do not get to assume that everyone speaks or at least minimally understands each others' languages? Suppose that, for all I know, my interlocutors do not understand English, and I have been assigned as the first speaker. I ask a question, "What are all your names?" Suppose that, in fact, nobody does speak English. Have I succeeded in asking a question? Dunno.
ReplyDeleteThis is a fascinating study, and I find it interesting that it has not been more widely discussed or disseminated on the mainstream philosophy blogs:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/04/08/1418878112.abstract
"The underrepresentation of women in academic science is typically attributed, both in scientific literature and in the media, to sexist hiring. Here we report five hiring experiments in which faculty evaluated hypothetical female and male applicants, using systematically varied profiles disguising identical scholarship, for assistant professorships in biology, engineering, economics, and psychology. Contrary to prevailing assumptions, men and women faculty members from all four fields preferred female applicants 2:1 over identically qualified males with matching lifestyles (single, married, divorced), with the exception of male economists, who showed no gender preference. Comparing different lifestyles revealed that women preferred divorced mothers to married fathers and that men preferred mothers who took parental leaves to mothers who did not. Our findings, supported by real-world academic hiring data, suggest advantages for women launching academic science careers."
http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/13/opinions/williams-ceci-women-in-science/index.html
DeleteIt'd be interesting to hear responses from FP...
It would. But I doubt they will respond.
Delete6:16, thanks for the link. These sentences are hilarious: "Then we compared the faculty members' rankings to see how hirable each candidate was, overall. What we found shocked us"
DeleteHilarious in a Buzzfeed/Clickhole/clickbait kind of way.
FP has posted it and there is some discussion...
Delete"Ceci and Williams are beloved of right wing columnists. We need to approach their work with scepticism, as commenters here have largely done."
DeleteHigh quality reasoning right there.
I follow my feelings in all things political. Reasoning is just one more oppressive tool of the Patriarchy.
DeleteI agree, 5:10. I think it is important to bear in mind what someone's political motivations might be for making a claim before we simply accept their claims at face value. If you claim, for example, that a set of data should be interpreted in a particular way, and I know that this interpretation helps support some political goal you have, then I have good reason to approach you interpretation with initial skepticism.
DeleteOf course this applies to every researcher and his/her politics. That's why FP is such a hotbed of skepticism concerning research supporting the FP narrative.
DeleteNotice that the political goals of the authors are no part of the claim, though. Rather, the claim was that the authors' work should be treated skeptically because of who tends to like their work.
DeleteSure, 6:09, but the most sensible way of interpreting that is not that the author is claiming specifically that if x likes y's work we should treat the work skeptically, but more likely that it appears that y is deliberately trying to appeal to a particular audience, then we might infer things about y's political motivations (or something along those lines). Don't you think?
DeleteWell, 6.39, I don't know anything about this particular case, but surely the inference from 'x likes y's work' to 'y is deliberately trying to appeal to a particular audience and so we can draw various conclusions about y's political motivations' is a lot more creaky (even) than the inference to 'we should treat the work sceptically'?
DeleteBut saying 'y is the darling of group x' is quite a bit stronger than simply saying 'x likes y.'
DeleteBut in any case, do you really want to have yet another conversation in which we spend ages parsing one sentence written on FP, arguing ad nauseum about what AJJ 'really' means and whether this means the 'the feminists are all hypocrites'? Cause I for one am pretty bored of that conversation.
No one said anything about hypocrisy or all the feminists. I think the point was just to say something like, "here's some motivated reasoning, which seems pretty disappointing as it comes from a professional philosopher." The only generalizing statement was from the original line from a Feminist Philosophers commenter about what "we" should do.
DeleteThere's no need to parse 7:07. Ajj's partisanship is evident on the face of it.
DeleteBut the whole point, 9:10, is that there is nothing wrong at all with the reasoning. As was pointed out at 5:54.
DeleteAlso, 'no-one said anything about hypocrisy' - you don't think that's the point 6:04 was trying to make?
10:07 would have us believe there's nothing wrong with reasoning as follows:
DeleteY is someone who is cited by proponents of A, and we are in favor of ~A. Therefore, be skeptical of Y's claims.
You're right about hypocrisy claims, then--I should have only said that I said nothing about that. I didn't notice 6:04.
DeleteI disagree that 5:54 (and the comments following it) was successful in "pointing out" that there was nothing wrong at all with the reasoning. I don't see any reason to think that the authors of the study are deliberately trying to appeal to a particular audience as apart from trying to discover and publish what they take to be facts of the matter. (Perhaps you know their work or their characters better than I do, though.) So I don't see why it would be more sensible to read the quoted comment as making that claim, instead of what it seems literally to say. Setting aside whether the reading is correct, can we at least agree that one should not increase one's skepticism about a claim simply because it confirms a belief of some group that one happens not to like?
Aside: I haven't participated in, or read much about, previous discussions about the quality of reasoning/posts/whatever on the FP blog, so I'm in no position to judge whether discussion of that blog is indeed overdone. But I have noticed several complaints about there being so much criticism aimed at it. (Perhaps the complaints are generally about the tone of the criticism?) In any case, it seems that many regard it as an important forum for a popular perspective. I don't think people should be as quick as 7:07 to write off critical discussion of things posted there as boring or trivial.
10:45, if I followed correctly, 10:07 was saying that something more like this is acceptable reasoning:
DeleteY aims to appeal to audience A by making claim P, regardless of whether P is actually true. Therefore we should be skeptical of Y's claim of P.
That does seem like ok reasoning to me. But it also seems implausible as a characterization of what the authors were doing. It also seems to make a substantial addition to AJJ's claim as written.
Seems the degree of skepticism about social science is now at an all-time high.
DeleteWhy?
DeleteI don't want that to be true. I used to not care, and think that it was a bunch of lightweight bunk, but now things are different. We need social science. We need to be able to treat it as a source of empirical knowledge.
Don't worry 11:43. Skepticism is reserved for studies that support right wing views.
DeleteSpeaking of which, see here the separate commentaries by Ceci & Williams, Richard Nisbett (who's credited with editing their recent study), and Roy Baumeister, who observes:
Delete"In my own experience, feminism has been by far the most difficult aspect of liberal bias to overcome. Deeply ingrained habits of liberal feminist thought are augmented by widespread intimidation and enforcement, as accusations of sexism are considered sufficient to condemn both an idea and anyone who even suggests it. This is especially difficult because the feminist bias masquerades as opposing bias."
http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~jussim/bbscommentaries.final33.pdf
(These are the commentaries to the upcoming Behavioral and Brain Sciences piece on political bias in social psychology.)
Don't worry, 12:09. It looks like anecdotal evidence is only worthless if it supports liberal views.
DeleteComments here treat AJJ's comment as if it was of the form "P, therefore Q." It isn't.
DeleteIt does however suggest that right wing approval is relevant. There is some background needed to understand the relevance. People who don't have the background to understand the relevance really shouldn't be critiquing AJJ's comment or continue supposing they are correctly interpreting claims made on FB.
I do not endorse the very common idea that Republicans are waging a war on women. Critiques need to be much more informed. But that slogan might point some of you toward the background you appear quite totally to lack.
@7:22
DeleteCould you explain what you mean by the relevance of right wing approval? I assume you mean to deny that our credence in some study or argument should change merely because of some third party's approval of it, right?
Do you instead mean that we should believe that the authors have compromised the integrity of their work in order to appeal to that third party? If so, what justifies that belief? I take it that it must be more than that third party approving of the authors' work multiple times.
Or do you mean something else?
So there's a thread about self-promotion at Daily Nous. How long until one of the usual suspects takes this thread to be about his or her narcissistic activities and throws a tantrum about the "vicious attacks" and "malice" contained in that thread?
ReplyDeleteShhhh. You'll wake up the trolls.
DeleteYeah. I thought from the beginning that it was meant to be about his or her narcisisstic activites who would throw a tantrum about the 'vicious attacks' and 'malice' contained in the thread but is too clever and devious and unwilling to stick his neck out for that.
DeleteI wish I could be an insider and know what/who you are talking about, but I can't figure it out.
DeleteHey apparently Leiter reads German. Color me impressed!
ReplyDeleteHe's a Nietzche scholar. No one would focus their scholarship on a particular person's work without being able to actually read that person's work, would they?
DeleteEr, yeah, that was just a joke about his posting a quote from Friedrich in German.
DeleteDoes Leiter's post about social media have anything to do with Dreger's meltdown on Twitter? Seems too coincidental. (No, she's not applying for jobs, whatever.)
ReplyDeleteMeltdown?
DeleteMeltdown?! How was that a meltdown?
DeleteI could see someone not unreasonably thinking that she picked some low-hanging fruit to make a moral spectacle, and perhaps that that doesn't reflect well on her, and then going on to wonder whether drawing attention to oneself in this way has positive or negative market consequences. But 'meltdown' implies some sort of loss of control or outburst. The possibly objectionable feature of the live-tweeting is that it seems calculated, and possibly done for the sake of appealing to ideological academics, not that she lost it and did something out of character. (I'm not sure this is fair--Dreger does have a valid interest in the mis-education of her own child--but I don't think it's a ridiculous reaction. Still, 'meltdown' seems inapt.)
Delete@1:44
DeleteI don't want to say it's a ridiculous reaction, because I don't really like saying people are being ridiculous. I do think it's deeply uncharitable and a bit bizarre. I think it only makes sense to object to something being "calculated" if it was calculated with the wrong goal, like getting attention for yourself in hopes that academics will think you're cool. Doing something that's "calculated" to get attention for an issue you think is important seems totally fine, and is a very normal part of activism—getting attention for your concerns is part of how you make change. But I don't know why anyone would assume she was trying to get attention for herself rather than for the issue.
Dreger is a woman. If she makes any spirited criticisms, she's having a meltdown. I mean, duh, and duhuh. Right?
DeleteYeah, I mean she didn't need to get all hysterical about it, right, 1:34?
DeleteWell she did end up cursing the school administrators and getting banned from the school, so there's that. I mean if you're going to drop f-bombs to the principal in front of other students, I'd say that reasonably counts as a meltdown.
DeleteThe fact that she cannot see anything wrong with live tweeting from a sex education class for her child shows just how grotesquely arrogant and complacent female entitled lefties are. Had a man done anything like this he would be have been arrested for sexual harassment and FP would adding it to their list of bogus wrongs to women in philosophy.
DeleteComplacent, arrogant, and entitled? Don't see that. She was outraged by what she thought was some fucked up shit. And I agree with her that it's fucked up shit. Opposite of complacent as far as I can tell. Why is all of attention about "oh noes, she sent snarky tweets from this class" and not on the bullshit indoctrination that the kids there were subject to? And not just there--it's part of a nationwide movement that deserves to be called out.
ReplyDeleteNo, she was mean. There were other ways to fight stupidity in sex education.
Delete