Personal Attacks - Inherently Personal Words

[Phi for All]

One of the rules we've tried to uphold here at SFN is the "No personal attacks" rule. We want people to feel free to discuss ideas here without fear of being judged personally by them. The consensus has always been that it's certainly possible to have a bad idea without being a bad person.

 

Still, it's difficult to ignore the personal angle when certain words are used. If I use the word "moronic" to describe your idea (hopefully with deeper reasoning and supportive evidence), am I just saying that the idea is stupid and lacks good judgement, or am I saying that's an idea only a moron would have? Same thing with idiotic. Are these words inherently personal?

 

The real goal here is meaningful conversation, not winning points or putting people down. I really don't like censorship, but I don't like using words poorly either. I don't like using sexual terminology for negative epithets. I don't like using "retarded" when it's not in the context of actual mental retardation.

 

So what do you think? Can we say an idea is moronic/idiotic without implying it came from a moron/idiot?

[Acme]

One of the rules we've tried to uphold here at SFN is the "No personal attacks" rule. We want people to feel free to discuss ideas here without fear of being judged personally by them. The consensus has always been that it's certainly possible to have a bad idea without being a bad person.

 

Still, it's difficult to ignore the personal angle when certain words are used. If I use the word "moronic" to describe your idea (hopefully with deeper reasoning and supportive evidence), am I just saying that the idea is stupid and lacks good judgement, or am I saying that's an idea only a moron would have? Same thing with idiotic. Are these words inherently personal?

 

The real goal here is meaningful conversation, not winning points or putting people down. I really don't like censorship, but I don't like using words poorly either. I don't like using sexual terminology for negative epithets. I don't like using "retarded" when it's not in the context of actual mental retardation.

 

So what do you think? Can we say an idea is moronic/idiotic without implying it came from a moron/idiot?

It's a balancing act. Context is everything and to quote some unattested writer that had Forrest Gump quoting his mother, "stupid is as stupid does". What I mean here is that it may take some time to determine if someone is simply/genuinely ignorant, or willfully ignorant, or stupid. In my humble opinion the simply ignorant and the stupid deserve a break, but not so much the willfully ignorant. It's analogous to legal action in the sense that you must invoke personhood; Jane Doe is a criminal because Jane Doe committed crime X.

 

To be sure this is not so serious an issue as criminality and there is good reason to not have things escalate into flame wars. On the other hand there is something to be said for calling a fig a fig and a trough a trough. But we don't want hurt feelings if we unnecessarily talk about someone's fig, while on the other hand we all enjoy a chuckle at a well placed observation on someone's trough.

 

Yup; a balancing act to be taken on a case-by-case basis. Battery low so gotta run.

[Ten oz]

An idea can be right or wrong, supported or unsupported, confusing or clear, poorly stated or well put, inaccurate or accurate, so on and so forth. An idea can not be extra wrong or extra inaccurate. Words like moronic and idiotic give a degree to how bad a person thinks something is which typically not useful and almost never neccessary IMO.

[Phi for All]

In my humble opinion the simply ignorant and the stupid deserve a break, but not so much the willfully ignorant.

 

But here at SFN, at least, I think we always want to preserve the difference between attacking the idea and attacking the person who had it. Something tells me we gain a lot by adhering to this, IF we can give up our urge to knock the person into the mud along with their idea. No matter how willfully ignorant that person is being.

 

It's analogous to legal action in the sense that you must invoke personhood; Jane Doe is a criminal because Jane Doe committed crime X.

 

 

This is why I think the personal labels are misleading and incendiary. I stole a piece of candy when I was eight, does that make me a thief? Maybe momentarily I was. But even if having a moronic idea momentarily makes me a moron, it seems unproductive to attempt argue against a temporary situation. The idea will still be moronic long after I personally have come to my senses.

[StringJunky]

I think calling an idea moronic, dumb, cretinous, imbecilic etc is insulting a person in a 'curve-ball' manner such that it looks like one is attacking the idea but is in fact insulting the person. Using descriptions like these can only invoke negative feelings - via the back-door - in the receiver and hence a discussive impasse. It's rather sly imo and not conducive to further rational and dispassionate discourse. Criticism should directly and explicitly describe the nature of the error. This is specific to when conversations are serious in nature but erroneous not when someone is deliberately just being a troll or idiot then they deserve all the colourful adjectives one can muster.

[Acme]

 

In my humble opinion the simply ignorant and the stupid deserve a break, but not so much the willfully ignorant.

But here at SFN, at least, I think we always want to preserve the difference between attacking the idea and attacking the person who had it. Something tells me we gain a lot by adhering to this, IF we can give up our urge to knock the person into the mud along with their idea. No matter how willfully ignorant that person is being.

 

I think the policy is sound and administered well enough. It's the administering that is really at the root of your concern I think and I don't envy you for the subjective tug-of-war you have to engage in.

 

 

It's analogous to legal action in the sense that you must invoke personhood; Jane Doe is a criminal because Jane Doe committed crime X.

This is why I think the personal labels are misleading and incendiary. I stole a piece of candy when I was eight, does that make me a thief? Maybe momentarily I was. But even if having a moronic idea momentarily makes me a moron, it seems unproductive to attempt argue against a temporary situation. The idea will still be moronic long after I personally have come to my senses.

 

I had in mind before my battery drain to further comment on rehabilitated criminals, or some other such qualifier. This still doesn't change the original offense or offender, which you more-or-less acknowledge. One might say "I was stupid when I was 12" or "I was a little thief when I was 8". In the same manner one might say "I was sharp as a tack when I designed that". Ergo, my fig-is-a-fig and trough-is-a-trough, which is to say, call things the way you see them. Trying to dress things up in some pretty pretense strikes me as rather intellectually dishonest. Lipstick on a pig if you will.

 

.

I think calling an idea moronic, dumb, cretinous, imbecilic etc is insulting a person in a 'curve-ball' manner such that it looks like one is attacking the idea but is in fact insulting the person.

The thing is, in Phi's own words one is making an attack. Regardless of the niceties employed, the person putting forward the idea under attack is going to take it personally. It's their idea and they have enough invested in it to have gone to the trouble to write it out and put it on the wall.

 

Using descriptions like these can only invoke negative feelings - via the back-door - in the receiver and hence a discussive impasse. It's rather sly imo and not conducive to further rational and dispassionate discourse. Criticism should directly and explicitly describe the nature of the error.

So again, there is no separating the person from their idea from their point of view. It's theirs and it's under attack and they know it whether that attack is dispassionate (cold?), sly, or brusk.

 

This is specific to when conversations are serious in nature but erroneous not when someone is deliberately just being a troll or idiot then they deserve all the colourful adjectives one can muster.

Aye, and there's the rub. The subjective balance we all must play to achieve and keep as we make determinations about the personal condition(s) of those we engage in discourse.

[Phi for All]

Ergo, my fig-is-a-fig and trough-is-a-trough, which is to say, call things the way you see them. Trying to dress things up in some pretty pretense strikes me as rather intellectually dishonest. Lipstick on a pig if you will.

 

But I'm even more worried about making blanket assumptions based on "I call them as I see them". It's a horribly subjective litmus test masquerading as common man-common sense. Everyone who tells you he calls them as he sees them expects you to take that to the bank, and those checks bounce often and hard. The "way you see them" is historically inaccurate and distorted by all kinds of biases.

 

And dressing non-provocatively isn't dressing things up in pretense. It's just choosing not to focus on unnecessary aspects of the situation.

[Popcorn Sutton]

I wouldn't take offense to someone saying that my idea is idiotic. Richard Dawkins does stuff like that all the time. Lawrence Krauss says that it's a cultural thing, and I have to agree with that, but he is who he is and he does offend a lot of people. I remember seeing a YouTube video of him and a religious guy (islam) trying to have an intellectual debate on whether Mohammed actually came from the moon in a fiery chariot. It's like the guy who was supposed to steer the debate was just shoving his words into Richard Dawkins' mind. It was pretty disturbing.

 

To me, that type of behavior is abusive, even if you're not directly calling someone an idiot, you should really give the person who you're trying to discuss these things with the time of day to actually respond to them. All too often I find myself in situations where people just don't seem to care what I have to say, and most of the time it's because they don't know me well enough. I don't speak much in person, but when I do I think that I have something fruitful to say. A lot of the time it can open someones mind and make them think differently, but there is a real gray area to thoughts. I think we all know how you can call your friend "buddy" and it'll be ok, but if you call a random stranger who is a psychotic criminal "buddy" just to get his attention, s/he may want to retaliate.

 

That being said, I've had some idiotic ideas (as you all probably know by now), or I've at least done some idiotic things, and I think that a lot of philosophers have as well. But, because I have a degree in philosophy, I think that I have the credibility to discuss anything on intellectual grounds. Although I may not specialize in the things that I try to talk about, I believe that I have enough interdisciplinary experience to have something worth being heard or read. What I find is that, a lot of the time, when someone comes up with an idea that Richard would call 'idiotic' or 'moronic', it's usually out of the speakers field of expertise, for one, or for two it's beyond anyone's field of expertise. In other words, it's just plain ignorance. We can only predict the future to a certain extent, and, as an example, I don't think that many people would've predicted this current degree of surveillance 6 years ago. Computers are making things really complicated, and the law just can't keep up at this point.

 

If you think of willful ignorance from a neurological perspective, I have a hard enough time interacting with new people if their thought or activity isn't something that I am accustomed to. The point is that people need to adjust to each other before they can feel comfortable with each other. It takes time for our brain and our bodies to do something like that.

Edited June 3, 2014 by Popcorn Sutton

[Acme]

 

Ergo, my fig-is-a-fig and trough-is-a-trough, which is to say, call things the way you see them. Trying to dress things up in some pretty pretense strikes me as rather intellectually dishonest. Lipstick on a pig if you will.

But I'm even more worried about making blanket assumptions based on "I call them as I see them". It's a horribly subjective litmus test masquerading as common man-common sense. Everyone who tells you he calls them as he sees them expects you to take that to the bank, and those checks bounce often and hard. The "way you see them" is historically inaccurate and distorted by all kinds of biases.

 

I'm not sure I made or implied any blanket assumptions. Can you clarify that bit? Anyway, we both in this discussion are calling things the way we see them. Virtually all of us see things through a lens of bias whether that bias sharpens or blurs the image. This board has a scientific bias, so does that mean it's horribly subjective?

 

As your title suggests, attacking an idea is sometimes inherently personal. If for example a person is asked a direct question that is germane to a discussion and the question is evaded, then it certainly seems right and fair to point that evasion out. Granted there is no necessity to say 'you're a poo-poo head question evader', but surely saying 'you evaded my question' is appropriate. There is no taking the 'personal' out of this kind of 'you' statement.

 

And dressing non-provocatively isn't dressing things up in pretense. It's just choosing not to focus on unnecessary aspects of the situation.

Sometimes the focus of the situation is provocative dress.

[Phi for All]

I'm not sure I made or implied any blanket assumptions. Can you clarify that bit?

 

The phrase itself seems to demand more trustworthiness than is warranted. "I call them like I see them" implies that what you "see" is always accurate. Just like being "natural" or "organic" doesn't automatically mean "better", I don't think it's right to treat anyone who says "I call them like I see them" like a professional umpire.

[davidivad]

there is a clear difference between bias and subjectivity.

i have personally found that while many posters here can argue a point, they cannot be subjective.

i haven't posted in some time because there is rarely reference beyond literal meaning. our posters learn to argue literal meaning but they do not exercise how to abstract. the result is pot shots and points. we end up looking like first year students.

i hope this does not offend anyone, but it has to be said.

i wish i could see more people who realize that being correct is not the only way to approach a situation. the smarter individual can lead a conversation in a way that is effective. sure its nice to be competitive and win, but who really needs someone who is never wrong.

[Spyman]

As your title suggests, attacking an idea is sometimes inherently personal. If for example a person is asked a direct question that is germane to a discussion and the question is evaded, then it certainly seems right and fair to point that evasion out. Granted there is no necessity to say 'you're a poo-poo head question evader', but surely saying 'you evaded my question' is appropriate. There is no taking the 'personal' out of this kind of 'you' statement.

Maybe we need to better define what a "personal attack" is.

 

I don't consider telling someone that they are wrong or that they have evaded my question as an personal attack, even though it's personal and negative. It's not an attack because it's not offensive, insulting or otherwise derogatory against that person as a person.

 

IMHO it's not wrong to be personal, the bad starts when you try to hurt the opponent.

[Prometheus]

It's quite possible to have a moronic idea without being a moron. I should know.

 

We need to be wary of the self-fulfilling prophecy of labels.

[CaptainPanic]

Discussing on the internet in 3 easy steps:

 

1. Write your message, but do not press "post".

2. Whatever you just wrote, tone it down.

3. When in doubt, tone it down even more.

[StringJunky]

I nicked this from Swansont in another thread and find it perfectly acceptable because there is no way it can be interpreted as a personal attack yet he's saying the idea is crap. I think the trick is to use words that can't be denoted as a person. You don't call someone 'a bollocks' or 'a crap' but 'idiotic' can be construed as 'idiot'.

 

 

Bollocks. Scientists challenge the mainstream all the time and remain gainfully employed in science. The journals and the arXiv preprint server are replete with examples of people coming up with alternatives to accepted science, and also full of results of experiments that could falsify mainstream science.

[Greg H.]

Personally I think the whole idea stems from an over developed sense of victimization that modern society seems to somehow acquired in the last couple of decades. If I say "This is a stupid idea", is my meaning somehow unclear? Is my grasp of English so poor that I have somehow miscontrued the meaning of that sentence as I was typing it? It's the same reason we have public officials in America having to resign because they used the word niggardly correctly. It's the dumbing down of language, and in turn we are losing our ability to communicate clearly, effectively, and concisely without resorting to hand holding our audience so they don't get their feelings hurt.

 

Edit:

Now obviously, if I said, "This is a stupid idea and you're a moron for thinking it" my meaning is equally clear, and that is, in fact, a personal attack.

Edited June 3, 2014 by Greg H.

[Phi for All]

Maybe we need to better define what a "personal attack" is.

 

I don't consider telling someone that they are wrong or that they have evaded my question as an personal attack, even though it's personal and negative. It's not an attack because it's not offensive, insulting or otherwise derogatory against that person as a person.

 

IMHO it's not wrong to be personal, the bad starts when you try to hurt the opponent.

 

What the staff filters for are ad hominem attacks, the kind that try to imply that not only is the idea bad, but the person who had it can't be trusted to ever have a good idea. Telling someone they've evaded a question doesn't come close to implying that. It's not an attack on the person.

 

I think of the word "disparage", i.e., regarding something as having little worth. We can disparage ideas, but shouldn't disparage people.

 

Personally I think the whole idea stems from an over developed sense of victimization that modern society seems to somehow acquired in the last couple of decades. If I say "This is a stupid idea", is my meaning somehow unclear? Is my grasp of English so poor that I have somehow miscontrued the meaning of that sentence as I was typing it? It's the same reason we have public officials in America having to resign because they used the word niggardly correctly. It's the dumbing down of language, and in turn we are losing our ability to communicate clearly, effectively, and concisely without resorting to hand holding our audience so they don't get their feelings hurt.

 

We're certainly affected by this perspective, but I'm really just talking about a few words that straddle the border of what we here at SFN define as personal attacks. I'm not concerned with people's feelings so much as I am with creating an environment conducive to exploration and learning through discussion. I want people to know that we're rigorous in our approach, but they hopefully won't get torn apart personally along with their ideas.

[CaptainPanic]

In a purely scientific debate, I can do without any subjective remark, because I don't care about opinions in such a debate. Also, while describing an idea with strong words may be acceptable according to the letter of the law (or rather, our rules), it can still be understood to be an insult. Whether something is an insult is decided by the receiver, not the sender. So, I conclude that any subjective comment about someone's idea is just not functional, because it is irrelevant for the contents of the discussion, and may sometimes (unintentionally?) even derail a discussion because it is received as insulting.

 

Finally, often when people make a remark that the "idea" was stupid, they are just looking for the limit of what is tolerated here. They don't break the letter of the law, but they certainly don't understand (or choose to ignore) the spirit of it.

 

So, ask yourself, while it may not be illegal to be insulting, do I want to run the risk of being understood as such? Unless your intent is to insult, a positive remark will have better results than a negative one. And if you have to ask yourself if something is allowed here or not, I am certain that you can make it sound more positive, and at the same time remove any doubt of breaking the rules.

 

 

And that is why I actually do keep to my 3-step plan, generally removing negative sounds from my posts, regardless of whether it is allowed or not.

 

Please note that I was able to convey my message without saying that "putting all that negative subjectiveness in a post is just stupid, moronic and retarded". (Also note that I mean the action of doing that, not the author of the comment, this wasn't a personal attack).

[imatfaal]

Personally I think the whole idea stems from an over developed sense of victimization that modern society seems to somehow acquired in the last couple of decades. If I say "This is a stupid idea", is my meaning somehow unclear? Is my grasp of English so poor that I have somehow miscontrued the meaning of that sentence as I was typing it? It's the same reason we have public officials in America having to resign because they used the word niggardly correctly. It's the dumbing down of language, and in turn we are losing our ability to communicate clearly, effectively, and concisely without resorting to hand holding our audience so they don't get their feelings hurt.

 

Edit:

Now obviously, if I said, "This is a stupid idea and you're a moron for thinking it" my meaning is equally clear, and that is, in fact, a personal attack.

 

 

But stupid, moronic, idiotic, and a host of other words are descriptive of a mind or of intelligence - by common usage we allow them to also describe the product created by that form of mind. We might not always mean it, but a moronic idea is an idea which has come from a moron. Stupid/moronic/idiotic etc are not synonyms of wrong, bad, poorly formed, incorrect, mis-conceived, misunderstood etc

 

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/stupid

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/moronic

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/retarded

 

None of these meanings have slipped far enough from the original use as description of the intelligence of another person to be divorced from that description.

 

Saying that an idea is stupid/moronic/idiotic to the creator of that idea is at least unfriendly and at worst insulting. Context can soften or harshen the blow - but not the underlying meaning. Why not use the word 'wrong'?

[Arete]

I think it can be useful.

 

For example a poster comes to the forum with a preconceived idea which happens to be based on faulty reasoning or inaccurate evidence. In some cases, when the faulty reasoning/inaccuracies are pointed out, rather than changing their position, the poster will switch to increasingly tenuous arguments to "support" their initial position.

 

In such cases, I think pointing out that the argument is untenable is worthwhile - and example would be this thread: http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/79212-my-eureka-moment-a-cure-for-cancer/

 

Where the poster presented a flawed idea, and many members spent considerable effort courteously explaining the flaws. The OP refused to acknowledge these and adjust his position, and instead starts going down a rabbit hole of making more and more obviously flawed claims. Getting to a point where someone points out "Hey, the argument your presenting here has become ridiculous. Either go back and address the criticisms of your position logically, or give it up." probably won't change many OP's minds, it at least represents an effort to turn a downward spiraling discussion around.

Edited June 3, 2014 by Arete

[iNow]

What the staff filters for are ad hominem attacks, the kind that try to imply that not only is the idea bad, but the person who had it can't be trusted to ever have a good idea.

"Ever" is a bit too absolute, but once we know the history of the poster we can with some accuracy anticipate the likelihood that a future post will be moronic or not.

 

I think of the word "disparage", i.e., regarding something as having little worth. We can disparage ideas, but shouldn't disparage people.

I think it's a laudable goal, but it's not possible to completely separate the person from their ideas in the way you're trying. What are we as conscious beings other than the expression of ideas (and actions that are themselves driven by ideas and thoughts)? At some point, the idea and the person need to be treated as one and the same.

 

We achieve some flexibility in that we have MANY ideas that form who we are, not just one. This creates opportunity for nuance with some ideas that are idiotic and others that are brilliant and most that are just "meh." One moronic idea doesn't make the person a moron, but there clearly is some threshold where calling them a moron is perfectly reasonable after the count of moronic ideas that compose their being gets high enough.

 

 

In a purely scientific debate, I can do without any subjective remark, because I don't care about opinions in such a debate.

But many of the debates here are not purely scientific. Often, we're just answering questions or clarifying inaccuracies and the tone is contingent on the other persons response. After that, much of the site activity is in politics and religion where subjectivity abounds and opinion is all you have. Edited June 3, 2014 by iNow

[Phi for All]

I think it can be useful.

 

For example a poster comes to the forum with a preconceived idea which happens to be based on faulty reasoning or inaccurate evidence. In some cases, when the faulty reasoning/inaccuracies are pointed out, rather than changing their position, the poster will switch to increasingly tenuous arguments to "support" their initial position.

 

In such cases, I think pointing out that the argument is untenable is worthwhile - and example would be this thread: http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/79212-my-eureka-moment-a-cure-for-cancer/

 

Where the poster presented a flawed idea, and many members spent considerable effort courteously explaining the flaws. The OP refused to acknowledge these and adjust his position, and instead starts going down a rabbit hole of making more and more obviously flawed claims. Getting to a point where someone points out "Hey, the argument your presenting here has become ridiculous. Either go back and address the criticisms of your position logically, or give it up." probably won't change many OP's minds, it at least represents an effort to turn a downward spiraling discussion around.

 

Sorry, you think what can be useful? Calling an idea moronic, or calling it ridiculous (or something else along those lines)?

 

I certainly don't have any problems calling an idea ridiculous, flawed, untenable, irrational, or any other word I can back up with supportive evidence. But I can never show that a person is a moron given our limited interaction here. It shouldn't ever be attempted or even implied.

 

Do we give anything meaningful up if we choose not to use words that cast aspersions on the person who has an idea? Does it harm or strengthen your position to describe an idea as "ridiculous" rather than "idiotic"?

[Arete]

 

Sorry, you think what can be useful? Calling an idea moronic, or calling it ridiculous (or something else along those lines)?

 

Apologies - what I meant was calling a poster's reasoning ridiculous/ludicrous/etc can be useful as an appeal to the audience when it's clear that rational discourse has led to a declining discussion. It's unlikely to produce positive results in terms of the OP, but by the time it's employed, rational discussion with the OP has presumably failed.

 

E.g. "Suggesting that unicorns eat garbage proves that it is safe for human consumption is a ridiculous argument, and it doesn't address criticisms a, b and c of your garbage food idea. Can you go back and explain why a, b and c don't apply to your idea, rather than presenting increasingly preposterous arguments for it, please?"

Edited June 3, 2014 by Arete

[Greg H.]

 

 

But stupid, moronic, idiotic, and a host of other words are descriptive of a mind or of intelligence - by common usage we allow them to also describe the product created by that form of mind. We might not always mean it, but a moronic idea is an idea which has come from a moron. Stupid/moronic/idiotic etc are not synonyms of wrong, bad, poorly formed, incorrect, mis-conceived, misunderstood etc

 

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/stupid

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/moronic

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/retarded

 

None of these meanings have slipped far enough from the original use as description of the intelligence of another person to be divorced from that description.

 

Saying that an idea is stupid/moronic/idiotic to the creator of that idea is at least unfriendly and at worst insulting. Context can soften or harshen the blow - but not the underlying meaning. Why not use the word 'wrong'?

I see your point. The connotation of the word can influence the message, which is often something I forget (I spend more time talking to computers than people, to be frank).

[dimreepr]

Discussing on the internet in 3 easy steps:

 

1. Write your message, but do not press "post".

2. Whatever you just wrote, tone it down.

3. When in doubt, tone it down even more.

 

I don’t think these steps are applicable unless one has indulged in a small sherry, beforehand.