Month: March 2014

The Price of Constant Debate

Stephanie Zvan3 Comments

Not only is debate useless for getting at the nature of reality, but it isn’t always good for you, or for communities where debate is fetishized. As I was looking for my previous words on debate, I came across this, originally published here. It seemed like a good time to repost it. “PTDD” is not intended to be remotely taken as a serious mental illness. It shares the element of hyper-vigilance with PTSD, and that’s about it. This is about what consistent debate trains you to do.

You may have Post-Traumatic Debate Disorder if:

  • Nobody really disagrees with you.
  • People who claim they disagree with you are being dishonest.
  • People who claim they disagree with you are out to get you.
  • You argue that someone (else) getting mobbed online “deserved it.”
  • You find yourself not understanding a lot of things but don’t ask any questions.
  • You consider accounting for differing situations to be hypocrisy.
  • You don’t know what your goal is in an argument, but that doesn’t stop you.
  • You view all discussions that consist of more than, “Yeah, me too,” as arguments.
  • All disagreements have a right and a wrong.
  • All disagreements must have a winner and loser.
  • Wrong = evil, unforgivable, delusional.
  • You alone understand what everyone “intends” by what they say. Better than the speaker.
  • You consider sympathy for both sides in a disagreement to be the same thing as no sympathy for either.
  • You crave real-world consequences for things said online, but not for you.

These are but a small sampling of the symptoms of PTDD. If you find yourself experiencing any of these symptoms, it is highly recommended that you log off the internet immediately. Further treatment may consist of quarantine to avoid denialists of all stripes, lots of face-to-face and eye-to-eye conversation, and outdoor exercise.

The Price of Constant Debate
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This Is What a Witch Hunt Looks Like

Stephanie Zvan2 Comments

Dr. Skyskull, in addition to being one of our funniest Mock the Movie participants, blogs about history. His usual topic is the history of physics, but he runs across other interesting tidbits too. About a week ago, he pointed at this translation of a contemporary description of a persecution for witchcraft. I thought it might help our community to see what a witch hunt actually looked like.

On Friday, June 30, 1628, the aforesaid Junius was again without torture exhorted to confess, but again confessed nothing, whereupon, . . . since he would confess nothing, he was put to the torture, and first the [Page 24] Thumb-screws were applied. Says he has never denied God his Saviour nor suffered himself to be otherwise baptized; [1] will again stake his life on it; feels no pain in the thumb-screws.

Leg-screws. Will confess absolutely nothing [and] knows nothing about it. He has never renounced God; will never do such a thing; has never been guilty of this vice; feels likewise no pain.

Is stripped and examined; on his right side is found a bluish mark, like a clover leaf, is thrice pricked therein, but feels no pain and no blood flows out.

Strappado. He has never renounced God; God will not forsake him; if he were such a wretch he would not let himself be so tortured; God must show some token of his innocence. He knows nothing about witchcraft. . . .

On July 5, the above named Junius is without torture, but with urgent persuasions, exhorted to confess, and at last begins and confesses:

It’s just like the blogosphere, isn’t it?

This Is What a Witch Hunt Looks Like

Debate Is Not Inquiry

Stephanie Zvan13 Comments

Ophelia brings news that those of us who have participated in a particular hashtag are not really skeptics:

What a joke #UpForDebate is. Skeptics should be willing to revise any and all of their beliefs given sufficient reason, argument, evidence.

No idea who said it, because Twitter is finally hiding posts by people you’ve blocked on the search function as well as in your mentions. Well, no, that’s not quite true. That alone gives me some ideas.

For example, I can be pretty sure that this is someone who would have been demanding that the feminist women in the atheist and skeptical movements debate their rights to bodily autonomy over the last couple of years. I can be pretty sure this same person tried to play the “bad skeptic” card then too, saying that things like, oh, blocking them on Twitter constituted an “unskeptical” refusal to address argument.

I can’t tell you whether this person followed along when I participated in the dialogue that Mick Nugent set up a year ago, but I can tell that they should have if they really thought every good skeptic has an obligation to interact with the people they oppose. And if they did that, they really should go running around confusing debate and inquiry like that, because I addressed it at the time. Nor is that the first time I’ve addressed the difference. Either someone isn’t paying attention to me the way they think I should pay attention to them, or they’re ignoring what I’ve said to restate their own premise again (which isn’t exactly good skepticism either). Either way, it’s time to say this again:

Debate is not inquiry. Argument is not skepticism. Fetishizing debate makes us less knowledgeable as a culture and even as a movement, not more. Continue reading “Debate Is Not Inquiry” →

Debate Is Not Inquiry

The Reading List, 3/16/2014

Stephanie Zvan2 Comments

I share a lot of links on Twitter and Facebook that I don’t blog about because I don’t have much to add. The reading list is a periodic feature where I share those links with my blog audience too. Of course, you’re still welcome to follow me on Twitter.

Around FtB

The Wider Web

The Reading List, 3/16/2014

Getting Drunk and Acting Like a Train Wreck

Stephanie Zvan8 Comments

My friend Cait Quinn posted this last weekend. I’ve been friends with several Irish bands over the years, and as such, I really appreciated it. I asked her for permission to share it as a guest post. Keep this in mind as you plan your weekend festivities. I’ll just add that, not only are you not part of the Irish Republican Army, but (unless you’re part of a local indigenous group) the people around you aren’t the occupation either. If you’re feeling oppressed, go get involved in politics.

So I’m going to engage in my St. Patrick’s Day rant a little early. Sorry, I’ve just had it. Celebrating the Irish culture by drinking and acting like a total barbarian is choosing to behave in the exact manner of the Irish stereotype. It is a stereotype that is not all in good fun, it is not irreverent and harmless it is the caricature that was used for hundreds of years to justify occupation, forced labor, deportation and restrictions on the Irish people’s rights and autonomy. It fueled the hatred of the Irish in America, legalized and normalized the British government’s continued occupation of the Irish people both in Ireland and in other British colonies. It was even used to justify slaver and murder. Oliver Cromwell killed over 200,000 Irish civilians by painting them as a dangerous, barbarous people.

So getting drunk and acting like a train wreck on St. Patrick’s day helps to perpetuate that very harmful narrative that to be Irish means that you drink and act like an ignorant fool. That you damage property and cannot control your behavior because dooood I’m totally wasted and let’s break stuff, Yay Ireland. If you are Irish or of Irish descent, your ancestors are ashamed of you. They fought incredibly hard to dispel the misconceptions that held the Irish people down. So shame on you.

And before anyone gives me crap about promoting respectability politics around this issue I’m not. What I’m saying is that if you are going to celebrate a people and it’s heritage imitating the behavior attributed to a people by their oppressors isn’t really a great way to do it. And if you are looking for an excuse to cut loose and break some rules, by all means do it, just don’t do it in the name of a culture and a people. Own it and say you are doing it for you.

This rant brought to you by the riots on Umass campus in the name of getting drunk and celebrating St. Patty’s Day.

Getting Drunk and Acting Like a Train Wreck

Saturday Storytime: Selkie Stories Are for Losers

Stephanie Zvan

It’s award nomination time again. As I said last week, this is my annual excuse to revisit great writers I’ve featured before. This week, it’s Sofia Samatar‘s turn, with another great story I passed on featuring when it came out.

I hate selkie stories. They’re always about how you went up to the attic to look for a book, and you found a disgusting old coat and brought it downstairs between finger and thumb and said “What’s this?”, and you never saw your mom again.

I work at a restaurant called Le Pacha. I got the job after my mom left, to help with the bills. On my first night at work I got yelled at twice by the head server, burnt my fingers on a hot dish, spilled lentil-parsley soup all over my apron, and left my keys in the kitchen.

I didn’t realize at first I’d forgotten my keys. I stood in the parking lot, breathing slowly and letting the oil-smell lift away from my hair, and when all the other cars had started up and driven away I put my hand in my jacket pocket. Then I knew.

I ran back to the restaurant and banged on the door. Of course no one came. I smelled cigarette smoke an instant before I heard the voice.

“Hey.”

I turned, and Mona was standing there, smoke rising white from between her fingers.

“I left my keys inside,” I said.

Mona is the only other server at Le Pacha who’s a girl. She’s related to everybody at the restaurant except me. The owner, who goes by “Uncle Tad,” is really her uncle, her mom’s brother. “Don’t talk to him unless you have to,” Mona advised me. “He’s a creeper.” That was after she’d sighed and dropped her cigarette and crushed it out with her shoe and stepped into my clasped hands so I could boost her up to the window, after she’d wriggled through into the kitchen and opened the door for me. She said, “Madame,” in a dry voice, and bowed. At least, I think she said “Madame.” She might have said “My lady.” I don’t remember that night too well, because we drank a lot of wine. Mona said that as long as we were breaking and entering we might as well steal something, and she lined up all the bottles of red wine that had already been opened. I shone the light from my phone on her while she took out the special rubber corks and poured some of each bottle into a plastic pitcher. She called it “The House Wine.” I was surprised she was being so nice to me, since she’d hardly spoken to me while we were working. Later she told me she hates everybody the first time she meets them. I called home, but Dad didn’t pick up; he was probably in the basement. I left him a message and turned off my phone. “Do you know what this guy said to me tonight?” Mona asked. “He wanted beef couscous and he said, ‘I’ll have the beef conscious.'”

Mona’s mom doesn’t work at Le Pacha, but sometimes she comes in around three o’clock and sits in Mona’s section and cries. Then Mona jams on her orange baseball cap and goes out through the back and smokes a cigarette, and I take over her section. Mona’s mom won’t order anything from me. She’s got Mona’s eyes, or Mona’s got hers: huge, angry eyes with lashes that curl up at the ends. She shakes her head and says: “Nothing! Nothing!” Finally Uncle Tad comes over, and Mona’s mom hugs and kisses him, sobbing in Arabic.

After work Mona says, “Got the keys?”

We get in my car and I drive us through town to the Bone Zone, a giant cemetery on a hill.

Keep reading.

Saturday Storytime: Selkie Stories Are for Losers

The Day I Decided to Have an Abortion

Stephanie Zvan48 Comments

Migraines were the reason I was at the doctor’s office.

She was a wonderful doctor. It was the first time I’d had an internist as my primary care physician. She had a Palm Pilot with a good medical database on it so she didn’t have to work on anything by memory or leave me sitting to get more information.

A lot of what she had to say wasn’t new to me. I’d figured out that the frequent headaches and other weirdness were migraines through internet research. But she had access to more and better information. When I said I had these three to four days a week, she looked at me funny and said, “Three to four times a month is the point where we want to consider prophylactic treatment.”

I was all for treatment. She looked at my chart, particularly at my (low) blood pressure, consulted the Palm Pilot again, and said, “You’re having stress headaches with the migraines. I want to put you on propranolol.”

I was fine with that too. Then she said, “But if I give you a prescription for this drug, I need to know that you’ll be okay with having an abortion if you get pregnant.”* Continue reading “The Day I Decided to Have an Abortion” →

The Day I Decided to Have an Abortion

"Hug an Atheist", Sylvia Broeckx on Atheists Talk

Stephanie Zvan

Sylvia Broeckx is hardly the first person living in Europe to be appalled at how atheists are treated in the U.S. Her approach to dealing with the problem, however, was new. Rather than tut (perhaps rightly) at how uncivilized we are, she decided to do something about it. After crowdsourcing the funding, she came to the U.S. to make a film featuring everyday atheists in the U.S. The result was the documentary Hug an Atheist, which premiered at the atheist film festival in San Francisco last year.

This Sunday, Sylvia joins us to discuss making her film and her quest to get the film out to festivals and wider audiences. Later that day, we will be screening Hug an Atheist for our monthly meeting, with the proceeds to fund distribution of the film.

Related Links:

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"Hug an Atheist", Sylvia Broeckx on Atheists Talk

You Made Your Bed, Now Burn in It

Stephanie Zvan44 Comments

Kameron Hurley wrote a great post recently that everyone in the atheist community ought to read right about now. It’s starts with an argument with a toddler.

I had the questionable delight of hanging out with a 3 year old for the last week, and at some point, when I hauled off his pants so he could go “Pee-pee in the potty” he proceeded to sit on said toilet for a solid five minutes having an argument with me because I’d said “Hey!” when he tried to hit his mother.

“You YELLED at me!” he yelled. “We don’t yell in this house.”

“We don’t hit our mom, either.”

“We don’t YELL. You HURT my FEELINGS.”

At some point, this child will understand the difference between a feeling of guilt for being called out when he does something bad and actual hurt feelings, but today is not that day.

“And you hurt your mom’s feelings,” I said. “You don’t hit your mom.”

“We don’t YELL IN THIS HOUSE.”

The post then goes on to use this framework to explain why the idea that Jonathan Ross was abused by that portion of the F&SF community that objected to his hosting this year’s Hugo Awards at WorldCon is nonsense. Continue reading “You Made Your Bed, Now Burn in It” →

You Made Your Bed, Now Burn in It

My Villain, My Hero

Stephanie Zvan2 Comments

Oh, how have I not seen this before?

One of the interesting things about “Cell Block Tango” is that it’s often read as being a celebration of the violence in it, particularly when taken out of the context of the full musical. I like this adaptation for the fact that it maintains the idea that these villains are heroes in their own stories, even if they’re not telling the stories straight.

H/T Kelly

My Villain, My Hero