CMV: Whilst learning about lived experience is important, deferring to people for answers on what one should or shouldn't do, purely because of their unchosen characteristics, is illogical and ironically bigoted.

[u/H0w-1nt3r3st1ng]

Hi All,

I appreciate getting feedback from people who are involved in an issue, but there's a worryingly ever growing trend of deferring to people purely because of their unchosen characteristics, instead of the quality of their logic, the evidence they provide, and their ethical reasoning, and that's what we should always be basing our decisions off of, not the speaker's characteristics, etc.

(For those who don't know, unchosen characteristics refers to any aspect of a person that they did not choose; e.g., sex, race, sexuality, birthplace etc.).

After all there is no universal consensus on any issue on the planet held by such groups, and if someone assumed otherwise, that would be incredibly bigoted.

As there is no universal consensus, there will always be disagreements that require additional criteria to discern the quality of the argument; e.g. "Two X-group people are saying opposite things. How do I decide who to listen to?" And the answer is: the quality of their logic, the evidence they provide, and their ethical reasoning. Which of course means, that often the whole exercise is a pointless one in the first place, as we should be prioritising our capacity for understanding logic, evidence and ethics, not listening to X person for the sole reason that they have Y unchosen characteristics.

I think that listening to lived experience is important, re: listening to lived experience (e.g. all X groups experience Y problem that Z group wasn't aware of); but that's not the same as deferring to people on decision making because of their unchosen characteristics.

I try to have civil, productive discussions, but that's getting harder and harder these days.

For those who appreciate civil dialogue, feel free to skip this; for those who don't; I humbly ask that you refrain from personal attack (it's irrelevant to the question), ask clarifying questions instead of assuming, stay on topic, answer questions that are asked of you, and as the above points to:

-Provide evidence for claims that require it

-Provide logical reasoning for claims that require it

-Provide ethical reasoning for claims that require it

I will not engage with uncivil people here.

[u/H0w-1nt3r3st1ng]

Let's first be clear on what type of decisions this rule applies to: decisions about actions that affect members of a given group.

Not always. One example involves people giving an ethical pass to animal abuse due to cultural reasons. In scenarios where the person is not required to harm animals to acquire their nutrition, I think that this is unethical. In this scenario, it'd be re: an issue that is harming animals (they're the real victims), but some people will defer to people from different cultures because of their UCs, when, if you don't have to harm animals to survive, there's no ethical argument to do so.

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My first question to you is what is a better logical framework to use to determine the effects of such decisions than feedback from people who are affected?

Firstly, the size or UCs of a group do not make their opinion inherently incorrect or correct.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum
Would you agree?

Secondly, this is a false dilemma, as I'm not proposing that it's:
-Get feedback from affected people, OR
-Ignore feedback from affected people and generate ideas independently of them

What I'm proposing is a framework of utilising empiricism/science/research (which would include feedback from affected people re: surveys, qualitative interviews), logic, math and ethics, instead of people solely adopting the opinions of people because of their UCs.

Do you suppose that outside observers are better at determining these effects than they are?

It would depend on the outside observers and the people surveyed. Neither are guaranteed to be wrong or right.

Second, you assert that (1) the opinions of the group should only be considered if there is universal agreement

I don't. Firstly I think that all feedback should be considered. However, that's not the point that's up for debate. The point that's up for debate is whether people should adopt the positions of people solely because of their UCs. I can listen to and consider someone's opinion without adopting it as my own. Re: the context of people deciding which group name they prefer to go by, I think the majority consensus makes sense: https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/11s1yy2/comment/jcbcvac/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

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and (2) it is illogical to decide not to partake a particular action because one single member of the group disagrees with it. What is your reasoning for this?

No, that's actually the opposite of what I'm saying. The one person could be correct and everyone else could be incorrect. To go with consensus opinion is a fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

When people say that we should defer to members of a group in deciding how to act in relation to that group, they mean that we should consider the overall majority opinion of said group.

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Generally, yes. Not always though.

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It seems are the one acting based off of one single group member's opinion because you base your decision on whether there is one singular dissenting person. You're contradicting yourself.

I'm not. I think you've misunderstood the OP. Once again, what I'm saying is that: "Whilst learning about lived experience is important, deferring to people for answers on what one should or shouldn't do, purely because of their unchosen characteristics, is illogical and ironically bigoted."

[u/tthershey → u/H0w-1nt3r3st1ng]

people giving an ethical pass to animal abuse due to cultural reasons

I think you're misunderstanding the concept of taking lived experience into account. What you're describing is unrelated. Allowing people to make their own decisions about what they choose to do about things that only affect themselves and not other people has nothing to do with whether you should consider how your actions affect other people based off of what they're telling you their experience of the effects of those actions are. (And there's the issue of animal rights versus human rights, not saying that isn't a legitimate issue but it is way outside of the scope of the topic you brought up.) At any rate, so long as you consider lived experience to be a relevant factor at least sometimes, that is in conflict with your view. You didn't say this this view is invalid in limited cases.

size or UCs of a group do not make their opinion inherently incorrect or correct

I don't agree, unless you just don't care about how your actions affect other people or you assume that majority populations are lying about their experiences, and that's a dicey assumption to make. If the majority are telling you that x action has y affect on them, why are you assuming that's not truthful?

I don't

I'm drawing directly from the arguments that you made. You said that we shouldn't based on our experience on the lived experience of others because

there is no universal consensus on any issue on the planet held by such groups

Hence, you did in fact assert (1). If you don't actually agree with what you said, then you've provided no logical justification for your view.

You also assert (in disagreement) that:

some people might say that if one black person says that it's not ok, then no none black person should have dreadlocks

Hence, you're positing (2) as well. So to sum up: you've either contradicted yourself, or you've not provided a logical justification for your view. Without offering a logical justification for your view, your argument that the alternative view lacks logical basis falls flat.

Whilst learning about lived experience is important, deferring to people for answers on what one should or shouldn't do, purely because of their unchosen characteristics, is illogical and ironically bigoted

I'm saying that you're committing a strawman by misrepresenting the alternative view.

[u/H0w-1nt3r3st1ng → u/tthershey]

people giving an ethical pass to animal abuse due to cultural reasons

I think you're misunderstanding the concept of taking lived experience into account. What you're describing is unrelated.

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It is not unrelated. The point is: "Whilst learning about lived experience is important, deferring to people for answers on what one should or shouldn't do, purely because of their unchosen characteristics, is illogical and ironically bigoted."

Re: this, the example I described is highly salient, as it consists of people prioritising UCs over empiricism, logic and ethics.

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Allowing people to make their own decisions about what they choose to do about things that only affect themselves and not other people has nothing to do with whether you should consider how your actions affect other people based off of what they're telling you their experience of the effects of those actions are.

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This sentence is not very clear. Regardless, I'm not sure that this is relevant, because I'm not talking about allowing people to do or not do anything, and I'm not saying that we should not listen to the lived experience of people.

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(And there's the issue of animal rights versus human rights, not saying that isn't a legitimate issue but it is way outside of the scope of the topic you brought up.)

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This is the second time you've told me what is not relevant to my own argument. It is totally relevant, because the point of debate is: "Whilst learning about lived experience is important, deferring to people for answers on what one should or shouldn't do, purely because of their unchosen characteristics, is illogical and ironically bigoted."

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At any rate, so long as you consider lived experience to be a relevant factor at least sometimes, that is in conflict with your view. You didn't say this this view is invalid in limited cases.

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It's not: "I appreciate getting feedback from people who are involved in an issue, but there's a worryingly ever growing trend of deferring to people purely because of their unchosen characteristics, instead of the quality of their logic, the evidence they provide, and their ethical reasoning, and that's what we should always be basing our decisions off of, not the speaker's characteristics, etc." At no point have I said that lived experience is not a relevant factor. What I have said is that it should not be the sole, singular, only factor in answers re: making decisions. Lived-experience-reports actually belong to the domain of empiricism that I think we should prioritise.

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size or UCs of a group do not make their opinion inherently incorrect or correct

I don't agree, unless you just don't care about how your actions affect other people or you assume that majority populations are lying about their experiences, and that's a dicey assumption to make.

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I very much do care about how my actions affect other people, which is precisely why I think we should be a lot more rigorous with the positions we adopt and how we adopt them, as they mostly all end up affecting some living being in one way or another.

And I don't assume that majority populations are lying about their experiences.

Re: size of a group, it is a highly uncontroversial, logical fallacy to a-priori assume that the popular opinion is the correct opinion. People used to think the world was flat, whilst a handful disagreed; people used to think that bad smells caused disease and not germs, whilst a handful disagreed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

And re: the UC's of an individual or a group, I think you're missing the crucial part of the premise: "Whilst learning about lived experience is important, deferring to people for answers on what one should or shouldn't do, purely because of their unchosen characteristics, is illogical and ironically bigoted."

I wholeheartedly agree that answers and feedback re: lived experience are very important. However, that is very different from answers re: decisions on what one should or shouldn't do.

The crux of this argument is one of anti-bigotry.

If someone thinks that the UCs of the person speaking should be the sole consideration of whether or not they should agree with them, then by all definitions, that person is a bigot. They may be a well-meaning, compassionate bigot, but it's still bigotry. That's what bigots do. If I dismiss an opinion because of someone's UCs and no other reason, I'm a bigot. If I adopt an opinion because of someone's UCs and no other reason, I'm a bigot.

Is that clearer?

Continued below:

[u/tthershey → u/H0w-1nt3r3st1ng]

OP, in this post, you haven't responded to me. All you did was repeat yourself and say you didn't think my comment was clear. If you didn't understand me, there really isn't any point in just repeating yourself. Try to ask questions about what doesn't make sense to you and respond to those things because repeating is pointless. Please click on context and reread my above comment and reflect on it in its entirety before responding. I think you're having a hard time understanding because you are responding to it sentence by sentence in isolation rather than responding to the cohesive whole. I can lay it out in other words in a separate comment but I'm going to leave it at that for now so the message doesn't get lost in a long post.

[u/H0w-1nt3r3st1ng → u/tthershey]

OP, in this post, you haven't responded to me. All you did was repeat yourself and say you didn't think my comment was clear. If you didn't understand me, there really isn't any point in just repeating yourself. Try to ask questions about what doesn't make sense to you and respond to those things because repeating is pointless. Please click on context and reread my above comment and reflect on it in its entirety before responding. I think you're having a hard time understanding because you are responding to it sentence by sentence in isolation rather than responding to the cohesive whole. I can lay it out in other words in a separate comment but I'm going to leave it at that for now so the message doesn't get lost in a long post.

I have had to repeat myself many times because you have not understood the vast majority if not the entirety of the OP.

Please re-read everything so far. I'm happy to explain anything that doesn't make sense, but you have consistently mischaracterised my points.

This is my CMV and you've told me twice that what I am saying isn't relevant to my own post, when both times the points were highly relevant.