posted
I don't think Katie has ever proclaimed herself more righteous than anyone else. She's very down-to-earth and admits her failings often.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
If he left copies of his missives about on the coffee table, I would feel justified in picking up a copy, reading it over, then showing it to the other people in the living room. I might even be worked up about it.
I personally would not say "What a loser-face, look at his stupid ideas!" but i might say something to the effect of: "I don't think this was very well researched" and I would even bring it up to the host himself.
I was never arguing *for* insulting OSC. Everyone who says that he is insulting and condescending in his articles is right. And everyone who says that doesn't give us the right to be rude to him is right, too.
These are simple, basic rules we all learned in grade school. You don't have to stoop to someone's insulting level in order to converse with them. But you also don't have to put up with it silently.
Posts: 3516 | Registered: Sep 2002
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posted
Bokonon, you really didn't need to say that so rudely. You disappoint me. . . . . . . . . . . Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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quote:If he left copies of his missives about on the coffee table, I would feel justified in picking up a copy, reading it over, then showing it to the other people in the living room. I might even be worked up about it.
I personally would not say "What a loser-face, look at his stupid ideas!" but i might say something to the effect of: "I don't think this was very well researched" and I would even bring it up to the host himself.
I was never arguing *for* insulting OSC. Everyone who says that he is insulting and condescending in his articles is right. And everyone who says that doesn't give us the right to be rude to him is right, too.
Which would put you firmly out of the scope of this thread. No one's saying don't disagree, they're saying, don't be insulting. I think both sides are arguing past each other, or have spiraled down into ad hominid attacks. Really I think the unresolved debate (that in anyways parallels this thread's original topic) is what constitutes rude.
posted
The idea that seems to be being floated around here is that OSC has carte blanche to be a turd in whatever manner he likes, yet people can't respond to his stuff in kind. Yeah, he owns the site. So, what. If he doesn't like what people are saying about his stuff, he or his representatives have the right to kick people off of the site or ban them. Or better yet, he can jump into the thread and respond. What a thought, eh?
As far as I'm concerned, if he doesn't want to respond, this is his problem.
If people who are offended by what's being said by others about his stuff are offended, this is, likewise, their problem. They should jump in and call bullshit on what's being said, or say something. Hiding behind the fact that he owns the site as reason to not post aggressive posts about what he writes is lame and weak.
I'm glad OSC has enough respect for other people's opinions not to ban them for responding to him in the same way he 'converses' with them. That's fair. That's good. That is right. To do otherwise, to ban people for responding to him for doing what he does would be hypocritical. For others to call others out for responding to him in a similiar fashion is also hypocritical.
To sum it all up, if you don't like what someone says, respond or don't. Reply or don't. Answer stupidity and rudeness, if there is any, with facts and reason.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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quote: You'll notice that he's the only one in this scenario (myself included) that's not arguing about anything.
That's not necessarily a good thing. I strongly suspect that people would be less inclined to criticize the man -- or his beliefs -- if he bothered to defend his statements. It's all very well for him to do the public demagogue thing; that's perfectly normal and acceptable among pundits. What's unusual is the expectation that he is entitled to the same kind of audience-author bond extended to bloggers and authors who're more active on their own websites. He's simply not here enough to get the whole "personal bond" thing working for him -- and by not responding to (and possibly not even reading) criticisms of his articles, he presents the impression -- perhaps a correct one -- that he honestly doesn't care what is said about him here.
I'm inclined to believe the latter, myself. If he cared, I would have expected him to issue an apology a while ago. I'm not just speaking on other people's behalf, either; a while back, OSC completely misunderstood something I said, believing it to be an insult to his wife, and came back with a furious post that basically called me -- specifically and individually -- a waste of human life. I sent a hasty E-mail to the Cards to explain the situation, providing them with context, and Kristine replied quickly enough that she had not been offended, was not offended, and had in fact understood my original meaning. OSC, sadly, never replied.
I continue to use his living room because I like the people here, and I believe I'd like him as well under most circumstances. But I think anyone accusing anybody of being excessively rude to him is, quite frankly, missing the forest for the trees.
posted
I think OSC would love to post more on the forum but it would cut into his mystery novel reading time. And some of the other stuff he reviews. I think he writes books sometimes too.
I actually don't find reading mystery novels at all appealing. I tend to skip over those parts of the reviews. Also the parts about music (ever since that "give country a try" debacle) and also the parts about restaurants/city councilmen that don't exists outside of Greensboro.
Posts: 2010 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Hobbes, Of the things that I thought people might be taking as rude, that one was pretty low on the list. Let me explain why.
First, it was a relatively mild statment of my own opinion. What I wrote was what I thought. I read the medical colum and then the self-esteem one and I thought, "Does OSC do any research for his columns?" I specifically didn't make that the title of the thread, however, because I wanted it to be clear that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, even for myself. I wondered about it and leaned one way, but I don't actually read all that many of OSC's columns and for all I know, in the past he's done an obviously more thorough job of research. I didn't want the conversation to start with that as an accepted basis, so I didn't make it the title. But I did think it was important to convey the impression that I was starting from, which was that OSC had a particular stance of the self-esteem issue, read one article about it as he was perusing Scientific American, and decided to write a column on it without doing any more looking into it. I don't think saying that I wonder if he does any research based on that impression is something I shouldn't have done, nor do I think it was rude.
Second, I certainly said much more derogatory things later on in the thread. It's not even necessary a bad thing that someone doesn't do research for something. I almost never do research for anything I write on Hatrack. I doubt many people do. Were I to write a column on self-esteem similar to OSC's, I wouldn't do any research for it. I already know more than enough about that topic to speak about it authoritatively in that context without needing a research backup. I'm sure there's plenty of things OSC could write about in that context without needed to go and look things up about it and do a perfectly adequate job. My much more negative complaint was that it appeared that he needed to do research on this particular issue because he knew very little about it, but that for whatever reasons (and I think it's partially due to OSC's unchallenged esteem of his own intelligence that makes him think that his ideas have quality without needed support) he didn't do this research.
That's why I don't think that this comment was rude. I don't even think my treatment was "brutally honest". I wasn't going to flinch away from saying that I think he approached this situation in a very wrong manner, but aside from reiterating that I thought he did this wrong so that people couldn't shy away from it, I don't think I was really all that harsh. There might be some small stuff, but I don't see how I could have expressed the content that I did in a significantly nicer way without resorting to equivocation and passive-agressiveness. I don't have much repsect for either of these, nor do I think that they would have made my point any nicer really, although it might have appeared so on the surface.
posted
No matter what OSC says or the manner he says it in, it's not right to engage in low behavior ourselves. There nothing that another person can do (especially when we're talking about writing things over the internet) that makes you doing something wrong ok. OSC (if he read any of this or cares if he did, which I pretty strongly doubt) could spend next week's column calling me every name in the book and disparaging me in every way he can think of and it wouldn't change in the slightest that it would be wrong for me to do the same to him or intentionally set out to hurt him. And that's leaving aside that it would cheapen me to do any of those things.
If I'm getting support (and I don't necessarily think that I am) that it of the type that it's okay for me to be rude because OSC has definitely been rude, I don't want it. If I thought I was being rude or that I set out to express hate or whatever, I would admit I was wrong and appologize. I just don't think that this is the case.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
Dag, It's possible that I let my perspective of OSC as someone who has been pretty free with the disdain for my profession and colleages in the past and to be honest, I didn't really see that possible interpretation until I went back and looked at it after reading your posts.
However, here's why I think you're giving more credit than is due. It's possible that when he was talking about not seeing any scientifically valid self-esteem research showing benefits he was only talking about those used by the crap self-esteemers and he just expressed it very badly and didn't feel that he had to mention the other people who were doing plenty of valid self-esteem studies during the same time. However, I don't see how you get around lauding Baumeister et al. as the people who finally stood up and said this stuff was garbage as not talking about all the researchers. It's pretty clear that the Scientific American article was evaluating all the research and OSC talks about all this research when he's talking about the article and it's implications. I think it's pretty clear to me that he thinks that Baumeister and his colleagues are the first from any research background to seriously come out for the "simple common sense" on this issue. Were his description correct and this crap self-esteem had gone unchallenged by researchers for 20 or so years, I'd call the whole field a bunch of empty-headed charlatans too.
quote:However, I don't see how you get around lauding Baumeister et al. as the people who finally stood up and said this stuff was garbage as not talking about all the researchers.
You're right, that's the most problematic point. I may have colored my perception by something utterly unrelated: the high-voltage wire EMF scare of the late 80s-early 90s.
In that incident, the scientific community performed study after study based on two original studies that suggested a link. However, the first two studies were not double-blind: the researchers knew which houses had child cancer incidents when they rated the emf level in the house. And yes, that's "rated." They didn't measure the field, they estimated it based on proximity to high-voltage lines.
The vast, vast majority of the double-blind studies done later found no correlation at all. Two found some very, very minor correlation two two specific types of cancer. No physical mechanism was proposed by which the fields could cause cancer.
Yet the media (I almost want to capitalize in situations like this) continually harped on the "possible dangers." Finally, the NIH (I think) did a research review, and this is what started getting more realistic press coverage. (This is all summarized from memory from the book "Voodoo Science," but this account agrees with the other research I did on the subject.)
Fast forward: I have always seen the self-esteem "praise anything" mantra put forth with no mention of the contradicting studies. This is because I do not read in the field. If I came across that article, it would be the first one seriously documenting the scientific studies it does. My conclusion would certainly be something like, "Finally! Someone is speaking sense about this." By that, I would mean "Someone in the popular media." If I were writing an article, it's something I'd catch on final (third or fourth) edit, probably.
My expectation is that OSC doesn't do third or fourth edits on these pieces. Which is depressing, because they're still better written than most of my stuff.
Anyway, that's the scenario that flitted through my head as I read the article. I have no evidence of it, but I do think my knowledge level on this topic is closer to OSC's than yours is, so it seems at least possible to me.
posted
I can see what you're saying and how it's possible (although I'd add just barely to that). However, even if that was the case, my central point still apllies and I'd like to add to it that the idea that it's the media's responsibility to educate us is a really, really crappy one. The media and the audience they play to are not concerned with, and even hostile to the ideas of quality and complexity.
There were two best-selling books written for a non-techinical audience about this very issue in the early 90s. It's not like it's hidden in arcane publications or that there weren't efforts to make this public. A very little independent effort would have turned these books up. It's the very ideas of not wanting to look at any complexity and of accepting things that sound like what you want to believe instead of looking for credible and more complete sources that allowed people to get away with the crap self-esteem in the first place.
And, if my interpretation is correct (or even if it's ust what a lot of people took away from it), OSC not only is working under this type of thinking, but is also contributing to it's spread. I think the part of the point that comes across is that people don't need to look at stuff turned out by the researchers in this area (and by extention any of psychology at all) because they are so without rigor that they bought into this empty-headed idea of self-esteem.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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