Usually when people say "both siding", its more refering to an ad hominem falacy where someone tries to counter an argument by pointing to something bad the other side does that is separate (and hence irrelavent) to the original argument. I dont think that is what the person who you are responding to is doing because what they are saying is directly applicable to the issue at hand.
Great question. Are there logical arguments for why both-sidesing/whataboutism is bad, backed up with evidence, and a comparative analysis against arguments that claim it is good? Surely there must be a rational basis for the claim so often made.
Is pointing this out as helpful as coming up with a real solution? No, of course not. But I don't have a real solution, so I'm sharing what I do have, which I think is at least slightly better than nothing even if it's not much better.
I don't think false balance is relevant here, because that's about the question of how to present a controversy to less-informed audiences, which isn't at issue in this case; if you're reading an internet argument then you probably have a decent understanding of how internet arguments tend to go and what makes them go wrong.
So I see the axis between the two as one of honesty, not one of closed-mindedness. The actual problem is to move both of them to a more open-minded position, not to balance honest vs. dishonest.
The problem with having an oversensitive trolling detector is that then people can spew arbitrary nonsense and dismiss counterarguments as trolling, and observers don't get a chance to find out that what's being said doesn't withstand scrutiny. The problem with an undersensitive trolling detector is that discourse becomes an endurance contest rather than a test of who's actually right. Hence the need for a well-calibrated trolling detector, or rather, for norms that weight speech according to some reasonable proxy of whether it's the kind of contribution that stands or falls on its merits. This is the challenge.
Fair enough, but there are those who won't even engage with those ill-prepared to counter their ideas.
Someone is trying to talk about the marketplace of ideas without reasonably engaging with Mill[1]. The positing of an idea being viable if and only if passing "peer review" is beyond ridiculous from a purely Millian standpoint. In his own words[2]:
> ...though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.
I agree that CK was a political grifter (e.g. someone that found great wealth by partaking in inflammatory speech), but the marketplace of ideas allows for people like him to engage in any dialog he pleases. After all, TMZ does the same thing. Tabloids do the same thing. Tons of podcasts do the same thing. Hasan Piker, Destiny, Piers Morgan, Bill O'Reilly, and Alex Jones all do it, too. I may not agree with Charlie Kirk's politics or with his rhetorical methods, but I'll defend his right of free speech to the death.
> It requires shared standards of evidence, mutual respect, and actual expertise on the topics being discussed.
No it doesn't. This is a carefully-crafted contingency to ensure that you always have the higher ground via: "you're not an expert" (when experts can be, and sometimes are, wrong) or "you don't have the same standard or evidence as me" (when standards of evidence are often contextual).
[1] https://web.uncg.edu/dcl/courses/vicecrime/m3/part1.asp
[2] https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Courses/Western_Washington_...
If we define truth as something real, and something that we determine based on evidence and correspondence with reality, then you absolutely need some shared epistemological standards for what constitutes evidence and correspondence. I'm not sure if you need peer review for everything, but building expertise in those epistemological standards and approaches _is_ a requirement for well functioning marketplace of ideas, especially if our goal is to develop and understand the truth.
This is distinct from free speech -- I wouldn't want to impose restrictions on one's ability to speak, but that's not the same as saying all speech is equally valid in the pursuit of truth.
This is semantic posturing, as, at the end of the day, any "truth" will always require some degree of consensus. Even in the hardest of sciences, we must agree to some (definitionally unprovable) axioms by consensus. Logical positivism died many years ago (though I do know modern-day "rationalists" are attempting to reanimate its corpse).
Why not just embarrass him in a viral stunt. Nobody even tried to do that. They leaped all the way from 0 to 11 by shooting him dead.
https://x.com/Rightanglenews/status/1966264506486853810
Edit: Downvoters, if that wasn't calls to violence, especially at the end, post it on HN on a reply. I dare you to be consistent on your vote.
Oh good, then my usual strategy of completely ignoring these types is the correct response.
Edit: Also, what's the deal with calling everyone a "grifter"? I see no evidence that Charlie Kirk was insincere about what he believed, where's the "grifting"? Isn't any kind of political activity for pay "grifting" by this standard?
Surely if disagreement emerges about something: it makes sense to "debate" in some sense of the word. But only insofar as that's indistinguishable from "trying to reach a mutual conclusion."
The other use of that word — what we see in televised debates or these little Kirklike pop up stands — is where both sides are predisposed/rooted in some opinion and are instead vying over an audience (real or imagined). It's a social exercise masquerading as an intellectual one. Which, to be fair, is maybe an exercise worth engaging for a prospective president, but that nuance is lost in how we treat them.
I don't think that's its purpose. At its best, having your ideas challenged helps you sharpen and refine them so they're more nuanced and persuasive. But at a minimum it helps you understand what rhetoric works and what doesn't.
Its not like falacious arguments and bad faith rhetoric is a new phenomenon. They've been with us since the beginning of time. They are problems we have solutions to.
That kind of moderation encourages bad-faith behavior instead of preventing it.
I'm not a fan of the national month of mourning for a b-list podcaster that the right is trying to institute but this is just disingenuous. "Toxic"? "Intellectual harassment"?
Does the article's author think that standards of debate were any kinder and gentler in ancient Athens, the Roman Republic, British Parliament, revolutionary era United States, leftist Russian revolutionaries (until they stamped out any debate), etc?
>> This is exactly backwards from how the actual “marketplace of ideas” is supposed to work.
> Fundamentally, it’s not actually a marketplace, and the analogy starts to break down. One of my crank takes for awhile has been we should retire the term. It gives people a false sense of the inevitability of good ideas winning out.
>> The format actively discourages the kind of thoughtful, nuanced discussion that might actually change minds—the kind actually designed for persuasion
> I think you’re underselling this, a bit. Kirk wasn’t in the business (just) for money. It’s because those viral clips can persuade people. There’s a lot of people you can win over with zingers. Spectacle is persuasion. It shouldn’t be, but it is effective.
>> Klein is inadvertently endorsing a grift
> I don’t think it’s inadvertent, he’s smart enough to know better. In the circles he cares about, it’s better to be seen as “open minded” and “bipartisan” than accurate, even if it means inventing a legitimate counterparty that doesn’t exist. it’s toxic, and it’s precisely the tic Kirk exploited.
rolph•1h ago
"Kirk perfected this grift. As a recent detailed analysis of one of Kirk’s debates demonstrates, when a student showed up prepared with nuanced, well-researched arguments, Kirk immediately tried pivoting to culture war talking points and deflection tactics. When debaters tried to use Kirk’s own standards against him, he shifted subjects entirely. The goal was never understanding or persuasion—it was generating content for social media distribution."
gjsman-1000•55m ago
Who is to say whether the college student's positions were actually nuanced? Is well-researched just "agreed with my perspective" or a fact?
(Edit: I missed the hyperlink somehow, point still remains this is an interpretation dance.)
crtasm•46m ago