6 Comments
Dec 20, 2022Liked by Bentham's Bulldog

I see what you're saying.

Not everyone can see, so you're discriminating against them. This makes you an Ableist.

'I see what you're saying' is a figure of speech. It doesn't belong in the category of discrimination.

Yes it does. It erases sightless people. Ableist.

I literally saw this argument made against someone on LinkedIn.

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Dec 20, 2022Liked by Bentham's Bulldog

Unfortunately, I think a lot of American policy debate is like this. However, as a debater in Canada, I assure the requirements of our style of debate (parliamentary) mean that points must be 1. fewer in number and more substantial 2. easily communicated to the judge and other debaters 3. relevant to the topic and only to the topic (not the moral status of the debaters). If your university has a parliamentary team you should join it, the community is much better!

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>(1) Access – normative knowledge-making practices are steeped in expert vernaculars that crowd-out minority participation

It's surprising to me how truly hilariously bad some woke arguments are. At best this argument will be self-undermining because the arguer will use the same methods of inquiry and argumentation already present in the public policy and debate institutions that they're criticizing - surveying people's feelings and making an appeal to least harm seem like common strategies that both experts and these arguers have used. At worst it will entail a global skepticism: academic knowledge is value-laden, personal testimony is value-laden, knowledge from the state is value-laden; ergo if we endorse a principle that we shouldn't believe value-laden knowledge claims, we should suspend judgment on every subject matter, including paradoxically, the subject matter of whether it is true that we should suspend judgment on every subject matter. This entailment would further undermine any subsequent points they make in the debate, which is just pretty funny.

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How did a private group chat screenshot make it into the hands of these other debaters?!

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One sent it to a mutual friend, and he turned out to be a little snake in the grass, and he sent it to people that don't like me.

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It was a good article!

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