Quick Sketch: Silo Walls

 Every time I hear an add for "Ground News" on a podcast and it's "blindspot" feature, I think of digging your way out of a hole. A problem that likely does not require a technical solution, one theoretically should be able to observe that if the news they consume leaves them frustrated and angry then it is likely because it doesn't do a very good job of explaining the world one lives in and the simplest solution is to stop consuming news.

Indeed: "If the map disagrees with the ground, the map is wrong."

But you know, and I know, that I at least am conceited. I'm currently on like day 5 of not checking The Age headlines (I don't even read the articles) to actually stimulate negative affect in myself. It's not so much that I don't need to because I'm on the ground, it's that I have this really good solution to the problem I always had with a factually accurate centre-left broadsheet paper ie. the least bias most professional news source operating in my home turf. It didn't keep me informed in Mexico, just aggravated me there, the best that could be said is that it vaguely reminded me that I had come from somewhere.

I get addicted to getting angry, so that's an obstacle to trying to find the best case presented for a position I'm not sold on, not necessarily even one I disagree with.

I could pluck out a myriad of examples, but as a quick sketch, just the last stimulus of something I put on anticipating I would dislike it so that I could fight the closing in of silo walls. Something I really struggled with, a video titled "how liberal feminism turns into fasc*m" I can't be f**ucked embedding it in this post, but to describe my problem, essentially one of tolerance ironically here's the link with a timestamp of when I gave up on a video whose title sounded dubious but intriguing.

Without reviewing just yet the transcript to make any specific point, I don't know why my algorithm threw this video up for me, again through conceit I feel some vanity that Youtube recommends me content I like and dislike, but it probably has determined via supercomputing that it can hook my attention with content I dislike.

But it's not like this video had to fail with me. Feminism is many things, it has many waves, I'm not poli-sci enough to know really what liberal feminism specifically and explicitly means and is meant to mean to people and I certainly don't know what the alternative is.

So the bad start, was that I think this video presumes knowledge on the part of the viewer. I don't need a "Crash Course Political Science" animated infographic explainer of the history of liberal feminism and its alternatives (male chauvinism?) I just need some statement of what someone is standing for, and preferably upfront, like you know from me that I think being in a silo is a bad thing, I'm pro connection and community despite acting like a cunt in prose.

Which meant I was basically sprawling as the video host launches straight into how a Roman teenage girl went to some all-male Italian Fascist meeting and it caused bemusement and derision, and now all grown up that teenage girl is now poised to be Italy's first female prime minister. (In fact she is Italy's first female Prime Minister).

Then I was already kind of tuned out, but I next noticed the video host referring to Richard V. Reeves book "Of Boys and Men" being well received, and a few examples of how it was well received and then the host gave me the first clue as to what she might actually stand for because my inference was that she thinks it is bad that the Overton window has made it okay for Richard V. Reeves to publish a book employing the principles of feminism to look at social issues effecting boys and men.

At which point I gave up and switched out, according to my history, to a video (that wasn't very good) about how the Los Angeles Clippers re-activated elite Russel Westbrook again.

This brings me to one of my most persistent peeves: the misunderstanding of "open mindedness"

One of my youtube heroes, someone capable of persuading me out of my own positions on things is a youtuber by the handle of "Theramintrees" an honest, thoughtful qualified psych-counsellor of some kind that produces one or two in-depth animated videos on subjects of significance once, maybe twice a year if we are lucky.

Once he recounted attending a training session where he was asked to be open minded, and he stated that an open mind wasn't a bucket that catches everything thrown in it, but a sieve that filters all the beliefs thrown in it to retain only knowledge. The instructor said "well, I'm a bucket."

In my experience, people who implore me to have an open mind, are telling me to suspend my critical faculties (a sieve, a funnel - pick your metaphorical sorting device) and accept uncritically what I am being told (a bucket). An open mind is to give up on making sense of the world, the idea that something is and therefore something must have happened.

There was a very interesting exchange between Alex O'Conner and the host of "Unbelievable" Justin Brierly. I can't find the exact one to link, and I'm not supposed to be investing time doing research on these sketches, so I'll advise you not to take it on trust what I'm relaying, before you accept my conclusion. 

Justin (a theist) wanted to ask Alex O'Conner (a lapsed Catholic atheist) about "free will" and reason, with the very interesting position that reason requires free will. Alex attempts to explain, that reason actually denies free will, for to be reasonable means you are compelled (ie. not free) to accept the conclusions reason shows to be true.

Alex demonstrates this to Justin, by provided a reason to believe that god doesn't exist just glibly pointing out that animals suffer unnecessarily and challenges Justin to freely will himself to no longer believe in God. That may appear to demonstrate experimentally that reason is at least compatible with free will, but actually even though the case is poorly made, unnecessary animal suffering is a compelling reason to reject the hypothesis of an omni-benevolent (all loving) and certainly a tri-omni classical god. The experiment while methodologically insufficient is probably sufficient to demonstrate that Justin is irrational, he irrationally believes in whatever god he believes in.

For me, the value of theological debates, is the vast data set, and I bring it up to point out I know how one can appear closed minded. Just the fact that atheists exist, is evidence that there is no argument for god, produced in Millenia that can compel a reasonable person to believe in god. The probability that anyone will come up with such an argument, at this stage of the game is so low that it might appear if you encounter an atheist that they are completely closed to any argument. But the fact is, you are probably just making one of the same 13 fallacious arguments for god that are always made. It's just that you are in fact not open to the possibility that you are wrong about this, so you believe a valid and sound and compelling argument must exist, despite having access to the internet.

Let me put it this way, if you flip a coin, catch it and cover it up - I am 100% open to the possibility that that coin is either tales or heads. Once you reveal that the coin is heads, that is I've examined the case for the coin being tales and found it wanting, my open mindedness has done its job, I cannot be faulted for being closed to the possibility that something that demonstrably isn't may in fact be.

So in trying to escape my silo, I am and remain open to the possibility of being convinced by a compelling argument. What I'm closed to is this:

I want to start this video by reading you a tweet
that was published by Politico Europe in September 2022.
So in 1992, a 15 year old schoolgirl went to join her
local branch of the far right Youth Front in Rome.
The all-male group of radicals met her with bemusement.
30 years later, Giorgia Meloni is on course
to become Italy's first female prime minister.
I could end the video here, to be honest, ~ transcript by youtube algorithms, emphasis mine

 I read "I could end the video here, to be honest" as "boom! case closed." as in the video host, or at least script writer that I'm assuming are one and the same, thinks this tweet essentially determines or maybe overdetermines the case that liberal feminism turns into f*scism. Where I assume f*scism is an expurgated "fascism".

I watch stuff like this, because I am not capable of persuading myself of the premise, I actually need someone to make a sound, valid and compelling argument to persuade me. My silo is probably shaped by the limits of my knowledge, intellect and imagination eg. I can't imagine how decreasing freedom of speech on political subjects can be a good thing for human flourishing, or I can't imagine how tolerating paralegal processes arbitrated by enthusiastic activists of no particular qualification is preferable to a flawed and inefficient due process that bends over backwards to protect the innocent.

The walls are built out of fait accomplis, blatent assertions, lack of definitions and clear positions, fallacies and cognitive distortions. This is what I cannot get purchase on.

So as a layman, not a trained rhetorician, not a trained sceptic or philosopher or logician, if I were to attempt to put this opening barrage into the form of a syllogism it would be something like this:

1. First premise, under liberal feminism women are permitted freedom of association.
2. Second premise, Georgia Meloni is a woman and therefore a going concern of feminism.
3. Third premise, far right groups are bad and therefore people should not be permitted to join them.
4. Fourth premise, Georgia Meloni is the prime minister of Italy.
5. Conclusion: Liberal feminism caused Georgia Meloni to become prime minister of Italy. 

 This may not be a fair representation of why the host thinks this is such a mic drop video ending argument. Hopefully it illustrates my confusion as to what liberal feminism is, and my inference that the host at this stage believes that feminism dictates what a teenage girl such as Georgia Meloni can do.

Like who are the liberal feminists in this story of a tweet? Is it the Roman chapter of Youth Front circa 1992 who through their embrace of liberal feminism accepted with bemusement Georgia where if not but the inroads made by liberal feminism into fascist youth groups, we would not have Georgia Meloni as the first female prime minister of Italy, but a male fascist prime minister of Italy?

It is frankly in my estimation, not just not a mic drop, case closed, dead to rights, smoking gun. It's nonsense; predicated on the assumption that fascism is bad and therefore anything that permits it must be terminated with extreme prejudice. I'm not saying fascism is good, but I could be convinced that say Leninism, Trotskyism, Stalinism, Maoism, Xi-ism, Putinism etc. can create fascist free places that are terrible if not worse than Italy at any point in its post war history including the present day.

Furthermore, to say you could end the video here, without bothering beyond telling an anecdote about a far right woman existing and coincidently winning an Italian federal election in a country famous for changing governments as often as it changes pasta water, where Mussolini's daughter was a member of parliament, where the previous government was a party formed by a comedian, where Bologna is communist and in Sicily you can be arrested for mentioning the Moors, this anecdote and opener is a better case for Italy's problem being that it is democratic, voting produces fascist governments. The same can be said of Brazil, where people can vote for the Socialist Lula (incumbent) one election, throw him in prison the next, vote in the fascist/trumpist Bolsonaro or whatever the next election, then vote Lula back in the next election. 

Shockingly, voters in Brazil and Italy, (and France) have choices more substantial than picking between a candidate who thinks his opponent's 2% tax on nickel goes to far and a candidate who thinks his opponent's 2% tax on nickel doesn't go far enough.

I care about Italy, I may if I lived there be pulling my hair out over Giorgia's election. But what it definitely doesn't do, is make the case that liberal feminism, what I still don't know what that is and can't infer it from the anecdote that she feels is sufficient to make the case, is; is to blame. Like maybe a complete bungling of a pandemic response is to blame, including long standing structural problems with Italy's ability to inform and educate its public. I don't fucking know. Opening this way, makes me feel that I'm not watching a video intended to make a persuasive argument, but to appeal to an audience that already agrees with the video's premise likely for insufficient and prejudicial reasons.

In collapse feminism,
I write about
liberal writer Richard Reeves,
who wrote a book on the plight of the modern man.
Maybe you've seen his face already.
He's been interviewed on various YouTube channels and
the videos have gone viral.
So in the book,
he argues that we have reached a point in history
where gender inequality
may not be as black and white as he used to be
or might even be reversing itself.
To make this statement, he used data
showing that boys are underperforming at school,
that they don't go to university as much as girls do,
that men, black men specifically
are more likely to go to jail, etc., etc..
Now, while
all these facts are true and verified,
Reeves decision to group them all
and analyze them as part of a bigger phenomenon
of reversal of gender inequality is a choice.
In fact, the idea that gender inequalities
reversing itself or that
matriarchy is on the rise has emerged a long time ago
in men's rights movements.
It remained a niche idea, a sort of conspiracy theory
shared by small groups of men
until the manosphere grew online
and spread this idea in the media.
And now Jubilee makes middle ground videos about it.
So that means that we are now in the Overton Window.
This idea is now deemed acceptable
from now on
to believe that matriarchy is on the rise
became a valid framework from which to think,
to write, to theorize.
And that's how you end up with this book.
Written by a respectable liberal,
praised by establishment media
giving credit and a liberal aesthetic
to an idea that emerged and remains
manospheres conspiracy theory.
This idea is precisely about how this phenomenon
expands in feminist spheres.
How liberal feminism turns into fascism
and what we can do about it.

So that's a large excerpt, and I share it because while it started to lose me in my initial attempt to find an intriguing path out of my silo, on reading the transcript from the video...let me resist a temptation to get ahead of myself.

This section I began after the offputting opening start to form an impression as to what the video actually stood for. Because it seemed to me that what it views as a problem, is that the Overton window is not under control - ie. society determines the Overton window, the Overton window is not dictated by some illiberal form of feminism. Hence someone like Richard Reeve's is permitted to make a sound and valid case for an idea that emerges out of disreputable male rights activists (ad hominem and genetic fallacies). 

Those are the two pieces I highlighted. So it seemed to me, this is essentially an argument for nationalizing a resource so it can be rationed out - essentially dictating the ideas the public can be exposed to.

So now rereading it, I'm starting to wonder if the video creator isn't advocating any alternate form of feminism but in fact hates feminism and is pro some kind of Stepford Wife Jordan Peterson characature. I'm genuinely confused. Because this attempt to explain the technical concept of the Overton window comes across as incoherent. 

I mean it has to be incoherent, because statements like "matriarchy is on the rise" don't fucking mean anything. Matriarchy if used demands explaining because there is no shared understanding of what it means. If you look up matriarchy on wikipedia we can see that there's a general consensus that a matriarchal society has never been observed in human history anywhere, but that depends on your definition of matriarchy. Generally it means something like a society where women enforce property rights.

In my experience though, if someone invokes the term "patriarchy" they are not referring to the historical patriarchy of pre Roman republic which was pre Roman empire but post Roman monarchy, and they may say that patriarchy simply means that societal outcomes favour men over women (ie. inequality favoring men is a fact) but often context suggests patriarchy is being employed as a conspiracy theory ie. men are conspiring to keep women down. This is a common Motte-and-Bailey strategy, because the banal interpretation of patriarchy suggests emotionally it is an equivalent statement to "giraffes are taller than elephants" like there's just something about the ordinary operation of human society that means on many measures it is better to be a man. There's no suggestion that giraffes are greater in dignity than elephants or have more intrinsic worth, and men and women though unequal in whatever - retirement fund balances eg. - this is something we've noticed happening and needs redressing. Nobody should be getting upset or distressed by observing this patriarchy. But in my experience people do and make enemies out of giraffes for being tall because they seem to have the impression that giraffes dedicate their lives to being taller than elephants.

If I strike you as incoherent and frankly insulting psychobabble then I have failed to describe the Motte and Bailey rhetorical strategy of dishonest argument. 

I'm not going to escape my silo via incoherent arguments. If someone decides to group a bunch of statistical categories together to establish that the patriarchy exists and persists in existing and is a problem. Like you take victims of crime vs. perpetrators of crime, net-unadjusted income, asset ownership, political offices, representation on boards of governance, etc. stuff we know has disparities between men and women and use that curated list to say "okay Patriarchy exists" which either does or doesn't mean "the Patriarchy" actively is producing these disparities (ie. how efficient is the patriarchy?) and say this is valid, and then someone says okay, using that exact methodology here are statistical categories that go against men - victims of crime, education, workforce participation, life expectancy, suicide, homicide, incarceration, pattern baldness, erectile dysfunction etc. that has to be as valid for saying "Matriarchy exists" because it is the same methodology. 

In both cases, it need not be a conspiracy, just systemic patriarchy and systemic matriarchy coexisting.  With those systems not just being legal systems, economic systems, educational systems producing gender disparities, but biological systems, physical systems too.

It becomes super incoherent if, for example the pay gap in 1977 was greater than the pay gap in 2024 to conclude by this methodology that Patriarchy is on the rise. And then, if someone pulls out verifiable, factual data that boys are going backwards in education to conclude that "matriarchy being on the rise" is a fringe conspiracy theory...

It's incoherent to the point of being unintelligible. 

If your approach is to say, an argument is sound and valid if it reaches my conclusion, an argument is not sound and invalid if it doesn't reach my conclusion. That is an egregious form of confirmation bias. A failure to identify that if disparity is sufficient to conclude that there is systemic oppression, then that the justice system is matriarchal, the education system is matriarchal, the economy is patriarchal, sports are patriarchal and black supremacist but not as anti-white as they are anti-asian and anti-latin american, education is both a Jewish and Asian conspiracy etc. these are all your conclusions you are obliged to accept. It's not a conclusion pick and mix if you are going to waste peoples fucking time with arguments for your prejudice.

If that is your approach, I'm not going to escape my silo.

Okay, let's go.
So earlier this month,
journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer
interviewed Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti
and talk TV over the war in Gaza.
And this is what she said: “time for this.
Oh my god, for the love of god,
let me finish the sentence, man.
Maybe you not use to women talking
I don't know.
But I'd like to finish the sentence.” Anyway.
So as many have already pointed out,
the journalist's behavior is completely inappropriate.
She utilizes feminism for racist purposes
because she claims that Barghouti won't let her speak
because she's a woman.
If you watch the full interview,
you see that
Barghouti struggles to put just one sentence together
because he's interrupted all the time.
This final attack, an attack on his character, is racist
because it is based on the assumption
that all Arab men, including Mustafa, are misogynist.
In fact, Mustafa didn't say anything sexist,
is not known for his sexism.
So this assumption is solely based on racist biases.

This follows from the Overton window section, which followed from the tweet about Giorgia becoming president. I am no closer to understanding what the video's position on feminism is.

She highlights an incident where someone tried to look cool and wound up looking dumb, and trusting in her evaluation, that appears to be the consensus. This news anchor was overconfident.

It's probably reasonable to infer that when the anchor said "Maybe you are not used to women talking I don't know." that it comes from a racist place. It is however no matter how reasonable, just an inference. I don't know the content of this news anchor's mind. It may just be sexist, like she is always engaging in her mind with a cartoon stereotype of a man that is always mansplaining shit to her.

What would help me out of my silo, is if she were like "here she is engaging with a non-Arab man who she also has a different editorial position on, and see how polite she is letting this guy get out full sentences and not caring when she interrupts her."

Now, mind-reading, when people are like "I know why you do what you do" which is a recognized cognitive distortion, like if you had a stalker that knew that you didn't invite him to your party because you can't admit you are in love with him, you'd say that guys nutz, but when people know that the reason they became a school crossing supervisor is because they are nazi sympathizers trying to bring back fascism - that's not nuts because studying the humanities everyone knows, gives people super powers.

So the confidence with which the video began to assert what it cannot know, without yet making its point. I mean it was either going to continue to fail to convince me that the problem with feminism is that it is too liberal and tolerant, or it was going to land squarely in my silo by pointing out that this news anchor doesn't understand feminism. 

Something I would whole heartedly agree on, is that across the spectrum we have a distribution issue. We say one thing, and people hear another. The author of "Men explain things to me." from which "mansplaining" is derived is on record saying "I don't think you fight condescension with condescension."

Many people, I infer, appear to have been told the concept of mansplaining (explaining to an expert their area of expertise by a non-expert, ie. a man explaining to a woman what it is to be a woman) and heard "it is illegitimate for men to explain anything to a woman ever." and you can generate a situation where a journalist, almost by definition a non-expert on the myriad topics they have to cover any given day, they are merely a presenter, feels it is illegitimate for a male expert on say, Palestine to interrupt her to make a point, explain or correct something she got wrong.

Equally, "virtue-signalling" was a potentially useful psychology term for the behaviour of being "all talk" ie. people who are trying to garner esteem for virtuous character without the inconvenience of taking virtuous action. But many, too many who had the concept explained to them heard "it is illegitimate for anyone to express a position in favour of any social good ever." So to them someone who lives sustainably off the grid in an earth ship made of garbage running their internet off a combination of solar and wind posting "climate action now" is doing the same fucking thing as someone who fly's from Perth to Los Angeles for two weeks to post photos of themselves eating In and Out Burger and Barbacoa and Birria and posts "climate action now".

If her thesis is, activism is bad because there's no quality control to ensure progress. She would resolutely be in my silo.

I honestly have no idea where she is going, and her video at least has lost my attention despite how stimulating the first fiveish minutes proved. I have no interest in waiting to see whether she eventually makes an argument as opposed to a procession of non-sequiturs of things she doesn't personally like.

In conclusion, I may appear to be in a silo, my mind closed to other ways of thinking. But alas every time I try to venture outside my silo, my impression of the world outside the silo gets reinforced.

The world outside my silo is truisms, from which nobody needs actual arguments because if you aren't already convinced by truisms, clearly you are simply defective. Fascism is bad, it's perfectly true, you don't need a whole video essay on why fascism is bad (but maybe one on what fascism is) but therefore liberal feminism is bad? What? I don't follow. "Well don't you understand that fascism is bad." Yeah, I do. Do you? "Did you hear me when I said that fascism is bad?" Yeah. I agree. I just don't understand what that true statement says about liberal feminism. "Okay, now I'm getting confused. You heard that I said fascism right?"

And so on. That is my enduring impression of literally everything the world has to offer me, outside my silo. I'll keep looking, because it is hard to be afraid when people keep doing the thing that hasn't convinced me yet.