Some time ago an acquaintance of mine was saying how Instagram banned pictures depicting people committing self-harm (such as cutting themselves), as well as pictures with "cosmetic surgery" filters (in other words, pictures of people's faces with dotted lines indicating cosmetic surgery locations, or something like that). He expressed approval of both bans.
While I'm quite a free speech absolutist, I conceded that it's ok to ban the former. If anything is banned, that particular subject doesn't really rank very high in the outrage scale for being banned. However, I couldn't understand why they banned the latter. What for? What's the reasoning?
After wondering why I couldn't understand the reason for the ban, he responded with the archetypal response "if you don't understand it, I'm not going to explain it to you".
That genuinely left me completely perplexed. Why not? What exactly would be the problem in explaining it, if I don't understand it? Where's the issue here? What's so problematic in having a discussion about this subject? Why the refusal to explain? I don't get it. To this day I still don't get it.
While his political opinions are somewhat left of the center, he isn't really a full-on SJW. He's a reasonable person who can have completely reasonable back-and-forth discussions, where all participants listen to the other person and understand and acknowledge their points, and openly agree to the particulars that they agree with, and present reasonable and calm objections to the parts that they don't agree with. Perhaps for this reason that response was doubly baffling. I'm not exactly sure why he suddenly decided to shut himself completely off on such a conversation.
That "if you don't understand it, I'm not going to explain it to you" is quite a popular sentiment expressed by many SJWs when you start asking them too many difficult questions about their ideology and why they think things are like they claim they are.
If you think about it, it doesn't make much sense, and it's quite illogical. "If you don't understand it, I'm not going to explain it to you." How exactly does one thing follow from the other? What's the logical connection here? How exactly does "if you don't understand it" work as a reason or motivation for refusing to explain?
Also, rather illogically, the sentence would imply that if you do understand it already, then they would explain it... But wouldn't that be kind of pointless? If the other person already understands, there would be no need to explain it. The need to explain only exists if the other person does not understand. "I'm not going to explain it" all on its own would make some logical sense: It's an outright refusal to cooperate, to have a conversation, to even try to explain things. But that "if you don't understand it", as if it were the reason for the refusal, makes it completely illogical. Why add that part there? (And why is it so common? You hear it all the time.)
I know I'm over-analyzing that silly sentence, but it just baffles me.
Of course in the vast majority of cases it's just a cop-out. It's essentially a more or less direct admission that "I don't know how to explain it", an admission of running out of arguments, an admission that perhaps there is no arguments or rational explanations for the claim. Thus, it's usually an opinion held and believed based on principle, not based on reason.
While I'm quite a free speech absolutist, I conceded that it's ok to ban the former. If anything is banned, that particular subject doesn't really rank very high in the outrage scale for being banned. However, I couldn't understand why they banned the latter. What for? What's the reasoning?
After wondering why I couldn't understand the reason for the ban, he responded with the archetypal response "if you don't understand it, I'm not going to explain it to you".
That genuinely left me completely perplexed. Why not? What exactly would be the problem in explaining it, if I don't understand it? Where's the issue here? What's so problematic in having a discussion about this subject? Why the refusal to explain? I don't get it. To this day I still don't get it.
While his political opinions are somewhat left of the center, he isn't really a full-on SJW. He's a reasonable person who can have completely reasonable back-and-forth discussions, where all participants listen to the other person and understand and acknowledge their points, and openly agree to the particulars that they agree with, and present reasonable and calm objections to the parts that they don't agree with. Perhaps for this reason that response was doubly baffling. I'm not exactly sure why he suddenly decided to shut himself completely off on such a conversation.
That "if you don't understand it, I'm not going to explain it to you" is quite a popular sentiment expressed by many SJWs when you start asking them too many difficult questions about their ideology and why they think things are like they claim they are.
If you think about it, it doesn't make much sense, and it's quite illogical. "If you don't understand it, I'm not going to explain it to you." How exactly does one thing follow from the other? What's the logical connection here? How exactly does "if you don't understand it" work as a reason or motivation for refusing to explain?
Also, rather illogically, the sentence would imply that if you do understand it already, then they would explain it... But wouldn't that be kind of pointless? If the other person already understands, there would be no need to explain it. The need to explain only exists if the other person does not understand. "I'm not going to explain it" all on its own would make some logical sense: It's an outright refusal to cooperate, to have a conversation, to even try to explain things. But that "if you don't understand it", as if it were the reason for the refusal, makes it completely illogical. Why add that part there? (And why is it so common? You hear it all the time.)
I know I'm over-analyzing that silly sentence, but it just baffles me.
Of course in the vast majority of cases it's just a cop-out. It's essentially a more or less direct admission that "I don't know how to explain it", an admission of running out of arguments, an admission that perhaps there is no arguments or rational explanations for the claim. Thus, it's usually an opinion held and believed based on principle, not based on reason.
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