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james_nicoll took a poll asking "Does a reviewer need to read a book before reviewing it?":
Another of the "yes, but": yes, but the reviewer is obliged to say that they didn't read the whole book (whether that's "didn't finish" or "skimmed large amounts of detail about battles/guns/vampire sex/fashion and then skipped to the last three pages to see if the annoying main character got their comeuppance." And to say why s/he didn't finish the book, whether it's because the books flaws were too serious, at least in the part read—and I don't really believe that someone who cannot produce a readable paragraph for the first 50 pages will suddenly start doing so on page 51, nor yet that a book whose viewpoint for the first 50 pages is repulsive will suddenly change in that regard on page 51. Yes, I know, writers are not responsible for the viewpoints of all their characters, but this includes both nonfiction and third-person narrative. For that matter, "the narrator may be intended as a caricature, but listening to his voice is too disturbing, so I stopped" may not be a book review, but it is a reasonable statement.
On a Making Light open thread, Lizzy L. was talking a bit about what it meant to ask "is Limbaugh sane?" I replied:
Lizzy @405:
Generalizing from Limbaugh: Treating "sane" as a yes/no question collapses multiple questions (I'm not sure how many) and oversimplifies the answers to at least some of those questions. "Does he know what he's saying?" for example can be "does he understand what the words he's using mean to most people?" and "…to his expected listener(s)?" and "Does he realize people are taking him seriously, rather than thinking he's joking and/or exaggerating for effect?" and probably a few other things. Both of those are different from "Does he believe he's telling the truth?" and "Does he care whether what he's saying is true?"
All of those are somewhat connected, and would be different from, say, "is this an appropriate scale of reaction to this event or statement?" which is something else that people might mean when they ask about someone's sanity. "Appropriate" is itself a judgment, of course: but there are times that I consider myself to be overreacting, in which case it makes sense to stop, take a deep breath, go get some protein, and then reconsider. (And someone else saying I was overreacting would be a different thing.)
All of that, I think, has to take into account that there is no ISO standard human being or set of appropriate reactions (and watch out for people who want you to believe that there is, especially if their standard is like them and not like you).
[I'm going to stop here, because otherwise it would take hour or weeks and want to be a post on my own journal, not a comment in an ML open thread.]
nancylebov was asking about whether people would choose to stop disliking something, and if so, what:
The Sarah Palin example in the comments leads to a useful distinction: does stopping disliking something mean actively liking or enjoying it?
There are a lot of things I have no real opinion about, and that just don't impinge on me that much. There's clothing I dislike, but there's other clothing that I don't wear for other reasons: for example, I don't dislike wetsuits, I've just never had occasion to use one.
I don't need or particularly want to like coffee, but it would be useful to be able to turn the dislike down enough that I could use it as a source of caffeine when tea isn't available. I don't actually like cola, but I can drink it at need, in the same sort of context.
From another angle, the question might be, how much would starting to like X change the rest of my personality, opinions, or life? I didn't like horseradish until a few years ago; I do now. That's mildly useful, but I'm not attending horseradish festivals, or changing my entire approach to food. Learning to like cooked vegetables (which was mostly about discovering the right way to cook things that aren't carrots or potatoes) made more of a difference.
Starting to like exercise made a major difference: I like it enough that I spend a significant amount of time at it, and that's time I'm not spending on something else.
There are some things where I would like to see/hear/feel/understand what people who like them are enjoying, and enjoyment might come with knowing that. Some music is like that: I don't have a good ear. Actively liking romance novels I think would involve a significantly different attitude toward life and relationships. And I have no shortage of things I want to read already: it's not like someone realizing that the combination of what they like and what they can safely eat is dangerously, or even tediously, small.
In a locked post, someone wrote "Seen in a locked post about sexual orientation identity labels: "I think 'sapiosexual' is, at best, xenophobic." If you understand this viewpoint and you are willing to explain it, I would really appreciate that.":
This is not what the other person was trying to say, but a thought related to it: while I like the term "sapiosexual," I think defining it as an orientation like lesbian, bi, gay, or heterosexual is the wrong axis, or maybe the wrong level. I think it's more like having a thing for particular kinds of voice (whether that's baritones or French accents) or long hair, something that overlaps the others. Being attracted by intelligence (either in terms of who you want to get to know, or good-conversation-as-foreplay) isn't limited to people who would otherwise be described as bisexual. And it rarely if ever overrides other distinctions: someone who self-describes as sapiosexual is likely to still be looking only at people who have other things in common. Hmmm. Maybe this is what zie was getting at: if someone says "I'm sapiosexual" but all their partners are of their own race or ethnicity, or brought up in their own class or region, that implies that they don't see intelligence if it comes with the "wrong" skin color or accent or cuisine.
[And now I'm wondering whether it would be inappropriate to include this in my next "save comments" post, given that the original poster might well read that.]
From a Making Light thread that's mostly about theMichigan Hutaree militia, but also, via conlangs*, Tolkien:
You're far from alone in not hating Bombadil.
On the other hand, I suspect that when I next reread, I'm going to find myself unhappy with the Goldberry part of it—she's presented entirely as supplemental to him. People reasonably complain about Eowyn giving up what she wanted and valued in order to marry Faramir, but Eowyn is an actual character in a way that I don't remember Goldberry being. (And Tom has what at least sounds like a person's name, part of a larger social structure, and Goldberry's doesn't. Even though Tom is sui generis and there's a mention of Goldberry being a daughter of some kind of river spirit.)
cakmpls doesn't understand the concept of 'safe space' because we can't entirely control the behavior of other people:
I think this is part of why Wiscon is referring to "safer space": it can be about expectations of behavior (for example, if one student is calling another names, or pulling her hair, do the teachers stop that, ignore it, or encourage it?) and/or about who is allowed to enter an area.
I cannot count on controlling other people's behavior. Nonetheless, we do influence other people's behavior. It makes a difference whether, if a coworker is yelling at me about something trivial, my boss tells the coworker they're out of line, or tells me that I shouldn't let it bother me.
james_nicoll took a poll asking "Does a reviewer need to read a book before reviewing it?":Another of the "yes, but": yes, but the reviewer is obliged to say that they didn't read the whole book (whether that's "didn't finish" or "skimmed large amounts of detail about battles/guns/vampire sex/fashion and then skipped to the last three pages to see if the annoying main character got their comeuppance." And to say why s/he didn't finish the book, whether it's because the books flaws were too serious, at least in the part read—and I don't really believe that someone who cannot produce a readable paragraph for the first 50 pages will suddenly start doing so on page 51, nor yet that a book whose viewpoint for the first 50 pages is repulsive will suddenly change in that regard on page 51. Yes, I know, writers are not responsible for the viewpoints of all their characters, but this includes both nonfiction and third-person narrative. For that matter, "the narrator may be intended as a caricature, but listening to his voice is too disturbing, so I stopped" may not be a book review, but it is a reasonable statement.
On a Making Light open thread, Lizzy L. was talking a bit about what it meant to ask "is Limbaugh sane?" I replied:
Lizzy @405:
Generalizing from Limbaugh: Treating "sane" as a yes/no question collapses multiple questions (I'm not sure how many) and oversimplifies the answers to at least some of those questions. "Does he know what he's saying?" for example can be "does he understand what the words he's using mean to most people?" and "…to his expected listener(s)?" and "Does he realize people are taking him seriously, rather than thinking he's joking and/or exaggerating for effect?" and probably a few other things. Both of those are different from "Does he believe he's telling the truth?" and "Does he care whether what he's saying is true?"
All of those are somewhat connected, and would be different from, say, "is this an appropriate scale of reaction to this event or statement?" which is something else that people might mean when they ask about someone's sanity. "Appropriate" is itself a judgment, of course: but there are times that I consider myself to be overreacting, in which case it makes sense to stop, take a deep breath, go get some protein, and then reconsider. (And someone else saying I was overreacting would be a different thing.)
All of that, I think, has to take into account that there is no ISO standard human being or set of appropriate reactions (and watch out for people who want you to believe that there is, especially if their standard is like them and not like you).
[I'm going to stop here, because otherwise it would take hour or weeks and want to be a post on my own journal, not a comment in an ML open thread.]
nancylebov was asking about whether people would choose to stop disliking something, and if so, what:The Sarah Palin example in the comments leads to a useful distinction: does stopping disliking something mean actively liking or enjoying it?
There are a lot of things I have no real opinion about, and that just don't impinge on me that much. There's clothing I dislike, but there's other clothing that I don't wear for other reasons: for example, I don't dislike wetsuits, I've just never had occasion to use one.
I don't need or particularly want to like coffee, but it would be useful to be able to turn the dislike down enough that I could use it as a source of caffeine when tea isn't available. I don't actually like cola, but I can drink it at need, in the same sort of context.
From another angle, the question might be, how much would starting to like X change the rest of my personality, opinions, or life? I didn't like horseradish until a few years ago; I do now. That's mildly useful, but I'm not attending horseradish festivals, or changing my entire approach to food. Learning to like cooked vegetables (which was mostly about discovering the right way to cook things that aren't carrots or potatoes) made more of a difference.
Starting to like exercise made a major difference: I like it enough that I spend a significant amount of time at it, and that's time I'm not spending on something else.
There are some things where I would like to see/hear/feel/understand what people who like them are enjoying, and enjoyment might come with knowing that. Some music is like that: I don't have a good ear. Actively liking romance novels I think would involve a significantly different attitude toward life and relationships. And I have no shortage of things I want to read already: it's not like someone realizing that the combination of what they like and what they can safely eat is dangerously, or even tediously, small.
In a locked post, someone wrote "Seen in a locked post about sexual orientation identity labels: "I think 'sapiosexual' is, at best, xenophobic." If you understand this viewpoint and you are willing to explain it, I would really appreciate that.":
This is not what the other person was trying to say, but a thought related to it: while I like the term "sapiosexual," I think defining it as an orientation like lesbian, bi, gay, or heterosexual is the wrong axis, or maybe the wrong level. I think it's more like having a thing for particular kinds of voice (whether that's baritones or French accents) or long hair, something that overlaps the others. Being attracted by intelligence (either in terms of who you want to get to know, or good-conversation-as-foreplay) isn't limited to people who would otherwise be described as bisexual. And it rarely if ever overrides other distinctions: someone who self-describes as sapiosexual is likely to still be looking only at people who have other things in common. Hmmm. Maybe this is what zie was getting at: if someone says "I'm sapiosexual" but all their partners are of their own race or ethnicity, or brought up in their own class or region, that implies that they don't see intelligence if it comes with the "wrong" skin color or accent or cuisine.
[And now I'm wondering whether it would be inappropriate to include this in my next "save comments" post, given that the original poster might well read that.]
From a Making Light thread that's mostly about the
You're far from alone in not hating Bombadil.
On the other hand, I suspect that when I next reread, I'm going to find myself unhappy with the Goldberry part of it—she's presented entirely as supplemental to him. People reasonably complain about Eowyn giving up what she wanted and valued in order to marry Faramir, but Eowyn is an actual character in a way that I don't remember Goldberry being. (And Tom has what at least sounds like a person's name, part of a larger social structure, and Goldberry's doesn't. Even though Tom is sui generis and there's a mention of Goldberry being a daughter of some kind of river spirit.)
cakmpls doesn't understand the concept of 'safe space' because we can't entirely control the behavior of other people:I think this is part of why Wiscon is referring to "safer space": it can be about expectations of behavior (for example, if one student is calling another names, or pulling her hair, do the teachers stop that, ignore it, or encourage it?) and/or about who is allowed to enter an area.
I cannot count on controlling other people's behavior. Nonetheless, we do influence other people's behavior. It makes a difference whether, if a coworker is yelling at me about something trivial, my boss tells the coworker they're out of line, or tells me that I shouldn't let it bother me.
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