> Even as we reach for the less terrible of two terrible ideas, we’re constantly reminded of how little say we have at all. Neither liberal feminists nor libertarians, radical feminists nor the religious right, can hear us speak in our own words. They do not want to hear us; they want to collect the scraped-bare “facts” of our lives and call them data.
The author laments that data and statistics have not proven effective tools unto themselves. And to quote you:
> To form a useful opinion about sex worker laws, that’s what I need. Facts totally divorced from human empathy
What the article does is provide real-life anecdata of how public policy has been harmful to sex-workers. This is useful information: seeing a law or policy, and then seeing a counter-example of how it didn't work in practice, some times even in spite of good-intentions, from people who have access to data.
A scientist will build their hypotheses first, then build the data to either affirm or refute their intuition. And this article can inform future policy-making and data acquisition.
> “This is useful information: seeing a law or policy, and then seeing a counter-example of how it didn't work in practice, some times even in spite of good-intentions, from people who have access to data.
A scientist will build their hypotheses first, then build the data to either affirm or refute their intuition. And this article can inform future policy-making and data acquisition.”
I suspect it’s just an agree-to-disagree situation, but I disagree very strongly about all this, and in particular I disagree very much that any aspect of this piece offers useful anecdata to either inform, confirm or refute policy. A single narrative, the interpretation of which I’m likely to overstate because of the emotional weight of the person’s experiences, just cannot count for much.
What is the emotional equivalent of multiplying this article by ~1 / 50 million to give it around the right amount of weight in my opinion-forming analysis?
>emotional weight of the person’s experiences, just cannot count for much.
I'm not talking about the emotional content, I'm talking about the recount of actual happenings (re: facts), of which the article is overwhelmingly composed of. Perhaps you should read it.
Edit:
> I disagree very strongly about all this
You should remove the emotional weight from your arguments, though I'm not sure what your argument is exactly. Perhaps it is that there's nothing to be gleaned from the world of human experience that can inform policy in democratic institutions? It begs the question.
> “I'm not talking about the emotional content, I'm talking about the recount of actual happenings”
This doesn’t make sense. All the recountings of facts in the article are heavily couched within emotional language, statements of feeling and perception.
If you think this article offers a clear explanation of facts, then either you didn’t really read it, you read it but are just taking the piss / trolling, or your understanding of what counts as presenting facts is so wildly different from the ubiquitous notion of it that we scarcely could communicate about it given your extreme and unusual set of standards.
> “You should remove the emotional weight from your arguments, though I'm not sure what your argument is exactly.“
This sounds like you’re looking for some kind of rhetorical flair to justify what actually is a poor and uncharitable attitude to try to just gainsay me. Seems most likely not worth it to engage further if you won’t be reasonable.
You seem to be deliberately trying to not understand my clear points.
Yes, there are facts in the article. They are presented in unison with emotional retellings of difficult circumstances from the author’s subjective perceptions.
Because of this, it’s not easy to extract meaning about the facts that is not biased by the emotional presentation.
Yet when dealing with an issue of this importance, where there is great potential to do harm to a large cohort of people if we design ineffective or incorrect policies, it is paramount to consider just the facts and understand quantitatively how those facts would relate to measurable outcome changes society would value.
That makes it so much worse when a subjective narrative story creates a mixed picture of what the facts mean.
>You seem to be deliberately trying to not understand my clear points.
You imagine you speak in pure axiomatic terms, and that I am incapable of reason. It's not the case. You make baseless assertions, one after the other. Consider this:
> it is paramount to consider just the facts and understand quantitatively how those facts would relate to measurable outcome changes society would value.
Maybe pick this apart. Why is it paramount? I agree that it is important, but you offer no reasoning for your opinion - built not on facts, but your moral standing.
And how does one 'understand quantitatively'?
These are rhetorical questions for you to answer. I think you're right that our views of the world are at odds with one another.
I believe that appeals to emotion are unavoidable, and part and parcel of unpacking the social compact, and coming to consensus on what is morally important - and that consensus will endlessly shift. Whereas you have some notion of moral realism, where moral facts emerge - 'ought' becomes 'is' - and are quantifiable. You'd probably be a fan of Sam Harris' Moral Landscape. But even Sam admits their can be equal peaks and valleys, and here we enter the world of subjectivity.
I suggest you dig deeper into the rabbit hole of philosophy and get out of the scientism local maxima you've caught yourself in.
> Even as we reach for the less terrible of two terrible ideas, we’re constantly reminded of how little say we have at all. Neither liberal feminists nor libertarians, radical feminists nor the religious right, can hear us speak in our own words. They do not want to hear us; they want to collect the scraped-bare “facts” of our lives and call them data.
The author laments that data and statistics have not proven effective tools unto themselves. And to quote you:
> To form a useful opinion about sex worker laws, that’s what I need. Facts totally divorced from human empathy
What the article does is provide real-life anecdata of how public policy has been harmful to sex-workers. This is useful information: seeing a law or policy, and then seeing a counter-example of how it didn't work in practice, some times even in spite of good-intentions, from people who have access to data.
A scientist will build their hypotheses first, then build the data to either affirm or refute their intuition. And this article can inform future policy-making and data acquisition.