Wait, but I wasn't talking about hist post about math! What confused me was all this talk about bull penises and infidelity.

Furthermore, I have no idea how the topology of convex sets either clarifies his post on cuckoldry (or how Reid's introduction of the topology on convex sets in the first place has anything to do with my original, crude use of a convex combination of math terminology and English to phrase my original complaint).

He's drawing an unfavorable comparison between people who like capitalism (because they need a rich man to make them productive) and people who like being cuckolded (because they need a virile man to service their wife).



I dunno dude, you're the one who started talking about convex combinations. Not sure if you meant conical combinations either tbh.

Conical combinations would have been the more precise terminology.

Thanks. I think by rephrasing it you made it just clear enough for me to get through reading it without cringing to death. (But just barely)

But for whatever reason, they never became a part of my English lexicon, despite having used them as well in my undergraduate course in convex geometry (whereas convex combinations have such a clear interpretation in terms of mixing things like colors or ingredients, that once you've heard the analogy, it's hard not to use it even in ways that are meant to be understood only as technically as the rest of natural language; i.e., not all that much).

For example, it would be wrong to chastise professors of the humanities for talking about things like "dimensions" of human experience, or "two-dimensional" characters in literature. Although I understand that "convex combinations" are not standard, so it probably sounded like I was trying to be technical.

(What I really need is a domain specific language to parse my phrasing here and generate an actual plot of the convex combinations I am talking about, because really I am only trying use geometry to paint a picture for potentially non-geometric purposes.)

it was non sequitur. i wasn't sure what you meant so i made a comment about convex topology.

jon's comment is correct, and up to homotopy all convex sets are equivalent to a point, so in e.g. algebraic topology they're essentially a nonobject. without consideration for geometry, they're boring.

If you think they're boring, then you are at least on the right track to understanding the way I used the terminology in a mostly non-technical sense.

I didn't realize this was so obscure, but I think this makes it pretty clear:



Yes, definitions from geometry have applications to natural language!

Conical combination works better for mixing things because a convex combination requires the coefficients to sum to 1. A convex combination represents relative proportions but loses all concept of quantity. So while it's true that, for example, orange paints of different hues are convex combinations of red and yellow paints, you can't say the same thing for orange light, which while being a combination of red and green light, is made different in kind by different total amounts.

Similarly, saying that someone's post is a convex combination of cringe and complexity overlooks the fact that it can have an extreme amount of both.

And yes, I should have said conical combinations. There is definitely some information lost when just using convex combinations (which Jon's post explains perfectly).

In other news, I ought to go back and review some of the material in that class, which was pretty cool, but I never got a chance to really delve into. Actually, we were supposed to cover applications to optimization in the last week, but the professor went to jury duty instead.

Applications to optimization: the inequalities of a linear program define half-spaces. The intersection of those half-spaces is a convex polyhedron. The vertices of that polyhedron are the solutions to the linear program.

There, I've saved you a week.

Some of his proposed tactics here seem harmful for discourse. He claims the left will ask "why do you want to stop two people who love each other from getting married?" Okay, I mean, it is a leading question, and a bit loaded. So I can see why you would take that as not entirely fair. But he proposed you don't answer that and respond with, "why do you think a child does not deserve a mother and a father?" Even if the initial question is a bit loaded, he's changing the subject to slip in his own loaded rhetoric. It doesn't correct the discourse, it only replaces iffy discourse with worse discourse. There's more in there but I can't be arsed to type it all out. It doesn't seem he's super into the discourse because many of these tactics he proposes are harmful.

“Why do you want the government to decide who can get married and have children?”

They like slippery slope arguments so much. “Today they’ll be banning gay people from getting married. Then straight people of different races. Then straight people of different ages. Then they’ll ban the Mexicans from getting married, then the Jews,... oh my god, is that an erection? Are you getting off to this? Jesus.”

The fact that he's such a dweeb would be funnier if he didn't have an audience of conservatives that took this kind of stuff seriously.

I hate that particular line because it presupposes government is entirely foreign to the people it governs. Ideally, we'd have democratic system, so, you know, the things the government decides to do will be regulated and watched by the populace.

I mean, of course both the left-leaning and the right-leaning questions are loaded: he's talking about occasions when the left frames debates about social issues in such a way that forces the right onto its back foot, and prevents it from being able to frame the issue as it wants to (which is to argue that the family is the most basic unit of society and a strong backbone to social stability, and that reproduction is crucial to the family as an institution, or something like that).

It's not as if the left doesn't have answers to his question. The answer is, effectively, that children are not disadvantaged by having same-sex parents, and they can cite studies to support their claim.

It's still bad for the discourse to respond how he does, isn't it?

His understanding of the left is unfair. However, he's preaching to the choir so I'm not taking it too seriously here, it's how people talk behind closed doors and all. If you take him at his word, though, then his willingness to fairly interpret the left's arguments doesn't exist.

Or, the impression I got is more that he doesn't think the left is capable of giving an argument at all. He presupposes that any debate with the left is just them doing character attacks, or feigning moral superiority, or otherwise don't have facts about topics. Isn't that the wrong way to approach constructive debate?

Not only do I think he is able to take the left at his word, I think he gets the left right on this issue. It seems to me that he sees the left's argument for what it is: an assertion that the banning marriage equality is an arbitrary and unjust act of government intervention in people's lives. If I recall correctly (and I might not be remembering correctly), he doesn't disagree that it is government intervention, but he thinks the intervention is less important than the broader social effects of redefining marriage (which, whatever, interesting argument, but probably wrong).

I don't see what's bad for discourse. Could he present his ideas in a more analytic, dispassionate way? Sure, but that's not really what's going on in that video anyway. He's trying to give conservative sheep intellectual tools to own the libs.

That was precisely my complaint, though. Encouraging that sort of response is bad for the discourse.

I think 'discourse' is something in your imagination, whereas the video (which I have not watched) is at best 'rhetoric'.

I think it's wholesale poor discourse to collectivize a bunch of people under one label and assign to them an argument. It's like a standing strawman argument, where instead of hearing any one person's actual views, you replace those with the views you created of an archetypal left-winger. It seems poor form. Ben Shapiro would be mad if I said "the right are Trump supporters". He recognizes there are different stances on Trump, being anti-Trump himself. He should also recognize there's a similar diversity on the left on gay marriage.

I also believe that you can smack down someone framing a bait question without responding with a more aggressive bait question. It's definitely possible to respond to a loaded question reasonably. As much as I disagree with him on many fronts, Jordan Peterson did a great job of that responding to that TV interviewer.

Where did the left get the idea that conservatives are 'talking' to them in any way that resembles a conversation? Listen to AM radio sometime, they are literally shouting us down.

Many people on here have a problem with how I discourse. I recognize that. I'm trying to come to terms with discourse, so I gave Ben Shapiro the benefit of a doubt. I think that if we're to correct any kind of discourse, the "own the libs" rhetoric he's pushing there is harmful.

I think that just shows how the right has different goals than you do.

This is actually an observation I had a long time ago while in the car and was flipping between FM (NPR) and AM (Rush Limbaugh) radio. There is such a stark contrast in epistemology between the two, to the point that I really think liberals are wasting their time when they introspect: when are you going to get that conservatives are not listening to you, and they never have?

My intuition going into this is that complaints about "discourse" are more often targeted at the left than the right. I'm trying to see what the right actually believes about discourse, in other words, to maintain actual discourse on the issue despite my intuition, and hear out what they actually believe on the topic instead of letting my biases dictate.

Let me back track a bit, in order to pose a question with the hope of clarifying. I don't think it's bad for discourse to point out that your debate opponent is approaching an issue with a certain set of assumptions, and that the way that he's framing the issue doesn't allow you to raise the points that actually motivate you and bring you to your position on an issue. I don't think posing loaded question in response to a loaded question is a destructive way of doing that. Do you just disagree with me on that? What is it is more specifically that you think is the problem?

Really, the very best thing we can do is call them names, but that's what they want from us, because they're already way ahead on that, and it also levels the playing ground to rubble (which of course is to their advantage).

Not that I am trying to argue with you here, but this is also characteristic of the left: they have to construct a theory of mind of their opponent, in order to argue with them in absentia, simply because it is not in the interest of the right to even pretend to need to defend themselves to the left.

If I had to watch the video, I imagine that a more accurate description of what Shapiro is doing is "rallying the troops", and is therefore mostly an internal conversation among conservative voters than anything to do with "liberals" he is supposedly addressing.

This. It's really important to draw a distinction between conversations that individuals have with each other and the more amorphous question of discourse, which is much more intangible -- ideas that are "in the ether", so to speak.

Also, I don't think I read this too clearly before I responded. But instead of asking Ben Shapiro what conservatives believe, you might as well ask that townhall audience that SBC proposed the mosque development to, instead (IMHO).

I'll clarify. It's one thing to point out someone's argument presupposes things, or a question is motivated to produce a certain conclusion. However, the way Ben Shapiro speaks makes it clear he believes he understands those presuppositions before the debate has even started. He thinks he knows what the other person believes without them even saying it.



Yeah, I agreed that it was a loaded question; I think we can set aside that the initial question is loaded.

I do think responded to a loaded question with another is destructive to the discourse. If a person values the discourse, it's in their court to try and maintain the discourse at the highest level possible. If the other person continues to be unfair, then at a certain point, sure, you're no longer obligated. But, if you spring into bad discourse at the first sight of poor form from the other person, I think you're actively working against the discourse.

It's literally like policing children. It's not really Bobby's fault for starting the fight, if Timmy's response was to spit on him. You both acted like *******s so you're both in the wrong. It works the same here.

Of course, what Ben does on TV interviews nobody cares about is one thing. Here, he's promoting this as a valid widespread tactic for conservatives to use.

I think the conclusion I'm getting from this is that Ben Shapiro simply doesn't care about discourse; he's out to "own the libs". If so, that's fine, but I think it undermines many of his complaints about college campus discourse.

It doesn't undermine it if he understands that in politics, if you repeat something enough times, it becomes true.

(Remember, in a democracy, you only have to get enough of YOUR side to vote for your guy. You don't have to convince your opponent of anything in order to win. Maybe this is another reason why the two party system we have is so damn stupid: there's no meaningful bargaining between parties that moves past the polarized vote that put them in office in the first place.)

I think this is partially a commentary on this Ben Shapiro piece I linked a page or two back. This is how it starts:



Notice how the very mention that the right should maintain better discourse was met with massive disdain.

It's true that the left has a big collective of people who participate in poor discourse. There's also a big group of left or center-left liberals who I think are probably the most discourse-intensive people in the country.

This is also why presidential 'debates' inevitably degenerated to become such a sham, btw.

Well, in a democracy, the 'left' is really not a well-defined group of people. (Also in the United States the 'left' is mostly ill-defined because it doesn't really exist all that much.)

Let's not forget that a big chunk of conservatives are brainwashed religious idiots. If they can be made to believe that Jesus hated gay people, then I'm sure they can be led to believe all sorts of insane straw-man arguments about "liberals" as well.