From: Hal Finney (hal@finney.org)
Date: Thu Sep 19 2002 - 11:38:52 MDT
Harvey asked for feedback on his style, so I will mention one point which
has bothered me, which is a tendency to misrepresent Lee's statements.
Consider one of his examples:
> 5. In the "life-boat" thread, you insisted that you had never
> participated, when in fact you were one of the more agitating
> participants. Later when this was proved from the archives, you said
> you forgot posting anything about it.
On May 24, Harvey posted in the "Re: group-based judgement" thread:
> You may have missed Lee's assertion that men should be saved before
> women because they are more valuable. You may have missed Gina Miller's
> suggestion that she was offended and might drop out if that is the
> viewpoint around here.
Lee replied later that day in the same thread:
> This is a complete falsehood. I NEVER even participated
> in the lifeboat thread, and certainly NEVER expressed an
> opinion about whose life is "more valuable".
Harvey replied, on May 25 in the same thread:
> Well, you quoted Phil's assertion that men should be saved before women,
> and you quoted his lifeboat example. You didn't seem to object to the
> idea. All you added was that ancient Romans sometimes valued woman more
> than men if they were breeders for more male soldiers. I must have
> missed the part where you describe men and women being valued equally.
Later on May 25, in the thread "META: Please! A retraction is called for
by someone!", Lee wrote:
> Well, it's true that I did say how Roman soldiers might
> value women more than men. So how did all this get twisted
> to mean that I thought men to be more valuable than women?
and
> Well, I didn't say anything at all about what I valued!
> Logically, no one can infer what I believe from the above.
> It so happens that I do *not* value women less than men.
>
> (And yes, the remark about Roman soldiers was in the
> lifeboat discussion. I was in error about never
> having participated at all, sorry.)
Harvey responded shortly afterward in the same thread:
> OK. I retract this statement now that you have clearly stated that you
> do not propose this viewpoint. I certainly was among those who
> misunderstood your position. You seem to think that I deliberately
> misrepresented you, and then I assumed that you were deliberately
> forgetting your involvement in that thread. The conversation quickly
> got off track there and moved to the subject of blame rather than
> content. I also apologize for participating in the blame game as well.
Now, it is clear from this that Lee was wrong to say that he had never
participated in the lifeboat thread. But he admitted his mistake and
apologized.
But Harvey was wrong in an even more fundamental way. He claimed that
Lee said that men should be saved before women because they are more
valuable. But when pressed, all he could offer as evidence is that Lee
quoted someone else and didn't express objection! That's a completely
unsound foundation for charging Lee with advancing such a view.
And further, Lee apparently followed Phil's quote with a contrary example,
saying that Roman soldiers took the opposite position, that women were
more valuable than men. This further undercuts Harvey's claim that Lee
was expressing the view that men were more valuable than women.
Overall, my reading is that Lee made a relatively minor factual error
about which thread he had posted in; while Harvey committed a very serious
rhetorical transgression. He accused Lee of advancing a position that
men were more valuable than women, without any valid grounds for that.
As soon as he was questioned about it, in his message above about how
Lee quoted Phil, Harvey should have realized that this was no basis for
saying that Lee made the claim. At that point Harvey should have seen
that he was misrepresenting Lee and apologized.
Harvey did eventually apologize, although he insisted that it was a
misunderstanding rather than a misrepresentation. If so it indicates that
Harvey has a serious blind spot in reading Lee's messages. Lee quoting
Phil and then offering a contrary example can hardly be read as Lee
endorsing Phil's position! Yet Harvey kept to this view even after he
himself characterized Lee's posting in exactly these terms. If it is
not misrepresentation, it is misunderstanding that rises to the level of
recklessness.
And even after apologizing, Harvey is now bringing up the issue once
more to criticize Lee. But the issue of exactly which threads Lee had
posted in was minor; the greater issue was Harvey's statement that Lee
had said that men were more valuable than women, and that this supposed
claim was threatening to drive Gina off the list. That is a much more
serious matter.
I think there are other cases as well where Harvey has misrepresented
(or at least carelessly misunderstood) Lee's position. This paragraph
in a message from Harvey to Lee on May 23 is an example:
> Proposing that we judge people by race, value people by gender, kill or
> abuse children, assassinate Luddites, reprogram people for their own
> good, initiate force because we're right, govern people against their
> will, and other "final solutions", without addressing the principles
> first is bound to fail. Most people will look at your new proposals and
> point out that they will break everything else we believe in.
Lee replied:
> *My* new proposals? This is slanderous. I NEVER said anything
> about assassinating anyone, valuing people by gender, going for
> "final solutions", initiating the use of force, or several other
> things on your list.
>
> This is quite scary. Do you think that by repeating accusations
> in a whole flurry of emails that people will believe you? I have
> written at length, and very recently about freedom and avoiding
> the initial use of force. Are you going to apologize for any of
> those accusations?
I don't want to take the time now to look at these point by point, but
I believe that Lee is right, and that Harvey has here taken viewpoints
by a number of people and carelessly ascribed them to Lee. If necessary
I will be happy to go through the archives more carefully to track these
points down.
My recommendation to Harvey is to be very careful about summarizing and
characterizing views that you disagree with. It is all too easy to get
things wrong and to make seriously unfair misrepresentations of other
people's views. If you're going to criticize a position, you should
take the time to go back into the archives and use a direct quote,
rather than relying on your memory.
And when you do misrepresent someone's position, even accidentally,
you should apologize straightforwardly. It is a very serious thing
to do in this kind of forum where it is not easy for people to go back
and check on what was actually said. It can hurt people's reputation
permanently if readers believe your false statements about other people.
Hal Finney
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