Isn't the onus on the ones claiming that Spartans practiced systemic infanticide to provide the evidence that they did so?
These accounts aren’t perfect. Not necessarily first hand eye witnesses, but not rumor mongers either.
So anyone arguing that this didn’t happen needs to address an established consensus.
Lots of more recent research is attacking traditional ideas about the Spartans, so this is a welcome argument.
But saying “it’s on them to prove their point” isn’t really helpful.
A specialist in the area could just say “appeal to authority” and they’d be right. The actual peer reviewed articles and books would require evidence.
But those articles and books wouldn’t be accessible to the average reader.
So the journalist is summarizing those arguments, but in the process reducing them to an appeal to authority - which is completely fine.
Each reader can decide for himself how much evidence he needs to be persuaded.
[1] Source: https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-p...
I would suggest reading the posted blog-post. The author <em>do</em> know what he is talking about and–in my opinion—quiet an engaging writer.
"Σπαρτιάτης" is used in Greek (modern and ancient) to mean a (male) inhabitant of a place called "Sparta". What the blog author claims is that there are _two_ words, one of which means free citizens of Sparta and the other, helots. He says that one of those words is "Spartiate" and that the other is "Spartan".
This is a distinction that is impossible to make with a single word in Greek. The words he uses, "Spartan" and "Spartiate" are two Latin transliterations of the single Greek word "Σπαρτιάτης", that has one single meaning, as I explain it above.
Furthermore, the distinction between free and enslaved inhabitans of Sparta is, in all historical sources, made clear by using two words with different roots: "Spartan" for the free citizens of the city, "helot" for the enslaved people of the surrounding territories of the city-state. Nobody else than the author calls one "Spartan" and the other "Spartiate". That's entirely the blog author's made-up terminology.
So what I'm saying the blog author has made up is the distinct meaning of "Spartan" and "Spartiate". I do not claim that he has made up the word "Spartiate", as you seem to assume in your comment. Please correct me if I misunderstood your comment, and not you mine.
And a small edit: It was your last parenthesis that confused me, I would have written it as:
“or even "Spartiate", a term distinguished by the author of the blog as distinct from "Spartan"…”
"Homoioi" (όμοιοι) means "equals" or "peers". That's what Spartans considered each other and they'd use that word in context, but used the demonym "Spartan" to refer to their fellow free citizens of Sparta as did everybody else. The helots were called either helots or ..."the Spartans' slaves".
And as for the title point: Spartans seem to only be mentioned in the article coverage of the research. They are not the topic of the research itself. Sparta doesn't even appear in the abstract of the paper. Demonstrating that infanticide of disabled babies wasn't a widespread practice in Ancient Greece does not necessarily mean that it wasn't practiced by a group that only consisted of the elite class of one state.
A weak counterclaim does not imply the claim to be truth.
Yes. So? The options are not just that we accept whatever fact is presented, or accept whatever is the oposite of it. We can just say: “looks like we don’t know” and that is perfectly fine.
A claim or a counterclaim (is there even a distinction?) warrants the same amount of proof.
Yes that is exactly what I was saying.
You wrote:
> Is there a name for being arbitrarily biased against a counterclaim?
Who is arbitrarily biassed against a counterclaim in your opinion here? Debby Sneed who wrote the study? Andrew Curry who wrote the science.org article about the study? gadflyinyoureye who wrote the comment your comment is responding to? Someone else?
> The simple fact that this is posed as a counterclaim itself seems to invoke skepticism...
As it should. I don't see the bias here. Are you saying that someone accepts claims without skepticism but not counterclaims? Who?
Strong men never make mistakes. Never. Only weak men do. You know it's true. You've seen it. Cavemen have seen it. Probably true in some animal societies, too
Edit: you've been doing this repeatedly. That's not cool. Please don't do it again.
If the vouch system shouldn't be used to rescue otherwise worthy on-topic comments, what is it there for, and why not ban the user entirely?
Before you 86 me over it, consider if you're in the right here, and what types of chilling effects your statement above has. Nobody claims that this place is the paragon of fairness, but this community works hard to keep it fair and balanced without this type of clandestine moderation. What you just attempted is morally wrong. If that gets me banned for daring to disagree, then you're doing me a favor by adding me to the list.
Even someone who's ideologically motivated like the guy I replied to can be right at times, whether I agree with them personally the rest of the time or not, so I'd implore you to reconsider the readiness with which you bear down on those who are doing the moderation for you by surfacing the comments where the shunned, for once, aren't pursuing their own agendas. Isn't that the purpose of the vouch system?
Deflated.
Of course the vouch system should be used to rescue worthy on-topic comments. That's its purpose. I wasn't talking about that, but rather about your repeatedly posting like this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29528161
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29528049
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29528043
There are two problems with doing that: (1) it's repetitive, which is not what HN discussion is for; and (2) it's basically doing an end run around moderation.
Pretty surprising and sad that you would ban me for a comment like that. Reading it back three years later I’m not wildly proud about it but I don’t think it’s ban worthy.
But I want to push back against the idea that this is not a shadow ban. I see now that you replied to my comment to let me know. But there’s no notification mechanism on HN for comment replies! So I didn’t see it until just now.
A ban mechanism that eventuates in the banned user logging on and participating for 3 years before realizing no one can see their comments is a shadow ban! If you wanted it to be clear there should be some messaging besides a comment reply. Just my two cents
> Pretty surprising and sad that you would ban me for a comment like that. Reading it back three years later I’m not wildly proud about it but I don’t think it’s ban worthy.
It's clear from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16118062 that I didn't ban you for just one comment. It says: "We've banned this account for repeatedly violating the HN guidelines with uncivil personal attacks and by using the site primarily for ideological battle. Those things are not allowed here, regardless of your politics, how right you are, or how right you feel you are." That's obviously about an overall pattern of behavior, no?
> A ban mechanism that eventuates in the banned user logging on and participating for 3 years before realizing no one can see their comments is a shadow ban! If you wanted it to be clear there should be some messaging besides a comment reply.
Definitional arguments aside, yes—you're making a fair point. It's on our list to fix this, perhaps with a probation system that tells people they're banned for a time period (at least at first) and then unbans them. Most people respond well to feedback, so it's possible this will help in other ways too. However, don't underestimate how much damage is caused by accounts that wilfully abuse the site and take advantage of such systems—it's hard to design something that's both fair to the majority and not so vulnerable to abuse.