No, they attribute to me the most extreme bad views imaginable
Yes. It’s partly why I’m banned, and why people call my behavior monstrous even though all I’ve done is point out inconsistencies in HN’s moderation.
I’ve built a 12 year reputation on this site, and it was destroyed overnight at the whims of a moderator. I haven’t broken any rules.
Ultimately, no one cares about the fate of those who fall to authority. And why would they? If Dan is willing to utterly ruin a 12 year member of HN for merely asking “why was I penalized?” then imagine what he’ll do to you.
As far as I can tell, he penalized me for some opinions I expressed (even though they were expressed thoughtfully and non inflammatorily). When I pressed the issue publicly, I was Game of Throne’d.
He dressed it up as a “90 day probation,” but of course it morphed into a permanent ban.
At this point it seems like my account has been marked unvouchable, meaning none of my comments even have a fair shot of being resurrected regardless of how many people vouch them.
Pretty interesting to see all of this stem from me expressing a few opinions. But, I chose this life partly to highlight the absurdity.
Yes, a certain mod occasionally vouches comments I make. You can tell this is true because the comment is marked [flagged] immediately. If a comment is flagged by the community, it becomes [flagged][dead], not merely [flagged].
The consistent theme here is to do whatever it takes to make me seem unreasonable or mistaken. In this case, I say “none of my comments are able to be resurrected from the dead,” and presto! Almost instantly, that same comment is ressurected. Whereas my comments about bcrypt or tech related matters stay firmly dead. And before my account was (apparently) marked unvouchable, a mod manually killed a substantive comment I made that happened to be vouched: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18564850 I don’t mind though.
The hard part is the loneliness. I genuinely miss talking with you guys and discussing the news of the day. But again, I chose this life as public protest.
This is my last comment for the next three hours, as I am limited to two comments every three. But I wish all the HN readers a Merry Christmas and a happy new year.
I vouched for it, and it came alive for a bit, although not immediately. I'm not sure if this was because it required multiple vouches to revivify, or whether there was manual intervention by administrators. It's dead again now, apparently by user flagging.
I vouched for it not because I agree with it, but because I thought it was non-offensive, and because I thought that it was better for this dispute to occasionally be in the light rather than always in the shadow-text of the show-dead.
As far as what's actually happening, I confess I don't understand. Shawn comes across as bright, polite, and occasionally oblivious to social norms. Which is to say, he doesn't seem that far out of place here. Dan has responded to him many times, including this meta-response linking to many other responses: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18454702.
I also confess that part of the reason I vouched for this comment was that it struck me as a real-life example of the loudly-humming child in the backseat, with the hands-over-ears seatmate writhing next to him. I'm not quite sure which is Dan, and which is Shawn, but either way, Merry Christmas to both of you, and best of luck in your respective quixotic quests.
“When a politician says his opponent is mistaken, that's a straightforward criticism, but when he attacks a statement as "divisive" or "racially insensitive" instead of arguing that it's false, we should start paying attention.”
At one point he reflects on the “high water mark of political correctness during the early 1990s.” Really funny to read that in 2018. Whether you are a liberal or not, everyone would agree that political correctness has grown tremendously since then. Wherher it was for good or bad depends on your politics. In any case, very interesting to consider.
No. The argument is that, when statements are labeled "divisive" rather than "wrong", that's telling you that there is something that, socially, you're not allowed to say (which was the topic of the essay that the quote came from).
I mean, divisiveness for its own sake is bad - I wish more people felt like we were 'in this together' more of the time instead of engaging in identity politics about which group deserves what. So I see where the point is coming from, but it's not a totally content-free argument to make, to accuse someone of being divisive. It doesn't mean they're wrong, but calling someone divisive could be a valid criticism in its own right.
> Long ago when I had two young kids, they would sometimes pick fights, for example on long car trips. One might start singing, to which the other would complain. We might agree that singing is too much for such a small space. Then the first might start to quietly hum, which we might decide is okay. Then first might hum more loudly and triumphantly, while the second might writhe, cover their ears, and make a dramatic display of suffering.
I love this example of bad faith complaining.
There's something grotesque about adults doing this in internet comments. Like watching a grown man wear a diaper.
The offended child is really complaining about the subtle and escalating transgression of the humming child.
> Then the first might start to quietly hum, which we might decide is okay. Then first might hum more loudly and triumphantly
The humming child scores low on the scale of interpersonal justice.
Framing the offended child’s suffering as bad faith is, in a Wittgensteinian sense, to misunderstand their use of language. They aren’t playing the language game of the observer passing judgement.
The observer is failing to steel-man the position of the aggrieved and instead chooses to focus on an apparent and ostensible fault.
> the subtle and escalating transgression of the humming child
Is humming a "transgression"? Music is typically considered entertainment. Why can't the other child put on head phones, hum a different song, or look out the window?
It's exactly this phenomenon that OP is addressing. A fairly common behavior (humming to oneself) is portrayed as a "transgression" and you go so far as to say it is unjust, just because somebody else happens to not like it.
You've thrown the authors framing, that certain actions are inherently annoying and unacceptable (singing loudly in a small space) while others are generally acceptable (humming softly to oneself) out the window.
> Why can't the other child put on head phones, hum a different song, or look out the window?
Why can't the humming kid not hum normally, instead of "more loudly and triumphantly"?
> A fairly common behavior (humming to oneself) is portrayed as a "transgression"
No, you portray deliberate annoying of someone else as humming to oneself.
> You've thrown the authors framing, that certain actions are inherently annoying and unacceptable (singing loudly in a small space) while others are generally acceptable (humming softly to oneself) out the window.
Because that's a "general" framing that is used to replace the actual context of the actual situation and the actual meaning of these actions.
The hummer acts in bad faith by following the letter, not the spirit of the law and humming "loudly and triumphantly" in as annoying a manner as possible.
The hummee acts in bad faith by victim-playing — overstating the harm caused by the hummer and making a "dramatic display of suffering"
The writhing child is not writhing in pain. They are writhing in an attempt to attract adult intervention. They are not giving an honest account of their sufferings, but a dramatization. It's a plea to the emotions, not of the transgressor (and I agree that there is a transgression), but of the bystanders.
The offended child's suffering is not bad faith, but the display is.
I don't think this is bad faith: bad faith entails a sort of inauthenticity, while the children in this analogy are both authentic in their desires. They might be exaggerating for rhetorical purposes, but neither is acting in bad faith in the way that the term is normally used.
An interesting analogy, but the only thing it captures for me is Hanson's abuse of a philosophical term of art.
I offend and I try to offend, I try to offend the anti-vaxers, the pedophile priests, the corrupt politicians, I try to offend anyone who hold ideas or behaviors that clearly shouldn't be part of society, specially I try to offend people that long ago decided they don't care for reasoning and not matter how much proof there is about them being wrong, to be clear I don't mean any kind of offending but offenses that show how ridiculous or inmoral their stance is on such matters.
And how do you manage to identify which ideas shouldn't be part of society? I can't imagine having the level of self assurance necessary to consider myself the arbiter of acceptable ideas for all of society, let alone to actually intentionally agitate people over my chosen results.
> every individual must act as if the whole future of the world, of humanity itself, depends on him. Anything less is a shirking of responsibility and is itself a dehumanizing force, for anything less encourages the individual to look upon himself as a mere actor in a drama written by anonymous agents, as less than a whole person, and that is the beginning of passivity and aimlessness.
Yes it did, seems the most popular counterargument is "what if people who are wrong believe the same" and fail to understand that many of them will use worse tactics regardless (e.g. calling people you dislike "rapists") and all they are doing its asking the right side to fight with plastic knives when the wrong one is already firing fully automatics.
> I try to offend the anti-vaxers, the pedophile priests, the corrupt politicians, I try to offend anyone who hold ideas or behaviors that clearly shouldn't be part of society,
I never said I never misinterpret ideas or behaviors, but if I assume all my interpretations may be flawed I might as well be death because my range of action would be just as nonexistent.
If you assumed that all your interpretations might be flawed, you might not be so eager to condemn. And when you did condemn, you might choose a course of action more likely to lead the other person to change.
Or I might do nothing like most people do and fail to understand that I'm not talking to a reasonable human being but a human fixated on doing wrong for all the wrong reasons, such lack of action is one of the things that allowed Trump from being a joke to being on charge of the biggest military in the world.
So it's okay for someone to offend so long as the offender thinks the offended should not belong in society? By that logic plenty of people are justified in offending gays, transgender, immigrants, etc.
Yes they are free to offend, and if all goes well we shall remember them the same way we remember racist people that offended black people; as bigots from a worse time.
In a free society, it's always OK to offend; offense is not given, it's taken. The offended person chooses to be offended, they are responsible for their own emotions.
> By that logic plenty of people are justified in offending gays, transgender, immigrants, etc.
Being offensive doesn't require justification, it's always OK; that's what free speech means. If you are not free to offend, you quite simply are not free. Gays, transgenders, and immigrants, and all other people might need to remind themselves the simple things children learn, words are not violence and can simply be ignored. If you're not mature enough to ignore a loudmouth trying to offend you, you are the one with the problem; you are not mature. As they say, prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child.
The point of the comment isn't that said offense should be banned. It's pointing out the irony in that the above commenter's pride in offending those he or she doesn't want to see in society is the same motivation as many people said commenter probably despises.
They can claim is the same motivation, but my mockery is based on reason, like when I mock anti-vaxers telling them their child will die because his mum trusted his facebook friends a bit too much instead of doctors, or when I mock the catholic church because a pedophile scandal on any other organization would make the organization dissappear.
Yes, and no doubt homophobes, islamophobes, etc. see the reason in their mockery with the same conviction as you see in yours. Just as you mock churches for pedophile scandals, they mock pro immigration for mass sexual assaults[1]. It seems like your rationale boils down to saying, "it's okay when I do it because I'm right", while failing to see that plenty of other people with conflicting views see themselves in the right.
Oh no doubt they have even more conviction than me, the thing is that conviction doesn't win arguments, what separate us from animals is reason, mockery is just a medium, a channel of communication, more consumable that long essays or books about why-they-are-wrong or whatever you believe to be the alternative to such mockery.
I would be cautious in assuming that mockery is an effective means of communication, at least if your goal is to influence people to adopt your point of view. In my experience, the result is that the subject of mockery becomes even more entrenched in their views and many of those that agree with the one carrying out the mockery become alienated and distance themselves. While mockery certainly garners attention, it's largely a self destructive endeavor.
Mockery is otherwise known as peer pressure, and it's quite effective to make an argument clear to those on the fence who don't feel strongly either way, particularly when many are mocking. To say mockery is not effective is to claim that peer pressure doesn't work, and I'd assert that's just wrong.
Humans are social animals, they don't like being mocked, and when enough people make fun of a particular position, people will avoid taking that position.
Mockery is not peer pressure. Peer pressure is the phenomenon in which people feel compelled to conform to the examples set by people they see as peers. E.g. friends conforming to the examples and expectations set by each other. Peer pressure's influence scales with the degree someone respects these people as peers. Mockery usually diminishes that respect.
People who mock each other rarely see each other as peers in the first place, anyway. How often have you seen a BLM activist change their views on police brutality after being mocked? I have witnessed exactly zero instances of this occurring. Same for, say, climate change skeptics. This is because they do not see the people being mocked as peers, and thus do not care about the opinion of those mocking them. This is why mocking is usually self defeating. By resorting to mockery, the people you're trying to influence no longer see you as a peer, and thus it drastically limits what influence you initially had on their views.
You claim that, "when enough people make fun of a particular position, people will avoid taking that position" but I have never witnessed this occur. I have not once witnessed an instance in which a person changed their views after being mocked for them. How many times have you adopted a view you previously opposed because you were mocked? Do people mocking gays or immigrants people make you feel compelled to adopt their views on LGBT issues or border policy, for example? If not, why do you seem to believe that your mockery will be any different in its success (or lack thereof)?
On the contrary, I have witnessed countless people take a defensive stance after being mocked for their views, and entrenching themselves even further into whatever views prompted the mockery. Not only that, it frequently makes people reluctant to take part in advancing the views of the one carrying out the mockery. In fact, this is occurring right now in this comment thread: witnessing you proudly stating that you carry out childish behavior in support of certain views is making me more reluctant to voice support of said views, even though I do agree with them, as I do not want to be associated with people such as yourself that take pride in their mockery.
Your point of view is wrong, I'm not talking about the person being mocked changing anything, I'm talking about those witnessing it; those not involved in the dispute. And yes mocking is peer pressure, and yes it does work on people; if you've never seen this, you need to get out more.
A I stated the person doing to mocking usually hurts their position more than they help it. My point of view is not wrong, I am pointing out that this applies both to the subject of the mockery and the people witnessing it. I've witnessed it repeatedly, and I have never seen it succeed in convincing those witnessing it to adopt the view of the person doing the mocking. Nor has it succeeded in leaving a positive impression on me when I have witnessed it. Take the Westboro Baptist Church's mockery of gays, for instance. It has probably convinced 10 people that anti-gay rights people are a bunch of wackjobs for every person it convinced to adopt their homophobic views. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if the actual disparity is even bigger. The only kinds of people that react positively to witnessing mockery are the types of people that political movements would do their best to avoid: people that take pleasure in witnessing the denigration of others.
As I stated before, resorting to childish behavior like mockery to make their point usually makes the people witnessing it think that the people who support that viewpoint are childish. Thus making most adults more adverse to that viewpoint than they were before. Mockery hurts support of the point in question both among the subject of the mockery, and those witnessing it.
> I've witnessed it repeatedly, and I have never seen it succeed in convincing those witnessing it to adopt the view of the person doing the mocking. Nor has it succeeded in leaving a positive impression on me when I have witnessed it.
You are in a bubble of like minded people, your anecdotal experience does not apply to all people.
> The only kinds of people that react positively to witnessing mockery are the types of people that political movements would do their best to avoid: people that take pleasure in witnessing the denigration of others.
That's well near half or so of the voting base; try and step outside your own limited experience, everyone isn't you. Trump supporters for example very much respond to mockery, they liked that Trump mocked the other republican candidates in the primary and were swayed to vote for him based on what appeared in their eyes to be a strong performance in the debates with his peers.
Frankly, you're giving people too much credit and failing to recognize that much of the population isn't very mature. Of course it's childish, that doesn't mean it doesn't work. You don't live in a country full of mature adults.
> You are in a bubble of like minded people, your anecdotal experience does not apply to all people.
Ask yourself this: Have you ever been on the fence about an issue, but upon seeing that one side heavily mocked the other you decided to side with the former? So far in this thread:
* I have repeatedly stated that I have not witnessed this.
* I asked you if you have ever experienced this, but you have not provided a response.
If this is a bubble, then it seems like we're both in it. Or, perhaps more likely, this judgement is incorrect.
> Trump supporters for example very much respond to mockery, they liked that Trump mocked the other republican candidates in the primary and were swayed to vote for him based on what appeared in their eyes to be a strong performance in the debates with his peers.
Yes, but the only people who responded positively to this are were other Republicans. In the grand scheme of things, Trump has been a disaster for the Republican party. They managed to secure the presidency, but as an immense cost in terms of Republican reputation. They have become so unpopular that they lost the house in the midterm election, something that rarely occurs given Republican advantage in the midterms.
And the reason why is largely because of what I described: people look at Trump's mockery and general behavior and find it difficult to associate themselves with what the party has become. Plenty of high profile Republicans have become alienated from the party. If we actually think critically about US politics in the last 3 years, the Trump campaign and presidency actually supports my conclusion about the lack of efficacy of mocking behavior: Trump's mockery rallied the subset of Republicans that support his behavior, but alienated those that did not, and stimulated Democrat opposition on top of that.
Have you never seen a comedian, George Carlin perhaps: a professional mocker? Yes, he's changed people's minds. You're wrong, we're done, you're just repeating yourself and denying what you haven't seen while ignoring that others have. You have a closed mind. And yes I've seen mockery turn people around and frankly I think anyone's that intellectually honest with themselves will admit they have as well if they sat and thought about it enough.
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the average person that brags about mocking people they think don't belong in society doesn't have the same charisma as a professional comedian. Not to mention those two situations are extremely different: Carlin performs to audiences that voluntarily attend his events.
It's also worthwhile that despite your repeated insistence that mockery is a functional persuasive strategy, and despite my repeated asking, you still have yet to provide an example of this playing out successfully. This speaks for itself. The only thing approaching an example is referring to the Trump presidency, but as I pointed out this is just as much an example backfiring, if not moreso.
Crossing into incivility and personal attack is not ok on HN, regardless of how wrong someone else is or seems, and we ban accounts that do it. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the spirit of this site to heart when posting here?
You might also find these other links helpful for getting a clearer idea of that spirit:
"You're wrong, we're done", "you're just repeating yourself and denying what you haven't seen", and "You have a closed mind" are uncivil by the standards that apply here. So is "you're in an ideological bubble and have closed your mind" and other things you've posted elsewhere. None of this meets that standard of the site guidelines. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the spirit of this site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Not, that's not the goal, if they feel offended or not is a irrelevant by-product, they already made their mind, the goal is for the anyone else watching the discussion from the fences (e.g. the undecided, the ones watching their twitter-feed, anyone) how ridiculous an stance or an idea is, also because it's entertaining, and as we know making things more entertaining makes them more likely to be shared and/or remembered.
> What fraction of women assaulted by a nominee for Supreme Court in high school would wait to publicly accuse him not just 30 yrs, but after Congress hearings & just before Congress vote?[0]
And then the author claims that the poll is "neutral"? However, there are biased ways of asking questions.[1] A poll about the Kavanaugh hearing could also ask "What fraction of rapists are convicted?" and that would carry a different political meaning.
Asking that question and then implying in the comments that the wording doesn't lead people to a specific conclusion is exactly the type of "bad faith" action this post purports to be against. Well, either that or the author is just very biased and very oblivious. Either way, it gives some insight into what he means by "infer indirectly from my neutral analytical text that I promote the most extreme views imaginable"
This is a prime example of someone claiming to be neutral or centrist to push their agenda while holding a falsified high ground. You see it all the time on Reddit.
You may be right, but it’s also possible that you are projecting your own bias onto what the author is doing.
If you read his pieces, it’s clear that his focus is on Bayesian probability and reasoning in general.
That question is interesting, because you can certainly read it as a leading question.
But you can also just take it at face value. One answer might be that the fraction is likely to be close to 100%, since there is a good chance that the population is just one, and we know that she actually did.
What fraction of people can tell the difference between a Bayesian economist asking a question with an uninituitive answer, and someone with a ‘falsified’ agenda to push?
It is rather disappointing that he thinks that the Twitter poll measures anything useful at all.
Ignoring the overwhelming political entanglement and resulting bias (which is obviously a huge issue for the poll's integrity), there is no reason to believe the respondents have a well-informed understanding of the dynamics of when and why women report sexual assault.
This comment should be even higher. He never misses an opportunity to promote his books (and I don't blame him for that). But imo he's happy for a bit of controversy.
I mean, based on available evidence, the answer is clearly ~100%. And the same if you replace "nominee for Supreme Court" with "huge and hugely contentious notoriety". Also, if it occurred ~30 years ago, I suspect that most victims would have pretty much forgotten about it. Until they got reminded by seeing him in the news.
Let's see. Thirty years ago is Dec 1989. I remember more or less how many sexual partners that I had that year. I remember the name of the one who I married. Plus a few others. Some, I never knew their names. What can I say, I was promiscuous.
In particular, I never knew the name of the guy who pulled a knife, while we were flirting, and threatened to rape me. Also, I don't remember the name of the woman who attempted suicide. After I got tired of waiting for a sexual relationship, and found someone else. With whom, by the way, I visited her in hospital, until she was discharged. And I never knew the name of the guy who beat the shit out of me in a park, after I'd insulted him.
I could go on. But the point is that most people arguably don't keep grudges for decades. And yes, maybe it's just that I'm a guy. And maybe rape is just so much worse that victims do keep grudges for decades.
Also, I admit that the "based on available evidence" argument is iffy. Because we only know about cases that involve notorious perpetrators. Maybe one could use FOIA to get relevant aggregate data from police. It'd be a decent thesis topic, perhaps.
Not sure I understand, sorry. In what way is this video relevant? It seems to suggest that spread of anger is always a bad thing, so are you suggesting that we should dismiss the concerns of angry people?
I'm suggesting we should be wary of inflammatory/controversial, trending content. Usually the attention content receives is proportional to how polarizing it is, not how nuanced or important it is. This is a legitimate problem, and the video does a better job explaining it than I could, which is why I linked it in this thread.
Yes. His claims that he has "not made moral, value, or political claims" in his inflammatory posts" and that he has written a "neutral analytical text" are silly.
> wait to publicly accuse him not just 30 yrs, but after Congress hearings & just before Congress vote?
Honestly that sounds like at least a local maximum (and given law enforcement for sexual assault 30 years ago, possibly a global maximum) in terms of "When is the best time to make this accusation in order to maximize the harm to the person who hurt me?", particularly if you know that there isn't enough evidence to get a conviction.
This is a good point. It is true in life and particularly true on twitter that you don't get to ask questions without people imputing a motive.
Frankly, it does sound here like he is (at best) uninformed about the emotional experience of sexual assault survivors (irrelevant to the specific case of Dr. Ford), or at worst a partisan hack.
He should spend less time publicly digging into the motivations of those he has "offended" and more time introspecting on whether he is actually in fact a being of pure logic who can perceive all from a position completely uninfluenced by his personal history and experience.
> uninformed about the emotional experience of sexual assault survivors (irrelevant to the specific case of Dr. Ford)
She stated that she was pretty emotionally torn up because of that attempt for many years after the event. I'm not sure how an attempted rape is irrelevant to her emotional well being. an attempted mugging is nearly as emotionally draining as a successful one I'd wager... there is still a violation in trust there.
I'm quite certain that (correctly or incorrectly) the perception was that he was engaging in bad-faith rhetoric: "just asking questions" or similar.
Like it or not, you can't just transparently "ask a question" on Twitter. Even Robin admits in the original post to not being transparent about his motives when conducting twitter polls. Add in the fact that 95% of everything on Twitter is already posturing or naked assertions and it's not surprising that people reacted badly.
The priors for a given tweet being a good-faith effort at discourse are very very poor, and his tone/style was doing him no favors.
I agree with you that people will impute motives, like it or not. I also agree that his tone and style are doing him no favors. I’m less sure about whose priors for his tweets you are talking about, since that depends on how much you know about him and what you think of it.
But I am still curious what you think the motivations of the people he offended actually are? What do you think they are trying to do?
I know this is a sensitive topic, but just for consideration: when I asked my wife this question, she answered, "Almost everyone." She thought that answer was so obvious it might be trying to lead people to that answer.
If you read the question with an open mind, I think any bias it has is up for debate.
It took me a ridiculously long time to even parse this question. "What fraction of women assaulted by a nominee for Supreme Court in high school..." I got to this bit and thought, "How many women are assaulted by a nominee for Supreme Court in high school? It can't be that many. Is it even reasonable to ask for a fraction? Is it meaningful?" I mean it's ludicrous to put up a "<1%" option as it implies that there were more than 100 women assaulted by a nominee for the Supreme Court in high school. Is that option justifiable? I find it really interesting that 65% of the respondents selected it, because it implies to me that they didn't understand the question.
And then "would wait to publicly accuse him not just [after?] 30 yrs" So I thought, "How many nominees for Supreme Court are in high school? If I'm going to publicly accuse a nominee for Supreme Court for assaulting me in high school (assuming we were both in high school at the time), don't I have to wait 30 years? Otherwise I'll never know they were a nominee for the Supreme Court." -- which is a weird way of thinking about it. This word "wait" is particularly problematic. You can't know a priori that the attacker will be a nominee for the Supreme Court, so you can't really wait to accuse them on that basis. The best you can really say is "After not accusing their attacker for 30 years, would they accuse them after they were nominated to the supreme court?" (which might be an interesting question to ask)
The last part "but after Congress hearings & just before Congress vote" didn't make grammatical sense to me. Granted I know nothing about the original context of the question, but presumably the hearing and vote are related to the appointment of the nominee. So I suppose the question the author wanted to ask is, would the accuser wait until after the hearings, but before the vote? However, this is really compressing the options. There are really 5 potential times to accuse the attacker: some time after the attack but before the nomination, between the nomination and the vote, after the vote, and never. Surely a much better question to ask would be "Which of these potential timings seems more likely to occur to you".
This question is so badly written that I have a really hard time believing that it was written by someone who makes their living doing statistical analysis about people's perceptions. I've read the author's comment on it, but if they are defending this question (and I'm not 100% sure that they are), then I don't really think I need to look at their larger corpus. I think I can happily conclude that if they are not just trying to be a shit disturber then they are incredibly incompetent. I'm not sure which of the two labels they would rather be stuck with.
> This word "wait" is particularly problematic. You can't know a priori that the attacker will be a nominee for the Supreme Court, so you can't really wait to accuse them on that basis.
Great analysis of (the absurdity of) that poll question. I was just commenting that it is possible for a question to be biased, so to I really appreciate this detailed breakdown of it, particularly of that seemingly innocuous word "wait".
After reading the author's comment on it I see it as a failure in making the question relevant to the problem they want to investigate, which was "Does the timing of the accusation seem suspicious?".
I would have phrased the question more like: "How many fewer reports of assault would be filled if nominated political candidates would be protected from accusations in media during the limited period of an election? 0, 0.1%, 1%?"
Expanding questions could then follow up to identify how the democratic process would benefit or suffer from having candidates be accused or accuse each other of illegal behavior, and if the public would find it informative or disinformative to read about it in the media. Further exploration could ask if it would be relevant whether the case ends up in the legal system after the election, or if it is enough that an accusation exists to make it relevant in the election process.
Those question would have been interesting to see, both after the 2016 election and the Kavanaugh nomination.
From the blog post I read and his about me, the author seems to regularly write in an obtuse style. It reminds me of college freshmen who use long and obscure words instead of common ones because they think it makes them sound smart.
I wonder what would happen if the blog author stopped reading twitter? He would never know that someone is real angry someplace out there, nor would he care very much.
If only Twitter were merely an insubstantial epiphenomenon lacking influence on the real world, but unfortunately, people can use Twitter as a tool to destroy those who offend them.
I think most people would agree that having rational, emotionally detached conversations about complex and sensitive subjects would be beneficial to society, so in that, I agree with the author. And from his writing, it does seem his effort to talk about these subjects is done in earnest.
But I think there are a few reasons why this mindset fails in real world application.
Firstly, the various social justice movements we see in western societies are all groups that aren’t straight white men. And while one might say that shouldn’t matter in a logical discussion, the fact is that the life experiences of these maligned groups are outside the realm of experience of the author, and of other straight white men. Rational debate depends on high quality data, and that data is not immediately available unless you live it. So unless you actively inquire and try to get a deep understanding of what these groups go through, you’re going to be debating or discussing something you don’t know a lot about, relatively.
The other issue is that these discussions inherently aren’t rational and detached from emotion. To the maligned group, this topic is something they live with every day, and often times have had to endure extreme emotional trauma. When someone says to them, “let’s just discuss this rationally”, they rightly often feel very frustrated.
If we want to have honest, good faith discussions on the topic of social equality, the only solution is for people to earnestly and honestly inform themselves of the life experiences of the social groups for whom equality has remained out of reach.
Also note that I’m not trying to target straight white men (I’m a straight white man too). I think this has more to do with power dynamics. I’m sure countries like India and China have their own particular historical class of power that is the target of their own social movements.
>If we want to have honest, good faith discussions on the topic of social equality, the only solution is for people to earnestly and honestly inform themselves of the life experiences of the social groups for whom equality has remained out of reach.
While I agree with every word you wrote, I don't know how you can maintain hope in this. Just weeks ago, there was an HN thread, where between the article and comments there were dozens of stories of women suffering harassment. And yet still, multiple people here commented to the effect, "No real women in my life tell me about this stuff, the rest must be hysterical." I'm paraphrasing, but it's not an unfair characterization.
I see it in the same light as folks that have a completely 100% incorrect understanding of "[institutional] privilege" and are already at a weird level of anger by time they enter any conversation about it. They seem to be unable or unwilling to entertain, let alone accept, evidence contrary to their closely held beliefs (and there's evidence to back it up).
Meanwhile, the groups that get frustrated at continual, constant marginalization from those with their heads in the clouds, or try to advocate for causes and less ignorance, are given three-letter acronym labels which are used to deride and derail.
And within 5 minutes this reply is swinging +/-4 votes with no replies. How absolutely utterly depressing.
Hey, I appreciate your response, and share in your sentiment that responses on this subject can be very depressing. But I do think we as a society are trending towards equality.
As much as the internet is supposed to connect us, subjects like these can be very divisive because the internet tends remove the human element from the discussion. We're much more likely to go on a political rant on Facebook than we ever would directly to our family, for instance.
This subject requires real human connection. It requires understanding our fellow citizens and understanding what they go through.
As a personal anecdote, I also used to be homophobic and very ignorant of racism in America. I feel awful about some of the things I've said. But then I began working for a company out in San Francisco, and a few of my coworkers were gay, and a couple people were going through sex reassignment. I became friends with them, and they shared numerous stories that really helped me see how uninformed I'd been. Obviously this is my personal experience, but I'm hopeful that as more and more people feel safe to come out, that the people around them will have similar experiences as me.
Yup. I believe that social justice movements go way too far in stifling discussion of important topics, and making people walk on eggshells when expressing their viewpoint.
At the same time though, it's ridiculous to expect people to be robots devoid of emotion and expect them to dispassionately participate discussion of a topic that deeply affects them, especially when they may have very real trauma related to said issue.
I agree the social movements sometimes go too far, but I try not to let perfect be the enemy of good, in this case.
Another issue, I think, is media coverage. I think we often conflate the coverage of the subject with the subject itself. How the media covers Black Lives Matter, for instance, is distinct from the actual movement. Often times the coverage encourages a "Walk on eggshells" mentality that doesn't necessarily reflect how members of the movement actually feel.
It's just something to keep in mind that they aren't necessarily the same thing. How many times has the media botched a report related to technology, for instance?
>Often times the coverage encourages a "Walk on eggshells" mentality that doesn't necessarily reflect how members of the movement actually feel.
I don't need to do that when I can simply check out e.g. the discussion in company Slack channels, where real members of these movements are causing people to really walk on eggshells.
Note that I wouldn't really put BLM as an example of a social movement that has gone too far in stifling discussion. It is probably a good example though of media coverage being bad for a momevement. From what I could tell, the media tended to most highlight instances of killings by police that weren't obviously bad, to drum up controversy (e.g. focusing on the Michael Brown shooting), discrediting BLM in the process.
You may be overlooking the spate of execution-style murders of police officers by BLM members that occurred in 2016. These killings ought surely to have some impact on how one judges whether BLM is a social movement that has on occasion gone too far.
> And while one might say that shouldn’t matter in a logical discussion, the fact is that the life experiences of these maligned groups are outside the realm of experience of the author, and of other straight white men
Why are you treating all "straight white men" as if they had identical life experiences? Do you suppose that the author's "realm of experience" could tell us anything useful about the lives of e.g. poor whites in Appalachia, or in poor parts of the Midwest that are now ravaged by the opioid epidemic? What's the point of bringing up this ascribed group identity, other than as a clear indication of bias (negatively-valenced homogeneity)?
And the notion that "rational discussion" should be avoided simply because some people might feel frustrated by it seems especially unhelpful: plenty of people, even very prominent people, feel "frustrated" by rational discussion of climate change, does this mean that it's morally wrong to discuss the best way of saving our way of life on this planet in the face of an urgent threat to it? Obviously not. But our stance on such issues as possible racism or sexism is also quite important, on its own terms - so it should be just as amenable to rational discussion.
>rational, emotionally detached conversations about complex and sensitive subjects would be beneficial to society
Yes, only when they are exactly that - rational, and emotionally detached. All conversations on sensitive subjects fall into 3 categories:
* Facts+logic vs facts+logic
* Facts+logic vs feelings
* Feelings vs feelings
HN is a rare place on the internet where one can frequently see "Facts+logic vs facts+logic" conversations even on sensitive topics. The vast majority of conversations on the internet about sensitive topics end up being "feelings vs feelings".
The problem with "feelings vs feelings" is that by design it's never about fact finding or truth. It's always about friend-foe identification. Any person who starts a conversation from the "feelings" position views the conversation as a way to categorize the other person as either a "friend" or a "foe".
Here's a smart, honest, careful intellectual who is always striving to elevate our discourse, and the mob just tries to drag him into the mud with the same blunt emotional attacks they use on everyone.
Short attention spans, fake outrage, and lazy arguments are the fundamental problems of contemporary discourse. But Robin Hanson has consistently been one of the best role models of what high-quality discourse should look like.
I was a full time mom for a lot of years. I absolutely would not have tolerated one of my kids triumphantly humming louder to intentionally aggravate the other one. The fact that he thinks there is something wrong with the other child protesting this makes me think the answer to his question -- Do I Offend? -- is probably "yes." He probably is pretty offensive at times. He doesn't really get basic human respect.
Having said that, I have come to the conclusion that we all offend, we all exclude, we all decide what kind of people we want to associate with and what kind we want nothing to do with. Then we argue about who is right and where those boundaries "should" be drawn.
Some people draw those boundaries along racial lines or religious lines or other fairly arbitrary categories for deciding who is the "right" kind of person and who is the "wrong" kind of person. Boundaries drawn that way tend to have a lot of downside to them.
But it's simpler and easier than trying to figure out who is actually respectful, honorable, kind and decent. That's a much harder question to answer in a meaningful way and we often need to decide if we trust someone to some degree under circumstances where, no, we can't reasonably determine the answers to such questions. So it's really common for people to come up with some shorthand method for sorting the presumed good apples from the presumed bad apples so we can try to get through the damn day without wondering if the guy bagging our groceries is really a serial killer.
I don't think it's actually good policy to use such rubrics. I think the world needs to sort out some better methodology for coping with social realities in a world of 7 billion people when our brains evolved to cope with little tribes and villages of about 150 people.
But I have come to believe that we all, to some degree or another, tend to promote rules with our own self interest in mind. So I no longer feel like, clearly, X is morally superior to Y!
Just because I'm a big believer in X and I spent years thinking about it doesn't mean it really is morally superior in some big picture sense. Those folks who believe in Y may have spent just as much time thinking about it and may feel just as strongly as I do and we may both be wrong. We may both simply be promoting something that happens to work for us as individuals while dressing it up in moral language because that works better for getting buy-in than admitting "It works for me, so I want it that way to enhance my life."
I'm a woman. Hacker News was perhaps as much as 98 percent male when I joined under a different handle more than nine years ago. I feel like it has become more welcoming of women over the years. I feel like I have played some role in that change.
I think the guys here tolerate me as well as they do because I don't take some sort of strident moral ("Feminazi") position that I have some kind of right to be here. I am mindful of the fact that there is something of value here and that thing was mostly built by men. I'm aware that change is a potential threat to the value that exists and accommodating my presence -- what with me being some loud-mouthed brassy broad who never managed to learn my "place" in the world and who, for whatever reason, grew up with the idea that my voice was as acceptable as any guy's voice, never mind that this is apparently not what most people on the planet seem to learn -- de facto involves change. I've worked at trying hard to figure out how to make that work in a way that doesn't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, so to speak.
When I first joined HN, I was more inclined than I am these days to feel self-righteous about trying to stand up for myself. I still am willing to take a stand, but I am much less inclined to feel self-righteous about it.
I'm just a human trying to make my life work. I'm angry, as most anyone would be, ab...
Anyone who goes so far out of their way to state that they don't push values is clearly trying (feebly) to mask their own motivations, perhaps even from themselves. Perhaps more incriminating is how thuroughly self-referencial this person's writing it. This person is so engrossed by his perception of himself as neutral that he doesn't recognize the validity of other people's experiences.
Am I the only one who can't find a single argument for why he isn't biased in the whole article?
He just goes: "Some people say I'm an offensive bad person, which is pushing a political and moral agenda, with my own biases, but I swear, I am pure facts and logic, and my reasoning is always neutral, and so I hope we can all move along and allow me to continue my logical rhetoric."
I was hoping for some facts, counterfacts, examples, logical reasoning, I don't know, some more concrete demonstration of his good faith, neutrality, and display of unbiased methodology. Instead I just got a plea to believe his words.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 149 ms ] threadYes. It’s partly why I’m banned, and why people call my behavior monstrous even though all I’ve done is point out inconsistencies in HN’s moderation.
I’ve built a 12 year reputation on this site, and it was destroyed overnight at the whims of a moderator. I haven’t broken any rules.
Ultimately, no one cares about the fate of those who fall to authority. And why would they? If Dan is willing to utterly ruin a 12 year member of HN for merely asking “why was I penalized?” then imagine what he’ll do to you.
As far as I can tell, he penalized me for some opinions I expressed (even though they were expressed thoughtfully and non inflammatorily). When I pressed the issue publicly, I was Game of Throne’d.
He dressed it up as a “90 day probation,” but of course it morphed into a permanent ban.
At this point it seems like my account has been marked unvouchable, meaning none of my comments even have a fair shot of being resurrected regardless of how many people vouch them.
Pretty interesting to see all of this stem from me expressing a few opinions. But, I chose this life partly to highlight the absurdity.
The consistent theme here is to do whatever it takes to make me seem unreasonable or mistaken. In this case, I say “none of my comments are able to be resurrected from the dead,” and presto! Almost instantly, that same comment is ressurected. Whereas my comments about bcrypt or tech related matters stay firmly dead. And before my account was (apparently) marked unvouchable, a mod manually killed a substantive comment I made that happened to be vouched: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18564850 I don’t mind though.
The hard part is the loneliness. I genuinely miss talking with you guys and discussing the news of the day. But again, I chose this life as public protest.
This is my last comment for the next three hours, as I am limited to two comments every three. But I wish all the HN readers a Merry Christmas and a happy new year.
I vouched for it not because I agree with it, but because I thought it was non-offensive, and because I thought that it was better for this dispute to occasionally be in the light rather than always in the shadow-text of the show-dead.
As far as what's actually happening, I confess I don't understand. Shawn comes across as bright, polite, and occasionally oblivious to social norms. Which is to say, he doesn't seem that far out of place here. Dan has responded to him many times, including this meta-response linking to many other responses: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18454702.
I also confess that part of the reason I vouched for this comment was that it struck me as a real-life example of the loudly-humming child in the backseat, with the hands-over-ears seatmate writhing next to him. I'm not quite sure which is Dan, and which is Shawn, but either way, Merry Christmas to both of you, and best of luck in your respective quixotic quests.
At one point he reflects on the “high water mark of political correctness during the early 1990s.” Really funny to read that in 2018. Whether you are a liberal or not, everyone would agree that political correctness has grown tremendously since then. Wherher it was for good or bad depends on your politics. In any case, very interesting to consider.
This essay was very good. Thanks.
I read this quote as "pay attention when someone stops making rational arguments because it means they don't have any rational arguments".
If you aren't paying attention you'll miss the switch between what is reasonable and what is emotionally manipulative.
Yes, that's part of society stopping with it.
I love this example of bad faith complaining.
There's something grotesque about adults doing this in internet comments. Like watching a grown man wear a diaper.
> Then the first might start to quietly hum, which we might decide is okay. Then first might hum more loudly and triumphantly
The humming child scores low on the scale of interpersonal justice.
Framing the offended child’s suffering as bad faith is, in a Wittgensteinian sense, to misunderstand their use of language. They aren’t playing the language game of the observer passing judgement.
The observer is failing to steel-man the position of the aggrieved and instead chooses to focus on an apparent and ostensible fault.
Is humming a "transgression"? Music is typically considered entertainment. Why can't the other child put on head phones, hum a different song, or look out the window?
It's exactly this phenomenon that OP is addressing. A fairly common behavior (humming to oneself) is portrayed as a "transgression" and you go so far as to say it is unjust, just because somebody else happens to not like it.
You've thrown the authors framing, that certain actions are inherently annoying and unacceptable (singing loudly in a small space) while others are generally acceptable (humming softly to oneself) out the window.
In a library, humming is a violation of the conventions of the space.
In a music practice room, it is perfectly fine.
In a car, the convention is ambiguous and dependent on the passengers.
This is precisely why it is necessary to come to agreement on what is okay to do in the space.
Again: The humming child was initially singing. So, to view the humming in isolation is to dismiss the fact that this is an iterative negotiation.
> Then the first might start to quietly hum, which we might decide is okay.
You've thrown the agreement on what is okay out the window because somebody is offended.
> Then the first might start to quietly hum, which we might decide is okay. Then first might hum more loudly and triumphantly
Why can't the humming kid not hum normally, instead of "more loudly and triumphantly"?
> A fairly common behavior (humming to oneself) is portrayed as a "transgression"
No, you portray deliberate annoying of someone else as humming to oneself.
> You've thrown the authors framing, that certain actions are inherently annoying and unacceptable (singing loudly in a small space) while others are generally acceptable (humming softly to oneself) out the window.
Because that's a "general" framing that is used to replace the actual context of the actual situation and the actual meaning of these actions.
The hummer acts in bad faith by following the letter, not the spirit of the law and humming "loudly and triumphantly" in as annoying a manner as possible.
The hummee acts in bad faith by victim-playing — overstating the harm caused by the hummer and making a "dramatic display of suffering"
The offended child's suffering is not bad faith, but the display is.
I don't think this is bad faith: bad faith entails a sort of inauthenticity, while the children in this analogy are both authentic in their desires. They might be exaggerating for rhetorical purposes, but neither is acting in bad faith in the way that the term is normally used.
An interesting analogy, but the only thing it captures for me is Hanson's abuse of a philosophical term of art.
It's fascinating.
I'm sure this lament is as old as time - someone probably has Yeats beat by a few millennia.
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching (date: controversial, but definitely BC)
The decision of remaining neutral is a moral choice in itself.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem
--Joseph Weizenbaum
Kant
But I do suggest this as a really interesting read:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweapo...
> I try to offend the anti-vaxers, the pedophile priests, the corrupt politicians, I try to offend anyone who hold ideas or behaviors that clearly shouldn't be part of society,
> By that logic plenty of people are justified in offending gays, transgender, immigrants, etc.
Being offensive doesn't require justification, it's always OK; that's what free speech means. If you are not free to offend, you quite simply are not free. Gays, transgenders, and immigrants, and all other people might need to remind themselves the simple things children learn, words are not violence and can simply be ignored. If you're not mature enough to ignore a loudmouth trying to offend you, you are the one with the problem; you are not mature. As they say, prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child.
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015%E2%80%9316_New_Year's_E...
Humans are social animals, they don't like being mocked, and when enough people make fun of a particular position, people will avoid taking that position.
People who mock each other rarely see each other as peers in the first place, anyway. How often have you seen a BLM activist change their views on police brutality after being mocked? I have witnessed exactly zero instances of this occurring. Same for, say, climate change skeptics. This is because they do not see the people being mocked as peers, and thus do not care about the opinion of those mocking them. This is why mocking is usually self defeating. By resorting to mockery, the people you're trying to influence no longer see you as a peer, and thus it drastically limits what influence you initially had on their views.
You claim that, "when enough people make fun of a particular position, people will avoid taking that position" but I have never witnessed this occur. I have not once witnessed an instance in which a person changed their views after being mocked for them. How many times have you adopted a view you previously opposed because you were mocked? Do people mocking gays or immigrants people make you feel compelled to adopt their views on LGBT issues or border policy, for example? If not, why do you seem to believe that your mockery will be any different in its success (or lack thereof)?
On the contrary, I have witnessed countless people take a defensive stance after being mocked for their views, and entrenching themselves even further into whatever views prompted the mockery. Not only that, it frequently makes people reluctant to take part in advancing the views of the one carrying out the mockery. In fact, this is occurring right now in this comment thread: witnessing you proudly stating that you carry out childish behavior in support of certain views is making me more reluctant to voice support of said views, even though I do agree with them, as I do not want to be associated with people such as yourself that take pride in their mockery.
As I stated before, resorting to childish behavior like mockery to make their point usually makes the people witnessing it think that the people who support that viewpoint are childish. Thus making most adults more adverse to that viewpoint than they were before. Mockery hurts support of the point in question both among the subject of the mockery, and those witnessing it.
You are in a bubble of like minded people, your anecdotal experience does not apply to all people.
> The only kinds of people that react positively to witnessing mockery are the types of people that political movements would do their best to avoid: people that take pleasure in witnessing the denigration of others.
That's well near half or so of the voting base; try and step outside your own limited experience, everyone isn't you. Trump supporters for example very much respond to mockery, they liked that Trump mocked the other republican candidates in the primary and were swayed to vote for him based on what appeared in their eyes to be a strong performance in the debates with his peers.
Frankly, you're giving people too much credit and failing to recognize that much of the population isn't very mature. Of course it's childish, that doesn't mean it doesn't work. You don't live in a country full of mature adults.
Ask yourself this: Have you ever been on the fence about an issue, but upon seeing that one side heavily mocked the other you decided to side with the former? So far in this thread:
* I have repeatedly stated that I have not witnessed this. * I asked you if you have ever experienced this, but you have not provided a response.
If this is a bubble, then it seems like we're both in it. Or, perhaps more likely, this judgement is incorrect.
> Trump supporters for example very much respond to mockery, they liked that Trump mocked the other republican candidates in the primary and were swayed to vote for him based on what appeared in their eyes to be a strong performance in the debates with his peers.
Yes, but the only people who responded positively to this are were other Republicans. In the grand scheme of things, Trump has been a disaster for the Republican party. They managed to secure the presidency, but as an immense cost in terms of Republican reputation. They have become so unpopular that they lost the house in the midterm election, something that rarely occurs given Republican advantage in the midterms.
And the reason why is largely because of what I described: people look at Trump's mockery and general behavior and find it difficult to associate themselves with what the party has become. Plenty of high profile Republicans have become alienated from the party. If we actually think critically about US politics in the last 3 years, the Trump campaign and presidency actually supports my conclusion about the lack of efficacy of mocking behavior: Trump's mockery rallied the subset of Republicans that support his behavior, but alienated those that did not, and stimulated Democrat opposition on top of that.
It's also worthwhile that despite your repeated insistence that mockery is a functional persuasive strategy, and despite my repeated asking, you still have yet to provide an example of this playing out successfully. This speaks for itself. The only thing approaching an example is referring to the Trump presidency, but as I pointed out this is just as much an example backfiring, if not moreso.
You might also find these other links helpful for getting a clearer idea of that spirit:
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html
http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html
http://www.paulgraham.com/trolls.html
But if the goal is just to troll some emotional reaction, and not change anything, what is the point?
Mockery is quite useful to onlookers.
The author would benefit from some time spent investigating from a humanistic perspective.
They need to grovel in other words.
> act obsequiously in order to obtain forgiveness or favour.
> obsequious: exhibiting servile complaisance or deference
No. That’s not what I’m saying.
I’m saying that there is a broader context to consider.
In particular, his investigation of the responses to A Star is Born, seems to be helpful and informative towards the humanistic perspective.
> What fraction of women assaulted by a nominee for Supreme Court in high school would wait to publicly accuse him not just 30 yrs, but after Congress hearings & just before Congress vote?[0]
And then the author claims that the poll is "neutral"? However, there are biased ways of asking questions.[1] A poll about the Kavanaugh hearing could also ask "What fraction of rapists are convicted?" and that would carry a different political meaning.
[0]: https://twitter.com/robinhanson/status/1041743505507405824?r...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anschluss#/media/File:Stimmzet...
If you read his pieces, it’s clear that his focus is on Bayesian probability and reasoning in general.
That question is interesting, because you can certainly read it as a leading question.
But you can also just take it at face value. One answer might be that the fraction is likely to be close to 100%, since there is a good chance that the population is just one, and we know that she actually did.
What fraction of people can tell the difference between a Bayesian economist asking a question with an uninituitive answer, and someone with a ‘falsified’ agenda to push?
Ignoring the overwhelming political entanglement and resulting bias (which is obviously a huge issue for the poll's integrity), there is no reason to believe the respondents have a well-informed understanding of the dynamics of when and why women report sexual assault.
I mean, based on available evidence, the answer is clearly ~100%. And the same if you replace "nominee for Supreme Court" with "huge and hugely contentious notoriety". Also, if it occurred ~30 years ago, I suspect that most victims would have pretty much forgotten about it. Until they got reminded by seeing him in the news.
In particular, I never knew the name of the guy who pulled a knife, while we were flirting, and threatened to rape me. Also, I don't remember the name of the woman who attempted suicide. After I got tired of waiting for a sexual relationship, and found someone else. With whom, by the way, I visited her in hospital, until she was discharged. And I never knew the name of the guy who beat the shit out of me in a park, after I'd insulted him.
I could go on. But the point is that most people arguably don't keep grudges for decades. And yes, maybe it's just that I'm a guy. And maybe rape is just so much worse that victims do keep grudges for decades.
Also, I admit that the "based on available evidence" argument is iffy. Because we only know about cases that involve notorious perpetrators. Maybe one could use FOIA to get relevant aggregate data from police. It'd be a decent thesis topic, perhaps.
https://youtu.be/rE3j_RHkqJc
Honestly that sounds like at least a local maximum (and given law enforcement for sexual assault 30 years ago, possibly a global maximum) in terms of "When is the best time to make this accusation in order to maximize the harm to the person who hurt me?", particularly if you know that there isn't enough evidence to get a conviction.
Frankly, it does sound here like he is (at best) uninformed about the emotional experience of sexual assault survivors (irrelevant to the specific case of Dr. Ford), or at worst a partisan hack.
He should spend less time publicly digging into the motivations of those he has "offended" and more time introspecting on whether he is actually in fact a being of pure logic who can perceive all from a position completely uninfluenced by his personal history and experience.
She stated that she was pretty emotionally torn up because of that attempt for many years after the event. I'm not sure how an attempted rape is irrelevant to her emotional well being. an attempted mugging is nearly as emotionally draining as a successful one I'd wager... there is still a violation in trust there.
Like it or not, you can't just transparently "ask a question" on Twitter. Even Robin admits in the original post to not being transparent about his motives when conducting twitter polls. Add in the fact that 95% of everything on Twitter is already posturing or naked assertions and it's not surprising that people reacted badly.
The priors for a given tweet being a good-faith effort at discourse are very very poor, and his tone/style was doing him no favors.
But I am still curious what you think the motivations of the people he offended actually are? What do you think they are trying to do?
If you read the question with an open mind, I think any bias it has is up for debate.
I personally think the answer is probably a high percentage, given the power dynamics and also what happened with Anita Hill.
And then "would wait to publicly accuse him not just [after?] 30 yrs" So I thought, "How many nominees for Supreme Court are in high school? If I'm going to publicly accuse a nominee for Supreme Court for assaulting me in high school (assuming we were both in high school at the time), don't I have to wait 30 years? Otherwise I'll never know they were a nominee for the Supreme Court." -- which is a weird way of thinking about it. This word "wait" is particularly problematic. You can't know a priori that the attacker will be a nominee for the Supreme Court, so you can't really wait to accuse them on that basis. The best you can really say is "After not accusing their attacker for 30 years, would they accuse them after they were nominated to the supreme court?" (which might be an interesting question to ask)
The last part "but after Congress hearings & just before Congress vote" didn't make grammatical sense to me. Granted I know nothing about the original context of the question, but presumably the hearing and vote are related to the appointment of the nominee. So I suppose the question the author wanted to ask is, would the accuser wait until after the hearings, but before the vote? However, this is really compressing the options. There are really 5 potential times to accuse the attacker: some time after the attack but before the nomination, between the nomination and the vote, after the vote, and never. Surely a much better question to ask would be "Which of these potential timings seems more likely to occur to you".
This question is so badly written that I have a really hard time believing that it was written by someone who makes their living doing statistical analysis about people's perceptions. I've read the author's comment on it, but if they are defending this question (and I'm not 100% sure that they are), then I don't really think I need to look at their larger corpus. I think I can happily conclude that if they are not just trying to be a shit disturber then they are incredibly incompetent. I'm not sure which of the two labels they would rather be stuck with.
Great analysis of (the absurdity of) that poll question. I was just commenting that it is possible for a question to be biased, so to I really appreciate this detailed breakdown of it, particularly of that seemingly innocuous word "wait".
I would have phrased the question more like: "How many fewer reports of assault would be filled if nominated political candidates would be protected from accusations in media during the limited period of an election? 0, 0.1%, 1%?"
Expanding questions could then follow up to identify how the democratic process would benefit or suffer from having candidates be accused or accuse each other of illegal behavior, and if the public would find it informative or disinformative to read about it in the media. Further exploration could ask if it would be relevant whether the case ends up in the legal system after the election, or if it is enough that an accusation exists to make it relevant in the election process.
Those question would have been interesting to see, both after the 2016 election and the Kavanaugh nomination.
The only thing I can imagine that will have any effect if some potential employer misguidedly taking twitter rumors for facts. Is that a thing?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAIP6fI0NAI
If she wasn’t in PR and didn’t log in to Twitter she wouldn’t have any problems.
So my question is whether you can get serious problem from twitter if you’re not in PR?
But I think there are a few reasons why this mindset fails in real world application.
Firstly, the various social justice movements we see in western societies are all groups that aren’t straight white men. And while one might say that shouldn’t matter in a logical discussion, the fact is that the life experiences of these maligned groups are outside the realm of experience of the author, and of other straight white men. Rational debate depends on high quality data, and that data is not immediately available unless you live it. So unless you actively inquire and try to get a deep understanding of what these groups go through, you’re going to be debating or discussing something you don’t know a lot about, relatively.
The other issue is that these discussions inherently aren’t rational and detached from emotion. To the maligned group, this topic is something they live with every day, and often times have had to endure extreme emotional trauma. When someone says to them, “let’s just discuss this rationally”, they rightly often feel very frustrated.
If we want to have honest, good faith discussions on the topic of social equality, the only solution is for people to earnestly and honestly inform themselves of the life experiences of the social groups for whom equality has remained out of reach.
Also note that I’m not trying to target straight white men (I’m a straight white man too). I think this has more to do with power dynamics. I’m sure countries like India and China have their own particular historical class of power that is the target of their own social movements.
While I agree with every word you wrote, I don't know how you can maintain hope in this. Just weeks ago, there was an HN thread, where between the article and comments there were dozens of stories of women suffering harassment. And yet still, multiple people here commented to the effect, "No real women in my life tell me about this stuff, the rest must be hysterical." I'm paraphrasing, but it's not an unfair characterization.
I see it in the same light as folks that have a completely 100% incorrect understanding of "[institutional] privilege" and are already at a weird level of anger by time they enter any conversation about it. They seem to be unable or unwilling to entertain, let alone accept, evidence contrary to their closely held beliefs (and there's evidence to back it up).
Meanwhile, the groups that get frustrated at continual, constant marginalization from those with their heads in the clouds, or try to advocate for causes and less ignorance, are given three-letter acronym labels which are used to deride and derail.
And within 5 minutes this reply is swinging +/-4 votes with no replies. How absolutely utterly depressing.
As much as the internet is supposed to connect us, subjects like these can be very divisive because the internet tends remove the human element from the discussion. We're much more likely to go on a political rant on Facebook than we ever would directly to our family, for instance.
This subject requires real human connection. It requires understanding our fellow citizens and understanding what they go through.
As a personal anecdote, I also used to be homophobic and very ignorant of racism in America. I feel awful about some of the things I've said. But then I began working for a company out in San Francisco, and a few of my coworkers were gay, and a couple people were going through sex reassignment. I became friends with them, and they shared numerous stories that really helped me see how uninformed I'd been. Obviously this is my personal experience, but I'm hopeful that as more and more people feel safe to come out, that the people around them will have similar experiences as me.
I have faith that the next generation will be wiser and less prejudiced.
Now if only climate change could wait...
Unfortunately we are running against a shot clock right now and we can’t simply wait for the next generation to pick up the bill.
At the same time though, it's ridiculous to expect people to be robots devoid of emotion and expect them to dispassionately participate discussion of a topic that deeply affects them, especially when they may have very real trauma related to said issue.
Another issue, I think, is media coverage. I think we often conflate the coverage of the subject with the subject itself. How the media covers Black Lives Matter, for instance, is distinct from the actual movement. Often times the coverage encourages a "Walk on eggshells" mentality that doesn't necessarily reflect how members of the movement actually feel.
It's just something to keep in mind that they aren't necessarily the same thing. How many times has the media botched a report related to technology, for instance?
I don't need to do that when I can simply check out e.g. the discussion in company Slack channels, where real members of these movements are causing people to really walk on eggshells.
Note that I wouldn't really put BLM as an example of a social movement that has gone too far in stifling discussion. It is probably a good example though of media coverage being bad for a momevement. From what I could tell, the media tended to most highlight instances of killings by police that weren't obviously bad, to drum up controversy (e.g. focusing on the Michael Brown shooting), discrediting BLM in the process.
Why are you treating all "straight white men" as if they had identical life experiences? Do you suppose that the author's "realm of experience" could tell us anything useful about the lives of e.g. poor whites in Appalachia, or in poor parts of the Midwest that are now ravaged by the opioid epidemic? What's the point of bringing up this ascribed group identity, other than as a clear indication of bias (negatively-valenced homogeneity)?
And the notion that "rational discussion" should be avoided simply because some people might feel frustrated by it seems especially unhelpful: plenty of people, even very prominent people, feel "frustrated" by rational discussion of climate change, does this mean that it's morally wrong to discuss the best way of saving our way of life on this planet in the face of an urgent threat to it? Obviously not. But our stance on such issues as possible racism or sexism is also quite important, on its own terms - so it should be just as amenable to rational discussion.
Yes, only when they are exactly that - rational, and emotionally detached. All conversations on sensitive subjects fall into 3 categories:
* Facts+logic vs facts+logic
* Facts+logic vs feelings
* Feelings vs feelings
HN is a rare place on the internet where one can frequently see "Facts+logic vs facts+logic" conversations even on sensitive topics. The vast majority of conversations on the internet about sensitive topics end up being "feelings vs feelings".
The problem with "feelings vs feelings" is that by design it's never about fact finding or truth. It's always about friend-foe identification. Any person who starts a conversation from the "feelings" position views the conversation as a way to categorize the other person as either a "friend" or a "foe".
Short attention spans, fake outrage, and lazy arguments are the fundamental problems of contemporary discourse. But Robin Hanson has consistently been one of the best role models of what high-quality discourse should look like.
Having said that, I have come to the conclusion that we all offend, we all exclude, we all decide what kind of people we want to associate with and what kind we want nothing to do with. Then we argue about who is right and where those boundaries "should" be drawn.
Some people draw those boundaries along racial lines or religious lines or other fairly arbitrary categories for deciding who is the "right" kind of person and who is the "wrong" kind of person. Boundaries drawn that way tend to have a lot of downside to them.
But it's simpler and easier than trying to figure out who is actually respectful, honorable, kind and decent. That's a much harder question to answer in a meaningful way and we often need to decide if we trust someone to some degree under circumstances where, no, we can't reasonably determine the answers to such questions. So it's really common for people to come up with some shorthand method for sorting the presumed good apples from the presumed bad apples so we can try to get through the damn day without wondering if the guy bagging our groceries is really a serial killer.
I don't think it's actually good policy to use such rubrics. I think the world needs to sort out some better methodology for coping with social realities in a world of 7 billion people when our brains evolved to cope with little tribes and villages of about 150 people.
But I have come to believe that we all, to some degree or another, tend to promote rules with our own self interest in mind. So I no longer feel like, clearly, X is morally superior to Y!
Just because I'm a big believer in X and I spent years thinking about it doesn't mean it really is morally superior in some big picture sense. Those folks who believe in Y may have spent just as much time thinking about it and may feel just as strongly as I do and we may both be wrong. We may both simply be promoting something that happens to work for us as individuals while dressing it up in moral language because that works better for getting buy-in than admitting "It works for me, so I want it that way to enhance my life."
I'm a woman. Hacker News was perhaps as much as 98 percent male when I joined under a different handle more than nine years ago. I feel like it has become more welcoming of women over the years. I feel like I have played some role in that change.
I think the guys here tolerate me as well as they do because I don't take some sort of strident moral ("Feminazi") position that I have some kind of right to be here. I am mindful of the fact that there is something of value here and that thing was mostly built by men. I'm aware that change is a potential threat to the value that exists and accommodating my presence -- what with me being some loud-mouthed brassy broad who never managed to learn my "place" in the world and who, for whatever reason, grew up with the idea that my voice was as acceptable as any guy's voice, never mind that this is apparently not what most people on the planet seem to learn -- de facto involves change. I've worked at trying hard to figure out how to make that work in a way that doesn't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, so to speak.
When I first joined HN, I was more inclined than I am these days to feel self-righteous about trying to stand up for myself. I still am willing to take a stand, but I am much less inclined to feel self-righteous about it.
I'm just a human trying to make my life work. I'm angry, as most anyone would be, ab...
He just goes: "Some people say I'm an offensive bad person, which is pushing a political and moral agenda, with my own biases, but I swear, I am pure facts and logic, and my reasoning is always neutral, and so I hope we can all move along and allow me to continue my logical rhetoric."
I was hoping for some facts, counterfacts, examples, logical reasoning, I don't know, some more concrete demonstration of his good faith, neutrality, and display of unbiased methodology. Instead I just got a plea to believe his words.
Did I miss something?