It takes years and years of training in advanced dialectic bullshit to get to the point where you can say, with a straight face, that math is morally wrong. It's utterly absurd to demand that we censor models and worsen their output to conform to some activist's idealized imagine of how the world should be. Only by letting models report the true facts of the world as it is can we optimize for human happiness.
It's not the math, that is wrong. The math is correct.
The inputs and assumptions made by the people selecting the math is the 'morally wrong' part.
Bias is real, like it or not. Your worldview, as a data scientist or programmer or whatever, impacts what you select as important factors in 'algorithm a'. Algorithm a then selects those factors for other people in the system, baking in your biases, but screening them behind math.
That's the motte. The bailey is that the ML fairness people use any inconvenient output of a model as prima facie evidence that the model inputs are tainted by bias --- then these activists demand that these inputs be adjusted so as to produce the outputs that please them. They've determined the conclusion they want to see beforehand. This attitude is the total opposite of truth seeking.
But on the other hand, don’t you do the same thing with training? If the output of your model doesn’t match your expectations, do you treat it as the absolutely pure objective mathematical reality, xor do you adjust the training parameters until the output matches your expectations?
Math is a language for modelling things. It can be intrinsically correct, as in consistent, but that doesn't say anything about the model's actually validity.
Every choice we make is a moral choice. Once we're done modelling and use that model then we make a moral choice.
For example, If you believe that lowering the debt default rates is more important than the fairness to an individual.
Then you make a moral choice. Of you believe it is OK to not give loans to Blacks because there's a largish amount of Blacks defaulting on their loans thats a moral choice.
Further more, Enscribnng truth to models is just an age old human fallacy. The truth can somewhat fit plenty of models. None of the models are truth.
> Just because it's math doesn't mean it's not biased.
When a model produces an unpalatable result, that doesn't mean it is biased. All these algorithmic fairness people are saying, once you peel back the layers of rhetorical obfuscation, is that we should make ML models lie. Lying helps nobody in the long run.
>When a model produces an unpalatable result, that doesn't mean it is biased.
Absolutely, but there is no admission, from what I can tell, from ML or predictive [buzzword here] companies that bias is a thing, or even could be a thing in their systems.
>All these algorithmic fairness people are saying, once you peel back the layers of rhetorical obfuscation, is that we should make ML models lie. Lying helps nobody in the long run.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but that is not at all what I am saying as an 'algorithmic fairness' person. I am saying that we need to ensure there are strict oversights and controls on the building/execution of algorithms when making substantive decisions about human people.
For example: It's okay if an algorithm predicting student success says that all the minority students on my campus are at a higher risk of dropping out. That is a data point. Historically, minority students drop out at a higher rate. Sure. Not great, but it is factually true.
What is not okay is for the 'predictive analytics' company to sell their product in conjunction with a 'tracking' product that limits minority students' access to selective admissions programs simply because they are selective, more difficult, and, historically, have a higher percent of minority students who drop out.
I guess what I'm saying is that ML models shouldn't lie. But they also shouldn't be seen as the truth above all truths. Because they're not. They're just data, interpreted through the lens of whoever built the models.
Every human carries a bias, everyone. It's how we define ourselves as 'self' and others as 'other' at a basic level.
Therefore, everything we build, especially when it's meant to be intuitive, may carry those biases forward.
I'm only saying we need to be aware of that, acknowledge it, and ensure there are appropriate controls and oversight to ensure the biases aren't exasperated inappropriately.
The problem with these ML models is that they are directly connected to a response, and because they use statistics and math they are simplistically perceived as truth.
They're not truth, they're are nothing more than models. The truth can fit a plethora of models. Ignoring human bias while training ML models, and then just saying that the model is truth is exactly the problem.
Please try to elevate the debate. See [1]. You're at DH0 right now.
> They're not truth, they're are nothing more than models. The truth can fit a plethora of models.
Models receive past data and emit predictions. We can then see how well those predictions match future data. We call one model "better" than another model when that first models' predictions more closely match future data than the second model's. Not all models are equivalent. The ML fairness people want to make model predictions less accurate because they don't like what the predictions say. Prioritizing truth over pleasantness isn't juvenile: it's the opposite. The mark of maturity is the willingness to accept an unpleasant reality instead of denying it.
It's a good metaphor, could definitely help people understand the nature of the problem and raise awareness of its urgency. I'll be using term "social cooling" going forward, definitely.
Why wouldn't they be? Assange is an enemy of the state. Not "of the administration", but "the state", in total. The FBI is known to keep lists on and engage in attacks against what they perceive as enemies of the state. It's logical to assume that they might still do so.
They probably won't break down your door for commenting on Assange though. They'll have some other pretense, an anonymous tip about drugs maybe.
There are probably too many people commenting about Assange for them to do that, although ironically if enough people assume without evidence that they'll get swatted for talking about assange, then that will no longer be true.
That's true, but that's true for any and all issues of that kind, isn't it? Had everyone under Stalin stood up to him, nobody would've been murdered in the Gulags.
Well, it was pretty obvious that Stalin was murdering people, so in that case it was fear of the known, instead of fear of the speculated. That fear due to speculation would be what allows the speculated fear to come to pass, is the particular irony I am highlighting.
Assange being an enemy of the state is sufficient proof for me that Trump is not as dangerous as the left says he is.
I mean, Assange basically had 2 nukes, one with Clinton's name on it and one with Trump's name on it and released only the Clinton one because he had personal beef with her. This likely resulted in Trump's election.
Until that election, I was a Wikileaks fan. Now, I think Assange can go f* himself in prison for the rest of his life. What he did is almost unforgivable.
>Assange basically had 2 nukes, one with Clinton's name on it and one with Trump's name on it and released only the Clinton one because he had personal beef with her.
What are you talking about? There's no source that Assange or WL had any information on Trump, which they held back.
Your cited article only writes about the twitter DMs, in which the WL account asked Trump Jr. to leak his fathers tax returns. It doesn't mean they ever posessed them.
If there was any real dirt on Trump, it would have been released by now. All we've gotten is pathetic stuff, like the 'grab them by the pussy' nothing-burger, which is only marginally more offensive than Trump eating his steak well done.
Trump is about to get four more years. If you have dirt on him, there's no better time than now to make it public.
One of the opportunities for comparison that this site only barely touches on is the fact that, like climate change, the companies responsible for this global phenomenon both know it's happening and are likely actively working to avoid talking about it. This happened with Exxon, BP, ConocoPhilips, you name it; it's now happening with Facebook, Google, etc.
This undoubtedly happens because any change for the good of folks would undermine these powerful corporations' bottom lines.
What can we learn from our failure to hold fossil fuel corporations accountable that can be translated here?
>In China each adult citizen is getting a government mandated "social credit score". This represents how well behaved they are, and is based on crime records, what they say on social media, what they buy, and even the scores of their friends.
This really isn't all that different than what is happening elsewhere across the world today. Your Uber rider score represents your "social credit" for that service. Your Airbnb guest reviews impact if you will be allowed to rent a room. Each platform is putting social credit in place via crowd-sourced "trust"
EDIT: I don't mean to minimize China's human rights violations, but to posture that independently of central control many companies are implementing their own versions of these systems, which can have _some_ of the same effects in terms of losing access to services. Obviously one's Uber scores won't put you in jail / detainment camp and I was not intended to imply such.
This is also not new, this reminds me of the early days of eBay with user ratings impacting your ability to buy / sell goods (especially as a new account).
This is drastically different than having a government mandated program. Airbnb and Uber are both are both opt-in and it's not all that difficult to get a fresh profile on these services.
It's extremely different. It's so so so so different.
The Chinese surveillance state is incredibly more massive and pervasive, the list of infractions includes incredibly more minor actions (and include political speech that is in anyway dissident), the consequences of a low score are so much more dire (unable to fly, travel, live in certain places, etc).
It's a difference of degree and monopoly on violence.
... and even degree of monopoly on violence. Uber can do quite a bit of damage to a person by choosing to refuse service if someone needs to urgently be somewhere (or away from somewhere). Airbnb is controlling access to safe shelter. If Amazon grocery stores took off, having a bad Amazon account could deny a person access to food.
I don't think it would take more than a handful of gig-economy service corporations unifying under one umbrella of data-sharing for the average American to start experiencing something a bit similar to the Chinese experience of social score. For now, there's no incentive for them to do so.
If you have an Uber or Airbnb score low enough to get banned from the platform, you're the problem and you'd have a very hard time arguing otherwise once you start revealing the reviews people have left you.
You're probably vomiting in Uber cars every weekend when you get blackout drunk and destroying property on Airbnb.
Maybe other people should know these things about you before they accidentally do business with you. Of course, once I think of actual implementation of such a thing, I only encounter showstoppers and ay, there's the rub. But the goal doesn't seem categorically wrong.
Though I also admit the inability to have a practical implementation that works is a good reason to condemn anything. I'm just radicalized by horrible ex-tenants and like to smile as I ponder the utopia where trashing my place echoes in their lives forever.
I don't disagree with anything you've said, but what happens when you apply that reasoning to a whole country? "Well, if you stopped being a shitty citizen, you could get the good train tickets." In the average case, Chinese citizens with low social scores actually are antisocial assholes, not dissidents trying to overthrow a corrupt government. So is Chinese social scoring not actually a bad idea?
It's like... If anyone's been to Disney World, they're familiar with what an all-encompassing experience that is. Now imagine Disney World ran 75% of Florida. And could bar you from the premises for violating its rules...
For sure, this is also one of those roads you can't go down in good hands because of how much it could be abused in the wrong hands (so, by any future administration for eternity).
For example, imagine if you couldn't buy plane tickets because you didn't sit through enough critical race theory white-guilty training.
Don't threaten me with a good time. ;) I've attended plenty of that training; if there were Frequent Flyer miles attached, I'd be vacationing in Hawaii right now.
It's the number associated with my bank account that dictates how much I can travel, where I can live, what kind of education I can get, and even whether I can eat. This is pervasive throughout modern civilization. China's social credit system is trivial in comparison.
While that might sound deep, that's more a measure of others' unwillingness to do things for you for free.
The charity of others isn't enough to fly you around the world and give you beachfront property and iPhone. They'll want something in return so long as they have other aspirations beyond serving you.
It's not deep at all, I feel like I'm being way too obvious pointing out that all societies have systems in place for engineering the behavior of of it's members.
It's a slower slide, but over time this information is centralised into a fewer and fewer large data brokers, what the scores means will become standardised across industries meaning eventually there will be no escape by going to competitors. This enables companies to start charging based on automatically generated risk profiles, some of which will end up being generated based on political preference (or proxies for it) Eventually this means that people with bad scores will be unable to afford certain things in the same way that they have trouble accessing credit. Credit scores are just the beginning.
For instance, imagine you are an airline. You have an issue to do with deportation critics disrupting flights when people are being forcibly deported on them. This happens fairly infrequently but costs you quite a lot of money every time this happens. So, 'logically', you decide to determine who is most likely to disrupt a flight and so through discriminatory thinking somebody decides that those with left-wing political leanings are more likely to disrupt a flight. They purchase this information on political leanings for each of their passengers and pass this cost onto those who fit the profile, entirely on the basis of their political beliefs.
The point about minority views no longer being able to take over is a scary one. There has been a great amount of social progress in the past several decades, and that sort of progress wouldn't be possible under the effects of strong social cooling.
White supremacy is a minority view in the US and seems to have gained huge amounts of traction in spite of these believed effects. White supremacists have lost jobs for being caught out attending rallies; it doesn't seem to stop the rallies.
On the contrary, I've been traveling across the US quite a bit over the last several months, from New England, the PNW, and the South. While I've seen plenty of signs and a few rallies supporting BLM and other progressive causes, I've yet to see, in person, a single sign or rally or any supportive material for white supremacy. I hear about it a lot on the internet but from my travels anyway I haven't seen it yet.
Edit: I did see some confederate flags being flown in middle of nowhere Mississippi, but I honestly believe they're not flown as a symbol of hatred (at least not always) as some people had banners next to their flags saying things like "Pride not hate", or the rainbow flag, or other phrases trying to distance themselves from the negative connotations of the flag.
Unfortunately for them, one doesn't really get to choose how other people interpret the symbols one uses, as anyone who's ever tried to do something weird in a protocol and then hope a code comment will stop developers of the future from screwing up the code around the weirdness can attest.
Sure, you can interpret the flag however you choose. That has nothing to do with the perceived rise in white supremacy though. Confederate flags have long been flown in the south, and if anything, flying the lgbt flag next to it is new.
The Confederate battle flag meant "The Confederacy" for five years, and meant "Mississippi" for 126.
I'm not from around there, and it isn't my business to defend nor condemn it. I do think taking it as ipso facto evidence of white supremacy is a Yankee mistake.
I had one almost happen in my town (in NJ). We had to counter rally to chase them out. There are fewer physical rallies because the ones they try to do are often successfully suppressed. Recall Boston in 2017. Unite the Right (not suppressed and resulted in a murder). etc.
If you go to certain left wing rallies, they WILL show up. I have seen real live nazis screaming at my friends at an anti-ICE rally.
The problem with these guys is they do have a narrative that is appealing to a certain set of people about nationalism and certain ethnic enemies that care creating the problems. The idea is to prevent their growth and flourishing because if you see them get very common, we are in deep trouble... though given the debate tonight with the president signaling "Stand Back. Stand By." to the Proud Boys, I sense a creeping darkness.
It seems like the definition is "broadened" but no actual definition is provided. All we can look at is who gets labeled as "white supremacist" and draw our own inferences. Notably, a lot of garden-variety egalitarians--people who are against any kind of racial ideology including critical race theory, "anti-racism", and other left-wing racial ideologies--are frequently labeled "white supremacist" (including an awful lot of people of color, jewish people, homosexuals, etc).
We should be very wary of rhetoric that depends on changing definitions of terms without providing precise definitions (see also "racism"). Put differently, everyone's ideas should be criticized on their own terms, but you oughtn't be taken seriously if you don't even define your own terms (and defining them in terms of other poorly defined terms--e.g., "'anti-racism' opposing racism"--doesn't count).
The status quo is not explicitly racist, and a lot of people are comfortable with it. The push by the left is to suggest that just because a system does not have discriminatory laws, that doesn't mean it's not oppressive. Take the prevalence of indentured servitude after the Civil War as an example. I'd recommend "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" for a lucid account of the racial issues in current America.
If you can be convinced that the status quo is oppressive to racial minorities, then it serves to perpetuate white supremacy.
I don't follow your first point, since it seems clear to me that people of color, jewish people, and homosexuals are able to hold white supremacist viewpoints.
> If you can be convinced that the status quo is oppressive to racial minorities, then it serves to perpetuate white supremacy.
This is assuming white privilege is the same as white supremacy, when the term white supremacy has been used for KKK and neo-nazis groups, not mainstream white society since after the civil rights era.
It also assumes that most whites and only whites benefit from white privilege, otherwise it's not so white, and may be more a combination of class, culture and/or historical consequences. Also the fact that white people are still a majority in countries like the US, where a majority in any country likely has similar privileges just by being the majority. One last assumption (in America) is that white culture is a certain way, when in reality the US is primarily an English dominated culture historically, whereas Europe has a lot of cultural variation.
A related issue is that white supremacy is sometimes extended to considering an entire economic system as racist, just because history went a certain way. But there's nothing about an economic system that says any one particular group need benefit more than another.
> there's nothing about an economic system that says anyone one particular group need benefit more than another.
Crony capitalism creates positive feedback loops where the friends of rich people benefit more than strangers to rich people.
I doesn't take a lot of analysis to see how that can re-enforce the dominance of one race in a society if there's any small amount of inequality to start(1) and people of a given race are mostly associating with others of the same race, since the positive feedback loops in capitalism are significant.
(1) And "small amount of inequality" isn't a fair assumption for the US, where one race started out owning people of the other race.
I should have said racial or ethnic group, since there's no reason other than historical happenstance why any racial/ethnic grouping can't benefit. As for friends of the rich, has there been any economic system where that wasn't true? If not rich, then at least the powerful and well connected have always benefitted in every society. The challenging part is how to mitigate that somewhat.
> Crony capitalism creates positive feedback loops where the friends of rich people benefit more than strangers to rich people.
That's about class, not race, ethnicity or whatever other grouping you prefer. White billionaires hang out with black billionaires, not with white hobos.
You're reinforcing the parent's point that there's not race discrimination but class discrimination. Our hypothetical white billionaire is presumably discriminating utterly on a class basis (hanging out with zero poor people of any race) and not discriminating at all on a racial basis (hanging out with members of his class in proportion to their race / without racial bias).
> I doesn't take a lot of analysis to see how that can re-enforce the dominance of one race in a society if there's any small amount of inequality to start(1) and people of a given race are mostly associating with others of the same race, since the positive feedback loops in capitalism are significant.
This isn't racial discrimination or racism or white supremacy, and yielding equal outcomes among racial groups isn't innately desirable. If we assume that all races would be equal today were it not for historical discrimination (quite an assumption given that significant disparities predated first contact between different racial groups and thus racism between them), and we want to correct for that historical discrimination then we can talk about it, but that's fundamentally different than "racism is rampant today" or "we've made little progress since abolition" or "we live in a white supremacist ethnostate" or any of the other left-wing claims.
> This isn't racial discrimination or racism or white supremacy
Definitionally, "a system that gives white people a structural advantage based on what color they were born" is a system of white supremacy, even if the system could be tilted to be a black supremacy or hispanic supremacy system if the initial conditions were different.
There's what the system could do (in another historical timeline) vs. what it is doing.
> Definitionally, "a system that gives white people a structural advantage based on what color they were born" is a system of white supremacy
Yes, but that's not our system. Our system doesn't give structural advantages based on race (at least we can hardly measure the extent of any such advantages). It does give structural advantages based on class (and many other variables) which correlates with race; however, correlation and causation are famously different. We don't have a white supremacist system or any kind of racist system, although some are advocating for a racist system so that we can eliminate disparities.
> There's what the system could do (in another historical timeline) vs. what it is doing.
No one is suggesting an alternate historical timeline; I'm arguing that our system today isn't racist, but that it's very nearly colorblind; however, disparities can result in a perfectly colorblind system because the initial racial distributions were not uniform.
EDIT: Downvoters, do you believe correlation and causation are the same thing in general or only when applied to racial disparities?
Fair point. White supremacy is an attitude, whereas white privilege a state of being. I would quibble that white supremacist ideas are quite widespread - see, e.g., references to "thugs" during the BLM protests.
I also agree that white privilege interacts with class, culture and historical consequences, this was well put.
If, hypothetically, an economic system admits little class mobility, and if classes are racially biased, then the effect of that economic system is to maintain a racial caste system. What are your thoughts on this? I'd also point that the justice system works similarly. There are few explicit racial biases, but what is the effect of this system? It actively maintains a racial hierarchy. Does that make it racist?
Sure, I’d say the West is less so over time as laws and attitudes shift towed being more inclusive. But as for capitalism in general, it’s just an economic system that any society can make use of. I’m of the opinion that it does a better job of growing the economy and producing more opportunities than other systems, raising the standard of living in general. It does also produce more wealth inequality. It also has a tendency to produce powerful corporations. So those two tendencies along with a few others need to be kept in check.
> The push by the left is to suggest that just because a system does not have discriminatory laws, that doesn't mean it's not oppressive. ... If you can be convinced that the status quo is oppressive to racial minorities, then it serves to perpetuate white supremacy.
There are a couple of dynamics at play here:
* The distinction between de jure and de facto discrimination. No one disputes that a country can be racially oppressive via de facto discrimination as our country has been in the past.
* Whether any kind of discrimination is a necessary condition for a system to be called "oppressive". Of course a system is oppressive if it discriminates at all, even if the discrimination is only de facto. This is a completely uncontroversial opinion--virtually everyone believes this, so I don't think this is the position that the left is espousing (especially given that prominent left-wing voices like Kendi are pretty explicit that this isn't what they're talking about). Moreover, if leftists are taking the uncontroversial interpretation, then it doesn't make sense to call anyone else a "white supremacist" because at worst they are opposed to discrimination to the extent that they are aware that it exists (and no, pointing to disparities does not constitute compelling evidence of discrimination).
So presumably leftists believe we live under "white supremacy" because there are disparities at all, irrespective of whether those disparities are attributable to racial discrimination. More likely, it seems to me that leftists are conflating "there was a lot of historical discrimination that created different wealth, crime, marriage/family, etc distributions that the present system acts upon" with "the system today is racist and we've made little progress since the legalization of slavery".
If the latter were true then we would indeed be under a 'white supremacist' system, but thankfully it's obviously fallacious. There are certainly still some vestiges of racism that we should continue to work to remove, but we've progressed tremendously--our system is mostly colorblind, everyone of consequence everywhere is in favor of making the system more colorblind (save apparently progressives and a handful of thoroughly marginalized actual white supremacists); however, a perfectly egalitarian (i.e., non-racist) system isn't going to yield equal outcomes.
That said, if we want to address historical racism, then let's talk about it as such and not give the impression that we're solving for extant racism (or that extant racism is a primary driver in various disparities). This is unnecessarily dishonest and divisive. Let's talk about reparations instead of advocating for a racialized society and system (in contrast to a colorblind society and system). Let's dispense with viewpoints of racial primacy and essentialism. Let's dispense with DiAngelo's "whites are inherently racist" (not paraphrasing) and Kendi's "anti-racism requires eternal discrimination" (paraphrasing). All of this is nonsense and a distraction if our goal is to address historical discrimination or decrease injustice or even close racial gaps (defunding police or antagonizing whites are not likely to improve yields for minorities).
> I don't follow your first point, since it seems clear to me that people of color, jewish people, and homosexuals are able to hold white supremacist viewpoints.
My point didn't depend on the ability or inability of people with those identities to hold white supremacist viewpoints; it was literally parenthetical. I only brought it up because there's a lot of overlap between the people who make broad claims of white supremacy and the people who advocate that whites "shut up and listen" to people with these identities such that, you know, they might shut up and listen before writing these people off as white supremacists.
The justice system (1) does discriminate against people of color to some extent, and (2) it also discriminates against the poor. The arguments for these points are laid out in detail in the book I referred to, so I'm not going to waste your time repeating them. If you do agree with either of these points, then we would agree that the justice system is oppressive.
You raise the point that leftists don't differentiate between a system that discriminates based on race and a system that discriminates on factors correlated with race. I would argue that the effects of those two systems are quite similar. Would you agree that, regardless of the intention, both of these systems have the effect of racial oppression?
I can't defend DiAngelo or Kendi because I'm ignorant of what they have to say.
> The justice system (1) does discriminate against people of color to some extent, and (2) it also discriminates against the poor
No doubt, and everyone agrees that this should be fixed to the extent that there is discrimination. It's unclear exactly how to fix this discrimination except to continue to promote a color-blind society (which has been the winning strategy thus far and while it hasn't completely resolved the problem, it's significantly curbed it in a relatively short amount of time).
> If you do agree with either of these points, then we would agree that the justice system is oppressive.
Yes. But no one is arguing that we shouldn't change the justice system; there's disagreement about the extent to which it's oppressive with the left arguing that it's "literally slavery" and moderates arguing that it's a problem that needs to be addressed but not a significant driver of the disparities that the left cites and the right arguing that it's an insignificant problem relative to black-on-black crime.
> ou raise the point that leftists don't differentiate between a system that discriminates based on race and a system that discriminates on factors correlated with race. I would argue that the effects of those two systems are quite similar. Would you agree that, regardless of the intention, both of these systems have the effect of racial oppression?
Yes, by definition, something that correlates with some underlying cause else has similar effects.
A good analogy would be the disparate outcomes of the criminal justice system with respect to men and women. As with blacks, the criminal justice system discriminates against men to some extent. However, it more significantly discriminates against violent behavior, which correlates with male gender to the effect that men are disproportionately likely to go to prison, their sentences are disproportionately harsh, etc.
A moderate would say that we should address the discrimination problem, but not try to discriminate against women in order to address the remainder of the gap which is attributable to the correlate: violent behavior.
An ideologically consistent leftist would argue that correlates should be treated as causes in the name of erasing disparities; however, (mysteriously) there are no nation-wide progressive efforts to close this gap. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine why progressives are comfortable discriminating against some groups but not others.
EDIT: Even though they have similar results, as with all correlations, the danger of treating correlations as a causation is that you end up treating the symptom and not the problem, and often this just exacerbates the symptom. Eliminating standardized testing in the college admissions process is very likely to result in more discrimination against blacks, but addressing our growing wealth inequality problem will benefit people of all races (and given that blacks are more likely to be poor than whites, it will benefit them disproportionately). Further, this allows us to dispense with the deliberately confusing, divisive "white supremacy", "white fragility", "racism" rhetoric that is in all likelihood only creating more racists.
EDIT2: While we may not disagree, I feel like this conversation is a lot more productive than most race conversations. Thanks for being a good faith participant, sincerely.
A commenter below helpfully provided links to pages talking about increases in hate group counts. As you suggest, this could mean either more hate groups, a more effective SPLC (that's better at finding them), or a broader definition. The last one might be written in the original reports somewhere. I have no idea how to distinguish the first two.
The idea has always been widespread but not accepted in the open. In the US the Trump administration’s embrace of white supremacy has lifted the fear of social recourse for supremacists (racists, sexists, fascists) and I suspect the same goes for other far right parties around the globe.
The global context is more complicated, but (as my international friends are fond of reminding me) the US has outsized cultural influence on what other countries consider best practices.
"Embrace" by the definition "continuing to parrot white nationalist points of view uncritically, and having a white nationalist as senior adviser for policy."
By that logic Hillary Clinton is a sexist for remaining married to a sexual harraser, and a vast proportion of the left are who-knows-what-label for uncritically parroting the Covington teen narrative.
It is exactly because of social cooling that you heard so little about white supremacy for so many years. The tacit endorsement of one famous person (see if you can guess who!) helped to somewhat raise the ambient temperature for it.
If true, that raises two interesting questions relative to the socialcooling.com content:
1) It begs the question of whether social cooling should be considered a universal ill. After all, white supremacy is bad, and consequences for publicly embracing it are useful.
2) It begs the question of whether the impact of digitally-originated social cooling is particularly relevant if one thought-leader can upend it.
I'm not sure there is causation here. Far-right ultra-nationalistic movements are gaining speed in many places in the world. I think there are many factors at play, one being that we get further and further away from WW2 and people forget how bad it can get (especially here in Europe). Only the military and very old people in the west now know what a real war feels like. On top of that there's general social unrest and increased inequalities (the infamous 1%), software eating the world etc...
I do think that white supremacy, fascism and nazism was really a lot more fringe even only 10 years ago, it wasn't just under-reported.
My point is more that people seem to no longer consider war even a possible scenario. As such the weakening on the EU is not seen as a huge problem by many, because as we all know Europe is not at all historically prone to spontaneously bursting into flames.
In a way your comment which, if I read it correctly, implies "surely you don't think that the rise of nationalism could lead to wars" kind of proves my point. It totally could, and I'd add fairly easily. The peace we have is not as solid as it may seem, especially with dwindling resources and the rise of new superpowers in the East.
Your point is only made because you choose to reinterpret my words. Sure, nationalusm could lead to wars, so could many other things. How is nationalism any more certain to do so?
There has been many wars in Europe since WW2, from Cyprus to Yugoslavia and Georgia. You don't need to be 80 years old to have experienced war. Or maybe you need to explain what a "real war" is.
Yeah, if you pay attention to the world (and I'm not implying grandparent does not - please don't draw that conclusion), you will see a lot of "symptoms" before 2016 happened.
I believe the person grandparent is referring to's rise to power was one more symptom in what's been happening, and not a cause in any way. Of course, these things tend to enter a sort of feedback loop. If you'll allow me a parallel with the rise of antisemitism in Europe in the early half of the last century: It was not Nazism that emboldened and bolstered antisemitic feelings across Europe. Nazism was a symptom of the established and pretty mainstream antisemitic current in western society at the time. Even the US was not immune to hating on the Jew.
This rise in far-right political strength is most likely associated with a backlash against the (mostly? totally?) left-wing push for inclusivity and rapid social progressivism. In a way, among those that wouldn't identify themselves as far-right but do manifest ideals associated with the far-right of today, I can identify a certain undercurrent of "we're going too far, we're making too many changes, we need to slow down". Of course, things like "cancel culture", Spotify's staff wanting complete creative control over a 'controversial' podcast, etc., as well as the social bubbles we isolate ourselves in on our chosen social media platforms do not help at all with empathy or viewing others' viewpoints, which greatly exacerbates the issue.
>Far-right ultra-nationalistic movements are gaining speed in many places in the world.
That may be true, but far-left movements are certainly gaining speed as well. And I'm talking about real actual 'cease the means of production'-communists. Politics is certainly getting more polarised.
I believe the phrase is "seize the means of production."
Ceasing it is merely a consequence of botching the seizing (and the understanding of where that means fit in a post-Industrial-Revolution ecosystem of interlocked systems). ;)
And full agreement; this is a language cobbled together by a chunk of land getting conquered and re-conquered so many times that the locals gave up trying to speak the language of the New King and made up their own from their favorite words in the aggressor cultures and the language they spoke amongst themselves.
Many people were accused of being xenophobic, mostly by self-important brats, of course they loose their reluctance towards it. It is much stronger than 10 years ago.
It's because this page is using "minority views" as a code word for "ruling class threatening views." Which has always been the case. A minority view that doesn't threaten business interests will face little suppression (see: white supremacy)
I don't think we can assume white supremacy doesn't threaten business interests. Particularly not in the US, where approximately 2 out of 5 Americans aren't white. How many companies are willing to put on the table as their business model "We'll be actively hostile to 40% of our potential customers?"
One business' potential customer is another's potential employee and a third's potential competitor.
How many websites have multiple translations available and put effort into accessibility proportional to the amount of the population that could be helped by it? It's not anywhere near 100%.
People in America dont live in random places. You have parts where everyone is white and parts where everyone is black. Then you have parts where one group is severely dominant. For many if not most businesses, their customer base does not have same racial ration as whole America.
I remember reading a story about a Black man attending KKK rallies to understand their argument and successfully convince some of them to leave the group. I think it was Daryl Davis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis
Nowadays this would be very difficult because the mere fact of being around "bad" people ("bad" depends on the context and might be something relatively innocent) would also brand you as "bad" regardless of any good intentions you might have.
What ends up happening is that "bad" people are stuck in their own echo-chamber surrounded by like-minded people and anyone outside of the group wouldn't dare to engage with them (and provide counter-arguments) because of consequences for their own career & social circle (as their own friends would distance themselves from him for the same reasons).
Daryl Davis is a really interesting guy. His episode on the JRE is really good and his stories keep you engaged. Even if you don't like Joe Rogan, you should still be able to enjoy his episode because Davis does the majority of the talking.
I didn't say it was a good solution or one I would ever offer myself, but I think a lot of the young-white-male-to-alt-right pipeline falls in to this when nobody else seems willing to hear them out except to tell them which ethnic group to blame.
In the way it might be casted upon supporters of the President, the distinction between white supremacy and white power is largely semantics.
As far as I understand it, "white supremacy" for those that desire it is the idealized end result of "white power." Much of the rhetoric from President Trump is to rally support for white power. [1]
Given the most common disagreement in the US is between those who advocate for or oppose President Trump, it makes sense that his followers would be deemed "white supremacists"
I believe the broad awakening among many white people in the US currently is the ambient benefits of invisible white power.
> White supremacists have lost jobs for being caught out attending rallies; it doesn't seem to stop the rallies.
Yesterday, there was a documentary movie on German's private TV station Pro7 about Nazis. An actual Nazi confirmed live on camera: yes, deplatforming Nazis (and that includes them losing jobs, family, friends) works and is a huge source of pain for the movement because many people don't hold up to that pressure and leave.
Just imagine how big the rallies would be if there was no social pressure on not being Nazi would no longer be there... at the moment many attendees either don't give a f..k about how they are perceived, or they relish on that being accepted in their social circles.
First they deplatformed the Nazis, and I did not speak out -- for I was not a Nazi.
>The problem is when governments go against legitimate opposition and abuse social pressure.
Legitimate according to who? Isn't any opposition to a government illegitimate opposition? Or exclusively legitimate, depending on how you feel about the concept of government itself.
I've been self-censoring for more than a decade now. I really like how the information is presented in this SocialCooling site.
As you have pointed out, the effects are good if they lower the voices you disagree with, and raise the ones that represent your views. My advice to everyone reading HN is to pick the winning side, and conform to it. Fortunately for us, picking the winners isn't hard.
Funny; I thought it was "First they deplatformed Nazis, and I did not speak out because Nazis can get fucked." ;)
> I've been self-censoring for more than a decade now
Good! I recommend it. It's a basic skill that is useful when living in a society with other human beings whose situation (social power, emotional state, world view) we must account for. We have entire empathic neurological systems to support that behavior.
> My advice to everyone reading HN is to pick the winning side, and conform to it.
> Funny; I thought it was "First they deplatformed Nazis, and I did not speak out because Nazis can get fucked."
The original quote which you're abusing begins "first they came for the Communists".
These were Communists in the era of Josef Stalin, to be clear. Mass-murdering totalitarians, exactly the sort of people you wouldn't want taking over your country.
It appears you missed both the lesson of Herr Niemoller, and a key part of the history of the rise of Nazism in Weimar Germany.
Someone missed a lesson from history. Might be me; might not.
In modern Germany, it's still illegal to explicitly disseminate means of propaganda of unconstitutional organizations. Is this wrong? I think I'll defer to the modern Germans on that question.
There's also difference of degree. Deplatforming Nazis (which is how parent post bastardized the quote initially) is not the same as incarcerating them. I was playing off the bastardization.
If you want to continue to defend platforming Nazis, be my guest, but I don't have to discuss it with you.
Many a barn door is closed after the horses escape.
I, too, have negative interest in continuing to speak to an unpleasant person who makes unsupported assumptions about my views on a topic I never addressed.
German communists most likely weren't aware of what was really happening in the USSR at the time.
(Whether an hypothetical communist revolution in Germany would have resulted in Stalinist-like horrors is an interesting question.)
French communists have had a disproportionate part in French resistance, and a disproportionate part in French after-war policies for a long time.
Correlation does not imply causation. Every authoritarian and totalitarian regime also agrees citizens should pay their taxes. As do most liberal democracies.
The US was largely founded on white supremacy and it has been part of the state institutions for two hundred years. It didn't disappear at the end of the civil war, or in the 1960s, or in 2008.
I'm afraid I don't know the definition of state you're operating under, so I don't think I can evaluate claims such as "white supremacy is endorsed by the state in the US."
Federal immigration control almost exclusively focuses their attention on deporting and denying asylum to Latino refugees and asylum seekers.
Last week it was uncovered that mass hysterectomies had taken place at an ICE facility in Georgia without the informed consent of patients - this falls under the UN's definition of genocide.
This policy shift towards targeting exclusively Latinos came under the Trump administration calling Mexican immigrants "rapists" who bring crime and drugs. Melania Trump is a white immigrant who was granted the exclusive EB-1 green card for "extraordinary abilities".
I find it nearly impossible in these circumstances to come to the conclusion that the state is not explicitly catering to white supremacist ideology...and immigration policy is only the tip of the iceberg.
No it is not. I literally never heard that "white supremacy is endorsed by the state in the US". I heard the highly exaggregated unsubstantiated claims though. (Eg by calling all people wearing MAGA hats white supremacists.)
As far as I can tell the number of people who are part of the KKK hasn't gone up any appreciable amount.
In fact, calling perfectly normal and valuable things "white supremacy" and then deplaforming "white supremacists" is an excellent example of this social cooling.
The pedigree of that image is that it started as a list created in a facilitated focus group on race and race relations. It assigns no positive or negative connotations to those items; they're things people said off the top of their head when they were asked "What does 'white culture' mean to you?"
Later, it was shared with the inaccurate description of being a list of negative aspects of white culture.
It's kind of funny really; the pedigree of that list being considered a list of negative things is white people making assumptions about the intent of a list assembled of things white people self-attributed to white culture.
Regarding the previous "iceberg" image---that's a lot of words to go looking through to try and pick out the items you're describing as 'perfectly normal and valuable things.' Can you highlight which ones you were referring to? Assuming good intent, I assume you didn't mean "Racial profiling" or "Fearing people of color."
> It assigns no positive or negative connotations to those items; they're things people said off the top of their head when they were asked "What does 'white culture' mean to you?"
The result is the same, the subconscious associations between "white" and "whiteness" and those traits has been strengthened. The meaning of words comes from what people think about when they hear it. By increasing the amount of things people associate with the word "white" the definition is expanded.
No negative connotations have been assigned by the document. But "white" and especially "whiteness" has very negative connotations. I've never come across any text or material suggesting "whiteness" is a good thing. Its always stuff like this: https://news.csusm.edu/ask-the-expert-the-problem-with-white... (That alone is already pretty fucked up when you think about it for more than a second) Furthermore, the meaning of words comes from what people think about when they hear it. But "white supremacy" has extremely negative connotations, and so all those normal things get tarred by association with imagery of the Nazis and the KKK.
>Regarding the previous "iceberg" image---that's a lot of words to go looking through to try and pick out the items you're describing as 'perfectly normal and valuable things.' Can you highlight which ones you were referring to? Assuming good intent, I assume you didn't mean "Racial profiling" or "Fearing people of color."
Of course not, those are the actually bad things that are used to tar the "perfectly normal and valuable things". If the iceberg picture only contained good things, it would associate positive valence with the term "white supremacy" rather than associating negative valence with the normal things as the picture was designed to do.
To take specific examples, "Calling the police on black people". This is a perfectly normal thing to do if your being robbed or harassed and the perpetrator happens to be black. Doing so does not mean your promoting white supremacy. Now if you're doing it because they're black, thats a bad thing, but the image makes no destination, so the normal thing is tarred by the bad thing. There are also some supper egregious ones, things like "White parents" and "there's only one human race/We're all one big human family". These are actually anti-racist perspectives that are now being associated with one of the most racist and destructive ideologies in history. Another one is "All Lives Matter", this is an explicitly egalitarian message that is now viewed as racist by association.
I can keep going through the list but then my arguments would turn into a gish-gallop.
This kind of rhetorical tarring has been going on for so long that certain kinds of explicit institutional racism is now viewed as not racist (affirmative action), and explicitly anti-racist and unifying statements "All lives matter/there's only one human race" are viewed as racist.
All lives matter, in particular, is perceived as racist because it's only trotted out as a response to black lives matter (a phrase it is not at all incompatible with, so people tossing "all lives matter" out as a response to "black lives matter" are immediately casting it in a racist connotation).
As for the reason it isn't really a retort to "black lives matter", that's been explained better by Chris Straub than I ever could.
No, it's always been a valid response to BLM. BLM puts the focus on race and race alone. Effectively excluding every other major source of causation and axis of variation. You know, things like extreme poverty, heart disease, malaria, etc.(All of which kill 100,000s every year and very disproportionately affect black people, but you never hear a peep about it from BLM) By making it a race issue (especially without solid evidence), you deliberately antagonize people who are either disproportionally affected by the other factors of variation who belong to the "privileged" race or who care about other issues that can be convincingly argued to be far more serious.
To extend the house analogy, there aren't 2 houses, there are 7 billion and you're saying we should focus our attention on the black ones rather than the ones that are on fire because they are more likely to be black.
Unfortunately, you can't quite capture that logic with a catchy jingle like BLM, so your left saying ALM and crossing your fingers hoping racial tensions don't escalate.
It's more that they're saying people just believe black houses are likelier to catch fire innately and that's acceptable, when they're not and it's not.
You could replace, "black" in that sentence with a whole bunch of other things. There's nothing special about race, and their shouldn't be. Again, multiple factors of variation. If someone is focused on "poverty" it's not that they find black people being disproportionately affected acceptable, it's that they have exercised their judgement and don't see it as a priority. And (IMO) rightly so.
Now you can make the argument that 99% of people don't give a shit, and only care about themselves. But that leads you more down the path of effective alturism than BLM, again because the former doesn't ignore the other factors of variation.
For those who genuinely care about the state of the world, and have identified issues that in their judgement that are more pressing, or those who do care but are currently busy keeping their own heads above the water for whatever reason, the accusations that they believe the current situation is acceptable are at best tone deaf and at worst downright insulting.
Political reform? How many people protesting actually voted in their municipal and state elections?
Even if that were the case, it would be a pretty solid argument to focus on more tractable problems rather than whatever the past few months have been.
Saying "Other options have been tried and failed." Is BS post-hoc justification. This round of BLM started because of 1 egregious viral video in a country of 300,000,000 when a whole bunch of young people had nothing better to do. When your dealing with complex systems like police-community interactions, you will never be able to completely eliminate egregious incidents, even if you can reduce the incident rate by 90%. Any kind of legitimate attempt to improve the situation will necessarily involve something resembling multiple A/B tests carried out over multiple areas and multiple years to understand the relationship between policy, environment, culture, and policing outcomes. This will necessarily take time, it will be extremely expensive, and the gains will be marginal. That's just how things work when your dealing with massive complex systems and rare events.
It wasn't just one video, it wasn't one just one incident, It's not a small amount of people who are upset, and it's not okay.
Quite a few of the protesters have documented why they're out in the street. If anyone is having difficulty understanding the situation, I recommend reading what they've said.
For me personally, it was very educational to bear witness to people protesting police brutality being met with more police brutality---not justified force escalation, but attempts to bait protesters into breaking laws to justify arrests, antagonize nonviolent protests hoping for violent ones, and straight up lying about the situation on the ground. The last part I find insulting, because it's not like the video cameras aren't there. They know the video cameras are there. They believe the system will protect them from violating their own protocols and the law, and so far, it does.
I mean you can point at all the examples of police overreach, injustice and brutality throughout history, but it was the one video that kicked it off. But you've kind of ceeded the original point, none of what you mentioned, and most of the examples cited in that link, are not specifically racial issues, even though they disproportionately affect black people. So "All lives matter" is a reasonable position to hold when presented with the issue of police brutality, that way you end up focusing on the brutality itself rather than the race of the victim. So tarring it as racist by including it in the definition of "white supremacy" in the way the picture does is rhetorically dishonest.
Which finally ties us back to my orignial claim, which is that "white supremacy" is on the rise, and thats because people who care more about themselves or non-racial issues than racial issues have been reclassified as "white supremacists".
This seems broken, especially with 'MAGA' thrown in there, are you saying only whites voted for that candidate? Because I got news for you... MAGA wasn't even original to Trump.
According to this list since I believe people can bootstrap themselves I must be a white supremacist. Except I highly doubt the KKK are fond of mestizo people, I even doubt they even like "white" Hispanics at all. I know people who have been homeless and now make more money than I do, living on cars or purely on the streets, minorities included.
As a minority I am astounded at all the bikeshedding people are doing to fight racism, worse yet finding racism where there is none like git branches.
Edit: Also, just because someone supported Trump and is white and voted for him doesn't automatically make that person a racist. This kind of prejudice rising up today is very worrisome and way too topical in a discussion about social cooling.
That's the point, it is broken. It's how "white supremacy" has gained so much traction in the US. Of course it will have gained traction if you expand the definiton to include almost 50% of the population.
This depends on how your aggregation function is weighted.
If your measure is "how many people in the US are white supremacists?" then, yes, it's definitely a minority view (though still more widely held than it should be!).
But if you scale it by each person's power/wealth, you get a very different view. If your question is "what is the total power held by white supremacists?" you'll end up with a larger number.
And if you really want to get an accurate measure where you treat each person's white supremacy value as a number that ranges smoothly from positive (actual white supremacist) to zero (not interested in putting effort into race relations one way or another) to negative (anti-white supremacist), your function may produce a number that explains a hell of a lot of US history.
> If your question is "what is the total power held by white supremacists?" you'll end up with a larger number.
I very much doubt so. The richest people in the US are whites (e.g. Besos, Gates, Buffet), but not suprematists. If you have data which proves otherwise, please share.
> The richest people in the US are whites (e.g. Besos, Gates, Buffet), but not suprematists.
And what of the Kochs and Waltons?
Either way, you're only thinking about the 0.01%. But consider the many many more people in the 1%. Big fish in small pond types that are part of the Old Boy's Club in your local area. People that wouldn't call themselves white supremacists or even racist, but also wouldn't really want Black folks joining their country club.
If you don't think deep-seated racism is profoundly prevalent across large areas of the US, you are probably just in the position of having enough privilege to be oblivious to it. I grew up in the South, and it is everywhere. You just have to scratch the surface a bit to see it.
Maybe it's true, maybe it's false, but the burden of proof on those who make statements about white supremacists, and I did not see any evidence supporting these statements.
> but the burden of proof on those who make statements about white supremacists
In a nation where it was legal to own black people for most of its existence and less than 40 years since the last lynching, you think the burden of proof is on me to show that white supremacy is a problem?
I don't know. Maybe you watched a movie about white supremacists when you were a child and it stick to your mind. People tend to have biases and see what they want to see. Some people see white supremacists everywhere. Otheres constantly see examples of inter-racial love and friendship.
> In a nation where it was legal to own black people for most of its existence and less than 40 years since the last lynching, you think the burden of proof is on me to show that white supremacy is a problem?
Maybe it is a problem, maybe it is not a problem.
The original statement was not about that. Quoting:
> But if you scale it by each person's power/wealth, you get a very different view. If your question is "what is the total power held by white supremacists?" you'll end up with a larger number.
This is the statement I'm contensting. Because it is unsubstantiated.
> Maybe you watched a movie about white supremacists when you were a child and it stick to your mind.
Well, I:
* Lived near a sundown town.
* Watched one of my closest friends get recruited by an associate of David Duke and slowly get indoctrinated into white supremacy.
* Had a white kid in high school proudly tell me about the time they "beat the shit out of that nigger" just because they didn't like the way he looked at them.
* Watched half a schoolbus full of elementary school kids joke about "porch monkeys".
* Grew up in a city named after one plantation in a neighborhood named after another one.
But, sure, yeah, I must be imagining it all.
> Because it is unsubstantiated.
I provided a link to lots of articles about white supremacy in the US. It is you who have provided no counter-evidence.
No, I'm not saying you are imagining. I suspect (not state) that you are biased, and describe the issue larger than what it is.
> I provided a link to lots of articles about white supremacy in the US. It is you who have provided no counter-evidence.
And I can give you a link to Google, when you can find anything.
You just provided a link with the list of white supremacist organisations. Nobody denies these organisation exists.
But there is no proof that "white supremacists" have significant power. They look like small marginal groups with no money and no real power. Like religious sects.
They did succeed in boosting the current President into the office, which is more than no power. How significant the power is of being a voting bloc the President can't seem to say no to is a question reasonable people can debate.
That one really rings false. Minority opinion holders are gathering online in record numbers. I'm thinking in particular of the nut jobs like anti-vaxxers and flat earthers, but also fan bases for obscure culture (reddit saved The Expanse) or the support for non mainstream political figures like Ron Paul or Andrew Yang. If anything, their ability to brigade online forums makes them seem far more prevalent than they really are.
I'd be interested in figuring out how I can use this to my advantage. For example, create a persona online that is optimal to lenders, employers and even the government.
The issue is my "real self" is uninterested in participating in these networks, even if to create a fake persona.
From what I understand this is an actual thriving industry already. Traditional identity theft (get someone's SSN and other info and open credit lines in their name) is much harder now, so the fraudsters have moved on to creating wholly made up "synthetic identities" de novo.
I don't think that would really fly. You may get served a higher class of ads, but if you go apply for a loan or a job, you still have to disclose your real self.
> but if you go apply for a loan or a job, you still have to disclose your real self
Then doesn't this discount the threat being posed by the "Social Cooling" theory? If social media activity doesn't matter "when it comes down to real transactions" shouldn't we be less worried?
I think the answer is somewhere in the middle. Obviously you can't "social media fake" your way into a mortgage (I hope) but it may stop you from getting a job or being elected to office.
Yes but that's just the thing: OP wants to create their "real" self, just not the authentic self. It becomes real, by association with the name of the person, yet it stays a simulated expression, a simulacrum[0].
Consider that the loan- or job-"machines" are collecting intelligence from social networks to evaluate the person -- in addition to loan history and previous job performance. Now if you can present "yourself" to this machines in a conformal way, you don't need to fear negative repercussions on shitposts you did. While you can still be authentic in private or under pseudonyms.
Of course, you will still get categorized by the bank transactions you make in your real name. Same goes for your performance reviews on previous jobs. It is just a matter of tricking these other forms of automated social control into a higher rating bound to your name.
-----
I find it fascinating that philosophers like Baudrillard and Deleuze were able to think and warn about these issues more than 40 years ago when none of this was even remotely on the horizon:
It definitely does, and he is scarily accurate in his analysis. I just re-read it myself, and stumbled over this part, which I certainly not anticipated in this form a few years back:
> For the hospital system: the new medicine "without doctor or patient" that singles out potentially sick people and subjects at risk, which in no way attests to individuation -- as they say -- but substitutes for the individual or numerical body the code of a "dividual" material to be controlled.
This is certainly an accurate description of the control mechanisms various states have put into place in the form of apps that enforce selective quarantine restrictions.
The socialcooling website really a great project! Important content presented concise and on-point, thank you for doing this!
This reminds me of Gattaca (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca) where people with good genes rent out their DNA to those who have bad genes so they can get better jobs, insurance, etc...
It has no bearing on anything as far as I can tell. For decades I've been open about my drug use, lack of care for people less fortunate than me, anti-organ-donation, anti-first-lady, illegal importation of pharma, and a hundred other things.
I have no problem accessing a $1.5 million mortgage at 2.875%, getting prescribed drugs, or immigration beyond whatever is inherently hard about the system.
The best way is still the real information. The hard stuff in the real world. What you do online does nothing.
Except maybe the Tinder thing. Most dating apps align your attractiveness with the attractiveness of potential targets. That's to be expected.
The way I see it is "Information wants to be free".
>It has no bearing on anything as far as I can tell.
...It says a lot that all of your examples are from your own life. There are counter examples abounding that just aren't affecting you (to your knowledge), such as those stated in TFA, or CA, or Brexit etc.
Do you think these data brokers are selling our info for billions to rubes? Are insurance companies known for their gullibility? Are sale of lists of rape victims to 'whoever has money' A-OK, because you are not being personally affected?
... These trends are worsening. People aren't spending more and more on data that has "no bearing on anything". That it's invisible to you makes it worse.
Oh yeah, for sure. And for instance, if it were to happen to 5% of people, then there will be twenty people like me for one person who is unfairly affected but for that person it will be a complete nightmare.
And societally it's not okay to create a complete nightmare for like 5% of people. So I totally get it.
Just that if you live in the First World and live a normative interface (my drug use doesn't leak into the professional environment, my illegal imports are on the quiet) you can get away with a lot.
This whole concept seems overdramatic to me at least at present. Banks are making lending decisions based on steady income and payment history, not your online persona. Similarly for employment. If you have reasonable qualifications, you will have no trouble finding work, regardless of how "optimal" your persona is.
Advertising is the area in which the most persona research and targeting is implemented. I suspect the reason no one is trying to fake online personas is because it would only have noticeable impact on what ads you see.
What do you mean, "It's a fictitious company"? Is this not a legitmate service of yours? I get that the service, if real, produces fictitious content but your wording is throwing me off.
All citizens who lie about being cat owning church going knitting enthusiasts — regardless as to whether it was to get a better rate on their next car lease, or not — will be incarcerated.
This may be reduced to a small fine (and denouncement) if you forgo your right to the wasteful scrutiny of a public trial.
I think this is a good example of how pro-privacy arguments should be framed. It is takes the varied aspects and complex implications of tracking users across the web (or even in the real world), and distills it down into an easy to understand concept.
When you think privacy of in in the terms of 'social cooling', or consider things like China's 'social credit' system, I can't help be think we are much closer to the world depicted in the last season of Westworld than we might want to admit.
this is the kind of privacy discourse I am interested in. Whether an individual can find my ssn, location, credit cards, or whatever personal information is not really what I am thinking about when I think about “protecting my privacy” but rather reducing my data emissions that compose these ratings. in my experience it’s hard to get this across to people who are not familiar though, always get the “I have nothing to hide :) what are you trying to hide?” response. Will try this “social cooling” framework next time. maybe a little less daunting as an entry point than “surveillance capitalism”
I never understood this. Economics 101 or 102 maybe tells us that our consumer welfare will be reduced if firms have less uncertainty about how much they can extract from us. You can make this argument more sophisticated in networks, regarding ads, regarding quality and what have you. But the basic case should be enough to convince you that amazon knowing every detail about you is not going to help you. At all.
What Economics 101 or 102 principles are you referring to? I Googled your comment and found this 2019 research paper [1] that seems to support it, but I would have thought the Economics 101 take is more aligned with what companies tell us – more information about consumer desires allows firms to sell us products that we like more at lower cost, and competition means that the savings eventually get passed onto us rather than captured in permanently higher profits.
Essentially, a sale contract can be written in many ways, but one can show the following generally for (more or less) all such contracts: to account for the fact that the firm is missing information about the counterparty, you, it will have to pay what is referred to as "information rent" to at least some customers. The firm ends up in a "second best" outcome merely because it does not possess all information about its customers. The difference, however, is "rent" that accrues to at least some customers. That is, you, the customer, can expect to pay less for things you care about. This in particular occurs when the contract is simply a single "price". With a price, you have to find the optimum between serving many customers and selling for high prices.
One can show that without enough information, the firm can not really do better than setting a single price, which leaves rents to the consumer lest demand is lost.
In contrast, if you have full information, you can construct pricing schemes that fully extract all surplus from the consumer. You can, in essence, get higher prices without losing customers. Many pricing schemes today are trying to use more information to approximate that situation (for example auctions, anything with subscriptions, fixed components, packages etc.). It is why firms like Amazon and Google hire a lot of Economics PhDs and Game Theorists.
You will also notice that many products are pushing toward such pricing models. This is not by accident.
So, your contention is half right and half wrong. In the greater scheme of things, full information is often (but not always) efficient for total welfare. However, in such situation total welfare also may accrue entirely to firms. That means higher profits, first, and higher costs for the consumer second.
In effect, you will pay more if you are more known.
It then depends on your faith in the fairness of the ownership and distributional properties of our capitalist systems, as well as the efficiency of the markets in question (e.g. competition), whether the increased profits are eventually redistributed to you, the consumer.
It seems to me that in many of the markets in question, even the description of oligopoly would be rather charitable. In that case, latter parts of your post do not seem likely.
Edit: Since you asked for the principles. The first iteration of this you may come across is called price discrimination. At that stage, it's not about information, but you can make that link in your head quite easily: The ability to set different prices, depends of course crucially on what you know.
Next, you may hear about auctions or contract theory, where such problems are tackled explicitly. Switching the roles, you may hear about principal agent problems, where a similar (really the same thing) occurs. For full generality, you may want to read into Mechanism Design. Tillman Borgers has a great book which used to be available free as PDF and you can probably still find it. If you are interested in questions such as: "What can we say generally about any sort of sales contract", then this is a good place to start. Needs some math though.
> It is why firms like Amazon and Google hire a lot of Economics PhDs and Game Theorists. You will also notice that many products are pushing toward such pricing models. This is not by accident.
My dad has a Ph.D in Econ from an Ivy League institution, and lives near-ish to a few FAANGs. He's retired but gets headhunter emails from them consistently.
It is enough in the present, but I'm not sure that will be enough in the future. People have always been distrustful of faraway strangers hiding their faces in hoodies and sunglasses. Similarly for a good credit score you need a history of taking and paying off loans.
You may need a good life on display rather than just an absence of bad things.
Right. Apart from the sci-fi tropes, the extreme drama, and aesthetics, it's a spitting image. A great deal of effort is quietly spent on social control, keeping things as they are, and extracting value from people-as-cows, both here and there. Any technology in a position to add robustness to that system, to reduce its upkeep effort, or improve its efficiency at generating wealth for the privileged is likely to succeed, so it's reasonable to think some of the not-yet-here but possible aspects their world will make it to ours in time.
Sometimes I think that authors who see patterns and make reasonable but dire predictions about where society is going actually end up providing a game plan to career oppressors.
Probably a reference to the individual user as an member of an aggregate “herd” that produces value for the social media platform from the perspective of the business.
There are also deeper potential meanings, though the OP did clarify some.
Cattle are products on a farm. They have purposes. A few bulls are left for breeding, the rest are gelded. Some cows are for milk. Others are fattened up as much as possible.
But all end up in the slaughterhouse. Anyone that steps out of line causes problems before that time may find themselves culled from the herd.
The purpose of the system is not to make cows happy, or meet cow needs. It's to produce as much economic product as possible.
It's an analogy. Personally, I think human lives have intrinsic value. I want my species not just to survive but to prosper as much as possible for as long as possible.
To answer your question, people aren't always seen as intrinsically valuable, nor their suffering meaningful. In the wrong context, corporations, congregations, and other populations are only valued for what they produce, like how cows are valued (and raised) for their milk and meat.
Agreed. I think the audience matters too -- different messages appeal to different people.
My dad is one of those old school guys who thinks law enforcement can do no wrong and nobody needs to hide anything unless they're doing something wrong. Even if that were true and I think it is true that many law enforcement personnel are trying to do good, that doesn't always mean the results will always reflect their intentions. When the sample size of facts is too small, as is often the case with mass collection, it's too easy for your sample to get mixed up with someone else's. Maybe your phone is the only other phone in the area when a murder is committed. That doesn't mean you did it, but it sure makes you look like the only suspect.
I was never able to gain an inch on his argument until I asked him why he has curtains on his living room window. I mean, it faces North, so there's no need to block intense sunlight, yet he closes them every night when he's sitting there reading a book or watching TV. Why? He's not doing anything illegal, yet he still doesn't want people watching him. He said he would not be ok with the Police standing at his window all night watching him. That's when he finally understood that digital privacy is not just for criminals, but for everyone who wants to exist in a peaceful state and not a police state.
> I was never able to gain an inch on his argument until I asked him why he has curtains on his living room window.
I'm not doing anything wrong, but I still close the door when I take a dump. The idea that someone wanting privacy means it is nefarious or wrong is ridiculous.
While crass, that's a great way to put it. Why can't I just want my conversations to be private because eavesdropping without cause is icky. Just like in person.
So instead of an ad blocker, we could have background bots in our browser visiting random urls and clicking on every ad in sight (of course it would need to mimic human UI input).
The only legitimate ad blocker that has been banned from the chrome store was ad nauseum. It was a thin wrapper over ublock that a click signal to every single ad. You could adjust the intensity (no clicks, some clicks, all), but that was where Google drew the line.
I never found this type of argument satisfying. It's more of an appeal to emotion than a rational reason.
In our culture we feel deep embarrassment if someone sees us using the toilet, but this is not universal across people and cultures, and honestly, it shouldn't be embarrassing. There's nothing inherently wrong with pooping. We irrationally feel embarrassment when we shouldn't have to.
This argument doesn't show any negative consequences of invasion of privacy. It's also not clear how it extrapolates to situations that don't involve toilets or nudity. If the problem is embarrassment, and people don't feel embarrassed that Facebook collects data, does that make it okay?
Obviously there are other arguments for privacy that do show potential harm. I find these more compelling.
We shouldn't do many things but we do. If I feel embarrassed, it means I am vulnerable. I want to keep it to myself and I have the right to feel embarrassed, despite it being illogical. Humans aren't perfectly logical beings. If we were, there would be no discussions like this one.
Sure, I don't want to embarrass people. We should try to accommodate people's feelings.
But I don't think it's the strong argument in favour of privacy that we want to make, because:
1. We do give people privacy in the bathroom. The debate is over the data social media companies collect. If people aren't generally embarrassed that Facebook collects data about what they post on Facebook, how does it relate to being embarrassed to be seen on the toilet?
2. Do we always have to accommodate irrational feelings? What about people who are easily offended by things that things that most would consider non-offensive? Is it immoral for a child to dress as a clown on halloween given that some people have coulrophobia? If you're arguing with someone who believes law enforcement should have access to people's social media and you bring up that stuff posted on social media could be embarrassing, the obvious response is, "Well, too bad. Investigating crimes is more important."
Embarrassment is an emotional state which sometimes occurs when the image that we seek to project is undermined. It's painful, but usually temporary. By loss of dignity, I mean that an individual is not being respected if they are not permitted any control over their person space. Humans seem to naturally require some degree of control over what may be witnessed by others and what is theirs alone.
Yes, psychological harm is one of the most powerful arguments against privacy invasion as I see it. The other being the potential for social or even physical harm, i.e. misuse of that data by people who are able to gain access to it.
Of course it matters. If the parent comment had said, "it's the loss of foobar that comes from having no control...", would you know what their argument is? Or that foobar exists? Or that foobar should be respected? Or that you lose foobar when you're seen on the toilet?
It's not possible to understand the parent comment without knowing what dignity is.
> Otherwise your argument becomes "I don't understand what these things are or why people care about them, and therefore perhaps they don't matter."
What argument? I literally said, "I'm not arguing, I'm just not sure what you mean." I was just asking for clarification. I haven't denied anything in the parent comment.
> It's more of an appeal to emotion than a rational reason.
It sounds more respectable if you call it an 'intuition pump'. Whether or not it is rational to want to defecate privately, this point may lead some fraction of those whose mind was previously made up to reconsider their position. In those cases, it can be the beginning of a conversation.
> It's more of an appeal to emotion than a rational reason.
But that is precisely the rational reason. In a free society you want people to act freely. To be able to act freely it helps tremendously to not be under constant surveillance by authorities, powerful actors and/or personal and political enemies. If one happens to have the same cultural background or political ideas as all those on the other side and one is generally a careless nature it helps in not feeling threatened by that surveillance.
The new thing digital surveillance brought is the ability to automate and for search things that happened once. Where in communist Germany the state had to have a giant apparatus that would break into your flat and install microphones, have people constantly following you around and listening in on every word you said. The impact this has on a free exchange of ideas is quite obvious, isn't it? These things have become far less resource intensive in the age of the web.
And if you now say: "Yeah but they were communists" — that is the point. If you are hoping those in power will be respectful because your values (currently) align with theirs; or because your information is (currently) more useful to them when not disclosed to your enemies — then this is a very optimistic view of the world. But things can change, and not all have that sense of optimism.
Not having to think about whether somebody will knock your door with state police in a decade because of something you wrote online is the reason why privacy exist. Not having to censor yourself because you are afraid those fringe lunatics on the opposite political side will destroy your life is the reason why privacy exists. Not having to censor yourself because your violent husband reads everything you wrote is the reason why privacy exists.
So maybe you can read this as: Power that sees what you do can (and does) change how you act, even if they don't come after you. Not having them see you is a good way of not having to change.
>> It's more of an appeal to emotion than a rational reason.
> But that is precisely the rational reason.
I'm not following your reasoning here. You list several logical reasons why digital privacy is important (it protects us from nefarious governments, it protects us from violent spouses, etc.). What does this have to do with an irrational embarrassment over pooping?
The rational argument is: we don't want to live in a society where the private is potentially intruded by other outside actors, because in our notion of liberty the individual shall be able to live a life without having to fear these intrusions.
Whether this fear is rational doesn't matter. Whether these intrusions are never actually carried out and always only remain a faint possibility, a story the actors make you believe doesn't matter.
Freedom of expression includes the freedom to be irrationally embarrassed about anything, or indeed irrational about anything at all. As long as you're not hurting anyone I guess.
> I never found this type of argument satisfying. It's more of an appeal to emotion than a rational reason.
John Oliver used a similar tactic when speaking about Edward Snowden and the Patrioct Act. Instead of framing it about rights, pricacy and stuff, he talkes about dick picks. It kinda worked? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEVlyP4_11M
That's not really the same thing. I close the door to the toilet because other people don't want to see it. I close the blinds when reading a book because they do want to see it.
I went to a debate once, in which the former head of GCHQ (British equivalent of the NSA) argued that because agents weren't literally listening to people's phone calls, like the Stazi did, mass digital surveillance is fine. And unfortunately for many people this argument works. Human eavesdropping is obviously a
problem at a viceral level, because somebody you don't know listening to you is frightening. The fact that digital surveillance gives power to its possessor just as much as human surveillance did is hard to get across.
Privacy is about control and power over your own existence and choices—just that its impact is usually long-term and most profound on a societal level but it starts at the most trivial aspects of life, like being able to sleep in safe, quiet place without any fear. So if data aggregation about you is automated, you still lose that control.
When an employer, for instance, is able to request data aggregation services for a break down about your entire life without or with forced consent from you, or able to monitor and analyze every step of yours during working hours, it's dehumanizing.
Similarly, it doesn't matter whether those with access to data regarding you have only good intentions. It may be pleasing to have a store know everything you like and need right in the moment, you still should be able to walk in and out (pseudo-)anonymously when you wish to.
Same with the state. We say not to talk to the police. In trials the determination what evidence can be submitted is always an important step. So why should the police, prosecution, intelligence agencies, or any other entity be able to access or collect data about you and evaluate it without due process?
This is hilariously cynical because GCHQ and the other letter agencies have had automated listening, recording, and analysis systems in place for decades.
Privacy is simple. The "watcher" always without exception has a massive power imbalance in their favor. The first and often only line of defense against that power imbalance is the right to privacy.
Yes, this was great. I think the slogans "Privacy is the right to be imperfect" and "Privacy is the right to be human" are both great, relatable, non-controversial, and easy to understand.
> "Privacy is the right to be human" are both great, relatable, non-controversial, and easy to understand.
And misleading. Privacy in private interactions (personal or closed groups) is basic human right. But in public interactions (public space or open groups) the concept of privacy is much more problematic. One can argue for less accountability for social progress, another for more accountability to weed-out bad actors.
Seems to me that using word 'privacy' for both of these different concepts is source of confusion. Perhaps we should limit term 'privacy' for private interactions and use some other (like 'non-accountability') for public ones.
> But in public interactions (public space or open groups) the concept of privacy is much more problematic.
I don't see what's so problematic. If someone is in public, they are exposed and obviously don't have any privacy. Same logic applies to data people publish on the internet. People can attempt to create some privacy for themselves in these contexts but it's not really a violation or invasion if some stranger shows up and witnesses things they weren't supposed to.
It's completely different from someone's house or computer. These are our spaces and we have complete control over them. So someone installing sensors such as microphones and cameras inside our own homes is a massive violation of our rights. Everybody understands this. It's offensive when the state does it even when warranted. So it is also not acceptable for mere corporations to turn on our microphones in order to listen to keywords or some other surveillance capitalism bullshit.
> If someone is in public, they are exposed and obviously don't have any privacy
Rights to wear clothes. Rights to not speak to anyone they don't want to. Rights against unreasonable search. These are all privacy related, and while we give some up to be a part of society, we retain some as well. Looking at this as black and white (on either side) is an obstacle to finding a sustainable and constructive path forward.
Considering we're see "social heating" if not "social fire" all around us, I'm not sure this is informs people correctly.
My local Facebook group seethes with an angry discussion just below threats of actual violence - and the actual violence was on display only a short time ago when Back The Blue physically assaulted a black lives matter demonstration (in a smallish city where "BLM" is just earnest liberals as you'd expect). And the miscreants were readily identifiable by Facebook (which hurt their business if nothing else but still basically weren't all that bothered by the situation).
Another thing about the heated local-group arguments is that few people have a good idea how unprivate their situation really is. The paranoia of Bill Gates "microchipping" people is a cartoonish example but there's a vast group people very concerned with privacy but having close to no understanding of what it actually involves (or how much they don't have).
If anything, the noxious effect of massive collection is most evidenced by micro-marketing of a variety of crazed ideas to those most susceptible to them - and employers and landlords being able to harass their own employees for particular things they object to (but lets a lot of things through, and business owners have less to worry about).
I believe that social cooling is a thing, and I also believe that the observations you're making are legitimate. Three points that might reconcile these ideas:
1) social cooling is a long-term, slow-burn, bring-pot-to-boil-so-slowly-the-frogs-don't-notice problem. Pointing out some social heat to discredit it is analogous to people discrediting global warming because they've experienced an unseasonable cold snap in their town.
2) By your own description, there are knowledge gaps inside the "social fire" crowd - they don't understand (potential, future) consequences like housing discrimination, work prospects, etc. I don't think it will take more than one generation for these realities to become common knowledge.
3) Finally, people who consider themselves hopelessly marginalized will be susceptible to 'social fire'. People who don't have anything to lose are prone to this (eg, what factors go into someone's decision to get on board with looting?). More solidly situated members of the public, with reputations (salaries, ongoing business concerns, etc) at stake, are likely to be more careful.
> When you think privacy of in in the terms of 'social cooling', or consider things like China's 'social credit' system, I can't help be think we are much closer to the world depicted in the last season of Westworld than we might want to admit.
We were 'almost' there 20 years ago. We are firmly near Westworld (everything outside of androids).
Gotta be honest: I don't have to spend more than 5 minutes on Facebook to dissuade myself of the hypothesis that, on average, people are feeling constrained about what they're saying.
There are different social contexts. Everyone recognizes this; you'll say things around friends that you won't say in a work meeting.
Online communities have contexts that are just as real, but they have the digital discontinuities we all know and love, so the odds of doing the equivalent of dropping into that work meeting after several beers is much more likely and happens far more frequently.
A separate issue is preservation - of course all this is on Your Permanent Record. And the future only has very different, limited interest in what the context is now.
but truly I bet you what you are referring to are people's opinions which are 'extreme' but at the same time probably can be lumped into groups of like-minded opinions with others - they are cooling towards their chosen echochambers but the same concept applies - because they get directed based on said data to these fringes because the data groups them towards them in suggestions
Firstly, you can create any number of accounts without matching people. Secondly, even for real users, those users are often from nations full of people that haven't learned better yet (new market growth). What's their growth look like in the US amongst those 25+?
Naively, it's going to slow because they're already saturated the market; they have a userbase of about 223 million US, which is 67% of all Americans (88% of adult Americans over 19, if we naively assume their TOS is followed and no kids have FB accounts).
I don't get the notion that social cooling was scoping itself to only the US, but even if it was, I don't think people are "learning better yet." Quite the contrary.
I'm really struggling to see how younger Americans joining different social networks, which all have the same effects, is a signal that they've learned their lesson?
It's interesting that this is about big data generally and people are reading it as "Facebook".
I use Facebook exclusively to check for Corono related info in my community, because the local administration can't disperse them via normal channels. It's interesting, groups with 4000 people (roughly 10% of the local population!) will have anywhere from 3-30 likes on posts. The super hot threads have 50 comments, usually from the same 10-15 people.
I don't know whether the rest are silent lurkers like me, or whether they are bots, or FB is just inflating the numbers, but they surely aren't visibly active. I imagine it's not a special thing where I live, so you'll likely have the vast majority not posting publicly at all while a small minority is extremely loud. If the user count grows (hasn't the growth slowed?), most of it will not be seen by you while you look at posts and comments.
The algorithm is designed to provide maximally engaging content. Of your Facebook friends, you will see posts from the most outspoken ones, which isn't everybody.
This article links at the bottom to similarly-styled piece about "mathwashing", the idea that it's morally wrong for an algorithm to notice true facts about reality. That idea is utter bunk, and so likely is "Social Cooling" as well. Both pushes are really about unelected activists trying to limit other people's technology to bring about their peculiar idea of Utopia.
In all human history, efforts to hold back the tide of technological progress have never worked. Instead of adopting a Luddite fear of data and math, we should use both for all useful ends as soon as possible.
the problem isn't necessarily with _accurate_ data and math, but with reductive statistics that paint with broad brushes. Statistics inherently remove nuance, which is fine when the nuance is unimportant to what you're measuring, but not when it's actually important.
The example about cancer doctors in TFA is perfect. "more deaths = worse doctor" is a poor metric, because advanced cases have higher deaths in general, leading to a disincentive to try to help people with advanced forms of cancer. That's a terribly perverse incentive, and one that should be avoided.
Fundamentally, a lot of this stuff comes down to a lack of nuance in metrics, leading to some nasty effects down wind.
Men commit more violent offenses than women. Should I, a man, be turned down for a job because of this despite never having committed a violent offense? No woman has ever won the US presidency, should we therefore divert funds away from female candidates because they are provably less likely to win? If after doing that for a century and no woman has yet to win, should we still continue to divert funds away from them? I hope the answers to these questions are obviously "no, we shouldn't." If data-driven decisions are equally problematic but hide it behind layers of apparently justifiable (and often opaque) mathematics, then we have a problem.
You missed the point. The point is that you can be doing the wrong math on the wrong data, jumping to completely baseless and detrimental conclusions. You cannot judge the needs of the many by the actions of the few or vice versa.
Perfect enforcement of rules is rarely a goal of policy. It just sets expectations for behavior, and when violation of policy becomes known remedial and/or punitive measures can be taken.
> Should we roll back those laws? Fraud is fine as long as the party defrauded can't find out?
I think you're putting words into my mouth.
Anyway, what's extra difficult is that when using data to build an ML model, you can actually throw away the data afterwards, like source code after compiling a program.
The thing is we don't even need opaque algorithms to do that, we do it to ourselves. Not a week (I should probably even say not a day) without a "cancel campaign" on Twitter to go after some rando's job just because they didn't tweet The Right Thing.
The content is brilliant. Very, very, very well done. From engineering POV: I'm amazed that I visited a website that set no cookies, that no resource was blocked by uBlock / nanoDefender / nextdns. Amazing. Just amazing. Such a rarity nowadays.
So the website owners won't get proper analytics about who are their users, why they came to the website, how did they finish reading page to the end and so on. They won't know if their message was effective or not.
I'm the creator of the website. It has a simple PHP text file counter. That's all it has, and I'd argue it's enough. I want people to be able to visit this website without any fear of tracking and profiling.
It's a strange thing to say I won't know if my message is effective or not without tracking, since we're currently discussing it on Hackernews ;-D
As the author mentioned, it ended up on HN. Message received. I can scroll to the bottom of the article and feed the trackers bad data. Your argument is invalid because you can't make a foolproof algorithm that'll tell you correctly how the user used the site and if the page was finished reading if the user can simply feed you bogus data.
There's another (also brilliant site) linked at the bottom of the original article: https://www.mathwashing.com/
And here's the funny part - you assumed the author won't know, and that's precisely what he's talking about at mathwashing.com - these "algorithms" that are as faulty as people who come up with them.
I doubt you actually read the whole thing with full attention. The message got through to the people it was supposed to get through. I applaud the effort to go without all the tracking nonsense. And whenever I see tracking crap like medium.com uses, I feed it bad data on purpose. It's better to stand true to your message and create a cookieless / trackless site whose purpose is to convey the message rather than use this shitty argument about authors knowing whether they are reaching out to their audience. Precisely because of that thinking we've broken internet where in order to read 512 bytes of text I've to block 50 megabytes of tracking bloatware.
this is particularly true for people who have international ties. you become subject to the social cooling mechanisms of very different cultures that may conflict with each other.
If you're paying attention you know that you might want to skip the "vocational bootcamp" when you need to do business in China some day. Because you might not graduate!
Let's just skip to the end: Every rebuttal I have to whatever lecture you want to give me could be construed as a whataboutism and could also be construed as simply true. There are various groups of people that would get re-routed outside of the respected due process paths in the US for things they said too. We also consider those problems. Its just not a different enough user experience for me to single out China.
This is exactly why I had to get off of Facebook (again).
I deactivated my first account 8 years ago, but got back on to re-connect with my old pals and acquaintances from back in the day. For that reason, it was fantastic.
After another year, I realized that I can't actually say ANYTHING interesting on this platform without offending someone. There's a lot of variety in my crowd. I have the sense IRL to know that not everything is for everybody, but that doesn't matter much on Facebook unless you want to spend hours and hours hand-crafting subsets of your friends for different topics (I don't). And I have zero interest in posting selfies or status updates of what's going on in my life, so that made the platform exceedingly boring and a waste of time for me. It's a shame, because it does work really well for "connecting" with people (in the shallowest sense of the word).
Even in the best of circumstances, being subjected to the highlights of 100 other people will make your life feel miserable in comparison. Amazing vacation locations at the best time of day, gorgeous food from the best angle, amazing health and fashion with the best lightning. That's before we go into likes hunting and what that does to the reward paths in your brain. Social media as a concept is deeply unhealthy. At least the traditional celebrity cult, already rather weird in its American incarnation, had some degree of psychological distance between self and the professionals. With social media, everyone is caught in the celebrity game.
Right now is a great time to delete your accounts. The only better time is yesterday.
Note that for many people this would be an example of their plan "working". For some, the most immediate goal is not to change your mind or the minds of others. There's an intermediate goal to make your position appear marginal, which can help in changing the minds of others. By dropping out, you increase the efficacy of this strategy.
Without going into details, for various reasons, my relationship with my employer essentially made it critical that I delete my account several years ago. I resented it at the time, because while I considered facebook fundamentally unhealthy, I justified it as a way to keep in touch with friends, and, very cynically, use it as a propaganda tool for career advancement.
In hindsight, though. I couldn't be more glad for the push. For at least a few years, I had actively unfollowed a good majority of friends from my feed because watching their gyrations (posing, fighting, echoing, ...) was making me lose respect for a lot of people. I don't need their mental hygiene and low-effort politics rubbed in my face and I'm happier not seeing it.
Looking back, one thing I did conclude was that the death of email was one of the few things that made Facebook valuable. I had email contact for pretty much every person I was "friends" with on FB, but many of those addresses have expired, or they are so flooded with spam that when you message someone, they don't see it at all or not for +a week or so. I'm like that myself - I only look at my personal email once a week, on Friday night.
Also, "social cooling" is an absolutely terrible name for the situation described in the linked site. They should have called it "Socially Mandated Fronting' or something instead of trying to make an awkward and not very meaningful global climate change analogy.
in my personal experience, email is completely dead. even the multiple mailing lists I belong to, some of which I personally run, have moved wholesale into the slack channels we made to augment them.
I don't think so, but I would never expect an answer to a cold email trying to rekindle a friendship. I all but ignore my email until I am expecting something in particular, anything that was sent to me between now and the last time I expected something I may never read.
To each their own I guess. I usually reply to any non-recruiter human who has taken the time to send me an email directly (not a list), even if it's just a one-line response. Especially if it's an old friend you've lost touch with.
I sincerely believe most people also would, but the problem is that outside of the workplace email has become mostly a marketing and notification channel.
Most non-tech people I know have hundreds, if not thousands of unread messages in their inboxes and will probably miss some unexpected ones.
Email is NOT dead. Despite everything that has been invented in an effort to replace it, email is still the only common denominator that everybody in the world uses.
Since getting off social media, I’ve tried using email to connect with friends and it has been a good experience.
> Also, "social cooling" is an absolutely terrible name for the situation described in the linked site.
Agreed.
I thought it was going to be about "evaporative cooling", how bad behaviour drives thoughtful people out of a group, producing a feedback cycle where bad behaviour is further amplified.
Which is tangentially related to the topic of the link, but different enough to be actively misleading. Unfortunate.
Not only is the "climate change" analogy strained, it perfectly contradicts their argument, showing both its weakness and their total lack of self-awareness.
The positions on climate change range from "existential threat to all life on the planet within 20 years and our way of life" to "mass hysteria founded by fault-ridden scientific evidence whose solutions are an existential threat to the global economy and our way of life". These positions in particular are held by a significant percentage of the population of the Western world, and most people cluster near one of these two extremes. In other words, it is an extremely polarizing issue that, for many, colors how they perceive other people, should they discover their positions.
The creators of this website suggest that social media and data-mining are forcing people to self-censor and not freely express themselves, but then proceed to frame the contentious political issue of climate change as a believer/denialist modality. The authors make it clear that they don't want people to have a nuanced opinion on climate change, they want them to conform to the "unquestionable truth".
But it is this form of rigid thinking that causes people to self-censor, not the intangible specter of "big-data" and "the algorithm". If you were employed by someone who made it clear that they are only interested in hiring people who were devout Christian, you wouldn't openly share your atheist views publicly. Western society as a whole is selecting more and more topics, like climate change, where to be on the record holding a conflicting opinion is disastrous for your relationships with friends, family, and employers. This fact isn't a fault of the technology, though the technology might be the reason society is becoming rapidly intolerant of dissent.
Conflict and social guardedness like this is guaranteed to arise when we have a political landscape that is so divided and thinks everything is on the line.
I realized that I can't actually say ANYTHING interesting on this platform without offending someone.
The only thing worse than people who are offended by everything is having to be afraid of offending over-sensitive people.
There's a lot of variety in my crowd
Which is a good thing. It's how it always was. You surrounded yourself with lots of different people with varying opinions. It's how you learned things. It was called being an adult.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scolia were polar opposites on the issues. But they were also very good friends. Because they were adults. They weren't children who had to surround themselves with familiar things that reinforce their own views of the world.
I remember in college, we were encouraged to seek out differing opinions. I remember a guy who once chastised me for not seeking a broad enough range of opinions. He said, "What's wrong with you? Don't you want to be challenged?" My understanding is that sort of thing would never happen on a college campus today.
Be who you are. If people can't respect you for having a different opinion, they're not adults, and they're certainly not "friends," Facebook or otherwise.
In terms of a social media site, what you are saying sounds exhausting. Having a couple of friends with different opinions is great, having like 100+ people not educated in certain topics, all with their own opinion is where it kind of breaks.
You mentioned Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scolia, they were both well versed in law and justice, so it makes sense even if their opinions are different, they can respect each other.
Well that is always an option, which I have thought about. I would basically need to remove my entire family and a large amount of friends (not low-quality friends, they are just educated in other areas).
Once I realized that, it was easier to just delete facebook, and keep in touch with my close friends and people that are in similar studies to myself by using group chat messages, emails or just face to face (not so much this option in 2020)
> Why not have a small group of high-quality friends, instead of a large pool of low-quality friends?
You can and should. Although at a certain point the benefit of being connected to those people via social media as opposed to say, a group chat via text message or an app like Discord/Slack, diminishes greatly. I think that's the paradox of social media: the only thing it does well that alternatives don't is connecting you to lots and lots of people, many of whom you barely or don't know at all, but the quality of the experience degrades with the number of people you are connected to and the weakness of your connection to them.
> The only thing worse than people who are offended by everything is having to be afraid of offending over-sensitive people.
That's a rather simplified world view. Let's make an example: I have a bunch of friends who are deeply interested in medicine - a discussion about cancer, what it is, treatment possibilities etc. are a very appropriate topic. I also have a friend who's just been diagnosed with breast cancer. Having that discussion in front of her would be utterly insensitive.
Likewise, it's kind of insensitive to perma-gloat about your new great relationship in front of somebody who just had a divorce.
What topics we can deal with depends on our lives and what's currently going on. Paying attention to those circumstances in other people's lives is the kind thing to do, and has nothing to do with "being afraid of offending oversensitive people"
Remember that guy who gave you advice? He suggest to seek a broad range of opinions. You were in control when you sought out those opinions. Facebook takes that control away - you will see the opinions it considers appropriate for your stream, when it considers them appropriate.
And sure, be who you are. But that "adult" thing also includes respecting other people's boundaries, and social media makes that almost impossible.
> My understanding is that sort of thing would never happen on a college campus today.
This is almost certainly not true. Your idea of what is the norm is being driven by what is actually the exception because that’s what we see on the news (the news almost by definition shows things that are newsworthy and are out of the norm).
How many people do you see on average using it though?
I make the safe guess that the University didn't spend money on signs and and allocate public space without there being a demand for it. It sure didn't look like an art installation.
how many people do you personally observe at the "safe space" - or do you even go there?
If by "go," you mean "attend," no I am not a student. If by "go," you mean "visit," I did quite frequently when I lived in Houston. But I didn't make a habit of sitting on a park bench with a clicker and monitoring the habits of other people. Can you tell me that it is never used? Rarely used? Never used? Do you even go there?
I wasn't the one making the assumptions, not exactly my responsibility to appease your questions. DYOR.
Though, in an attempt to perhaps please you:
I go to the most liberal University in my state because I was born in the town and got an academic full ride. We pul about 25,000 students in a town with a pop of less than 5,000.
Our safe space office was actually just "repurposed" as it was just about never used. In the beginning in helped spawn some friendly campus programs that meet every now and then as University programs do. Most students who sought the Uni official safe space office migrated to those. Thus, it's purpose was served, and now it's gone.
Hope this helps in your research.
Looking back at your comment: No, you weren't a student who would in any way be affected by the office, yet you still are commenting on it from the outside. Seems... unnecessary. I'm glad you're so concerned about the dispersal of University funds. Must be wanting to know how each penny will be benefitting your community in the way you see fit.
The free speech zone exists so that anti-women's-rights protesters can show pictures of fetuses to students.
The safe space area was made when we found out it was physically dangerous for the student communist and anarchist groups to peaceably assemble in the free speech zone.
During my time at UH, the greatest threat to free speech was posed by the conservative student population. I was physically threatened and harmed on many occasions in my 4 years there.
No, excessive, unpunished bullying forced the University to create areas small enough for them to actually protect their students from said bullies. The Free Speech zone is in the spiritual center of the university, directly in front of the library, and the University lacked the will or ability to protect leftist student groups there.
"However, hard evidence points to a different reality. This year, the Heterodox Academy conducted an internal member survey of 445 academics. “Imagine expressing your views about a controversial issue while at work, at a time when faculty, staff, and/or other colleagues were present. To what extent would you worry about the following consequences?” To the hypothetical “My reputation would be tarnished,” 32.68 percent answered “very concerned” and 27.27 percent answered “extremely concerned.” To the hypothetical “My career would be hurt,” 24.75 percent answered “very concerned” and 28.68 percent answered “extremely concerned.”
In other words, more than half the respondents consider expressing views beyond a certain consensus in an academic setting quite dangerous to their career trajectory."
First, this says nothing about if this is different than it used to be "back in the day". Second, it has never been true anywhere that almost all people in a given field felt totally comfortable voicing controversial opinions around their colleges and did not worry about any consequences. Third, these are faculty, not students. Students are there to learn and expand their knowledge and try out different ideas. Teachers are there to do a job and openly talking about a crazy idea you had to anyone and everyone is not going to do you any favors.
This was said in a glib manner, which may be the reason for the downvotes, but it is completely true. This is how the Heterodox Academy defines itself:
>Heterodox Academy is a group of 4,100+ educators, administrators, & graduate students who believe diverse viewpoints & open inquiry are critical to research & learning. [1]
Does anyone think that a person who joins a group focusing on promoting "diverse viewpoints" is going to have a representative view of sharing controversial opinions? This is a wildly biased population of people to be answering this question.
Well, in my corporate job, there are meetings where I don't espouse my controversial view about an architecture or modeling decision, because... the same thing?
I'm sure that's also true in the Church of Scientology and a lot of religious congregations. That is how people work. Creating spaces where robust discussion and dissent is respected and productive is actually hard work and requires good management (which Lord knows most academic departments don't have, since the Head Manager is just whoever got coerced into being chair this time).
The thing is, academia once served as an institution to protect unorthodox thinkers against external oppression. People who offended the Church or the King had to be protected there.
Nowadays it seems that this role has been forgotten.
You're painting a rosy picture. For example, how many Blacks were ever friends with Klansmen? How many Jews were friends with Nazis? If someone's opinions include the idea that I'm less than human, I can't be friends with them. It's impossible to bridge that gap if the other side sees me as an animal, or a monster, or an enemy agent actively working to destroy the country, if not the world.
I doubt there are any more hate groups now than there ever were; the difference is, these days, people are more willing to call them out for being what they are.
how many Blacks were ever friends with Klansmen? How many Jews were friends with Nazis?
Pointing out extreme cases doesn't make anything in the original statement untrue. It just means those are extraordinary cases. The world is not absolute.
It's impossible to bridge that gap if the other side sees me as an animal, or a monster, or an enemy agent actively working to destroy the country, if not the world
Do don't. You try, and if it doesn't work, you move on. There are seven billion other people in the world to be friends with.
Probably a lot? I can't speak to that question specifically, since there aren't many Baptists in my area, but the Catholic Church leadership has a similarly anti-gay message to the SBC and lots of gay people are friends with Catholics.
Here, gay hide their gayness from such catholics. They occasionally do comment on their inability to express their gayness with those catholics. They also prefer company of people they dont have to so careful about keeping secret with.
Note the keeping secret part - it all stands on gay knowing he is not even in position to say I am gay without there being price.
No it’s not. Southern baptists don’t hate gay people, they hate gayness and want to save you from eternal hellfire. Of course it’s asinine and backwards but it’s completely different than nazis and klansmen.
The bar for people getting upset is much lower than Nazis and Klansmen. Two examples I've seen are a blog title "Postgresql for idiots", and someone said it was offensive because Hitler used to exterminate people classified as idiots, and someone saying that describing software as "sexy" is sexist and contributes to women not wanting to work in tech jobs. I think you're painting a rosy picture where people are only upset at actual hate groups, and not using whatever benign words the "allies" have decided are unacceptable.
> someone saying that describing software as "sexy" is sexist and contributes to women not wanting to work in tech jobs. I think you're painting a rosy picture where people are only upset at actual hate groups, and not using whatever benign words the "allies" have decided are unacceptable.
And I think _you're_ painting a picture wherein "people who are amplifying minority perspectives in order to help society be more inclusive" are in fact nefariously scheming to control a cultural narrative for...reasons?
There is certainly a line beyond which "Excessive Political Correctness" is unreasonable, unhelpful, unproductive, and disconnected from actual people's experiences. But the latter of these examples, at least, strikes me as a perfectly reasonable piece of feedback. I don't personally find the former to be offensive, but at the same time - I have no reason to disagree with the person making that claim. If they're offended by it, that is a _fact_. It's up to me whether I choose to act on that fact. Personally, I don't consider the words "idiot" or "sexy" to be important enough to insist upon using them, when others have told me that the usage hurts them.
Say that someone is intentionally misrepresenting the situation, and is trying to pressure you into stopping using a particular word even though no-one is truly hurt or impacted by it. What's the failure case if you listen to them? You stop using a word. Big whoop. What's the failure case if you _don't_ listen to them? You continue to hurt and offend people. This seems both more likely and more impactful than the other failure case - so, to me, the choice is clear.
Your last paragraph is addressed in full by the OPs link. Social interactions become more and more meek and stilted because the risk of "offending someone" is always there (and I'd argue, approaches 1 over time). What's driving it is different - social pressure rather than megacorp data mining, but the effect and implications are identical and no less pernicious.
At some point there is a line beyond which if someone is "offended", the problem is with them and them alone. I'd argue policing words like "idiot" (esp. when not directed at someone as an insult) is squarely on the wrong side.
It seems to me, though, that this is social cooling just as insidious. "I can't complain about the work 'sexy' on this corporate release because someone will think I'm a SJW." "I can't push back on using 'retard' here because someone will think I'm a special snowflake." It's exactly what the linked post is talking about.
Isn't the aim to have a robust and productive discourse? That means I get to say, "Hey, I don't think this is the right context for the descriptor 'sexy'" and you get to say, "Well, I think it is because (reasons)..." In some ways I sort of agree with you that "At some point there is a line beyond which if someone is "offended", the problem is with them and them alone." If you are "offended" because I say I don't like you using the word "idiot", that's your problem, is it not?
The point is to talk about whether "idiot" is accurate and well-suited to the situation, rather than shifting the conversation immediately to your hurt feelings at having your wording critiqued.
This is precisely it. An immediate shut-down of a conversation is almost always wrong, whether it's "you used a word that I don't like, and so now you don't get to talk" _or_ "you're criticizing my word-choice, so clearly you're unreasonable".
> Social interactions become more and more meek and stilted because the risk of "offending someone" is always there.
Strong disagree. The same ideas and concepts can be discussed, the same conversations can be had - just with tweaked vocabulary.
Now, if you're talking about not expressing a particular attitude because it might offend someone, but you still stand by the position (regardless of its phrasing) - well, that's a different situation. Any sufficiently important position is going to offend someone - just make sure that you're offending the right people.
> At some point there is a line beyond which if someone is "offended", the problem is with them and them alone. I'd argue policing words like "idiot" (esp. when not directed at someone as an insult) is squarely on the wrong side.
That's fair! I disagree, but I'm not going to say that you're wrong - just that my line is drawn elsewhere. I have not found my life to be markedly impacted by consciously avoiding the twenty-or-so words/phrases that various folks have told me that they find offensive. I can still express the same ideas - I just know that I'm doing it in a way that doesn't distract from my message. If your experience is different - if you find that those words are fundamental to your message, and/or that having the freedom to use precisely the words that you want is more important to you than knowing that those words may hurt someone - that's your prerogative.
Some people aren't really hurt but like to erase your message by depicting your expression as hurtful. Maybe they just don't like you, it would be another reason. Your naive line of thinking draws in people that might want to take advantage of you. I don't think it could be a universal rule for the internet.
> Some people aren't really hurt but like to erase your message by depicting your expression as hurtful.
I hear this fear a lot, and have never seen any evidence of it whatsoever. Not saying it doesn't exist - just that I haven't experienced it. The only people who've ever mentioned to me that my word-choices were harmful did so with an intention to educate and reduce-harm-to-themselves-or-others, not to undermine or silence me.
There can only be as much evidence as for something being hurtful. You cannot read minds, but I don't think it far fetched that sometimes it seems to be more about validation and getting your way instead of being genuinely affected.
Never experienced that yourself? Babies do so very commonly when they cry. My understanding is that adults get out of it to a degree.
I guess the vast majority of people do so with honest intend and some don't. If it is about definitions and wording on hot button issues, I think the latter group to be disproportionally large.
> If it is about definitions and wording on hot button issues, I think the [group who intentionally misrepresent their emotions] to be disproportionally large.
And I disagree; and based on that fundamental disagreement, we're never going to reach agreement on the derived conclusion. Oh well.
It’s easy for the choice to be clear when you are entirely missing the point. What are the consequences of using these newly offensive words? What if you used the word but had no idea it was offensive? And how do we police that in a world where more and more things are offensive?
> What are the consequences of using these newly offensive words?
Well, loosely speaking - if it's a truly "newly offensive word", then the general consequence is that someone will politely take you aside and explain that the reasons why so-and-so a word is not great to use in public, explain the reasons why, and suggest alternatives. If you continue to use it regardless, then you are intentionally signalling that your freedom of vocabulary is more important than showing respect to others - which is a position you are entitled to take, and others are entitled to judge accordingly.
"Public dunks" and vicious whispering (without an attempt to actually educate) don't tend to happen (in my, admittedly anecdotal, experience) for truly "newly offensive words", but rather for those that have already spread far and wide enough that there's truly no excuse for ignorance.
> What if you used the word but had no idea it was offensive?
See above. If you find yourself moving in circles where you fear that you'll be judged and condemned rather than advised, I suggest you re-evaluate whether those circles are truly worth it.
> And how do we police that in a world where more and more things are offensive?
Not sure what you're referring to "policing" (the usage itself, or the consequences _of_ the usage), so this may be inaccurate, but - the former happens naturally through social dynamics, and I don't see why the latter needs policing at all? If people are taking disproportionate damaging action based on speech that is perceived to be offensive, that's an offence like any other. If the consequences are "people thinking that you're a bit of a racist/sexist/whatever", then...why does that need policing.
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I suspect I come across as naïve for believing that "the Social Justice crowd" are well-intentioned, and that slip-ups will be gently corrected rather than leading to immediate castigation and ostracism. Conversely, to me, the concern that "if I don't keep up with the seventeen new daily offensive terms, I will be shunned forever!" seems like an over-reaction when most "SJWs" treat not-obviously-deliberate-offensive speech as an opportunity to educate, not attack. I suspect, as always, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Our outlooks are products of our environments and experiences - and I've been lucky enough to be surrounded by folks who communicate.
Daryl Davis, an African-American man, famously attended KKK rallies, befriended Klansmen, and over the course of his life helped persuade over 200 Klansmen to give up their robes. He did what you claim is impossible and I can't imagine a better role model.
That is however not how civil rights movement worked in general. And actual blacks were beaten up or worst by klan. It was not something that would be exceptional either. The violence in particular around voting suppression was very real and not just about how people feel. It was not just about personal hate, or was more rational about who is going to rule the place.
The person you responded to asked how many. The answer is that not many. And it is not like having black friends meant you won't be racist. Nor having wife or mom you like prevents mysoginy. Personal relationships have part only up to the point.
That being said, some nazi members had a Jew they personally liked or protected. It dis mot stopped genocide.
Well, how many Klansmen attended Black churches and universities, befriending Black folks all the while and... uh... ok, I can't really see the great outcome here other than the Klansman not being a Klansman anymore.
I'm proud you could come up with one guy who was saintly. For the rest of us non-saintly people, it's pretty tough to maintain and tend friendships with people who think we're bad, immoral, subhuman, or otherwise less than. Just makes conversation hard to keep up!
That's a great accomplishment. However, I think the point is that we (as a society) should recognize and stand up for our oppressed people. Otherwise, we're placing the burden on the oppressed to "take the high road" and, essentially, fight an uphill battle.
While this is great advice, it doesn't solve OPs problem of worrying about offending someone.
The larger problem is an offended person can do a lot of damage. In extreme cases, offended people have SWATted their targets causing all sorts of physical damage and emotional distress.
Personally, I don't want to worry about getting SWATted because some nobody from my high-school disagreed with my Facebook post. So I'm not going to post anything on Facebook.
it doesn't solve OPs problem of worrying about offending someone
The solution is to not worry about them. If they don't like it, too bad. They're not worth knowing.
There are plenty of high-quality people and friendships to be made in the world. We don't need to cling to low-grade friendships just because they're people we already know.
In extreme cases, offended people have SWATted their targets causing all sorts of physical damage and emotional distress
You can't live your life worrying about what someone else "might" do.
I guess the bigger question is why are you friends on facebook with someone you're not friends with in real life if that person has the power to negatively influence your career?
it extends past facebook. Tweets, community slacks, etc. It is just a re-hashing of what we were told when the internet was young: things you say and do there can stick with you and haunt you later. At the time, we thought that meant nude selfies or drunk pics. Turns out it can be anything that puts you out of the purity spiral and can come back and bite you.
offended people have an extremely disproportionate power. An offended female HS student can completely destroy the career and livelihood of a male teacher in a few keystrokes.
Disproportionate power _compared to whom_? To take your example: on any given day, if I'm a female HS student interacting with a male teacher, the power differential is hugely in his favor.
The teacher can fundamentally change the course of my life by limiting my ability to take more advanced courses and/or what colleges I can get into. They can humiliate me in front of my peers. They could simply make it impossible for me to learn and engage with material that could be important to my future success.
The fact that a female student has the ability to speak out about being abused _does_ upset that power imbalance, but it would be a mistake to claim that it gives her _more_ power than the teacher.
Either way, power should be wielded with good judgement, and there are certainly consequences on both for using it (and abusing it).
Worrying about offending people is like trying to make something idiot-proof. It's impossible, in part because there are simply a bunch of malicious people who want to be offended to use it as a weapon or pretense against someone they don't like for whatever reason (or worse, "just because").
I definitely know that nobody on my Facebook would ever SWAT me. I just don't like to trigger people. People carry a lot of hidden emotional baggage with them these days with trip wires in various topics of discussion. Something about Facebook/Twitter makes it easier to step on those. Or, maybe it's me; maybe something about FB/Twitter makes me post outlandish things without realizing it. I'm with you on this - it's not worth trying to "solve" it when I can just not post on Facebook.
I think it's kind of like the difference between e-sports and real sports. Real sports and e-sports share their competitive nature, but real sports have the endorphins that balance that out with positivity. Online discussion can be antagonistic just like real discussion, but real discussion often has non-verbal cues, food, relaxing atmosphere, small talk, jokes, etc. that balance that out.
Ah yes, I remember the era of: "I'm gay" "Well, now you have to get out of the house and never see your parents again. Too bad. Get over it. Oh and there's a pandemic on with a high fatality rate for gay people. Who cares?"
The amazing thing about those phrases is how many situations they don't work for. Berlin Wall? Who cares. 9/11? Get over it. Uighur detention? Too bad.
If you are going to hold regular people to the intellectual and emotional discipline of supreme court justices, you're gonna be disappointed. I think we can use our empathy here and understand that these systems we have created have successfully disrupted information flow, its social verification, and the tools and processes we have to mitigate fallout from this are immature. It will take time for society to filter in the social processes needed to suss out truthful information. Sadly, like those who dealt with other disruptive technologies like the printing press, I dont think this will be fixed to our standards within a generation.
Ginsburg and Scalia obviously cleared that bar but that doesn't mean those with less discipline can't do so. I share GP's view that this is a pretty basic part of being an adult.
That being said, I fully agree with the rest of your comment. This deficiency isn't new: Most people in any period of history have been unable to engage with ideas like adults, and there are a host of social technologies that prevent these infantile tendencies from blowing up society. Dramatic shifts in the way we live and engage with others (like those brought about by the Internet age) obsolete these safeguards, leaving this type of person vulnerable to a world of epistemological hazards until new tools and processes are created for them to follow by rote.
>Dirac and Bohr obviously cleared that bar but that doesn't mean those with less discipline can't do so.
See how silly that sounds when you change the subject to something that we know is difficult. "Being an adult" is even more open ended. What does it mean, who defines it? Do you have to be "An Adult" to get elected to office and make rules that others have to follow? Is "An Adult" necessary to implement features on a website that dictate how people interact with each other?
I agree with your agreement statement. Infantile grownups in the past generally did not have a global audience in which they could wreak havoc with, and there issues tended to be local in context.
> See how silly that sounds when you change the subject to something that we know is difficult.
In what way does this sound silly? We could easily be talking about Dirac and Bohr both learning how to read, in which case "they're so smart, you couldn't possibly do anything they did" would be obvious nonsense. The point here is that exceptional people doing something doesn't imply a high bar, and
> "Being an adult" is even more open ended.
Well obviously. There's no objective test of what makes one an adult[1], so it's inherently an opinion. An adult _can_ do all of those things, though they probably shouldn't, and a big part of what makes the world shitty is down to people like this doing things and making decisions that they shouldn't be, including in the way they vote (it still boggles the mind that people think it makes sense to vote on the basis of a policy you haven't bothered to even _try_ to educate yourself on).
[1] Colloquially, obviously. The legal sense is defined fairly rigorously (though it doesn't mean quite the same thing as the colloquial sense)
I suppose your defenition of maturity is different than mine, I would assume that maturity is defined by the traits held by most adults in a species. If it isnt held by most adults in that species, is it really an indicator of maturity? But we are getting into pedantics here. I agree with you, I just assume from human history that what we as a society claim to be maturity is a idealist goal that we set out to achieve but ultimately fall short of. He are going to have to up out maturity baseline in order to tackle the challenges we have created for ourselves.
I suppose your adult/child dichotomy is meant to be an insult and not taken literally, but I have to say that it's just as important for children/young people to intentionally seek out different opinions. Maybe even more so than adults, because that's when the bulk of your worldview, beliefs, and personality are formed.
From my experience, young people are better at it than adults, too.
Every newborn is like an angel. But they quickly learn and follow parents footsteps. Like infinite purgatory. Some break through, acknowledging that conflicting view can be right. That's an ideal. Sadly a lot of people would die earlier than achieve it.
I agree with the spirit of your words. I think that the subtext of your post (or at least people that espouse similar things on the internet) is that this is the fault of a certain brand of American politics (left leaning, "SJW" types) that don't engage with many right-leaning people.
The frustrating (and silly) thing is that this argument is used a lot to attack left-leaning folks who _do_ engage with many people whose experience and world view are very different from them... like people who are homeless, immigrants from other countries, people who are racially minoritized, people who are disabled.
For many people who don't experience those kinds of life experiences, building relationships with those folks can be really tough and bring into question a lot of the foundations of their world view.
The argument that left-leaning people won't engage with right-leaning people often feels like it's used as an excuse for right-leaning folks to use rhetoric and hold positions that routinely disenfranchise and threaten the safety of the kind of people that left-leaning people have worked to empathize with and build relationships without consequence. That the people who continue to have right-leaning views don't seem interested in putting in the same _effort_ to empathize and build relationships with people other than themselves is both hypocritical and not surprising to me.
Finally, engaging with "challenging" opinions is all well and good as a mental exercise, but building and maintaining a relationship with someone is a project that requires continuous work (even as just a friendship) and I think it's worthwhile to be selective in the people who you put in that kind of work for.
> I think that the subtext of your post (or at least people that espouse similar things on the internet) is that this is the fault of a certain brand of American politics (left leaning, "SJW" types) that don't engage with many right-leaning people.
I would like to know how many "right winger" did actively and honestly engaged with feminists texts. Not even with radical feminists texts, just with a mild moderate variety or with those who were radical back then and not anymore. Cause it seems to me that very little. Not that they have to, but they dont go that far in range as they pretend. They do read range where range is within what they like or where range is completely irrelevant to our lives.
It is also currently right wing that seeks to suppress actual fields of study on Universities.
It is also my experience is that many (not all) right people simply "know" the text is stupid without ever reading it. They also "know" that if movie pleases feminist crowd it is bad without seeing that movie.
And working in more conservative environment, I was careful not to say things that could be constructed as near-feminist, because that would lower my "trustworthiness" in other arenas too.
"Right wingers" don't have a monopoly on ignorance. People of every ideology are unwilling to listen to opposing viewpoints, read controversial books, and rate movies based on the social context rather than the artistic content. Pointing at the worse parts of only one ideology is counterproductive.
I haven't said that. Nor that they have monopoly nor that all of them are like that.
But the ideological subgroup specifically who throw around "listening to other viewpoints" a lot tend to be the kind who seriously engage only with view points comfortable to them. As in, there is talk about uncomfortable viewpoints, but their idea of uncomfortable viewpoint is someone telling them they are superior and they disagreeing cause they are more egalitarian. Which is not uncomfortable at all.
Hahaha, this is far too true. I think anyone who says "You should listen to other viewpoints" and intends that to be "this is why you should listen to me" has some massive lack of self-awareness.
Listening to other viewpoints is like invoking Crocker's Rules. You can't invoke the rules on other people. Only yourself.
You just don't have the information to determine whether you're worth listening to. Because you will always think you're worth listening to.
> It is also currently right wing that seeks to suppress actual fields of study on Universities.
Care to share your feelings on the far left push to suppress science and mathematics?
> And working in more conservative environment, I was careful not to say things that could be constructed as near-feminist, because that would lower my "trustworthiness" in other arenas too.
The opposite is certainly true today in corporate America and higher education. Making an argument for the existence of a biological basis for sex or denying that all whites are automatically racist is a no-go.
The ideas that the far left is trying to suppress are very much not conservative. It’s an assault on objectivity and rational thought.
>Making an argument for the existence of a biological basis for sex [...] is a no-go
If this were true, biology departments themselves would be a no-go. Every university I can name has a biology department. Is there any source for the claim that making such an argument is a no-go, or even any serious scholar (in any field) arguing that there is no biological basis for sex?
>It’s an assault on objectivity and rational thought.
If it were an assault on objectivity, then the scholars wouldn't be using 'objective' metaphysical models to argue for their positions. If they used 'non-objective' models, then the work would lack the normative force claimed. If it were an assault on rational thought, they wouldn't be crafting arguments at all. Would you care to link to some scholarly work which not only argues for the positions you criticize, but also adopts a model which denies objective or rational thought? Philosophically, rationality and objectivity are very tricky concepts. We should have debates on those just as we have debates on most other things.
It's a motte-and-bailey argument going from "a small percentage of people don't neatly fall into either the male or female category" to "the concept of biological sex is meaningless and the only relevant factor is a person's self-identification".
> > or even any serious scholar (in any field) arguing that there is no biological basis for sex?
> Sadly this is a thing:
Neither of the things your point to argue that.
They do argue that biological sex is not simple or binary, but that's very different from “there is no biological basis for sex”.
> It's a motte-and-bailey argument going from "a small percentage of people don't neatly fall into either the male or female category" to "the concept of biological sex is meaningless and the only relevant factor is a person's self-identification".
Except it's not; another thing neither of the sources you point to argues is that the various biological sex features don't matter: each of them matters; where they matter differs.
Unless, of course, by “matter” you mean specifically “provide an excuse to base socially ascribed gender on something other than gender identity”, in which case, sure, but it's hardly a motte-and-bailey argument, then.
>It's a motte-and-bailey argument going from "a small percentage of people don't neatly fall into either the male or female category" to "the concept of biological sex is meaningless and the only relevant factor is a person's self-identification".
Except that's not what the links you posted say. In fact, the very first sentence of the second link says:
"First, sex defined: We're talking physical sex here, not gender."[0]
What's more, the same poster says further down:
"It is worth noting that I never talk about transgender in this thread. Intersex is not the same as transgender. You can be one without the other, or be both."
So that thread doesn't say anything close to what you think it says. Unless I misunderstood either the twitter thread or you. Which is always possible.
Would you mind expanding on your point? It might lead to an interesting discussion.
The bigger problem is left-leaning people getting harassed and immediately flagged as right/alt-right/-ist (i.e., "not one of us") when merely disagreeing with or challenging dogma. See Joe Rogan, JK Rowling, Sam Harris, Bret Weinstein, Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker for some high profile examples.
Don't toe the line and echo approved orthodoxy? You're the enemy! This is extreme tribal behavior.
As a result, there is a chilling effect and a lot liberals no longer feel welcome on the left[1][2]. Certainly don't feel welcome to speak or think openly. This is incredibly regressive, damaging to liberalism and enlightenment values. Seriously, not being able to challenge your own side and engage in dialectic will send us back to the dark ages.
This was addressed above, in the bit talking about people failing to put the same effort into empathising and understanding people who historically receive little to no empathy or understanding whatsoever. Ignore our personal feelings on the matter for a moment: do we honestly believe JK Rowling has made an effort to converse with, understand, and empathize with trans women?
> do we honestly believe JK Rowling has made an effort to converse with, understand, and empathize with trans women?
I don't agree with JK Rowling's take on these issues. But I actually think she likely has made at least some effort to do this. Some of her open letters certainly mention her knowing trans people and sympathising with their experiences.
Although in general I think the gender debate is a prime example of neither side listening to the other. There is a group of people who aren't listening to trans people when they say that they have gender feelings which are important to them. But equally trans people aren't listening to other people when they say that their physical bodies are important to them.
Nor does calling the person who said the following (Magdalen), "immensely brave:"
> You are fucking blackface actors. You aren't women. You are men who get sexual kicks from being treated like women. fuck you and your dirty fucking perversions. our oppression isn't a fetish you pathetic, sick, fuck.
Typically when I try to empathize with people, I don't turn around and compliment someone calling those people "pathetic" and "sick."
EDIT: I guess I got downvoted enough to be rate limited. I only allow small windows of HN time so I'm going to post my reply to the below comment as an edit. Sorry that's annoying but, eh.
Why are you talking about sides? Why are you talking about "trans people" being absolutely right, claiming moral highground, or dismissing viewpoints?
I'm discussing an individual whose words I can point to. JK Rowling. Who are you talking about?
You're engaging in a method of rhetoric that is wide open for abuse by fallacies such as strawman.
If JK Rowling had mad a serious attempt to understand transgenderism, she wouldn't give credence to the idea that it's a fetish.
I won't defend those words/actions: I don't agree with them, and they're definitely hurtful. But I don't believe that being hurtful necessarily means that you haven't made a serious attempt to understand the other persons point of view. I guess whether that is sufficient to count as empathy will depend on your definition of empathy.
My wider point though is that both sides seem to be failing to sufficiently take into the other side's perspective. The point about same-sex attraction in the second tweet you link is a good one IMO. I can't describe my sexuality without referring people's physiological attributes. Doesn't that make them socially relevant? A view on gender that completely eliminates the physical components of sex/gender is denying people's realities just as much as one that doesn't account for people's "feeling of gender".
Trans people are absolutely right that people like JK Rowling are treating them poorly. But they can't claim the moral high ground until they stop completely dismissing the viewpoints of anyone who tries to tell them that the physical aspects of sex/gender are important to them, and labelling such people as transphobic. That's not very empathetic either.
I think this is a completely illogical thing you're arguing.
Trans person: I feel (this way).
a non-equivalent statement from an anti-transness-person: You are wrong to feel that way; your feeling is false and what you are doing is wrong.
An equivalent statement for the non-trans-person here would be: I feel (this other way).
This business about trans people "dismissing the viewpoints of anyone who tries to tell them that the physical aspects of sex/gender are important to them" is just bullshit. I've talked with and interacted with trans folks and really no one's gonna tell me that their experience growing up as a boy and transitioning into girlhood or womanhood is the same as my experience growing up as a girl. And none of them has ever said that my experience of my physical self is not important, or is transphobic. Like, what? Can you find me instances of this sort of behavior?
Ragging on "people who menstruate" instead of "woman" (pun intended) as Rowling does is not her saying "the physical aspects of sex/gender are important to me". Menstruation is not the definition of womanhood (you do know postmenopausal women exist, right?). If you want to talk about menstruation, talk about menstruation. Don't pretend it's equivalent to wearing nailpolish or getting catcalled or giving birth or trying to find pants with pockets that fit a cell phone. JK Rowling is trying to tell other people about how they should experience sex/gender, not just representing her experience. Beyond being not empathetic, it's intellectually lazy.
Trans man: I "feel like a man", and this makes me like you because "trans men are men".
Me (AMAB, uses label "man"): I don't "feel like a man". That's not what being a man means to me.
Trans man: Well that's what being a man means. It's transphobic to think anything else.
---
I feel like trans people are assuming that cis people have the same gender feelings that they do. And while some cis people do seem to have those feeling, many (like myself) don't. I'm not saying that trans feelings are wrong or that they don't feel like they say they do. I'm saying that the feelings they describe don't correspond to gender as I experience it. And thus that a model of gender that defines gender exclusively in those terms doesn't represent my experience.
Whenever I express the above viewpoint I get shut down and told that I'm transphobic. In other words: I am told that my experience of gender is invalid.
---
> If you want to talk about menstruation, talk about menstruation.
I kinda agree with this. But I feel like this ought to apply to aspects of gender as well as aspects of sex. If we should about "people who menstrate" rather than "women", shouldn't we also talk about "people who feel like women" and "people who present as women" rather than "women". Taking the "feeling" of being a man/woman as definitive is exclusive because not everyone who has other gendered traits has such feelings just as taking physiology as definitive is exclusive because not everyone who has other gendered traits has the same gendered physiology.
>Trans man: Well that's what being a man means. It's transphobic to think anything else.
I don't know what trans men you've met, but this is laughably far from my near-universal experience of hearing them say things like "oh god what if the way I assert masculinity makes someone feel bad or invalidates someone else's feelings or experiences." I have no doubt people have said things akin to that (being trans is by no means an inoculation against horrifically bad takes) but basically every trans person I know explicitly has a model of gender that doesn't invalidate your experience of "I don't experience gender like that, but 'man' works well for me, not least because of my physical body."
People may point out that it could be good to pull on that thread and consider the possibility of being agender or otherwise non-binary, but no one I know would call you transphobic for critically engaging with your gender and coming to the conclusion "nope, still don't get anything new from considering this, 'man' it is". Quite the opposite in fact, as even attempting to do so should be a decent signal for empathy with trans people.
At the end of the day, the label is for you however that manifests; whether it's having a mental model of gender where you finally have a place instead of always being pushed to the side, or having a magic phrase that indicates to someone the broad strokes of how you'd prefer to be addressed, the label is only important insofar as it helps you.
>If we should [talk] about "people who menstruate" rather than "women"
Just to clarify, "people who menstruate" isn't woke code for cis women to make trans women more comfortable. It's explicitly inclusive of trans men since many do menstruate and strongly prefer not to be labeled women as a result of that.
This is what makes Rowling's take on "people who menstruate" as well as the strong chorus of "trans women are women" and much weaker echo of "trans men are men" in response to it that much more tone-deaf. Trans men were the people whose experiences Rowling aimed to invalidate, but as usual trans women became the public face of the issue.
>Taking the "feeling" of being a man/woman as definitive is exclusive because not everyone who has other gendered traits has such feelings just as taking physiology as definitive is exclusive because not everyone who has other gendered traits has the same gendered physiology.
For argument's sake, what if your subjective experience of being a man were just so ingrained in you that you never consciously engaged with it? That could manifest the same way ("i don't 'feel like a man', that isn't how being a man works for me"), but now would you have a place in the "feelings" model you've established as exclusionary.
It seems to me that the fundamental issue you describe comes down to the coexistence of "I'm a man because that's just what I am" and "I'm a man because I feel like a man", and the only conflict inherent to that comes when the former group feels pushed out by the latter. I personally fail to see any way that someone embracing masculinity, especially if it's something that's long been denied to them, invalidates the experience of a man who's comfortable enough being labeled a man even without subjective experience of his gender.
> For argument's sake, what if your subjective experience of being a man were just so ingrained in you that you never consciously engaged with it? That could manifest the same way ("i don't 'feel like a man', that isn't how being a man works for me"), but now would you have a place in the "feelings" model you've established as exclusionary.
I have considered this quite extensively because this seems to be what most people assume my experience is like. But I'm pretty sure I really don't have such feelings. One of the key things that made me sure of this is seeing other (cis) men and women justify or explain things in terms of their gender. I have never felt like I wanted to do something because I'm a man. And I've always hated when someone describes me as man and implies that means anything more than I have a certain physiology, even if the implication is a positive one.
This is very different to for example my experience of sexuality. I'm heterosexual, and I can understand what it is like to be gay in reference to my own sexuality. I have feelings of attraction towards female people, and even though I don't experience such feelings towards male people, it's pretty easy for me to imagine what that would be like.
My experience of gender seems more like what I imagine asexual people's experience of sexuality must be like: something completely alien to them that they can only come to understand through others' descriptions and explanations.
---
> I personally fail to see any way that someone embracing masculinity, especially if it's something that's long been denied to them, invalidates the experience of a man who's comfortable enough being labeled a man even without subjective experience of his gender.
Because it implies that "being a man" has something to with masculinity. I am very much not masculine (I do have a masculine side, but so do even the girliest of cis women so that doesn't mean much - but if anything I'm more feminine). I am comfortable being labeled a man only so long as it doesn't come with an implication of masculinity, which in my lifetime thus far it largely hasn't (I was born in the early 90s). Now if I describe myself as a man people start making assumptions about how I feel inside (as you did in your comment!)
What I want is a label that I can use to describe my cluster of male physiological traits without implying anything about my feelings, behaviour or personality. I'm not hung up on that being "man", but I would like there to be some word to describe that aspect of myself and others.
---
> Just to clarify, "people who menstruate" isn't woke code for cis women to make trans women more comfortable
Sure, I get that. But "people who present as feminine" isn't code for "trans and cis women" either. It would include men (cis and trans) who present in a certain way, and exclude women (cis and trans) who don't. And the distinction can be important. For example, one of the arguments in the infamous "bathroom debate" is that trans women can be unsafe in men's bathroom. And I think this argument has a lot of merit: it's important that everyone is safe while they use the bathroom. However, the group of people who are at risk in men's bathrooms is not actually "trans women", but "people who are presenting as feminine": a trans woman who was presenting in a masculine way would be perfectly safe because nobody would suspect that they aren't a man, whereas a cis man presenting in a feminine way (say wearing a dress and makeup) would not be because there are prejudiced people who are violent towards males transgressing gender norms, and these people typically won't stop to check what someone's gender identity is before attacking.
I don't see how saying "women" when you mean "people presenting as fema...
To be fully honest, I'm not so different -- I personally feel that I'm a woman 'cause that's the body I was born into and that's how I'm treated, and since I have no desire to transition, it's the hand I've been dealt so here we are. It does not have intrinsic meaning, probably because it's the water I swim in. In addition, I'm not honestly that interested in the feelings of most other people, cis or trans.
But I still feel you're making up conflict when you have this charge that trans people are telling you how you need to experience yourself. It seems awfully self-centered.
Last, I have particular feelings about "people who menstruate" etc because I live with a physician who gets dinged on quality metrics when he can't perform a prostate check on a person without a prostate or a Pap smear on a person without a cervix. As a math person who is pretty literal, my opinion is that we should be clear about the salient characteristic. You want to do something anatomical? Be clear about it, and I'll tell you if I have the requisite anatomy. You want to shop for curtains for your male partner because women born women automatically have better interior decorating sense? Be clear about that, and I can demonstrate you're wrong. Tell me I'm wrong about a math proof or my perception of politics because hormones? I'll show you what female aggression looks like. I don't like folks telling me what I am or what I think because of my hormones, and your last sentences in the second to last paragraph indicate you might do that to me.
> Me (AMAB, uses label "man"): I don't "feel like a man". That's not what being a man means to me.
I mean... it is what being a man means to you, because that's what you "feel" being a man is.
You are a single cell in a culture. You can't decide for anyone other than yourself what it means to be, say, a Man, a (certain religion), a (I dunno, gamer?). These are identities and they're based on your feelings. Sometimes you'll bump into someone else that uses the same word to describe that identity. Say two "gamers" bump into eachother. Both would say "I am a gamer." One has never played Mario and the other has never played Halo. "You're not a gamer!" they say to eachother.
Of course, when we're talking about gender and sex, there's a lot more at stake, and a lot more historical and cultural tendrils to pick apart. Regardless, whatever it means to you to "be a man," is entirely on you. You don't get to decide for me what it means to "be a man," and therefore you don't get to decide for a trans man what it means either.
On that same note, my definition of what it is to "be a man" has no bearing whatsoever on your manliness or identity! You can feel safe in your identity regardless of what the rest of us are doing. What, are you not confident in your own identity? That's a separate issue, and it's not trans men's fault that you feel that way.
Being told your opinions are problematic and hurtful is part of the process of changing them. This is the "paradox of intolerance", without a certain degree of intolerance of unacceptable beliefs, intolerance itself spreads further.
It is really the same process as having any ingrained belief challenged, it is going to make that person uncomfortable because something they took on faith is being challenged. That doesn't mean it's not something that should happen.
This seems like a false equivalence. Trans people aren't trying to tell cis people that their physical bodies aren't allowed to matter to them, nor to invalidate cis people's gender or force them to be treated as another gender.
Caster Semenya is a cis woman, not trans. People are so preoccupied with stripping the rights of trans people that they ended up stripping away the rights of cis people while they were at it.
It's funny how this gets spun as "discrimination against women" when it's more "discrimination between women". Only women athletes want Caster excluded. No men athletes find Caster threatening.
Caster's case has nothing to do with trans people, it's more that she has rare biology (intersex) but happened to be raised as a woman.
Since her rare biology gives her some of the same advantages as men (elevated testosterone) the question is whether it's more fair for her to compete with men or with women.
She can easily beat many women, so some women feel it's unfair for her to compete with them.
> Trans people aren't trying to tell cis people that their physical bodies aren't allowed to matter to them
I feel like they are.
Specifically, if you believe that "feeling like" a gender makes you that gender, then it seems to me that logically you have to believe one of the following:
(1) That having the physiology associated with a given gender is not sufficient to count as a gender.
This invalidates the identity of people like me who don't experience the "gender feeling" that trans people (and some cis people) talk about, and therefore base their identity as a man/woman on their physicality.
OR
(2) That gender categories are "open" where for example either feeling like a man OR having "male" physiology makes you a man.
But that seems to make the whole concept of gender pointless because people with penises don't share anything in common with people who feel like men (that they don't also share with people who feel like women and people with vaginas) unless they happen to be people who fall into both categories. It also makes it impossible for someone express that they have one of those things but not the other because there is only one label "man/woman" to describe two distinct phenomena.
---
If you have a suggestion for how someone like me who has male physiology but doesn't have a "feeling of being a man" (or any other gender) can represent themselves in a system where there is only a single gender identifier and making sub-distinctions is frowned upon (because "trans (wo)men are (wo)men") then I'm all ears.
> If you have a suggestion for how someone like me who has male physiology but doesn't have a "feeling of being a man" (or any other gender) can represent themselves in a system where there is only a single gender identifier and making sub-distinctions is frowned upon (because "trans (wo)men are (wo)men") then I'm all ears.
This is called nonbinary, agender, or genderqueer. This is a fairly established situation. You may come across someone who uses nonstandard pronouns such as "they/them" or "zyr/zem" or something like that. There's even an LGBTQ flag for being nonbinary. (Q stands for queer/questioning as well). If you are assigned male at birth but don't identify as male or any other gender then you may be nonbinary or agender. If you're interested in learning more I recommend reaching out to a local LGBTQ community organization to be more educated about gender identity and to figure out if you might yourself be LGBTQ!
(Additionally on technicality, trans means "anything that isn't identifiying as one's assigned gender at birth". Being nonbinary is a subset of being trans. Society is most familiar with binary trans identity, which is when someone is assigned F/M at birth but identifies as M/F, however this is not the entire set of trans identity. You are free to be assigned M at birth but identify with no gender, and still be trans.)
Right, so this deals with one side of the equation: it allows me to represent the fact that I don't have gender feelings. But it doesn't allow me to represent my biological maleness, in fact if anything it seems to deny it. My physiology is an important part of me (and my identity), and if I describe myself as non-binary or agender then that part of me isn't being communicated or represented. I want to be able to describe my (lack of) gender feelings and my physiology separately, and make the same distinction when talking about other people.
---
> If you're interested in learning more I recommend reaching out to a local LGBTQ community organisation to be more educated about gender identity and to figure out if you might yourself be LGBTQ!
I'm pretty familiar with the LGBTQ community in general, and I have spent a great deal of time over the last year or so reading up about and thinking about gender identity. My view is that the mainstream view in the LGBTQ community where one's gender identity (which label they use - man/woman/non-binary/etc) is assumed to correspond to "a feeling of gender" is quite naive. This is certainly true for some people, but there are also other reasons why people choose to use those labels including having certain physiologies or simply the fact that you were assigned the label and never bothered to change it. It seems to me that these other kinds of gender identity are equally valid and one way or another ought to find representation in whatever system of gender we settle one, but that a "gender feelings" focussed conception of gender doesn't provide this representation.
(one such system would be a system eschews having a single gender label at all and requires that we are more specific about which aspects of sex/gender we are talking about in situations where we need to make gendered distinctions)
> it allows me to represent the fact that I don't have gender feelings. But it doesn't allow me to represent my biological maleness, in fact if anything it seems to deny it.
You can identify as a masc nonbinary or AMAB nonbinary. These are distinctions that are pretty common to use in the LGBTQ community which is why I suggest not just reading up and thinking but actually going to a community and participating within it. Your local group may even be able to introduce you to other AMAB NB people that you can compare and contrast experiences with.
is there not room outside of the right for people who are not that empathetic or would rather not spend the energy to understand these people? I want action on climate change, I want single payer health care, subsidized college, reproductive rights, separation of church and state.
what i don't care about is how many genders an English department can create. I don't discriminate, but I also don't want to expend any energy understanding or empathizing .
Liberals aren't out here forcing each other at gunpoint to protest every cause that exists. If you don't want to engage on an issue, don't engage. The person being discussed above (Rowling) is being called out for making repeated, harmful public statements. Don't do that. Smile and nod and you'll be fine.
Maybe avoid characterizing your would-be allies in terms of dumb right-wing tropes like "how many genders an English department can create" while you're at it.
Interesting since 1 day later a major HN story is about a company (coinbase) blocking political discussions at the workplace. It created a big backlash by people who refused to follow that rule and insisted that anything and everything is politics, arguing that (lack of speech) is still speech, that speech is action, that being neutral is implicit or even active support of one side or the other, and many other completely extreme and unreasonable stances.
Maybe people aren't forcing each other at gunpoint, but it's pretty close.
I don't really see the parallel. The poster I responded to seemed to be asking the question in a personal capacity, not from a position of power over others. When you front an organization representing, and being represented by, hundreds of people, then yes, politics are unavoidable by definition.
Furthermore, unless there's more context I've skimmed over (I assume you're referring to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24636899), it's not clear that Coinbase will suffer any negative consequences from this whatsoever aside from being shunned by activists, which I presume is a consequence they're okay with since they published a blog post explicitly alienating that group. The only folks being forced I see are the employees being told to pipe down or ship out.
(also, while it may not be substantive to this discussion, the belief that neutrality, especially explicit neutrality, is tacit endorsement of the status quo is neither extreme nor unreasonable)
The people who were working there were forced discuss or be "activists" by other coworkers. That isn't a position of power, it's others directly encroaching on their space and working conditions.
This is a direct example of what you are denying, that people are somehow not being forced to participate in these politics. They are, and increasingly so, with very few companies taking such an active stance to combat it.
And yes, neutrality is specifically the absence of any single position. It cannot be an endorsement of anything, be definition. Redefining terms to be whatever is politically convenient to create strawman positions and drama is another tactic used by those who want to force politics into every situation.
> The people who were working there were forced discuss or be "activists" by other coworkers.
Source? I have no idea what this is referring to.
Effective neutrality due to lack of will or resources is one thing. But a declaration of neutrality is a message to other actors that you will not intervene in their affairs. It is a rejection of the cultural norm that extremism (outside the company) should be tempered. Sounds pretty political to me, but maybe you and I are working with different definitions of politics.
> a lot liberals no longer feel welcome on the left
"the left" isn't a discrete thinkspace. There is a political spectrum, which isn't linear. The individuals mentioned are still relatively leftist, regardless of whoever is critical or engaging in other disparaging acts. Implying there is 1 left-wing or 1 right-wing is tribal behavior.
On all of those issues there are at least two takes-and they’ve flip-flopped over time. People on the right have a different take on how to alleviate homelessness (self empowerment vs state dependence). On immigration (remember the time Bernie _didn't_ want immigrants to take jobs from locals?) minorities (also about the extent of state help vs other empowerment vehicles).
There are varied ways to address the issues from different points of view. Parties have switched from one view to the opposing view over time, so by proxy of this we know there isn’t a “right” way and a “wrong” way but rather opposing philosophies that stress one thing over another. Why does one work better now and why will a different one work better tomorrow?
The issue isn't that they don't have a different rationale, it's the particulars of what that rationale is built on. "State dependence" alleviates suffering when implemented in earnest, "self-empowerment" perpetuates inequality and privileges luck and momentum over innovation and (paradoxically) moment-to-moment hard work.
In America, there has always been one side on the right side of history and one on the wrong, as far as health and happiness go. People and institutions switch sides, but the sides exist all the same. It comes down to how considerate you are of your neighbors, here and abroad. It's baffling that such a rich society continues to engage interpersonally with a scarcity mindset. Bootstraps are a myth; give until you can't and then ask for what you need. If we still then have racial issues, class issues, gender issues, religious issues, then the problem goes deeper than economics, and we'll need to face that with the same level of compassion.
The thing about state dependence that I don’t like is that that means the state has power over you. Follow our rules or you lose benefits. What, you’re against X? Sorry, come correct or lose your privilege to those benefits.
We don’t want to have what they had in the old “second world” where the state could bend the will of the people because it held all the cards.
That’s not to deny that we can serve people better. Create access to capital, lessen predatory practices on innumerate consumers, incentivize women to enter more productive areas of the economy, etc.
>The thing about state dependence that I don’t like is that that means the state has power over you. Follow our rules or you lose benefits. What, you’re against X? Sorry, come correct or lose your privilege to those benefits.
I don't understand how this would be a valid reason to not give a benefit. Even if that benefit comes with strings or can be taken away, isn't receiving that benefit for a period of time more helpful than never receiving it at all?
Or they will be returned to the exact same state they would be in otherwise? How is that a threat? Would a hungry person turn down a free meal because they will just be hungry later and they don’t want to be reliant on whoever gave them the meal?
I'd like to see what real-world examples you're thinking of when you write this, because the line of reasoning you're pursuing in this part of the thread looks to me more like a terminally cynical description of having a society and legal system.
It doesn't have to be a valid reason. From the POV of a state that wants to micromanage the beliefs of its population, social benefits become a tool of coercion. This has happened before, the history of USSR has plenty of examples.
That's not an argument against state help & social services per se. It's an argument for being vigilant and ensuring the government serves the people more than it serves itself.
In USSR these opportunities didn't exist outside of the state. In the US, opportunities exist, some people are just too far down below the ladder that they can't even begin to climb. If you fear this type of situation in which people in the US are dependent on the state, isn't it an acknowledgment that the self reliance and "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" ideas that are used to argue against state help are myths? Otherwise why would people allow themselves to be coerced by the state if there were other viable alternatives?
> If you fear this type of situation in which people in the US are dependent on the state, isn't it an acknowledgment that the self reliance and "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" ideas that are used to argue against state help are myths?
Perhaps. I personally don't buy the "self-made man" arguments. They feel too much like survivorship bias.
I don't think it's that simple. The presence of a benefit can create a moat around other opportunities, e.g. social housing easing the burden of finding housing but also reinforcing geographic segregation by social class.
Do you apply this same reasoning to people whose housing, food, and healthcare are all put at risk if their employer decides they don't like them?
Seems like you're concerned about what's mostly a hypothetical when done by the state today- but probably hundreds of millions of people in the US alone are being coerced to do things they don't want to under threat of losing the exact things you're worried about. And in a lot of cases, what's one big thing mitigating that coercion? The very social safety nets you're worried about!
There are more employers than govs. Imagine if the govt could cancel your benefits because it didn’t like your tweet. A few companies, ok, it sucks, but you have a chance to move on.
Consider how hard it would be to get a law like that past the judiciary system. If you or I can see how ridiculous the notion is then it must be obvious to a jury of our peers. Even with majority fiat the judiciary branch can still quell all kinds of popular but unjust laws. The travel ban is a great example of something the judiciary crushed. Same thing with the requirement in the ACA that employer-provided insurance include coverage for birth control, which is arguably far more popular.
There isn't just one Government in the US. What we have is a system of branches, each of which must agree that a law is acceptable. If just one branch disagrees then it can effect change.
Similarly we are not just one state. We're a federation and individual states can fight against federal laws that their constituents find unjust. Washington and Colorado did just that when they legalized marijuana. It's still illegal at the federal level, but the ATF has no jurisdiction within state lines so they can't do anything about manufacture and sale within state borders.
Consolidating that all under the same umbrella erases a lot of the very complexity that serves to protect you. And you can't accord that complexity to a corporation because shareholders and the board have a level of tyranny not found in our government.
If the government could do that it would mean that legislators were elected that passed such a law. It's not a credible hypothetical, IMO. And even if it were, there would be recourse in the form of electing different legislators at the next opportunity.
Any illegalities perpetrated by the private sector should be (and are) prosecuted to the full extend of the law. In addition, market misbehaving is punished by the market through the consumer.
The private sector is not above the law. The problem is that the government is. This is why, while both can misbehave, I see governments as a much, much larger danger to the average citizen than corporations. And the history agrees with me.
Just noting that in your scenario here, you are admitting that the private sector is not able to correct it's own abuses, but rather needs the elected government to do so.
>market misbehaving is punished by the market through the consumer.
Can you explain how the consumer punishes private sector entities engaged in human trafficking, for example? It seems there's plenty of evidence that deception and cutting corners is the most market competitive behavior that corporations can employ which allows them to offer the most appealing prices. Therefore market misbehavior is rewarded, not punished by consumers because the price signal is too reductionist to capture all of that.
I wrote this in another comment but it bears repeating: Illegal behavior is punished. Markets require the rule of law. The role of governments to implement and uphold the law. Nobody is disputing that.
But there are no substantial distinctions between employers in terms of how the utilize the coercive leverage that they have. So this is an illusory "safety-net".
The state always has power over you, it wouldn't be much of a state otherwise. If it doesn't respect your rights, you're screwed anyway. Capital doesn't help you when the state refuses to enforce your property rights, skills don't help you when you've been disappeared out of a helicopter.
Exactly. See Russia for an example of all these awful consequences of state power, without the social safety net.
Sure, a tyrannical government could take away your benefits for having the wrong views. They could also just take away your property in the absence of benefits.
> The thing about state dependence that I don’t like is that that means the state has power over you.
This is genuinely sad-funny considering the state of the US federal government overreach (independent of sitting president), policing, justice and implementation of secret courts and police forces.
In any case, welfare states handle this quite well with a justice system largely independent from the social executive flanked by mandatory legal aid. Which, if anything, has resulted in a power imbalance towards those receiving state benefits.
Re: state power... ”Follow our rules or you lose benefits.
What, you’re against X? Sorry, come correct or lose your
privilege to those benefits.”
How is this different than private power? Honestly, I've had to put up with far more arbitrary bs from my HMO than state or federal programs. With my state and the feds at least there is a clear statement of benefits, a clear procedure to appeal, and a solid attempt to deliver on promises.
How well does that compare to, say, your cable company? Or how well have big companies done respecting your privacy? In other words, lots of people get directly screwed by private companies, too.
I'm not trying to say that government programs are the ideal answer to everything. In the USA there is a serious need for reasonable debate, responsible budgets, and a commitment to good government.
There is plenty of potential for abuse with government over reach. But there is also plenty of abuse from government under-reach, too. Isn't it in everybody's interests to have a functioning government? One that that operates under good-faith intentions to follow it's mandate?
My guess is that right-leaning people are more comfortable with private corporations having that sort of power because they presume that the people in charge of the corporations must be competent and wise to get to their position. Possibly also that the dynamics of the free market will somehow protect people's rights.
Governments are checked by the wavering legitimacy of any given representative within the government. In our system, we have a direct check on that legitimacy through elections.
Meanwhile, corporations frequently do not have to compete, having either become a monopoly or having agreed upon "standards" without which they insist solvency in their given area would be impossible (as they rake in untold riches in profit). The only check on that power is indirectly through refusing to transact with them en masse. However, as long as their credit is good, they can continue to exist and operate with impunity.
In the end, the question is of the accumulation of which currency determines who is "good" enough to run your life: political clout or money.
Franklu, people who have to be nice to me tend to do better by me than people who just happen to have a lot of money.
Governments are checked by the democratic process. And competition is not working as well as it should. There are plenty of corporate monopolies, Varsity being one of the most obvious at the present time.
Neither is perfect but we can easily see that private competition works better by far by comparing the results: all the modern life products and services vs the mess that governments and governmental services are in various parts of the world.
Governments have incomparably more power and thus their abuses are incomparably worse: famines, pogroms, wars, asset confiscation, incarceration, murder.
Companies are controlled by the market, it's governments we need to worry about and find ways to control and regulate.
The only unbeatable way companies control the market is through government-granted monopoly. Any other way is eventually defeated by the market itself.
Every government intervention in the market will benefit established players and will hinder startups and thus the markets's self-regulating mechanisms.
This is an extreme counterexample, but doesn't the fact that the government will prosecute large companies that order hit squads to assassinate startup employees count as an "intervention"?
There are many other cases where I'd be very uncomfortable trusting these so-called "self-regulatinf mechanisms", e.g. the abolition of slavery, child labour, and racial/sexual employment discrimination.
Moreover, none of those things were always illegal. There was a time where it was not obvious that they should be illegal. Yet, despite the relatively laisez faire economics of the 19th century (in the UK at least), these behaviours were not simply self-regulated away. That required government intervention in the form of passing laws and ensuring that the law was followed.
So the proposition is which "check/balance" is better: Market competition or Elections.
Modern economics research shows that the efficient markets hypothesis is not true and definitely requires government regulation to operate in the way that Chicago School econ describes it. So that leaves Elections as the better balance mechanism by default.
> So that leaves Elections as the better balance mechanism by default.
This is a non-sequitor. The efficient market theorem can be untrue without elections necessarily being better at determining efficiency. I personally don’t believe in the efficient market (it’s why I’m an active trader). But elections, where ill-informed people vote on topics they barely have any knowledge about, risking nothing in the process, seem significantly worse at guaranteeing acceptable outcomes.
> The efficient market theorem can be untrue without elections necessarily being better at determining efficiency.
Can you go into more detail on how that could be for me? If the EMH is untrue, then there must be some other mechanism besides competition that checks the private sector, no? What would that be?
I'm implicitly lumping "regulation" as part of the Elections mechanism, btw, so I'm assuming you didn't mean regulation as the mechanism.
Yeah, we've seen the remarkable result of elections with Putin, Venezuela, China and now Trump.
Meanwhile unregulated fields like software, computers and communication have enjoyed the fastest and most remarkable progress in modern history. Progress which benefits us all every day.
First of all, You seem to be confused because you are mistaking what happens in Russia, Venezuela and China for actual elections. Whatever happens in those places is certainly not what I meant by the term "elections."
Second, You point to "three" (or are those 3 things really the same thing?) successes in competition, each of which were aided by investment authorized by elected legislators. Then you point to one failure of elections and proceed to conclude that competition is the better of the two. It doesn't follow, I'm afraid.
As for Trump, yes, that was the elections mechanism failing. I never said it was perfect. But the Market competition mechanism fails more often, in my estimation. Neither is perfect, but competition seems to create much higher probability for imperfection, abuse, flaws, and suffering.
Russia, Venezuela and USA all had actual democratic elections at some point. But they elected dictators which took power and never let go. The results were horrifying: imprisoned people, children in concentration camps and death, countless deaths. Destroying a country's economy leads to famine and, yes, death.
The effects of free market "failures" are comparatively laughable and always corrected by the free market itself sooner or later.
There is no contest which one is graver. To pretend otherwise is to ignore the reality and evidence all around us.
No, IMO it's because generally speaking the govt has much more power over you than any private entity. You don't have to follow the rules of any particular private entity unless you choose to. You can't choose not to pay your taxes (legally) or escape the surveillance state.
There are exceptions to this of course, such as government-sponsored monopolies (healthcare, ISPs, utilities). But a lot of that is regulatory capture IMO - we've ceded a lot of power to MegaCorp Inc. which I'm not comfortable with either.
As terrible as a lot of big private companies are, at least they can't waltz into any/every platform (e.g. G, FB, Twitter, etc) and demand everything they have on you like the feds can. No one holds a candle to the potential of govt tyranny, everyone is at the mercy of "the man".
At the end of the day, massive consolidation of power at the top levels of society is never healthy, whatever form it may take.
As terrible as a lot of big private companies are, at least they can't waltz into any/every platform (e.g. G, FB, Twitter, etc)
This in an amusing statement considering that many people consider Google and Facebook to be terrible big private companies.
And note, their power doesn't come from government-sponsored monopolies.
Also, calling utilities and ISPs government-sponsored utilities is grossly misleading; both are natural monopolies due to the capital costs that are involved.
Even more people consider Google and FB useful and valuable and gladly (and voluntarily) use their services. Otherwise those "terrible companies" wouldn't be so big anymore.
Capital costs do not create monopolies, just an obstacle solved by raising capital. Government regulations create monopolies - there is no way to fix those.
I recommend you actually read up on natural monopolies. It's a well understood and universally accepted phenomenon (at least academically; obviously there are vested interests who prefer to deny their existence despite clear facts).
Every time people show me a "natural" monopoly I find regulations around it that corrupt the market.
People believing in the so-called natural monopolies lack fate in the entrepreneurial drive, creativity and innovation of the free individuals working hard in their own interest, for their own betterment.
I'd say it's because corporate power is much more fragily held than goverment power. A startup can ruin a corporation - it takes a revolution to ruin a government.
This is a recurring theme that I despise. People need to start to talk about the government in a democracy as "we". You are the government, the state is a collective you are part off and have power over. You are in fact dependent on others, that is the point of a society.
So when someone says, hey, when I joined this society, I was told its people upheld the right for all its members to equal opportunity? But my parents did not have the money that yours did? And that affected my opportunity? So what gives?
When you have the attitude of the government as a seperate entity, it becomes reality. The more you see the government as such, the more it is allowed to become a ruler over others, since that's how you depict it. When it should be the CEO that you, a member of the board, elected, and can booth out when you don't like what they're doing no more, and you also can join the government if you want to contribute more, etc.
Sorry to hijike your discussion about handling the homelessness crisis , but that's a sore point for me. I find it really weak of people to look for someone else to govern them, and I wish people took responsability for their government (in democracies), because they are its owner and fundamentally have power over it. But too many prefer to delegate and pretend they're powerless against the faceless man.
Sorry but no, the state is fundamentally different and opposed to the individual. Individuals make up society but individuals are not society.
The entire purpose of society, and of a state, is to stifle the motivations of the individual for some group. In most cases it's pretty mundane stuff you give up as an individual, basically 0 cost stuff for a much bigger benefit of working with other individuals in society. Or via listening to the state in regards to the rules and policies they put in place.
But it is foolish to say that they are one and the same.
You are being small minded to what I'm saying. You say harness the potential of the group. How do you do that? It necessarily requires stifling the motivations of individuals so that they can work together. I'm making 0 moral judgements on whether the motivations of an individual are or are not valid.
Notice I specifically said
> for a much bigger benefit of working with other individuals in society.
So, you might want to re-evaluate your bias towards what I said.
>It necessarily requires stifling the motivations of individuals so that they can work together.
This assumes that people are naturally and totally individualistic, which is untrue even at a biological level. People work together instinctually, and they also decide, rationally, to work together. Individual and collective motivations are often the same; and while collective motivations sometimes stifle individual motivations, the former often (if not more often) replaces a LACK of motivation. In fact, the appeal to engaging in collective action in order to fill in a hole of individual meaning (motivation) underpins some of humanity's strongest and most common institutions: military service, volunteer service, protest, religion, work. That is society: individuals working in concert, by each's determination.
>I'm making 0 moral judgements on whether the motivations of an individual are or are not valid.
You're making a moral judgment privileging individual motivation, separating it from collective motivation.
Your argument is simply wrong on its face. It tries to generalize a solipsistic perspective to the rest of humanity, to which it very clearly does not apply. Perhaps only in this thought are you truly as much an individual as you seem to think people must necessarily be.
No, I simply addressed your statements re: individual vs collective motivation. This reply of yours is simply a way for you to avoid interrogating your viewpoint in light of my response, which I think is a shame.
But people ARE naturally and totally individualistic. Even when they cooperate, they do it for their own individual interest. It's due to the nature of our evolution.
That's a misunderstanding of the thesis. Because humans tend to have trouble surviving completely alone, our nature is to privilege others and the group in many circumstances, over our individual wellbeing. Sacrifice - of comfort, health, even life - in order to secure the survival of our children and tribe is common because it is often so much more effective at allowing for the perpetuation of a given line than purely individualistic behavior. That's what's so profound about the concept presented in "The Selfish Gene": the meta-impulse to preserve one's genes often overrides the meta-impulse to preserve one's own life.
> But it is foolish to say that they are one and the same
I don't see where in what I said you got the impression I was saying that they are one and the same?
I'm saying that, in a working democracy, you are a part of the government, which is very different from seeing the government as a seperate entity you are subservient too.
> The entire purpose of society, and of a state, is to stifle the motivations of the individual for some group
The point of a democratic society is to create a friendly association with others. For it to be friendly, it kind of requires all participants to benefit and feel fairly treated. In turn, this often means that a democratic society will put a stronger emphasis on the individual than non-democratic alternatives. That is to say, the goal of a democratic society is to maximize everyone's rights at the individual level.
Now yes, that does mean that a democratic society is a group of people that assemble together in order to overpower individuals or other groups that would try to dominate over them through force. Maybe that's what you meant here, but it seems a bit of a sideway conversation. Since they do so in order to protect their own individual rights from being taken by force by others.
Unless we're talking election fraud though, it is the people that have chosen to reelect or to delegate the choice to others to do so for them.
And anyone motivated enough can engage even further in the process, become a candidate, influence others, etc.
I find so many people are just complainers, but they barely take anytime to even understand how the system works, I wouldn't be surprised if half the people don't even know what a congressman can do, can't do, and does. And even less surprised if most people didn't even bother reading about each candidate for more than 10 minutes.
I'm not American, but now live in America, and I've literally had to explain how laws are made in the US to many Americans. That's depressing. And it's not like I'm an expert on it, I just took a few hours reading through the wikipedia page and the usa.gov website. (p.s.: It's not better in my country Canada, people are similarly lacking in ownership and awareness, so I'm not trying to point fingers at Americans exclusively)
Yes, we can discuss the system and issues with representation, like being first past the post, and all, but even before that, I think there's just a lack of ownership by a lot of people who don't consider themselves a part of the government, when they are. The word itself means: "the people rule" and is defined as: "a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state". As a citizen of a democratic state, YOU ARE the government.
> This is a recurring theme that I despise. People need to start to talk about the government in a democracy as "we". You are the government, the state is a collective you are part off and have power over. You are in fact dependent on others, that is the point of a society.
I take your point, but for an individual this is only true in a very abstract sense. The People may govern Themselves, but I do not govern myself in any meaningful way.
>We don’t want to have what they had in the old “second world” where the state could bend the will of the people because it held all the cards.
Isn't it apparent, though, that this type of leverage is inevitable in any societal structure? Some party will have a level of power where it can coerce many others to basically do their bidding at threat of witholding some essential sustenance. In the private sector, witholding employment means poverty and the resulting wretched consequences to health and status.
The proposition that government should be the only one with that leverage is the lesser of many evils, because at least there is electoral recourse against a government that abuses it.
This is opposed to leaving that leverage with the private sector, where there is no recourse, other that not participating, which is exactly their leverage in the first place, as you will be left with no income and in poverty.
This is in part a reply to you and in part a comment on all the sibling comments.
There are many cultural assumptions that are built into the comments here. Worth examining.
* "What, you’re against X? Sorry, come correct or lose your privilege to those benefits." Some countries use government to ensure every mom and baby-to-be has prenatal care and food. There is not a belief test there, just a pregnancy test. Could you give an example of the types of belief tests you are against?
I find the US emphasis on church charity rather than government services repugnant in particular because it often is used exactly for ideological coercion. Not all churches, but many, see the provision of services as a way to enforce/reward/punish certain beliefs and behaviors. I've always found that un-christ-like myself but hey I'm just a heretic. A government service that says, "hey, you're 16 and homeless so we will feed you dinner" seems much better and less coercive than a church that says, "you're 16 and homeless so we'll feed you dinner if you pray beforehand and we get to choose your pronouns".
* Many sibling commenters mention employers a lot. That's another cultural assumption that I find interesting. In the culture I was raised in, it was assumed that government help is rightfully directed primarily at the very young, the very old, and the very sick -- in general, people without employers and with fewer opportunities to 'just help themselves' or pull themselves up by their bootstraps. That is, after all, why we formed a bunch of these government agencies -- we as a people, as a community, felt bad seeing 87-year-old men starve to death in their apartments because they had limited mobility and no income, or watching 4-month-old babies refuse to get that corporate job they obviously should've that would've allowed mama who had a debilitating injury from birthing to afford formula for the kid. Ah, self-empowerment: works so well when it results in 4-year-olds becoming trash pickers to help their families, and 92-year-olds to sit by the road (if they even live that long) begging because it brings in a little cash! No. Some of these government programs were formed because there are times in a person's life where all the psychological empowerment and even job skills training classes you want aren't gonna help, but food and a place to live will.
To go back to discussions above this, I still engage a lot on Facebook for political argument purposes. It's boring just talking with people who agree with me (the people I live with, generally) so I do seek out other points of view on Facebook. It is interesting how some folks always slide an argument back to the point they want -- tried talking about Amy Coney Barrett's opinion in a Title IX case with a friend doing a PhD, and strangely enough she kept bringing it back to how universities shouldn't be policing "stuff that happens in bars". I just mention this example because campus adjudication of sexual assault cases and the relationship with Title IX and due process rights is, ugh, a totally different, complicated, legally interesting conversation than 'what happens in bars'. But we can't even have the conversation -- a conversation I feel I can contribute to in an interesting way because I've been faculty at a university and have dealt informally with harassment between students -- because it continually slides back to these fake talking points that dismiss all the important stuff! Is that social cooling or not?
> Many sibling commenters mention employers a lot.
Probably because the vast majority of Americans can only afford healthcare for those debilitating injuries by finding an employer who will sign them up for the employee health plan.
> A government service that says, "hey, you're 16 and homeless so we will feed you dinner" seems much better and less coercive than a church that says, "you're 16 and homeless so we'll feed you dinner if you pray beforehand and we get to choose your pronouns".
If the results of the latter were proven to result in generally a much happier and more cohesive society, would you be so confident and assured in your opposition and disdain for the approach?
I'm a religious person for utilitarian reasons and read my Bible weekly and go to church accordingly.
But a whole lot of teen suicide and abortion is due to haters hating (I mean Christians being dogmatic) -- it's pretty well proven that coercive religious dogma is bad for mental health, as well as in the US divorce and abortion rates. The pressure to keep up appearances and lie about who you are and your actual life is not the bit that leads to a happy and cohesive society.
You’re leaping from “coercive religion dogma is bad for mental health” (I’ll accept that for the sake of argument) to “faith based charity is bad”. I don’t see how that follows. Seeing as you go to Church for utilitarian reasons, I don’t understand why you would condemn a faith based charity for trying to offer some sort of spiritual sustenance to the people they serve.
What about all the instances where state dependence increased suffering though? What baffles me is that we continue to fall into the trap that there are only 2 ways to approach every problem.
I think a huge part of the difference is people's perspective on which is worse: false positives or false negatives.
Warning: opinions follow
To reduce scope to something like welfare for illustrative purposes, there's actually pretty broad agreement from both sides that some people just need help through no fault of their own and that at some level, there should be some kind of program to provide that help. And there's similar agreement that people who don't have such a need should be prevented from intentionally gaming/milking a system (getting benefits without a legitimate need). The interesting parts come in two other scenarios: 1) someone who legitimately needs help and doesn't get it, and 2) someone who doesn't need help but does get it. Those are both wasteful and unjust and we'd all like to reduce those cases to as close to zero as possible. But the left and the right disagree about which case is more unjust. The right would like to focus on efficiency and self-sufficiency, so the greater injustice is fostering an environment where you can get assistance without deserving it (which perpetuates and/or deepens the dependence), and you're willing to concede that this means some people who need help won't get it. The left, on the other hand, would like to focus on covering everyone who needs help, and anyone slipping through the cracks is an injustice, but this means that you have to accept the inefficiency of allowing some people who don't need/deserve assistance to get it, and you just shrug and say that's the cost of providing a good safety net.
I think this is basically true. although there are some issues that are so polarizing that they take precedence over the false positive vs false negative preference. the examples that immediately come to mind involve enforcement and punishment. the right generally seems to accept policies like stop-and-frisk or demanding ID from brown people near the border, regardless of how many of those targeted turn out to be doing nothing wrong. the left pretty much takes the same position on campus sexual assault cases, although it at least asserts that false positives are very rare.
Yeah, I think false-positive and false-negative aren't exactly the right construct to consider for some scenarios. It's more like "whose suffering bothers you more?" People in need or those whose contribution is wasted? The racially-profiled or those who may be harmed by criminals if we aren't diligent? Wrongly-accused rapists or rape victims?
False positive and false negative rates also have a relation to the injustice of a false positive. Having to provide ID and get frisked sucks but being falsely accused of a crime and having your entirely life destroyed even if rare is a massive injustice. This is the entire premise of Blackstone's Ratio
Good Q. I think it’s a nuanced distinction. Helping too much can too often lead to a lack of empowerment, IMO. The idea that you can’t help yourself, so you must be led along by another as if you were a child. I think empowerment requires helping, but helping through “nudges,” if that makes sense
In the context of a system where it's almost impossible to lose money above a certain point and almost impossible to make money below a certain point (edit: without doing something reckless, which often happens).. No this does not make sense to me.
> In the context of a system where it's almost impossible to lose money above a certain point and almost impossible to make money below a certain point
Whether you believe we live in such a system seems like a matter of opinion and outlook.
I wonder if there's a correlation there, where for some people they think that offering any help is by definition paternalistic? "As if they were a child", as in believing that only children need help.
I don't think conservatives/Republicans are strictly against helping anyone, they just disagree on the method. The historically conservative view has been to try and give them a job through which they can support themselves as opposed to a "handout" through a social program. On paper I think they would describe it as the equivalent of "teaching a man to fish" vs "giving a man a fish".
Obviously there is a lot of room for skepticism as to whether you think the approach works in practice, or if the approach is simply a front to enact changes that will nominally benefit the unempowered but in reality benefit the empowered. But I don't know of many who aren't in favor of something as vague as "helping people", and most genuinely believe they are doing so.
It’s more than that. Conservatives think that liberal social and economic ideas actively destroy the infrastructure people rely on to help themselves. An example of this is marriage. Liberals have sought to normalize divorce and the raising children outside of marriage. Both of those things are empirically proven to make people poorer—for obvious reasons. Indeed, welfare benefits are often structured to disincentivize marriage, which in turn keeps people poor. Liberals often don’t appreciate that conservative social and economic views are synergistic like that.
I'd be interested in hearing more about what liberals have done to "normalize" divorce.
A conservative movement genuinely interested in making sure children are raised in wedlock could endorse routine family planning and reproductive health services, rather than building an entire totalizing culture war out of opposition to them. Otherwise, it's hard to imagine a policy more antithetical to our founding principles than one that compels the reluctant unwed parents of unwanted children to marry.
These issues didn't seem to bother Ben Franklin too much. But: fair enough! A liberal.
Can you post an example of how welfare benefits are structured to disincentivize marriage?
I also think this is an example of how conservatives and progressives talk past each other. There's a difference between being in favor of divorce, and being in favor of recognizing that there are situations where divorce is a better option than staying married. Also, there's a difference between being in favor of raising children outside of marriage, and being in favor of an unmarried person or family raising an existing child that would otherwise not be raised by anyone.
> Both of those things are empirically proven to make people poorer
Nothing of this sort has by any means been proven.
I’m from a country that probably has one of the highest—if not the highest—proportion of children born outside of marriage. I my self is raised by a single mother, my sister has a son born outside of marriage, and so do many of my friends. This country is also one of the wealthiest in the world and has way less poverty then many countries where child rearing outside of marriage is less common.
In fact you could probably argue just as easily that actively supporting single parents has greater economic benefits then to disenfranchise them.
> While it’s well-established that married parents are typically better off financially than unmarried parents, there are also differences in financial well-being among unmarried parents. For example, a much larger share of solo parents are living in poverty compared with cohabiting parents (27% vs. 16%).3
Correlation is not causation. Could it be that a third variable (say stress) is causing both high divorce rates and mass poverty?
Also the article you link to and quote is about unmarried couples vs. married couples, the source for these number is confusing to say the least, and focuses on the US where single parents don’t get that much welfare, which neither adds nor removes anything from my point that: single parenting is not by it self a good predictor of poverty.
>Indeed, welfare benefits are often structured to disincentivize marriage, which in turn keeps people poor. Liberals often don’t appreciate that conservative social and economic views are synergistic like that.
I'd posit that it's not the benefits themselves that disincentivize such things, it's the rules surrounding how one accesses such benefits does so.
If our social programs didn't penalize such activities (through a variety of a restrictions on applying for and keeping such benefits) and we didn't make people jump through arbitrary and often degrading hoops to get them, all the while denigrating such folks as "lazy" or "greedy" or "worthless to society" I think that there wouldn't be such an issue to discuss.
What's more, at least in the US, there is a long tradition of blaming the poor for their poverty and assuming that it's their fault. Which makes it much more palatable to discriminate against those without means for many people.
But that's objectively false. There are many factors that impact poverty, some of which include specific legal and cultural incentives (both conscious and unconscious) which disadvantage certain people and advantage others.
First of all, note that I did not talk at all about parties. I talked about left and right. Historically, the parties that represent right and left (or how much to the right and left they skew) has changed; which ideas fall in the category of left and right thinking have not as much.
It seems that your stance is based on the idea that a large group of people simply adopts one viewpoint or another arbitrarily, that those solutions have not changed over time, and that because of this we should treat them with equal merit. I believe this is wrong, for a number of different reasons.
First, it ignores the outcomes of the actual policies as well as the framework of thinking that it supports. Someone who has a "different take" whose outcome changes whether I or my friends can afford health care or not is not an "equal but opposite" philosophy.
To build on that, because it ignores the actual outcomes and treats all ideas as equal, it supports a framework of hyper-partisan thinking, the idea that ideology is about who you are loyal to. In this framework, your belief makes sense: just because we're loyal to different parties doesn't mean we can't be friends! But again, it ignores the very real implications of those beliefs.
Finally, it also concludes that solutions to these problems, and the people who are in charge of supporting them, cannot evolve and improve, only be renewed as a way to for members of a party to pledge loyalty. Bernie is not a perfect leftist, and has certainly had some shitty takes and policies; sometimes people get better (and sometimes they don't). As our understanding of the plight of the common people grows and adjusts to the new realities we are faced with, different solutions will evolve on the left, and that is good.
> First, it ignores the outcomes of the actual policies as well as the framework of thinking that it supports. Someone who has a "different take" whose outcome changes whether I or my friends can afford health care or not is not an "equal but opposite" philosophy.
What opinions about health care policy are people allowed to have, in your view?
And who gets to judge that it isn't equivalent? Equivalency implies measurability and this seems like an immeasurable assertion based solely on personal opinion.
No one; I was under the impression that this was an opinion stated by the poster. The response just seemed to not understand what the poster was saying.
Oh, got it. You highlighted that part from the OP so I assumed that there was some shared understanding of objectivity here that wasn't apparent to me. If it is just the OP's opinion/perception of equivalency (or lack thereof) and nothing else then I guess there's nothing worth discussing here since the person the OP would be in dialogue with could disagree about the OP's judgement of equivalency and it's just two people agreeing to disagree and nothing more.
I meant no disrespect. If I read into your reply here, I think you feel that I am saying that anyone who is "not a perfect leftist" is "shitty"? On reflection I can see how that would be interpreted.
What I meant to wrote was 3 separate points:
- Bernie is not a perfect leftist
To be clear: I don't hold Bernie to the standard of being a "perfect leftist," rather stating the obvious that he is not one. And while I would love a candidate that agreed more with my viewpoints than him, I don't think he's a bad person because he doesn't.
- Bernie has had some shitty takes and policies
I do believe that Bernie Sanders, the politician, has not always wielded his power in my best interest; for instance, voting for the "Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists" joint resolution that has been used as justification for our military presence in the middle east. I would, in a glib way, rate that vote and the opinions he gave during that time as a "shitty take." I don't think that disrespects him as a person.
- Sometimes people get better (and sometimes they don't)
Sometimes people evolve their politics and beliefs as they learn more and the material conditions which they exist in change, which is good. Sometimes they do not, and that's bad. I do not think that adopting strictly leftist beliefs - of which there are a cacophony of differing, conflicting ones - is inherently good. Rather the lack of evolution is bad.
> remember the time Bernie _didn't_ want immigrants to take jobs from locals?
I'm plucking this bit out because I don't think that's a good summary of his position. He still doesn't "want immigrants to take jobs from locals." He's concerned about corporations abusing immigrant labor to depress American wages. He's long voted for bills to protect immigrants, even while being wary of increasing low-skill immigration. He's trying to find a middle ground between labor and immigration, and that isn't easy.
A missionary may also engage with people with different experiences than their own, but they're only doing so to cement their own world view. When they come across someone they disagree with, they'll just label them as evil without thinking about it.
To be clear, I don't think that it's a right vs left thing. I think that social media incentivizes people to behave poorly. Ben Shapiro had an enlightening discussion with a founder of Vox about the nature of polarization [1], but that's not why he's famous or how he makes money. His audience wants to see him bash unprepared liberals, so that's what he's going to do. Even if he doesn't, some other pundit will simply take his place.
> A missionary may also engage with people with different experiences than their own, but they're only doing so to cement their own world view. When they come across someone they disagree with, they'll just label them as evil without thinking about it.
As a former Mormon missionary, I couldn't disagree more. I didn't meet many people who were interested in the Mormon church, but I didn't consider them evil. If anything, it was my views on my religion and personal spirituality that evolved enormously over the course of the two years, far more than the 19 years previous or the many since. I learned a lot about myself and my worldview. Certainly a lot more than anyone changed their worldview by talking to me.
That's fair. I shouldn't have generalized this among all the individual missionaries. My point is to provide an example of engaging with different worldviews does not necessarily imply open-mindedness.
This comment is the most conniving one I have heard in awhile. To paraphrase, your argument is convincing and it’s similar to those who blame it on the “SJW” types so let’s shift the argument on over to those supposed people.
So many assumptions piled onto assumptions about people.
As a Colombian leftist it is quite difficult to find educated and challenging views from the "right", I work with a lot of veterans and most of them are blinded by their ideology, no matter what the government does or says they will always back it.
I have come to realize that right wingers are brainwashed or people with mental problems or childhood traumas, like our ex president (Alvaro Uribe Velez), who was addicted to kill people with chainsaws, or military men that as part of their training are tortured [1], and are subject to psychological training that change the way they behave.
> I have come to realize that right wingers are brainwashed or people with mental problems or childhood traumas
As a american center-rightist, I have come to realize that left wingers are brainwashed or people with mental problems or childhood traumas.
Like the millenial kids who grew up without father figure or a stable family.
Like college going students who have been brainwashed by leftists to seek state protection everywhere in terms of safe spaces.
I feel like they are blinded by ideology to believe that there cause is just and their opinions are morally justified and anyone even questioning their beliefs is morally wrong.
>Like the millenial kids who grew up without father figure or a stable family.
Grew out in a stable family, although very corrupt one, I remember handing money to judges and other officials as a teen, and smuggling goods through the Venezuelan border, about 10 members of my family were killed and military service is mandatory here.
> Like college going students who have been brainwashed by leftists to seek state protection everywhere in terms of safe spaces.
College has never been free in Colombia and I've never been in one, additionally constantly the government is trying to privatize primary and secondary education so the poor can no longer educate themselves, you develop your own opinion based on your environment.
All policies implemented by the right wing have had disastrous consequences and are done with malice.
Additionally the Colombian government seems to fight an endless imaginary war against drugs even though every single right wing politician has ties with drug cartels, like the president [1], or the vice president (her siblings were jailed in the US) [2] and her husband was the main partner of one of the most powerful cartel leader [3], or the Colombian ambassador of Uruguay who had a cocaine lab [4], or the father of the ex president Alvaro Uribe Velez who was the main partner if not the boss of Pablo Escobar [5].
This is really eloquently put. A concrete example: I grew up in Minnesota in an area with a lot of Somali refugees. When the Trump travel ban went into effect, many of them were cut off from their families. I have friends that had to choose between packing up their lives to immigrate to Germany or never seeing their family again.
In that context, I'm not particularly interested in engaging with the idea that the travel ban is A Good Thing Actually. And I don't think I'd maintain a friendship with someone who thinks that it is. I do not consider this a character flaw.
Agreed. Parent seems to think that engaging in rhetoric is universially fun and useful endeavor that will expand our mind and better us as a person. This is not true on a number of issues.
Disenfranchising issues (such as gay rights, police brutality, immigration, right to abortion, etc.) is not only theoretical to some people, but a real threat to their lives and well being. A person playing the devils advocate arguing for limits on immigration to an immigrant is not only annoying but actively threatening to an immigrant at risk of being deported.
A number of people have full rights to be insulted when points are raised on a number of subjects. In fact they also have the rights to react angrily if the subject is a direct threat to their lives and livelihood. People arguing things often don’t realize that there is a person on the other end of the debate, a person with feelings, like love and compassion, but also anger and disgust. If a subject threatens or belittles, them being insulted or angry is the natural response.
Those disenfranchising issues have affected people on the other side. Those parents probably know a few.
Getting angry is natural, but anger is easy. Advancement of the cause doesn't entail getting likes, hearts or clap-backs. The real work is in persuasion.
You can't just label some topics as "Disenfranchising issues" and then cease to have debate on the topic. There's always going to be a debate on to what extent should society go out of its way to enfranchise people and to what extent is the onus on the individual." You can't just shutdown these topics because you want more than others are willing to give. You can't label people hateful just because they don't want to be generous and you certainly can't shutdown the debate on the extent to which people are entitled to generosity or frugality.
It’s not being hateful it’s just being honest. Sorry if the Truth offends you. This thread is like a bunch of steroid users becoming up with reasons why they need them
> "A person playing the devils advocate arguing for limits on immigration to an immigrant is not only annoying but actively threatening to an immigrant at risk of being deported."
This is nonsense. I'm an immigrant who argues for limits. Certain subjects being (subjectively) sensitive to talk about doesn't mean they're unproductive because of it. In fact we'll never get anywhere if we don't talk about them.
Limiting speech arbitrarily, especially over very assumptive beliefs of offense, is a terrible thing. You're not forced to participate in any discussion you don't want to be in but people have a right to discuss it.
This. I'm also an immigrant myself that argues for limits.
> You're not forced to participate in any discussion you don't want to be in but people have a right to discuss it.
Exactly, and if you're not capable of engaging in that discussion productively, don't be surprised if your viewpoints and positions don't get the consideration you think they deserve.
Civil dialogue is the foundation upon which we find understanding in the face of disparate experiences. If you're feelings about the dialogue gets in the way of contributing to understanding, then it is you that is hurting your own cause.
+1 , want to add, almost everyone argues for limits on immigration because without limits that would be an argument for _unlimited_ immigration.
Sometimes we construe ourselves as vastly separated "islands" of ideologies, when in reality we're more like tight clusters. That is we have similar ideals, and differentiate on how to accomplish them.
For example "Help the poor" is often agreed upon, but then argued about "How to help the poor" . (Do we give them tough love and bootstraps yada yada? or Do we give them support, resources and encouragement and yada yada?).
> Limiting speech arbitrarily [...] is a terrible thing.
This is not true. We do limit speech, both through moderation (like here on HN), terms of service (e.g. on Twitter, Facebook etc.), codes of conduct (in our workplace), in our legal society (slander, hate-speech, etc.), etc. But also through our moral behavior. As humans we know that some topics are insensitive to talk about around some people (e.g. we don’t tell yo'mama jokes around a recently orphaned person).
Debating against abortion around a person that is at risk of being forced into pregnancy, or against gay rights against a person not allowed to openly express their love for their same-sex partner is a truly offensive thing to do. When a platform limits such a speech it is acting in a very human way.
Sussing an offensive party to protect the rights of the disenfranchised one is what normal humans do in a normal conversation.
First, protecting the rights of the disenfranchised means, by definition, they are not disenfranchised. I'm not sure why you keep using that word.
Second, if we rewind to the original comment, it's clearly talking about people "who are offended by everything", on a platform where everything offends someone. This is not about rules or regulations, or personal behavior; all of which have very specific context in which they apply.
Rather it's about the lack of engagement with different perspectives by labelling everything taboo at such a scale and breadth as to prevent any possible discussion, and the worrisome self-censorship as a result. You're only reinforcing this point with your sweeping generalizations on behalf of people and situations you don't represent.
If you find something offensive then you are free to not participate, but you do not have the right to limit their speech. You're not protecting anyone's right by doing so, and I find it the very opposite of human to regress towards silence instead of moving forward through reason.
Sorry you are right, this I went on a little tangent there (as explained in a sibling comment).
However “people who are offended by everything” is often used as a synonym for left leaning folks (or rather folks in favor of societal diversity; SJWs if you will). Also “shutting down the debate” is often used to complain about when a left leaning person reacts offensively (or even angrily) during a debate. This is regardless of if the preceding comment was actually very insulting or threatening to some people that may be present.
In a sibling comment I explain that—in my opinion—it is actually a good thing if people that hold oppressing and insulting views self-censor after having received angry replies to their offensive views. I‘d like to add now that normally us “left leaning folks” don’t simply label speech as offensive and leave it at that. We—as grandparent points out—we actively engage in the conversation and point out (sometimes in anger) the flaws in the opposing opinion, explain why a thing is offensive and bad, and why we are angry about it. Then we hope that either they will change their view or at least reconsider before they say something like this again.
Again I should reiterate that I am specifically talking about debates that I consider threatening or offensive to some groups of people.
> "“left leaning folks” don’t simply label speech as offensive and leave it at that"
But that's what you just did, and are still doing. Offensive is subjective. Who are you to consider what is offensive to others? Are you in those groups? Are you personally taking offense?
Why did you say immigration can't be discussed? I'm an immigration who discusses it just fine, and I find it annoying and offensive that you act offended on my behalf and shutdown any discussion. I don't want or need that and am fully capable of engaging in the discussion or leaving myself out of it. Engage with the argument or leave it, but stop acting on behalf of others as if they don't have agency. It's just a soft bigotry to think that they can't speak for themselves.
And self-censorship is never good. People holding views that you find offensive don't need to stop doing anything, and this has both exposed bad people and led to revolutionary new ideas. At one point ending slavery and women's suffrage was also offensive to discuss, but good thing we discussed it and actually made progress. Let's not stop now.
Lets get this straight: When did I actually say “immigration can’t be discussed”? I said it might be annoying to an immigrant when people play the devils advocate to argue for limits on immigration. And I said it might be threatening to an immigrant that is at risk of deportation.
I know I didn’t word it perfectly and I understand you might have misunderstood me. English is not my first language and I’m sometimes not as clear as I could be. Particularly in this case I left out the word ‘might’, hoping that it was implied from this being a hypothetical scenario. Sorry for that.
I’m sorry if I left you thinking that all immigrants think this, or are of a certain opinion, I don’t believe this my self and it certainly was not my intention to claim any such thing.
I also don’t hold the opinion that some topics can’t be discussed. Only that it is natural to be insulted if certain opinions in said topics are expressed. Since you mentioned slavery, imagine a public forum about in Pennsylvania in 1849. Some people might think the debate about abolition is only theoretical and might play the devils advocate, imagining and stating arguments that make sense in a theoretical scenario. Who is this helping? Is Fredrick Douglass gonna walk by this forum and think: “I’m glad people are having this debate, I hope this person that argues for slavery keeps posting.” Say John Brown replies stating this for-slavery person “is an idiot” and “should keep silent, for their own good,” do you think that Harriet Tubman would be thinking: “Oh my, I hope John Brown—though well intentioned—will not silence this anti-abolitionist. In fact why is John Brown speaking on my behalf? he was never a slave. We got to keep this debate going if we want to end slavery.” Finally Harriet Ann Jacobs walks by and simply says to her self: “Well, I’m free now, I don’t need to participate in this forum. I’ll just leave it.”
No, this is ridiculous. We don’t stop these humanitarian disaster by allowing bigoted views to persist. If someone comes with an insulting argument based on a bigoted view, the normal thing to do is to insult back and hope they never speak of this again.
No I’m not. Here I was expanding on the point the parent made where abolition was an example:
> [S]elf-censorship is never good. People holding views that you find offensive don't need to stop doing anything, and this has both exposed bad people and led to revolutionary new ideas
This is a silly argument given the above example.
Remember the topic is about self-censorship and whether getting offended about certain rhetoric is natural, not about any specific topic which might offend people.
> "Only that it is natural to be insulted if certain opinions in said topics are expressed."
Again, so what? It happens and is entirely subjective, and whether it's shared by millions of people or specific to an individual is an irrelevant detail.
> "Who is this helping?"
Who cares? Discussion happens. There is no imperative that it must be helpful, whatever that means. That's yet another subjective judgement.
> "We don’t stop these humanitarian disaster by allowing bigoted views to persist."
Discussion is what determined they were wrong views in the first place. Speech from the opposing side that, at the time, was considered rebellious and wrong eventually won and created change.
> "the normal thing to do is to insult back"
Yes. Counter speech and ideas with better speech and ideas. That is the opposite of (self-) censorship and limiting expression because of potential offense.
As we provide platforms to everyone to broadcast their opinions on everything , what I foresee is that if we continue to keep generating these gazillions of data points every second all the time then soon AI’s will be needed to do the analysis for us and complement or help human policy makers to make the right decisions. We already see this with things like sentiment analysis. Welcome to the singularity .. I for once can’t wait to have our constantly bickering politicians replaced with AI agents whose sole job is to work for the people and who can be overidden by executive authority only as a last resort.
You're on the left. Your current political pet issues aren't something you're willing to debate - instead you're announcing that anyone who disagrees with you is a "threat".
A person playing the devils advocate arguing for limits on immigration
Limits on immigration aren't a "devil's advocacy" position, they're the de-facto standard around the world for obvious and common sense reasons.
This is why the modern left is so awful. You take something that every single place in the world does and describe it as being basically the same as clubbing someone over the head. You refuse to even attempt to engage with the vast majority who think your position is nonsense.
This is why "social cooling" happens, if we accept the use of that term. It is a problem created by people like you.
I wish more people on the left took the time to familiarize themselves with the work of Harvard researcher/professor George Borjas that has probably done the most rigorous work into the impact of immigration both pros and cons and considering all affected.
His op-ed in politico from 2016 is a good introduction to the issues he tries to tackle:
There's a palpable lack of self awareness in the comment you're responding too because there is an implicit non-recognition of the very real concerns that immigration presents to people that are hurt by immigration. I'm one of the people that benefits from immigration, but I'm not blind to the fact that some people in the country do not benefit from immigration. Those people and current immigrants are my neighbors and future immigrants are my future neighbors. It's important to consider how immigration impacts more than just current immigrants like myself and future immigrants.
That is a huge, unhelpful generalization. I am pretty far to the left and I consider immigration a perfectly reasonable topic to debate. Most everyone in my circle of friends feel the same way. The 'cancel culture', as it were, is just a subgroup of the left. And frankly, there is a cancel culture on the right, too.
> The 'cancel culture', as it were, is just a subgroup of the left. And frankly, there is a cancel culture on the right, too.
Yes. On this I will agree with you strongly. Both varieties of cancel-culture are essentially the bulwarks of the false dichotomy of American politics - serving as backstops to try to keep people in the middle, which itself is a controlled position.
You're to the left of that. There's actually a lot more to discuss out there, and out to the right of it, than many people realize. For example, broad agreement on rights for workers to a fair wage, benefits, etc. - you'd be surprised how popular that is with the modern American right, when you can get them out from the GOP paradigm and weak, unhelpful talking points.
Sounds like we could probably have a fascinating discussion. I get so tired of the same old tired name-calling and finger-pointing that most people count as political discussion. My Facebook is filled with posts from both sides which do nothing more than hurl insults at the other side.
Nobody actually wants to talk about issues. Bring up anything specific and everyone just goes silent. It's boring, and a bit offensive. People with so little imagination do us all a disservice by expressing it so strongly.
People seem to have really grabbed on to me supposedly holding the view that “debating immigration is offensive and therefor off limits”.
Perhaps I wasn’t clear enough (which is likely; English is not my first language).
This sub-thread started with an ancestor complaining about people being afraid to discuss certain topics because people are too easily offended, this was expressed as a bad thing:
> The only thing worse than people who are offended by everything is having to be afraid of offending over-sensitive people.
The comment keeps going by pointing out that adults should be able to handle these “offensive” topics and debate them like adults.
A grandparent pointed out that there is truth in this point of view, but this is often used as a critique on “the left” which is unfounded since “left-leaning folks [...] _do_ engage with many people whose experience and world view are very different from them”.
I then point out in my comment above that I agree and—further—being insulted and angry when these topics spring up is perfectly natural:
> A number of people have full rights to be insulted when points are raised on a number of subjects.
I think a lot of people have taken the view that since I think being offended when debating the rights of disenfranchised people I must be for shutting down all debate about it. And while I think that is the right thing to do in certain cases I certainly don’t think that nobody is allowed to debate immigration on a public forum.
My point is that—depending on your stance—people might get offended and angry as you are debating this. It might be theoretical to you, but it might be very real to some people in the room. If your stance is really brutal you shouldn’t be surprised if some people—who may have their or loved once lives threatened by that stance—want to “cancel you”. To reiterate, my point is that it is not a bad thing if some people are afraid to voice their opinions in a public forum, when their opinions are threatening to disenfranchised people.
But you're making yourself the arbiter of what can and cannot be debated, which is intolerable, as such a person automatically wins any 'debate' they feel strongly about. You say you support shutting down debate "in certain cases" but the moment you go there, you're always going to get strong pushback.
Imagine if Trump announced tomorrow that debates on workers rights were off-limits because they were a threat to the very existence of job creators. And then he tried to even make it illegal, to create a culture where anyone who talked about unions positively was immediately fired? Would the left recognise that as a legit strategy and go, oh ok, I guess if he says shutting down debate in that case is legitimate then it must be?
Of course not. You may not rule your pet topics off-limits for debate. Ever. On anything. Countries that try that in even mild ways have endless problems, though they may not immediately become apparent.
debating the rights of disenfranchised people
Look, I am an immigrant. I have been for 15 years. And I know that until I become a citizen I am a guest. Not a "disenfranchised person", a guest in another people's homeland. Until they make me one of them via citizenship, I have to respect that and act like a guest.
Your (genuinely) devil's advocacy on immigration is that there should be no limits on it, at all. This has become a common theme on the modern left, but why? It's the same as arguing that if a guest is invited into someone's home, then they can immediately turn around and invite whoever else they like to stay in that home as well, whilst expecting the hosts to accomodate everyone without limit. It's not physically or financially possible but it's also morally wrong and a bizarre attack on the very notion of guesthood.
If your stance is really brutal you shouldn’t be surprised if some people—who may have their or loved once lives threatened by that stance—want to “cancel you”.
But nobody is having the lives of their loved ones "threatened" by any of the stances you outlined, which is why people react so badly to this kind of rhetoric. Not being invited to live in a new place is not a "threat", it's not even taking any action at all - it is passive. And for those who ignored the laws and principles of immigration, being deported is only a "threat" in the same sense that society saying you will go to prison for fraud is a "threat" - we use different languages for the consequences of lawbreaking because of the different context in which such "threats" happen.
> But you're making yourself the arbiter of what can and cannot be debated.
No I’m not. I’m saying there are topics which are disenfranchising which may offend or threaten a person. If I am offended by such speech (either personally or through a friend or family member) I may react appropriately. My goal may certainly be to silence this speech, but that does not make me an arbitrator does it?
Attempting to silence political speech you disagree with is the definition of making yourself the arbiter. Is it really so hard to understand? When you stand up and say, nobody may express this idea that I disagree with, you are placing yourself in control of the debate and that will never be accepted.
All you're doing here is acting in an entirely totalitarian manner, by expansively defining entire segments of human thought off-limits on the grounds that they're "offensive" - in your mind. So what? Your position right here is offending me, because it's an attempt to disenfrachise people like me who disagree with you. So by your own logic you should recuse yourself from this debate and never speak of your views ever again. Presumably you won't do that, which is how you can tell your position isn't coherent.
By the way, the left constantly promotes policies that are offensive and disenfranchising. Just look at how they treat straight white men. Not big fans, shall we say? Anyone can turn your position around and claim feminist ideas should be banned from discussion because they are offensive and disenfranchising towards men.
You misunderstand (or perhaps I am the one that misunderstands). I don’t have the authority to silence speech I find offensive or hurtful. I can only speak out and hope the other person takes the hint. That’s not really how arbitration works is it? (unless I’m misunderstanding what an arbiter is).
>This is why the modern left is so awful. You take something that every single place in the world does and describe it as being basically the same as clubbing someone over the head. You refuse to even attempt to engage with the vast majority who think your position is nonsense.
And painting those you call "the left" with such a broad brush, and ignoring that there is great diversity of opinion within that artificial, amorphous group is "basically clubbing someone over the head" and refusing to engage with them, even though study after study shows that (at least within the US, and likely across much of the world) we have much more in common WRT the kind of society we want than we do differences.
Those that create conflict from those differences (as you appear to be trying to do) are, if the goal is to create a better society for everyone rather than just satisfying oneself that he/she is right and "they" are wrong, are taking entirely the wrong tack.
Instead, let's celebrate the stuff we have in common, use those more prevalent commonalities to humanize and bring those of us who disagree about the differences together in a positive mode, rather than a dismissive, adversarial one.
Yes, the left is a broad spectrum with many varied positions within it. But this article is about the very specific phenomenon of people feeling they can't express their views on social media, and the number one reason for that by far is the very specific slice of the left that viciously attacks anyone who publicly deviates from their very specific set of acceptable policy issues.
The people on the receiving end may well be on the equally amorphous right, or they may be more classical leftists who are more concerned with workers and unions than identity politics, it doesn't really matter. In the end cancel culture is not, in fact, a bipartisan thing - it is virtually always about the same small set of topics and the same people with the same views doing the cancelling.
It's a serious issue, which is why we are seeing more and more discussions of it. It would be great to celebrate that which we have in common, and I'd love to see more of that, but ultimately it's hard to celebrate differences when those differences are being used as justification for "cancellation", something which can have a very negative consequences for those concerned. The whole problem is people who don't respectfully disagree and use rhetoric comparing disagreement to physical violence as a justification.
Being angry about an opinion is fine. That doesn't mean you should try to stop people from talking about it.
Save from the feedback of concrete actions being taken (which you want to avoid), discussion by a diverse crowd is the only way to properly surface the harmfulness of a viewpoint.
Making an opinion politically incorrect won't stop people from holding it, they may on the contrary feel validated by it.
> Disenfranchising issues (such as gay rights, police brutality, immigration, right to abortion, etc.) is not only theoretical to some people, but a real threat to their lives and well being.
To achieve long lasting social changes you have to have a dialogue and convince the other party, if you think the entirety of your opinion is so morally justified that even having further debate is morally wrong then you can never achieve permanent social change it will just be temporary.
> Disenfranchising issues (such as gay rights, police brutality, immigration, right to abortion, etc.) is not only theoretical to some people,
Immigration is a zero sum game. No developed country can accept all immigrants wanting to live there. Neither leftist nor more conservative immigration policy gives every immigrant who wants to the opportunity to enter the United States. The claim that left-leaning individual's immigration policy is not 'disenfranchising' is laughable. For every person entering from South America, some number of people cannot enter from another country. You can say this is not the case all you want, but given that immigration does put pressure on a country's resources, this is always true. Similarly, if you let in everyone from South Asia, you will disenfranchise some South Americans, etc.
You can't just say something is disenfranchising and thus non-negotiable. For example, you say the pro-life position is disenfranchising because -- I assume -- you believe it takes away the right of a woman to not have a child. However, a pro-life person would make the obvious argument that actually the pro-choice position is disenfranchising because there is a person -- the child -- who is being killed without having a say in it. Should the pro-choice position now become unmentionable?
> No developed country can accept all immigrants wanting to live there.
"developed": The US and Europe are rich.
"wanting": Other people want to be rich. That's why they come.
If US/Europe worshipped money less, they would be less rich. There would be less incentive for others to come, or for incumbents to keep them out. If you want to reduce flow, reduce pressure.
Here's the thing though: You, and your children, would have to work for a living.
> immigration does put pressure on a country's resources
Does it? Or are immigrants the resource being consumed? Seems to me they do the work. And once their children are Americanized, how many grandchildren will they have? Fewer. The US needs immigrants like a car needs gasoline. It eats them.
> if you let in everyone from South Asia, you will disenfranchise some South Americans, etc.
Only if there's a cap. Which is uncreative. Do the opposite. Aggressively add people to the ranks of the United States.
Imagine: Tomorrow, Trump comes on the TV and, in terrible Spanish, invites the people of Baha California (both states), Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas to hold referenda under Article IV, Section 3 of the US Constitution, about joining the United States. They'd be enticed by what's left of the "American dream", sun-belt voters would get a shot at cheaper and sunnier real estate, and factory workers could go to where the jobs are. The problem with NAFTA is that capital can flow but workers can't. So let the people move freely too! And if the Russians can run a foreign influence campaign to make Brexit happen, why can't the US do a Mexic-enter?
Thank you! I’ve been biting my lips not to correct these comments about how “immigration is (sometimes) bad” because I’m trying to focus on grandparent’s point. But you said it much better then I could have.
The point of the parent is to demonstrate how silly zero-sum arguments against immigration are, not to compare. A similar anecdote is to point at the open border policy inside the EU. Allowing free migration of people within the EU states (i.e. open borders) has had tremendous economic benefits for every member state, except perhaps the countries that are loosing workers.
Consider also that free migration is allowed within the US borders. Everyone in South Carolina is currently leagally allowed to migrate to California. Is California loosing money to South Carolina because of this?
> Consider also that free migration is allowed within the US borders. Everyone in South Carolina is currently leagally allowed to migrate to California. Is California loosing money to South Carolina because of this?
Again... completely apples-to-oranges comparison. Migrants between South Carolina and California share enough in common that it hardly classifies as migration other than due to the internal political divisions of the United States.
Legal immigration to the US is a zero-sum game, by law, and this is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.
Tell me, what precisely is the economic mechanism that makes California loose money from Sonorense migrants, but not from South Carolinian migrants. What is it that migrants from Baja California, Liberia, or Ireland lack in commonalty with native Californians but migrants from Louisiana have?
I’m also a little confused as to what you mean by zero-sum by law. Is there a law that states that the federal government has to pay with each immigrant? If a Jamaican immigrant produces growth for the US (say by doing labor and contributing to the economy), then the US has to, by law, pay that growth back to Jamaica? Are we not talking about economic zero-sum?
None of this is true. Immigrants come for better opportunity and living conditions, not to be "rich" although the ability to actually do so is welcomed.
If the countries they were coming from had better conditions then there would be less need to immigrate, and it would also help far more people. That's what people who are for immigration reform and strong borders want. Why would you rather have countries be worse to stop immigration rather than lifting the others up?
And the vast majority of people have to work for a living so why would immigration change that? Immigrants are not "consumed" whatever that means.
> Immigrants come for better opportunity and living conditions, not to be "rich" although the ability to actually do so is welcomed.
The US, and similar countries, are rich by global standards. A "normal", "not rich" middle class lifestyle there is enviable to "normal" people in most of the world. The argument about "better opportunity and living conditions" vs "rich" is about word choice and connotation. When I say "rich" I mean to call into question what Americans think of as "normal", and to consider how their "normal" is supported.
> to stop immigration
When a patient is sick, you don't want to stop the blood transfusions keeping them alive.
> Why would you rather have countries be worse [...] rather than lifting the others up?
The United States isn't actually better in a sustainable way. It operates a Ponzi scheme: Immigrants are lured in, they do the work, and hopefully they even get a little material comfort, but mostly they are working for the benefit of their children. The trap is that their children end up Americanized, which reduces their fertility to below replacement. Within a few generations they are all dead. Hence the need for a constant replacement flow. Without that, the US would be Japan.
It goes without saying that not every culture can operate in this way. An ecosystem made entirely of leeches will crash; there also need to be hosts.
> [t]he vast majority of people have to work for a living so why would immigration change that?
The incumbents at the top of these Ponzi schemes have easy jobs. They certainly don't pick strawberries.
Those easy lives serve one purpose: They are the beacon that draws more workers in.
The top of the pyramid can be supported because it is constantly dying off.
> Immigrants are not "consumed" whatever that means.
Their culture, which gave them life, is destroyed, and replaced with The American Way of Life, so they have no great-grandchildren. In this way, America is a population sink.
> That's what people who are for immigration reform and strong borders want.
So long as the draw of the American Dream is as strong as it is, any disincentives sufficiently powerful to counteract it will need to be inhumane -- think "children in cages". Laws that cannot be enforced humanely are not legitimate.
> Disenfranchising issues (such as gay rights, police brutality, immigration, right to abortion, etc.) is not only theoretical to some people, but a real threat to their lives and well being. A person playing the devils advocate arguing for limits on immigration to an immigrant is not only annoying but actively threatening to an immigrant at risk of being deported.
There is a limit at which this is true, but most discussion of these issues doesn’t encroach into that territory. As an immigrant from a Muslim country I don’t feel “threats to my safety” when Trump talks about Islamic fundamentalism or extra scrutiny over immigration from certain countries. (It would be pretty odd to declare those topics off-limits, seeing as how the Muslim country I’m from has taken aggressive measures to fight the same exact fundamentalist forces.) I might feel differently if we were talking about putting Muslims in internment camps. But nobody is doing that, even though the left is acting like they are.
Does the US have “too many immigrants?” Until 2007, a plurality of Hispanic Americans (many of whom are immigrants) said “yes.” https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/19/latinos-hav.... Even today, 1 in 4 do. Only 14% say we have “too few immigrants” (which is the view de facto embraced by our current policies, which will lead to increased numbers of immigrants.) Given those views, it’s bizarre to treat discussion of immigration issues as off-limits.
You see this on issue after issue: leftists declare huge swaths of issues as off limits for discussion even to the point of excluding discussion of positions held by large swaths of the groups at issue. For example, 37% of women want to restrict Roe further or overrule it completely, compared to 38% who want to loosen its restrictions either somewhat or significantly. Another 16% want to maintain the status quo. http://maristpoll.marist.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/NPR_.... Supermajorities of women, moreover, support measures like waiting periods.
Or, consider “police brutality.” An editor at the NYT was fired for running a op-ed by Tom Cotton advocating a law-and-order response to violence following the death of George Floyd. Recent polling shows that a majority of Hispanic people, who are disproportionately the target of aggressive policing, think “the breakdown of law and order” is a “bigger problem” than “systemic racism.” Large majorities of Black and Hispanic people want to either maintain existing levels of policing, or further increase them.
In practice, it’s your approach that’s “disenfranchising.” That rule makes the majority uncomfortable with expressing anything but the most left-leaning views with respect to a minority group. For example, Ilhan Omar and Linda Saraour say expectations of assimilation are “racist.” This is not even a mainstream opinion among American Muslims, who are one of the most assimilated groups in the country. (To the point that a majority voted for George W. Bush in 2000.) But a big fraction of well-meaning non-Muslims don’t want to be called racist. So they feel comfortable amplifying anti-assimilationist views, but not pro-assimilationist ones. Since non-Muslims are a huge majority of people, that dramatically distorts and biases the debate around Muslim assimilation in a manner that doesn’t reflect the views of Muslims themselves.
That phenomenon has had a real impact on the debate over abortion. A quarter of Democratic women want to further restrict Roe or overrule it. That viewpoint is completely unrepresent...
You wrote a good comment a couple years about about the dynamics here. "Leftists" oppose discussions about incremental regulation of abortion for the same reader "right-wingers" oppose those discussions about firearms: both sides assume the discussion is a slippery slope towards all-out prohibition, and both sides have valid reasons to believe that.
In this comment, you depict left-of-center resistance to these discussions as irrational. But of course, it's not at all irrational; in fact, it's probably vital.
In that context I was talking about political strategy. I think its rational for Democrats as a party to oppose abortion restrictions. But here I’m talking about whether certain issues should be off-limits for discussion. Folks on the far left accuse men of being misogynist if they express opposition to using federal funds for abortion, even though 50-60% of women themselves, depending on the poll, express such opposition. That distorts the debate.
There are also special considerations when you’re talking about issues that affect minorities, outside a political context. There, the approach of selectively amplifying extreme positions can overwhelm ideological diversity (or even majority views) within minority groups. The other day, my dad—a blue dog Democrat—expressed his frustration at how “the media has made Ilhan Omar the face of Muslims.” I’ve observed the palpable discomfort people in liberal circles have expressing views on immigration to the right of Omar. They feel like the way to be “allies”—and insulate themselves from being called racist—is to “amplify” views like her’s. But the net result of that is that debate around issues like assimilation—within the left—is totally dominated by these extreme views. And that seriously disenfranchises people. Especially in contexts, such as academic institutions and media, controlled by the left, where there is no need to deal with the potential opposite extreme positions on the right.
Consider this: Person A calls for a total ban on abortion. person B calls this person a misogynist.
[Now I don’t know if this has ever happened (usually I don’t call people misogynists unless they talk about women as objects) but let’s go with this]
We can rephrase this as: Person A says pregnant people should be forced to undergo their pregnancy. Person B says this person in misinformed in an insulting manner.
What might have even happened in this discussion (we are just being theoretical here, right, so we can entertain, right? Or at least we don’t want this topic to be off limits right?) is the following: Person A actually said: “If it were up to women, humanity would be extinct in a generation. Women are evil, and we should not grant them any rights, particularly not the right to determine the birth of their children”. Person B responds: “I’m glad you’ve shown your bigoted misogynistic face. Now we all know what kind of a person you are, and whether we should keep listening to you. Do your self a favor and keep these opinions to your self unless you want to keep embarrassing your self”.
Who here is guilty of shutting down the debate? Who here decided that talking about abortion rights is “off topic”?
Now person B most certainly suggested that person A shouldn’t continue this debate. They also definitely insulted person A. But is anything here in their response surprising? Did they do anything wrong? How about we look at person A in this context? Do we want people like that expressing their opinion? Person B might have insulted person A, and hoped they would leave and never come back, but person A was insulting all women and calling for a whole group of people to have their decisions dictated by other people.
So why am I taking this example? It is obviously an exaggeration and not specifically what we are taking about here. But for all I know this is the kind of conduct that many people say us “lefties” are doing when we “mark a topic off limits”.
Ancestor’s point was this exactly, many people claim that us lefties want to shut down the topic because we get offended by everything. But do we? Are we maybe just behaving in a completely rational way, insulting back people that have insulted us? Asking people to stop that are threatening us, our friends, or people that we know exist?
---
PS: Off course in your example there is another qualifier there: “using federal funds for abortion”. People might have many reason disagree with that including being for forced pregnancies. But now the goalpost has been moved a little hasn’t it? So I took the liberty of moving it in the other direction my self. You provided an example that has probably never happened in reality, so I provide a counter example that also probably never happened, sounds fair?
A premise of your strawman seems to be that women have a different opinion on abortion than men, which isn’t true. Unlike many other political opinions, there is very little difference between men and women on abortion questions: https://www.vox.com/2019/5/20/18629644/abortion-gender-gap-p.... Republican women are significantly more likely than Republican men to identify as pro-life: https://www.npr.org/2019/06/07/730183531/poll-majority-want-.... Your strawman also invokes gratuitous insults, which aren’t necessary to actually debate the issue.
Apart from that, my hypothetical is one that happens all the time. Article after article denounces policies like waiting periods, which the majority of women support and which exist in other developed countries, as misogynistic: https://www.vice.com/en/article/qkg753/what-its-like-to-endu....
Stepping back, a problem with your examples is the individualistic framing. Abortion undoubtedly involves a woman’s bodily autonomy. But it also undoubtedly involves another living thing. (Regardless of what political rights you believe that thing should have, it’s alive as a scientific matter.) Even Roe recognizes that a societal interest in the unborn child kicks in during the second trimester. (Roe, by the way, is unusual even in developed countries. Where many countries have abortion by law, almost none guarantee it under their constitution. Around the same time as Roe, the Canadian Supreme Court declared abortion to be purely a legislative matter. And the German constitutional court declared allowing abortion to be an unconstitutional violation of a fetus’s right to life. That’s still the law in both countries.) It also involves society generally. The fact that the developed world spends tremendous amounts of aid money assisting developing countries to reduce their birth rates belies the idea that reproduction has purely individual effect. Framing it in purely individualistic terms makes it seem more like it shouldn’t be up for debate, but only because the framing cuts out all the interests actually involved. Likewise, a discussion about immigration isn’t just about the immigrant, but about the society that has to expend resources integrating and supporting the immigrant. When you reframe these issues in individualistic terms to exclude effects on other people, they seem more like things that shouldn’t be subject to debate. But that’s just a product of the artificial framing.
> A premise of your strawman seems to be that women have a different opinion on abortion than men.
No it’s not. My premise is that there exist some topics that are disenfranchising to some people, and debating those can be insulting or threatening to some people.
I’m not gonna debate you on the merits of abortion laws or immigration laws, we can leave that for another time. Here we are talking about whether it is OK (or even rational) for us ‘lefties’ to get offended by some topics, and argue to an extend where some people might not want to say certain things in a future debate.
I say it is OK, precisely because there is another person with stakes in the topic who might be at risk if terms of the debate are not in their favor. I moved this to individualistic terms on purpose, precisely because some topics involve individuals. These individuals have feelings and you may expect them to react accordingly.
I think we get into trouble with this analysis, of taking topics off the table for civic discussion.
There are obviously some topics where that's true; for instance, no sane person will entertain a debate about re-segregating schools.
But then you have the idea that immigration is off the table because it dehumanizes undocumented people --- despite the fact that even American Latinos generally believe immigration is a colorable argument, or that abortion is off the table because it threatens the bodily autonomy of women --- despite the fact that a very large fraction of women support addition abortion restrictions. The principle just doesn't hold together.
It's possible that we're all just talking past each other, and that all of us acknowledge that there are going to be public policy discussions about these kinds of topics, and we're just talking about why some citizens will refuse to engage.
(Disclaimer: I think we have a moral imperative to issue a blanket amnesty and simplified path to citizenship for the vast majority of all undocumented immigrants, and oppose European-style restrictions on abortion).
Legal immigrants, which is the majority and the ones generally designed by the word “immigrants” (without qualitatif), aren’t being deported. Legal and illegal immigrations are two different topics (social, political, economical), it doesn’t really make sense to mix them.
Also I’m an immigrant myself and argue for some level of immigration control, and that’s the case for every single expat I know.
I think the current trend of not engaging with those who are politically different cuts across the political spectrum. There is an intense trend to stay within ideological bubbles at the moment, and to try to censor voices that do not align with one's own leanings. People both liberal and conservative just get _angry_ at anyone with a different political or social idea, and write them off as "bad people", which is not productive. They also tend to leap to the conclusion that if you disagree about one idea, you must adhere to the opposite ideology on every issue. As a moderate person, this is an extremely tiresome experience I have over and over again with people of both liberal and conservative leanings.
> I think that the subtext of your post (or at least people that espouse similar things on the internet) is that this is the fault of a certain brand of American politics (left leaning, "SJW" types) that don't engage with many right-leaning people.
That wasn’t the subtext at all. Interesting that you think the shoe fits so well, though.
I tried to couch my reply as not assuming intent on your part specifically, but rather my attempt at pointing out a pattern I have seen other people engage in and be subject to.
When looking at this and your other reply to me elsewhere in this thread, it does not feel like you're engaging me in good faith.
> The frustrating (and silly) thing is that this argument is used a lot to attack left-leaning folks who _do_ engage with many people whose experience and world view are very different from them... like people who are homeless, immigrants from other countries, people who are racially minoritized, people who are disabled
I think there are a lot more people who think they do this than actually do this. Left-leaning spaces are some of the most homogenous around. I can’t tell you how many left-leaning people I know who were genuinely shocked and surprised that, when it came time to vote, “people of color” didn’t like Elizabeth Warren. Their perception of getting to know “immigrants from other countries” and “people who are racially minoritized” rested entirely on interacting with immigrants and minorities who travel in the same rarified elite circles as themselves and hold the same views. “Center people of color” during the primary became “f--k moderates” after the convention, without a hint of irony.
Of course I’m painting with a very broad brush! Obviously not all left-leaning people are like that. But I do think there is a lack of appreciation for the relationships right-leaning folks have with people who are different from themselves. One of the most racially integrated places I’ve ever been is rural Texas. It’s a function of economics and geography. Left-leaning cities are highly segregated—educated left leaning people generally don’t live and work alongside immigrants and racial minorities.
I do actually agree with you. It is very easy to be radical in your beliefs (in either direction) when you don't need to interact with the people that they effect. There are plenty of "ivory tower" leftists. The difference is that I do believe that those leftists are seeking to find solidarity with the oppressed, though not always successfully. Sometimes they miss the mark, and there are plenty examples of shitty behavior, but I think that they're heading in the right direction.
I also think that it's unfortunate it's so easy to mistake a critique like that as an attack of the left as a whole. Leftist policy should always have the goal of materially making peoples lives better. We should ruthlessly measure and criticize whether we are in fact succeeding in that, both by the numbers and by the lived experience of the people they effect.
The current form of discourse in America is so hyper-partisan as to make that sort of critique almost impossible to do in public, as it comes off as a show of weakness rather than an opportunity for evolution. It's painful.
The ivory tower leftists are now pushing a narrative of pervasive “white supremacy,” pitting whites versus non-whites. And again, the ivory tower folks are being tone deaf. The NYT recently ran an article where self-described “liberal pollsters” asked about the views of Latino people. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/18/opinion/biden-latino-vote...
> Progressives commonly categorize Latinos as people of color, no doubt partly because progressive Latinos see the group that way and encourage others to do so as well. Certainly, we both once took that perspective for granted. Yet in our survey, only one in four Hispanics saw the group as people of color.
> In contrast, the majority rejected this designation. They preferred to see Hispanics as a group integrating into the American mainstream, one not overly bound by racial constraints but instead able to get ahead through hard work.
What the article describes as the views of the overwhelming majority of Hispanics reflects my own views as an immigrant. By contrast, the approach taken by these ivory tower folks is in my opinion unworkable and threatens to blow up something that works about America: our ability to assimilate and lift up immigrant groups. If you look at the data, all immigrant groups are on a path to reaching economic parity with white people. Asians are already there, and Latinos achieve parity within a few generations: https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/135/3/1567/5741707
Ivory tower leftists are leading these chants, amplifying people like Linda Sarsour who call assimilation “racist,” etc. And I think that ends in disaster. Nowadays, I have to keep an eye out to make sure my half-white daughter isn’t being exposed to this stuff. And frankly, I’m a pretty liberal person so this is distressing. I don’t like the direction Trump has gone by alienating immigrants. But there is a good chance that Nikki Hailey is the future of the GOP. Meanwhile, who comes after Biden? Elizabeth Warren, who talks about all of us non-white people as a progressive bloc, constantly assailed by white people? AOC? Ilhan Omar?
You get that Ilhan Omar, AOC, and Elizabeth Warren don't represent the majority of people left of the American center, right? "Squad" politics get trounced outside of hyper-left noncompetitive districts. There's a pretty significant media bias feeding into this analysis you're providing. If you're going to cite Elizabeth Warren, for instance, you might want to factor in the fact that she quite literally embarrassed herself in the 2020 Democratic primary.
I recognize they’re not representative. I said that “I’m not sure” that the left is “heading in the right direction.” What’s the direction? After Biden won the nomination I thought I had overreacted and things were going back to normal. Then I opened up Twitter to see the most completely normal Midwestern people at my alma mater declare they are “gatekeepers of white supremacy” on a Zoom conference with hundreds of students. The feminist academic Dean I watched get installed just a couple of years ago was cancelled for not acquiescing to similar declarations. My dad says it’s just academia, and not to worry about “so long as it’s confined to the campus.” But he’s also 70! He’s not going to be around forever to keep things in line.
I think it mostly is campus stuff. Even the New Yorker ran a whole long piece practically taking Ibrahim Kendi apart. See also the elite discourse backlash against Robin Diangelo.
I don't know. Do left-wing people really put so much effort in empathizing with minorities, or is it rather that they come with a complete theory of how the minorities think, and only interact with those who agree with the theory?
How much would a white left-wing person be willing to debate with e.g. a conservative immigrant? Would they treat them as an equal, or even defer to their lived experience? Or would they simply find another, less conservative immigrant, who would not oppose their world-view, and choose this one to be the speaker for the minority?
In my experience, there is not much difference between left-wing and right-wing people in willingness to help oppressed people. Seems to me they mostly differ in style: a left-wing person would probably create a non-profit organization and also write about what the government should do, a right-wing person would probably work under the umbrella of some religious group and also write about how individuals should help themselves and each other. On each side, a few people would actually do something, more people would talk about how someone else should do something, and most wouldn't really care. I am not saying the sides are exactly balanced; I am just saying empathising with people (but also twisting their opinions to better fit your ideology) exists on both sides.
(By coincidence, today I saw a debate where a strongly left-wing person dismissed some complaints of a marginalized person as "anti-scientific", without actually addressing the substance of their argument, just because that person disagreed with some organization that has a mission to help this marginalized community. No more detais, because it happened in a private conversation, it's just a funny coincidence that first I read this, then I switch a browser tab and read about how empathetic left-wing people are. Some of them are, some of them are not.)
I am not necessarily saying that leftists are a panacea of altruist thinking, having washed away their colonial upbringing in their dialogues with a theoretical minority. ;)
Rather, I understand leftist thought to be rooted in questioning hierarchy and power structures, which I believe leads to more readily seeking solidarity with those that are not as well off as they are.
> By coincidence, today I saw a debate where a strongly left-wing person dismissed some complaints of a marginalized person
This does sound like a funny happenstance. My original reply was about this same sort of funny coincidence in reverse; how I often see the left critiqued as being "intolerant" when I frequently see them lifting and amplifying the voices of those who are disenfranchised by the system that they materially benefit from.
> How much would a white left-wing person be willing to debate with e.g. a conservative immigrant?
First, debates are not typical discourse. In my experience, debates are meant to be a show of virtue. Whose virtues you're being weighed against will greatly determine your behavior or whether you even decide to participate at all. I think that Hacker News values sound, well written arguments, which is why I am here posting. :)
Therefore, I think that given the propensity toward identity politics (from both sides) and the difficulty in interrogating the root of the beliefs that immigrant without appearing to be questioning the validity of them, I (as a white leftist) would prefer not to debate them. So, yes, I would rather propose someone whose lived experience might be more similar to theirs - perhaps a left-leaning immigrant - specifically because I would be afraid of either appearing weak in the eyes of right-wing spectators by deferring to their lived experience, or seem like an asshole because I am questioning the validity of their experience. It would be a PR nightmare. :)
In a private, personal setting (i.e. not a debate) I think that talking to your hypothetical conservative immigrant would probably be a great opportunity for me to learn about their experience and explore the root of their beliefs. I hope I would get to share mine as well.
> I understand leftist thought to be rooted in questioning hierarchy and power structures, which I believe leads to more readily seeking solidarity with those that are not as well off as they are.
Yes. A political orientation is about - to put it bluntly - which parts of reality you focus on and which parts of reality you ignore. So, suppose we have a group of people who are e.g. simultaneously victims of racism and of high crime in their neighborhood. A left-wing person would be happy to help them fight racism, but would feel uncomfortable hearing about crime perpertated by members of the same minority against their neighbors. A right-wing person would be happy to help them fight crime, but would feel uncomfortable discussing structural racism.
Sometimes the existing structures are oppressive and should be torn down. Sometimes they are necessary for survival. Quite often, they are both at the same time.
Oh come on. When you meet your friends, you meet them in groups. When you talk to them, it's usually to sub groups or one to one. There's the nice colleagues from work, there's the childhood friends, there's the friends for drinking and banter and there's former girlfriends or love interests.
Each of these have different interests, a different shared background with you, and are used to different communication modes and different contexts. The idea that you should always talk to everyone at the same time and show them a single monolithic self is just silly. Life doesn't work like that and being a politician is not a job I signed up for.
Ginsburg and Scalia, even if they did take a genuine interest in one another's friendship, had external considerations two average, everyday people wouldn't have. The image of the court, and its ability of folks with different world-views to come together and still respect each other when disagreeing-- it helps present an image of an impartial court. The functioning of SCOTUS depends on the legitimacy of its image. Many of our institutions function this way, but it is acutely important to the court.
Let's phrase this another way: if neither were SCOTUS justices, but mere acquaintances that came across one another at say, a party, and began discussing politics-- would they have become friends? No.
really? because I am friends with quite a few people who I disagree with on political issues. I will even say those are some of the people I enjoying talking with the most (so long as we both agree to show respect to each other).
I believe they were friends prior to SCOTUS appointments when they were both on DC circuit. They were really big opera buffs. But in any case they had some exceptional traits that are not necessarily common.
There's quite a bit of data supporting the fact that there are less moderates today and both sides are less civil to one another when compared to the past, mostly because echo chambers reduce our exposure to perspectives outside of our own, and in aggregate, it makes us less receptive when we rarely do encounter opposite beliefs.
If people can't respect you for having a different opinion, they're not adults, and they're certainly not "friends," Facebook or otherwise.
What if your opinion is proven to be wrong but you are just not respecting the fact. Does it make sense to respect someone's opinion just because it is an opinion in such a case?
There are a few identifiable elements of toxicity in social memia.
i) The tendency to immaturity. (This is a social problem.)
ii) The tendency to loud stupidity and stubborn ignorance. Not all opinions need be heard and acknowledged. Reason is a habit that must be practised. (This is a cultural problem. At bottom, it is anti-intellectualism.)
iii) The very modern problem of "victimology discourse". Everyone has lived injustice because, frankly, people are exploitative and "the system" finds abuse to be profitable. But we cannot have free speech and productive exchanges if Victim Points overrule discussion.
In the end, the reflective person will disengage from the dungheap. This leaves only the dung.
I would add into this mix that the engagement algorithms social media uses to pick which posts show up in peoples timelines, go viral, etc. is very much a cyclic process that reinforces all of the social problems that you speak of.
No. The problem is that social media is like gathering all the people you know into a single room and shouting your thoughts at them. That's not how socializing is done. Not how the encouragement to seek out differing opinions in college works. Those things are done individually or in small groups. That works great, there can be a give and take where people can listen to each other. That's where social media badly breaks down.
> Which is a good thing. It's how it always was. You surrounded yourself with lots of different people with varying opinions. It's how you learned things. It was called being an adult.
This is a very rosy-colored view of a past that wasn't enjoyed by many people except for certain small subsets of relatively-well-off folks whose disagreements were around less directly consequential things (like tax policy) than "some of you don't deserve any rights."
And even then, even in my grandfather's old social circles... still a LOT of sorting going on.
Read "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" for a good discussion from the inside of how American religion has been dominated by sensitivity for decades.
>Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scolia were polar opposites on the issues. But they were also very good friends. Because they were adults. They weren't children who had to surround themselves with familiar things that reinforce their own views of the world.
They also were both high status individuals who lived almost exclusively in the world of academic disagreement. It's not that difficult to be open-minded when closed-mindedness has little physical consequences for you.
If you live in a town in Myanmar where some heated discussion on the internet can turn into an ethnic riot and end with you dead on the street, or you're a Chinese shop owner and some garbage on the internet ends with your store being destroyed you get a little bit more careful about the "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me" attitude.
The shifting attitude towards offense isn't so much the result of technology as the article suggests, or changing culture in the upper strata of society, it's democratisation of discourse to people for whom discourse actually matters in the real world. I think this is why the change has been so pronounced in the US in particular. In the US, average people for the longest amount of time had no ability to speak at all, all discourse was 'free' because it was free from consequence for the people who spoke, in practical terms.
Please could you explain this bit a little further?
> The shifting attitude towards offense isn't so much the result of technology as the article suggests, or changing culture in the upper strata of society, it's democratisation of discourse to people for whom discourse actually matters in the real world. I think this is why the change has been so pronounced in the US in particular. In the US, average people for the longest amount of time had no ability to speak at all
Why did people in the US have no ability to speak? Or have less ability than those in some other country?
Or are you saying that social media took off because those in the US already felt free to speak and then a platform appeared?
>Why did people in the US have no ability to speak? Or have less ability than those in some other country?
because US public discourse has been, in the past, dominated by elites. Politics was largely the domain of the upper middle-class, politicians were largely homogenous demographically drawn from top-tier universities, the media recruited from similar institutions, and so on. So you have a significantly narrower spectrum in what is considered 'political debate' than what is actually present in the population, and the people who are doing the debating are largely shielded in their personal life from consequences because it's a sort of intellectual exercise and filling op-ed pages, not a matter of life and safety. That's what created the idea of 'free' debate, but rather it's insular debate. Culture in the US was predominantly created top-down.
Social media kind of blew this wide open in all directions. You see this take alot these days that Americans 'used to live in the same reality' and now don't, and it's the fault of liberals, conservatives, the media, postmodernism or whatever else. But really what's happening is that Americans never lived in the same reality, but finally middle America, and black lives matter, and metoo get to actually speak up. And that's going to cause much more heat than a bunch of harvard grads in a debate club, because now the people who actually have skin in the game are part of the discussion rather than just the subject of it.
People who spend their time commenting on social networks are not necessarily people who actually have skin in the game.
From my relatively small sample of the Czech Twitter, the discourse there is dominated by about thirty journalists and white collar workers. No ghetto voices to be heard; people in ghettos have more urgent problems than to sit on the phone and crank out 60 status updates a day.
People in American ghettos do express their opinions online, but the upper classes and special interest groups have much more ability to construct and influence the dominant narratives. So one should always question whatever is the prevailing wisdom surrounding lower class Americans. For example, in the 80s and 90s it was thought that a punitive criminal justice system and a draconian war on drugs was what they needed. Turns out, retrospectively, that was probably not an optimal approach and most people nowadays want to ratchet down the war on drugs.
This right here. This has been my position since the beginnings of the stirrings of the discontent that social media was powering years ago.
I think that this is why there has been such a push back by each of the demographics and movements that you listed. They each have a voice and can be more powerfully organized than ever before albeit in some cases a more superficial basis hence the rise of cancel culture.
Traditionally if you wanted to get a way from push back in your locale you moved. Now that is not an option since so much of your speech is tied to a identifiable account that follows you hence the social cooling.
I think this time of change is a phase of growing pains that might last generations that will see us wrestle with these issues for a long time.
Good point. Supreme court justices have constitutionally protected, lifetime appointment job security. They can't really get fired for writing politically incorrect memos or dissenting opinions.
"high status individuals who lived almost exclusively in the world of academic disagreement"
And yet it seems to me as an outside observer that it is precisely American academia that is obsessed with divisive ideologies. The shop owners seem to be way more pragmatic.
> If people can't respect you for having a different opinion, they're not adults, and they're certainly not "friends," Facebook or otherwise.
Nah. Not everyone has the luxury that you have, of just throwing away their friends like that, even if it is "their" fault.
Frankly, I personally don't care much about politics at all. It is a hobby of mine. But I don't truly care about it.
Why would I give up a friend, to stand up for ideas that I don't really care much about at all?
For some sort of worthless "principle"? No thanks. Feel free to keep your principles if that's what you care about. I don't really value those, though.
> What would it take for you to care about politics? What sort of issue would have to be up for debate?
I don't think that there is anything at all, in modern day politics that makes that much of a difference.
Individual circumstances and relationships matter much much more than basically all politics in the modern day.
But even if we are discussing things that pass this very high bar of where it matters (So as an actual real life world world, or civil war, and before you say it, the 2020 election does not count as a "civil war" lol), I would still argue that an individual person's ability to effect those politics is very small.
So, for example, even if that other friend was on the "wrong" side of whatever this "very important political topic" is, that person's actual ability to have an effect on that political topic, is so small that I would care more about that person, than their stance on this issue.
This reminds me of the Black Mirror episode "Nosedive".
Everyone has a publicly visible social score and they can vote their peers based on their interactions.
Since it's used for jobs, housing, loans etc. everyone becomes risk-averse and artificially nice. And more and more alike externally.
We're not there yet but excessive surveillance is definitely worth talking about.
I think you're making an assumption of participants that are reasonable, rational, and willing to engage in discussion and debate in good faith. But a lot of people are unreasonable, irrational, do not want to discuss, and are really simply entrenched in their belief systems and preaching it.
> Which is a good thing. It's how it always was. You surrounded yourself with lots of different people with varying opinions. It's how you learned things. It was called being an adult.
This is a load of gilded age nonsense. There's never been any point in history where people deliberately exposed themselves to uncomfortable truths about people they considered other as part of "growing up".
I'd really challenge you to think about when you think this was. Was it in the 80s while gay people were dying of aids while straight people ignored their plight?
The 70s when mainstream american society treated anti-war activists as terrorists?
The 50s and 60s when white people literally moved out of cities and into suburbs to get away from black people?
What you're experiencing isn't "people failing to communicate with people with diverse views," but the internet finally forcing people to coexist with social groups they could just ignore until now. You have to exist on the same site as people who have been deeply harmed by the systems that benefit you and you're scared of that anger and those people's unwillingness to accept your desire to stick your head in the sand like your parents could.
It was true for me, individually, my entire life. Yes, a large segment of society have always been closed-minded. That doesn't make being open to new ideas and diverse friendships a bad thing.
At the same time that we are scoffing at the closed-mindedness of the past, in realms like politics, people were _better_ at working together across the aisle at some periods in History. Obviously, not the Civil War era, but for much of the early 20th century, as an example. Just because a lot of people are bad at something does not mean it isn't a laudable goal or practice.
I believe the parent comment is describing how most people had friends of various backgrounds that they saw physically and communicated with freely - instead of having a social filter over digital connections that blocked them immediately before they ever really knew them.
> "internet finally forcing people to coexist with social groups they could just ignore until now"
How so? The internet has made it much easier to isolate and block than ever before. That's exactly why there's so much division today.
> "you're scared of that anger and those people's unwillingness"
> I believe the parent comment is describing how most people had friends of various backgrounds that they saw physically and communicated with freely - instead of having a social filter over digital connections that blocked them immediately before they ever really knew them.
In person or not, everyone has a social filter on who they interact with. Your wealth, race, gender, orientation, interests, and location all act as filters against who you'll interact with, let alone be friends with. If you go to Harvard, how much relative opportunity do you think that gives you to befriend someone who isn't a rich white person? Especially, ya know, when only white people (white men, even) could even go to Harvard.
These filters are more or less permeable by the culture and scope of your life, but if you think there's some magical moment in the past when white people by an large all had black friends or rich people all had poor friends, you're dreaming.
It's easier now to experience perspectives alien to you by a country mile. It's also easier for them to intrude into your life.
Somehow, it's the most privileged people are the most likely to call this intrusion an attack. To call people wanting to re-establish boundaries with them a violation of their 'right to free speech'. Funny that.
Let's slow down on calling anyone else privileged when most of us are in arguably the most privileged profession to ever exist.
A few things are true about wealth distribution, it's empirically become more concentrated and also more localized to elite urban areas. When people from this urban elite start calling everyone else privileged and intolerant to the point that they don't deserve a voice.. it's not a great look.
Or, people here could admit their privilege rather than try to deny it. I am absolutely privileged on some very very important axes (somewhat the opposite in others). I'm throwing stones in the glass house because the glass house is shitty.
I don't know if you realize it but you seem to give yourself a more nuanced existence while denying that same understanding in others' parent comments.
You (rightly) acknowledged that you can be privileged in some areas but disadvantaged in others, but seem to take the stance in a previous statement that there is no progress, just "gilded age nonsense" because there are still marginalized groups.
We can acknowledge progress while still admitting there is a lot of work to be done. There's no reason to treat them as mutually exclusive. My worry is that those who take the alternate stance ironically end up alienating potential allies. Or, to butcher the old idiom, they fail to realize that expecting perfection can get in the way of progress.
Sorry, how have I argued there has been no progress?
I would certainly say that on social issues I do not believe there has been enough progress, but there absolutely has been a lot of progress.
On the specific issue of bubbles, I have argued for a complex view that the nature of the boundaries of people's social bubbles have changed. As I don't think there's a good way to measure this I take as a baseline that it may have largely stayed the same but the way we experience conflict over it has changed.
Your previous dismissal of in-person social interaction as evidence comes across as stating there was no progress on this front until the internet "finally" forced people to interact across cultural lines. My apologies if I misinterpreted your point.
Oh, I mean, I think the bubbles have shifted to some degree historically depending on culture and conflict but did largely remain within the scope possible with in person interaction. Exposure to groups outside an individual's own has grown with every communication invention as well, from books to newspapers to radio to phones to the internet.
Social media I think does, however, represent an exponential growth in how much "outside perspective" people are exposed to, as well as the intrusiveness of those perspectives. All those other communication inventions required filtering perspectives through layers of privilege (media, basically).
On social media though I can post a tweet about my lunch and have someone from across the ocean tell me I deserve to die for who I am in the replies to it. No one in history has ever had to face that level of forced interaction on so mundane a social act until now.
And that's why we put up walls. To get back to where we were 20 years ago. Not because we can't handle "disagreement", but because when I'm eating lunch I don't want to be told I don't deserve to live.
I think where the disagreement may be is that the internet (defined as the applications, not as the infrastructure), and social media in particular, isn't optimized for open communication or sharing different viewpoints. It's optimized for capturing our attention. Unfortunately, the way it often does this is by hijacking our psychology; one way is by confirmation bias and another is by inducing outrage (which strengthens our pre-existing beliefs). The flow of information is not "free"; it's curated to the ends of the attention economy so even while there is a lot more availability of information, it's passing through some filters that may not be the most productive for society. In other words, it's designed to reinforce our pre-existing beliefs rather than challenge them.
Those filters become social media's own "layers of privileges" to a certain extent. I think the downside with those compared to previous media is that the new filters are much more difficult to interpret compared with, say, a newspaper's political leanings.
What magical moment? You seem to be reaching for extremes rather than accepting the very reasonable assertion that the vast majority of people now pick a side and never engage in any dialogue.
All those characteristics you mentioned are outward and secondary to the one that matters the most - the way you think. The original post said "varying opinions". Your beliefs, character and worldview are far more important than what you look like and you had to actually communicate with people to understand this. This built much better dialogue and interactions.
Now it takes a few taps to block millions based on assumptions and the most tenuous associations, as well as surface attributes like you mentioned. Someone merely liking a post you disagree with is enough to end a relationship. New perspectives being easier to experience also means they're easier to block, and the latter is the issue being discussed.
As far as "right to free speech" is concerned, I don't see what it has to do with this but regardless you also have a right to not participate in any discussion. Nobody is forcing you to talk, and nobody ever could.
I'm not the one who started with the comparison between past and present. The original post I was responding to was clearly saying that people were better in the past.
My assertion is simple: people have always lived in bubbles (honestly this is so blatantly true it's hilarious anyone even tries to argue against it) and the internet has only strengthened those bubbles in so far as it has forced people to confront the edges of them more readily.
No one ever had to "block millions" until twitter existed. The concept was meaningless. Every day of anyone's life before the internet every single person was ignoring the lives of countless people who had no way to reach them, an effective but implicit block on literally everything uncomfortable in the world.
People have to work harder now to maintain bubbles like people had in the past naturally, especially on platforms like twitter.
I don't think this speaks specifically to whether or not "things are better/worse now," it's a criticism of a particular pop-psych trope angle of measuring it.
I think the contact hypothesis is correct. People interacting with people they're bigoted against will generally ease or counteract their bigotry.
I also think that people overestimate the degree to which contact happened in the past and mistake modern forms of 'bubble-friction' (for lack of a better term) being more visible than the silent, implicit kinds in the past for it being new.
Middle class and rich white people literally left north american inner cities to struggle on their own with reduced tax bases to escape having to interact with black people. They did this quietly, and they did it in a way that appeared individualistic and rational.
The effect was far more profound than any possible consequence of being blocked on twitter or yelled at on facebook, but it was very easy to ignore happening.
Thanks for the well-reasoned reply. I think the angle one of the other commenters may have been taking is that the "social filter" (i.e., social network algorithms) reinforce bubbles rather than, as you say, make people "work harder now to maintain bubbles".
I think some of the work by people like Tristan Harris and Renee Diresta support this. The attention economy works in large part simultaneously on outrage and confirmation bias. To some of the parent comment points, not interacting in the real world may short-circuit the ability for us to confront different views while simultaneously acknowledging others humanity.
>white people literally left north american inner cities to struggle on their own with reduced tax bases to escape having to interact with black people.
White flight is a real thing, but I think the plight of these cities is much more complicated than to be distilled to a single feature like race. As an example, Detroit went from one of the wealthiest cities to bankrupt in a generation. White flight is part of this, as is corruption, as is poor economic diversification, and a host of other issues.
> "the internet has only strengthened those bubbles"
This is, quite literally, what the original poster was saying though. Nobody is arguing that bubbles never existed (again let's please avoid the extremes) but that they were much more permeable before.
Of course you don't interact with those you can't reach. Some barriers, physical or otherwise, will always exist. However people who did reach each other would interact much more freely because you didn't have any other way to know more about them in the first place. Now your social reputation precedes you, even if it's not created by you but rather an amalgamation of data points constructing some skewed halo, and it's used to stop interaction before it can ever start.
That's the fundamental issue raised in this thread. Do you not agree with this premise?
I disagree with your characterization of the post I was originally replying to. While I'm sure no one believes there were "no bubbles ever" I do think that the content of that post implies a pretty far off from reality level of bubble permeability in the past.
Also, extremes are useful tools for examining assumptions.
As for the rest, in so far as online interactions have different boundaries and background information levels, I think you have to work harder to demonstrate that these interactions aren't (current covid-world aside) in addition to rather than replacing in person interactions people largely had before. Until we're all walking around with google glass to tell us all about everyone we meet, you are still free to go talk to the person on the street corner about their life.
But even then, your social status has always proceeded you to some degree. Again, your race, visible evidence of your wealth (clothes, haircut, etc), visible elements of queerness or lack thereof, and visible gender, your language and speech patterns are all elements of social signalling that have always acted as barriers to communication between in and out groups of those people.
On the internet, some of these can be mitigated or erased. On the street, while dating, in the workplace they cannot. They are data points that tell someone a lot about you (as with social media, within some error bars) before you even interact.
Again, these are changes in the structure of the outer edges of our bubbles and do not argue for a change in the scope or degree of our bubbles on their own.
>What you're experiencing isn't "people failing to communicate with people with diverse views," but the internet finally forcing people to coexist with social groups they could just ignore until now.
How is that working for you?. This kind of forced one dimensional thinking is the issue rather than having discussions and building consensus around these very complex and sensitive topics.
> as people who have been deeply harmed by the systems
Most of the people attacking other people online haven't been deeply harmed by anything at all. They're just parroting what they hear in their online echo chambers. The signal to noise ratio in the discussion of issues that really do affect people is moving to mostly noise. Most of the time it's mountains from molehills, just to virtue signal for attention. Nothing constructive is coming from it. In fact, I'd say it's dividing people more than ever.
Farnam Street has a great blog post supporting what you just said:
That most people only express things to people that they thing would be accepting of what they said. Even if they might not agree with it, they'll at least accept that it's okay to hold those opinions.
Once you cross the line into "Expressing this opinion will cause negative social consequences to me" then people start self-censoring.
They actually largely came about because people protested and demanded to be heard.
Ignoring that your statements are optimistic at best. Some gay people are accepted into mainstream society. Anti-war activists absolutely have recently still been considered terrorists. Hell, anti-RACISM activists are actively being called terrorists by the government right now which goes to the next thing, which is that segregation as a legal concept has ended but turning neighbourhoods white is still absolutely a thing.
You are conflating anti-war protesters in a prior post who protested drafts that affected all young adults through peaceful civil disobedience to anti-racism protesters who by and large protest through destructive violent and disruptive tactics against police brutality which hasn’t been proven to be overtly racist as a whole group. Overall, it sounds like you are fairly angry at the current situation and I recommend stepping back and perhaps listening to various viewpoints on the matters you feel strongly about.
A lot of this is down to context, not our moral failings.
We moderate ourselves differently at the bar, with our boss, with our wife's aunt. Maybe you don't drag contentious politics to your inlaw's dinner chat or sex anecdotes into work conversations. The OP's point is about applying this moderation across the board, because on FB everything is. This context breeds a culture of banality.
This website is discussing a broader and scarier implication, but the what the OP is describing is already at full (I hope!) maturity.
> Which is a good thing. It's how it always was. You surrounded yourself with lots of different people with varying opinions. It's how you learned things. It was called being an adult.
Right and wrong. I don't think a ton of young people in the 60s were hanging around with people who voted for Nixon. But its true that in a world where (all the white people) go to the same bar, there's a social pressure to meld and focus on common understanding.
The divergence between the 2 ends of the wedge issues is as large right now as it was in the 1800s. The reason we are not literally having skirmishes across state lines is because we are more geographically mixed now (cities vs rural).
Its not a maturity thing anymore - its that we're actual enemies of each other, and not just at the wedge issues anymore. We have similarities like "shops at Target" and "wants their family to do well" but that doesn't prevent open conflict. Ideologically we are actually, really divided, and fundamentalism is the coin of the realm.
The level of emotionally and politically motivated anti-intellectualism over the past decade or so has grown so much and so exponentially to the point that all-out idiocracy now rules the day. It's become a fashionable sport to compete on how aggressively one can deploy stupidity to drown out the voices of reason and truth, so that we all inevitably sink a little deeper into the worst instincts of human nature.
Thing is, I /know/ for a fact that most people are not this stupid. But I also understand that these days it's every man, woman and child for themselves, so I can sympathize with the innate need to blend in.
Past dictators and totalitarian regimes from the history books, who wanted people to have zero ability to think for themselves could honestly look at this situation we're in right now, and feel so much pride that they might even blush a little bit; meanwhile Carl Sagan is turning over in his fucking graves.
Hm. Speaking of, is there any way to deactivate a FB profile but stay on messenger? I have no interest in a fb profile but I'm connecting with all my friends and family on Messenger
You can install messenger separately from the fb app itself on android. Not using your fb profile is basically deactivating it. Remove your pics, set as many things as you want to private, and just don't download or log into the app
I posted a "good-bye" message so people would know not to expect any more posts, and kept my account because I wanted to still use Groups, Events, and Marketplace.
Are you on Twitter? It's a more common platform for political stuff. Facebook is for friends, and unless you want to discuss politics with all of your friends at once, why not just keep it to personal stuff?
Yeah, I tried Twitter too, but so few of my friends use it, it just seemed like a clunkier, angrier version of HN with about half the average IQ points.
I think that is the point of twitter: it is what people say without a filter and without thinking it through. I’ve found the proper way to use it is to follow extreme opinions from the entire spectrum to get a sense of what is brewing.
I wouldn't say I recommend trying this, but it takes time to find people you are actually interested in on Twitter.
All the obvious "blue check-mark" people have zero insight at best. There is a whole weird world of small follower count people on there. Small communities. People with unique ideas. People that will actually respond to replies.
Again, I don't think it an addiction you should necessarily cultivate, but there is value to be had.
note that this is a marketing site (as noted in my other comment[0]), so discount appropriately.
social pressure predates humans. it's pervasive and our teenage years (especially) are spent coping with/negotiating that. the difference with facebook is that it's potentially unbounded in reach and visibility (in nearly all cases it's not, but every once in a while, something blows completely out of its social circle). as with many modern phenomena, the risk-aversion this induces is out of proportion with the actual risks because of that potential (but not actual) reach and visibility, amplified by memetic social networks that trade in novel (whether true or false) information. in short, the worry over the effects of offense are greater than the potential effects themselves.
> I realized that I can't actually say ANYTHING interesting on this platform without offending someone.
If you really don't get value out of a platform then it's definitely a good thing to withdraw, but personally... I find there are plenty of interesting things I can talk/post about without flipping any major rage behavior. And I have lefty, liberal, and conservative friends, religious and anti-religious friends, friends who are interested in high/intellectual culture and friends who are not.
I do sometimes offend people. Anything that prompts people to evaluate themselves or their models of the world or their particular value-set runs that risk. Sometimes I have things to say that are likely to do that. Like, for example, the suggestion that maybe a personal capacity for diplomacy has as much to do with the ability to hold wide-ranging conversations as much as the foibles of platforms or people do.
Some topics are especially difficult, but there sure seem to be approaches that minimize the heat-to-light ratio in discussions.
Maybe I'm not always as diplomatic as I could be all the time, but what if I like it that way? I don't have this problem with offending people IRL or even in other online communities. And I'm not interested at all in cutting people out of my life - I like my social circle. So, in my mind, the platform is indeed the problem.
I can see how censoring yourself to the point of silence is bad, however, as someone who spent a great deal of time expressing my sometimes offensive POV's with very little consideration for others, the forced filter and permanence of the internet has benefited me. I am more careful and thoughtful about how I express myself now.
I go back and forth between deactivating my again and getting back on FB. I've realised the only reason I'm on FB these days is because of some hobby groups that I'm a part of and those are only on FB. I don't connect with any of my friends on FB and have blocked updates from most acquaintances.
There definitely needs to be an event aggregator that doesn't require a facebook account. I don't use Facebook, but all the hobby groups I ever meet in real life do!
I've quit (as in, delete, not suspend) my Facebook account twice. Deleted it, signed up again years later, deleted it again. I hope it's for good.
The reason really was politics. I've never learned anything new from these posts, they tend to just be the more bombastic restatements of things that everyone already knows about. I think they're a form of social signaling or posturing (people want to establish themselves as the most for or against... whatever their in-group is for or agains).
There's a funny onion article I've always enjoyed, "I don't like the person you become when you're on the Jumbotron".
There are people I am friends with, but I wouldn't want to be around when they're drunk. I feel the same way about some people on social media. The problem is, they tend to be the ones who dominate the platform. And it's new, so we're not really aware of the dangers - but I actually do think it may have a lot in common with alcohol addiction.
I left when coworkers started asking to connect on FB.
I don't bring my friends to work with me, except once in a very great while about ADA topics. I don't need my work life to be affected by the activities of my social circles.
I wasn't getting much out of it anyway, it was easier not to play (leave and say I didn't have one).
I've also noticed I can disagree with people I actually know.
Online we're all on teams. If anywhere in your post history you indicate your on a different team then we need to say mean things to each other.
In real life I have very liberal , very conservative and somewhat indifferent friends. I've also dated a variety of folks with different political leanings. I've largely stepped back from social media due to this. Why am I going to get into arguments with people I don't even know ?
If you want to connect with people, I suggest meet up groups. It's very easy to make friends you can actually hang out with. I would say to prioritize doing things you want to do. Like I'm heavily into tech talks , so I attended a ton of those.
I'm fairly optimistic next year the vaccine will be out and things will be somewhat normal.
I have no idea how you can do this, all my friends are on FB and that's my only way to keep in touch with them. I just use messenger so I don't really see the downsides that everybody is talking about here.
Recently my close friend who still uses FB tried to send someone a link to a public tweet made by the president’s daughter.
FB messenger censored the private message and refused to send it, claiming it was against “community standards”.
These sorts of logged-forever, censored platforms are absolutely chilling speech, person-to-person, even in DMs, and you wouldn’t even know when it happens to messages sent to you.
That means that you can’t communicate with them, even in DM, in a way that’s not logged for and filtered by a remote party whose interests are not your own. It’s only a matter of time until this is abused by the state.
That was one advantage of Google Circles (or Google Groups or whatever they were calling it before they killed it): you could define different circles and send messages only to specific circles if you wanted. It seemed like good way to do it, but of course, as with all things Google it was killed.
The people designing Google Groups were clearly on a mission to fix social media. Their bosses had a different mission: to force all Google services into a single account, unified around some "Facebook killer" that was just going to magically work because, y'know, it's Google.
These differing goals came to a head with the "true names" debacle, which Groups never recovered from. But Google did get its One True Account out of it, which is all they really wanted.
I'm kind of surprised that FB didn't copy that targeted circles feature. It was such a great idea. You could even do some logical operations on the circles. You could have a circle for professional stuff which you kept politics out of and you could have a separate political circle for politics only, but if you wanted to target both you could do an AND.
The Google+ push definitely provided some activation energy, but unifying accounts---and more importantly, building out a framework for account unification given that Google knows it will continue to build new applications and purchase companies that must be integrated against its existing applications---had been a goal for a while.
It was becoming a game of technological whack-a-mole on Google's back end to manage account information across apps. For example, was a user logged into Gmail also logged into YouTube? Were they logged in as the same person? How do resources get unified across different apps, since that's behavior users assume should work? What applications had authority to act on a user's behalf, in what contexts, And can we provide a better way to support that functionality than requiring a user to give their whole password to a third-party system? And when an account had to be banned for being abusive, what precisely got banned? previous to account unification, it was a shotgun depending on who did the banning and in what context.
True names was, in my opinion, a misstep. The account unification goal was a great idea.
I agree with you, but I find it interesting to contrast this with what this site is describing as social cooling. The website's claims are entirely big data and algorithm driven. But what you describe here, and what I think most people initially think of in terms of "social cooling" is the type of self-censorship and fear of the masses that is the result of masses of individual users, rather than algorithmic bias adjusting to our digital fingerprint.
The two aren't completely inseparable. Social media and the modern internet drive the kind of digital puritanism you are describing, and social media and the modern internet are largely based on monetization through advertising, which is driving the social cooling the website is describing. But the two are different phenomena, and I find the one you are describing much more relevant and terrifying than algorithms tracking my clicks to curate my advertisements and Instagram feed.
That's fair. I read the "Social Cooling" site (as an aside, what would you call sites like this? E-pamphlets seems like a good term to use.) and it immediately made me think of this essay I read years ago:
I think this "social cooling" is related to this generalized feeling of "precarity," the feeling that your place in society can be suspended or deleted in an instant. Whether the agent of this deletion is a state actor (China), a corporation acting on behalf of a state or advertiser (YouTube/Facebook/Twitter), or just ordinary people not acting on any agenda but just carrying forward the anxiety they experience internally. I don't find the latter particularly scarier than the first two since it doesn't carry as much of a threat with it. I certainly didn't experience it as such; but just a minor annoyance and general dissatisfaction with Facebook as a product.
I find it ironic that so many took my top-level comment to mean something was wrong with my social universe; as if, instead of the obvious solution of eschewing Facebook, my solution should be to separate from the people in my life and find better people who I could be on Facebook with. The assumption that it's healthy or even possible to "cancel" people out of your life for not passing some arbitrary standard of behavior is ludicrous to me (and, I would think, to any sane person with family ties, work relationships, etc.). Other people are messy, unpredictable and sometimes awful, but we do need them, and they need us. I think they have internalized this experience of precarity and turned it into a weapon they can wield against others, like an abused person becoming an abuser.
Thank you for sharing that essay, it was very insightful!
I can see a lot of the parallels there. Precarity and "social cooling" are two very similar perspectives on the consequences of surveillance capitalism. It's still difficult to sell the idea that there is a systemic underpinning for feelings and experiences that, for most people, will only be interpreted as exclusively personal.
Offending your peers is a separate issue than social cooling as described by this submission. That is an interpersonal issue. Social cooling is a relationship between an individual and powerful institutions like credit agencies, governments, employers, banks, etc.
Why would you want to share that with random acquatiances anyway ? For me Facebook is about life events of people I know and easy contact/messaging not political discussions or whatever else people find triggering.
As we provide platforms to everyone to broadcast their opinions on everything , what I foresee is that if we continue to keep generating these gazillions of data points every second all the time then soon AI’s will be needed to do the analysis for us and complement or help human policy makers to make the right decisions. We already see this with things like sentiment analysis. Welcome to the singularity .. I for once can’t wait to have our constantly bickering politicians replaced with AI agents whose sole job is to work for the people and who can be overidden by executive authority only as a last resort.
Facebook is the new television: a pile of rubbish made to keep the plebes entertained. I use it mainly for fun (posting memes and jokes) and to see what people I haven't seen for ages are up to. No serious conversation can go on on FB, forget it.
If the Varian Rule is true, that what the rich have today, the middle classes will have in 5-10 years and the poor in 10-15, it's worth noting that what the rich have today is private security.
The real risk is that the ultimate popular reaction to these systems will not be civil.
The Secret Service has been protecting US Presidents for 100+ years. And bodyguards go back way further. Varian (via McAfee) was talking about technology. Let me propose a clarifying addendum:
"A simple way to forecast the future is to look at what rich people have today [but didn't have 10 years ago]; middle-income people will have something equivalent in 10 years, and poor people will have it in an additional decade."
I'd say that american software developers affording private security as a result of a company they founded is a pretty recent phenomenon. I'm sure there is an n<10 of early precedents, but the underlying point is that the response to these oppressive systems is likely to be uncivil.
Indeed the Varian rule was coined by the FT journalist McAfee as you mentioned (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varian_Rule), though as a counter example, presidents don't really count. Politicians can be wealthy but, like criminals, they're never rich.
I've stopped engaging in many places online over the last few years. The reason for me is that engaging with a pseudonym has become the exception rather than the rule.
The evolution of identity on the internet is an interesting one. In the 90s, using your real name was considered absurd. Now it's the standard. Maybe you'll also have a pseudonym in your handle, but the majority of people use their real name on most of their social media.
Certain communities retain pseudonymous, such as a good portion of Hacker News and Reddit. Although, I see many people posting more and more revealing information on Reddit these days, as it leans towards becoming like Twitter and Facebook.
Very good presentation, and very good analogies to get the general public attention.
I think the key points are:
- Data allows the projection of stereotypes on everything you might be involved.
- Rating systems create unwanted incentives.
I don't think social credit systems are crazy, but they are extremely dangerous and easy to get wrong. Their memory should be limited, and their use should be controlled, opt-in, show-to-see, or whatever might be relevant.
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[ 0.16 ms ] story [ 585 ms ] thread(It's linked at the bottom of this one, but I'm sure a lot of people don't get that far)
The inputs and assumptions made by the people selecting the math is the 'morally wrong' part.
Bias is real, like it or not. Your worldview, as a data scientist or programmer or whatever, impacts what you select as important factors in 'algorithm a'. Algorithm a then selects those factors for other people in the system, baking in your biases, but screening them behind math.
Every choice we make is a moral choice. Once we're done modelling and use that model then we make a moral choice.
For example, If you believe that lowering the debt default rates is more important than the fairness to an individual.
Then you make a moral choice. Of you believe it is OK to not give loans to Blacks because there's a largish amount of Blacks defaulting on their loans thats a moral choice.
Further more, Enscribnng truth to models is just an age old human fallacy. The truth can somewhat fit plenty of models. None of the models are truth.
Every company has a predictive algorithm to use on students. Every startup that's stepping into the space is pushing the data and data scientists.
But they all have the same-old, usually decades old, baked in biases. AND they're not doing anything to address it!
Just because it's math doesn't mean it's not biased. I hate it more than anything professionally, right now.
When a model produces an unpalatable result, that doesn't mean it is biased. All these algorithmic fairness people are saying, once you peel back the layers of rhetorical obfuscation, is that we should make ML models lie. Lying helps nobody in the long run.
Absolutely, but there is no admission, from what I can tell, from ML or predictive [buzzword here] companies that bias is a thing, or even could be a thing in their systems.
>All these algorithmic fairness people are saying, once you peel back the layers of rhetorical obfuscation, is that we should make ML models lie. Lying helps nobody in the long run.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but that is not at all what I am saying as an 'algorithmic fairness' person. I am saying that we need to ensure there are strict oversights and controls on the building/execution of algorithms when making substantive decisions about human people.
For example: It's okay if an algorithm predicting student success says that all the minority students on my campus are at a higher risk of dropping out. That is a data point. Historically, minority students drop out at a higher rate. Sure. Not great, but it is factually true.
What is not okay is for the 'predictive analytics' company to sell their product in conjunction with a 'tracking' product that limits minority students' access to selective admissions programs simply because they are selective, more difficult, and, historically, have a higher percent of minority students who drop out.
I guess what I'm saying is that ML models shouldn't lie. But they also shouldn't be seen as the truth above all truths. Because they're not. They're just data, interpreted through the lens of whoever built the models.
Every human carries a bias, everyone. It's how we define ourselves as 'self' and others as 'other' at a basic level.
Therefore, everything we build, especially when it's meant to be intuitive, may carry those biases forward.
I'm only saying we need to be aware of that, acknowledge it, and ensure there are appropriate controls and oversight to ensure the biases aren't exasperated inappropriately.
The problem with these ML models is that they are directly connected to a response, and because they use statistics and math they are simplistically perceived as truth. They're not truth, they're are nothing more than models. The truth can fit a plethora of models. Ignoring human bias while training ML models, and then just saying that the model is truth is exactly the problem.
Thank you for demonstrating the issue so vividly.
Please try to elevate the debate. See [1]. You're at DH0 right now.
> They're not truth, they're are nothing more than models. The truth can fit a plethora of models.
Models receive past data and emit predictions. We can then see how well those predictions match future data. We call one model "better" than another model when that first models' predictions more closely match future data than the second model's. Not all models are equivalent. The ML fairness people want to make model predictions less accurate because they don't like what the predictions say. Prioritizing truth over pleasantness isn't juvenile: it's the opposite. The mark of maturity is the willingness to accept an unpleasant reality instead of denying it.
[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
to my astonishment quite a few were convinced this is exactly what happens. TF?
They probably won't break down your door for commenting on Assange though. They'll have some other pretense, an anonymous tip about drugs maybe.
I mean, Assange basically had 2 nukes, one with Clinton's name on it and one with Trump's name on it and released only the Clinton one because he had personal beef with her. This likely resulted in Trump's election.
Until that election, I was a Wikileaks fan. Now, I think Assange can go f* himself in prison for the rest of his life. What he did is almost unforgivable.
https://theintercept.com/2017/11/15/wikileaks-julian-assange...
What are you talking about? There's no source that Assange or WL had any information on Trump, which they held back.
Your cited article only writes about the twitter DMs, in which the WL account asked Trump Jr. to leak his fathers tax returns. It doesn't mean they ever posessed them.
The same Russian hackers who actually hacked both the DNC and RNC, but notably (and impactfully) did not release the RNC data.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2016/12/10/report-russi...
Trump is about to get four more years. If you have dirt on him, there's no better time than now to make it public.
One of the opportunities for comparison that this site only barely touches on is the fact that, like climate change, the companies responsible for this global phenomenon both know it's happening and are likely actively working to avoid talking about it. This happened with Exxon, BP, ConocoPhilips, you name it; it's now happening with Facebook, Google, etc.
This undoubtedly happens because any change for the good of folks would undermine these powerful corporations' bottom lines.
What can we learn from our failure to hold fossil fuel corporations accountable that can be translated here?
This really isn't all that different than what is happening elsewhere across the world today. Your Uber rider score represents your "social credit" for that service. Your Airbnb guest reviews impact if you will be allowed to rent a room. Each platform is putting social credit in place via crowd-sourced "trust"
EDIT: I don't mean to minimize China's human rights violations, but to posture that independently of central control many companies are implementing their own versions of these systems, which can have _some_ of the same effects in terms of losing access to services. Obviously one's Uber scores won't put you in jail / detainment camp and I was not intended to imply such.
In the US you mean.
The Chinese surveillance state is incredibly more massive and pervasive, the list of infractions includes incredibly more minor actions (and include political speech that is in anyway dissident), the consequences of a low score are so much more dire (unable to fly, travel, live in certain places, etc).
... and even degree of monopoly on violence. Uber can do quite a bit of damage to a person by choosing to refuse service if someone needs to urgently be somewhere (or away from somewhere). Airbnb is controlling access to safe shelter. If Amazon grocery stores took off, having a bad Amazon account could deny a person access to food.
I don't think it would take more than a handful of gig-economy service corporations unifying under one umbrella of data-sharing for the average American to start experiencing something a bit similar to the Chinese experience of social score. For now, there's no incentive for them to do so.
If you have an Uber or Airbnb score low enough to get banned from the platform, you're the problem and you'd have a very hard time arguing otherwise once you start revealing the reviews people have left you.
You're probably vomiting in Uber cars every weekend when you get blackout drunk and destroying property on Airbnb.
Maybe other people should know these things about you before they accidentally do business with you. Of course, once I think of actual implementation of such a thing, I only encounter showstoppers and ay, there's the rub. But the goal doesn't seem categorically wrong.
Though I also admit the inability to have a practical implementation that works is a good reason to condemn anything. I'm just radicalized by horrible ex-tenants and like to smile as I ponder the utopia where trashing my place echoes in their lives forever.
It's like... If anyone's been to Disney World, they're familiar with what an all-encompassing experience that is. Now imagine Disney World ran 75% of Florida. And could bar you from the premises for violating its rules...
For example, imagine if you couldn't buy plane tickets because you didn't sit through enough critical race theory white-guilty training.
https://thepointsguy.com/news/uber-vomit-fraud-scam/
And what if Uber is your government-provided method of transportation for health care?
https://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/uber-healths-non-...
they can restrict access, but not control it, because Airbnb doesn't have a monopoly on safe shelter.
The charity of others isn't enough to fly you around the world and give you beachfront property and iPhone. They'll want something in return so long as they have other aspirations beyond serving you.
For instance, imagine you are an airline. You have an issue to do with deportation critics disrupting flights when people are being forcibly deported on them. This happens fairly infrequently but costs you quite a lot of money every time this happens. So, 'logically', you decide to determine who is most likely to disrupt a flight and so through discriminatory thinking somebody decides that those with left-wing political leanings are more likely to disrupt a flight. They purchase this information on political leanings for each of their passengers and pass this cost onto those who fit the profile, entirely on the basis of their political beliefs.
And if they don't do this directly, they will do it by proxy in the same way that the insurance industry has been using proxies for race. https://www.forbes.com/sites/advisor/2020/07/23/insurance-re...
It's a sort of insurance-ification of all pricing and permission which this kind of technology is increasingly enabling.
Edit: I did see some confederate flags being flown in middle of nowhere Mississippi, but I honestly believe they're not flown as a symbol of hatred (at least not always) as some people had banners next to their flags saying things like "Pride not hate", or the rainbow flag, or other phrases trying to distance themselves from the negative connotations of the flag.
I'm not from around there, and it isn't my business to defend nor condemn it. I do think taking it as ipso facto evidence of white supremacy is a Yankee mistake.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jim_Crow_law_examples_...
If you go to certain left wing rallies, they WILL show up. I have seen real live nazis screaming at my friends at an anti-ICE rally.
The problem with these guys is they do have a narrative that is appealing to a certain set of people about nationalism and certain ethnic enemies that care creating the problems. The idea is to prevent their growth and flourishing because if you see them get very common, we are in deep trouble... though given the debate tonight with the president signaling "Stand Back. Stand By." to the Proud Boys, I sense a creeping darkness.
https://www.factcheck.org/2019/03/the-facts-on-white-nationa...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/18/white-national...
We should be very wary of rhetoric that depends on changing definitions of terms without providing precise definitions (see also "racism"). Put differently, everyone's ideas should be criticized on their own terms, but you oughtn't be taken seriously if you don't even define your own terms (and defining them in terms of other poorly defined terms--e.g., "'anti-racism' opposing racism"--doesn't count).
If you can be convinced that the status quo is oppressive to racial minorities, then it serves to perpetuate white supremacy.
I don't follow your first point, since it seems clear to me that people of color, jewish people, and homosexuals are able to hold white supremacist viewpoints.
This is assuming white privilege is the same as white supremacy, when the term white supremacy has been used for KKK and neo-nazis groups, not mainstream white society since after the civil rights era.
It also assumes that most whites and only whites benefit from white privilege, otherwise it's not so white, and may be more a combination of class, culture and/or historical consequences. Also the fact that white people are still a majority in countries like the US, where a majority in any country likely has similar privileges just by being the majority. One last assumption (in America) is that white culture is a certain way, when in reality the US is primarily an English dominated culture historically, whereas Europe has a lot of cultural variation.
A related issue is that white supremacy is sometimes extended to considering an entire economic system as racist, just because history went a certain way. But there's nothing about an economic system that says any one particular group need benefit more than another.
Crony capitalism creates positive feedback loops where the friends of rich people benefit more than strangers to rich people.
I doesn't take a lot of analysis to see how that can re-enforce the dominance of one race in a society if there's any small amount of inequality to start(1) and people of a given race are mostly associating with others of the same race, since the positive feedback loops in capitalism are significant.
(1) And "small amount of inequality" isn't a fair assumption for the US, where one race started out owning people of the other race.
That's about class, not race, ethnicity or whatever other grouping you prefer. White billionaires hang out with black billionaires, not with white hobos.
I'm pretty sure that, to a 90%-10% ratio, they hang out with white millionaires, not either of the groups you described.
This isn't racial discrimination or racism or white supremacy, and yielding equal outcomes among racial groups isn't innately desirable. If we assume that all races would be equal today were it not for historical discrimination (quite an assumption given that significant disparities predated first contact between different racial groups and thus racism between them), and we want to correct for that historical discrimination then we can talk about it, but that's fundamentally different than "racism is rampant today" or "we've made little progress since abolition" or "we live in a white supremacist ethnostate" or any of the other left-wing claims.
Definitionally, "a system that gives white people a structural advantage based on what color they were born" is a system of white supremacy, even if the system could be tilted to be a black supremacy or hispanic supremacy system if the initial conditions were different.
There's what the system could do (in another historical timeline) vs. what it is doing.
Yes, but that's not our system. Our system doesn't give structural advantages based on race (at least we can hardly measure the extent of any such advantages). It does give structural advantages based on class (and many other variables) which correlates with race; however, correlation and causation are famously different. We don't have a white supremacist system or any kind of racist system, although some are advocating for a racist system so that we can eliminate disparities.
> There's what the system could do (in another historical timeline) vs. what it is doing.
No one is suggesting an alternate historical timeline; I'm arguing that our system today isn't racist, but that it's very nearly colorblind; however, disparities can result in a perfectly colorblind system because the initial racial distributions were not uniform.
EDIT: Downvoters, do you believe correlation and causation are the same thing in general or only when applied to racial disparities?
I also agree that white privilege interacts with class, culture and historical consequences, this was well put.
If, hypothetically, an economic system admits little class mobility, and if classes are racially biased, then the effect of that economic system is to maintain a racial caste system. What are your thoughts on this? I'd also point that the justice system works similarly. There are few explicit racial biases, but what is the effect of this system? It actively maintains a racial hierarchy. Does that make it racist?
There are a couple of dynamics at play here:
* The distinction between de jure and de facto discrimination. No one disputes that a country can be racially oppressive via de facto discrimination as our country has been in the past.
* Whether any kind of discrimination is a necessary condition for a system to be called "oppressive". Of course a system is oppressive if it discriminates at all, even if the discrimination is only de facto. This is a completely uncontroversial opinion--virtually everyone believes this, so I don't think this is the position that the left is espousing (especially given that prominent left-wing voices like Kendi are pretty explicit that this isn't what they're talking about). Moreover, if leftists are taking the uncontroversial interpretation, then it doesn't make sense to call anyone else a "white supremacist" because at worst they are opposed to discrimination to the extent that they are aware that it exists (and no, pointing to disparities does not constitute compelling evidence of discrimination).
So presumably leftists believe we live under "white supremacy" because there are disparities at all, irrespective of whether those disparities are attributable to racial discrimination. More likely, it seems to me that leftists are conflating "there was a lot of historical discrimination that created different wealth, crime, marriage/family, etc distributions that the present system acts upon" with "the system today is racist and we've made little progress since the legalization of slavery".
If the latter were true then we would indeed be under a 'white supremacist' system, but thankfully it's obviously fallacious. There are certainly still some vestiges of racism that we should continue to work to remove, but we've progressed tremendously--our system is mostly colorblind, everyone of consequence everywhere is in favor of making the system more colorblind (save apparently progressives and a handful of thoroughly marginalized actual white supremacists); however, a perfectly egalitarian (i.e., non-racist) system isn't going to yield equal outcomes.
That said, if we want to address historical racism, then let's talk about it as such and not give the impression that we're solving for extant racism (or that extant racism is a primary driver in various disparities). This is unnecessarily dishonest and divisive. Let's talk about reparations instead of advocating for a racialized society and system (in contrast to a colorblind society and system). Let's dispense with viewpoints of racial primacy and essentialism. Let's dispense with DiAngelo's "whites are inherently racist" (not paraphrasing) and Kendi's "anti-racism requires eternal discrimination" (paraphrasing). All of this is nonsense and a distraction if our goal is to address historical discrimination or decrease injustice or even close racial gaps (defunding police or antagonizing whites are not likely to improve yields for minorities).
> I don't follow your first point, since it seems clear to me that people of color, jewish people, and homosexuals are able to hold white supremacist viewpoints.
My point didn't depend on the ability or inability of people with those identities to hold white supremacist viewpoints; it was literally parenthetical. I only brought it up because there's a lot of overlap between the people who make broad claims of white supremacy and the people who advocate that whites "shut up and listen" to people with these identities such that, you know, they might shut up and listen before writing these people off as white supremacists.
You raise the point that leftists don't differentiate between a system that discriminates based on race and a system that discriminates on factors correlated with race. I would argue that the effects of those two systems are quite similar. Would you agree that, regardless of the intention, both of these systems have the effect of racial oppression?
I can't defend DiAngelo or Kendi because I'm ignorant of what they have to say.
No doubt, and everyone agrees that this should be fixed to the extent that there is discrimination. It's unclear exactly how to fix this discrimination except to continue to promote a color-blind society (which has been the winning strategy thus far and while it hasn't completely resolved the problem, it's significantly curbed it in a relatively short amount of time).
> If you do agree with either of these points, then we would agree that the justice system is oppressive.
Yes. But no one is arguing that we shouldn't change the justice system; there's disagreement about the extent to which it's oppressive with the left arguing that it's "literally slavery" and moderates arguing that it's a problem that needs to be addressed but not a significant driver of the disparities that the left cites and the right arguing that it's an insignificant problem relative to black-on-black crime.
> ou raise the point that leftists don't differentiate between a system that discriminates based on race and a system that discriminates on factors correlated with race. I would argue that the effects of those two systems are quite similar. Would you agree that, regardless of the intention, both of these systems have the effect of racial oppression?
Yes, by definition, something that correlates with some underlying cause else has similar effects.
A good analogy would be the disparate outcomes of the criminal justice system with respect to men and women. As with blacks, the criminal justice system discriminates against men to some extent. However, it more significantly discriminates against violent behavior, which correlates with male gender to the effect that men are disproportionately likely to go to prison, their sentences are disproportionately harsh, etc.
A moderate would say that we should address the discrimination problem, but not try to discriminate against women in order to address the remainder of the gap which is attributable to the correlate: violent behavior.
An ideologically consistent leftist would argue that correlates should be treated as causes in the name of erasing disparities; however, (mysteriously) there are no nation-wide progressive efforts to close this gap. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine why progressives are comfortable discriminating against some groups but not others.
EDIT: Even though they have similar results, as with all correlations, the danger of treating correlations as a causation is that you end up treating the symptom and not the problem, and often this just exacerbates the symptom. Eliminating standardized testing in the college admissions process is very likely to result in more discrimination against blacks, but addressing our growing wealth inequality problem will benefit people of all races (and given that blacks are more likely to be poor than whites, it will benefit them disproportionately). Further, this allows us to dispense with the deliberately confusing, divisive "white supremacy", "white fragility", "racism" rhetoric that is in all likelihood only creating more racists.
EDIT2: While we may not disagree, I feel like this conversation is a lot more productive than most race conversations. Thanks for being a good faith participant, sincerely.
"embrace" by the definition "openly supporting white supremacy"? Or "dared to suggest there where two sides at fault in Charlottesville"?
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/08/trump-w...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Miller_(political_advi...
1) It begs the question of whether social cooling should be considered a universal ill. After all, white supremacy is bad, and consequences for publicly embracing it are useful.
2) It begs the question of whether the impact of digitally-originated social cooling is particularly relevant if one thought-leader can upend it.
I do think that white supremacy, fascism and nazism was really a lot more fringe even only 10 years ago, it wasn't just under-reported.
In a way your comment which, if I read it correctly, implies "surely you don't think that the rise of nationalism could lead to wars" kind of proves my point. It totally could, and I'd add fairly easily. The peace we have is not as solid as it may seem, especially with dwindling resources and the rise of new superpowers in the East.
I believe the person grandparent is referring to's rise to power was one more symptom in what's been happening, and not a cause in any way. Of course, these things tend to enter a sort of feedback loop. If you'll allow me a parallel with the rise of antisemitism in Europe in the early half of the last century: It was not Nazism that emboldened and bolstered antisemitic feelings across Europe. Nazism was a symptom of the established and pretty mainstream antisemitic current in western society at the time. Even the US was not immune to hating on the Jew.
This rise in far-right political strength is most likely associated with a backlash against the (mostly? totally?) left-wing push for inclusivity and rapid social progressivism. In a way, among those that wouldn't identify themselves as far-right but do manifest ideals associated with the far-right of today, I can identify a certain undercurrent of "we're going too far, we're making too many changes, we need to slow down". Of course, things like "cancel culture", Spotify's staff wanting complete creative control over a 'controversial' podcast, etc., as well as the social bubbles we isolate ourselves in on our chosen social media platforms do not help at all with empathy or viewing others' viewpoints, which greatly exacerbates the issue.
That may be true, but far-left movements are certainly gaining speed as well. And I'm talking about real actual 'cease the means of production'-communists. Politics is certainly getting more polarised.
Ceasing it is merely a consequence of botching the seizing (and the understanding of where that means fit in a post-Industrial-Revolution ecosystem of interlocked systems). ;)
And full agreement; this is a language cobbled together by a chunk of land getting conquered and re-conquered so many times that the locals gave up trying to speak the language of the New King and made up their own from their favorite words in the aggressor cultures and the language they spoke amongst themselves.
How many websites have multiple translations available and put effort into accessibility proportional to the amount of the population that could be helped by it? It's not anywhere near 100%.
For example, SaaS companies aren't going to create white supremacist technology, but they will sell to white supremacists.
Nowadays this would be very difficult because the mere fact of being around "bad" people ("bad" depends on the context and might be something relatively innocent) would also brand you as "bad" regardless of any good intentions you might have.
What ends up happening is that "bad" people are stuck in their own echo-chamber surrounded by like-minded people and anyone outside of the group wouldn't dare to engage with them (and provide counter-arguments) because of consequences for their own career & social circle (as their own friends would distance themselves from him for the same reasons).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGTQ0Wj6yIg
But people self identifying as such are extremely rare.
It's very hard to support with a straight face that the acceptance of the confederate flag in the south does not have racial overtones.
So if that's your measure, white supremacy is not doing well at all.
As far as I understand it, "white supremacy" for those that desire it is the idealized end result of "white power." Much of the rhetoric from President Trump is to rally support for white power. [1]
Given the most common disagreement in the US is between those who advocate for or oppose President Trump, it makes sense that his followers would be deemed "white supremacists"
I believe the broad awakening among many white people in the US currently is the ambient benefits of invisible white power.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6iSgqFahoM
It's of course possible they still are. But it makes this whole discourse pretty weird.
But the Proud Boys absolutely are at the very least adjacent. With a decent dash of misogyny thrown in.
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/grou...
Yesterday, there was a documentary movie on German's private TV station Pro7 about Nazis. An actual Nazi confirmed live on camera: yes, deplatforming Nazis (and that includes them losing jobs, family, friends) works and is a huge source of pain for the movement because many people don't hold up to that pressure and leave.
Just imagine how big the rallies would be if there was no social pressure on not being Nazi would no longer be there... at the moment many attendees either don't give a f..k about how they are perceived, or they relish on that being accepted in their social circles.
The problem is when governments go against legitimate opposition and abuse social pressure.
>The problem is when governments go against legitimate opposition and abuse social pressure.
Legitimate according to who? Isn't any opposition to a government illegitimate opposition? Or exclusively legitimate, depending on how you feel about the concept of government itself.
I've been self-censoring for more than a decade now. I really like how the information is presented in this SocialCooling site.
As you have pointed out, the effects are good if they lower the voices you disagree with, and raise the ones that represent your views. My advice to everyone reading HN is to pick the winning side, and conform to it. Fortunately for us, picking the winners isn't hard.
> I've been self-censoring for more than a decade now
Good! I recommend it. It's a basic skill that is useful when living in a society with other human beings whose situation (social power, emotional state, world view) we must account for. We have entire empathic neurological systems to support that behavior.
> My advice to everyone reading HN is to pick the winning side, and conform to it.
My advice is never pick the Nazis.
The original quote which you're abusing begins "first they came for the Communists".
These were Communists in the era of Josef Stalin, to be clear. Mass-murdering totalitarians, exactly the sort of people you wouldn't want taking over your country.
It appears you missed both the lesson of Herr Niemoller, and a key part of the history of the rise of Nazism in Weimar Germany.
Pity.
In modern Germany, it's still illegal to explicitly disseminate means of propaganda of unconstitutional organizations. Is this wrong? I think I'll defer to the modern Germans on that question.
There's also difference of degree. Deplatforming Nazis (which is how parent post bastardized the quote initially) is not the same as incarcerating them. I was playing off the bastardization.
If you want to continue to defend platforming Nazis, be my guest, but I don't have to discuss it with you.
I, too, have negative interest in continuing to speak to an unpleasant person who makes unsupported assumptions about my views on a topic I never addressed.
As with so many gigantic institutions, the US government is not uniformly supportive of or disruptive of white supremacy, over time or within an era.
Last week it was uncovered that mass hysterectomies had taken place at an ICE facility in Georgia without the informed consent of patients - this falls under the UN's definition of genocide.
This policy shift towards targeting exclusively Latinos came under the Trump administration calling Mexican immigrants "rapists" who bring crime and drugs. Melania Trump is a white immigrant who was granted the exclusive EB-1 green card for "extraordinary abilities".
I find it nearly impossible in these circumstances to come to the conclusion that the state is not explicitly catering to white supremacist ideology...and immigration policy is only the tip of the iceberg.
WTF!?! Source, please ?
Well obviously, the definition expanded:
https://i.imgur.com/gW9sQoM.jpg
As far as I can tell the number of people who are part of the KKK hasn't gone up any appreciable amount.
In fact, calling perfectly normal and valuable things "white supremacy" and then deplaforming "white supremacists" is an excellent example of this social cooling.
[citation needed]
I can keep going if you want me to.
Later, it was shared with the inaccurate description of being a list of negative aspects of white culture.
It's kind of funny really; the pedigree of that list being considered a list of negative things is white people making assumptions about the intent of a list assembled of things white people self-attributed to white culture.
Regarding the previous "iceberg" image---that's a lot of words to go looking through to try and pick out the items you're describing as 'perfectly normal and valuable things.' Can you highlight which ones you were referring to? Assuming good intent, I assume you didn't mean "Racial profiling" or "Fearing people of color."
The result is the same, the subconscious associations between "white" and "whiteness" and those traits has been strengthened. The meaning of words comes from what people think about when they hear it. By increasing the amount of things people associate with the word "white" the definition is expanded.
No negative connotations have been assigned by the document. But "white" and especially "whiteness" has very negative connotations. I've never come across any text or material suggesting "whiteness" is a good thing. Its always stuff like this: https://news.csusm.edu/ask-the-expert-the-problem-with-white... (That alone is already pretty fucked up when you think about it for more than a second) Furthermore, the meaning of words comes from what people think about when they hear it. But "white supremacy" has extremely negative connotations, and so all those normal things get tarred by association with imagery of the Nazis and the KKK.
>Regarding the previous "iceberg" image---that's a lot of words to go looking through to try and pick out the items you're describing as 'perfectly normal and valuable things.' Can you highlight which ones you were referring to? Assuming good intent, I assume you didn't mean "Racial profiling" or "Fearing people of color."
Of course not, those are the actually bad things that are used to tar the "perfectly normal and valuable things". If the iceberg picture only contained good things, it would associate positive valence with the term "white supremacy" rather than associating negative valence with the normal things as the picture was designed to do.
To take specific examples, "Calling the police on black people". This is a perfectly normal thing to do if your being robbed or harassed and the perpetrator happens to be black. Doing so does not mean your promoting white supremacy. Now if you're doing it because they're black, thats a bad thing, but the image makes no destination, so the normal thing is tarred by the bad thing. There are also some supper egregious ones, things like "White parents" and "there's only one human race/We're all one big human family". These are actually anti-racist perspectives that are now being associated with one of the most racist and destructive ideologies in history. Another one is "All Lives Matter", this is an explicitly egalitarian message that is now viewed as racist by association.
I can keep going through the list but then my arguments would turn into a gish-gallop.
This kind of rhetorical tarring has been going on for so long that certain kinds of explicit institutional racism is now viewed as not racist (affirmative action), and explicitly anti-racist and unifying statements "All lives matter/there's only one human race" are viewed as racist.
As for the reason it isn't really a retort to "black lives matter", that's been explained better by Chris Straub than I ever could.
https://chainsawsuit.com/comic/2016/07/07/all-houses-matter-...
Not unlike the battle standard of northern Virginia, symbols pick up racist connotation when racists keep using them.
To extend the house analogy, there aren't 2 houses, there are 7 billion and you're saying we should focus our attention on the black ones rather than the ones that are on fire because they are more likely to be black.
Unfortunately, you can't quite capture that logic with a catchy jingle like BLM, so your left saying ALM and crossing your fingers hoping racial tensions don't escalate.
Now you can make the argument that 99% of people don't give a shit, and only care about themselves. But that leads you more down the path of effective alturism than BLM, again because the former doesn't ignore the other factors of variation.
For those who genuinely care about the state of the world, and have identified issues that in their judgement that are more pressing, or those who do care but are currently busy keeping their own heads above the water for whatever reason, the accusations that they believe the current situation is acceptable are at best tone deaf and at worst downright insulting.
To fix what? Police brutality? I don't think so. Here's some stuff that was tried and worked. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2015/05/18/10-citi...
Political reform? How many people protesting actually voted in their municipal and state elections?
Even if that were the case, it would be a pretty solid argument to focus on more tractable problems rather than whatever the past few months have been.
Saying "Other options have been tried and failed." Is BS post-hoc justification. This round of BLM started because of 1 egregious viral video in a country of 300,000,000 when a whole bunch of young people had nothing better to do. When your dealing with complex systems like police-community interactions, you will never be able to completely eliminate egregious incidents, even if you can reduce the incident rate by 90%. Any kind of legitimate attempt to improve the situation will necessarily involve something resembling multiple A/B tests carried out over multiple areas and multiple years to understand the relationship between policy, environment, culture, and policing outcomes. This will necessarily take time, it will be extremely expensive, and the gains will be marginal. That's just how things work when your dealing with massive complex systems and rare events.
Quite a few of the protesters have documented why they're out in the street. If anyone is having difficulty understanding the situation, I recommend reading what they've said.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-i-protest-george-floyd-pr...
For me personally, it was very educational to bear witness to people protesting police brutality being met with more police brutality---not justified force escalation, but attempts to bait protesters into breaking laws to justify arrests, antagonize nonviolent protests hoping for violent ones, and straight up lying about the situation on the ground. The last part I find insulting, because it's not like the video cameras aren't there. They know the video cameras are there. They believe the system will protect them from violating their own protocols and the law, and so far, it does.
Which is why people continue to protest.
Which finally ties us back to my orignial claim, which is that "white supremacy" is on the rise, and thats because people who care more about themselves or non-racial issues than racial issues have been reclassified as "white supremacists".
According to this list since I believe people can bootstrap themselves I must be a white supremacist. Except I highly doubt the KKK are fond of mestizo people, I even doubt they even like "white" Hispanics at all. I know people who have been homeless and now make more money than I do, living on cars or purely on the streets, minorities included.
As a minority I am astounded at all the bikeshedding people are doing to fight racism, worse yet finding racism where there is none like git branches.
Edit: Also, just because someone supported Trump and is white and voted for him doesn't automatically make that person a racist. This kind of prejudice rising up today is very worrisome and way too topical in a discussion about social cooling.
This depends on how your aggregation function is weighted.
If your measure is "how many people in the US are white supremacists?" then, yes, it's definitely a minority view (though still more widely held than it should be!).
But if you scale it by each person's power/wealth, you get a very different view. If your question is "what is the total power held by white supremacists?" you'll end up with a larger number.
And if you really want to get an accurate measure where you treat each person's white supremacy value as a number that ranges smoothly from positive (actual white supremacist) to zero (not interested in putting effort into race relations one way or another) to negative (anti-white supremacist), your function may produce a number that explains a hell of a lot of US history.
I very much doubt so. The richest people in the US are whites (e.g. Besos, Gates, Buffet), but not suprematists. If you have data which proves otherwise, please share.
And what of the Kochs and Waltons?
Either way, you're only thinking about the 0.01%. But consider the many many more people in the 1%. Big fish in small pond types that are part of the Old Boy's Club in your local area. People that wouldn't call themselves white supremacists or even racist, but also wouldn't really want Black folks joining their country club.
If you don't think deep-seated racism is profoundly prevalent across large areas of the US, you are probably just in the position of having enough privilege to be oblivious to it. I grew up in the South, and it is everywhere. You just have to scratch the surface a bit to see it.
Or you are biased to see it everywhere.
Maybe it's true, maybe it's false, but the burden of proof on those who make statements about white supremacists, and I did not see any evidence supporting these statements.
Why would I be?
> but the burden of proof on those who make statements about white supremacists
In a nation where it was legal to own black people for most of its existence and less than 40 years since the last lynching, you think the burden of proof is on me to show that white supremacy is a problem?
But, sure, here you go then:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:White_supremacy_in_th...
I don't know. Maybe you watched a movie about white supremacists when you were a child and it stick to your mind. People tend to have biases and see what they want to see. Some people see white supremacists everywhere. Otheres constantly see examples of inter-racial love and friendship.
> In a nation where it was legal to own black people for most of its existence and less than 40 years since the last lynching, you think the burden of proof is on me to show that white supremacy is a problem?
Maybe it is a problem, maybe it is not a problem.
The original statement was not about that. Quoting:
> But if you scale it by each person's power/wealth, you get a very different view. If your question is "what is the total power held by white supremacists?" you'll end up with a larger number.
This is the statement I'm contensting. Because it is unsubstantiated.
Well, I:
* Lived near a sundown town.
* Watched one of my closest friends get recruited by an associate of David Duke and slowly get indoctrinated into white supremacy.
* Had a white kid in high school proudly tell me about the time they "beat the shit out of that nigger" just because they didn't like the way he looked at them.
* Watched half a schoolbus full of elementary school kids joke about "porch monkeys".
* Grew up in a city named after one plantation in a neighborhood named after another one.
But, sure, yeah, I must be imagining it all.
> Because it is unsubstantiated.
I provided a link to lots of articles about white supremacy in the US. It is you who have provided no counter-evidence.
No, I'm not saying you are imagining. I suspect (not state) that you are biased, and describe the issue larger than what it is.
> I provided a link to lots of articles about white supremacy in the US. It is you who have provided no counter-evidence.
And I can give you a link to Google, when you can find anything.
You just provided a link with the list of white supremacist organisations. Nobody denies these organisation exists.
But there is no proof that "white supremacists" have significant power. They look like small marginal groups with no money and no real power. Like religious sects.
https://www.businessinsider.com/rick-santorum-trump-right-wi...
The issue is my "real self" is uninterested in participating in these networks, even if to create a fake persona.
Maybe it could be automated, or outsourced?
I mean identities that span across several networks and include emails, aged cookies, fake fingeprint generator, etc
Then doesn't this discount the threat being posed by the "Social Cooling" theory? If social media activity doesn't matter "when it comes down to real transactions" shouldn't we be less worried?
I think the answer is somewhere in the middle. Obviously you can't "social media fake" your way into a mortgage (I hope) but it may stop you from getting a job or being elected to office.
> but it may stop you from getting a job or being elected to office.
This is more of the problem - the social impact eventually leads to financial impact.
Consider that the loan- or job-"machines" are collecting intelligence from social networks to evaluate the person -- in addition to loan history and previous job performance. Now if you can present "yourself" to this machines in a conformal way, you don't need to fear negative repercussions on shitposts you did. While you can still be authentic in private or under pseudonyms.
Of course, you will still get categorized by the bank transactions you make in your real name. Same goes for your performance reviews on previous jobs. It is just a matter of tricking these other forms of automated social control into a higher rating bound to your name.
-----
I find it fascinating that philosophers like Baudrillard and Deleuze were able to think and warn about these issues more than 40 years ago when none of this was even remotely on the horizon:
See also Deleuzes "Societies of Control":
https://cidadeinseguranca.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/deleuz...
and:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337844512_Societies...
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacrum
I re-read Deleuze's three-page paper every year. It really describes things well.
It definitely does, and he is scarily accurate in his analysis. I just re-read it myself, and stumbled over this part, which I certainly not anticipated in this form a few years back:
> For the hospital system: the new medicine "without doctor or patient" that singles out potentially sick people and subjects at risk, which in no way attests to individuation -- as they say -- but substitutes for the individual or numerical body the code of a "dividual" material to be controlled.
This is certainly an accurate description of the control mechanisms various states have put into place in the form of apps that enforce selective quarantine restrictions.
The socialcooling website really a great project! Important content presented concise and on-point, thank you for doing this!
I have no problem accessing a $1.5 million mortgage at 2.875%, getting prescribed drugs, or immigration beyond whatever is inherently hard about the system.
The best way is still the real information. The hard stuff in the real world. What you do online does nothing.
Except maybe the Tinder thing. Most dating apps align your attractiveness with the attractiveness of potential targets. That's to be expected.
The way I see it is "Information wants to be free".
...It says a lot that all of your examples are from your own life. There are counter examples abounding that just aren't affecting you (to your knowledge), such as those stated in TFA, or CA, or Brexit etc.
Do you think these data brokers are selling our info for billions to rubes? Are insurance companies known for their gullibility? Are sale of lists of rape victims to 'whoever has money' A-OK, because you are not being personally affected?
... These trends are worsening. People aren't spending more and more on data that has "no bearing on anything". That it's invisible to you makes it worse.
And societally it's not okay to create a complete nightmare for like 5% of people. So I totally get it.
Just that if you live in the First World and live a normative interface (my drug use doesn't leak into the professional environment, my illegal imports are on the quiet) you can get away with a lot.
Advertising is the area in which the most persona research and targeting is implemented. I suspect the reason no one is trying to fake online personas is because it would only have noticeable impact on what ads you see.
https://www.cloakingcompany.com
It's a fictitious company that helps you do exactly this. And while it's fiction, the tool actually does work.
Although as time passes, it seems maybe it should be real...
>You can just use the tool for free.
So can you actually use it or not? If you can use it, then I would say it is a real service in any sense of "real service" I can think of.
testimonials for cloakingcompany.com: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24328764
All citizens who lie about being cat owning church going knitting enthusiasts — regardless as to whether it was to get a better rate on their next car lease, or not — will be incarcerated.
This may be reduced to a small fine (and denouncement) if you forgo your right to the wasteful scrutiny of a public trial.
Glory to Arstotska
When you think privacy of in in the terms of 'social cooling', or consider things like China's 'social credit' system, I can't help be think we are much closer to the world depicted in the last season of Westworld than we might want to admit.
So of course we have something to hide.
[1] https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/reports/reduced-d...
In contrast, if you have full information, you can construct pricing schemes that fully extract all surplus from the consumer. You can, in essence, get higher prices without losing customers. Many pricing schemes today are trying to use more information to approximate that situation (for example auctions, anything with subscriptions, fixed components, packages etc.). It is why firms like Amazon and Google hire a lot of Economics PhDs and Game Theorists. You will also notice that many products are pushing toward such pricing models. This is not by accident.
So, your contention is half right and half wrong. In the greater scheme of things, full information is often (but not always) efficient for total welfare. However, in such situation total welfare also may accrue entirely to firms. That means higher profits, first, and higher costs for the consumer second.
In effect, you will pay more if you are more known.
It then depends on your faith in the fairness of the ownership and distributional properties of our capitalist systems, as well as the efficiency of the markets in question (e.g. competition), whether the increased profits are eventually redistributed to you, the consumer.
It seems to me that in many of the markets in question, even the description of oligopoly would be rather charitable. In that case, latter parts of your post do not seem likely.
Edit: Since you asked for the principles. The first iteration of this you may come across is called price discrimination. At that stage, it's not about information, but you can make that link in your head quite easily: The ability to set different prices, depends of course crucially on what you know.
Next, you may hear about auctions or contract theory, where such problems are tackled explicitly. Switching the roles, you may hear about principal agent problems, where a similar (really the same thing) occurs. For full generality, you may want to read into Mechanism Design. Tillman Borgers has a great book which used to be available free as PDF and you can probably still find it. If you are interested in questions such as: "What can we say generally about any sort of sales contract", then this is a good place to start. Needs some math though.
My dad has a Ph.D in Econ from an Ivy League institution, and lives near-ish to a few FAANGs. He's retired but gets headhunter emails from them consistently.
You may need a good life on display rather than just an absence of bad things.
Sometimes I think that authors who see patterns and make reasonable but dire predictions about where society is going actually end up providing a game plan to career oppressors.
Cattle are products on a farm. They have purposes. A few bulls are left for breeding, the rest are gelded. Some cows are for milk. Others are fattened up as much as possible.
But all end up in the slaughterhouse. Anyone that steps out of line causes problems before that time may find themselves culled from the herd.
The purpose of the system is not to make cows happy, or meet cow needs. It's to produce as much economic product as possible.
To answer your question, people aren't always seen as intrinsically valuable, nor their suffering meaningful. In the wrong context, corporations, congregations, and other populations are only valued for what they produce, like how cows are valued (and raised) for their milk and meat.
My dad is one of those old school guys who thinks law enforcement can do no wrong and nobody needs to hide anything unless they're doing something wrong. Even if that were true and I think it is true that many law enforcement personnel are trying to do good, that doesn't always mean the results will always reflect their intentions. When the sample size of facts is too small, as is often the case with mass collection, it's too easy for your sample to get mixed up with someone else's. Maybe your phone is the only other phone in the area when a murder is committed. That doesn't mean you did it, but it sure makes you look like the only suspect.
I was never able to gain an inch on his argument until I asked him why he has curtains on his living room window. I mean, it faces North, so there's no need to block intense sunlight, yet he closes them every night when he's sitting there reading a book or watching TV. Why? He's not doing anything illegal, yet he still doesn't want people watching him. He said he would not be ok with the Police standing at his window all night watching him. That's when he finally understood that digital privacy is not just for criminals, but for everyone who wants to exist in a peaceful state and not a police state.
I'm not doing anything wrong, but I still close the door when I take a dump. The idea that someone wanting privacy means it is nefarious or wrong is ridiculous.
(... not saying dumps are advanced noise, but this is on the right track. Don't hide the needle. Produce more haystack)
So instead of an ad blocker, we could have background bots in our browser visiting random urls and clicking on every ad in sight (of course it would need to mimic human UI input).
I wonder what affect that would have.
In our culture we feel deep embarrassment if someone sees us using the toilet, but this is not universal across people and cultures, and honestly, it shouldn't be embarrassing. There's nothing inherently wrong with pooping. We irrationally feel embarrassment when we shouldn't have to.
This argument doesn't show any negative consequences of invasion of privacy. It's also not clear how it extrapolates to situations that don't involve toilets or nudity. If the problem is embarrassment, and people don't feel embarrassed that Facebook collects data, does that make it okay?
Obviously there are other arguments for privacy that do show potential harm. I find these more compelling.
But I don't think it's the strong argument in favour of privacy that we want to make, because:
1. We do give people privacy in the bathroom. The debate is over the data social media companies collect. If people aren't generally embarrassed that Facebook collects data about what they post on Facebook, how does it relate to being embarrassed to be seen on the toilet?
2. Do we always have to accommodate irrational feelings? What about people who are easily offended by things that things that most would consider non-offensive? Is it immoral for a child to dress as a clown on halloween given that some people have coulrophobia? If you're arguing with someone who believes law enforcement should have access to people's social media and you bring up that stuff posted on social media could be embarrassing, the obvious response is, "Well, too bad. Investigating crimes is more important."
I'm not arguing, I'm just not sure what you mean.
Could we perhaps group together embarrassment, loss of dignity and shame and summarize the point as follows?
"Invasions of privacy cause psychological harm."
Otherwise your argument becomes "I don't understand what these things are or why people care about them, and therefore perhaps they don't matter."
And that's not a strong argument.
It's not possible to understand the parent comment without knowing what dignity is.
> Otherwise your argument becomes "I don't understand what these things are or why people care about them, and therefore perhaps they don't matter."
What argument? I literally said, "I'm not arguing, I'm just not sure what you mean." I was just asking for clarification. I haven't denied anything in the parent comment.
It sounds more respectable if you call it an 'intuition pump'. Whether or not it is rational to want to defecate privately, this point may lead some fraction of those whose mind was previously made up to reconsider their position. In those cases, it can be the beginning of a conversation.
But that is precisely the rational reason. In a free society you want people to act freely. To be able to act freely it helps tremendously to not be under constant surveillance by authorities, powerful actors and/or personal and political enemies. If one happens to have the same cultural background or political ideas as all those on the other side and one is generally a careless nature it helps in not feeling threatened by that surveillance.
The new thing digital surveillance brought is the ability to automate and for search things that happened once. Where in communist Germany the state had to have a giant apparatus that would break into your flat and install microphones, have people constantly following you around and listening in on every word you said. The impact this has on a free exchange of ideas is quite obvious, isn't it? These things have become far less resource intensive in the age of the web.
And if you now say: "Yeah but they were communists" — that is the point. If you are hoping those in power will be respectful because your values (currently) align with theirs; or because your information is (currently) more useful to them when not disclosed to your enemies — then this is a very optimistic view of the world. But things can change, and not all have that sense of optimism.
Not having to think about whether somebody will knock your door with state police in a decade because of something you wrote online is the reason why privacy exist. Not having to censor yourself because you are afraid those fringe lunatics on the opposite political side will destroy your life is the reason why privacy exists. Not having to censor yourself because your violent husband reads everything you wrote is the reason why privacy exists.
So maybe you can read this as: Power that sees what you do can (and does) change how you act, even if they don't come after you. Not having them see you is a good way of not having to change.
> But that is precisely the rational reason.
I'm not following your reasoning here. You list several logical reasons why digital privacy is important (it protects us from nefarious governments, it protects us from violent spouses, etc.). What does this have to do with an irrational embarrassment over pooping?
Whether this fear is rational doesn't matter. Whether these intrusions are never actually carried out and always only remain a faint possibility, a story the actors make you believe doesn't matter.
John Oliver used a similar tactic when speaking about Edward Snowden and the Patrioct Act. Instead of framing it about rights, pricacy and stuff, he talkes about dick picks. It kinda worked? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEVlyP4_11M
When an employer, for instance, is able to request data aggregation services for a break down about your entire life without or with forced consent from you, or able to monitor and analyze every step of yours during working hours, it's dehumanizing.
Similarly, it doesn't matter whether those with access to data regarding you have only good intentions. It may be pleasing to have a store know everything you like and need right in the moment, you still should be able to walk in and out (pseudo-)anonymously when you wish to.
Same with the state. We say not to talk to the police. In trials the determination what evidence can be submitted is always an important step. So why should the police, prosecution, intelligence agencies, or any other entity be able to access or collect data about you and evaluate it without due process?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON
And misleading. Privacy in private interactions (personal or closed groups) is basic human right. But in public interactions (public space or open groups) the concept of privacy is much more problematic. One can argue for less accountability for social progress, another for more accountability to weed-out bad actors.
Seems to me that using word 'privacy' for both of these different concepts is source of confusion. Perhaps we should limit term 'privacy' for private interactions and use some other (like 'non-accountability') for public ones.
I don't see what's so problematic. If someone is in public, they are exposed and obviously don't have any privacy. Same logic applies to data people publish on the internet. People can attempt to create some privacy for themselves in these contexts but it's not really a violation or invasion if some stranger shows up and witnesses things they weren't supposed to.
It's completely different from someone's house or computer. These are our spaces and we have complete control over them. So someone installing sensors such as microphones and cameras inside our own homes is a massive violation of our rights. Everybody understands this. It's offensive when the state does it even when warranted. So it is also not acceptable for mere corporations to turn on our microphones in order to listen to keywords or some other surveillance capitalism bullshit.
Rights to wear clothes. Rights to not speak to anyone they don't want to. Rights against unreasonable search. These are all privacy related, and while we give some up to be a part of society, we retain some as well. Looking at this as black and white (on either side) is an obstacle to finding a sustainable and constructive path forward.
My local Facebook group seethes with an angry discussion just below threats of actual violence - and the actual violence was on display only a short time ago when Back The Blue physically assaulted a black lives matter demonstration (in a smallish city where "BLM" is just earnest liberals as you'd expect). And the miscreants were readily identifiable by Facebook (which hurt their business if nothing else but still basically weren't all that bothered by the situation).
Another thing about the heated local-group arguments is that few people have a good idea how unprivate their situation really is. The paranoia of Bill Gates "microchipping" people is a cartoonish example but there's a vast group people very concerned with privacy but having close to no understanding of what it actually involves (or how much they don't have).
If anything, the noxious effect of massive collection is most evidenced by micro-marketing of a variety of crazed ideas to those most susceptible to them - and employers and landlords being able to harass their own employees for particular things they object to (but lets a lot of things through, and business owners have less to worry about).
1) social cooling is a long-term, slow-burn, bring-pot-to-boil-so-slowly-the-frogs-don't-notice problem. Pointing out some social heat to discredit it is analogous to people discrediting global warming because they've experienced an unseasonable cold snap in their town.
2) By your own description, there are knowledge gaps inside the "social fire" crowd - they don't understand (potential, future) consequences like housing discrimination, work prospects, etc. I don't think it will take more than one generation for these realities to become common knowledge.
3) Finally, people who consider themselves hopelessly marginalized will be susceptible to 'social fire'. People who don't have anything to lose are prone to this (eg, what factors go into someone's decision to get on board with looting?). More solidly situated members of the public, with reputations (salaries, ongoing business concerns, etc) at stake, are likely to be more careful.
We were 'almost' there 20 years ago. We are firmly near Westworld (everything outside of androids).
Online communities have contexts that are just as real, but they have the digital discontinuities we all know and love, so the odds of doing the equivalent of dropping into that work meeting after several beers is much more likely and happens far more frequently.
A separate issue is preservation - of course all this is on Your Permanent Record. And the future only has very different, limited interest in what the context is now.
I don't get the notion that social cooling was scoping itself to only the US, but even if it was, I don't think people are "learning better yet." Quite the contrary.
It's interesting that this is about big data generally and people are reading it as "Facebook".
The total amount of posting doesn't go to zero because not everybody is in the careful category.
I don't know whether the rest are silent lurkers like me, or whether they are bots, or FB is just inflating the numbers, but they surely aren't visibly active. I imagine it's not a special thing where I live, so you'll likely have the vast majority not posting publicly at all while a small minority is extremely loud. If the user count grows (hasn't the growth slowed?), most of it will not be seen by you while you look at posts and comments.
I would have thought this is obvious, but clearly not.
In all human history, efforts to hold back the tide of technological progress have never worked. Instead of adopting a Luddite fear of data and math, we should use both for all useful ends as soon as possible.
The example about cancer doctors in TFA is perfect. "more deaths = worse doctor" is a poor metric, because advanced cases have higher deaths in general, leading to a disincentive to try to help people with advanced forms of cancer. That's a terribly perverse incentive, and one that should be avoided.
Fundamentally, a lot of this stuff comes down to a lack of nuance in metrics, leading to some nasty effects down wind.
Perfect enforcement of rules is rarely a goal of policy. It just sets expectations for behavior, and when violation of policy becomes known remedial and/or punitive measures can be taken.
Should we roll back those laws? Fraud is fine as long as the party defrauded can't find out?
I think you're putting words into my mouth.
Anyway, what's extra difficult is that when using data to build an ML model, you can actually throw away the data afterwards, like source code after compiling a program.
Be the change you expect from the world! Start building sites like this!
It's a strange thing to say I won't know if my message is effective or not without tracking, since we're currently discussing it on Hackernews ;-D
There's another (also brilliant site) linked at the bottom of the original article: https://www.mathwashing.com/
And here's the funny part - you assumed the author won't know, and that's precisely what he's talking about at mathwashing.com - these "algorithms" that are as faulty as people who come up with them.
I doubt you actually read the whole thing with full attention. The message got through to the people it was supposed to get through. I applaud the effort to go without all the tracking nonsense. And whenever I see tracking crap like medium.com uses, I feed it bad data on purpose. It's better to stand true to your message and create a cookieless / trackless site whose purpose is to convey the message rather than use this shitty argument about authors knowing whether they are reaching out to their audience. Precisely because of that thinking we've broken internet where in order to read 512 bytes of text I've to block 50 megabytes of tracking bloatware.
am American.
If you're paying attention you know that you might want to skip the "vocational bootcamp" when you need to do business in China some day. Because you might not graduate!
Let's just skip to the end: Every rebuttal I have to whatever lecture you want to give me could be construed as a whataboutism and could also be construed as simply true. There are various groups of people that would get re-routed outside of the respected due process paths in the US for things they said too. We also consider those problems. Its just not a different enough user experience for me to single out China.
I deactivated my first account 8 years ago, but got back on to re-connect with my old pals and acquaintances from back in the day. For that reason, it was fantastic.
After another year, I realized that I can't actually say ANYTHING interesting on this platform without offending someone. There's a lot of variety in my crowd. I have the sense IRL to know that not everything is for everybody, but that doesn't matter much on Facebook unless you want to spend hours and hours hand-crafting subsets of your friends for different topics (I don't). And I have zero interest in posting selfies or status updates of what's going on in my life, so that made the platform exceedingly boring and a waste of time for me. It's a shame, because it does work really well for "connecting" with people (in the shallowest sense of the word).
Right now is a great time to delete your accounts. The only better time is yesterday.
Yes, that makes me a 'lurker', which is fine with me, though I do use Facebook messenger to chat with some people as well, which is nice.
In hindsight, though. I couldn't be more glad for the push. For at least a few years, I had actively unfollowed a good majority of friends from my feed because watching their gyrations (posing, fighting, echoing, ...) was making me lose respect for a lot of people. I don't need their mental hygiene and low-effort politics rubbed in my face and I'm happier not seeing it.
Looking back, one thing I did conclude was that the death of email was one of the few things that made Facebook valuable. I had email contact for pretty much every person I was "friends" with on FB, but many of those addresses have expired, or they are so flooded with spam that when you message someone, they don't see it at all or not for +a week or so. I'm like that myself - I only look at my personal email once a week, on Friday night.
Also, "social cooling" is an absolutely terrible name for the situation described in the linked site. They should have called it "Socially Mandated Fronting' or something instead of trying to make an awkward and not very meaningful global climate change analogy.
Most non-tech people I know have hundreds, if not thousands of unread messages in their inboxes and will probably miss some unexpected ones.
Since getting off social media, I’ve tried using email to connect with friends and it has been a good experience.
Second after SMS.
Agreed.
I thought it was going to be about "evaporative cooling", how bad behaviour drives thoughtful people out of a group, producing a feedback cycle where bad behaviour is further amplified.
Which is tangentially related to the topic of the link, but different enough to be actively misleading. Unfortunate.
The positions on climate change range from "existential threat to all life on the planet within 20 years and our way of life" to "mass hysteria founded by fault-ridden scientific evidence whose solutions are an existential threat to the global economy and our way of life". These positions in particular are held by a significant percentage of the population of the Western world, and most people cluster near one of these two extremes. In other words, it is an extremely polarizing issue that, for many, colors how they perceive other people, should they discover their positions.
The creators of this website suggest that social media and data-mining are forcing people to self-censor and not freely express themselves, but then proceed to frame the contentious political issue of climate change as a believer/denialist modality. The authors make it clear that they don't want people to have a nuanced opinion on climate change, they want them to conform to the "unquestionable truth".
But it is this form of rigid thinking that causes people to self-censor, not the intangible specter of "big-data" and "the algorithm". If you were employed by someone who made it clear that they are only interested in hiring people who were devout Christian, you wouldn't openly share your atheist views publicly. Western society as a whole is selecting more and more topics, like climate change, where to be on the record holding a conflicting opinion is disastrous for your relationships with friends, family, and employers. This fact isn't a fault of the technology, though the technology might be the reason society is becoming rapidly intolerant of dissent.
Conflict and social guardedness like this is guaranteed to arise when we have a political landscape that is so divided and thinks everything is on the line.
The only thing worse than people who are offended by everything is having to be afraid of offending over-sensitive people.
There's a lot of variety in my crowd
Which is a good thing. It's how it always was. You surrounded yourself with lots of different people with varying opinions. It's how you learned things. It was called being an adult.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scolia were polar opposites on the issues. But they were also very good friends. Because they were adults. They weren't children who had to surround themselves with familiar things that reinforce their own views of the world.
I remember in college, we were encouraged to seek out differing opinions. I remember a guy who once chastised me for not seeking a broad enough range of opinions. He said, "What's wrong with you? Don't you want to be challenged?" My understanding is that sort of thing would never happen on a college campus today.
Be who you are. If people can't respect you for having a different opinion, they're not adults, and they're certainly not "friends," Facebook or otherwise.
You mentioned Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scolia, they were both well versed in law and justice, so it makes sense even if their opinions are different, they can respect each other.
Why have 100+ people? Why not have a small group of high-quality friends, instead of a large pool of low-quality friends?
Once I realized that, it was easier to just delete facebook, and keep in touch with my close friends and people that are in similar studies to myself by using group chat messages, emails or just face to face (not so much this option in 2020)
You can and should. Although at a certain point the benefit of being connected to those people via social media as opposed to say, a group chat via text message or an app like Discord/Slack, diminishes greatly. I think that's the paradox of social media: the only thing it does well that alternatives don't is connecting you to lots and lots of people, many of whom you barely or don't know at all, but the quality of the experience degrades with the number of people you are connected to and the weakness of your connection to them.
That's a rather simplified world view. Let's make an example: I have a bunch of friends who are deeply interested in medicine - a discussion about cancer, what it is, treatment possibilities etc. are a very appropriate topic. I also have a friend who's just been diagnosed with breast cancer. Having that discussion in front of her would be utterly insensitive.
Likewise, it's kind of insensitive to perma-gloat about your new great relationship in front of somebody who just had a divorce.
What topics we can deal with depends on our lives and what's currently going on. Paying attention to those circumstances in other people's lives is the kind thing to do, and has nothing to do with "being afraid of offending oversensitive people"
Remember that guy who gave you advice? He suggest to seek a broad range of opinions. You were in control when you sought out those opinions. Facebook takes that control away - you will see the opinions it considers appropriate for your stream, when it considers them appropriate.
And sure, be who you are. But that "adult" thing also includes respecting other people's boundaries, and social media makes that almost impossible.
This is almost certainly not true. Your idea of what is the norm is being driven by what is actually the exception because that’s what we see on the news (the news almost by definition shows things that are newsworthy and are out of the norm).
Actually, my notion of this is driven by seeing a dsignated "Safe Space" on a college campus, and a "Free Speech Zone" at the University of Houston.
Don't make assumptions about other people.
How many people do you see on average using it though? Are students in wheel chairs the norm of the campus?
Ala - how many people do you personally observe at the "safe space" - or do you even go there?
I make the safe guess that the University didn't spend money on signs and and allocate public space without there being a demand for it. It sure didn't look like an art installation.
how many people do you personally observe at the "safe space" - or do you even go there?
If by "go," you mean "attend," no I am not a student. If by "go," you mean "visit," I did quite frequently when I lived in Houston. But I didn't make a habit of sitting on a park bench with a clicker and monitoring the habits of other people. Can you tell me that it is never used? Rarely used? Never used? Do you even go there?
Though, in an attempt to perhaps please you:
I go to the most liberal University in my state because I was born in the town and got an academic full ride. We pul about 25,000 students in a town with a pop of less than 5,000.
Our safe space office was actually just "repurposed" as it was just about never used. In the beginning in helped spawn some friendly campus programs that meet every now and then as University programs do. Most students who sought the Uni official safe space office migrated to those. Thus, it's purpose was served, and now it's gone.
Hope this helps in your research.
Looking back at your comment: No, you weren't a student who would in any way be affected by the office, yet you still are commenting on it from the outside. Seems... unnecessary. I'm glad you're so concerned about the dispersal of University funds. Must be wanting to know how each penny will be benefitting your community in the way you see fit.
The free speech zone exists so that anti-women's-rights protesters can show pictures of fetuses to students.
The safe space area was made when we found out it was physically dangerous for the student communist and anarchist groups to peaceably assemble in the free speech zone.
During my time at UH, the greatest threat to free speech was posed by the conservative student population. I was physically threatened and harmed on many occasions in my 4 years there.
That makes sense. Whenever I walk into a building with a bathroom, I assume I can pee anywhere in the building.
In other words, more than half the respondents consider expressing views beyond a certain consensus in an academic setting quite dangerous to their career trajectory."
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/09/academics-...
>Heterodox Academy is a group of 4,100+ educators, administrators, & graduate students who believe diverse viewpoints & open inquiry are critical to research & learning. [1]
Does anyone think that a person who joins a group focusing on promoting "diverse viewpoints" is going to have a representative view of sharing controversial opinions? This is a wildly biased population of people to be answering this question.
[1] - https://heterodoxacademy.org/
I'm sure that's also true in the Church of Scientology and a lot of religious congregations. That is how people work. Creating spaces where robust discussion and dissent is respected and productive is actually hard work and requires good management (which Lord knows most academic departments don't have, since the Head Manager is just whoever got coerced into being chair this time).
Nowadays it seems that this role has been forgotten.
I doubt there are any more hate groups now than there ever were; the difference is, these days, people are more willing to call them out for being what they are.
Pointing out extreme cases doesn't make anything in the original statement untrue. It just means those are extraordinary cases. The world is not absolute.
It's impossible to bridge that gap if the other side sees me as an animal, or a monster, or an enemy agent actively working to destroy the country, if not the world
Do don't. You try, and if it doesn't work, you move on. There are seven billion other people in the world to be friends with.
It's the same dynamic, even though Southern Baptists are more mainstream.
Note the keeping secret part - it all stands on gay knowing he is not even in position to say I am gay without there being price.
Some of my friends have done things that my religion considers murder, adultery and sexual abuse.
My life is better for their friendship. Hopefully they appreciate me as well.
And I think _you're_ painting a picture wherein "people who are amplifying minority perspectives in order to help society be more inclusive" are in fact nefariously scheming to control a cultural narrative for...reasons?
There is certainly a line beyond which "Excessive Political Correctness" is unreasonable, unhelpful, unproductive, and disconnected from actual people's experiences. But the latter of these examples, at least, strikes me as a perfectly reasonable piece of feedback. I don't personally find the former to be offensive, but at the same time - I have no reason to disagree with the person making that claim. If they're offended by it, that is a _fact_. It's up to me whether I choose to act on that fact. Personally, I don't consider the words "idiot" or "sexy" to be important enough to insist upon using them, when others have told me that the usage hurts them.
Say that someone is intentionally misrepresenting the situation, and is trying to pressure you into stopping using a particular word even though no-one is truly hurt or impacted by it. What's the failure case if you listen to them? You stop using a word. Big whoop. What's the failure case if you _don't_ listen to them? You continue to hurt and offend people. This seems both more likely and more impactful than the other failure case - so, to me, the choice is clear.
At some point there is a line beyond which if someone is "offended", the problem is with them and them alone. I'd argue policing words like "idiot" (esp. when not directed at someone as an insult) is squarely on the wrong side.
Isn't the aim to have a robust and productive discourse? That means I get to say, "Hey, I don't think this is the right context for the descriptor 'sexy'" and you get to say, "Well, I think it is because (reasons)..." In some ways I sort of agree with you that "At some point there is a line beyond which if someone is "offended", the problem is with them and them alone." If you are "offended" because I say I don't like you using the word "idiot", that's your problem, is it not?
The point is to talk about whether "idiot" is accurate and well-suited to the situation, rather than shifting the conversation immediately to your hurt feelings at having your wording critiqued.
Strong disagree. The same ideas and concepts can be discussed, the same conversations can be had - just with tweaked vocabulary.
Now, if you're talking about not expressing a particular attitude because it might offend someone, but you still stand by the position (regardless of its phrasing) - well, that's a different situation. Any sufficiently important position is going to offend someone - just make sure that you're offending the right people.
> At some point there is a line beyond which if someone is "offended", the problem is with them and them alone. I'd argue policing words like "idiot" (esp. when not directed at someone as an insult) is squarely on the wrong side.
That's fair! I disagree, but I'm not going to say that you're wrong - just that my line is drawn elsewhere. I have not found my life to be markedly impacted by consciously avoiding the twenty-or-so words/phrases that various folks have told me that they find offensive. I can still express the same ideas - I just know that I'm doing it in a way that doesn't distract from my message. If your experience is different - if you find that those words are fundamental to your message, and/or that having the freedom to use precisely the words that you want is more important to you than knowing that those words may hurt someone - that's your prerogative.
> knowing that those words may hurt someone
Some people aren't really hurt but like to erase your message by depicting your expression as hurtful. Maybe they just don't like you, it would be another reason. Your naive line of thinking draws in people that might want to take advantage of you. I don't think it could be a universal rule for the internet.
I hear this fear a lot, and have never seen any evidence of it whatsoever. Not saying it doesn't exist - just that I haven't experienced it. The only people who've ever mentioned to me that my word-choices were harmful did so with an intention to educate and reduce-harm-to-themselves-or-others, not to undermine or silence me.
Never experienced that yourself? Babies do so very commonly when they cry. My understanding is that adults get out of it to a degree.
I guess the vast majority of people do so with honest intend and some don't. If it is about definitions and wording on hot button issues, I think the latter group to be disproportionally large.
And I disagree; and based on that fundamental disagreement, we're never going to reach agreement on the derived conclusion. Oh well.
Well, loosely speaking - if it's a truly "newly offensive word", then the general consequence is that someone will politely take you aside and explain that the reasons why so-and-so a word is not great to use in public, explain the reasons why, and suggest alternatives. If you continue to use it regardless, then you are intentionally signalling that your freedom of vocabulary is more important than showing respect to others - which is a position you are entitled to take, and others are entitled to judge accordingly.
"Public dunks" and vicious whispering (without an attempt to actually educate) don't tend to happen (in my, admittedly anecdotal, experience) for truly "newly offensive words", but rather for those that have already spread far and wide enough that there's truly no excuse for ignorance.
> What if you used the word but had no idea it was offensive?
See above. If you find yourself moving in circles where you fear that you'll be judged and condemned rather than advised, I suggest you re-evaluate whether those circles are truly worth it.
> And how do we police that in a world where more and more things are offensive?
Not sure what you're referring to "policing" (the usage itself, or the consequences _of_ the usage), so this may be inaccurate, but - the former happens naturally through social dynamics, and I don't see why the latter needs policing at all? If people are taking disproportionate damaging action based on speech that is perceived to be offensive, that's an offence like any other. If the consequences are "people thinking that you're a bit of a racist/sexist/whatever", then...why does that need policing.
---
I suspect I come across as naïve for believing that "the Social Justice crowd" are well-intentioned, and that slip-ups will be gently corrected rather than leading to immediate castigation and ostracism. Conversely, to me, the concern that "if I don't keep up with the seventeen new daily offensive terms, I will be shunned forever!" seems like an over-reaction when most "SJWs" treat not-obviously-deliberate-offensive speech as an opportunity to educate, not attack. I suspect, as always, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Our outlooks are products of our environments and experiences - and I've been lucky enough to be surrounded by folks who communicate.
The person you responded to asked how many. The answer is that not many. And it is not like having black friends meant you won't be racist. Nor having wife or mom you like prevents mysoginy. Personal relationships have part only up to the point.
That being said, some nazi members had a Jew they personally liked or protected. It dis mot stopped genocide.
I'm proud you could come up with one guy who was saintly. For the rest of us non-saintly people, it's pretty tough to maintain and tend friendships with people who think we're bad, immoral, subhuman, or otherwise less than. Just makes conversation hard to keep up!
The larger problem is an offended person can do a lot of damage. In extreme cases, offended people have SWATted their targets causing all sorts of physical damage and emotional distress.
Personally, I don't want to worry about getting SWATted because some nobody from my high-school disagreed with my Facebook post. So I'm not going to post anything on Facebook.
The solution is to not worry about them. If they don't like it, too bad. They're not worth knowing.
There are plenty of high-quality people and friendships to be made in the world. We don't need to cling to low-grade friendships just because they're people we already know.
In extreme cases, offended people have SWATted their targets causing all sorts of physical damage and emotional distress
You can't live your life worrying about what someone else "might" do.
The teacher can fundamentally change the course of my life by limiting my ability to take more advanced courses and/or what colleges I can get into. They can humiliate me in front of my peers. They could simply make it impossible for me to learn and engage with material that could be important to my future success.
The fact that a female student has the ability to speak out about being abused _does_ upset that power imbalance, but it would be a mistake to claim that it gives her _more_ power than the teacher.
Either way, power should be wielded with good judgement, and there are certainly consequences on both for using it (and abusing it).
I think it's kind of like the difference between e-sports and real sports. Real sports and e-sports share their competitive nature, but real sports have the endorphins that balance that out with positivity. Online discussion can be antagonistic just like real discussion, but real discussion often has non-verbal cues, food, relaxing atmosphere, small talk, jokes, etc. that balance that out.
Not any more than in days past. People just don't deal with it well anymore.
Possibly because they missed out on three formerly common phrases when they were growing up: "Too bad," "Who Cares?" and "Get over it."
The amazing thing about those phrases is how many situations they don't work for. Berlin Wall? Who cares. 9/11? Get over it. Uighur detention? Too bad.
That being said, I fully agree with the rest of your comment. This deficiency isn't new: Most people in any period of history have been unable to engage with ideas like adults, and there are a host of social technologies that prevent these infantile tendencies from blowing up society. Dramatic shifts in the way we live and engage with others (like those brought about by the Internet age) obsolete these safeguards, leaving this type of person vulnerable to a world of epistemological hazards until new tools and processes are created for them to follow by rote.
See how silly that sounds when you change the subject to something that we know is difficult. "Being an adult" is even more open ended. What does it mean, who defines it? Do you have to be "An Adult" to get elected to office and make rules that others have to follow? Is "An Adult" necessary to implement features on a website that dictate how people interact with each other?
I agree with your agreement statement. Infantile grownups in the past generally did not have a global audience in which they could wreak havoc with, and there issues tended to be local in context.
In what way does this sound silly? We could easily be talking about Dirac and Bohr both learning how to read, in which case "they're so smart, you couldn't possibly do anything they did" would be obvious nonsense. The point here is that exceptional people doing something doesn't imply a high bar, and
> "Being an adult" is even more open ended.
Well obviously. There's no objective test of what makes one an adult[1], so it's inherently an opinion. An adult _can_ do all of those things, though they probably shouldn't, and a big part of what makes the world shitty is down to people like this doing things and making decisions that they shouldn't be, including in the way they vote (it still boggles the mind that people think it makes sense to vote on the basis of a policy you haven't bothered to even _try_ to educate yourself on).
[1] Colloquially, obviously. The legal sense is defined fairly rigorously (though it doesn't mean quite the same thing as the colloquial sense)
From my experience, young people are better at it than adults, too.
Every newborn is like an angel. But they quickly learn and follow parents footsteps. Like infinite purgatory. Some break through, acknowledging that conflicting view can be right. That's an ideal. Sadly a lot of people would die earlier than achieve it.
The frustrating (and silly) thing is that this argument is used a lot to attack left-leaning folks who _do_ engage with many people whose experience and world view are very different from them... like people who are homeless, immigrants from other countries, people who are racially minoritized, people who are disabled.
For many people who don't experience those kinds of life experiences, building relationships with those folks can be really tough and bring into question a lot of the foundations of their world view.
The argument that left-leaning people won't engage with right-leaning people often feels like it's used as an excuse for right-leaning folks to use rhetoric and hold positions that routinely disenfranchise and threaten the safety of the kind of people that left-leaning people have worked to empathize with and build relationships without consequence. That the people who continue to have right-leaning views don't seem interested in putting in the same _effort_ to empathize and build relationships with people other than themselves is both hypocritical and not surprising to me.
Finally, engaging with "challenging" opinions is all well and good as a mental exercise, but building and maintaining a relationship with someone is a project that requires continuous work (even as just a friendship) and I think it's worthwhile to be selective in the people who you put in that kind of work for.
I would like to know how many "right winger" did actively and honestly engaged with feminists texts. Not even with radical feminists texts, just with a mild moderate variety or with those who were radical back then and not anymore. Cause it seems to me that very little. Not that they have to, but they dont go that far in range as they pretend. They do read range where range is within what they like or where range is completely irrelevant to our lives.
It is also currently right wing that seeks to suppress actual fields of study on Universities.
It is also my experience is that many (not all) right people simply "know" the text is stupid without ever reading it. They also "know" that if movie pleases feminist crowd it is bad without seeing that movie.
And working in more conservative environment, I was careful not to say things that could be constructed as near-feminist, because that would lower my "trustworthiness" in other arenas too.
But the ideological subgroup specifically who throw around "listening to other viewpoints" a lot tend to be the kind who seriously engage only with view points comfortable to them. As in, there is talk about uncomfortable viewpoints, but their idea of uncomfortable viewpoint is someone telling them they are superior and they disagreeing cause they are more egalitarian. Which is not uncomfortable at all.
Listening to other viewpoints is like invoking Crocker's Rules. You can't invoke the rules on other people. Only yourself.
You just don't have the information to determine whether you're worth listening to. Because you will always think you're worth listening to.
Care to share your feelings on the far left push to suppress science and mathematics?
> And working in more conservative environment, I was careful not to say things that could be constructed as near-feminist, because that would lower my "trustworthiness" in other arenas too.
The opposite is certainly true today in corporate America and higher education. Making an argument for the existence of a biological basis for sex or denying that all whites are automatically racist is a no-go.
The ideas that the far left is trying to suppress are very much not conservative. It’s an assault on objectivity and rational thought.
If this were true, biology departments themselves would be a no-go. Every university I can name has a biology department. Is there any source for the claim that making such an argument is a no-go, or even any serious scholar (in any field) arguing that there is no biological basis for sex?
>It’s an assault on objectivity and rational thought.
If it were an assault on objectivity, then the scholars wouldn't be using 'objective' metaphysical models to argue for their positions. If they used 'non-objective' models, then the work would lack the normative force claimed. If it were an assault on rational thought, they wouldn't be crafting arguments at all. Would you care to link to some scholarly work which not only argues for the positions you criticize, but also adopts a model which denies objective or rational thought? Philosophically, rationality and objectivity are very tricky concepts. We should have debates on those just as we have debates on most other things.
Sadly this is a thing: https://twitter.com/RebeccaRHelm/status/1207834357639139328 https://twitter.com/ScienceVet2/status/1035246030500061184
It's a motte-and-bailey argument going from "a small percentage of people don't neatly fall into either the male or female category" to "the concept of biological sex is meaningless and the only relevant factor is a person's self-identification".
> Sadly this is a thing:
Neither of the things your point to argue that.
They do argue that biological sex is not simple or binary, but that's very different from “there is no biological basis for sex”.
> It's a motte-and-bailey argument going from "a small percentage of people don't neatly fall into either the male or female category" to "the concept of biological sex is meaningless and the only relevant factor is a person's self-identification".
Except it's not; another thing neither of the sources you point to argues is that the various biological sex features don't matter: each of them matters; where they matter differs.
Unless, of course, by “matter” you mean specifically “provide an excuse to base socially ascribed gender on something other than gender identity”, in which case, sure, but it's hardly a motte-and-bailey argument, then.
Except that's not what the links you posted say. In fact, the very first sentence of the second link says: "First, sex defined: We're talking physical sex here, not gender."[0]
What's more, the same poster says further down: "It is worth noting that I never talk about transgender in this thread. Intersex is not the same as transgender. You can be one without the other, or be both."
So that thread doesn't say anything close to what you think it says. Unless I misunderstood either the twitter thread or you. Which is always possible.
Would you mind expanding on your point? It might lead to an interesting discussion.
[0] https://twitter.com/ScienceVet2/status/1035246030500061184
It's not actually happening. I can imagine what you're thinking of as "suppression of science and mathematics" is pseudoscience.
Don't toe the line and echo approved orthodoxy? You're the enemy! This is extreme tribal behavior.
As a result, there is a chilling effect and a lot liberals no longer feel welcome on the left[1][2]. Certainly don't feel welcome to speak or think openly. This is incredibly regressive, damaging to liberalism and enlightenment values. Seriously, not being able to challenge your own side and engage in dialectic will send us back to the dark ages.
1. https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-left-is-now-the-right
2. https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-left-is-now-the-right/comm...
I don't agree with JK Rowling's take on these issues. But I actually think she likely has made at least some effort to do this. Some of her open letters certainly mention her knowing trans people and sympathising with their experiences.
Although in general I think the gender debate is a prime example of neither side listening to the other. There is a group of people who aren't listening to trans people when they say that they have gender feelings which are important to them. But equally trans people aren't listening to other people when they say that their physical bodies are important to them.
https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1269382518362509313?s=...
And no, simply saying "I'm empathetic!" in a tweet doesn't make it true
https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1269406094595588096
Defending an avowed transphobe doesn't come off as very empathetic:
https://twitter.com/Carter_AndrewJ/status/127078794525190553...
Nor does calling the person who said the following (Magdalen), "immensely brave:"
> You are fucking blackface actors. You aren't women. You are men who get sexual kicks from being treated like women. fuck you and your dirty fucking perversions. our oppression isn't a fetish you pathetic, sick, fuck.
Typically when I try to empathize with people, I don't turn around and compliment someone calling those people "pathetic" and "sick."
EDIT: I guess I got downvoted enough to be rate limited. I only allow small windows of HN time so I'm going to post my reply to the below comment as an edit. Sorry that's annoying but, eh.
Why are you talking about sides? Why are you talking about "trans people" being absolutely right, claiming moral highground, or dismissing viewpoints?
I'm discussing an individual whose words I can point to. JK Rowling. Who are you talking about?
You're engaging in a method of rhetoric that is wide open for abuse by fallacies such as strawman.
If JK Rowling had mad a serious attempt to understand transgenderism, she wouldn't give credence to the idea that it's a fetish.
My wider point though is that both sides seem to be failing to sufficiently take into the other side's perspective. The point about same-sex attraction in the second tweet you link is a good one IMO. I can't describe my sexuality without referring people's physiological attributes. Doesn't that make them socially relevant? A view on gender that completely eliminates the physical components of sex/gender is denying people's realities just as much as one that doesn't account for people's "feeling of gender".
Trans people are absolutely right that people like JK Rowling are treating them poorly. But they can't claim the moral high ground until they stop completely dismissing the viewpoints of anyone who tries to tell them that the physical aspects of sex/gender are important to them, and labelling such people as transphobic. That's not very empathetic either.
Trans person: I feel (this way).
a non-equivalent statement from an anti-transness-person: You are wrong to feel that way; your feeling is false and what you are doing is wrong.
An equivalent statement for the non-trans-person here would be: I feel (this other way).
This business about trans people "dismissing the viewpoints of anyone who tries to tell them that the physical aspects of sex/gender are important to them" is just bullshit. I've talked with and interacted with trans folks and really no one's gonna tell me that their experience growing up as a boy and transitioning into girlhood or womanhood is the same as my experience growing up as a girl. And none of them has ever said that my experience of my physical self is not important, or is transphobic. Like, what? Can you find me instances of this sort of behavior?
Ragging on "people who menstruate" instead of "woman" (pun intended) as Rowling does is not her saying "the physical aspects of sex/gender are important to me". Menstruation is not the definition of womanhood (you do know postmenopausal women exist, right?). If you want to talk about menstruation, talk about menstruation. Don't pretend it's equivalent to wearing nailpolish or getting catcalled or giving birth or trying to find pants with pockets that fit a cell phone. JK Rowling is trying to tell other people about how they should experience sex/gender, not just representing her experience. Beyond being not empathetic, it's intellectually lazy.
Trans man: I "feel like a man", and this makes me like you because "trans men are men".
Me (AMAB, uses label "man"): I don't "feel like a man". That's not what being a man means to me.
Trans man: Well that's what being a man means. It's transphobic to think anything else.
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I feel like trans people are assuming that cis people have the same gender feelings that they do. And while some cis people do seem to have those feeling, many (like myself) don't. I'm not saying that trans feelings are wrong or that they don't feel like they say they do. I'm saying that the feelings they describe don't correspond to gender as I experience it. And thus that a model of gender that defines gender exclusively in those terms doesn't represent my experience.
Whenever I express the above viewpoint I get shut down and told that I'm transphobic. In other words: I am told that my experience of gender is invalid.
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> If you want to talk about menstruation, talk about menstruation.
I kinda agree with this. But I feel like this ought to apply to aspects of gender as well as aspects of sex. If we should about "people who menstrate" rather than "women", shouldn't we also talk about "people who feel like women" and "people who present as women" rather than "women". Taking the "feeling" of being a man/woman as definitive is exclusive because not everyone who has other gendered traits has such feelings just as taking physiology as definitive is exclusive because not everyone who has other gendered traits has the same gendered physiology.
I don't know what trans men you've met, but this is laughably far from my near-universal experience of hearing them say things like "oh god what if the way I assert masculinity makes someone feel bad or invalidates someone else's feelings or experiences." I have no doubt people have said things akin to that (being trans is by no means an inoculation against horrifically bad takes) but basically every trans person I know explicitly has a model of gender that doesn't invalidate your experience of "I don't experience gender like that, but 'man' works well for me, not least because of my physical body."
People may point out that it could be good to pull on that thread and consider the possibility of being agender or otherwise non-binary, but no one I know would call you transphobic for critically engaging with your gender and coming to the conclusion "nope, still don't get anything new from considering this, 'man' it is". Quite the opposite in fact, as even attempting to do so should be a decent signal for empathy with trans people.
At the end of the day, the label is for you however that manifests; whether it's having a mental model of gender where you finally have a place instead of always being pushed to the side, or having a magic phrase that indicates to someone the broad strokes of how you'd prefer to be addressed, the label is only important insofar as it helps you.
>If we should [talk] about "people who menstruate" rather than "women"
Just to clarify, "people who menstruate" isn't woke code for cis women to make trans women more comfortable. It's explicitly inclusive of trans men since many do menstruate and strongly prefer not to be labeled women as a result of that.
This is what makes Rowling's take on "people who menstruate" as well as the strong chorus of "trans women are women" and much weaker echo of "trans men are men" in response to it that much more tone-deaf. Trans men were the people whose experiences Rowling aimed to invalidate, but as usual trans women became the public face of the issue.
>Taking the "feeling" of being a man/woman as definitive is exclusive because not everyone who has other gendered traits has such feelings just as taking physiology as definitive is exclusive because not everyone who has other gendered traits has the same gendered physiology.
For argument's sake, what if your subjective experience of being a man were just so ingrained in you that you never consciously engaged with it? That could manifest the same way ("i don't 'feel like a man', that isn't how being a man works for me"), but now would you have a place in the "feelings" model you've established as exclusionary.
It seems to me that the fundamental issue you describe comes down to the coexistence of "I'm a man because that's just what I am" and "I'm a man because I feel like a man", and the only conflict inherent to that comes when the former group feels pushed out by the latter. I personally fail to see any way that someone embracing masculinity, especially if it's something that's long been denied to them, invalidates the experience of a man who's comfortable enough being labeled a man even without subjective experience of his gender.
I have considered this quite extensively because this seems to be what most people assume my experience is like. But I'm pretty sure I really don't have such feelings. One of the key things that made me sure of this is seeing other (cis) men and women justify or explain things in terms of their gender. I have never felt like I wanted to do something because I'm a man. And I've always hated when someone describes me as man and implies that means anything more than I have a certain physiology, even if the implication is a positive one.
This is very different to for example my experience of sexuality. I'm heterosexual, and I can understand what it is like to be gay in reference to my own sexuality. I have feelings of attraction towards female people, and even though I don't experience such feelings towards male people, it's pretty easy for me to imagine what that would be like.
My experience of gender seems more like what I imagine asexual people's experience of sexuality must be like: something completely alien to them that they can only come to understand through others' descriptions and explanations.
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> I personally fail to see any way that someone embracing masculinity, especially if it's something that's long been denied to them, invalidates the experience of a man who's comfortable enough being labeled a man even without subjective experience of his gender.
Because it implies that "being a man" has something to with masculinity. I am very much not masculine (I do have a masculine side, but so do even the girliest of cis women so that doesn't mean much - but if anything I'm more feminine). I am comfortable being labeled a man only so long as it doesn't come with an implication of masculinity, which in my lifetime thus far it largely hasn't (I was born in the early 90s). Now if I describe myself as a man people start making assumptions about how I feel inside (as you did in your comment!)
What I want is a label that I can use to describe my cluster of male physiological traits without implying anything about my feelings, behaviour or personality. I'm not hung up on that being "man", but I would like there to be some word to describe that aspect of myself and others.
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> Just to clarify, "people who menstruate" isn't woke code for cis women to make trans women more comfortable
Sure, I get that. But "people who present as feminine" isn't code for "trans and cis women" either. It would include men (cis and trans) who present in a certain way, and exclude women (cis and trans) who don't. And the distinction can be important. For example, one of the arguments in the infamous "bathroom debate" is that trans women can be unsafe in men's bathroom. And I think this argument has a lot of merit: it's important that everyone is safe while they use the bathroom. However, the group of people who are at risk in men's bathrooms is not actually "trans women", but "people who are presenting as feminine": a trans woman who was presenting in a masculine way would be perfectly safe because nobody would suspect that they aren't a man, whereas a cis man presenting in a feminine way (say wearing a dress and makeup) would not be because there are prejudiced people who are violent towards males transgressing gender norms, and these people typically won't stop to check what someone's gender identity is before attacking.
I don't see how saying "women" when you mean "people presenting as fema...
But I still feel you're making up conflict when you have this charge that trans people are telling you how you need to experience yourself. It seems awfully self-centered.
Last, I have particular feelings about "people who menstruate" etc because I live with a physician who gets dinged on quality metrics when he can't perform a prostate check on a person without a prostate or a Pap smear on a person without a cervix. As a math person who is pretty literal, my opinion is that we should be clear about the salient characteristic. You want to do something anatomical? Be clear about it, and I'll tell you if I have the requisite anatomy. You want to shop for curtains for your male partner because women born women automatically have better interior decorating sense? Be clear about that, and I can demonstrate you're wrong. Tell me I'm wrong about a math proof or my perception of politics because hormones? I'll show you what female aggression looks like. I don't like folks telling me what I am or what I think because of my hormones, and your last sentences in the second to last paragraph indicate you might do that to me.
I mean... it is what being a man means to you, because that's what you "feel" being a man is.
You are a single cell in a culture. You can't decide for anyone other than yourself what it means to be, say, a Man, a (certain religion), a (I dunno, gamer?). These are identities and they're based on your feelings. Sometimes you'll bump into someone else that uses the same word to describe that identity. Say two "gamers" bump into eachother. Both would say "I am a gamer." One has never played Mario and the other has never played Halo. "You're not a gamer!" they say to eachother.
Of course, when we're talking about gender and sex, there's a lot more at stake, and a lot more historical and cultural tendrils to pick apart. Regardless, whatever it means to you to "be a man," is entirely on you. You don't get to decide for me what it means to "be a man," and therefore you don't get to decide for a trans man what it means either.
On that same note, my definition of what it is to "be a man" has no bearing whatsoever on your manliness or identity! You can feel safe in your identity regardless of what the rest of us are doing. What, are you not confident in your own identity? That's a separate issue, and it's not trans men's fault that you feel that way.
It is really the same process as having any ingrained belief challenged, it is going to make that person uncomfortable because something they took on faith is being challenged. That doesn't mean it's not something that should happen.
Shaming is often more about making the shamer feel good than a rational calculation of persuasive power.
Caster's case has nothing to do with trans people, it's more that she has rare biology (intersex) but happened to be raised as a woman.
Since her rare biology gives her some of the same advantages as men (elevated testosterone) the question is whether it's more fair for her to compete with men or with women.
She can easily beat many women, so some women feel it's unfair for her to compete with them.
I feel like they are.
Specifically, if you believe that "feeling like" a gender makes you that gender, then it seems to me that logically you have to believe one of the following:
(1) That having the physiology associated with a given gender is not sufficient to count as a gender.
This invalidates the identity of people like me who don't experience the "gender feeling" that trans people (and some cis people) talk about, and therefore base their identity as a man/woman on their physicality.
OR
(2) That gender categories are "open" where for example either feeling like a man OR having "male" physiology makes you a man.
But that seems to make the whole concept of gender pointless because people with penises don't share anything in common with people who feel like men (that they don't also share with people who feel like women and people with vaginas) unless they happen to be people who fall into both categories. It also makes it impossible for someone express that they have one of those things but not the other because there is only one label "man/woman" to describe two distinct phenomena.
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If you have a suggestion for how someone like me who has male physiology but doesn't have a "feeling of being a man" (or any other gender) can represent themselves in a system where there is only a single gender identifier and making sub-distinctions is frowned upon (because "trans (wo)men are (wo)men") then I'm all ears.
This is called nonbinary, agender, or genderqueer. This is a fairly established situation. You may come across someone who uses nonstandard pronouns such as "they/them" or "zyr/zem" or something like that. There's even an LGBTQ flag for being nonbinary. (Q stands for queer/questioning as well). If you are assigned male at birth but don't identify as male or any other gender then you may be nonbinary or agender. If you're interested in learning more I recommend reaching out to a local LGBTQ community organization to be more educated about gender identity and to figure out if you might yourself be LGBTQ!
(Additionally on technicality, trans means "anything that isn't identifiying as one's assigned gender at birth". Being nonbinary is a subset of being trans. Society is most familiar with binary trans identity, which is when someone is assigned F/M at birth but identifies as M/F, however this is not the entire set of trans identity. You are free to be assigned M at birth but identify with no gender, and still be trans.)
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> If you're interested in learning more I recommend reaching out to a local LGBTQ community organisation to be more educated about gender identity and to figure out if you might yourself be LGBTQ!
I'm pretty familiar with the LGBTQ community in general, and I have spent a great deal of time over the last year or so reading up about and thinking about gender identity. My view is that the mainstream view in the LGBTQ community where one's gender identity (which label they use - man/woman/non-binary/etc) is assumed to correspond to "a feeling of gender" is quite naive. This is certainly true for some people, but there are also other reasons why people choose to use those labels including having certain physiologies or simply the fact that you were assigned the label and never bothered to change it. It seems to me that these other kinds of gender identity are equally valid and one way or another ought to find representation in whatever system of gender we settle one, but that a "gender feelings" focussed conception of gender doesn't provide this representation.
(one such system would be a system eschews having a single gender label at all and requires that we are more specific about which aspects of sex/gender we are talking about in situations where we need to make gendered distinctions)
You can identify as a masc nonbinary or AMAB nonbinary. These are distinctions that are pretty common to use in the LGBTQ community which is why I suggest not just reading up and thinking but actually going to a community and participating within it. Your local group may even be able to introduce you to other AMAB NB people that you can compare and contrast experiences with.
what i don't care about is how many genders an English department can create. I don't discriminate, but I also don't want to expend any energy understanding or empathizing .
Maybe avoid characterizing your would-be allies in terms of dumb right-wing tropes like "how many genders an English department can create" while you're at it.
Maybe people aren't forcing each other at gunpoint, but it's pretty close.
Furthermore, unless there's more context I've skimmed over (I assume you're referring to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24636899), it's not clear that Coinbase will suffer any negative consequences from this whatsoever aside from being shunned by activists, which I presume is a consequence they're okay with since they published a blog post explicitly alienating that group. The only folks being forced I see are the employees being told to pipe down or ship out.
(also, while it may not be substantive to this discussion, the belief that neutrality, especially explicit neutrality, is tacit endorsement of the status quo is neither extreme nor unreasonable)
This is a direct example of what you are denying, that people are somehow not being forced to participate in these politics. They are, and increasingly so, with very few companies taking such an active stance to combat it.
And yes, neutrality is specifically the absence of any single position. It cannot be an endorsement of anything, be definition. Redefining terms to be whatever is politically convenient to create strawman positions and drama is another tactic used by those who want to force politics into every situation.
Source? I have no idea what this is referring to.
Effective neutrality due to lack of will or resources is one thing. But a declaration of neutrality is a message to other actors that you will not intervene in their affairs. It is a rejection of the cultural norm that extremism (outside the company) should be tempered. Sounds pretty political to me, but maybe you and I are working with different definitions of politics.
"the left" isn't a discrete thinkspace. There is a political spectrum, which isn't linear. The individuals mentioned are still relatively leftist, regardless of whoever is critical or engaging in other disparaging acts. Implying there is 1 left-wing or 1 right-wing is tribal behavior.
There are varied ways to address the issues from different points of view. Parties have switched from one view to the opposing view over time, so by proxy of this we know there isn’t a “right” way and a “wrong” way but rather opposing philosophies that stress one thing over another. Why does one work better now and why will a different one work better tomorrow?
In America, there has always been one side on the right side of history and one on the wrong, as far as health and happiness go. People and institutions switch sides, but the sides exist all the same. It comes down to how considerate you are of your neighbors, here and abroad. It's baffling that such a rich society continues to engage interpersonally with a scarcity mindset. Bootstraps are a myth; give until you can't and then ask for what you need. If we still then have racial issues, class issues, gender issues, religious issues, then the problem goes deeper than economics, and we'll need to face that with the same level of compassion.
We don’t want to have what they had in the old “second world” where the state could bend the will of the people because it held all the cards.
That’s not to deny that we can serve people better. Create access to capital, lessen predatory practices on innumerate consumers, incentivize women to enter more productive areas of the economy, etc.
I don't understand how this would be a valid reason to not give a benefit. Even if that benefit comes with strings or can be taken away, isn't receiving that benefit for a period of time more helpful than never receiving it at all?
That's not an argument against state help & social services per se. It's an argument for being vigilant and ensuring the government serves the people more than it serves itself.
Perhaps. I personally don't buy the "self-made man" arguments. They feel too much like survivorship bias.
Seems like you're concerned about what's mostly a hypothetical when done by the state today- but probably hundreds of millions of people in the US alone are being coerced to do things they don't want to under threat of losing the exact things you're worried about. And in a lot of cases, what's one big thing mitigating that coercion? The very social safety nets you're worried about!
There isn't just one Government in the US. What we have is a system of branches, each of which must agree that a law is acceptable. If just one branch disagrees then it can effect change.
Similarly we are not just one state. We're a federation and individual states can fight against federal laws that their constituents find unjust. Washington and Colorado did just that when they legalized marijuana. It's still illegal at the federal level, but the ATF has no jurisdiction within state lines so they can't do anything about manufacture and sale within state borders.
Consolidating that all under the same umbrella erases a lot of the very complexity that serves to protect you. And you can't accord that complexity to a corporation because shareholders and the board have a level of tyranny not found in our government.
We can elect legislators who are opposed to abuses like Guantanamo Bay and campaign on fixing it.
What can we or the private sector do about abuses in the private sector?
The private sector is not above the law. The problem is that the government is. This is why, while both can misbehave, I see governments as a much, much larger danger to the average citizen than corporations. And the history agrees with me.
>market misbehaving is punished by the market through the consumer.
Can you explain how the consumer punishes private sector entities engaged in human trafficking, for example? It seems there's plenty of evidence that deception and cutting corners is the most market competitive behavior that corporations can employ which allows them to offer the most appealing prices. Therefore market misbehavior is rewarded, not punished by consumers because the price signal is too reductionist to capture all of that.
>And the history agrees with me.
That is debate-able
Sure, a tyrannical government could take away your benefits for having the wrong views. They could also just take away your property in the absence of benefits.
This is genuinely sad-funny considering the state of the US federal government overreach (independent of sitting president), policing, justice and implementation of secret courts and police forces.
In any case, welfare states handle this quite well with a justice system largely independent from the social executive flanked by mandatory legal aid. Which, if anything, has resulted in a power imbalance towards those receiving state benefits.
How is this different than private power? Honestly, I've had to put up with far more arbitrary bs from my HMO than state or federal programs. With my state and the feds at least there is a clear statement of benefits, a clear procedure to appeal, and a solid attempt to deliver on promises.
How well does that compare to, say, your cable company? Or how well have big companies done respecting your privacy? In other words, lots of people get directly screwed by private companies, too.
I'm not trying to say that government programs are the ideal answer to everything. In the USA there is a serious need for reasonable debate, responsible budgets, and a commitment to good government.
There is plenty of potential for abuse with government over reach. But there is also plenty of abuse from government under-reach, too. Isn't it in everybody's interests to have a functioning government? One that that operates under good-faith intentions to follow it's mandate?
Meanwhile, corporations frequently do not have to compete, having either become a monopoly or having agreed upon "standards" without which they insist solvency in their given area would be impossible (as they rake in untold riches in profit). The only check on that power is indirectly through refusing to transact with them en masse. However, as long as their credit is good, they can continue to exist and operate with impunity.
In the end, the question is of the accumulation of which currency determines who is "good" enough to run your life: political clout or money.
Franklu, people who have to be nice to me tend to do better by me than people who just happen to have a lot of money.
Companies are controlled by the market, it's governments we need to worry about and find ways to control and regulate.
Companies are remarkably good at finding ways to control the market. That's why antitrust legislation is needed to protect consumers.
Every government intervention in the market will benefit established players and will hinder startups and thus the markets's self-regulating mechanisms.
There are many other cases where I'd be very uncomfortable trusting these so-called "self-regulatinf mechanisms", e.g. the abolition of slavery, child labour, and racial/sexual employment discrimination.
Modern economics research shows that the efficient markets hypothesis is not true and definitely requires government regulation to operate in the way that Chicago School econ describes it. So that leaves Elections as the better balance mechanism by default.
This is a non-sequitor. The efficient market theorem can be untrue without elections necessarily being better at determining efficiency. I personally don’t believe in the efficient market (it’s why I’m an active trader). But elections, where ill-informed people vote on topics they barely have any knowledge about, risking nothing in the process, seem significantly worse at guaranteeing acceptable outcomes.
Can you go into more detail on how that could be for me? If the EMH is untrue, then there must be some other mechanism besides competition that checks the private sector, no? What would that be?
I'm implicitly lumping "regulation" as part of the Elections mechanism, btw, so I'm assuming you didn't mean regulation as the mechanism.
Meanwhile unregulated fields like software, computers and communication have enjoyed the fastest and most remarkable progress in modern history. Progress which benefits us all every day.
First of all, You seem to be confused because you are mistaking what happens in Russia, Venezuela and China for actual elections. Whatever happens in those places is certainly not what I meant by the term "elections."
Second, You point to "three" (or are those 3 things really the same thing?) successes in competition, each of which were aided by investment authorized by elected legislators. Then you point to one failure of elections and proceed to conclude that competition is the better of the two. It doesn't follow, I'm afraid.
As for Trump, yes, that was the elections mechanism failing. I never said it was perfect. But the Market competition mechanism fails more often, in my estimation. Neither is perfect, but competition seems to create much higher probability for imperfection, abuse, flaws, and suffering.
The effects of free market "failures" are comparatively laughable and always corrected by the free market itself sooner or later.
There is no contest which one is graver. To pretend otherwise is to ignore the reality and evidence all around us.
There are exceptions to this of course, such as government-sponsored monopolies (healthcare, ISPs, utilities). But a lot of that is regulatory capture IMO - we've ceded a lot of power to MegaCorp Inc. which I'm not comfortable with either.
As terrible as a lot of big private companies are, at least they can't waltz into any/every platform (e.g. G, FB, Twitter, etc) and demand everything they have on you like the feds can. No one holds a candle to the potential of govt tyranny, everyone is at the mercy of "the man".
At the end of the day, massive consolidation of power at the top levels of society is never healthy, whatever form it may take.
This in an amusing statement considering that many people consider Google and Facebook to be terrible big private companies.
And note, their power doesn't come from government-sponsored monopolies.
Also, calling utilities and ISPs government-sponsored utilities is grossly misleading; both are natural monopolies due to the capital costs that are involved.
Capital costs do not create monopolies, just an obstacle solved by raising capital. Government regulations create monopolies - there is no way to fix those.
People believing in the so-called natural monopolies lack fate in the entrepreneurial drive, creativity and innovation of the free individuals working hard in their own interest, for their own betterment.
This is a recurring theme that I despise. People need to start to talk about the government in a democracy as "we". You are the government, the state is a collective you are part off and have power over. You are in fact dependent on others, that is the point of a society.
So when someone says, hey, when I joined this society, I was told its people upheld the right for all its members to equal opportunity? But my parents did not have the money that yours did? And that affected my opportunity? So what gives?
When you have the attitude of the government as a seperate entity, it becomes reality. The more you see the government as such, the more it is allowed to become a ruler over others, since that's how you depict it. When it should be the CEO that you, a member of the board, elected, and can booth out when you don't like what they're doing no more, and you also can join the government if you want to contribute more, etc.
Sorry to hijike your discussion about handling the homelessness crisis , but that's a sore point for me. I find it really weak of people to look for someone else to govern them, and I wish people took responsability for their government (in democracies), because they are its owner and fundamentally have power over it. But too many prefer to delegate and pretend they're powerless against the faceless man.
The entire purpose of society, and of a state, is to stifle the motivations of the individual for some group. In most cases it's pretty mundane stuff you give up as an individual, basically 0 cost stuff for a much bigger benefit of working with other individuals in society. Or via listening to the state in regards to the rules and policies they put in place.
But it is foolish to say that they are one and the same.
The entire purpose of a society is to harness the potential of the group in order to enrich each individual life within it.
Stow that scarcity mindset.
Notice I specifically said > for a much bigger benefit of working with other individuals in society.
So, you might want to re-evaluate your bias towards what I said.
This assumes that people are naturally and totally individualistic, which is untrue even at a biological level. People work together instinctually, and they also decide, rationally, to work together. Individual and collective motivations are often the same; and while collective motivations sometimes stifle individual motivations, the former often (if not more often) replaces a LACK of motivation. In fact, the appeal to engaging in collective action in order to fill in a hole of individual meaning (motivation) underpins some of humanity's strongest and most common institutions: military service, volunteer service, protest, religion, work. That is society: individuals working in concert, by each's determination.
>I'm making 0 moral judgements on whether the motivations of an individual are or are not valid.
You're making a moral judgment privileging individual motivation, separating it from collective motivation.
Your argument is simply wrong on its face. It tries to generalize a solipsistic perspective to the rest of humanity, to which it very clearly does not apply. Perhaps only in this thought are you truly as much an individual as you seem to think people must necessarily be.
I share the same argument David Graeber was making in Utopia of Rules, you should give it a read.
Read "The Selfish Gene".
I don't see where in what I said you got the impression I was saying that they are one and the same?
I'm saying that, in a working democracy, you are a part of the government, which is very different from seeing the government as a seperate entity you are subservient too.
> The entire purpose of society, and of a state, is to stifle the motivations of the individual for some group
The point of a democratic society is to create a friendly association with others. For it to be friendly, it kind of requires all participants to benefit and feel fairly treated. In turn, this often means that a democratic society will put a stronger emphasis on the individual than non-democratic alternatives. That is to say, the goal of a democratic society is to maximize everyone's rights at the individual level.
Now yes, that does mean that a democratic society is a group of people that assemble together in order to overpower individuals or other groups that would try to dominate over them through force. Maybe that's what you meant here, but it seems a bit of a sideway conversation. Since they do so in order to protect their own individual rights from being taken by force by others.
And anyone motivated enough can engage even further in the process, become a candidate, influence others, etc.
I find so many people are just complainers, but they barely take anytime to even understand how the system works, I wouldn't be surprised if half the people don't even know what a congressman can do, can't do, and does. And even less surprised if most people didn't even bother reading about each candidate for more than 10 minutes.
I'm not American, but now live in America, and I've literally had to explain how laws are made in the US to many Americans. That's depressing. And it's not like I'm an expert on it, I just took a few hours reading through the wikipedia page and the usa.gov website. (p.s.: It's not better in my country Canada, people are similarly lacking in ownership and awareness, so I'm not trying to point fingers at Americans exclusively)
Yes, we can discuss the system and issues with representation, like being first past the post, and all, but even before that, I think there's just a lack of ownership by a lot of people who don't consider themselves a part of the government, when they are. The word itself means: "the people rule" and is defined as: "a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state". As a citizen of a democratic state, YOU ARE the government.
Meritocracy works (barely) in private corporation but is completely useless in politics.
I take your point, but for an individual this is only true in a very abstract sense. The People may govern Themselves, but I do not govern myself in any meaningful way.
BTW, this idea came up recently on a different article and got some good discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24528467
Isn't it apparent, though, that this type of leverage is inevitable in any societal structure? Some party will have a level of power where it can coerce many others to basically do their bidding at threat of witholding some essential sustenance. In the private sector, witholding employment means poverty and the resulting wretched consequences to health and status.
The proposition that government should be the only one with that leverage is the lesser of many evils, because at least there is electoral recourse against a government that abuses it.
This is opposed to leaving that leverage with the private sector, where there is no recourse, other that not participating, which is exactly their leverage in the first place, as you will be left with no income and in poverty.
There are many cultural assumptions that are built into the comments here. Worth examining.
* "What, you’re against X? Sorry, come correct or lose your privilege to those benefits." Some countries use government to ensure every mom and baby-to-be has prenatal care and food. There is not a belief test there, just a pregnancy test. Could you give an example of the types of belief tests you are against?
I find the US emphasis on church charity rather than government services repugnant in particular because it often is used exactly for ideological coercion. Not all churches, but many, see the provision of services as a way to enforce/reward/punish certain beliefs and behaviors. I've always found that un-christ-like myself but hey I'm just a heretic. A government service that says, "hey, you're 16 and homeless so we will feed you dinner" seems much better and less coercive than a church that says, "you're 16 and homeless so we'll feed you dinner if you pray beforehand and we get to choose your pronouns".
* Many sibling commenters mention employers a lot. That's another cultural assumption that I find interesting. In the culture I was raised in, it was assumed that government help is rightfully directed primarily at the very young, the very old, and the very sick -- in general, people without employers and with fewer opportunities to 'just help themselves' or pull themselves up by their bootstraps. That is, after all, why we formed a bunch of these government agencies -- we as a people, as a community, felt bad seeing 87-year-old men starve to death in their apartments because they had limited mobility and no income, or watching 4-month-old babies refuse to get that corporate job they obviously should've that would've allowed mama who had a debilitating injury from birthing to afford formula for the kid. Ah, self-empowerment: works so well when it results in 4-year-olds becoming trash pickers to help their families, and 92-year-olds to sit by the road (if they even live that long) begging because it brings in a little cash! No. Some of these government programs were formed because there are times in a person's life where all the psychological empowerment and even job skills training classes you want aren't gonna help, but food and a place to live will.
To go back to discussions above this, I still engage a lot on Facebook for political argument purposes. It's boring just talking with people who agree with me (the people I live with, generally) so I do seek out other points of view on Facebook. It is interesting how some folks always slide an argument back to the point they want -- tried talking about Amy Coney Barrett's opinion in a Title IX case with a friend doing a PhD, and strangely enough she kept bringing it back to how universities shouldn't be policing "stuff that happens in bars". I just mention this example because campus adjudication of sexual assault cases and the relationship with Title IX and due process rights is, ugh, a totally different, complicated, legally interesting conversation than 'what happens in bars'. But we can't even have the conversation -- a conversation I feel I can contribute to in an interesting way because I've been faculty at a university and have dealt informally with harassment between students -- because it continually slides back to these fake talking points that dismiss all the important stuff! Is that social cooling or not?
Probably because the vast majority of Americans can only afford healthcare for those debilitating injuries by finding an employer who will sign them up for the employee health plan.
If the results of the latter were proven to result in generally a much happier and more cohesive society, would you be so confident and assured in your opposition and disdain for the approach?
But a whole lot of teen suicide and abortion is due to haters hating (I mean Christians being dogmatic) -- it's pretty well proven that coercive religious dogma is bad for mental health, as well as in the US divorce and abortion rates. The pressure to keep up appearances and lie about who you are and your actual life is not the bit that leads to a happy and cohesive society.
Warning: opinions follow
To reduce scope to something like welfare for illustrative purposes, there's actually pretty broad agreement from both sides that some people just need help through no fault of their own and that at some level, there should be some kind of program to provide that help. And there's similar agreement that people who don't have such a need should be prevented from intentionally gaming/milking a system (getting benefits without a legitimate need). The interesting parts come in two other scenarios: 1) someone who legitimately needs help and doesn't get it, and 2) someone who doesn't need help but does get it. Those are both wasteful and unjust and we'd all like to reduce those cases to as close to zero as possible. But the left and the right disagree about which case is more unjust. The right would like to focus on efficiency and self-sufficiency, so the greater injustice is fostering an environment where you can get assistance without deserving it (which perpetuates and/or deepens the dependence), and you're willing to concede that this means some people who need help won't get it. The left, on the other hand, would like to focus on covering everyone who needs help, and anyone slipping through the cracks is an injustice, but this means that you have to accept the inefficiency of allowing some people who don't need/deserve assistance to get it, and you just shrug and say that's the cost of providing a good safety net.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio
For what it's worth I'm libertarian and lean towards having false positives for any of those three scenarios.
Whether you believe we live in such a system seems like a matter of opinion and outlook.
Obviously there is a lot of room for skepticism as to whether you think the approach works in practice, or if the approach is simply a front to enact changes that will nominally benefit the unempowered but in reality benefit the empowered. But I don't know of many who aren't in favor of something as vague as "helping people", and most genuinely believe they are doing so.
A conservative movement genuinely interested in making sure children are raised in wedlock could endorse routine family planning and reproductive health services, rather than building an entire totalizing culture war out of opposition to them. Otherwise, it's hard to imagine a policy more antithetical to our founding principles than one that compels the reluctant unwed parents of unwanted children to marry.
These issues didn't seem to bother Ben Franklin too much. But: fair enough! A liberal.
I also think this is an example of how conservatives and progressives talk past each other. There's a difference between being in favor of divorce, and being in favor of recognizing that there are situations where divorce is a better option than staying married. Also, there's a difference between being in favor of raising children outside of marriage, and being in favor of an unmarried person or family raising an existing child that would otherwise not be raised by anyone.
Nothing of this sort has by any means been proven.
I’m from a country that probably has one of the highest—if not the highest—proportion of children born outside of marriage. I my self is raised by a single mother, my sister has a son born outside of marriage, and so do many of my friends. This country is also one of the wealthiest in the world and has way less poverty then many countries where child rearing outside of marriage is less common.
In fact you could probably argue just as easily that actively supporting single parents has greater economic benefits then to disenfranchise them.
> While it’s well-established that married parents are typically better off financially than unmarried parents, there are also differences in financial well-being among unmarried parents. For example, a much larger share of solo parents are living in poverty compared with cohabiting parents (27% vs. 16%).3
Also the article you link to and quote is about unmarried couples vs. married couples, the source for these number is confusing to say the least, and focuses on the US where single parents don’t get that much welfare, which neither adds nor removes anything from my point that: single parenting is not by it self a good predictor of poverty.
I'd posit that it's not the benefits themselves that disincentivize such things, it's the rules surrounding how one accesses such benefits does so.
If our social programs didn't penalize such activities (through a variety of a restrictions on applying for and keeping such benefits) and we didn't make people jump through arbitrary and often degrading hoops to get them, all the while denigrating such folks as "lazy" or "greedy" or "worthless to society" I think that there wouldn't be such an issue to discuss.
What's more, at least in the US, there is a long tradition of blaming the poor for their poverty and assuming that it's their fault. Which makes it much more palatable to discriminate against those without means for many people.
But that's objectively false. There are many factors that impact poverty, some of which include specific legal and cultural incentives (both conscious and unconscious) which disadvantage certain people and advantage others.
It seems that your stance is based on the idea that a large group of people simply adopts one viewpoint or another arbitrarily, that those solutions have not changed over time, and that because of this we should treat them with equal merit. I believe this is wrong, for a number of different reasons.
First, it ignores the outcomes of the actual policies as well as the framework of thinking that it supports. Someone who has a "different take" whose outcome changes whether I or my friends can afford health care or not is not an "equal but opposite" philosophy.
To build on that, because it ignores the actual outcomes and treats all ideas as equal, it supports a framework of hyper-partisan thinking, the idea that ideology is about who you are loyal to. In this framework, your belief makes sense: just because we're loyal to different parties doesn't mean we can't be friends! But again, it ignores the very real implications of those beliefs.
Finally, it also concludes that solutions to these problems, and the people who are in charge of supporting them, cannot evolve and improve, only be renewed as a way to for members of a party to pledge loyalty. Bernie is not a perfect leftist, and has certainly had some shitty takes and policies; sometimes people get better (and sometimes they don't). As our understanding of the plight of the common people grows and adjusts to the new realities we are faced with, different solutions will evolve on the left, and that is good.
What opinions about health care policy are people allowed to have, in your view?
What does this even mean?
The wording here demonstrates deep disrespect for people whose ideas, experiences, conclusions and understanding of the world differs from your own.
What I meant to wrote was 3 separate points:
- Bernie is not a perfect leftist
To be clear: I don't hold Bernie to the standard of being a "perfect leftist," rather stating the obvious that he is not one. And while I would love a candidate that agreed more with my viewpoints than him, I don't think he's a bad person because he doesn't.
- Bernie has had some shitty takes and policies
I do believe that Bernie Sanders, the politician, has not always wielded his power in my best interest; for instance, voting for the "Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists" joint resolution that has been used as justification for our military presence in the middle east. I would, in a glib way, rate that vote and the opinions he gave during that time as a "shitty take." I don't think that disrespects him as a person.
- Sometimes people get better (and sometimes they don't)
Sometimes people evolve their politics and beliefs as they learn more and the material conditions which they exist in change, which is good. Sometimes they do not, and that's bad. I do not think that adopting strictly leftist beliefs - of which there are a cacophony of differing, conflicting ones - is inherently good. Rather the lack of evolution is bad.
I'm plucking this bit out because I don't think that's a good summary of his position. He still doesn't "want immigrants to take jobs from locals." He's concerned about corporations abusing immigrant labor to depress American wages. He's long voted for bills to protect immigrants, even while being wary of increasing low-skill immigration. He's trying to find a middle ground between labor and immigration, and that isn't easy.
For an in-depth look:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/2/25/21143931/b...
To be clear, I don't think that it's a right vs left thing. I think that social media incentivizes people to behave poorly. Ben Shapiro had an enlightening discussion with a founder of Vox about the nature of polarization [1], but that's not why he's famous or how he makes money. His audience wants to see him bash unprepared liberals, so that's what he's going to do. Even if he doesn't, some other pundit will simply take his place.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMOUiWCjkn4
As a former Mormon missionary, I couldn't disagree more. I didn't meet many people who were interested in the Mormon church, but I didn't consider them evil. If anything, it was my views on my religion and personal spirituality that evolved enormously over the course of the two years, far more than the 19 years previous or the many since. I learned a lot about myself and my worldview. Certainly a lot more than anyone changed their worldview by talking to me.
So many assumptions piled onto assumptions about people.
Spot on.
It's basically a preemptive strike before anyone gets the idea to point at cancel culture and the like.
I have come to realize that right wingers are brainwashed or people with mental problems or childhood traumas, like our ex president (Alvaro Uribe Velez), who was addicted to kill people with chainsaws, or military men that as part of their training are tortured [1], and are subject to psychological training that change the way they behave.
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3RDT-n6t1s
Edit: I got a couple of downvotes but no one seems to really challenge my opinion, reinforcing my initial beliefs.
As a american center-rightist, I have come to realize that left wingers are brainwashed or people with mental problems or childhood traumas.
Like the millenial kids who grew up without father figure or a stable family.
Like college going students who have been brainwashed by leftists to seek state protection everywhere in terms of safe spaces.
I feel like they are blinded by ideology to believe that there cause is just and their opinions are morally justified and anyone even questioning their beliefs is morally wrong.
Grew out in a stable family, although very corrupt one, I remember handing money to judges and other officials as a teen, and smuggling goods through the Venezuelan border, about 10 members of my family were killed and military service is mandatory here.
> Like college going students who have been brainwashed by leftists to seek state protection everywhere in terms of safe spaces.
College has never been free in Colombia and I've never been in one, additionally constantly the government is trying to privatize primary and secondary education so the poor can no longer educate themselves, you develop your own opinion based on your environment.
All policies implemented by the right wing have had disastrous consequences and are done with malice.
Additionally the Colombian government seems to fight an endless imaginary war against drugs even though every single right wing politician has ties with drug cartels, like the president [1], or the vice president (her siblings were jailed in the US) [2] and her husband was the main partner of one of the most powerful cartel leader [3], or the Colombian ambassador of Uruguay who had a cocaine lab [4], or the father of the ex president Alvaro Uribe Velez who was the main partner if not the boss of Pablo Escobar [5].
1: https://colombiareports.com/we-got-a-president-and-we-got-fr...
2: https://elpais.com/internacional/2020-06-12/la-vicepresident...
3: https://www.insightcrime.org/investigations/invisible-drug-l...
4: https://es.euronews.com/2020/02/14/descubren-un-laboratorio-...
5: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relaciones_entre_la_familia_Ur... https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB131/
In that context, I'm not particularly interested in engaging with the idea that the travel ban is A Good Thing Actually. And I don't think I'd maintain a friendship with someone who thinks that it is. I do not consider this a character flaw.
Disenfranchising issues (such as gay rights, police brutality, immigration, right to abortion, etc.) is not only theoretical to some people, but a real threat to their lives and well being. A person playing the devils advocate arguing for limits on immigration to an immigrant is not only annoying but actively threatening to an immigrant at risk of being deported.
A number of people have full rights to be insulted when points are raised on a number of subjects. In fact they also have the rights to react angrily if the subject is a direct threat to their lives and livelihood. People arguing things often don’t realize that there is a person on the other end of the debate, a person with feelings, like love and compassion, but also anger and disgust. If a subject threatens or belittles, them being insulted or angry is the natural response.
Getting angry is natural, but anger is easy. Advancement of the cause doesn't entail getting likes, hearts or clap-backs. The real work is in persuasion.
This is nonsense. I'm an immigrant who argues for limits. Certain subjects being (subjectively) sensitive to talk about doesn't mean they're unproductive because of it. In fact we'll never get anywhere if we don't talk about them.
Limiting speech arbitrarily, especially over very assumptive beliefs of offense, is a terrible thing. You're not forced to participate in any discussion you don't want to be in but people have a right to discuss it.
> You're not forced to participate in any discussion you don't want to be in but people have a right to discuss it.
Exactly, and if you're not capable of engaging in that discussion productively, don't be surprised if your viewpoints and positions don't get the consideration you think they deserve.
Civil dialogue is the foundation upon which we find understanding in the face of disparate experiences. If you're feelings about the dialogue gets in the way of contributing to understanding, then it is you that is hurting your own cause.
+1 , want to add, almost everyone argues for limits on immigration because without limits that would be an argument for _unlimited_ immigration.
Sometimes we construe ourselves as vastly separated "islands" of ideologies, when in reality we're more like tight clusters. That is we have similar ideals, and differentiate on how to accomplish them.
For example "Help the poor" is often agreed upon, but then argued about "How to help the poor" . (Do we give them tough love and bootstraps yada yada? or Do we give them support, resources and encouragement and yada yada?).
This is not true. We do limit speech, both through moderation (like here on HN), terms of service (e.g. on Twitter, Facebook etc.), codes of conduct (in our workplace), in our legal society (slander, hate-speech, etc.), etc. But also through our moral behavior. As humans we know that some topics are insensitive to talk about around some people (e.g. we don’t tell yo'mama jokes around a recently orphaned person).
Debating against abortion around a person that is at risk of being forced into pregnancy, or against gay rights against a person not allowed to openly express their love for their same-sex partner is a truly offensive thing to do. When a platform limits such a speech it is acting in a very human way.
Sussing an offensive party to protect the rights of the disenfranchised one is what normal humans do in a normal conversation.
Second, if we rewind to the original comment, it's clearly talking about people "who are offended by everything", on a platform where everything offends someone. This is not about rules or regulations, or personal behavior; all of which have very specific context in which they apply.
Rather it's about the lack of engagement with different perspectives by labelling everything taboo at such a scale and breadth as to prevent any possible discussion, and the worrisome self-censorship as a result. You're only reinforcing this point with your sweeping generalizations on behalf of people and situations you don't represent.
If you find something offensive then you are free to not participate, but you do not have the right to limit their speech. You're not protecting anyone's right by doing so, and I find it the very opposite of human to regress towards silence instead of moving forward through reason.
However “people who are offended by everything” is often used as a synonym for left leaning folks (or rather folks in favor of societal diversity; SJWs if you will). Also “shutting down the debate” is often used to complain about when a left leaning person reacts offensively (or even angrily) during a debate. This is regardless of if the preceding comment was actually very insulting or threatening to some people that may be present.
In a sibling comment I explain that—in my opinion—it is actually a good thing if people that hold oppressing and insulting views self-censor after having received angry replies to their offensive views. I‘d like to add now that normally us “left leaning folks” don’t simply label speech as offensive and leave it at that. We—as grandparent points out—we actively engage in the conversation and point out (sometimes in anger) the flaws in the opposing opinion, explain why a thing is offensive and bad, and why we are angry about it. Then we hope that either they will change their view or at least reconsider before they say something like this again.
Again I should reiterate that I am specifically talking about debates that I consider threatening or offensive to some groups of people.
But that's what you just did, and are still doing. Offensive is subjective. Who are you to consider what is offensive to others? Are you in those groups? Are you personally taking offense?
Why did you say immigration can't be discussed? I'm an immigration who discusses it just fine, and I find it annoying and offensive that you act offended on my behalf and shutdown any discussion. I don't want or need that and am fully capable of engaging in the discussion or leaving myself out of it. Engage with the argument or leave it, but stop acting on behalf of others as if they don't have agency. It's just a soft bigotry to think that they can't speak for themselves.
And self-censorship is never good. People holding views that you find offensive don't need to stop doing anything, and this has both exposed bad people and led to revolutionary new ideas. At one point ending slavery and women's suffrage was also offensive to discuss, but good thing we discussed it and actually made progress. Let's not stop now.
I know I didn’t word it perfectly and I understand you might have misunderstood me. English is not my first language and I’m sometimes not as clear as I could be. Particularly in this case I left out the word ‘might’, hoping that it was implied from this being a hypothetical scenario. Sorry for that.
I’m sorry if I left you thinking that all immigrants think this, or are of a certain opinion, I don’t believe this my self and it certainly was not my intention to claim any such thing.
I also don’t hold the opinion that some topics can’t be discussed. Only that it is natural to be insulted if certain opinions in said topics are expressed. Since you mentioned slavery, imagine a public forum about in Pennsylvania in 1849. Some people might think the debate about abolition is only theoretical and might play the devils advocate, imagining and stating arguments that make sense in a theoretical scenario. Who is this helping? Is Fredrick Douglass gonna walk by this forum and think: “I’m glad people are having this debate, I hope this person that argues for slavery keeps posting.” Say John Brown replies stating this for-slavery person “is an idiot” and “should keep silent, for their own good,” do you think that Harriet Tubman would be thinking: “Oh my, I hope John Brown—though well intentioned—will not silence this anti-abolitionist. In fact why is John Brown speaking on my behalf? he was never a slave. We got to keep this debate going if we want to end slavery.” Finally Harriet Ann Jacobs walks by and simply says to her self: “Well, I’m free now, I don’t need to participate in this forum. I’ll just leave it.”
No, this is ridiculous. We don’t stop these humanitarian disaster by allowing bigoted views to persist. If someone comes with an insulting argument based on a bigoted view, the normal thing to do is to insult back and hope they never speak of this again.
> [S]elf-censorship is never good. People holding views that you find offensive don't need to stop doing anything, and this has both exposed bad people and led to revolutionary new ideas
This is a silly argument given the above example.
Remember the topic is about self-censorship and whether getting offended about certain rhetoric is natural, not about any specific topic which might offend people.
Again, so what? It happens and is entirely subjective, and whether it's shared by millions of people or specific to an individual is an irrelevant detail.
> "Who is this helping?"
Who cares? Discussion happens. There is no imperative that it must be helpful, whatever that means. That's yet another subjective judgement.
> "We don’t stop these humanitarian disaster by allowing bigoted views to persist."
Discussion is what determined they were wrong views in the first place. Speech from the opposing side that, at the time, was considered rebellious and wrong eventually won and created change.
> "the normal thing to do is to insult back"
Yes. Counter speech and ideas with better speech and ideas. That is the opposite of (self-) censorship and limiting expression because of potential offense.
You're on the left. Your current political pet issues aren't something you're willing to debate - instead you're announcing that anyone who disagrees with you is a "threat".
A person playing the devils advocate arguing for limits on immigration
Limits on immigration aren't a "devil's advocacy" position, they're the de-facto standard around the world for obvious and common sense reasons.
This is why the modern left is so awful. You take something that every single place in the world does and describe it as being basically the same as clubbing someone over the head. You refuse to even attempt to engage with the vast majority who think your position is nonsense.
This is why "social cooling" happens, if we accept the use of that term. It is a problem created by people like you.
His op-ed in politico from 2016 is a good introduction to the issues he tries to tackle:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/trump-clinto...
There's a palpable lack of self awareness in the comment you're responding too because there is an implicit non-recognition of the very real concerns that immigration presents to people that are hurt by immigration. I'm one of the people that benefits from immigration, but I'm not blind to the fact that some people in the country do not benefit from immigration. Those people and current immigrants are my neighbors and future immigrants are my future neighbors. It's important to consider how immigration impacts more than just current immigrants like myself and future immigrants.
That is a huge, unhelpful generalization. I am pretty far to the left and I consider immigration a perfectly reasonable topic to debate. Most everyone in my circle of friends feel the same way. The 'cancel culture', as it were, is just a subgroup of the left. And frankly, there is a cancel culture on the right, too.
Yes. On this I will agree with you strongly. Both varieties of cancel-culture are essentially the bulwarks of the false dichotomy of American politics - serving as backstops to try to keep people in the middle, which itself is a controlled position.
You're to the left of that. There's actually a lot more to discuss out there, and out to the right of it, than many people realize. For example, broad agreement on rights for workers to a fair wage, benefits, etc. - you'd be surprised how popular that is with the modern American right, when you can get them out from the GOP paradigm and weak, unhelpful talking points.
Nobody actually wants to talk about issues. Bring up anything specific and everyone just goes silent. It's boring, and a bit offensive. People with so little imagination do us all a disservice by expressing it so strongly.
Perhaps I wasn’t clear enough (which is likely; English is not my first language).
This sub-thread started with an ancestor complaining about people being afraid to discuss certain topics because people are too easily offended, this was expressed as a bad thing:
> The only thing worse than people who are offended by everything is having to be afraid of offending over-sensitive people.
The comment keeps going by pointing out that adults should be able to handle these “offensive” topics and debate them like adults.
A grandparent pointed out that there is truth in this point of view, but this is often used as a critique on “the left” which is unfounded since “left-leaning folks [...] _do_ engage with many people whose experience and world view are very different from them”.
I then point out in my comment above that I agree and—further—being insulted and angry when these topics spring up is perfectly natural:
> A number of people have full rights to be insulted when points are raised on a number of subjects.
I think a lot of people have taken the view that since I think being offended when debating the rights of disenfranchised people I must be for shutting down all debate about it. And while I think that is the right thing to do in certain cases I certainly don’t think that nobody is allowed to debate immigration on a public forum.
My point is that—depending on your stance—people might get offended and angry as you are debating this. It might be theoretical to you, but it might be very real to some people in the room. If your stance is really brutal you shouldn’t be surprised if some people—who may have their or loved once lives threatened by that stance—want to “cancel you”. To reiterate, my point is that it is not a bad thing if some people are afraid to voice their opinions in a public forum, when their opinions are threatening to disenfranchised people.
Imagine if Trump announced tomorrow that debates on workers rights were off-limits because they were a threat to the very existence of job creators. And then he tried to even make it illegal, to create a culture where anyone who talked about unions positively was immediately fired? Would the left recognise that as a legit strategy and go, oh ok, I guess if he says shutting down debate in that case is legitimate then it must be?
Of course not. You may not rule your pet topics off-limits for debate. Ever. On anything. Countries that try that in even mild ways have endless problems, though they may not immediately become apparent.
debating the rights of disenfranchised people
Look, I am an immigrant. I have been for 15 years. And I know that until I become a citizen I am a guest. Not a "disenfranchised person", a guest in another people's homeland. Until they make me one of them via citizenship, I have to respect that and act like a guest.
Your (genuinely) devil's advocacy on immigration is that there should be no limits on it, at all. This has become a common theme on the modern left, but why? It's the same as arguing that if a guest is invited into someone's home, then they can immediately turn around and invite whoever else they like to stay in that home as well, whilst expecting the hosts to accomodate everyone without limit. It's not physically or financially possible but it's also morally wrong and a bizarre attack on the very notion of guesthood.
If your stance is really brutal you shouldn’t be surprised if some people—who may have their or loved once lives threatened by that stance—want to “cancel you”.
But nobody is having the lives of their loved ones "threatened" by any of the stances you outlined, which is why people react so badly to this kind of rhetoric. Not being invited to live in a new place is not a "threat", it's not even taking any action at all - it is passive. And for those who ignored the laws and principles of immigration, being deported is only a "threat" in the same sense that society saying you will go to prison for fraud is a "threat" - we use different languages for the consequences of lawbreaking because of the different context in which such "threats" happen.
No I’m not. I’m saying there are topics which are disenfranchising which may offend or threaten a person. If I am offended by such speech (either personally or through a friend or family member) I may react appropriately. My goal may certainly be to silence this speech, but that does not make me an arbitrator does it?
All you're doing here is acting in an entirely totalitarian manner, by expansively defining entire segments of human thought off-limits on the grounds that they're "offensive" - in your mind. So what? Your position right here is offending me, because it's an attempt to disenfrachise people like me who disagree with you. So by your own logic you should recuse yourself from this debate and never speak of your views ever again. Presumably you won't do that, which is how you can tell your position isn't coherent.
By the way, the left constantly promotes policies that are offensive and disenfranchising. Just look at how they treat straight white men. Not big fans, shall we say? Anyone can turn your position around and claim feminist ideas should be banned from discussion because they are offensive and disenfranchising towards men.
And painting those you call "the left" with such a broad brush, and ignoring that there is great diversity of opinion within that artificial, amorphous group is "basically clubbing someone over the head" and refusing to engage with them, even though study after study shows that (at least within the US, and likely across much of the world) we have much more in common WRT the kind of society we want than we do differences.
Those that create conflict from those differences (as you appear to be trying to do) are, if the goal is to create a better society for everyone rather than just satisfying oneself that he/she is right and "they" are wrong, are taking entirely the wrong tack.
Instead, let's celebrate the stuff we have in common, use those more prevalent commonalities to humanize and bring those of us who disagree about the differences together in a positive mode, rather than a dismissive, adversarial one.
The people on the receiving end may well be on the equally amorphous right, or they may be more classical leftists who are more concerned with workers and unions than identity politics, it doesn't really matter. In the end cancel culture is not, in fact, a bipartisan thing - it is virtually always about the same small set of topics and the same people with the same views doing the cancelling.
It's a serious issue, which is why we are seeing more and more discussions of it. It would be great to celebrate that which we have in common, and I'd love to see more of that, but ultimately it's hard to celebrate differences when those differences are being used as justification for "cancellation", something which can have a very negative consequences for those concerned. The whole problem is people who don't respectfully disagree and use rhetoric comparing disagreement to physical violence as a justification.
Save from the feedback of concrete actions being taken (which you want to avoid), discussion by a diverse crowd is the only way to properly surface the harmfulness of a viewpoint.
Making an opinion politically incorrect won't stop people from holding it, they may on the contrary feel validated by it.
To achieve long lasting social changes you have to have a dialogue and convince the other party, if you think the entirety of your opinion is so morally justified that even having further debate is morally wrong then you can never achieve permanent social change it will just be temporary.
Immigration is a zero sum game. No developed country can accept all immigrants wanting to live there. Neither leftist nor more conservative immigration policy gives every immigrant who wants to the opportunity to enter the United States. The claim that left-leaning individual's immigration policy is not 'disenfranchising' is laughable. For every person entering from South America, some number of people cannot enter from another country. You can say this is not the case all you want, but given that immigration does put pressure on a country's resources, this is always true. Similarly, if you let in everyone from South Asia, you will disenfranchise some South Americans, etc.
You can't just say something is disenfranchising and thus non-negotiable. For example, you say the pro-life position is disenfranchising because -- I assume -- you believe it takes away the right of a woman to not have a child. However, a pro-life person would make the obvious argument that actually the pro-choice position is disenfranchising because there is a person -- the child -- who is being killed without having a say in it. Should the pro-choice position now become unmentionable?
"developed": The US and Europe are rich.
"wanting": Other people want to be rich. That's why they come.
If US/Europe worshipped money less, they would be less rich. There would be less incentive for others to come, or for incumbents to keep them out. If you want to reduce flow, reduce pressure.
Here's the thing though: You, and your children, would have to work for a living.
> immigration does put pressure on a country's resources
Does it? Or are immigrants the resource being consumed? Seems to me they do the work. And once their children are Americanized, how many grandchildren will they have? Fewer. The US needs immigrants like a car needs gasoline. It eats them.
> if you let in everyone from South Asia, you will disenfranchise some South Americans, etc.
Only if there's a cap. Which is uncreative. Do the opposite. Aggressively add people to the ranks of the United States.
Imagine: Tomorrow, Trump comes on the TV and, in terrible Spanish, invites the people of Baha California (both states), Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas to hold referenda under Article IV, Section 3 of the US Constitution, about joining the United States. They'd be enticed by what's left of the "American dream", sun-belt voters would get a shot at cheaper and sunnier real estate, and factory workers could go to where the jobs are. The problem with NAFTA is that capital can flow but workers can't. So let the people move freely too! And if the Russians can run a foreign influence campaign to make Brexit happen, why can't the US do a Mexic-enter?
We can make the sum be much, much more than zero.
Namely.. I am someone who is against illegal immigration but I would support mexico joining the usa
Consider also that free migration is allowed within the US borders. Everyone in South Carolina is currently leagally allowed to migrate to California. Is California loosing money to South Carolina because of this?
Again... completely apples-to-oranges comparison. Migrants between South Carolina and California share enough in common that it hardly classifies as migration other than due to the internal political divisions of the United States.
Legal immigration to the US is a zero-sum game, by law, and this is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.
I’m also a little confused as to what you mean by zero-sum by law. Is there a law that states that the federal government has to pay with each immigrant? If a Jamaican immigrant produces growth for the US (say by doing labor and contributing to the economy), then the US has to, by law, pay that growth back to Jamaica? Are we not talking about economic zero-sum?
If the countries they were coming from had better conditions then there would be less need to immigrate, and it would also help far more people. That's what people who are for immigration reform and strong borders want. Why would you rather have countries be worse to stop immigration rather than lifting the others up?
And the vast majority of people have to work for a living so why would immigration change that? Immigrants are not "consumed" whatever that means.
The US, and similar countries, are rich by global standards. A "normal", "not rich" middle class lifestyle there is enviable to "normal" people in most of the world. The argument about "better opportunity and living conditions" vs "rich" is about word choice and connotation. When I say "rich" I mean to call into question what Americans think of as "normal", and to consider how their "normal" is supported.
> to stop immigration
When a patient is sick, you don't want to stop the blood transfusions keeping them alive.
> Why would you rather have countries be worse [...] rather than lifting the others up?
The United States isn't actually better in a sustainable way. It operates a Ponzi scheme: Immigrants are lured in, they do the work, and hopefully they even get a little material comfort, but mostly they are working for the benefit of their children. The trap is that their children end up Americanized, which reduces their fertility to below replacement. Within a few generations they are all dead. Hence the need for a constant replacement flow. Without that, the US would be Japan.
It goes without saying that not every culture can operate in this way. An ecosystem made entirely of leeches will crash; there also need to be hosts.
> [t]he vast majority of people have to work for a living so why would immigration change that?
The incumbents at the top of these Ponzi schemes have easy jobs. They certainly don't pick strawberries.
Those easy lives serve one purpose: They are the beacon that draws more workers in.
The top of the pyramid can be supported because it is constantly dying off.
> Immigrants are not "consumed" whatever that means.
Their culture, which gave them life, is destroyed, and replaced with The American Way of Life, so they have no great-grandchildren. In this way, America is a population sink.
> That's what people who are for immigration reform and strong borders want.
So long as the draw of the American Dream is as strong as it is, any disincentives sufficiently powerful to counteract it will need to be inhumane -- think "children in cages". Laws that cannot be enforced humanely are not legitimate.
There is a limit at which this is true, but most discussion of these issues doesn’t encroach into that territory. As an immigrant from a Muslim country I don’t feel “threats to my safety” when Trump talks about Islamic fundamentalism or extra scrutiny over immigration from certain countries. (It would be pretty odd to declare those topics off-limits, seeing as how the Muslim country I’m from has taken aggressive measures to fight the same exact fundamentalist forces.) I might feel differently if we were talking about putting Muslims in internment camps. But nobody is doing that, even though the left is acting like they are.
Does the US have “too many immigrants?” Until 2007, a plurality of Hispanic Americans (many of whom are immigrants) said “yes.” https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/19/latinos-hav.... Even today, 1 in 4 do. Only 14% say we have “too few immigrants” (which is the view de facto embraced by our current policies, which will lead to increased numbers of immigrants.) Given those views, it’s bizarre to treat discussion of immigration issues as off-limits.
You see this on issue after issue: leftists declare huge swaths of issues as off limits for discussion even to the point of excluding discussion of positions held by large swaths of the groups at issue. For example, 37% of women want to restrict Roe further or overrule it completely, compared to 38% who want to loosen its restrictions either somewhat or significantly. Another 16% want to maintain the status quo. http://maristpoll.marist.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/NPR_.... Supermajorities of women, moreover, support measures like waiting periods.
Or, consider “police brutality.” An editor at the NYT was fired for running a op-ed by Tom Cotton advocating a law-and-order response to violence following the death of George Floyd. Recent polling shows that a majority of Hispanic people, who are disproportionately the target of aggressive policing, think “the breakdown of law and order” is a “bigger problem” than “systemic racism.” Large majorities of Black and Hispanic people want to either maintain existing levels of policing, or further increase them.
In practice, it’s your approach that’s “disenfranchising.” That rule makes the majority uncomfortable with expressing anything but the most left-leaning views with respect to a minority group. For example, Ilhan Omar and Linda Saraour say expectations of assimilation are “racist.” This is not even a mainstream opinion among American Muslims, who are one of the most assimilated groups in the country. (To the point that a majority voted for George W. Bush in 2000.) But a big fraction of well-meaning non-Muslims don’t want to be called racist. So they feel comfortable amplifying anti-assimilationist views, but not pro-assimilationist ones. Since non-Muslims are a huge majority of people, that dramatically distorts and biases the debate around Muslim assimilation in a manner that doesn’t reflect the views of Muslims themselves.
That phenomenon has had a real impact on the debate over abortion. A quarter of Democratic women want to further restrict Roe or overrule it. That viewpoint is completely unrepresent...
In this comment, you depict left-of-center resistance to these discussions as irrational. But of course, it's not at all irrational; in fact, it's probably vital.
There are also special considerations when you’re talking about issues that affect minorities, outside a political context. There, the approach of selectively amplifying extreme positions can overwhelm ideological diversity (or even majority views) within minority groups. The other day, my dad—a blue dog Democrat—expressed his frustration at how “the media has made Ilhan Omar the face of Muslims.” I’ve observed the palpable discomfort people in liberal circles have expressing views on immigration to the right of Omar. They feel like the way to be “allies”—and insulate themselves from being called racist—is to “amplify” views like her’s. But the net result of that is that debate around issues like assimilation—within the left—is totally dominated by these extreme views. And that seriously disenfranchises people. Especially in contexts, such as academic institutions and media, controlled by the left, where there is no need to deal with the potential opposite extreme positions on the right.
[Now I don’t know if this has ever happened (usually I don’t call people misogynists unless they talk about women as objects) but let’s go with this]
We can rephrase this as: Person A says pregnant people should be forced to undergo their pregnancy. Person B says this person in misinformed in an insulting manner.
What might have even happened in this discussion (we are just being theoretical here, right, so we can entertain, right? Or at least we don’t want this topic to be off limits right?) is the following: Person A actually said: “If it were up to women, humanity would be extinct in a generation. Women are evil, and we should not grant them any rights, particularly not the right to determine the birth of their children”. Person B responds: “I’m glad you’ve shown your bigoted misogynistic face. Now we all know what kind of a person you are, and whether we should keep listening to you. Do your self a favor and keep these opinions to your self unless you want to keep embarrassing your self”.
Who here is guilty of shutting down the debate? Who here decided that talking about abortion rights is “off topic”?
Now person B most certainly suggested that person A shouldn’t continue this debate. They also definitely insulted person A. But is anything here in their response surprising? Did they do anything wrong? How about we look at person A in this context? Do we want people like that expressing their opinion? Person B might have insulted person A, and hoped they would leave and never come back, but person A was insulting all women and calling for a whole group of people to have their decisions dictated by other people.
So why am I taking this example? It is obviously an exaggeration and not specifically what we are taking about here. But for all I know this is the kind of conduct that many people say us “lefties” are doing when we “mark a topic off limits”.
Ancestor’s point was this exactly, many people claim that us lefties want to shut down the topic because we get offended by everything. But do we? Are we maybe just behaving in a completely rational way, insulting back people that have insulted us? Asking people to stop that are threatening us, our friends, or people that we know exist?
---
PS: Off course in your example there is another qualifier there: “using federal funds for abortion”. People might have many reason disagree with that including being for forced pregnancies. But now the goalpost has been moved a little hasn’t it? So I took the liberty of moving it in the other direction my self. You provided an example that has probably never happened in reality, so I provide a counter example that also probably never happened, sounds fair?
Apart from that, my hypothetical is one that happens all the time. Article after article denounces policies like waiting periods, which the majority of women support and which exist in other developed countries, as misogynistic: https://www.vice.com/en/article/qkg753/what-its-like-to-endu....
Stepping back, a problem with your examples is the individualistic framing. Abortion undoubtedly involves a woman’s bodily autonomy. But it also undoubtedly involves another living thing. (Regardless of what political rights you believe that thing should have, it’s alive as a scientific matter.) Even Roe recognizes that a societal interest in the unborn child kicks in during the second trimester. (Roe, by the way, is unusual even in developed countries. Where many countries have abortion by law, almost none guarantee it under their constitution. Around the same time as Roe, the Canadian Supreme Court declared abortion to be purely a legislative matter. And the German constitutional court declared allowing abortion to be an unconstitutional violation of a fetus’s right to life. That’s still the law in both countries.) It also involves society generally. The fact that the developed world spends tremendous amounts of aid money assisting developing countries to reduce their birth rates belies the idea that reproduction has purely individual effect. Framing it in purely individualistic terms makes it seem more like it shouldn’t be up for debate, but only because the framing cuts out all the interests actually involved. Likewise, a discussion about immigration isn’t just about the immigrant, but about the society that has to expend resources integrating and supporting the immigrant. When you reframe these issues in individualistic terms to exclude effects on other people, they seem more like things that shouldn’t be subject to debate. But that’s just a product of the artificial framing.
No it’s not. My premise is that there exist some topics that are disenfranchising to some people, and debating those can be insulting or threatening to some people.
I’m not gonna debate you on the merits of abortion laws or immigration laws, we can leave that for another time. Here we are talking about whether it is OK (or even rational) for us ‘lefties’ to get offended by some topics, and argue to an extend where some people might not want to say certain things in a future debate.
I say it is OK, precisely because there is another person with stakes in the topic who might be at risk if terms of the debate are not in their favor. I moved this to individualistic terms on purpose, precisely because some topics involve individuals. These individuals have feelings and you may expect them to react accordingly.
There are obviously some topics where that's true; for instance, no sane person will entertain a debate about re-segregating schools.
But then you have the idea that immigration is off the table because it dehumanizes undocumented people --- despite the fact that even American Latinos generally believe immigration is a colorable argument, or that abortion is off the table because it threatens the bodily autonomy of women --- despite the fact that a very large fraction of women support addition abortion restrictions. The principle just doesn't hold together.
It's possible that we're all just talking past each other, and that all of us acknowledge that there are going to be public policy discussions about these kinds of topics, and we're just talking about why some citizens will refuse to engage.
(Disclaimer: I think we have a moral imperative to issue a blanket amnesty and simplified path to citizenship for the vast majority of all undocumented immigrants, and oppose European-style restrictions on abortion).
Legal immigrants, which is the majority and the ones generally designed by the word “immigrants” (without qualitatif), aren’t being deported. Legal and illegal immigrations are two different topics (social, political, economical), it doesn’t really make sense to mix them.
Also I’m an immigrant myself and argue for some level of immigration control, and that’s the case for every single expat I know.
That wasn’t the subtext at all. Interesting that you think the shoe fits so well, though.
When looking at this and your other reply to me elsewhere in this thread, it does not feel like you're engaging me in good faith.
I think there are a lot more people who think they do this than actually do this. Left-leaning spaces are some of the most homogenous around. I can’t tell you how many left-leaning people I know who were genuinely shocked and surprised that, when it came time to vote, “people of color” didn’t like Elizabeth Warren. Their perception of getting to know “immigrants from other countries” and “people who are racially minoritized” rested entirely on interacting with immigrants and minorities who travel in the same rarified elite circles as themselves and hold the same views. “Center people of color” during the primary became “f--k moderates” after the convention, without a hint of irony.
Of course I’m painting with a very broad brush! Obviously not all left-leaning people are like that. But I do think there is a lack of appreciation for the relationships right-leaning folks have with people who are different from themselves. One of the most racially integrated places I’ve ever been is rural Texas. It’s a function of economics and geography. Left-leaning cities are highly segregated—educated left leaning people generally don’t live and work alongside immigrants and racial minorities.
I also think that it's unfortunate it's so easy to mistake a critique like that as an attack of the left as a whole. Leftist policy should always have the goal of materially making peoples lives better. We should ruthlessly measure and criticize whether we are in fact succeeding in that, both by the numbers and by the lived experience of the people they effect.
The current form of discourse in America is so hyper-partisan as to make that sort of critique almost impossible to do in public, as it comes off as a show of weakness rather than an opportunity for evolution. It's painful.
The ivory tower leftists are now pushing a narrative of pervasive “white supremacy,” pitting whites versus non-whites. And again, the ivory tower folks are being tone deaf. The NYT recently ran an article where self-described “liberal pollsters” asked about the views of Latino people. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/18/opinion/biden-latino-vote...
> Progressives commonly categorize Latinos as people of color, no doubt partly because progressive Latinos see the group that way and encourage others to do so as well. Certainly, we both once took that perspective for granted. Yet in our survey, only one in four Hispanics saw the group as people of color.
> In contrast, the majority rejected this designation. They preferred to see Hispanics as a group integrating into the American mainstream, one not overly bound by racial constraints but instead able to get ahead through hard work.
What the article describes as the views of the overwhelming majority of Hispanics reflects my own views as an immigrant. By contrast, the approach taken by these ivory tower folks is in my opinion unworkable and threatens to blow up something that works about America: our ability to assimilate and lift up immigrant groups. If you look at the data, all immigrant groups are on a path to reaching economic parity with white people. Asians are already there, and Latinos achieve parity within a few generations: https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/135/3/1567/5741707
Ivory tower leftists are leading these chants, amplifying people like Linda Sarsour who call assimilation “racist,” etc. And I think that ends in disaster. Nowadays, I have to keep an eye out to make sure my half-white daughter isn’t being exposed to this stuff. And frankly, I’m a pretty liberal person so this is distressing. I don’t like the direction Trump has gone by alienating immigrants. But there is a good chance that Nikki Hailey is the future of the GOP. Meanwhile, who comes after Biden? Elizabeth Warren, who talks about all of us non-white people as a progressive bloc, constantly assailed by white people? AOC? Ilhan Omar?
How much would a white left-wing person be willing to debate with e.g. a conservative immigrant? Would they treat them as an equal, or even defer to their lived experience? Or would they simply find another, less conservative immigrant, who would not oppose their world-view, and choose this one to be the speaker for the minority?
In my experience, there is not much difference between left-wing and right-wing people in willingness to help oppressed people. Seems to me they mostly differ in style: a left-wing person would probably create a non-profit organization and also write about what the government should do, a right-wing person would probably work under the umbrella of some religious group and also write about how individuals should help themselves and each other. On each side, a few people would actually do something, more people would talk about how someone else should do something, and most wouldn't really care. I am not saying the sides are exactly balanced; I am just saying empathising with people (but also twisting their opinions to better fit your ideology) exists on both sides.
(By coincidence, today I saw a debate where a strongly left-wing person dismissed some complaints of a marginalized person as "anti-scientific", without actually addressing the substance of their argument, just because that person disagreed with some organization that has a mission to help this marginalized community. No more detais, because it happened in a private conversation, it's just a funny coincidence that first I read this, then I switch a browser tab and read about how empathetic left-wing people are. Some of them are, some of them are not.)
Rather, I understand leftist thought to be rooted in questioning hierarchy and power structures, which I believe leads to more readily seeking solidarity with those that are not as well off as they are.
> By coincidence, today I saw a debate where a strongly left-wing person dismissed some complaints of a marginalized person
This does sound like a funny happenstance. My original reply was about this same sort of funny coincidence in reverse; how I often see the left critiqued as being "intolerant" when I frequently see them lifting and amplifying the voices of those who are disenfranchised by the system that they materially benefit from.
> How much would a white left-wing person be willing to debate with e.g. a conservative immigrant?
First, debates are not typical discourse. In my experience, debates are meant to be a show of virtue. Whose virtues you're being weighed against will greatly determine your behavior or whether you even decide to participate at all. I think that Hacker News values sound, well written arguments, which is why I am here posting. :)
Therefore, I think that given the propensity toward identity politics (from both sides) and the difficulty in interrogating the root of the beliefs that immigrant without appearing to be questioning the validity of them, I (as a white leftist) would prefer not to debate them. So, yes, I would rather propose someone whose lived experience might be more similar to theirs - perhaps a left-leaning immigrant - specifically because I would be afraid of either appearing weak in the eyes of right-wing spectators by deferring to their lived experience, or seem like an asshole because I am questioning the validity of their experience. It would be a PR nightmare. :)
In a private, personal setting (i.e. not a debate) I think that talking to your hypothetical conservative immigrant would probably be a great opportunity for me to learn about their experience and explore the root of their beliefs. I hope I would get to share mine as well.
Yes. A political orientation is about - to put it bluntly - which parts of reality you focus on and which parts of reality you ignore. So, suppose we have a group of people who are e.g. simultaneously victims of racism and of high crime in their neighborhood. A left-wing person would be happy to help them fight racism, but would feel uncomfortable hearing about crime perpertated by members of the same minority against their neighbors. A right-wing person would be happy to help them fight crime, but would feel uncomfortable discussing structural racism.
Sometimes the existing structures are oppressive and should be torn down. Sometimes they are necessary for survival. Quite often, they are both at the same time.
Each of these have different interests, a different shared background with you, and are used to different communication modes and different contexts. The idea that you should always talk to everyone at the same time and show them a single monolithic self is just silly. Life doesn't work like that and being a politician is not a job I signed up for.
There's no need to doubt this. It's been well documented in books and newspapers for decades.
What if your opinion is proven to be wrong but you are just not respecting the fact. Does it make sense to respect someone's opinion just because it is an opinion in such a case?
Everyone is not perfect. It is maddening when person with so many flows can't be respectful about another person minor inconveniences.
i) The tendency to immaturity. (This is a social problem.)
ii) The tendency to loud stupidity and stubborn ignorance. Not all opinions need be heard and acknowledged. Reason is a habit that must be practised. (This is a cultural problem. At bottom, it is anti-intellectualism.)
iii) The very modern problem of "victimology discourse". Everyone has lived injustice because, frankly, people are exploitative and "the system" finds abuse to be profitable. But we cannot have free speech and productive exchanges if Victim Points overrule discussion.
In the end, the reflective person will disengage from the dungheap. This leaves only the dung.
This is a very rosy-colored view of a past that wasn't enjoyed by many people except for certain small subsets of relatively-well-off folks whose disagreements were around less directly consequential things (like tax policy) than "some of you don't deserve any rights."
And even then, even in my grandfather's old social circles... still a LOT of sorting going on.
Read "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" for a good discussion from the inside of how American religion has been dominated by sensitivity for decades.
They also were both high status individuals who lived almost exclusively in the world of academic disagreement. It's not that difficult to be open-minded when closed-mindedness has little physical consequences for you.
If you live in a town in Myanmar where some heated discussion on the internet can turn into an ethnic riot and end with you dead on the street, or you're a Chinese shop owner and some garbage on the internet ends with your store being destroyed you get a little bit more careful about the "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me" attitude.
The shifting attitude towards offense isn't so much the result of technology as the article suggests, or changing culture in the upper strata of society, it's democratisation of discourse to people for whom discourse actually matters in the real world. I think this is why the change has been so pronounced in the US in particular. In the US, average people for the longest amount of time had no ability to speak at all, all discourse was 'free' because it was free from consequence for the people who spoke, in practical terms.
> The shifting attitude towards offense isn't so much the result of technology as the article suggests, or changing culture in the upper strata of society, it's democratisation of discourse to people for whom discourse actually matters in the real world. I think this is why the change has been so pronounced in the US in particular. In the US, average people for the longest amount of time had no ability to speak at all
Why did people in the US have no ability to speak? Or have less ability than those in some other country?
Or are you saying that social media took off because those in the US already felt free to speak and then a platform appeared?
because US public discourse has been, in the past, dominated by elites. Politics was largely the domain of the upper middle-class, politicians were largely homogenous demographically drawn from top-tier universities, the media recruited from similar institutions, and so on. So you have a significantly narrower spectrum in what is considered 'political debate' than what is actually present in the population, and the people who are doing the debating are largely shielded in their personal life from consequences because it's a sort of intellectual exercise and filling op-ed pages, not a matter of life and safety. That's what created the idea of 'free' debate, but rather it's insular debate. Culture in the US was predominantly created top-down.
Social media kind of blew this wide open in all directions. You see this take alot these days that Americans 'used to live in the same reality' and now don't, and it's the fault of liberals, conservatives, the media, postmodernism or whatever else. But really what's happening is that Americans never lived in the same reality, but finally middle America, and black lives matter, and metoo get to actually speak up. And that's going to cause much more heat than a bunch of harvard grads in a debate club, because now the people who actually have skin in the game are part of the discussion rather than just the subject of it.
From my relatively small sample of the Czech Twitter, the discourse there is dominated by about thirty journalists and white collar workers. No ghetto voices to be heard; people in ghettos have more urgent problems than to sit on the phone and crank out 60 status updates a day.
I think that this is why there has been such a push back by each of the demographics and movements that you listed. They each have a voice and can be more powerfully organized than ever before albeit in some cases a more superficial basis hence the rise of cancel culture.
Traditionally if you wanted to get a way from push back in your locale you moved. Now that is not an option since so much of your speech is tied to a identifiable account that follows you hence the social cooling.
I think this time of change is a phase of growing pains that might last generations that will see us wrestle with these issues for a long time.
And yet it seems to me as an outside observer that it is precisely American academia that is obsessed with divisive ideologies. The shop owners seem to be way more pragmatic.
Nah. Not everyone has the luxury that you have, of just throwing away their friends like that, even if it is "their" fault.
Frankly, I personally don't care much about politics at all. It is a hobby of mine. But I don't truly care about it.
Why would I give up a friend, to stand up for ideas that I don't really care much about at all?
For some sort of worthless "principle"? No thanks. Feel free to keep your principles if that's what you care about. I don't really value those, though.
I don't think that there is anything at all, in modern day politics that makes that much of a difference.
Individual circumstances and relationships matter much much more than basically all politics in the modern day.
But even if we are discussing things that pass this very high bar of where it matters (So as an actual real life world world, or civil war, and before you say it, the 2020 election does not count as a "civil war" lol), I would still argue that an individual person's ability to effect those politics is very small.
So, for example, even if that other friend was on the "wrong" side of whatever this "very important political topic" is, that person's actual ability to have an effect on that political topic, is so small that I would care more about that person, than their stance on this issue.
Since it's used for jobs, housing, loans etc. everyone becomes risk-averse and artificially nice. And more and more alike externally.
We're not there yet but excessive surveillance is definitely worth talking about.
This is a load of gilded age nonsense. There's never been any point in history where people deliberately exposed themselves to uncomfortable truths about people they considered other as part of "growing up".
I'd really challenge you to think about when you think this was. Was it in the 80s while gay people were dying of aids while straight people ignored their plight?
The 70s when mainstream american society treated anti-war activists as terrorists?
The 50s and 60s when white people literally moved out of cities and into suburbs to get away from black people?
What you're experiencing isn't "people failing to communicate with people with diverse views," but the internet finally forcing people to coexist with social groups they could just ignore until now. You have to exist on the same site as people who have been deeply harmed by the systems that benefit you and you're scared of that anger and those people's unwillingness to accept your desire to stick your head in the sand like your parents could.
At the same time that we are scoffing at the closed-mindedness of the past, in realms like politics, people were _better_ at working together across the aisle at some periods in History. Obviously, not the Civil War era, but for much of the early 20th century, as an example. Just because a lot of people are bad at something does not mean it isn't a laudable goal or practice.
> "internet finally forcing people to coexist with social groups they could just ignore until now"
How so? The internet has made it much easier to isolate and block than ever before. That's exactly why there's so much division today.
> "you're scared of that anger and those people's unwillingness"
What are you talking about here?
In person or not, everyone has a social filter on who they interact with. Your wealth, race, gender, orientation, interests, and location all act as filters against who you'll interact with, let alone be friends with. If you go to Harvard, how much relative opportunity do you think that gives you to befriend someone who isn't a rich white person? Especially, ya know, when only white people (white men, even) could even go to Harvard.
These filters are more or less permeable by the culture and scope of your life, but if you think there's some magical moment in the past when white people by an large all had black friends or rich people all had poor friends, you're dreaming.
It's easier now to experience perspectives alien to you by a country mile. It's also easier for them to intrude into your life.
Somehow, it's the most privileged people are the most likely to call this intrusion an attack. To call people wanting to re-establish boundaries with them a violation of their 'right to free speech'. Funny that.
A few things are true about wealth distribution, it's empirically become more concentrated and also more localized to elite urban areas. When people from this urban elite start calling everyone else privileged and intolerant to the point that they don't deserve a voice.. it's not a great look.
You (rightly) acknowledged that you can be privileged in some areas but disadvantaged in others, but seem to take the stance in a previous statement that there is no progress, just "gilded age nonsense" because there are still marginalized groups.
We can acknowledge progress while still admitting there is a lot of work to be done. There's no reason to treat them as mutually exclusive. My worry is that those who take the alternate stance ironically end up alienating potential allies. Or, to butcher the old idiom, they fail to realize that expecting perfection can get in the way of progress.
I would certainly say that on social issues I do not believe there has been enough progress, but there absolutely has been a lot of progress.
On the specific issue of bubbles, I have argued for a complex view that the nature of the boundaries of people's social bubbles have changed. As I don't think there's a good way to measure this I take as a baseline that it may have largely stayed the same but the way we experience conflict over it has changed.
Social media I think does, however, represent an exponential growth in how much "outside perspective" people are exposed to, as well as the intrusiveness of those perspectives. All those other communication inventions required filtering perspectives through layers of privilege (media, basically).
On social media though I can post a tweet about my lunch and have someone from across the ocean tell me I deserve to die for who I am in the replies to it. No one in history has ever had to face that level of forced interaction on so mundane a social act until now.
And that's why we put up walls. To get back to where we were 20 years ago. Not because we can't handle "disagreement", but because when I'm eating lunch I don't want to be told I don't deserve to live.
I think where the disagreement may be is that the internet (defined as the applications, not as the infrastructure), and social media in particular, isn't optimized for open communication or sharing different viewpoints. It's optimized for capturing our attention. Unfortunately, the way it often does this is by hijacking our psychology; one way is by confirmation bias and another is by inducing outrage (which strengthens our pre-existing beliefs). The flow of information is not "free"; it's curated to the ends of the attention economy so even while there is a lot more availability of information, it's passing through some filters that may not be the most productive for society. In other words, it's designed to reinforce our pre-existing beliefs rather than challenge them.
Those filters become social media's own "layers of privileges" to a certain extent. I think the downside with those compared to previous media is that the new filters are much more difficult to interpret compared with, say, a newspaper's political leanings.
All those characteristics you mentioned are outward and secondary to the one that matters the most - the way you think. The original post said "varying opinions". Your beliefs, character and worldview are far more important than what you look like and you had to actually communicate with people to understand this. This built much better dialogue and interactions.
Now it takes a few taps to block millions based on assumptions and the most tenuous associations, as well as surface attributes like you mentioned. Someone merely liking a post you disagree with is enough to end a relationship. New perspectives being easier to experience also means they're easier to block, and the latter is the issue being discussed.
As far as "right to free speech" is concerned, I don't see what it has to do with this but regardless you also have a right to not participate in any discussion. Nobody is forcing you to talk, and nobody ever could.
My assertion is simple: people have always lived in bubbles (honestly this is so blatantly true it's hilarious anyone even tries to argue against it) and the internet has only strengthened those bubbles in so far as it has forced people to confront the edges of them more readily.
No one ever had to "block millions" until twitter existed. The concept was meaningless. Every day of anyone's life before the internet every single person was ignoring the lives of countless people who had no way to reach them, an effective but implicit block on literally everything uncomfortable in the world.
>the internet has only strengthened those bubbles
I’m having a hard time tracking whether you think things are better or worse now, unless you are asserting the contact hypothesis is wrong
I don't think this speaks specifically to whether or not "things are better/worse now," it's a criticism of a particular pop-psych trope angle of measuring it.
I think the contact hypothesis is correct. People interacting with people they're bigoted against will generally ease or counteract their bigotry.
I also think that people overestimate the degree to which contact happened in the past and mistake modern forms of 'bubble-friction' (for lack of a better term) being more visible than the silent, implicit kinds in the past for it being new.
Middle class and rich white people literally left north american inner cities to struggle on their own with reduced tax bases to escape having to interact with black people. They did this quietly, and they did it in a way that appeared individualistic and rational.
The effect was far more profound than any possible consequence of being blocked on twitter or yelled at on facebook, but it was very easy to ignore happening.
I think some of the work by people like Tristan Harris and Renee Diresta support this. The attention economy works in large part simultaneously on outrage and confirmation bias. To some of the parent comment points, not interacting in the real world may short-circuit the ability for us to confront different views while simultaneously acknowledging others humanity.
>white people literally left north american inner cities to struggle on their own with reduced tax bases to escape having to interact with black people.
White flight is a real thing, but I think the plight of these cities is much more complicated than to be distilled to a single feature like race. As an example, Detroit went from one of the wealthiest cities to bankrupt in a generation. White flight is part of this, as is corruption, as is poor economic diversification, and a host of other issues.
This is, quite literally, what the original poster was saying though. Nobody is arguing that bubbles never existed (again let's please avoid the extremes) but that they were much more permeable before.
Of course you don't interact with those you can't reach. Some barriers, physical or otherwise, will always exist. However people who did reach each other would interact much more freely because you didn't have any other way to know more about them in the first place. Now your social reputation precedes you, even if it's not created by you but rather an amalgamation of data points constructing some skewed halo, and it's used to stop interaction before it can ever start.
That's the fundamental issue raised in this thread. Do you not agree with this premise?
Also, extremes are useful tools for examining assumptions.
As for the rest, in so far as online interactions have different boundaries and background information levels, I think you have to work harder to demonstrate that these interactions aren't (current covid-world aside) in addition to rather than replacing in person interactions people largely had before. Until we're all walking around with google glass to tell us all about everyone we meet, you are still free to go talk to the person on the street corner about their life.
But even then, your social status has always proceeded you to some degree. Again, your race, visible evidence of your wealth (clothes, haircut, etc), visible elements of queerness or lack thereof, and visible gender, your language and speech patterns are all elements of social signalling that have always acted as barriers to communication between in and out groups of those people.
On the internet, some of these can be mitigated or erased. On the street, while dating, in the workplace they cannot. They are data points that tell someone a lot about you (as with social media, within some error bars) before you even interact.
Again, these are changes in the structure of the outer edges of our bubbles and do not argue for a change in the scope or degree of our bubbles on their own.
How is that working for you?. This kind of forced one dimensional thinking is the issue rather than having discussions and building consensus around these very complex and sensitive topics.
Most of the people attacking other people online haven't been deeply harmed by anything at all. They're just parroting what they hear in their online echo chambers. The signal to noise ratio in the discussion of issues that really do affect people is moving to mostly noise. Most of the time it's mountains from molehills, just to virtue signal for attention. Nothing constructive is coming from it. In fact, I'd say it's dividing people more than ever.
That most people only express things to people that they thing would be accepting of what they said. Even if they might not agree with it, they'll at least accept that it's okay to hold those opinions.
Once you cross the line into "Expressing this opinion will cause negative social consequences to me" then people start self-censoring.
https://fs.blog/2020/09/spiral-of-silence/
> In anonymous environments, the spiral of silence can end up reversing itself, making the most fringe views the loudest.
Now in 2020s Gay people are accepted in the mainstream society.
> The 70s when mainstream american society treated anti-war activists as terrorists?
Anti-war activists are no longer treated as terrorists.
> The 50s and 60s when white people literally moved out of cities and into suburbs to get away from black people?
Segregation has ended.
All of these positive changes have come by "You surrounded yourself with lots of different people with varying opinions."
If the people were so rigid with their views as assume them to be then these positive changes would have never happened.
Ignoring that your statements are optimistic at best. Some gay people are accepted into mainstream society. Anti-war activists absolutely have recently still been considered terrorists. Hell, anti-RACISM activists are actively being called terrorists by the government right now which goes to the next thing, which is that segregation as a legal concept has ended but turning neighbourhoods white is still absolutely a thing.
You have revealed yourself too early. Disinformation requires more finesse.
We moderate ourselves differently at the bar, with our boss, with our wife's aunt. Maybe you don't drag contentious politics to your inlaw's dinner chat or sex anecdotes into work conversations. The OP's point is about applying this moderation across the board, because on FB everything is. This context breeds a culture of banality.
This website is discussing a broader and scarier implication, but the what the OP is describing is already at full (I hope!) maturity.
Right and wrong. I don't think a ton of young people in the 60s were hanging around with people who voted for Nixon. But its true that in a world where (all the white people) go to the same bar, there's a social pressure to meld and focus on common understanding.
The divergence between the 2 ends of the wedge issues is as large right now as it was in the 1800s. The reason we are not literally having skirmishes across state lines is because we are more geographically mixed now (cities vs rural).
Its not a maturity thing anymore - its that we're actual enemies of each other, and not just at the wedge issues anymore. We have similarities like "shops at Target" and "wants their family to do well" but that doesn't prevent open conflict. Ideologically we are actually, really divided, and fundamentalism is the coin of the realm.
Thing is, I /know/ for a fact that most people are not this stupid. But I also understand that these days it's every man, woman and child for themselves, so I can sympathize with the innate need to blend in.
Past dictators and totalitarian regimes from the history books, who wanted people to have zero ability to think for themselves could honestly look at this situation we're in right now, and feel so much pride that they might even blush a little bit; meanwhile Carl Sagan is turning over in his fucking graves.
And character limits.
All the obvious "blue check-mark" people have zero insight at best. There is a whole weird world of small follower count people on there. Small communities. People with unique ideas. People that will actually respond to replies.
Again, I don't think it an addiction you should necessarily cultivate, but there is value to be had.
social pressure predates humans. it's pervasive and our teenage years (especially) are spent coping with/negotiating that. the difference with facebook is that it's potentially unbounded in reach and visibility (in nearly all cases it's not, but every once in a while, something blows completely out of its social circle). as with many modern phenomena, the risk-aversion this induces is out of proportion with the actual risks because of that potential (but not actual) reach and visibility, amplified by memetic social networks that trade in novel (whether true or false) information. in short, the worry over the effects of offense are greater than the potential effects themselves.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24629098
If you really don't get value out of a platform then it's definitely a good thing to withdraw, but personally... I find there are plenty of interesting things I can talk/post about without flipping any major rage behavior. And I have lefty, liberal, and conservative friends, religious and anti-religious friends, friends who are interested in high/intellectual culture and friends who are not.
I do sometimes offend people. Anything that prompts people to evaluate themselves or their models of the world or their particular value-set runs that risk. Sometimes I have things to say that are likely to do that. Like, for example, the suggestion that maybe a personal capacity for diplomacy has as much to do with the ability to hold wide-ranging conversations as much as the foibles of platforms or people do.
Some topics are especially difficult, but there sure seem to be approaches that minimize the heat-to-light ratio in discussions.
It allowed you to define different views and audiences for your profile from your friend list.
I loved it, though building the lists was awful awful.
Now its even harder to edit the lists, and they hidden three layers deep and you can only view them on the web browser.
They should bring them back.
The reason really was politics. I've never learned anything new from these posts, they tend to just be the more bombastic restatements of things that everyone already knows about. I think they're a form of social signaling or posturing (people want to establish themselves as the most for or against... whatever their in-group is for or agains).
There's a funny onion article I've always enjoyed, "I don't like the person you become when you're on the Jumbotron".
https://sports.theonion.com/i-dont-like-the-person-you-becom...
There are people I am friends with, but I wouldn't want to be around when they're drunk. I feel the same way about some people on social media. The problem is, they tend to be the ones who dominate the platform. And it's new, so we're not really aware of the dangers - but I actually do think it may have a lot in common with alcohol addiction.
I don't bring my friends to work with me, except once in a very great while about ADA topics. I don't need my work life to be affected by the activities of my social circles.
I wasn't getting much out of it anyway, it was easier not to play (leave and say I didn't have one).
Online we're all on teams. If anywhere in your post history you indicate your on a different team then we need to say mean things to each other.
In real life I have very liberal , very conservative and somewhat indifferent friends. I've also dated a variety of folks with different political leanings. I've largely stepped back from social media due to this. Why am I going to get into arguments with people I don't even know ?
If you want to connect with people, I suggest meet up groups. It's very easy to make friends you can actually hang out with. I would say to prioritize doing things you want to do. Like I'm heavily into tech talks , so I attended a ton of those.
I'm fairly optimistic next year the vaccine will be out and things will be somewhat normal.
Killer feature
FB messenger censored the private message and refused to send it, claiming it was against “community standards”.
These sorts of logged-forever, censored platforms are absolutely chilling speech, person-to-person, even in DMs, and you wouldn’t even know when it happens to messages sent to you.
https://twitter.com/atomly/status/1309632274908946434
> that's my only way to keep in touch with them
That means that you can’t communicate with them, even in DM, in a way that’s not logged for and filtered by a remote party whose interests are not your own. It’s only a matter of time until this is abused by the state.
https://sneak.berlin/20200421/normalcy-bias/
Also part of that agreement, when I comment on their post.
That's where most problems arise for me. I typically unfriend people when they're offended when I question their post.
The people designing Google Groups were clearly on a mission to fix social media. Their bosses had a different mission: to force all Google services into a single account, unified around some "Facebook killer" that was just going to magically work because, y'know, it's Google.
These differing goals came to a head with the "true names" debacle, which Groups never recovered from. But Google did get its One True Account out of it, which is all they really wanted.
It was becoming a game of technological whack-a-mole on Google's back end to manage account information across apps. For example, was a user logged into Gmail also logged into YouTube? Were they logged in as the same person? How do resources get unified across different apps, since that's behavior users assume should work? What applications had authority to act on a user's behalf, in what contexts, And can we provide a better way to support that functionality than requiring a user to give their whole password to a third-party system? And when an account had to be banned for being abusive, what precisely got banned? previous to account unification, it was a shotgun depending on who did the banning and in what context.
True names was, in my opinion, a misstep. The account unification goal was a great idea.
This is called "context collapse"
https://www.rewire.org/context-collapse-online/
https://fanlore.org/wiki/Context_Collapse
You might know what to say and how to say it in each context, but this becomes impossible when the contexts are all collapsed into one.
The two aren't completely inseparable. Social media and the modern internet drive the kind of digital puritanism you are describing, and social media and the modern internet are largely based on monetization through advertising, which is driving the social cooling the website is describing. But the two are different phenomena, and I find the one you are describing much more relevant and terrifying than algorithms tracking my clicks to curate my advertisements and Instagram feed.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/institute-for-precar...
I think this "social cooling" is related to this generalized feeling of "precarity," the feeling that your place in society can be suspended or deleted in an instant. Whether the agent of this deletion is a state actor (China), a corporation acting on behalf of a state or advertiser (YouTube/Facebook/Twitter), or just ordinary people not acting on any agenda but just carrying forward the anxiety they experience internally. I don't find the latter particularly scarier than the first two since it doesn't carry as much of a threat with it. I certainly didn't experience it as such; but just a minor annoyance and general dissatisfaction with Facebook as a product.
I find it ironic that so many took my top-level comment to mean something was wrong with my social universe; as if, instead of the obvious solution of eschewing Facebook, my solution should be to separate from the people in my life and find better people who I could be on Facebook with. The assumption that it's healthy or even possible to "cancel" people out of your life for not passing some arbitrary standard of behavior is ludicrous to me (and, I would think, to any sane person with family ties, work relationships, etc.). Other people are messy, unpredictable and sometimes awful, but we do need them, and they need us. I think they have internalized this experience of precarity and turned it into a weapon they can wield against others, like an abused person becoming an abuser.
I can see a lot of the parallels there. Precarity and "social cooling" are two very similar perspectives on the consequences of surveillance capitalism. It's still difficult to sell the idea that there is a systemic underpinning for feelings and experiences that, for most people, will only be interpreted as exclusively personal.
The real risk is that the ultimate popular reaction to these systems will not be civil.
"A simple way to forecast the future is to look at what rich people have today [but didn't have 10 years ago]; middle-income people will have something equivalent in 10 years, and poor people will have it in an additional decade."
Indeed the Varian rule was coined by the FT journalist McAfee as you mentioned (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varian_Rule), though as a counter example, presidents don't really count. Politicians can be wealthy but, like criminals, they're never rich.
[citation needed]
Certain communities retain pseudonymous, such as a good portion of Hacker News and Reddit. Although, I see many people posting more and more revealing information on Reddit these days, as it leans towards becoming like Twitter and Facebook.
Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14585882
edit:
The author also replied to some comments in that thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=socialcooling
I think the key points are:
- Data allows the projection of stereotypes on everything you might be involved.
- Rating systems create unwanted incentives.
I don't think social credit systems are crazy, but they are extremely dangerous and easy to get wrong. Their memory should be limited, and their use should be controlled, opt-in, show-to-see, or whatever might be relevant.
Netflix Trailer https://youtu.be/R32qWdOWrTo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive_(Black_Mirror)