Obviously this discussion is INCREDIBLY DANGEROUS to post online, so this video is not mine and not my perspective but: #meToo, every time I, as a Cajun lady, walk into any kind of game store, tobacconist, gas station, or grocery store in the United States of America.
American friends keep saying over and over and over again that this is "unique" to American culture but I have never felt this under threat in any country I've ever been in with the possible exception of Austria/Poland between 2014-2021. I am so used to "hackers" in the MIT/CSAIL sense covering up the damage of other academics in order to protect "their own" and it's not ever been cool, and I refuse to respond to anyone who expects me to reply to anything here ever in Yiddish.
And as someone who is in a real sense a convert to Judaism not from it: I am 110% unsurprised to see this get downvoted. It is simply not safe online in many spaces where we discuss complex techincal issues, especially in games (electronic or otherwise) to center the experiences of more powerful, more affluent, less Jewish, more "properly" white perspectives.
In startups we do this every single time we choose countries with complex racial histories (like everywhere, but for example Canada and New Zealand) and then try to target for affluence or similar markets rather than serving the downtrodden. That sort of behavior embeds some negative values imo.
It's funny that you should mention the MIT sense of the term. I was very influenced by this line from The New Hacker's Dictionary, which came out of the MIT hacking culture:
"[T]he ties many hackers have to AI research and SF literature may have helped them to develop an idea of personhood that is inclusive rather than exclusive — after all, if one's imagination readily grants full human rights to future AI programs, robots, dolphins, and extraterrestrial aliens, mere color and gender can't seem very important any more."
It has been a rather rude awakening to realize how much hacker culture is the opposite of that. They see the most powerful and intelligent people as looking like themselves, and see their exclusion of anybody else as proof that they were right about it. They believe in a "meritocracy", but define themselves what constitutes "merit", and it just happens to be the things that they're already doing.
I don't know what's actually going on in Cambridge, Mass, but Hacker News brings me every day evidence from their successors in Silicon Valley. I see so much intolerance here.
I refuse to respond to anyone who believes esr over jwz or other pr gnus services, personally. But I never "matriculated" into MIT or CSAIL, despite having direct connections to the Fine Institutes of the Commonwealth of the People's Commeanweal de Cambervillained of Nouveaux Anglishteary Albion Perfidioux. I just picked up their trash in the 90s-2000s and failed out of my BA/BSc+MFA.
Or in more direct langauge: the Tech Model Railroad Club was not the only group that were bigger fans of safe operations of tiny tracks and switchways. SNCF and the rest of Europe use different lingo for consists and that's life and safety critical training even with duplo blocks.
> No, sweet summer child, you can't simply dispel this with a single JPEG.
How can we know unless we try? And watching the news, I haven't seen them try once (this issue is no exception - it seems media in general is allergic to graphs and data).
Unfortunately, I cannot try it. I'm not published by any media company, and posting it here would prove nothing - readers here are highly non-representative, so results would not generalize.
To clarify, I don't think it would be a panacea. As you say, the most hardboiled would dismiss it. But it would surely help.
>And watching the news, I haven't seen them try once (this issue is no exception - it seems media in general is allergic to graphs and data).
"media in general" publishes graphs and data all the time.
>Unfortunately, I cannot try it.
Sure you can. Just find one of the many forums or groups where such people hang out and post the graph. If you're correct, the cascade failure should be near instantaneous.
But those are exactly the most hardboiled - I'd fully expect them to reject the graph as fake. But just because some racists are lost causes, does not imply all who harbor racist fears are beyond saving.
If you really believe, as you stated, that "To dispel the false white replacement conspiracy theory, all one needs is a single graph (...)" then I implore you to find such a graph and get to work. If you're correct, it should be easy, and white supremacists aren't difficult to find online right now. Call it a weekend hack.
I predict you'll have as little luck with anyone as with the hard-boiled types, simply because human beings in general, much less those in the thrall of extremist belief, don't operate the way your original comment suggests. In fact, I suspect it's more likely you'll be radicalized than anyone will be de-radicalized.
This video is not for converting the racists, it's for talking to people who don't want the racists to win. Period. I think Jean-Paul Sartre was right when it comes to Réflexions Sur la Question Juive / The Anti-Semite and Jews:
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
There is no convincing them. They argue in bad faith. White Replacement Theory is at its core both anti-semitic, anti-black, anti-"outsider/other". It is not responsive to data, it is responsive to being rejected by those of us who are listening hard enough that those motivated by anti-semitic, racist nonsense eventually hear it. Genuine human connection, not just charts.
Ah yes, a great response here: "Please don't be racist towards people different than you" with a reference to one of the greatest wealth and race based forms of discrimination the world has known. I'm not at all against the peoples and cultures that suffered under Marxist-Leninist or Marxist-Leninist-Maoist domination and oppression from 1917 to today. But I refuse to tolerate the idea that a group meeting with HR is anything like the actual "struggle sessions"/"denunciation rallies":
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denunciation_rally
- https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9ance_de_lutte
- https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%89%B9%E9%AC%A5
Using that term to describe a meeting for a few hours over hot or cold non-alcoholic beverages is not only showing ignorance of history, it's demonstrating that you tolerate and embed racist notions of the unimportant of the real suffering of Chinese and other peoples relative to the minor burden of on the job training, especially if you do more of the white-collar end of technical work.
Read a few books on the history of that term before using it again, or I have to assume that you literally would rather scare off anyone who has a heritage of suffering under ML/MLM domination rather than hire someone who is considered part of your in-group.
Slight bit of additional context for those who can't be bothered to click the link at all: Shelf Stories is presented by a doctor of psychology who uses that lens to examine his primary hobby of physical games. As a game designer and programmer/implementer: I'm much more inclined to trust him on the psychology side and he usually gets how things relate to games pretty well too.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 47.9 ms ] threadAmerican friends keep saying over and over and over again that this is "unique" to American culture but I have never felt this under threat in any country I've ever been in with the possible exception of Austria/Poland between 2014-2021. I am so used to "hackers" in the MIT/CSAIL sense covering up the damage of other academics in order to protect "their own" and it's not ever been cool, and I refuse to respond to anyone who expects me to reply to anything here ever in Yiddish.
In startups we do this every single time we choose countries with complex racial histories (like everywhere, but for example Canada and New Zealand) and then try to target for affluence or similar markets rather than serving the downtrodden. That sort of behavior embeds some negative values imo.
"[T]he ties many hackers have to AI research and SF literature may have helped them to develop an idea of personhood that is inclusive rather than exclusive — after all, if one's imagination readily grants full human rights to future AI programs, robots, dolphins, and extraterrestrial aliens, mere color and gender can't seem very important any more."
It has been a rather rude awakening to realize how much hacker culture is the opposite of that. They see the most powerful and intelligent people as looking like themselves, and see their exclusion of anybody else as proof that they were right about it. They believe in a "meritocracy", but define themselves what constitutes "merit", and it just happens to be the things that they're already doing.
I don't know what's actually going on in Cambridge, Mass, but Hacker News brings me every day evidence from their successors in Silicon Valley. I see so much intolerance here.
Or in more direct langauge: the Tech Model Railroad Club was not the only group that were bigger fans of safe operations of tiny tracks and switchways. SNCF and the rest of Europe use different lingo for consists and that's life and safety critical training even with duplo blocks.
How can we know unless we try? And watching the news, I haven't seen them try once (this issue is no exception - it seems media in general is allergic to graphs and data).
Unfortunately, I cannot try it. I'm not published by any media company, and posting it here would prove nothing - readers here are highly non-representative, so results would not generalize.
To clarify, I don't think it would be a panacea. As you say, the most hardboiled would dismiss it. But it would surely help.
"media in general" publishes graphs and data all the time.
>Unfortunately, I cannot try it.
Sure you can. Just find one of the many forums or groups where such people hang out and post the graph. If you're correct, the cascade failure should be near instantaneous.
I predict you'll have as little luck with anyone as with the hard-boiled types, simply because human beings in general, much less those in the thrall of extremist belief, don't operate the way your original comment suggests. In fact, I suspect it's more likely you'll be radicalized than anyone will be de-radicalized.
There is no convincing them. They argue in bad faith. White Replacement Theory is at its core both anti-semitic, anti-black, anti-"outsider/other". It is not responsive to data, it is responsive to being rejected by those of us who are listening hard enough that those motivated by anti-semitic, racist nonsense eventually hear it. Genuine human connection, not just charts.
Using that term to describe a meeting for a few hours over hot or cold non-alcoholic beverages is not only showing ignorance of history, it's demonstrating that you tolerate and embed racist notions of the unimportant of the real suffering of Chinese and other peoples relative to the minor burden of on the job training, especially if you do more of the white-collar end of technical work.
Read a few books on the history of that term before using it again, or I have to assume that you literally would rather scare off anyone who has a heritage of suffering under ML/MLM domination rather than hire someone who is considered part of your in-group.