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The internet has made defensive writers of us all

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Re: The internet has made defensive writers of us all

#101

Post by 13thLetter »

delecti wrote: post #58
puredemo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you're saying it's fine to be racist against whites, but offensive to do the same thing to your personal "in-group." Little ironic, lol.

Often, when people are referring to racism, they're referring specifically to Institutional racism. As a general rule (because everything is naturally full of gray areas) it's considered to be impossible for whites to experience institutional racism in countries where we're the majority. So while a PoC could certainly be bigoted against whites, it wouldn't be accurate to say that they're inflicting institutional raci…

" As a general rule (because everything is naturally full of gray areas) it's considered to be impossible for whites to experience institutional racism in countries where we're the majority."

Sorry, what? Considered by whom? Because we should have a word with these people about how unimaginative they are.

For one thing, there are plenty of ways a member of group X could experience institutional racism in an X-majority country. Perhaps they live in a Y-dominated region of the country, or work for a Y-owned company, or group Y has more political/economic/cultural power in society despite being a minority, or they work for an organization whose policy is to hire and promote Y preferentially.

More generally, I don't see the purpose of desperately insisting that institutional racism can never affect group X. To say that group X can be harmed certainly doesn't mean that group Y isn't harmed more. It's a weird and pointless linguistic game that harms the purpose of achieving equality of opportunity by gratuitously driving away allies.

Re: The internet has made defensive writers of us all

#102

Post by niccaluim »

jsprogrammer wrote: post #24
WalterBright wrote: post #5

One of the common methods people use to attack posts with ideas they don't agree with is to take the prose literally. This is much like the "work to rule" form of protest that unions use, and the "letter of the law" rather than the spirit of it, and of course all those "zero tolerance" policies.

One approach to resolving this would be to not make statements that are literally not true and to correct statements that are literally not true to not be literally not true.

Sure. Come up with a bulletproof definition of truth and falsity in language and we'll get right on that.

It's ok. We'll wait.

Re: The internet has made defensive writers of us all

#103

Post by dkarapetyan »

kelukelugames wrote: post #18

As engineers, we are hardwired to nitpick. Coming up with counter-examples is the default response. Instead, I try to say a supporting example first. This helps me learn from other people's point of view. Edit: Though I admit I don't do the best job on HN. :/

I once had a discussion like this with a marketing VP. She didn't understand engineers and how they talked to each other. Conversations between engineers always seemed like arguments to her when in reality they were just poking holes in logic and programs to make things better.

Re: The internet has made defensive writers of us all

#104

Post by squeaky-clean »

ghaff wrote: post #86

I'm not sure I buy this argument at all. I've certainly heard the argument enough times that it's less critical to get everything right on the first pass on the Web because you can always update it. I'm not a particular fan of this mindset but it's out there. And I'd note it's the offline pubs that are far more likely to still have people in a fact checker role--however vestigial. And making errors of fact too many t…

> I'm sure we could all name columnists/bloggers who are more interested in being controversial than in being correct

I can't name any, so your comment is wrong, and I don't care to respond to the rest of it, or even acknowledge that I read it. Of course I don't really mean that, but I feel this is the kind of pedantry the article is talking about, and not true factual incorrectness.

The Twitter account linked to only has 36.2K followers, not 39K, so that paragraph is incorrect and stupid. ...Except the important detail here isn't the exact number of followers, just that there's a large amount. If this were a scientific paper on the number of followers various humor accounts gain, then yeah, I would be all for ripping this apart. But it isn't, so it's irrelevant.

Writing defensively is more than just being factual. It's being overly factual where it doesn't really matter, because a vocal minority will likely yell at you otherwise.

Re: The internet has made defensive writers of us all

#105

Post by m52go »

proksoup wrote: post #27
Florin_Andrei wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one of the surprising side-effects of the Internet that anything whatsoever you might say in a public forum can potentially offend someone, somewhere, somehow.

I recently watched Slavoj Zizek speak about how political correctness is a more complete totalitarianism. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tndXr-oQxxA I am optimistic the video has some relevance to this discussion.

Mises recently published an excellent article on this topic, titled "PC is About Control, Not Etiquette"

https://mises.org/library/pc-about-control-not-etiquette-0

Re: The internet has made defensive writers of us all

#106

Post by trhway »

on the other side, that guaranteed exposure to unexpected and harshest criticism is a great beauty of the Internet (it is like street fight with no rules vs. strictly regulated fights under rules of some league) - if you're not afraid (which is easily achieved by for example staying anonymous :) you may explore many ideas much more boldly, deeply and widely and be able to hear arguments and criticism of them not available otherwise elsewhere. As a result, Internet taught me that i may be sometimes [fortunately very infrequently] not right and/or just plainly mistaken. That was a huge personal discovery :) , a bit painful, yet it is percolated even into offline life - whenever i hear some crap at the meeting, etc. i now sometimes give myself a second or even 2 to entertain the very improbable idea that that crap may be worth something what i just don't see right at the moment :)

Re: The internet has made defensive writers of us all

#107

Post by kelukelugames »

dkarapetyan wrote: post #103
kelukelugames wrote: post #18

As engineers, we are hardwired to nitpick. Coming up with counter-examples is the default response. Instead, I try to say a supporting example first. This helps me learn from other people's point of view. Edit: Though I admit I don't do the best job on HN. :/

I once had a discussion like this with a marketing VP. She didn't understand engineers and how they talked to each other. Conversations between engineers always seemed like arguments to her when in reality they were just poking holes in logic and programs to make things better.

Which is great for code reviews, but terrible for sensitive topics like diversity, etc.

Re: The internet has made defensive writers of us all

#108

Post by geofft »

puredemo wrote: post #30
kelukelugames wrote: post #6

I feel compelled to write about race issues because I am a person of color. The issues directly impact my life. But I'm afraid because readers might be pissed off enough to get me fired. :/

Excuse my ignorance but do Asians "count" as people of color? I thought that usually referred to Latinos and African Americans? I know that university admissions PoC don't include Asians, in fact most admissions standards are stacked against them.

The usual term I hear in university admissions contexts is "underrepresented minorities," which is generally taken to not include Asians.

There are contexts where Asians are underrepresented; political representation comes to mind. In those places "people of color" makes more sense.

Re: The internet has made defensive writers of us all

#109

Post by Avshalom »

jsprogrammer wrote: post #77
WalterBright wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Babies are not smarter than dogs, but they are certainly people. There are also people in vegetative states.

In what way are dogs smarter than (or equivalent to) babies? What value is there in such a statement: This dog is at least as smart as this baby? What does smart even mean?

Well I mean okay it's not rocket science or anything but my schnauzer is a certified cosmetologist. What's your baby got?

Re: The internet has made defensive writers of us all

#110

Post by munificent »

noonespecial wrote: post #95

The phenomenon of the nitpicky someone-on-the-internet-is-wrong type comment is so prevalent, I thing we need an acronym like tl;dr for it. How about "willful misinterpretation; doesn't justify response"? Wm;djr

Great idea. And if anyone is confused, this thread is already the #1 result when you Google "Wm;djr".
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