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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

#141

Post by TeMPOraL »

danieltillett wrote: post #71
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.

Walter you used a capital P. This means the group, not individual people. "People" the group are smarter than any "dog". "Babies" the group are smarter than any dog too :)

A proper application of the Principle of Charity would lead you to assign more probability to the theory that WalterBright put a fully-formatted sentence inside quotation marks, with a dot at the end and... a capital letter at the beginning. Therefore, his "People" are just "people", and the capital P only marks the start of the sentence.

;).

Re: The internet has made defensive writers of us all

#142

Post by TeMPOraL »

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?

> What does smart even mean?

Precisely. That's why it's better to stick with the principle of charity :).

Re: The internet has made defensive writers of us all

#143

Post by yummyfajitas »

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…

Institutional racism is defined (according to the wikipedia article you link to) as unequal statistical outcomes and unequal statistical treatment (e.g. group X being more likely to live in poor neighborhoods), sliced by race.

White people can certainly experience this in countries where they are the majority. As an example taken directly from the wikipedia article, white people significantly underperform Asians on standardized tests, they are more likely to live in poor neighborhoods, have worse health, and are disproportionately likely to be "targeted" by police (also they commit less crime).

Can you cite any piece of evidence in favor of institutional racism by whites against blacks that doesn't also support institutional racism by asians against whites?

Re: The internet has made defensive writers of us all

#144

Post by TeMPOraL »

OvidStavrica wrote: post #43

I am fairly new to Y-Combinators Hacker News. Unfortunately, I've run head-long into this very issue on this forum. It ruins the experience. There is value in communicating figuratively and/or with metaphors. When creatively solving problems, looking for trends or drawing a hypothesis out of the ether, it is often desirable to avoid specifics. In my opinion, one's inability to comprehend and respond to any given stat…

Welcome to HN!

Since others covered the topic of metaphors, let me give just a quick practical hint instead. Ignore the downvotes. That is, try and detach yourself emotionally from them.

Even the most controversial opinions get a fair hearing if you take little care to keep them civil. Not politically correct, not hedged every other word, just civil. Still, even if Jesus himself were to write a HN comment that goes agaist status quo, he could catch occasional downvotes. Because people are people. But what ultimately matters here is if people engage with your argument. Catching a few downvotes is totally worth it if it leads to a constructive discussion.

And yes, you can expect that even most benign comments will occasionally catch some random downvotes. Your comment may get down to negative karma for a while, but it usually settles back to a positive score within an hour or two. Karma system isn't perfect and people aren't perfect either; hell, it's easy to get downvoted by accident because up and down arrows are way too close to each other, especially on mobile :).

Re: The internet has made defensive writers of us all

#145

Post by outis »

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. :/

You're being dishonest here. Your choice of words paints a certain picture, but we all know what kind of people get people fired for their controversial opinions, and they wouldn't go after a self-described poc for talking about race. The example you give further down (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10859834) shows that you know how it works in practice, which is why I'm saying "dishonest" rather than "confused".

Re: The internet has made defensive writers of us all

#146

Post by evincarofautumn »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #132
evincarofautumn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Programming is an applied form of constructive logic. A program that works is an example (existence proof) that its specification (a theorem) can be fulfilled (proven). When we review code, we’re generally trying to disprove—looking for ways in which the program doesn’t fulfill the specification.

If that's true you're missing lots of opportunities to strengthen good behaviors and ideas.

I removed all the hedges from my comment. Apparently that was too much. I agree with you too.

Re: The internet has made defensive writers of us all

#147

Post by 13thLetter »

delecti wrote: post #120
13thLetter wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" 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-majorit…

I know it's lazy to just link to a Wikipedia article on the subject, but I'm going to anyway, because I'm too lazy to address all the things in your post when you can do your own research. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism The fact is, the occasional inconvenience on whites in America (as a convenient example) from occasional pockets of bigoted blacks is fundamentally different from the regular impac…

Sorry, no, I'm not going to click on that link. As you pretty much realized yourself, just linking to Wikipedia and saying "read this, I'm too lazy to explain my point of view" is not going to convince anyone of anything. This is a discussion, not a classroom. You're going to have to do the legwork yourself.

Re: The internet has made defensive writers of us all

#148

Post by [deleted] »

outis wrote: post #145
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. :/

You're being dishonest here. Your choice of words paints a certain picture, but we all know what kind of people get people fired for their controversial opinions, and they wouldn't go after a self-described poc for talking about race. The example you give further down ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10859834 ) shows that you know how it works in practice, which is why I'm saying "dishonest" rather than "confus…

[deleted]

Re: The internet has made defensive writers of us all

#149

Post by TeMPOraL »

scrollaway wrote: post #133
linkregister wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that HN is one of the rare forums where this article doesn't apply. Usually the top comment in a particular thread contains the least hedges and most enthusiastically espouses a particular opinion. The comment is not usually overly bombastic (though it sometimes is). The comment almost always adopts the majority opinion on HN. Posting a comment not aligned with the majority opinion carries a risk of at most -…

It's not just the downvotes. They don't help, but it's also the responses. There is a major psychological effect from getting attacked for stating an opinion you might hold to heart. As an avid reddit/hn commenter, I feel it often. I don't really care if someone disagrees with me on something minor, but if it's something I truly believe is important and I see people disagreeing with it left and right and downvoting a…

Hey, thanks for opening up!

Yes, there is a psychological risk you take when you state an opinion on a topic that is important to you. The more important, the more disagreement hurts.

There isn't much one can do about opinions of others. We all try to keep things civil here, but it doesn't always work. Not immediately, at least. I remember the discussions after the last Paris attack; some comments were awful and literally heartbreaking, and I too was feeling a mix of anger and despair.

> What if it's, for example, similarly insensitive and disgusting comments about islam/muslims? I don't just feel awful being around that person, I feel crushed by the amount of people who would agree with it. I'm quite afraid of what happens when such opinion is widely held. I feel like I'm looking at a lifetime of awful and I feel crushed by it.

I recognize that feeling. Frankly, I prefer hanging on HN so much because it sometimes seems like one of the last few bastions of sanity on the planet. Back after Paris, my Facebook feed was literally breaking my heart, and it was HN that reminded me that not everyone holds harmful beliefs.

Anyway, when you see knee-jerk attacks and hurtful behavior, I recommend judicious use of the downvote and flag buttons. That's what they're for, and they seem to work pretty well at keeping the discourse at proper level.

Best wishes to you and your fiancée. Stay strong!

Re: The internet has made defensive writers of us all

#150

Post by TeMPOraL »

jxramos wrote: post #121
geowwy wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scott Adams suggests calling it "outragism". http://blog.dilbert.com/post/109482303301/outragists-are-the...

"I coined the word outragism so victims of it will have a powerful word of self-defense", what a fantastic idea! Word equipment/equipping, good stuff.

Fantastic, except what you get is an arms race, and then someone pulls out a conceptual superweapon[0][1], and the whole topic becomes an irradiated, barren wasteland that won't be able to provide any value for a couple of few years.

[0] - http://squid314.livejournal.com/329171.html

[1] - http://squid314.livejournal.com/329561.html

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