Twitter Suspends Prominent Alt-Right Accounts

Since we are getting to the point where the HN formats are making lines be quite short, I would just like to say thanks. My goal by continuing the discussion was to see the view and understand the arguments when discussing groups with power as a source for racism (and by extension, other ism's). Out of happenstance, only two days ago I also listened on a keynote that highlighted the importance to listen and see the human in on-line discussions.

> Powerful groups usually become allegiant to one another only when threatened by a large accumulation of less powerful groups

Such groups are very temporarily in coherency, and don't seem to match the concept of "white men" when described as a cause for ism's. If anything, grouping people based on race or gender without a very specific context seems to loose all the attributes of a allied group with aligned interests and goals.

> Nearly all dynamical systems involve feedback ... Eventually, the lower classes want to resemble the high classes, and mimic the same behavior

I think studies done by Robert Sapolsky on social ranking in baboons to be quite enlightening on this. He showed that if you group individuals by ranking, number 3 competes with 2 and 4 but not with 1 and 5. To theorize, I think that when individuals of a class mimics the behavior of whoever is at top, they do so in order to primarily compete with the nearest ranking members of the same class. The power relation between the top and those at the bottom becomes very indirect and largely unintended through this mechanism.

> I should warn against relying too much on behaviors attributed to a prehistoric past

Fully agree, and mostly bring it up as a point where we tend to view men as powerful because some nation forbids unmarried women to be outside, while we have similar situation in nations where unwealthy men are also not allowed outside. The variation in culture has a much bigger impact on power distribution and liberty than gender has on a global scale.

> [New feminism]. I don't like this distinction. Feminism is simply the ideology of having women attain the same power as men. Feminists simply have different strategies of attaining those goals.

If we look at the left and right politics, both strive to attain economical progress and prosperity. The distinction is in the strategies of attaining those goals, the values behind it, and from that a lot of effort and energy is expended to fighting each other. A think a major factor in this is when two strategies conflict with each other, you end up with two opposing ideologies with the same goal.

To take a few example, Difference feminism encourage and promotes diversity, and have a large undertone of biology in their message. A company should strive 50% women and 50% men because men and women are different and brings different values. The older feminism movement want to eliminate the defining aspect of diversity, and have companies only see the humans behind the applicants for which the natural result should be, spread over enough companies, 50/50.

To bring a second area of conflicting strategies, lets bring up domestic violence. A key statistics that new feminism commonly brings up is that 80% of reported perpetrators are men and 20% are women, often witch explicit implication of testosterone as a biological cause for violence. A common phrase used by feminist is "men violence against women". However, if we look for supporting evidence in homes where there is two men living together, or two women, we don't get the expected result of higher and lower violence based on gender. What we find is that regardless of the genders, the amount of domestic violence is identical.

New feminism reaction to that data can be read in several papers and reports, released in the last 20 years. The full title, often cut in half, is now days "Mens violence against women and violence by people in same-sex relationships", perfectly matching the data and (in my view) completely missing the point. Looking from the perspective that we are all humans, wouldn't it be better to ask why 80% of the time men are implicated as the perpetrator in heterosexual relationships? I would even go as to say that the strategies should simply focus on reducing the human behavior of turning verbal arguments into physical confrontations, rather than focus on gender.

> to change policy in an aristocracy, you could either convince one king and thirty noblemen, or 100,000 peasants

To change culture in an aristocracy, I don't think its enough to convince one king and thirty noblemen. They can influence peasants to mimic the higher class behavior with incentives of higher social status, but that will inherently be within the constraints of existing culture that defines the social structures. If someone want to attain change outside of those, the only method that historically has worked (as far as I seen) is by getting those 100,000 peasants to align with the new values. Wealth and power can help or slow that progress, but it can't force or stop it (although we may be, as you say, getting there, which is a very scary thought).

To go back a bit and talk about racism, if we want to stop racism we can't only talk about white men. Having people to see humans rather that skin color takes a value change, and it is currently very ingrained into everyones mind. The black panther movement was by my interpretation an reflection of the white supremacy movement, putting skin color as an defining feature in create the in-group and out-group. Similarly, new feminism is doing a similar thing to gender.

> white men have been more powerful than white women or black men in the West

So how do we define power in this context. If members of the group has conflicting goals and conflicting interests, how do the group as a whole "get their way most of the time"?

We could use a proxy like wealth and work position, but that leaves us with the problem that quite explicit in the Chinese culture. If men are culturally forced to seek wealth and profession, is that power? When there such major incentive for men to seek wealth, which I will emphasize by cite OkCupid (West data) statistics blog: "If you're 23 or older [male] and don't make much money, go die in a fire". The effect of wealth for men is as correlating and explicit as looks are for women.

Comparing white men with black men works better using that proxy, through there is additional factors. The most powerful factor for wealth is being born by wealthy parents (per any article I have read on the subject of wealth). Unless a nation has an immigration that matches the wealth of people currently living there, those people are going to be at a major statistical disadvantage in their ability to gather new wealth.

Politics is however a nice proxy for checking if a group is getting their way most of the time, since plenty of political decision intentionally impacts group of people. When balanced in respect to wealth, do schools in black areas get less funding/focus then schools in white areas? Do parks get more built/funded in white areas than black areas? If so, is it because of the political representation (ie, since black population in the US is 8%, the 92% will carry a majority in all decision and in theory dominate any decision). This is part of the problem why most nation aren't rule by popularity vote, since high population density of cities would dominate the lower population of the rural area and carry a majority in all political decisions. However, the cost to such system is that all votes don't counts as equal, and all system that I know of is based on land and not on race.

> It's unlikely that feminists would emphasize a biological cause

A common comment I see is that new feminism is extremism, and they don't represent the mass movement that view everyone as humans. While I do hope that is true, key note speakers on tech conferences is heavily weighted in the new feminism camp, and when it comes to political activism, there seem few who represent the view that cultural roles and values in gender and race is harmful.

> Yes. Again, power is not about how you feel and what you want, but what you have.

Knowing the source is critical to solve a problem. If cultural pressure is the source, shouldn't it be solved? Seems a bit to me like blaming black people for being in prison, demanding that they should fix the issue of being jailed more than white people.

A key feature of science is to figure out and understand how a system works and what affects it. How successful has efforts in the past been in trying to get people that are forced into a situation to also fix the problem of being forced?

> If some decisions affect me negatively and some affect me positively

This was part of what I was wondering about. Could you define in what way 80% of decisions have been positive for say, men in general in the last 30 years? In order for things to be positive for the group as a whole, the decision can't be significant contradicting within the group. I can't think of any interest that is that exclusively an interests to men but the opposite for women, and carries a significant majority.

> If the majority doesn't treat the minority equally, that's discrimination.

Should 8% get equal 50% influence? With winner take all decision, majority will always dominate the minority. In an election, the winning 51% get 100% representation, while the loosing 49% get 0%. That is not equal, and many nation solve this in a imperfect way by having more than 2 party system, through practically all retain some limits.

A problem with the word discrimination in this context is that intent is lost. 92% voting what they want and 8% voting for something else is generally not considered discrimination since the 92% don't intentionally try to miss treat the 8%. You need intent for discrimination, which is by its nature create before the end result.

> Advocacy groups are supposed to focus on one problem, or one kind of problems.

A common reply I get, but there is three major issues with it. First, feminism proclaims to be about gender equality, and over half its existence the movement stood for that. Its only in the last 30 years that the movement changed course.

Second, having an alternative movement that focus on Mens Right is bad for everyone. Equality don't need to have competition between two polar movements. If your house on fire, the fix is not to use fans and try to cool it down. Having two polar movements with the same goal is only causing less understanding, more fighting, and less empathy, and shouldn't a movement about equality stand for more than that?

Third, it should be said that sex segregation has only gotten worse in the last 30 years, a trend that many people are surprisingly surprised about. Difference feminism is sometimes, rather hushed, accused of this, and I don't disagree.

> we were fine letting you have what you asked for yesterday

Except when that what people asked yesterday, and what people are asking tomorrow, is polar opposites. One side want people to be treated equally regardless of gender and race. The other side want people to be treated different based on gender and race, but demand that the outcome to be equal. You can only fulfill the later demand by taking back the earlier and reversing progress.

> "Black lives matter"

I always found that adding the word "too" transforms the message. I also think it is way too early to evaluate the movement, as it could go as black panther movement and be about guns and violence, or it could be about reducing murder caused by racial tensions. The later has general support in society.

As a side note: Thanks for the link to Jonathan Haidt talk. Very interesting, through I have heard some exception to the left politics being pro-science and pro-lenience with crime. In particular, feminist (assuming left) groups successfully lobbied to prevent medical research on causes for rape, with statements that such research could result in lower jail sentences and people avoiding justice with insanity pleas.

P.S.

> In particular, feminist (assuming left) groups successfully lobbied to prevent medical research on causes for rape, with statements that such research could result in lower jail sentences and people avoiding justice with insanity pleas.

Do you have a source for this? This sounds like fake news or a gross distortion.

Robert Sapolsky, on talk about sexual behavior and aggression. If it is in one of the lectures I suspect, its about 3.5 hrs I would need to go through to give you an exact time stamp.