171–180 of 476 posts
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Some of the worst offences are these new "fact-checkers" which all seem heavily biased towards the left. When so many people are committed to a motivated and shallow version of the truth, it's hard to find the people who care ONLY about the truth.
Links to support this claim?
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Your comment is dishonest. That isn't a quote from the memo. It is: [7] Communism promised to be both morally and economically superior to capitalism, but every attempt became morally corrupt and an economic failure. As it became clear that the working class of the liberal democracies wasn’t going to overthrow their “capitalist oppressors,” the Marxist intellectuals transitioned from class warfare to gender and race…
I'm still not clear what they're actually supposed to be doing that is bad. Do you not know either? edit: I just realised you thought I was providing a direct quote, I was just paraphrasing, but I think it accurately captures the spirit of this footnote. I'm happy for someone to provide clarification on how this isn't a reference to the widespread conspiracy theory.
Your paraphrasing is totally off (IMHO) because the footnote is neutral about the desirability of the gay lifestyle.
At the same time I do think it's really important for them to be discussed.
Time and again, though, I'm disappointed by how reductive and unmeditative these discussions are. I'm also surprised by how angry people seem.
This is a site used by a lot of very smart people, but I think there is an element of people transferring the confidence of their domain expertise from one area into another, without noticing that they've crossed that border.
I think people need to approach these topics with a humility they wouldn't need to bring to say, hashing algorithms or distributed databases.
edit: typo
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It should be obvious that anyone arguing against having a rational discussion is wrong about being in that camp.
Why? Is it wrong to be against a rational discussion of the benefits of race-based slavery? Is it wrong to be against a rational discussion of the benefits of child-slavery? Is it wrong to be against a rational discussion of the benefits of childhood labor? Is it wrong to be against a rational discussion of the benefits of racial discrimination? Is it wrong to be against a rational discussion of the benefits of gende…
But how can you come to the conclusion things "should not be legitimized"? The topics "tolerance of homosexuality" or, "that god might not exist" both fell into that category. In absence of rational discussion, there is just sentimentality and bias.
I also think you've biased/unbalanced you topics with specific conclusions: "The benefits of X" - why would you insist on only discussing the benefits? It's a topic that makes certain assumptions.
> they are against the very nature of human rights
And atheist is against god, and homosexuality against nature. I think "human rights" is a more subjective concept than you might think.
> a rational discussion of race-based slavery is something that legitimizes it
How? What do you mean by "legitimize"? It only does so in a society that considers only "legitimate" topics to be up for discussion. If anything can be discussed, there would be no such perception that talking about something assigns it validity.
To summarise; Why is it harmful to discuss the above, unless you expect the outcome to be desirable. There is a difference between assuming a rational discussion, when the participants are incapable of a reasonable level of discourse; and an actual rational discussion. I would gladly hear Hitchens, Fry, Harris etc talk on the above topics.
Quick question. “Every mathematician believes that he is ahead of the others. The reason none state this belief in public is because they are intelligent people.” The others here, does it refer to other mathematicians, or other people in general?
Other mathematicians.
Tell me, truly, is this a view held by many here? That, as the church denounced Galileo's observation that we turn around the sun as heretical, so too our modern PC culture suppresses legitimate inquiry into wether gender is a determinant of programming aptitude? This is a comparison worth drawing? Galileo was a scientist. He published papers, books, treatises. He devoted his life to the pursuit of the truth, found a…
If I understand things correctly the argument by feminists etc is something along the lines of "there are no differences between men and women, and thus any difference in outcome must be due to discrimination". Firstly, even if there was only this claim and accusation, one might want to defend oneself against it. Especially since this is an almost universally agreed upon "truth" in the western world. Secondly, motiva…
Really? Could you give a reference to anyone ever actually making this argument?
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Other mathematicians.
I wouldn't be surprised if a sizeable fraction, perhaps even the majority, of mathematicians are in fact ahead of all the others. They just have to be best at their own chosen specialization. (Also, one may need a little hubris to actually do something. I would never have written my crypto library if I didn't started with the overconfidence required to brave mainstream advice.)
Let's say this is about the Google memo. And let's say, for the sake of argument, you're a person who thinks Damore had some good points and some bad points but you think the hysterically censorious response to him was way over the line. But you don't want to become a pariah yourself, so you stay quiet about it. The argument Damore was making was fiddly, kind of subtle and takes a long time to explain, it's not worth…
Putting Damore's stuff aside for a while (I haven't even read it yet), reasonably discussing anything and having some sort of "Bohm dialogue" is one of the hardest things in the world. Not only it takes quite a bit of mental effort, but it's also easily disrupted. The loudest and most obnoxious people in the room can very well misrepresent or ignore whatever you said, take a few bits of it and use it to build their o…
Tell me, truly, is this a view held by many here? That, as the church denounced Galileo's observation that we turn around the sun as heretical, so too our modern PC culture suppresses legitimate inquiry into wether gender is a determinant of programming aptitude? This is a comparison worth drawing? Galileo was a scientist. He published papers, books, treatises. He devoted his life to the pursuit of the truth, found a…
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Counterpoint: even if you want to defend a "middle" position, that doesn't mean every argument roughly in that area is worthy defending. I didn't read the memo, so I have no opinion its merits on their own, but considering the immediate response it had, I'd argue it's not worth defending, because it clearly wasn't written in a way that could ever have a hope of convincing anyone not already on the fence.
I think 'considering the immediate response' used to be a valuable heuristic, but isn't any more. Too many people have become too polarized. There are a bunch of folks from the tech industry on Twitter that I have followed for years, including some HN regulars, that are now, IMHO, in the 'too polarized' group. I no longer trust their opinion on various 'political' subjects to be the result of deliberate consideration…
Thank god, I thought it was just me. This place (or at least, popular members of this place) seems to have become more ideological in recent times. I used to be pretty comfortable in knowing that most here were of the classical liberal/enlightenment ilk and would discuss the majority of reasonable ideas with open eyes and ears. Now I see a lot of angry and dismissive reactions that would have been uncharacteristic of this community only a few years ago.