Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Untitled topic

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 66 posts

Re: undefined

#21

Post by hyperdunc »

brucephillips wrote: post #12

The difference between critical theory (and postmodernism generally) and social justice is the belief in universal values. Believers in postmodernism don't accept universal values. They see every conflict as a power struggle, devoid of moral truth. Broadly speaking, social justice advocates, or at least those described in the article, and caricatured by the Channel 4 interview, do have a universal value, namely equal…

Equality of outcome can only be obtained through tyranny. Or perhaps at some point in the future by surrendering to a benevolent super AI.

Neither scenario is appealing.

Re: undefined

#22

Post by xiphias »

hyperdunc wrote: post #8
nicolashahn wrote: post #4

Direct link to the interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcjxSThD54

The interviewer is either extremely confused about her own ideology or being deliberately standoffish by invoking strawman after strawman. She seems to think certain groups of people are entitled to success they haven't earned, because there is some nefarious and ill-defined force oppressing them. Peterson handled it well and made some great points about the roles of competence, sacrifice and disagreeableness in work…

Actually what would have been interesting to talk about is whether a company would be run better if agreeableness would be handled as a bias for the managers/salaries and thought about consciously. But this shouldn't be a male vs female thing.

Re: undefined

#23

Post by brucephillips »

api wrote: post #20
brucephillips wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen his twitter feed, granted. To your first point, to make that leap would be to conflate "is" and "ought". Yes, many people do make that error, but you can't accuse him of doing it when others do.

The is/ought issue is one of the core philosophical issues under the surface here. It goes to the heart of what it means to be a liberal (broadly defined) or a conservative. To be a conservative is to tend toward deriving "ought" from "is," or at least skepticism toward attempts to change the status quo.

Sure, but you can't accuse him of doing this unless he actually makes these arguments.

Doing so equates to the same fallacy that intelligent design adherents make, which is that since evolution yields ugly, selfish behavior, it must be wrong, or at least we should keep our mouths shut abou tit. Peterson is just pointing out how things are, not how we should design our policies.

I think he should probably be more responsible in qualifying his statements to prevent his simple minded followers from jumping to the wrong conclusions, but that's about as strong of an indictment as I think one could make against him, at least in this context.

Re: undefined

#24

Post by Jach »

gdix wrote: post #9

This post is rocketing down the list. It was number 1 just 10 minutes or so ago, then it went to 6, now it's 36. Is that normal or is this post being moderated or brigaded? edit: And now it's gone completely from the list with 74 points... edit 2: Ok now it's back... wtf mods make up your mind about what we're allowed to see edit 3: All the comments in this thread are getting brigaded down.

HN can probably only handle one of these at a time, if that. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16182318)

Re: undefined

#25

Post by thedoops »

api wrote: post #11
gdix wrote: post #9

This post is rocketing down the list. It was number 1 just 10 minutes or so ago, then it went to 6, now it's 36. Is that normal or is this post being moderated or brigaded? edit: And now it's gone completely from the list with 74 points... edit 2: Ok now it's back... wtf mods make up your mind about what we're allowed to see edit 3: All the comments in this thread are getting brigaded down.

Alt-right vs. "SJW" left posts get flagged around here. Usually I agree and one of the reasons I hang around here is to stay away from that whole scorpion fight. Personally I view both as two sides of the same coin. Both the alt-right and the social justice left are totalitarian, intolerant, and intellectually shallow. I find their argumentative styles, emotional reactivity, and style of engagement with the larger cu…

This notion that the Alt-right is just another side of the coin is, I think, a misdirection. In fact I think the whole Alt-right label is entirely arbitrary and doing a significant amount of harm by polarizing the discussion. Black and white representations of the world leave us confused and frustrated.

Truth is the world is complex. We're dealing with multi-variate problems to use JBP's term. The societal benefits of free speech and open dialog are harmed by polarization. Reductionist generalizations pollute truth with doubt. Our societal discussions should be liquid and multi-dimensional.

Re: undefined

#26

Post by Retra »

api wrote: post #13
psyc wrote: post #5

I watched this interview the other day. It was infuriating. I mean, you expect today's journalists to be provocative, sure. But this interviewer relentlessly , and in the most hostile manner, misrepresented Peterson, put words in his mouth, and made sideways accusations. I don't know who she is, but if she's supposed to be any kind of serious journalist at all, she deserves to be called out for this. Most striking to…

I agree that the interview is awful, but consider what an interview with an advocate of social justice and equality would be like if it were given by one of many popular alt-right Youtubers. There are some incredibly hot button emotional issues under the surface here. It's very hard for most people to talk about any of this without going nuts.

It is a professional journalist's job to do just that. Most people can't do heart transplants either, but that's not an argument to be made for protecting a negligent heart surgeon.

Re: undefined

#27

Post by jules »

throwaway1748 wrote: post #6
nicolashahn wrote: post #4

Direct link to the interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcjxSThD54

This interview really demonstrates the style of argumentation you see around these topics, just dialed up to 11. Practitioners of this form of argument intentionally mis-represent the other side to form a strawman argument. This works exceptionally well on Twitter, where someone quote-tweets their adversary, intentionally warping their words with the intention to shame. Some people have called this tactic "dunking on…

I don't think that tactic works poorly in that format at all, it's just that this person is incredibly good at defending against it. Very few people could withstand such an interview.

Re: undefined

#28

Post by harshreality »

Threads like this getting buried on HN are a symptom of the ideological intolerance and echo-chamber problems that lead to people like the interviewer never having encountered Peterson's ideas before.

Re: undefined

#29

Post by Turing_Machine »

psyc wrote: post #5

I watched this interview the other day. It was infuriating. I mean, you expect today's journalists to be provocative, sure. But this interviewer relentlessly , and in the most hostile manner, misrepresented Peterson, put words in his mouth, and made sideways accusations. I don't know who she is, but if she's supposed to be any kind of serious journalist at all, she deserves to be called out for this. Most striking to…

Yep. The interviewer's style is something akin to this:

Peterson: "Since they are human beings, women are mortal."

Interviewer: "So you're saying that all women should be murdered."

That is only a slight exaggeration of what she was doing. He would say something, then she would respond with "So you're saying...(some hot-button statement totally unrelated to what he actually said)".

I give him a lot of credit for remaining calm through that.

Re: undefined

#30

Post by jdoliner »

Jach wrote: post #24
gdix wrote: post #9

This post is rocketing down the list. It was number 1 just 10 minutes or so ago, then it went to 6, now it's 36. Is that normal or is this post being moderated or brigaded? edit: And now it's gone completely from the list with 74 points... edit 2: Ok now it's back... wtf mods make up your mind about what we're allowed to see edit 3: All the comments in this thread are getting brigaded down.

HN can probably only handle one of these at a time, if that. ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16182318 )

Exactly, interestingly one of these threads had flags turned off, the other one did not.
Post reply on HN