31–40 of 149 posts
Because the desire to do a good deed causes people to discount the ramifications of detrimental effects by rationalizing with the “it was for the best” adage
No, you didn't have to do anything. Doing nothing is actually sometimes better than doing something stupid.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And then there's King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail: https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.... Sometimes you need to make waves in order to advance a cause. Now that doesn't mean you should be uncivil (like screaming "you fucking moron!"), but it can be a fine line to walk. So it's understandable that tone policing itself can become a controversial topic.
It's proportionate to the cause. If we're talking about the Jim Crow south, that's one thing. King even wrote a whole essay about how white moderates 'tone policing' the civil rights movement needed to get on board or get out of the way. And he was right. Emmett Till's lynching had just happened, they were being categorically denied rights, and then getting fucking attack dogs unleashed on them, churches firebombed,…
In 1955 there was a higher murder rate and a higher rate of disease. Just because both are lower in 2018 doesn't mean we don't continue to invest significant effort into working on both murder and disease.
In 1955, Jim Crow laws were appalling and inhuman. Lynchings were accepted by large segments of society. In 2018, we still have strong systemic bias in police forces that handle black criminals with a significantly higher rate of violence than white criminals leading to many preventable deaths. And we still have a justice system that punishes black criminals more severely than white criminals, affecting community cohesion and health.
These are still serious problems that need significant effort into solving. That is 99% of what the noisy people on twitter and in your workspaces are talking about. But Sean Hannity and Co pick up on the 1%, or misintepret the 99% and present it as some rhetorical excess about feelings and safe spaces and outrage.
No. It's still about human lives.
I feel weirdly (perhaps irrationally) about the effective altruism people including 80,000 hours. I just can't shake the cult-y vibes they give off. Am I alone in this?
"cataloguing these risks is important if we’re going to be serious about having an impact in important but ‘fragile’ fields like reducing extinction risk" I certainly hope that I'm mistaken, but that sounds awfully a lot like a pro - eugenics bit of propaganda. Personally, I would suggest that people with a clear intent toward 'love thy neighbor' rather than 'We're the best set of people to fix your problem for you'…
If you thought they were referring to something else, I wonder where you got that idea.
This is very interesting! But I've seen a lot of push back against this kind of thinking in some political groups. For example saying that you should follow norms of niceness when promoting a cause - people call that tone policing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_policing You could say you should criticise the people who are tone policing rather than the people who are worked up about a cause that personally effec…
Both are big issues and especially their combination can give huge advantage to one side. Their combination can effectively amount to expectation that one side is submissive to the other.
I feel weirdly (perhaps irrationally) about the effective altruism people including 80,000 hours. I just can't shake the cult-y vibes they give off. Am I alone in this?
I likewise question the efficacy of efforts like eradicating malaria. I can't help but feel all that money would be better spent on technology (not startups, but like fusion and other energy research, nanotech, space industry etc), even if for-profit. Like, no mater how many Africans you can save from malaria, they will keep dying or living shitty lives because of poverty, famine, wars... Only technology can actually change the world (and politics, but we can't really seem to be able to do much about that...).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's proportionate to the cause. If we're talking about the Jim Crow south, that's one thing. King even wrote a whole essay about how white moderates 'tone policing' the civil rights movement needed to get on board or get out of the way. And he was right. Emmett Till's lynching had just happened, they were being categorically denied rights, and then getting fucking attack dogs unleashed on them, churches firebombed,…
The problem isn't any different in 2018 than it was in 1955. The MAGNITUDE is different, but the magnitude is always different. In 1955 there was a higher murder rate and a higher rate of disease. Just because both are lower in 2018 doesn't mean we don't continue to invest significant effort into working on both murder and disease. In 1955, Jim Crow laws were appalling and inhuman. Lynchings were accepted by large se…
2) I'm not arguing that racism doesn't exist. I'm arguing that the outrage-addicts are ineffective, and that they suffer from a bias towards slacktivism and purity-gating.
Contrast with King and especially LBJ. Making change requires building bridges.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And then there's King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail: https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.... Sometimes you need to make waves in order to advance a cause. Now that doesn't mean you should be uncivil (like screaming "you fucking moron!"), but it can be a fine line to walk. So it's understandable that tone policing itself can become a controversial topic.
It's proportionate to the cause. If we're talking about the Jim Crow south, that's one thing. King even wrote a whole essay about how white moderates 'tone policing' the civil rights movement needed to get on board or get out of the way. And he was right. Emmett Till's lynching had just happened, they were being categorically denied rights, and then getting fucking attack dogs unleashed on them, churches firebombed,…
It's that very letter, isn't it?
"I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate ... the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is ... the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice"
I feel weirdly (perhaps irrationally) about the effective altruism people including 80,000 hours. I just can't shake the cult-y vibes they give off. Am I alone in this?
No... I, for one, would really like to know what the actual (measurable, practical) effect of effective altruism is. I definitely hope that it's not just like, we do nothing but more effectively . I likewise question the efficacy of efforts like eradicating malaria. I can't help but feel all that money would be better spent on technology (not startups, but like fusion and other energy research, nanotech, space indust…
If they'd given one direct piece of easily actionable advice the actual impact might have been far larger ...
"So what?" - a Church sermon I heard well over decade ago, the speaker said basically if there's nothing that listeners will remember and act on then your sermon is moot. You can give a tonne of great advice, but sometimes less is more impactful.
Perhaps they do that to. The title gave me high hopes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
People who criticize tone police are technically right that the content of an argument is what should matter, but that smacks of ignorance of how humans engage in conversation. If someone is screaming at me and ending every sentence with, "you fucking moron!", there is approximately a 0% chance I'm going to take them seriously and I'm going to assume emotional outbursts will be sent in return to any responses I care…
How many pro-choice people do you think are persuaded by Symmetrically, how many pro-life people do you think are persuaded by the people screaming "woman-hater/sexist/misogynist" outside of Planned Parenthood? If you can't explain your argument in a calm, rational manner, You overestimate the efficacy of explaining in a calm, rational manner. As a university teacher with > 10 years experience, I can tell you with ex…
When it comes to more abstract concepts, the average person will ignore the screaming lunatics and side with the person that appears sane at first glance, even if they're really the crazy ones.