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RIP Culture War Thread

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Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#131

Post by rosser »

ufmace wrote: post #115
kadendogthing wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It seems like we're moving in the opposite direction these days Good. >with the internet as a means to control, oppress, and indoctrinate. No, we're just not allowing "information anarchy." Not all information is beneficial, useful, or constructive. Some of it has net negatives. Stop assuming there are enough rational/good actors to counter act the bad/ignorant actors who propagate bad information. We don't have the…

> Stop assuming there are enough rational/good actors to counter act the bad/ignorant actors who propagate bad information. It took me a few minutes to think of what really bothered me about this line of thinking, and I think it comes down to this sentence. If you believe that this is true, why should it stop with just the internet? Why not all of life? This is exactly the line of thinking that, when applied to real…

> If you believe that this is true, why should it stop with just the internet? Why not all of life?

It is true of "all of life" but the social dynamics (coupled with bog-standard H. sapiens cognitive foibles) in play when you aren't interacting with a "real person", but merely a name on a screen, empowers the bad/ignorant actors far moreso than it does the good/rational ones.

Even the most reprehensible forum troll knows that if he behaved that way to someone's face, he'd get punched.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#132

Post by cabalamat »

jasode wrote: post #43
ufmace wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may well be right about the civil nature of things in the early days being due to being composed of a small group of techies whose culture wasn't all that different from each other. Maybe it was naive of everyone. It doesn't seem like the worst thing in the world, though, to hope that even the most different of us could talk out our difference more and resort to violence and intimidation less. Maybe we're now see…

>Maybe it was naive of everyone. It doesn't seem like the worst thing in the world, though, to hope that even the most different of us could talk out our difference more and resort to violence and intimidation less. The naivete of everyone is somewhat understandable because each generation lets new technology (e.g. telegraph, airplanes, internet, etc) seduce them into thinking its capabilities will help humans unders…

> Some examples of previous naive forecasts:

Another example would be "Nation shall speak peace unto nation", the BBC motto from 1927, round about the time Dr. Goebbels was using radio to speak a distinctly unpeaceful message.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#133

Post by manfredo »

komali2 wrote: post #75
manfredo wrote: post #13

What really hit home was this passage: > I acknowledge many people’s lived experience that the thread felt right-wing; my working theory is that most of the people I talk to about this kind of thing are Bay Area liberals for whom the thread was their first/only exposure to a space with any substantial right-wing presence at all, which must have made it feel scarily conservative. I moved from Western Washington where…

I hear what you're saying, and as a Texan, I feel like I understand your viewpoint. I've got thoughts on the issue too, having lived in the Bay area for a couple years now. Mostly they revolve around this point: >half the country. I disagree that half the country is conservative. I was put onto this idea by Michael Moore actually, who argued that if you run the surveys, turns out most Americans support liberal values…

You're essentially trying to say, "we're tolerant of all views except for those that are morally wrong." There's nothing tolerant about that. If that's your definition of tolerance, then Saudi Arabia and mainland China are tolerant countries - they just have different views of morality.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#134

Post by manfredo »

johnny22 wrote: post #123
refurb wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is, relatively benign viewpoints are labelled as racist, misogynistic or homophobic when they aren't. And it's done in an effort to silence "undesirable" opinions. What I've noticed the most about SF are it's inhabitants being shocked (shocked!) to learn that people have views different than them. It's as if their entire world ends at the city limits.

I think it's interesting to see all the people talking about the Bay Area here. I've never done anything but pass through California, and yet I tend to mostly share the views of these "liberal" Bay Area folks. I grew up in southern Virginia. You should remember that we're not all from the Bay Area.

If you've "never done anything but pass through California" then you should probably refrain from saying that you share the Bay Area views.

For example many people in my workplace will genuinely call you racist if you say "employment decisions should not be made on the basis of race or gender." Threats of violence towards Trump voters varying degrees of subtlety are made on public channels with no apparent repercussions, and these were positively received by much of the company.

Are these views and behavior that you agree with? Sure most liberals probably agree with Bay area liberals on national issues, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#135

Post by fzeroracer »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #112
eschaton wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand why people think giving space and respect to odious beliefs is somehow virtuous. What it does is normalize those beliefs and enable them to propagate while simultaneously exhausting those who oppose them. See Sarte’s comments on Anti-Semitism; the holders of odious beliefs are generally not “playing the same game” as those who oppose them, and giving space to all ideas, no matter how awful, is actu…

The counterargument is: Odious as defined by who ? By me? Heh, eschaton, your beliefs might not come out so well by that measure. Defined by you? No thank you. Defined by society? Twenty years ago, homosexual marriage was an odious belief by that standard. Today, it's not (instead, opposing it is now considered odious). Same with racism sixty years ago. Same with slavery 160 years ago. "Odious" is a moving target. Bu…

I assume you have not read Sarte's comments, then?

Whenever you participate in a community you accept that there are going to be individuals controlling the discussion to an extent and cleaning up things that affect the site in a negative way. For example no matter how kindly you might argue or how much data you may provide on how the Jewish people should be eradicated, that sort of comment would get you rapidly flagged on HN.

The definition of odious does evolve over time according to a societies standards, and I don't think it's a particularly big leap to say calls for genocide are odious. Communities do eventually need to take a stand for what they represent, for allowing people with said beliefs on their platform means those people represent the platform.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#137

Post by manfredo »

dmode wrote: post #99
manfredo wrote: post #13

What really hit home was this passage: > I acknowledge many people’s lived experience that the thread felt right-wing; my working theory is that most of the people I talk to about this kind of thing are Bay Area liberals for whom the thread was their first/only exposure to a space with any substantial right-wing presence at all, which must have made it feel scarily conservative. I moved from Western Washington where…

Honestly, Bay Area is like >50% recent immigrants. I think a lot of the problem arise because we ascribe the American label of "conservative" and "liberal" to a population who grew up in a very different society. A lot of behaviors that we assign to conservatives and liberals do not line up that way in other societies. For example, in Europe, the far right has very little interest in free markets, and has policy goal…

BJP is pro science? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/28/indian-prime-m...

Sure Modi is just an individual, but the BJP elected him to office.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#138

Post by cabalamat »

labster wrote: post #83
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't exactly an idyll, but there was a widespread belief that you abided by some basic standards, just as you might if going to a restaurant compared to sitting at home in your boxers. Or as dang and sctb try to enforce here. It wasn't that homogeneous, nor always comfortably off. Certainly some groups were hugely over-represented. A lot of the early non-tech groups, and BBS's before them, had a surprisingly wide d…

/me checks calendar. Yep, still September. To a social network, moderation is a cost center that limits engagement and lowers impressions, while making many of their products get upset at their censorship. Sure they could have done more, but there were a lot of economic reasons not to do so.

Not only that, controversial stuff gets lots of pageviews. An organisation driven by metrics, such as Facebook or Twitter, won't want to moderate it.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#139

Post by MFLoon »

kadendogthing wrote: post #50
ufmace wrote: post #14

This highlights some very troublesome trends on the internet these days. We once envisioned the internet as a place of revolutionarily open discourse, where any idea under the sun could get posted somewhere and read, no matter how crazy or bad it seemed, with the worst ridiculed and dismissed, but still able to be read, and the best rising to the top. It seems like we're moving in the opposite direction these days, w…

>It seems like we're moving in the opposite direction these days Good. >with the internet as a means to control, oppress, and indoctrinate. No, we're just not allowing "information anarchy." Not all information is beneficial, useful, or constructive. Some of it has net negatives. Stop assuming there are enough rational/good actors to counter act the bad/ignorant actors who propagate bad information. We don't have the…

Just to be clear: you're arguing in favor of doxing/no-platforming/otherwise suppressing people who espouse 'ridiculous, harmful, or "bad"' ideas?

Leaving aside the issue of pre-judging which ideas fall into that bucket, what about the fallible targeting mechanisms of the mob? Do you think that what happened to the culture war thread was good and justified?

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#140

Post by Farradfahren »

mikeash wrote: post #106
komali2 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>is that some people have good faith beliefs, respectfully expressed, that are nevertheless so repugnant to others that you will be tarred for not censoring them. I'm skeptical of this - I've never seen a polite racist argument, for example, or a polite homophobic one. The closest I've seen is a post riddled with condescension - something along the lines of "you don't understand, I'm trying to save your soul from the…

Part of the problem is that too many people think “polite” just means “no profanity or name-calling.” It is impossible to respectfully argue for a racist or homophobic position. The very nature of what you’re arguing for is that some people are inherently less than others, which is the opposite of respect. But if you state such an argument without using naughty words, a lot of people will misinterpret that as respect…

Lets assume that beauty of woman decreases over time. Lets further assume, that contracts are needed to uphold a ressource supply. Lets call such a contract marriage. Lets assume, to uphold such a contract a - "neutral" third party is needed. This party should be able to be pressurized into certain behaviour, while beeing independent enough to not be seen as affiliated to one side of the interest conflict.

Consider, for a moment, homophobia, not as a trained fear, but a usefull emotional reaction. One party hates a third party, the second party can controll that emotional reaction, by sanctioning this behaviour (lets call this sanctioning/ controlling religion).

Thus, without saying anything disrespectfull to anyone, just stating that we are a sad, retarded species in full blown denial of what we where and are - and the state of economic surplus keeps civil peace afloat, i took your concept of homophobia for a ride.

PS: I predict, that the love of your life will check on your emotional inner workings regularly, by telling you little stories about a gay co-worker. If you don not show a emotional reaction, i predict increasingly hostile reactions and worries.

Turing and Haber-Bosch did more for gay rights then all those processions (catholic back then - rainbow now) combined.

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