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RIP Culture War Thread

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Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#171

Post by haberman »

fzeroracer wrote: post #162
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have read Sarte's comments (at least I think I have - no link, so I'm not sure). Look, I'm glad that racism and genocide are banned on HN, and that I don't have to wade through the garbage. CW wasn't trying to be HN, though. It had moderators, but they had a different set of filters, and they let a lot more through. That was by intent and design. Then some people decided that, because it allowed stuff from the far…

The problem is if you allow those comments, then by extension you do in fact support them. If HN in attempt to be more neutral started allowing think pieces from far-right authors on how bad the Jewish people are, then people would believe HN supports them (and rightfully so) by offering them a platform. This is part of the reason why HN does have banned websites (such as InfoWars) because the information from those…

> Communities have to have a baseline stance of things they don't support

CW has this. They are very clear about their guidelines: https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/a6wues/cult...

> As for the actual data relating to the CW thread, the data only tells us what people self-describe as, not necessarily the frequency of their posts, the content contained within or how closely the poll reflects the actual userbase.

Scott did a random sample of comments from CW:

> During the last few years of Culture War thread, a consensus grew up that it was heavily right-wing. This isn’t what these data show, and on the few times I looked at it myself, it wasn’t what I saw either. After being challenged to back this up, I analyzed ten randomly chosen comments on the thread; four seemed neutral, three left/liberal, and three conservative. When someone else objected that it was a more specific “blatant” anti-transgender bias, I counted up all the mentions of transgender on three weeks worth of Culture War threads: of five references, two were celebrating how exciting/historic a transgender person recently winning an election was, a third was neutrally referring to the election, a fourth was a trans person talking about their experiences, and a fifth was someone else neutrally mentioning that they were transgender. This sort of thing happened enough times that I stopped being interested in arguing the point.

This is why all the claims of "odious views", "how the Jewish people should be eradicated", and other things you've mentioned in this thread fall so flat to me. People claim stuff like that is flying around to justify their call for greater censorship and shunning. But when you dig into the details about what people are actually saying, it virtually never lives up to the labels that have been put on it.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#172

Post by amanaplanacanal »

komali2 wrote: post #157
50656E6973 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been racially slandered for posting MLK quotes, even though I'm not black (they assumed I was). Conversely I've also been called a racist/bigot for claiming white people didn't invent racism/slavery, or that statistical differences in social groups shouldn't automatically be attributed to oppression, or that Frederick Douglass is evidence of how someone can free themselves from oppression. They obviously had nev…

>Conversely I've also been called a racist/bigot for claiming white people didn't invent racism/slavery, or that statistical differences in social groups shouldn't automatically be attributed to oppression, Hmm. That sounds like it can be frustrating, but I can see how it can happen. For example - what's the point of claiming "white people didn't invent slavery?" I can't think of any reason that doesn't involve a bla…

> what's the point of claiming "white people didn't invent slavery?" I can't think of any reason that doesn't involve a blanket statement about either white people or some other race

I could easily say that in response to a claim that white people invented slavery, in total innocence that somebody would read me as racist. I am somewhat naive, in my defense.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#173

Post by kadendogthing »

MFLoon wrote: post #160
kadendogthing wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does "doxing" come into play? Why did you just whimsically group those together? Feels like a bad faith question.

Because they were grouped together in the original article, as tactics Scott Alexander's detractors had employed against him in trying to silence the CW threads.

But I replied to the comment directly. So why would you think that original, not really congruent, grouping of concepts applies?

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#174

Post by heurist »

microcolonel wrote: post #41
api wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I scanned the thread a bit and can second this. I am originally from Ohio the type and extremity of right wing ideas present there seemed far to the right of anything typical in the midwest. There are KKK types and similar in Ohio of course but they're pretty extreme outliers in most areas, especially anywhere near a city or a college. I agree that SF is a special kind of bubble, but I do think there's been an explos…

> I agree that SF is a special kind of bubble, but I do think there's been an explosion of shockingly extreme right-wing thinking on the Internet in recent years... really since about 2008-2012 as near as I can tell. I think you can attribute that seeming explosion (at least in part) to people suppressing moderate conservatives, who then have a choice between becoming enlightened classical liberals and bearing the co…

I haven't seen a lot of active suppression of right wing views other than the more numerous liberals having more bodies to throw at arguments. If the tables were turned and liberal ideas were less popular than conservative ideas then by human nature we'd likely see the same kinds and amount of individual attacks.

It already happens in right wing enclaves. I've been banned from multiple conservative subreddits for making reasonable centrist arguments that conservatives historically agreed with or asking questions that stir the pot in a gentle way. On Facebook and Twitter I get people responding with ad hominems to arguments which are not liberal but which do not toe the current Republican party line. Also, someone was arrested the other day for seriously plotting to murder a bunch of popular Democratic politicians. The grass is not greener, in other words.

I have not attempted to engage on many other forums but it seems to me that arguing outside the local groupthink is what makes people angry, more than any particular ideology being the driver. Angry people do stupid things. If you're in the minority party locally, you might feel oppressed even if you could go to the next town over and feel right at home.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#175

Post by kadendogthing »

Diederich wrote: post #146
kadendogthing wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need. It really says a lot about the linked article in question where the best arguments he had for debate were allowing Nazi view points and pedophiles. He seemed kind of angry at other people for bringing it up as a way to demonstrate what he was doing was wrong but then turned around used those topics as an example of why his moderation and general platform were so great. Guess he can just have it both ways bec…

I don't agree with you, and I think your tone is harsher than it should be, but I don't think this comment merits being flagged to [dead].

I mean it was immediately set as [dead]. Not even 30 seconds after posting. Is that characteristic of a moderator action?

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#176

Post by mikeash »

malvosenior wrote: post #170
mikeash wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People will make bad arguments on all sides. This is not a surprise, and is not really related to my point.

> It is impossible to respectfully argue for a racist or homophobic position. My point is that in 2019 this statement has no meaning because there are wide swaths of the audience (not just fringe elements) that will label nearly everything "racist". The main point of contention in this thread is whether you should ban unpopular opinions or let them stand on their own. Racist comments are and should be unpopular but w…

I think that statement only has no meaning if you are contending that I am one of those people who labels nearly everything “racist.”

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#177

Post by krapp »

malvosenior wrote: post #170
mikeash wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People will make bad arguments on all sides. This is not a surprise, and is not really related to my point.

> It is impossible to respectfully argue for a racist or homophobic position. My point is that in 2019 this statement has no meaning because there are wide swaths of the audience (not just fringe elements) that will label nearly everything "racist". The main point of contention in this thread is whether you should ban unpopular opinions or let them stand on their own. Racist comments are and should be unpopular but w…

>. Racist comments are and should be unpopular but when the definition racism is widened to include half the population then censoring "racists"

Half the population didn't vote for Trump.

I think that's what we're supposed to be reading between the lines here, that half the population voted for Trump and have now been unfairly demonized as racists and homophobes and that, because of this, the terms "racist" and "homophobic" have no meaning... but no. Those terms still have a definite meaning, and half the population didn't vote for Trump.

Also, the demonization isn't entirely unfair. At least, it's not entirely arbitrary and without merit. There was a definite and overt narrative of racial identity and struggle behind the populism of Trump's campaign, and its appeal to white supremacists was well documented by mainstream media, and the narrative of Trump's success as a revolution of white cultural identity was even defended here on Hacker News a few times.

Trump supporters can't have their anti-establishment cake and eat it too. They can't support a campaign which galvanized right-wing extremists and xenophobes and then complain that people think they might be racist.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#178

Post by [deleted] »

gipp wrote: post #19
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…

What you've left out of that idyll of the early internet, though, is that its population was - smaller, by many orders of magnitude - from a highly homogeneous distribution of cultural backgrounds - mostly of comfortable material means These are, and have probably always been, prerequisites for the kind of civil discourse you're talking about. The "heavy-handedness" of tech companies is IMO less a cause than it is a…

[deleted]

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#179

Post by yourbandsucks »

kadendogthing wrote: post #175
Diederich wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree with you, and I think your tone is harsher than it should be, but I don't think this comment merits being flagged to [dead].

I mean it was immediately set as [dead]. Not even 30 seconds after posting. Is that characteristic of a moderator action?

Possibly. Can you honestly complain?

You're upset that the SSC guy didn't aggressively moderate others, after all, when it wasn't even his job.. maybe there's a lesson here.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#180

Post by yourbandsucks »

CM30 wrote: post #58
seiferteric wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem is all of the throwing stones in glass houses, hypocrisy an self righteousness I see out there. It's so easy to attack something a public figure might have once said but no one is looking through the "attackers" entire history to see what they might have once said. I don't believe any real person has never said something they later regretted (or should regret) and would be embarrassed by if it came out. As…

Well, I wouldn't exactly say no one is. Often, it ends up being revealed that the people attacking others for these culture war things are usually hiding some dark secrets of their own, or acting as hypocrites, and people have made quite a deal out of that. For example, the person whose video about questionable YouTube comments set off an advertiser backlash ended up getting involved in a bunch of stories themselves…

The key thing about people going around attacking people on the internet is that they're really into attacking people.

We could do with a lot more empathy from everyone.

And I think it's fair in a certain way to get extra-annoyed at this type of behavior from those who preach inclusiveness. Like, at least the judgmental a-holes are consistent.

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