RIP Culture War Thread • Hacker News Board

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#291

Post by commandlinefan » Sun, Feb 24, 2019, 2:06 PM UTC

nullc wrote: post #225

nullc wrote: post #219

This is a really over the top one sided presentation. The thread being mourned was continually full of really shockingly horrible stuff. Straight faced technobabble laden arguments for genocide and such. A reliable go-to for "oh-shit,-humanity-is-screwed" porn. It was impossible to tell how much of it was actually awful people earnestly advancing awful ideas vs screwed up performance art with people intentionally pos…

A post I once read by a thoughtful author said, > There’s an unfortunate corollary to this, which is that if you try to create a libertarian paradise, you will attract three deeply virtuous people with a strong committment to the principle of universal freedom, plus millions of scoundrels. I don't know what has caused the loss of that kind of insight now, but I hope its found again in the future.

My apologies if I’m spoiling your subtlety, but it was Scott Alexander (of the linked post) who said that.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#292

Post by sullyj3 » Sun, Feb 24, 2019, 2:18 PM UTC

chc wrote: post #150

dvtrn wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting to behold that every response to this comment in the last hour, with the most recently made response being posted 56 minutes ago (as of, at least before the time I hit the 'reply' button) are ALL downvoted to light grey. I await my turn for making this observation.

The responses are also mostly expressing the exact same hollow moral relativism — "Who is to say what is odious?" — so it's not surprising that they're voted similarly.

People are not making the claim that nobody is right, so labelling it "relativism" is inappropriate. Merely pointing out that these norms are applied to everyone, and cut both ways. if somebody else thinks your views are odious and you ought to be silenced, what principled reason do you have for saying you ought not to be? you can take the route of saying that in fact your own views are not odious so you shouldn't be silenced, but your opponents are and therefore should be. But in that case all you've done is engendered a situation where every side feels comfortable and justified in attempting to silence their opponents. Because obviously, every side thinks they're right and their opponents are terrible people (note that I'm still not claiming that neither side is right). Discourse quality is degraded. And people start looking around for the next rhetorical nuke to throw at their percieved enemies. it's a race to the bottom, and the bottom contains mainly shouting, hatred, and fearmongering.

Norms like "people shouldn't be silenced even if their speech is despicable" are the Geneva convention in the war of the words. They're social technologies which allow people who disagree to coexist peacefully. These are the insights of the enlightenment, and liberalism as the word originally meant.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#293

Post by api » Sun, Feb 24, 2019, 3:08 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #168

api wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The linked article can be summerized into a few word sentence: The p-value of a famous study, cited by researchers and media, is claimed to be 0.33. I am completely amazed that from there you interpret biological determinism, leading to red pill, leading to nazi worship, and finally landing at the far-right. I guess that answer my question why people think it is far-right, while my own definition of far-right is no w…

On further thought I think it is this:

I question the motives of anyone who invests a lot of their time in the debate and discussion of the merits of various metrics for ranking the value of human beings unless they are on the skeptic side. Generally those who argue for even tangentially defend stereotypes or or metrics that can be used to a priori rank people by quality of meat are at the very least flirting with some kind of totalitarian elitism.

Perhaps this is hypersensitivity and overreaction, but I am not sure. I have studied human history. The instant the camel of a priori anonymous judgement of other people gets its nose under the tent, literal hell on Earth follows. Every single time.

I do not believe humans are all (physically) equal, but I do believe that it is important to treat people that way by default and to absolutely reject the aggregates-to-individuals fallacy here. That kind of reverse projection of statistics is always problematic or downright erroneous, but here it is also toxic and evil. Save biases from MTBF statistics for hard drives or other inanimate objects. (Even there it is problematic!)

Since you can't go from aggregate to individual with humans, what is the value of defending potential means of doing so?

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#294

Post by helen___keller » Sun, Feb 24, 2019, 3:16 PM UTC

humanrebar wrote: post #196

helen___keller wrote: post #125

I think the internet is just an awful place to have a "national discussion" honestly. Arguments you encounter are not representative of opinions actual people hold, both because of bad faith internet trolls & because of vocal minorities. I think people have started learning this, which is why so few people care about social media censorship and the lack of open debates on the internet. Most people have probably had e…

In my experience, actually having conversations about meaningful and controversial subjects is impolite and a good way to lose friends. At least on the internet, the other party can just stop talking when they're done. They won't feel like they're cutting off or abandoning a friend.

Well, I know which friends are comfortable talking about what. It's usually still over the internet too.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#295

Post by Izkata » Sun, Feb 24, 2019, 3:38 PM UTC

cm2012 wrote: post #204

legitster wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is fairly acknowledged that for the new Ghostbusters movie, Sony Pictures deleted well-reasoned and articulated negative comments on the trailer's Youtube, but left up hateful and poorly worded ones so they could portray all negative criticism as bigoted.

Is it?

Yes: http://www.hedgology.com/how-the-ghostbusters-film-is-market...

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#296

Post by Izkata » Sun, Feb 24, 2019, 5:43 PM UTC

api wrote: post #293

belorn wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The linked article can be summerized into a few word sentence: The p-value of a famous study, cited by researchers and media, is claimed to be 0.33. I am completely amazed that from there you interpret biological determinism, leading to red pill, leading to nazi worship, and finally landing at the far-right. I guess that answer my question why people think it is far-right, while my own definition of far-right is no w…

On further thought I think it is this: I question the motives of anyone who invests a lot of their time in the debate and discussion of the merits of various metrics for ranking the value of human beings unless they are on the skeptic side. Generally those who argue for even tangentially defend stereotypes or or metrics that can be used to a priori rank people by quality of meat are at the very least flirting with so…

> unless they are on the skeptic side.

...Consider that the orchestra post that triggered these last couple replies is the skeptic side.

> Since you can't go from aggregate to individual with humans, what is the value of defending potential means of doing so?

I'm not sure this is going to follow, since I'm not sure this more-general question is still based on the orchestra study, but if so: That's not the point of focusing on stuff like it. The point is specifically to debunk claims of institutionalized sexism/etc that get taken at face value.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#297

Post by chipsa » Sun, Feb 24, 2019, 7:39 PM UTC

striking wrote: post #260

barrkel wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My sampling of the posts linked in the article seem to indicate otherwise. What is your evidence?

Here's one that seems to sum it up pretty well. https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9174vt/cult... is a 2-part comment advocating for > Mandatory abortions of the congenitally ill. > Removal of tax incentives for homosexual marriages > Corporal or capital punishment for adultery. > Mental illness/having mental health medication prescribed disqualifying voting. > Paid sterilisation (i.e., trading your fec…

1. Your first link is broke, as it merely takes you to the Quality Contribution round up.

2. It was the second part of said two part comment that advocated any of that, which was not well voted, and provided no support for anything in there.

3. The quality contribution round up ends up being anything that anyone reports to the moderators as a quality contribution, with little discrimination on the part of the moderators.

4. Sometimes it's not the post itself that's the quality, but the responses to it that provide the quality conversation.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#298

Post by Izkata » Sun, Feb 24, 2019, 8:52 PM UTC

komali2 wrote: post #152

manfredo wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I never used the word tolerant but on that note, I don't think morally wrong views should be tolerated. What are morals is the obvious counterpoint and that's fine - I'm not arguing people should be jailed for it, or physically harmed. I'm saying the worse that should happen to a racist is that they are ignored. We aren't China, in that sense.

Sounds to me that your views could be summed up most closely as "socially liberal, fiscally/economically conservative". This is a viewpoint I see most often among the oft-mocked libertarians.

This is probably the biggest problem with our two-party system: Most people land similarly to you and I, as shown by the specific-issue poll earlier, but neither of the two major parties really fall that way, making people choose based on the issue(s) they deem most important.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#299

Post by striking » Sun, Feb 24, 2019, 8:55 PM UTC

chipsa wrote: post #297

striking wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's one that seems to sum it up pretty well. https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9174vt/cult... is a 2-part comment advocating for > Mandatory abortions of the congenitally ill. > Removal of tax incentives for homosexual marriages > Corporal or capital punishment for adultery. > Mental illness/having mental health medication prescribed disqualifying voting. > Paid sterilisation (i.e., trading your fec…

1. Your first link is broke, as it merely takes you to the Quality Contribution round up. 2. It was the second part of said two part comment that advocated any of that, which was not well voted, and provided no support for anything in there. 3. The quality contribution round up ends up being anything that anyone reports to the moderators as a quality contribution, with little discrimination on the part of the moderat…

Blasted mobile devices. I wish I could edit the link in (https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/8xa97t/cult...)

And yes, I mentioned that it was bipartite, and the second part had 11 votes which is maybe not excitingly high but not extremely low either.

"Quality contributions" being barely moderated by moderators does not sound like a useful thing. How are we to know they're "quality" if the moderators don't actually test for their quality in some way?

The responses only barely disagreed, and mostly against the mandatory abortions of the mentally ill. There is maybe one comment that makes an actual attempt at most of the silly points, and the original poster of this "quality" contribution did not respond to it.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#300

Post by dang » Sun, Feb 24, 2019, 9:38 PM UTC

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?

Software did that; your comment triggered a spam filter. Then a user came vouched for it, which is the intended use of vouching. Moderators didn't touch it.