Live data from Hacker News

What You Can't Say (2004)

paulgraham.com

261–266 of 266 posts

Re: What You Can't Say (2004)

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diversity e.g., in higher education admissions isn't just about what's fair for the students, it's also about what's best for the university and the students. Universities are naturally xenophillic--both in their desire to understand more about the world and in their desire to influence it. Exploration and openness to new experiences and ideas are also important intellectual values important to develop in students. A…

> As a more concrete example... $IVY_LEAGUE doesn't gain that much by having its average standard test score go from the 99th to the 99.5th percentile. Assuming accurate tests and a normal distribution of scores, shouldn't that be approximately equivalent to going from the 80th to 90th percentile?

Given you assumptions, the difference between the 80th and 90th percentile is about twice as big as the difference beteen the 99th percentile and the 99.5th percentile.

Re: What You Can't Say (2004)

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a matter of selfishness, but groupishness .

Collective ego is also prone to selfishness, an individual can take on a group identity and make being the member of a group part of the identity they selfishly defend. Unless I misunderstand what you're pointing to?

I'm not sure what you mean by the word "selfishness", but you don't seem to be using it in the usual way. "Selfishness" usually refers to self-interested action that is or attempts to be rational, not irrational action motivated by identity. Perhaps you mean something like "egotism"?

Re: What You Can't Say (2004)

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not an example of someone being fired for saying or believing that there are two genders. This was someone deliberately misgendering and ungendering a trans boy (not non-binary) in class after having been ordered to stop.

The teacher felt strongly that the student's gender was biological and not something the student could arbitrarily choose to change. The teacher felt that using a pronoun other than a biologically consistent one was "lying", and it was against the teacher's religion to lie, so the teacher would not use the student's chosen pronoun. Did I miss something?

Your response to my comment was flagged, but you seem to be laboring under some misconceptions here. While biology is what it is, the mapping from biology and other factors to social categories is determined purely socially. Categories and labels are not true or false, they are socio-political processes that can uplift or oppress minorities just like other such processes.

I would recommend reading "THE CATEGORIES WERE MADE FOR MAN, NOT MAN FOR THE CATEGORIES": https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-ma...

Re: What You Can't Say (2004)

#264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The teacher felt strongly that the student's gender was biological and not something the student could arbitrarily choose to change. The teacher felt that using a pronoun other than a biologically consistent one was "lying", and it was against the teacher's religion to lie, so the teacher would not use the student's chosen pronoun. Did I miss something?

Your response to my comment was flagged, but you seem to be laboring under some misconceptions here. While biology is what it is, the mapping from biology and other factors to social categories is determined purely socially. Categories and labels are not true or false, they are socio-political processes that can uplift or oppress minorities just like other such processes. I would recommend reading "THE CATEGORIES WER…

I don’t particularly care if my response was flagged. I didn’t notice. Have a nice day in your echo chamber. Everything in the universe is relative. That doesn't mean I'm going to let others tell me that up is down and left is right. At the moment, I feel like I'm the "minority" being "oppressed". It's ironic, since the topic of this thread is "What you can't say". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Re: What You Can't Say (2004)

#265
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/teacher-fired-refusi...

I don't know what really happened but assuming he just refused then I assume that will in the future more been like a teacher who refused to stop calling his black students negroes than an example of PC hysteria. But who knows

And I assume that in the future, the people who currently support the transgender movement will be thought of as members of a small fringe group that sympathetically lost their minds when Bruce Jenner very publicly lost his. At the moment, thousands of innocent children are being pumped full of hormones to "assist them in their transition". Well done.

https://salvomag.com/article/salvo38/doctors-delusional

Re: What You Can't Say (2004)

#266
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Researchers are able to correctly classify human skulls into black and white Americans a vast majority of the time.

So?

People are trying to destroy Race, and it is scientifically defensible. This is important for the reasons why people want to destroy Race, which are inherently political.
Post reply on HN