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You can’t prove I meant X

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Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#41

Post by meheleventyone »

Kaiyou wrote: post #30
augustt wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either you are being disingenuous or you have a very naive understanding of the quote. I could just as easily say: "work sets you free" doesn't sound so unreasonable! How could anyone take issue with that?!

That work sets you free is an unsubstantiated claim. I'm working and I don't think that this set me free. On the contrary, I think it's pretty shackling. What would be a not naive understanding of the quote? I think it is reasonable to want a future for your own children. How are we living in a world where this is controversial?

It's not a future for "your own children" it's a future for "white children" generally that needs to be "secured" (from whom?) spoken in the context of white supremacy.

If it was "I want a nice future for my own children" that would be uncontroversial.

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#42

Post by Kaiyou »

Nursie wrote: post #33
Kaiyou wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That work sets you free is an unsubstantiated claim. I'm working and I don't think that this set me free. On the contrary, I think it's pretty shackling. What would be a not naive understanding of the quote? I think it is reasonable to want a future for your own children. How are we living in a world where this is controversial?

You can't be this naive? Please search for "arbeit macht frei" and get back to us.

I'm from Germany, I know that slogan. Like I said, I think it's inherently wrong. Work is something that shackles you.

Your reply doesn't address my questions.

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#43

Post by glaugh »

dkarl wrote: post #31
Veen wrote: post #4

> "this sentence could mean y as well as x so you can’t prove I meant x" It's interesting that a lot of online debate and media commentary uses the opposite technique: > "this sentence could—with varying degrees of plausibility—mean bad thing y as well as good thing x, so you can't prove you didn't really mean to say the bad thing." The principle of anti-charity.

And of course whether charity is applied or not is all about the presumed social fault lines in the situation. For example, in the U.S. right now, if you say, "The expert predictions about the coronavirus are all over the place and changing every day," it's an uncontroversial statement when everyone's politics are assumed to be the same. Among liberals, it will be interpreted as meaning that the coronavirus is extrem…

This is a nicely crafted example.

Human communication is so densely laden with nuance and context and subtext that it takes soooo much work and a dose of generosity to have a real conversation that doesn’t spin off into something useless.

In a technical context you can define things clearly, but in a political context it’s just too hard, there are so many things that mean different things to different people.

My attempt in daily life to deal with this is to offer a place where my “side” is wrong to foster generosity then try to tightly circumscribe the thing we’re discussing. I think it sometimes works. But it’s a ton of conversational work with unclear payoffs.

I don’t see how we’re not doomed to usually have largely fruitless conversation in the current climate. I don’t like the approach, but I understand why people move towards a “screw convincing them, let’s rally the base.” Bit of a prisoner’s dilemma there, I think, where the whole country is left impoverished by the individually rational approach to rallying the base

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#44

Post by Kaiyou »

linguistbreaker wrote: post #35
Kaiyou wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I think context is the important thing here. Taken out of context, the quote is reasonable. I had never heard of this but if you replace "white" with "black" it seems pretty acceptable right? In context it sort of means repress and kill everyone else though.

And how do you get from this quote to the context of genociding other people? That's a pretty big non-sequitur. The quote is about securing a future, not to "kill all infidels".

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#45

Post by baud147258 »

1996 wrote: post #10
pjc50 wrote: post #7

Two modern equivalents of this kind of thing are the use of euphemisms to bypass Chinese censorship: https://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/Main_Page and the ever-mutating set of "dog whistles" used by the far right ("fourteen words" etc.) The historical background of the 1700s I'm a bit vague on, but it was crucial for the development of Parliamentary government in the UK through a long series of succession crises from…

> ("fourteen words" etc.) This is signaling through lingo (keywords), very different from this article, yet also worth studying during this lockdown. If I simply replied "88 bro", the average reader may not click, and think I was just saying I was born in 1988, like you, and we are maybe "birth year brothers". Yet to the initiated, it would signal that I have some very special political ideas! Once you have started l…

I get the 88 thing, but not the blood type tatooed 8 inches above the elbow, care to explain?

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#46

Post by Kaiyou »

WoahNoun wrote: post #37
Kaiyou wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever since I've looked up what the fourteen words are, I'm both struggling to understand why they are controversial and associated with the far right. They seem pretty reasonable and on par with the "It's okay to be white" campaign.

Wow white nationalism apologism on HN. At least it's being downvoted quickly.

How is it white nationalism to want to secure a future for white children? This seems highly illogical to me.

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#47

Post by Robotbeat »

commandlinefan wrote: post #3

There's an interpretation of the biblical book of Revelation that it was written as a "disguised" attack on the Roman empire: https://www.educationalcoin.com/blog/the-mystery-of-the-book...

Pretty common understanding among biblical scholars. Christian scholars often understand it as dual prophecy, referring both to contemporary (i.e. Roman power structures) and later eschatological ones.

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#48

Post by 1996 »

hawkice wrote: post #22
1996 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ("fourteen words" etc.) This is signaling through lingo (keywords), very different from this article, yet also worth studying during this lockdown. If I simply replied "88 bro", the average reader may not click, and think I was just saying I was born in 1988, like you, and we are maybe "birth year brothers". Yet to the initiated, it would signal that I have some very special political ideas! Once you have started l…

Strange tattoo example (and Google-able). Boggles my mind why someone would want to identify so strongly with Nazis, but obviously I strongly agree that we should receive those signals. What a bunch of idiots.

This is exactly why we need to learn these signals - to recognize people who so strongly want to identify, with something that would seem strange or benine to the uninitiated.

About a celtic cross and 1488 written below, someone in this thread said they can't "tell that much about a person based on an accessory."

I believe it is a grave mistake to ignore such extremely strong signals, especially the person seems aggressive or inhebriated.

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#49

Post by _v7gu »

1996 wrote: post #10
pjc50 wrote: post #7

Two modern equivalents of this kind of thing are the use of euphemisms to bypass Chinese censorship: https://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/Main_Page and the ever-mutating set of "dog whistles" used by the far right ("fourteen words" etc.) The historical background of the 1700s I'm a bit vague on, but it was crucial for the development of Parliamentary government in the UK through a long series of succession crises from…

> ("fourteen words" etc.) This is signaling through lingo (keywords), very different from this article, yet also worth studying during this lockdown. If I simply replied "88 bro", the average reader may not click, and think I was just saying I was born in 1988, like you, and we are maybe "birth year brothers". Yet to the initiated, it would signal that I have some very special political ideas! Once you have started l…

All this dogwhistling stuff is fun and games until you start to put innocent people under fire for dogwhistling. If more people start reading Nazi propaganda just to avoid dogwhistling, you will have created more enemies as a second order effect of your actions.

A better approach would be to fill the whistles with noise, so they lose their use for the people trying to use them to identify allies. There's a reason why the phrase "normies ruin everything" is so common

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#50

Post by Kaiyou »

meheleventyone wrote: post #41
Kaiyou wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That work sets you free is an unsubstantiated claim. I'm working and I don't think that this set me free. On the contrary, I think it's pretty shackling. What would be a not naive understanding of the quote? I think it is reasonable to want a future for your own children. How are we living in a world where this is controversial?

It's not a future for "your own children" it's a future for "white children" generally that needs to be "secured" (from whom?) spoken in the context of white supremacy. If it was "I want a nice future for my own children" that would be uncontroversial.

There's no difference between your own children and white children, if you are white, is there? Generally speaking, the future is something that needs securing. If you don't secure your future, you might not have any. One way to secure your future is by learning a valuable skill another one is to marry into a wealthy family. There doesn't have to be a boogeyman threatening your future. Just missing out on opportunities or wasting your life away in idleness can be a big enough blow to ruin your future.
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