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You can’t prove I meant X

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Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#61

Post by cousin_it »

0xff00ffee wrote: post #17
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.

> "It's okay to be white" campaign. Are you saying this is reasonable? EDIT: Here come the downvotes. You can't prove I meant X... oh the irony.

I still don't understand, why didn't the left simply reply "yes it is" and resist the urge to hedge/caveat/etc? It seems it would've been tactically and strategically best. Judging from the people I see online who were pushed right by the left's response to this.

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#62

Post by wool_gather »

glaugh wrote: post #43
dkarl wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 atte…

> 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.

This sounds quite interesting; would you be able to provide an example?

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#63

Post by AnimalMuppet »

Kaiyou wrote: post #9
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…

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.

Say I'm white. Say my kids are white. Say I want a future for my kids. So far, so good.

Now, down the street are three other families: one white, one black, and one asian. They all have kids, too. Now what does the saying say?

Here's a family where the parents are white, the kids are mixed, because they also adopted some kids from Africa. Those adopted kids are just as much their children as the natural children are. What does the saying say to them?

Here's an anglo who married a person of another race. What does the saying say to them?

We want a good future for kids - our kids, and our community's kids. Whether they're white has nothing to do with it.

And because whether they're white has nothing to do with it, adding that to the phrase is what makes it racist. It winds up at least implying that white children deserve a good future, and other children don't (or at least don't as much).

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#64

Post by mos_basik »

Kaiyou wrote: post #44
linguistbreaker wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

I just got back from reading a blogpost [0] by another commenter (presumably also German, if you are, in fact, German) in this thread about how Americans are so steeped in euphemism that they don't notice how much they respond to what they think their conversational parter is implying and not to what the partner is actually saying. I admit that I am American and the blogpost resonates with my experience.

That being said, you've just made a very interesting sequence of comments in this subthread that, taken as a whole, can be interpreted in at least a couple of quite different ways - and the more comments you make, the more your (probably predominately American) readers are going to build up a mental model of what you might be implying.

Personally, as an American who maybe has spent too much time on the internet, my interpretation of your comments in this subthread is that they are essentially a piece of performance art. Also personally, I am enjoying the performance quite a lot. I'll make no comment about whether or not the performance is appropriate to the spirit of this website as revealed to us by dang.

But! Maybe it's good for me to practice responding to what people actually say. And I think your logic slipped a little:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22924541 (GP) said:

>Taken out of context, the quote is reasonable. [Taken in context], it... means repress and kill everyone [but whites].

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22924684 (you) said:

>How do you get from this quote to the context of genociding other people?

The issue is that GP said "There is a context that the quote was made in, and that context turns the quote bad" and you non-sequitured by asking "How does one, starting from these words, derive the bad-making context?" You're right, you can't. The literal words are fine by themselves. But the words are not all there is (at least to an American audience in the current year, which the audience I'm most qualified to have an opinion on).

This is why when you tell an American "allahu ackbar" they think "suicide bomber". Or "it's time for a change" means "the boundless optimism of a young black presidential candiate". Or "planned parenthood" could mean either "women finally gaining control over their own bodies" or "state subsidy of immoral behavior" instead of, you know, literally planning whether/when one wants to have children.

Americans wouldn't tattoo 1488 on themselves if there were no additional, metatextual information that they wanted to convey to a viewer, so it seems kind of naive to interpret that kind of thing in the literal manner you've been exploring. I don't think you're suggesting they should be interpreted literally, though; I think you're lamenting that some humans have gotten to a place where they see terrible concepts in words that are intrinsically innocuous.

I think that's just a part of being human, but I'm American so maybe it's just a part of being American. I lament it also.

0: https://sneak.berlin/20191201/american-communication

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#65

Post by ebg13 »

i_am_nomad wrote: post #52
0xff00ffee wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "It's okay to be white" campaign. Are you saying this is reasonable? EDIT: Here come the downvotes. You can't prove I meant X... oh the irony.

I perceive the "It's okay to be white" slogan as a very moderate and constructive reaction to the propagation and even normalization of anti-white messages and memes. And I specifically mean anti-white as an ethnic hatred, not as part of an equality and justice argument. For example, see the "Karen" meme, which besides its horrible sexism, specifically focuses on white women. Middle-class white people have increasing…

> For example, see the "Karen" meme, which besides its horrible sexism, specifically focuses on white women.

"Angry black woman" was a trope looooooooooong before Karen hit your screen. If you only care about meanness when it's targeted at white people, then this is not a meme problem; this is a you problem.

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#66

Post by monocasa »

_v7gu wrote: post #49
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…

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…

How many people do you know who aren't white nationalists have gotten a 1488 tattoo?

The whole point of these signals is that they seem innocuous, but practically no one is going to signal them in other contexts. So you have the vague auspices of plausible deniability when pushed, but nearly 100% specificity too.

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#67

Post by monocasa »

cousin_it wrote: post #61
0xff00ffee wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "It's okay to be white" campaign. Are you saying this is reasonable? EDIT: Here come the downvotes. You can't prove I meant X... oh the irony.

I still don't understand, why didn't the left simply reply "yes it is" and resist the urge to hedge/caveat/etc? It seems it would've been tactically and strategically best. Judging from the people I see online who were pushed right by the left's response to this.

It's sort of like the "All Lives Matter" thing. The "it's ok to be white" argument structure is designed so that either accepting it or denying it furthers the goals of white nationalists, because either has to be done in an extremely nuanced way that can't really happen in the context of a protest sign or a meme.

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#68

Post by jaljal »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #63
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.

Say I'm white. Say my kids are white. Say I want a future for my kids. So far, so good. Now, down the street are three other families: one white, one black, and one asian. They all have kids, too. Now what does the saying say? Here's a family where the parents are white, the kids are mixed, because they also adopted some kids from Africa. Those adopted kids are just as much their children as the natural children are.…

You've taken their bait.

What they are trying to demonstrate is that there is a massive double standard. There are organizations, government programs, scholarships, etc which are explicitly designed to help the futures of children of color. Many people are openly, consciously, and unapologetically acting in a focused way to make the future better for them. But merely saying that we should be concerned about the future of white children is hotly contested.

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#69

Post by Nursie »

mos_basik wrote: post #64
Kaiyou wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

I just got back from reading a blogpost [0] by another commenter (presumably also German, if you are, in fact, German) in this thread about how Americans are so steeped in euphemism that they don't notice how much they respond to what they think their conversational parter is implying and not to what the partner is actually saying. I admit that I am American and the blogpost resonates with my experience. That being s…

I believe the account is a troll, in the earlier internet definition, someone that goads others, often for the sake of contrarianism, often to make them say odd/unsupportable things in response to seemingly reasonable or mild posts.

When they're good, they have been performance art. I wouldn't rate this one particularly highly though.

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#70

Post by mos_basik »

0xff00ffee wrote: post #17
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.

> "It's okay to be white" campaign. Are you saying this is reasonable? EDIT: Here come the downvotes. You can't prove I meant X... oh the irony.

Man, that blogpost [0] really did a number on me. Warning, navel-gazing ahead.

I have a browser extension [1] that lets me set custom tags on HN users. I'm not unconflicted about using it, since I have some ideological hangups that tell me to let people's words speak for themselves and to not let someone's history muddy the waters of a discussion in the present. That being said, HN isn't anonymous and it's a comparatively small community and I decided I might as well try keeping track (to some extent) of who's saying what here because it's practicable and there are other places I can experience death-of-the-author just fine. Besides, it reminds me that jacquesm sorted two metric tons of lego using legos and machine learning that one time, so now that always makes me smile when I see him comment.

So here I am, looking at your comment and trying to figure out what it tells me about you as a commenter - what I would want to remember about you if I saw you again. It needs to be fairly terse, to fit.

The first idea that arrives is "It's not reasonable to be white." I dismiss this immediately, because it's the most cynical and least-founded take on your comment (though darkly funny to me).

The second idea is "The 'It's ok to be white' campaign is not reasonable." I turn this over in my mind a few times and even start typing it out. But while I'm typing, I re-read your edit and pause. Then I realize - I'm doing exactly what that blogpost described. "What did 0xff00ffee mean here?"

What if all you meant to do is ask is the literal question "Are you saying that the 'It's ok to be white' campaign is reasonable?" And it's hard for me to even come up with a way of phrasing this in such a way that it sufficiently emphasises the literal, un-euphemistic, un-implicating character that I'm trying describe.

Then I pause again and realize that I've fallen down a semantic rabbithole and there's a snowball's chance in hell that you meant your comment in the third way. And by this time I've read your next comment [2] and am aware that you're aware of the ambiguous, scissor statement nature of your original comment and the amount of context that must be conveyed in order to disambiguate it. This humanises you. Instead of a snarky internet signaller, you become a real person, with parents whose views you care about and who's already expended effort trying to convey the that large context to people without setting off the self-generating minefield that you know exists. The snappy comment wasn't because you haven't stopped caring about changing people's minds; you're just tired of arguing with apparently superficial people who aren't prepared to take context into account (and you were responding to someone who may be a particularly strong example of such).

So I guess you're "a real human bean".

0: https://sneak.berlin/20191201/american-communication

1: https://github.com/etcet/HNES

2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22924252

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