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You can’t prove I meant X

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Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#81

Post by seph-reed »

augustt wrote: post #15
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.

Well assuming you looked it up, clicked on the first Google result, and read Fourteen Words, 14, or 14/88, is a reference to the fourteen-word slogan "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children, "[1] or the less commonly used "Because the beauty of the White Aryan woman must not perish from the earth."[2] The slogans were originally coined by white supremacist David Lane,[3] a founding…

It honestly seems like we should be able to say:

"Hey white-nationalist, I see that you really like white people and that's okay. You want white kids to be happy, go for it. If someone else wants green kids to be happy, they should do that too. Just don't be a dick to everyone else."

If they're directing their energy towards anything good at all, it's probably best to recognize the validity there, while doing your best to devalidate things they shouldn't be doing. It's not like "fuck everything about you white nationalist" is paying off... it's kind of how we got Trump IMO.

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#82

Post by renewiltord »

Kaiyou wrote: post #46
WoahNoun wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's okay for you to not understand and to inadequately comprehend the English language.

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#83

Post by Benjammer »

TheSoftwareGuy wrote: post #80
pjc50 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a big prisoner's dilemma thing going on. If you're charitable, and the people you're discussing with are too , you can have better discussions. If you're operating in an environment like the internet where you can more or less guarantee that there will be one comment based on the the worst possible interpretation of what you said, being charitable in advance just makes things worse for you. You're playing "co…

I've found it to be pretty effective to simply not engage with those who keep taking the worst possible interpretations of your (or others) arguments. It sort of simulates an environment where everyone is charitable. In other words, "Don't feed the trolls"

Tit for tat has always been the solution to prisoner's dilemma. The people who think "prisoner's dilemma" means "I should be wholly and utterly selfish, because it's the logical thing to do" are just idiots who don't understand how cooperation can work over time and repeated trials to build trust.

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#84

Post by kazagistar »

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".

In a statistical sense, in an global integrated society, where everyone is freely equally likely to partner with everyone, there eventually won't be any children by the traditional racist definitions of white, ie, with white. no interbreeding with non European ancestry. (The whole concept of white is questionable and mostly racist, fyi.) This is what is generally called white genocide by the far right, even though it is anything but.

To prevent this scenario, we get some pretty ugly ethnostate and facist ideas. Controlling "race mixing", keeping different "races" separated to different countries, and in some cases, explicit calls for genocidal actions.

All this infringement on freedoms just to prevent an outcome that is just based on some made up unscientific discrimination like race and fear of race mixing.

Basically, 14 words are bad because they acknowledge the constructed idea of race and embrace it in the worst possible way.

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#85

Post by ebg13 »

miscPerson wrote: post #36
0xff00ffee wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. it takes like 20 minutes to communicate the context and how this isn't so innocuous as it looks. I've had to explain this to my aging boomer parents, and they still don't buy it. It is truly a subversive phrase because it takes control of the argument from a place that requires, IMO, a lot of basics to be explained and/or challenged... which most people don't want to sit through. It's like a self-generating min…

I’m curious, what is that context? ...why is it “problematic” for an underrepresented group (such as in Harvard admissions), to rally around a claim it’s okay to be them? Have you ever considered that if you need to do a lot of explaining, and not even your own parents follow your logic, but the other person can persuasively summarize their argument... you might just be wrong? A question for people downvoting: Do you…

> Do you think I’m wrong or do you just not like what I’m saying?

Por qué no los dos?

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#86

Post by kazagistar »

jaljal wrote: post #68
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 futur…

White is a dumb category anyways. A lot of non-whites have significant European heritage. Its asymmetrical in a way that can only be identified as cultural racism.

But yeah, the correct full position is we want to secure a good and fair future for all children, and fair sometimes means compensating for historical and ongoing inequalities and injustices created by racism.

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#87

Post by _v7gu »

monocasa wrote: post #78
_v7gu wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that 1488 is a signal, but don't agree that it is invisible. The implied meaning is just a google search away. >if someone is on a rant about how immigrants are ruining the country I'd say this is the actual reason you think they are a white supremacist, rather than deciphering their dog whistle. Going on a rant on immigrants specifically is a much clearer indicator of their political alignment (my guess woul…

So you agree that the person you had previously said is just innocuously defending "it's ok to be white" is actually a white supremacist or a troll pretending to be one? You keep pretending like there's these innocent victims, and it turns out these people where actually what we had said they were all along.

I am getting confused now. My ESL'ness might be getting in the way of us communicating.

Based on how the okay sign thing went, with all of its false positives (which are the innocent victims), I don't think the "dog whistles" give a clear enough signal. Your examples also use judgement from context rather than the dog whistles which is in line with what I've said.

The other poster turned out to be a clear troll, and arguing with them on what the dog whistles mean is giving them just what they want.

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#88

Post by mc32 »

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.

I agree and I didn’t take notice till the day I learned a woman flying to ZA wrote some quick satire on twitter before departing, when she landed many hours later she learned her tweet was taken straight and was summarily fired with the tireless assistance of the twitter-rage-mob.

I agree with Cleese and Chapelle. It’s madness.

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#89

Post by i_am_nomad »

ebg13 wrote: post #65
i_am_nomad wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So we agree that mean and racist tropes are bad and should be shunned. I’m glad to hear it.

Re: You can’t prove I meant X

#90

Post by crankylinuxuser »

pjc50 wrote: post #58
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.

There's a big prisoner's dilemma thing going on. If you're charitable, and the people you're discussing with are too , you can have better discussions. If you're operating in an environment like the internet where you can more or less guarantee that there will be one comment based on the the worst possible interpretation of what you said, being charitable in advance just makes things worse for you. You're playing "co…

> There's a big prisoner's dilemma thing going on. If you're charitable, and the people you're discussing with are too, you can have better discussions.

Privately, I'd very much agree.

However Cardinal Richelieu's quote comes to mind when posting to the internet at large (yes, im counting HN in this):

"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."

And that is evermore so, with concern trolls and those in mind with being 'wronged' in some way. Because, no matter how charitable you are, there is someone who isn't and will assume the worst. And then you become the brunt of a social media campaign gone awry.

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