‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study • Hacker News Board

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#321

Post by another-dave » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 4:31 PM UTC

hrktb wrote: post #282

another-dave wrote: post #56

I think the main culprit exacerbating this is the main stream media. "Vox pops" have formed part of filling air-time or column inches for a long while, but this is largely replaced now by journalists looking at Twitter and either a) using that as a stand-in for 'this is what the public think' or b) making it the story itself. Social media is no longer just "second screen" below-the-line commenting on events, it's hel…

I am curious about how do you see street corner enquetes and random telephone sampling before SNS. Thoses enquetes were done on somewhate crowded yet non busy places for convenience, and tended to sample a specific part of the population: e.g. people going to shopping districts at off hours, or people coming out of church for the most biased samplings. Telephone checks were similar in that you had a very high percent…

I wouldn't say I think that they're more sophisticated but conducting a telephone sample, or doing a vox-pop on street corners with a TV camera requires more effort than just typing a hashtag into a searchbox and pulling out a few responses. I think the lower friction of skimming social media, plus the added pressure of having more air-time / articles to fill means there's an over-reliance on it in a way that there wasn't before.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#322

Post by throwaway2245 » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 4:37 PM UTC

reccanti wrote: post #268

From my perspective, it doesn't really matter to me what percentage of the population holds what beliefs, or how many different political stances they're balancing. What matters is the beliefs they have and the outcomes of these beliefs. For example, if you think about support gay marriage and LGBT nondiscrimination protections, these are things that would have been framed as fringe progressive ideas a few decades ag…

> It doesn't really matter whether 30% of the population supports these things or 60%.

In two-party democracies, 30% and 60% are exactly the percentages that do matter.

At 30% support you can expect no change - even human rights violations will scarcely be considered a relevant political issue with such a level of support.

Once you hit 60% support, you can expect reform that won't be rolled back.

Exactly as we have seen with gay marriage in the USA. Support for gay marriage reached 40% around 2005 - I can't establish when it hit 30%, as it was rarely polled in the decade before this. Support reached 60% for the first time in 2015 - the year when the Supreme Court ruled it a constitutional right.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#323

Post by rayiner » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 4:37 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #276

inanutshellus wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He signed the document to stay at the institution. I wouldn't call it "dodging a bullet" I'd call it "securing his own yoke".

God forbid large firms employing people from diverse backgrounds require employees to take training on how to work with people from diverse backgrounds.

What you’re doing is called a motte and bailey fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy

You’re defending diversity training, which nobody is attacking. We’re talking about a particular kind of rhetoric where people take personal responsibility in behalf of their race and label themselves with words that, in ordinary usage, have extremely inflammatory meanings.

I’m from a “diverse background.” I think diversity training and making organizations more diverse is great. But this rhetoric is an explosively bad approach to race relations, and as a non-white person I am very worried about what the result will be.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#324

Post by shadowgovt » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 4:37 PM UTC

luckylion wrote: post #314

shadowgovt wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God forbid large firms employing people from diverse backgrounds require employees to take training on how to work with people from diverse backgrounds.

Are you suggesting it's required to "confess that you're a racist" in a Mao-style struggle session to work with people from diverse backgrounds?

I'm definitely not. I also hold such descriptions of these trainings in high skepticism, because I've been through a similar training and had a coworker describe it as such when all the training was doing was surfacing the scientific evidence suggesting unconscious bias is a real phenomenon that people aren't aware of.

The fact my colleague took it so personally says more about them, I think, than the training.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#325

Post by shadowgovt » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 4:38 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #323

shadowgovt wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God forbid large firms employing people from diverse backgrounds require employees to take training on how to work with people from diverse backgrounds.

What you’re doing is called a motte and bailey fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy You’re defending diversity training, which nobody is attacking. We’re talking about a particular kind of rhetoric where people take personal responsibility in behalf of their race and label themselves with words that, in ordinary usage, have extremely inflammatory meanings. I’m from a “diverse background.” I…

You'd have to nail down what rhetoric you mean for me to have any response to that.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#326

Post by globalx » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 4:39 PM UTC

germinalphrase wrote: post #125

luckylion wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As with many things, nuance is important. Sensitize people to larger issues is one thing, creating a cult they have to submit to is another. You can tell people about factory farms without screaming "cow rapist". You can tell people about privilege without spiraling into some racist cult. But that would probably be class privilege, which is much better at predicting success than the color of your skin.

Based on the experiences that I - and my wife - have had in trainings of this type, I am somewhat skeptical that any such “cult” exists. There were moments of discomfort, but I was never coerced or made to feel negative about myself as a white man. I have always walked away from these events with a better sense of myself (for good and bad) which I view as a positive thing.

The Python Software Foundation is an example of such a cult:

https://marc.info/?l=python-dev&m=159351161520376&w=2

This is just one example of the musings of a PSF vice chairman and Steering Council member.

Follow the Twitter for more.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#327

Post by zarkov99 » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 4:40 PM UTC

cmdshiftf4 wrote: post #205

another-dave wrote: post #56

I think the main culprit exacerbating this is the main stream media. "Vox pops" have formed part of filling air-time or column inches for a long while, but this is largely replaced now by journalists looking at Twitter and either a) using that as a stand-in for 'this is what the public think' or b) making it the story itself. Social media is no longer just "second screen" below-the-line commenting on events, it's hel…

>I think the main culprit exacerbating this is the main stream media. I understand your argument but I also in no way want to distract from the culpability owned by social media companies, their product designers and managers, and the people who wrote the code to implement their desires. They are ultimately guilty for the damage they have wrought on our societies. Traditional media companies may have exacerbated the…

The difference is while few people would claim social media companies are in any way a credible source of truth, there is still a residual notion that the main stream media's role is to be the eyes and ears of society, a role that it obviously no longer deserves.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#328

Post by QuesnayJr » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 4:40 PM UTC

nailer wrote: post #17

QuesnayJr wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how someone can say this with a straight face. Whitewater was a New York Times created scandal. It was the New York Times that ran cover for the Bush administration in invading Iraq. It was the New York Times that a week before the 2016 election ran dueling stories that played up the Clinton e-mail story and simultaneously absolved Trump of any links to Russia. All of these stories got widespread m…

> simultaneously absolved Trump of any links to Russia The investigation also failed to find sufficient evidence to charge anyone in the Trump administration with collusion. At this point Russiagate is thoroughly debunked.

It's really not. Mueller went as far as he felt his remit allowed, and turned it over to the Justice Department, where Barr was determined not to follow up on it. Expect this to change in January.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#329

Post by stjohnswarts » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 4:42 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #276

inanutshellus wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He signed the document to stay at the institution. I wouldn't call it "dodging a bullet" I'd call it "securing his own yoke".

God forbid large firms employing people from diverse backgrounds require employees to take training on how to work with people from diverse backgrounds.

There's nothing wrong with bringing privilege and systemic racism up and taking a "course" as a way to make it poignant. Forcing white people to say "all white people, including myself, are racist P's of S" is garbage and I would get up and walk out at that point, no amount of money or "this position is cool" would convince me to do otherwise. If you don't have standards then why even be alive or call yourself an individual? Sure if you're racist speak up and would like to fix it, otherwise it's blackmail and you are working with garbage people.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#330

Post by vixen99 » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 4:42 PM UTC

lawtalkinghuman wrote: post #101

arethuza wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"there is no counterpart to the hyper-polarised TV of Fox News yet" The Daily Mail?

The reason the UK doesn't have hyper-partisan television news is because of the regulation of broadcast television (i.e. Ofcom). There is an effort to start a Fox News equivalent in the pipeline: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GB_News

The instigator and driving force of the supposed 'Fox News equivalent' is Andrew Neil. Try putting it to him that he's 'hyper-partisan'! Neil is anything but that, as unprepared politicians across the spectrum from left to right have discovered to their cost.