I have found that one general rule works pretty well. No ad hominem or insults. No insults to people, groups, or policies. Calling someone or a policy racist would fall under insults. When you eliminate insults, all of a sudden people are talking more about cause and effect. Frankly political debates become incredibly boring and the emotion disappears once insults are removed.
In my company I regularly remind our employees that we are not allowed to insult customers, ever. I even try to find the good in everyone. People have competing priorities, personal issues, etc. You never have the whole story.
I imagine the downvotes are mainly because the comparison seems pretty off base, regardless of whether one agrees with the good or bad of the original post. Comparing "you are now in a situation where you may have an opportunity to empathise with difficulties others have had" to "you are trying to build a society where more fortunate people are harmed in the name of sameness" doesn't resonate at all.
You are exactly right. The funny thing is that the short story in question, Harrison Bergeron, was meant as a satire of right-wing fears of slippery slopes toward sameness. It's no coincidence that the comparison is made here; the comparison is exactly what Kurt Vonnegut was making fun of when he wrote the story.
Most critiques of the story entirely disagree with your interpretation. I couldn’t find anything specific about how the author meant it to be understood but it appears that most understand it as I interpreted it when I was 9 years old.
What's a good and a bad idea is very subjective. Let them run their business the way they want! Pretty much everywhere else in the world political polemics are not allowed at work as they can divide the workforce and some people could feel harassed by hearing non-work-related stuff they wholeheartedly disagree with!
Sure, but part of the consequences of making horrible decisions is that you're going to lose 30% of your employees. Any business leader can do what they like with their business, it doesn't mean that they shouldn't be immune to criticism or that they have a god-given right for their employees not to quit.
I worked at a big company and popular brand when they hired an asshole to harass the entire developer team and make them leave and replaced all of us with contractors from the asshole's buddy company. It was beyond obvious that this was coming from upper management, because all of us reporting to HR did not result to any change, even if there was documented harassment of employees. So, maybe Jason and DHH just wanted these people out and found this way to do it as to do a layoff if the company is beyond a certain size, it's not so easy. Anyway, I am no the kind of employee that will go sue their former employer or talk shit about them as, again, I know employment is at will and should be.
Feels like it would be very weird to ask someone if they are a recent immigrant (there are millions of African Americans who immigrated to the USA post 1965 or are children of those immigrants) or an ADOS to decide whether you should label them “Black” or “black”. I’ll say whatever someone prefers though. Capitalizing “w” in white is a bit creepy to me though and has echoes of promoting the idea that all “whites” are…
Why would you need to label someone by their ethnicity in daily life? This stuff really only comes up in two situations: 1. Forms where the person in question just fills it in themselves (generally the option is Black/African anyway) 2. Discussions about groups of people in which case the labels are descriptive and fairly easy to navigate.
> Third, they secretly deleted over a decade's worth of company chat history shortly before making the disastrous blog post. Why? I can think of a reason. To protect employees who are not part of the woke mob from being “canceled” by the woke mob.
any time I find someone like you complaining about “getting cancelled” or “cancel culture”, I just replace “cancel” with “consequences”, since that’s what it really is. They wanted to protect employees from the consequences of their words and actions.
Please don't cross into personal attack. You can make your substantive points without swipes like that.
any time I find someone like you complaining about “getting cancelled” or “cancel culture”, I just replace “cancel” with “consequences”, since that’s what it really is. They wanted to protect employees from the consequences of their words and actions.
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Please don't cross into personal attack. You can make your substantive points without swipes like that.
I have found that one general rule works pretty well. No ad hominem or insults. No insults to people, groups, or policies. Calling someone or a policy racist would fall under insults. When you eliminate insults, all of a sudden people are talking more about cause and effect. Frankly political debates become incredibly boring and the emotion disappears once insults are removed. In my company I regularly remind our emp…
Generally I agree - no ad-hominem or insults should be rule number one.
> Calling someone or a policy racist would fall under insults.
How can a policy be insulted? Policies are not people. I don’t see how calling a policy racist falls under ad-hominem.
Arguments from silence are, by definition, illogical fallacies. There could be any number of reasons why someone might choose to remain silent. It's possible they are endorsing it, but you don't really know without additional statements or context. https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Argumen...
If someone asks you “do you denounce white supremacy?”, and you stay silent… many people (myself included) would see that as a form of endorsement. I don’t need any additional context, and I don’t see it as being any kind of logical fallacy.
There could be many reasons for silence, such as not wanting to be bullied into saying something, no matter how true it is. In some situations, that might be the nobler option and could take a lot of courage.
I’m not complaining about the downvotes, but I’d like to understand what the disagreement is. I’m sorry that people do that. I generally will respond if I disagree instead of downvoting. I’ll take a look at your comment history and see if I have time to address it. ETA: I’ve looked over your comments, aside from one that appears to be sarcastic everything you say has a response to it. I added my own comment to one of…
It's not your fault, and besides, I received a more recent reply to one. These are heated topics that likely won't be resolved on HN comments sections. Edit: I read your edit. It appears that in your mind, comments that disagree with you resemble a Twitter flame war, and comments agreeing with you are well articulated and thoughtful. In reality, your comments are just as negative and one-sided as the others you dispa…
> Edit: I read your edit. It appears that in your mind, comments that disagree with you resemble a Twitter flame war, and comments agreeing with you are well articulated and thoughtful. In reality, your comments are just as negative and one-sided as the others you disparage.
Just the opposite, I welcome disagreement. I just don’t like being attacked without knowing why.
> On the other hand, when did racial equality become an inherently political topic? When it was turned into one by politicians and activists, just like masks were. I'm a firm believer that if you actually sit a few people down and try to have a sane conversation where people actually talk and don't spout slogans, you find that their views aren't all that different, then just put emphasis and importance on slightly di…
(laughs) "Politicians and activists" obviously didn't politicize masks. No coherent reading of the last 2 years supports that conclusion. It was the screeching Republican base, who decided on day one that the masks were a symbol of government overreach and I guess got Covid to own the libs.
Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar hell. The GP contained a provocation but the thing to do with those is ignore them, not single them out and then blow on them until they flare into war.