311–320 of 321 posts
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> Can you name a poor philosopher? Diogenes.
If we must go back 2400 years, "his father minted coins for a living" doesn't really make it sound like he came from a deprived background.
Or we could find ways to promote civil discourse. Avoiding conversation about difficult topics we disagree about doesn't seem like a very good idea. Society still has to deal with these things. You can't avoid personal beliefs involved in navigating the politics that run a country. Learning to have productive discussions about that and similar scenarios is a learned skill. Heck, while HN is by no means perfect, the a…
I believe it's reasonable for someone to hold to what they already know regardless of arguments to the contrary if the consequences of accepting the argument seem unacceptable.
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Note the contradiction of big things and small part. Importance isn’t the same thing as taking up a large fraction of your identity. Suppose you wrote an autobiography, the big stuff like age, religion, or sexual orientation are shared with millions of people. They have huge impacts, but the details are going to be stuff like past partners not simply repeating “I am Bi” for hundreds of pages. Height is a great exampl…
I tried to write a response to you this morning and bailed on it because this conversation has been exhausting. You’re taking important/big to you and projecting it on me. You’re insisting that the things about my identity that I consider big are small. I could almost understand if you don’t fully appreciate the impact of discovering one’s sexuality and gender feels like. But you’ve included autism as small, and that…
Storing the pattern of your palm print takes up more space than a listing most peoples current bank account balances. People generally care a lot more about bank accounts than palm prints, but that doesn’t mean they take up a lot of space. As such palm prints are literally a larger part of your identity than your bank account balance.
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I tried to write a response to you this morning and bailed on it because this conversation has been exhausting. You’re taking important/big to you and projecting it on me. You’re insisting that the things about my identity that I consider big are small. I could almost understand if you don’t fully appreciate the impact of discovering one’s sexuality and gender feels like. But you’ve included autism as small, and that…
It’s literally small in the information compression sense. Storing the pattern of your palm print takes up more space than a listing most peoples current bank account balances. People generally care a lot more about bank accounts than palm prints, but that doesn’t mean they take up a lot of space. As such palm prints are literally a larger part of your identity than your bank account balance.
How so? Your example doesn’t make this clear as I can’t relate those things to the actual parts of my identity you’re addressing.
Tell me more detail about how small my queerness, NBness and neurodivergence are.
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It’s literally small in the information compression sense. Storing the pattern of your palm print takes up more space than a listing most peoples current bank account balances. People generally care a lot more about bank accounts than palm prints, but that doesn’t mean they take up a lot of space. As such palm prints are literally a larger part of your identity than your bank account balance.
> It’s literally small in the information compression sense. How so? Your example doesn’t make this clear as I can’t relate those things to the actual parts of my identity you’re addressing. Tell me more detail about how small my queerness, NBness and neurodivergence are.
Except not every word fits into sexual identity. If you where listing every person on earth let’s be generous and call it 10,000 options for sexual identity or ~15 bits of information.
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> It’s literally small in the information compression sense. How so? Your example doesn’t make this clear as I can’t relate those things to the actual parts of my identity you’re addressing. Tell me more detail about how small my queerness, NBness and neurodivergence are.
You just described your queerness in 1 word, so that’s ~20 bits of information. Having also summed up the other 2 conditions in a single world call it’s at most ~60 bits of information to describe all 3. Except not every word fits into sexual identity. If you where listing every person on earth let’s be generous and call it 10,000 options for sexual identity or ~15 bits of information.
> I spent most of my life shielding myself from admitting I’m queer, and nearly all of it shielding myself from admitting I’m non-binary and admitting I’m autistic, using this logic.
You really think there isn’t more to shape me, to who I am and what shaped and continues to me, than what I described here? You really think the kinds of pain I described in responses from the process that led to these recognitions about myself are low information?
You’re talking to me like my life and my self is distilled down to the words I’ve written in a HN comment thread.
Honestly this isn’t worth my time. Go dismiss yourself.
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As far as I can tell, both the "political class" and the regular people aren't very good at understanding or productively participating in politics. The only decent and thoughtful political discussions I've ever seen have come from philosophers. Which perhaps could be considered an "elite" class, too, but IMO there's zero economic or status hierarchy that serves as a barrier to entry, unlike being a politician.
Can you name a poor philosopher? If anything, the barriers appear to me to be greater.
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Hey there just wanted to say : not everyone in America thinks like this. there is this strange brand of modern racism where people reduce everything down to a race issue even when it is not. Ergo immigrant = not white. Same type of people that will claim that a given communities lack of resources is because it is a black community, ignoring that the community is poor and that there is a white community not 20 miles a…
> I suspect if you make your way closer to the midwest you will meet less of these people, and more people who treat you like just another person and couldn't give a fuck how you identify. As someone that grew up somewhere in the midwest (which isn't as homogenous as is often implied) and then moved to a stereotypically left-leaning coastal city, this was perhaps true in certain circumstances but definitely not other…
But like yeah I mean I grew up in one town, lived 1 life, and im a member of the racial majority so take my words with a grain of salt I guess.
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Hey there just wanted to say : not everyone in America thinks like this. there is this strange brand of modern racism where people reduce everything down to a race issue even when it is not. Ergo immigrant = not white. Same type of people that will claim that a given communities lack of resources is because it is a black community, ignoring that the community is poor and that there is a white community not 20 miles a…
>Ironically, this seems to come from highly educated individuals whom I suspect have never 1) been to a third world country, off the resort 2) lived in a financially struggling household 3) worked an honest day of manual labor ever. is programming the common denominator between them?
I mean yeah a lot of programmers fall into that catagory but no theres a plenty of people in all different professions (including blue collar professions) that fall into the catagory im describing
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> I suspect if you make your way closer to the midwest you will meet less of these people, and more people who treat you like just another person and couldn't give a fuck how you identify. As someone that grew up somewhere in the midwest (which isn't as homogenous as is often implied) and then moved to a stereotypically left-leaning coastal city, this was perhaps true in certain circumstances but definitely not other…
Yeah somehow I just don't buy that. Like ymmv but I've seen exactly 2 examples of actual racist people in the midwest. But like yeah I mean I grew up in one town, lived 1 life, and im a member of the racial majority so take my words with a grain of salt I guess.
In that case, I probably will, unfortunately. The incidents I encountered directed at me almost never involved a witness who belonged to a racial majority, so if I had to guess you wouldn't have witnessed a representative number of them either. I suspect that's because most people are (thankfully) afraid of being seen as racist in public, so they're usually in a more one-on-one setting.