The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

I can sympathize with a sensitivity to things that others take in stride: for example, TVs in public spaces, jumping and cutting frenetically, impossible to really ignore.

But here's another example: in the 80s there was still a live issue of the convention that 'he' could cover both genders, and so on. I'd been reading long enough, with enough older writing, that I can remember how attempts at nonsexist writing could be jarring and awkward -- arresting the reader full stop for the sake of a cultural-politics position completely irrelevant to the point being written about. (Especially since those newer conventions had to evolve.) For people to come over to the newer way took time (and I wasn't won over instantly myself) -- maybe it's useless to say this, but the Right Answer to How We Should All Talk is not divinely revealed.

"But this isn't for liberation! It's dumb!" Maybe. The point is that in a dynamic free culture you get comfortable with genuine differences and you learn it's pointless to make a fuss over such a harmless eccentricity. And a dynamic free culture is the type that can learn to get better over time. I think seeing so many complaints, so consistently, about this eccentricity, is a real (albeit trivial) signal of a cultural problem. (Admittedly I dunno, maybe it's just that HN has a lot more commenters and the fraction who do this is a big enough number now. But it's part of a broader pattern.)

I hope this helps you see my point of view, starting this thread. Can't speak for Kragen.

Still is, AFAICS. And I'm not entirely unsympathetic to the traditional view that it can.

> I'd been reading long enough, with enough older writing, that I can remember how attempts at nonsexist writing could be jarring and awkward

Still are, sometimes.

> For people to come over to the newer way took time (and I wasn't won over instantly myself)

Long before me, it seems.

> the Right Answer to How We Should All Talk is not divinely revealed.

Kind of isn't -- and kind of is: It's informed by lots of things, like prevailing usage, history, social upheaval, fleeting fashions, and... Simple logic. From a single speaker's perspective, most of those are pretty much "divine revelation"; none of us can single-handedly change these phenomena.

Especially for numbers, which more than most other aspects of language are governed by mathematical logic, which less than all the other governing phenomena changes over time.

> "But this isn't for liberation! It's dumb!" Maybe.

No "maybe" about it; it just plain simply is dumb. That's not how numbers work. Also, to the extent that Kragen wants to promote a "long now" perspective: Why just one prefix zero? Bah, that's still practically the day after tomorrow! That should be at least three zeros! Or, heck, why not six -- or fifteen?

See where that gets us in the end? Yeah, exactly: Nowhere. It's just ridiculous.

> I think seeing so many complaints, so consistently, about this eccentricity, is a real (albeit trivial) signal of a cultural problem.

Yup. And when one person persists in being "a cultural problem" that is sometimes a sign that something is wrong with the culture... And far, far more often a sign that something is wrong with that person. Shaving this situation with the oldest(?) of the philosophical Razors, I'm leaning towards Kragen's affectation.

> (Admittedly I dunno, maybe it's just that HN has a lot more commenters and the fraction who do this is a big enough number now. But it's part of a broader pattern.)

I think it's just simply that the HN readership is above-Internet-average literate and STEM oriented, and therefore tends to get annoyed at illiterate -- and innumerate! -- writing more than you might be likely to see elsewhere on the Net.

> I hope this helps you see my point of view, starting this thread.

Sure. Are you getting mine?

> Can't speak for Kragen.

If only they could speak for themself.

Huh? How does that follow? I don't think so. Seems at least as likely that "the government" is just collecting and codifying some of the populace's pre-existing norms.

TL;DR: [Citation needed]

> historically what you see in the death throws of an empire.

Throes.

Fuck knows if that's etymologically just a weird old spelling of 'throws' that has survived only in this particular usage or WTF it's all about, but nevertheless that's how it's usually spelled.

We are all of us more wrong than we can imagine. I believe cultures that tolerate weird ideas (and there's a difference between tolerating and embracing them) learn faster than conformist cultures. My 80s anecdote was about how an idea I now see as good appeared at first as pointless convention-breaking of negative value, and how you can't tell the difference at first. Such changes generally don't happen by conspiracy, but by someone having an idea and doing it, and others running with it or not. The policy you seem to be pushing instead is that ideas to be tolerated must come with social proof. ("none of us can single-handedly change these phenomena. ... one person ... something is wrong with that person.") In putting it that way I'm probably exaggerating what you really think, but directionally this does seem to be our difference.

> [zeros are dumb]

As I said, I don't care about this at the object level. In my native culture we shrug and move on.

If Long Now dates end up materially helping to make our culture more farsighted, it wouldn't even be all that surprising. For instance, if it caught the attention of one particular nonconformist and inspired them towards some project that set off another cascade which you didn't see as silly.

> the HN readership is above-Internet-average literate and STEM oriented

That hasn't changed in this interval.