Heresy • Hacker News Board

Re: Heresy

#341

Post by leephillips » Sun, Apr 10, 2022, 4:05 PM UTC

tlogan wrote: post #271

Can somebody list “heresies” which we are not allowed to say but they are ok? I cannot find a single one. But maybe I’m missing something.

(1) The concept of an inherent “gender” makes no biological nor logical sense. You can’t have been born in the “wrong body.”

(2) Socrates was mostly right about democracy.

(3) Seriously violent criminals, once convicted, should never bet let out of prison.

(4) The US (and all nations) should have essentially open borders.

(5) The US should make health insurance illegal and provide health care as a function of government, the way they provide national defense.

(6) All gun control is against the US constitution and poor public policy.

These are all my sincere opinions, and, although I think most of them are clearly, sometimes self-evidently true, most of them are heresies.

Re: Heresy

#342

Post by ajross » Sun, Apr 10, 2022, 4:06 PM UTC

roflc0ptic wrote: post #72

tedivm wrote: post #11

This thing where people want to say horrible things without consequence is just so weird. I have the right to judge your statements just as much as you have a right to say them. I have the right to leave jobs when it turns out the people working there hate people like me, and companies have the right to hire people who aren't going to alienate future potential employees. When people bring up posts like this they neve…

> When people bring up posts like this they never say what the "heresies" are. People aren't getting "cancelled" for their takes on taxes. There are plenty of examples of stuff that is way less clearcut "that's bad" than your example. See e.g. David Schor getting fired for retweeting a black professor's paper arguing riots are bad for black political movements. See also, e.g. a friend ending our friendship because I…

> There are plenty of examples [...] e.g. David Schor

I think it's rather the opposite. There are, to be sure, tragedies and abuses of woke rhetoric that gets directed at the wrong people and/or implemented in outrageous ways. But they're pretty rare, and generally get a ton of media coverage for exactly that reason. Those are what PG is writing about.

But in my experience, the overwhelming majority of people entering this kind of argument are actually just wanting more cover to say things they used to say that are... well, kinda off. Not "lose your job" off, but casually "x-ist" in a way that most of us would prefer not to engage with.

And really, that's the rub here, and the biggest problem with PG's essay here. Where are the examples? If there's something you want to say but feel you can't, then say it. This is a reasonably anonymous forum. PG is reasonably immune to that kind of criticism. But the problem is that when you say it the debate becomes a debate about your opinions and not your oppression, and that's ground these folks won't win on, like this one:

> I gently challenged her fat acceptance rhetoric

You literally had a friend walk out of your life because you couldn't respect her boundaries about something as senselessly unobjective as body image, and the lesson you seem to have taken from it is that you were the oppressed one?

Re: Heresy

#343

Post by falcolas » Sun, Apr 10, 2022, 4:06 PM UTC

metmac wrote: post #59

Why was this post flagged?

Because many users flagged it.

That’s usually all there is to it.

Personally I flagged it because it’s conversational flame bait where two radicalized groups will argue past each other endlessly, which will serve only to reinforce their radicalization. (Yes, me too)

Re: Heresy

#344

Post by woodruffw » Sun, Apr 10, 2022, 4:06 PM UTC

morelisp wrote: post #296

javajosh wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too complicated. The culture war was explicitly born of a left-wing power grab through cultural means, and it was foisted on college students starting in like 2014, and has had remarkable success (for its proponents). College kids believe a lot of stuff without knowing what, or why, and cancel culture rules are no different.

> The culture war was explicitly born of a left-wing power grab through cultural means The current culture war got stoked in the early 90s by conservatives because it got them votes, and has been escalating since then because it still does. Or are you going full Buchanan to claim black and gay people getting equal treatment in the civil arena is a "left-wing power grab"?

And even beyond that: there's a direct line from Goldwater's open hatred for the press and academia to the Contract With America/early 90s "big tent" cultural conservatism.

Conservatism in America has not existed as a unified front modulo the culture war for decades. The only thing keeping the stakeholders together are social issues and revanchist sentiments towards anything that has even historically challenged those issues.

Re: Heresy

#345

Post by zarzavat » Sun, Apr 10, 2022, 4:06 PM UTC

This is one of the best reasons to learn a second language. Heretical concepts are often wrapped in layers of euphemism. For this reason, heresies tend to have problems crossing language barriers as that structure of euphemisms hasn’t necessarily been developed. One of the properties of the euphemism treadmill is that the mere existence of softer alternatives makes the original seem much worse than it was before.

Speaking another language often exposes you to people expressing taboo (to you as an outsider) concepts in a blunt and direct manner. This may strengthen or weaken the taboo to you, but at least it will make you think.

To give a very mild example, in English it’s taboo to mention someone’s weight. Even if they are a public figure that you will never meet. So we have a structure of euphemisms: “overweight”, “larger”, “plus-sized”, etc. But there are other languages where people literally do call each other fat, to their face, and it is not taboo. As you can imagine, this principle extends to political and social concepts too.

Re: Heresy

#346

Post by typon » Sun, Apr 10, 2022, 4:07 PM UTC

the_gipsy wrote: post #289

This can also be interpreted as an interesting piece on perceived martyrdom and persecution fetish.

The plight of powerful white men in positions of power is nothing to scoff at

Re: Heresy

#347

Post by jameshart » Sun, Apr 10, 2022, 4:07 PM UTC

pikma wrote: post #80

muglug wrote: post #36

> Can a statement be x-ist, for whatever value of x, and also true? If the answer is yes, then they're admitting to banning the truth I disagree. The statement “very few women are capable of running a Fortune 500 company effectively” is factually true, but implicitly sexist (very few men are capable either). By banning those sorts of statements you’re not banning the truth, you’re just quieting assholes.

Is the reason it's sexist because it can be interpreted as "women are less capable than men"? You would say this other statement is false and sexist, correct?

Human discourse does not consist of people stating neutral, truthful propositions in isolation. We are not Vulcans.

When someone chooses to say a particular sentence is as much a part of communication as what that sentence says.

So when someone says "very few women are capable of running a Fortune 500 company effectively," they aren't merely blurting out a fact at random, they are trying to say something.

And depending on the context, and who they are, and who they are speaking to, the thing they are trying to say can be different.

In many cases, if someone brings up that particular fact in conversation, you would reasonably conclude that they are submitting it in support of the idea that it is unsurprising that few women are CEOs of F500 companies; that they believe that is natural and reasonable.

But in other circumstances, say in a profile of a successful female F500 CEO, that same assertion could be being offered in support of the thesis that the subject of the profile is an exceptional individual, deserving of success.

Or, as in muglug's comment to which you're replying, it could be being used to illustrate a point about the fact that very few people are capable of running a fortune 500.

So this is the thing: a fact is neutral. But the facts that you introduce into a conversation are always selected to support a position. And a position can certainly be sexist.

Re: Heresy

#348

Post by Koshkin » Sun, Apr 10, 2022, 4:07 PM UTC

pkulak wrote: post #10

When you say or do socially unacceptable things, there can be consequences. Is that “heresy”? I always associated that word with religion, myself, but it’s interesting that religion is so out of favor right now that you can use it as a comparison to argue that any action not explicitly illegal should be free of negative consequence.

Yes, heresy by definition is an opinion that is deemed socially unacceptable.

Re: Heresy

#349

Post by pen2l » Sun, Apr 10, 2022, 4:08 PM UTC

Osmose wrote: post #258

The behavior he's calling "heresy" here cannot be evaluated in a vacuum; these kinds of statements are all contextual, ESPECIALLY hinging on who is saying them. And the reason that is the case is because the consequences of saying something are different depending on who says them. Paul Graham is wealthy and influential, and actively tries to influence folks with essays like this. So when he says something, it is jud…

Is it a good thing that filters of all sorts are eradicated? Never before has a thought been able to travel as freely as it can now, 5 of the 8 billion people in the world have the internet, in a few seconds a thought you utter is potentially accessible to half of humanity. But this thought forgoes the chance to be interpreted, re-interpreted by mentors and participants in your community, your parents, peer-reviewed in some manner, honed, reconsidered before meeting the wider public.

Tech, reddit/fb/etc enables this in its propensity to reduce friction in the path of information's travel, to make sharing possible with the least amount of clicks and obstructions, this gives way to instinctive and emotional thinking over deliberate and logical thought, and indeed the proliferation of those thoughts. One would be remiss to look over the role that these new-fangled tools play in a discussion of these topics, particularly, the formalization of what constitutes as heresy and resulting actions of galvanized crowds or institutions when being met with heresy.

Re: Heresy

#350

Post by otterley » Sun, Apr 10, 2022, 4:08 PM UTC

hunterb123 wrote: post #325

ratww wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an OCEAN of difference between saying what this article is saying and being okay with the recent wave of anti-trans/anti-LGBT conservatism in the US. Someone saying that "teaching about sexuality is akin to grooming" is clearly telling a lie. If someone gets shit for it, then the hubbub/cancellation is definitely not taking priority over the question of truth or falsity . Heck, if anything, the anti-trans/an…

> "teaching about sexuality is akin to grooming" is clearly a lie. Out of curiosity is there an age limit on this statement for you? Because while we're talking about heresies I'd like to say teaching sexuality to young children without parental consent is grooming. What happened to asking for a permit slip signed by the parents if you want to give a sex talk. It's a parent's rights issue, not a LGBTQ issue.

I’m always amused when I see people who say that “abortion is not a legitimate right because it’s a court-created right that’s not enumerated in the Constitution” are the same people who have no trouble finding a “parent’s right” where no such enumerated right exists, either.

Also, this word “grooming” gets dispensed a lot lately when discussing this issue, and I’m not sure that the people who say it know what it means. Or, alternatively, they are afraid to say what they really think the consequences of talking to children about all the different relationships people have because they know it is wrong and would subject them to fierce ridicule.