171–180 of 275 posts
I've seen this obscure story on HN three times in the last month. I read it decades ago. Did some mainstream event make it popular?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anyone I've ever heard it from was a Libertarian, so it seems fair to use that as a label. I don't know or care if it is a "party plank" shared by "all Libertarians" or "true Libertarians" or "true Scotsmen", it's not relevant to my point.
You're not hearing it from this libertarian. Libertarianism is not code for rude, thoughtless, meanness, uncharitable, stealing, defrauding, enslaving, etc. It's code for people doing what they want to, as long as they don't hurt others. For example, I follow recommendations for making my web sites more usable for people using screen readers. Not because anyone makes me do it - I'm happy to do it.
A lot of accommodations cost money and are supported by taxes. Are you one of the rare Libertarians who doesn't also believe "taxation is theft"? Other accommodations require regulation because incentives (money) alone don't work (and have been repeatedly proven not to). Have you squared your Libertarianism with the need for useful regulations of accommodations?
The extreme nihilistic version has deep roots in modern American Libertarianism, I'm glad you anecdotally don't think you subscribe to it. I don't have any cookies to hand out for someone feeling happy to do the low hanging fruit when part of the point is about doing the hard things for equity (not equality) and compassion.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why can't it be both at the same time? Vonnegut was both a great thinker and a great writer (the former is typically a precondition for the latter).
Vonnegut was brilliant, but I never found his writing subtle. He generally was pretty straightforward about things. imho, Harrison Bergeron should be taken at face value as his indictment against holding back the gifted among us. Remember that his exemplars aren't great Randian industrialists, but like... dancers. Artists. Quietly intelligent men like himself. Vonnegut isn't saying "the strong should triumph and stan…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And Television. And radio. And books. And the ability to read in general. These same historical ills attributed to all of these activities are being recycled against today's social media, even here on HN.
It was true for all of those things. It is an ever accelerating trend away from in person socialization and towards solitary entertainment and electronically mediated, soloed interactions.
Not everybody does.
Not everyone finds socializing with the same clique of 5-10 people day after day after day to be a valuable experience. Especially when you're not the "star" of the social cliques you find yourself in.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I can't be sure, but there is a possibility that my story "Harrison Bergeron" is about the envy and self-pity I felt in an over-achievers' high school in Indianapolis quite a while ago now. Some people never tame those emotions. John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald and Mark David Chapman come to mind. "Handicapper Generals," if you like." - Vonnegut
That fits. It sounds like it's not the high-minded anticommunist social criticism that conservatives want it to be, but more of just grousing about the tall-poppy problem of high-school that I think most gen-X-and-older nerds would be more than familiar with.
George Orwell, also a socialist, famously noted that many of his fellow socialists were motivated more by envy and resentment toward the rich than by compassion for the poor. As others have commented, envy could certainly be attributed as the cause of many "social justice" minded policies we see today.
Those on the right would argue that (barring some virtuous individual socialists) socialism is at root an ideology for justifying envy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Story from a local school: Parents of the more advanced math students in the grade requested some sort of more advanced math opportunities for their kids. School didn't provide any. When several of the kids used a more advanced math concept they had learned outside of school to solve a problem, the teacher told them to not do it that way because they hadn't learned it yet. The school does provide extra classes for ki…
Note the contrast between that and the athletic department, where schools are absolutely delighted to get a kid with an aptitude for sport, and push him hard to achieve.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Americans idolize athletic skill and beauty, but look down on intellectual achievement. "nerds"
That's an unnecessary large brush. There are 300 million of us. Are we all the same?
"All" is a modifier for a reason.
For example, people are demanding that the SATs should not be used to evaluate students academic ability, because it's unfair that some students do better on the test than others.
Have you ever seen anyone advocate this sort of thing for the school sports program? How about it being unfair and inequitable that top athletes have a leg up on college admissions?
Did any PE teacher shower attention on me or the other inept students to bring us up to speed? Nope. The attention was all on the top 2 or 3 athletic students. The rest of us were just an annoyance. (I'm not saying this to complain, as my interests were elsewhere, just illustrating an example.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting. I've always felt the story to be a bit of a straw man. Don't we always celebrate and idolize ability, beauty etc?
Americans idolize athletic skill and beauty, but look down on intellectual achievement. "nerds"
One way that popular culture teaches this dichotomy is with role playing games, where you choose to spec into INT or STR, but if you split your skill points between both you'll be mediocre at both. Real life doesn't work like that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're not hearing it from this libertarian. Libertarianism is not code for rude, thoughtless, meanness, uncharitable, stealing, defrauding, enslaving, etc. It's code for people doing what they want to, as long as they don't hurt others. For example, I follow recommendations for making my web sites more usable for people using screen readers. Not because anyone makes me do it - I'm happy to do it.
Great. You want a pat on the back for doing the easy things? A lot of accommodations cost money and are supported by taxes. Are you one of the rare Libertarians who doesn't also believe "taxation is theft"? Other accommodations require regulation because incentives (money) alone don't work (and have been repeatedly proven not to). Have you squared your Libertarianism with the need for useful regulations of accommodat…
I'm not asking for cookies. I'm pointing out that you have a misinformed view of Libertarianism, and gave an example.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting. I've always felt the story to be a bit of a straw man. Don't we always celebrate and idolize ability, beauty etc?
There have been school districts lately that have been getting rid of advanced math classes in the name of equality.
I think a better overall solution would be something like what Khan academy was going for - you can have a bunch of kids at different levels in the same class, and then you can also rely on them to help teach each other more. I think this was the main way schoolhouses were run before the industrial revolution. Then you're not limiting anyone, and you're also not encouraging the weird social effects that come from trying to section off people into discrete buckets