Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

telegraph.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

621–630 of 992 posts

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#621

Post by zirgs »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #577
josephg wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I disagree with both of your points: > There’s simply no possible way for a minority of such a small size to make any waves happen anywhere, not even on anything as small as a popular video game. There's an old quote - "Never assume a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. Its the only thing that ever has." The radical left - for all that they're championing the rights of a small group o…

You’re going off about a lot of stuff but all I’m saying is that if even 100% of all trans people loudly proclaimed they wanted to be against the Harry Potter game they probably wouldn’t accomplish shit just because they’re such a small population. I mean literally we have laws being passed in some states to ban all of 2 trans kids (in the entire state) from participating in sports. It’s not like they can do anything…

If you ban someone from reddit or twitter - their opinions only disappear from your echo chamber not from the real world. Maybe echo chambers aren't such a good idea after all.

Those people banned every single dissenting opinion and after a while started to think that their opinions are way more popular than they actually are.

"Everybody around here thinks that JKR is bad - so surely our boycott is going to be successful - I don't see anyone who disagrees."

If anything - this ridiculous hate campaign against JKR could decrease the support for trans people.

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#622

Post by sillysaurusx »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #524
mensetmanusman wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your decision may be contributing to the crisis of identity of women who do want to raise a family though, and who have been crushed by a culture who pushes college and helping capital owners as the meaning to life.

My understanding is that this crisis of identity is actually on men, because men aren’t now the sole breadwinners and also don’t have girlboss feminism to bolster them. Men attain less education and are more prone to crime, homelessness, and addiction. The traditional role of a man is an emotionally closed-off breadwinner, and this doesn’t work in a world where women can rival men in breadwinning but also don’t have…

> Men attain less education and are more prone to crime, homelessness, and addiction.

What an awful thing to say. It would be different if your comment taught us something, but it's little more than a well-written diss.

Imagine how you'd feel if the word "Men" were replaced by various ethnic groups, while still maintaining its accuracy.

At one time it was true to say that women were naturally bad at chess.

My wife supported me financially for close to five years. It's why I was able to learn ML so thoroughly. Maybe some men would view her as the competition, but I'm fortunate to be in a relationship where we don't feel threatened by the other. I recommend other men try to find this as well, since it's quite nice.

It's also nice to have a family where the roles are well-defined and reliable, and there's nothing wrong with wanting one over the other. It's personal preference, which you can't really control. But saying that men are bad at forming robust social safety nets is different than qualifying your statements with "some" or "most."

I'll be the first to say that it's a huge double standard to expect most men to be emotionally closed off most of the time, whereas women are expected to be more emotional in relation to men. But you're phrasing this in a highly negative way.

The women who don't become homeless often resort to sex work. It tends to be more difficult for men to do this in a financially successful way. Men are statistically more prone to violent crime; granted, and testosterone deserves to be scrutinized in its role regarding this. As for the addiction claim, I'd be curious to see the data, since my anecdata suggests mostly equal rates. https://nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/substance... claims the situation is a bit more nuanced:

> For most age groups, men have higher rates of use or dependence on illicit drugs and alcohol than do women. However, women are just as likely as men to develop a substance use disorder. In addition, women may be more susceptible to craving and relapse, which are key phases of the addiction cycle.

More generally, if you're going to paint various segments of the population with negative traits, it's important to bring data to the discussion which backs up your assertions. That way it informs the reader rather than polarizing them.

That said, if you'd written a children's book, I wouldn't lobby for it to be changed. I'd buy different books, or explain it in context.

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#623

Post by Nevermark »

zmgsabst wrote: post #467
Nevermark wrote: post #282

So many classics hit us differently today I recently read all of Ian Flemming’s James Bond novels. The identification of race as correlated with strong personality and motive characteristics is pervasive, especially for the enemy in any narrative. Often negative, but often positive - the enemy is always “different”, but must always be respected, never underestimated. And foreign characters often team up with Bond, ad…

How are the James Bond stories different than the anti-Russian sentiments we see circulating today? I think we should read such historical texts precisely so we can gain an appreciation for how those ideas happen — and can examine ourselves doing the same thing.

In the books, the very distasteful view of Russians is aimed at particular people and organizations within Russia.

Not the general repressed public.

That is worth remembering in the heat of war.

Also, the books recognize that the motives of those powerful government (and government sponsored) organizations are implacable.

They continuously worked in every way possible to undermine the power of other countries, vassal or competitive.

(With the purely pragmatic partial exception of other likeminded or strategically helpful countries.)

Putin seems to have retained those motives, and we ignored that.

Regardless of how the war continues or ends, as long as Putin is in charge, or someone like him, there will be a very active (on their side) clandestine Cold War against everyone external.

And repression of everyone internally.

They really are Bond-worthy villains.

We should not forget that again.

EDIT: Until something fundamentally changes in the leaderships very competitive view of the world.

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#624

Post by acuozzo »

smt88 wrote: post #512
zmgsabst wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think the best way to address slavery is to erase all the records and pretend it didn’t happen?

Children's books are not a vital record of historical prejudice. I don't agree with these changes, but this argument makes no sense.

Ask a few random people on the street in a major US city how many books they've read in the past five years.

I'd wager that children's books represent a much larger percentage of the books the typical US citizen reads in their entire lifetime than anyone would like to believe.

If true, this would elevate their importance enough for matters like historical accuracy to be worth considering.

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#625

Post by n3storm »

alerter wrote: post #617

People will complain about political correctness, but this is just the market and intellectual property law in action. In my experience, the ‘left’ doesn’t want the public sphere to become coddled and inoffensive. Advertisers and media companies do. It’s risk aversion. Ideally, our shared cultural legacy would not be subject to the whims of corporate executives.

I don't think advertisers and media care if you their consumers are rightist or leftist as long as they consume and the company find out what they are willing to pay for, be it weapons, "organic" food, propaganda t-shirts, survivalist stuff or magic stones.

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#626

Post by a_e_k »

bentcorner wrote: post #477
bla3 wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm neither credible nor reputable, but I'm in favor of a weak version of this. When reading older books to my young child, I replace language that suggests that women are supposed to stay at home and men are supposed to go to work. One day soon he'll be able to read, and at that point I'll wish that books that were a product of their time would have been updated for the current time, so that he could just read the b…

> I replace language that suggests that women are supposed to stay at home and men are supposed to go to work I totally agree - my kids had Berenstain Bear's books (as random gifts and such) and I would avoid reading them because in particular the way they portrayed Papa Bear as a bumbling fool grated on my nerves. He's like a Homer Simpson without the heart. I'm certain mothers also don't appreciate the way Mama Bea…

I've taken the "Oh no! Sorry. That book was accidentally destroyed maliciously," approach before.

(Interestingly, my own parents took that approach with the Berenstain Bears for exactly the reason you describe.)

But I'd prefer to either read something to my kids as originally written or not read it all. Or as they get older, read the original but with a parental aside on how it was a product of its time. (Might as well make it an opportunity for a brief history lesson.)

I'm definitely not a fan of this "force push" approach to updating established older works.

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#627

Post by hugh-avherald »

xupybd wrote: post #455
ComputerGuru wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is forbidden to say being fat is unhealthy, undesirable or to pathologize it at all. Does that seem sensible?

As someone who is fat and unhealthy I don't think it is. You're not rejecting me to tell me I need to lose some weight, you're suggesting you care about my well being. I don't understand the modern idea that you must celebrate every part of a person to love them.

I suspect it went something like this: There were studies into shaming of overweight individuals concluded it was a poor method for weight loss. This mutated into the idea that anti-shaming must be good for health and the idea that we should not implicitly shame fat people in general.

In general, I suspect these kinds of cultural phenomena generally begin by fairly mundane scientific observations being processed through a game of telephone within academia.

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#628

Post by TaylorAlexander »

gramie wrote: post #355
Beldin wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Screeching typically concerns loud, high-pitched, emotional screaming (my connotation, backed up by a quick google). I am under the impression that, on average, men's voices are lower than women's voices. Hence some connotation. Doesn't mean men cannot screech, though. Just that there is some reason for making that connection, so at least some folks will make that connection.

I would associate "screeching" with women, just as I would associate "bellowing" with men. I fail to understand why using these words is bad, though.

It ends up being used to dismiss women levying legitimate criticism. It basically gets used to enforce patriarchy. In practice the opposite is not really true of “bellowing” to the same extent. But even then, gendered insults are falling out of favor in general.

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#629

Post by dang »

archagon wrote: post #192
dang wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On HN, we go by article quality rather than site quality: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... . The current article, I would say, easily clears the bar for interestingness on HN, despite its culture war aspect. Interestingness is the thing we care about here ( https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... ). (Also, the submitter did a fine job of rewriting the title to be…

Does anything valuable truly emerge from these culture war articles? All I see is people raging from their favorite soap boxes.

Sometimes it does! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34850886 is superb - in my book, that's above the "one has no right to expect a comment of this quality on an internet forum" line.

That led me to https://news.ycombinator.com/posts?id=HuShifang and posts like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31074363. I mean wow.

You're right about raging and soapboxes of course. Unfortunately, angry repetition is in far greater supply than excellent comments sharing rare information. But this is an internet problem and indeed a human problem in general. We try to moderate in favor of the good posts as best we can. It's not clear how to do it much better.

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#630

Post by rrsmtz »

jquery wrote: post #484
DanHulton wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Screeching" in english (at least North American english) is typically a gendered derogative. You generally wouldn't say a man was "screeching", not unless you also wanted to imply he was effeminate. By avoiding the word, you avoid insinuating the target's gender is part of the issue, and/or avoid insinuating that the target is effeminate when they "should not" be, i.e. you avoid homophobia.

>"Screeching" in english (at least North American english) is typically a gendered derogative. When HN can't tolerate such an obviously true statement such as this, yet plenty of dog-whistles supporting homophobia and racism and transphobia in this thread stay upvoted, it tells me I probably shouldn't be spending time here anymore. I don't know if I've changed or the community has changed. Probably a bit of both. May…

Can I get dibs on your username?
Post reply on HN