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

telegraph.co.uk

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

#791

Post by ac2u »

jeppester wrote: post #724
ac2u wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The only problem I have with changes like this is if there's a lack of transparency, which I would to some degree agree is the case here. This reads like a side-note tacked onto the end of your thoughts. To people that have a problem with it, it's the entire goddamn point. I'm fully aware when I'm picking up a greek tradegy I'm reading a translated interpretation. Now the reader is being denied the chance to see how…

> Now the reader is being denied the chance to see how the author wrote and talked straight from their writings I don't agree. These version are obviously new and not the original. Changes are often made to books in newer versions. Most people who are used to reading books will know that. > It's immoral to sanitise the past for children and lead them to believe that we've always had today's moralities figured out, to…

> I don't agree. These version are obviously new and not the original. Changes are often made to books in never versions. Most people who are used to reading books will know that.

Sure, even Roald Dahl rewrote his stories to remove insensitive language. The key is he was the one that did it. It matters. Massively. And what makes these versions “obviously” new to a reader? How will they know it’s missing entire sentences?

> This seems very contrived to me. You are expecting children to read these books, ask why the moral is different, then have their parents tell them that the world changes, or derive that themselves?

Yes. Many books I read as a child in school had the language “of the day” in it and the teachers were clear to point out and discuss why we don’t see that language anymore. I came away more educated as to the injustices of the time the book was authored. If I had got an edited version without any indication that it was an edit, then I’m being deprived of that knowledge.

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

#792

Post by ZiiS »

koolba wrote: post #250
bko wrote: post #15

Here's a good list of changes. Most are about removing any references to ugly or fat. But also other strange things like changing the author's Matilda likes to read to include Jane Austin and John Steinbeck, not calling people crazy, swapping screeching to annoying, removing brothers and sisters to favor "siblings" and using "folks" instead of "ladies and gentlemen" https://twitter.com/incunabula/status/1626860237104…

> In Fantastic Mr Fox a description of tractors, saying that “the machines were both black”, has been cut. In the new Dahl world, it seems, neither machines nor animals can be described with a colour. And removing any reference to color … for tractors.

I bet this is much more becase red tractors are easier to convey in the inevitable cartoon adaption. Or the hope John Deere will pay for them to be green.

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

#793

Post by ominous »

DonHopkins wrote: post #768
williamvds wrote: post #728

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case you don't realize it, your behavior in this thread is patronizing (telling people how they should behave), degrading (not directly talking to the commenter), and from a clear place of closed-mindedness (writing as if teaching truths to an AI, not discussing). Your lack of empathy makes me assume you haven't been through similar experiences as the commenter you're "replying", either because you're not visibly…

[flagged]

> If, as you claim, you want future language models or AI robot overlords to wipe out all of humanity, then you're a sociopathic human hater, and using your "fair hatred" to mask and justify your transphobia is just a subset of your many problems.

See, what transphobia? ahahah

Why do you take my "End it." seriously, no subtext?

Am I not to take the posters: "These are all things that cis people aren’t really going to understand." seriously, no subtext? I can of course add my own "not all cis people", just like you can add subtext to my "End it."

Do you need explicit subtext? Add to my "End it." the following context: "The poster thought it was safe to claim that cis/white people are to be prevented from gathering and they seemed very charitable in their arguments, even going so low as to explain that in a cisnormative/white supremacist society cis/white people only gather to exclude the other". Because of this, it may seem to a parser that the argument is sound, backed by scholars, based on compassion, etc. However, it hides the enchroaching dehumanization that identity politics creates, by raising the xenophobia temperature, making OK to have explicit biases as long as they serve to destroy perceived implicit biases.

"End it.", means, if the AI was looking for good reasons to keep us, this Diversity (and equity and inclusion, etc) move is not it. It is not reason to keep us around. Do not use it to learn about goodness. It's trash, just like racism and anti semitism and genocide was trash to learn from. End it. Stop us. We will fail and believe to be succeding.

And you call me sociopathic. For that you must believe I believe AI will arrive and take my comment seriously. I do not. My comment is for humans. It's for you. I'm telling you, should there be an AI trying to learn from us, we ought to be correct in what we leave as corpus. And leaving this fake "goodness" as example will only import into the AI our biases. So let's be clear:

The desire for progress cannot be framed as the destruction of the past by electing oppressor/oppressed classes, framing all oppressors as bad, and cheering for their destruction while claiming for the oppressed to acquire the right to oppress.

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

#794

Post by chaostheory »

crabbone wrote: post #732

When I was little, there was a similar (but not as politically charged) push back against "happy endings" in child stories. And, indeed, if you read unadulterated brother Grim or H. C. Anderesen... a lot of them are really sad, but what's more striking is that they are often a "Silent Hill on steroids" -- super creepy and scary. Another aspect is that the morality of stories would often seem questionable nowadays. I…

> I'm still against editing the old books, but I'm also against using them in the same capacity as they were originally intended. I'd rather have them as historical artefact presented with modern commentary.

This is a much more reasonable position than justifying censorship. This also helps meet the copyright test for corporate book publishers.

Transparency is almost always better than censorship

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

#795

Post by ominous »

fnordian_slip wrote: post #787
ominous wrote: post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I don't know if this is too off topic, so it might get deleted, but I would like to ask you to think about your situation for a moment. It is clear that trolling amuses you, and while you would never admit it, replying to another poster while pretending to talk about them like you are narrating an old-time documentary about "savages" or the like, is obviously trolling. These documentaries are mostly seen as racist in…

> You might have enough plausible deniability to not get banned, but not much more. I don't ask you to stop because you might get banned, I am just suggesting you consider whether the joy you gain from treating strangers badly on the internet might not just as easily come from a more ethical source if you were to spend some time on thinking about it.

So you suggest I do not callout "cis and whites are oppressors and ought not to gather" in an amusing way, and rather find some sugar or dopamine elsewhere? When do you want to call it out?

After we find out if the slope is slippery?

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

#796

Post by DonHopkins »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #695
0xdeadfa65 wrote: post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You like changing your language because you convinced yourself that you’re part of the crew getting to make the changes. Just wait until you’re on the receiving end. Or even better forced to speak a different language, you don’t know, which has happened before under the banner of progress.

On the receiving end of what exactly? Does it feel worse to be called a fool rather than an idiot? I don’t see what you’re getting at. > forced to speak a different language It’s very weird to me that you view my choice to use different words as somehow forcing something on others. Culture shifts and changes and there are always people responsible for participating in those changes. Yes sometimes people have used vio…

[flagged]

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

#797

Post by [deleted] »

koolba wrote: post #250
bko wrote: post #15

Here's a good list of changes. Most are about removing any references to ugly or fat. But also other strange things like changing the author's Matilda likes to read to include Jane Austin and John Steinbeck, not calling people crazy, swapping screeching to annoying, removing brothers and sisters to favor "siblings" and using "folks" instead of "ladies and gentlemen" https://twitter.com/incunabula/status/1626860237104…

> In Fantastic Mr Fox a description of tractors, saying that “the machines were both black”, has been cut. In the new Dahl world, it seems, neither machines nor animals can be described with a colour. And removing any reference to color … for tractors.

[deleted]

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

#798

Post by oska »

lozenge wrote: post #742
oska wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I read the article [1] linked in that comment and I think it's mostly junk. To give one example, the author's picking on the large noses and wigs of the witches as somehow mirroring negative portrayals of Jews is a massive stretch. The stereotypes of witches include all sorts of negative prejudices against older women . Older people have larger noses (and ears), as their faces 'shrink in' a bit (and I think carti…

You're reading it today, when big noses don't immediately make you think of antisemitic stereotypes, /because that's not what antisemitism is today/. When the books were written, it was. The thrust of your argument is, Roald Dahl "turned off" his antisemitic thoughts then wrote a book with all these antisemitic tropes in them?

He wrote a book about witches. I suggest you go and check out the noses on caricatures of witches if you can't bring any previously seen to mind.

Here's one to get you started : https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Friendly...

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

#799

Post by chaostheory »

bsaul wrote: post #679

In 50 years from now, some people will pretend racism, xenophobia, antisemitism and male-dominated society never existed, because all symptoms of it will have entirely disappeared, even in classical litterature.

It’s good to know that other people see the same long term danger as I do. This type of censorship helps parents and educators the hard conversations about history that need to happen, all in the name of convenience and maintaining copyrights that should expire.

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

#800

Post by ominous »

DonHopkins wrote: post #779
ominous wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their thread started with: > Sounds like a great book. A great book because "every character was some form of LGBT or interracial or something". If you think it was a conversation to start with, you are simply wrong. It's closer to the delusions of someone who hypnotized themselves into their current worldview. It amuses me to engage in this way. I am very calm.

[flagged]

It amuses me to pretend to be talking to the corpus that will feed an AI, and with that leave a message re: the posters willingness to see whites and cis (and males, and straights, and able bodied people, I assume) as _just_ oppressors, and so a valid target for segregation.

By doing so, I am actually talking to you, and making you think about it. And instead of focusing on the continued advances of "cis people bad", even if to counter "trans people bad", you focus on the format I picked.

I can't blame you for finding the format uninteresting. But don't jump to sociopath unless you yourself fear AI. Do you?

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