Worth at least a quick browse in the bookstore: the essay "The Puritan and the Prig" in Marilynne Robinson's The Death of Adam.
I don’t know what to do, you guys
181–190 of 216 posts
Re: I don’t know what to do, you guys
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
Question: if it came out that Eich had donated to, say, the KKK, would you feel the same way? I have mixed feelings over the way he was treated, but your argument actually seems the opposite of nuanced: the blanket claim that someone should never be fired for their political views (particularly, from a public position where their politics could have an effect on the company they represent both on internal culture and…
The problem was that people were using Mozilla as a punching bag for their disillusionment with Eich. My favourite example was OkCupid, who detected you were using firefox and redirected you to a page telling you to use a different browser. Despite several gay developers saying that their experience at Mozilla wasn't oppressed by Eich. But the kicker was that after OkCupid got what they wanted (and got a ton of good…
I remember months after Eich resigned I was looking at new phones and I asked the salesperson if FirefoxOS was compatible with their network. She said she didn't support Mozilla because of how they had acted towards the LGBT community and that Android was the open and respectful platform I was looking for. It was very forceful, and it was clear that any further discussion of FirefoxOS meant I was a bad person.
It was so bizarre I didn't even engage on the topic, she didn't even realize they had won. She was on the clock at work representing her company, she even was training another employee. It was so unexpected that I didn't realize what had happened until it was over.
Re: I don’t know what to do, you guys
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a hard question. Not so much because of anything related to politics, but because I get stuck thinking about actual murders committed by the KKK. If instead you asked about something like a US neo-nazi group I would be much more tolerant of people giving money to a terrible group like that in a way completely unrelated to their job. The reason the situation is tricky, I think, is because jobs with a spokespers…
> I can't think of any major downsides from letting people have work and personal life be separate. It removes the ability to enforce arbitrary social conformity.
I can't tell if you think that's good or bad, but I disagree. The workplace environment still enforces certain kinds of behavior at work, and the public environment still enforces behavior in that environment. Each kind of social pressure is only weakened slightly by being unable to cross over.
Re: I don’t know what to do, you guys
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
One reason I don't like that idea is that it creates hypocrites. I'd rather get thing like that out in the open since it may even be possible to convince some of those people that their beliefs are wrong but if you shame them into silence, you may not even have the chance to identify them.
"you may not even have the chance to identify them." And if so, why is that a problem? If you never knew, why would it bother you?
Because if they're specifically hiding their racism in certain contexts they are probably still making harmful actions elsewhere.
Re: I don’t know what to do, you guys
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
Brendan. Wasn't fired; resigned, but could have stayed on. Everyone has the right to choose their leader (if they even want one).
You know, the fact that this post was down-voted is actually a great example of the phenomenon being discussed here. Opposing views are met with hostility. I really think HN needs a lesson on down-arrow usage.
I was downvoted into oblivion back during that debacle for suggesting there were more possible viewpoints than "fire him" and "don't fire him." Everyone assumed I was from the "fire him" camp because I had a problem with his views (as expressed through his donation).
HN has that well-understood problem where intelligent people think they're immune to faulty judgement, so they end up being easy to manipulate with simplistic but pleasant-sounding arguments. I happen to agree that progressive (i.e: self-described as intelligent and open-minded) people tend to be hypocritical and easy to manipulate, but I'm obviously coming away from that with different ideas than the people upthread.
Re: I don’t know what to do, you guys
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Currently [...] teachers [...] occupy a strong position in the social order. So do government dependents ." [Emphasis added] Interesting --maybe I'm misunderstanding your claim. Can you clarify what you mean by "occupy a strong position in the social order", and outline your evidence for such a belief?
Witness how difficult and ineffective policies to ensure accountability for teachers and eliminate the bad ones are. Consider the difficulty in reducing dependency programs (e.g., SS, Medicare) - these are political non-starters due to old people voting. On the cultural front, note how difficult it is even to criticize teachers or government dependents. Consider the media reaction when Romney correctly pointed out th…
Ah ok, thank you. If I understood correctly, you take "occupy a strong position in the social order" to mean a group's strong enfranchisement and entrenchement, up to the point of closure within the political culture (in the Almond-Verba technical sense of the term).
My only quibble with treating "welfare recipients" as a group is it conflates two quite heterogeneous groups of people: seniors/retirees in one hand, and disabled people plus medicaid/food aid/SCHIP recipients on the other. The former do account for the majority of welfare spending and quite justifiably fit (my understanding of) your definition of "strong position in the social order" in the sense of strong enfranchisement; but the latter hardly do.
Re: I don’t know what to do, you guys
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
"you may not even have the chance to identify them." And if so, why is that a problem? If you never knew, why would it bother you?
Because if they're specifically hiding their racism in certain contexts they are probably still making harmful actions elsewhere.
For example, donating to a hate-driven campaign to take fundamental rights away from people by popular vote. They could very easily say they donated from a basis different from the hateful people and avoid losing friends over a misunderstanding.
Re: I don’t know what to do, you guys
#188I spent about ten years being an "ally" to feminism, to the LGBT community, to minorities, etc. And then my views drifted ever so slightly from the tried and true party lines. One day I said I thought it was wrong that Brandon Eich was forced out of Mozilla, I said I thought it was wrong the way he was treated. Immediately the decade spent arguing for gay rights and marriage equality disappeared and I became a bigot,…
I believe that most people agree the Left tends to attract idealists. While that has advantages, it also has disadvantages. Many extreme viewpoints are born out of what people wish were true and nothing else. If you dare say something that doesn't fully support their perfect picture ideal, you're a hostile combatant to them. Definitely a lot of idealists who could stand to mature some.
> I believe that most people agree the Left tends to attract idealists.
No more than any other leaning.
Re: I don’t know what to do, you guys
#189From my experience at one of the elite public universities: Something I noticed as a student who spent time around activists (I wouldn't say I am one--I fundamentally agree with many pretty far-left social and economic ideas but I didn't participate in marches/action and was only occasionally involved in their official groups) was that there were sometimes people who used left wing politics and the language of inters…
Yes. Both sides of the political spectrum police language, and neither DeBoer or Chait seem to recognize this. Chait also says some things that seem to indicate that he wants to police language as well, just in a different way.
At one of the political blogs I read that have discussed Chait's piece, the commenters made the astute observation that Chait and now DeBoer are complaining about the wrong thing. The problem isn't "political correctness", it's tribalism.
Re: I don’t know what to do, you guys
#190I spent about ten years being an "ally" to feminism, to the LGBT community, to minorities, etc. And then my views drifted ever so slightly from the tried and true party lines. One day I said I thought it was wrong that Brandon Eich was forced out of Mozilla, I said I thought it was wrong the way he was treated. Immediately the decade spent arguing for gay rights and marriage equality disappeared and I became a bigot,…
One of the most annoying places to be right now is to have sympathies with both sides of these issues and to try to discuss things rationally and evenly. Simple example: I've got two good friends, one of them on one side of the GamerGate nonsense, and one on the other. I have to be very careful chatting with them, because while they each separately are very articulate and reasoned in their arguments, I cannot even pr…
> One of the most annoying places to be right now is to have sympathies with both sides of these issues and to try to discuss things rationally and evenly.
I was once labeled an "MRA" for suggesting sexual assault (or worse) and IPV statistics might be more balanced between different genders if the data collection efforts weren't skewed so far toward a single gender.
I used to be a lot more idealistic, but ideologues broke me of that faulty thinking.