I don’t know what to do, you guys • Hacker News Board

Re: I don’t know what to do, you guys

#111

Post by deciplex » Fri, Jan 30, 2015, 7:34 AM UTC

WillNotDownvote wrote: post #79

deciplex wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if this is a reaction to Republican party politics of the last 20 years or so? They seem to speak with a single voice, even if that voice is usually saying stupid, hateful, regressive things. That they march in such lockstep is probably their greatest asset as a party, and I really don't know if it's something to be emulated or not (leaning toward 'not', though).

"They seem to speak with a single voice" This is something that even casual observation of the real world as opposed to rhetoric will show you that it's not true.

Like, when they all mysteriously start saying "I'm not a scientist" at exactly the same time?

I'm not suggesting they all adhere to the same ideology. I'm saying that they have better party discipline.

Re: I don’t know what to do, you guys

#112

Post by defen » Fri, Jan 30, 2015, 7:37 AM UTC

powera wrote: post #55

vijayboyapati wrote: post #20

This post, which definitely resonates with me and my experience in Silicon Valley and in Seattle, surrounded by very leftist politics, reminds me a lot of Mencius Moldbug's brilliant piece "Technology, communism and the Brown Scare": http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2013/09/technol...

I know I'm going to get downvoted for this comment, but: what the literal fuck? That article seems to only be a borderline incoherent mix of various claims of racism, anti-communism, pro-communism, and anti-semitism directed at nobody in particular. If anybody can make any actual sense of the point of the article, please say so?

You can't just jump into a late-stage Moldbug article like that. He's very...talmudic, perhaps, is a good word. You have to read all his stuff from the beginning, which is probably too much for anyone to do at this time.

Re: I don’t know what to do, you guys

#113

Post by jsprogrammer » Fri, Jan 30, 2015, 7:37 AM UTC

Meekro wrote: post #101

stolio wrote: post #12

I 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 know what you mean! I've been a supporter of gay marriage for my whole life. But when the Brendan Eich thing happened, I was stunned. The "good" side of this fight was acting more evil than the "evil" side. What terrified me most was reading the ArsTechnica forum and seeing the majority cheering for his downfall, and totally ignoring the dangerous precedent that a person could be fired for donating to the wrong bal…

Brendan.

Wasn't fired; resigned, but could have stayed on.

Everyone has the right to choose their leader (if they even want one).

Re: I don’t know what to do, you guys

#114

Post by nostrademons » Fri, Jan 30, 2015, 7:42 AM UTC

qnaal wrote: post #65

stolio wrote: post #12

I 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 wonder what about that community caused it to evolve like that

Hypothesis:

When people are powerless for a long period of time, all they learn is the "language" of power, and every issue is cast as a life-or-death struggle where you are either with them or against them. When such people are close to attaining power, actually achieving it is the only thing that matters to them. They often become just as dogmatic oppressors as the people they fought against. It takes time to learn higher-level "languages" like empathy, or justice, or reasoned argument, and typically these skills can only be learned in a situation where you have a certain baseline of personal power. And so you get see-saw effects where the groups on top change but nothing is ever more just about the society.

I can see this dynamic with certain Hacker News personalities who've been in powerless positions in the past and hence frame every comment as an us vs. them struggle, and it also explains the political history of numerous countries (eg. Russia, Rwanda, Israel/Palestine) in the modern era. It's a very common theme in arts & literature as well, eg. 1984, The Hunger Games, The Who ("Won't get fooled again"), South Park.

Re: I don’t know what to do, you guys

#115

Post by Xcelerate » Fri, Jan 30, 2015, 7:43 AM UTC

omegaham wrote: post #36

I think one of the biggest problems with these types is that they associate opinions with morality. As in, if you hold uninformed / ignorant / bigoted opinions, you are automatically an evil person and should be treated accordingly. Are some bigoted people evil? Sure. But I think that a lot of people hold various opinions because they just haven't thought about it too hard. They've just gone along with whatever they'…

> Sure. But I think that a lot of people hold various opinions because they just haven't thought about it too hard. They've just gone along with whatever they've been taught from childhood, and they're just kind of parroting their indoctrination. That doesn't make them bad.

It's funny you say this because I was discussing the exact same thing with a friend today. There's some views I have where previously I have been incredulous that anyone could support the opposite view -- "How can anyone possibly support something so horrible and wrong?" But then I think, is 50% of the population really be evil? No, of course not. That's ridiculous. I think most people have good intentions with what they believe, and if they have the opposite viewpoint on something that is important to you, it's not the case that they're evil people who just don't care about morality; it's far more likely that they truly think their viewpoint is moral and just.

Re: I don’t know what to do, you guys

#116

Post by deciplex » Fri, Jan 30, 2015, 7:43 AM UTC

omegaham wrote: post #97

deciplex wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if this is a reaction to Republican party politics of the last 20 years or so? They seem to speak with a single voice, even if that voice is usually saying stupid, hateful, regressive things. That they march in such lockstep is probably their greatest asset as a party, and I really don't know if it's something to be emulated or not (leaning toward 'not', though).

I would actually argue that the Left is far more ideologically consistent. The Right is badly split between the fiscal and the social conservatives; half of them couldn't care less about abortion and gay rights, and half of them couldn't care less about the economy. In contrast, while they disagree about how far left to go, the Left is mostly pretty consistent on the fundamentals of their platform.

I think that's more the fact that any leftists you can get to stay in a room together for five minutes without tearing each others throats out, will by necessity be ideologically consistent with each other.

I'm leftist, but I'm also pro-gun (how else to overthrow the ruling class, after all), and I think there are probably some innate gender differences in humans, much like there are in e.g. Sumatran orangutans. I wouldn't last two minutes in deBoer's class, and while I'm leftist, I could never be an ally of The Left.

Re: I don’t know what to do, you guys

#117

Post by sparkzilla » Fri, Jan 30, 2015, 7:46 AM UTC

titanomachy wrote: post #98

sparkzilla wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Occupy leaves behind one lasting achievement - the identification of "the 1%" as a problem. As long as the 1% doesn't include Steve Jobs.

I don't think the message is that those 1% of people are themselves a problem, more that it's a problem that wealth is distributed as inequitably as it is.

It's still the same argument. I didn't see Steve Jobs offering to pay extra taxes. And I don't see the Occupy crowd complaining about Jobs. Or Soros for that matter (who financed the Occupy movement). OTOH the Koch brothers and any republican 1%ers seem to be fair game. It seems some billionaires are more equal than others.

Re: I don’t know what to do, you guys

#118

Post by SafariDevelop » Fri, Jan 30, 2015, 7:47 AM UTC

hagan_das wrote: post #75

Many of the "social justice" crowd get off on the moral superiority they feel from engaging in rabid political correctness. Unfortunately for them, moral superiority is by definition a positional good, a good whose value rapidly diminishes as PC concepts become increasingly mainstream. Thus they seek increasingly extreme levels of political correctness to signal their status as being above the common rabble.

As Kristian wrote "Political Correctness is really just a special form of conspicuous consumption, leading to a zero-sum status race. The fact that PC fans are still constantly outraged, despite the fact that PC has never been so pervasive, would then just be a special form of the Easterlin Paradox" http://www.iea.org.uk/blog/the-economics-of-political-correc...

Re: I don’t know what to do, you guys

#119

Post by deciplex » Fri, Jan 30, 2015, 7:51 AM UTC

angersock wrote: post #88

stolio wrote: post #12

I 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…

My reaction to Gamergate was to continue playing video games and to continue not reading 'Games Journalism' because I already knew it was payola garbage. As for your friends my suggestion would be to discuss other shared interests. It's possible - even common - for both 'sides' of an issue to be way off the mark.

Re: I don’t know what to do, you guys

#120

Post by Xcelerate » Fri, Jan 30, 2015, 7:53 AM UTC

I absolutely detest the way some people "argue" and attempt to shame their opponent. Shaming doesn't work on me; it just pisses me off. As soon as someone begins attacking me as a person instead of my argument, I lose all patience with them and honestly start to view them as stupid and incapable of rational thought. The conversation on their end normally contains an implicit assumption that their viewpoint is automatically the correct one (no willingness to even hear other perspectives), and personal attack techniques include phrases like, "you are trolling" (even though half the US population shares the "troll" viewpoint), "the flaw in your argument is...", "unless you are a [something genetically immutable], your privileged white male opinion does not matter". Pull up the list of logical fallacies on Wikipedia and they hit almost every single one of them.

I have had calm, rational debates with people who have viewpoints that are completely opposite to mine. Both of us come away from the conversation feeling enlightened, and occasionally one of us changes our mind on an issue because of a persuasive argument. This is what a good debate should be like. But unfortunately, people who can debate like this are few and far between.

Far more often I just end up frustrated and leave the "debate" part way through. So many people get angry and emotional if you criticize their viewpoint, and I don't have the time or energy to deal with it. Although sometimes if I'm in a good mood, I will stir things up for entertainment: if I am listening to a debate between two people I know, and one of them is using shaming tactics and logical fallacies, I will join in on the conversation (if permitted) and automatically take the side against theirs, even if I have the exact same viewpoint that they do. Then I will tear their argument down the best way I know how (it's fun to argue against your own belief). And at the end I will reveal that my viewpoint was actually the same as theirs.