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Keep your identity small (2009)

paulgraham.com

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Re: Keep your identity small (2009)

#121

Post by CheckHook »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #106
Spivak wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do understand the other side's situation right? You are, albeit impersonally, being accused of participating in something monstrous, the institutional subjugation and prejudicial treatment of an entire class of people, and there is literally nothing you can say or do which will demonstrate otherwise since your racist acts are unconscious and unknowable to you. It's like trying to convince someone that you're not…

If you don't believe in widespread racism, what is your explanation for why people of color, as a group, keep having a bad time? It can't be some property of them, because believing that would be racist, right? If it's not them and it's not us (I'm white) then what is it?

The previous and continuing actions of bad people but not "you" as a collective, just the racist ones. (I'm mixed race, not that it should make my point any more/less valid).

Re: Keep your identity small (2009)

#122

Post by tremon »

kecks wrote: post #113
sysk wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a nitpick but atheism is not a faith, it's the absence of faith.

An atheist doesn't believe in the existence of god(s); a theist is the opposite and believes in the existence of god(s). The difference lies in lack of faith v. faith. An agnostic believes it's not possible to be sure whether one or more gods exist. Combinations are possibly; an agnostic theist believes in the existence of gods, but also thinks it's impossible to be sure. There are also apathetic agnostics; they don'…

An atheist doesn't believe in the existence of god(s)

Rather, an atheist believes in the non-existence of gods. We don't need a word like non-theist because we already have a word for it.

Re: Keep your identity small (2009)

#123

Post by mcbits »

enord wrote: post #91
sysk wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a nitpick but atheism is not a faith, it's the absence of faith.

Do you identify as atheist? Is the distinction important to you? Grouping different religious views together with atheism under the same category is useful when discussing people and their beliefs. Arguing the semantics of wether Atheism is a "belief" or "faith" (or some nicer, more certain-sounding term) is in my experience unfruitful and most often besides the point. /nitpick

I find there's a pretty wide gulf between our day-to-day beliefs vs. what we claim to believe with all the pedantics and caveats added when our beliefs come under scrutiny (especially by a critic).

Re: Keep your identity small (2009)

#124

Post by tremon »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #106
Spivak wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do understand the other side's situation right? You are, albeit impersonally, being accused of participating in something monstrous, the institutional subjugation and prejudicial treatment of an entire class of people, and there is literally nothing you can say or do which will demonstrate otherwise since your racist acts are unconscious and unknowable to you. It's like trying to convince someone that you're not…

If you don't believe in widespread racism, what is your explanation for why people of color, as a group, keep having a bad time? It can't be some property of them, because believing that would be racist, right? If it's not them and it's not us (I'm white) then what is it?

If you don't believe in widespread racism, what is your explanation for why people of color, as a group, keep having a bad time?

Why does it need a different explanation then why many people of the white persuasion keep having a bad time? When you selectively group people together, you will always get an identifiable pattern. But you can't then claim that the pattern is universal, since the pattern was predefined in your selection.

Re: Keep your identity small (2009)

#125

Post by mcbits »

setpatchaddress wrote: post #80
danieltillett wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will join in on the love for nano. If you are just doing simple things like editing config files it is all you need. I don't use vim often enough ever get really comfortable with it.

Perverse! Nano is actually more difficult to use than vi over time. Sad, but true. The first time you have to learn the arcane control-keys to search for something, you've already lost, because vim is approximately as arcane, but much faster .

I don't think I've ever had to search for anything in nano or vi to get a system into a state where I can use an editor with good ol' Ctrl-F. But then I'm not hot-patching a server over an acoustic coupler from a phone booth in rural Nevada, or whatever hardcore sysadmins do.

Re: Keep your identity small (2009)

#126

Post by mseebach »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #106
Spivak wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do understand the other side's situation right? You are, albeit impersonally, being accused of participating in something monstrous, the institutional subjugation and prejudicial treatment of an entire class of people, and there is literally nothing you can say or do which will demonstrate otherwise since your racist acts are unconscious and unknowable to you. It's like trying to convince someone that you're not…

If you don't believe in widespread racism, what is your explanation for why people of color, as a group, keep having a bad time? It can't be some property of them, because believing that would be racist, right? If it's not them and it's not us (I'm white) then what is it?

You've clearly made up your mind and preemptively called everybody who disagrees racist. That's not exactly conductive for an insightful conversation.

But I'll bite anyway: historical racism clearly still plays a significant role. Whatever the level of present-day racism, I'm sure we can agree that it's orders of magnitude lower than it was historical. The plight of people of colour today can be attributed to historical widespread institutional racism independently of whether any such racism exists today. Also, your model fails to account for the possibility that racism can exist and be harmful without being widespread, and that people of colour can make bad decisions without that being a "property" of their colour (shaming people for "acting white" strikes me as particular counterproductive).

That's not saying that's the whole explanation (or even that it is the explanation), just that your model ("it's not them and it's not us") is a false dichotomy and generally too limited to be likely to yield a satisfactory answer.

Re: Keep your identity small (2009)

#127

Post by tempodox »

ixtli wrote: post #74

> any mention of religion on an online forum degenerates into a religious argument. Why? Why does this happen with religion and not with Javascript Then later > the question of the relative merits of programming languages often degenerates into a religious war, because so many programmers identify as X programmers or Y programmers. Also as another poster said, this works because he's been able to go his entire life c…

> Why does this happen with religion and not with Javascript

But it does happen with JS, among others. Critical remarks on PLs are met with the most religious of fervour in HN threads.

Re: Keep your identity small (2009)

#128

Post by ikeboy »

ixtli wrote: post #74

> any mention of religion on an online forum degenerates into a religious argument. Why? Why does this happen with religion and not with Javascript Then later > the question of the relative merits of programming languages often degenerates into a religious war, because so many programmers identify as X programmers or Y programmers. Also as another poster said, this works because he's been able to go his entire life c…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acting_white

Arguably some black people label themselves.

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