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Heresy

paulgraham.com

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Re: Heresy

#171

Post by nicoburns »

i000 wrote: post #138
Aeolun wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think people want to say bad things without consequence. They want to be able to discuss a topic without the rabid tone police descending on it. Like, I say I cannot understand trans people at all , and people will jump on me because I’m rejecting them and making them feel bad, when I’m just stating a fact. There’s a lot of this stuff.

Perhaps replacing "trans" with "black", "Jew", "Muslim" or any other marginalized minority group, would help you understand why such blanket "I cannot understand X at all" causes people to object?

I don't think that's fair. Nobody is debating what it means to be black, jewish or muslim. People's attitudes to people who are those things vary, but for the most part everybody is in agreement about which people are black, which people are Jewish, etc.

On the other hand, there is no such agreement around gender. People are using terms such as "gender", "man" and "woman" to refer to vastly different concepts ranging from "how someone subjectively feels inside" to "what physiological traits someone has" to "how someone is treated by society".

To the extent that not understanding someone comes from not understanding how they personally define gender and how that fits with how other people are using the same term, it seems quite reasonable to be confused.

Re: Heresy

#172

Post by jimbob45 »

vinceguidry wrote: post #76
rs_rs_rs_rs_rs wrote: post #53

Quoted post unavailable.

You should probably go look at the current state of diagnosis and treatment of gender dysphoria before giving your hot take. If caught and treated early, gender reassignment surgery can work miracles on a child's quality of life. It really shouldn't be seen any differently than other treatable birth defects.

The left’s current position is that puberty blockers should be available to all kids until they can decide what gender they want to be. They claim there are zero (0) irreversible side effects to puberty blockers.

No drug has no side effects, least of all one that inhibits puberty. Letting a kid make a choice like that - one they can’t possibly understand the consequences of - is worse. Saying we’re doing it so that they don’t commit suicide in the short-term with no regard to their long-term induced infertility? That’s just irresponsible not to talk about.

Re: Heresy

#173

Post by happytoexplain »

pikma wrote: post #80
muglug wrote: post #36

> Can a statement be x-ist, for whatever value of x, and also true? If the answer is yes, then they're admitting to banning the truth I disagree. The statement “very few women are capable of running a Fortune 500 company effectively” is factually true, but implicitly sexist (very few men are capable either). By banning those sorts of statements you’re not banning the truth, you’re just quieting assholes.

Is the reason it's sexist because it can be interpreted as "women are less capable than men"? You would say this other statement is false and sexist, correct?

I know you didn't ask me, but I just wanted to say that language is nothing without context. "Less capable" is very subjective and context-dependent, so without more specifics it can't really be "true" or "false" except very colloquially. As for "sexist" - in a void with no context, it's apparently sexist, but that doesn't mean the sentence can't exist in a non-sexist context.

Re: Heresy

#174

Post by prtkgpt »

yojo wrote: post #67

Woo boy. Generally liked the concept for the essay, but this piece jumps out as problematic (or just poorly written): > The clearest evidence of this is that whether a statement is considered x-ist often depends on who said it. Truth doesn't work that way. The same statement can't be true when one person says it, but x-ist, and therefore false, when another person does. Really? He can’t think of a statement that is r…

Ghost writing?

Re: Heresy

#175

Post by ricardo81 »

I'll preface my comment by saying maybe (certainly) some people are more nuanced on the matter.

I think the baseline is equality. Anything after that, we celebrate our differences and the debate is about a future direction for us all. Extremely generic I know, but better than trying to homogenise us into a singular point of view.

Re: Heresy

#176

Post by jimmar »

yojo wrote: post #67

Woo boy. Generally liked the concept for the essay, but this piece jumps out as problematic (or just poorly written): > The clearest evidence of this is that whether a statement is considered x-ist often depends on who said it. Truth doesn't work that way. The same statement can't be true when one person says it, but x-ist, and therefore false, when another person does. Really? He can’t think of a statement that is r…

Maybe you chose your "hunger" example in haste, but it's not a great counterexample to the points in the article. Only the person making the statement about being hungry can know the truth. The focus of the article, as I read it, is on shared truths that must be evaluated in public sphere.

Re: Heresy

#177

Post by mordae »

ratww wrote: post #33

I feel like a pariah sometimes in those discussions. I agree with PG in that I'm also not too happy with the "only X can be x-ist", but on the other hand I'm also not a conspiracy nut that talks non-stop about "critical race theory". I'm also not free speech absolutist, as I'm ok with things like European law criminalizing Nazism or glorification of genocide. I feel like I'm constantly against three very radical grou…

Hahaha, same here.

Have you noticed how the discussion here is fairly civil? It's very similar to most Reddit places, lobste.rs and other *moderated* fora as well.

Most of these extremes only arise in unmoderated spaces such as Facebook and Twitter. Or the original /b/.

Similar things are happening in the news comment sections wherever they don't care to moderate.

It radicalizes people long-term. I am no fan of censorship, but EU will probably step in eventually.

Re: Heresy

#178

Post by seaourfreed »

tedivm wrote: post #11

This thing where people want to say horrible things without consequence is just so weird. I have the right to judge your statements just as much as you have a right to say them. I have the right to leave jobs when it turns out the people working there hate people like me, and companies have the right to hire people who aren't going to alienate future potential employees. When people bring up posts like this they neve…

* Heresy supporters give themselves a license thinking it is about issues of real racism, sexism, and other real bad problems, but...

* The tools of censorship are then used for normal speech. Proof: Ron Paul had a YouTube channel. He left politics before the covid and no videos had been posted since the pandemic started. But they censored his YouTube channel full of videos by censoring all of the videos and the channel.

* Proof here: https://twitter.com/ronpaul/status/1308849979730071554

* This censorship of the political right happens in a long list of cases that have nothing to do with racism, sexism, or false propaganda. Ron Paul's YouTube channel being censored is one example in a list of thousands just like it.

Re: Heresy

#180

Post by nicoburns »

eadmund wrote: post #130
pikma wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain what it means to "deny the existence" of someone? I see this expression often, but I'm genuinely puzzled by what it means in practice. I agree with you that "purposely misgendering one's colleagues" should lead to firing, but I think this article isn't about that. It's about people who are tolerant of others and in general try to be nice people, but just disagree about certain things - for example, ho…

Quoted post unavailable.

You're simply using a completely different concept of gender to this person. I'd argue that not only do you both have reasonable points of view, your assertions don't actually conflict! You can both be correct.

I don't think it is reasonable for you to hold that your definition of gender is the only correct one.

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