112 Gripes About the French • Hacker News Board

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#181

Post by mbfg » Sat, Jul 17, 2021, 3:46 PM UTC

bumby wrote: post #161

mbfg wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to evaluate verifiable facts and come to conclusions. In discussion regarding two sides, A against B, you don't just say well each has it's good points, each has it's bad, we have to be fair and balanced. No, this is especially where newspapers have it wrong. You are fair and balanced when you appropriate praise and scorn to sides based on the externally verifiable facts, and the honestness of their actions.…

I don't think the point is advocating some sort of moral relativism but rather to steel-man both sides in good-faith rather than respond to some sort of caricature of each.

Yes i agree caricaturing is clearly wrong. But i am saddened by this group think that all groups of people should be given even standing as all having positives and negatives. People should be given standings based on verifiable evidence with regard to their actions. If your group is composed of bad actors, your group is bad. We don't have to treat you fair and balanced.

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#182

Post by spiderice » Sat, Jul 17, 2021, 3:46 PM UTC

techrat wrote: post #176

echelon wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to be reminded of this. The left and right are so divided that they're intolerable of one another. Neither side believes the other is worth listening to. It's a shame. We're all animals traversing a complicated landscape. There's daily pain and suffering, and then we die. We should remind ourselves how similar everyone actually is, and that the diversity of our views are humanity living and breathing through…

Right there with the 'both sides are the same' false equivalence... In case you're wondering why.

How, exactly? I don’t see any claims to equivalence in GP’s comment at all.

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#183

Post by fridif » Sat, Jul 17, 2021, 3:47 PM UTC

eplanit wrote: post #99

Jasper_ wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's considered "a different race" has changed over the years and the classifications we have today is mostly along social and political boundaries. Before WWII, Polish natives were often seen as of a different race, today we would consider them Caucasian. Note how the remaining big race classifications recognized by the US Census are divided up mostly based around areas with which we still have some political tens…

I think you're conflating race with ethnicity and nationality, which makes all three concepts meaningless.

The only thing meaningless here is your attempt to be poetic.

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#184

Post by RHSeeger » Sat, Jul 17, 2021, 3:47 PM UTC

animal_spirits wrote: post #149

> For the right to speak involves the duty to listen. The right to criticize involves the responsibility of giving "the other side" a fair chance to make its point. I wish this could be chiseled in rock somewhere prominent

I love the idea of this, but it also plays poorly with

> Brandolini's law, also known as the bullshit asymmetry principle, is an internet adage that emphasizes the difficulty of debunking false, facetious, or otherwise misleading information: "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it."

But I guess, to be fair, giving the other sides a fair chance to make it's point doesn't mean you need to provably debunk it if it's wrong.

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#185

Post by jamesmontalvo3 » Sat, Jul 17, 2021, 3:50 PM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #23

ThePadawan wrote: post #9

> (...) tensions began to rise between the French and the U.S. military personnel stationed in the country, with the former seeing the latter as arrogant and wanting to flaunt their wealth, and the latter seeing the former as proud and resentful. Well. I mean... Joking aside, the text is amazingly blunt and honest, in a rather refreshing way. "The French don't bathe." The French don't bathe often enough. They can't.…

> the text is amazingly blunt and honest It would likely have been written to be comprehensible to people with a fairly low reading level.

Perhaps also to enable the French to read and understand it? You wouldn’t want them just reading the gripes (which are short and simple) and then not reading the responses.

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#186

Post by JackFr » Sat, Jul 17, 2021, 3:50 PM UTC

411111111111111 wrote: post #47

baby wrote: post #10

This whole thing is amazing. It still reads really well today, like there's no tone of racism and nothing seems inappropriate (which is a hard thing to achieve with time). I wish we had such a book currently on how arabs and the muslim world are different, but not so different than us. > We didn't come to Europe to save the French, either in 1917 or in 1944. We didn't come to Europe to do anyone any favors. We came t…

Another thing that's been mostly sweeped under the rug wrt WW2 is that Russia both did the most damage to the German army and paid the highest price. America only started their offensive after Russia started winning and likely only wanted to deny them Europe. And the heavy casualties in the war likely caused Russia to fold on the cold war as well, there were just not enough able men after the war to create families w…

Swept under the rug as well is the Luftwaffe secret training facilities in the Soviet Union (in circumvention if the Treaty of Versailles) and among other things the Soviet invasion of Poland 2 weeks after the Nazis.

The Soviet Union paid a very high price, but their hands were not clean.

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#187

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 17, 2021, 3:51 PM UTC

techrat wrote: post #176

echelon wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to be reminded of this. The left and right are so divided that they're intolerable of one another. Neither side believes the other is worth listening to. It's a shame. We're all animals traversing a complicated landscape. There's daily pain and suffering, and then we die. We should remind ourselves how similar everyone actually is, and that the diversity of our views are humanity living and breathing through…

Right there with the 'both sides are the same' false equivalence... In case you're wondering why.

[deleted]

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#188

Post by techrat » Sat, Jul 17, 2021, 3:51 PM UTC

bumby wrote: post #148

mbfg wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sometimes groups of people are just nasty, bad people worthy of mocking and ridicule. You can't always pretend that situations are around reasonable differences of opinion with each side being honest actors. Each situation is going to be different. the english/french situation may be one way and the progressive/conservative situation may be different.

I think interrogating those differences can help you either find out if they are borne of "nastiness" and ignorance, or if there is actually fundamental difference in values that should be explored. E.g., Someone could assume a person is against voter ID simply because they want to disenfranchise specific groups or they can legitimately be concerned about fraud. If we just assume the former, it misses any opportunity…

Yet if you look at all the cases of actual election fraud and voter fraud, they (almost?) exclusively fall on the side pushing voter ID the hardest.

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#189

Post by invincing » Sat, Jul 17, 2021, 3:51 PM UTC

Intermernet wrote: post #173

bennysomething wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True but the USSR was ally of Germany, two dictator states started world war two.

What history have you been reading?

I think it's a reference to this pact:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac...

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#190

Post by bennysomething » Sat, Jul 17, 2021, 3:52 PM UTC

Intermernet wrote: post #173

bennysomething wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True but the USSR was ally of Germany, two dictator states started world war two.

What history have you been reading?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_P...

Also USSR pretty much annexed eastern Europe after the war, in a way they are the only country that won anything out of ww2.