Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

They Thought They Were Free (1955)

press.uchicago.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 545 posts

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#341

Post by Waterluvian »

kloop wrote: post #335
anal_reactor wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I grew up with this belief that for all their loud, obnoxious quirks and faults, Americans do not fuck around when it comes to their principles of liberty and freedom. This is exactly the problem. Americans see their own country as perfect example of freedom and liberty, and the idea that they might be wrong never crosses their minds. When you try to explain to them that their culture has elements actively hostile…

> When you try to explain to them that their culture has elements actively hostile to personal freedom, you get a syntax error at best. Alright, I'll bite. Mind elaborating more? As a follow up question, are you talking more about positive or negative freedoms? I e. freedom-to vs freedom-from?

I imagine one example is the imposition of their values on LGBTQ/trans/etc. It’s very much a “stop you from having personal freedoms” padded with very, very weak strawman arguments for why they’re protecting themselves or kids from imaginary bogeymen.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#343

Post by permo-w »

shermantanktop wrote: post #331
permo-w wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so what are you suggesting causes, for example, the French to strike more often than other Western countries? or Japan to typically have particularly low inflation? or Argentina to typically have particularly high inflation?

History? Geography? Specific laws? Particular parties in power? There are a lot of things to look at alongside mystical notions of a collective national character of a people, especially now that most of these countries have significant immigration and exposure to ideas from elsewhere.

all of the things you listed make up or result from national character. besides some short interludes, for example, Japan has had the same party in power since 1955. it's a weird thing to deny the existence of. different nations act differently. it's not heresy to make generalisations, particularly in the age of nationalism when many/most people actively try to set and follow their country's norms

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#344

Post by epistasis »

4bpp wrote: post #99

The problem is that essays like this are always written, preserved and propagated with the benefit of hindsight, producing the mistaken feeling that an actionable lesson is contained within. "A bad thing happened. We had been a little uneasy, but did not act on it. Well, of course it was hard to act on mere unease. Still, if only we had acted on it sooner...". And thus, what we take away is a simple lesson and call t…

> Receiving decisions deliberated in secret"? "Believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand"? "or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security"? "Demands in the community, the things in which one had to, was ‘expected to’ participate that had not been there or had not been important before"

It's awfully funny that your comparison is to the COVID years! There were a million deaths from COVID. It's almost as if those people don't exist anymore, all those people that died, that their lives were nothingness and not worth fighting for.

Was COVID something new? Yes. It killed a million people in the US because it was new. Is that similar to Nazi Germany's fear of the threat of Jews? To Nazi Germany's sudden decision to invade Poland? Why is COVID your touchpoint of something similar to that, and not something like 9/11, which killed far fewer people, but was enough to send the country to war, with lots of deliberations in secret and secret evidence that proved to be faked?

Nothing was faked with COVID, it was all out there in the open. People who actively lied and spread misinformation got tagged as doing so on some but not all platforms, but they could still speak just fine and have their views weighed against the warnings of the platform which was giving them the means to communicate their misinformation. It's not like a popular broadcaster who said something that the President disliked would get fired because the executives were getting strongarmed into firing the person.

I find your comment quite disturbing, and it is making me reassess just how far down the hole the US has gone. We are far closer to Nazi Germany than I had assumed. That a person that can form full sentences like you do, in paragraphs of thought, and still type these thoughts out. Perhaps its because I was a scientist and could evaluate all the information that was out there in the public, it wasn't a mystery, the basis for decisions was 100% transparent and open for anybody to see. For others, that listened to lies and never got the information or disregarded it as unintelligible, perhaps what you describe might make sense. But I suspect that there are many people like you, and it scares the hell out of me.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#345

Post by lossolo »

Schnitz wrote: post #140
brightball wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the sane alternative has long been modeled by the US Constitution. The real test is how any model handles corruption and expunges it because no matter the ideology, people are in charge and people are corruptible. The only real model that can work is one that minimizes the power of those in charge.

The US constitution is outdated and vulnerable. Modern constitutions like Germany’s basic law are a lot more resilient. We are watching the US constitution fail right now, it didn’t even take smart men to start dismantling it. I hope I’ll be proven wrong, but what indications do you see right now that the US constitution is performing as intended?

Constitution is just a social contract, it’s not a law of physics. Without people wanting to preserve it, it’s just words on a piece of paper with no real power. With a majority in the Supreme Court, the Constitution can be interpreted however one wants.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#346

Post by epistasis »

skybrian wrote: post #261
epistasis wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not aware of humanities getting get to fund the sciences, at least in the UC system. But in many places with highly complicated accounting, the sciences can sometimes indirectly fund humanities through the overhead rate that universities charge. These are highly negotiated rates between the government and the universities, so there has to be a bit of confusion on what money keeps which buildings going.

The problems at the University of Chicago seem especially bad and I don’t entirely trust this article, but for what it’s worth: > The reason today’s Dean of Humanities wants to send students to other universities to learn subjects that she would like to cancel, or use ChatGPT to teach subjects tomorrow that humans teach today, is to drive the “marginal cost” of teaching students from 20 percent of their tuition down…

By "UC" I was referring to the University of California system, which is massive, and generally what UC means in the scientific world is travel in.

The University of Chicago is a very prestigious institution due to its historical reputation, but the administration in recent years seems to have both ruined its future with terrible financial decisions, even before the pressures of Trump.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#347

Post by mystraline »

api wrote: post #239
mystraline wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Indiana, there were groceries that had early morning for healthcare workers and elderly only. That helped limit spread as well. Again, we had no real lockdowns. School was remote, which had its own really bad effects on early socialization. I'm not at all sure what we should have did differently. Technically a hard lockdown for 6 weeks could mostly eradicate it everywhere. But a lot of people can't handle that. Wh…

There are things we could have done very differently but it’s all Monday morning quarterbacking.

I wasn't really recommending anything. Was more just observations what happened here.

The 6 week lockdown was more a potential way to slow covid and basically knock it out across the country. But I'm not sure we could even do that if we wanted to. Most people only have a few days of food in their house.

I also note that domestic abuse skyrocketed also during the vaccine-less parts of the pandemic. There was a whole lot of weird.

However with RFK and Dr Phil (cringe) as heads of respective health agencies, I know if we get a new pandemic, we're fucked. These are the same idiots that think vaccines cause autism and horse dewormer cures covid.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#348

Post by mindslight »

username332211 wrote: post #340
mindslight wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is they're not different factors, they're the same dynamic. As for your comparison, the actual threat from more Luigis is small. There are at least thousands of CEOs at or above the level of Armstrong? And one death, over a seeming period of several years? And the motive wasn't just "elites bad", but very specific healthcare denials. Meanwhile Trump is actively attacking many companies and institutions. Part…

> As for your comparison, the actual threat from more Luigis is small. There are at least thousands of CEOs at or above the level of Armstrong? And one death, over a seeming period of several years? It's less about the murderer himself, and more about the high level of support he has. "Many of the rank and file in the Democratic coalition want you dead, but not to worry nearly all of them are cowards who'd never do a…

You seem to be trying to make this into a partisan thing by invoking some imagined attribution to Democrats, when the outrage against elites is clearly pan-partisan. Also if anything it's rightism that tends to encourage individualist violence (and I'm saying this not as a partisan slam, but as a libertarian who sees the virtues in both philosophies)

You've also completely sidestepped the fact that Trump is actively attacking many companies and institutions. Sure, it's conceivable that some capitulating-institutional leaders were looking for an excuse to bring their institutions to heel, but it's not conceivable that they all were.

It seems like your goal is to absolve the autocratic authoritarians, and justify the elites cozying up to the autocratic authoritarians. So I don't see how continuing this conversation can be productive.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#349

Post by wizzwizz4 »

drankl wrote: post #322
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And FIDE "disagrees with me on the question of male physiological advantage" in… chess. https://doc.fide.com/docs/DOC/2FC2023/CM2_2023_45.pdf There's clearly more to this "ban trans people from sports" phenomenon than dispassionate assessment of the evidence. dang has asked you to stop commenting like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45108551 . If you're explaining your position, I'd consider that fine (tho…

The reason for a separate women's category in FIDE's chess competitions is different to athletic sports - it was introduced to encourage female participation in what was an overwhelmingly male-dominated field. As an example, here's what women in chess have to deal with: https://www.fide.com/fides-statement-on-sexist-remarks/ That statement makes the point that FIDE are well aware this is a problem, and is one they're…

Retroactively stripping the titles from trans men (§4.1) does not "encourage female participation", no matter how you slice it.

> if a male competitor claims to have a woman identity, whatever that is

And I understand that from this perspective, the things you're saying might make internal sense; but if you were more familiar with the social pressures on trans people, you'd realise that they aren't well-modelled as cis members of their AGAB, for the purposes of inclusivity measures. Your perspective isn't a valid worldview.¹ This FIDE initiative makes no sense, if its intent is as stated.

> Why would you feel the need to rebut this?

For the same reason you felt the need to bring it up, I assume.

The arguments you've made to defend the FIDE decisions don't hold up, and you haven't explained why you believe the World Athletics decisions hold up, so there is nothing for me to rebut. Placing the burden of rebuttal on the opponent, when you make many comments in a short space of time, is known as the "Gish gallop": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop. If you want to enter something into discussion, you put in the work to do so. I'm not here to participate in no-rules debate club. (The main reason I'm engaging here is that I'm trying to practice de-escalation strategies.)

> Instead of considering it thoughtfully.

I have half a literature review devoted to this perspective. What I haven't done is written an essay with numerous citations in response to your one sentence and a link. Meanwhile, your "whatever that is" remark suggests you haven't thoughtfully considered the perspective of trans people before. So: you first. (If this is because you haven't had access to a trans person's perspective, let me know. I don't collect such articles, but I've probably got a link lying around somewhere.)

---

¹: There are similar world-views which I strongly disagree with, but which nonetheless are valid, in the particular sense that I just called yours invalid. I sometimes learn things from talking to such people, so I make an effort to be friendly to them, even if they're not friendly to me.

Post reply on HN