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The Origins of Wokeness

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#561

Post by drawkward »

>Much as they tried to pretend there was no conflict between diversity and quality. But you can't simultaneously optimize for two things that aren't identical. What diversity actually means, judging from the way the term is used, is proportional representation, and unless you're selecting a group whose purpose is to be representative, like poll respondents, optimizing for proportional representation has to come at the expense of quality. This is not because of anything about representation; it's the nature of optimization; optimizing for x has to come at the expense of y unless x and y are identical.

Eh, if x and y are correlated, you can optimize for x to a point and still get y gains.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#564

Post by superdisk »

redeux wrote: post #517
soheil wrote: post #371

Unbelievable how anti-pg hn has gotten. I don't think what pg is saying is anything new, he's always had the same sentiment around anti-censorship, anti-authoritarian/mob and pro-breaking-the-rules attitude. It's called "hacker" news for a reason.

Exactly, this “hacker” news. Where does this screed from PG fit into that? If this was published by literally anyone else it wouldn’t have been allowed in the first place.

Hacking isn't just about computer programming, you could call it a philosophy.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#565

Post by gitfan86 »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #297
yapyap wrote: post #99

I think the word “woke” means very different things to some people. As an example I think people from the American political left to somewhere(?) in the middle see it as what it has been introduced as, that being looking past the status quo and instead looking at your own values, i.e. the morality of homelessness and not having a disdain for them but empathy for them instead. and then on the other side it feels like…

You're right. It's really lazy to use the term at this point as there isn't a shared meaning assigned to it. It's mostly used as a pejorative by the right at this point, but it's original meaning was very different and indicated a positive attribute. Whenever I'm in a conversation with someone who uses the word, I stop them and ask them to define what they're talking about. Usually they end up with something vague th…

You are dismissing the issue by implying it is a right wing thing.

Obama is using the term and criticising people who do it in this clip. I in no way consider him to be right wing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaHLd8de6nM

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#566

Post by josh-sematic »

commandlinefan wrote: post #301
yapyap wrote: post #99

I think the word “woke” means very different things to some people. As an example I think people from the American political left to somewhere(?) in the middle see it as what it has been introduced as, that being looking past the status quo and instead looking at your own values, i.e. the morality of homelessness and not having a disdain for them but empathy for them instead. and then on the other side it feels like…

> not having a disdain for them but empathy for them instead [4] The woke sometimes claim that wokeness is simply treating people with respect. But if it were, that would be the only rule you'd have to remember, and this is comically far from being the case. My younger son likes to imitate voices, and at one point when he was about seven I had to explain which accents it was currently safe to imitate publicly and whi…

Treating people with respect can sometimes mean learning enough about them to understand a little about what life is like in their shoes. There are a lot of different kinds of people wearing a lot of shoes. Learning about them is a lifelong process. It’s not about learning “a long list of rules” but more “learning about a lot of kinds of people and their experiences.”

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#567

Post by tines »

boplicity wrote: post #556
runlevel1 wrote: post #501

> The danger of these rules was not just that they created land mines for the unwary In real life, these "land mines" don't usually explode unless people think you're stepping on it intentionally. For instance, every time I've accidentally used the wrong pronoun for someone, I've gotten a polite correction, I make a mental note, and everyone moves on. It's just not a big deal. With a large enough audience, there will…

I think what PGs article misses, pretty much completely, is a more accurate definition of the work woke , which is: >A word used to label another's political beliefs and activism as incorrect and foolish, particularly if that person is seen as "left leaning" or "progressive." In other words, it's common usage has devolved to mean "you're an idiot." This is a travesty, really, because its use erases any chance to have…

> In other words, it's common usage has devolved to mean "you're an idiot."

So liberals call conservative idiots "woke"? I think people have lost the plot here in trying to define this word.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#568

Post by tflinton »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #456

"Prig" is in the eye of the beholder. What about when the "prigs" were right? I'm sure the Quakers were seen as "prigs" by the southern slaveholders/traders. The Quakers were early to the abolition party and their opposition to slavery was based on religious zeal which made them seem like "prigs" to the people in the South who's whole society and economy was built on slavery. But we now consider the Quakers were righ…

I think the basis of his arguement is a prig is incentivized by calling out the moral failures of others to make themselves feel more virtuous.

Where perhaps the quakers or MLK were doing it out of moral outrage.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#569

Post by adiabatty »

redeux wrote: post #517
soheil wrote: post #371

Unbelievable how anti-pg hn has gotten. I don't think what pg is saying is anything new, he's always had the same sentiment around anti-censorship, anti-authoritarian/mob and pro-breaking-the-rules attitude. It's called "hacker" news for a reason.

Exactly, this “hacker” news. Where does this screed from PG fit into that? If this was published by literally anyone else it wouldn’t have been allowed in the first place.

I think tracking vibe shifts is interesting and noteworthy.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#570

Post by gitfan86 »

Larrikin wrote: post #345
yapyap wrote: post #99

I think the word “woke” means very different things to some people. As an example I think people from the American political left to somewhere(?) in the middle see it as what it has been introduced as, that being looking past the status quo and instead looking at your own values, i.e. the morality of homelessness and not having a disdain for them but empathy for them instead. and then on the other side it feels like…

Anyone using the term woke in 2025 is using the term in bad faith and to create the bogeyman you describe. It's actually hard to find the time when anyone on the left actually used it. Seems like it was a little under a year and the term was dropped to be more specific actions.

You obviously didn't read the article. He calls out how virtue signallers quickly change what the rules are around which word are OK.

Here is someone who you may or may not consider to be a far right bad actor explaining what woke is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaHLd8de6nM

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