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The Origins of Wokeness

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#681

Post by LeafItAlone »

hyeonwho4 wrote: post #575
zug_zug wrote: post #421

Spending too much time in the richest, most tolerant counties in the country can make you forget that we still have colleges that won't admit gay students, or that many people still don't believe in interracial marriage. Yes it's a teeny tiny little bit of a shame that a college president had to step down for raising a fair academic question. It is not half as important as when a cop shoots a black person dead for da…

> we still have colleges that won't admit gay students, or that many people still don't believe in interracial marriage 1. Who cares? Those colleges are private entities and presumably this admissions discrimination means they cannot receive Federalor state funds. If admitting gay students goes against their religious beliefs, then the rest of us benefit from having the people they reject. 2. It is not up to us to te…

>Who cares?

I believe it’s in everybody’s best interest to stand up against discrimination.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#682

Post by aprilthird2021 »

_yb2s wrote: post #673
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…

Insightful comment. While some of wokeness involves performative aspects like PG mentioned, it also seems to involve a genuine increase in awareness about injustice, and a desire to do something about it- which is much needed. I’m concerned that this desire to “end wokeness” will throw the baby out with the bathwater, and end us in a situation where it becomes taboo to point out or do anything about injustice. It’s i…

Idk, he spent a good chunk of the blog post saying that we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#683

Post by jvandreae »

submeta wrote: post #512

There’s a globally shared movement opposing anything the left considers progress—for minorities, the environment, a shift away from fossil fuels, animal rights, fairness, and other ethical causes. This opposition dismissively labels such efforts as “wokeness.” From the US to Germany, from Orbán to Erdoğan, you see this trend everywhere. It’s largely driven by men who feel their way of life is under threat. They want…

"Progress for the tick is not progress for the dog."

> These are the same individuals who empower fascists—whether in the US, Germany, Argentina, or Italy

Correct, madame.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#685

Post by aprilthird2021 »

Ukv wrote: post #38

> Imagine having to explain to a well-meaning visitor from another planet why using the phrase "people of color" is considered particularly enlightened, but saying "colored people" gets you fired. [...] There are no underlying principles. To understand much of our language, Gnorts would have to already be aware that our words and symbols gain meaning from how they're used, and you couldn't, for instance, determine th…

Yeah, I generally really liked this blog post, and I was very much steeped in "woke" culture at one point. But this part struck me as an analogy that could be improved. Lots of things about human culture and language are strange if you try to understand exactly why they came to be what they are. Think of various ways of saying Christmas: Xmas, Noel. Or Santa Claus, he is also Saint Nicholas, but Christmas is not Saint Nicholas's Day, like Saint Patrick's Day or Saint Valentine's Day, etc.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#686

Post by actuallyalys »

smikhanov wrote: post #111
Ukv wrote: post #38

> Imagine having to explain to a well-meaning visitor from another planet why using the phrase "people of color" is considered particularly enlightened, but saying "colored people" gets you fired. [...] There are no underlying principles. To understand much of our language, Gnorts would have to already be aware that our words and symbols gain meaning from how they're used, and you couldn't, for instance, determine th…

I can't for the life of me comprehend how PG manages to write in a style that sounds so lucid, so readable and compelling, and so authoritative, but on a substance that's so factually incorrect that it won't stand to any bit of critique. Like the paragraph quoted above: it's just so blatantly obvious what's wrong with turns like "considered particularly enlightened", or "there are no underlying principles" that I fin…

Someone could say something similar about the large number of people who apparently reviewed this essay, who were supposed to critique it in order for him to make it stronger. It's possible he just ignored their criticism, but it's also possible they already agree with Graham and didn't think about the flawed premises, so their feedback didn't address what might be "blatantly obvious" to you or I.

Similarly, Graham almost certainly already has strong opinions on the basic premises of this essay. Thus, the process of revising and polishing his essay to make it readable and compelling doesn't help him spot any of these obvious critiques. As you quoted, he believes the people advocating "people of color" over other terms have no principles. Thus he can't apply their principles to his own essay and anticipate their criticisms. Based on how he describes "wokeness," he seems to think are generally unprincipled.

Neither he nor his reviewers are equipped to analyze the substance, which is why it can be stylistically strong but substantially weak.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#687

Post by ipnon »

evmar wrote: post #261

This is pretty much a canonical example of what does not belong on HN. A dumb topic, and then on top of that a dumb take on that dumb topic.

It's like calling the word of Jesus heresy ... if pg essays don't belong on HN then the word "hacker" has lost all meaning. He's describing a system and how to change it. What else are we doing all day on these computers?

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#688

Post by mplewis »

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.

[flagged]

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#689

Post by johnnyanmac »

1300 comments seems a bit... overkill. The article is overall very pragmatic and doing exactly what the title says. Ofc this is all a soft science, so there will inevitbly be some interpretations that aren't agreeable, and no "source to back it up".

just one tiny nitpick though:

>Instead of going out into the world and quietly helping members of marginalized groups,

"quietly" is indeed a way to literally silence such progress. You don't need to be prigish about it, but you should indeed be advertising yourself and the efforts of the groups. as well as what actions to take to help relive this. It's easier than ever in the age of the internet. Any charity will tell you that awareness is one of the most important aspects of their organization. Likewise here.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#690

Post by bachmeier »

djur wrote: post #84
rhelz wrote: post #5

From the article: "Twitter, which was arguably the hub of wokeness, was bought by Elon Musk in order to neutralize it, and he seems to have succeeded — and not, incidentally, by censoring left-wing users the way Twitter used to censor right-wing ones, but without censoring either. [14]" Then follow to the footnote: "[14] Elon did something else that tilted Twitter rightward though: he gave more visibility to paying u…

The antiwoke crusaders are just as intent on moralizing and language policing as the worst of their opponents, and in places like Florida they're actively implementing limitations on speech and academic inquiry. To the extent that Graham and his fellow travelers in tech believe in freedom of expression, they've picked dangerous allies.

According to DHH, the massive tech layoffs were motivated by a desire to rid companies of wokeness: "most major corporations have wound down the woke excesses while pretending it's all just a correction for "over hiring"." He goes so far as to say that's what Basecamp did and (in his opinion) it's a necessity to clean out those with the wrong political views in every tech company. Sure sounds like a politically-motivated purge to me.

https://world.hey.com/dhh/google-s-sad-ideological-capture-w...

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