[HN Gopher] I Met Paul Graham Once
___________________________________________________________________
I Met Paul Graham Once
Author : DamonHD
Score : 542 points
Date : 2025-01-20 11:20 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (okayfail.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (okayfail.com)
| _dark_matter_ wrote:
| I really appreciate this article, and I would like the author to
| know that there are lots of people - yes, especially in tech -
| that support their happiness.
| sho_hn wrote:
| This was also my first thought -- a deep sadness over someone
| hurting and feeling threatened and persecuted. I'd also like
| them to know they're not alone in this.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| >I'm certain he wouldn't be rude to my face, but he might quietly
| discriminate against me, say no thanks. He might not even think
| of it as discrimination, only that I don't have what it takes.
|
| >I'm better at my job than most. I'd be a better startup founder
| today than I was in 2015. None of that will matter.
|
| IMHO, jumping to conclusions just like this is a big reason why
| 'going woke' isn't a healthy mindset for someone to hold. Stating
| that none of it matters is exactly the same thing as saying "I
| can't do it"
| frereubu wrote:
| This feels like a pretty shallow reading of the article and
| you've fallen into the trap - described in the article itself -
| that "woke" is "some left-wing thing that I don't like".
| Whatever your views on trans issues, I think this article
| deserves a more thoughtful answer.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Will you agree with the author's viewpoint that "none of
| experience" matters if one is trans?
| skyyler wrote:
| That's what facing structural oppression feels like.
|
| You can have the right skills and competency and mindset
| and disposition but will be looked over because you don't
| fit the norm.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| I agree with this somewhat, however, facing structural
| oppression is very different from deciding if a journey
| simply isn't worth starting. The mindset and disposition
| you speak of is or is not inclusive of assuming
| oppression will fully control one's overall success and
| happiness at a company?
| coderc wrote:
| It's hard to prove that this happens to any given
| individual, because employers aren't mandated to announce
| why any person was "overlooked". One might be quick to
| blame "structural oppression", racism, sexism, or any
| other -ism or -phobia, but that doesn't necessarily make
| it true.
| Gothmog69 wrote:
| Yup but still a poor attitude to have. I feel this way
| often times as a white male in tech, that they would
| rather hire literally anyone else if they can add some
| much desired "diversity" but I'm sure you would disagree
| that this is the case. Better for me to try anyways and
| have the best possible outlook even if I believe the
| cards are stacked against me.
| skyyler wrote:
| >I feel this way often times as a white male in tech
|
| Wait, you feel like you face structural oppression as a
| white man in tech?
|
| Could you explain what challenges you face as a result of
| your gender identity and race?
| coderc wrote:
| The person you're replying to mentioned it in the post
| you quoted:
|
| > "they would rather hire literally anyone else if they
| can add some much desired "diversity""
|
| He feels like his applications are automatically
| deprioritized in favor of minorities.
| skyyler wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the hiring numbers still show white men
| have it easier than all other groups. Even with "DEI"
| policies.
|
| I'd be interested to see data that suggests otherwise.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| My reading of the author's viewpoint is that there are a
| lot of people in leadership positions in the tech world who
| would have previously recognized the author's talent and
| supported them, but would now form a negative opinion of
| them, regardless of their experience. These people would no
| longer give them the opportunity they gave them previously.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| I think good leaders recognize people like the author
| simply have an additional life burden that they both
| choose and need to fight against and uphill.
| Additionally, those fights will ebb and flow
| unpredictably, possibly becoming too much of a burden for
| them at unpredictable times. If this is what you mean by
| negative opinion, then I agree. But I really don't think
| good leaders will take it out on them personally or hold
| them back to the point where they choose fighting inner
| trans issues over their business and success.
| skywhopper wrote:
| He's saying, for people who take Zuckerberg, Trump, and
| Paul Graham's statements as permission to discriminate
| against trans folks, their experience doesn't matter. The
| author is not giving up, they're saying that essays like
| Paul's make the world worse for them, for no good reason.
| beedeebeedee wrote:
| > IMHO, jumping to conclusions just like this is a big reason
| why 'going woke' isn't a healthy mindset for someone to hold
|
| This is not unique to "wokeness" and is in fact much more
| clearly expressed by people who are "anti-woke". Many folks
| just can't handle things that don't fit neatly into their
| (unexamined) categories about the world.
|
| They'd rather destroy that person or thing rather than reflect
| and improve their understanding of the world.
| thiago_fm wrote:
| I like the article, but one doesn't need to meet pg once to get
| to know what he is.
|
| You can just read his tweets (x's?) and he, like many VCs or
| higher-ups in SV doesn't give a huge importance in how other
| humans feel, just in his kids/family/relatives.
|
| So overall, he doesn't care about how you think or feel.
|
| If he did, he wouldn't write an essay on a touchy topic without
| making a big disclaimer.
|
| By reading him tweet for sometime you'd realize the kind of
| person he is, and he isn't somebody that is there to support
| others or something, or has threaded prejudice or huge issues in
| his life.
|
| The deepest essay pg has written that touches the "They don't
| like me" point, from all I've read is his thoughts about
| nerds/geeks, after all we get bullied! You can't compare being a
| nerd to being transgender, or a victim of racism, or xenophobia.
| It's very different.
|
| He just doesn't have studied, or suffered enough to understand
| the perspective of a "woke", then he wrote that article. AI
| engineers would say the problem with pg's llms didn't have enough
| training data ;-)
| afavour wrote:
| In the long run I think realizations like the authors are healthy
| ones.
|
| PG is not a hero. He's just a guy. A guy who entered into
| business transactions with a number of people, many of whom
| benefitted greatly (as did Paul himself). I'm not saying any of
| that as a negative! Just that we have a habit of attributing
| superhuman characteristics to folks (Obama getting the Nobel
| Peace Prize comes to mind) and ending up disappointed.
|
| I'm not an affected group by any means but I still share the
| disappointment in the world we see today vs the possibilities I
| felt tech would allow when I was younger. The tech CEOs I
| previously viewed as visionaries now just look like a new
| generation of socially regressive robber barons. I wanted to be
| one of those CEOs, these days I'm still not quite sure what I
| want to be. My only consolation is knowing that I'm seeing the
| world more accurately than I once did.
| bobosha wrote:
| >My only consolation is knowing that I'm seeing the world more
| accurately than I used to.
|
| also known as growing older ;-)
| afavour wrote:
| For sure. I almost included something in my comment about "I
| guess this is what getting old is like", losing your idealism
| as you age. But equally, maybe not. If I'd grown up in, I
| dunno the 60s? I would have witnessed enormous leaps in
| technological possibility _and_ enormous increases in
| standards of living, personal freedoms, yadda yadda. In my
| youth it felt like there _was_ a viable future where tech
| enabled radical positive changes in society. Instead we
| concentrated wealth at the top of society at historically
| unprecedented levels.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I wouldn't call it "losing my idealism," but, rather
| "understanding that everything is a lot more complex than
| my simple young mind could deal with."
|
| I'm probably more "idealistic" than I have ever been; it's
| just that I no longer have the silly "Let's just do this
| one simple thing" attitude. I've just found that getting
| places is always a lot more difficult than we think.
| Usually, it's people, and all their messy personal issues,
| that gum up the works.
|
| The good news is, is that I am actually accomplishing more
| than I did, when I was younger. I'm devoting less energy,
| and it is often more frustrating, but shit gets done. A big
| reason, is that I understand myself, and the people around
| me, a lot better than I used to. They are no longer "NPCs"
| in my Game of Life.
|
| As to the article, I seriously feel for the author, but I
| am not exactly in their shoes. I don't have anything
| against them, but their cause is not my cause. I don't have
| a dog in this race. I have nothing at all against trans
| folks. Many of my friends are varying types of LGBTQI+
| folks. If I'm not going to bed with them, then who they
| love, and what they do, when I'm not around, isn't my
| concern. I'd usually like them to be happy, and support
| their choices, as long as they don't interfere with my
| life. I'm even willing to go out of my way, in some cases,
| to support them (that's what friends do).
|
| The one thing that is almost guaranteed to make our cause
| to go floop, is insisting that everyone else is either with
| us, or against us. This is especially annoying, when our
| cause is important to only a small minority of
| stakeholders.
|
| For some reason, almost everyone in our life ends up in the
| "against" column, and many of them started as people that
| actually supported us, but weren't willing to go much
| farther than that. So now, they are actively working
| against us, as we declared them to be "enemy combatants."
| The "woke" stuff caused exactly this reaction. It's not
| just left-leaning stuff, either. Activists of every stripe,
| do the same thing, and then act all puzzled, as to why
| everyone seems to be against them.
|
| As Dr. Phil might say, "So...how's that working out for
| you?"
| ta10496520945 wrote:
| > The one thing that is almost guaranteed to make our
| cause to go floop, is insisting that everyone else is
| either with us, or against us. This is especially
| annoying, when our cause is important to only a small
| minority of stakeholders.
|
| Masterfully said, I'd love this to be the pull quote
| here.
| crimsoneer wrote:
| Yeah. I'm clinging to the hope the hacker revolution might
| not be over just yet :P
| jimmydddd wrote:
| "I saw a dead head sticker on a Cadillac."
| tehjoker wrote:
| I followed a similar trajectory, but if anything seeing
| these problems made me more serious about learning what is
| at the root of the rot of society and become a socialist.
| There are better days ahead, but we need to run society and
| the economy democratically and not by the inhuman drives of
| capitalism.
| guelo wrote:
| At the end of the essay he says "I'd be a better startup
| founder today than I was in 2015" and my thought was, yea but
| YC is biased towards college kids. And then I saw your
| comment and I think something clicked for me. But maybe the
| ignorance and pliability of youth really is required to make
| the crazy bet on the startup dream.
| rexpop wrote:
| > pliability of youth
|
| Not entirely dissimilar to the exploitation of eg college
| athletes.
| duxup wrote:
| I feel like the best advice is to take the ideas, even
| principles you like from folks and run with that. That's it.
|
| I still like a lot of what Steve Jobs had to say at times. I do
| not pretend to know what he was like IRL or if I would even
| like him ... doesn't matter.
|
| Truth be told folks who take those ideas and principles from
| others and not carry the weight of those folks as idols, might
| even do better with them.
| underlipton wrote:
| I dunno about even that. Forgive my example (though I love
| bringing it up, since so few people seemed to have grokked it
| in the time since initial release): in the video game
| Bioshock: Infinite, one of the later levels sees you
| transported into the far future of 1984. The game's setting,
| a flying city named Columbia, which was characterized by its
| almost cartoonish levels of capital-A capital-P American
| Patriotism, had featured in its original Gilded Age
| incarnation many of the ills of turn-of-the-century American
| society, including racism, an exploited working class,
| religion-driven insularity, and a predilection for violence.
| However, it had also presented an enthusiasm for the new and
| curious, an ambition for high living standards, and other
| cultural accoutrements that are usually associated with
| forward-thinking societies.
|
| By this late-game level, however, the city has descended into
| dystopia. Why? Well, a three-quarter century game of
| telephone. The ideals of the city's original founder, already
| imperfect, were further transmitted imperfectly to his
| successor and her charges, whose personal traumas further
| warped their interpretation of Columbia's intended values,
| and the actions taken in their name. That repentant
| successor, having lost control of the city's populace to a
| revolutionary fever, sends you back to the past just as
| Columbia's weapons begin to level New York City (a caricature
| of America destroying its real-life historical "center").
|
| It's a metaphor, of course.
|
| It's easy for the soul of an idea to get lost in translation.
| It's easy for principles of one era to be an ill fit for
| another. It's easy for the original ideas and principles to
| be fundamentally flawed in ways that no one could or was
| willing to admit to.
|
| "Running with it" can be dangerous. (Ask us how well Cold War
| politicking has worked out for us post-9/11.)
|
| I think, at all turns, you must be asking yourself why you're
| doing what you're doing, and if it's actually effective. If
| it's actually _good_. I don 't know that Jobs ever predicted
| that the bicycle for the mind would be beholden to OTA
| updates or have a commensurate attack surface exposure, but
| we have to deal with that reality, regardless.
| lisper wrote:
| > He's just a guy. A guy who entered into business transactions
| with a number of people
|
| Unfortunately, that's not true. He is also a well-read and
| influential essayist. He wields power and influence through his
| words as well as his money.
| 11101010001100 wrote:
| Not mutually exclusive.
| lisper wrote:
| The word "just" in the GP implies that the author _did_
| intend for them to be mutually exclusive.
| mort96 wrote:
| No, the word "just" in "He's not a hero. He's just a guy"
| indicates that he's not a hero. "Just" applies to the
| "just a guy" part, not to the "entered business
| transactions" part.
| lisper wrote:
| In conversational English, the phrase "He's just a guy"
| carries an idiomatic meaning along the lines of, "This
| person is no different from anyone else. He has no
| special power or influence or insight." And that might be
| true with respect to insight, but it is clearly not true
| with respect to power and influence. And that is why,
| when PG says something tone-deaf, it can hurt more than
| when some rando does it.
| atoav wrote:
| Even if your essays win you a Nobel price (Paul Grahams
| certainly didn't) the writer isn't protected from becoming a
| bullshit-dispenser.
|
| This is why I respect authors that publish a consistent level
| of quality more than those who hit and miss as if they were
| throwing darts at a map. And the stuff I have read from Paul
| Graham is definitly not in the former category.
|
| I don't feel he is intellectually honest, either with himself
| (bad) or with his readers (worse). But if the past decade of
| the Internet has shown anything, it is that honesty and
| consistency isn't required to get insecure people to follow
| you blindly.
| ryanjamurphy wrote:
| Would love to hear a few of the consistently-high-quality
| writers you're thinking about.
|
| I have a pet theory that volume is required for quality,
| but would love to be wrong so that I can feel less bad
| about how much I publish!
| gedpeck wrote:
| _it is that honesty and consistency isn 't required to get
| insecure people to follow you blindly._
|
| I'm going to use this. Well stated.
| Nevermark wrote:
| He also frames himself, accurately I believe, with his essays
| and the enabling-of-others nature of his successive
| accomplishments, as someone who genuinely values winning by
| helping others win.
|
| But frustration can over simplify issues for all of us, at
| some point.
|
| And power dulls sensitivity to those with less of it.
| nradov wrote:
| I have enjoyed most of Paul Graham's essays, and even been
| slightly influenced by a few of them, but let's not overstate
| his influence. We're in a real echo chamber here. Outside of
| a tiny tech industry bubble no one in positions of power
| reads those essays and they have virtually zero influence.
| lisper wrote:
| Sure, but at this point, YC is a pretty big echo chamber.
| And for an individual inside the echo chamber, Paul's words
| can hurt more than most.
| ryantgtg wrote:
| Is he well-read? His essay on the origins of wokeness was
| pure vibes, with hardly any historical accuracy or
| understanding of sociology. Many here on HN explained it as
| him not being well-read.
| sho_hn wrote:
| I assume OP meant that pg is read by many people.
| lisper wrote:
| Yes, exactly. (Maybe I should have said "widely read".)
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > I'm not an affected group by any means but I still share the
| disappointment in the world we see today vs the possibilities I
| felt tech would allow when I was younger. The tech CEOs I
| previously viewed as visionaries now just look like a new
| generation of socially regressive robber barons. I wanted to be
| one of those CEOs, these days I'm still not quite sure what I
| want to be.
|
| Upvoted because I couldn't describe better how I feel if I
| tried. There were so many of these tech leaders who I looked at
| with such awe, and a lot of it was because they _did_ have a
| set of skills that I didn 't and that I really envied (namely
| an incredible perseverance, amount of energy, and ability to
| thrive under pressure, while I was often the reverse). So it's
| hard to overstate how disappointed I am with people (and
| really, myself for idolizing them) whom I used to look at with
| such admiration, who now I often look at with something that
| varies between dissatisfaction and disgust.
|
| But I realized 2 important things: the same qualities that
| allowed these leaders to get ahead also figures in to why I
| don't like them now. That is, if you care _too_ much about
| other people and what they think, it will be paralyzing in the
| tech /startup world - you do have to "break some eggs" when
| you're doing big things or trying to make changes. At the same
| time, this empathy deficit is a fundamental reason I think of a
| lot of these guys and gals (it's usually guys but not always,
| e.g. Carly Fiorina) as high school-level douchebags now.
| Second, it's allowed me to have a higher, more compassionate
| vision of myself. I used to feel bad that I wasn't as
| "successful" as I wanted to be, and while I do have some
| regrets, I'd much rather be someone who cares deeply about my
| friends and family and really wants to do some good in the
| world, as opposed to someone I see as just trying to vacuum up
| power and money under the false guise of "changing the world".
| mola wrote:
| I think the issue is not being disappointed, it's being scared.
| Because PG yields influence. OP describes the mechanism by
| which PGs words can create a dangerous world for them,
| personally. Yes they are disappointed, but mainly afraid.
|
| The very powerful just affirmed a reversal of "wokeness" this
| may become performative just as much as their acceptance of the
| "other" became performative by their admirers and corporate
| copycats. This will result in tangible harm to people. I think
| OP did a great job in explaining this.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize comes to mind
|
| Ha well that a particular bad joke.
|
| Most are not so egregious.
| caycep wrote:
| sclerosis happens with time
| mellosouls wrote:
| _PG is not a hero. He 's just a guy. _
|
| The downgrading of exceptional individuals like PG to
| mediocrities is no healthier than placing them on pedestals.
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _The downgrading of exceptional individuals like PG to
| mediocrities is no healthier than placing them on pedestals._
|
| Recognizing that we're all just people is certainly healthier
| than placing people on pedestals.
| mellosouls wrote:
| It's obvious he's a person, the parent comment implies
| that's the extent of his achievements.
| sho_hn wrote:
| I don't think that extent of achievements equals heroism.
| History is filled with enormously productive people we
| judge very poorly for theirs.
| musicale wrote:
| > socially regressive robber barons
|
| At least we got some good universities (and a somewhat
| functional transcontinental rail system) out of the 19th
| century iteration.
|
| > In 1975 the student body of Stanford University voted to use
| "Robber Barons" as the nickname for their sports teams.
| However, school administrators disallowed it, saying it was
| disrespectful to the school's founder, Leland Stanford [1]
|
| It's a shame that the school's administrators (perhaps fearing
| the wrath of alumni and donors) were so humorless - "Stealin'
| Landford" would have been a highly entertaining mascot, and one
| oddly appropriate for the gridiron.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist)
| kps wrote:
| And 2509 libraries.
| musicale wrote:
| Indeed - Carnegie Libraries may be one of the best results.
|
| I would like to see our modern robber barons and
| philanthropists (and society in general) put some effort
| into creating a usable digital library system; we actually
| have things like Google Books, which scanned many
| university collections, but it will likely remain unusable
| as an actual digital library unless some sort of copyright
| reform can be enacted.
| CPLX wrote:
| > At least we got some good universities out of the 19th
| century iteration.
|
| You mean the ones that turned around and produced the current
| market fundamentalist and elite-run culture we have today?
|
| What a coincidence.
| musicale wrote:
| And the ones that produced the current crop of tech
| industrialists?
|
| What a coincidence.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| You should have finished reading PG's essay.
|
| It's really quite narrowly scoped. There's no indication I could
| see that he doesn't still hold the same basically liberal
| politics (he included explicit disclaimers, for all the good that
| did); he might still be fine with transgender identity. He just
| wanted to talk about how the particular loudmouth brand of
| annoying leftist came to prominence. He even had a decent
| definition of them beyond "leftist I don't like", and put them in
| a broader context.
|
| Even in the HN thread on the essay, it felt like hardly anyone
| actually read and understood it, just brought their own
| assumptions and intellectual allergies and let them run wild. It
| would be great if people could discuss these issues rationally,
| but the vast majority can't. Everyone is on a hair trigger.
| spokaneplumb wrote:
| This one's footnote #2 addresses PG's definition of "woke",
| which I agree is useless (I'd go further: that kind's so
| inconsequential that it's nonsense to bring it up unless you're
| using those complaints to attack _other_ actions that _do_
| maybe have some justification, using the definition as cover to
| retreat to if called out; if that's actually the only part
| you're complaining about, just don't write the piece, everyone
| already dislikes that kind for the same reasons you do)
| natch wrote:
| What is "that kind" referring to? That kind of essay? The
| first essay? The response essay? That kind of definition? The
| author? Which author? That kind of person who is aggressively
| performative? If by "that kind" you mean that last
| definition, then let's take one example in that happened
| recently and address your claim that "that kind" is
| inconsequential.
|
| Undemocratically, performatively, anointing behind closed
| doors a weak but social justice signaling candidate to run on
| the democratic ticket in the recent US election, seems to
| have been just a wee bit consequential.
| spokaneplumb wrote:
| > Undemocratically, performatively, anointing behind closed
| doors a weak but social justice signaling candidate to run
| on the democratic ticket
|
| You're just stringing together bingo-card words. I don't
| think this is going to be a productive exchange, so I'll
| leave things where they stand.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> It would be great if people could discuss these issues
| rationally, but the vast majority can 't. Everyone is on a hair
| trigger._
|
| If only we in the tech industry could blame social media on
| anyone but ourselves :(
| netsharc wrote:
| My startup idea is a iPhone/Android virtual keyboard that
| detects the user is writing something toxic, and refuses to
| cooperate. Using AI. Who wants to fund me?
|
| My other idea is a video/audio communication app that mutes
| the user if they become toxic.
|
| Yes, I'm only joking. I wonder how many will be triggered and
| foam about "But who determines what is toxic!?!". That makes
| me think about the joke about feminists where the setup is "I
| have a joke about feminists..." and punchline is someone from
| the audience yelling "That's not funny!" straight away.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Are you sure? How many of us in tech actually made decisions
| that made social media how it is? How many of us were even
| complicit in implementing it? I wasn't. Most of "tech" is not
| social media. Now how many of us were sounding the alarm and
| trying to build alternatives?
|
| I don't think we should put all the blame on social media
| anyway.
| skywhopper wrote:
| The mere fact that pg takes the word "woke" seriously tells me
| he's fallen for the right-wing doublespeak where they take a
| word vaguely related to left-wing ideals, pretend it means
| something else, apply to anyone center-right or leftward, and
| get the mainstream media and self-conscious centrists like Paul
| to accept their intentional distortions at face value.
|
| This pattern happens again and again with words and phrases
| like "liberal", "socialist", "Black Lives Matter", "critical
| race theory", "woke", and "DEI". Anyone who can't see through
| it is either okay with the distortion, or not as good an
| observer as they think.
| marcusverus wrote:
| It might be reasonable to disregard Mr. Graham if he were
| somehow abusing the term "woke", but it seems wrongheaded to
| disregard him due to "the mere fact that [he] takes the word
| "woke" seriously".
| otde wrote:
| The point OP is making (and it 's one that I agree with) is
| that Graham's particular usage of the word "woke" as
| written in his essay functions as a _shibboleth_ for a
| collection of reactionary beliefs and impulses -- not
| merely that he uses the word, but that he does so in a
| poorly-defined and pejorative way that is characteristic of
| the word's usage in various right-leaning circles.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| From the essay:
|
| > This was not the original meaning of woke, but it's rarely
| used in the original sense now. Now the pejorative sense is
| the dominant one. What does it mean now?
|
| It's early in the essay, too. Pretty near or above "the
| fold".
| r0p3 wrote:
| It is not narrowly scoped, it states that we need to stop
| another "wave" of "social justice piggishness" which would
| include challenging the gender identity framework the author is
| using among other things. It also makes broad claims about
| social justice politics writ large.
|
| Having read it carefully I found the hn thread interesting and
| it correctly criticized the essay's lazy reasoning.
| runjake wrote:
| Unless pg just now edited it out, you're making false quotes
| and misrepresenting his words.
|
| I cannot find the quote "social justice piggishness" or the
| word "gender" in his essay. Every single mention of the word
| "wave" is attached to "wave of political correctness" or a
| close variation thereof.
|
| _Edit: OP meant "priggishness". Got it._
| rexpop wrote:
| It's a typo. Paul's term is "priggish". And "political
| correctness" is a broad brush euphemism for, among other
| things, genderqueerness.
| runjake wrote:
| Thanks for this. I've always considered PC an entirely
| different thing, but after perusing the comments here,
| and given our new president's attitude toward the people
| affected, I can see your point.
| carabiner wrote:
| I don't think pig and prig mean the same thing.
| r0p3 wrote:
| Sorry my mistake I meant "priggishness"
| BearOso wrote:
| This is exactly the thing the essay seems to be complaining
| about. It's not the ethics of equality being targeted, it's the
| moral hypocrisy.
|
| People put on a false front with offensive messaging claiming
| support of these groups, but the whole purpose is to build
| clout or benefit themselves. They don't care about the message
| at all.
|
| Messages like "I support lgbtq, and if you don't you're a
| bigot," are self-aggrandizement. "I support lgbtq," is all
| that's needed if you want people to know they are supported. No
| one needs to hear it at all if the discussion isn't relevant.
| Just try to treat everybody with respect.
| netsharc wrote:
| Re your last paragraph: I feel I'm quite left, but it feels
| like a lot of these activists are busy trying to make enemies
| out of everyone, which makes me think "I'll just shut the
| hell up" and, if I ever get confronted as being a part of the
| enemy class (I'm a heterosexual male, get the pitchforks!) ,
| I'll just point out, "if you don't want me as your ally, then
| hey, no worries, I can be your enemy."...
| BearOso wrote:
| That's how I feel. Everyone always has to have an "us vs
| them" methodology. Like you have to take sides. No thank
| you, I'm apathetic to the situation. I'm not going to
| deliberately make life worse for anyone or support it.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Have you heard of or witnessed someone who was confronted
| as part of the enemy class just for being a straight male?
|
| Where are you going that you need a contingency plan for
| this situation? Are you expecting this in a work situation,
| on a campus maybe, or just walking down the street?
| jlebar wrote:
| Your argument is, "Don't say 'I believe X and if you disagree
| with me you're bad'. Just say, 'I believe X.'"
|
| But then _literally in the same sentence_ , you say, "If you
| do the thing I don't like (in this case, calling people
| bigots because they don't support lgbtq) *then you are self-
| aggrandizing."
|
| "Nobody should be called a bigot for their views on lgbtq,
| but it's virtuous to call people self-aggrandizing for
| calling people bigots."
|
| Either name-calling is okay or it's not. You can't have it
| both ways.
| jl6 wrote:
| You can argue hypocrisy or about the way the argument is
| presented here, but it's beside the point. Saying "there is
| only one correct opinion on this matter and if you disagree
| then you're a bigot" is exactly what is driving people to
| oppose those opinions, regardless of whether they are
| correct. It's just a really, really poor move, in terms of
| rhetorical strategy.
| jlebar wrote:
| I agree that people don't like being called out for their
| views (on race, lgbtq, women, whatever). They would
| rather be left to believe what they believe in peace and
| not face the disapprobation of others.
|
| Calling individuals may even further radicalize them, as
| you say. I am not convinced on this point, I sort of
| think their mind is not changing either way, but maybe I
| am wrong.
|
| What I am sure of is, it is not the responsibility of
| people whose rights are being taken away to be polite to
| their oppressors for the sake of rhetorical strategy.
| jl6 wrote:
| > What I am sure of is, it is not the responsibility of
| people whose rights are being taken away to be polite to
| their oppressors for the sake of rhetorical strategy.
|
| This is very much the TERF line of thinking.
| klik99 wrote:
| Yes - this is exactly how I felt about the "Wokeness" essay. I
| am constantly afraid that PG is gonna fall down the same
| strongly right rabbit hole so many of his colleagues have, and
| he hasn't so far, so seeing the title of the essay was
| worrying.
|
| When I read it though, I realized he was just using "wokeness"
| to mean the dogmatic surface level understanding of the subject
| (IE, not that he was being surface level, but he's talking
| about people who engage with equality/identity issues in a
| surface level way). It's kind of a strawman idea, but people
| like that exist and are annoying. It makes me wonder how many
| people who are really centrists hate wokeness because they
| think the most annoying wing of it is representative of the
| whole movement.
|
| Reading PGs article, I get the sense of someone who doesn't
| fully understand the thing he's criticising, so makes me
| hopeful he can learn. But again, I'm always a little afraid
| that the legit criticizisms of his article will get drowned out
| by people who reinforce what he says in it.
| pbiggar wrote:
| PG feel down that rabbit hole years ago. He was one of the
| very first people posting aggressively about "free speech on
| campus" in the 2012ish era. It was obvious to everyone I knew
| at the time that "free speech on campus" was right wing
| propaganda to platform hate speech, with folks like Milo and
| Ann Coulter. Where we are today with Trump, and his
| marginalization of immigrants and LGBTQ+, came directly from
| that.
|
| Does PG know he did this? Hard to say. But he's still
| platforming right wing views for his centre-right-but-thinks-
| theyre-left audience.
| watwut wrote:
| > He just wanted to talk about how the particular loudmouth
| brand of annoying leftist came to prominence.
|
| Nah, this is just not true about that essay. This is sort of
| excessive "lets twist what people say with maximum leftist spin
| so that we can paint everyone who disagree with them as crazy".
| It is getting repetitive, tiresome and amounts to a massive
| amount of online gaslighting. Center and left are all supposed
| to pretend that everyone is leftist just concerned with some
| extremists, no matter how much it is clear it is not the case,
| unless someone actually supports nazi party ... and sometimes
| even longer.
|
| That essay did not even cared about actual history of events
| either.
| oxguy3 wrote:
| From the essay: "Consumers have emphatically rejected brands
| that ventured too far into wokeness. The Bud Light brand may
| have been permanently damaged by it."
|
| What Bud Light did was hire an influencer to promote their
| product in an Instagram video (and then of course they later
| backtracked). The only thing "woke" about the video was that
| the influencer was a trans woman.
|
| If Paul Graham would like to elaborate on this passage meant I
| welcome it, but my read was that supporting a trans woman falls
| under his definition of "wokeness".
| notahacker wrote:
| Indeed. I mean, an article on censorious "priggishness" could
| have easily picked outrage mobs boycotting brands over
| deeming a trans person worthy of association as evidence that
| the "woke" people didn't have a monopoly on self
| righteousness and censoriousness.
|
| Instead, he effectively endorsed the position that trans
| people were "woke" simply for existing and the consumers
| cancelling them had a point.
| didiop wrote:
| Better than endorsing Dylan Mulvaney's regressive and
| misogynistic "Days of Girlhood" act. A boycott was the
| right thing to do.
| agent281 wrote:
| > Even in the HN thread on the essay, it felt like hardly
| anyone actually read and understood it, just brought their own
| assumptions and intellectual allergies and let them run wild.
| It would be great if people could discuss these issues
| rationally, but the vast majority can't. Everyone is on a hair
| trigger.
|
| I think the essay was a rorschach test for readers. On its
| face, it has a very reasonable and measured tone. It also has
| some nods to the other side like the disclaimer you mentioned.
| However, it starts from some uncharitable premises (e.g., its
| definition of wokeness) and contains unnecessary gibes (e.g.,
| against social sciences). More importantly, it takes the tone
| of a social sciences essay, a discipline that he mocks, without
| any of the rigor. There are not sources for his claims about
| the origins of wokeness or how universities operated from the
| 80's until today, you just have to take him at face value. It
| gives the illusion of being erudite without doing any of the
| actual work.
| sho_hn wrote:
| pg writing about non-tech topics has always rubbed up against
| Gell-Mann Amnesia.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I'm too lazy to search my comment history, but I wrote a
| comment on the original post about pg's essay that I _did_
| pretty much agree with what pg wrote, and so consequently I
| agree with most of what you wrote.
|
| But that said, I definitely could not ignore the timing of pg's
| essay, and it felt plain gross to me. It felt like a lazy,
| convenient pile-on at that moment, even if pg's position had
| been largely consistent for a long time. I've seen all these
| tech leaders now lining up to point out the problems of the
| left (again, a lot of which I agree with), so where is the
| essay about the embarrassingly naked grift of the POTUS
| launching a ridiculous and useless meme coin just before his
| inauguration?
|
| Also, there was nothing in that essay that I felt was
| particularly insightful or that I learned much from. It was,
| honestly, some bloviating pontification from someone who I now
| think holds his ideas in much higher regard than they deserve.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| I can largely agree with this as well. There were plenty of
| interesting and valid critiques people could make of the
| content, if they actually read it. I'm seeing a few of them
| in the replies to my comment here, but more intellectual
| sneezes.
| rockemsockem wrote:
| Idk if it's just me, but I voted blue in the last 3
| presidential elections and I'm way more pissed about the
| Democrats than the Republicans right now.
|
| They failed the country, so hard, by making poor decisions
| which made them lose. They did this repeatedly, I think which
| decisions were the wrong ones is up for debate, but the
| surest one imo is Joe Biden running again instead of stepping
| aside and having a real primary.
|
| Anyway, all that is to say that I feel like I understand
| choosing now as a time to talk about what things you despise
| most about the left, because a lot of people feel like they
| failed America and the entire world by losing so decisively
| for reasons that feel stupid.
| pavlov wrote:
| _> "he might still be fine with transgender identity"_
|
| How extremely generous!
| JohnMakin wrote:
| I feel this a lot, not so much from the perspective of someone
| that belongs to a formerly "protected" group, but came into tech
| at the height of the tech revenge-of-the-nerds style "zeitgeist"
| in the early 2010's to 2015, around the same time he mentions
| being involved in startups. My first job was a startup, with a
| bunch of students and a professor at my alma mater. We failed
| miserably - not in the way I had envisioned, but because of just
| basic VC funded stuff. We were a $20 million company with half a
| dozen of us, which would have been great for any of us, even our
| founders - but the VC's wanted a $200 million company. Poof.
|
| That put a bitter taste in my mouth that has gotten more bitter
| when the "promise" of a society led by technocrats has yielded a
| barrage of increasingly shitty and invasive products that don't
| provide any additional utility to anyone except the people who
| stand to profit from them. It's exhausting, extremely depressing,
| and if I had to do it again I probably would have avoided tech,
| as much as I like what I do - I feel a deep sense of shame
| sometimes at the state of how it's gone.
| neom wrote:
| It's complicated isn't it? A business doesn't care about you. It
| doesn't because it can't. Business doesn't have thoughts and
| feelings, business is clinical. Business is nothing more than the
| collection of processed and systems crafted to work together,
| facilitating the exchange of value between 2 parties. The problem
| is with the 2 parties part. The 2 parties part, that part very
| much does have thoughts, feelings, and emotions, those two
| parties are made up of humans. Bobby Sue just wants the
| alternator working on the car so they can go to a family funeral
| and mourn. Jerry in accounting at alternator inc's going through
| a momentous life shift, spiraling his whole world into a new
| framing, changing everything. Sally in design is just trying to
| feed her kids. And while these things matter none to the business
| technically, they matter deeply to the humans involved. It's
| complicated because business doesn't, shouldn't, and can't have
| feelings, however, business activity is indeed made up of people,
| and they most certainly do. There is always a risk of being too
| cold and focusing only on the bottom line, or becoming so caught
| up in individual needs and emotions that you lose sight of the
| basic structure that keeps a business functioning. Booby Sue
| needs to mourn, and Jerry needs stability for his life change,
| Sally has kids. And so, there is some empathy to be found for
| people deciding fundamental things for their businesses, it's not
| easy to know when to be clinical in look at the business,
| especially knowing it's comprised of a collections of humans,
| organized, into a company. Care too much about the outside, the
| business fails, care too much about the inside, the business
| fails. These are not easy things, the trick is to avoid hostage
| situations, and so rationality and intellectual honesty is key
| when framing these discussions. I expanded these thoughts here:
| https://b.h4x.zip/dei/
| Angostura wrote:
| I disagree with your axiom that businesses _shouldn't_ have
| feelings. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a business
| that feels it should treat its workforce kindly and ethically
| and recruit a diverse set of people.
| neom wrote:
| How can a business feel that? You mean a founder? a ceo? the
| investors? The laywers? People who are running business at
| $500MM+ arr have 4 things to consider distinctly, with their
| own lenses and frames: The business- It's model, it's
| operations, defined processes etc, every monday this report
| comes in, it is read by this functional area, it's converted
| into this insight, the insight is used, the consumer is
| delighted, more money comes in, the cycle continues. The
| humans involved are relevant so much as they must be able to
| do the task, who the literally are doesn't particularly
| matter, it's just a resource to allow a cog to spin. The
| company - the people inside the business. The organizations -
| how the people are assemble continually. The market -
| customers etc.
|
| If you observe the business "feeling" - done correctly, what
| you're observing the outcome of an evaluation process that
| decided it functioned more competitively in a different mode.
| (The best world class employees are in Spain, lets make our
| HR more diverse in it's language) A business cannot, should
| not, and does not, have feelings. The only place ethics
| technically come into play are in the context of law.
|
| It's nuanced, but it's important, without being fully fleshed
| in your framings, things get muddy. Businesses are systems
| and processes that fairly and adequately serve the parties
| involved while hedging out individual humans.
| spacechild1 wrote:
| I'm so mad at people like PG. They are actively helping turn the
| US into a right wing tech oligarchy and at the same time complain
| about "wokeness". Let's say I'm not surprised, just a few months
| ago PG called Musk a political centrist!
|
| All the best to the author!
| sillyfluke wrote:
| Didn't downvote you, but I'm not sure there is anyone in the
| American VC class that shared the harrowing plight of
| Palestinians as much as Kamala-voting pg did. Not to say he
| does it alot, but in the VC feeds that I normally check out
| once in a while it's virtually non-existent. Hell, Musk even
| attended and applauded Netanyahu's speech in Congress.
|
| ...By that metric that would make pg a radical leftist.
|
| You know what wasn't on my bingo card for 2024? Paul Buchheit
| being red-pilled harder than Paul Graham.
| spacechild1 wrote:
| > Kamala-voting pg
|
| Oh! I didn't know he spoke out against Teump and endorsed
| Harris:
| https://x.com/paulg/status/1851200055220306378/photo/1
|
| That's a pretty strong statement. Hats off!
|
| Since then, PG seems to have gone silent on Trump. Instead he
| decided to post that essay about wokeness, right after major
| SV players publicly sucked up to Trump. Didn't he - or the
| people who read the draft - realized that it would make
| people believe he joined the MAGA camp? What happened there?
| sillyfluke wrote:
| I think Musk called pg a retard and released the right-
| wings trolls on him by doing so after pg pushed back on
| Musk's UK interference when he shared a UK poll showing a
| dislike for Musk across party lines. He's stated his
| preference for Kamala over Trump on multiple occasions ("I
| don't agree with xyz, but on the whole Trump is worse."
| being the gist of it). Right-wing trolls also went after
| him after this anti-woke essay, claiming he was late to the
| party. though he had been consistent on that point for
| quite some as well.
| spacechild1 wrote:
| > when he shared a UK poll showing a dislike for Musk
| across party lines.
|
| Love it! But all of that doesn't really explain why he
| went silent on Trump and decided to publish that essay at
| probably the worst time possible. I know it is consistent
| with some of his past essays, but the optics are
| terrible. What was he thinking?
| kristianc wrote:
| Can't help but OP might have been better engaging with PG's
| Wokeness article itself (it's full of holes, and probably one of
| the weakest he's written), than talking about what they think the
| article said made them feel.
|
| Ironically the Wokeness article does what most people accuse
| "wokeness" of doing, predetermining its conclusion, and then
| shoehorning in a bunch of loosely connected facts and phenomena
| to support that assertion.
| ternnoburn wrote:
| It's not a direct criticism of the PG article, the OP is
| examining a broader cultural phenomena right now. PGs scribbles
| were just one example.
| spokaneplumb wrote:
| > Ironically the Wokeness article does what most people accuse
| "wokeness" of doing, predetermining its conclusion, and then
| shoehorning in a bunch of loosely connected facts and phenomena
| to support that assertion.
|
| This basic approach underpins the pop-business and some of the
| pop-science industry. Plus much of self-help. And a good chunk
| of popular political books, of course.
|
| It's a winning approach, lots of folks read that kind of thing
| and nod along, are glad they paid money for it, and recommend
| that others do the same.
|
| Even the "good" books in those genres are often guilty of it
| :-/
|
| Motivated reasoning, cheap rhetorical tricks, and half-fake but
| digestible and uncomplicated history/facts are how you "win"
| the war of ideas.
| JDEW wrote:
| > Are "identity politics" just a status game that economically
| advantaged elites play?
|
| Yes. But it's a disgrace that we're throwing the baby (genuine
| progress, like the slow acceptance of non-binary people) out with
| the bathwater.
| natch wrote:
| Huge pretending going on though that we are doing this. We are
| not throwing away the baby.
|
| There is nuance and people are pretending there is not. I
| support trans people but also support safety for all people.
| There are some nuanced details when you get to reality, and we
| can't just pretend those away.
|
| The symptoms or pretending are things like not finishing the
| essay, or not even reading far enough to uncover PG's
| definition near the beginning, so it had to become a footnote
| later when someone told them about it.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| My sympathies to the author. I've had more than a few moments of
| disillusionment myself.
|
| But it's always better to be aware and disillusioned than unaware
| and happy.
| bryant wrote:
| My guess is there are two possibilities as to what's going on:
|
| * Many tech pioneers and leaders deep down felt an animosity
| towards supporting people who didn't fit the mold and finally
| feel free to express it (the worst-case outcome), and/or
|
| * Many tech pioneers and leaders wish to continue supporting
| those who don't fit the mold but feel their own status threatened
| by figures with nearly infinite power[0] who disagree.
|
| The former are simply the intolerant coming up for air. The
| latter exhibit a cowardice, though there's a subpoint to that
| second bullet: there could be some in this crowd who prefer to
| conform to but then dismantle the power structures enabling
| hatred from within, but these people likely won't be known for a
| while, and it'll be difficult to predict who's acting
| subversively in this way. Though given PG's narrowly scoped
| essay, there's a reasonable chance that this is his footing.
|
| The best people can do is assume the least-worst case - the
| cowardice - and instead seek to either craft themselves as the
| people they wish to see... and/or protect oneself from the rising
| tides of hatred.
|
| [0] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf
| myflash13 wrote:
| Or maybe the world is simply returning to the way it has been
| for pretty much all of recorded history. Wars, male dominance,
| two fixed genders, oligarchs and barons and racism is the norm
| for all human beings since forever. "Wokeness" is a very recent
| anomaly.
| tclancy wrote:
| You probably need to read more history, and maybe challenge
| yourself to find sources, if you think those things were
| always widely true everywhere.
| myflash13 wrote:
| Even most of the world right now doesn't care about
| wokeness and never has. India, the Middle East, Africa,
| China, Russia etc. never caught on to most woke stuff that
| came out of the west in the past 20 years.
| Philpax wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_history
| myflash13 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke
| Philpax wrote:
| This isn't a response to what I posted. You said that
| it's a recent concept without any presence in non-Western
| spaces. My link clearly demonstrates that's not the case.
| DasCorCor wrote:
| _goose comic_ Who has recorded that history?
| ethbr1 wrote:
| There's also a third type, that I consider to be the most
| likely reality given self-selected population of founders /
| successful leaders:
|
| - People who will amorally play to the limits of the rules if
| it helps them win.
|
| It doesn't matter what they personally feel, or even if they
| have feelings at all. They tack with whatever way the wind is
| blowing in order to derive the maximum benefit.
|
| E.g. the million dollar inauguration contributions
|
| That's not a lot of money for that sort of person. The point of
| kissing the ring is the visible action and the favor it
| curries, not because the kiss is dear.
| bryant wrote:
| Yeah I don't know why I skipped this one, but given the
| relationships between CEOs and psychopathy I shouldn't be
| surprised.
| neom wrote:
| This is lacking a lot of nuance though isn't it? You're
| basically saying hate the player not the game, and that isn't
| really useful. When you step up to the arena and decide to
| play a competitive sport, because of game dynamics you can
| only know so much about who you are playing against, so you
| should play. The whole philosophical theory behind capitalism
| is literally progress emerges from the conflict and tension
| created between it's functional systems. If you want to get
| down to blaming humans, you're going to hav to go over to
| Adam Smiths or Joseph Schumpeter.
| tclancy wrote:
| Yeah, there's probably some Pulling The Ladder up like my Irish
| immigrant ancestors did. At one point everyone in the
| discussion was a nerdy social outcast. Now that they can afford
| to hang out with the Beautiful People, time to be as agreeable
| as possible.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> Many tech pioneers and leaders wish to continue supporting
| those who don 't fit the mold but feel their own status
| threatened by figures with nearly infinite power[0] who
| disagree._
|
| If only tech had some sort of rugged frontiersmen who weren't
| afraid of a bit of hardship. Davy Crockett types, pushing
| boundaries and standing firm under siege no matter the personal
| cost.
|
| We could call them "pioneers" - if any existed.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Great, cohesive, and clear essay! Hear hear.
|
| One thing that I think is underappreciated in our current times,
| that gets lost on both the left _and_ the right sides -- an
| _individual_ is more important than their _identity_.
|
| - A specific trans person can _also_ be an asshole.
|
| - A specific white man can _also_ be a saint.
|
| Extremists on both political sides will scream about the reasons
| one or the other of those statements is wrong, but doing so lumps
| all possible individuals of an identity into a "them" category to
| which blanket statements, positive or negative, can be applied.
|
| That reductionism feels incredibly insulting to our shared,
| innate humanity.
|
| Are there all kinds of subconscious and societal biases that
| seriously influence our perceptions of others on the basis of
| their identity? Sure!
|
| But it doesn't change the goal of treating the person standing in
| front of you, first and foremost and always, as an individual
| person.
|
| Be curious. Be courteous and respectful. Be a normal, nice
| goddamn human to human across the table from you.
|
| (And maybe, if you feel so inclined, have some compassion about
| what they did to get to that table)
| gedpeck wrote:
| _Be curious. Be courteous and respectful. Be a normal, nice
| goddamn human to human across the table from you._
|
| In general I wholeheartedly agree. But if the person in front
| of you has done or advocated for things that cause harm or is
| themself a horrible person then I disagree.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Fair, but in our current times using someone's identity as a
| justification to act like an asshole to them is a sith's
| whisper.
|
| We all have our less enlightened moments. Better we not
| afford ourselves easy intellectual justifications for being
| our worst selves.
|
| As the quip goes: the greatest evils are perpetrated by those
| most assured of their own righteousness.
|
| _Edit:_ Or in video form. Beginning summary: "brick suit
| guy" was apparently an extremely aggressive heckler of the
| media at Trump rallies.
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fRSIv7alUZ8&t=95s
| gedpeck wrote:
| In normal times I would agree with you. At present in the
| U.S. I'd not agree with this sentiment. People who support
| electing a known racist, thief, con man, and felon are
| deserving of ridicule and ire. They don't deserve respect
| in my opinion.
|
| When the politics of a nation shift so far in one direction
| we get into a situation where supporters of that shift
| don't deserve respect. Stalinist Soviet Union is an extreme
| example of this.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| So what lengths do you think you're _justified_ going to
| against individuals you disagree with?
|
| And how do you feel about them feeling the same about
| you?
|
| Mutual righteous hostility is why ethnic and religious
| wars simmer forever, because there's always a convenient
| justification for acting violently towards others (and
| them towards you).
| gedpeck wrote:
| _... justified going to against individuals you disagree
| with?_
|
| I don't do anything at this time. But I understand why
| there are those who do have vitriol for supporters of a
| rapist who lusts after his own daughter. There are times
| when a nation's society fractures as the social cohesion
| evaporates. We are beginning to be in such a time in the
| U.S. Well, it appears that way to me. Only time will
| tell.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _a rapist who lusts after his own daughter._
|
| You have issues and should probably log off.
| gedpeck wrote:
| The one who rapes and lusts after his daughter is the one
| who has issues. Well, him and the people who support him.
| Never thought I'd live to see Republicans, the so called
| party of family values, support such an asshole. You
| should get some ethics and apply them consistently.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| You keep repeating that he's a rapist, which is
| categorically untrue.
|
| I'm not even American, either. You are clearly unwell.
| mecsred wrote:
| Then you don't agree at all. Every single adult in the world
| has "done or advocated for things that cause harm". It's
| inescapable.
| gedpeck wrote:
| Great harm then? I'm not morally obligated to to treat
| Putin with respect. Most people agree that there are people
| who are so reprehensible that they don't deserve respect.
| haswell wrote:
| There are obvious bad/evil actors in the world. When
| people talk about engaging with other humans
| respectfully, they're generally not referring to the
| Putins of the world.
|
| And it's pretty rare to have so much clarity about a
| person to know they're in the "obviously reprehensible"
| bucket.
|
| I'm not saying this is what you're doing, but I often see
| people argue like this:
|
| 1. There are obviously bad actors in the world
|
| 2. Nobody would argue those bad actors should be given
| respect
|
| 3. So I won't respect people I come across who disagree
| with me
|
| The fallacy is in the jump from 2 to 3, and the
| assumption that the existence of bad actors means the
| person _I 'm interacting with right now_ is one of them.
| The vast majority of people aren't Putin, nor can they be
| judged so quickly/clearly. And setting aside whether or
| not someone like that _deserves_ respect, there 's also a
| clear difference between respecting someone for who they
| are vs. behaving in a respectful manner out of self-
| preservation. The latter may ultimately keep you alive.
| gedpeck wrote:
| Herein lies the crux of the matter in my view. The jump
| from 2 to 3. When Bob Dole ran for President I
| wholeheartedly agreed with the position about being
| respectful to those you disagree with. Politics was still
| normal in the U.S. at that time. But now we in the U.S.
| elected a known rapist. A felon and a con man. He can't
| run a charity in New York due to his misdeeds. He lusts
| after his own daughter. We have entered into an era where
| supporters of one party's President deserve the
| assumption of being terrible people.
|
| Now obviously there are many people who disagree with the
| above. But this is how I see things and I act
| accordingly. The call for civility comes from those who
| hold terrible beliefs. We are well into the Paradox of
| Tolerance situation in the U.S.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _The call for civility comes from those who hold
| terrible beliefs._
|
| Oof, that's a _lot_ of assumption.
| hnthrowaway6543 wrote:
| "over 50% of the country i live in are irredeemably
| terrible people" is obviously hyperbole -- if it were
| true, the onus would be on you to start taking action
| against those terrible people. but my guess is you don't
| _actually_ think they 're so terrible, because you're
| still working your 9-5 for your terrible-person boss,
| getting paid like every other schmuck, and you're happy
| to let those irredeemably terrible people deliver your
| DoorDash, teach your children at public school, and keep
| your electricity and water running.
| gedpeck wrote:
| _" over 50% of the country i live in are irredeemably
| terrible people"_
|
| A large majority of the people did not vote for Donald
| Trump.
|
| _but my guess is you don 't actually think they're so
| terrible,_
|
| People who support Donald Trump are, in general, terrible
| people. They aren't evil people doing evil things so why
| would I have an obligation to take action against them?
|
| It is a fact of life that we all must live amongst people
| who we think are terrible human beings. Of course I
| haven't the slightest idea what a person's views are for
| almost everyone I interact with. I give everyone the
| assumption that they deserve respect until proven
| otherwise.
|
| Given the context of the thread it's ironic that you
| don't seem to understand what it means to give the
| assumption of respect to people. I think you edited your
| disparaging remarks to me. It was hilarious to read those
| remarks given the context of the discussion at hand. Feel
| free to put them back. I don't mind them.
| signatoremo wrote:
| > People who support Donald Trump are, in general,
| terrible people
|
| This is not true, and that shows your narrow mindset. To
| give you the benefits of the doubt, can you explain why
| Trump supporters are not only wrong, but generally
| "terrible people"?
| gedpeck wrote:
| I have no desire to change anyone's mind about their
| political views. Anyone who supports a known rapist and
| felon and who openly takes bribes can not be convinced of
| anything. I don't engage in political discussions with
| such people. There is no consistency in their beliefs so
| no meaningful discusion can be had.
| haswell wrote:
| To me, the issue boils down to pragmatism and utility.
|
| It's just human psychology; people tend not to change
| their minds when someone screams at them and otherwise
| disrespects them. If the goal is to move society in any
| particular direction, that requires some degree of
| successful communication, and throwing respect out the
| window directly counteracts the goal. If the goal is just
| to hold some moral high ground for the sake of it, that's
| a pointless goal if it doesn't lead to any underlying
| change.
|
| Collectively, we don't need to change the minds of
| obviously evil people, but we do need to influence the
| population that can vote them into or out of power. I
| just don't see that ever happening if your outlook on
| life is this extreme:
|
| > _We have entered into an era where supporters of one
| party's President deserve the assumption of being
| terrible people_
|
| I know many people have convinced themselves that this is
| true, but this ultimately boils down to the question: so
| what then is the goal? To push these people deeper into
| their bubbles?
|
| At some point one has to ask how much of the problem is
| being directly created by this "they're all terrible
| people so I won't even talk to them" mindset.
| gedpeck wrote:
| My personal view is as follows. American society has
| reached a point of no return. Something has to give
| before a new equilibrium has been found. As an extreme
| example look to Nazi Germany. The repugnant views that
| were normal in 1939 Germany weren't normal in 1960
| Germany. A similar (though far less extreme) change will
| happen in the U.S.
|
| I have no desire to change anyone's mind about their
| political views. Anyone who supports a known rapist and
| felon and who openly takes bribes can not be convinced of
| anything. I don't engage in political discussions with
| such people. There is no consistency in their beliefs so
| no meaningful discusion can be had.
|
| For me, my desire is secession. The country needs to beak
| up. This is an extreme view but will likely be
| increasingly held by people with similar political
| beliefs as mine.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| Why is the comparison always Nazi Germany?
|
| By the way, the jury explicitly rejected the rape
| allegation. So you're just making stuff up from your
| high-horse:
|
| https://apnews.com/article/trump-rape-carroll-trial-
| fe68259a...
| gedpeck wrote:
| I didn't compare anything to Nazi Germany. I gave Nazi
| Germany as an example of how what is socially acceptable
| can drastically change in a short period of time.
|
| I apologize. He was found liable for sexual abuse,
| battery and defamation. These distinctions are extremely
| important. He's not quite as bad as I made him out to be.
| What about him calling his daughter a nice piece of ass?
| The other stuff?
| itsoktocry wrote:
| Yes, Nazi Germany is the example, we get it. We are all
| Nazis.
|
| Enjoy the next four years, buddy!
| petsfed wrote:
| I'm going to be pedantic for a second, as a sort of dark
| coping mechanism:
|
| >Anyone who supports a known rapist and felon and who
| openly takes bribes can not be convinced of anything
|
| Clearly, they can be convinced of _something_ , just not
| anything you or I might consider _good_.
|
| In all seriousness, I think the truly disturbing thing
| about this whole sorry situation is just how many people
| don't actually hold any durable ethics or morality, just
| rank self-interest. Pearl clutching over the death of
| American dreams like economic mobility is a sideshow to
| the death knell of American _idealism_. America is not
| the shining city on a hill we thought it was, and
| honestly, it never was.
| gedpeck wrote:
| _Clearly, they can be convinced of something, just not
| anything you or I might consider good._
|
| Yeah. I should have been more precise.
|
| The country deserves what is going to happen.
| snowfarthing wrote:
| Do you realize the _exact same things_ can be said about
| the President we had for the last four years?
|
| It's really hard to worry about your own guy being a
| scumbag, when the opposition supports a scumbag too (and
| then lies about it).
| gedpeck wrote:
| Biden hasn't been convicted of felonies. He's not an
| adjudicated rapist. He doesn't refer to his daughter as a
| nice piece of ass. He isn't banned from running a
| charity. He hasn't bribed any porn stars. He hasn't
| accepted $30 billion in bribes. He hasn't taken secret
| documents to illegally keep in his bathroom. He hasn't
| met with Putin alone without an interpreter or any other
| U.S. official present. He hasn't made fun of a reporter's
| disability. He didn't appoint his son-in-law to be an
| advisor who then accepted bribes from Saudi Arabia. He
| hasn't engaged in Twitter feuds with 15 year old kids
| from Sweden. He didn't threaten to withhold disaster aid
| to states that didn't vote for him.
|
| Nothing I've said against Trump is about his politics.
| He, as a person, is narcissistic, self centered, selfish,
| boorish, infantile, incurious, lustful, and greedy. He's
| a despicable person and those who support him are
| terrible people.
| snowfarthing wrote:
| You aren't aware of what was found on Hunter's laptop, or
| in Ashley's diary (she had to choose her showering times
| carefully to make sure her father wouldn't join her), or
| Tara Reed's allegations. To say Biden hasn't accepted $30
| billion in bribes, in particular, is laughably funny, and
| he was caught having secret documents kept illegally in
| his garage. He is on record threatening aid from Ukraine
| unless they fired a particular prosecutor who was
| investigating his son. He has, for all intents and
| purposes, withheld disaster aid from North Carolina, who
| _didn 't_ vote for him. He has plagiarized speeches
| several times over the years -- indeed, this is what
| derailed his first attempt to run for President, back in
| the 1980s. And he hasn't been particularly nice to
| reporters, and considering what he is on record saying to
| constituents, I can confidentially say that the only
| reason he doesn't engage in Twitter feuds is because he's
| too senile to be allowed near Twitter.
|
| Biden, as a person, is narcissistic, self centered,
| selfish, boorish, infantile, incurious, lustful, and
| greedy. He's a despicable person and those who support
| him are terrible people.
|
| Either that, or they are just ignorant -- because the
| mainstream press has worked hard to hide these kinds of
| things from us. It is why trust in them has plummeted
| over the last few years.
| gedpeck wrote:
| Great. We are in agreement that a person who engages in
| odious behavior is not worthy of support. As such Donald
| Trump is not worthy of support.
|
| If you want to discuss Biden then start another thread.
| This one is about Donald Trump.
| snowfarthing wrote:
| "If you want to discuss Biden then start another thread.
| This one is about Donald Trump."
|
| You cannot talk about Trump without putting him in
| context. The fact is, the reason why we have Trump for
| President again, is because the person who replaced him
| was so horrible, that Trump looked better in comparison.
|
| And what's more, conisdering what _I_ said -- and what
| _you_ are responding to -- I _have_ to bring up Biden,
| because my entire point is "both sides do it". If you
| want to bring back honor and decency to the White House,
| you have to do it with an honorable and decent person.
| Neither Biden nor Harris fit that bill.
| gedpeck wrote:
| _You cannot talk about Trump without putting him in
| context._
|
| I can. I did. It doesn't need context. It's well
| documented the things he did.
|
| _The fact is, the reason why we have Trump for President
| again..._
|
| This is not an established fact.
|
| _... Harris fit that bill._
|
| Harris' moral and ethical failings are nothing compared
| to Trump. You can do what I did and not vote and not
| support either candidate. Stand up for truth and
| righteousness and stop trying to justify your support for
| a person as shitty as Trump. It's a choice to defend
| shitty behavior. When you do so you end up smelling like
| shit.
| snowfarthing wrote:
| "Harris' moral and ethical failings are nothing compared
| to Trump. You can do what I did and not vote and not
| support either candidate. Stand up for truth and
| righteousness and stop trying to justify your support for
| a person as shitty as Trump. It's a choice to defend
| shitty behavior. When you do so you end up smelling like
| shit."
|
| She implicitly supported Biden. She was complicit in all
| the lies that were pushed about Biden, particularly those
| about his fitness for the position. She endorsed going
| after political enemies with the legal system -- and then
| had the gall to claim that Trump would do just that
| himself.
|
| And then to go on and claim that if you supported a
| crappy candidate, then those people are crappy too, you
| have basically condemned the 95% or so who voted for one
| or the other -- for motivations that are well beyond
| either yours or my understanding -- _this_ attitude
| _right here_ is why politics is so toxic these days.
| gedpeck wrote:
| You should get a bumper sticker that reads, "I vote for
| rapists who openly take crypto coin bribes."
| itsoktocry wrote:
| Pure recitation of ridiculous left-wing talking points.
| Absolutely comical, but unfortunately deranged.
| gedpeck wrote:
| Which of the accusations are wrong? Do you deny these
| well documented things?
| itsoktocry wrote:
| Rape, for one.
|
| "The verdict was split: Jurors rejected Carroll's claim
| that she was raped"
|
| https://apnews.com/article/trump-rape-carroll-trial-
| fe68259a...
|
| You are reciting points that are provably false. Low
| information voter, reason your party lost and will
| continue to. Normal people do not agree with your
| extremism.
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _Low information voter, reason your party lost and will
| continue to_
|
| It's funny, in a sad way, that after so much discussion
| here about how silly it is to have this us vs. them, side
| vs. side mentality, that we end up with someone saying
| this.
| foxglacier wrote:
| Do you not see how you're part of the problem? You're
| applying cherry-picked standards that just happen to
| match what Trump did because you'd already been
| brainwashed to hate him and his supporters. What if you
| judge presidents by how many deaths they cause in wars
| instead of what dirty jokes they made? Wouldn't that be
| more meaningful measure of badness? No because you're
| cherry-picking to support your pre-existing hatred that
| you were driven to by the news and social media.
| gedpeck wrote:
| Cherry picked facts? Ha. Being a rapist is a cherry
| picked fact?
|
| The difference between me and you is that I consistently
| apply my morals and ethics. I don't support rapists and
| bribe takers for President. I didn't support Clinton when
| it became clear what he did and I don't support Trump.
| Have a higher standard for yourself. Don't support bad
| people.
|
| I do judge George W. Bush for the deaths he caused. Obama
| too.
| mecsred wrote:
| Sure I can support that. The difficulty as always comes
| with the grey area in defining "great". There are truly
| reprehensible people in the world, but they're the
| exception not the norm. I see you did address that in
| your comment with "in general" so I was a bit strong in
| my wording, but I do believe the in general case covers
| >99.99% of people.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| It's like.. incredibly escapable. Nihilism makes for a weak
| argument
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Moral hubris - where one believes all of one's positions
| are morally correct - is the shortest path to becoming a
| monster.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| Stupid and vapid. Tech is already full to the brim with
| people with zero moral convictions aside from the things
| that get them paid. Those are the real monsters
| AlexandrB wrote:
| At least someone being paid to make your life worse can
| often also be paid to stop. I'm more afraid of someone
| convinced that they're saving the world as they destroy
| it instead.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| Why are you writing in the tone of a Christoper Nolan
| movie? These hypotheticals have literally nothing to do
| with real life.
| hnthrowaway6543 wrote:
| > But if the person in front of you has done or advocated for
| things that cause harm or is themself a horrible person then
| I disagree.
|
| the current conflict in the middle east shows why this
| doesn't work in the long run.
|
| despite what a generation that grew up consuming Marvel films
| was led to believe, not every conflict is a clearly defined
| superhero-vs-supervillain, good-vs-evil affair. eventually,
| _you_ will be the one who, according to some, is advocating
| for things that cause harm and is considered a horrible
| person.
| gedpeck wrote:
| Most definitely. Each person decides for themselves where
| the lines are drawn.
| beardedwizard wrote:
| Very underrated comment. Right and wrong are largely a
| function of culture, not universal law.
| gopher_space wrote:
| > Right and wrong are largely a function of culture, not
| universal law.
|
| Sure, but then you're handwaving away questions about why
| cultures align along similar axioms.
| hnthrowaway6543 wrote:
| > Sure, but then you're handwaving away questions about
| why cultures align along similar axioms.
|
| there's a lot of reasons, but it doesn't make someone
| with a different opinion due to their culture a horrible
| person and not worthy of respect.
|
| as a concrete example, let's take gay marriage. on a site
| like HN, i expect people here to be supportive. on the
| other hand, the vast majority of Africa, the Muslim
| world, and Asia do not support support it. according to
| gedpeck, nearly everyone in Africa and Asia, and every
| single practicing Muslim, is a horrible person... which
| sounds pretty bad when it's phrased that way, doesn't it?
| gedpeck wrote:
| _according to gedpeck, nearly everyone in Africa and
| Asia, and every single practicing Muslim, is a horrible
| person..._
|
| I said no such thing.
| hnthrowaway6543 wrote:
| if you don't think you said that, you're not listening to
| yourself.
| gedpeck wrote:
| Care to point out where I said this or implied this? I'm
| opposed to gay marriage.
|
| EDIT: I'm not really opposed to gay marriage. But I never
| said anything about my views on gay marriage or anything
| inconsistent with the view that gay marriage is wrong.
|
| EDIT: I don't consider people who oppose gay marriage to
| be bad people. I consider people who support and vote for
| a known felon, rapist, theif, and bribe taker to be
| terrible.
| mantas wrote:
| Do they? Different cultures have widely different axioms.
| E.g. compare Islam and Christianity. Not to begin with
| cultures far away geographically from each other.
| sbarre wrote:
| I dunno man.. When someone advocates for treating another
| person as "not human" or wants to deny them basic human
| rights, that's universally wrong in my book.
| yread wrote:
| dehumanization of the other side is one of the most used
| tools of war propaganda of all sides. Just look at people
| in the west joking about orcs
| gedpeck wrote:
| But if someone acts inhuman then it's justified. Russia's
| war crimes are well documented and they started the war.
| When you are the baddies then expect to be called so.
| yread wrote:
| Wait are we still in the thread discussing that it's
| childish to call one side baddies?
| gedpeck wrote:
| It's not childish to call bad people bad.
| foxglacier wrote:
| You're still in the goodies-vs-baddies mindset. Western
| media pushes people into that way of thinking but it's
| the Marvel level view and is wrong. Also, look at all the
| people who think Russia is the baddies for starting that
| war, but Israel is the baddies despite not starting its
| war. That's an arbitrary standard people invented to
| justify their simply goodie-baddie view. If you apply a
| different standard to every war, then it's not really a
| standard, is it?
| gedpeck wrote:
| It's mostly about willful acts of violence against
| innocents. This might be a nuance that is too subtle
| though. Bad acts and bad actors should be called out.
| Russia is the bad actor in the Ukrainian invasion. Hamas
| and IDF are bad actors in their conflict.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| I'm worrying that one can't win an US election without
| the support of morons and bigots. You don't need to get
| their vote on the basis of those qualities, but you can't
| say "leaders should be smart" or "bigotry is bad."
|
| It's pretty hard to stand on principle when those
| principles aren't broadly shared anymore, unless you are
| okay with being a principled minority.
| jrflowers wrote:
| It only "doesn't work" if your goal is to appear morally
| impeccable to everyone.
|
| If instead of this worrying you
|
| > you will be the one who, according to some, is advocating
| for things that cause harm and is considered a horrible
| person.
|
| you have a set of morals that centers something more or
| different than theoretical other people's opinions, your
| example of the current "conflict in the Middle East" is
| still a good example just not for the reason you stated. It
| is a perfectly valid ethical position to think that
| genocide is bad and that people that advocate for genocide
| are also bad. To pivot to "actually the Really Bad Thing
| would be if you said that and someone somewhere disagreed
| with you" is weird and hollow.
|
| "The truly wise know that everything is morally equivalent,
| except for the pursuit of unbounded approval which is Good
| for some reason, and believing otherwise is the same thing
| as getting your morals from comic book movies" isn't a
| coherent or defensible moral position. The Marvel movie
| comparison is a thought terminating cliche.
| hnthrowaway6543 wrote:
| > It is a perfectly valid ethical position to think that
| genocide is bad and that people that advocate for
| genocide are also bad. To pivot to "actually the Really
| Bad Thing would be if you said that and someone somewhere
| disagreed with you" is weird and hollow.
|
| to clarify, are you saying that Israel carpet bombing
| Gaza and killing many Palestinians is bad, or are you
| saying that Hamas being allowed to murder Israeli
| civilians without Israel being permitted to defend itself
| is bad?
|
| "genocide is bad" _is_ the Marvel-brained zoomer
| reductionist good-vs-evil take. it 's easy to take the
| moral high ground when you don't actually take a stance
| on issues with nuance to them.
| jrflowers wrote:
| > "genocide is bad" is the Marvel-brained zoomer
| reductionist good-vs-evil take
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_salad
| hnthrowaway6543 wrote:
| yeah i know, you can't really think of a refutation
| because you have no original thoughts. any more stunning
| and brave controversial takes you want to share while
| you're here though? maybe "racism is bad" or "trans lives
| matter"?
| foxglacier wrote:
| Genocide=bad is too simple. If some country kills 100% of
| a 10,000 population ethnic/cultural group, is that worse
| than killing 10% of a 10,000,000 population
| ethnic/cultural group? Are some people's lives worth more
| because of their ethnicity? What if that happened because
| the 10,000 fought to the death against the 10,000,000 and
| ended up losing? Is that genocide? Is that bad?
| Suppafly wrote:
| >In general I wholeheartedly agree. But if the person in
| front of you has done or advocated for things that cause harm
| or is themself a horrible person then I disagree.
|
| I feel like the parent comment is pretending to be deep and
| meaningful but is really just rehashing the 'both sides are
| the same' argument with a side of 'everyone is entitled to
| their own opinion'. It's nice to say that we should judge
| everyone for who they are, but if who they are is a vocal
| member of a group that wants to hurt other people, that's all
| we need to know to judge them. Pretending otherwise is silly.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| The difference is between judging an individual for what
| they themselves say vs what identities you associate with
| them (or even those they associate with themselves).
| Suppafly wrote:
| >or even those they associate with themselves
|
| I see no problem judging someone for the identities that
| they choose to associate themselves with.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Over and above their works and words?
| Suppafly wrote:
| Their associations are their works and words. You can't
| just handwave that stuff away as being irrelevant because
| you like the parts of their works and words that don't
| touch on anything you deem to be an association.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| I know people of the political party I tend to disagree
| with who are saints and dedicate the majority of their
| time to others.
|
| I know people of the political party I tend to agree with
| who are insufferable selfish pricks and treat others
| terribly.
|
| Works and words aren't always associations.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >I know people of the political party I tend to disagree
| with who are saints and dedicate the majority of their
| time to others.
|
| Except for the part of the time that they are devoting to
| supporting a political party that is actively harming you
| and people you love.. you can't just wave that off as not
| being important just because they are nice the rest of
| the time.
|
| >I know people of the political party I tend to agree
| with who are insufferable selfish pricks and treat others
| terribly.
|
| And they should be negatively judged for the latter
| behavior.
|
| Both examples should be negatively judged for their
| behavior, you're just choosing to ignore some of the
| behavior of the first person.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| I'd say what a person chooses to put their time and
| energy into is _more_ important than their political
| affiliation.
|
| Otherwise, all we'd have to do to be good in life would
| be to support political parties on internet forums. ;)
| CivBase wrote:
| What constitutes "harm"? Is hurting someone's feelings harm?
| Is misinformation harm? How do you determine intention? To
| what extent does intention matter? How do circumstances
| impact the answers to these questions?
|
| When your creed is basically "I only hate bad people", you
| have given yourself permission to hate anyone and feel
| righteously justified about it. And you'll never feel the
| need to empathize because bad people always deserve whatever
| bad things happen to them.
|
| You don't need to love everyone unconditionally, but clearly
| more neuance is needed.
| gedpeck wrote:
| _What constitutes "harm"? Is hurting someone's feelings
| harm? Is misinformation harm? How do you determine
| intention? To what extent does intention matter? How do
| circumstances impact the answers to these questions?_
|
| I know the answers to these questions...for me. Each person
| decides for themselves where the lines are drawn. It has
| always been this way.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| I'm so tired of hearing "both sides" though.
| layer8 wrote:
| Focusing on the individual means dropping the notion of
| "sides". Identifying people (or even arguments) by their
| alleged "side", instead of taking them on their own merit, is
| where things go wrong.
| watwut wrote:
| Where things go wrong is that the "extremists on both
| sides" is used to distract from what people on one side do.
| It is just a shield designed to prevent analysis.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| It's not, because there's a difference between 'extremist
| individuals in a side' and 'a side as monolith.'
|
| It is currently en vogue to use the excesses of specific
| instances or individuals to tar entire identities, but
| that's statistically dishonest.
|
| Most people are not extremists, in the sense of 'if you
| talk to them at 1:13pm on a random Tuesday.'
| watwut wrote:
| There is actual political program and actual laws being
| pushed on. That is the reality. And yes, that political
| program belongs to that side.
|
| It is OK to blame republicans as such for what Trump or
| JD Vance does, because they made them big. It is ok to
| blame them for the for the supreme court politics too,
| because they knowingly put exactly those people there,
| knowing they will remove protection for abortion and lied
| about it.
|
| It is OK to blame democrats for what Biden does.
|
| For the both sides thing however, you need to attribute
| acts of people who Democratic party actively pushes away
| to that party ... and to pretend that people voting for
| republicans have zero to do with what that party does.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| I think about it with different divisions.
|
| For politicians (as opposed to people in other
| professions), they are obviously responsible for the
| policies their parties support, to the extent that they
| support their parties. Given not every politician votes
| in lockstep with their party.
|
| BUT for individuals in the US, their personal positions
| are often more complex than the binary reductions the
| two-party system affords us.
|
| Consequently, there are many (most?) dissenters on one
| issue or another in both parties.
|
| If a person has thoughts on matters, it's therefore more
| interesting to me to discuss those thoughts, than to
| derive my interactions with them solely by their D or R
| label.
| redcobra762 wrote:
| I would argue it's currently en vogue to incessantly
| repeat the argument that "Both Sides" have bad actors,
| thus commenting on the bad actors of one side is an
| incomplete argument.
|
| It's tiring and non sequitur to hear such arguments
| however, as what the opposition to a position does is
| wholly unrelated to the arguments related to that
| position.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| I think your point is what gets missed in this conversation.
|
| Many people just want to go to work and do their job ... and
| not have social topics or politics discussed at work.
|
| That doesn't mean they don't care about those topics, they
| just don't feel like work is the correct place for discourse.
|
| And the sense I get from recent moves by tech execs is that
| they simply want employees to focus 100% on _work_ (because
| obviously they want to get the most productivity out of their
| paid staff), and anything non-work related is viewed as a
| distraction. Regardless of what that non-work topic might be.
| timeon wrote:
| > gets lost on both the left and the right sides
|
| It gets lost because of this black/white US perspective on
| politics. If you were multiparty system there will be less
| identities in politics.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Also, diffusing the bully pulpit and celebrity between a
| president, prime minister, and/or ceremonial royalty. Policy
| > popularity.
| zug_zug wrote:
| Good thought. The only change I'd make, to make your neutrality
| explicit, is to say
|
| - A specific trans person can be an an asshole. A specific
| trans person can be a saint.
|
| - A specific white man can be an asshole. A specific white man
| can be a saint.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| I call it the "could I share this with my grandmother" test. I
| don't like things that are supposed to have a point or make a
| good argument but fail the grandmother test.
| transcriptase wrote:
| >A few days ago, Paul Graham published an essay on "Wokeness". I
| skimmed it. I couldn't finish reading it, it made me too upset.
|
| ...
|
| >I'm still not sure what pg thinks "Wokeness" means
|
| Hmm
| skywhopper wrote:
| The point he's making is that Paul did not explain what he
| thinks "wokeness" means in a coherent way. Which is true.
| ternnoburn wrote:
| The point _she 's_ making, the author is a woman.
| transcriptase wrote:
| How could she know if she didn't read it.
| anonfordays wrote:
| Paul most definitely explained what he thinks "wokeness"
| means in a coherent way. The author has an malformed opinion
| on a piece he claimed to not read in its entirety.
| slibhb wrote:
| I thought this was better than most essays in this vein.
|
| I do fundamentally disagree with the author. People can think
| poorly of you for whatever reason they want. If someone hates
| trans people, they can, and you can't stop them. The whole "war
| on hate" thing was a bad idea; you can't forbid hatred. It
| predictably didn't work, and it's good that we're turning away
| from it.
|
| Adding on, the trans issue isn't simple. There are real questions
| about bathrooms, women's sports, and when medical interventions
| are called for. Of course, there are also just bigots. The proper
| response to bigots is not to banish them, ban them, shadowban
| them, etc. That didn't work. The proper response is -- in the
| spirit of the new era of free speech -- to firmly state your
| opposition to their beliefs.
| DeathRay2K wrote:
| You're wrong that a so-called "war on hate" doesn't work. More
| correctly, it doesn't work in the US because of the first
| amendment and the few limitations on it.
|
| Many other countries have robust anti-hate speech laws that are
| effective, although less so in the age of the internet.
|
| People broadly conform to the society in which they live, and
| the rules of the society are broadly set by the laws they
| adhere to. So in countries where hate speech is disallowed,
| people conform to a less hateful viewpoint as a rule, and
| hateful people are the exception.
|
| In the United States, it is clear that hatred is the norm as
| long as it is permitted by law and by leadership.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| > it doesn't work in the US because of the first amendment
| and the few limitations on it.
|
| This isn't clear to me. For instance, Meta was free to forbid
| hate speech on their platforms, or not to promote it in their
| feed algorithms. I don't think first amendment would force
| them to authorize hate speech. They do it to align with power
| in place (freely or coerced, not clear), but it's not a legal
| enforcement.
|
| > So in countries where hate speech is disallowed, people
| conform to a less hateful viewpoint as a rule, and hateful
| people are the exception.
|
| There are hateful people in Europe too.
| raincole wrote:
| German woman given harsher sentence than rapist for calling
| him 'pig' : https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-
| news/2024/06/28/german-wom...
|
| That's what "war on hate" slides to.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| Article is behind a paywall. I found another article
|
| https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/a-german-woman-said-she-
| was-...
|
| > The court did find the two men guilty of wrongly making
| and distributing the sex video and fined them 1,350 euros
| ($1,500) each. But it reserved its gravest punishment for
| Lohfink, levying her a fine of 24,000 euros for falsely
| accusing the men.
|
| If we're talking about the same story, it has nothing to do
| with "war on hate".
| arp242 wrote:
| _" Maja R was sentenced to a weekend in jail after her
| comments because she had a previous conviction for theft
| and had not attending the court hearing for the case."_
|
| Whatever you can say about the suspended sentences, merely
| _" given harsher sentence than rapist for calling him
| 'pig'"_ is not true by your own article.
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| > People broadly conform to the society in which they live,
| and the rules of the society are broadly set by the laws they
| adhere to
|
| Well this can work very differently from what you imagine I
| believe. Like late Soviet Union where certain things were
| said in public and other things were said in private or in
| "trusted environments". For years and years... From what I
| hear this is in part what goes on in large multinationals
| where the pressure to conform is quite tangible.
| Arainach wrote:
| >The whole "war on hate" thing was a bad idea; you can't forbid
| hatred
|
| You can't forbid it but you can absolutely make it socially
| unacceptable. "Free speech" doesn't mean letting people spew
| hate and doing nothing; choosing not to hand them a megaphone,
| support their business, etc. is entirely valid.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| It became so socially unacceptable that its proponents won
| the US presidency and took control of Congress and globally
| famous business leaders are bending the knee to them without
| repercussion? What definition of "can absolutely" are you
| using?
| ziddoap wrote:
| It is less socially acceptable in some cultures, more in
| others.
|
| The fact that a gradient exists is proof that, under
| different circumstances, the social acceptableness of
| hatred can change.
| snowfarthing wrote:
| There is a danger to hating something so much, that it goes
| underground. A major reason why President Trump won the first
| time around was because hatred against Trump and his
| supporters was so strong, that many people being polled were
| afraid to tell the pollsters who they were really voting for,
| for fear of being destroyed. This is a major reason why Trump
| outperformed his polling.
|
| In the meantime, when people are lied to by every avenue of
| culture, they are convinced everyone else believes in the
| lies, so they feel alone and in the minority, even though
| they may very well be in the majority. So long as this spell
| can be maintaned, the dictator can hold his grip on power.
|
| But what happens when that spell was broken? When something
| happens, and all of the sudden, everyone realizes they've
| been in the majority all along? This is how dictatorships
| topple -- and the toppling can happen _very_ swiftly, as
| Ceausescu discovered in Romania.
|
| Elon Musk acquiring Twitter and taking out the censorship is
| what initially cracked the spell this time; and when Trump
| was elected not just by Electoral College, but by the Popular
| Vote, the spell was broken completely. It's why we're seeing
| so much change now, and why it's so rapid.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| The author isn't talking about abstract "hatred" in the sense
| of people's internal, personal experiences. They are talking
| about _hate speech_ , a specific concrete act with external
| material consequences.
|
| > Adding on, the trans issue isn't simple.
|
| It really kind of is though.
| watwut wrote:
| > There are real questions about bathrooms, women's sports, and
| when medical interventions are called for.
|
| Yes there are real questions, but there are also real answers.
| Currently, 99% of people asking questions have literally zero
| interest in answers. They do not care about what research say
| or whether there is harm or not. They ask questions to convince
| the audience about their political project.
|
| They do not care about whether medical interventions are good,
| bad, safe or unsafe. They want to convince you that that they
| are unsafe. They want to stop the interventions regardless of
| their impact. They do not care about safety of bathrooms, they
| want you to punish transgender people in the wrong bathroom.
| They do not care about women sports either, in fact they are
| the same people arguing against women sports whereever it
| matters.
|
| > People can think poorly of you for whatever reason they want.
|
| And it should be my god give right to call them sexist and
| racists if they think of me poorly because of those reasons.
| But somehow that is supposed to be a taboo. We are all supposed
| to pretend there is no sexism, that there was no historical
| sexism, so that someone feels good about themselves. Again and
| again, sjws pointed out someone is sexist/racist, there was an
| outrage in response, they were painted crazy stupid
| exaggerating. And I actually believe the response, multiple
| times. Except that it turned out, multiple times, that they
| were right all along.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Besides, the whole bathroom thing is so old hat. You know
| what I hate in a bathroom? Other people. Of any gender.
| Thankfully, stalls have doors.
|
| I miss the days of Ally McBeal when unisex bathrooms were hip
| and the future.
| watwut wrote:
| In my local city there was conservative article about
| unisex bathroom putting framing it as transgender thing.
|
| The bathroom was unisex when I was a kid, when trans were
| universally mocked. Bathroom is unisex, cause there is
| exactly one toilette in a small cafe in a super old
| building.
| samastur wrote:
| Unisex bathrooms mean women get to clean the bathrooms
| again because men can't be bothered to aim or sit.
| coderc wrote:
| I would think that your claim about "99% of people asking
| questions have literally zero interest in answers" applies
| more to 'both sides' than one might initially think.
|
| Is either side open to being told "no", or at least "wait, we
| need to be more cautious about this"? Or do both sides just
| want their demands to be accepted?
|
| Would either side actually back down if the research said
| that what they were doing was harmful or ineffective?
| watwut wrote:
| > "wait, we need to be more cautious about this"? Or do
| both sides just want their demands to be accepted?
|
| I think that yours "wait, we need to be more cautious about
| this" or is this just another "I do not care about answers,
| I just want to pretend so".
|
| > Would either side actually back down if the research said
| that what they were doing was harmful or ineffective?
|
| Research is there and it is saying current clinics were not
| harmful and were not ineffective. So yes, one side cares
| about research and the other is not.
| coderc wrote:
| >I think that yours "wait, we need to be more cautious
| about this" or is this just another "I do not care about
| answers, I just want to pretend so".
|
| I don't know what you're referring to, but if you would
| like to get specific about it, many authoritative medical
| organizations, such as the one that presides over Sweden,
| have declared a halt on procedures such as prescribing
| puberty blockers to minors. This is an example of a
| "wait, we need to be more cautious about this", saying
| that the risks outweigh the benefits.
|
| https://segm.org/Swedish-2022-trans-guidelines-youth-
| experim...
|
| But here you are implying that the science is already
| "settled" and that there is no harm. So when you say that
| one side cares about the research and the other does not,
| are you completely sure about that?
| watwut wrote:
| I am completely sure about that, yes. Because even your
| "many authoritative medical organizations" thing cherry
| picks one organization saying maybe and ignores any
| positive results entirely.
|
| You do not care about which procedures were actually done
| nor about what it took to get them. Puberty blockers for
| minors are not something new or done to transgender kids
| only. They have been used for years for non-transgender
| kids and they are not the only treatment constantly under
| attack.
|
| If you cared about puberty blockers safety, you would
| care about also about when they work, you would care
| about accessibility when they do work ... and you would
| not act as if they were so easy to get in the first
| place.
|
| And that last thing gives the game away.
| coderc wrote:
| It's not just Sweden, I could list other countries too,
| such as Denmark, Finland, England (outside of trials),
| Wales and Scotland. Norway calls it "experimental". All
| this information was found on the homepage of the same
| site I linked earlier.
|
| But you don't seem to be open to discussion on this
| issue, and that's the double standard I'm pointing out.
| "They do not care about what research say or whether
| there is harm or not" is what you've said about others,
| and it seems like it applies equally to you as well.
|
| And since you don't seem to be open to discussion on this
| issue, I'm going to leave it here. I think my point has
| been made.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _They do not care about what research say_
|
| No, we do not care about "research" that says men and women
| have equivalent physical abilities and sports performance.
| It's ludicrous.
|
| > _They do not care about safety of bathrooms_
|
| I care a lot about bathroom safety. Does safety only matter
| for transgender bathroom users?
| robmccoll wrote:
| > The whole "war on hate" thing was a bad idea; you can't
| forbid hatred. It predictably didn't work, and it's good that
| we're turning away from it.
|
| This is a myopic view. You are obviously correct that you
| cannot legislate that someone think in any particular way or
| otherwise force someone to change their minds, but the idea
| that collectively deciding that a viewpoint is not longer
| tolerated within the broader society and then making efforts to
| support that at all levels is ineffective and not worthwhile is
| absurd. Threats, physical violence, and murder have always been
| illegal, but used to occur with much higher frequency against
| many minority groups toward which society tolerated hatred and
| abuse. It's plainly obvious what changed is the idea that it
| would be brushed under the rug, that others would at worst turn
| a blind eye to the perpetrator if not support them, that there
| would be no real consequences whether legal or in social
| circles - this environment in which people act on impulse
| rather than thinking twice about what they're doing - went
| away. We must remember that progress isn't permanent, that
| civil rights must be maintained and won't protect themselves,
| and that there's probably someone out there that hates someone
| each of us loves and cares about for some arbitrary reason and
| would act on that if only society gave them permission.
| rexpop wrote:
| > There are real questions about bathrooms, women's sports
|
| No there aren't. These are frivolous questions.
| wastle wrote:
| Yours is a very typically male point of view.
|
| Female athletes having to complete against trans-identifying
| males tend to disagree that this is frivolous issue. As do
| many others.
| otde wrote:
| > If someone hates trans people, they can, and you can't stop
| them. The whole "war on hate" thing was a bad idea; you can't
| forbid hatred. It predictably didn't work, and it's good that
| we're turning away from it.
|
| It is disingenuous to suggest that anti-discrimination laws for
| trans people are attempting to legislate away the hatred held
| in people's hearts, instead of access to healthcare, public
| facilities, protections against workplace discrimination --
| things you describe as having "real questions," but which are,
| in fact, the parts of a full and dignified life that bigots
| would deny to trans people in particular. If you pretend like
| it's trying to legislate "thoughtcrime," it's much easier to
| distinguish anti-discrimination laws for trans people from
| rulings like _Obergefell_ or _Brown v. Board_ -- far easier to
| say "look, those were good, but this particular civil rights
| legislation is simply unreasonable."
|
| To platform these beliefs is to afford them a legitimacy they
| do not deserve. To suggest that bigotry, when amplified, will
| be in some way countered or reduced is naive beyond belief.
| Instead, it becomes easier for bigotry to find an audience of
| receptive listeners and willing conduits for further
| transmission.
| whack wrote:
| I appreciate the author and this article. As an immigrant and
| person of color, the author's concerns resonate with me. I don't
| think people like PG or Andreessen are evil bigots. But they are
| underestimating and enabling a movement that is cruel and
| exclusionary by design. A movement that they seek to tame and
| harness, but not understanding that the movement is fundamentally
| untameable.
|
| I miss the days when the Republican party was led by a President
| like Bush, who told America that Islam is a religion of peace.
| And nominees like McCain, who told his supporters that Obama is a
| decent family man, and a natural-born American. I worry for the
| future, and my children's place in it.
| rchaud wrote:
| While I understand the point you're making, I am surprised by
| the examples you chose.
|
| What Bush's speechwriter wrote, did not stop Bush from
| authorizing torture stations across the world, murdering
| hundreds of thousands of Muslim civilians in two failed
| military occupations, while weakening America vis-a-vis Russia
| and China, a confrontation that has dominated the past several
| years. Do not mistake public statements as any indication of
| actual policy.
|
| As for McCain, his words were "No Ma'am, he is not an Arab, he
| is a decent family man", which I suppose is addressing
| misinformation with a decisiveness Republicans wouldn't dream
| of today.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "who told America that Islam is a religion of peace"
|
| This is something I considered a brazen lie in the interest of
| stability.
|
| I believe in existence of individual peaceful Muslims, but I
| don't believe in inherent peacefulness of a religion founded by
| a warrior who converted Arabia by the sword and which had since
| seen an endless series of holy wars initiated in the name of
| Islam.
|
| You can't really build societal understanding on a foundation
| of such misinformation.
|
| To be clear, Christianity and Judaism aren't "religions of
| peace" either. Some explicitly anti-militaristic sects like the
| Amish maybe. But the Abrahamic faiths as such, no.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| To pretend that every Muslim area in the world was converted
| by the sword is just totally unsupportable
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I haven't said that _every Muslim area in the world was
| converted by the sword_.
|
| But Muhammad led a lot of wars, in which thousands died.
| Which is fairly untypical among the founders of currently
| widespread religions, though the Old Testament heroes like
| Joshua can be categorized into a very similar slot.
| arp242 wrote:
| > I miss the days when the Republican party was led by a
| President like Bush, who told America that Islam is a religion
| of peace
|
| At the same time he also said that if you don't agree with him,
| you're with the terrorists. I do agree that Bush went out of
| his way to not stigmatize Muslims or Islam, but "don't be a
| flaming racist" is not that high of a bar to meet, and he was
| very much not a moderate open to nuanced views (on this topic,
| and various others). Never mind stuff like Iraq, Guantanamo
| Bay, torture. I'm not sure it really matters for the Guantanamo
| Bay whether Bush is or isn't prejudiced against their ethnicity
| or religion: they're still detained in a camp. Without trail.
| For years. Being tortured.
|
| McCain defending Obama against vile racist attacks was also not
| that high of a bar to meet. McCain was also a standard GOP
| senator during the "obstruct whatever Obama does at all cost"
| years, never mind how he tried to appeal to the crazy Tea Party
| fanbase with Palin. I don't entirely dislike the man by the way
| - I'd say his legacy is mixed and complex.
|
| I guess what I'm trying to say is: don't look at it the past
| too rose-coloured. The current mess didn't spontaneously come
| to exist out of nothing. People like Bush and McCain made a pig
| sty of things, and then were surprised pigs turned up to roll
| around in the mess. The old "gradually and then suddenly" quip
| applies not just to bankruptcy.
| cabbaged wrote:
| > I miss the days when the Republican party was led by a
| President like Bush, who told America that Islam is a religion
| of peace.
|
| As an ex-Muslim, I can assure you that Islam is not, by any
| stretch of the imagination, a religion of peace.
|
| And you seem to be forgetting that Bush was a warmongerer who
| killed millions of innocents. I hope you are not endorsing the
| horrors he wrought.
| oezi wrote:
| I don't have exact numbers but my understanding is/was the
| US-led wars into Iraq and Afghanistan didn't cause millions
| of deaths but the insurrections against the governments
| established afterwards did. Iraqis killing other Iraqis,
| Afghans killing other Afghans.
|
| Bush might have been the one who toppled the existing
| equilibrium of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban, but most of
| the suffering was inflicted by the bloody civil wars (often
| fueled by third parties such as Iran).
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| > Islam is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a religion
| of peace.
|
| It is. The word Islam and Salaam are etymologically tied to
| the word "peace".
|
| If your definition of peace is "never wages war", well
| there's no country or political regime in the world like
| that. Even India, which was liberated by the famous
| nonviolent philosopher Gandhi, did not last many years
| without needing to wage war and take territory.
|
| Islam is the only remaining religion with a political element
| and an existing desire for statehood. You could argue for
| Judaism (but some of the Orthodox would disagree) also. Back
| when Christendom had aspirations of statehood, it was also
| not "peaceful" in the way most people imagine. But this isn't
| a feature of the religions. It's a feature of world politics.
| No one can be peaceful and engage meaningfully in world
| politics. Everyone is propped up by some army somewhere.
|
| You can have many arguments against the social regime, views
| on gender, etc. Etc. of Islam, but to say it's not peaceful
| because it is a political entity is just not understanding
| politics or the world, imo
| tome wrote:
| > Islam is the only remaining religion with a political
| element and an existing desire for statehood
|
| What do you mean by this? There are several countries that
| declare themselves to be Islamic.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > I miss the days when the Republican party was led by a
| President like Bush, who told America that Islam is a religion
| of peace.
|
| He said this as he invaded a majority muslim country causing
| the deaths of tens of thousands of muslims. It was perception
| management, not a genuine concern for muslims. Words are not
| more important than actions.
| CivBase wrote:
| Far be it from me to defend GWB, but in fairness he didn't
| invade them _because_ they were muslim. There were many
| (poor) reasons for the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, but their
| primary religion was not among them. If it were, many other
| Middle Eastern countries would have also been invaded.
|
| Words are not more important than actions. But words can
| inform us of the intentions behind the actions - which must
| be considered when casting judgement.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| As POC I feel like equity movements in the US have, by far,
| become majority LGBT+ issues with a minority of racial or
| religious issues. Many POC cohorts in this election shifted
| toward Trump and I suspect it has to do with how much diversity
| initiatives have come to settle around White LGBT+ voices. I
| don't think I've seen the topic of Islam in America covered in
| any MSM article in years unless buried deep into an Opinion
| section.
|
| I like to build bridges between minority groups but the current
| moment is really about mostly White gender minorities in the
| US. This is especially fraught right now because many POC
| communities tend to be more socially conservative than white
| communities, and LGBT+ acceptance is lower in POC communities
| than among the general American public.
|
| That said I am not a fan of Trump and the modern MAGA
| movement's discriminatory politics, lack of respect for rule of
| law, denial of basic climate realities, and many many other
| things that I could list for days.
| hnthrow90348765 wrote:
| This made me unreasonably annoyed, not from the author though.
|
| >The mentors applied a neat and very effective trick: they
| believed in you.
|
| It's crazy to me that the LeetCode interview style is _still_
| such an aberration compared to other jobs that yield potentially
| much more money
|
| Do you want to be a Software Engineer at this company? We don't
| trust you, the previous company could have let you in under the
| radar and you could secretly be a terrible engineer.
|
| Do you want to run a SaaS and make us and yourself a bunch of
| money? Welcome aboard, we trust you completely once you're in.
| Just change your company name to fucking _Oracle_ , ha ha ha.
|
| This industry is such an imbalance of misplaced scrutiny, and
| certainly more so when they get into political stuff like
| wokeness.
|
| If you're pg rich, just shut the fuck up.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Once upon a time, not that long ago, within my lifetime in fact,
| being gay was targeted for public abuse the way that transgender
| people are being targeting now.
|
| That has declined as people came to understand that being gay,
| lesbian, bi is part of how a person is made. Under public
| pressure, a gay person can act straight or at least act not gay.
| But it doesn't change who they are, doesn't help anyone around
| them, and makes them miserable. There is no point to it.
| Thankfully popular opinion and the law have adjusted to that
| reality.
|
| Being transgender is the same way. A transgender person is not
| someone who dresses a certain way, takes hormones, or gets
| surgery. A transgender person is someone who is absolutely
| miserable when they are not permitted to express the gender they
| feel. It is part of who they are deep inside, how they feel every
| day of their life. Like gay people, they can hide it to avoid
| abuse. Like gay people, it's not fair to force them to do so. And
| it doesn't help anyone around them either.
| coderc wrote:
| It seems to me that prigs, as defined in pg's article, are just
| jumping on the transgender issue because it's an easy way for
| them to enforce rules. From my understanding, having read both
| articles, PG might say that the prigs have chosen to ride the
| lgbt movement. The problem is not with the lgbt movement
| itself.
|
| Unfortunately, this gives the movement a bad reputation. Some
| prigs aren't lgbt people at all, but they speak on behalf of
| them, as they also speak on behalf of other groups that they
| aren't a part of. Some prigs might actually be a part of the
| minority they speak for, but I would hazard a guess, based on
| no data, and say that these are the minority of all prigs.
|
| I think PG's problem is with the prigs, not the lgbt movement
| itself. Can these be separated?
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Self-congratulatory, self-righteous prigs are all over the
| place within human society.
|
| When people complain about them, the substantive content of
| their complaint is the context in which they issue it. For
| example pg is complaining about the prigs who nag everyone
| about transgender acceptance, but not the prigs who nag
| everyone to reject and abuse transgender people.
|
| Matters of speech, manners, and decorum are convenient ways
| to launder the advocacy of a certain set of values. All you
| have to do is accuse your enemies of violation when they
| advocate, and stay silent when your allies apply the same
| tactics.
|
| In order to consistently navigate politics, one needs to
| start with one's own values. That's why I posted my comment
| above. The core issue for me is whether transgender people
| can show up in their preferred gender. Not whether other
| people are annoying jerks when they talk about that question.
| There are plenty of annoying jerks on both sides of any value
| question, if one has the open eyes to see them.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| The prigs are doing a motte-and-bailey thing, where if you're
| against them, then they will claim that you're against trans
| people or gays or minorities or whoever.
| nathansherburn wrote:
| I think this is spot on. The confusion for me comes from the
| fact that, as far as I can tell, I've never met a prig in
| real life. And yet they seem to be the biggest political
| issue of our time. Is it because I live in Australia and it's
| more of a US thing? Or is it because I'm not online as much
| maybe? I find it really confusing.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| > But it doesn't change who they are
|
| This is the part that we all don't really actually converse
| about. It's not an easy point to prove (genetically, after
| sequencing the entire human genome, there is not actually any
| proof that gay is something one "is" intrinsically), but it's
| also so personal and getting it wrong has such heavy
| consequences that most avoid the topic.
| lubujackson wrote:
| I'll just say it must suck being precisely in the crosshairs of a
| political proxy battle. The truth is, neither the left nor the
| right really give a shit about transgenders but use them to rile
| up their bases.
|
| First, the brief "woke" movement which was soon taken by the
| right and extrapolated to the extreme. It's the same tactic used
| by the right for any issue - when I was a kid it was "if gays can
| marry, then they will want to marry their pets."
|
| They take whatever social progress has been made and push it
| until the concept annoys >50% of people then say "that's what the
| left wants."
|
| But I can't get behind the left's approach of highlighting and
| siloing every sub-group. It just simplifies division and is
| counter to all the American "melting pot" concepts that actually
| worked over many decades to integrate immigrants and normalize
| differences.
|
| I don't know where all of this leads, but it certainly doesn't
| feel like progress is ever made or even really desired, only a
| cycling of hot button issues to distract everyone.
| Angostura wrote:
| It's not really a left- right issue, as far as I'm concerned.
| It's people with empathy v those without.
| watwut wrote:
| I dont think transgender are in the crosshairs of a political
| proxy battle. The issues is that many people feel disgust and
| hate over the idea of transgender. And whenever they become
| visible, they lash out and react.
| phillmv wrote:
| I was genuinely afraid of this post hitting HN, but thank you for
| the kind words.
| solfox wrote:
| This is a very important conversation to have right now. Thank
| you for your vulnerability in sharing it.
| tmearnest wrote:
| I was terrified to look up through the comments after reading
| the article, but HN truly surprised me today.
| mkaic wrote:
| As someone pondering the exact same sentiment of "I like women
| so much that I kinda want to _be_ one " but who hasn't fully
| committed to it yet, I really appreciated your vulnerability
| and lucid writing. I hope folks are kind here in the comments.
|
| > _It took me a while to remove my facial hair, I still haven't
| trained my voice._
|
| The facial hair removal really does take forever, it's so
| annoying :sob:. And I've found voice training (particularly
| around other people) to be really intimidating. I wish you the
| best of luck if you decide to pursue it!
|
| Take care, OP.
| qarl wrote:
| Your piece is very very well said. Thank you so much for
| putting yourself out there.
| vasilipupkin wrote:
| "why go out of your way to remove them" in principle, it's fine
| to have them. But really, they are just a symbol of the fake
| performative substance free dei culture. A reminder of it.
| Transgender employees should not be discriminated against, should
| have all the protections and respect like any other employees.
| But do we really need tampons in mens' bathrooms, really?
| Angostura wrote:
| If someone was born biological any male and is transitioning
| and still has periods, it seems useful, so why not?
| vasilipupkin wrote:
| how many people like this did meta have who had this issue
| and also had no access to a tampon, so that having it in
| mens' bathroom specifically was really important? what if I
| am a forgetful guy and I have socks with holes in them and I
| forget to buy new socks. Should meta bathrooms stock those
| socks? at some point this just becomes a bit absurd, no?
| timeon wrote:
| Why does it bothers you?
| uwthrowaway wrote:
| It seems similarly performative to remove them, especially in
| the context of the election/Zuckerberg's signalling. Yes,
| adding tampons to men's bathrooms was largely performative and
| less substantial, but the same applies to removing them.
| asabjorn wrote:
| There are two key aspects here: the nature of work and a critique
| of woke narratives, which some argue deny recent developments by
| framing them as a simple desire for acceptance. Specifically,
| transgender individuals are seen as being elevated through
| diversity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, with accusations that
| these efforts sometimes prioritize activism over qualifications
| and invade female only spaces that are there for a reason.
|
| While I understand the personal challenges you're navigating
| regarding identity and humanity, it's important to maintain
| boundaries between personal matters and professional life. In
| Silicon Valley, the focus is on achieving ambitious goals that
| deliver exceptional results, similar to the performance expected
| in professional sports. Success depends on everyone concentrating
| on their work, regardless of personal beliefs or identities.
| Therefore, keeping personal issues like sexuality and the woke
| religion separate from the workplace ensures a productive and
| diverse viewpoint inclusive environment where all qualified
| individuals can contribute effectively and help companies thrive
| against odds.
| James_K wrote:
| It's interesting to see how tech bros are slowly sliding to the
| right. The first thing I ever read from Paul was his thing about
| lisp, and I almost instantly disliked him. There is an intense
| ego that radiates from his ilk. You see a similar thing with some
| small business owners. Owning and running a business gives them a
| feeling of superiority. They feel that they are affluent thanks
| solely to their own efforts (and perhaps some negligible work
| from their employees), and seeing that others are less wealthy
| they conclude themselves to be superior [1]. I think it's an
| inevitable fact of capitalism that the people who rise to the top
| are the ones who are greedy, who confuse profit with virtue. It's
| really no surprise that they are easily influenced by the winds
| of fashion; you don't get rich by taking a stand.
|
| [1] Footnote 12, https://paulgraham.com/superlinear.html#f12n
| spokaneplumb wrote:
| You may enjoy "Dabblers and Blowhards" from IdleWords, if
| you're not already familiar with it.
|
| https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm
|
| Reading that helped me come to terms with how most of the time
| when I read PG essays I was a lot less impressed than everyone
| else seemed to be, and often (any time the topic wasn't
| narrowly tech or maaaybe business) his writing struck me as
| actually bad--not well-reasoned, not convincing, and giving an
| impression of his being poorly-informed.
|
| When I experience an author everyone else is praising that way,
| I wonder if _I'm_ the moron. But, sometimes, maybe I'm not...
| James_K wrote:
| Thanks, a very good read. Made me chuckle a lot. I've always
| found Paul's obsession with being a "hacker" rather annoying.
| benrutter wrote:
| This is a really personal article and I'm really grateful the
| author shared it. I think too often conceptual terms like
| "wokeness" and "identity politics" get thrown around without
| really considering the people underlying those ideas.
|
| It's easy to make snap judgements along the lines of "the world
| is too woke these days", but a lot harder to argue against
| peoples ability to live as they choose with basic dignity.
| ndesaulniers wrote:
| Link to the essay in question: https://paulgraham.com/woke.html
| subarctic wrote:
| I have to say that this is a very well written piece. The story
| in the first half does a good job of showing the author's
| personality and making him seem very relatable, at least if you
| are a typical HN reader. And it's a good story and didn't have me
| thinking "get to the point", especially since the title doesn't
| make you expect anything more than a good story.
|
| Then halfway down, he drops the words "I'm transgender now" and
| you start to realize what he/she is really writing about.
|
| If the article started there it would have lost a lot of people.
| Instead with the first half it gets you invested and you stick
| around to read the rest of it.
|
| PG's essay about wokeness, on the other hand, didn't really
| accomplish this. In fact it kind of did the opposite: came on
| strong and imprecise at the beginning and became more measured
| and precise towards the end. And thus it probably lost a lot of
| readers toward the more "woke" end of the spectrum like this
| author.
| crimsoneer wrote:
| Hard agree, the writing here is exceptional.
| wastle wrote:
| As soon as he said " _It turns out that I like women so much
| I'd like to be one of them_ " I knew that these were the words
| of a misogynist, of a man who sees women as objects rather than
| people.
|
| When I read " _the reason why conservative women are so mad
| about trans women is because they don 't want to share
| washrooms with the sex slave caste_" this confirmed it. At this
| point it was clear that he prioritizes male interests, male
| desires, male entitlement above any sense of humanity for
| women.
|
| His end paragraph, where he acts as if there could any
| realistic prospect of him being " _relegated to the sex slave
| caste_ " disgusted me in his lack of empathy for women - actual
| woman, not men with a woman fantasy - who are subjected to this
| every day.
|
| He's play-acting the suffering of others, stamping his own boot
| on his own face and crying out in faux oppression.
| tmountain wrote:
| Earlier in my (now long) career, tech didn't feel political at
| all (just a bunch of nerds trying to figure shit out). Nowadays,
| it feels really weird to associate things like cryptocurrency
| with "tech bros on the right", etc. It all feels very
| unnecessary, but I suppose humans have a natural tendency to
| divide into camps as a survival characteristic. Whatever the
| case, The United States has certainly at a stage where it feels
| like tolerance for others is at a low point--at least as far as
| my historical memory serves--and the country seems far less
| welcoming than it has in the past to a variety of cohorts which
| will affect the makeup of the work force. The general
| politicization of the tech industry makes me less excited about
| continuing as an engineer, which is sad, because it's always been
| a discipline that I've really loved. It feels like "hate
| politics" are oozing out of everything these days, and I don't
| see how that represents progress of any kind.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| There's just more money in tech than in 2000s, so the most
| interest is mostly coming from financial incentives rather than
| general curiosity. That just puts extreme pressure for it to be
| politicized.
| Nevermark wrote:
| There are a lot of things that bother me these days. But
| particularly some things that are pervasive, unnecessary,
| habitual amplifiers of disagreement.
|
| If someone is going to address extremists on an issue, don't just
| be anti-extremist. What empty courage is that?
|
| Address extremists by pushing the dialog back to the real issue.
| In this case, treating people who have been denigrated for
| centuries better.
|
| Otherwise, ungrounded one-sided criticism of extremists on one
| side of an issue, just gives tacit permission for the extremists
| on the other side. It can even be difficult to tell, whether they
| are not simply mirror extremists themselves. But either way, they
| just amplify the extremist vs. extremist narrative.
|
| And completely distract from the real human level issues that are
| being hijacked.
|
| Don't be anti-bad, while conspicuously avoiding acknowledging
| what would be good. How should we address discrimination against
| trans and other non-binary people? What changes are beneficial?
| What companies have DEI approaches that are good models?
|
| PG, any thoughts?
|
| Please, don't call out "your going too far!" - no matter how
| necessary or accurately - if you don't have the courage, insight,
| or a genuine desire to solve the underlying problem. And express
| "how far" you agree we should go.
|
| Don't just poke a bear. Address the elephant!.
|
| --
|
| One-sided viewpoints just make an easy sport, score trivial (
| _dare I say, also performative?_ ) points, out of something more
| serious.
|
| I.e. don't make strong arguments for or against one side of the
| Israeli-Palestine situation, without acknowledging the strong
| points you do accept as valid from both sides.
|
| I hope I don't offend anyone by suggesting that any
| intellectually honest discussion of divisive views cannot
| possibly boil down to one-sided criticisms of other people's one-
| sided views.
| rexpop wrote:
| You make a good point that no one else had, afaik: PG is
| strawmanning, and not steelmanning his opponents. This is
| craven.
| Nevermark wrote:
| So much said, with such fewer words ... :)
|
| And giving voice to power vs. power, instead of to the less
| powerful. Reduced by both "sides" to pawns, their needs to
| playing cards.
| patresh wrote:
| I agree with your premise that there is often an unproductive
| pendulum-like phenomenon in public debates where
| interpretations swing from one extreme to the other, making
| nuanced discussions difficult.
|
| However I don't believe that PG's article meant to address the
| elephant, but rather was a meta-level thesis on how he sees
| debates being shut down by orthodoxy, and for that he does
| suggest what he thinks would be a possible solution.
|
| Perhaps the thesis could have gained in being more balanced to
| as you say "avoid giving tacit permissions for the extremists
| on the other side"? On the other hand, does one always have to
| shield one's expressions with disclaimers and is one not free
| to share thoughts however raw in order to express, discuss and
| learn, update our beliefs?
|
| There likely is a bigger responsibility when one has a larger
| audience to avoid misinterpretations, but ultimately I believe
| as long as there is a rational and nuanced discussion to take
| the good points and have a productive debate, it should be
| okay.
|
| How can we create incentives to have a more nuanced discussion?
| richrichie wrote:
| Are you the "ordinary people" he was referring to in a recent
| tweet @ Musk?
| 23B1 wrote:
| The essay wasn't a criticism of the changing definitions of
| gender/race/power etc.
|
| The essay was a criticism of the activist tools used by 'woke'.
| The difference between:
|
| "Hi! I am transgender."
|
| and
|
| "You _will_ acknowledge me as transgender. "
| ryanisnan wrote:
| I appreciate this post, and that HN clearly isn't moderating it
| in a way outside of their stated policies.
|
| It is really hard to see the backpedaling of big tech with
| regards to identity politics as something other than virtue
| conformance. The sad and natural question that gets drawn is,
| where does the real virtue start and the performance begin?
| rchaud wrote:
| Having read many of PG's essays from the 2000s and seeing how he
| communicates now, I can only reach one conclusion. Like Musk,
| Zuck and the others who got rich quick decades ago, they are too
| far removed from any kind of "hacker" ethos today, and see
| everything from 30,000 ft, almost literally. What kind of self-
| described hacker spends their days advising incubees on the best
| way to close "high-touch B2B sales"?
|
| They concern themselves with accumulating power first, and
| maintaining their "innovator" image second. Any empathy or
| compassion they may have had for the concerns of ordinary people
| appear to be long gone, except perhaps for their personal friends
| who may be on the receiving end of state-sanctioned bigotry.
| Reagan for example ignored AIDS, seeing it as a "gays and
| minorities" issue, while in private he looked out for the care of
| his AIDS-afflicted gay actor friend Rock Hudson, who passed from
| complications in 1985.
|
| Back to PG, see his essay from some years ago, "How People Get
| Rich Now"[0]. You would think it was ghost-written by an
| investment bank's IPO division. Every single line is another way
| of saying "raise money for speculative bet, then go public",
| ignoring his own decades of experience at YC indicating the
| overwhelming majority cannot achieve this, in the biggest VC
| market in the world. Much of the United States population has
| absolutely no entry point into Sand Hill Road.
|
| A response to that essay from a software engineer provided a
| sobering perspective to counterbalance the winner-take-all world
| PG lives in. [1]
|
| [0] https://paulgraham.com/richnow.html
|
| [1] https://keenen.xyz/just-be-rich/ (HN discussion link:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40962965)
| notahacker wrote:
| tbf, "high touch B2B sales" is very much something a quite
| ordinary hacker doing quite ordinary B2B stuff is likely to
| want to figure out unless they're already quite good at it or
| know someone else that is, and I'm sure some of the suggestions
| are "hacky" in ways with both positive and negative
| connotations.
|
| But yeah, he's always ultimately been an outspoken advocate for
| the most optimistic outcomes Silicon Valley ecosystem, because
| that's where his startup funnel leads. See also his article
| from 2004 in which he suggested that a startup was a way to
| work at a high intensity for four(!) years instead of forty[1].
| Wonder what proportion of YC alumni retired happy after the
| four year work life?
|
| I'm sure if you actually met PG in office hours he'd be
| realistic enough that your most realistic exit strategy almost
| certainly involved a lot more than four years of hard work and
| that yeah, your chances of success probably aren't high enough
| to impact the Gini coefficient, and I'm sure if you were trans
| he wouldn't take the side of people that send death threats to
| Budweiser for featuring people like you. But most of the essays
| are about positioning Silicon Valley. In a sense, he's a low
| touch, very high stakes B2B salesperson
|
| [1]https://paulgraham.com/wealth.html
| rexpop wrote:
| > the reason why conservative women are so mad about trans women
| is because they don't want to share washrooms with the sex slave
| caste.
|
| I would like to see more of the HN caste engage with the very
| notion of a caste system, but I can't immediately think of a way
| to do it that also accommodates the spirit of HN--which I value--
| that dictates we focus on technical subjects. Perhaps the techie
| workforce angle is the only good faith approach.
| patresh wrote:
| Some of the disagreement or confusion seems to stem from the
| definition of the word "woke" which means different things to
| different people?
|
| Having read both essays I don't see them necessarily in
| disagreement. pg criticizes the performative and orthodox nature
| of some social justice activists' behavior, however it doesn't
| seem that the author's behavior here is performative at all.
|
| Perhaps we should just avoid these terms like "woke" and just say
| what we mean to avoid this societal dissonance? I feel like
| decent rational people can talk past each other depending on how
| they have been exposed to the term.
| bun_terminator wrote:
| > But for so long, people like me were strongly discriminated
| against
|
| bro, you own the world. People get sentenced to jail for saying
| the truth about people like you. You get showered with money,
| jobs and free points HN for saying a few magic words. It's the
| most disgusting guilt trip in the history of mankind
| cdelsolar wrote:
| I met PG once when we went to visit him for some office hours for
| my YC startup. I was a late cofounder so I hadn't been part of
| the program. During the conversation I said something, he looked
| and me and said "I have no idea what you just said", then turned
| back to my cofounder and kept chatting. o_O
| jhp123 wrote:
| I'm not a target of tech's fascist turn, but my head is still
| spinning from the change of direction. When I entered this
| industry it was for hackers, nonconformists, weirdos, nerds,
| people who don't care about titles or clothes or what your
| genitals are.
|
| What particularly stings is that the vipers at the top tricked
| people into giving away an enormous amount of intellectual
| property. Zuck is removing tampons from the men's room--will he
| also remove open source code written by queer people from his
| company? Of course not.
| cmos wrote:
| It's time for tech to go back to its roots and starve the kings
| and 'noblemen' of our talent.
|
| Stop working for billionaires.
| neom wrote:
| Remains to be seen, but attention_is_all_you_need.pdf might
| put a kink in your plan.
| spinach wrote:
| The backlash against the trans movement has little to do with
| trans people, and more to do with the ideology and coercion.
| Being forced to comply and lie about the nature of human's being
| only male and female, that humans can't change sex and women's
| single sex spaces (bathrooms, rape shelters, changing rooms)
| being dismantled. Most of the men who identify as woman still are
| intact. Do parents want their daughters to change with men with
| erections at the local pool? Because that is already happening.
|
| There is also the problem of very young people taking hormones
| and young girls cutting of their breasts (see their stories at
| r/detrans). Most people have no problem with trans people. It's
| the ideology. Even transsexuals from back in the day do not like
| what is currently happening.
| bsetlow wrote:
| I'm also a transgender woman and while I agree with the author on
| many points (like sharing washrooms with the sex slave caste) I
| think we can rely on YC to find talent and support it regardless
| of what race or gender it's associated with and in defiance of
| possibly sexist or racist VCs.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| _The irony is I too dislike nagging, hollow, corporate DEI
| exercises. In the abstract I was glad they existed[3] but the
| insincerity was palpable_
|
| Footnote [3] is: _A small minority of people really do need to be
| taught how to be kind._
|
| The author thinks probably thinks that fairly obvious fact is
| some harmless premise, but I suspect he knows well enough having
| been through YC and in the community of American business that
| this is not an accurate description of how DEI was implemented in
| parts of corporate America and beyond. In many companies,
| colleges, and government agencies, DEI initiatives were
| implemented in a way that assumed _everyone_ had to be taught how
| to be kind, were differentially guilty or prone to be guilty by
| (sometimes externally assumed) group association of their birth
| or early childhood of certain offenses, and were preferentially
| treated to work placements, promotions, etc.
|
| It was more than just "hollow" in many instances. It was blatant
| witch hunting that ruined careers and personal lives via internet
| virality. If PG's greatest offense in fighting back against this
| was an obtusely chosen word like "woke", that's pretty minor.
| croisillon wrote:
| But the Appcanary was not a bad idea, isn't website monitoring a
| lucrative market (see New Relic)? Too crowded?
| mellosouls wrote:
| If the OP struggles to reconcile their perception of PG before
| and after discovering his differing beliefs, that's neither PG's
| fault nor anyone else's.
|
| This reaction reflects a broader cultural issue that PG himself
| occasionally comments on. It's an unfortunate symptom of our
| times to misattribute personal frustrations and resentments--born
| of an often unfriendly and unfair world--to solely _external_
| causes like a conspiracy of bigotry and malevolence.
|
| In reality, such feelings often stem from an unrealistic
| _internal_ denial of the natural (painful) "othering" of outlier
| behaviour or identity, something that can only be mitigated
| through education and maturity, and pragmatic reasonableness on
| both sides.
|
| It cannot be solved by the hectoring, bullying, self-pitying, or
| other toxic behaviours rightly associated with the declining
| "woke" movement, which the OP seems to criticise PG for opposing.
| countarthur wrote:
| I suspect the author should be worrying more about what his wife
| really thinks than what Paul Graham thinks.
|
| This isn't meant to be a snarky attack or insult - his
| relationship with his family and loved ones matters a lot more
| than an investor he once met and has nothing to do with anymore.
| Quasidomo wrote:
| "A small minority of people really do need to be taught how to be
| kind."
|
| Yes, such as the men who desire to be women and, on the basis of
| that, insist on trespassing into women's and girls' spaces.
|
| How about you men "be kind" to women and girls by respecting
| their boundaries?
|
| Or does the author mean "be kind" as it is often targeted at
| women and girls, as in to obediently acquiesce to male demands
| and desires?
|
| Given the context of the article, I expect that's exactly what he
| means.
| jedberg wrote:
| > He thought it was a decent enough idea, but the name,
| Appcanary, he wasn't crazy about the name. He was very good at
| naming companies.
|
| FWIW, he hated the name Reddit, and the mascot even more. He said
| if they have to keep the mascot, it should be on the bottom right
| where no one can see it.
|
| PG is a smart guy, but you gotta trust your gut sometimes even
| when taking to experts.
| financypants wrote:
| I like the shape of your prose!
| spacecadet wrote:
| The industry has become very unsettling, mean, and malicious. For
| 20 years I have warned people about the old "we are changing the
| world" mantra and that the people leading that chant were "evil",
| and therefore "change" would not be aligned with good... and here
| we are. Remember kids. Change and progress are extremely
| subjective.
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