fad-interpretations of what is taboo and scandalous
I hope there isn't a time in the future when people see the current wave of anti-racism, anti-slavery, and anti-misogyny as just a silly fad we had in the early 21st century. Although, I guess the people would have said the same about nudity in the mid-1800s...
You will not get an interesting conversation on these topics on an American discussion board. These topics are a minefield.
Plenty of the things which are pushed unconditionally in the US right now should be debatable and debated. Some concepts like cultural appropriation look clearly dubious to my French self. The issue is that having a debate has become impossible. In some circles, you will be quartered for daring to express that there exists differences between men and women which might not be socially constructed.
> Why have people become so afraid to speak their minds?
A sufficiently large group of people have realized that they can function legally as a social lynch mob.
A person can stand by their ideals all they want, but if their livelihood and/or social standing have been taken from them, then expressing those ideals doesn’t serve them very well.
Many people just find it easier not to engage.
History will not reflect kindly on these groups — they will be mocked (“crazy things people actually believed in the 2020s!”).
> We live in a democracy or not?
Regarding democracy, the most vocal zealots on both extremes of the political spectrum support decidedly undemocratic positions.
> So people like to speak about freedom but are afraid of actually living in freedom?
Many/most of the folks I know who speak out loudest about “freedom” are also the most willing to restrict it… for others.
What’s the saying… freedom for me but not for thee?
Before I come across as overly cynical, let me just add that most Americans I’m around have a very laissez faire attitude about most things. They are just very quiet about it, living their lives peacefully.
I’m a believer in the very moderate silent majority in the US. It’s just hard to notice that it exists when pretty much all mainstream media and social media are designed to favor the promotion of extremist stances.
In my opinion many want democracy but few only exercise their democratic duty (vote) and fewer are active beyond that.
Couch potatoes and complacent consumers will get ruled by dictators in the long run.
I don't see any contradiction between wanting to live in a democracy and taking an active part in it. In fact, quite the opposite — I think there's something truly anti-democratic about places like Australia where voting is compulsory. In my ideal world, fewer people would vote — everyone would still, of course, have the right to, just fewer would choose to.
> the most vocal zealots on both extremes of the political spectrum support decidedly undemocratic positions
My experience in the US is the opposite. It's only at the extremes that you'll find people concerned about our civil liberties slipping away, wanting to give everyone a voice, and accepting that there are opinions unlike their own and that's ok.
Probably because people on both ends are threatened by the middle party duopoly. The middle only allows conversation about wedge issues and nothing different or more substantive. The middle both decide for whom we can vote because they're corporations, not democratic entities. They collaborate only to make sure viable 3rd parties cannot exist and to ensure their donors' demands are met. Otherwise, they return to squabbling over wedge issues that neither party actually ever solves because the wedges are too useful to be solved. Our two middle parties are fundamentally anti-democratic - maybe that's why most Americans are independent.
Do you consider AOC extreme? Or do you support her positive attitude towards cancel culture? The consequence of having an even moderately contrarian opinion these days is getting fired from your job, not to meantion mob violence and threats.
All top-tier US politicians are extreme in one way or another. Moderation and nuance have no place in the US' bipolar system, so the only way to be noticed and reach the top is to become an extreme caricature of whatever topic is most dear to your voters' (or donors') hearts.
> That's a problem. Why have people become so afraid to speak their minds? We live in a democracy or not?
Always was, IMO what you're experiencing with this is just the Overton window shifting around you.
Goes both ways: People hardly ever discussed trans topics when I was a teenager and I don't know if that was a taboo or merely lack of awareness, but I do know that lesbian gay and bisexual topics were tabooed.
> Why have people become so afraid to speak their minds?
Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I put the blame on those afraid to speak their minds.
I try always to speak my mind — whether it flies in the face of popular opinion or no. I take the downvotes — I sort of like that they have me pause and reconsider my opinion. But if in the end I feel I am still justified the downvotes just become a kind of war-wound or something that I take some small amount of pride in.
Downwoting me on HN or any online forum, doesn't affect me a bit. I can stand the enemies even if they outnumber me by 100x. Occasionally I can outsmart them, so I can take a point.
But denying me the possibility to provide food for my two kids, my wife and me, is another thing. And there are just two possible responses: either I won't talk anything meaningful to strangers, or, having calculated my chances, I would aggressively defend my right and my children's rights to speak our minds. And by aggressively I mean very, as in revolutionary very. You threaten my very existence, and then all bets are loose and anything that will let me and my people win over you is permitted.
Because for vast swaths of the population, even the tiniest risk that they could lose their job/livelyhood isn't worth it, and especially not worth it online.
Do _you_ want to be on the side that argues that our modern interpretations of age of consent may be a fad? Or that one day science may provide incontrovertible evidence that racism is entirely rational and appropriate?
Arguing these is pointless, because they are violate dogmas that underpin our modern ideology. They are not up for argument. If another ideology suggests that racism is actually a-ok, then we consider it clearly flawed, because dogmatically, ideologies that come to that conclusion must be flawed. And not just flawed, because these fundamental dogmas are what shapes our notions of "good" and "evil". Not adhering to these dogmas makes you evil.
I must add, this is not a fallacy of some sort. If I were thrown into another society where everyone approves of racism, I am still attached to my personal dogmas. I would consider such a society unjust and warped. As a matter of fact, there's plenty of personal dogmas our current society violates, and I consider our current society and its ideology unjust and flawed.
Which raises another point, which is that our society does not have a monolithical ideology. It has an emergent ideology that arises from common agreement, but there's plenty of people in our society these days who disagree with several of the dogmas. And that's what makes them "bad" or "evil".
The only way to argue someone out of a personal dogma is to convince them that whatever your dogmas are is reflective of absolute good, evil, and/or truth. This is the subject of what is likely one of the oldest philosophical debates and has spawned several religions.
> Do _you_ want to be on the side that argues that
This is not a two sided discussion where each camps agree in block with a set list of propositions. It's also not manichean with things being either completely true or false, right or wrong or, good or evil. You are not either for or against. If you believe that, you are the problem.
We should be able to explore these subjects in their full complexity with the disagreement that entails. It's not even possible anymore in academia.
> Do _you_ want to be on the side that argues that our modern interpretations of age of consent may be a fad
I mean it is a fad just a centuries old one.
My opinion is that morality is essentially a tips and trick of how to survive passed in a game of generational telephone.
E.g. ancient Greek hated cannibalism but practiced pederasty. Cannibalism can lead to catching prions and going crazy. For them it was god's punishment. Pederasty probably didn't have as many negative side effects at that time.
Proclaiming superiority over our predecessors is short lived. Imagine if there were two races of butterflies, one gray one white. The white blend better on trees and thus survive more, so white butterflies start arguing they are morally superior (favorite of God, etc.) to the gray ones, but that quickly changes once pollution grays the trees making now white butterflies the more visible prey.
Immanuel Kant had the idea of a supreme morality test. All things done by an individual which extended to all individuals would mean human kind extinction are imoral. All the rest are not imoral.
So killing, cannibalism and pederasty are obviously imoral.
> So killing, cannibalism and pederasty are obviously imomral.
Actually cannibalism is just eating of people, there is no requirement that said people get butchered for it. Someone might ritualistically eat an elder in their community to gain part of their wisdom for example, but there is not a requirement that they slay that elder first - they may just wait for them to die
Setting aside pedantry about the US being a republic and not a pure democracy, the fact is that wealthy elites decide election outcomes now. You ended up with Trump because elites in Russia wanted him elected more than elites in the US wanted Clinton. You got rid of him because elites in the US had woken up to the fact that they weren't the only player in that game anymore.
Culture wars are a proxy battlefield in much the same way that Ukraine is.
The Russians have an advanced, complex, and deep system of influence and espionage, but they're not the only players in this game. China, Israel, the Saudis, even allies like France, all push on US politics.
Some of them, like Israel and China, push pretty hard, albeit with different goals.
Also worth noting that in many cases they're just co-opting the system set up by US powerbrokers, e.g. Tucker Carlson of Fox News talking about how great Putin is.
I should really have said "elites, including those in antagonistic countries like Russia". My main point was more about the elites than where they are from.
No, they nailed it pretty unambiguously. It was a testament to weaponizing social media. In retrospect, an amazing time in history, glad we survived it (mostly because Trump isn't really very good at anything, including treachery).
Do you believe the appeal of Trump to disaffected Americans would be enough to win him the election, if big business (Koch et al) turned against the Republican party? Genuine question, because I feel like that is where the lever really is.
Moissanite is correct. It's rarely as simple as the sound bite would have it. It's a very interesting subject, honestly, especially in the era of AI popularization. Back in the day they did that work with humans, but the ways of tracking the results would be pretty much the same either way.
I'm the OP - and it's more complicated than that. Foreign powers fermented the discord in American society (which was already there for sure, but could have been much less toxic without external influence), hence describing it as a proxy war and not a foreign-backed coup.
The presidential campaigns had a billion dollars apiece, plus more from SuperPACs. Blaming the Russians for the outcome is just evading responsibility.
Blaming foreigners for anything that is wrong in your country. I thought, you guys, considered that a conservative feat. Are you copying the conservatives you blame, are you on a morally high ground and feel you have the right to affirm anything that helps your cause, whatever it might be?
Blaming foreign influence is not the same as blaming foreigners. Foreign influence is more about pushing the most convenient angle (to them) by means of propaganda, astroturfing or information laundering.
On a similar note, you can absolutely point to America for using the international monetary system in its favor, and that wouldn't be the same a blaming regular americans.
Any effect that Russia could have possibly had has been massively and wildly exaggerated. If anything, that election showed that elites don't decide the outcomes. Clinton did appeal to a lot of 'elites' but not to many rank and file Democrat voters, large numbers of whom didn't turn up and vote. Trump, on the other hand, didn't appeal to most 'elites', but did appeal to a lot of rank and file Republican voters, who did turn up and vote. That more than explains Trump's win without having to resort to foreign boogeymen (for which the majority of the evidence never solidified beyond being just hearsay) to explain the loss of an uninspiring candidate.
> Setting aside pedantry about the US being a republic and not a pure democracy,
Actually political scientists routinely refer to the US as a democracy. You're splitting a hair that experts do not. The word "democracy" does not only mean direct democracy. Mentioning this non-issue at all is a signal, but maybe not the one you hoped for.
I actually thought of this because of a line in The West Wing where the President is making a point about representation, then went off on a googling exploration to understand a bit whether it is a meaningful distinction - most of what I read seemed to reinforce the notion that the difference is important.
In day-to-day life it certainly doesn't matter - but when you are attempting to discuss the nature of that political system itself, I don't think it is at all unreasonable to call out the distinction and decide whether to discuss it further. No need for snide jabs.
> You will not get an interesting conversation on these topics on an American discussion board. These topics are a minefield.
I hope you're wrong, but...
It would be lovely to see some actual historical perspective on America's periodic obsessions. Post-9/11 anti-terrorism and airport security theater are still here. The Vietnam-era obsession of the left with being anti-war (while the right was still pro-war and anti-communist) has almost reversed. We had McCarthyism in the 1950's. Etc.
> You will not get an interesting conversation on these topics on an American discussion board. These topics are a minefield.
That's the point. Create a chilling effect to stifle discussion. Make it easy to draw sides and rally a demographic. Force opposition to take increasingly wild, extreme positions, then use those as a way to force your side to get even more extreme. Now you have 20-305 of the population who are rabid about issue X, and any real discussion about it is dead.
Makes it real easy to sidestep other discussions, like how broken housing or minimum wages are.
Nor is this a new thing, by a long shot; was an explicit tactic of the Soviet Union, and has been adopted by plenty of others, notably the US Right-wing.
> In some circles, you will be quartered for daring to express [view]
where [view] exists at any point on the political spectrum.
> that there exists differences between men and women which might not be socially constructed
It depends on the context for me. If you're stating that point to make an interesting and insightful comment, all well and good. If you're just using it to bash trans people, it's less valuable IMO.
I have no opinion whatsoever regarding transpeople outside of everyone should be able to do whatever they want with themselves but I'm amused that you could basically rephrase your sentence like that:
> If you're stating that point to [say something I agree with], all well and good. If you're just using it to [say something I disagree with], it's less valuable IMO
I think it's totally reasonable to argue that there's more value in interesting and informed debate than there is in attacking trans people (I accept that's not what you were doing in this case, of course).
I'd like to think society will be less racist, misogynist and such in the future. But there will be scrutiny of the specific actions taken, because frankly, a lot of "anti-racist" behavior has been upper-middle class white people doing easy, performative things to make themselves feel good and to promote themselves as an ally.
It hasn't even been 5 years, and already the 2020 "fight racism by renaming your master branch to main" movement feels like a tone-deaf embarrassment.
Whitelist/Blacklist. I find the word erasure issue very obnoxious.
One day we will realize all over again that hyper-focus on race only produces more division and more racism. But I'm lost as to whether or not those on the left doing it care. Maybe they want division and feel that minorities will come out on top and all white men will get their chance to "suffer". Not sure. I have been told as much in person by some who hold this philosophy.
Yep, I agree. In some cases (especially whitelist/blacklist), the newspeak names are actually better/more descriptive, and shorter (which I view as a win). Regardless of how you feel about the motivations behind it, I would hope that highly technical people can appreciate better clarity and brevity.
Did anyone ever make a claim that master —> main was going to have a significant, direct impact on the fight against racism? Obviously, it's a step, but it seemed like an entirely positive thing to me (shorter, more semantic) with essentially zero downside.
> Did anyone ever make a claim that master —> main was going to have a significant, direct impact on the fight against racism? Obviously, it's a step,
It's not obvious at all. The music industry has been using the term "master" for ages: master bus, master copy, mastering engineer. (It's worth noting this is the exact etymology of the git term, too, as opposed to master in the context of master and slave.) The Black community has overall had zero problem with this, and it hasn't stopped many Black musicians and artists from being successful. The music industry also had none of the "we have to rename the master bus" nonsense that came from the tech industry, despite, or more likely because, a significantly larger proportion of BIPOC and LGBT minorities being involved in music.
I don't care about the master vs main name in the abstract. Either branch name is a fine choice. It just completely doesn't matter and pretending that it has any positive impact or meaningful change on the racism and discrimination faced by Black people in America is insulting. It's purely driven by self-indulgent white people who don't want to make material changes to their own extremely comfortable lives while pretending they're fighting the good fight.
> Either branch name is a fine choice. It just completely doesn't matter and pretending that it has any positive impact or meaningful change on the racism and discrimination faced by Black people in America is insulting. It's purely driven by self-indulgent white people who don't want to make material changes to their own extremely comfortable lives while pretending they're fighting the good fight.
Exactly, and I agree with this completely as a Slavic person (from which the word slave is derived). I frankly consider this insulting as well as having a great grandparent used for forced labour in the Ukrainian Canadian interment camps during WWI, and a grandparent in the German forced labour camps during WWII.
If only there was no downside, but you can't change 15+ years of convention and not break something in the process. For example, I've had Homebrew upgrade fail because someone thought the "master" branch must not only be renamed but also permanently eradicated from a cask repo, Yocto had the same issue [1], etc.
> The nodeSelector and peerSelector for the route reflectors target the label `node-role.kubernetes.io/master`. In the 1.20 series, Kubernetes changed its terminology from “master” to “control-plane.” And in 1.24, they removed references to “master,” even from running clusters. This is the cause of our outage. Kubernetes node labels.
Yep, this has been a constant pain point for me nearly every day. Having dozens of repos I work in across multiple organizations, where half follow the old convention (master) and the other half follow new (main), when I want to switch branches I usually have to do it twice. First `git co main` and if that doesn't work, `git co master`. Vice versa doesn't work because older repos that have been converted have a master branch! It's usually way behind. There are also tons of scripts and CI/CD yaml everywhere that has to be modified for main vs. master.
Main is a better name IMHO (increased clarity and brevity) but it is far from "zero downside."
> I hope there isn't a time in the future when people see the current wave of anti-racism, anti-slavery, and anti-misogyny as just a silly fad we had in the early 21st century.
Maybe not, but there'll definitely be a time in the future when the current puritanical wave will be seen as a fad, an embarrassment in human history.
"You mean people actually self-censored in case they were punished for thoughtcrime?"
The problem is that nowadays very often the people pushing the "we just want to reduce obvious bad thing X" narrative are using it as a Trojan horse to smuggle in a plethora of other terrible ideas. We don't need to rewrite history or vandalize prior art to create a better future.
I think this is a bit too much of a strawman for an argument that's in line with what's actually discussed in the linked article. Especially when talking about a guy who directed Schindler's List.
> Spielberg was also asked about the controversial re-editing of Roald Dahl’s work which has included changing words like “fat” to “enormous” and “ugly and beastly” to just “beastly”.
> Initially he joked that “Nobody should ever attempt to take the chocolate out of Willy Wonka! Ever!” before adding “For me, it is sacrosanct. It’s our history, it’s our cultural heritage. I do not believe in censorship in that way.”
Roald Rahdl books were a big part of what I remember reading as a child. The words "fat" and "ugly" are absolutely grotesque, but also part of the palette he used to draw his worlds as he wanted people to see them. I think parents have the responsibility to have a proper conversation about the questions their children might have about the some of stuff those books bring up, or make the decision to not read them until the child is of a certain age. At least from my point of view, the central question would be that what is the proper age that a child is old enough to know about the existence of the words "fat" and "ugly".
'Fat' and 'ugly' are not grotesque words, they are unkind. If you want grotesque, look up 'hassan's rumpus room' from Naked Lunch. Should be around page 60 or so.
Euphemism treadmill is driven by people who believe in a fairly strong version of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, that the thoughts we have are bounded by the words we have. They think that the negative connotations of fatness are at least in part derived from the word "fat" itself and could therefore be at least partially erased by getting rid of that word and replacing it with another.
But even if we erased every single word for fatness from the minds of everybody in existence all in an instant, new words for fatness would be invented the very next instant when people around the world see fatness, can't find a word for it, and invent a new one. Words are tools for conveying understanding. Humans are tool-creating apes; when we need a tool, we make a tool. Remove a slur from people's vocabulary and people will invent a new one.
When I was young, my school had a program for retarded kids, the kids with profound mental disabilities. We also called each other retarded as a mild insult to impugn our friends' intelligence. The teachers and parents hated this, they banned the word retarded and renamed the class for the retarded kids to "Special Education". Anybody caught saying "retarded" would be scolded very severely and denied recess/etc. So what did we do? We started using "special", "special education" and "sped" as insults equivalent to retarded. You can't erase concepts by erasing words, least of all concepts that are so readily observable and self-evidently negative as the state of being mentally retarded or fat. Need a tool, make a tool.
Probably does. Although the words are definitely not equivalent. I'm not advocating any sort of age limit on Roald Dahl books, pretty much the opposite.
I also think the Dahl books shouldn't have been altered, but everything I've read about that suggests it was the publisher's decision, not government-mandated censorship. The issue here is more about authors' right and IP ownership.
Who said anything about the government? In the article, Spielberg laments his own decision to censor the guns in ET. It was his decision to alter his own movie, not government-imposed. The article isn't about government-imposed censorship specifically, it's Spielberg lamenting censorship generally.
inb4 "it's not real censorship unless the government does it"
I think the word censorship really has to relate to government action - if it's extended to an author reworking their own output, it really loses all sense of meaning.
Anyway, you're wrong and I think you know it because you said "government-mandated censorship." The first two words clarify the third. This wouldn't be necessary if the third truly implied the first two.
Have you ever heard of the Hays Code? It's quite infamous, you probably have; it was a system of self-imposed censorship from Hollywood to ban scandalous content from movies, such as people kissing or husbands and wives only having a single bed in their bedroom (oh the implications!) But the point is this censorship was self-imposed, there was no act of congress requiring it. The claim that true censorship must come from the government is simply wrong.
> if it's extended to an author reworking their own output, it really loses all sense of meaning.
It doesn't lose all meaning. It loses only the very narrow meaning you wish to impose (probably because it's an ugly word and you don't want to think yourself capable of censoring.)
The Hays Code and the Comic Code were both arguably an industry self-censoring "somewhat" (for whatever value of that you want) so as to side-step government legislation.
"I hope there isn't a time in the future when people see the current wave of anti-alcoholism as just a silly fad we had in the early 20th century." - someone in 1930
"I hope there isn't a time in the future when people see the current wave of anti-nude displays as just a silly fad we had in the early 17th century"
Proceeds to destroy hundreds of paintings by adding poorly drawn fig leaves and to censor masterpieces over tiny penises.
It is a fad; people will come to their senses and recognise the value of the original work; while accepting the fact that they were produced in a time where these behaviours were considered as acceptable but it's no longer the case.
I wonder if the enlightened future-people will consider the institutional exclusion of asian people from higher education on the basis that there are too many others of the same race in colleges, to be pro-racism or anti-racism.
White men applying for software and management jobs could make the same point. Positive discrimination almost always results in someone else facing negative discrimination because of the same attribute.
It can also lead to further problems. Is it still racist to point out the [race/gender/religion/etc.] [students/employees/etc.] on average aren't as good now they actually aren't due to [employment/selection] bias?
It’s not that those feelings are wrong, it’s when you decide to alter artistic work based on the current vogue. It’s when you cross the line into censorship.
Good half of people who complain about modern sensitivity are in it for inequality and for revenge.
You see that in a way they are perfectly fine with old sensitivity. As long as censorship and exclusion are done the way they have been done in past, they support it.
> see the current wave of anti-racism, anti-slavery, and anti-misogyny as just a silly fad
So... I certainly hope that being genuinely anti those things doesn't turn out to be a fad, those things are all bad things and should be opposed. Having said that I do hope that some of the ways people are choosing to be "anti" these things goes the way of the dodo because I believe they are ineffective and dumb.
As an example trying to get rid of the word "master" in tech... it's use in tech is in no way an endorsement of slavery. The suggestion it is racist to use this term is especially silly to me, because slavery has been practiced by all sorts of cultures for human history and because slavery is still a thing that is going on in the world (just look at that new stadium in the UAE).
Being anti slavery is fantastic. We can do that by boycotting companies that turn a blind eye to forced labour and by pressuring our governments to sanction countries that ignore it within their borders.
The same applies to being anti-racist or anti-misogynist or whatever. There are concrete actions that can be taken that will make a difference, but going back through old art and censoring certain words for fear that they get uttered as if this were Harry Potter and these words were Voldemort is just fucking silly.
I think the risk is more that the people will read Dahl or watch Spielberg and think that the cultural sensitivities from the 1960s-1980s we're exactly like those during the 2020s.
Like when all the books say we raised the chocolate ration..
“It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grams a week. And only yesterday […] it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grams a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours?"
If there's anything to be sure of, it's that this is bound to happen. The core ideas will always have staying power, but the current implementations are already seen as a silly by large swaths of us who don't disagree with the core ideas. I suspect the future will judge social mores from this time period much more harshly than a silly fad though.
I hope there isn't a time in the future when people see the current wave of anti-racism, anti-slavery, and anti-misogyny as just a silly fad we had in the early 21st century. Although, I guess the people would have said the same about nudity in the mid-1800s...