4 ms·

none of those opinions would be labelled "politically correct"; the term is a dog-whistle for people who want to express opinions like "what if women are simply

by zem 11y ago

none of those opinions would be labelled "politically correct"; the term is a dog-whistle for people who want to express opinions like "what if women are simply less capable than men?" or "black people would get a lot further if they'd just clean up their act and behave like civilised folk". google for "politically incorrect but" if you are disinclined to take my word for it.

philwelch 11y ago
Yeah, those are examples of opinions that are politically incorrect today, but so are more sophisticated and plausible opinions, like "genetics may be expressed in behavioral ways that predict criminality", "the distribution of cognitive and personality traits differs between sexes and races", "Islamic immigrants to Europe are disproportionately responsible for cases of sexual assault", "some women falsely accuse men of rape", or even "it's not realistic to expect people to coexist in society together when they hold entirely different social mores and norms". You may agree or disagree with any of these statements, but the notion of political correctness is that we are not even allowed to discuss whether or not these propositions are factually correct, because they are already politically incorrect. But the real risk of political correctness isn't just the possibility that some politically incorrect proposition turns out to be true. It's that reality is always more complicated than we think it is. Two opposing propositions might be true in different contexts. For instance, the NBA slam dunk competition was this weekend; I don't think it's a stretch to say that in that particular context, women are, in fact, less capable than men. What if that's true about things other than dunking basketballs? We're not even comfortable contemplating that notion. That discomfort is a bias on our picture of the world.

4 ms·

none of those opinions would be labelled "politically correct"; the term is a dog-whistle for people who want to express opinions like "what if women are simply

by zem 11y ago

philwelch 11y ago
Yeah, those are examples of opinions that are politically incorrect today, but so are more sophisticated and plausible opinions, like "genetics may be expressed in behavioral ways that predict criminality", "the distribution of cognitive and personality traits differs between sexes and races", "Islamic immigrants to Europe are disproportionately responsible for cases of sexual assault", "some women falsely accuse men of rape", or even "it's not realistic to expect people to coexist in society together when they hold entirely different social mores and norms". You may agree or disagree with any of these statements, but the notion of political correctness is that we are not even allowed to discuss whether or not these propositions are factually correct, because they are already politically incorrect. But the real risk of political correctness isn't just the possibility that some politically incorrect proposition turns out to be true. It's that reality is always more complicated than we think it is. Two opposing propositions might be true in different contexts. For instance, the NBA slam dunk competition was this weekend; I don't think it's a stretch to say that in that particular context, women are, in fact, less capable than men. What if that's true about things other than dunking basketballs? We're not even comfortable contemplating that notion. That discomfort is a bias on our picture of the world.