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I think the reason why people have a hard time understanding what you're saying is because unless you've experienced _systemic_ difficulty in your life it's ver

by ixtli 10y ago

I think the reason why people have a hard time understanding what you're saying is because unless you've experienced _systemic_ difficulty in your life it's very hard to differentiate it from _personal_ difficulty. Put in a less rigorous way, if you've never truly had to fight against a system that seems constructed to see you fail it would be hard to understand how this is different from, and much worse than, difficulty that stems from smaller, instantaneous issues that present roadblocks or troubles in your life.

eropple 10y ago
I would agree with this--it's interesting to me that a culture that generally views itself as rational has such blind spots when it comes to systemic failures. I would expect that working with systems full of unintended behaviors, non-continuous outputs that can result in sudden failures, etc. should make that obvious, but apparently it doesn't. (Personally, I have never experienced systemic difficulty in my life--but it's plainly obvious that it exists.) For the sake of my blood pressure I won't go into the similarly strange attempts to solve what systemic failures (almost always the ones that minorly inconvenience the privileged, isn't that strange?) folks of this mindset do deign to recognize, but...yeah.
- ixtli 10y ago
  I appreciate your desire to assume stupidity before malice but I've come to see the continuation of oppressive systems as intentional :( People profit off of them and so I'm forced to conclude that they're purpetrated intentionally. I'm not trying to say that there's some movie-like evil villain out there cackling to himself but rather that there are many people making money as a direct or related result of the systemic suffering of others and that they turn a blind eye to the sometimes painfully obvious effects of their actions.
  - eropple 10y ago
    Sure, but those aren't the people who are caping up for them on Hacker News. (I mean, some may be, but in general I'm skeptical.)

by ixtli 10y ago

eropple 10y ago

I would agree with this--it's interesting to me that a culture that generally views itself as rational has such blind spots when it comes to systemic failures. I would expect that working with systems full of unintended behaviors, non-continuous outputs that can result in sudden failures, etc. should make that obvious, but apparently it doesn't. (Personally, I have never experienced systemic difficulty in my life--but it's plainly obvious that it exists.) For the sake of my blood pressure I won't go into the similarly strange attempts to solve what systemic failures (almost always the ones that minorly inconvenience the privileged, isn't that strange?) folks of this mindset do deign to recognize, but...yeah.

ixtli 10y ago
I appreciate your desire to assume stupidity before malice but I've come to see the continuation of oppressive systems as intentional :( People profit off of them and so I'm forced to conclude that they're purpetrated intentionally. I'm not trying to say that there's some movie-like evil villain out there cackling to himself but rather that there are many people making money as a direct or related result of the systemic suffering of others and that they turn a blind eye to the sometimes painfully obvious effects of their actions.
- eropple 10y ago
  Sure, but those aren't the people who are caping up for them on Hacker News. (I mean, some may be, but in general I'm skeptical.)