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Omfg give it a rest already. Yes, some people are more privileged than others. But if you're going to hang out on an internet forum full of professional progra

by gxs 10y ago

Omfg give it a rest already. Yes, some people are more privileged than others. But if you're going to hang out on an internet forum full of professional programmers only to lament how privileged everyone is youre going to have a bad time. In the context of this forum and this discussion, nothing about what the parent said screams privilege. Living with your parents after college is privilege now? Where the hell does this circus end? If you look down the chain far enough, we are all privileged and none of us should be allowed a modicum of joy or happiness because we should all be steeped in guilt.

corecoder 10y ago
Yes, living with your parents is (somewhat) privilege. Yes, most of us reading HN are privileged, often in more than one way. No, the alternatives are not forgetting our privilege or giving up joy and happiness, the alternatives are being self absorbed and unaware or trying not to.
thesimpsons1022 10y ago
geeze you're touchy. rush limbaugh got you too worked up today? All he is saying is that not everyone can go home and live with their parents when they fail. Not sure where guilt plays into this other than in your own mind/narrative.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  But why point it out? It's one of the least "privilegy" privilege I could imagine. Living with parents is the default, something "privileged" people try to escape. It's more economically sensible, so in this way poor people are more "privileged" by being more likely to live with their parents. Yes, you could point out various groups like people who've lost their parents, or people with abusive parents, etc. but at this point one has to realize that for every possible attribute X you could carve out a social subgroup that doesn't have X, and call X-havers privileged. It's meaningless.
  - ZeroGravitas 10y ago
    By Jove he's got it! No wait, those last two words suggest it's not quite sunk in. I enjoyed the journey of this post, where we went from not even being able to imagine something worse than living with your parents, to realising, what if I didn't have parents? What if they kicked me out? What if... a hundred different scenarios that real people have to deal with in their lives. It was like watching personal growth happen right in front of my eyes. But looks like it didn't quite stick
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      > It was like watching personal growth happen right in front of my eyes. But looks like it didn't quite stick Hey, at least I got a close brush with it. :). Seriously though, my point is that you can make arbitrary thing into a "privilege" by selecting a subgroup of society that doesn't have that thing. You could also turn the table around and say that the not-havers are "privileged" by growing up not having to depend on having that thing. So what's the point of even bringing it up in this context? It's not like not being able to move in with your parents makes you ill-equipped to start a business. Let's reserve talking about "privilege" for big things that block off some desired ways of life on a large scale.
      - ZeroGravitas 10y ago
        So, I'm not an expert in "privilege", but I generally approach it like usability. You know how the person who built a tool simply doesn't get why it's hard for other users, who have no context or history with it, to use the tool. It's a basic flaw in human psychology. Teaching is similar, the person who knows everything about X struggles to explain X to people who know nothing about X, even though in theory they should be the best person possible. The shared context is just not present. Your first line, where even after being prompted, you simply couldn't imagine something worse than living with your parents is a great example of this. Put yourself, just for a moment, in the shoes of the orphan, or the kid whose parents disowned them for being gay/trans/athiest/addicted, or the kid whose loving parents simply don't have space for them in their small apartment or would be breaking social housing rules by allowing them to stay. From their perspective, you're being a bit of an asshole, but you weren't even trying to be an asshole. You just couldn't imagine that people like them existed, probably because you, your friends, your family, your neighbours don't fit that description. The concept of privilege exists, not to make you feel guilty about this, but to make you aware of your unconcious biases. And to stop you accidentally being a asshole by e.g. deciding that everyone should use their real names online, which solves your spam problem, and causes issues for people with abusive exes, or secret lives they need to hide from their family or community. It's about acknowledging that people have different experiences in life for all sorts of reasons and you can't assume what is "normal" for you is all there is. Getting back to usability, apparently there is video somewhere of a programmer watching people use his application through a two-way mirror. So enraged is he, by them "using it wrong" that he ends up throwing a chair at the mirror. I'm not sure why people get so upset by having their worldview disrupted in this way, but it seems to be a thing.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

by gxs 10y ago

corecoder 10y ago

Yes, living with your parents is (somewhat) privilege. Yes, most of us reading HN are privileged, often in more than one way. No, the alternatives are not forgetting our privilege or giving up joy and happiness, the alternatives are being self absorbed and unaware or trying not to.

thesimpsons1022 10y ago

geeze you're touchy. rush limbaugh got you too worked up today? All he is saying is that not everyone can go home and live with their parents when they fail. Not sure where guilt plays into this other than in your own mind/narrative.

TeMPOraL 10y ago
But why point it out? It's one of the least "privilegy" privilege I could imagine. Living with parents is the default, something "privileged" people try to escape. It's more economically sensible, so in this way poor people are more "privileged" by being more likely to live with their parents. Yes, you could point out various groups like people who've lost their parents, or people with abusive parents, etc. but at this point one has to realize that for every possible attribute X you could carve out a social subgroup that doesn't have X, and call X-havers privileged. It's meaningless.
- ZeroGravitas 10y ago
  By Jove he's got it! No wait, those last two words suggest it's not quite sunk in. I enjoyed the journey of this post, where we went from not even being able to imagine something worse than living with your parents, to realising, what if I didn't have parents? What if they kicked me out? What if... a hundred different scenarios that real people have to deal with in their lives. It was like watching personal growth happen right in front of my eyes. But looks like it didn't quite stick
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    > It was like watching personal growth happen right in front of my eyes. But looks like it didn't quite stick Hey, at least I got a close brush with it. :). Seriously though, my point is that you can make arbitrary thing into a "privilege" by selecting a subgroup of society that doesn't have that thing. You could also turn the table around and say that the not-havers are "privileged" by growing up not having to depend on having that thing. So what's the point of even bringing it up in this context? It's not like not being able to move in with your parents makes you ill-equipped to start a business. Let's reserve talking about "privilege" for big things that block off some desired ways of life on a large scale.
    - ZeroGravitas 10y ago
      So, I'm not an expert in "privilege", but I generally approach it like usability. You know how the person who built a tool simply doesn't get why it's hard for other users, who have no context or history with it, to use the tool. It's a basic flaw in human psychology. Teaching is similar, the person who knows everything about X struggles to explain X to people who know nothing about X, even though in theory they should be the best person possible. The shared context is just not present. Your first line, where even after being prompted, you simply couldn't imagine something worse than living with your parents is a great example of this. Put yourself, just for a moment, in the shoes of the orphan, or the kid whose parents disowned them for being gay/trans/athiest/addicted, or the kid whose loving parents simply don't have space for them in their small apartment or would be breaking social housing rules by allowing them to stay. From their perspective, you're being a bit of an asshole, but you weren't even trying to be an asshole. You just couldn't imagine that people like them existed, probably because you, your friends, your family, your neighbours don't fit that description. The concept of privilege exists, not to make you feel guilty about this, but to make you aware of your unconcious biases. And to stop you accidentally being a asshole by e.g. deciding that everyone should use their real names online, which solves your spam problem, and causes issues for people with abusive exes, or secret lives they need to hide from their family or community. It's about acknowledging that people have different experiences in life for all sorts of reasons and you can't assume what is "normal" for you is all there is. Getting back to usability, apparently there is video somewhere of a programmer watching people use his application through a two-way mirror. So enraged is he, by them "using it wrong" that he ends up throwing a chair at the mirror. I'm not sure why people get so upset by having their worldview disrupted in this way, but it seems to be a thing.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]