5 ms·

I wrote a reply to this asking about the alternate category of material which is both true/accurate and also intended to incite negative feelings. That comment

I wrote a reply to this asking about the alternate category of material which is both true/accurate and also intended to incite negative feelings. That comment was flagged to death. I guess that's the answer - it's not just "fake" news we want suppressed.

0xfeba 10y ago
I read the post before it was removed. I don't agree with a lot of it (like declaring lists of things true and then qualifying individual items with "probably because"), but I get your point. You have to tread very carefully. A better example would be a statement made by Trump's recent pick for National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn, in his book "The Field of Fight": "I don't believe all cultures are morally equivalent" Just that statement seems to bother many people, enough to have it included in Trevor Noah's Daily Show recently. But why? Why is that statement such a big deal? I believe Western culture is better than, say, Saudi Arabian culture. I realize there is no objective standard to base this on, but even if it is the same nationalism/tribalism Saudi Arabians judge Western culture, so be it. If you make the argument that we can't judge other cultures, wouldn't it also be true that you can't say they're equivalent, since that is judging them?
- danans 10y ago
  The statement is a problem because it is so general that it is devoid of any useful meaning, but it rather works as a huge dog-whistle. In the context of Flynn's other rhetoric, he's clearly referring to American Culture vs Islamic and other non European cultures. So why didn't he just state that directly, like you did? Why the "political correctness" around not using concrete examples of the "cultures" he is referring to? Probably because he is trying to maintain the thinnest possible veneer of plausible deniability of bigotry by avoiding making those references to specific cultures. However, even if you take his statement in isolation, how do you measure the morality of something as large as a "culture" anyway? Do you take the laws of a country that represses a huge number of it's citizens, like Saudi Arabia? There are huge numbers of individuals who do not subscribe to the "morality" of the culture that the world associates them with. Over-generalizing about cultures and denying individuals in those cultures moral agency is one step on the path to justification of terrible acts against them.
  - 0xfeba 10y ago
    Flynn does go on in the book and explicitly state Islamic (don't recall if it mentions Islamist) culture is "evil", etc. I specifically mention a country rather than a extremist group. So he's not really hiding behind much. > how do you measure the morality of something as large as a "culture" anyway? Well, you can't. At least, not without being in terms of your own culture. That is, culture defines morals, in my opinion. But I see no problem in pointing out these problems--as long as you don't go as far as pre-emptively accusing individuals or demanding they account for them. Eg., accosting Scientologists over Scientology.
- nitrogen 10y ago
  > I read the post before it was removed. You should be able to see the flagged comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13105342 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13105342) if you turn on showdead in your HN settings. It is disappointing that HN isn't able to discuss openly the ways in which true facts are (ab)used to create false beliefs.
lovich 10y ago
The closest I've seen to something like that is when a country's merits or good deeds are being discussed and someone brings up past mistakes/atrocities. An example would be bringing up Unit 731 when discussing Japan giving aid to some country as a reason that Japan is evil. As an aside, I frequently see your comments flagged to death and have used you as an example of how a community will create its own bubble. I happen to disagree with 99% of every post I have ever seen by you, but I've yet to flag a post just for being infuriating.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  I get a little bit of exposure to white nationalist blogs since they are occasionally quoted by neoreactionary blogs. I don't agree with their normative conclusions at all, but their factual claims seem reasonably accurate. There was a great article on this recently: http://hurryupharry.org/2016/11/27/who-gave-us-post-truth-conspiracy-culture-and-the-alt-right/ http://hurryupharry.org/2016/11/27/who-gave-us-post-truth-co... Some years ago, a friend sent me a shocking article. It said hundreds of British girls were being systematically gang-raped by Muslim gangs. It claimed this was being covered-up. I’ve never had time for conspiracy theories, especially when they look as hateful as those in the article....I wrote a curt reply to my friend: “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t send me made-up crap from neo-Nazi websites”. Some months later, I read the seminal exposé of the (mainly) ethnic-Pakistani grooming gang phenomenon by Andrew Norfolk in The Sunday Times. Of all the people pushing for Facebook to suppress "fake news", I've not heard a single one that had a plausible mechanism to make sure true stories like this don't also get suppressed.
  - pjc50 10y ago
    The whole Rotherham grooming business is one of those things that really ought to have had a national inquiry to establish what happened and punish the guilty and the negligent. Instead it's seemingly vanished from mainstream public discussion. Can we even name any of the victims? Or even any of the perpetrators? It's going to be like Hillsborough or Orgreave but for the right instead of the left: a historical injustice flag to wave for decades. Ignoring it is a massive disaster for race relations.
  - 10y ago
EdHominem 10y ago
Well, there's "true" and there's "an accurate summary of events". I could sift through arrest records in my city and publish a list of Group X (let's pick an established group, like Italians) and make them look like monsters. But that's just a framing exercise. For instance, the immigrant rape issue. Yes, of course many immigrants have committed sexual assaults. But are they more numerous per-capita, or more vicious? I see sources saying they're rape machines, and others saying it's all made up, but I don't see anything believable that says "Yes, and 2% more than ..."
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  I could sift through arrest records in my city and publish a list of Group X (let's pick an established group, like Italians) and make them look like monsters. But that's just a framing exercise. This is exactly what the mainstream media does in the US. The relatively small number of police shootings of black men get lots of coverage. The much larger category of black criminals harming white people get very little coverage, as does the biggest category of crime (white on white violence). Stats quoted here: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/420565/shameful-liberal-exploitation-charleston-massacre-heather-mac-donald http://www.nationalreview.com/article/420565/shameful-libera... What makes it a less "accurate summary of events" when a non-mainstream source chooses a different small subset of crime to focus on? As for the "rapefugee crisis" in Europe it's hard to know. Crime statistics tracking these things are usually suppressed and the authorities seem to cover up major incidents. (Even in the US, the Bureau of Justice Statistics stopped publishing it's table of interracial crime stats when Obama took office.) So all we really have are anecdotes and incident reports. Given this level of suppressed information, how can you claim that the white supremacists are less "accurate" than anyone else? Sometimes unpleasant people are correct about facts. Sometimes their views are just as accurate as anyone else's.
  - EdHominem 10y ago
    > black criminals harming white people get very little coverage That makes sense though. It's not a competition between the two groups so the amount of black-on-anything violence is irrelevant to the issue of police shooting people when it can be shown that the people being shot weren't acting violently. Talking about the black community when discussing police shooting is like blaming the prostitutes dressing badly down the block for your sister getting raped. Not only is it victim blaming, but it misses the point that these aren't meaningful groupings. (All black people, your sister and the prostitutes, etc...) > how can you claim that the white supremacists are less "accurate" than anyone else? Well, I don't claim that but I think I could, because I see them grasping at straws and forwarding the same tired stories around as if they prove anything. With no effort to dig into the facts behind the case and its selection as news. Exactly the same as the anti-racist knee-jerk I see which posts the same set of "Immigrants don't rape" refutation articles with the same lack of critical inspection. > Given this level of suppressed information, That is a problem. When our government lies to us it throws all semblance of civilian oversight right out the window and instantly becomes a dictatorship.

0xfeba 10y ago

I read the post before it was removed. I don't agree with a lot of it (like declaring lists of things true and then qualifying individual items with "probably because"), but I get your point. You have to tread very carefully. A better example would be a statement made by Trump's recent pick for National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn, in his book "The Field of Fight": "I don't believe all cultures are morally equivalent" Just that statement seems to bother many people, enough to have it included in Trevor Noah's Daily Show recently. But why? Why is that statement such a big deal? I believe Western culture is better than, say, Saudi Arabian culture. I realize there is no objective standard to base this on, but even if it is the same nationalism/tribalism Saudi Arabians judge Western culture, so be it. If you make the argument that we can't judge other cultures, wouldn't it also be true that you can't say they're equivalent, since that is judging them?

danans 10y ago
The statement is a problem because it is so general that it is devoid of any useful meaning, but it rather works as a huge dog-whistle. In the context of Flynn's other rhetoric, he's clearly referring to American Culture vs Islamic and other non European cultures. So why didn't he just state that directly, like you did? Why the "political correctness" around not using concrete examples of the "cultures" he is referring to? Probably because he is trying to maintain the thinnest possible veneer of plausible deniability of bigotry by avoiding making those references to specific cultures. However, even if you take his statement in isolation, how do you measure the morality of something as large as a "culture" anyway? Do you take the laws of a country that represses a huge number of it's citizens, like Saudi Arabia? There are huge numbers of individuals who do not subscribe to the "morality" of the culture that the world associates them with. Over-generalizing about cultures and denying individuals in those cultures moral agency is one step on the path to justification of terrible acts against them.
- 0xfeba 10y ago
  Flynn does go on in the book and explicitly state Islamic (don't recall if it mentions Islamist) culture is "evil", etc. I specifically mention a country rather than a extremist group. So he's not really hiding behind much. > how do you measure the morality of something as large as a "culture" anyway? Well, you can't. At least, not without being in terms of your own culture. That is, culture defines morals, in my opinion. But I see no problem in pointing out these problems--as long as you don't go as far as pre-emptively accusing individuals or demanding they account for them. Eg., accosting Scientologists over Scientology.
nitrogen 10y ago
> I read the post before it was removed. You should be able to see the flagged comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13105342 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13105342) if you turn on showdead in your HN settings. It is disappointing that HN isn't able to discuss openly the ways in which true facts are (ab)used to create false beliefs.

lovich 10y ago

The closest I've seen to something like that is when a country's merits or good deeds are being discussed and someone brings up past mistakes/atrocities. An example would be bringing up Unit 731 when discussing Japan giving aid to some country as a reason that Japan is evil. As an aside, I frequently see your comments flagged to death and have used you as an example of how a community will create its own bubble. I happen to disagree with 99% of every post I have ever seen by you, but I've yet to flag a post just for being infuriating.

yummyfajitas 10y ago
I get a little bit of exposure to white nationalist blogs since they are occasionally quoted by neoreactionary blogs. I don't agree with their normative conclusions at all, but their factual claims seem reasonably accurate. There was a great article on this recently: http://hurryupharry.org/2016/11/27/who-gave-us-post-truth-conspiracy-culture-and-the-alt-right/ http://hurryupharry.org/2016/11/27/who-gave-us-post-truth-co... Some years ago, a friend sent me a shocking article. It said hundreds of British girls were being systematically gang-raped by Muslim gangs. It claimed this was being covered-up. I’ve never had time for conspiracy theories, especially when they look as hateful as those in the article....I wrote a curt reply to my friend: “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t send me made-up crap from neo-Nazi websites”. Some months later, I read the seminal exposé of the (mainly) ethnic-Pakistani grooming gang phenomenon by Andrew Norfolk in The Sunday Times. Of all the people pushing for Facebook to suppress "fake news", I've not heard a single one that had a plausible mechanism to make sure true stories like this don't also get suppressed.
- pjc50 10y ago
  The whole Rotherham grooming business is one of those things that really ought to have had a national inquiry to establish what happened and punish the guilty and the negligent. Instead it's seemingly vanished from mainstream public discussion. Can we even name any of the victims? Or even any of the perpetrators? It's going to be like Hillsborough or Orgreave but for the right instead of the left: a historical injustice flag to wave for decades. Ignoring it is a massive disaster for race relations.
- 10y ago

EdHominem 10y ago

Well, there's "true" and there's "an accurate summary of events". I could sift through arrest records in my city and publish a list of Group X (let's pick an established group, like Italians) and make them look like monsters. But that's just a framing exercise. For instance, the immigrant rape issue. Yes, of course many immigrants have committed sexual assaults. But are they more numerous per-capita, or more vicious? I see sources saying they're rape machines, and others saying it's all made up, but I don't see anything believable that says "Yes, and 2% more than ..."

yummyfajitas 10y ago
I could sift through arrest records in my city and publish a list of Group X (let's pick an established group, like Italians) and make them look like monsters. But that's just a framing exercise. This is exactly what the mainstream media does in the US. The relatively small number of police shootings of black men get lots of coverage. The much larger category of black criminals harming white people get very little coverage, as does the biggest category of crime (white on white violence). Stats quoted here: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/420565/shameful-liberal-exploitation-charleston-massacre-heather-mac-donald http://www.nationalreview.com/article/420565/shameful-libera... What makes it a less "accurate summary of events" when a non-mainstream source chooses a different small subset of crime to focus on? As for the "rapefugee crisis" in Europe it's hard to know. Crime statistics tracking these things are usually suppressed and the authorities seem to cover up major incidents. (Even in the US, the Bureau of Justice Statistics stopped publishing it's table of interracial crime stats when Obama took office.) So all we really have are anecdotes and incident reports. Given this level of suppressed information, how can you claim that the white supremacists are less "accurate" than anyone else? Sometimes unpleasant people are correct about facts. Sometimes their views are just as accurate as anyone else's.
- EdHominem 10y ago
  > black criminals harming white people get very little coverage That makes sense though. It's not a competition between the two groups so the amount of black-on-anything violence is irrelevant to the issue of police shooting people when it can be shown that the people being shot weren't acting violently. Talking about the black community when discussing police shooting is like blaming the prostitutes dressing badly down the block for your sister getting raped. Not only is it victim blaming, but it misses the point that these aren't meaningful groupings. (All black people, your sister and the prostitutes, etc...) > how can you claim that the white supremacists are less "accurate" than anyone else? Well, I don't claim that but I think I could, because I see them grasping at straws and forwarding the same tired stories around as if they prove anything. With no effort to dig into the facts behind the case and its selection as news. Exactly the same as the anti-racist knee-jerk I see which posts the same set of "Immigrants don't rape" refutation articles with the same lack of critical inspection. > Given this level of suppressed information, That is a problem. When our government lies to us it throws all semblance of civilian oversight right out the window and instantly becomes a dictatorship.