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I think your interpretation of the blog post is not what the author had in mind. The problem is that for politically correct matters and other "pre formed" idea

by antirez 10y ago

I think your interpretation of the blog post is not what the author had in mind. The problem is that for politically correct matters and other "pre formed" ideas people tend to attack certain ideas solely on the basis that they are against, even if supported by facts, from what the society or the "good thinking" society thinks it is appropriate, auspicable, and so forth. So basically there are arguments for which it is not possible to get a real discussion on the table (or on the internet) but only insults because for certain topics the % of people overreacting is going to be over the signal/noise acceptable ratio. So I can't see any request for immunity here nor she is claiming to be silenced. She is just saying: it is not possible to share useful things because there is a percentage of people not ready to have discussions only using arguments and facts. I totally agree with her.

xapata 10y ago
I think the phrase "politically correct" has lost all meaning. It used to be used as a synonym for "polite" and now, in the US, it seems to be used as a synonym for "ignorant and obstinate".
- antirez 10y ago
  Here my definition is: behaviors that start with a good goal and later turn into a set of taboos.
- ConceptJunkie 10y ago
  I always took it to mean, "attempting to corrupt the language to force a certain point of view", similar to Orwell's Newspeak. Ignorance and obstinance are symptoms.
  - xapata 10y ago
    That's not what it meant back in the 90s. Certainly not like "war is peace". The phrase was most often used to explain what a person wanted to be described as, like, "Please call me handicapped, not retarded."
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  It's never meant "polite", and the modern use stems from its use in the mid-20th Century as a pejorative for obstinate and ignorant adherence to dogma by American Socialists referring to American Communists who were seen as slavishly following Stalinist orthodoxy.
  - xapata 10y ago
    Strange, I remember people using the phrase in sentences where one would otherwise say "polite", like "that's not the polite term" or "that's not the politically correct term". For example, "Oriental is not the politically correct term, say Asian."
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      That use does exist, but it's a (popular in the mid-90s, still occasionally encountered) ironic use that derives from the older (and particularly common by the American Right against the Left in the late 1980s and early 1990s, its peak before the current resurgence among the same political faction) use as a pejorative. So, the modern popularity of the older and original pejorative use isn't "losing meaning" from that use...
      - xapata 10y ago
        In those cases, perhaps its use was objectively ironic, but it was not ironic from the speaker's perspective.
        dragonwriter 10y ago
        While a minority of users may not have ironic intent, usually its use in the context referenced is deliberately ironic; the pejorative use has always been far more common, and it's very unusual for someone using the phrase in any sense not to be aware of that and, if not using it in the pejorative sense, be making a deliberate, usually ironic, reference to that well-known sense when using it in any other way.

by antirez 10y ago

xapata 10y ago

I think the phrase "politically correct" has lost all meaning. It used to be used as a synonym for "polite" and now, in the US, it seems to be used as a synonym for "ignorant and obstinate".

antirez 10y ago
Here my definition is: behaviors that start with a good goal and later turn into a set of taboos.
ConceptJunkie 10y ago
I always took it to mean, "attempting to corrupt the language to force a certain point of view", similar to Orwell's Newspeak. Ignorance and obstinance are symptoms.
- xapata 10y ago
  That's not what it meant back in the 90s. Certainly not like "war is peace". The phrase was most often used to explain what a person wanted to be described as, like, "Please call me handicapped, not retarded."
dragonwriter 10y ago
It's never meant "polite", and the modern use stems from its use in the mid-20th Century as a pejorative for obstinate and ignorant adherence to dogma by American Socialists referring to American Communists who were seen as slavishly following Stalinist orthodoxy.
- xapata 10y ago
  Strange, I remember people using the phrase in sentences where one would otherwise say "polite", like "that's not the polite term" or "that's not the politically correct term". For example, "Oriental is not the politically correct term, say Asian."
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    That use does exist, but it's a (popular in the mid-90s, still occasionally encountered) ironic use that derives from the older (and particularly common by the American Right against the Left in the late 1980s and early 1990s, its peak before the current resurgence among the same political faction) use as a pejorative. So, the modern popularity of the older and original pejorative use isn't "losing meaning" from that use...
    - xapata 10y ago
      In those cases, perhaps its use was objectively ironic, but it was not ironic from the speaker's perspective.
      - dragonwriter 10y ago
        While a minority of users may not have ironic intent, usually its use in the context referenced is deliberately ironic; the pejorative use has always been far more common, and it's very unusual for someone using the phrase in any sense not to be aware of that and, if not using it in the pejorative sense, be making a deliberate, usually ironic, reference to that well-known sense when using it in any other way.