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> If a person is engaging in reasonable dissent then why is this true: "If anything, their position will be radicalized."? Uhmmmm.... because they get fired fo
by thinkfurther 9y ago
> If a person is engaging in reasonable dissent then why is this true: "If anything, their position will be radicalized."?
Uhmmmm.... because they get fired for deviating from the party line, not for being unreasonable. How can you skip that "detail"?
In this case, it seems to be even lamer than that, seems like he was not fired for the memo, but the reaction to it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14977750 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14977750
> Damore said he initially shared the memo a month ago, but "no one high up ever came to me and said, 'No, don't do this,' even though there were many people who looked at it," Damore told Bloomberg. "It was only after it got viral that upper management started shaming me and eventually firing me."
So, what's hiding under this leaving out crucial parts and misrepresenting in the context of destroying people while paying lip service to being for people being unafraid? Anyone else seeing this?
> The (true) implication is that their reasonable dissent actually is a bland cover for a position that is much more radical once it is reduced to its core propositions.
This is so incredibly sinister and you don't even know it. Here's an example: a kid has a legitimate grievance, or at least legitimately thinks it does, but when it brings it up modestly, non-radically, it gets hit in the face. Now it will do something "bad", like cuss or somehow act out, because it is not allowed to place the grievance where it should be -- and then that is used to excuse that initial oppression or however you want to call it. Another example is SS officers despising people in concentration camps for being the diseased husks they turned them into, seeing this as a confirmation for their inferiority. Roll your eyes how much you want at that, chose whatever example you want, but that is the mechanism, that is an apt analogy just as much as bad parenting. Heck, get hung up on me somehow equating the Holocaust with a kid getting hit, I really don't care because people who don't want to understand always find something.
Granted, even being fired is no excuse to be radicalized. He's not a little kid, and he's not being made physically sick. But he also has a mob against him, plus the support of many he actually might not want want to be a martyr for (I mean, does anyone even allow for the fact that he is not some kind of closeted alt-right monster?), and that's more pressure than someone who was not on the receiving end of stuff like this can imagine, so I'll call that a wash. The point isn't (to me) "would he be justified to go loopy now", but "was this an okay reaction by the stronger party, and should this be normalized". My answer is no, and no. But not because it might lead to things I don't want, because it itself is already something I don't want either. Kinda of like I don't think corporations shouldn't turn street kids into sausage "because it would lead to a backlash and therefore make bad financial sense", but because it'd be evil. And I might not even want to sit with people who want the right thing for the wrong reason, because this is some very fundamental and serious stuff IMO.
If the memo caused a shit storm or went viral amongst assholes or both, but the memo itself was not grounds for termination or even internal criticism, then the spineful thing to do for Google would have been to have the discussion, not fire the guy, drop him like a hot potato, and then patting themselves on the shoulder for it. That's disgusting. They have just proven in action what a human life is worth to them, the rest is lip service, plus a whole lot of distortions which are the main hard data points so far.
- scandox 9y agoI don't understand your point. Mine is that being attacked should not change one's ideas. Getting fired is bad, but it isn't new information pertinent to the original debate. It may inform your ideas about the climate in which the debate is occurring, which may radicalize you personally. It shouldn't radicalize your position.
- thinkfurther 9y ago"Getting fired" is a bit of an euphemism though, there is a lot more going on here than just that. Just start with Gizmodo leaving out some stuff at first and so on. The claim is that he is being treated unfairly, at the least. > It shouldn't radicalize your position. In some fantasy world, where marijuana being illegal didn't make a single person try harder drugs because shady types were the only ones they could get weed from, and so on. Where a person is somehow separate from a position they hold. I think people shouldn't steal. Reasonable, yes? Hacking off the hand of someone who stole some bubble gum is not so reasonable and much more radical. If you can somehow treat someone so badly for suggesting stealing is not okay that they harbor murderous thoughts about thieves, does that now mean the original idea of stealing being bad is not reasonable? I don't know who is to judge a person for their reaction to mistreatment, but never the ones doing or excusing the mistreatment, that is for super fucking sure. But even granting that this is no excuse to go off the deep end, which I did; to focus on that, instead of the original action without which the debate about the reaction to it would be completely moot is not okay, and that is my point. There can be only bad results from this, that is the takeaway. If people downstream from this could alleviate this a bit by being saints is besides the point.
- scandox 9y agoWell I didn't mean to imply "you" - I meant "one's" position. Hopefully it didn't come across in any way personal.
- thinkfurther 9y agoNo worries, I did get that, I also find "your position" much easier to write (and read) than "one's position".