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Actually it's a sign of strength when it's not unPC to make fun of a group. I wouldn't want that to change. (I wrote about the phenomenon in "What You Can't S
by pg 16y ago
Actually it's a sign of strength when it's not unPC to make fun of a group. I wouldn't want that to change.
(I wrote about the phenomenon in "What You Can't Say." Search for "English.")
- francoisdevlin 16y agohttp://paulgraham.com/say.html http://paulgraham.com/say.html
- frossie 16y agoI don't know about that. It's not unPC to make fun of lawyers, but I sure wouldn't like for programmers to be the butt of those kind of jokes. I actually personally witnessed a trainer on Sexual Harassment Avoidance say "You can't make fun of somebody because they are black, or a woman, but you can make fun of them if they are wearing a pocket protector because nerds are not a legally protected class". Strangely, my reaction to this was not joy that we are not a historically oppressed protected class. It was more like "Why can't we teach people to treat all their colleagues with respect"?
- hugh3 16y agoRelax. Every profession is stereotyped by every other profession. Programmers are boring nerds who only care about Star Trek. Lawyers are soul-sucking bastards. Plumbers are filthy and walk around with their butt cracks hanging out. Politicians are also soul-sucking bastards. Engineers are like programmers, only drunk. And so forth. Most people are quite capable of distinguishing between the professional stereotype and any individuals they may meet, though.
- Kaizyn 16y agoMost politicians are lawyers by trade, never ever forget that. When you really realize the implications of this, it starts making way more sense why things are as screwed up as they are.
- rortian 16y agoHow have you not thought through this? Black people must have been incredibly powerful in the Jim Crow-era south. It's not cool when people find it socially acceptable to say something venomous about a group of people.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- sesqu 16y agoNor is it cool when people find it socially unacceptable to say something venomous about a particular group of people. Tangentially, I just saw the Frontline document on healthcare reform yesterday. Lots of venom near that topic, but everyone who got their soundbytes in condemned a particular senator, who called the President a liar while he was attempting to describe how he saw the bill. It struck me as odd to just go and get shocked by that, when it would have been a great opportunity to seize a factoid and get to the bottom of things, thereby narrowing the gulf that fed the raw emotion.
- apsec112 16y agoI think that programmers are on the weakness side rather than the strength side: "And yet a group has to be powerful enough to enforce a taboo. Coprophiles, as of this writing, don't seem to be numerous or energetic enough to have had their interests promoted to a lifestyle."
- defen 16y agoLooks like you anticipated Scott Adams' "High Ground Maneuver" (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1530274 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1530274) in that essay - "One way to do this is to ratchet the debate up one level of abstraction."