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What You Can't Say (2004)
- masonic 7y agoMost active recent past posting, 120+ comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18221049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18221049
- dang 7y ago(Edit: just to be clear, links like this don't mean that the article shouldn't have been reposted! Reposts are fine on HN after a year or so—this is in the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html. Had this repost had been a bad one, we'd have marked it as [dupe] in the title instead. The purpose of linking to previous threads is that readers find those interesting.) Also, from 2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14952908 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14952908 2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7443420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7443420 2009: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=956884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=956884 2009: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=581050 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=581050 Those are the big ones.
- masonic 7y ago> links like this don't mean that the article shouldn't have been reposted! I didn't say, or even imply, that. I just thought reference to past discussions would be useful.
- dang 7y agoOh, I didn't in the least think you did. I meant that bit to apply to the link you kindly shared as well as the ones I listed. I added it because another commenter in the thread referenced that this had been discussed a lot before. Sorry for the misunderstanding! I still don't know a reliable way to briefly link to past discussions, or mention linking to past discussions, without it coming across to many readers as an implicit reproach. Which is not at all the intention.
- c22 7y agoMaybe the site should just automatically include links to past discussion. Perhaps hidden behind a little [+] next to or under the title in the comments view. Then you wouldn't have to spend time posting them or feeling awkward about it.
- dang 7y agoI'm reluctant to clutter the HN UI. It's simple enough that when X comes up, nothing seems more natural than to just build in X... but there are many Xs. Automatically finding links to good past discussions is harder than it sounds, too.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- kristianc 7y agoThe inverse of this seems to be taking hold now: that it’s socially acceptable to say things which are unreasonable, outlandish or downright factually incorrect, if they’re considered to be in service of a cause that ‘our side’ believes in. But yes, this has also been discussed a lot here before.
- mikelyons 7y agoSelfishness is devilry, and devils make Truth out as falsehood and spin falsehood as true.
- chimi 7y agoThis is pervasive in society right now. It's rampant in politics, advertising, dating... and it seems to be getting worse not better. It's almost like we don't have time to evaluate honesty. Politicians win, not because they will answer a question honestly, but because they will repeatedly deflect and they get away with it. Why do we allow it?
- mikelyons 7y agoThe people who are working to raise their level of consciousness, and who are willing to let go of ideology and dogma are few and far between, because it's painful and difficult. Just look at the votes that happen to anyone speaking this truth, people hate getting called on their devilry because it makes them look bad so they down vote when really this is the conversation that we need to have to eventually disallow it!
- Sniffnoy 7y agoThis isn't a matter of selfishness, but groupishness.
- mikelyons 7y agoCollective ego is also prone to selfishness, an individual can take on a group identity and make being the member of a group part of the identity they selfishly defend. Unless I misunderstand what you're pointing to?
- jonahrd 7y ago> It could be that the scientists are simply smarter; most physicists could, if necessary, make it through a PhD program in French literature, but few professors of French literature could make it through a PhD program in physics. Well having taken a lesson from the article, I think he's purely mistaken with this point. (As well as divisive, insensitive, etc..) Quite the hubris to make that assumption!
- tomrod 7y agoThere is a certain, je ne sais quoi, gravity to it.
- voidhorse 7y agoTotally, it’s the classic blowhard man of science attitude: “I think what I do is more difficult than any other human endeavor and though I’ve never attempted the grand feats of intelligence I claim to be capable of...” there’s a reason actual polymaths and polyglots are rare occurences in history. The very attitude itself shows that what someone has in specialized knowlegde they clearly lack in wisdom, which makes it highly unlikely that such a person is actually capable of their prideful delusions of grandeur. He has a point about the sokal hoax but the proper conclusion from that is that there are issues with the academic system and structure around work in the humanities—not that physicists are “smarter”—we’re talking about a system thats largely free-form vs one that’s inherently rigorous—theres no reasonable way to derive any strong claims about general intelligence based on this. The only reason physicists wouldnt get tripped up by hoax is because theres a centuries long system of rigor around what they do that makes it very hard fr them to let anything bogus slip in—its proceedure—they have a way better instrument backing them up, it has nothing to do with the intelligence of individuals, only learned behavior and functioning within prescribed systems. It’s hubris that’s a product of our age. Technologists, even more so than scientists at this point, are supossed to be the priestly class capable of miracles (while in reality the vast majority of them, even the brightest, have at best a passing knowledge of the humanities just like humanists have scant expertise in the sceinces! In fact such a reality is practically deterministic due to the hyperspecialization of knowledge) Paul Graham’s writings, at least what I’ve read, annoy me. No matter how much studying he may have actually done in reality, he always comes off as an individual that assumed he could play at philosophy and cultural critique just fine while maintaining a total disregard for the tradition and without ever having engaged with it in a deep way. Makes for literature that sounds very self-assured and pompous with little to back it up. Kind of like reading the incredibly naive thoughts of a cocky teenager with slightly more life experience. This essay for example, covers subject matter (moral relativism, bleeding into relativism in general, as well as the engine of history) that has been examined to death in the history of philosophy, yet paul graham doesn’t cite one person from that tradition. Why? Because, at the time, he was totally oblivious and had a superiority complex that wasn’t at all critical, self-reflective, or intelligent, which probably kept him from engaging with people that might’ve pointed outthe vast history of exploration into the topic that he handles as though man discovered history yesterday. Of course this doesn’t actually matter, because his target audience is totally oblivious too (people who, through no fault of their own, have been pushed into a very narrow specialized sphere of life—note this isn’t a sufficient condition for “smartness”), and we’ll all remain blind and blundering until we really introduce some cross-disciplinary study back into schooling and life itself.
- aazaa 7y agoThis quote is eerily prescient: > I suspect the biggest source of moral taboos will turn out to be power struggles in which one side only barely has the upper hand. That's where you'll find a group powerful enough to enforce taboos, but weak enough to need them. It's especially powerful when paired with this question: > Let's start with a test: Do you have any opinions that you would be reluctant to express in front of a group of your peers? Combining the two yields an odd idea. The group likely to have the most things they're afraid to say out loud will be the group that was recently strong enough to enforce taboos, but is not now. One such group is white, straight males in the US.
- rocqua 7y ago> I suspect the biggest source of moral taboos will turn out to be power struggles in which one side only barely has the upper hand. That's where you'll find a group powerful enough to enforce taboos, but weak enough to need them. Later, Paul Graham comes with the following variation of the above: > What groups are powerful but nervous, and what ideas would they like to suppress? Which I think is better. The difference is "weak enough to need taboos" vs "nervous". The group just needs to feel their power slipping away. This makes it a lot more applicable to your white males comment too. Whether white males' position is "weak enough to need taboos" is much more up for debate than whether some are nervous that their power is slipping away.
- traderjane 7y agoWhich group is countering the strength of straight white males? When one looks at the faces of the powerful in America, what do they see? Gay black women?
- jf- 7y agoIt’s the most currently socially acceptable way of agreeing with the argument. Which is in itself a wonderful way of highlighting what you can and cannot say, not to mention the punishments doled out for doing so.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- john-radio 7y ago> Suppose in the future there is a movement to ban the color yellow. Proposals to paint anything yellow are denounced as "yellowist"... This made me remember the essay "Against Murderism" by Scott Alexander. If someone would like to read a somewhat similar article to what's posted here, written by (in my opinion) a devastatingly better essayist than Graham with a lot more knowledge about human psychology and understanding of how culture works, I definitely recommend it and Alexander's popular blog, "Slatestar Codex," in general. https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/06/21/against-murderism/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/06/21/against-murderism/
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- spumoni 7y agoAnd if you would like to visit a place that is tacitly backed by Scott Alexander as a place to discuss cultural phenomena with a wide variety of backgrounds, visit https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/
- yourbandsucks 7y agoThat's not at all how he described it in his Scott alexander-length blog post on the matter.
- spumoni 7y agoWhy don't we pull up a direct quote, then? > At this point this stops being my story. A group of pro-CW-thread mods led by ZorbaTHut, cjet79, and baj2235 set up r/TheMotte, a new subreddit for continuing the Culture War Thread tradition. After a week, the top post already has 4,243 comments, so it looks like the move went pretty well. Despite fears – which I partly shared – that the transition would not be good for the Thread, early signs suggest it has survived intact. I’m hopeful this can be a win-win situation, freeing me from a pretty serious burden while the Thread itself expands and flourishes under the leadership of a more anonymous group of people. Not sure that proves your point.
- rocqua 7y agoWhat is scary about this approach is that it tends to favor conservatism. Any change achieved politically can easily be dismissed as a moral fashion (immigrant's rights, racial equality being ideal, same-sex marriage, women's rights). This is much more of an issue when you use the methods outlined to argue against an idea. If instead you use these methods internally, this is less of an issue.
- malandrew 7y agoNeither conservatism nor progressivism is necessarily correct or better. Sometimes conservatism is worse because it preserves things that we should change for the better. Sometimes progressivism is worse because it doesn't fully understand why society arrived at a solution so progressives try to change things in a way they think is better but then there are all sorts of unintended consequences that turn out to be worse that what progressives were trying to change for the better. For example, at one time progressives were trying to end segregation and promote judging someone on the content of character and not the color of their skin while conservatives fought them on this. Now progressives are trying to reinstitute segregation and promoting the idea that people should be judged on skin color and not content of character while conservatives fight them on these changes.
- Tronno 7y ago"Now progressives are trying to reinstitute segregation and promoting the idea that people should be judged on skin color and not content of character while conservatives fight them on these changes." That's quite a statement. Could you go into more detail?
- lazyasciiart 7y agoI believe they are referring to support for concepts like Black History Month or a Women In Engineering group being equivalent to "segregation".
- ixtli 7y ago
- iconjack 7y agoThings you can't say in the tech world, 2019: * global warming is junk science * there are approximately two genders * Trump is a great president * the US is not a racist country * Apple sucks Edit: If you're one of the many downvoters, who presumably disagree with this, I dare you to say any of these things if you work for a tech company.
- sincerely 7y ago"Apple sucks" got 1000 upvotes yesterday on this exact website.
- hugeElection 7y agoTranny Retard Nigger Kike Chink Faggot Slut
- armenarmen 7y agodownvoters proved that rather quickly
- topmonk 7y agoAfrican Americans consist of only 13% of the population yet commit over half of the crimes. Asians and Whites score much higher on IQ tests than African Americans and Latinos. Women have innately different interests than men.
- georgewsinger 7y ago> For example, at the high water mark of political correctness in the early 1990s, Harvard distributed to its faculty and staff a brochure saying, among other things, that it was inappropriate to compliment a colleague or student's clothes. No more "nice shirt." I think this principle is rare among the world's cultures, past or present. There are probably more where it's considered especially polite to compliment someone's clothing than where it's considered improper. Odds are this is, in a mild form, an example of one of the taboos a visitor from the future would have to be careful to avoid if he happened to set his time machine for Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1992. This is interesting. I've heard multiple people say that there have been two political correctness peaks: one in the early/mid 90s, and the other starting from about 2013 to now. Are we already coming down from our current PC peak? I think we might be, even though it seems weird to say (given that we're still near the peak, so that political correctness is still high). Some evidence for this: 1. There seems to be a larger and larger cultural awareness of the toxicity of political correctness, so much so that it's starting to no longer be counter-cultural anymore, but just a well-represented view. The IDW is becoming more mainstream (which means they need to stop representing themselves as a persecuted group, lest they become stuck in 2017). For the record I'm a huge fan of the IDW. I don't want to see them stagnate. 2. Leftists -- usually blamed the most for political correctness -- are even now able to discuss a few ideas in public that they weren't formerly able to quite as easily: (i) they can more openly discuss the merits of socialism (using the "s" word) and (ii) they are free to question the orthodoxy of traditional free trade. In fact nearly every major candidate for the Democratic nomination has denounced free trade in some way. This would have been unimaginable 10 years ago. There's still a long way down from the peak, but times feel less PC now than they were say in 2017.
- ixtli 7y agoWhat is the IDW?
- taylormckay 7y agoFrom Wikipedia: The intellectual dark web (IDW) is a neologism coined by American mathematician Eric Weinstein, and popularized in a 2018 editorial by Bari Weiss. The term refers to a group of public personalities who oppose what they see as the dominance of progressive identity politics and political correctness in the media and academia.
- egdod 7y ago“It’s ok to be white” is racist hate speech. Does that count?
- spumoni 7y agoOh, it gets even worse. You can't just not talk about being white. You can't talk about preserving a future for white children.
- ixtli 7y agoYes, it’s terrible that you’re not allowed to reproduce white nationalist propaganda in public.
- egdod 7y agoThanks for proving the point. People of literally every race are allowed to be proud of being that race... except white.
- ixtli 7y agoI’m so sick of dealing with people who make this nonsense argument. You know damn well the cultural context the literal words you wrote carry. It’s incredibly (and intentionally!) disingenuous to say this is anything like someone saying “I’m proud to be of Spanish decent.” You know, come to think of it I’d be weirded out by anyone saying something equivalent, like being proud of being Asian instead of saying “I’m proud of being Korean.” When black Americans talk about black pride that has a specific context: they are proud of a heritage that includes not knowing where they are from because of the slave trade. The thing is, though, you know this. Further, reasonable people know what you’re trying to do. Edit: in case anyone is unaware. The original comment is a direct evocation of David lanes 14 words. “ We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” Edit II: I appear to have confused the person I’m replying to here with the user that rephrased the 14 words but I’m still pretty sure they’re trying to defend the notions of a far right terrorist.
- seamyb88 7y agoMy laptop works every day. without fail. It's technical correctness gone mad. We have lots of people at work who are technically correct, it's sooo annoying, like just let me design my 737 how I want man/woman/neither/both. Seriously, why would you want correctness in every other aspect of your life, but not wish for members of a society to be correct (to whatever your definition) about issues of society?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- hanoz 7y agoThis comment is analogically incorrect.
- Uehreka 7y agoHaving seen many articles on this topic show up on HN, and this one in particular recur like a comet every year, I’d like to note a trend I feel like I see in the HN comments every time. First I see a highly upvoted top-level comment talking about how tragic it is that thoughtcrime is such a capital offense these days, and lamenting that surely the HN thought police will be coming for their head, but they still feel the need to speak their mind about this because it’s true despite the surely inevitable downvoting. The most upvoted reply concurs with the GP, adding a corollary about how the current social justice climate is particularly nasty because of “X”, and of course this miasma is so thick in the Bay Area that you simply can’t escape it. Then their most upvoted reply is also someone shaking their head about how no one is willing to question the SJW status quo. Soon, a crystalline structure emerges: layers upon layers of contrarians agreeing with each other, reflecting forlorn looks and awaiting the scythe of politically correct criticism that is surely coming any minute. Folks, let’s take a breath. To be sure, there exist people on HN who hold liberal or leftist beliefs, and there exist similar people in the Bay Area. But you know who else lives in the Bay Area? Paul Graham, the guy who wrote TFA! Peter Thiel! A veritable army of libertarian crypto enthusiasts! I won’t deny that political conflict exists on HN, in the valley or elsewhere. I just wish people would stop acting like no one agrees with them.
- hollerith 7y ago>sure, there exist people on HN who hold liberal or leftist beliefs, and there exist similar people in the Bay Area. But you know who else lives in the Bay Area? . . . Peter Thiel! Uh, he moved to LA " — a move his camp describes as a bid to escape the political hegemony of the San Francisco Bay Area": https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-peter-thiel-20180215-story.html https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-peter-thiel-20180215-...
- Uehreka 7y agoWomp, fair enough. That part notwithstanding though, I think the overall point stands.
- ecuzzillo 7y agoPG moved to England, afaik.
- moksly 7y agoWhat about the people who aren’t afraid to provoke their peers? They seem to neither fall into the “stay silent out of fear” or “you just believe what you are told” categories.
- mips_avatar 7y agoI'm confused about the comments section, maybe it's better to keep taboo comments to myself, or consider HN my confidants and enrich my belief.
- sterileopinions 7y agoWhat about the things you can't say on HN
- chess93 7y agoMy belief is that people believe whatever they want to believe. If you are liberal it is because you want to be liberal. Alternatively you might just not want to be conservative. Same for the other direction. Naturally formed beliefs are just an afterthought. It goes without saying that this might not apply to everyone or to every belief. For the record, I recognize that perhaps I believe this belief strictly because I want to believe it. I also think many people don't want to believe it.
- undecisive 7y agoI'm not sure it's that simple. As Mr Graham points out, we are shaped by our echo chambers, the chorus of voices that shout out against our fellow "heretics". As children, those chambers come from our families and religious / community institutions, as dictated by our elders. As we reach our rebellious phases, sure - we scrabble around and find beliefs we want to believe in - but the effort expended in doing so is difficult and the reward is little. From a social perspective, a little deviation acts as a differentiator - we are made interesting within our peer groups by our rebellions - but too much heresy makes us "other". As we get past that, self-realisation comes in waves; nestled between desires of belonging in a new group, we find moments where we are invited to re-evaluate some deeply held truth. Rarely is the re-evaluation self-driven, and almost never is that belief so different that a nearby echo chamber is not crouching nearby, waiting to nurture our newfound "chosen" belief in it's warm, corroborating belly. For the record, I want to believe your belief. I recognise that this autonomous self-truthing could be the pinnicle of what we as humans could become. I also think the very concept of society becomes a meaningless nothing if it were possible.
- toasterlovin 7y agoFWIW, I think that a huge amount of political alignment in the U.S. derives from aesthetic sensibilities. The thing last year where Trump ordered McDonald's for the college football team that was visiting him because the White House cook staff was not working due to the government shutdown is basically the perfect example of this. The left though it was the most gauche, trashy thing that ever happened, as in, "I can't believe someone would server toxic trash food to a guest in their own home." And right wing people mostly though it was totally normal, as in, "Of course you would order McDonald's if something came up and you couldn't serve a home cooked meal to a guest."
- kaens 7y ago> Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. > In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. - Karl Popper, Open Society and it's Enemies, 1945
- lone_haxx0r 7y agoEmbracing Popper's thesis implies the existence of a line separating "tolerant ideologies" from "intolerant ideologies". Who is going to define that line? Knowing how the world works, I don't suspect, but I know it will be used to suppress things that the mob doesn't agree with, while that same mob preaches ideologies more violent and intolerant than the ones they suppress. Popper's opinion only makes sense when the person in power (or the mob) is never wrong, and that never happens.
- Jarwain 7y agoI think that if one were to draw the line between tolerant and intolerant ideologies, that line shouldn't be drawn based on the content of the ideology but rather how that ideology spreads. Specifically, based on this quote > they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols The only ideology, the only Belief, that should not be tolerated is the belief that ideology must spread through violent means. That in and of itself is a belief, but it is a belief that can be discussed through rational argument, and only calls upon violence when all else fails.
- ixtli 7y agoThis gets posted constantly and every time it gets easier and easier to find white nationalist propaganda in the comments. Always glad to see whatever ideological bender the administrators of this site are on, providing a platform for hate speech is a price they’re willing to pay for it. Edit: I’m talking specifically about someone all but quoting the 14 words and lamenting at how society is intolerant of his views.
- dextralt 7y ago1) The last time this was posted seems to be a year ago according to a comment here. 2) The comment you're referring to was 1 out of 120, and it got flagged to death. What is it with communists and perpetual victim complex? You have full backing of the media, academia and the rest of the establishment. Cheer up.
- evrydayhustling 7y agoI'd like to think that, like opening paragraph brings up, this piece is an old snapshot that brings some embarrassment today. At the time it was posted I would have been excited about it. 15 years later, indulgently and exhaustively defining the well worn subject of heresy feels pretty dull. Like most celebrations of heresy, this skips the fact that orthodoxy has its own value: coordination. Parents teach their kids to avoid bad words so that they can coordinate with others. This is not a bad thing. A better thing still is for kids to understand that words aren't inherently bad but that being conscious of how others feel about them is good. The impactful heretics do the hard work of helping the orthodox world adapt to what they have discovered. And meanwhile, the vast majority of heresies are authentically wrong. Celebrating being heretical for its own sake, rather than a combination of truth seeking and empathy, had enabled all manner of jerks and frauds over the years. Tech culture needs a more nuanced view of this topic.
- codr7 7y agoThe point stands, allowing your mind to roam freely without paying attention to what others might think is the only way to find truth within. The vast majority of heresies are authentically wrong? How exactly did that happen? The opposite sounds more likely to me. I used to enjoy PG's writings a lot more than anything that ever came out of YC, that much I know.
- baddox 7y ago> Let's start with a test: Do you have any opinions that you would be reluctant to express in front of a group of your peers? > If the answer is no, you might want to stop and think about that. If everything you believe is something you're supposed to believe, could that possibly be a coincidence? Odds are it isn't. Odds are you just think what you're told. I’ve never quite understood this argument, because it seems to imply that people’s beliefs are or should be a random, unpredictable process, and that any regularity in the data should be treated with apprehension. But if beliefs are not in fact random, but can be guided by some common forces, then it wouldn’t be strange to expect people’s beliefs to in some cases largely converge. Should I “stop and think about” the fact that I oppose murder, even though my parents and all my friends and even most of my “enemies” hold that same belief?” Of course not.
- lmm 7y agoIf someone claimed to have done detailed fundamentals analysis on which stocks to buy, and the recommended portfolio they came up with was exactly the S&P 500, you'd be dubious that they'd actually done the analysis, right? If someone was doing a book report and came up with exactly the same analysis as a well-known essay, you'd be sceptical that they'd read the book themselves. Of course there's an underlying reality and you'd expect everyone to come up with the same broad themes. But there's enough noise that you also expect individuals to come up with some idiosyncratic differences.
- baddox 7y agoThere are obviously different levels of detail. I would be suspicious if two book reports contained significant passages with the exact same phrasing. I wouldn’t be surprised if two book reports for the same book noticed very similar themes.
- buboard 7y agoTL;dr Progress only happens at the borders. This long piece of wrongthink is such a great handbook for the 2010s
- pointerpointer 7y agoThis definitely applies to HN. HN should not grey out down voted comments. It is like there is no freedom of thought and speech on HN. If many people don't like what you're saying your idea gets censored while it might be very true. That is inherently wrong IMHO. edit: HN, why not just showing how many up and down votes a comment gets? I am really curious why someones comment should be invisible. Sometimes I'm reading replies on a comment I cannot read because it's down voted, what's the point of it?
- atoav 7y agoI have never seen a comment that I couldn’t read because it was greyed out. I always saw it more or less as sign that I should either take the greyed out comment with a grain of salt (which makes it less likely for me to post a snarky reply underneath) or it shows me that the thing said there (or how it was said) is at least viewed as controversial. Marking opinions is not censorship. Even if you’d mark posts with a bold red “lie” watermark, it wouldn’t be censorship. The thing to keep in mind is: when the communicative tool of greying out is taken away, more people will write pointless responses.
- pointerpointer 7y ago> Marking opinions is not censorship. You mean when a comment is not readable anymore it is 'marking' instead of censoring? So if China hides peoples opinion it is 'marking', like being a good thing? I don't get this. > more people will write pointless responses Is that scientifically proven?
- hmry 7y agoThey are supposed to be readable still. If you can't then that's an accessibility issue, not censorship. Try turning up your screens contrast.
- pointerpointer 7y agoI don't have accessibility issues and I don't make this up. I've seen comments with a text color of #eee, I had to go into the inspector to make it readable.. Maybe that has been changed/fixed already which would make my entire comment pointless indeed. Personally I think grey out text should not exceed about #ccc.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jonny383 7y agoYou mean like, there are only two biological genders, and you were either born a male or female?
- cc81 7y agoHow do you view intersex people? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex
- jonny383 7y agoFair point. There are two genders, and you were either born (male or female) or (with a medical condition).
- toasterlovin 7y agoExceptions do not invalidate categories. We do not say that humans have between 0 and 2 hands because some humans are born missing one or both of their hands. Such people are exceptions.
- pgcj_poster 7y agoThe statement "there are two genders" is only controversial because it is said in order to suggest that trans people are invalid or not real. If you accept that there can be exceptions, like intersex and trans people, then no one would disagree.
- toasterlovin 7y agoFWIW, that trans people want to transition seems to support the stance that there are only two genders, since they are seeking to switch genders, rather than exist at some intermediary point. So stating that there are only two genders does not seem, to me at least, to be a statement which invalidates the existence of trans people. I could be mistaken in my understanding, though. It’s hard to keep up with the latest developments in the gender identity space.
- eric234223 7y agoThe Norm is changed by the trouble makers and impulsive people who don't think about the long term consequences. Being selfish I don't want to be one of them but i am very glad they exist.