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The last paragraph is nefarious: "Once you realize that orthodox privilege exists, a lot of other things become clearer. For example, how can it be that a larg

The last paragraph is nefarious: "Once you realize that orthodox privilege exists, a lot of other things become clearer. For example, how can it be that a large number of reasonable, intelligent people worry about something they call "cancel culture," while other reasonable, intelligent people deny that it's a problem? Once you understand the concept of orthodox privilege, it's easy to see the source of this disagreement. If you believe there's nothing true that you can't say, then anyone who gets in trouble for something they say must deserve it." Wow, talk about a word-salad to defend privelege. Who would suspect more wisdom on privilege from proud sexist Paul Graham. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/paul-graham-revives-sexism-tech-talk/356541/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/paul-... He's STILL complaining about "things you can't say" in this article: http://paulgraham.com/say.html http://paulgraham.com/say.html And completely missing the boat on "right to free speech" != "right to no consequences". He's learned nothing. Not a self-reflective bone in this man's body.

diffrinse 6y ago
> Wow, talk about a word-salad to defend privelege. "I'm on the right side of history, and for other people like me, here is how to navigate this trying persecution". It's also clear that you can replace the term "orthodox privledge" with "perspective" and the good parts of the article would make complete sense while excluding the rather uncritical parts, since their substance largely hinges on the rhetorical value of this weaponized spin on the term privilege. What's funny is he has no idea this entire elaboration can be perfectly applied to himself since, again, the whole thing lives-or-dies on the implicit perspective that he, or whatever persecuted idea(s), is on the "right side of history. Like, which perspective is defining orthodox?
- staycoolboy 6y ago
  I agree that using the word "perspective" is useful as a 101-level concept because perspectives can change radically based on a number of socioeconomic and cultural conditions out of their control. I think privilege is a 201-level concept that should only be deployed after someone internalizes the former statement, you gotta walk before you can run.
gosukiwi 6y ago
I understand and share your POV, but it's also really easy to abuse. If you think consequences for saying what you think are okay, it's no different than defending dictatorial goverments, where you just "dissapear" if you say something agains it. Or Galileo being forced to recant his theory that the Earth moves around the Sun. So where do you draw the line?
- staycoolboy 6y ago
  > So where do you draw the line? On a case-by-case basis. There is no black-and-white here, it is a journey that evolves. "Disappear" isn't just for China or the Philippines: some right-wing hardliners in the US think liberals should be disappeared on the topic of confederate monuments, and some left-wing hardliners things right-wingers should be disappeared for suggesting liberals be disappeared. However, I think a good line to start with would be: "holding an opinion that calls for the oppression, abuse, genocide, or death of an individual or group of individuals because you personally don't like them is a bad thing, M'kay?" And then go from there? EDIT: Here we go, people already claiming "deplatforming someone" is "oppression". To them, I say: crack a history book once and a while. Or maybe read a newspaper, like learn about Hong Kong's history in the past two weeks and what happened to individuals who protested Beijing's assertion of control on HK. That is not at all the same as Alex Jones getting deplatformed for spreading lies about Clinton running a sex ring out of a pizza parlor. If you think they are the same, we're doomed as a species.
  - dilandau 6y ago
    But you just wrote: >And completely missing the boat on "right to free speech" != "right to no consequences". Calling for the de-platforming, destruction of reputation, and career is a form of oppression.
  - dpoochieni 6y ago
    It's a slippery slope from deplatforming someone to oppression. Might be good for you to read some history on it.
  - luckylion 6y ago
textgel 6y ago
This could be an excellent opportunity for you to grow as a person by reflecting on how this made you feel and your privileged position; remember, equality tends to feel like oppression to those in privileged positions.
- NoodleIncident 6y ago
  I suppose we can put "privilege" in the bucket next to "fake news", along with all the other words co-opted to mean the exact opposite of their original meaning..
  - textgel 6y ago
    If you push "nazi", "sexist" and "racist" aside you should find some room.
- dpoochieni 6y ago
  And after that reflection what? Just give away your privilege as some sort of sacrifice? Btw, this might be impossible from the wokies perspective, what is more inherently tied to identity than your own personal skin color. Can't change that, so maybe it just boils down to money.
sakian 6y ago
Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't understand why his comments are deemed sexist. Isn't he saying that 13 year old girls aren't as interested in computers as much as 13 year old boys? What am I missing?
- dpoochieni 6y ago
  Because they go against the narrative the wokes want to impose. Why doesn't anyone ask why 13yo girls are not interested in becoming loggers, or police or trash collectors? Why are most 13yo boys not interested in becoming ballerinas? Sure the wokies try to pretend there is no such thing as human biologically encoded biases: everyone is a supposed blank slate. That's why it seems a bit stupid for people who don't share their views, why try to fix human nature (as if it were possible) when you can just live with it?
  - dang 6y ago
    This comment breaks the site guideline against calling names in arguments. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules. Other comments in this thread are breaking the guidelines as well, but this one stood out.
    - dpoochieni 6y ago
      Correction Because they go against the narrative the proponents (irony...) of cancel culture want to impose. Why doesn't anyone ask why 13yo girls are not interested in becoming loggers, or police or trash collectors? Why are most 13yo boys not interested in becoming ballerinas? Sure the proponents of cancel culture try to pretend there is no such thing as human biologically encoded biases: everyone is a supposed blank slate. That's why it seems a bit stupid for people who don't share their views, why try to fix human nature (as if it were possible) when you can just live with it?
- bargl 6y ago
  This was my take too. I disagree with the opinion piece linked by the op. My take was that he wanted more girls to be involved at a younger age in tech. If you look upstream at hiring, If I have 20 candidates and they all graduated from either a bootcamp or a cs degree, then my pool will probably reflect that ratio. If we want to fix the representation of people in any workforce that has a barrier to entry such as previous training. Like with Engineering and college. You have to get more representation in the engineering programs. If you want that you have to have more applications to the engineering programs. If you want that you have to de-stigmatize engineering at a young age. That was my take away from what he said, but maybe I'm projecting.
dpoochieni 6y ago
When did privilege become bad? I mean it is a reality we face daily but is it actually "bad" so should be eliminated? Plus there is no one privilege right? At what point do I owe someone something for being less privileged than me?
koheripbal 6y ago
> Who would suspect more wisdom on privilege from proud sexist Paul Graham. This is a great example of Cancel Culture. You attack someone's character, rather than their argument. This is the definition of arguing in bad faith.
lliamander 6y ago
> He's learned nothing. Not a self-reflective bone in this man's body. There's a lot of rhetoric without any actual argument. Unless you are a mind reader, I would suggest refraining from speculating on other people's mental states. Self-reflection is not a trait unique to people who agree with you.
jariel 6y ago
"And completely missing the boat on "right to free speech" != "right to no consequences"" This is the straw-man of all straw-mans. ---> Nobody is disagreeing with this statement. There's 'no point to miss' because it's not even a point of discussion. Everyone agrees that 'speech has consequences' and everyone agrees that someone 'calling a Black man the N-word in a derogatory manner' is terrible. But we are arguing of people can dress up and play characters of another race or identity, or if we can mock people who do bad things by having characters do bad things or if we can literally use bad words while intellectually discussing bad words. Or how much 'racism' is in the 'out group' using bigotry to attack the 'in group'. Etc. etc.. The cancel culture arguments are at the margins of hate, not knee-deep. If someone was doing Vaudevillian Blackface acts to mock black people, there would be 99.99% common agreement that this should be 'cancelled'. But whether or not my corporation should be putting BLM on their website, that's complicated.

diffrinse 6y ago

> Wow, talk about a word-salad to defend privelege. "I'm on the right side of history, and for other people like me, here is how to navigate this trying persecution". It's also clear that you can replace the term "orthodox privledge" with "perspective" and the good parts of the article would make complete sense while excluding the rather uncritical parts, since their substance largely hinges on the rhetorical value of this weaponized spin on the term privilege. What's funny is he has no idea this entire elaboration can be perfectly applied to himself since, again, the whole thing lives-or-dies on the implicit perspective that he, or whatever persecuted idea(s), is on the "right side of history. Like, which perspective is defining orthodox?

staycoolboy 6y ago
I agree that using the word "perspective" is useful as a 101-level concept because perspectives can change radically based on a number of socioeconomic and cultural conditions out of their control. I think privilege is a 201-level concept that should only be deployed after someone internalizes the former statement, you gotta walk before you can run.

gosukiwi 6y ago

I understand and share your POV, but it's also really easy to abuse. If you think consequences for saying what you think are okay, it's no different than defending dictatorial goverments, where you just "dissapear" if you say something agains it. Or Galileo being forced to recant his theory that the Earth moves around the Sun. So where do you draw the line?

staycoolboy 6y ago
> So where do you draw the line? On a case-by-case basis. There is no black-and-white here, it is a journey that evolves. "Disappear" isn't just for China or the Philippines: some right-wing hardliners in the US think liberals should be disappeared on the topic of confederate monuments, and some left-wing hardliners things right-wingers should be disappeared for suggesting liberals be disappeared. However, I think a good line to start with would be: "holding an opinion that calls for the oppression, abuse, genocide, or death of an individual or group of individuals because you personally don't like them is a bad thing, M'kay?" And then go from there? EDIT: Here we go, people already claiming "deplatforming someone" is "oppression". To them, I say: crack a history book once and a while. Or maybe read a newspaper, like learn about Hong Kong's history in the past two weeks and what happened to individuals who protested Beijing's assertion of control on HK. That is not at all the same as Alex Jones getting deplatformed for spreading lies about Clinton running a sex ring out of a pizza parlor. If you think they are the same, we're doomed as a species.
- dilandau 6y ago
  But you just wrote: >And completely missing the boat on "right to free speech" != "right to no consequences". Calling for the de-platforming, destruction of reputation, and career is a form of oppression.
- dpoochieni 6y ago
  It's a slippery slope from deplatforming someone to oppression. Might be good for you to read some history on it.
- luckylion 6y ago

textgel 6y ago

This could be an excellent opportunity for you to grow as a person by reflecting on how this made you feel and your privileged position; remember, equality tends to feel like oppression to those in privileged positions.

NoodleIncident 6y ago
I suppose we can put "privilege" in the bucket next to "fake news", along with all the other words co-opted to mean the exact opposite of their original meaning..
- textgel 6y ago
  If you push "nazi", "sexist" and "racist" aside you should find some room.
dpoochieni 6y ago
And after that reflection what? Just give away your privilege as some sort of sacrifice? Btw, this might be impossible from the wokies perspective, what is more inherently tied to identity than your own personal skin color. Can't change that, so maybe it just boils down to money.

sakian 6y ago

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't understand why his comments are deemed sexist. Isn't he saying that 13 year old girls aren't as interested in computers as much as 13 year old boys? What am I missing?

dpoochieni 6y ago
Because they go against the narrative the wokes want to impose. Why doesn't anyone ask why 13yo girls are not interested in becoming loggers, or police or trash collectors? Why are most 13yo boys not interested in becoming ballerinas? Sure the wokies try to pretend there is no such thing as human biologically encoded biases: everyone is a supposed blank slate. That's why it seems a bit stupid for people who don't share their views, why try to fix human nature (as if it were possible) when you can just live with it?
- dang 6y ago
  This comment breaks the site guideline against calling names in arguments. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules. Other comments in this thread are breaking the guidelines as well, but this one stood out.
  - dpoochieni 6y ago
    Correction Because they go against the narrative the proponents (irony...) of cancel culture want to impose. Why doesn't anyone ask why 13yo girls are not interested in becoming loggers, or police or trash collectors? Why are most 13yo boys not interested in becoming ballerinas? Sure the proponents of cancel culture try to pretend there is no such thing as human biologically encoded biases: everyone is a supposed blank slate. That's why it seems a bit stupid for people who don't share their views, why try to fix human nature (as if it were possible) when you can just live with it?
bargl 6y ago
This was my take too. I disagree with the opinion piece linked by the op. My take was that he wanted more girls to be involved at a younger age in tech. If you look upstream at hiring, If I have 20 candidates and they all graduated from either a bootcamp or a cs degree, then my pool will probably reflect that ratio. If we want to fix the representation of people in any workforce that has a barrier to entry such as previous training. Like with Engineering and college. You have to get more representation in the engineering programs. If you want that you have to have more applications to the engineering programs. If you want that you have to de-stigmatize engineering at a young age. That was my take away from what he said, but maybe I'm projecting.

dpoochieni 6y ago

When did privilege become bad? I mean it is a reality we face daily but is it actually "bad" so should be eliminated? Plus there is no one privilege right? At what point do I owe someone something for being less privileged than me?

koheripbal 6y ago

> Who would suspect more wisdom on privilege from proud sexist Paul Graham. This is a great example of Cancel Culture. You attack someone's character, rather than their argument. This is the definition of arguing in bad faith.

lliamander 6y ago

> He's learned nothing. Not a self-reflective bone in this man's body. There's a lot of rhetoric without any actual argument. Unless you are a mind reader, I would suggest refraining from speculating on other people's mental states. Self-reflection is not a trait unique to people who agree with you.

jariel 6y ago

"And completely missing the boat on "right to free speech" != "right to no consequences"" This is the straw-man of all straw-mans. ---> Nobody is disagreeing with this statement. There's 'no point to miss' because it's not even a point of discussion. Everyone agrees that 'speech has consequences' and everyone agrees that someone 'calling a Black man the N-word in a derogatory manner' is terrible. But we are arguing of people can dress up and play characters of another race or identity, or if we can mock people who do bad things by having characters do bad things or if we can literally use bad words while intellectually discussing bad words. Or how much 'racism' is in the 'out group' using bigotry to attack the 'in group'. Etc. etc.. The cancel culture arguments are at the margins of hate, not knee-deep. If someone was doing Vaudevillian Blackface acts to mock black people, there would be 99.99% common agreement that this should be 'cancelled'. But whether or not my corporation should be putting BLM on their website, that's complicated.