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I think that the right has moved the Overton Window so much to the right that they see things that most of the world would see as mainstream (Black Lives Matter

I think that the right has moved the Overton Window so much to the right that they see things that most of the world would see as mainstream (Black Lives Matter, Abortion, Medicare for All, Defund the Police, Anti-Fascism etc) as extreme.

lliamander 6y ago
None of those things, properly understood[1], were in any way mainstream until very recently. And arguably still aren't mainstream. [1] Obviously, black lives do matter and fascism is bad, but as slogans "Black Lives Matter" and "Anti-Fascism" represent very radical political programs. You should be as suspicious of these slogans as I assume you are of slogans like "All Lives Matter" and "Anti-Communism".
- lawnchair_larry 6y ago
  And the fact that people apparently can’t stand to hear this shows how far left the tech overton window has shifted. As if we all were not already aware.
ttt0 6y ago
That's not how the Overton Window works. The Overton Window says what kind of opinions are socially acceptable. If you describe those things are mainstream, they're by definition inside the Overton Window. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that you're more likely to be fired for being a nationalist rather than a communist, so that's another indicator that the Overton Window is actually on the left.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that you're more likely to be fired for being a nationalist rather than a communist I see no evidence that that is the case.
  - ttt0 6y ago
    I don't keep track of this, but there is a lot of "canceling" going on recently. If we talk strictly about politics, I did saw a couple of left-leaning people who got fired for politics, because the angry mob went after their employment. But most of the time I see it happening to right-leaning people. And what I never saw was anyone on the left got kicked off platforms like PayPal for example. Though it's within the realm of possibility that the social media just gave me the impression that this is the case. However, considering the fact that basically every corporation and even some of the smaller companies are changing their logos in support of BLM, LGBT Pride etc., I think it's quite reasonable to assume that.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > But most of the time I see it happening to right-leaning people. And the question you have to ask is how do you see it when it happens to right-leaning people? Is it happening in your immediate neighborhood? Or is this supposed social "cancelling" happening to people who have pre-existing or readily-made-available access to strong, highly-visible, wealthy network that shares their story as outrage fuel and/or enables the socially "cancelled" a highly-visible platform to do so? Information gathered as unstructured anecdotes, especially absent analysis of the systematic biases in how the information gets to you, is not a reliable basis for drawing conclusions about relative frequency, especially when the topic is specifically differential suppression of viewpoints and information.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  I'm not the one you're replying to, but here's how I think the Overton Window works. Everyone has a personal Overton Window - the set of ideas that they think are reasonable and acceptable, even if they personally don't agree. When most of the personal Overton Windows approximately align on a particular topic, then we have society's Overton Window. For example, think about gay marriage. 50 years ago, maybe even 20, 95% of society thought that gay marriage was clearly not acceptable. That meant that 95% of society agreed with 95% of society's personal Overton Windows on the topic, and so we had a clear society-wide Overton Window. Now we have maybe 30% of people who still think that gay marriage is clearly not acceptable. We also have 40% who think that gay marriage is clearly in bounds. Of those, maybe half (so 20% of the population) think any doubts about gay marriage are clearly unacceptable. There is no position which a large majority of society finds acceptable. (All numbers made up, but I think they're in the approximate neighborhood.) The society-wide Overton Window didn't move. It shattered.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > That's not how the Overton Window works. The Overton Window says what kind of opinions are socially acceptable "Socially acceptable" is, necessarily, relative to some defined group. Especially in a political system with limited major parties and partisan primary elections (especially if they are closed, but even if they are open in theory but tend to attract a specific mostly-stable community in practice), and a substantial population that participates in neither parties primaries, considering the Overton Window within each party and/or ideological identity group as well as the "national" Overton Window can be useful. The GP comment could be rephrased without, I think, change of meaning as "the Overton Window of the community of the ideological Right and/or the Republican Party has moved relative to the rest of society such that it excludes much of the window as viewed by those not ideologically tied strongly to the Left or Right faction".
lawnchair_larry 6y ago
You might want to familiarize yourself with the criticisms of those. You might also want to familiarize yourself with what those organizations and ideologies are actually about beyond their slogan (which in most cases has nothing to do with what the slogan is). But either way, defund the police is not mainstream anywhere - that’s pretty universally understood to be a fringe (and ridiculous) proposition, and has already proven its devastating consequences.
ccn0p 6y ago
That's funny that you say that because those who find themselves right of center generally say the same thing. The mainstream media, hollywood, and academia, have become so liberal that the center feels like extreme right to them. Again, goes to show the polarization of the US.
etangent 6y ago
Curious in what country you live in that sees "Defund the Police" as mainstream.
- rsynnott 6y ago
  A number of countries have ripped up their police force and started again, to greater or lesser degrees, in the last few decades. The RUC would be a mild case, the Stasi an extreme one.
  - etangent 6y ago
    Curious in what country you live that sees its police force as equivalent of Stasi or even RUC.

lliamander 6y ago

None of those things, properly understood[1], were in any way mainstream until very recently. And arguably still aren't mainstream. [1] Obviously, black lives do matter and fascism is bad, but as slogans "Black Lives Matter" and "Anti-Fascism" represent very radical political programs. You should be as suspicious of these slogans as I assume you are of slogans like "All Lives Matter" and "Anti-Communism".

lawnchair_larry 6y ago
And the fact that people apparently can’t stand to hear this shows how far left the tech overton window has shifted. As if we all were not already aware.

ttt0 6y ago

That's not how the Overton Window works. The Overton Window says what kind of opinions are socially acceptable. If you describe those things are mainstream, they're by definition inside the Overton Window. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that you're more likely to be fired for being a nationalist rather than a communist, so that's another indicator that the Overton Window is actually on the left.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that you're more likely to be fired for being a nationalist rather than a communist I see no evidence that that is the case.
- ttt0 6y ago
  I don't keep track of this, but there is a lot of "canceling" going on recently. If we talk strictly about politics, I did saw a couple of left-leaning people who got fired for politics, because the angry mob went after their employment. But most of the time I see it happening to right-leaning people. And what I never saw was anyone on the left got kicked off platforms like PayPal for example. Though it's within the realm of possibility that the social media just gave me the impression that this is the case. However, considering the fact that basically every corporation and even some of the smaller companies are changing their logos in support of BLM, LGBT Pride etc., I think it's quite reasonable to assume that.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > But most of the time I see it happening to right-leaning people. And the question you have to ask is how do you see it when it happens to right-leaning people? Is it happening in your immediate neighborhood? Or is this supposed social "cancelling" happening to people who have pre-existing or readily-made-available access to strong, highly-visible, wealthy network that shares their story as outrage fuel and/or enables the socially "cancelled" a highly-visible platform to do so? Information gathered as unstructured anecdotes, especially absent analysis of the systematic biases in how the information gets to you, is not a reliable basis for drawing conclusions about relative frequency, especially when the topic is specifically differential suppression of viewpoints and information.
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
I'm not the one you're replying to, but here's how I think the Overton Window works. Everyone has a personal Overton Window - the set of ideas that they think are reasonable and acceptable, even if they personally don't agree. When most of the personal Overton Windows approximately align on a particular topic, then we have society's Overton Window. For example, think about gay marriage. 50 years ago, maybe even 20, 95% of society thought that gay marriage was clearly not acceptable. That meant that 95% of society agreed with 95% of society's personal Overton Windows on the topic, and so we had a clear society-wide Overton Window. Now we have maybe 30% of people who still think that gay marriage is clearly not acceptable. We also have 40% who think that gay marriage is clearly in bounds. Of those, maybe half (so 20% of the population) think any doubts about gay marriage are clearly unacceptable. There is no position which a large majority of society finds acceptable. (All numbers made up, but I think they're in the approximate neighborhood.) The society-wide Overton Window didn't move. It shattered.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> That's not how the Overton Window works. The Overton Window says what kind of opinions are socially acceptable "Socially acceptable" is, necessarily, relative to some defined group. Especially in a political system with limited major parties and partisan primary elections (especially if they are closed, but even if they are open in theory but tend to attract a specific mostly-stable community in practice), and a substantial population that participates in neither parties primaries, considering the Overton Window within each party and/or ideological identity group as well as the "national" Overton Window can be useful. The GP comment could be rephrased without, I think, change of meaning as "the Overton Window of the community of the ideological Right and/or the Republican Party has moved relative to the rest of society such that it excludes much of the window as viewed by those not ideologically tied strongly to the Left or Right faction".

lawnchair_larry 6y ago

You might want to familiarize yourself with the criticisms of those. You might also want to familiarize yourself with what those organizations and ideologies are actually about beyond their slogan (which in most cases has nothing to do with what the slogan is). But either way, defund the police is not mainstream anywhere - that’s pretty universally understood to be a fringe (and ridiculous) proposition, and has already proven its devastating consequences.

ccn0p 6y ago

That's funny that you say that because those who find themselves right of center generally say the same thing. The mainstream media, hollywood, and academia, have become so liberal that the center feels like extreme right to them. Again, goes to show the polarization of the US.

etangent 6y ago

Curious in what country you live in that sees "Defund the Police" as mainstream.

rsynnott 6y ago
A number of countries have ripped up their police force and started again, to greater or lesser degrees, in the last few decades. The RUC would be a mild case, the Stasi an extreme one.
- etangent 6y ago
  Curious in what country you live that sees its police force as equivalent of Stasi or even RUC.