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It's a link from the word "bogus." I'm going to expand on this a bit, possibly against my better judgment. I believe Paul Graham has a point here, and it's a g

It's a link from the word "bogus." I'm going to expand on this a bit, possibly against my better judgment. I believe Paul Graham has a point here, and it's a good one. In intellectual pursuits, there's a spectrum from dealing purely with nature and facts, to dealing with human perceptions. To pick what I hope is a reasonably neutral example, doing the science to get containment of a fusion reaction is on one end of the spectrum. Planning and engineering a project to do it is in the middle. And making the case that carbon-based energy production poses an existential threat to humanity and that we should be investing hundreds of billions into fusion energy is on the other. All these inform each other, and I (personally) don't make a value judgment on which is most virtuous or most important. The salient thing is that Paul Graham did not choose a somewhat neutral example. Rather, he chose one that is perhaps at the very center of the culture wars, and has done so using a highly emotionally loaded word. Because he is someone who knows how to use words, I can fairly confidently conclude that he is effectively declaring his position on the issue.

zepto 6y ago
Did you look at the references at the other end of that link? It seems like you are equating rejecting papers like that, with denying white supremacy. Would it be possible for someone to think that particular kind of academic work is of low value, and yet still think white supremacy is real?
- throwaway2245 6y ago
  The informative question is the converse: Would your hypothetical someone append the word 'whiteness' to their primary example search illustrating bogus research?
  - zepto 6y ago
    If some particular research they thought was bogus was about the concept of whiteness, why wouldn’t they?
    - pseudalopex 6y ago
      Because they could cite the particular research instead.
      - zepto 6y ago
        That doesn’t explain what’s wrong with using the search as an example if a person thinks there is a problem with the research which shows up for that search.
        pseudalopex 6y ago
        The search has thousands of results. Tomorrow's top results could be entirely different. I've only seen 2 people say they read today's top result. They didn't see what was wrong with it.[1][2] And now he changed the search terms.[3] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25400495 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25400495 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25400289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25400289 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25402638 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25402638
        zepto 6y ago
        Ok. So your view of what was wrong with it is that the search terms might change. And it seems like he has removed the word ‘whiteness’. Is he still ‘denying the existence of white supremacy’?
        pseudalopex 6y ago
        No. My view is probably he didn't read any of those papers. He has to know most of his audience won't. He has to know the search results could change too. So he was just sneering at the words. Changing the search terms is just more evidence he wasn't pointing to any particular research.
        zepto 6y ago
- geofft 6y ago
  I looked at the references on the other end of the link. I expected it to be a particular article with all four of those words in the title. It was not; it was just a search for those four words. The top result is an article about the Swiss theologian Karl Barth (d. 1968), who was among other things one of the leaders of the theological opposition to the Third Reich and its subversion of Christian belief in service of white-supremacist ideology. The article says that Barth's interpretation of Romans 2 provides us a way today to avoid commingling Christian identity and whiteness. It's certainly possible for someone who believes white supremacy exists (and is worth opposing) to think that academic work that reads Barth today to counter racial superiority disguised as Christianity is of low value. I'd say it's pretty unlikely. To be fair, this is not the most charitable interpretation. The most charitable interpretation is that the author of the essay has never seriously read any academic work involving the words "hermeneutic," "dialectic," "hegemonic," or "whiteness" and they're just four words that he thinks mean nothing, and that he didn't actually read the results in the Google Scholar search before a middlebrow dismissal (to use his own term) of the results. That would make him like the vast majority of the folks who deny the existence of white supremacy - dismissing serious opposition to it as silly instead of specifically disbelieving it.
  - pseudalopex 6y ago
    It's worth mentioning Paul Graham has a degree in philosophy. He should know what hermeneutic and dialectic mean.
    - geofft 6y ago
      By the way, he has now silently changed the link to remove "whiteness" and add "racialized" and "phenomenology," which I guess confirms - no, he did not read the results and had no specific academic work in mind, he just listed some words he didn't like - he still doesn't like words about the academic study of race - he somehow didn't learn the meaning of "phenomenology" in his Ivy-League philosophy degree, either
nonce42 6y ago
I read the linked paper out of curiosity. It's a theological paper arguing against forms of Christianity that are based on the world-view of whiteness; instead Christianity should move toward a "decolonial option". The paper's arguments are based on the famous theologian Karl Barth and his commentary on Romans 2, so it's not easy reading. Is this bogus? If you consider theology bogus, then yes. But the paper is highly relevant to current US politics with the influence of evangelical churches and their embrace of a white-centered model of the world. (Although it doesn't explicitly get into politics.) One irony of linking to this paper is that religion is highly marked by earnestness, and this paper even more so. The paper's author is clearly genuinely interested in this subject as a "theology nerd". She is writing not for personal gain but to make the world a better place.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  I think PG is engaging in a very common form of fallacy, the assumption that everyone agrees with his judgement on an issue (in this case the uselessness of certain avenues of research and endeavor) and thus that their intentions must be viewed by interpreting their actions in light of that ascribed belief, so if they are engaging in the endeavors he finds useless, they must also be doing so through a lack of earnestness. This is a common way of converting a difference in judgement about the value of particular activities into a characterization of dishonesty and fraudulent activity; when done accidentally it is a sign of lack of ability to recognize differences in viewpoints, when done intentionally it's technique of avoiding debate on the issue on which agreement is assumed through the distraction of casting moral aspersions at those who disagree.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

zepto 6y ago

Did you look at the references at the other end of that link? It seems like you are equating rejecting papers like that, with denying white supremacy. Would it be possible for someone to think that particular kind of academic work is of low value, and yet still think white supremacy is real?

throwaway2245 6y ago
The informative question is the converse: Would your hypothetical someone append the word 'whiteness' to their primary example search illustrating bogus research?
- zepto 6y ago
  If some particular research they thought was bogus was about the concept of whiteness, why wouldn’t they?
  - pseudalopex 6y ago
    Because they could cite the particular research instead.
    - zepto 6y ago
      That doesn’t explain what’s wrong with using the search as an example if a person thinks there is a problem with the research which shows up for that search.
      - pseudalopex 6y ago
        The search has thousands of results. Tomorrow's top results could be entirely different. I've only seen 2 people say they read today's top result. They didn't see what was wrong with it.[1][2] And now he changed the search terms.[3] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25400495 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25400495 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25400289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25400289 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25402638 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25402638
        zepto 6y ago
        Ok. So your view of what was wrong with it is that the search terms might change. And it seems like he has removed the word ‘whiteness’. Is he still ‘denying the existence of white supremacy’?
        pseudalopex 6y ago
        No. My view is probably he didn't read any of those papers. He has to know most of his audience won't. He has to know the search results could change too. So he was just sneering at the words. Changing the search terms is just more evidence he wasn't pointing to any particular research.
        zepto 6y ago
geofft 6y ago
I looked at the references on the other end of the link. I expected it to be a particular article with all four of those words in the title. It was not; it was just a search for those four words. The top result is an article about the Swiss theologian Karl Barth (d. 1968), who was among other things one of the leaders of the theological opposition to the Third Reich and its subversion of Christian belief in service of white-supremacist ideology. The article says that Barth's interpretation of Romans 2 provides us a way today to avoid commingling Christian identity and whiteness. It's certainly possible for someone who believes white supremacy exists (and is worth opposing) to think that academic work that reads Barth today to counter racial superiority disguised as Christianity is of low value. I'd say it's pretty unlikely. To be fair, this is not the most charitable interpretation. The most charitable interpretation is that the author of the essay has never seriously read any academic work involving the words "hermeneutic," "dialectic," "hegemonic," or "whiteness" and they're just four words that he thinks mean nothing, and that he didn't actually read the results in the Google Scholar search before a middlebrow dismissal (to use his own term) of the results. That would make him like the vast majority of the folks who deny the existence of white supremacy - dismissing serious opposition to it as silly instead of specifically disbelieving it.
- pseudalopex 6y ago
  It's worth mentioning Paul Graham has a degree in philosophy. He should know what hermeneutic and dialectic mean.
  - geofft 6y ago
    By the way, he has now silently changed the link to remove "whiteness" and add "racialized" and "phenomenology," which I guess confirms - no, he did not read the results and had no specific academic work in mind, he just listed some words he didn't like - he still doesn't like words about the academic study of race - he somehow didn't learn the meaning of "phenomenology" in his Ivy-League philosophy degree, either

nonce42 6y ago

I read the linked paper out of curiosity. It's a theological paper arguing against forms of Christianity that are based on the world-view of whiteness; instead Christianity should move toward a "decolonial option". The paper's arguments are based on the famous theologian Karl Barth and his commentary on Romans 2, so it's not easy reading. Is this bogus? If you consider theology bogus, then yes. But the paper is highly relevant to current US politics with the influence of evangelical churches and their embrace of a white-centered model of the world. (Although it doesn't explicitly get into politics.) One irony of linking to this paper is that religion is highly marked by earnestness, and this paper even more so. The paper's author is clearly genuinely interested in this subject as a "theology nerd". She is writing not for personal gain but to make the world a better place.

dragonwriter 6y ago
I think PG is engaging in a very common form of fallacy, the assumption that everyone agrees with his judgement on an issue (in this case the uselessness of certain avenues of research and endeavor) and thus that their intentions must be viewed by interpreting their actions in light of that ascribed belief, so if they are engaging in the endeavors he finds useless, they must also be doing so through a lack of earnestness. This is a common way of converting a difference in judgement about the value of particular activities into a characterization of dishonesty and fraudulent activity; when done accidentally it is a sign of lack of ability to recognize differences in viewpoints, when done intentionally it's technique of avoiding debate on the issue on which agreement is assumed through the distraction of casting moral aspersions at those who disagree.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]