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> One can empathically agree that such injustice, and any injustice, sucks, and still advocate compartmentalizing between institutions of the society writ large

> One can empathically agree that such injustice, and any injustice, sucks, and still advocate compartmentalizing between institutions of the society writ large. That depends very heavily on the nature of the injustice, doesn't it? I mean, take Godwin's perspective here: that's literally the logic that gave us the holocaust! Implicit in your statement is the idea that the "injustice" might "suck", but not so much that it's worth blowing up your employer. Which is to say: you really don't think this injustice sucked very much. Well... some people disagreed. And they were willing to quit over it. Isn't that an existence proof that your intuition is simply wrong here?

acituan 5y ago
> Implicit in your statement is the idea that the "injustice" might "suck", but not so much that it's worth blowing up your employer. Which is to say: you really don't think this injustice sucked very much. You're both misreading and over-reading. The comparison is not between how much the injustice sucks vs. the cost of blowing up the employer. It is a) whether all injustices have equitable access to pressuring employers and b) whether parasitizing any organization to advance a cause, however honorable the intentions are, is a fair game despite the negative externalities. If any cause fails either of these criteria, it is bound to be creating its own injustices.
- shkkmo 5y ago
  I don't think "parasitizing" is accurate or constructive terminology. I think your conclusion is also obviously false. The access that the civil rights movement eventually acquired at many institutions did nothing to increase the injustices faced by LGBTQ group. So while unequal access can create further injustices, it is not case they always do. I think that the linkage you are calling out tends to arise when the two groups are in conflict.
shkkmo 5y ago
> That depends very heavily on the nature of the injustice, doesn't it? I mean, take Godwin's perspective here: that's literally the logic that gave us the holocaust! Um... I completely failed to follow this. Are you talking about Godwins law? What is the logic that literally gave us the Holocaust? > Isn't that an existence proof that your intuition is simply wrong here? I believe you have an error in your modal logic. Existence proofs can only disprove 'all/no X are P' statements and prove 'there exists an X that is P' statements. The claim you cite is of the later form. Generally, the way to disprove such a claim is to assume it is true then reach a logical contradiction.
- newacct583 5y ago
  If you polled Germans in 1938 about whether it should be state policy to kill six million jews, you would have gotten a hard no. Yet it happened anyway, because (to borrow the upthread phrasing) while sure rounding them up might "suck", it was important to "compartmentalize" and not conflate the injustice suffered by the local jews being interned with the prosecution of the war. So the people prosecuting the war got cart blanche to engage in genocide, because the people who should have stopped it didn't, because of something very much like the "compartmentalization" in the upthread post. The point being (which of course isn't that a modern holocaust is brewing) that if injustice sucks, it should suck for everyone everywhere and it should be allowed to discuss it in any forum. Arguing otherwise isn't arguing for "compartmentalization", it's just arguing for the perspective that the injustice doesn't suck.
  - shkkmo 5y ago
    Holocaust didn't happen because the people who opposed rounding up people demonstrated as part of their private lives but didn't bring up their objections at work. Pretending that THIS is "literally" why the Holocaust happened borders on anti-semitism. The Holocaust happened because enough peoole there were willing to accept bad things being done when they were done to unpopular groups. The lesson to be learned from it is that even if someone is unpopular, we need to be strive to treat them with humanity.
    - newacct583 5y ago
      I'm sorry, but no. The holocaust absolutely happened because the German people turned a blind eye to what was going on. Because whatever their private feelings might have been, they kept them private because they weren't appropriate to express in public. The German people, in aggregate, were clearly able to stop the holocaust. And it happened anyway. Also let me just note that your casual attempt to accuse me of antisemitism in a thread LITERALLY ABOUT people being casually and unjustly accused of white supremacy is just "chef's kiss" level hypocrisy. Well done.
      - 5y ago
dang 5y ago
Would you please stop using HN primarily for ideological battle, and please stop feeding flamewars? We've had to ask you this many times before. It's not helping. Going to the Holocaust is super not helping. You could easily have made your point here without that; in fact your comment is entirely coherent without that gratuitous provocation. I appreciate that you may be arguing a minority position in this particular thread (at least from the portions that I've seen), but that doesn't absolve you of needing to follow the site guidelines, and your comments have been noticeably more flamey than many others. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27046069 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27046069.

acituan 5y ago

> Implicit in your statement is the idea that the "injustice" might "suck", but not so much that it's worth blowing up your employer. Which is to say: you really don't think this injustice sucked very much. You're both misreading and over-reading. The comparison is not between how much the injustice sucks vs. the cost of blowing up the employer. It is a) whether all injustices have equitable access to pressuring employers and b) whether parasitizing any organization to advance a cause, however honorable the intentions are, is a fair game despite the negative externalities. If any cause fails either of these criteria, it is bound to be creating its own injustices.

shkkmo 5y ago
I don't think "parasitizing" is accurate or constructive terminology. I think your conclusion is also obviously false. The access that the civil rights movement eventually acquired at many institutions did nothing to increase the injustices faced by LGBTQ group. So while unequal access can create further injustices, it is not case they always do. I think that the linkage you are calling out tends to arise when the two groups are in conflict.

shkkmo 5y ago

> That depends very heavily on the nature of the injustice, doesn't it? I mean, take Godwin's perspective here: that's literally the logic that gave us the holocaust! Um... I completely failed to follow this. Are you talking about Godwins law? What is the logic that literally gave us the Holocaust? > Isn't that an existence proof that your intuition is simply wrong here? I believe you have an error in your modal logic. Existence proofs can only disprove 'all/no X are P' statements and prove 'there exists an X that is P' statements. The claim you cite is of the later form. Generally, the way to disprove such a claim is to assume it is true then reach a logical contradiction.

newacct583 5y ago
If you polled Germans in 1938 about whether it should be state policy to kill six million jews, you would have gotten a hard no. Yet it happened anyway, because (to borrow the upthread phrasing) while sure rounding them up might "suck", it was important to "compartmentalize" and not conflate the injustice suffered by the local jews being interned with the prosecution of the war. So the people prosecuting the war got cart blanche to engage in genocide, because the people who should have stopped it didn't, because of something very much like the "compartmentalization" in the upthread post. The point being (which of course isn't that a modern holocaust is brewing) that if injustice sucks, it should suck for everyone everywhere and it should be allowed to discuss it in any forum. Arguing otherwise isn't arguing for "compartmentalization", it's just arguing for the perspective that the injustice doesn't suck.
- shkkmo 5y ago
  Holocaust didn't happen because the people who opposed rounding up people demonstrated as part of their private lives but didn't bring up their objections at work. Pretending that THIS is "literally" why the Holocaust happened borders on anti-semitism. The Holocaust happened because enough peoole there were willing to accept bad things being done when they were done to unpopular groups. The lesson to be learned from it is that even if someone is unpopular, we need to be strive to treat them with humanity.
  - newacct583 5y ago
    I'm sorry, but no. The holocaust absolutely happened because the German people turned a blind eye to what was going on. Because whatever their private feelings might have been, they kept them private because they weren't appropriate to express in public. The German people, in aggregate, were clearly able to stop the holocaust. And it happened anyway. Also let me just note that your casual attempt to accuse me of antisemitism in a thread LITERALLY ABOUT people being casually and unjustly accused of white supremacy is just "chef's kiss" level hypocrisy. Well done.
    - 5y ago

dang 5y ago

Would you please stop using HN primarily for ideological battle, and please stop feeding flamewars? We've had to ask you this many times before. It's not helping. Going to the Holocaust is super not helping. You could easily have made your point here without that; in fact your comment is entirely coherent without that gratuitous provocation. I appreciate that you may be arguing a minority position in this particular thread (at least from the portions that I've seen), but that doesn't absolve you of needing to follow the site guidelines, and your comments have been noticeably more flamey than many others. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27046069 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27046069.