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MLK keenly understood that olive branches need backing by a sharp tongue to cut through comfortable stupor, otherwise minds don't change and bodies don't make w

MLK keenly understood that olive branches need backing by a sharp tongue to cut through comfortable stupor, otherwise minds don't change and bodies don't make way. issues of intrinsic identity--race, gender, sexuality, etc.--are contentious, not because of those characteristics themselves, but because of the perceived threat to the status of marginally-statused individuals in otherwise higher status groups. that's what implicit bias is, a subconscious vigilance against rising threats principally based on outwardly observable characteristics[0]. it's applied insecurity. people comfortable in their status don't bother to shout down and suppress others. this is small-p politics. pointing out hypocrisy hurts. it creates cognitive dissonance, it backlashes. but nothing changes without that. pain is literally our built-in evolutionary change agent. and the challenge-suppression dynamic is playing out right here. you're part of it, responding to maintain the status quo while pointing out a tiny opening far away and in the future, a nonthreatening mirage of a glimmer[1]. other responders feel so marginal and threatened that they've decided to screech back, in defense of their own tenuous position, lest it decline further. this is literally trying to put people in their place (exhibit A: @bsanr's flagged/dead parent comment). all this from a little comment pointing out commonplace racial hypocrisy. what power that is! by the way, @dang explicitly declined to intervene for the kobe memorial posts at the time. merry christmas! [0]: those outward characteristics are uncritically internalized to represent a nebulously combined physical, ideological and cultural threat (an antiquated evolutionary feature that aided survival millions of years ago but not so much today). this shortcut also serves to lessen cognitive load and the suppressive resistance required. [1]: i'd delve into the dynamics of why hn won't change just given 'time and measured effort', but this post is too long already.

dredmorbius 5y ago
Martin needed and acknowledged Malcolm. Status-quoism is inherently repressive in any culture in which existing descrimination exists. And yes, cognitive dissonance, especially aimed at cultural or tribal identity, hurts. Most people reject it. I agree with all of those points. I'm not arguing for status-quoism. I am suggesting what I've found to work reasonably well in promiting my own set of heterodox views, which include some shared by you, here on HN. Neither the userbase nor the mods will respond well to direct confrontation. Even when they're sympathetic to a viewpoint, mods will act on the basis of how the site will respond to a comment rather than its message or viewpoint. A recent example is here. I disagreed strongly with dang's moderation (and am still discussing the issue with him), though I see and get dang's guiding rule: the tone is all but certain to generate a flamefest rather than productive or insightful discussion. (That view guides very nearly all HN moderation, outside spam and personal attacks.) dang's admonition was actually flagged and killed for a time. (It was later restored, though the "flagged" tag remains.) Yes, it inherently puts all heterodox viewpoints at a disadvantage, and as I argued, the response was to a piece that was itself mindless ideological flamebait. It's really hard to counter the piece without explicitly pointing that out. You'll have to have "showdead" enabled to see the start of this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29489004 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29489004 I'd made my own rebuttal to the article on that post. I applied some of the methods I've discussed here. No, it wasn't the top comment, but it did pretty well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29490375 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29490375 The point is that HN is not an open or unbiased field. It does have an establishment bias, and it has the means to serve that. It's not a venue in which direct confrontation is effective. I'm not saying that confrontation doesn't work ever, or that it's not ever justified. Defeating fascism required WWII. And a large part of the fight you're describing is a continuation of that battle. HN is a venue in which a consistent effort over time does have effect. I'd joined the site years ago feeling myself something as an outsider. For what it's worth, I've had some success in posts and comments. And what I've used to best effect is: - Repeated submissions of topics I think deserve greater attention. Most of those fail. Much of what I submit that does take root isn't what I'd most hope does. Sometimes I get lucky. - Find ways of pointing out ... less than robust thinking or belief ... with a minimum of edge. This is one I consider fairly successful, as what I was muttering under my breath was "just think about what you're actually saying here". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22133112 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22133112 - Sometimes, be direct. In that case, I'll lay out my case first, and leave the knife for the end. I thought a few times before leaving the last 'graph of this comment, on balance I'm glad I did: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29669873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29669873 I've suggested you reach out to dang. I've contacted him on your behalf. I do hope you both take up the opportunity. And good luck, I really and truly mean it. You're tackling an extremely valid cause, and one that I try to help where, when, and how I can.
- clairity 5y ago
  maybe it's inadvertent, but by hammering on your perspective for how you think change can happen (which i can appreciate but don't agree with), you come off as normative, that we should all think and act the same way. it's brushing aside malcolm for martin, and only martin. but confrontation has a place in the constellation of approaches needed to move groups beyond shallow backwaters. confrontation is an exertion of power; it shifts fault lines. it creates the discomfort required to unlock stupor, the ossification of perceived hierarchy. that said, i'm not really a revolutionary. i'll drop in a provocation from time to time to keep the sheep vigilant, but i generally nope out of most hn discussions around issues like race and gender. the ignorance, self-serving naïveté, and shallowness of those discussions are as gallingly juvenile as they are unrewarding. this isn't just an hn problem, it's a tech industry problem.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    That reading is certainly not what I'm intending. It's more a strategic reading of the landscape. Direct confrontation plays poorly in HN comments, and attempts to do so will be futile. There's a subtext to the moderator response in the thread linked above: if you do want to engage in direct political discourse, doing so within an article submitted to HN is far more likely to be successful. The submission queue is a more powerful instrument than the discussion thread. Focus efforts there principally. That doesn't mean "don't play the comments". But recognise the limitations, ground rules, and limitations in doing so. (Review of my own comment history should show the types of confrontation I'm finding generally useful. I usually aim less at changing minds directly than at exposing hypocrisy and/or motivated reasoning, or similar faults.) Your submission history suggests you haven't been utilising that approach. You might give it a shot. The submissions queue also affords the option at encouraging others' efforts in the direction you'd like to see. It's also possible to contact HN mods directly (again: hn@ycombinator.com) and recommend posts for the 2nd chance or invited submissions queues. I've found mods quite receptive to this. My practice is to not recommend my own pieces, though that's apparently permitted.
    - clairity 5y ago

dredmorbius 5y ago

Martin needed and acknowledged Malcolm. Status-quoism is inherently repressive in any culture in which existing descrimination exists. And yes, cognitive dissonance, especially aimed at cultural or tribal identity, hurts. Most people reject it. I agree with all of those points. I'm not arguing for status-quoism. I am suggesting what I've found to work reasonably well in promiting my own set of heterodox views, which include some shared by you, here on HN. Neither the userbase nor the mods will respond well to direct confrontation. Even when they're sympathetic to a viewpoint, mods will act on the basis of how the site will respond to a comment rather than its message or viewpoint. A recent example is here. I disagreed strongly with dang's moderation (and am still discussing the issue with him), though I see and get dang's guiding rule: the tone is all but certain to generate a flamefest rather than productive or insightful discussion. (That view guides very nearly all HN moderation, outside spam and personal attacks.) dang's admonition was actually flagged and killed for a time. (It was later restored, though the "flagged" tag remains.) Yes, it inherently puts all heterodox viewpoints at a disadvantage, and as I argued, the response was to a piece that was itself mindless ideological flamebait. It's really hard to counter the piece without explicitly pointing that out. You'll have to have "showdead" enabled to see the start of this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29489004 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29489004 I'd made my own rebuttal to the article on that post. I applied some of the methods I've discussed here. No, it wasn't the top comment, but it did pretty well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29490375 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29490375 The point is that HN is not an open or unbiased field. It does have an establishment bias, and it has the means to serve that. It's not a venue in which direct confrontation is effective. I'm not saying that confrontation doesn't work ever, or that it's not ever justified. Defeating fascism required WWII. And a large part of the fight you're describing is a continuation of that battle. HN is a venue in which a consistent effort over time does have effect. I'd joined the site years ago feeling myself something as an outsider. For what it's worth, I've had some success in posts and comments. And what I've used to best effect is: - Repeated submissions of topics I think deserve greater attention. Most of those fail. Much of what I submit that does take root isn't what I'd most hope does. Sometimes I get lucky. - Find ways of pointing out ... less than robust thinking or belief ... with a minimum of edge. This is one I consider fairly successful, as what I was muttering under my breath was "just think about what you're actually saying here". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22133112 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22133112 - Sometimes, be direct. In that case, I'll lay out my case first, and leave the knife for the end. I thought a few times before leaving the last 'graph of this comment, on balance I'm glad I did: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29669873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29669873 I've suggested you reach out to dang. I've contacted him on your behalf. I do hope you both take up the opportunity. And good luck, I really and truly mean it. You're tackling an extremely valid cause, and one that I try to help where, when, and how I can.

clairity 5y ago
maybe it's inadvertent, but by hammering on your perspective for how you think change can happen (which i can appreciate but don't agree with), you come off as normative, that we should all think and act the same way. it's brushing aside malcolm for martin, and only martin. but confrontation has a place in the constellation of approaches needed to move groups beyond shallow backwaters. confrontation is an exertion of power; it shifts fault lines. it creates the discomfort required to unlock stupor, the ossification of perceived hierarchy. that said, i'm not really a revolutionary. i'll drop in a provocation from time to time to keep the sheep vigilant, but i generally nope out of most hn discussions around issues like race and gender. the ignorance, self-serving naïveté, and shallowness of those discussions are as gallingly juvenile as they are unrewarding. this isn't just an hn problem, it's a tech industry problem.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  That reading is certainly not what I'm intending. It's more a strategic reading of the landscape. Direct confrontation plays poorly in HN comments, and attempts to do so will be futile. There's a subtext to the moderator response in the thread linked above: if you do want to engage in direct political discourse, doing so within an article submitted to HN is far more likely to be successful. The submission queue is a more powerful instrument than the discussion thread. Focus efforts there principally. That doesn't mean "don't play the comments". But recognise the limitations, ground rules, and limitations in doing so. (Review of my own comment history should show the types of confrontation I'm finding generally useful. I usually aim less at changing minds directly than at exposing hypocrisy and/or motivated reasoning, or similar faults.) Your submission history suggests you haven't been utilising that approach. You might give it a shot. The submissions queue also affords the option at encouraging others' efforts in the direction you'd like to see. It's also possible to contact HN mods directly (again: hn@ycombinator.com) and recommend posts for the 2nd chance or invited submissions queues. I've found mods quite receptive to this. My practice is to not recommend my own pieces, though that's apparently permitted.
  - clairity 5y ago