5 ms·

I'd love a discussion of a (serious) solutions. A lot of Western solutions sound like variants of Simpson's Paradox, where equity is increased locally, and dec

by blagie 4y ago

I'd love a discussion of a (serious) solutions. A lot of Western solutions sound like variants of Simpson's Paradox, where equity is increased locally, and decreased globally. This is, for example, true if one provides people with a better-but-not-good-enough option. If I do something not meeting Western standards, I'm liable to get cancelled. On the other hand, many options a step up from slavery are just that: a step up from slavery, and would be considered very exploitative by Western standards. Sustainability matters for scalability. Likewise, cultural imperialism is bad, and a lot of options do a lot more (distributed) harm while helping individuals. I like cultural diversity. Options also need to stakeholders and implementation. It's easy to say "If I were dictator of the world, I would do X," but they do need to content with incentive structures, politics, and similar types of issues. I'm not quite sure how to even have that discussion, since if something can be misinterpreted, you're liable to be cancelled (or at the very least, receive some very bad press).

enkid 4y ago
Maybe not being cancelled shouldn't be your top priority? People talk like getting cancelled is a death sentence. Free speech advocates went to jail in times past. Now people act like getting ratio'd on Twitter for saying something insensitive is the worst possible fate.
- mjburgess 4y ago
  Well, quite a lot of people have committed suicide. cf. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjMPJVmXxV8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjMPJVmXxV8 Not everyone has The Comedy Store stage to relieve their depression.
  - throwawayoaky 4y ago
    [flagged]
  - enkid 4y ago
    Sorry, I'm not watching a two hour YouTube video to figure out what point you're making. Suicide is a serious concern and we should certainly take more steps to be civil online, but there's also never a singular simple reason for why someone made that decision.
    - mjburgess 4y ago
      Thousands of members of an online community which was previously supportive exiling you and attacking you, etc. is a pretty good push-over-the-edge. I'd suggest investing research time proportionate to the weight of your opinions.
- nerdawson 4y ago
  That trivialises the destruction of peoples’ lives. It’s that sort of thought pattern that allows the mob to justify its behaviour. Getting “cancelled” causes real world harm. Imagine losing your job, being too toxic to find work elsewhere, being unable to pay your mortgage, being unable to keep a roof over your family’s head.
  - enkid 4y ago
    Give me a break. What the above poster calls getting cancelled is not going to destroy their life. He's talking about fear of a downvote for saying something someone disagrees with on Hacker News, that's the context, so no I'm not minimizing the destruction of people's lives.
    - rabite 4y ago
      LOL, people who get cancelled get their bank accounts and credit cards and exchange accounts shut off, and are completely exiled from modern society. They can't complain about it either because they're banned from all social media. All of the above happened to me! You obviously sympathize with the mob destroying people's lives to trivialize the effects like this.
      - enkid 4y ago
        You were exiled from modern society and had your bank accounts cancelled? What for? Sorry, but I don't believe that this was caused by a tweet or hacker news comment.
        sjsdaiuasgdia 4y ago
        The mention of 'exchange accounts' leads me to believe there are possibly two unique situations this individual is co-mingling: 1) Transferring money between crypto exchanges and regulated financial institutions in ways that trip fraud or AML detection measures leading to closed accounts 2) Actions against one or more social media accounts in reaction to content this individual has posted or shared People love to act like one social media post against the "mainstream" is potentially life destroying but there's yet to be an actual example of that. Just loud jerks being loud jerks and getting mad when told to leave the party.
impossiblefork 4y ago
Considering your mention of cultural diversity in the context of slavery I can't interpret this other than as mere preference. But there are actual victims of this cultural diversity, and cultural imperialism which destroys such cultures as have victims would be strongly preferable to the continued existence of such cultures.
- extasia 4y ago
  Agreed. Personally I'm fine with cultural imperialism if it means _less slavery_. Not all cultures are equal.
- wincy 4y ago
  Okay but we agreed it was wrong and basically forced the Aztecs to stop sacrificing people to their sun god. I don’t think you’ll find a sane individual today advocating for child sacrifice to make sure the sun comes up in the morning. The Aztecs certainly would have preferred to keep being on top and brutalizing the other tribes around them. Is this a lack of cultural diversity? When do we stop respecting cultural diversity and step in to do what we believe to be the right thing?
  - bigbillheck 4y ago
    I think you might have some incorrect notions about the motivations of the conquistadores.
  - Spooky23 4y ago
    Hate to break it to you, but they didn’t work millions of Aztecs to death in the mines to save them from human sacrifice.
- pas 4y ago
  As an additional data point. Qatar and the building of the stadiums. Migrant workers kept in absolute inhumane conditions and worked to death in the heat. If a culture is okay with that maybe it's okay to want to nudge that culture to change. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnAER5JHHjo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnAER5JHHjo
acdha 4y ago
> If I do something not meeting Western standards, I'm liable to get cancelled. This just means you’re getting information from unreliable sources. “Cancelled” sounds like you’ll be unemployable but 99% of the time it means someone said something insulting, some people criticized them, and they had no significant consequences. The American and English right-wing like to talk like cancellation is a real problem because it’s both an effective marketing tool (notice how often complaints about being cancelled are delivered in for-profit books and media by people making upper-class incomes from it) and as a proactive defense against criticism.
gsatic 4y ago
Learnt about simpsons paradox today. Thanks!
wincy 4y ago
I mean, there’s certain types of cultural exports or hegemony that makes sense. We got the Aztecs to stop sacrificing children to Huitzilopochtli. We don’t live in a world where people REALLY believe in total cultural relativism. I think you’re spot on that we in the West find “step above slavery jobs” extremely distasteful. This results in situations where the news media celebrates the closing of a “child sweatshop” in Cambodia, but the cameras aren’t rolling when, faced with poor economic conditions due to the factory closing, those same children are now working in a child brothel, which everyone agrees is worse. Similarly, Siddharth Kara has recently revealed the horrors going on in the Congo involving the Cobalt trade with the warlords and the Chinese. That ones interesting too because thirty years ago the operations were run by South Africans but the western world largely agreed this was wrong so they ceded the land back to the Congo. This resulted in warlords becoming enriched by the power vacuum and becoming well armed and making things horrific for the poor people living in Congo who have to mine up toxic cobalt with their bare hands in dangerous tunnels and pits.
- pas 4y ago
  The solution to child and worker exploitation is not look sad and just buy the cheap garments and cobalt. This is a coordination problem first and foremost. The solution is to tax the shit out of supply chains that don't provide the basics. ... And yes, development economics is ugly. There's no royal road from subsistence farming to Switzerland-level, but whatever road there is it's not composed of separately inscrutable steps. It's perfectly okay to strive to make each step better and less horrible. Just as on the other side of globalization it's not some unknowable force closing non-profitable mines, and again it's a coordination problem that the disadvantaged folks and regions of globalization, in the developed economies, only got a big pat on the back. (And yes yes, there were a few programs to try to retrain unemployed people here and there, but it was simply a waste of money, because they got no help to mentally deal with the situation. Folks should have been encouraged very heavily to move where the jobs are instead of wallowing in semi-deserted corporate towns of misery.)
sushzbdbehsh 4y ago
word soup to advocate for exploitative work environments
- Chris2048 4y ago
  "Please don't post shallow dismissals"
  - sushzbdbehsh 4y ago
    it deserves nothing better
ksniwmidjd 4y ago
My sense is that a lot of the political class throughout the world is heavily benefitting from it. As long as that’s the case then the problem isn’t gonna get resolved.

by blagie 4y ago

enkid 4y ago

Maybe not being cancelled shouldn't be your top priority? People talk like getting cancelled is a death sentence. Free speech advocates went to jail in times past. Now people act like getting ratio'd on Twitter for saying something insensitive is the worst possible fate.

mjburgess 4y ago
Well, quite a lot of people have committed suicide. cf. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjMPJVmXxV8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjMPJVmXxV8 Not everyone has The Comedy Store stage to relieve their depression.
- throwawayoaky 4y ago
  [flagged]
- enkid 4y ago
  Sorry, I'm not watching a two hour YouTube video to figure out what point you're making. Suicide is a serious concern and we should certainly take more steps to be civil online, but there's also never a singular simple reason for why someone made that decision.
  - mjburgess 4y ago
    Thousands of members of an online community which was previously supportive exiling you and attacking you, etc. is a pretty good push-over-the-edge. I'd suggest investing research time proportionate to the weight of your opinions.
nerdawson 4y ago
That trivialises the destruction of peoples’ lives. It’s that sort of thought pattern that allows the mob to justify its behaviour. Getting “cancelled” causes real world harm. Imagine losing your job, being too toxic to find work elsewhere, being unable to pay your mortgage, being unable to keep a roof over your family’s head.
- enkid 4y ago
  Give me a break. What the above poster calls getting cancelled is not going to destroy their life. He's talking about fear of a downvote for saying something someone disagrees with on Hacker News, that's the context, so no I'm not minimizing the destruction of people's lives.
  - rabite 4y ago
    LOL, people who get cancelled get their bank accounts and credit cards and exchange accounts shut off, and are completely exiled from modern society. They can't complain about it either because they're banned from all social media. All of the above happened to me! You obviously sympathize with the mob destroying people's lives to trivialize the effects like this.
    - enkid 4y ago
      You were exiled from modern society and had your bank accounts cancelled? What for? Sorry, but I don't believe that this was caused by a tweet or hacker news comment.
      - sjsdaiuasgdia 4y ago
        The mention of 'exchange accounts' leads me to believe there are possibly two unique situations this individual is co-mingling: 1) Transferring money between crypto exchanges and regulated financial institutions in ways that trip fraud or AML detection measures leading to closed accounts 2) Actions against one or more social media accounts in reaction to content this individual has posted or shared People love to act like one social media post against the "mainstream" is potentially life destroying but there's yet to be an actual example of that. Just loud jerks being loud jerks and getting mad when told to leave the party.

impossiblefork 4y ago

Considering your mention of cultural diversity in the context of slavery I can't interpret this other than as mere preference. But there are actual victims of this cultural diversity, and cultural imperialism which destroys such cultures as have victims would be strongly preferable to the continued existence of such cultures.

extasia 4y ago
Agreed. Personally I'm fine with cultural imperialism if it means _less slavery_. Not all cultures are equal.
wincy 4y ago
Okay but we agreed it was wrong and basically forced the Aztecs to stop sacrificing people to their sun god. I don’t think you’ll find a sane individual today advocating for child sacrifice to make sure the sun comes up in the morning. The Aztecs certainly would have preferred to keep being on top and brutalizing the other tribes around them. Is this a lack of cultural diversity? When do we stop respecting cultural diversity and step in to do what we believe to be the right thing?
- bigbillheck 4y ago
  I think you might have some incorrect notions about the motivations of the conquistadores.
- Spooky23 4y ago
  Hate to break it to you, but they didn’t work millions of Aztecs to death in the mines to save them from human sacrifice.
pas 4y ago
As an additional data point. Qatar and the building of the stadiums. Migrant workers kept in absolute inhumane conditions and worked to death in the heat. If a culture is okay with that maybe it's okay to want to nudge that culture to change. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnAER5JHHjo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnAER5JHHjo

acdha 4y ago

> If I do something not meeting Western standards, I'm liable to get cancelled. This just means you’re getting information from unreliable sources. “Cancelled” sounds like you’ll be unemployable but 99% of the time it means someone said something insulting, some people criticized them, and they had no significant consequences. The American and English right-wing like to talk like cancellation is a real problem because it’s both an effective marketing tool (notice how often complaints about being cancelled are delivered in for-profit books and media by people making upper-class incomes from it) and as a proactive defense against criticism.

gsatic 4y ago

Learnt about simpsons paradox today. Thanks!

wincy 4y ago

I mean, there’s certain types of cultural exports or hegemony that makes sense. We got the Aztecs to stop sacrificing children to Huitzilopochtli. We don’t live in a world where people REALLY believe in total cultural relativism. I think you’re spot on that we in the West find “step above slavery jobs” extremely distasteful. This results in situations where the news media celebrates the closing of a “child sweatshop” in Cambodia, but the cameras aren’t rolling when, faced with poor economic conditions due to the factory closing, those same children are now working in a child brothel, which everyone agrees is worse. Similarly, Siddharth Kara has recently revealed the horrors going on in the Congo involving the Cobalt trade with the warlords and the Chinese. That ones interesting too because thirty years ago the operations were run by South Africans but the western world largely agreed this was wrong so they ceded the land back to the Congo. This resulted in warlords becoming enriched by the power vacuum and becoming well armed and making things horrific for the poor people living in Congo who have to mine up toxic cobalt with their bare hands in dangerous tunnels and pits.

pas 4y ago
The solution to child and worker exploitation is not look sad and just buy the cheap garments and cobalt. This is a coordination problem first and foremost. The solution is to tax the shit out of supply chains that don't provide the basics. ... And yes, development economics is ugly. There's no royal road from subsistence farming to Switzerland-level, but whatever road there is it's not composed of separately inscrutable steps. It's perfectly okay to strive to make each step better and less horrible. Just as on the other side of globalization it's not some unknowable force closing non-profitable mines, and again it's a coordination problem that the disadvantaged folks and regions of globalization, in the developed economies, only got a big pat on the back. (And yes yes, there were a few programs to try to retrain unemployed people here and there, but it was simply a waste of money, because they got no help to mentally deal with the situation. Folks should have been encouraged very heavily to move where the jobs are instead of wallowing in semi-deserted corporate towns of misery.)

sushzbdbehsh 4y ago

word soup to advocate for exploitative work environments

Chris2048 4y ago
"Please don't post shallow dismissals"
- sushzbdbehsh 4y ago
  it deserves nothing better

ksniwmidjd 4y ago

My sense is that a lot of the political class throughout the world is heavily benefitting from it. As long as that’s the case then the problem isn’t gonna get resolved.