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I'm just happy they are talking about it all! It's good to learn about things outside your main domain, especially with something like world history/geopolitics

I'm just happy they are talking about it all! It's good to learn about things outside your main domain, especially with something like world history/geopolitics. Can you give examples of the gibberish? Genuinely fascinated to know what you are referring to. This kind of stuff in particular can be pretty disheartening to learn about in general, and I find misinformation/pathos around it can often come from resistance to confronting the sadder, more terrible aspects of it. Which is totally understandable honestly! But I haven't heard of "gibberish" before.. you mean like being nonsensical? Like its hard to understand? Edit: ok all the downvotes makes me think I am missing something here.. Is this kind of thing in the culture war now?? Like British empire history?? I know I'm not the smartest guy (by far), but I can't even guess what, like, the controversy could be here. Truly trying to have the discussion, and I give anyone permission to be mean and tell me how I am being dumb here, I'd just be happy to know precisely how I am being dumb here.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
dijit 3y ago
Wait until you learn that there's no such thing as ethical consumption of anything under capitalism.
eyelidlessness 3y ago
> ok all the downvotes makes me think I am missing something here The thing you’re missing is that, to a certain prominent subset of the tech community which is also prominent here on HN, “politics” should be “kept out of” tech. Also from this point of view, “politics” is anything uncomfortable which doesn’t reinforce status quo power dynamics; reinforcing those however is “not politics”, and should be explicitly not kept out of tech. One such topic of “politics” is any analysis of how those power dynamics came to exist and be sustained on a global scale in the first place. Analysis of how they might be undone is right out.
- evantbyrne 3y ago
  Right. Yeah, that's definitely it.
u32480932048 3y ago
Hi there! I'm glad you're genuinely fascinated! Deciphering the meaning of words used by commoners can be totes challenging! I too enjoy learning things outside my main areas of interest, sometimes even conversing with people who exist outside the monoculture of my university program. I find there's a lot of misinformation/pathos around these beautiful people and their diverse cultures. Instead of using every word literally, they rely on a series of adaptive techniques (or "linguistic crutches", as I like to call them). They're just like the similes or metaphors we all learned about in English Composition I and II, but theirs don't always capture the depth, breadth, and/or nuance of a topic like ours do. Sometimes they speak in generalities or fail to support their comments with peer-reviewed meta-analyses. Nevertheless, they still seem to understand each other! It's truly very fascinating! Despite not knowing how words work or what Science is, it's a longstanding cultural practice of theirs to make unlicensed casual, general observations about their lived experience and the world they live in. They're known to do it in bars, in line at the gas station, in newspapers, comment sections on the internet, and even over the telephone! Sometimes, PhD students mistake these for formal theses and miss the point entirely. Other times, people who think they look smart ask them patronizing, bad-faith questions. In this case, the user is likely not saying that the text fails to encode meaningful information or is especially difficult to understand. Instead, this is a commonly-employed polite term for "banal bullshit". Put another way, they're likely expressing their opinion that this class of content is frequently superficial, lacks criticality, contributes minimally to the advancement of knowledge, and offers limited utility or actionable insight for broader discourse or practical application, as if the authors just wanted an excuse to use a new word or phrase they've just learned, whether to drive revenue, to prove to their peers that they're a Good Person, or some secret third thing.
- weeblewobble 3y ago
  Incredibly rude comment
  - CamperBob2 3y ago
    [flagged]
KaiserPro 3y ago
A fascination with history is good! I'm not entirely sure why people are downvoting. The only thing that I would suggest is learning about "historiography". As that's very important when you are learning about "contested" or "active" fields of historical research. History is always biased, and often is used as a way to frame the present, more than it is the past. to your point, Learning about the history of the empire is currently difficult for a number of reasons: 1) certain parts of the world are deeply ashamed of it, and will readily believe the worst, even if its logically not actually true. 2) other parts truly believe it was the best thing since sliced bread and civilised the world. the truth lies in between. Because the empire is now partly wrapped up in a culture war (renaming of streets, statues etc) internet and popculture sources for history tend to be either hyperbolic or really black and white. For example "England was the real empire builder and Scotland were also victims and were not really involved." This is patent bollocks for a number of reasons not least of which Scotland had a much higher rate of literacy and numeracy, so were needed to actually run the empire. However this view as scotland being the Victim of Englands bloodthirsty slave trade, is a device that is (mostly unwittingly) used to further the othering of the UK to allow for scots independence. This is where historiography comes in, an academic or, group of people will set out with a new narrative (Scots were the victims of empire) and start searching for sources to back that up. They will write a set of papers that will put forward the narrative. It will be challenged by others and perhaps it will shift accepted opinion on the matter. Another example is "Britain stood alone against the germans in WWII and won the war". was very fashionable up until recently. Now people are pointing out that it had the biggest economy by far, and it's empire covered large parts of the planet. It wasn't one island, it was an entire empire. More over, it almost single handedly funded the American industrialisation that kickstarted the post war American boom. Keep looking, keep questioning sources and motivations (including mine.)
- beepbooptheory 3y ago
  Right, thank you for taking the time, I think I understood all this. I am not sure how it relates to "tech people" talking about colonialism, but rather simply outlines some more ambient context to it. Either way, thank you for the lesson.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

dijit 3y ago

Wait until you learn that there's no such thing as ethical consumption of anything under capitalism.

eyelidlessness 3y ago

> ok all the downvotes makes me think I am missing something here The thing you’re missing is that, to a certain prominent subset of the tech community which is also prominent here on HN, “politics” should be “kept out of” tech. Also from this point of view, “politics” is anything uncomfortable which doesn’t reinforce status quo power dynamics; reinforcing those however is “not politics”, and should be explicitly not kept out of tech. One such topic of “politics” is any analysis of how those power dynamics came to exist and be sustained on a global scale in the first place. Analysis of how they might be undone is right out.

evantbyrne 3y ago
Right. Yeah, that's definitely it.

u32480932048 3y ago

Hi there! I'm glad you're genuinely fascinated! Deciphering the meaning of words used by commoners can be totes challenging! I too enjoy learning things outside my main areas of interest, sometimes even conversing with people who exist outside the monoculture of my university program. I find there's a lot of misinformation/pathos around these beautiful people and their diverse cultures. Instead of using every word literally, they rely on a series of adaptive techniques (or "linguistic crutches", as I like to call them). They're just like the similes or metaphors we all learned about in English Composition I and II, but theirs don't always capture the depth, breadth, and/or nuance of a topic like ours do. Sometimes they speak in generalities or fail to support their comments with peer-reviewed meta-analyses. Nevertheless, they still seem to understand each other! It's truly very fascinating! Despite not knowing how words work or what Science is, it's a longstanding cultural practice of theirs to make unlicensed casual, general observations about their lived experience and the world they live in. They're known to do it in bars, in line at the gas station, in newspapers, comment sections on the internet, and even over the telephone! Sometimes, PhD students mistake these for formal theses and miss the point entirely. Other times, people who think they look smart ask them patronizing, bad-faith questions. In this case, the user is likely not saying that the text fails to encode meaningful information or is especially difficult to understand. Instead, this is a commonly-employed polite term for "banal bullshit". Put another way, they're likely expressing their opinion that this class of content is frequently superficial, lacks criticality, contributes minimally to the advancement of knowledge, and offers limited utility or actionable insight for broader discourse or practical application, as if the authors just wanted an excuse to use a new word or phrase they've just learned, whether to drive revenue, to prove to their peers that they're a Good Person, or some secret third thing.

weeblewobble 3y ago
Incredibly rude comment
- CamperBob2 3y ago
  [flagged]

KaiserPro 3y ago

A fascination with history is good! I'm not entirely sure why people are downvoting. The only thing that I would suggest is learning about "historiography". As that's very important when you are learning about "contested" or "active" fields of historical research. History is always biased, and often is used as a way to frame the present, more than it is the past. to your point, Learning about the history of the empire is currently difficult for a number of reasons: 1) certain parts of the world are deeply ashamed of it, and will readily believe the worst, even if its logically not actually true. 2) other parts truly believe it was the best thing since sliced bread and civilised the world. the truth lies in between. Because the empire is now partly wrapped up in a culture war (renaming of streets, statues etc) internet and popculture sources for history tend to be either hyperbolic or really black and white. For example "England was the real empire builder and Scotland were also victims and were not really involved." This is patent bollocks for a number of reasons not least of which Scotland had a much higher rate of literacy and numeracy, so were needed to actually run the empire. However this view as scotland being the Victim of Englands bloodthirsty slave trade, is a device that is (mostly unwittingly) used to further the othering of the UK to allow for scots independence. This is where historiography comes in, an academic or, group of people will set out with a new narrative (Scots were the victims of empire) and start searching for sources to back that up. They will write a set of papers that will put forward the narrative. It will be challenged by others and perhaps it will shift accepted opinion on the matter. Another example is "Britain stood alone against the germans in WWII and won the war". was very fashionable up until recently. Now people are pointing out that it had the biggest economy by far, and it's empire covered large parts of the planet. It wasn't one island, it was an entire empire. More over, it almost single handedly funded the American industrialisation that kickstarted the post war American boom. Keep looking, keep questioning sources and motivations (including mine.)

beepbooptheory 3y ago
Right, thank you for taking the time, I think I understood all this. I am not sure how it relates to "tech people" talking about colonialism, but rather simply outlines some more ambient context to it. Either way, thank you for the lesson.