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> Imagine having to explain to a well-meaning visitor from another planet why using the phrase "people of color" is considered particularly enlightened, but say

• dfltr 2y ago
  In fact the Gnorts would not have "a long list of rules to memorize" with "no underlying principles". They would instead have a history and culture (or many histories and many cultures) to learn in order to contextualize words and symbols and find their actual meaning, because meaning doesn't really exist without context.
  • username332211 2y ago
    Imagine that the 2028 Democratic presidential candidate for some reason consistently uses the term "colored people". We all know what's going to happen. The underlying history and culture would change within the span of 24 hours, and suddenly "colored people" would loose it's racist connotations. Awareness of history and culture won't help you understand language rules. Instead, to avoid saying something racist, one must be keenly aware of political expediency.
    • kubb 2y ago
      „The Democrats control the language“ is a wild, but unsurprising take.
  • zahlman 2y ago
    From the perspective of someone who was not raised in the culture in question, this is a distinction without a difference.
• pydry 2y ago
  It's the same with the performative moral posturing. Woke used to mean being cognizant of systemic injustice - stuff like police brutality. It came from 1970s harlem. Then the dominant culture that was responsible for a lot of that injustice latched on to it and twisted its meaning, watering it down. This is known as political recuperation - when radical ideas and terminology gets sanitized and deradicalized. It isnt some conspiracy either. It happens naturally, especially in America. Just today I merged to the main branch instead of a master branch. This happened because Microsoft employees wanted to pressure Microsoft to prevent sales to ICE-the-concentration-camp-people and Microsoft wanted to throw them a bone by "avoiding the term master" while still making that sweet sale. Rename that branch and everybody is happy, in theory right? Everybody except the people in those concentration camps, I guess. The people in Silly valley with masters degrees and scrum master certificates can laugh and pat themselves on the back about all of this silliness, imagining that "wokeness" became stupid because of Marxism or something, rather than because of societal pressures (like the ever present profit motive) which they actually deeply approve of.
  • ImHereToVote 2y ago
    In every American community there are varying shades of political opinion. One of the shadiest of these is the liberals. An outspoken group on many subjects, ten degrees to the left of center in good times, ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally. Here, then, is a lesson in safe logic. Phil Ochs
    • glitchc 2y ago
      That's a brilliant quote. Thank you for sharing.
    • affinepplan 2y ago
      wojack-meme levels of insight
      • ImHereToVote 2y ago
        Best insights are
• miunau 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • dang 2y ago
    Please make your substantive points without personal attacks. Btw your assessment could not be further from the truth. I've never met anyone who was more interested in learning or more intellectually curious than pg is.
    • deleted 2y ago
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    • deleted 2y ago
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• NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
  I think I once read on reddit that the first few votes a comment gets pretty much determines whether it will score sky-high, or get downvoted into oblivion. In the same way "colored people" can gain these connotations, just from other few people (falsely or not) inferring that it has those connotations. There need not be a history. I've seen too many blowups over the years about the word niggardly to think otherwise (more than one of these has made national news in the last few decades). It's not that there is a history of discrimination, it's that we've all made a public sport out of demonstrating how not-racist we are, and people are constantly trying to invent new strategies to qualify for the world championships.
  • dragonwriter 2y ago
    > In the same way "colored people" can gain these connotations, just from other few people (falsely or not) inferring that it has those connotations. [...] > It's not that there is a history of discrimination In abstract theory, that would be possible. In concrete reality, with "colored people", there is, in fact, a history of discrimination, and when the context of use is not such that there is a clear separation from that history (a separation that exists in, e.g., the NAACP continuing to use "colored people" in its name) it has become problematic because of that history.
    • NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
      >In concrete reality, with "colored people", there is, in fact, a history of discrimination Such is claimed. Which are the false accusations, which are the legitimate accusations, and which are merely the mistaken accusations? And how are each of those quantified? If someone actually tells me the numbers, how do I know that those are the correct numbers? And why should I believe them? Is there a reason to believe those, other than trying to qualify for the world championship "I am not a racist" games? If my skepticism is also racism, I then lack the means to be and remain rational about the subject, and if I can't be rational about it then I am with 100% certainty being manipulated with regards to the subject. Are you allowed to be skeptical? Do you feel as if you're allowed to be skeptical? If you do feel as if you are allowed to be skeptical, why are you not?
• tayo42 2y ago
  Haven't read the article yet, skimming the comments. Wild quote though. Does PG self censor when using the N word? Or does he say it, with the hard r? If that word isn't part of his vocabulary, why not? Seems like it should be.
  • recursive 2y ago
    > If that word isn't part of his vocabulary, why not? Seems like it should be. I don't get the comparison. Hard "R" or not makes little difference. You're eligible to be canceled for using either form. So not like PoC/CP.
    • tayo42 2y ago
      Without the r, you could maybe say it's a friendly word and hide behind that. Though generally yeah consequences socially are the same.
    • johnnyanmac 2y ago
      > Hard "R" or not makes little difference Should have told that to that teacher from decades ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vz9Zy2-C_lY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vz9Zy2-C_lY Such a wild interview that Boondocks outright sampled it for an episode.
• smikhanov 2y ago
  I can't for the life of me comprehend how PG manages to write in a style that sounds so lucid, so readable and compelling, and so authoritative, but on a substance that's so factually incorrect that it won't stand to any bit of critique. Like the paragraph quoted above: it's just so blatantly obvious what's wrong with turns like "considered particularly enlightened", or "there are no underlying principles" that I find it hard to believe that the text as a whole sounds so friendly and convincing, unless you stop and think for a second. I wish I could write like this about whatever mush is in my head.
  • snotrockets 2y ago
    I think it's called "from first principles", which is the laundered term for "disregarding context and previous work, because I don't feel other people's work is worth anything".
    • nomel 2y ago
      These are my favorite to read since it contains a full, traceable, logical path to get to a conclusion. It's much easier to understand why they think something. On this flip side, my least favorite are when someone name drops thinkers as a way to reference an ideology. It's very hard to actually know if someone understands the ideas behind that name, so it's usually impossible to understand why they think something. And, the names they drop often were the types to present their thoughts as the first, rarely, if ever, dropping names themselves, which I always find an amusing "they were allowed be free thinkers, but you can't!"
      • skulk 2y ago
        "Standing in the shoulders of giants is for losers! I will instead crane my neck and fail to see much of anything."
        • bpt3 2y ago
          What "giants" should he be standing on in your opinion?
• mike_hearn 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • brewdad 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • ImHereToVote 2y ago
      [flagged]
      • dang 2y ago
        Posting like this will get you banned here, no matter how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. No more of this, please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        • ImHereToVote 2y ago
          Fair enough. I see the message I replied to got the same warning. Fair play.
    • dang 2y ago
      You can't post this kind of ideological flamewar (not to mention personal attack) to HN and we ban accounts that do, so please don't. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  • watwut 2y ago
    Swastika use in Germany is heavily regulated. It is certainly not free to use symbol.
    • mike_hearn 2y ago
      It's regulated in such a way that it's absolutely allowed to use it to criticize the political opposition, which is why Der Spiegel can not only use it but show it combined with the German flag: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F93e09d8b-e320-4117-af3c-2df40b35126a_920x1236.png https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_pr... ... but CJ Hopkins is prosecuted repeatedly for using it on the cover of a book that criticized COVID policies (no double jeopardy rule there!)
• asdasdsddd 2y ago
  Having the principle of "words become bad because bad people use them" is stupid because you cede power to bad people. But really, its not a principle at all, its just a dumb cultural signaling, ie. "I'm not like those uneducated hicks".
  • dowager_dan99 2y ago
    Is that how you justify a swastika tattoo? You can also rob the bad people of the power to hide behind the words and symbols: if only bad people use them, we know the users are bad. It's definitely signaling, I don't see why it has to be "cultural".
    • asdasdsddd 2y ago
      Signaling is bad because anyone can signal anything they want. Everyone should be judging either other based on actions not superfluous signals. And yes, maybe you should think twice if you see a swastika tatoo on someone, people change and are multi dimensional.
      • 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
        Everyone "should" be vegan too but I ain't holding my breath
      • munificent 2y ago
        Is your comment here an "action" or "superfluous signal"? Do you have a coherent principle that separates one from the other?
        • asdasdsddd 2y ago
          Obviously its a gradient, but we can agree that "dedicate time and money" is on the action side and "typing online" being superfluous signaling. And yes, if you knew me in real life, you probably shouldn't weight my hacker news comments over what I spend time and money on.
• daseiner1 2y ago
  they’re not negroes, they’re colored they’re not colored, they’re African-American they’re not African-American, they’re black they’re not black, they’re Black they’re not Black, they’re People of Color they’re not People of Color, they’re BIPOC I wonder what the next twist of the pretzel will look like
  • JohnMakin 2y ago
    What, IYO, is being twisted here? What should people be called?
    • daseiner1 2y ago
      Truthfully I think that it is a dialectic process that counterintuitively perpetuates a mentality of victimhood and otherness. The neverending process of being othered//feeling othered//trying to empower oneself in one's otherness is entirely futile. To assimilate, you must assimilate. I'm well-aware that I'm being rather evasive and I certainly don't think anyone is fooled by what I'm really saying.
      • deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      • jvandreae 2y ago
        Yep, just the age-old trick of creating a problem and then selling an ineffective solution. Unbounded profit!
    • drdec 2y ago
      Personally, I took the comment to imply that we are not really solving the root issue behind what is driving the change in terminology and thus we are doomed to continue to apply the same (ineffective) solution.
      • potatoman22 2y ago
        Why is the changing terminology something that needs to be stopped? Does the language used to describe an identity need to be frozen in time?
• coliveira 2y ago
  Owners of social networks are terrified that they're accountable to society in any way. That explains why Musk and now Zuckerberg are so happy to throw away the last concept of accountability that society tried to create in the last decades. Basically they've taken over and are making all the rules.
  • xdennis 2y ago
    What is accountability? A platform picking what the truth is? Presumably you liked the fact checkers before because they were of the same political persuasion as you. Now that Trump is in power would you prefer if Musk/Zuckerberg placed right wing fact checkers in place and punished any opinion which is outside of the platform's Overton window? Musk removed picking fact checkers and replaced them with community notes. Zuckerberg says he'll do the same. Isn't that the societal accountability that you want?
    • MathMonkeyMan 2y ago
      I'm wary of the concepts of "fact-checking" and "mis-information," but there really is a lot of bullshit being said without any corresponding check on "yeah, but is that true?" Of course, if your worldview is sufficiently different from mine, we will disagree on what is true. But lying is lying.
    • enragedcacti 2y ago
      > The document explains to employees that epithets like "gays are freaks" and "immigrants are grubby, filthy pieces of shit" are now allowed under the new policy. but yeah, its definitely the fact checking that people are most upset about
    • LeafItAlone 2y ago
      I think these visitors from another planet would be more confused about the phrases “right/left wing _fact_ checker”…
    • kelnos 2y ago
      > Presumably you liked the fact checkers before because they were of the same political persuasion as you Or perhaps the GP liked the fact checkers because they were on the whole doing a good job of actually checking facts. I don't know if that's true or not; I haven't been on social media in years. But it's an incredibly weak argument to assume that someone only likes something because it aligns with their politics.
• blactuary 2y ago
  He's a smart enough person that even asking that question makes me think the whole piece is written in bad faith. Yes, language evolves and has specific context and nuance.
  • enragedcacti 2y ago
    its not that complicated, he just doesn't think that hard about things when they support his conclusion. He's silently edited blog posts in the past to fix glaring holes that a 7th grader could catch after commenters on HN pointed them out.
    • shanecleveland 2y ago
      Interesting point to consider. I recently questioned the validity of a statement made by a newsletter publisher related to a repeatedly-debunked conspiracy theory that he used to attempt to bolster his point. It reeked of irony. I politely asked for a fact-check on it in the comments section, as I otherwise enjoyed and agreed with the substance of the post. He both removed the claim in question and my comment. I was unsure of how to feel about this. Those who had already read the post online or still had the original in their inbox were left with the misinformation from what they may consider a trusted source. I believed it would have been better to edit out the false information, leave my comment, and reply with clarification on the editing and why. Likewise, this practice of dynamically-edited online content is actually relevant to the topic of PG's post and the role it plays in replacing the traditional constraints on printed media.
      • Vegenoid 2y ago
        While there is room for quibbling about whether or not silently removing false information from a piece you've written is dishonest, it most certainly is not honest. In addition to those who received an older version with the misinformation, a critical aspect of determining what is true is determining who to trust, since there is far too much to be known for any one person to determine it themselves. Silently editing your own writing to respond to good criticism of it leaves future readers less informed about your own trustworthiness.
• dredmorbius 2y ago
  I read Future Shock for the first time a few years ago, on about the 50th anniversary of its publication. One of the strongest impressions I had were that there were TK-count principle topics in the story: - The psychological impacts of an ever-increasing rate of change and information flow. Largely a dark view of the future, and one that's borne out pretty well. - Specific technological inventions or trends. Most of these have massively under-performed, with the obvious exception of information technologies, though how that's ultimately manifested is also strongly different from what was foreseen / predicted. - Social changes. Many of these read as laughably trite ... until I realised how absolutely profound those changes had been. The world of 1970 and of 2020 are remarkably different in gender roles, acceptance of nontraditional sexual orientations, race relations, even relationships of the young and old. I'm not saying "perfect" or "better" or "worse", or even that FS is an especially good treatment of the topic, only that the situation is different. Moreso than the other categories, the book marks a boundary of sorts between and old and new world. We live in the new world, and the old one is all but unrecognisable. (Those in their 70s or older may well have a more visceral feel of this as they'd lived through that change as adults, though they're rapidly dying out.)
  • dredmorbius 2y ago
    "TK-count" should of course be "three". Gah!
• aprilthird2021 2y ago
  Yeah, I generally really liked this blog post, and I was very much steeped in "woke" culture at one point. But this part struck me as an analogy that could be improved. Lots of things about human culture and language are strange if you try to understand exactly why they came to be what they are. Think of various ways of saying Christmas: Xmas, Noel. Or Santa Claus, he is also Saint Nicholas, but Christmas is not Saint Nicholas's Day, like Saint Patrick's Day or Saint Valentine's Day, etc.
• haberman 2y ago
  > gained racist connotations This passive phrasing implies a kind of universal consensus or collective decision-making process that the word has officially changed connotation. If this were the case, it would not be such a problem. What happens in practice is that a small minority of people decide that a certain word has bad connotations. These people decide that it no longer matters what the previous connotation was, nor the speaker's intention in uttering it, it is now off-limits and subject to correction when used. People pressure others to conform, in varying degrees of politeness -- anything from a well-intentioned and friendly FYI to a public and aggressive dressing down -- and therefore the stigma surrounding the word spreads. It's hard to believe that this terminology treadmill genuinely helps anyone, as people are perfectly capable of divining intent when they really want to (nobody is accusing the NAACP of favoring discrimination and segregation). Add to this that the favored terms of the treadmill creators don't necessarily even reflect what the groups in question actually want. Indigenous Americans generally prefer being called Indian, not Native American (CGP Grey made a whole video about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh88fVP2FWQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh88fVP2FWQ). So that momentary pause you feel when you almost say "Indian" and then correct it to "Native American", who is that actually serving? It's not the people in question. It's a different set of people, a set of people who have gained the cultural power to stigmatize words based on their own personal beliefs.
  • zahlman 2y ago
    >So that momentary pause you feel when you almost say "Indian" and then correct it to "Native American" Here in Canada it's "Indigenous peoples", sorry, I mean "First Nations", unless they've come up with something else now. Never mind that the people in question don't necessarily feel any kind of solidarity with other indigenous groups beyond their own. (Also, "missing and murdered indigenous women (and children)" is a set phrase, and people will yell at you if you point out the statistics showing that something like 70% of missing and murdered indigenous people in Canada are men.)
    • nayuki 2y ago
      When I went to school in Canada, the term I received in year 2000 was "aboriginals". The terminology has indeed been changing.
• griomnib 2y ago
  Yeah pretty sure the aliens are going to struggle more with there, they’re, and their.
• RickarySanchez 2y ago
  The stigmatization is imagined at best. Its similar to how words to describe individuals with learning disabilities also gain a negative connotation. Its not the word its the fact that the word refers to a subset of people that a comparison to is an insult. Hence, Mongoloid -> Retard -> Special -> <whatever the new one is> In terms of racism, its different but the same mechanism. Being compared to a minority race is not an insult (to most people). Its the fact, that racist people will use the word with vitriol. Racists and those they argue with will use the term in their arguments and gradually the use of the term will gain the conotation of a racist person. Hence, Negro -> Colored -> Person of Color -> <the next thing when PoC becomes racist>
  • ZeroGravitas 2y ago
    With terms for learning disabilities (and some racist terms) factual inaccuracy is also a factor. Mongoloid, Retard, Special, individuals with learning disabilities are not entirely interchangeable (except as insults).
  • OtherShrezzing 2y ago
    I think _Mongoloid_ doesn't fit with the rest of your examples, as it was never originally an impartial term. There's never a time when _Mongoloid_ wasn't an offensive term to some group, whereas _retard_ & _special_ were originally impartial.