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> PG is deciding that because PC culture exists, we can't work on those real issues until PC culture is gone That doesn't seem to be supported by the essay its

by diggan 2y ago

> PG is deciding that because PC culture exists, we can't work on those real issues until PC culture is gone That doesn't seem to be supported by the essay itself, since it has the following part: > But by the same token we should not automatically reject everything the woke believe. I'm not a Christian, but I can see that many Christian principles are good ones. It would be a mistake to discard them all just because one didn't share the religion that espoused them. It would be the sort of thing a religious zealot would do. It seems to say there are real issues, there are good things coming from "the woke" (whatever that means), we shouldn't discard all ideas just because one or two are bad. > Because PG doesn't think its actually a problem. Is that something pg actually said/wrote/hinted at in any of the essays, or are you just trying to bad-faith your way out of this discussion?

petsfed 2y ago
PG says >Racism, for example, is a genuine problem. Not a problem on the scale that the woke believe it to be, but a genuine one. What he does not explain is how big a problem of scale this is, but based on the way the rest of the essay goes, I'm going to guess that he thinks racism is not a problem that currently demands any policy changes whatsoever, except perhaps to roll back prior policy changes to address the real, measurable damage of historic racism.
- diggan 2y ago
  > I'm going to guess that he thinks racism is not a problem that currently demands any policy changes whatsoever, except perhaps to roll back prior policy changes to address the real, measurable damage of historic racism. Is that really your charitable reading of the part you quoted? In my mind, a charitable reading would be that he means it is a genuine problem, and deserves to be fixed, but it isn't as big as "the woke" deems it to be. I wouldn't do any assumptions if he wants/doesn't want policy change, and jumping to thinking he advocates for rolling back prior policy certainly doesn't sound like charitable reading to me. It is a divisive topic already, we would all be better off trying to understand as well as we can before replying.
  - ImPostingOnHN 2y ago
    > he means it is a genuine problem, and deserves to be fixed, but it isn't as big as "the woke" deems it to be Who is "the woke"? How big do they think big is? How does PG know what this nebulous group all agrees upon? How big of an issue does he think it is, as far as actions to be taken? Is "the woke" just anyone who disagrees with him here? Not specifying any meaning makes it literally a meaningless, divisive (us vs. them), dismissive statement on racism at best, and at worst, rhetoric to baselessly paint my opponent as more extreme than myself, because I am of course precisely the correct amount of reasonable. A rebuttal in similar style would be "racism is actually a problem larger than thought by those who think it isn't", which you may notice is also meaningless and dismissive.
    - Levitz 2y ago
      Pretty much all of that is answered if you actually read the article.
      - petsfed 2y ago
        I just read the article, and I can conclusively say that no, he does not explain how big a problem racism actually is, he claims that its all humanities professors and students (my experience as a physics and engineering student prior to 2015 suggests otherwise), nor does he explain why he is such an expert on what "the woke" all believe. What he does do is explain at length how unfair it is that offenses he considers minor are now grounds for termination. See one of my other comments for details about why professors need to be particularly aware of the hostile environment they can create by dint of being in a position of considerable power over their students.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - davorak 2y ago
    > I wouldn't do any assumptions if he wants/doesn't want policy change, and jumping to thinking he advocates for rolling back prior policy certainly doesn't sound like charitable reading to me. I think it is a weakness of the article that PG does not address this directly. He dis say that racism is > Not a problem on the scale that the woke believe it to be So if someone only uses woke to mean "being aware of and attentive to important social issues" it is easy for the to wake away with the impression that PG painted their concerns as overblown. If I was PG's editor I would suggest replacing 'woke' with prig here for clarity.
vannevar 2y ago
I don't think anyone reading this article would conclude that PG believes racism is a bigger problem than wokism. Which wildly diminishes the actual real-world impact of racism and wildly exaggerates the actual real world impact of wokism.
- bpt3 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - Jensson 2y ago
    > designed to appease (and in some cases enrich) a very small, fickle, and vocal portion of the population. Note that the people enriched here aren't the poor minorities, it are the self proclaimed leaders of these movements that gets high positions in governments and companies and thus enrich themselves. There is no value in making those grifters richer, even though there is value in helping poor people.
  - vannevar 2y ago
    Is it an "enormous amount of resources"? How do you think it compares to the amount of resources historically put into racism, including all the waste and lost opportunity costs? In my experience, most people complaining about wokism are projecting their own annoyance at language policing into some kind of massive social problem. But I'm open-minded, and if you have a good argument that the resources put into wokism far outweigh the losses from racism, I'm happy to listen. PG's essay makes no effort to present that argument.
    - bpt3 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - vannevar 2y ago
        So your point isn't so much that language policing costs a lot, it's that it doesn't provide any value. But what if it does? What if the way people talk publicly about other people does impact behavior? Do you think the social stigma attached to the n-word, and the consequential reduction in its public use, helped contribute to equal rights? What about slurs against gays, or Jews? Maybe there is some value in policing language after all?

by diggan 2y ago

petsfed 2y ago

PG says >Racism, for example, is a genuine problem. Not a problem on the scale that the woke believe it to be, but a genuine one. What he does not explain is how big a problem of scale this is, but based on the way the rest of the essay goes, I'm going to guess that he thinks racism is not a problem that currently demands any policy changes whatsoever, except perhaps to roll back prior policy changes to address the real, measurable damage of historic racism.

diggan 2y ago
> I'm going to guess that he thinks racism is not a problem that currently demands any policy changes whatsoever, except perhaps to roll back prior policy changes to address the real, measurable damage of historic racism. Is that really your charitable reading of the part you quoted? In my mind, a charitable reading would be that he means it is a genuine problem, and deserves to be fixed, but it isn't as big as "the woke" deems it to be. I wouldn't do any assumptions if he wants/doesn't want policy change, and jumping to thinking he advocates for rolling back prior policy certainly doesn't sound like charitable reading to me. It is a divisive topic already, we would all be better off trying to understand as well as we can before replying.
- ImPostingOnHN 2y ago
  > he means it is a genuine problem, and deserves to be fixed, but it isn't as big as "the woke" deems it to be Who is "the woke"? How big do they think big is? How does PG know what this nebulous group all agrees upon? How big of an issue does he think it is, as far as actions to be taken? Is "the woke" just anyone who disagrees with him here? Not specifying any meaning makes it literally a meaningless, divisive (us vs. them), dismissive statement on racism at best, and at worst, rhetoric to baselessly paint my opponent as more extreme than myself, because I am of course precisely the correct amount of reasonable. A rebuttal in similar style would be "racism is actually a problem larger than thought by those who think it isn't", which you may notice is also meaningless and dismissive.
  - Levitz 2y ago
    Pretty much all of that is answered if you actually read the article.
    - petsfed 2y ago
      I just read the article, and I can conclusively say that no, he does not explain how big a problem racism actually is, he claims that its all humanities professors and students (my experience as a physics and engineering student prior to 2015 suggests otherwise), nor does he explain why he is such an expert on what "the woke" all believe. What he does do is explain at length how unfair it is that offenses he considers minor are now grounds for termination. See one of my other comments for details about why professors need to be particularly aware of the hostile environment they can create by dint of being in a position of considerable power over their students.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- davorak 2y ago
  > I wouldn't do any assumptions if he wants/doesn't want policy change, and jumping to thinking he advocates for rolling back prior policy certainly doesn't sound like charitable reading to me. I think it is a weakness of the article that PG does not address this directly. He dis say that racism is > Not a problem on the scale that the woke believe it to be So if someone only uses woke to mean "being aware of and attentive to important social issues" it is easy for the to wake away with the impression that PG painted their concerns as overblown. If I was PG's editor I would suggest replacing 'woke' with prig here for clarity.

vannevar 2y ago

I don't think anyone reading this article would conclude that PG believes racism is a bigger problem than wokism. Which wildly diminishes the actual real-world impact of racism and wildly exaggerates the actual real world impact of wokism.

bpt3 2y ago
[flagged]
- Jensson 2y ago
  > designed to appease (and in some cases enrich) a very small, fickle, and vocal portion of the population. Note that the people enriched here aren't the poor minorities, it are the self proclaimed leaders of these movements that gets high positions in governments and companies and thus enrich themselves. There is no value in making those grifters richer, even though there is value in helping poor people.
- vannevar 2y ago
  Is it an "enormous amount of resources"? How do you think it compares to the amount of resources historically put into racism, including all the waste and lost opportunity costs? In my experience, most people complaining about wokism are projecting their own annoyance at language policing into some kind of massive social problem. But I'm open-minded, and if you have a good argument that the resources put into wokism far outweigh the losses from racism, I'm happy to listen. PG's essay makes no effort to present that argument.
  - bpt3 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - vannevar 2y ago
      So your point isn't so much that language policing costs a lot, it's that it doesn't provide any value. But what if it does? What if the way people talk publicly about other people does impact behavior? Do you think the social stigma attached to the n-word, and the consequential reduction in its public use, helped contribute to equal rights? What about slurs against gays, or Jews? Maybe there is some value in policing language after all?