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I absolutely dislike this development. It seems beyond my understanding why Twitter is becoming the judge over which value systems around the world are the righ

by stfu 13y ago

I absolutely dislike this development. It seems beyond my understanding why Twitter is becoming the judge over which value systems around the world are the right ones to enforce and which ones are the wrong ones. If they want to play that whole culture sensitivity game, they also need to censor all negative statements against religious figures - because there is certainly some nation, somewhere in the world, which has laws against that. It seems to me absolutely unacceptable why Twitter is bowing to free-speech censorship of one country (U.K.) and not of another (let's say all the Arabic Nations). Either you subscribe to the rigorous interpretation of free speech in the U.S. or you have to respect each Nation's individual understanding of free speech. Otherwise this is pure cultural imperialism.

yummyfajitas 13y ago
What's wrong with cultural imperialism? Some cultures just suck, and cultural relativism is nonsense. "This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs." Charles Napier, British Commander of India
- marvin 13y ago
  Cultural imperialism is wrong when you can't be absolutely, unequivocally certain that your own culture is in the right. Which means that most of the time, cultural imperialism is bad. I don't know how much you've been travelling, but every place you'll visit you will see that there are big and small differences. Most of these will be weird to you, and some will be offensive. This is true even for very similar cultures, like for instance those of Australia and the United States. It becomes pretty obvious that it's usually impossible to be right in the scientific sense, when it comes to customs and cultural norms. I think we can safely say that witch-burning, widow-burning, genital mutilation (might there be an interesting observation about a popular US custom here?) and torture are all bad enough to warrant a bit of pressure. But outside of human rights violations, or maybe things that most cultures would agree is bad, these questions become fuzzy enough that you'll be more likely to look like a jackass than do any good. Try to imagine how cultural imperialism would look to you if, for instance, India was the global superpower and not the United States. http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html has some good observations about cognitive bias regarding social customs.

by stfu 13y ago

yummyfajitas 13y ago

What's wrong with cultural imperialism? Some cultures just suck, and cultural relativism is nonsense. "This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs." Charles Napier, British Commander of India

marvin 13y ago
Cultural imperialism is wrong when you can't be absolutely, unequivocally certain that your own culture is in the right. Which means that most of the time, cultural imperialism is bad. I don't know how much you've been travelling, but every place you'll visit you will see that there are big and small differences. Most of these will be weird to you, and some will be offensive. This is true even for very similar cultures, like for instance those of Australia and the United States. It becomes pretty obvious that it's usually impossible to be right in the scientific sense, when it comes to customs and cultural norms. I think we can safely say that witch-burning, widow-burning, genital mutilation (might there be an interesting observation about a popular US custom here?) and torture are all bad enough to warrant a bit of pressure. But outside of human rights violations, or maybe things that most cultures would agree is bad, these questions become fuzzy enough that you'll be more likely to look like a jackass than do any good. Try to imagine how cultural imperialism would look to you if, for instance, India was the global superpower and not the United States. http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html has some good observations about cognitive bias regarding social customs.