Item — HN Reader

Well I think you addressed the simplest case, which wasn't really the situation here (nor in the meme).

I think if somebody directly offends you by calling you something you don't like, then from first-principles, it does seem like you're always okay letting them know that and seeing if they mind stopping. And most kind people would.

But in the meme-case it wasn't the lady in the meme asking people to stop, it was just some random girl on reddit. Same with the cargo-culting, I don't think the cargo-cults themselves are objecting, rather it is somebody objecting on behalf of another group.

Or the case of how we name our git-branches is even more indirect (since nobody is calling anybody anything, except a git-branch).

I'd love to hear some from-first-principles, emotionless arguments with clear proposals (e.g. If x% of people think term Y offends group Z, at what threshhold do we care? And does only group Z get to vote?).

1 comments

I think what you're asking for are the kinds of philosophical questions that don't have clean logical answers. I agree that the cases of people advocating for groups they are not members of are more challenging, but I think they're also highly situation-dependent; for example what representation does group Z have already? And how do you quantify that?

In my experience a lot of these problems ultimately trace their cause back to some systemic imbalance that's often invisible to those on the 'winning' side of it. Take the idea of 'white privilege'; a lot of white people live in very poor or difficult circumstances, and probably don't feel privileged, but the real meaning of that phrase is that their situation would be even worse if they weren't white, and purely because of their appearance. So I think if you want proposals for dealing with these kinds of problem, then fixing the societal systems is where you want to look, rather than dealing with the proximate causes. Most of us can only work on the level of symptoms with this one though, hence my initial reply.

I'm not asking for a philosophical proof of which terms are or aren't bad. I am proposing that rather than taking every single complaint seriously that we try to set some basic structure or benchmark.

I perceive that the current state of language-policing is anarchy: anybody can all anything bad/harmful/problematic/ism etc. Often a small group suddenly decides that their personal judgments on language should be followed by all, and it makes the remaining majority bristle, particularly if they try to enforce it without bothering to make a compelling case and win popular support.

I perceived this blog-post to be one piece of noise in this free-for-all.

Perhaps it's time for a better system than anarchy -- such as setting a standard (majority vote of the affected group?).

I don't think the general concept that "victims must be able to articulate the exact damage done to them or else no harm was done" nor "if some of the victims of something say it's ok then it is ok for everyone" are very sound.

This is not an attack on what you're saying and I'm not saying it even applies wholly right now, it just sticks out to me as a problem with any approach where "a majority of people publicly express an opinion" as a criteria.