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!dev

I have a couple of thoughts about social justice controversies from these last years.

I think it's hard to have a good opinion about these events for several reasons.

One reason is that finding good information in 2019 is very hard.

Revenue based sites (thus unneutral) dominate the search results. You search about something and you find thousands of sites basically saying the same thing (because they copy each other).

That's why the existence of a free and open search engine is so important, so it's easier to find neutral hence good information on which to base your opinions, but they are prohibitively big for small groups to build.

Another reason is that controversies generate shock and shock curtails rational thinking. Maybe that's how the primitive brain works?

I'm not much of a scholar to feel confident to say that, but it's so recurrent that it's not too much of a wild guess.

When a controversy happens, a natural reaction is to pick a side. This means that:
a) we assume that there are only 2 sides, and
b) we must pick one of them

So, maybe the human is a bad politician by nature?

Also, because of the shock controversies generate, peaceful dialogue is very rare.

I have yet to see peaceful dialogue online about what patriarchy means to feminists and a lot of other terms they use.

I don't care much about feminists that vandalize or interrupt talks (yelling over someone else is abuse in my opinion).

But for the rest of them, I think discussing their ideas would be good.

I say this because most feminist discourse I see online is not open. Or maybe there are such instances but the web is so big that it's hard to find such instances.

I think some part of the modern feminist doctrine is bullshit, and some part is true.

I for one hate when some men I know in life expect their wives to be their cooks+cleaners (unless they want to do that, willingly). Personally, I'd encourage my wife to get a job (rightfully so, not just to meet some minority quota in some company).

I don't mind either calling a trans person the pronoun she wants.

But other ideas are awful, like the idea that meritocracy is patriarchy, so you need to force minorities to meet a proportionate quota. That's terrible reasoning.

Or the excessive self appreciation culture, like saying to yourself "you are pretty, you are beautiful, you are perfect". I think that grows arrogance and black-or-white thinking.

And some other ideas as well.

I guess the same you can say about any doctrine with different degrees. Some part is bullshit, some part isn't.

Some right wing people hate everyone who isn't white by default, but some want to have more immigration control.

I sure don't like the experiment of separating children from families like the current us govt did, but I wouldn't be happy either to know that by '99 50% of gangs members in the us were hispanic.

With this, I'm not going to say "embrace everyone's ideas" like an idiot. I hate when people do that. It's a stupid and weak reaction to radicalism.

In fact I think the way you fight radicalism and bad doctrines is that you listen to them and maintain good dialogue and counterargue in a respectful but insightful manner.

Making snide remarks, insulting or trolling won't change anyone's mind. That is just throwing fire to the fire.

In fact, when someone gets harassed because of something they believe in, usually it results in even more adherence to their beliefs, because of the usual assumption that success or goodness is full of strife.

So by telling a "sjw" or kkk member that they are idiots over twitter, you are in fact making them stronger believers in their doctrine.

Think of Daryl Davis, a black guy that made 200 members leave the kkk. How? He didn't tell them they were assholes, he somehow made friends with them.

I feel bad now because I've been trolling new devrant users a lot because of how they worsen the quality of the site, but maybe I should tell them that they are ruining the site somehow in a nice way and maybe they'll listen? I dunno...

Comments
  • 2
    Funnily enough, you are making the same mistake you are brining up: Tribal thinking.

    I mostly agree with you but I think there is plenty of rational (if you can call it that, let's rather go with civil) debate about feminism. It's just that you always see the loud minority. Sadly, as much as we see the loud minority, the powers in charge also do, so they do actually have quite a bit of influence.

    I do know very well what you mean but sadly us more calm people (by nature) don't get as much attention. I know it's a meme that centrists are like canadians, too polite to say anything but it's kinda true
  • 1
    @12bitfloat I'm not following you.
    > you are making the same mistake you are
    > brining up: Tribal thinking.
    how?

    > there is plenty of rational (if you can call it that,
    > let's rather go with civil) debate about feminism
    where/when does that happen though? not challenging the existence, just trying to find those, like I said "... maybe there are such instances but the web is so big that it's hard to find such instances".

    > It's just that you always see the loud minority
    I don't think bad feminism is the loud minority, bad feminism is quite present and has good presence, including the open source community. Coraline Ehmke was very influential and authored a CoC (that I like for the most part, except one very bad section) that was adopted by then 40k projects.

    I think good feminism is the minority, albeit quiet.
  • 1
    @jesustricks Not directly, but by implication.
    I guess I was a bit too harsh on that though, so sorry about that.

    In real life. My mom probably thinks feminism is great but if we would have a conversation we wouldn't hate each other. Most people aren't that politically polarized as the internet makes it seem. I'm sure even if I sat down with one of the SJW types in my university to a beer we could talk about it in a civil way. For some reason people are always meaner on ther internet.

    True, as I stated, sadly the load minority is what's getting the attention. Not only from us but also from the ones making the decisions. So I also don't be the whole "but SJWs are just a few upset college kids" thing
  • 1
    The discussion culture in the interwebs is just quite toxic in some circles, especially those with conflict potential (popular sites which cater to a broad spectrum). Maybe because no one gets punched in their face for jumping at the throat of someone else (lack of consequences). Maybe because most people are idiots ¯\_ (ツ) _/¯
  • 1
    It's easy to get through a spiral of rage on the internet today. I like living in Europe. Those SJW problems are still rare. I just try to be the most polite during my day and try not to stick to ideologies (although when I vote, I vote on communist parties). Sometimes I go with the occasional "I don't care" or "I don't know" when SJW topics hit the room. I just go on with my own stuff. Life is already hard without caring about external stuff. The world is unfair, but PC stuff make's it even harder to get to the bottom of the questions.
  • 0
    @bartmr How can you not be sure on SJWs and vote for communists?

    SJWs aren't all bad. Some things are quite reasonable and have good intentions. But all the bad things they say are the result of their collectivist views which is exactly the same foundation for communism 🤔
  • 1
    Can I skip most of the cruft here and just point out that there is no such thing as a meritocracy? Like "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps", the term "meritocracy" was invented as a sardonic joke at the expense of people who thought something like that was realistic or possible. It was coined by a sociologist named Michael Young in a satirical essay about a fictional dystopia.
  • 0
    @HollowKitty I did not know that but he didn't create the concept [image from the meritocracy article on wiki].

    Even if he invented the term as a joke, I've seen it happen in several jobs, usually people get promoted because they do well.
    And that's the experience of thousands of people as well.

    So good historical scholar insight, but it's not really true that it's not real.
  • 1
    @jesustricks "usually people get promoted because they do well"

    I'm going to take a big ol' citation needed on that one bud. At best you can say that people get promoted because there's a general perception that they've done well. Unfortunately that's not the same thing as actually doing well in your job. In development specifically, the guy who writes shit code and then spends a lot of time putting out fires is often seen as a bigger go-getter than the person who writes decent code more slowly. The first guy puts out features really quickly, and is always fixing problems (saving people from emergency problems), while the second person just slowly but consistently releases stuff that never breaks. There was actually a great discussion on HN about this just today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item/...
  • 0
    Secondly, when you're talking about promotions, merit in your previous position (whether true or perceived), doesn't equate merit the new position. The skills required for a position in N-1 tier and the skills required for N tier of an org chart are often very different. There are a lot of people who make great programmers and are absolute dogshit at being managers or even technical leads.
  • 0
    @HollowKitty yes, I agree very much with what you're saying but I feel that you're creating an entirely different debate that I'm not even trying to counterargue.

    You initially said "there is no such thing as meritocracy" which is a completely incorrect statement. It exists as a concept, even as a joke, and as a practice in some companies.

    Are there bad companies that don't practice it? Of fucking course. But companies that have a good moral compass do practice it.

    This is like the third time you try to start unrelated shit on threads, I hope to not hear you again on my threads because you are wasting my time.
  • 0
    @jesustricks Which company have you worked for which practices a meritocracy?
  • 0
    Also I'm not sure what the first rant of yours is that I've disrupted but I just realized you're the dude who thinks it's manipulative for comedians to smile, which relieves me of a lot of potential asshole-guilt. I'm sure rant #1 was me telling you to toss babies down a garbage chute or something but YTA still on the comedian thing. 😂
  • 0
    @HollowKitty I just don't like stupid bullshit.
    Your question "Which company have you worked for which practices a meritocracy?" is a very stupid question with very stupid reasoning.

    If I say yes, I can't really prove that.
    And if I say no, then apparently for you that stands true for every company on the fucking universe.

    Apparently you worked for every company on earth and are qualified to say that none of them exercise meritocracy.

    But if even they didn't fucking exercise it, it would be still be good as an ideal. So what are you even trying to argue?

    And that other comment was equally as stupid as the ones you're posting here.

    About your other comment, I remember reading it and thinking "wow a stupid comment", and then forgot to reply, but I'm gonna now and prove how that other comment is as stupid as the shit you're saying here.
  • 0
    @jesustricks I think it's funny that you regularly come on here and write rambling, ignorant 800-word essays and then complain about other people wasting your time by leaving brief replies.
  • 0
    Also as I've already stated, the ideal of a meritocracy is impossible to achieve. Everyone sees their own way of doing things as the best way to achieve a meritocracy, and the fact that you refer to one way of doing things as meritocracy and not another way is just reflective of your own bias and not of anything real.
  • 0
    @HollowKitty
    > Everyone sees their own way of doing things as the best way to achieve a meritocracy, and the fact that you refer to one way of doing things as meritocracy and not another way is just reflective of your own bias and not of anything real.

    ok, can you rephrase that? maybe there's some sense in that aside that I can agree with from all these other broken and falacious comments
  • 0
    @jesustricks Making you mad isn't a fallacy and I'm not going to rephrase it. Get an adult to explain it to you.
  • 0
    @HollowKitty ok, i will, then you can get a therapist because you sound like you have some issues
  • 0
    @12bitfloat Communists here in Europe aren't so bad. And also my dad was in the communist party when my country was a fascist dictatorship, so he saw and suffered some shit. Communists in Europe are more like social-democrats. Like Bernie Sanders. Even some communists parties in Europe used to condemn the USSR when it was a thing. Right now our country has a left wing party coalition, and our transport passes are free if you're a student or poor :D
  • 0
    @bartmr Communists are delusional idiots. Read up on collectivisim and tell me again how great they are
  • 0
    @12bitfloat *sigh* did you even read the post?
  • 0
    @jesustricks Yes I did. I couldn't care less about how "nice" or "great" someone is. If they don't treat the individual as paramount I have not even the slightest shred of respect for them
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