I consider myself a very politically informed person. I'm not a politically active person however, largely for the reasons mentioned in the article.
I considered myself a liberal by the standards of the time I grew up in. My views on some social issues, particularly 'free speech', are considered a conservative now. I am one of the people the article is concerning who will not publicly voice their political opinions in the workplace for fear of potential repercussions. One thing that particularly upsets me, is how willingly other people bring up politically sensitive issues in the workplace. I regularly hear woefully uninformed diatribes on geopolitics and American domestic politics (I do not live in America) in the workplace. Even correcting people who are clearly misinformed on clear matters of fact can cause offense. As a result, I do not enter into such discussions.
I feel as though I am more open-minded than many others. I am always ready to be corrected if I am wrong, and I am always willing to discuss my views with people subscribing to other political ideologies. However, I fear the repercussions of offending others who do not have an open mind. I also feel as though many politically active people are not acting in good faith. I feel that the safest option I will not regret is not to engage.
"However, I fear the repercussions of offending others who do not have an open mind."
You're dead right and it's damned terrible. I long for both formal and informal debates on many topics but without my opponents becoming annoyed or offended (as so often they do nowadays). These days it seems almost impossible to debate any subject without upsetting someone.
I now long for the type of television programs that I remember from my youth—talking heads discussing and debating serious topics. For instance, I remember Bertrand Russell, Malcolm Muggeridge and A.J.P. Taylor and many others and it was wonderful and exciting television.
What so many people fail to realize these days is that one can learn so much from discussions and debates of this kind.
Incidentally, such discussions always remind me of the wonderful formal debate between Socrates and the sophist Thrasymachus in Book One of Plato's Republic on the topic of justice. It's so good that every time I read it, it sends shivers of excitement down my back.
people have been programmed, on a massive scale, to react emotionally to certain learned key phrases and terms. when this automatic emotional reaction occurs, all logical processing ceases immediately, and the person you're talking to either immediately leaves the conversation (if you're lucky) or starts emotionally, verbally attacking you as though your non-conforming line of thought is a pathogen and their overreacting response is an antibody swarm. you're a strawman caricature of everything evil and wrong if you question basic learned political orthodoxy, even if you make it clear you're approaching the topic with an open mind.
TV and social media "debates" between politicians are 100% posturing, signaling, and rhetoric without any substance, and almost nobody can see it, everyone thinks their guy won.
it's as though we've forgotten how to think for ourselves and have opinions and stances that lay outside dogmatic groupthink. I even know a few people who think of themselves as "free thinkers" who nevertheless hitch their proverbial cart to some political eceleb personality's proverbial horse, buying into everything they say, wholesale.
people want to be told what to think, not how to think, as it's much easier that way.
Social media did a lot to foster outrage and destroy nuanced thinking.
But also decades of materialism and "me me me" culture: I think people learn to follow their desires no-matter-what when buying goods or services and the same emotional mechanism is transferred into "buying in" an idea.
Modern advertising and branding is based on emotion and vague ideas. The same algorithms to target online ads have been used to influence politics (see cambridge analytica).
> stances that lay outside dogmatic groupthink
Yes, but with a caveat: an idea can be labeled "groupthink" and "too political" as a tactic to dismiss it easily.
> Social media did a lot to foster outrage and destroy nuanced thinking.
Way before social media, there was short wave radio, then cable news which introduced the 24-hour news cycle, and entertainment-shows-disguised-as-news with their permanently outraged talking heads (think Rachel Maddow or Tucker Carlson).
Political polarization is older than social media, and it wasn't emergent - it was a deliberate political tactic and it worked well enough until the other side adopted it too. It's like an iterated prisoner's dilemma and both sides are now locked into a cycle of defecting - doing otherwise makes no sense, and there aren't many deescalation off-ramps.
Literally any change would count as "an experiment". Not just for algorithims but for "do people like to buy this new product". Saying there should be limited changes of algorithms is a popular "hot take" but it fundamentally doesn't make any goddamned sense.
Human experiments being activities defined by the subject instead of the object make more sense. Can you have the human-involved experiment with just the objects occur naturally?
You cannot just leave the props lying around a college campus and get a Milgram's experiment replication attempt. You cannot just have a freezing chamber or scalpels to repeat the horrors of nazi Germany and Unit 731.
> Social media did a lot to foster outrage and destroy nuanced thinking.
Plug as a founder: We are trying to balance things out on Polemix.co (invite code LV005)
Launched 6 weeks ago, we bring together people from both sides of hot questions. The format is inspired from TikTok and consists of 30-second videos in which speakers answer YES or NO to controversial questions. The app’s goal is to break echo chambers.
If you are passionate about exchange of ideas, please shoot me your thoughts to feedback@polemix.co to have your view on social media outrage.
> How does only allowing yes or no answers increase nuance?
I don't know. It says they're 30-second videos- I imagine it'll consist of people prefacing their answer with "yes" or "no" followed by 30 seconds to elaborate. However, I think this will have the same problem that makes Twitter so unpopular with HN's crowd; Twitter is far too limiting in the length of a single tweet, so all that gets shouted out into the aether is an emotionally-triggering soundbite. That's a key part of what fosters such an echo chamber. It kills discussion and all you end up with are some very loud, angry tweets with no context or nuance.
I have no idea how Polemix plans on bringing more nuance to the political scene this way, but that's probably why I'm still a lowly non-founder/non-FAANG dev. I don't like to be negative or disparaging, but in my limited vision, this sounds like the love child of Twitter and Vine.
Because everyone gets to see a Yes followed than a No video.
Also, besides the classical "like button", there is a Respect button that signals that you are willing to open the door to the other side.
Hence, the nuancing and approaching instead of flame wars
Because to propose that 30s video format (that our research has proven is easier to engage and create) we frame questions as Yes or NO. Indeed, this is not the proper format for every question.
"Modern advertising and branding is based on emotion and vague ideas. The same algorithms to target online ads have been used to influence politics (see cambridge analytica)."
You're right, advertising and branding is, as you say, based on harnessing one's emotions, however an integral part of that process is also involved in converting those initial 'vague ideas'/notions into a solid worldview and it's this newly-developed worldview that causes its recipient/owner to actually believe in or act upon the idea. In essence, this is the basis of all propaganda; and, as we all know, in its most extreme forms it's both pernicious and very dangerous.
Probably the best—and certainly the most infamous—explanation of how one's worldview can be changed by carefully planned propaganda comes from a 1928 speech titled Knowledge and Propaganda. Tragically, this succinct and simple to understand speech comes from one of the most notorious and despicable persons of the 20th Century, and we only have to look to history to see how devastatingly effective the contents of this short message turned out to be: https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb54....
Naturally, the advertising industry would want to dissociate itself from this document as much as is absolutely possible but I'd bet many dollars to a brick that many in the advertising industry have read it secretly and understand its message extremely well. Why? Because it has form—when actually implemented its message turned out to be so overwhelmingly effective.
In a free market capitalist economy, advertising is seen and considered as being beneficial, and at one end of the spectrum, it probably is, but as we've seen recently, at the other end it can morph into dangerous propaganda—and, unfortunately, there is no clear demarcation point to separate the two. Given the fact that trillions of dollars are now tied up in advertising, and that serious things have been done in its name (Cambridge Analytica and those other recent assaults on democracy), I reckon it's now time that we stopped pretending that advertising and propaganda are separate entities when clearly they are not.
In my opinion, if we viewed them as both one and the same entity and then set rules accordingly, then we would have some hope of making progress.
Yeah, exactly. And my amygdala is over sensitive and I wish I had a gain control fitted to it so that I could turn it down occasionally. (Anyway, at least I know it's prone to over-sensitivity, and that's somewhat helpful. ;-) )
Sometimes I wonder if this mechanism (another post referred to "amygdala hijack") makes concepts like personal gender pronouns and similar "correct and incorrect speech" concepts so delicate.
get me right, language is deliberately abused to exercise power, to belittle others, by deliberately misgendering them or deliberately not using their academic title, etc.
However if I want to have a conversation about something of importance and my conversation participant is not there yet, should I not ignore misgendering or omission of academic titles or similar heckling from their side, simply to get into a conversation about the topic proper, and then, should the conversation participant surprisingly evolve into a conversation partner, then ask about pronouns, or academic title, or whichever language convention I prefer?
Why do I say this? If the other participant does not intend to evolve into a conversation partner, they will for lack of a better term jack off on heckling on the wrong pronoun or title or whatever it is that I may be asking for. I will never get to the core of what I want to discuss with that participant.
> people want to be told what to think, not how to think, as it's much easier that way.
Or people have forgotten how to have a proper conversation, an engaged dialogue about topics they disagree on, at least in parts.
"people have been programmed, on a massive scale, to react emotionally to certain learned key phrases and terms.'
You're right about that and it scares me, especially so since the advent of the internet as everything is already there and in place to make it much easer to program them on a massive scale. My first experience of the wide scale nature of this phenomenon was in the early 1970s when almost overnight television stations changed from televising mostly game shows and old movies to pushing news full on. As news became the new 'paradigm' for judging ratings it meant that hyping up the news became commonplace—the more sensational news stories became the higher up the ratings went. This continued to escalate to the situation we now have, that is where TV stations regularly interrupt programs with news headlines and news grabs. As these interruptions have to be short, making them sensational and thus more memorable became quite an art form. (Of course, as sleazy tabloids also played out similar themes it became increasingly difficult to escape such practices.)
At the same time, good news reporters and news anchors became thin on the ground (because of stations' new policies, through their dilution in the new news cycle, and the new breed having different ethics to the previous generation). Excellent reporters such as Ed Murrow (and his 'Murrow Boys') and anchors like Walter Cronkite who knew how to balance the news eventually disappeared, so by the time the internet came along that priming to which you refer was ready grow exponentially.
[For those not acquainted to news as it once was (and as a reality check), here are several of Ed Murrow's broadcasts (there are many more on the web and I'd urge you to listen to a sample of them). I apologize in advance if the second one offends or upsets anyone as the subject matter is horrible but I've included it to illustrate how dramatically news reporting has changed over the past 70 or so years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3qpgfH5imAhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8ffpIHnuaw ]
"people want to be told what to think, not how to think, as it's much easier that way."
Right, that's why those in charge of media organizations have the important responsibility to present news objectively and not sensationally (unfortunately, in the competition for resources the dollar has won out big-time over ethics).
When I was at school, we were taught how to debate, and along with this training, we learned the critical difference between rhetoric and fact and how to tell them apart. From our class the teacher would select two teams at random and they would debate a proposition provided by the teacher. The proposition could be factual, fiction or hearsay, or some theoretical possibility: 'There is no such thing as a black swan' and 'Life exists both on earth and elsewhere in the universe' being two such examples. The teacher then assigned one team to argue in the affirmative and the other in the negative (the teams had no say or choice in which way they had to argue).
At the end of the debate the remainder of the class voted on which team won the debate and that was then followed by an analysis of what had taken place—both the remaining class and debaters had to separate rhetoric from supported fact, figure out subject from predicate, and so on. At later debates, the teacher would allow teams to debate topics that they actually believed or disbelieved but the same analytical process would follow afterwards.
I reckon my early debating experience at high school is the reason why I found my later encounter with the formal debate between Socrates and Thrasymachus at university so interesting, as I quickly realized that the debating techniques that we'd been taught at school were essentially the same as those that Socrates had used against his opponent.
What's very important to realize here is that we don't need university-level logic to teach kids how to develop decent 'bullshit' filtering techniques—techniques that they can then apply throughout life. Moreover, the subject can be made interesting for kids: casting Thrasymachus as a selfish villain who believes 'that justice is everyman for himself' and watching how Socrates not only systematically demolishes that premise but also counters it with the notion that 'justice is much more than just one's self-interest' , as it's not only interesting and can be used to teach kids about logic, rhetoric and false premises but also the narrative has a built-in moral dimension/argument that's essentially universal.
I believe it's of fundamental importance that we provide kids with a solid grounding in these matters early on in their education so they can think logically and reason things out for themselves. Because, as we've seen from horrific events in the 1930s in Germany (and others), great swathes of even intelligent people can succumb to false argument and determined propaganda (and as we now know, good and concerted propaganda is extremely hard to resist).
For the first two decades after WWII, it seems we attempted to get things right (witness the training kids at my school had (and my high school was nothing special, it was stock-standard ordinary and typical of many others)). Unfortunately, in recent decades, and at a time when it's needed more than ever, such training seems to have fallen by the wayside. I'm not sure how we should now tackle the problem either—given that most kids will have experienced and grown used to the internet long before they'll ever get any training in logic, rhetoric, etc. (that is if they ever manage do so at all).
About TV debates — A lot of these have moved to podcasts and YouTube these days. Eg the Oxford Union debates on YouTube, some of which are quite popular. I suspect some talk radio, eg PBS and BBC Radio 4, will also have interesting debates. Radio 4’s magazine programmes like The Life Scientific, In Our Time, The Public Philosopher, Reith Lectures etc certainly make for extremely interesting listening.
But this is precisely a problem because of the demonetization that occurs on anything sensitive. These podcasts can't easily sustain themselves on a platform that actively de-ranks their content.
I know, thanks, they're great. Recently I've seen quite a few. Only several days ago I watched for the first time in many decades the program about A.J.P. Taylor and his controversial 1961 book The Origins of The Second World War (which, incidentally I have a copy of).
You're right, we really need to spread the word at every opportunity.
As a sort of counterpoint, I think it might be worth it to watch a classic of the 'free debate' genre, Buckley vs Baldwin[1], that happened in the sixties in Cambridge. It pitted a black civil rights activist against the young Buckley, later a stalwart of American conservatism.
I don't know if it's my bias speaking, but I felt that in the debate, Buckley comes across as a bully, with very little argumentative meat, who doesn't really respond to Baldwin's points. For what its worth, I didn't really like Baldwin's delivery either, but at least I felt there were substantive points there that were worth addressing.
In a way, this is probably the best one can hope for when you stage this kind of event - Buckley is, at least, well educated, but I can't help but think the debate might have been far more interesting if it was Baldwin vs Malcolm X - because ultimately the problem with the Buckleys of the world is that they defend institutions that were not built on ideals, but rather economics, and as such the defenses themselves are generally sophistic and without anything really interesting in them.
If I was a student, I would probably agitate to exclude a Buckley, and instead reach for a Malcolm, and I expect somebody would accuse me of being anti-free-speech, since the debate that would result would no longer span a societal divide, and both parties in the debate would be on 'one side' of the broader social issue. However, from an intellectual standpoint, it just sometimes is the case that interesting positions aren't evenly distributed across the terrain of popular feeling and political rhetoric, and a lot of people are simply defending things that are convenient or traditional but have no moral basis. So inviting those people is a waste of time - they're just (at best) going to come up with clever excuses for whatever already exists, or whatever they would want regardless.
Blindly applying your advice (which was offered without qualification - so that's how I'll respond) opens the door for all sorts of concern trolling and contextless talking point repetition. That often-paid messaging serves a purpose to drown out nuanced and insightful debate with low-information content to defend a status quo or to run interference for an unpopular position to gather support without significant rhetorical challenge. We see that plenty online and in broadcast media, and is like that Buckley is described as doing but these days often more rote and mindless.
Allowing that sort of thing to mix with good debate waters down discussion. It turns people off to opposing viewpoints too, since they're so inundated with rhetorical noise that they need to dismiss most rhetoric out of hand due to the poor SNR. I don't think your position is a very good one.
> I now long for the type of television programs that I remember from my youth—talking heads discussing and debating serious topics.
There are orders of magnitude more such content now than there was for instance 40 years ago. There's probably hundreds of hours of your favourite philosopher/economist/pundit's lectures/debates/speeches at your fingertips. Click-click and you literally begin to hear them talk in less than 30 seconds. This probably includes those very programmes from ages ago!
This whole type of complaint reeks of "back in my day" appeals to nostalgia.
Of course with an abundance of content comes the issue of curation. Media used to be curated by people with sometimes lofty goals of trying to be highbrow, and having their journalism subsidized by classified ads. Now everyone has to be a tabloid. With an abundance of content also comes niche-ization, where to get a loyal audience you need to keep pandering to their pre-conceived notions. Debates between opposite sites these days get condemned by both sides.
> I now long for the type of television programs that I remember from my youth—talking heads discussing and debating serious topics.
I never had that in my youth, but YouTube recently started suggesting videos from The Dick Cavett Show from the 60's and 70's. The show was broadcast on TV and I think counted as light entertainment, so I don't presume it's very special for it's time, but seeing these interviews conducted at a pace where people can actually express themselves with anything but pre-canned anecdotes, with an interviewer who is actually listening and engaging with the topic is such a breath of fresh air compared to what I am used to. A lot of the interviews I've watched seem like they touch on pretty controversial subjects for the time (religion, LGBT, race, drugs, alcoholism etc)
(of course it helps that the clips that get uploaded and recommended are of historical figures, so there's a lot of survivorship bias there)
Free to Choose is absolute gold if you want to see rational debate among diametrically opposed groups about modern political and economic topics. Compared to what we see today it looks like something from another planet.
Lot of advice floating about the workplace these days along the lines of be candid, join the conversation, bring your whole self to work, etc. The people giving this advice seem to have no conception that not everyone actively engaged in these topics is acting in 100% good faith. Being too open could so easily backfire. Encouraging this is borderline negligent. Indeed there’s entire branches of activism that rest on bad-faith ideologies. Good advice would be to avoid controversial and political discussions and to keep a strong separation between your private life and your work life. Instead, we have employers, especially universities, asking staff to promote their organisations through their personal social media accounts.
> join the conversation, bring your whole self to work, etc.
This is a classic honeypot. They want to weed out people who have views that do not align with current PC status quo. One of the reasons is that no company wants to be associates with an employee who has views that could damage company image and lose money. They want your whole self, so they can discard you if they think you are a liability.
There is no social setting besides close friends and family(and therapy I suppose) where you should ever "be yourself." I never caught on to the trend that started with social media of blurting or tweeting out whatever you're thinking and for good reason. Now people are going back years scrubbing candid thoughts they had when they were teenagers while the naturally reticent have nothing to worry about.
> Now people are going back years scrubbing candid thoughts they had when they were teenagers while the naturally reticent have nothing to worry about.
Not only that, but do you know for certain which of the views you have today that are benign and unoffensive, will be considered taboo and hateful in 20 years? I don't know which ones, nobody does! But in 20 years someone is going to trawl through the archives and measure your views today with tomorrow's moral measuring stick.
In many countries therapists have a duty to break confidentiality for example if they think you have a intent to break the law. I knew people with drug problem who didn't go for a therapy out of fear the therapist will report them to the police.
I'm in the market for a new leadership role and I have a very well established leadership model that I've honed over the years to build high performing organizations. I was considering publishing my leadership writings (that I share with my employees when I coach them) on my LinkedIn so prospective employers could see whether I'm a good fit for transforming their organizations.
One of my former employees cautioned me that my since my leadership model doesn't virtue signal that I might find it hurts me more than it helps my prospects. I'm not sure what to make of this.
Perhaps you could collect candid feedback on your writings? Don't ask friends or close colleagues, instead search for those in your field whose opinions you respect (but may not agree with)? More broadly, perhaps find/form a community of individuals with similar interests (organizational leadership and change) and join them? In particular, seek out people with different backgrounds than yourself. I've found book authors on these subjects to be especially open to dialogue, if your opening letter connects your question to their work.
Recently had a Zoom call with a prospective enterprise software vendor, a small but very successful business. They trotted out quite a few senior people to make their pitch. In our internal chat room one of my colleagues noted the lack of diversity in their line-up as a red flag (those on the call were all white male boomers). Ironically, the company has a female founder/CEO. I’m not saying this comment led to anything one way or the other, but what you present to the outside industry will definitely be scrutinised along these lines by some.
One of the purposes of meetings (in person or remote) is to get a sense of the other group's values, and how they will treat the least of your staff. As a vendor, it's critically important to listen carefully and not interrupt. Conversely, I've rejected vendors when they've talked over one of my colleagues. I don't care how good the product is... if they are not going to be good collaborators.
Edit: This is related to the above comment -- a colleague may be summarizing an uncomfortable experience not in terms of behavior (a rude vendor that talked over them) but in terms of identity (white male).
My take on these management aphorisms is that they are rarely actually meant literally. They're usually a form of signalling about how much you're supposed to love the Company/job. Worse, they are often adopted because management copy them from other firms they see as "successful" or "leaders" in a particular area.
If I were being more cynical, I'd say that managers or leaders love to talk about "Company culture" or "Company values" points like this because it allows them to mark their own work when they define success (although this may be unconscious). "We changed our company culture" isn't a statement that's easy to check or measure (it won't show up in eg engagement surveys), unlike "we grew earnings by x%", yet it also sounds much more "difficult".
A lot of the time it's effectively all an elaborate social game.
When their actions/interests are less noble than what their words imply. For instance, using statistics and evidence to make a judgment seem objective, but knowingly leaving out other evidence that contradicts their position, especially when political association can be used to attack anyone who does bring up that evidence. Or asking that people “simply be aware” of their own prejudices, but in practice they are only interested in deconstructing the prejudices of one particular group, and would react furiously if another group was targeted. Pretending that everything is just a level playing field of debate, when they know that it isn’t, and they like it that way.
The idea is that people are engaging with no interest in making society better. An example might be a person who advocates for policies that are almost certainly harmful to the communities he purports to care about because his rhetoric draws favor (i.e., social capital) from others of his well-to-do segment of the political spectrum. The chief idea is that someone is plainly not interested in addressing the problem they purport to care about, but that they want the benefits of virtue signaling or else the “politics as tribal sport” element or a fondness for malice and divisiveness.
To be really clear, I’m not making a veiled political statement—I can think of a dozen ways this could fit a bad faith person on either side of the spectrum.
Just as an example, there are many ways to speak in bad faith: They say something they know is wrong so you correct them, then they take offense. They then leverage this perceived (by everyone else) offense and use it to gain some sort of advantage (over you, or systemically).
In contrast, talking in good faith is saying something they believe is true. Maybe you correct them or maybe you don't, but in the end they're just trying to talk to other people.
In general bad faith means that someone is lying to you, either implicitly or explicitly, when engaging you.
An example of this might be to act interested in a point, request sources to back it up, but with the intention to never look at the sources. Instead, the intent is to attack them for not providing sources making them look like their opinion is unsourced if they don't provide any, attack the sources if they provide anything that might be considered controversial, or to ignore them entirely and move onto the next person if they do provide good sources. The goal is to at worst waste their time and at best make them look like their position is unfounded.
Other examples might be asking questions when discussing a slightly controversial topic to get even more controversial replies that you will then quote mine to attack the poster, even if the quotes weren't controversial in context.
A less agreed upon example might be someone who is purposefully being misleading because they don't want to expose their true goal, but whose true goal is to educate the person. Asking leading questions to get someone to reach a conclusion when you would not be able to argue directly for that conclusion. This last example might even pass as an acceptable form of bad faith dialog because it is done with the intention of having a good faith conversation on a topic where good faith conversations aren't possible.
Actual intent differs from presented intent. As in "not negotiating in good faith"—carrying on negotiations only to extract information, with no intention of making a deal, might be an example of this.
To me bad faith is also just lying. You lie about your motives and intentions. You lie about the other's sides motives and intentions. Bad faith actors also prop up a lot of straw men in order to tear them down, but disengage or put words in the mouth of direct opponents. They make concrete statements, then back away and act like they never said if called out for it, or can't back up their assumption with evidence.
Bad faith arguments are more about scoring points or making that person feel better. It's never about the actual policy. So it allows the bad faith actor freedom to say whatever they want, as long as they come out ahead.
It can come from cognitive dissonance and ignorance, refusing to concede a point that has been logically refuted. Maintaining a position and then launching a personal attack if the position is threatened.
When I hear "bring your whole self to work", I think of gay people who couldn't mention their loved ones because that would out them. When you say there should be a "strong separation between your private life", I don't think you're expecting to never mention your family. Maybe your partner is sick and you're feeling stressed. In a supportive environment, shouldn't that be mentioned?
Even though the personal is political (such as the status of being gay), It sounds to me like you're thinking about political topics irrelevant to the organization when you advise people to "avoid controversial and political discussions". Whether the topic is relevant to your work depends on the topic, and it's up to you to make a cost-benefit analysis of whether it's worth discussing. I think that people should be able to discuss their family life and workplace policies, but I agree that broader political discussion may not be worth it.
I guess I'd like to end by saying that it depends. What don't you think should be discussed at work? Why shouldn't you discuss this with your colleagues? Personally, I think discussing a gay spouse should be fine and expected, and supporting genocide shouldn't be, but there's a lot of room in between those two extremes.
> Why shouldn't you discuss this with your colleagues?
If you believe that women might be less represented in tech because they opt for other careers when they have the chance, you might get fired. You better leave that part of your whole self at home.
I don’t disagree with the idea that people shouldn’t have to hide certain things. I’m just commenting on the apparent naivety of the people recommending greater openness, like they don’t acknowledge the pitfalls, the potential ambushes.
I would say that this is a failure of philosophy in political leadership. Not that philosophy was ever paramount in politics, but it was at least expected in the highest classes.
Everything devolves into tribalism without philosophy. It looks like people are discoursing, but they are really just signalling.
> It looks like people are discoursing, but they are really just signalling.
I was looking to put words on my feeling about this, and you did it perfectly.
I was wondering why suddenly so many people voiced the same engaged opinion, while I know for having discussed with them in private settings that they don't think deeply about society.
Now I realize that's because they want to look like they belong to a certain kind of people. It's not about ideas. It's about tribes.
wonder what percentage of our likelihood to survive depend on ensuring we still are part of the tribe (e.g. signalling)? I think all communication other than the functional coordination of mundane things (can you pick the kids up today? how much for X etc) would fall into that category. Why otherwise bother with any of it at all?
It seems there is perhaps a relation between the amount of tribalism and uncertainty in life people face? It's easier to take risks and care about art and talk about very complex topics in a distanced way with people from opposing views when we're not in the thick of it?
In my more pessimistic moments I find myself moving towards the same conclusion. The vast majority of communication between people seems, at its root, to simply be sorting of in-group from out-group
My brother is an artist and the stories he tells about the art world are hilarious.
He's gay with brown skin and votes left so I consider him reasonably unbiased. Hardly a reactionary.
Radicalisation on the left spectrum of the horseshoe.
Politics in English-speaking countries, particularly the US, seems to have partly become entertainment. Some of the "fans" appear more fervent than even the politicians themselves.
I'm an outsider and even I've been drawn into US politics, because it is entertaining. Sometimes it's more entertaining than a fictional story. But I doubt that this makes for sensible governing.
Their election cycles happen every 2 years and I think there's no time limit for electoral advertising. So they're always promoting candidates, almost all year round.
To top that off, they have only two parties and party affiliation is almost like supporting a sports club.
For neutrality's sake I'll say there's Team Green, and Team Yellow. When Green is in power, Yellow supporters might scream about a topic, like debt. Then Team Yellow comes into power. Spending goes crazy, Team Green supporters point out previous Team Yellow statements about debt, and their current conduct. What does the average Team Yellow supporter do? They don't listen, they don't try to analyze the stuff themselves, they listen to their own news media.
The problem is when political polarization becomes so strong that they become two separate ethnicities. The USA would probably have already fallen apart if it wasn't a federal country ?
"Not that philosophy was ever paramount in politics, but it was at least expected in the highest classes."
Well some of it has been influential, works by Aristotle and Plato for instance. In another post here I've mentioned Plato's Republic (now well over 200 years old). Its arguments about justice are still the cornerstone of our justice system these days—or at least they're supposed to be.
"Everything devolves into tribalism without philosophy."
Unfortunately, that's true. It's not gone unnoticed that in recent decades many universities have closed down their liberal arts and often this includes their schools of philosophy. It's pretty terrible really.
Duh, how did miss that glaring typo? Of course that should read 2000 years. While I'm at it, the best figure we have for the Republic is ≈375 BC which makes it ≈2396 years old.
What makes you think that tribalism isn't in philosophy? It is no pancaea or vaccine and has a history of basis of tribalism - the Great Schism for one. If there is a lack of tribalism in niche philosophies well, it isn't important enough to have a tribe.
> correcting people who are clearly misinformed on clear matters of fact can cause offense
This is modern anti-culture. It's a climate where "opinions" matter more than knowledge and consumerism matters more than democracy.
There are many employers. I am an employee, but I am first and foremost a citizen in a Democracy... If I have the courage to defend it and the will to learn/educate.
An educational system worth the title should provide understanding of society and democracy.
"It's a climate where 'opinions' matter more than knowledge..."
It's not just that. Sometimes the people don't understand the difference between their opinion and facts. Like I could point out some factual incorrectness and they see me as attacking their opinion. A lot of the time they coincidence, but sometimes I might be in favor of their opinion based on other facts and simply don't want misinformation to spread. Or we might share the same objective but that false information would lead to a flawed implementation that would block us from achieving a shared goal. Not to mention, I try not to attack an actual opinion, because everyone is entitled to one, even if it differs from mine.
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
From what I remember, in polite circles it was always known that you should never discuss politics and religion with anyone except your immediate family and close friends.
"The Fall of Public Man" argues that we actually used to be more political and had to "put our cards on the table" so to speak. This would be as opposed to now, where we are very much able to hide our positions if we so please.
I don't know what polite circles would be, but I suppose some sort of aristocracy? Certainly gentile society in 1780s in France were not scared of expressing heavy political discourse in public. Nor were the rich Romans.
Edit: And just to be clear. Rich people may perhaps only speak politics with their closest friends, but they certainly act politically with the use of their capital. Imitating them by shutting up has no point and is detrimental to a democratic society.
The polite society he refers to which originated this standard is the English gentry, with whom American political culture has much more in common than either the Latin aristocracies you mention or the Gallic working class.
In America there is a tension between Jacksonian public man populism of the type you allude to and gentrified politesse of southern planters and northern merchants. In short, you’re both right.
How? If I go to the town square and yell at crowds about how one race is superior to the others, I should expect some repercussions. Why is it different, now, just because it involves computers?
It depends. If the "wrong cause" is one advocating for fewer rights for fellow humans, most reasonable humans feel hard to sympathize with the person complaining about it.
And of course a 'correct' opinion today might be 'incorrect' tomorrow and since you've previously expressed the 'now incorrect' opinion you can be in trouble.
Just delete your Twitter account and say nothing to anyone about anything, especially in the workplace.
> Even correcting people who are clearly misinformed on clear matters of fact can cause offense.
This resonates deeply. I'm at the point where "I'm entitled to my opinion!" is a great signal to change the topic, never to return to the topic of politics with that person ever again
When someone comes at me with "I'm entitled to my opinion!" I reply, "You're entitled to your INFORMED opinion!".
I think since around 2008 with the rise of social media, so much of one's ego has been made public. More so than ever before. Its as if everyone is a public figure. Because of this, more people are incapable of accepting that they may be wrong, underinformed, or simply misinformed.
The problem with that is the question becomes who determines what is informed? It wasn't that long ago that informed people were being made fun of because they where avoiding handshakes despite the CDC not supporting it.
Now both those who support and those who disagree with masks think they are the informed party. I have disagreed with the reopening plan for my country, based on the science as I understand it (they didn't open up enough outside) and it now looks like I was right.
So the question is, who and how do you determine what constitute an informed opinion?
It's a shame if that's the case some of my favorite discussions have been with people tht disagree with me. I hope we haven't lost the ability to have a disagreement and remain friends.
I think its precisely those who can disagree and remain friends that are the people worth maintaining a friendship with. All others are a lower class of acquaintance.
The result is that world becomes more and more boring. No interesting discussion can take place. Environment becomes more toxic and it's mainly due to radicals who perceive everything as offensive and everybody who disagrees as "nazi" or "racist" or "-phobic".
I'm not sure why everyone keeps scoffing at the idea of calling some of these folks Nazis or racists. It's not hyperbole or an exaggeration. We did have a rally with a bunch of white nationalists exercising their "free speech" to chant "The Jews will not replace us" and they ended up murdering someone there. We had a National Security Advisor to the President of the United States promoting replacement theory. There are countless other examples major and minor over the last 12 years. Just how much racism and bigotry has to be clearly and consistently demonstrated for the labels to stick?
Applying those labels to people who are objectively and overtly acting that way is not the problem. The problem is that way too often people are assuming it's there. It's a presumption of intent, "racism is one possible explanation for your viewpoint, therefore I somehow /just know/ that you are a racist person".
Example: every recent white-cop-shot-a-black-person incident in the U.S. Not only is there widespread assumption of racism being the motivation (despite little or no evidence of that), you can't even /talk/ about parts of the problem without being labeled a racist. Heck, even /raising the question/ of whether or not the incident was motivated by racism will often get you labeled as racist. Want to discuss the practical benefits of being cooperative during a police encounter? You're racist!
> every recent white-cop-shot-a-black-person incident in the U.S. Not only is there widespread assumption of racism being the motivation (despite little or no evidence of that), you can't even /talk/ about parts of the problem without being labeled a racist.
What I thought was even more interesting was that racism was never a charge raised in the George Floyd case yet it was one parroted by many individuals as completely 'obvious' guilt in.
The discussion that happens outside of these circles seems to be entirely different approach too and I would dare not even mention facts like this among work colleagues, even though he is plainly guilty of other charges as it does not fit the narrative they hold.
>Not only is there widespread assumption of racism being the motivation (despite little or no evidence of that)
It's hard to say what all the issues of individual motivation are in every case, but there is evidence that racism plays a factor. [0] It may not be because of overt racism, the officers involved don't have to attend klan rallies for other racially biased policies like redlining to have a broad effect on policing.
>Want to discuss the practical benefits of being cooperative during a police encounter?
The reason you're getting dismissed here is because this is missing the point. People in a state of confusion or crisis sometimes don't have the option of being cooperative with the police. That shouldn't be cause to get you shot and killed by a police officer inside your own house with no due process, which currently you have an increased risk of that happening to you if you're of a certain race.
> People in a state of confusion or crisis sometimes don't have the option of being cooperative with the police.
I hear your point, and I'm all for mercy, patience, trying to understand and help people in crisis, etc. But at the same time, choices have consequences, and you can't escape that. This isn't victim blaming, it's just a law of nature. It is a tragedy if someone gets into such a state of confusion/rage/whatever that they, say, try to stab someone to death, but it's also not wrong for someone to step in and protect the intended victim. And if the act of saving the innocent harms the attacker, that's awful, but the fact remains that the attacker would not have come to harm if not for their earlier choices.
I haven't had time to look at this study in depth, but a cursory glance suggests they are almost completely ignoring what is probably the most important factor, and that is the rate of violent crime (the second most influential data point would probably be socioeconomic level).
They show a correlation between race and death at the hands of police, which is indisputable. A causal relationship is TBD, though they brush up against it by stating, "This pattern is similar to the distribution of violent crime".
Cooperation is no guarantee that you won't be extra-judiciously murdered without consequences either. We have plenty of examples like Philando Castile to put the myth of "just cooperate" to rest.
So? There is no guarantee of anything, for anyone. But in terms of risk management, you can take some extremely simple steps to reduce the risk to approximately zero. Here's "the talk" that all parents can have with their kids:
1) Do your best to avoid breaking the law or associating with people that do.
2) If you have a police encounter, cooperate.
Does that /guarantee/ anything? Of course not. But follow those two simple rules and the odds of getting killed by police are /effectively/ zero. Yes, there's still a chance, but there's always a chance (for everyone, of all colors). But follow those two simple rules and you'll probably win the lottery or get hit by lightning first.
Step #2 is precisely the opposite of the advice that keeps innocent victims of the police out of jail. Cooperate, sure, but the actual advice that lawyers provide is not to talk, and end the interaction as firmly and respectfully as possible. As a reminder, cops are encouraged and professionally trained to manipulate and deceive, and they will use anything you say against you.
Your advice might work more effectively for someone privileged enough to be able to afford bail and a lawyer.
> Not only is there widespread assumption of racism being the motivation
Well, is there?? Everybody I seem to interact with doesn't think so. Where are all those bogeymen chanting racism right away? Surely you can quote some sort of survey to back up your perception, right?
For starters, go search Twitter for 'George Floyd' - it's hard to find threads that /don't/ make it about racism to some degree or another. But even a cursory search on other sides yields oodles of results; here's some from just the first page or two of hits:
There's pages and pages of this stuff. And beyond that there's layers of not-explicit-but-not-subtle positioning of incidents - if a cop (of any color) shoots a white person, it's a police shooting and usually doesn't go much further than the local news. If a cop (of any color) shoots a black person, it's national news and the victim's race is mentioned constantly. If racism is not being implied, what is the relevance of his race?
You asked for examples and so I gave them to you, and then you dismissed the first because you didn't like it and then completely ignored the other two.
I'm discussing this in good faith and am assuming you are too. Please update your reply or erase it. Thanks!
It's very evident the US has strong implicit biases just from the Justice system. We could also look at incarceration rates, or sentencing disparities by ethnicity.
At some point saying "hey, we can't just _assume_ this is racist" _appears_ less like good faith debate and more like bad faith denialism.
Statistics do not prove intent, unless you want us to use the same data to prove that the Justice system is an order of magnitude more sexist than racist because 2000% more men are killed then women. The numbers for incarceration rates and sentencing disparities are similar damning.
If we go by the data in the study, the likelihood of death by cop in the US is determined by age first, gender second, race third. If we look at other studies we can add social economical factors, geographic location, geopolitical and cultural factors, all which has correlation impact with age, gender and race.
Agreed, I think one of the ways the two camps talk past each other is using "racist" to refer to both the motive of individual actors and the systemic and cultural biases.
Also yes, the judicial system is also sexist - police don't see women as being threats demanding lethal force, juries are more willing to see women as victims including of their circumstances. That's not the only reason for discrepancies, sociobiology looks into links between biological factors and criminality too, but the cultural issues are enough that defendants are coached to behave differently based on gender.
I see your final point, but my hunch is if you dig in to the correlation between age, gender and race with economics and geography, the eigenvalues will be ordered the other way (race, gender, age) - and if so I think that would indicate the Justice system is only a reflection of the larger society, rather than negate the idea of a racist justice system?
My hunch is leaning towards the opposite. Social economic status is determine from primarily income, education and occupation, and each three is correlated to age groups and gender to a point where one can make pretty decent probability curves for each. There are not many 20 years old that share income of 55 years old. Naturally there aren't many phd's or people working senior positions at a very young age.
If we look at age groups, 20-29 is the most common age for criminals to be found guilty by the justice system which matches the age when people exit from schools and have the lowest amount of income and highest rate of unemployment. High crime areas also tend to have a lower median age than low crime areas. For being shot by a cop, this age jumps a bit to 30-40, but I don't know why.
The general problem with this kind of statistics is that you will always end up with correlations that goes both way. If a country has a massive wave of refugees of a certain age, refugees with a lower social economic status that the existing population, you get an obvious correlation with social economic status, age and refugee status. At which point some statistician try to normalize values and those numbers suddenly becomes a discussion about which factors are considered and which ones aren't.
Is the justice system ageist, sexist, racist, and -phobic? When it tries to do a risk assessment based on little else than demographic data then yes.
I'm all for looking at incarceration rates and sentencing disparities, etc. - if there are actual imbalances after controlling for relevant factors, then it makes sense to root them out and fix them.
That said, studies like the one you're citing appear to be flawed because they fail to account for rates of crime (especially violent crime) as well as socioeconomic factors. Correlation is not causation and all that.
I think you're missing the point w.r.t. BLM and racist policing. The assumption isn't racism. The statistical evidence says racism. And the argument was never that all of these white cops are independently racist in their heart of hearts. It's that they participate in and support a system with explicitly racist outcomes. There is simply no question that the criminal justice system in the US has racist outcomes.
Are there many potential explanations as to why our justice system has racist outcomes? Absolutely. Does that change whether the outcomes are racist or not? Absolutely not.
There seems to be a lot of confusion over racism where one group seems to think racism only exists when it involves white hoods and hurling racial epitaphs and the other group is more concerned about large societal trends and documented evidence of disparities in outcomes based on race.
Machine learning algorithms are a perfect example. If you build an ML algorithm for approving home loans using historical data, the outcomes of that algorithm will likely have a strong racial bias due to the history of housing segregation. If a company were to use that algorithm, they would be participating in systemic racism even if not a single person in that company was racist. It's racist because the outcomes are, not because of individual racists within the system trying to explicitly hurt black folk.
The term "racist outcomes" is an example of the problem we're talking about. A racial disparity is not racist. Correlation is not the same thing as causation.
Racism could very much be one of the factors, but painting the entire disparity as racism pretty much guarantees we will make no progress on zeroing in on, and ultimately eliminating, the actual racism.
Conflating racial disparities with racism is really harmful and counterproductive.
It wasn't racist in my country at any point, as we never had any slavery (we did enslave and genocide each other, but we're all white so no one cares) or racial minorities even, besides maybe some Turks or whatever. And I was still told by some people that I benefit from white privilege.
Can you double check the link? You might have mistakenly posted the wrong one. Thanks!
(I read it and the accompanying PDF and neither seem to support your point of "statistical evidence says racism" - this is a study about how sharing data showing a correlation between race and policing affects people's attitude towards policing)
The commenter clearly has an agenda to further. No dispassionate observer whatever their political leaning really believes the 'silencing' only exists on the Right. Not a hint of that in the comment. That's concerning.
It's because the labels themselves have become diluted to have any real meaning. Yes, there are white nationalists who show up to rallies waving Nazi flags. But it's also totally normal to hear people refer to "white supremacy" with regard to SATs[1]. So there really is a diminishing return on calling things racist, and that's probably what most people are "scoffing" at.
I think you're just illustrating the point. It's okay to address issues with racial bias in SAT questions. Those things can still be racist (maybe not even intentionally so) and worth addressing despite there being worse racism somewhere else. We don't have to ignore that, it's not getting diluted because there are neo nazis that exist somewhere else.
Using loaded terms like "racism" or "white supremacy" to describe major incidents as well as minor "not even intentionally so" infractions is pretty much the definition of dilution.
This conversation shows up on pretty much every HN story that ends up discussing racism. This fear of "dilution" is a textbook "no true Scotsman" fallacy.
> I'm not sure why everyone keeps scoffing at the idea of calling some of these folks Nazis or racists.
Except you call everyone Nazis or racists including Jews, blacks, and others (J. K. Rowling for a recent example) who would be considered disqualified from white ethno-nationalist movements.
I think one aspect of Polarization in the US is that a big part of it is our expectations of polarization. I think we strongly overestimate the degree to which we can predict someone's political views and world outlook from a single statement.
I am worried we are in a positive feedback were perceptions of polarization lead to self-censorship among the less polarized, which further drives the perceptions of polarization.
Worse yet, the language gets so abstract and contorted it becomes hard to find areas where there is strong consensus matter of practice. We can't agree on concrete policies because people can't agree on why something shoud be done and not how. And even when there exists consensus for both for some subset everyone wants to use it as leverage to get their entire position so we end up with more status quo. You see this with Republicans and Obamacare, as well as the DSA crowd and Medicare expansions proposed by Warren/Clinton/Butti.
I don't mean to pick on you a bit here, but this feels like a good place to express something I've been having trouble with.
My parents raised me to do my best to neither take nor give offense. Most of my peers as a child were taught the same way. Obviously we're not Vulcans; We will sometimes inadvertently give offense, or respond emotionally to something that may have been meant innocuously. Yet so much of what I see in public discourse is reveling in both sides of that equation: deliberately trying to provoke emotional reactions from others, intentionally adhering to uncharitable interpretations of others' statements even after they have explained themselves, and celebrating the drama resulting from these things.
Civil discourse simply cannot function if this is a substantial part of pubic culture. There is no way to have a productive discussion if even one of the parties is deliberately provoking an emotional response. There is no way to have a productive discussion if even one of the parties is deliberately misinterpreting another in order to justify their own emotional response. Yet the dominant forms of public discourse these days include heavy doses of both of these things.
I think it just looks like this, mostly becuase of twitter. I've never seen anyone in real live interpret a statement in the most offensive way imaginable and not accept correction nor explanation. The chilling effect is undeniably though.
I've never seen anyone in real live interpret a statement in the most offensive way imaginable and not accept correction nor explanation.
I have. I can't share details, but the event forever damaged the whole group's trust in one another because one person decided to interpret something in the most offensive way possible, and lashed out viciously at anyone who disagreed, or even agreed but not as strongly as they wanted.
I've been one to speak my mind. I see myself as having been punished for it. I was doing work a grade or two above mine but was held back from promotion. So I didn't make senior developer on that team. Then I was even in jeopardy of losing my job over a statement I made (not vulgar, disrespectful, or anything) so I have to switch stacks a couple times to move out of a bad area of the company. I'm 9 years in and just a midlevel. My trust in the company and my desire to work hard for them are abysmal.
"Even correcting people who are clearly misinformed on clear matters of fact can cause offense."
I was stupid enough to do this too. People were discussing the gender wage gap the way the TV reporters do - that a woman in the same job as a man, with all things equal, makes 80 cents on the dollar. So I brought up the BLS study that shows that the 80 cents number is about an aggregate comparison of all men and women in the workforce, and that the main driver of the discrepancy comes from the types of jobs that men and women are in. I wouldn't be surprised if I get downvoted on here for this comment too.
Not to get too far into a debate about this, as we're well off the path of the article now, but I'm genuinely not sure if you've thought of this. Your argument:
>the discrepancy comes from the types of jobs that men and women are in.
only comes down to just being a moving the goal posts sort of thing from disparity in pay to disparity in expectation and opportunity for young men versus women. It's not a compelling argument against a gender pay gap, overall.
Using your own metric of a broad view, it's probably more of a problem than a specific man versus a specific woman, because it points to a theory that societal norms serve to re-enforce the expectation of taking jobs in lower paying fields on women versus men.
Anyway, any workplace that wouldn't let you have a conversation about this topic, in a respectful, non-bigoted way is maybe not a healthy place to work. The problem is, these types of arguments are (in my experience as a professional) a thin veneer of 'civility' over a massive ocean of bigotry and idiocy in many cases. I'm afraid employers take a hard line, because it's easy to slip into that ocean.
Maybe, but I still think there's an important point in there.
We (society) do a lot of handwringing about CEO and engineering jobs, but these aren't even remotely the most gender-asymmetric careers out there.
According to [1], "Locomotive engineers and operators" are 92.3 percent male. I'm willing to bet that if you can "fix" that problem - or even conclusively identify the cause - gender imbalance issues in other fields will be less contentious.
“fixing” that “problem” would involve somehow convincing many women to enter a career field in which they have no interest. How do you propose to force them to change their desires?
> would involve somehow convincing many women to enter a career field in which they have no interest
This is a blatant non sequitur. Counterexample:
It's hard in many places to be a male schoolteacher, because men are seen by parents and other staff as potential predators, to the point where some people won't even trust a man to change their kid's diapers. Men have said that this is a big reason they don't want to become schoolteachers, so if we help change public opinion on this front, then we've ostensibly lessened a gender imbalance without "forcing" any men to "change their desires."
That argument assumes women aren't interested in those roles, and that their disinterest is the only or primary thing that causes an imbalance.
You have to know that isn't true, which makes this a great example of why people are frustrated about discussing anything 'political' in the workplace.
Why on earth would you say "you have to know this isn't true"?
If you see similar patterns across many different cultures, including ones considered to be more gender-egalitarian, I would have honestly thought the conclusion would be, in fact, varying interests.
Or do you think there are no biological differences (on average) between men and women, in which case, I can provide you with large, multi-national studies that come to a different conclusion.
I can see how there could be debate about how much the difference is, and what the causes of it are, but "you have to know that isn't true" seems like saying "Come on, everyone knows the world is flat, stop arguing in bad faith".
Sure. And there are fewer full-blown autistic people than there are people "on the spectrum". But it's a lot easier to study autism by looking at severe cases than it is to try to figure out what's biologically different about people who are "a little aspy".
92% of veterinarians are female
98.8% (!) of preschool and kindergarten teachers are female
If you want to understand gender imbalance in employment, these are the obvious places to start.
> 98.8% (!) of preschool and kindergarten teachers are female
I'm fairly sure a big part of the driver for the imbalance in education is that being a teacher is one of the only ways, other than being a full-time employee (not contractor) some place like Google, to access European-like levels of parental leave, plus European-like levels of time-off, generally, which is also hugely valuable when you have kids, while also being a career in which leaving multiple times for months at a time to have kids (if you time it well with Summer, or hit up FMLA time) is minimally disruptive to one's career growth, which is unusual for non-very-rare-and-hard-to-get jobs. Plus, and this isn't to be under-appreciated, teachers are in demand everywhere, so one can gain all the above and move to (for example) let your spouse chase higher wages at a less-family-friendly job (nursing is similarly friendly in that demanded-everywhere way, and go figure, nursing is dominated by women, too).
Relatedly, teaching is also one of the most single-parenting-friendly jobs around. The pay may not be great, but you're off (more or less) when your kids are, it's stable, and it comes with benefits. Retirement, even! It may also let you do things like get a job in a good school district, while living in a worse district (cheaper housing), but send your kids to the better district you work in, which can make a huge difference if you're on a single income.
For younger grades in particular, I think it's all of the above, plus a combination of simple interest-factor, and of men fearing (not unjustly) that any interest in or affinity for young kids (who aren't relatives) will make them look extremely creepy.
That would be a great theory, except that gender segregation is similar for countries with European-like levels of parental leave.
In a Swedish study the term they used for the teacher profession was a "leaky pipe". The first year at university the teacher program is only somewhat gender segregated, but for every year that goes men either quit or refocus towards a specialty with more men. Once graduate, each year as an employed teacher the segregation rate increases with men either quitting or switching to a specialty like after-school sport.
The number 1 cause as highlighted by that study: culture fit and not feeling accepted.
Okay yeah, that's a different issue than what I thought you meant. You're saying we should focus on the most asymmetric careers because they'll give us the best understanding of gender gaps.
That makes sense, but personally I think you should still focus on the "smaller issues" instead of just looking at the most extremes. People who are "a little aspy" may have similar biological causes as severe autism, but their social situations are much different. People with Aspergers may just require some minor accommodation to live their lives, but people with Autism may require a lot of care. The causes can be similar while the scale drastically changes the type of response.
Not that agree or disagree, but... Using that logic, why should we care at all. Less than 7 million out of about 170 million in the workforce. Shouldn't we be looking a other, more common jobs? (On a side note I'm surprised software devs are only 1.9 million)
What's your point? Either way we're adding up largely arbitrary line items composing a very small minority. It makes more sense to look the areas that would impact the most people. To use your analogy, who cares if the seller takes care of that $40k line item of the other ones that need work add up to $250k? Great, I have a solid roof but what about my crumbling foundation...
Because men and women are physiologically different and are just not attracted to the same things. For example most women don't like hunting, while men do, most likely due to evolutionary reasons.
If it's just about statistics not looking as nice and even as we'd like then no, in my opinion we shouldn't make any efforts to change it.
Obviously that is the case. It would be startling if adults chose careers in exactly even proportions, regardless of their gender, age, ethnicity, or whatever. BUT, based on human developmental theory and how people make decisions, no choice is truly random.
Therefore, there must be a reason for those choices.
Your theory offers no explanation other than random chance, from what I can tell. Identifying inputs and outcomes is sort of the point of solving problems.
I think the main issue was with the "expectation" part. It carries an insinuation of being forced, or socially shunned, etc. There are choices being made, and choices aren't random. I don't really see expectations that a woman take a lower paying job playing into that very much. I can see more pressure on the other side - like for the man to pay for everything on dates, support their family, etc, with the resulting less pressure on the other side allowing the choice of work that is fulfilling in other ways (societal benefit, fun, less stress, flexibility). Even these roles are choices. A man could choose not to pay for dates, be a stay at home dad, etc. When it come mate selection, there is generally more pressure on the male than the female.
I'm assume you're male because you're coming at it from that perspective. Do you believe there is no pressure when you're one of the few women in an engineering course? There's a lot at play here, and focusing on your slice may prevent you from seeing the whole.
I can see pressure if the woman (or any first-of) is one of the first in their role/job to do well and represent their subgroup. This of course implies that there is a stereotype to overcome, which I see as a very small minority sentiment today. I didn't notice any stereotyping related to women in my classes. Also, in my masters courses the gender mix was probably 60% male 40% female.
There is a lot at play, and there is plenty of variation by location and other factors.
And what you have done, I am willing to bet, is use your own individual experiences to draw conclusions for the wider world. My own personal experience is that this is almost never a good idea (see what I did there). This is not a values judgment, or meant to be hateful at all, really.
This paragraph reads as if you are saying, "I've never seen it, so it doesn't exist."
And the same can be done in the other direction. Are you worried about some rare disease or catastrophe? We have to determine where the line is and if the current laws are somehow not adequate to protect people's rights.
I'm not saying that issues do not exist (see my prior comment about very small minority). From what I've seen, including various statistics, it seems to me that gender discrimination is not common and the laws are already in place to deal with it.
But then why do those careers earn less money? Why is it that it just so happens that every job that is more likely for women to work also is paid less?
If, by being a man, you are 10x more likely to die from your job, and you are 10x more likely to die younger, should society compensate for your fewer hours lived?
If no, why would society decide to undervalue males?
The question is why those careers earn less money. Your assertion is that the careers men choose are more dangerous, so those careers earn more. My question is, are dangerous careers well paid?
My point wasn't that all the specified careers were above the median salary, my point was that the most dangerous jobs don't seem to be the best paid jobs. The original question was
> But then why do those careers earn less money?
and the follow up was
> If, by being a man, you are 10x more likely to die from your job, and you are 10x more likely to die younger, should society compensate for your fewer hours lived?
which I tried to answer with looking at which jobs killed more people. It doesn't look to me like the big money is in jobs which kill more people
Computer systems design and related services: $50.60/hr ~= $101k/yr
Legal services: $46.34/hr ~= $93k/yr
-------
That said, I think the commenter I was responding to was trying to change the subject
> If no, why would society decide to undervalue males?
Regardless of the answer to their question, the topic would then be on-the-job deaths instead of the gender wage gap. I chose to answer the part of the question relevant to the gender wage gap.
Many of those jobs produce fewer tangible outputs, are government jobs, non-profit, or otherwise do not focus on maximizing profit. Positions like teachers, social workers, etc are seen as cost centers, not revenue centers. They are necessary jobs and perform valuable societal functions, but they are supported through other revenues which were not a direct product of their job. As for why one gender chooses those jobs more than others, there are a variety of factors. One of the leading ones is that some people are more likely to choose work that is meaningful over just a dollar amount. Studies show that isn't just based on gender, but also in the some minority groups.
That's not true. Obstetricians are mostly women and are better paid (on average) than internal medicine, which is mostly men. There are other examples.
If you assume men are willing to give up more (life span, time, stress, risk) for money than women, it has an amazing amount of explanatory power.
This is basically my point. If you have a srated goal of getting to 1.00 v 1.00 with that metric and focus on the individuals in the same jobs, then you will never get there. It's a mismatch between policy and intent. Using the goal post analogy, there taking their shots at the sideline without realizing where the goal really is. The posts haven't moved, they just see a mirage in another place.
"...points to a theory that societal norms serve to re-enforce the expectation of taking jobs in lower paying fields on women versus men."
I do disagree a little with this part. I know that might be true in some cases, but I think a lot of it is by choice too. My wife could have worked at a regular job and made more money, but she likes her flexible hours and her fun job more. In fact, her hourly rate is more than mine, but she just works fewer hours. So she has the opportunity to make more than me, but chooses not to. It makes sense. If I could work less and have less stress, more fun, and the same benefits or living conditions...
I remember a study about African American college grads and aggregate pay being lower than other groups. The analysis showed that the main part of that was because they were choosing jobs based on societal benefit rather than just pay. Things like social workers, teachers, etc. I believe the BLS study showed some of that to be true for the gender wage gap too. Basically, I'm saying that it's not like people are being forced into or away from specific jobs as the main driver.
I'm afraid you've missed my point. Obviously no one is forcing individual people into one career or another. Never in my life has someone held a gun to my head and said, "pick a job in education, because I say so."
But, society as a whole, places expectations on some groups, but not others. Whether those expectations are to be the caregiver or big tough man who provides for the family. Therefore, career choice, and the pay outcomes, are not truly based on merit or ability, and can be controlled by unfair external factors. Further, what this means is that the playing field is not level. Some people will have advantages, just because of how they were born - which is the issue we started with.
Also - while I applaud you and your wife's position, you are confusing anecdotal data with evidence. It does tell a story, absolutely, but it proves nothing by itself.
>The analysis showed that the main part of that was because they were choosing jobs based on societal benefit rather than just pay.
Why do you think that would be the case? Why do you believe one subset of students would choose those careers in larger numbers than other groups?
"Therefore, career choice, and the pay outcomes, are not truly based on merit or ability, and can be controlled by unfair external factors. Further, what this means is that the playing field is not level. Some people will have advantages, just because of how they were born - which is the issue we started with."
I could be a doctor, or a lawyer, or some other high paying powerful job, but I chose not to. Does that have anything to do with my gender? Why am I not being paid on my merits and abilities eventhough I chose not to take those paths in life?
The idea that the pay is based on someone's innate abilities or merits is insane. You get paid for your output/outcomes in the job that you work. There is not some unfair external factor based on how someone is born (you can choose your gender). There are people of all backgrounds in every job. If you're claiming some inherent characteristic at birth is fatalistic in determining one's outcome, you are greatly mistaken. Sure, you can be born with intelligence or physical abilities that can make it easier to get to some high paying professional or sports job, but there are plenty of people born with less who work harder to make up for that and are successful.
People choose work because they are driven by money (which your argument focuses on). Other people choose work on if it's their passion. Or they might want to make the world a better place. Assuming it's all about money is a huge mistake.
I think we have a miscommunication and an issue with a lack of common definitions between the two of us.
>The idea that the pay is based on someone's innate abilities or merits is insane
Merit is not innate ability. Merit is just ability - not natural ability. This is a combination of skill, willingness to learn, hard work, grit, access to resources, and (yes some innate factors such as disability status) other factors contained inside the person - but very few of these are predetermined. Overall, merit is 'how good you are' and innate ability is 'how good you could be' by my definition. I am not talking about innate ability. I feel that i did not do a good job of explaining that.
>If you're claiming some inherent characteristic at birth is fatalistic in determining one's outcome, you are greatly mistaken
I am not saying it is 100% fatalistic. That is an extreme view that I did not claim. Let me explain further. What I am saying is that, in theory, and what I am responding to OP with in regards to his/her statement about the gender pay gap, is that some careers are, from an early age, taught to us as being more masculine (engineer, doctor, that sort of thing) than others (teaching, social work, those sorts of things). And, further, more classically masculine jobs tend to pay better than the more classically feminine job. No one person is 'predetermined', but we, as a society, instill a values system that says girls do 'x' and boys do 'y'; also 'x' is valued in 'x1' career fields (lower paid) and 'y' is valued in 'y1' career fields (higher paid). Therefore, society is at least partially responsible for a disparity in employment in certain fields, which leads to the pay gap originally claimed. Yes, individuals have responsibility for their own futures, but there needs to be an acknowledgment and work toward overcoming the arbitrary barriers society has put in place for some people based on innate characteristics such as gender.
>People choose work because they are driven by money (which your argument focuses on). Other people choose work on if it's their passion. Or they might want to make the world a better place. Assuming it's all about money is a huge mistake.
I am not assuming it's all about money. I am simply using that metric, because it's what we started with, and it seems to be the easiest/most popular.
What I am saying----- the playing field is not level for all contenders, based on external factors. These factors do NOT predetermine outcomes, but they absolutely DO influence choices. If the playing field were level, and men still chose some careers over others, and women some other careers over the first, that's fine. It's about equality in opportunity, not equality in outcome.
"Therefore, career choice, and the pay outcomes, are not truly based on merit or ability, and can be controlled by unfair external factors."
"Merit is not innate ability. Merit is just ability - not natural ability. This is a combination of skill, willingness to learn, hard work, grit, access to resources, and (yes some innate factors such as disability status) other factors contained inside the person - but very few of these are predetermined."
How are these both true? Career choice and pay is not based on merit, yet merit is a measure of your ability. Wouldn't you need the ability to choose a career and be successful at it? My point is that if you have the merit, you will have the job and the pay.
"Yes, individuals have responsibility for their own futures, but there needs to be an acknowledgment and work toward overcoming the arbitrary barriers society has put in place for some people based on innate characteristics such as gender."
I don't see any real barriers. I understand that some people may be swayed by the opinions of others. For example, some people may not want to be strippers of pornstars due to stigma. But that is not a true barrier to entry. They have every right to pursue that career. If we live in a society where group-think is so important that you will decline a career or job based on what other people think and not on your morals or beliefs, then I feel this says more about the sad state of that individuals self-imposed restrictions in freedom than it does about "society". After all, society has approved of those careers by allowing them to be lawful.
"It's about equality in opportunity, not equality in outcome."
"What I am saying----- the playing field is not level for all contenders, based on external factors."
What makes you say the playing field is not level and that equal opportunity does not exist?
It doesn't really -- I don't think any business say "well, I'm paying for surgeons rather than pediatricians, which have more men, so I'll pay more." This would ignore obstetricians (more women) getting paid more than internal medicine (mostly men). Jobs tend to pay what the market works out is the lowest amount people will take the role for. This is the basic principle of supply and demand.
Men tend to go to the jobs that pay more, the jobs don't pay more because men go to them. Not seeing this seems to be a massive willful ignoring of economics.
Men tend to work longer hours. They negotiate more at hiring, as they are willing to take the chance that the request for more money fails and apply somewhere else.
> and can be controlled by unfair external factors
Are you sure about that?
In Sweden, society is very gender-equal: they have paternity leave, very small paygap, about 50% of women in leadership position. Yet only 13% of Swedish engineers are women.
I think if you eliminate all the external factors you’re talking about, you still won’t get anywhere close to 50% of female engineers, or 50% of male pediatricians, as long as people are free to choose a profession.
>you still won’t get anywhere close to 50% of female engineers, or 50% of male pediatricians, as long as people are free to choose a profession.
And that's fair. My argument isn't that it needs to be split and completely equal. It's that the freedom to choose needs to be equal, and the playing field needs to be level, so that who is and who isn't in 'field a' is, in fact based on merit and not arbitrary classification at birth such as gender and ethnicity.
> It's that the freedom to choose needs to be equal, and the playing field needs to be level
I agree. About race inequality, I think in the US the two main causes are public schools paid by local district taxes, and very expensive higher education.
"It's that the freedom to choose needs to be equal, and the playing field needs to be level, so that who is and who isn't in 'field a' is, in fact based on merit and not arbitrary classification at birth such as gender and ethnicity."
This seems to imply that it is not equal now. Is there any basis to support that?
> Using your own metric of a broad view, it's probably more of a problem than a specific man versus a specific woman, because it points to a theory that societal norms serve to re-enforce the expectation of taking jobs in lower paying fields on women versus men.
The problem is "societal norms" are incredibly vague and difficult to pin down or prove or even define.
It is very dangerous to start socially engineering all of society and our economy by a small, unrepresentative, self selected group of activists arbitrarily determining each person's "value" and rearranging society to fit their whims.
> The problem is, these types of arguments are (in my experience as a professional) a thin veneer of 'civility' over a massive ocean of bigotry and idiocy in many cases.
Yes, I've definitely seen this coming from many self proclaimed progressives.
I think it is still understandable though that making those kinds of technical corrections about a study could be perceived as "defining away the problem" or getting too technical about a (potentially) real societal issue.
The mere fact that you are talking about "TV reporters" way of talking about things communicates that you have a disdain for the way such issues are commonly discussed in the media or by the general public, and correcting their statement about the study also seems to suggest that according to you really there is no gender wage gap (or it's less of an issue than people would seem to generally think), it's all just due to personal choice or preference in what type of jobs they do or something to that effect.
You can of course agree or disagree about a lot of these things, but I do think that sometimes a "mere factual correction" can have additional connotations that are much more political and not just neutral statements. It's often the opinion or suggestion behind the factual correction that causes more offense.
I don't see why a factual correction should be seen as political. Especially if I don't present any arguement with it or have it lead into an opposing opinion. As stated in the prior comment, I'll correct people who I agree with their conclusion (on different factual/logical basis) if their facts are wrong or blatantly misapplied.
The comment about the TV reporters is because they should have a responsibility to ensure their facts are correctly represented. Instead of doing their own research and reading the study, they are willing to just repeat what others have said. I think it's difficult to provide an accurate picture of a subject if they know almost nothing about it. How many times have you heard a report on a technology story and thought that isn't a correct explanation, or maybe it's not the whole story?
HR departments are also being given the false impression that their latest "initiatives" have near-universal support because they only hear words of praise from the usual politically outspoken set. Everyone else keeps their mouths shut.
A large number of employees are in a "quiet seething" mode and are becoming increasingly disengaged from workplace culture (i.e., "I don't want to get to know any of you. I just want to do my work and clock out").
> Even correcting people who are clearly misinformed on clear matters of fact can cause offense.
This is so true.
I've seen polling showing that large numbers of people believe that the number of unarmed black men fatally shot by American police every year is in the "thousands" or even "tens of thousands". And the further to the left the media people consume, the higher they're likely to believe the number is.
The actual number of unarmed black men shot dead by American police in 2019 is thirteen.
Regardless of what you think about racism and police violence, this is a fact. People who think that "thousands" of unarmed black men are killed by police every year are not only numerous, they are wrong - so absurdly, wildly wrong by so many orders of magnitude that if you tell tell me that the number is in the thousands, I'm going to assume you're deeply uninformed on many other things, not just this one number.
Yet in the current climate I'd be afraid to even correct people on this enormous, inarguable factual innaccuracy.
(And good luck explaining to people that "unarmed" isn't synonymous with "innocent" - you can be unarmed and still give a cop a good reason to shoot you, for example by attacking the cop with your fists.)
Is it really too much to ask that we leave this stuff out of the workplace?
(Someone commented that it's "insane" to say that you should be able to shoot someone if they attack you with their fists and I typed out a long reply, but they had deleted their comment before I could post it, so I'm going to post my reply here so I don't feel like I wasted my efforts)
Yes, it absolutely is a valid reason to shoot someone, and anyone with training in firearms or self-defense would agree. You're not necessarily going to get shot for throwing a single punch, but you're increasing your chances of getting shot exponentially.
First of all, a fist can be a deadly weapon. It's possible to kill someone with a single punch, or knock them unconscious, or do all manner of nasty and permanent damage. Cops know this, as does anyone who knows anything about violence.
And this is crucial: every interaction you have with a cop in the US is colored by the fact that the cop has a gun on his waist. If you attack a cop with any kind of weapon, you've demonstrated that you're willing to use violence against him, and he has no way of knowing how far you're willing to take it. What if you get your hands on his gun? He knows that a single punch might be enough to disable him, even temporarily, and even a second's delay might be enough for you to grab his gun - and then he's fucked.
Cops don't carry guns for the exclusive purpose of stopping other people with guns. The point of a gun is to make someone stop doing what they're doing, and sometimes you really need someone to stop doing what what they're doing, no matter what they're armed with. We can't expect cops to be champion bare-knuckle boxers: if someone's attacking you with their fists, they're potentially threatening your life, and it's not unreasonable to use whatever tools are at your disposal to neutralise the threat.
Again: this doesn't mean that every use of fists should immediately be met with a death sentence. My point is just that guns can in some (not all) circumstances be a legitimate response to fists.
And on the more general point, that's not the only case in which it's justifiable for an unarmed person to be shot. In some cases of "unarmed" men being shot by police, the perp was trying to ram the cops with his car.
Conversely, not every case of an "armed" man being shot by police is justified either. Philando Castile had a gun in his car, but he didn't deserve to die.
I hear this opinion a lot when talking to Americans. I've lived in many places (including America for a few years), and I've noted that in first world Asian and European countries, cops very rarely ever use their guns (and in many cases don't even have them to begin with). Deaths on both sides are much lower, and trust in the police is much higher.
By far the easiest way how to "operate" is to avoid bad neighborhoods and police them only very lightly, leaving a power vacuum for the local gangs to step in. Criminal-on-criminal kills do not elicit as much public response.
Of course, the result is what the French call "lost territories of the Republic".
The "criminal-on-criminal" crimes may not make the news, but they end up being used to push for stricter gun control laws.If I remember correctly, the majority of gun violence and mass shootings is done with hand guns, is gang related, and mostly contained to some very violent areas in cities. Politicians and the media try to make it seem like the shootings are all done by right-wing radicals killing kids with AR-15s.
Yeah, I surprise my fellow Europeans by explaining that homicides (by gun or other means) are extremely unevenly distributed in the U.S. and that, depending on where you live, your safety may be on the level of Reykjavík (basically a peace heaven) or Johannesburg (living hell), with local gun ownership rates having only a very loose correlation to crime, if any.
Statistics, of course, are often made to include all gun deaths, and it would also be interesting to see whether the overall rate of of suicide is affected by levels of gun ownership.
You shouldn't try grabbing a cop's gun in Germany, or come at them with a knife, because you might get shot. I don't think it's that different in countries with armed police.
> if someone's attacking you with their fists, they're potentially threatening your life ... use whatever tools are at your disposal to neutralise the threat.
If a sentence like that is assimilated by the most obtuse cops (not all cops are super great critical thinkers) then I am not surprised of the current situations happening in the US.
What if it's an old lady trying to hit the cop because of an anxiety episode? I've seen a lot of videos on Reddit of cops tazing, pulling guns and acting super aggressive at mad old women probably because "cop's life potentially under threat".
As other commenters said, this is, in my opinion, so american...
You're missing my point. Your "old lady" example isn't relevant. I'm not arguing that cops should shoot everybody who swings a fist in their direction. My point is merely that sometimes it's justified to shoot an unarmed man. Just because you hear an "unarmed" person was shot by police, you can't automatically assume that the shooting was unjustified.
I can think of one very famous case of an unarmed man getting shot by police in the US where it's beyond doubt (confirmed by the forensics and all the credible eyewitnesses) that he was shot after punching the officer, trying to grab his gun then charging at him. This shooting was totally justified - but I wouldn't dare say that in the workplace if someone mentioned this guy ("say his name!") as an example of a martyr.
> I've seen a lot of videos on Reddit of cops tazing, pulling guns and acting super aggressive at mad old women probably because "cop's life potentially under threat".
Yep, American policing is fucked up in many ways, and police violence in the US is a huge problem. But I never said it wasn't.
"The actual number of unarmed black men shot dead by American police in 2019 is thirteen."
I think you mean, the reported number of unarmed black men shot dead by American police in 2019 is thirteen. (But surely we've learned that police reports are not necessarily completely accurate.) And I think that some people believe that a suspect's being armed is not justification for summary execution, barring extraordinary circumstances, so in their minds the caveat of "unarmed" is a distinction without a difference. Therefore they might be more concerned with the total reported number of black persons shot dead by American police, which is 235.
As long as we're on that subject, here's an interesting (albeit somewhat misleading) fact I discovered that I haven't seen cited anywhere else. While 235 fatal shootings by officers doesn't seem like a huge number compared with the total population, consider that there were about 697,195 police officers in the US in 2019, meaning that each officer had a 1/2967 chance of killing a black person that year. Contrast that with the oft-cited black-on-black murder rate: 7484 blacks were murdered in 2019. Let's (erroneously) assume that every single one was killed by a black male. The total black population in 2019 was 46.8 million, 48% of them male which comes to 22.4 million black males. So the chances of a black male murdering another black person is only 1/2933. That's right, a random police officer is very slightly more likely to have killed a black person than a random black male is likely to have killed a black person.
So if it's true that blacks ought to fear other black males, then the fear that some black people have of police officers as a class might be correspondingly justified.
Did I express an opinion? I'm pretty sure I just quoted a statistic.
But since you asked: American police kill white men (including unarmed white men) at the same rate at which they kill black men, once you control for crime rate and poverty. But police killings of white men don't become national news.
Tony Timpa died in near-identical circumstances to George Floyd. Ask yourself why you haven't heard of him. Or Ryan Whitaker, or Daniel Shaver.
(Does the overrepresentation of black men among criminals and the poor have anything to do with racism? Obviously it does, and I'm happy to discuss it in good faith. But I've probably derailed the thread enough already.)
> As long as you express something in a civil way, you should be able to do it without repercussion.
To get back the original topic of the thread: an increasing problem in our workplaces is that lots of people don't think this way. And maybe I'm wrong, but the impression I get is that those people are overwhemingly of a particular political persuasion. It's not even "left wing" but a specific type of ultra-leftism. The word "woke" has so much baggage but I'm not aware of a better label.
It's impossible to have a good-faith discussion with these people. Any disagreement is immediately met with mind-reading accusations of bigotry. Professional and personal consequences are likely to follow, which I suppose is consistent: if I sincerely believed that someone was a literal white supremacist, I wouldn't want them in my company either.
I don't know how things are internally at Coinbase or Basecamp, but I can sympathise with the general idea of their "no politics at work" policies. There are better and worse ways you can implement such a policy - some of the objections I've heard are totally fair, e.g. gay men saying "since gay marriage is a political issue, does this mean I'm not allowed to mention at work the fact that I have a husband?" I'm straight, but I wouldn't want to work at a place where gay people feel like they have to keep their sexuality a secret.
But it's not always that clear-cut. Coinbase's initial "no politics at work" announcement said something like "we can all agree that something is a problem while disagreeing on the best way to solve it", and that's the key thing I think we're losing. You can believe that black lives matter without supporting the organisation called Black Lives Matter. You can oppose racism without agreeing with the policy prescriptions of Ibram Kendi (and there are black intellectuals who make such a case, e.g. Coleman Hughes, John McWhorter.) Maybe I'm wrong, and I don't claim to be an expert on any political issue, racism included. But can we at least have this discussion without my being called a white supremacist? To quote a famous victim of police violence: can't we all just get along? And if that really isn't possible, maybe we should just all shut the fuck up and stick to writing code.
Really I think this is a symptom of a deeper rot within our political instutitions. In a more perfect world, we'd all be content to keep politics out of the workplace because it wouldn't be necessary: we'd be able to satisfy our political needs through the structures that are specifically in place to do so. If workplaces are being hyper-politicised, something is going wrong with democracy.
> It's impossible to have a good-faith discussion with these people.
To clarify: obviously bigotry, racism, sexism, etc are all real and occur. I am specifically addressing the baseless, knee-jerk accusations towards dissenting opinion. As are you, from what I gather.
I think there is something to be said for the idea that secular ideologies (be they libertarian, MRA, "classical liberal", environmentalist, feminist, woke, intersectionalist, etc) have replaced the religions of yore for large parts of the population. With those secular religions come all the incidentals of religious community: social control, virtue signalling, one-upmanship, splinter factions, standard texts...
You are not so much having a discussion as questioning articles of faith, which people don't generally budge on, can take very personally and which can be somewhat impervious to reality. That's also why it devolves into ad hominems: where you might have been called a bigot before for disagreeing with, say Christian orthodoxy, you are now called a racist/misogynist/transphobe/etc for disagreeing.
In short, I think the "culture war" is a real thing. It's just not nearly as new, widespread or tangible as Fox News (for instance) would have us believe. For some reason, academia and tech seem to be disproportionately affected. For tech specifically: maybe because we sectorally skew young and tend to live on the Internet more, increasing exposure to fringe bubbles?
I agree, and this is kinda new but to be expected.
For a long time some minorities were particularly silenced by our societal systems. If you were a foss advocate, vegan, ecologist, feminist, LGBT aware, what have you, in the 90', you were ridiculed and you didn't have a voice.
Now the table have turned, and the pendulum is balancing to the other extreme: those who were frustrated 20 years ago now created an anger culture out of it that they express loudly. I understand were they come from.
It will go back to balance, but things take time to stabilize. In the meantime, those who had a point of view that were common in the 90' now are considered bad people by default.
I don't think this is the right move, but I understand the process.
Are you sure that the ones who were particularly silenced are now particularly angry?
I would say that a lot of unscrupulous individuals just used the momentum to give free rein to their toxicity or bad ideas. A lot of the young activists even do not personally remember the old bad times, so they are getting angry on behalf of historical events.
(The same development was typical for 19th and 20th century nationalisms - "they" caused a historical wrong to "us" in 1740, "we" must have a revenge. Thus all the building of Greater X countries. It turned to be a very bad principle with a huge body count.)
The swing of the pendulum is possible. For example, the immigration and Islam debate in Europe swung a lot towards far right positions since the 2015 migration wave. Few parties openly advocate for a permissive border regime anymore; even those that are "suspect" of harboring such sentiments try to bury them under other topics, such as the German Greens.
Sure, I am not, this is an opinion backed by life anecdotes, not science.
But I do see some of my idealists friends that ended match up this pattern, and I find that there are regularly people in the angry mob that seem to have a similar profile.
I don't hold that theory as gospel, but it helps me develop compassion toward those who are angry.
The number of white armed men shot by police in 2019 was, according to the Washington Post database[1], between 388 and 398. The number of white unarmed men shot by police in 2019 was 26.
According to this source, the number of black unarmed men shot by police in 2019 was not 13, but 12. The number of armed black men shot by police was 240, possibly 241.
I agree - interpretation is super important. The above is a good example; someone who isn’t paying attention might not take into account that there are 5-6x the number of white vs black people in the US, which puts a very different spin on the raw figures.
Yes. And crime and poverty is related. Also, when more crime occur, police tend to congregate. So if police are pulling people over for minor traffic violations, and then discovering drugs, the 'crime' rate goes up. This then exacerbates the stats.
My point is, pure stats should never be the only source of information. One may not think the police are racist, and instead think that crime and poverty are related. But over policing of the poor doesn't magically make them wealthy.
If this was really a fact, surely you have a source for it?
Because if you are the one out of a group who comes up with a number drastically out of what other people estimate, it seems reasonable to assume you are the one who are in the wrong.
And of course unarmed doesn't mean innocent anymore than being armed means being in the wrong.
I am challenging you to a source for two reasons: to make sure you are not just making the number up, and because I want to see what the source defines as being unarmed and how they determine that.
The Washington Post keeps a database of all reported police killings in the US. I can't see it myself without a subscription to the WP, but USA Today cites the WP database for the claim that 13 unarmed black men (and one unarmed black woman) were fatally shot by US police in 2019: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/23/fact...
That's only the number who were shot dead by the police, not all police killings (George Floyd wasn't shot.) Also, as the USA Today article says, this data isn't 100% reliable, because the WP can only track reported police killings, and some might be unreported. But dude, I could be off by an order of magnitude and still not be close to "thousands". American police kill about 1000 people per year of all races (armed and unarmed, justified and unjustifiable); anyone who thinks that thousands of unarmed black men are killed by the police every year has no idea what they're talking about.
> And of course unarmed doesn't mean innocent anymore than being armed means being in the wrong.
Yep, and I already said the same in another comment. Not all shootings of an "armed" man are justified. I'll give a name: Philando Castile had a gun in his possession when he was shot dead by police officer Jeronimo Yanez. But, in my non-expert opinion, Castile did not do anything that warranted deadly force, and this shooting was absolutely unjustified.
In things like that I think that more scientific-oriented workplaces would not create this fear. People with a hard science background respect factual information.
And also the ethical implications of shooting 13 unarmed people in a year can still be a subject of debate.
Would you feel more comfortable in a company that openly encouraged / enforced political debate within a civil framework?
Is the problem (in your company and the world at large) that open respectful political debate has not got a common set of rules / words? If there was a phrase "I respectfully disagree - I understand that ..." was a phrase used by every TV host, Politician and Facebook poster, would prefacing your words with that make others more open to receiving it?
No, because companies have absolutely 0 incentive to stand by you if doing so becomes difficult. They are amoral, when they throw you under the bus it's like a lion killing a gazelle. Just something they do. You should not ever trust any company in any way.
> You should not ever trust any company in any way.
Idk if I agree with this. There needs to be some level of trust. I trust them to pay my paycheck, I trust them to respect the contract I signed when hired. I trust them to give me my tax information in a timely manner. Now, those are some examples that are backed by law or contracts, but if you don't trust any company in any way, then you could be missing out on some of the benefits of said company.
I'm also highly skeptical of all companies and make sure boundaries exist that when crossed will result in my departure. But there is definitely a balance, and some level of trust needs to exist.
> Now, those are some examples that are backed by law or contracts
exactly what i was thinking when i read your examples.
this isn’t trust in the company, it’s trust in societal infrastructure.
> if you don't trust any company in any way, then you could be missing out on some of the benefits of said company
maybe, but you haven’t shown that in your arguments. i would love to be convinced otherwise but have seen too much evidence to support the idea that companies should always be held at arm’s length.
individuals in the company can be great. but even they will stand by while you are put through the ringer because, understandably, they have their own problems (kids, mortgage, medicine etc) and you won’t be able to help them if they quit out of solidarity with you.
> I trust them to pay my paycheck, I trust them to respect the contract I signed when hired. I trust them to give me my tax information in a timely manner. Now, those are some examples that are backed by law or contracts, but if you don't trust any company in any way, then you could be missing out on some of the benefits of said company.
You don't need trust for any of those. Those are mutually beneficial; the companies benefit in actually having workers and not having the IRS crawling all over them.
True trust occurs when you believe another party will not harm you in situations where it would benefit them to harm you, or would at the very least have no negative repercussions for them.
Telling a friend a deep secret and then asking them not to tell anyone is trust. Telling them a secret and then making them sign an NDA with financial penalties is a sure sign of a lack of trust.
Political debate used to have rules. Take this [0] debate between William F Buckley and Noam Chomsky about the Vietman War, for example. The two clearly detested each other but the debate was mostly civil.
Christopher Hitchens' debate are others worth watching.
Western society seems to have gotten the idea that "debate" is either talking heads trying to shout over each other, presenting prepared arguments to random unprepared people and claiming victory when it takes time to respond, or simply presenting opinions back and forth without trying to justify them. This is tied to the (independent but both incorrect) notions that whoever has the last word in a debate is the winner, and whoever wins the debate is necessarily right.
I think it would be valuable to somehow expose ordinary people to structured competitive debate, if only because it makes many of these falsehoods evident. This kind of debate uses the rules to select the positions of the parties and when they get to speak. Obviously the last speaker doesn't necessarily win, and the winner doesn't necessarily even believe their own position (so the debate doesn't prove that position right). Yet still, it's much better at educating people on the issues than any "debate" that most people have ever watched.
I still speak my mind openly in the work place and invariably I find that most people are actually delighted when they realise they can have open conversations with me without fear of judgement. The vast majority of people are still entirely reasonable.
Of course you never know if you’re going to say the wrong thing to the wrong person, but I don’t go to work to make friends and I certainly don’t go there to be intimidated by bullies.
I can count the number of unreasonable people I’ve had to deal with on the knuckles of one finger and they all skulked away pretty quickly when they realised I was standing up to them.
I’m not trying to downplay what you’re saying. I think there is a culture of fear and I think it’s been stoked deliberately to a certain extent, but I also think it’s a lie. Most of the people you work with are probably like you. That may also explain why you don’t notice them ;)
Hmm. Seems like, in a political discussion/argument, the least open mind "wins", because they are the most impervious to evidence.
But the consequence is that the other side becomes less open minded too. They've tried arguing with someone who Just. Will. Not. Listen, who Just. Will. Not. Think. And when they run into the same arguments from someone else, they are less likely to be willing to listen themselves.
It's hard to stay open minded in the middle of this. It's a battle. There are areas I just don't want to talk about any more. So I guess I'm losing the battle, at least to some degree.
Whether there is legitimate fear of reprisal or not, work is not a good place to talk politics, religion, or any other topic that gets people emotional. Unless of course topic is relevant to your work!
> I feel as though I am more open-minded than many others. I am always ready to be corrected if I am wrong, and I am always willing to discuss my views with people subscribing to other political ideologies. However, I fear the repercussions of offending others who do not have an open mind.
This is how every open and critically minded person feels nowadays.
There is a clear line between two groups:
1. People who think the best way to learn, educate and explore other people's views is by having an open discussion, saying uncomfortable things and having an ear to be corrected and showing mutual respect.
2. People who think that saying something uncomfortable during a discussion is an act of offence itself and therefore must be muted even if it takes some form of aggression by one or many people in order to mute that person. A discourse is only allowed if people immediately subscribe to a specific ideological idea and people are not allowed to get to that point through saying or asking the wrong things but must somehow be born with those views or otherwise need to be extinguished by the mob.
Unfortunately the 2. group is getting increasingly more violent and aggressive in their approach which makes the 1. group increasingly more aware that they are in fact in danger to just be themselves and learn about life through sometimes tough discourse or mistakes.
So let me get this straight: one group is rational, open, and critically minded; while the other is irrational, violent, and aggressive. And people are clearly either in group 1 or group 2. Let me guess, you see yourself as belonging to group 1? If so, what a very convenient worldview you've constructed for yourself.
I would say exactly same is happening with health of human body or even how it's working. I simply stopped trying to correct others and talking at all about it. When people start conversing about it, I just shut up.
I believe that liberalism and conservativism concern different values, liberalism is about personal freedom (like freedom of speech), while conservativism is about preserving the existing values in the society.
It's quite normal as we grow up we become more conservative, especially successful people - we want to continue the success that was based on values we grew up with. That's why conservativism is associated with belief in authority - you need authority to enforce the values of the past.
So when you grew up, you perceived freedom of speech as a good value because it meant freedom, and now you perceive it as a good value because it was there when you grew up.
However, liberals moved on, and found other issues that concern human freedom, which were neglected before. So for instance, there is freedom to have a different sexual orientation, and be able to express it. Conservatives disagree with that value because it simply wasn't part of our culture in the past.
(Progressives - or perhaps socialists would be more fitting name - are based on another value, namely inclusion in the community. They are distinct from liberals.)
Libertarians have always been favorable to "the freedom to have a different sexual orientation"; it's not a "new" issue that was only discovered recently. However, conservatives and libertarians have always known that the freedom to live one's life as one desires can never extend beyond the point where others' freedoms are curtailed. Otherwise it's not actual freedom, but mere licence.
It's hard to answer because I'm not sure what you're asking, or why you are confused. The first and second sentence are describing libertarians' understanding of freedom as a value, and how this connects with "preserving existing values" to use GP's phrasing. It's quite wrong to say that sexual orientation "was not part of our culture in the past", as GP contends (unless you mean a quite remote past). If anything, it was understood in a far more nuanced way that always involved tolerance for others' orientations and value systems.
So, maybe I'm overthinking. Those two sentences read as if personal liberty is important, but LGBT marriage somehow impact others' personal freedoms. This is based on my knowledge that conservatives tend to be anti-lgbt marriage rights.
Maybe it's the grouping of conservatives and libertarians together. Maybe that's where my head gets lost.
Libertarians are complicated.. in my experience they have mix of liberal and conservative values.
Take private property as a canonical example. Private property is good from both liberal and conservative perspective, but for different reasons. Liberals like private property because it confers more freedom to individuals, while conservatives like it because of its hereditary nature, as a reward for being good manager. These are two different values. (Oh and BTW, Marx was one of the first people who pointed out this contradiction, if you reward capitalists with property for doing good, eventually you're gonna run out of it..)
Well, in the United States LGBT marriage was instated via an application and extension of customary law, not any statute from Congress or even any overt politics. I see this as being quite compatible with conservative and libertarian values, seeking to remove undue interference from personal lives as much as possible. I'm not sure why you would disagree. Progressive activists may see the political process as the only way of achieving "positive" change, but that's a short-sighted point of view.
That's what I'm saying. In the US, conservatives actively worked, and still work, against personal liberties in terms of LGBT marriage rights. That was my point.
People have different definitions of marriage. One person ‘defending’ one definition looks like ‘actively working against’ another definition.
E.g. in some cultures, by definition, a marriage isn’t valid without a male/female sexual act (the only kind that can lead to procreation, by definition). This axiom is held by over a billion humans for example.
LGBT marriage, at least in the United States, is a legal definition that need not have any bearing on how 'marriage' is understood in any other context. It came about purely as a legal hack, to address the needs of people who sought some legal acknowledgment of their stable companionship. The existing law and custom provides this wrt. "married" couples, and this was simply extended wholesale by sort-of pretending or establishing by fiat that two people can be 'married' no matter what their gender, as far as the law is concerned. It's a sensible mechanism that has plenty of other uses in law and policy.
Take any marginalized group. Call it group A. It is almost always the case that there are prominent advocates for group A, who profess (at least at first) to be pushing for equality for group A, but what they really want is special pleading for group A. The libertarian position is that equality is desirable; special pleading is not. The people who advocate for special pleading, once having dropped the pretense of being merely for equality, tend to argue that special pleading is now necessary to compensate for the centuries/millennia of oppression group A have suffered in the past.
I see your viewpoint - but I also think that you're confusing equality for moving the goalposts in some cases.
Take racial disparity in the US for instance, and the history of racial segregation and racist policies in government institutions. How do we address the inequality present in the current system without first addressing the root causes of that inequality; some of which stem from hundreds of years ago?
By your definition, that would seem to be special pleading, but it is not, in reality. It is attempting to address current conditions that were caused by past conditions. Or am I way off base?
Racial segregation and racist policies exist today; consider the state of policing and the criminal justice system in the U.S. as it affects minority communities. It's silly, wasteful and divisive to focus on speculative "root causes which stem from hundreds of years ago" when activists have barely even gotten started on addressing the actual, plainly visible causes and dynamics perpetuating current inequality. Clean your room before you think about changing the world.
That's not assuming good faith. Basically it's equivalent of saying that any complaints about discrimination are always dishonest, which is certainly not the case.
I'm actually more sympathetic than the average libertarian to marginalized groups, because social marginalization itself is a terrible thing and it seems hard to address without some sort of community-oriented focus that goes beyond conventional "libertarian" politics and its focus on mere individual equality.
However, I also thinking most advocacy is falling way short of acheving stronger community ties for marginalized groups. Indeed, a lot of such advocacy is clearly counterproductive, in pushing for "liberal" social atomization and further marginalization.
> how willingly other people bring up politically sensitive issues in the workplace
I'd say I'm a mix of conservative/Libertarian and this kind of blows my mind over the past few years. It seems like I constantly hear people on the left openly voicing their political opinions around crowds of people, and always speak in a way that they genuinely believe everyone around them agrees....and often have a condescending way of saying it. It amazes me how they seem to have absolutely no idea where the right-wing people are even coming from. I think this recent over-confidence is mostly due to them not realizing the major media outlets are essentially feeding them communist propaganda (if you don't agree with this I'd consider researching cognitive dissonance). I experience this on a regular basis, and it usually leads to me completely losing respect for that person purely due to the lack of awareness that person is showing.
The other dynamic, and what the leftists don't realize (or can't process), is that the left's arguments are primarily things that sound good in practice, but don't add up in theory. It always sounds good when someone says they want to help someone else, no matter who says it. This allows them to go crazy in public giving one liners about the surface level of their political policies ("everyone should have world class health care!", "everyone should have lots of money!", "No one should ever shoot someone else with a gun!"...all because they sound good (even to conservatives). Conservative policies take a bit more explaining to get their point across, and are much more focused on the logical and realistic side of things. No one likes to say "someone who doesn't work and doesn't contribute to society doesn't deserve govt handouts"...but it makes logical sense. That kind of talk doesn't exactly sound as good around the water cooler. Also, the time horizon for conservative viewpoints is often much longer (think about generations in the future and the impact today's decisions will have down the road). Compared to the left's policies that solve shallow issues today while mortgaging the well-being of future generations.
The simple fact is that conservatives have an easier time seeing where the left is coming from as a result of the left's primary policies being shallower and less thought out. These aspects also make it easier for the left to create snarky comments around. Conservatives however, simply don't agree and think it's all a pipe dream. They see the shallowness that the left is not able to. The left on the other hand, not only doesn't understand the right's overarching viewpoints...they also aren't even willing to try to understand where the right is coming from.
I think you over-dignify yourself as the "sane" side. You believe you can perceive all the flaws in your opponents reasoning, they're obvious to you - but reject the possibility that they feel exactly the same way about you. The humility you expect from them - you aren't displaying it yourself. The situation has far more symmetry than you assert.
The things you describe as political policies - they aren't. "Universal health care" and "minimize gun deaths" are goals, or value systems. You can make excellent pragmatic arguments for why they make sense (e.g. human capital is valuable), but as primary values they're motivated by emotion. Likewise, your perspective of "someone who doesn't work and doesn't contribute to society doesn't deserve govt handouts" does not "make logical sense" - it simply fits your value system, motivated by a sense of righteousness. You might be able to construct logical arguments for it, but let's not kid ourselves that's why you feel that way.
I agree with the overall point, there are plenty of sane people on the left, thank God.
However, I want to defend the idea that some right wing opinions make a lot of logical sense on their own; their being valid does not require right-wing-specific value systems.
Let's take one of the points you're criticizing.
> someone who doesn't work and doesn't contribute to society doesn't deserve govt handouts
Here's the logic: the products and services we enjoy every day are all the product of someone else's work. None appear out of thin air. If they're provided by the government, they are still funded by taxes on the fruit of someone else's work. Why would someone who does not produce anything be entitled to any of it? The basic value behind this point is plain fairness, which everybody agrees on.
That being said, I will concede the above point needs refining and nuance before it can be used as a principle to guide public policy. For instance, it makes sense that society should help people who cannot work because of some handicap. The value here is common decency, which is neither specific to the right or the left.
Another refinement: what about people who are out of work and haven't found their next position? It's probably productive to help them with unemployment benefits: we can bet they will be back on their feet faster if they worry less about immediate money problems. The value here is efficiency. Of course, these benefits should be delivered under certain conditions, because the overall point regarding fairness still stands. They are not entitled to the fruit of someone else's work if they refuse to give back.
So here's the refined point:
In a fair society, people who are able to work but willingly refuse to do so should be not entitled to the fruits of someone else's work. However, people who are unable to work, whether permanently or temporarily, are excluded from this point and may be helped through the means of redistribution.
The final point is maybe a bit centrist, but still fairly right-leaning in its position. It's very logical, and only buttressed by the shared values of fairness, efficiency and common decency.
The refined point (and all preceding points) are not based in any sort of actionable public policy. I would argue that that point is as much based in emotion as the leftist points the parent is talking about. Yes, it sounds good that in a fair society people should not be entitled to the fruits of someone else's work, except if they cannot work themselves. It sounds good to people of both sides. I would not label this as a very conservative viewpoint.
However, that is not what politics is (supposed to be) about. It is supposed to be about actionable policies and their effects. When putting this into an actionable public policy you run into many problems. How are you going to police the "except if they cannot work themselves" part? What are the requirements for "not being able to work"? How lenient are you there? What happens to people that fall through the cracks because of mistakes made in policing that (i.e. people that cannot get a job, but do not qualify for the help)?
How much money does it cost to police that, and what are the costs of not policing it at all? If the cost of policing is higher than the cost of not policing and just accepting that some people will take advantage of the system, is it still a good idea to police?
You can also contribute to society in ways that are not defined as work. What happens to someone that is taking care of children, or taking care of their sick parents? Should they be assisted financially, or not? If so, how do you define that?
Then there is the issue of automation. Perhaps people are not entitled to the fruits of other people's labor. But what about the labor of machines? As more and more jobs get automated, who is entitled to that? Should the owners of the machines reap all of the benefits while the rest of society is left with less and less as more and more jobs get automated away, or should this be divided amongst the total population?
Different people will answer all of these trade-offs in different ways, even if they may agree on the core view. Left-wing and right-wing people generally share most of their core views. Nobody wants more crime, more poverty, etc. The implementation of these policies are where disagreement and discussion happens.
> The refined point (and all preceding points) are not based in any sort of actionable public policy. I would argue that that point is as much based in emotion as the leftist points the parent is talking about. Yes, it sounds good that in a fair society people should not be entitled to the fruits of someone else's work, except if they cannot work themselves. It sounds good to people of both sides. I would not label this as a very conservative viewpoint.
There are countries that 'action' this exact policy. Take Australia for example. Unemployment payments are based on the concept of mutual obligation, where those receiving unemployment benefits must demonstrate that they are searching or training for future employment: https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/individuals/topics/mutu...
> You can also contribute to society in ways that are not defined as work. What happens to someone that is taking care of children, or taking care of their sick parents? Should they be assisted financially, or not? If so, how do you define that?
I agree with your point that people will fall through the cracks and that there will be mistakes in administering any system like this. But that is simply the nature of a rules-based bureaucratic system, which trade off the ability to handle edge cases with scalability.
The mutual obligation requirement in Australia might not be the best example, with at least 2 issues:
1. It's, in part, a thinly veiled program to transfer public money into the pockets of privately owned "Employment Service Providers"
2. It's offloading the "checking" to other private companies by way of requiring people to apply for a certain number of jobs. Any jobs. Maybe the same jobs you've been rejected for again and again so many times that HR recognizes your identical cover letters coming in every month.
3. Might be an extension of 1, but Employment Service Providers (private, for-profit companies) have the ability to report you to the government and get your payment cancelled for missing certain appointments, with little oversight and no repercussions for errors.
The whole employment services provider model is a weird frankenstein pseudo-market which operates according to bureaucratic rules and artificial 'prices'. And this model requires the bureaucracy to monitor the pseudo-bureaucracy (employment service providers) to ensure they're delivering employment services appropriately. The thinking behind this model is similar to arguments made in favour of privatisation - that private firms will always be more efficient than direct government service provision.
Lots of policy trade-offs to consider: Should government directly provide employment services or is a pseudo-private market more efficient? Should we just drop mutual obligation entirely at the cost of potentially higher structural and hardcore unemployment (and so higher government outlays on transfer payments)?
The welfare systems of most (if not all) Western countries are inspired by this viewpoint, but take fundamentally different trade-offs. They do not action the viewpoint itself - the viewpoint clearly is not an actionable policy. It is also not a conservative viewpoint. I bet if you would ask people from both sides the majority will agree to some extent with the viewpoint.
The devil is in the details. I could take this viewpoint and take several trade-offs on the implementation which would result in either extremely left-wing or extremely right-wing policies.
That's a central flaw in right-wing ideology. Society has never been fair, and probably never will be. People don't have the same opportunities in life, if nothing else due to the birth lottery. Adopting laissez-faire or "bootstrap" policies doesn't address this problem. As such, it very much is an irrational stance because it is incongruent with reality.
In other words, the right focuses on duty over rights, in extreme cases making welfare punitive. The left goes the other direction, focusing on rights over duty: government handout programs with few stipulations for the receiver.
The difference between the right and left here is that people on the right tend to presume fairness, and the left prescribes fairness - and conversely increasingly presumes oppression.
> the fruits of someone else's work
This is another, ignoring that we're social creatures and only thrived as a species because of co-operation. The left exaggerates in the other direction, pretending like we don't have a selfish gene and nowadays confusing outcome with opportunity. Individualism versus collectivism.
> efficiency
Yet the following are right-wing policies: teaching abstinence, the war on drugs, budget cuts to education... You might be right in some areas, but your definition of efficiency would need to be narrowed down specifically to budgetary efficiency.
In the context of your example, yes, it it more efficient to help someone financially while they're unemployed. It's also more efficient to decriminalise drugs and prostitution, to inform kids about sex and drugs, and to invest in education (as a proxy for success in life).
> common decency
Which has no objective definition by default.
I don't think there is such a thing as a political stance that is free from emotional axioms. At best, the political ideology can be internally consistent, with one point logically flowing from the basic principles, but there is always an external dependency on emotion. That said, there definitely is value in right-wing principles, just as there is in left-wing principles. The key is not becoming too entrenched or foaming at the mouth.
As a conservative, its not that educated conservatives think society is "fair", in that their aren't people with more or less advantages. Rather, we accept that life is "fair enough", and true equality, in the sense that everyone has the exact same capital/life outcomes is worse for society than it is good.
To be more fair, is better, in the sense that rewarding meritocracy is the goal, but even here there is a fundamental unavoidable unfairness born out of the natural talents and genetic predispositions of individuals making them uniquely advantaged for a given sport, field, career, etc.
> You believe you can perceive all the flaws in your opponents reasoning, they're obvious to you - but reject the possibility that they feel exactly the same way about you.
I'm not sure about that. I believe that (calm, observant, not the Yelling-at-you-on-Facebook kind) conservatives today better understand liberals and progressives than the other way round, because the liberal/progressive point of view is overwhelmingly represented in the media, so conservatives are much more exposed to it than any random liberal would be to conservative ideas (unless they specifically seek them out).
It sounds to me like you are doing the exact same thing you accuse "the leftists" of doing - oversimplifying the other sides views without actually considering their benefits and drawbacks, and writing them off as "feel good speech", while positioning your own political (and emotional) views as logical and rational.
The "logical" view you have given ("someone who doesn't work and doesn't contribute to society doesn't deserve govt handouts") is purely an emotional view. "Deserve" has nothing to do with any sort of logic or realism. What are the effects of such a policy? What are the effects on crime, homelessness, unemployment...?
Politics is complicated, there is no absolute right or wrong, and the effects of policies are complex and hard to predict. There are many trade-offs, and a lot of those are non-obvious. People also have different values, and will prefer different trade-offs. That is not necessarily better or worse, just different.
Another point I think is relevant is that I feel many solutions that you've described are easy to understand, quick fixes. In a world that is growing more and more complicated I think people are more prone to gravitate towards the simple.
Another reason, in my opinion for the leftist narrative being so captivating at the moment is that people are delaying adulthood, kids, family more and more. When you are young, or have little, true life experience you don't see why the simple solutions to help all these people wouldn't work. You haven't been in the trenches of life to realise that compromise is needed and that we don't always understand the 2nd or 3rd order effects that our actions will have.
Again all this is my own personal experience but I think it has some bearing on todays political minefield.
It sounds like you're saying "I only see these leftists using extremely shallow reasoning, and they don't understand that they're wrong because they don't look at my/our reasoning beyond a shallow level."
If you would look for more depth in the reasoning of the people you're disagreeing with yourself, you might be surprised at what you might find. The frustration you're expressing to me seems to be very symmetric, occurring on both sides of the spectrum.
I believe I understand their reasoning significantly better than they understand mine. I don't think it's even close to being symmetric. As I said, the left's policies are shallower and easier to understand...when you question as to how a certain policy would ever actually work, the left usually tries to change the subject and call me a bigot insurrectionist (as the leftist crowd behind them cheers "yeah shutup you insurrectionist!"). All without ever discussing the initial question of how something would actually work. Look at AOC's green new deal BS and question-dodging as a perfect example. Then how she relies on sensationalist fluff (shallow-topic) banter as protection....without ever answering any of the initial questions. And then she honestly believes she's a savior sent from above. To me, the levels of tunnel-vision dissolution and lack of grade-school logic is astonishing.
This all leads me to the question if this is all being stirred up on purpose (via the media) as a type of psychological warfare against America. The emotions being purposely poked by the media (race issues, gun rights, etc) don't seem to be purely a ratings grab. But the insane thing about this situation is that the left is so caught up in shallow issues that they label me as a "conspiracy theorist"...I feel like I'm trying to warn the people on the roof of the skyscraper in Independence Day right before it gets blown up by the aliens.
One of the problems of modern political discourse is that the world is now extremely fragmented, and the economic and social theories underpinning this or that position are extremely complex - on all sides.
For example, stuff like gender-related issues on the left have now evolved through hundreds of papers and volumes, which might even make sense if considered sequentially (and if validity is granted to the field at all) but look outright baffling from "the street". There is no possibility of civil dialogue between some intellectual who spent his or her life (over)analysing a complex and niche topic, and an averagely-informed person. It's like having a professor of String Theory discuss that with an undergraduate drop-out: whether the theory is right or wrong, they are just not speaking the same language, and there is not enough time for either side to work on finding a level of complexity that is agreeable to both.
Add to it that social incentives push people towards finding "un-owned niches" and push them into mainstream consciousness even if they are very rare, and you end up with constant arguing on what are basically strawmen (the "immigrant who never works", the "transexual who wants to use this or that toilet", etc etc).
> social incentives push people towards finding "un-owned niches" and push them into mainstream consciousness
Yeah social incentives are so ass-backwards nowadays. People are actually being rewarded for being seen as victims nowadays, so we're seeing people actually compete for the "highest level of victimhood". We literally just had a princess on Oprah telling her sob story about how the other princes and princesses weren't nice enough to her.
It's a race to the bottom that doesn't actually benefit anyone, doesn't include any mention of figuring out how to fix the root cause of the issue, and reduces the seriousness of actual victims of bad circumstance.
How so? I'm primarily calling them out for spewing their political beliefs in public and I described the lack of awareness they have as they do it (and I touched on the underpinnings as to why I think that lack of awareness exists). How am I doing the "exact" same thing here?
> Conservative policies take a bit more explaining to get their point across, and are much more focused on the logical and realistic side of things.
>...
>Also, the time horizon for conservative viewpoints is often much longer (think about generations in the future and the impact today's decisions will have down the road).
Conservative policy in the US toward climate change right now is "it's a worldwide scientific hoax designed to take down the United States economy." That is not logical or reasonable. It expressly ignores the needs of future generations. Give me oil and economic growth now, externalities be damned.
>"everyone should have world class health care!"
The United States is the about the only western country for which the right-wing views this as illogical and unrealistic. Why? Maybe it is because sick people sometimes have trouble keeping a job, and
>"someone who doesn't work and doesn't contribute to society doesn't deserve govt handouts"
> The United States is the about the only western country for which the right-wing views this as illogical and unrealistic
I never said this wasn't ideal, I'm saying it's unrealistic to snap your fingers and make it happen. I'm saying it sounds good to say this(which is why it's often boasted about by the left), but the process in which the left wants to go about it are completely unrealistic and lead to bigger unrelated long-term issues that they want to sweep under the rug. Kind of like what the boomers did with social security, so we are stuck paying the bill but will never share the benefits of. I'm sure it made for great left-wing politics back then!
> Climate change
I don't think it's a hoax, but I think it's being blown out of proportion to support other left wing agendas (in the form of using it as a vehicle to collect more tax money). I also don't think necessary components are being factored in such as exponential growth of new technologies, and a reduction of the world population in the future (no one's having kids anymore). I also think the left's proposed idea of a "climate tax" will not only not work, but it will lead to even more wealth disparity and overall human suffering. Lets do simple economics: charge a polluting business extra taxes...they pass the extra cost down the supply chain (eventually to consumers)...and they mark up their services by a fixed percentage and use their variable cost as the anchor...which means e.g. a 35% markup leads to more profits for big business, higher expense for consumers, and no actual incentive to cut production levels. Not to mention the inflation triggered by that.
FYI your response is essentially a cookie cutter leftist response, and you're pretty much proving my point. You complain about things using sensational, overly emotional, and somewhat condescending language...but then don't offer any logical solutions to any of the issues. You're essentially making noise that sounds good, but doesn't contain any meaningful or helpful substance.
>Lets do simple economics: charge a polluting business extra taxes...they pass the extra cost down the supply chain (eventually to consumers)...and they mark up their services by a fixed percentage and use their variable cost as the anchor...which means e.g. a 35% markup leads to more profits for big business, higher expense for consumers, and no actual incentive to cut production levels. Not to mention the inflation triggered by that.
That assumes a completely inelastic demand curve, which is unrealistic.
>FYI your response is essentially a cookie cutter leftist response, and you're pretty much proving my point. You complain about things using sensational, overly emotional, and somewhat condescending language
My point was that your post itself was completely condescending and sensationalistic about the left, and I could do the same to you. You should have a bit of introspection about your final paragraph:
>The simple fact is that conservatives have an easier time seeing where the left is coming from as a result of the left's primary policies being shallower and less thought out. These aspects also make it easier for the left to create snarky comments around. Conservatives however, simply don't agree and think it's all a pipe dream. They see the shallowness that the left is not able to. The left on the other hand, not only doesn't understand the right's overarching viewpoints...they also aren't even willing to try to understand where the right is coming from.
That is completely sensationalistic, overly emotional, and extremely condescending.
That's a fair point; tbh I can't make any excuse for whatever they're trying to pull off with that; I've heard a lot of complaints about the UK govs approach to things; sounds like they're upsetting just about most people.
I think you'll find most grassroots conservatives agree with you on this. And so do most right wing commentators. It is only the government that is pushing this and it's crazy.
> Search Google for the Right to Protest legislation
There is nothing in there as far as i can see specifically targeting leftist protestors, it seem to be written for any kind of protests, even non political. Are only leftist protests in the UK noisy, violent and disruptive?
>Go read the stories about JKRowling and others view on trans people, and the editorials about it
As far as I know she considers herself a feminist and a liberal and has actively supported feminist causes. I don't know what she has to do with the conservatives and I don't know which rights she is taking away from trans people or how can she even do that.
> My views on some social issues, particularly 'free speech', are considered a conservative now.
By who? Rosa Luxembourg, for example, was a free speech fundamentalist, and she is still far left of many left wingers today.
Free speech is a value that is often adopted, nuanced, and discarded by political projects from all over the spectrum - and it's naive to think that one side of the spectrum has a monopoly on its defense or denigration.
This is exactly the problem. "I do not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it" has been replaced with "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences". The latter is, of course, utter nonsense. Repercussions or retaliation for expressing wrongthink is the literal definition of a place that does not have freedom of speech.
You want your speech to be free from consequences -- i.e if you were to call someone a liar / cheat, they can't change their opinion of you based on what you've said? How is that compatible with their freedom of thought?
To me, freedom of speech means I shouldn't worry about legal repercussions for expressing wrongthink.
There is perhaps a separate discussion to be had about the sort of society we want to live in - do we want to promote open discussion, even if it can be divisive? But I don't think it's really a rights issue unless the consequences progress from social / economic to legal.
Freedom from speech can only mean freedom from consequences, but virtually nobody thinks all speech should be free from all consequences.
For example, if the government allows its critics to speak freely, but then puts them in prison [1], is that free speech? No. So because of a consequence, speech is not free.
If someone says they hate you and want to kill your family, and you avoid them as a result, is that free speech? Yes - no significant number of people would say it is not. So here, despite a consequence, speech is free.
Some people connect free speech specifically with prior restraint. But prior restraint is also purely about consequences: if the government bans your book, what that actually means is that anyone distributing your book will be punished, and that's a consequence.
Some people connect free speech specifically with government action. But if a tech monopoly deletes its enemies from the internet, is that free speech? I would say it is not.
It's meaningless to be for or against free speech in some binary sense. What you can have is an opinion about the mapping from speech to consequences. You might think that speech should map to lighter consequences than it does at the moment across all speech, or to heavier consequences, for for some kinds of speech to be lighter and some heavier.
[1] Idi Amin is reputed to have said "There is freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech."
> It's meaningless to be for or against free speech in some binary sense. What you can have is an opinion about the mapping from speech to consequences. You might think that speech should map to lighter consequences than it does at the moment across all speech, or to heavier consequences, for for some kinds of speech to be lighter and some heavier.
I think this is a very good way of putting things. However, when it comes to answering the question, there's two ways of thinking about it -- how do I map other's speech to consequences with my actions (i.e morally) and how does the government map speech to consequences (i.e legally). I think only this second way of thinking is where the "right to free speech" comes in.
The view that I'm advocating is that I want the government to support a relatively strong version of free speech (i.e you should be able to say what you want without fear of being persecuted by the government, bar a few exceptions), but my personal map of speech to consequences is for me to decide. This means, for example, that I may choose to stop supporting a particular business because of something one of their employees have said, and may even shout about it on Twitter, but doing so wouldn't be an infringement of their right to free speech (it may be morally questionable).
Exactly. People say they want freedom of speech, but really they want the ability to say whatever they want while also having the ability to punish others for saying things they don't like.
Similarly, people say that some countries have freedom of speech, when in reality every country has ways of punishing people for making certain noises out of their mouths - they just differ in which noises and to what degree.
The effect of this dishonesty is there is a hidden social contract on what you are, or are not, allowed to say, and everyone has to negotiate that. The article is about how people are becoming more self-censorious as a consequence of this social contract tightening up.
So the strong form of the phrase "free speech must mean freedom from consequences" implies all speech must mean freedom from all consequences, whereas the weak form would mean all speech must be free from a certain undefined subset of consequences?
That phrase is always proposed as a rebuttal to "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences," and always in the context that any consequences given will lead to a slippery slope. It doesn't contradict that premise at all if interpreted in the weak form, it only makes sense as a rebuttal in the strong form.
So either the so-called "free speech maximalist" side actually believes that people who argue free speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences are referring to all consequences rather than any consequences, or else we're all just in violent agreement with one another, and really just haggling over what those consequences should be.
Limiting it to legal consequences is not enough. There are also physical and psychological safety consequences that are relevant. You're not, for example, free to speak your mind if expressing wrongthink will result in a punch to the face.
In the context of a workplace (being the topic of this post, after all), one such consequence is the loss of your job. Something that is very real these days, with so-called activists doxing people and trying to get them fired just because they dared to express a dissenting opinion.
Punching people in the face is illegal regardless of the reason - I don't really see how that's relevant?
Are you really saying that it should be impossible for someone to lose their job over what they say? If someone, for example, threatened to kill a co-worker, you don't think they should be fired? I appreciate that this is an extreme example, but when we talk about rights, don't we have to cover all examples of speech?
I'd agree that social media mobs trying to get people fired is a bad thing, that it's become too easy to whip up such mobs, and that as a society we should try to be more tolerant of other views. But I don't see somebody losing a job over something they've said as a rights issue - you don't have a right to a job.
> Punching people in the face is illegal regardless of the reason - I don't really see how that's relevant?
The 'freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences' was popularized (repopularized?) and became a somewhat mainstream talking point in America around 2016-17 to justify political violence with the "punch a nazi" thing and stuff. It's the "paradox of tolerance".
Fair enough. I'm certainly not advocating that it's ok to punch someone over something they said.
The context of this thread (expressing political opinions at work) makes me think the other types of consequence are more relevant for this discussion though.
In non-America places (or in the few remaining unionised workplaces in America) you typically have some right to due process, and you can't just be terminated on a whim because you said something the boss didn't like.
Yes, and I think that's a good thing. But I don't see think that's incompatible with my view here - that freedom of speech doesn't mean I have the right to say anything and expect to keep my job.
If I was to say something offensive, I should be accorded due process, but the result of that process may be that I'm let go.
Sure, I probably largely agree with that. But there's a difference between what you're describing and what often happens in the real world where a twitter mob calls for you to be fired and your company immediately shitcans you to placate the yobs.
I'd agree that a twitter mob getting someone fired is in most cases a bad thing and I can think of a bunch of reasons why it's a bad thing. But "infringing on the employees right to free speech" isn't one of them.
This might seem a bit pedantic, but I do think it's important. If something is a violation of someone's rights then there doesn't need to be any further discussion - it shouldn't be allowed. I think claiming that this is a free speech issue is not only wrong, but also shuts down much needed discussion about where we set the limits of our tolerance.
I think we largely agree, and where we disagree is quibbling over semantics.
I don't consider myself a "speech absolutist", so I wouldn't agree that assigning, say, twitter mobbing to the category of "free speech issues" shuts down further discussion.
Freedom of speech should have the same protection as freedom of religion, and there really shouldn't be a difference between if someone speech is referencing views from an old book/science fiction author, life experience good and bad, or anything else that is a reflection of the personal identify of an individual.
The European humans right is a good example of this. EU has countries with widely different religions, widely different politics, geographic regions and cultures. If you want freedom of speech in such a diverse area you can't allow discrimination for expressing wrongthink, because any speech is a wrongthink somewhere except for views about kittens and ice cream.
The only major hard lines are explicit and direct threat of violence targeting person or persons, fraud, and national security (the later being a topic of debate).
>You want your speech to be free from consequences -- i.e if you were to call someone a liar / cheat, they can't change their opinion of you based on what you've said? How is that compatible with their freedom of thought?
The issue of calling someone "a liar / cheat" if they're not belongs to libel. Same way yelling fire in a crowded cinema is a public safety issue.
Expression of ideas is neither, and should not have "consequences".
>To me, freedom of speech means I shouldn't worry about legal repercussions for expressing wrongthink.
So is it OK if a mob (not a legal or govermnet entity) stomped on you and beat you to a bloody pulp?
If a church (not a legal entity) asked its members to spit on your face and abuse you on the internet?
> So is it OK if a mob (not a legal or govermnet entity) stomped on you and beat you to a bloody pulp?
No - legally and morally, this is not OK.
> If a church (not a legal entity) asked its members to spit on your face and abuse you on the internet?
Morally, I'd say this was wrong, but legally, I think they would be within their rights. But equally, if I were to respond by encouraging my friends to protest outside the church, I wouldn't be violating their right to freedom of speech.
> If you were immediately fired?
This would depend on the country and my contract, but I'd hope that immediate dismissal would be a violation of my labour rights - not my right to free speech.
>Both libel and inciting imminent lawless action are expressions of ideas, that term is so vague as to be all-encompassing.
And yet courts all over the world are able to separate them from "expression of ideas" (here in Europe e.g. where we have and use libel laws).
It's not that hard either, unless we specifically go for edge case.
"X is a thief" can be libel.
"The climate is in danger/is not in danger and we should or shouldn't do so and so" is an expression of an idea, and can't be libel.
As long as you don't speak about someone in particular (a person or set of named persons, as opposed to ideas and abstract groups), and don't accuse them of being something criminal or derogatory (especially something they're not) you should be able to express any idea you like, how about that?
> "The climate is in danger/is not in danger and we should or shouldn't do so and so" is an expression of an idea, and can't be libel.
If I was an employee of a climate action advocacy group, wouldn't publicly stating that the climate is not in danger cause harm to my employer? Should they be forced to continue employing me despite that harm?
Again, I'm not advocating that this person should be fired, but it feels like overreach to say that it shouldn't be possible for someone to be fired for what they say.
Let's talk concretely about the consequence that is most fraught.
Should employees be fired for expressing political positions at work that their employer disagrees with? Should all employees be told to focus on their companies mission instead?
Previously progressives seemed happy for the former to happen, but now they seem annoyed that they also might have their free speech squashed.
Uhm, I'm not following you. Historically, employees who "expressed political opinions" would typically support leftist/progressive views that their employer would disagree with; hence why laws were passed to protect their rights in this area (at least in Europe). So I don't think anybody on the left was ever "happy" that an employer could fire someone for their political position, as a general concept.
What might have some support is the idea that an employer could fire someone holding positions that are incompatible with the majority of other employees. We can argue about the best way to regulate this, but it's a different and horizontal view of determining the boundaries of civil coexistence.
Surely that depends on a number of things -- the nature of the employer's business, the manner in which the opinion is expressed, etc? I think businesses should generally be free to set their own terms and conditions, provided they are compatible with the nation's labour rights.
Personally, I'd prefer to live in a society where people are encouraged to have frank and respectful exchanges of views, and I'd prefer to work for a business where I'm not afraid to share my views, but equally where political discussion is not a large part of workplace culture.
But that's just my preference _- we're not discussing what should happen, but what rights people have, and no, I don't think you have the right to say whatever you like and keep your job.
That doesn't mean your boss should fire you because he disagrees with something you said, but it does mean it should be possible, provided you are accorded due process.
As the old Soviet joke goes: "We have freedom of speech in the USSR too. The difference is that in the USA, you can use your freedom of speech more than once."
I don't agree with your comparison of the two terms above - and in fact I think they are complementary, not contradictory as you suggest. The right to speak has been to say unpopular opinions and be free from government oppression, not from social opinion.
If "freedom of speech MEANS freedom from consequences", as you suggest, then what would be the point of speaking with our absolute freedom, as no one would be allowed to form an opinion on it?
Freedom of speech has always meant "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences" in America, it is just that you have the right to say it and be free from government persecution. You can and will be judged on it socially, which is what this paper says is not right, as workplace employees are self censoring their views because people will take a principled stand on their opinions.
This paper seems to want people to be able to state exactly what they please and for there to be no social repercussions - which the first quote you have acknowledges there are.
"I do not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it" contains "I do not agree", meaning that the individual who uttered it has made an opinion based on someone else's speech.
I think you have a misconception here about what freedom is. A freedom is a restriction on the state. It simply says that the state cannot act against you for exercising a freedom, or act to prevent you from doing so. Repercussions, consequences, or retaliations are completely unrelated so long as they are not state-sponsored.
With this in mind, "I do not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it", and "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences", are totally compatible. You can both fight for a restriction on state power, and have a personal reaction to what somebody has said.
The real issue here is that people never had to utter "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences" in the past because people had an implicit understanding that this was reality.
If a Catholic school teacher declares publicly that women should have the right to choose to have an abortion, what do you think her chances are of retaining her employment at that school?
Conservatives would claim that the school has a right to fire the teacher, because it's just freedom of religion, as if somehow that particular freedom should supersede the others.
So what changed?
Oh, right, the country has shifted left and Christianity is not the dominant social force that it used to be. One man's belief in a man in the sky is no more important than another's alignment with a set of moral values.
No, the expectation of being able to say anything and not be responsible for it, is what's wrong.
Say what you want, but be prepared to stand by it and take responsibility for it, in a court of law if necessary.
Free speech is a right, and thus it requires the person exercising that right to understand that it does not absolve them from being held responsible for what they say or express.
Just like the 2nd amendment doesn't shield you from all possible consequences of exercising that right to bear arms.
I'm not really sure what the amendments to the US constitution have to do with a post about British workplaces, but I think you have a very different view on "freedom of speech" than the classically liberal one that it is arguably founded upon. That's OK, of course.
In the UK we don't have and have never had freedom of speech. In fact, we have some of the harshest libel laws in the world. There are very many consequences for saying or publishing things that you're not allowed to here.
But this post is about people self-censoring their opinions, particularly in the workplace, for fear of repercussions, and that is something that absolutely is getting worse. Like many others I steer clear of all of these topics myself, as even though I hold "approved" opinions on them. I fear that someone may wilfully misinterpret something I say and cause me irreparable harm by going on some weird crusade to have me fired and my life ruined, as that seems to be what normally happens these days.
>In the UK we don't have and have never had freedom of speech.
That's not true - we do have freedom of speech.
It's just not absolute freedom of speech, which is a frankly horrible idea, because absolute rights almost always undermine other rights. (As an example, absolute freedom of speech would preclude all rights to privacy and confidentiality.)
What we have is a framework of fundamental rights, most of which are "qualified rights" and must be balanced with each other.
That it is a balancing act means that it's an imperfect system, for sure, but it's better not to allow the use of one right to trample over another.
In the UK we have limited freedom of expression (under S10 of the Human Rights Act 1998), which is much more narrowly defined, and even then subject to many restrictions and limitations (libel, court privilege, hate speech, and more). It doesn't really qualify as "freedom of speech" in the sense that really matters for this discussion.
>In the UK we have limited freedom of expression [...] which is much more narrowly defined
There is no real distinction between freedom of speech and freedom of expression. Speech is expression, or rather it is a subset.
Section 10 of the Human Rights Act 1998 is the "Power to take remedial action" by ministers if a court has issued a declaration of incompatibility.
I think you mean Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which is given direct domestic legal effect by the Human Rights Act.
A10 states
>Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.
which I'm not sure you can claim isn't "freedom of speech".
I did state earlier that it's a qualified right, and those qualifications are:
>The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
but this hardly seems like it undermines freedom of speech. There are limits, but they must be "necessary in a democratic society" (which can be - and often is - the basis for a legal challenge by those who think their A10 rights have been violated) and for a defined, and limited, number of reasons.
Like I also said above, if you remove (some of) these qualifications then you end up with perverse results, like undermining the right to privacy or justice itself.
I'm not from the US either, however I wanted to frame the argument in a way that would be understandable to the majority on this site.
> "But this post is about people self-censoring their opinions, particularly in the workplace, for fear of repercussions, and that is something that absolutely is getting worse. Like many others I steer clear of all of these topics myself, as even though I hold "approved" opinions on them."
In a way, this gives you just a little perspective on how homosexual people have felt for millennia, in fact how anyone with a sexuality, religion, political view or any other aspect that was sufficiently divergent from the status quo have been treated for millennia. In many parts of the world, some of those things still carry death sentences, and it's not very long ago that this was also the case in our western countries.
Being told that ones views are "not cool, dude" is extremely mild, and the threat of doxxing is wildly overblown, unless you are an actual political activist. And in that case, it still a lot more dangerous being an ultra-woke leftie than a white supremacist, considering the cases we've seen of violent attacks, car rammings at protests and so on.
> "I fear that someone may wilfully misinterpret something I say and cause me irreparable harm by going on some weird crusade to have me fired and my life ruined, as that seems to be what normally happens these days."
I'm sorry, but that is just horse manure. You hear of a small handful of cases, which are given completely overblown coverage in the media, because outrage sells. That is not an accurate representation of the world, it is a twisted media picture. It is especially bad in the UK, where the big media is overwhelmingly conservative.
As someone who probably agrees with you on a number of things, being of an old-school leftist persuasion (trade unions, progressive taxation, wealth taxes, completely legalize weed, trust that people have good intentions at heart, judge people by their actions, not by where they happened to be born), and someone who interacts with a lot of different companies from all over the spectrum, I simply cannot recognize your argument that people who don't hold "woke leftist" views are discriminated against.
On the contrary, there is still a undercurrent of conservative and somewhat xenophobic attitude at a lot of manual labor and otherwise "blue collar" workplaces. It has gotten a lot better, but it is still present.
You can call my fears "horse manure" if you like, but that doesn't really change the fact that I have them. Based on how I've seen some of my (now ex-)colleagues treated when they have spoken up, I don't think they are at all unfounded.
And yes, people have been discriminated against for who they are, or what they believe, for a long long time. It was wrong then and it is wrong now.
You can say as many wrong things as you want, but you cannot expect that there will be no consequences.
Those consequences range from people not wishing to associate with you anymore at the mildest end, to actual fines and jail time, if your speech can be proven to have directly incited violence (the bar for which various according to country and jurisdiction).
You can't just claim that "I have no control over these words that are coming out of my mouth, and I take no responsibility for them", free speech doesn't work like that.
And if your strongest argument for saying something is "I have the right to say this", then maybe reconsider whether it's actually worth saying.
If freedom of speech is so limited, does it even exist as a freedom anymore?
You could say I have the "freedom to take anything I want" except I mustn't take anything that belongs to somebody else. Do I really have any freedom with that restriction in place?
Personally I don't think we have freedom of speech (in the UK, certainly legally we do not). You have to be careful of what you say and who you say it to. Maybe that's OK, and free speech was a failed experiment. But to claim we have that freedom whilst restricting it thus is just wankery.
The really important thing here is that your freedom does not overrule the freedom of others. It's freedom of speech, not an obligation to listen to or agree with or condone what you say.
As always, if your greatest argument for saying something is that you have the right to say it, maybe reconsider what you're about to say.
So "freedom of speech" is where you can say what you want, except that if you say the wrong thing to the wrong person, then there are potentially serious repercussions, up to and including imprisonment.
I'm curious to know what not having freedom of speech would look like.
I'll repeat myself: "your freedom does not overrule the freedom of others."
Words can and do cause harm, just as actions can and do. You don't see very many people seriously arguing for "freedom of action", because that would be an utterly chaotic and brutal society, even worse than the extremes of feudalism or warlordism.
Actions have consequences, and words have consequences. Arguing that you cannot be held responsible for the words that come out of your mouth or text written by your hand, is completely ridiculous.
Often I see the very same people who argue fiercely for personal responsibility above all, turn around and argue for free speech absolutism, seemingly unaware of the absurd incompatibility of those two stances.
Just because you "don't celebrate it" doesn't mean you should call their boss, harass their workplace, place demands that they are fired from their job, mark them as bad people, and so on.
And yet many people do just that, and feel good about it.
> We asked whether it is “fair or unfair for people who say grossly offensive things to be at risk of losing their livelihoods?” Nationally, 48 percent believe it is “fair,” but this figure rises to 65 percent for social democrat-aligned Labour voters, compared with 39 percent for right-leaning Conservative voters.
Meaning right leaning are more likely to live and let live.
"right leaning" is a minority in the UK, and if you exclude those who've retired it's a small minority. Minorities tend to be more accepting of speech that goes against the majority view.
And a lot of old-school lefties in the UK consider Blair's New Labour to be centre-right, "Red Tories" etc. Blair might have been left-wing but he certainly wasn't a socialist.
The "left" in Britain arguably haven't won an election since 1974.
It has to be considered that "the left" has been structurally divided in three parties (Lab, LibDem, Greens) for most of this period, which is a cardinal sin in the British system.
The right had fewer splits, and arguably none of them is comparably structural.
The left might have lost a lot of elections, but I think you can still make a case for the original point the "right-of-centre" are a minority in the UK, even if it's only a narrow majority. The Conservatives haven't won a majority of the popular vote in nearly 90 years (but then neither has any party)
Showing just how unrepresentitive our electoral system is. The combined Tory/Brexit/DUP vote was about 43% in 2019, a minority.
Ashcroft and Ipsos confirm that older people were more likely to vote tory, with >50% only in the over 65 range.
If you're a HN poster you're likely in a workplace with
1) Under 45s, certainly under 65s
2) ABC1
3) University education
All of those are 3 indicators of low 'right wing' (defined as voting Tory or whatever Farage's party is) support, so it's not surprising most people in the workplace of the average HN poster vote not-tory.
I have a few (really lovely) conservative friends who have expressed to me that they feel they can't express their political opinions outside of close friends and family because of the social risks involved with doing so. While I hold some "controversial" political opinions they're mostly related to fiscal policy rather than social policy so I've never personally felt like I couldn't express myself if I wanted to -- although I prefer not discussing politics in work environments.
However, last year I decided to start promoting conservative views I don't necessarily agree with that my friends hold to see what the consequences of this would be. I think people would be surprised at how open most people are to be honest. I've expressed conservative views on immigration, trans-rights and Trump as if they were my own and had very little push back outside of Twitter. I can contrast this with the fact that I've seen some people over the last few years express left-wing positions at work and have had at least equal push back. I especially remember one guy who expressed how he felt we should remove statues of historical figures who did things we wouldn't approve of today and got a very strong negative reaction in my office.
I wonder if the real problem here is that people who are conservatively minded are just naturally less comfortable with social conflict. I know my progressive friends are in all regards much more opinionated and seem far more comfortable with conflict, where as my conservative friends tend to be the types of people who avoid conflict.
Perhaps it's an age thing too. Older people who are generally more conservative and perhaps also less interested in getting into a heated debates on Twitter or in the office about some slightly controversial political position they hold. This difference in willingness to enter into social conflict may explain why conservatives feel they are in a minority despite making up about 50% of the population.
All I can say to those who feel oppressed is that as a bullied kid something I learnt from a young age is that it's hard to look myself in the mirror if I start trying to adapt my behaviour to please others. I much rather be myself and hated than try to conform at the expense of my identity. Be proud of who you are and never feel afraid to express yourself. If you're hated for that, so be it. It's better to be yourself than a coward.
> I wonder if the real problem here is that people who are conservatively minded are just naturally less comfortable with social conflict. I know my progressive friends are in all regards much more opinionated and seem far more comfortable with conflict, where as my conservative friends tend to be the types of people who avoid conflict.
Exactly, conservatives do not want change, and therefore do not want a conflict associated with the change. However, liberals and progressives push for changes because they simply do not value "do the things as in the past" nearly as much as their respective values, and every change means, potentially, a conflict.
It just takes one person to take offense to something for your life to be ruined.
It is not worth the risk talking to anyone about anything remotely "honest" unless you have known them for years and know how they will react.
This is a catch-22 because to really trust someone you have to be willing to talk to them (which kind of makes it moot to begin with, right?)
Even now I find myself curbing my opinion strongly based on which words have been weaponized with malicious connotation, lets not discuss which 'truth-telling business' could be seen as responsible for this.
Lets not discuss the other points which are too numerous to start on, and too political for the likes of this conversation. We could touch on the destruction of Western Academia as a point of origin for all this, we could muse on the comparable style of current social interaction to how things are depicted in 1984, or Communist Russia, but based on the keywords I already dropped, there is surely a large enough group of bots available to run this into the ground.
These are all my opinions, none of it is considered some unchangable, unalterable worldview, and I don't believe you can engage critically with anyone if you are not willing to compromise.
That being said, compromise comes from both sides, and one side is way better at yelling racist, sexist, misogynist, whenever the bargaining starts.
> I have a few (really lovely) conservative friends who have expressed to me that they feel they can't express their political opinions outside of close friends and family because of the social risks involved with doing so.
When I read things like this, I think back to [this tweet](https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/105039166355267174...). What innocuous issues exactly are conservatives receiving so much backlash on? Most often I see this sentiment from people who just want to say how they really feel about immigrants and "PC culture" is ruining everything for them.
> Conservative: I have been censored for my conservative views
> Me: Holy shit! You were censored for wanting lower taxes?
I'm also a politically informed person and, unlike you, I am politically active. What can I say? It's my hobby. People go skydiving on weekends, I engage in left-wing politics. But I'm quite afraid of the possible consequences. What if a prospective employer sees me handing out flyers? What would by colleagues think? Well-paid developer and activist, how does that even work? Aren't they all unemployed and living with their moms? Fact is, many people (certainly a large number of bosses, and those are the ones whose opinions matter) think that you can't work at a private bank if you think private banking shouldn't exist.
At every workplace I've been at, liberal (as in right-wing) views have been omnipresent and shared widely. I've often had to bite my tongue. If your coworkers celebrate tax cuts because it gives them more money in their wallets you are a downer for expressing doubts on its consequences for society. Don't argue with people expressing anti-immigration views because you will be labeled a "virtue signaler".
I have no problem working with people who do not share my views. I briefly worked with someone who was a member of a Nazi group once (he didn't know I knew). It worked fine.
What the hell? These terms are in no way synonyms.
You seem to be fairly extreme left, which is fine, but then labelling everyone to the right of you as "right-wing" is not a useful classification. "Left" and "right" are relative to the political centre, not to wherever you yourself happen to be.
Please consider the possibility that GP is from a different country than you are and that liberal may mean something different there. For example in Sweden, the Liberals are a party that "historically was positioned in the centre" but has since "positioned itself more towards the right". [0]
I think in terms of politics, discussion today doesn't really matter and won't convince anyone. It's about identity, not opinions or facts, they don't really matter so when you are trying to argue with a conservative, he is right not to listen to you.
They may know that their worldview is all wrong, and they aren't fighting for it because it's right, but because there's nothing in for them in the alternatives: they need to preserve their black-collar workplaces for as long as they can, ideally till they retire (so they reject global warming and other concepts that definitely threaten them), they need value of their houses to stay or increase, or again they will never be able to retire, so they reject any multi-unit housing, affordable or assisted housing etc projects, and so on and so forth. They don't fight for their conservative ideas because they think they are right, but because they have vested interest in them being upheld at least for a while.
This is also why in Europe, politics is a lot less divisive. Because most people own nothing and have no vested interest in anything[sarc on], they are already on the hook of the Big State[sarc off]
> Only nine percent of the British adults we surveyed described politics as “very important” to their sense of identity, and only 22 percent had shared any political content on their social channels in the previous year
> When it comes to speaking their minds at work, one of these tribes—home of the “Progressive Activist”—is not like the others. “A powerful and vocal group for whom politics is at the core of their identity,” as More in Common describes them.
i see this more and more. the loud few make a lot of noise, the majority just want to do their jobs. companies have to cater to everyone... but at some point there’s too much virtue signaling at work
As an employer, we have a office policy that advises people to refrain from talking about religion or politics in the office place.
At first, there were two people who pushed back very very vocally to this policy and refused to abide by it. After a few warnings, one quit and the other did something inappropriate that caused us to fire her.
I was really surprised by the reaction after that. People came up to me and thanked me. It turns out those two people were an enormous distraction for everyone at work, and actively created a divisive and uncomfortable environment. They were obsessing about politics and could not stop talking about it with their peers - badgering anyone that disagreed with them. One of them even tried to use the company website and social media accounts to champion her politics.
After her termination, we discovered that she was also collecting client invoices on her desktop computer. Apparently, she had it in her head that we were secretly overcharging customers (she apparently did not understand how compound interest works) and was planning on reporting the company to the financial authorities. Note that even when you're innocent, an accusation of fraud can cause serious reputational damage as well as huge legal fees associated.
Activists are absolute poison to a company. I feel that company's efforts to placate them are usually recipes for them to backfire.
The presumption that the world can be divided in to "progressive activists" and "racists" probably has a lot to do with the reason people don't want to express diverse political opinions at work.
So I take it you support the Uighur genocide in China, the Maduro regime in Venezuela, the current covid crisis in India, the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, and the persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar? Or are you doing something to actively fight against them?
The world is a big place. Many times I've seen local job ads for computer programmers that explicitly state "male only".
Where I am it is common for the hierarchy within a corporation to have a clear separation along ethnic lines, e.g. construction workers will be local, their supervisors will be from a nearby country, and the big bosses will be from another larger, wealthier country.
This is a pitch perfect example of polarization: the previous poster said "there’s too much virtue signaling at work", and now you're strongly implying that anybody who feels this way is a "racist".
It's all the news shows anymore. They could cover many other things, maybe throw in a few positive stories, but cable news and largely the whole industry is just one growing dark cloud.
Local news (small town of <35k population) in the midwest regularly covers bus crashes and other negative news from other states. States that are like 14-20 hours away.
How does that matter to me? It sucks, and it's a tragedy, but it has literally zero impact on my life.
But it sure makes good news for people to worry about.
This is why I avoid news media pretty much completely. If you study everything a few years removed you actually get a much better picture.
The problem with news media is that people have no context what so ever and often no sense of connection. Afghanistan in 2001 fell from the clear blue sky from a non existing place to being a place that can teleport people to New York. Despite it having been in the news somewhat in the 80s.
Even the people who remembered the 80s had no context of what happened in between then because nobody cared basically.
A modern example is the Syrian Civil war, if you only follow the day by the news even if you do it everyday, you actually would have very little understanding what so ever. Many of the actual facts only get relieved much later.
> the assumption that 'viewpoint diversity' is either valuable or worth cultivating on all subjects, this is not true.
Ah yes. It shouldn’t even be legal for people to question your viewpoint. Because when has discussion ever been a valuable thing? Or when has a political fashion ever turned out to be sorely wrong, and new viewpoints were needed? Wait, I remember a few times - but I’m sure that this time is going to be different.
Also, “fragile white boys”? This kind of ad hominem makes you sound like a raging ideologue.
You argued that we shouldn't always have viewpoint diversity. If you don't have viewpoint diversity you have viewpoint monoculture. There is no way this is going to happen short of enforcing it legally (even then there is going to be dissent, so you would rather need something like brainwash, which should already tell you everything about whether this is a good idea, really.)
> I have never seen _anyone_ other than a frightened white male use the term 'virtue signalling'
I think this statement is fairly telling regarding the degree to which you seem to interpret everything through your particular political lens. Together with your use of "conventional" almost as if it were an insult, and talk of "sides"/the KKK/"losing" it's like you think you're part of some revolution. I would seriously consider whether that's true.
One thing I learned after 10 years of being vegetarian: antagonism is a a loosing strategy.
Shaming and tribalism doesn't help anybody, and is an arrogant view of the world.
You are probably some *ist right now, compared to a future world view.
Just because people have an opinion you know is unwise doesn't make them a bad person. They are like you. You are more like them than you think, but like them you have blind spots that prevent you from seeing it. Tolerance goes both way.
We all create suffering, at different scales and in different manners.
The idea is not to cater to racists, but just to make sure their believes does not translate to hurtful actions in the work place. If it doesn't, then it's ok, they probably tolerate stupid things on your part too.
If it does, then first, try to engage with them to make it stop.
When I was a teenager, I had a classmate that would often point out I was eating corpses and it was gross whenever I was eating a ham sandwich.
A friend of his, liked also to point out I believed in fantasies, myths and magic, because I wasn't an atheist.
One day the pair grabbed a holy book from my closed backpack (yep, they opened it without permission), and started playing soccer with it, while saying the book was useless for anything other than being kicked.
Let's say that wasn't an winning strategy, I am still not vegetarian and still not an atheist, all they did was convince me that they are assholes.
Somewhere down the road, people that were against religious extremism took the worst example from it, like dogmatic thinking, blind faith and intolerance, and decided it was ok to use it against religious people.
'For two-thirds of the population, talking politics sincerely, on the job, is uncomfortable. People who hold certain, commonplace views, stay silent believing that expressing those views will carry penalty not reward. '
This sounds like a recipe for disaster for any company. When I worked in the UK no part of my job description was about 'talking politics sincerely' or sharing my 'commonplace views'. I did that in the pub afterwards.
'Ethical Systems' appear to be a great way to stir up rancor and division with the usual cocktail of racialisation (the new segregationists) and genderisation of everything. I can't see how this would help productivity or enhance people's work lives in any shape or form. It reminds me of the first frame of a Dilbert cartoon.
People with, shall we say, radically progressive views, are more than comfortable to share them openly in the staff rooms, kitchens, before and after meetings, etc. without anybody contending with them. Anybody with more centrist, or God forbid conservative views, saves them for the pub afterwards or for their private gatherings. The Overton window seems to shift weekly.
I' not sure where you have worked, but the people who freely give their political opinions are grouped accordingly. They are not grouped by left/right, but by how annoying they are.
All are avoided if at all possible.
I have worked with people who's politics I greatly and deeply oppose. I liked them personally and never delved to deep into their political lives. However, where we have strayed I have tried to learn from their view point.
After all, if we cannot understand one another, how are we supposed to forge middle ground?
I think we really should start to teach _how_ to talk about things we disagree on. It appears that people think that re-iterating the same points (the ones that the "other" side find so extreme) at volume will change people's minds.
That's the case if the majority of people hold progressive views. I've encountered enough conservative companies where people had no problem sharing openly conservative views (some to an extreme that led to open racism).
In those companies, no one would've dared voicing progressive views. Doing that was the easiest way to become an outsider.
I think racism is orthogonal to political affiliation. The (thankfully few) most virulently racist people I know, i.e. white people who drop the "N" word in casual conversation, are straight-ticket "D" voters. I also know people who are fiscally and socially conservative but not racist in the slightest.
I mean at work you have literally nothing to gain by being honest about your views (it's not a polling booth) and could curry favour by professing the same views as those around you.
Therefore, it's not surprising that this tends towards groupthink that agrees with the Highest Paid Person's Opinion whether that should be on the left or on the right.
Indeed. At work my political views shift to whatever way the wind is blowing for a particular group. I can usually find a way to speak sincerely from any view point. All of this is contingent on not being able to avoid such conversations in the first place. You can piss people off by simply taking a neutral stance so that is not always an option. I often end up as an unofficial go-between for different groups where I can influence both toward more moderate common ground.
Could you point to some research on this, specifically ones that
account for the jobs where this happens (HN readers are likely in jobs that attract more middle class and higher education people, who are overwhelmingly left of the current UK median - go to a taxi driver mess room and compare conversations)
and
provide examples of the overton window shifting (yes, the rise of farage and ukip shifted it significantly in some aspects, but on the other hand civil unions and equal marriage has shifted it in others)
I'm willing to believe you that the overton window has shifted to the right significantly over the last 10 years on many aspects, but I'd like to see the evidence
The shift on trans rights isn't simply a shift to the left though - it's more like the mainstream/"liberal" view on trans rights has shifted and the left-wing progressive activists have been dragged along behind it, whilst insisting all the way that they were a vital spearhead of trans rights and that not agreeing uncritically with them about everything and censoring dissenting views is an attack on trans people's existence.
For example, one of the last things the UK's more left-wing party did when they were in power was add a special exemption to anti-discrimination law to deny trans women access to rape and domestic violence services. (As in, this was literally the stated goal.) Pretty much the entire mainstream progressive activism community covered for them and the lobbying group who campaigned for this, demanding that everyone shut up about how the law got there, until 2019 when the same group started lobbying the Conservatives for similar purposes. Similarly, only half a decade or so ago the folks currently trying to cancel J K Rowling and insisting everyone support beating up random elderly lesbians for holding transphobic views were just as confident in their insistence trans women were misogynist bigots for just speaking out about what TERFs were actually doing because supposedly feminist women couldn't have any affect on the real world and so the only reason to blame them for anything was hatred of women. Even the term TERF itself was apparently only coined in 2008, though the ideas it describe go back decades before then.
This becomes even more true the further you go back, to the point that maybe a couple of decades ago, probably three at the most, trans rights seems to have been outside the normal range of progressive activist viewpoints entirely in the sense that - at least in the UK - the people who rose to positions of dominance and influence did so by shunning anyone who actually treated trans women as people, and worse. I mean this very literally, not in the usual hyperbolic sense where any dissent from the activist canon of views is spun as dehumanising trans women - it seems people had a choice between being willing to talk to trans women or gaining connections and influence.
I have trouble describing any view wrt. trans folks as "mainstream". The dynamic you describe is quite real but it looks like the result of salami-slicing politics within progressive activism itself, rather than any discernible 'mainstream' influence.
Obviously, the mainstream isn't exactly campaigning for trans people to be treated in any particular way, but there's a kind of baseline expected level of respect for them as people that's changed over time, and I get the impression that the activists fall below that baseline - especially when compared to people of similar ages and social backgrounds who aren't proud crusaders for social justice. Not only that, the "salami-slicing politics" seems to happen after the non-activist consensus shifts to the point the consensus within the activist community is untenable, not before - of course, the activists spin this as evil bigots suddenly infiltrating their glorious community for justice, but in reality those views were the almost-unchallenged status quo up until that point. Even back when there was much less awareness of the existence of trans people, the activist community was vicious and nasty enough that I suspect it would've made mainstream people uncomfortable if actually exposed to their actions.
Also, it seems like the non-mainstream communities which acted as welcoming spaces for trans people back in the earlier days were often non-activist ones, founded around the kind of "liberal" ideas about diversity and acceptance that activists decry. Then more recently the activists used that historic support for trans people to demand some of them end that diversity and acceptance, because that's supposed to be what it means to support trans people these days.
>The overton window has shifted to the left on many issues. E.g. trans rights
>
>In my own workplace the overton window shifted notably left in gender issues in the last decade.
These are not shifts to the left, they are a shifts towards liberalism.
The left still has a big problem with gender identity. Take a look at Rosie Duffield and Jess Phillips in the Labour Party, Joanne Cherry in the SNP, and the issues surrounding the formation of the Alba Party.
My point was actually that the Overton window has been shifting to the left. It has been shifting to the left on social issues basically ever since the French Revolution, and to the left on economic issue ever since the end of the Cold War.
People looked at Trump and thought "wow, what a far right extremist", but compare Trump to a far right extremist from 100 years ago, and you'll realise just how far left the window has shifted.
I remember working at a company that had a library room which was sometimes booked for meetings.
Every single time I was in a meeting there, without fail, at least one progressive person in the room had to loudly make some negative remark about Ayn Rand and scoff, sigh loudly, or roll their eyes to express their disapproval. Maybe they'd do all three at once. It was a real meme. I think this was because the room had a poster with quotes from various authors and Ayn Rand may have been on the list, although I'm unclear in my memory.
I always found it funny, the behavior was over-the-top childish coming from grown adults. I just bit my tongue, they were otherwise decent people as coworkers.
Then you need to sense what is the workplace consensus on political topics and pretend you agree, otherwise you'll risk getting pushed away at work. I used to know a guy who was pretty vocal about legalisation of drugs and he was able to present his points very well. However everyone at workplace labelled him as a "druggie" and eventually he was dismissed as HR bought the rumours that he is doing drugs, which was of course false.
I love working in a place where using work resources for non-work tasks is strictly forbidden. It's been years since I got an email with even a scent of politics.
What do you mean by "the new segregationists" and "genderisation of everything"? Are people stomping in and replacing gender-neutral workplace restrooms with separate ones for specific genders? Is racial (or otherwise) segregation being put in place at your place of work? Are gender-neutral pronouns like "they" being replaced in company prose with "he" or "she"?
I assume that the previous poster sees “new segregationism” in the following behaviours:
* The de-nuancing of race by reverting to “white” vs “black” and sidelining all other “races”.
* The redefinition of racism to be exclusively something that “white” people do to “black” people.
* The rollback of cultural integration goals by ringfencing certain behaviours as either “black” or “white”, with any cross-pollination being branded “appropriation”.
* Elevating race as the primary lens through which all society should be viewed, thus abandoning the project of emphasising the content of our hearts and not the color of our skin.
I assume that the previous poster sees “genderisation” in the following behaviours:
* Confusing sex and gender, to the detriment of sex and with the aim of establishing the primacy of gender in all respects - legal, interpersonal and medical.
* Re-establishment of gender norms as the definition of identity, rolling back progress in challenging gender stereotypes.
I should say that as far as i can tell, this sort of belief is extremely fringe. The nature of the world today is that a handful of people can get loud on Twitter and get a lot of attention for it.
Reminds me of a friend (a white woman) who was wearing dreadlocks for a period of time (she loved reggae music and everything associated with it). She was abused by black people who didn't like she "appropriated" "their" hair style and she was abused by white supremacists for "promoting" other races. She ended up shaving her head after a couple of incidents.
yes, this represent progresive activist learning lesson from group like KKK. what was the KKK strategy? burn crosses, hold hostile marches, lynch people for to intimidate beyond their numbers. what is progresive strategy? yell on twiter to get persons fired/canceled beyond their numbers. obviously there is not lynching or equivalent here: become incresingly loud to ocupy mindshare past number of people behind the cause.
I'd consider myself on the left, progressive etc, concerned about issues of discrimination. But hear hear, the four points you make regarding 'new segregationism' are very, very familiar and I'm truly concerned about it.
In effect it's led me away from the political bloc I tend to vote alongside, because the tone of the discourse is polarising and often reductive. I don't want to be affiliated with it, nor do I want to participate in it.
At the same time, I have even less with the centre right parties, many of whom are entirely satisfied with ignoring or belittling genuine issues and their own partial culpability. And I feel the 'new segregationism' from the left is in large part a reaction to their belief in the right's insistence to see white supremacy (not in the nazi sense, but just in the political sense that white's socioeconomic positions should remain elevated) as the default, just look at the Trump era. It's really hard to seek cooperation with the other side anymore, and in large part I can't say they're wrong either.
Progressivism is the new Christianity, taking over the pagan landscape.
It used to be that politics (in the UK) was class based. You are this or that based on your background. Two people from different classes would understand why the other did not support the same political party. That was how it was, and nobody felt the other should not exist. Everyone felt the other had a place in society. These progressive ideologies are different. Everyone can be part of them. You can be a pauper progressive and also a billionaire progressive. Secondly if you are not one of them, you are the enemy, and you do not belong in society, and the aim is to eradicate you.
This is what changed.
No conservative in the 1970s would have thought, everyone in Britain should be a conservative. That would not make sense. They would not have felt that was something reasonable to demand, or even at all possible. But now you got progressives who think that is indeed what should happen. Everyone should be progressive. If you are not you need to be exterminated.
And paradoxically, they want to include everyone in their ranks, but they also stand for very little. When you have all kinds, within your ranks you cannot accomplish much of substance without upsetting your own comrades.
> Progressivism is the new Christianity, taking over the pagan landscape
Perhaps your comment is a bit of a rant with highs and lows, but this is a rather powerful analogy.
Growing up in Spain, a country with a very strong Catholic tradition, I hated the Church and its invasive prescriptions. Still to this day I count my lucky stars not having spent my younger years during the Franco dictatorship, where being Spanish was inseparable from being Catholic by law, or worse yet, during the Inquisition where by law you could end up in burnt alive in a public square.
Now, however, it's mostly Progressives who assume this role of telling people what to do. This includes companies of dubious moral standing (Google, Uber, and others) who are constantly reminding us of what's Good, mostly for marketing reasons.
I can't stand it now, as I couldn't back in the day with conservative Catholics. Can't everyone just fuck off and stop preaching their shitty gospel?
I was raised Catholic as well, and went to a Catholic school. I've drawn heavy parallels between the Catholic church in the 90s to progressive rhetoric. You're not alone.
I'm sure that in the depth of their hearts the coal miners not only understood but also accepted Thatcher as a fundamental and important part of society.
It's important to draw the similarities between attempting to have dialogues with Christians/Progressives, in that they both argue their position exclusively from an emotional standpoint, never from an objective one.
For example, say you suggested "God does not exist" to a Christian. More often than not you'll receive an emotional response: "You're going to hell, is that what you want?!", "So life is meaningless to you?", "I feel sorry for you", etc.
Say you suggested to a "Progressive Activist", something as objective as "You should defend the right to display the Confederate flag (while condemning the action itself)". Progressive Activists become irrevocably distracted by the emotional injustice that the Confederate flag represents to them. Responses often include: "No, those people are pieces of shit, fuck them", "Racists", "They're what's wrong with this country", etc.
The emotional disposition of Christians and "Progressive Activists" are nearly identical.
> No conservative in the 1970s would have thought, everyone in Britain should be a conservative
Like the points your making. I would add that by the standards of the early 20th century when progressivism started even a 1970s conservative is a progressive.
Even taking American conservatives, who are more conservative that than their British peers, conservatives are fine with social security, medicare/medicade (NHS), and fine with government run education, and fine with an unbacked U.S. dollar funding this modern welfare state. I.E. even American conservatives are mostly fine with the lasting policies of FDR; perhaps our most progressive president.
What am I getting at?
My broader point is that Progressivism is indeed the current state religion. Both parties are 'progressive' parties by historical standards. The only recent development is that we are now approaching near total domination of the cultural, political, and legal rings of influence by Progressivism and this has resulted in a new popular interest in actual reactionary politics as people wake up.
> everyone in Britain should be a conservative
This is important to understand because it is how we got here. Reactionary ideologies are not interested in global leadership, but rather local control. Progressivism is an expansionist ideology interested in global domination; which is why we are currently either all progressives or former progressives (like yourself).
I might be one of these progressive activists, and this is interesting to read and reflect on. I am quite vocal about culture, hiring, compensation etc, though I would definitely not say that I feel "confident being vocal" - it actually feels very exposed and quite vulnerable (in part because others don't necessarily share their own views). The reason I'm still vocal about it is that I care, I would feel much more satisfied if I can look back on my working life and feel like I was able to introduce structural improvements than if all I see is that I did what I was told and grew my bank account.
I am very worried about inequality and climate change causing massive issues down the road and the current system does not seem sufficiently equipped to address this - the "short term productivity" signal seems unlikely to lead to a solution by itself. So I guess fear plays a role as well.
What I would definitely not want is a mono-culture where everyone thinks like me, or large scale central planning, or anything of that kind. But I am desperate to find a feasible gradual path from where we are now to something more sustainable - if we don't find something gradual, I'm afraid change will be sudden and uncontrollable.
I know there is a lot of frustration about cancel culture, political correctness, virtue signaling, social justice warriors, etc. I think the issue here is mainly one of polarization and lack of effective discourse - it's easier to call people names than engage thoughtfully (which goes both ways). I hope we will find a way to get better at this collectively.
To some extent I think these are things that should be discussed and addressed internally rather than externally so I'll try to be generic. Key things are
(1) I'm a strong believer that anyone with a job should be easily able to get health insurance and be able to send their children to university (i.e. even if law doesn't enforce it I think a decent minimum wage for all employees is appropriate)
(2) people doing work of similar value should get similar compensation in the same organization/on the same team (i.e. location based pay adjustments should be minimal at most)
(3) hiring should be diverse w.r.t. background/class/education (i.e. search widely and resist hiring people's friends)
I think these are not just moral issues, I think a culture of fairness also benefits morale and gives people more confidence to contribute and feel heard. And I think these kinds of issues become especially important when considering public organizations and non-profits.
That's pretty wholesome and reasonable, but I don't think that's they type of behavior and views tha people are worried about.
I have a feeling the type of progressiveness that people are concerned about is this kind:
> "Sixteen percent [of progressives] have tried to have something banned, versus a seven percent national average.
>"We asked whether it is “fair or unfair for people who say grossly offensive things to be at risk of losing their livelihoods?” Nationally, 48 percent believe it is “fair,” but this figure rises to 65 percent for social democrat-aligned Labour voters, compared with 39 percent for right-leaning Conservative voters."
>"Our polling found that while the most popular word selected, from a list of nine, by Conservatives to describe people “with strongly different political views to my own” was “honest” (39 percent), the most popular among Labour voters was “closed minded” (28 percent)"
FWIW your views are not what I think of when I hear the phrase 'progressive activist'. I tend to think of someone who is concerned almost exclusively with race, gender and sexuality.
I think a lot of this boils down to power and bias, and a lot of the discussion around race/gender/sexuality seems overly simplified (they are correlated with certain patterns of power and bias, but not perfectly so). I think the aspect of class is generally underappreciated in public discussions, and in my context the minimum-wage and pay-equity concerns have a pretty significant racial component (when I refer to location adjustments that's primarily about continents, not urban/rural).
As someone who is definitely considered "a progressive activist" I may add my 2cents:
I am not quite sure what you mean with objections? If you mean that people are not willing to talk about those things: I accept it, and stop talking about it. (Aslong as it is no direct issue like those people using the N-word, or being racist in general.)
About disagreement: It would be pretty strange if everyone would have the same opionion? I ask people about their reasons and try to understand their point of view. If they have valid arguments that I was not aware of, I am open to change my opinion.
BUT: If people come at me saying: Climate Change is a hoax, The complete media and science is controlled by the elites etc... Then i stop talking to them, as they would never consider an argument opposing to their opinion as valid.
AND: If someone considers people inferior only because of their gender, their race or their religion? Then I tell them indirectly, to go and **** themselfs.*
* At work I would try to be more diplomatic. Otherwise a whole team dynamic could be destroyed. But In my personal environment, I am as direct as possible. I do not want those people in my life.
Due to an high amount of work I have to do I was only able to skim through the memo.
It seams as if the memo was written in a good intention. What I took away from the text is that he mostly considers people different, not inferior, because of their gender. It would be dumb to completly disagree with that. I think rational and follow science, therefore I agree on some off his points. I disagree with the extend of his conclusions and imo he sometimes mixes up correlation and causality.
But those are all things one could discuss. He sounds like reasonable guy.
Rereading the memo, I definetly missed some points earlier.
Things like:
- "We need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism."
- Followed by him arguing that the attemp to reduce the gender gap (Which is imo clearly a result of sexism) is discriminating the poor white man.
- On Top the strange "Woman on average" part connected to "Once we acknowledge that not all differences are socially constructed or due to discrimination"
My view on the tone of the whole memo changed. One could interpret it, as a "white guy whining about people taking his century old priviledges away".
BUT: I would need to talk with him about it, to really know what his intention was. Again, ignoring his short reference to the IQ tests, I did not have the feeling that he was openly considering certain people inferior. I would still be open to talk to him.
If Google fired him, just for this memo and not because of a combination of other things he said and did, it would be exeggerated. And it would support at least his points on "alienating conservatives"
Objections and disagreements are pretty common (many of the things that I would like to change are not easily compatible with neoliberalism/the modern corporation). I try to use them as learning opportunities to understand other people's viewpoints and refine/revise my own. I do get frustrated as well though, sometimes things seem self-evident to me and then it's painful when that view is not shared - in some cases it's not about arguments but about the underlying value systems from which people derive their arguments (e.g. what does fair mean to a person). These things are definitely not easy to talk about and I also don't think that I always manage to find the right tone or approach, but I try to be persistent and adjust as I find out how things work.
This happens in American workplaces, too. In my experience, most people at tech startups think the same, especially non-product people (anyone who isn't in engineering, design or product). If you want to unconditionally love the mission of your company, chances are you have to set aside your own personal opinions.
It is statistically very unlikely that your personal viewpoints are exactly parallel to the company's. Nobody wants to hire someone who thinks for themselves. Which is a bit ironic, because the best people are the ones who don't give a shit what other people think and are willing to call bullshit on their own product and even their own co-workers if they have to. Seen a lot of groupthink in SF tech especially, and it gets old. SF tech is like fight club -- everyone knows it's cult-like, but nobody wants to talk about it.
Nobody wants to be the one misfit who rains on the parade, even if the parade is headed off a cliff. In my experience, VC money makes smart people less smart. Having an outsider's viewpoint is going to be extremely valuable in the coming years, but it's currently out of fashion.
This is the paradoxical struggle I've had, from day one, at the startup for which I work.
I was praised for being "fresh eyes" and having "creative ideas", only to be reminded "how we do things here" after producing something that I thought would be a progressive way of addressing the company's challenges.
I continue to try new directions, and every once in a while something sticks, but often times I just have to be "another pair of hands" and do things the established way, flaws and all, because often that's what they really want me to do but don't want to admit.
It's especially frustrating when I can see the consequences of this a mile away and know that I'll be the one to have to deal with it, but what can I do?
This is normal. If you are an IC or middle manager you are there to execute (do what your boss says). Defining process and culture is not your job. Whether your process is better or not is besides the point. Fighting this will only lead to political pain.
Sure. But it’s frustrating when management says that they want me to help improve processes and produce “new and different” only for me to deliver what they say they want and realize they really didn’t want that.
In my case, it’s not so much “do what your boss says” so much as it’s “try to figure out if your boss really wants you to do what he/she says or if they just like the idea of change and really just want you to leave everything alone”.
Yes, if you want to keep your job then you don't question your employers' politics. If you're annoying to your manager (or their manager, etc), they will fabricate reasons to fire you. It might take a while (in countries with employee protection), but they'll get there.
That sounds like a dreadful work environment you've got there. Some workplaces encourage communication with management, provided it's done respectfully.
Had to leave one job already. Bashing white people on company meetings while going on about wonderfully diverse they were.
Their disdain in having to hire a white guy was constant.
Product was falling apart since they had nothing but juniors of the correct races sexes and orientations.
They say racism is something that happens between groups, so you are racist by definition if you're white. This makes huge assumptions - that individuals are nothing more than members of the group, that only groups matter, that white people are a single homogeneous group, and that young people bear the guilt of their parents and grandparents. There is no nuance here, it doesn't matter if you're hard working or not if you're white because they can explain away your accomplishments as privilege. Anti-racism at its finest, using reverse polarity racism to fix racism. How could that backfire? It's like going to war for peace or fucking for virginity.
" If you want to unconditionally love the mission of your company, chances are you have to set aside your own personal opinions."
This research is not about 'company viewpoints', it's about 'workplace diversity of individual viewpoints'.
In fact, the article is very clearly about 'political' viewpoints etc. and doesn't refer at all to pro/anti-company thinking etc. which frankly deserves study but would represent a different kind of social artifact.
Personal politics has absolutely no place in the workplace unless you’re working in politics. Nothing good can come of it. Leave it to the pub and Hacker News.
My workplace is a wonderful bastion of big-P-Politics-free collaboration. It is an apolitical safe space. My colleagues and I absolutely do have political views, but there is just no reason whatsoever to share them at work.
“Bring your whole self to work” is a flawed goal unless you live to maximise shareholder returns.
Actually, it would be nice if you left politics out of HN, too. In theory you could talk about politics and policy in a way that's conducive to intellectual interest and curiosity, but I've literally never seen this happen here with any consistency.
The political threads are always littered with knee-jerk hot takes that just don't belong here from an intellectual POV. To be very clear about what I'm saying, this is not about ideology; I've seen this behavior come from all parts of the political spectrum, and I find it even more annoying when "my" preferred side is doing it.
I agree with you - but the standards elsewhere seem to be so much lower even than here that I think it's (possibly) worthwhile having political discussions on HN.
Of course, I would love to know of a place that discusses things even more sensibly.
I'm not sure there is such a thing as an "apolitical space" - it is kind of like trying to remain stationary on a moving train. Even if you don't discss contentious issues, political parties, etc, you are still part of social and economic systems premised on political views.
For example, one might say they don't talk about climate change/sexism/racism in the work place and therefore it is apolitical, but to another viewpoint not talking about these issues is political.
People were willing to live and let live when the psychos were confined to gender theory classes and unsuccessful bookshops but now that they are so prevalent and demanding that people indulge their delusions every waking second it seems people are starting to get sick of it.
I disagree with this, firstly on the principle that if you ask someone on a moving train to stand still they know exactly what you mean, and secondly because politics are acceleration rather than velocity - applying energy to push, rather than drifting in a direction.
> Even if you don't discss contentious issues, political parties, etc, you are still part of social and economic systems premised on political views.
Even if you don't rub it in my face, you're still sitting on an ass.
Having one doesn't make the work place a strip club, even if someone there likes to spend their off moments imagining how your concealed taint might look.
I think this is missing the thrust of the issue which is that is, for some groups, certain kinds of politics invariably involve work and are a moral imperative.
If this were about issues likee 'big vs. small government' then it wouldn't be a problem.
But it's about political issues like 'diversity in the workplace' and 'Corporate support for Social Justice' (such as BLM) - as the big Elephant in the Room subject.
So things like 'Thanksgiving is Covert White Supremacy' as part of your job training [1] and 'we must achieve certain diversity targets or we are racist'.
That kind of stuff.
There's a group (part of the 13%) that thinks unless you're on board all of that, you're a problem, basically it's a moral imperative and anything else is racism. There's other groups that believe in some of those things, but are open minded with respect to other's views. And of course a wide array of other opinions.
I really don't believe that most other political subjects are entirely so sensitive. 'Privatization of Amtrack' or whatever is simply not going to engender in/out groups.
Abortion, Gun Rights are probably trigger issues for some, but they are really easy to just avoid at the office.
> But it's about political issues like 'diversity in the workplace' and 'Corporate support for Social Justice' (such as BLM)
but the problem with this view is that we are implementing a policy in a political way. There are many ways to argue for diversity that are either purely economic or practical. The issue here isn't the policy, its who and how its sold/pushed through.
There are companies that are run by, or full of shouty political types. Part of the interview process is to sniff out that kind of company and avoid like the plague. The post you linked to is evidence of that.
The other thing to mention is that US based companies are far more willing to let their works talk politics in the open. In the UK you are rightly looked at as suspect if you speak out on politics or religion.
It’s a valid point that some political issues are workplace-oriented, but in my organization they manifest as HR policies and are not up for personal debate round the water cooler.
One problem is what counts as politics. For a past example, someone talking about their opposite gender partner would not be seen as political as someone talking about their same gender partner. Someone talking about getting married may not think it is political, but when that action is denied to another group then merely bringing up marriage would be a political action. Even today there are still groups who cannot get married.
Politics has a tendency to seep in. For example, at a job a long while ago a colleague made a "joke" about a gang rape that had recently been in the news. He started humming the Batman song and sang "Na, na, na, na, GANGRAPE, na, na, na, na, GANGRAPE, ...." I told him his joke was tasteless and offensive. He said it was "just a joke" and our colleagues mostly sided with him. Was he bringing politics into the workplace by joking about gangrape? Was I bringing politics into the workplace? "Politics free" just means that the politics of the majority dominates.
That just sounds like bad parenting and poor social adjustment. Actually, most of the problems in this entire thread could probably be tracked to bad parenting.
By reading the other threads about work-from-home, i realize that for a lot of people work is one of the few places where they can talk politics with a group of real people, which is the reason why it happens so often
If you hire women, you're acting politically. And if you don't hire women, you're acting politically. Pretending that you're not political is the comfort of being in a position where those politics don't effect you.
In the West there are people that think women shouldn't work, or shouldn't work professional roles. And if there are countries where employing an individual is illegal, there are citizens of those countries in yours, or companies that work with those countries.
No, you choose to interpret it as such. Maybe it was only women who applied or a man would be utterly useless in the job for physical reasons or . . .
Of course you can put a gloss on anything someone says but that doesn't mean it's necessarily a substantive contribution to the actual circumstances which apply for that time and place.
Women were banned from being priests in the Church of England before 1994. The same Church of England sends 26 bishops - until 2015, all men - to sit in the house of Lords.
Personally I have worked in a small company where the owner wouldn't have hired a woman regardless of ability.
I am so tired of constantly hearing about politics at my workplace. Politics have already made their way into the tv shows, music, video games, and online forums that I enjoy. At least let me disconnect from that outrage-fuel at work. It also affects team cohesion. I can easily collaborate with just about anyone when I don’t know their political beliefs. As soon as I find out someone holds opposing views on a topic I feel strongly about, I can’t help but dread my interactions with them. I would strongly prefer to not know what my coworkers think about (most) non-work related topics.
I think it boils down to lacking in writing. I used to watch shows that had a lot of political statements made through their worldbuilding and character interactions. These were good stories because to find a political message there you had to think about it and draw parallels yourself. More modern shows tent to just outright mention current political movements IRL or just straight up lecture people by characters doing speeches. It's very distracting because it clearly breaks away from the flow of the show. Even if the lecture is something I 100% on board with it may feel even worse because it feels like the show insults my intelligence.
It was less blatant. As another poster mentioned, the politics was part of the narrative. The GamerGate debacle was a big shifting point, where video games have become another cultural battlefield. I'm not picking on one side or the other, I just want to enjoy my video games in peace without people calling each other SJWs or racists or sexists.
Just as an example, there was a huge kerfuffle in Battlefield a few years ago because they added black and female playable characters. They proceeded to shove it in everyone's face so we could be in awe of how progressive they are, and then the counterparty threw a huge fit about how those people would not have been combatants in WWI. I don't particularly care either way about the change, because it doesn't impact my gameplay. I do care that for a while the entire community focused in on this one aspect that has almost nothing to do with the game itself. It makes me dislike both sides, because they're both getting in the way of the game.
They complained about Picard. I wasn’t allowed to watch it as a kid because my parents didn’t like the political agenda (my guess, though I’ve never asked them, is they thought it was communist/ anticaptitalist due to the absence of money).
Many modern US "conservatives" complain that Star Trek is political, and when it was Kirk and Picard it wasn't.
If you said that you didn't like Kirk, he's an unbelievable badly-written over-the-top Mary Sue character, noone would call you an anti-Semite because Shatner happens to be Jewish.
Everyone is oppressed in some way. Unfortunately, everyone loses in the oppression Olympics. If you are oppressing others that you assume aren't oppressed enough, then you are an oppressor and the cycle continues.
If everyone is opressed in some way - I agree - then my conclusion is that we should realise we all benefit from being allowed to opt-into the politics of those opressions. Many of my employment rights were or are political arenas.
Agree and resonate with my personal observation. I've personally completely and utterly stopped following politics. I do follow local elections and things that affect me and my neighborhood (HOA, municipality decisions, etc.).
What we're seeing is an emergence of anti-political movement that is directly in response to the echo-chambered, uncivilized and nauseating social media that's profited from this rage. Twitter and Facebook along with the entire for-profit media machine is going to be historically marked as the dark footnote of human disgrace, greed and exceptional lack of responsibility.
I predict that the anti-political movement is going to take off and pick up steam in the intellectual circles. We're exhausted and I can feel it.
> I predict that the anti-political movement is going to take off and pick up steam in the intellectual circles.
Only in anti-intellectual circles could an anti-political movement take off. Anyone with even a shred of intellect understands how important politics is for everyday life and that being anti-political means "I will have to accept what others decide for me without any recourse."
Politics may be an uncomfortable topic, but it's still a very important one.
I've just received an email asking me for more for a work permit application to work in the netherlands in a few months. More cost, more expense, less agility.
This is a direct result of retired people voting to leave the UK.
Politics matters, and votes have consequences. Sadly with many votes, the consequences are disproportionately felt by the ones that lose the vote.
Oh no you have to fill in a form! You must lead a pretty nice life if that's a major concern of yours.
Sorry if I come across as an a-hole, but seeing what's been happening in the world in the last year you'd think people would become a little more resilient.
> As soon as I find out someone holds opposing views on a topic I feel strongly about, I can’t help but dread my interactions with them.
I'm of the opinion that all views that my colleagues have that are not related to the work at hand does not/should not affect how we work together at all.
I've been hearing my colleagues personal political opinion, the spectrum goes to both ends. I personally don't mind at all, I'm more sensitive to code quality and bugs.
I miss all those old video games without politics.
Nothing political at all about escaping from Castle Wolfenstein and killing Hitler in the process.
No politics in Final Fantasy 7, just some lively ecoterrorists saving the world from an exploitative totalitarian megacorporation that's destroying the environment.
Or indeed in BioShock, a game that certainly wasn't a satire of Ayn Rand libertarianism of the sort that enchants many a Valley VC/founder.
I miss playing Call of Duty/Rainbow Six/other shooters where you could just grab an assault rifle as a serving member of the US military and shoot a bunch of Bad Guys, which had absolutely no politics in it at all.
It sure is a shame the terrible awful SJWs made games political because they let you play as a girl, or put two gay characters kissing for ten seconds in a cutscene.
I'm going to stop playing games and instead go and read a book I've just bought called 'Animal Farm'. I'm sure it isn't a metaphor for anything. I bet Star Trek hasn't got any politics in it either.
I don't trust this article. The phrase "Losing viewpoint diversity" is of course crafted to make it sound like a chilling trend. Pretty clear what they want you to think about it. But if you drill into what that's referring to, whether you think it's a bad thing is entirely up to what you think of how the viewpoints are changing. "Fewer racists than ever" also maps to "less viewpoint diversity" but is totally a good thing.
I don't know anything about politics in the UK, but in Australia one of the big things correlated with conservative politics is growing up outside a big city. Rural and regional communities are under-served in everything from healthcare to transport to job growth. Coming from a working class background can also make it hard to keep up with the euphemism treadmill and know what's politically correct, even if you're on the left.
I also don't think outright racism is the only taboo viewpoint. Example contributions could be "I think male and female should be the most prominent gender options because my grandma wouldn't know how to use this device if she had to scroll through our current alphabetised list", or "do we really want to stick a gigantic Black Lives Matter banner on our website when 37% of our customer base supports Blue Lives Matter and will hate us, and 40% have no strong opinion"? If someone is skeptical about a political message, they'll be able to notice problems that the less skeptical don't.
You’ve gone straight to the implication that everyone who doesn’t want to hear politics from the noisy few is racist, despite the article not mentioning specifics. This is exactly the kind of chilling effect it’s about. I.e. “You’re not shouting as loud as us, you must be one of THEM”
I think that's an unfair characterisation. I read it as the commenter using racism purely as an example where reduced diversity of opinion towards no racism is a good thing, not saying that all opponents of diversity are racist.
I interpreted it as them picking an example that most people would agree is bad. Taking something to its logical extremes is a natural part of exploring its consequences.
Fewer people thinking that the Earth is flat would also be a reduction in viewpoint diversity.
OP has tried to make one point about the poor logic of the headline & you shut them down & refused to deal with the argument because you inferred the posit that racism is bad as them calling people who disagree with them racist. That's not you engaging with diverse viewpoints.
> OP has tried to make one point about the poor logic of the headline & you shut them down & refused to deal with the argument because you inferred the posit that racism is bad as them calling people who disagree with them racist. That's not you engaging with diverse viewpoints.
First of all, you are confusing me with Neil44. I did not say "You’ve gone straight to the implication that everyone who doesn’t want to hear politics from the noisy few is racist". Neil44 said that. Not me. At no point did I infer that OP would be calling people who disagree with them as racist.
Secondly, how am I "not engaging with diverse viewpoints"? I'm literally on the internet right now engaging with people who express viewpoints that I disagree with. Like, what is your expectation of what "engaging with diverse viewpoints" is supposed to look like? If I'm fawning over an internet comment like "yes, well said, comrade, I agree 100%", then I'm not engaging with diverse viewpoints, am I? If everybody in the conversation agrees with each other, where is the diversity in their views? It's only when people _disagree_ with each other, and still engage one another, that you might say people are "engaging with diverse viewpoints".
Thirdly, I didn't even "shut down" their arguments. I simply acknowledged that this person thinks negatively of viewpoint diversity, and that they provided an example of a viewpoint where diversity is indeed bad (racism). That's me acknowledging their argument (in a snarky way, but still).
I don't agree. I think they were pointing out that the issue is more complex than "viewpoint diversity is good per se". Although these discussions are almost invariably terrible in comment sections because they lack the nuance of spoken discussion, so either of us could be right. I just chose to assume good faith and the strongest plausible interpretation of what they said.
I'd say that's a rather charitable interpretation. "Not necessarily good"? Come on, this is the comment we are talking about:
> I don't trust this article. The phrase "Losing viewpoint diversity" is of course crafted to make it sound like a chilling trend. Pretty clear what they want you to think about it. But if you drill into what that's referring to, whether you think it's a bad thing is entirely up to what you think of how the viewpoints are changing. "Fewer racists than ever" also maps to "less viewpoint diversity" but is totally a good thing.
I’ll also note that anytime I see the phrase “come on” in debate I perceived that the person that said it has lost, knows they lost (usually subconsciously) and are literally begging for leeway.
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
> I’ll also note that anytime I see the phrase “come on” in debate I perceived that the person that said it has lost, knows they lost (usually subconsciously) and are literally begging for leeway
Oh, the irony. After you scold me on the need to assume "the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says", you immediately proceed to interpret my comment as "literally begging for leeway". I guess my comment was not deserving of "strongest plausible interpretation", or even interpreting it at face value? No, you'll go as far as psychoanalyzing my subconscious where I "know I lost". Wow.
um, I was the commenter, and I clearly just picked racism as an example of the sort of viewpoint that you would be glad to see less of, to show that viewpoint diversity is not necessarily good depending on the viewpoint. You are really misreading it to make some weird point that no one is buying.
> um, I was the commenter, and I clearly just picked racism as an example of the sort of viewpoint that you would be glad to see less of to show that viewpoint diversity is not necessarily good depending on the viewpoint. You are really misreading it to make some weird point that no one is buying.
Ok. Let's see if I understood your point correctly this time: you are saying that sometimes viewpoint diversity is good, and sometimes viewpoint diversity is bad. For example, viewpoint diversity is bad in the subject of racism, but viewpoint diversity might be good in some other subject. Overall, you expressed a sentiment that you are not worried about "decreasing viewpoint diversity". Would you agree with this characterization?
I apologise if I read more into your initial post than was there. However I think the whole discussion thread 100% proves the point that politics should be kept out of the workplace.
I don't really care about the article, but I've noticed a very real trend of "unconditionally believe in the product, don't second-guess or ask why we're building what we're building". To me, that's what viewpoint diversity should be about. Businesses always suffer from "but we're already profitable" bias.
I'm sure there's a Wikipedia article for this phenomenon -- where you are making profit and therefore lose the desire to question the product or improve it significantly because you want to continue on your current trajectory.
It's possible to simultaneously be profitable and be doing bad work. The problem is that it is very hard to convince people that they're doing bad work when they are profitable, especially considering that most people are slaves to their equity and salary.
The founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales said this very elegantly[0] "it's very hard to get someone to understand something when their paycheck depends on them not understanding it". This to me, is the enemy of viewpoint diversity. Success is a double-edged sword and makes people dumber than they actually are.
Edit: we've warned you about exactly this before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23453371. Needing two warnings about something like that is an extremely bad sign. Please don't do this on HN again.
I believe that in the US, racism itself is highly segregated and compartmentalized. You have academia where Asian people are discriminated against, law enforcement where black people are discriminated against. You have the ultra-woke collective culture that drives tech companies that are 80% white/Asian male to have all-hands meetings where they jerk themselves off about how great they think women and minorities are. It creates an atmosphere where absolutely everybody feels like they're discriminated against.
Yeah, probably. If you don't believe this you are probably not as aware as you could be of just how incredibly racist the world was a single generation ago. (Some would say it's still racist, sure, not the point here).
> Anti-white racism has been on the rise the last few years.
a little bit of it, but not really a fair comparison given the many-orders-of-magnitudes of difference. if it seems like it is comparable you are dealing with a very skewed version of reality.
> that progressive dogma now fuels racism more than it suppresses it
agree that the reactionary movements are in response to progressivism and so could sort have been said to have been 'caused' by it. But I think it's important to keep in mind that big, vocal 'thought movements' are exactly what changes in acceptability look like on the inside. I imagine that it's not really possible to go from (a very racist state) to (a less racist state) without a big reactionary clash in the middle. Better to let it get worse for a while so everything can play out, than not have the fight at all and let things stay bad.
Single generation? Sure. But do you think there are fewer racists now than there were 10-20 years ago? I doubt it. I have the sense that we passed a low point in racism a few years ago and it has been increasing since then.
>not really a fair comparison given the many-orders-of-magnitudes of difference
As far as I can tell, anti-nonwhite racism in the United States has very little power. Orders-of-magnitudes of difference? I do not see it.
Agreed, even the title seemed like a dog whistle to me.
Their subsequent bashing of The Progressive Activist confirmed it.
Then when they compared discrimination based on political views (which you pick) with discrimination on race (which you don't get to pick), I wasn't even surprised.
Who the hell are these "Ethical Systems", and why the hell should anyone listen to them?
(I guess we could believe them because an unethical person would never call their org Ethical Systems /s)
Well yes, it's obviously a 'bad thing' but to everyone but the 13% with the least life experience, and who are most likely to arbitrarily reject the views of the other 87%.
It's also keenly hypocritical because it's the same group for whom 'diversity' is a ostensibly an important, defining element.
For most people, losing viewpoint diversity would not be a good thing.
Also - I don't think there ever was a time to 'talk politics' at work, but certainly holding 'commonplace views' was ok, historically.
For the same reason I always look skeptically on other research about "polarization". The trend tends to be that in the past it was common for otherwise-sane people to advocate crazy stuff like bans on interracial marriage. Now the only people who are against interracial marriage are straight-ticket crazy people, and this sorting of society is superficially "polarization" but I can't find the negative in it, because there is a wrong side of those issues.
> Now the only people who are against interracial marriage are straight-ticket crazy people, and this sorting of society is superficially "polarization"
I'm not sure which metric of polarization is typically used in studies, but the situation you describe (vast majority agreeing, with a tiny minority in an extreme position) intuitively sounds like approaching consensus.
Intuitively, with some survey measure of 0 to 10, maximum polarization would be 50% of respondents responding 0 and 50% of respondents responding 10. Minimum polarization would be 100% of respondents giving the same answer (regardless of what that answer is). I would hope that any polarization metric being used in a serous study would give its maximum value in the former case and its minimum value in the second case.
Variance of survey responses is one statistical measure meeting these criteria, but there might be better measures. Minimum Kullback-Leibler divergence, or earth-mover's distance, from any consensus distribution might also make sense, or a fractional statistical moment less than 2 about the mean.
In any case, tons of people believing one thing and a tiny fraction of people believing something radically different doesn't fit my intuitive notion of polarization. My intuitive notion is closer to variance of survey responses, or earth-mover's distance from any consensus.
> "Intuitively, with some survey measure of 0 to 10, maximum polarization would be 50% of respondents responding 0 and 50% of respondents responding 10. Minimum polarization would be 100% of respondents giving the same answer (regardless of what that answer is)."
A world where 50% of people live at the North Pole, 50% at the South Pole and nobody at the equator, is polarized. So is a world where 90% of people live at the North Pole, 10% at the South Pole and nobody at the equator. Seems like "polarization" is about how many people live somewhere in between, rather than whether the groups at the poles are balanced or not.
Or even, that there exist places between the poles where people could be, even if they aren't. A world where 100% are at the North Pole, the South Pole exists but nobody is there, and between them is only water, is still polarized. The only place you can be, or go, is the two extreme positions. If the survey says "do you LOVE Politician X or HATE them?" and I can't be indifferent to them or mildly in favour or slightly against, it's a polarizing survey, isn't it?
> A world where 50% of people live at the North Pole, 50% at the South Pole and nobody at the equator, is polarized. So is a world where 90% of people live at the North Pole, 10% at the South Pole and nobody at the equator.
First, in order to make sense, it should be "would like to live" not "live", with some context that a new city needs to be built, or something. Polarization is about opinions and attitudes.
Secondly, a world where 90% of people would like everyone to live at the North Pole and 10% would like everyone to live at the South Pole is less polarized. Society is able to make a compromise that is acceptable to more people.
If 8 billion people think soap tastes terrible, 1 person thinks soap tastes delicious, and nobody thinks soap tastes meh, we've reached consensus as a society. There will always be some issues where there is a strong consensus at one extreme or another, but that doesn't hamper society's ability to agree on decisions.
Indeed, and the discourse around American political polarization is centered around the Pew poll which poses binary choices like the one between "homosexuality should be accepted by society" or "homosexuality should be discouraged by society", not questions that have scales of agreement from 0-10.
Polarization has nothing to do with the craziness of ideas, but the lack of a middle ground.
Polarization has to do with the clustering of beliefs. If attending BLM protests makes you less likely to attend pro-life protests, that is polarization. The strength of that correlation is the amount of polarization.
Acceptance of Inter-racial marriage is a topic that was once far more polarized. That depolarization is exactly allowed us to make progress on the topic as a society.
Thus polarization inhibits cultural growth and change.
Interracial marriage did not just slowly creep in until it was considered acceptable. It had to fight its way into the conversation, then have champions who were willing to take great risks and accept painful consequences for promoting these polarizing beliefs.
'Depolarization' on this subject is not something that just happened, nor it an effective strategy for change. What happened is that one side LOST and their viewpoint was forcibly removed from the conversation. Within a generation this viewpoint was considered completely unacceptable and those who held this belief learned to shut up unless they were prepared to become the office racist. Voila, depolarization.
Polarization is the only means by which change will be accomplished and there is a growing majority that desires change so your options are to either pick a side or accept the fact that this conflict is happening and keep your head down while you focus on the rest of your job. There are not other options and we passed the tipping point for this conflict quite a while ago.
You seem to mean something entirely different by polarization and depolarization.
As long as the issue is polarized, then it gains network support from the issues with which it is polarized. That process of standardization that you describe as "winning" happened because the issue became decoupled from stances on other issues and was no longer predictive of other views.
To put this in more concrete terms, I am not saying that you should not challenge racism and racists. I am saying that in pursuit of that goal you should actively push back on assuming someone is racist because of their political views.
More importantly, most of us hold moral judgements that our grandchildren will find horrifying, and it's a tautology that we're unable to see our moral blind spots (or have a good guess where they are). I'm happily in an interracial marriage, but I'm not sure that I would have been in favor of (or even neutral toward) interracial marriage had I been a product of the culture a century earlier.
I'm very glad we've made moral progress as a culture, and that progress has required some voices in the wilderness speaking out. History has shown that these moral errors aren't all attributable to one side of the political isle, either.
We should have some humility in our policies. Almost all of us are on the wrong side of history in ways we are blind to. An absolute belief of being on the right side of history has lead to most of the major disasters of the last century.
I fheyly agree that we should have humility in our policies, but should also be aware that all "progress" is not positive. In fact, how is progress even defined in this case? Is all change progressive? Or is change that younger people agree with automatically positive? At some point before the Spanish Inquisition, one could have argued that this new idea of burning witches was "progress" because it reduced the evil in the world. Back in 1970s Iran, one could have argued that a law that forced women to cover their bodies from head to toe to stop tempting men into sin, as "progressive".
In my own view, which I'm always willing to debate (and lose), a change isn't progressive if it cannot argue it's point using logic. If it silences dissent using threats of ostracism, job loss or ban from some ubiquitous online platform, it's not progress. If it presumes itself to be morally right without arguing it's case, and is happy to shut down any disagreement as (some)phobia, then it's not progress. If it denies science, it's not progress. And if it goes further than demand silence from dissenters, and actually demand that everyone agree (wear the colours, add the right signals to the Twitter bio, "you're with us or against us"), then it's not just "not progressive", it's regressive. It's dogmatic. It's a church full of people all changing a creed whether or not try believe.
Reminder that the UK did have to abolish (and reconstitute) a police force in order to end its civil war in 2001, and still has ongoing litigation about the legality of troops shooting civilians in the streets.
That has absolutely nothing to do with modern "abolish the police" rhetoric.
"Abolish the police" is a utopian Marxist fantasy that holds that in some hypothetical perfected society we won't need police because everyone will just get along, and that the only reason we currently "need" police is because capitalism/patriarchy/white supremacy/imperialism drive people to commit crime and violence, therefore all we have to is burn the existing system to the ground (no need to specify its replacement it in any detail) and utopia will emerge from the rubble. (Nevermind that the politicians who advocate this nonsense spend tens of thousands of dollars on private security while pretending that police are unnecessary.)
It's no exaggeration to say that this is the same ideology ("society is imperfect, therefore burn everything to the ground with no plan to rebuild other than my being in charge") that got tens of millions of people killed in the twentieth century. It's insane, dangerous garbage and it should not be tolerated.
None of the orchestrators of the Northern Ireland peace process held political views that are remotely similar to this.
> Replace interracial marriage with something like abolish the police. Is the ethical/sane choice still clear cut?
That's easy, if you don't elide meanings:
Abolish marriage (as an institution that is only between two people of the same race) (and replace it with one that is between any two consenting people)
Abolish the police (as an institution that is corrupt and excessively violent) (and replace it with an institution that is accountable and reduces crime with the minimum amount of force)
For many progressives, workplaces are inherently political by their very structure and processes. In this perspective, to ask a progressive to "not bring politics to work" is telling them that the established political norms shall be victorious (without debate). It's not like conservatives don't do virtue signaling: there are catch phrases like "respect for capital" and "work hard" that are just as prevalent in the workplace, it's just that those phrases may not be seen as being political.
In my opinion, there is room for many political perspectives in the workplace, moreover, they can all be correct at the same time. In particular, once people stop talking in abstract generalities, but in concrete actions regarding concrete challenges, many of these perceived differences melt away to reveal far more consensus than political posturing might indicate.
In my experience, the best way to handle political speech in the workplace is to ask the speaker to contextualize their perspective into a concrete action that they'd like to be taken, taking into account all of the moving parts and stakeholders. At this point, the ones who have a serious point to make have an opportunity to present a process improvement, or be educated about considerations they are not thinking about.
> For many progressives, workplaces are inherently political by their very structure and processes.
If so, then I wouldn't want them in my company. If I'm hiring, I'm (almost always) hiring someone to do some work, not to try to destroy my company's structure and processes.
Nah. Plenty know that they're doing what they want at the expense of other people. But the bullies who think they're doing something good are the most dangerous, since they don't have any moral qualms about how far they take things.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
Everybody needs to sleep at night. Not many people are psychopaths; the rest of us need to weave stories to tell ourselves that "we're really the good guys".
Maybe. To me this article is useful because it precisely bounds the size of the group that genuinely feels this way. 13%. Not that large, really. Could a determined company get rid of half of those, sending a strong message to the other half to get back to work? Yeah, definitely. Could you refuse to hire people with these views without significantly losing out in the market for skilled employees? I think so, especially as they skew young (i.e. inexperienced).
It wasn't really clear before how large this group of radicals is because they are so aggressive and noisy. But they're a small minority.
Many "progressive" activists are like Soviet apologists a few decades ago. Totally sure of their righteousness, blinded by their ideology, unable to accept differing viewpoints.
I sure don't want to work with those who bring their hateful ideology to the workplace.
I'm neither old nor experienced enough to back this with even anecdotal evidence, but I can't imagine this is a new development; surely most workplaces have always been hostile to viewpoints at odds with contemporary business norms. It's just the norms themselves that have changed during the shift to a globalized economy that favors knowledge work.
Despite the "progressive activist" moniker applied in the article and allusions to radical-left-cancel-this-woke-that blah blah blah from even more sensational sources, the prevailing ideology of the professional class runs in lockstep with global neoliberalism. Having anti-immigrant/Euroskeptic views is a surefire way to draw ire from your colleagues/manager/HR, because you're gumming up the gears of the way business is conducted in this day and age. But you know what else is equally unacceptable in the eyes of most companies? Genuinely progressive stances on labor organization, public ownership, and anti-imperialism. For the same reasons.
Most "activism", especially from within a company, is just cheerleading for the status quo.
I remember things about a generation ago. It wasn’t always rosy; some unacceptable things were causally said. But, there seemed to be less hate for the other team. We seem to live in a hyper-polarized world exemplified by the shift in late night talk shows where you can no longer escape politics. Both teams are playing to win and there is never any rest.
There were certainly polarizing events in the past. Canada has no shortage of important events including the Quebec referendum. But i've never felt like i was under continuous pressure from one news cycle to the next.
> But you know what else is equally unacceptable in the eyes of most companies? Genuinely progressive stances on labor organization, public ownership, and anti-imperialism. For the same reasons.
Why then even bother to work at those places? there are many other places to work, many that share those views.
Sadly for some their only purpose at work is to cause division, they don’t want the work, they don’t want to be in a place were their ideas are dominant because what they really seek is change, by force. That number is growing and is causing all these problem and it will only get worse.
> there are many other places to work, many that share those views.
We might be talking past each other. I don't think there is a private sector entity that empowers workers or opposes the military industrial complex, because these stances are inherently opposed to most firms' profit motives.
Despite the way the issue has been framed, companies aren't being stormed by left-wing radicals. The "progressive activism" decried by this article is myopically centered on representation, language policing, and—presumably in the UK—the validity of the EU. These all dovetail perfectly with the standards of the HR/marketing departments and do nothing that threatens the company's bottom line. This divisive behavior is tolerated because it actually enforces discipline.
Employees haven't been radicalized. "Bodies and spaces" is just the new "did you get that TPS report?"
How can we be talking past each other when you got exactly what I said? You just disagree with me that non profits exists, that cooperatives exists, that employee owned businesses exist, that communions and communities where profit is not a word in their lexicon exist.
But they exists. And not only that, the number of self employed people that share all or some of those values grows every year.
And if all that isn’t enough, there are countries much less imperialistic that would have no trouble letting you in.
Cold corporate jobs are not the only jobs and have never been.
We might've been talking past each other when you said
> Sadly for some their only purpose at work is to cause division
Your implication is that disruption is taking place over issues of workers' rights or anti-imperialism. It isn't for the most part. Those matters pit the company against its workers.
The brand of hostility covered in the article is worker-on-worker, and often occurs with the implicit blessing of the company itself.
My only intent was to draw a distinction, since the latter situation was disingenuously dubbed "progressive activism."
I'm assuming it's journalism being biased towards certain political factions.
I can't comment on other countries, but this is definitely true for the UK. If you look at the top 10 newspapers in terms of circulation (which, AFAIK, are also the biggest online news providers) there is little objective journalism there. It's plain political propaganda for the most of it.
I am from Brazil, here mainstream journalism for most part support blatantly a few political parties and ideologies, and do their best to sabotage the others, including with blatant lies.
I think people start believing journalism is "political", when it stops being "factual" for political reasons.
If you select for diversity in everything except viewpoint, which (in my experience) has increasingly been the case over the last ~20 years of my career, is it surprising that you end up with little diversity in (expressed) viewpoint?
Initially the theory was that a hiring people with more diverse backgrounds (the means) would translate into more diverse viewpoints (the goal).
Somewhere someone mistook the means for the goal, and never bothered to check if the initial theory even held up.
To make matters worse they also institutionalised racism and sexism in encoded it into the ideology.
It’s unscientific and racist, but the people complaining about online disinformation and fake news will be the first people to spread this drivel in the corporate sphere.
If you live in the uk you’ll realize the only place you’ll probably hear honest viewpoints aired in public is small village pubs.
The only place I’ve heard people vocally support Brexit or say anything other than support for the Labour party is when visiting relatives and going to the pub while there. I’ve never met a single supporter of Brexit or Tories outside of that.
What you generally hear on the street, in media and in the workplace clearly isn’t reflected in the voting booth.
I've met many supporters of Brexit in local pubs here in London, I don't think it's that uncommon. I've had work colleagues that argued for and voted for Brexit, here in London. We had fun conversations on the topic, changed our opinions on many points, but still ultimately agreed to disagree. In the meantime, the media helped polarise the debate by making it about them hating those damn "forriners" on one side, or the EU being akin to a stalinist dictatorship on the other side. The "gammons" to the right, the "remoaners" to the left.
I think the issue is that most progressives in cities in the UK live in progressive bubbles and are unlikely to come across people with very opposing viewpoints on a daily basis. They're also quite arrogant, which is something I've noticed amongst friends (most of whom are progressive). I'm a non-white EU citizen (forriner to the average brexiteer in a village pub) living in the UK so it's already a matter of fact that the majority of people I speak to are of a different identity.
If anyone gets their information about a group from what the media reports instead of from actually speaking to members of said group, then they ought to reconsider their views.
One of the most depressing/irritating things in modern political and current affairs discourse is how standard it has become to say things like “X group is stopped more frequently by police” with the implication that the expectation is for equal rates of stopping. Basically the entire point of the entire discipline of statistics is that there are covariates, and substructure within a population, that cause expected rates to differ, even in the absence of the sorts of bias that are the focus. I wouldn’t want my children to think that sort of content was anything less than stupid since if they did not, they would be unable to think rationally about data.
Is there a way we can detect these people and not hire them? It takes enough restraint to refrain from commenting on rampant virtue signalling on LinkedIn and I often fail. Having to deal with it at work would be a step too far.
How about something like, ask their opinion on a contentious technical issue (like dynamic vs static typing). Then, after they've finished answering, ask them to argue sincerely for the opposite viewpoint, and see if they can. A common trait among cancel culture types is they're unwilling to hear/consider the perspectives of people who disagree with them, so they wouldn't be able to fairly present the opposing argument.
Another thing is to make it explicit company policy that people's non-work activities cannnot in any way affect their performance evaluation at work, to disincentivise cancel cuture behaviour. I think in some European countries this is even part of labor law (so a company can't e.g. fire a worker for hearing he went out drinking heavily on the weekend).
I initially liked the idea of empathy tests, however I'm not sure if it's a global personality variable - that someone might be emphatic to someone else and not be open to other technological viewpoints.
I now think that it's not empathy that's missing. The woke are able to empathize with many people. It's primarily that they believe certain others are not actually people and worthy of their empathy. Bigotry. Othering.
Perhaps questions about Ethical Source licensing might be rewarding? Or talking about types of users?
> I think in some European countries this is even part of labor law (so a company can't e.g. fire a worker for hearing he went out drinking heavily on the weekend).
That would depend. The industry I work in (infrastructure management) is very H&S focused, so if you weren't completely sober and able to work safely on Monday morning you would be at best sent home, and at worst fired.
I simply unfriended everyone online who virtue signals and/or engages in hostile politics. That includes some family members. If asked, it’s simple enough to explain calmly and honestly.
I just don’t use social media for “viewpoint diversity” — I don’t use it to discuss politics or morals at all. It isn’t an effective venue. So it’s best IMO to remove the nodes who are using it for those purposes rather than get sucked into the vortex.
I find it far easier to get along in work environments by never discussing sports, religion or politics. Sports, because I don't care; religion and politics - because I want to get my work done and go home. I have worked with people who wore both on their sleeves all day long and found them to be uniformly unpleasant to work with.
Why on Earth would I feel comfortable 'bringing my whole self to work'? I don't want my colleagues to know about my hobbies, I don't want them to know about my personal life. I certainly don't want them to know my views on big-tech monopolisation, taxation, and intellectual property law. Choosing to present this as a bad point is doing it to create a springboard into the real point, complaining about other's politics. Which Hacker News is gladly leaping from.
Funny that they don't mention what "certain, commonplace views" people "stay silent" about. That might put a different spin on things.
As I mentioned [1] about the Basecamp debacle, you can't get full "viewpoint diversity" and full "identity diversity" because some viewpoints are hostile to some identities. Given our society's long history of those viewpoints being endemic, and given the slow movement away from identity-based oppression that has sped up a bit recently, workplaces will have to choose whether they value "viewpoint diversity" or "identity diversity" when they conflict.
> Funny that they don't mention what "certain, commonplace views" people "stay silent" about. That might put a different spin on things.
The article actually mentions at least two examples, so I don't think there's as much room for spin with this as you might think.
One is Conservative voters, who have been vilified by the hard left since the 1970s, not least because of a sense of betrayal with the erosion of parts of the historic Labour voter base as people from working-class backgrounds moved to white-collar professions and abandoned trade unionism, and this has been particularly apparent in the arts. There is a "Shy Tory" phenomenon that has continued to confound pollsters.
Another is people who voted for the UK to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum. Leave voters were regularly presented as ignorant and racist by major media sources from the lead up to the referendum until the final death of the Remain/Change UK insurgency after the 2019 General Election, with variations on Little Englander as well as different flavours of False Consciousness.
I think your reference to a "full 'viewpoint diversity'" is invoking a concept that isn't found within the article; instead, the article addresses
> views that diverge from majority public opinion
and it is saying that these are more likely to be voiced, and to be tolerated without fear of termination or marginalization when they are from people on the Progressive/Labour side of the political spectrum.
I don't think the scope of this discussion was intended to extend to people who "want to kill black people" (as they did in your cartoon); instead it encompasses the type of issues that people have been talking about in the UK over the last few years, which include enacting the result of the 2016 referendum, as well as those pertaining to taxation, immigration, education, healthcare and defence.
For what it's worth, the 'shy Tory' effect isn't really a thing, at least in British opinion polling. Maybe in the 1992 General Election, when it was coined, not since. Polling errors go both ways, most polling misses turn out to be a result of turnout modeling problems or (occasionally) unrepresentative samples, and voters have no problem at all telling pollsters they're going to vote for the Tories, UKIP, or anyone else.
Take the present prime minister. I don't think it's particularly controversial to say that he's repeatedly proven himself to be a fairly brazen liar. Voters don't actually like liars. They do, nevertheless, like Johnson (and quite a bit more than they like Starmer). And they're not shy about saying so.
I gather that it was still an active phenomenon as of the GE in 2015 [0][1], and in 2016 there was a significant underestimation of the Leave vote [2]. I'm not really sure how the last part is supposed to relate to this issue in particular, other than being a general swipe at BoJo.
There was a fairly large polling miss in 2015, yes - and the traditional in-depth postmortem by the British Polling Council[0]. Nevertheless, the conclusion from the inquiry was that the shy Tory effect "...is unlikely to have been a contributory factor in the polling miss." (p.42). Or from your link 0: "I do not mean to dismiss the "shy Tory" argument out of hand, but I find it far less plausible in 2015 than in 1992".
In short, the polls are normally a bit wrong, and sometimes more than a bit. And occasionally that changes the expected result (as in 2015) rather than just the magnitude of an expected victory. And over the last 30 years or so those misses have on average been larger against the Conservatives than against Labour. But the conclusion, on analysis, is that the misses have generally been caused by structural problems with the polling, not respondents lying because they're shy. This shouldn't surprise us too much: trying to produce a valid poll with less than 100% response rates requires assumptions, and increasingly more heroic ones as the numbers fall and distributions of those still answering change. I'm mildly in awe of my colleagues for getting as close as they do, given how difficult the problems are. And (with the exception of a few partisan hacks) the polling industry and polling academia in Britain is remarkably straightforward about exposing their errors in public and issuing 'mea culpa's where appropriate.
The last part was intended to relate because the notion of a 'shy Tory' is that a voter has deeply-held but perceived socially embarrassing views that they are shy about revealing to a pollster. Persistent dishonesty is disliked, by voters of all parties, and seen to be socially unacceptable - so we would expect social desirability bias to apply to polling for Johnson. But, in fact, voters are happy to rate him as both dishonest and their preferred choice for Prime Minister. Which suggests in a straightforward (though admittedly non-rigorous) way that they're unlikely to be hiding voting for his party.
"Conservative" isn't a view. It's a movement allegiance. So I don't think that qualifies. I feel the same applies more loosely to Brexit.
What's interesting in both case is that both movements absolutely contain rich seams of racism. So if the actual view people are afraid to voice is racism either intent or action, then I would submit that it is in fact good that they are not voicing it.
I also strongly doubt that many are afraid to voice a view that the correct tax rate for high income earners are 3 points higher or lower. But what decades of history teaches is that since overt racism is no longer acceptable, quite a lot of other issues are used as covers for racism. See Lee Atwater's quote here, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy#Evolution_(1...
So I stand by my view that we must look at the specific opinions people are scared to voice and see to what extent they relate to oppressing groups who were previously forced to keep quiet. My bet here is that a lot of what "Conservative voters" happen to be afraid to speak about is the conservation parts of the past that they are rightly ashamed to be honest about wanting to keep.
> "Conservative" isn't a view. It's a movement allegiance. So I don't think that qualifies. I feel the same applies more loosely to Brexit.
People tended to vote for these things because they believed that the policies of the Conservative Party in the 2019 election or the Leave option in the referendum would be the best expression of their values. They were also rejecting the alternatives, such as a centrally-planned economic model including wealth taxes and the nationalisation of companies and utilities or European federalism and supranationalism, because these policies opposed their views. And they were certainly criticized for this decision with the reasoning being that it was the result of them having the wrong sort of views.
> What's interesting in both case is that both movements absolutely contain rich seams of racism.
Where did racism come from, all of a sudden? That's a very broad smear, and I'd challenge you to provide evidence.
> So if the actual view people are afraid to voice is racism either intent or action, then I would submit that it is in fact good that they are not voicing it.
Again, I'm not sure why specifically you're bringing racism into Brexit or the 2019 GE, but you're welcome to substantiate that.
> I also strongly doubt that many are afraid to voice a view that the correct tax rate for high income earners are 3 points higher or lower.
In many parts of the UK, in various professions and walks of life it's just not worth the hassle of letting it be known that you vote Conservative or that you voted Leave. The unions all support Labour, and there is no point in particular in making your life harder by exposing your political alignment if you're working in a blue-collar role in the public sector.
> But what decades of history teaches is that since overt racism is no longer acceptable, quite a lot of other issues are used as covers for racism. See Lee Atwater's quote here, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy#Evolution_(1...
It's hard to tell how much personal bias is involved when allegations of dog-whistling are made, but I'm not sufficiently familiar with Reagan to be able to make an assessment in this case.
> So I stand by my view that we must look at the specific opinions people are scared to voice and see to what extent they relate to oppressing groups who were previously forced to keep quiet. My bet here is that a lot of what "Conservative voters" happen to be afraid to speak about is the conservation parts of the past that they are rightly ashamed to be honest about wanting to keep.
I've already given you two particular examples of opinions that people have been unwilling to broadcast; one is that the UK should have a Conservative government (and not a Labour government under Jeremy Corbyn/John McDonnell) in the 2019 election, and the other is that the UK should leave the EU, and people have been subject to criticism for holding either of those views. The inference in this case that an unwillingness to broadcast the basis or the practical conclusions of one's political ideology would likely be due to a person harboring shameful and unconscionable opinions basically amounts to a form of victim-blaming, and it appears to be ideological rather than based in evidence. I'd encourage you to continue to look into this, if you're interested, because you might end up being surprised.
Racism didn't "come from, all of a sudden". As history demonstrates, racism is an endemic problem in both places. The question isn't "does it exist" it's "how is it being expressed today".
You really seem to be having trouble getting my point about views, so I'll try again. "Party X should be in charge" is not what I'd call a view. It's generally more a tribal affiliation and a placeholder for a basket of actual opinions on specific policies and issues. If "viewpoint diversity" actually matters in a business context, we need to be specific about which views exact views are vital to business success.
And if you are really having trouble understanding how some of the Brexit-related views might be racist, it seems like you aren't trying very hard there either. I was going to Google it for you, but that rarely turns out to be worth my time. So let's try this: you tell me what you searched on when you failed to find the material and I'll suggest some better searches.
You also seemed to miss with the Southern Strategy bit. Lee Atwater isn't accusing anybody of racism. He was a hugely important figure in the Republican party and was one of the architects of Reagan's 1984 campaign. It wasn't an accusation; he was bragging.
Of course, even with open admissions like this, American conservatives will do the same sort of straining-out-gnats-and-swallowing-camels routine you're doing here. "Racism?!? Surely that stopped existing about the time I was born. How dare you accuse us conservatives of doing what we have been doing all along. Where's your evidence?"
It may work to re-convince the true believers, but it has been some years since I found it persuasive, so if you want to keep this dialog up, I'd suggest some other tack.
I wasn't being obtuse, I wanted to give you the opportunity to explain your claims in your own words, because I didn't want to risk misrepresenting you. I also wanted to withhold judgement about your level of knowledge concerning the subject matter.
> The question isn't "does it exist" it's "how is it being expressed today".
I'm glad that you've come out and said that, because it drives right to the heart of the issue. The problem with the proposal to recast racism into the the mould of an immutable characteristic (I would say redenominating is also a good metaphor) is that we have developed a real moral aversion to transferring individual guilt for events permanently onto groups, and for good reason. On a related note, the problem with claims that we can identify racism through the disparate impact of policies on marginalized groups is that it tends to falsely equate correlation with causation, and in practice it tends to be the result of politically-motivated reasoning.
Overall, I think you've perfectly illustrated the problem that the article was pointing to: "anyone who disagrees with my particular set of claims is bad, and anyone who then claims not to be bad is super-bad".
I see you've decided to make up a cartoon version of my views and argue with that. I'll try one more reply, but I'm not optimistic.
I didn't say it was an immutable characteristic. I said it was an endemic problem. I would like it to go away, but we won't get there by pretending it has gone away. We have to make that happen, and that first requires looking honestly at the history and present facts of it.
A positive example here is Germany. They stopped denying they had an antisemitism problem and have worked assiduously to remove it. And plenty of western nations have moved fitfully in the direction of acknowledging previous and current oppression. In the US, both Reconstruction and the Civil Rights movement are positive examples there. But in both cases, society gave up before finishing the job (see first and second Nadirs). My proposal: this time let's not let those trying to conserve oppression win.
As with polio, it's perfectly possible to eliminate something endemic. But also as with polio, some people of a conservative bent will try to conserve even the harmful parts of the status quo. (My part of the US was settled by a bunch of Dutch who thought things like vaccines and insurance were refusing to accept God's will, for example. And in the modern era, the US right has caused at least a couple hundred thousand deaths through various pro-Covid actions.) So yes, conservatives trying to conserve harmful things may end up feeling bad about that.
I'm fine with that. I understand that conservatives are used to being coddled by society, and that this is uncomfortable for them. As they say, when you're used to privilege, equality feels like oppression. But my goal here is minimizing actual oppression, and I think that's more important than preserving the very delicate feelings of those who previously got away with not examining the consequences of their politics.
> One is Conservative voters, who have been vilified by the hard left since the 1970s, not least because of a sense of betrayal with the erosion of parts of the historic Labour voter base as people from working-class backgrounds moved to white-collar professions and abandoned trade unionism, and this has been particularly apparent in the arts. There is a "Shy Tory" phenomenon that has continued to confound pollsters.
not to be a nit picking noo noo, but both wings of each party mock and vilify the other party. (just have a look at the various twitter streams for your local labour/green/tory/libdem party.) its what they've always done.
The labour party hasn't been about trade unionism since at least 1995.
The problem you are asserting as effectively a freedom of speech issue isn't that, its tribalism. The brexit debate is a good example of this. The country is split 50/50 (+-10%) between remain/brexit. It is therefore impossible to present an average view.
This is because its such a polarising issue. Made worse by the fact that we can see so much froth in real time about each tiny plot point. We are used to now seeing the most extreme arguments about each trivial thing (the BBC won't show you THIS. or the MSM are so biased towards x) we are simply not used to coming to a consensus anymore.
We have lost (or never had) the ability to listen to the "other" side and find common ground. In all debates we seem to be shouting loudly at the "other" side, so that we can get a reaction from our own.
Just on the subject of trade unions, Labour would cease to exist without them, as their (millions of) members' subscriptions contribute to its funding, and since Corbyn they have had a significantly larger role in the NEC than in the Blair/Brown years. Now that he has left there is all sorts bitter in-fighting, and the prospect that the radical factions could break away (or stay and cause Starmer an unending stream of headaches).
In your tweet, you immediately go to "well off white guys".
The fact that you feel comfortable and proud to write like this in public, under your real name, perfectly encapsulates how far off the reservation you are.
I am a well-off white guy. Please explain why you think I can't talk openly about a group I'm in, one that was favored by law and custom starting right at the beginning of my country.
Your skin color and socioeconomic status are irrelevant.
You can talk openly about whatever you like. The fact that you don't understand how awful it is to talk about a "well-off white male mentality" is an indictment of you as a person. You've lost the plot completely and your worldview is characterized by comic levels of intolerance.
The truth is that when discussing societal power in the US, both race and socioeconomic status are hugely relevant. And have been since the founding of this country, when by law only well-off white men could vote.
I understand facing that frankly makes some people, you included, uncomfortable to the point of irrationality. I suggest you get over it, as the issues are not going away.
The idea that there is a well-off white-male way of looking at the world ("To me it looks like a couple of well-off white guys...") is the idea that humans are concrete beings whose consciousnesses are determined by certain identity categories (socio-economic status, skin color, sex).
You apparently don't think that your consciousness is determined by those categories. Just those of other well-off white-males.
I have no patience for this stuff. I learned in kindergarten that this way of looking at the world is morally bankrupt. You have to treat people as individuals. For one thing, because that's how you view yourself, as someone singular. For another, because there is no way to quantify human behavior in terms of this or that category, no such theories exist. And finally, because the idea that a person can be summarized by socioeconomic status, sex, or skin color is associated with crimes against humanity.
It's frankly embarrassing for me to see adults behaving as you do. And to drive home the point, your comeback is "you're white" and link Robin DiAngelo.
If you have feelings in response to my views, that's fine. Good, even. But I think it's hilarious that out of one side of your mouth you argue for respecting individuals and their views while at the same time trying to shut me up about my views because of your white fragility.
I don't think anybody's consciousness is "determined" by anything. But there are strong correlations. The language people speak, their religion, their customs, and many of their views are usually taken from the people around them growing up. That's the whole point of culture, after all: inter-generational transmission of non-genetic adaptation.
Some of that cultural heritages is good, some bad. All of it should be consciously examined. But conscious thought is small and slow compared to our vast cultural inheritance, so it's inevitable that many of people's beliefs and behaviors will be unexamined. More so if they are "frankly embarrassed" by anybody doing that examination in their presence.
I am not only a well-off white male. But I'm definitely those things, and they have had an influence. That's especially true in a society where well-off white men drew strong legal and cultural divisions between well-off white men and everybody else. Your unwillingness to examine whiteness is part of that culture.
So if you are seriously concerned about crimes against humanity (hint: you probably aren't) you should really take some time to look at the cultural and ideological factors behind America's wide array of those. A good place to start: Who were the perpetrators of those crimes? If you can sit with that question for as long as 30 seconds, you might be ready to read Kendi's "Stamped from the Beginning" or Loewen's "Sundown Towns".
It's a slip of the mask that your argument, again and again, is "you're white". Are you analyzing my prose to determine my skin color?
I didn't say a thing about "respecting views". I support your right to spit your venom but I can criticize your racialist nonsense, which is all I'm doing. I never said you shouldn't be able to speak, only that you should be ashamed of what you've chosen to say.
> I don't think anybody's consciousness is "determined" by anything. But there are strong correlations. The language people speak, their religion, their customs, and many of their views are usually taken from the people around them growing up. That's the whole point of culture, after all: inter-generational transmission of non-genetic adaptation.
Yes, of course it's just a strong correlation. We've established that. As you said, it's all those other white males, not you.
Of course this is all nonsense. There is no theory of culture. Culture exists, it affects behavior, but there is no theory that describes how, just garden-variety bigotry. You shift between banalities ("culture affects behavior") and clear statements about what constitutes a "white male mentality" as if you had a theory of culture or a theory of mentality. How else could you claim to know my skin color based on what I've written? Of course you have no theories, it's all bullshit.
The fact that you cite pseudo-intellectual hucksters (Kendi, DiAngelo) is all that needs to be said about the trough you've been drinking from. If you want to find a better religion read the Bible.
Was there an actual argument in any of that? It seems like you're just back to ad homs, albeit wordier ones. Given that, I think we're done here. I have better ways to spend my time, and surely you must have other people to attempt to suppress so you can avoid thinking about anything that makes you uncomfortable.
> you can't get full "viewpoint diversity" and full "identity diversity" because some viewpoints are hostile to some identities.
I've heard variations of this idea and I personally disagree. Yes, some ideas are hostile to some identities, including mine (black), but hostility we can live with.
It's disheartening to see society devolve to a state where being offensive is considered being harmful. If you believe that, then you'll likely also believe that "hate speech is violence", or that words can be "harmful" (yes, they can, but not in a literal sense). It's unlikely that you can have viewpoint diversity in an environment where people believe that someone's opinion has the potential to cause actual harm. I'm not talking about someone inciting violence against individuals or groups based on their identity, beliefs, etc.
When I've been called the n-word, it's hurt my feelings and offended me, amongst other things to unpack, but it would be wrong to equate that with violence, independent of what anyone's opinion on the matter might be. So yes, I can definitely speak and have spoken to people who hold racist views (I mean actual neonazis, not conservatives) and we've agreed to disagree and we've had actual interesting conversations (at least, interesting to me, because I'm interested in understanding how they think, where the hate comes from, how it was learnt, etc). They get disrespectful, they insult, we disagree, etc. It's disappointing that people would think that I, because of the colour of my skin, am unable to hold -- never mind being interested in -- hearing these fringe points of views and opinions that can be offensive. That my personality is somehow override by my identity, as if it were some sort of basic instinct. I don't understand how you otherwise intelligent people can make such assumptions about "some identities" and not see the irony in that.
You seem to think the only kind of harm is violence. I find that might hard to fathom. There is rich individual and statistical evidence that hate and bias cause lasting harm.
The most newly contentious formerly 'commonplace view' is the position that 'we should treat people for who they are, not for their race, gender' etc..
This is actually the fault line between classical progressives and newer groups. CRT hinges on the notion that groups are marginalized in a million unseen ways, in which case, one simply cannot ignore anothers race, rather one must make assumptions about that person's group characteristics to inform one's judgement, presumably, empathetically.
So MLK's famous proclamation: "I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character" ... is now effectively a 'problematic' signal for one group, it's now 'out group behaviour' in their view.
I don't have a problem at all with those seeking to think they are actively helping, but am very opposed to the intolerance and absolution implied by those groups who can no longer accept those abiding by MLK's virtues.
It's very odd because most people over a certain age have spent their life being told about those virtues, and are now told that it's 'unacceptable'.
Edit: I should add, the degree of intolerance of these views is expressed by the sanctioning of certain kinds of workplace diversity programs (CRT), which are of course 'required training' in many companies and government sectors. [1]
Somehow the legacy of MLK has been reduced to just that one quote, even though he wrote a a book ("Why We Can't Wait") that advocated for affirmative action programs for black people. His legacy has effectively been sanitized and "abridged" to be less challenging to persistent and harmful power structures.
Agreed. He was very clear that solving the existing problems involved directly confronting them. "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" makes very clear that however uncomfortable white people are with being forced to look at what's going on, that discomfort is a necessary precondition to progress: "Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word 'tension.' I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth."
But many conservative viewpoints are not hostile to identities.
If I don't agree with Affirmative Action, am I hostile to someone's identity? A majority of Californians at the ballot box will disagree with AA but none of them will say it out loud at the workplace.
It's the misconception that identities are "opposed" by certain viewpoints that leads to this.
Many conservative viewpoints are perfectly acceptable to share in the workplace. Down with taxes, small government, privatize and monetize, down with regulations, etc.
Well. Except there's some lines. If you work in the oil industry and you complain about regulation of food products, fine. But if you complain about environmental regulations that pertain to your business and an inspector happens to overhear, then your company can expect the worst. So it's in your boss's interest to come down on you, even when the inspector isn't around to hear.
Some are, some aren't. I have not noticed conservative colleaguess being afraid to say they're in favor of a tax cut, for example.
But consider Buckley's definition: "A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop [...]". I think that's fine; as an engineer, I'm dispositionally conservative. But in each case, it's worth asking what capital-C Conservatives are actually trying to conserve. Given how ripe America's history is with oppression of everybody who wasn't a well-off white man, it is extremely easy to conserve that oppression.
So in practice, quite a number of Conservative viewpoints are hostile to certain identities. That's obviously true with LGBT+ folks, who in my lifetime have had to fight to get the same rights as anybody else and have faced deep Conservative opposition every step of the way. It is less obviously true for other identity groups, and I'm willing to credit the notion that many Conservative individuals are not as consciously focused on oppressing some minority in the way they were with LGBT+ people. But conscious intent doesn't matter a ton to the people facing the sharp end of oppressive systems.
Something has changed in the last year or two. Basically it is impossible to talk with someone about anything other than weather and the tasks in the pipeline. Everyone is afraid of being cancelled. Even if you tell something politically correct today, you don't know if this will be cancellable in 10 years and then a co-worker who doesn't like you will make a tweet about what you said.
Something has gone terribly wrong in the society...
Hopefully this "wokeness" in our culture can be corrected peacefully and sensibly, as opposed to having a massive overreaction that may itself have an overreaction
I don't voice political opinions in the workplace because I don't think that's what the workplace is for.
I don't "bring my whole self" to work any more than I "bring my whole self" anywhere else - different aspects of personality are appropriate in different settings. My family see different sides to me that others do not. Not only do I believe that's healthy, I believe it's normal and inevitable. I was also brought up to think that it was not polite to discuss politics or religion except with your closest friends. Generally this seems still to be good advice.
As a slight aside to people talking about "cancel culture" etc, where I grew up if you voiced the wrong opinions you could just disappear and never be found again. This is still the case in many parts of the world. Most of the time when people mention this they seem to inherently be speaking from a position of privilege where they believe they have a right to be listened to without consequence, which I'm not sure has ever existed.
At the time of writing there is violence on the streets of Northern Ireland due to a not unfairly held sense that NI has become more closely aligned with Eire that the UK, and an election in Scotland in which the nationalists are once again going to win a majority, with the stated aim of using this mandate to organise a referendum on independence (which current opinion polls show the public would support).
Yet ironically, in an article the purports to support "viewpoint diversity" in the UK, none of this is mentioned. Not even at a time when the UK is literally breaking apart (which sounds like hyperbole, but is not).
You could change the title to read "New evidence that _English_ workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity", and it would be less egregiously incorrect, but it would still lack perspective.
The whole article is basically a long-winded way of saying that English conservatives don't feel comfortable speaking up for what they believe in, and that is fair enough, with the caveat that conservatives views are now being treated with the same suspicion as, say, communist or republican views were a few years ago.
Also they seem to be using and spelling "polarisation" incorrectly.
"In the United Kingdom, most people don’t feel comfortable bringing their whole selves to work. For two-thirds of the population, talking politics sincerely, on the job, is uncomfortable."
I don't live in the UK but have been there many times including having worked there and I believe this view is reasonably commonplace elsewhere, especially so in all Anglophone countries. I've always been a highly political person even to the extent of having studied Political Science as part of Philosophy Studies and I would also strongly agree with the article's third sentence which concludes that 'People who hold certain, commonplace views, stay silent believing that expressing those views will carry penalty not reward'.
Even with my strong political views, I've always applied that rule of not discussing politics and religion when in the company of the majority of people I know, and especially so in the workplace environment. In fact, my posts here on HN are about as political as I get in public, as I know that even the few who know that I post on HN would never bother to read my comments anyway—as they are just not interested in discussing politics.
Even those who hold similar political positions to me will not engage in or sustain a discussion on a political matter for very long. Thus, I'd not only agree with the Ethical Systems blog that 'workplaces are losing their viewpoint diversity' but I'd also suggest that this position holds generally across the whole population. Moreover, I also add that this view of keeping quiet is much more commonplace nowadays than it was decades ago during the 1960s when my politics were forming. That said, back then there was not the same degree of polarization as there is now—and when it existed it was cleanly divided along the well defined political left-right axis. These days, an axis of view can exist on any number of subjects and it's this wide diversity that's a large part of the problem. Many people are becoming even more timid and thus unprepared to discuss their views, as now there is increased potential to tread on someone's political toes.
It's clear to me why this problem exists and it's because our societies are now much more culturally diverse and far less homogeneous than they were when I was a kid. Back then, many of the issues that confront us today were essentially unknown let alone the subject of hot political discussion—unlike many of those of today where everyone is forced to engage in and espouse the politically correct position whether they like doing so or not.
For example, in the '50s it was just accepted that women stayed home and minded the kids; there was no problem in discussing Islam or Moslems as there were essentially none in Western society; and the word 'gay' had a completely different meaning to what it does these days. And as for the subject itself, being completely taboo it was never discussed (in fact, I didn't get to know the word's new connotation and meaning until I was in my late teens). I was like many others, when we found out its new meaning we were somewhat miffed, as we had suddenly lost a valuable word from our vocabulary and there was no replacement. (Back then, there was a subtle but distinct difference between 'gay' and 'happy' that everyone understood, however by the mid 1970s usage of its original meaning had all but disappeared from the language.)
Most of you who will read this weren't even born in the '50s and '60s so it is extremely difficult for me to convey how very different those times were from now. The shifts that have taken place in many societal values have been enormous and I'd venture to say there would be few times in history when values have changed so much and in so many different areas within a single lifetime. Thus, it's little wonder that many people have found it very difficult to adapt to these massive changes. Similarly, the rise of identity politics has further complicated matters as it has added many more threads to the problem.
If one looks at the problem globally, speaking one's mind in public nowadays is fraught with dangers. No wonder that so few actually do so.
If any, it's not indented. My once lecturer in logic would have delighted in giving this text to the class as an exercise, the students would have then set about analyzing what I'd written. He then have said 'this is what you actually wrote, but is it what you actually meant to say?' Answering 'no', I may have been given a c-grade pass if he'd been feeling generous on the day. ;-)
Your implication is absolutely correct, it's crappy writing written in a hurry. My question now is did you get the overall gist of what I'd said? (It would also be interesting to know what good AI would have made of it.)
There is a tremendous difference between "never discussed" and "not brought up in public". Examples of topics that are discussed but not brought up in public are your child's struggle with potty training, whether you will provide them with birth control, whether anal sex is safe, when you and your partner like to have sex, when you intend to conceive, that weird discharge that sometimes comes out your nose, and what you will leave in your will.
Funny that you should make a leap from gay to sex and bodily functions. I’m pretty sure that being gay is not just about sex.
What about dating, relationships, marriage, and having a family? These things are commonly discussed at work. Fifty or sixty years ago being known to be in a gay relationship could be very professionally damaging.
While I think it’s wrong for people to be generally afraid of being penalized for their political beliefs, I don’t see anything inherently wrong with a lack of “viewpoint diversity” at the workplace. By “viewpoint” I’m taking them to mean political and political beliefs just aren’t very relevant to the majority of jobs.
Before I discuss anything complex with another person (politics, religion, etc.), I check to see if they're an idiot. Do they think for themselves or parrot a standard position? Can they explain how they came to a conclusion? When they say "I think . . . ", did they? It doesn't matter they subject; either they think or they don't.
If a person doesn't think (many don't), you're not arguing with them, but with a set of recordings.
This is definitely not just a British phenomenon. American workplaces have little to no viewpoint diversity these days, and no psychological safety for anyone who is moderate or conservative. Corporations have adopted numerous political stances that are right in the middle of the culture wars - support for Black Lives Matter, support for trans activists' stances, support for affirmative action (racially discriminatory hiring practices), and so on. Reasonable viewpoints like not supporting the BLM organization due to its Marxist founders, or not support transwomen's participation in women's sports, or wanting race-neutral hiring are not allowed. If you display any of these opinions, chances are you will not only be a social outcast at work, but that you'll be fired for "putting others at risk" or "creating an unsafe work environment" or "not representing the company's values" or any number of other vague justifications.
I initially thought this trend would be confined to Google and Facebook but it is everywhere now, including non-tech companies, government agencies, schools, universities, hospitals, and so on. Every space has been turned by dedicated activists into a battlefield for politics, usually with room only for one set of viewpoints (progressive ones). In the case of schools, they have been turned into indoctrination centers as radical activist curricula have replaced more balanced, standard material - all without parents' knowledge or consent.
For those worried about viewpoint diversity in our society, please consider following or supporting some of the organizations that are speaking up below, and consider supporting school choice (https://reason.com/2021/01/27/viewpoint-diversity-will-get-a...).
With regard to why it wasn't confined to Google etc, I'm under the impression that a lot of it is just fear of media coverage. If you have very progressive activists in the large media companies (or have the large media companies often cover/follow the activists), you'll automatically get corporations wanting to insure themselves against attacks.
I do believe that it sorts itself out in the long run, as more and more consumers will drop activist media products and they lose their relevance (who's afraid of having a hit piece about their multinational corporation published in a local school paper vs the New York Times).
The movie ex machina approaches intelligence as the ability to
manipulate others.
When you encounter people way more intelligent than you having contrary
opinions from yours the best option is to remain silent or subject yourself
to the whims of those with superior intellect trying to dissect you.
Nobody wants to feel like a victim or a martyr or impostor. Better to be the
fly on the wall.
It might be true that opposing some progressive social issues (which ones?) could get you in trouble in the workplace, but it's always been true that expressing economic left wing views will get you in trouble. Try telling your boss that personal wealth should be capped and heavily redistributed, or that their industry would be better off nationalized, or any of a number of socialist views, and you may get fired as well.
Remember that the conservative cancel culture uses anti-terror tools : secret lists, administrative persecutions, and other sneaky means. Do not believe that cancel culture is a left leaning trope.
Except that I remember the left looking askance at those tactics. Decrying them as immoral and wrong and a bad thing. Yet when political and cultural power shifted to the left what happened? They did the same things. What this conveys to me is that there were never any principals or morals in play. It was all an exercise in power. Those without power posturing until it was their turn and then doing the exact same kind of things.
I think thats what secretly terrifies people the most about the equity types, the complete lack of belief that they believe anything they say. And that the ultimate result will be that some of those actors feel it's their turn to conduct what they say are injustices. That is how the wheel of history has almost always played out. It feels like a real lack of first principles when it comes to equity politics. Racism is bad, but racism we do is good. Oh what we do isn't racism because we changed the definition of racism to not include what we are doing at the moment. Oh we PROMISE we wont change it again when we have all the power. Pinky swear.
I work with and for people of different political view points. We get along great. We just do not discuss politics at the office. Our focus is on getting the job done.
The author conflates "viewpoint diversity" as it pertains to a workplace setting with political diversity. There are many benefits in a workplace to a diversity of views on how to approach the work and this kind of diversity improves the quality of the product the organization produces. But is this true for political diversity? Maybe, but the author doesn't explain why, and it's not clear what studies exist that support his view.
I don't think this is an intellectually honest article.
So this is a study about political diversity where it's specifically relevant to the organization's work. In this case, Wikipedia. I'll admit that political diversity is necessary when the "product" is unbiased articles written on politically controversial topics. But how would this affect how a software company develops products, how a car manufacturer develops cars, etc, where political diversity is not relevant?
Well, if one accepts the argument that identity-based diversity among the workforce is important to more fully represent the perspectives of everyone in society... then that logic extends to political diversity and other kinds of viewpoint/idea diversity as well.
Seems those decrying the article are often aligned with the one diversity assumption... curious why they seem to be rejecting the others.
I'm going to be honest, ethicalsystems.org couldn't scream "bad faith actor" to me harder if it had a high-shouldered leather office chair, a facial scar, and a grumpy white cat.
The real problem is the lack of proportions around "viewpoint diversity". A flat earther, a neo-Nazi, an anarchist, a conspiracy theorist have all different viewpoints. But we can't ask people to stop referring to the Earth as flat not to offend flat-Earthers.
And, particularly from the leftwing there is a phenomenon where if you as much as disagree to some minor policy point you become the enemy of the people the same as Hitler.
There is no solution to this conflict, since the very principles that encourage tolerance towards different views is an ideology in itself so you should tolerate that people can be intolerant.
I believe workplaces should just make it clear that the most important thing is to produce good work (a reasonable demand since they pay you) and that any political view should be acceptable if you do your job
I don't understand what you mean by "go the way", most places I've worked it is the way and always has been. Keeping politics and religion out of the workplace is just called "being professional". Seems like we're just rediscovering why things are that way.
No, the apolitical don't feel the need to discuss politics at work; they'll get on just fine. It's the political who will leave places they disagree with, accelerating polarization.
Plenty of people (from any point on the spectrum) identify as apolitical because they think their beliefs about the world are the neutral standard. They don't feel the need to discuss politics, but in their mind that doesn't cover things like that crazy story on the news about parents who were letting their daughter pretend to be a boy, or mentioning that their sister's wife is visiting.
Yes, yes, I hear what you're saying. Women who wear pants, black people who insist on getting paid for their work, or casually mention their white spouses, people who wear yarmulkes and turbans? Those apolitical people? Why should they feel the need to go anywhere?
This article suffers from the assumption that all viewpoints are symmetrical. Supporting discrimination in the workplace and opposing it are not equally acceptable political perspectives.
Equating the two from a management perspective as equally problematic is simply absurd. Excluding racists from the workplace is not the same as excluding people based on their race. The first excludes a section of the workforce and the second opposes that exclusion.
Maintaining an unequal status quo is not a value-free position.
A big part of the problem is that terms like 'racist' are often used as synonyms for 'people who don't share my viewpoint'. As long as that level of hyperbole is present, you can't have meaningful conversations on this stuff.
racism = judging people / taking actions based on race.
Reality in many workplaces is that the racists making decisions based on race are on the left these days - not the right.
When you say exclude folks who practice racism you need to be very careful. I've no problem with affirmative action, but running around saying folks making judgements based on race should be excluded from the workplace will do a LOT of harm to diversity efforts which generally explicitly recognize race and take actions around race.
> racism = judging people / taking actions based on race, but only if you are white
It goes even further than that - anything that supports the dominant class - technology, science, logic, math and even common sense concepts in language - are considered racist.
The latest manifestation of this absurdity is that things like "rational thinking" and "following schedules" are now considered "white culture" and thus it's racist to expect black people to think rationally or show up on time:
There is no evidence that article implies the workplace, or even society at large, is divided between those who 'support negative discrimination' and those who don't.
The very presumption of this is a kind of a problematic radicalism.
Almost everyone wants people to be treated fairly and with dignity, it's just the 'equity' types think that is still a problem, and that other things should be done.
Paradoxically, it is the '13%' who want us to use race, gender and other artifacts as primary elements of professional identity for hiring, promotion, delegation etc..
Edit: I should add, I don't have a problem with the 13% view that they think they should 'do more'. I'm 'part' of the 13% in that sense. What I'm (very) against is the intolerance and absolution that anyone who doesn't share their agenda is problematic, immoral etc..
"People who hold certain, commonplace views, stay silent believing that expressing those views will carry penalty not reward."
Certain _commonplace_ views, hmm? A lot of abhorrent beliefs about race and gender are commonplace - that doesn't make them acceptable.
"And yet, despite winning a landslide victory in 2019’s General Election, British Conservative voters are nine points more reticent to say what they believe than Labour voters. Why does the larger group fear judgement more than the smaller group?"
Could it be that in this _self-reported_ survey, one group would like to portray themselves as an embattled minority, when in fact they've been in complete control of the country for most of the last decade, and have made a series of appallingly bad decisions based on their "commonplace" but wildly false "views", decisions which have devastated the economy, with even worse yet to come?
Could it be - and I'm only spitballing here - that a lot of truly repugnant or even false beliefs are no longer acceptable in the workplace?
I considered myself a liberal by the standards of the time I grew up in. My views on some social issues, particularly 'free speech', are considered a conservative now. I am one of the people the article is concerning who will not publicly voice their political opinions in the workplace for fear of potential repercussions. One thing that particularly upsets me, is how willingly other people bring up politically sensitive issues in the workplace. I regularly hear woefully uninformed diatribes on geopolitics and American domestic politics (I do not live in America) in the workplace. Even correcting people who are clearly misinformed on clear matters of fact can cause offense. As a result, I do not enter into such discussions.
I feel as though I am more open-minded than many others. I am always ready to be corrected if I am wrong, and I am always willing to discuss my views with people subscribing to other political ideologies. However, I fear the repercussions of offending others who do not have an open mind. I also feel as though many politically active people are not acting in good faith. I feel that the safest option I will not regret is not to engage.