What's the difference between saying n-word and the actual word? The concept that symbolises in my head is the same - and so any difference necessarily is to the benefit of the speaker, not the listener.
It is similar to the difference between "you" and "sir"/"madame". It signals that the people being referred to are important enough that the speaker will modify their behaviour.
Huge difference IMHO. Saying the actual word is meant to inflame or diminish. Saying “n-word” is intended to do neither. Both are simply a collection of letters, but they carry a lot of baggage.
I’m saying that the word carries intent. In part because there is a well known alternative that can be used in almost any situation if intent is not intended.
There are a few exceptional situations, but none have been noted here.
You’re either arguing that we never know intent, ever, so you can’t judge someone. Or that intent can’t be inferred from one word, not sure which one. But both seem like poor positions.
Signal, then? Your intent is irrelevant (& fairly assumed) when you use the wrong word.
It's this kind of thinking that led an ex colleague to wonder out loud whether he shouldn't seek some "desensitivity training" for the entire company (who had just reacted very negatively to a message he'd sent out) rather than communication training for him!
> Your intent is irrelevant (& fairly assumed) when you use the wrong word.
If my intent is irrelevant, why bring it up?
And this is exactly what we're talking about: Is using the wrong word bad in itself, or does there need to be some intent? Can we determine intent objectively? Fairly? Does intent matter? What is a wrong word? Who decides? What consequences do taboo words have for society?
You can't just claim "Your intent is irrelevant ... when you use the wrong word." when that's the entire question.
Your ex colleague thinks people should grow thicker skin. You think we should police language. I don't see that your idea is very developed and it certainly doesn't work very well right now.
I could have sworn I saw a comedy one time in which a uptight racist lady said about some other character something like "I don't want to say anything but they are just a real n-word if you know what I mean" with the pursed lips and nodding that one would assume such a character would do - late 80s early 90s movie.
So obviously one can imagine a scenario where the word is used to inflame or diminish while at the same time trying to make the speaker seem (in their own minds at least) better than they actually are.
True. You can use the phrase n-word with negative connotation. But the existence of the term is meant to be non-inflammatory to discuss the n-word precisely because the n-word itself is inflammatory. Any word could be offensive with context, but some words can be offensive without context — which again is why the term n-word is used.
So why is the actual n-word, outside of context offensive? Because it was often used in contexts that were non-offensive to the speaker but offensive to the listener. For example, “Tom you’re a good n-word, but you know you can’t go with us to the show.” To the speaker this is a cordial use, given the subject.
And then there is the David Chapelle effect, where some people just really enjoy saying it in the “right context” a little too much.
> Saying the actual word is meant to inflame or diminish.
That's an odd accusation to be making. I've gotten so used to reading "the n-word", that at this point it also comes as a more natural thing to me, so it's what I would generally use, but that's a fairly recent thing, and not something I do with any other word (offensive or not).
Claiming that anybody uses a word with the intent to inflame or diminish is both a strawman argument and top tier poisoning the well.
If I tell you the word blah is inflammatory (especially to a marginalized group) just in its mere mention and the word blech is its non-inflammatory substitute to use when you want to talk about the word blah. Then you proceed to use the word blah, I can’t make any assumptions about intent?
You could take your assumptions, but they would be wrong and ridiculous.
If you told me I'm not allowed to say "blah" and should use "blech" instead, why would I care? I'd use "blah" because that's the right word. It's literally the actual word I'm talking about.
And as for the point that it's "inflammatory": that's not my problem. I'm not interested in having any conversation where the invocation of one word or another can detail the whole discussion. If that's the case, then I'd rather leave that conversation anyway.
And why don't I have the right to be offended by the phrase "n-word"? Every time I hear it I feel the implication that my freedom of expression (a human right, mind you) is being slowly eroded. Need I point out that, as an east-German the issue of freedom of expression is historically much closer to me than racism and slavery? I mention that just in case you want to pull the "oh but you're not black" argument.
> If you told me I'm not allowed to say "blah" and should use "blech" instead
I didn't say you weren't allowed to say it, I said it would be inflammatory. "blah" is only the right word if you choose to be inflammatory. So given that this is the word you have chosen to use, why should I assume you meant something different? Now you may not want to deal with the consequences of that word, after you've used it -- that's fine, but I know what you meant at the time.
> I'm not interested in having any conversation where the invocation of one word or another can detail the whole discussion. If that's the case, then I'd rather leave that conversation anyway.
Always your choice to not be in any conversation. I'd argue that most people that use the word are intending to derail the conversation. People aren't that stupid. They know what they're doing.
> And why don't I have the right to be offended by the phrase "n-word"
You can be. You an be offended by the word "the". You can completely remap the English language any way you like. That's your choice.
> Every time I hear it I feel the implication that my freedom of expression (a human right, mind you) is being slowly eroded.
Why? Because we've given you more choices to express yourself? Are you triggered by all euphemisms? In fact there are audiences that will love it if you say the actual n-word -- especially in a derogatory way toward Black people if you like. Enjoy your freedom of expression, you can exercise it.
> Need I point out that, as an east-German the issue of freedom of expression is historically much closer to me than racism and slavery
Racism is still very much alive today, so I'm not sure how freedom of expression is much closer to you today than racism is for Blacks -- but I guess you wouldn't know since you're not Black.
> Why? Because we've given you more choices to express yourself?
1. Make up a new word 2. Give people the choice to use the new word 3. Destroy them if they choose not to.
Sure.
> Racism is still very much alive today
Try criticising the government in china and you will soon realise that censorship is also very much alive today. Not that this makes a difference in either case, of course.
> so I'm not sure how freedom of expression is much closer to you today than racism is for Blacks.
Second, black people exist outside of america, in case you didn't know. So mentioning them as just "blacks" already shows a rather narrow view of the world.
Freedom of expression is closer to me than racism. Racism is probably closer to many black Americans than freedom of expression. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you didn't intentionally misunderstand that just to have a ridiculous strawman to argue against.
Surely meaning is foremost dictated by context? English does not have a context free grammar.
I can say the actual n-word without meaning to enflame or diminish - it is very easy in fact: take a sentence where I would have used the literal n-word, and replace it with the actual n-word.
But the existence of the “n-word” as the less inflammatory alternative always draws into question why you’d use the actual word. In most cases with the example you give, the use of the actual word is probably much more offensive.
That said I think there are a few places where the use is acceptable, but it’s not common and those uses almost never get called out anyways (so it is generally understood).
As a linguist, I can assure you that there is no 'linguistic' concept of a context-free grammar as distinct from the mathematical concept.
A language being non-context-free just means that the string language doesn't fall within a certain class. It in fact took quite a while to show conclusively that English was not context-free; it's far from obvious.
None of this has anything to do with 'context' in the sense we're talking about here.
Can't you sort of feel that it doesn't have the same psychological impact? I immediately bristle if I actually hear someone say the n-word (as opposed to 'the n-word').
Well that's really the only bar we have for offensive language, isn't it? If we need a higher bar than that then I suppose we can all just go around insulting each other and expecting nothing to happen as a consequence. Good luck with that.
If you want something more objective, why don't you just ask a sample of people whether they react the same to 'n-word' as they do to the n-word?
I won't let the reaction of a sample of people dictate how I express myself, and I will not hold other people to that standard either.
When did the pursuit of rationality get replaced by the onslaught of feelings? A person can feel insulted, without someone else insulting them. It happens all the time - it's called a misunderstanding. Along the same lines, we may brisk at language not offensive at all, made by people whom through no fault of their own were misunderstood.
And lets not pretend offensive language is not a natural part of how humans (that's us) express ourselves. If it wasn't, there wouldn't be so many swears.
And so we come back to the bigger issue. It is my belief that the society in which I live should be a rational one, and each person in it a rational actor who can distinguish between subtle nuances of meaning, both implied and expressed, and not rely on the stark contrast between allowed and disallowed, accepted or unaccepted. And I fear that if we pursue a mindless list of rules for behaviour, we will be less free for doing so.
We must show humility, knowing that we are not the just judge of each other, and give the benefit of doubt. It is not morally right to participate in a witch hunt on someone for _a word_ said years ago - so I will condemn doing so.
> Well that's really the only bar we have for offensive language, isn't it?
We can construct any bar we'd like.
You seem to completely dismiss concern for the bar being too low, why is that? Lots of people might feel sort of offended by women showing their hair -- should we accept that bar?
When the data no longer fits inside a compute resource (a node, or even a rack), you are by necessity going to be distributed. Communication is a fact of life when the problem-size grows. This is true also for GPU-based computing.
>"It found that “daughter-divorce” risk emerges only in a first-born girl’s teenage years (see chart). Before they reach the age of 12, daughters are no more linked to couples splitting up than sons are. “If fathers were really more likely to take off because they preferred sons, surely they wouldn’t wait 13 years to do so,” reasons Dr Kabatek."
Maybe parts of the article I could not access goes more into detail, but this is an odd perspective when it is known that women initiate 70% of divorces (see fig. 1 in [0]).
I think that retribution, which is of course the principal component of justice, is a key part of prisons. Somewhere the scales must be balanced, and if not in prisons, where then? Should the assaulted be happy with the fact that the inmate will get a job?
That is not to say that prisons should be blind to the fact that inmates will eventually be released. There are plenty of people who have committed no crime, but go hungry. Where is their free lunch?
What makes you think retribution is the principal component of justice? That seems very wrong to me.
Justice is a deep concept - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice/ is an overview, and it's not short - but on plain sight, I'd say that since it is the public, through the medium of government, that enforces justice, it should do so with a utilitarian view.
Society has a vital interest in reintegrating people who have been punished, so that they don't fall back into a life of crime as the only life available to them. If justice is mostly retribution, then society is not well served. Even further, society can profit from the valuable contributions of people who've learned the error of their ways.
> What makes you think retribution is the principal component of justice? That seems very wrong to me.
It seems right to me. In my opinion, justice comes from the concept of reciprocity. In other words, if someone does bad, it is just that bad is done to them (retribution). The reverse is also true: it is just that good things occur to people who do good deeds.
> Justice is a deep concept - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice/ is an overview, and it's not short - but on plain sight, I'd say that the fact that it is the public, through the medium of government, that enforces justice, it should do so with a utilitarian view.
It's wrong to write as if this is a closed question. There are plenty of philosophers who aren't utilitarians and who see justice grounded elsewhere than "whatever I think will be good for society".
The idea of prisons should be to simply keep people away from society so they cannot harm others. There's no need to heap punishment on top of that. That's medieval and doesn't belong in modern civilization.
> That's medieval and doesn't belong in modern civilization.
The concept of retribution as justice goes far back beyond medieval, to at least the Bronze Age (see Hammurabi).
In addition, it seems a common component across cultures. The utilitarian view is by no means nearly as universal.
Here is a modern example: every few years you hear about some former Nazi Concentration Camp guard that was arrested. From a utilitarian point of view it is completely useless. The old guard is never ever going to take part in anything like that again. However, from a justice as retribution for misdeeds, it make perfect sense.
Or if someone kills his wife in a passion crime, along that logic, what is the point of jailing him then? He doesn’t have another wife to kill and so there is no further harm to society expected. So he should walk free if the only objective is no further harm to society.
It's part of modern civilization for the same reason people enjoy it when the bad guy gets punished at the end of a movie. This is the essence of justice, whether you have the stomach to face it or not.
I enjoy watching movies as much as anyone, but that doesn't transfer into enjoying people being hurt/punished in real life. I'm happy to leave my darker impulses behind when exiting the theater.
You can't leave them behind and I'm sure you've wanted someone punished for some misdeeds they've committed. This isn't a bad thing and is an overwhelmingly natural response.
Sure, it's not a closed question. I'm mostly pointing out, as an example, the fact that society operates the mechanics of justice these days, it is the interests of society that are paramount. Making individuals whole is a part of that, but avoiding repetition is also vital, or else the punishment plays a part in causing crime later.
I don't think I have the ability. I can, however, say with a some certainty that retribution is not principal component of justice, because a moment's consideration shows more considerations at play.
Retribution had a place - in Babylonian times, when eye for an eye was the rule. Things have moved on.
Things haven't moved on. All modern justice systems continue to be based on retribution. They seek to punish the guilty (proportionally to their crimes) and to exonerate the innocent. It's all well and good to argue "this punishment is too severe, it does not fit the crime". But to argue that "the world has moved on" from retributive justice is just naivete.
If you're interested in a defense of retributive justice, read Kant:
> Punishment by a court can never be inflicted merely as a means to promote some other good for the criminal himself or for civil society. Punishment can only be inflicted in response to a crime committed, i.e., retributive justice only. A human being ought never to be treated merely as a means to an end as all human beings have an innate personality even thought they may be condemned to lose their civil personality. The law of punishment is a categorical imperative, and woe to him who crawls through the windings of eudaemonism in order to discover something that releases the criminal from punishment or even reduces its amount by the advantage it promises, in accordance with the pharisaical saying, “It is better for one man to die than for an entire people to perish.” For if justice goes, then so does the value of human beings. However, what if a proposal comes forwards to preserve the life of a criminal sentenced to death in exchange for allowing dangerous experiments to be performed, so that physicians can learn something of benefit to the commonwealth? A court would reject with contempt such a proposal form a medical college, for justice ceases to be justice if it can be bought for any price whatsoever.
You'll notice, I hope, from my comments that I've never said retribution wasn't an element. What I've been arguing is that it isn't and shouldn't be the principal component in modern justice.
An anecdote that frames my thinking: the most recent crime I've suffered was when I've been assaulted on the street - bikejacked, in fact, pulled off my motorcycle at a stop light by one hoodlum, kicked in the head (though helmeted), while another rode off on my bike. In the moment, there's anger at the perpetrators. But more than that, I feel pity; pity that their lives are so empty that the only way they see to get their kicks is to do this kind of thing.
They should suffer consequences (i.e. a deterrent), sure, but I don't really want retribution. Revenge wouldn't have brought back my bike (I'd put months of work into that bike, getting it back on the road, but when the bike was recovered it had been crashed into a parked car). It certainly wouldn't have made me feel safer on the road; if anything, it would have made the us (well paid) vs them (aimless, hopeless poor youth) dichotomy worse, not better.
As it turned out, the London police are much worse than the hoodlums. Didn't get a line-up of faces until more than 4 months after the fact, long after any hope of remembering anything. I have a lot more anger at the police than I do at those hoodlums.
I want that kind of crime to no longer be a risk. That requires a systematic solution, not a point fix of retribution, which I don't want - I don't and didn't want those kids' lives ruined. They'll just do even worse things.
I can imagine different crimes where retribution and revenge might play a larger part in the emotions of the victim. I think those crimes are a small minority of total crime, and even then justice is and needs to be rational, not emotional. Revenge, as a reaction, overreacts. Justice needs to be balanced. So I'm not sure it can be a principal component even for that minority of crime.
Turn the other cheek; violence begets violence; etc. But some people seem to use the word "justice" and mean "revenge".
> Society has a vital interest in reintegrating people who have been punished
Food for thought, but this is only true if we release them. For most of history, we simply executed criminals.
In most of the world, that's still the case (thieves without hands etc).
Without making a moral judgment on what's right or wrong, if most societies evolved that way, it probably means it's conducive to the long-term health and survival of societies. Survivorship bias and all that.
I think this actually varies a lot across cultures, although one common principle, historically at least, is that justice is less deadly for the rich than it is for the poor. For instance, the concept of blood money reduces the punishment of murder to a fine
> Should the assaulted be happy with the fact that the inmate will get a job?
Um... what? This is borderline advocating for all sentences be for life.
If a sentence is given and served, the convicted deserve a chance at living. The US has a terrifying and awful fetish for punishing lower/middle-class folks who commit some of the pettiest of crimes, many of which struggle to re-integrate with society if/when they're released and therefore continue to serve a sentence long after they're no longer in prison. Compared with, for example, a vast majority of white-collar crime that often has victims an order of magnitude or two greater than most petty crime.
You were complaining that inmates would deign to find work after being incarcerated.
> Should the assaulted be happy with the fact that the inmate will get a job?
YES, everyone should be happy if ex-felons are able to find work after leaving prison. Otherwise, they just go back their previous behaviors (eg ~80% recidivism). If they can't get work, that's effectively a "life sentence".
I was not complaining about anything. They aren't ex-felons, after they are released, they are felons.
I do not think you understood my original comment, since you keep quoting that sentence only. Where is the restitution to the aggrieved party? The assaulted, the robbed, the beaten, the raped? You pay for what you do, and if your enterprise is criminal, you pay in time behind bars. Personal responsibility. Why would anyone want to hire a wife-beater? There are millions of upstanding citizens out of work ...
You seem to have a very limited understanding of why people commit crimes, which makes for extremely uninformed opinions.
Punishing those who commit crime demonstrably does little to nothing to dissuade them from future crime. Given an understanding of the reasons why many people commit crimes makes this obvious: by taking angry people without hope, and giving them more reasons to be angry and even less hope, we end up with an incredibly high recidivism rate. Meanwhile, harshly punishing those who've committed crimes usually doesn't make the victims of those crimes feel better, either.
So if it's not benefitting victims, and making re-offense more likely, why do we do it? So third parties can feel a sense of self-righteousness that they call "justice?" That seems to be the primary reason!
Sometimes people in dire straits do bad things, and hurt others. Punishment is reasonable, but objectively, rehabilitation is also needed. Restitution to victims, and victim statements, also help. We can look around the world and see objectively that there are many ways to do this better than we're doing, by any measure. It's both more humane, and more effective.
If someone murdered a loved one of mine, I don't see how having the state execute them would make things any better for me. I'd be satisfied if they were simply imprisoned so they could not hurt others. Punishing them further wouldn't help me at all.
Depending on whether you look at state or local prisons, anywhere from 1/3 to almost 1/2 of inmates are detained for non-violent offenses. With a reasonable rehabilitation program that focuses on getting people out of the situation that led them to petty theft, drug dealing, etc in the first place, we could probably take 30-40% of the population out of prisons and reintegrate them to society with no discernible impact on public safety.
This would be without even touching any “wife-beater,” rapist or murderer.
There are a lot of people unnecessarily locked up for absurd sentences compared to the crime who absolutely deserve another chance at society. We should actively want that. It’s a net good for society and it happens to be a lot less expensive, too.
> Where is the restitution to the aggrieved party? The assaulted, the robbed, the beaten, the raped? You pay for what you do, and if your enterprise is criminal, you pay in time behind bars. Personal responsibility. Why would anyone want to hire a wife-beater?
Criminal law is about wrongs against the state. In regards to payment for restitution, how is the state being restored by somebody rotting in jail?
What sort of payment is this that the state may end up even poorer than before? In fact, if serving in prison is payment, then I'd say it's the state that's paying for the prison and all the harms which follow.
If the state should find itself awfully harmed from its own criminal justice policy, from where shall the state seek remedy?
I can't think of anything more cruel and worse for society as a whole than to permanently damage some people because it feels vaguely cathartic and might serve as a "warning" to others.
I say this knowing full-well that I might seek retribution if something awful were to ever happen to me or my loved ones, but:
> I think that retribution, which is of course the principal component of justice, is a key part of prisons.
No amount of retribution will ever be enough. The concept of making things right is a delusion that parents infect their children with.
However, the most effective way to inflict retribution is to teach an individual the meaning of their actions and have them live with the guilt of those actions. Another word for that is rehabilitation.
American prisons are based on childish like-for-like retribution (your limited someone's rights, you get your rights limited). It didn't work when I was 8, so why would it work for an adult? All that we achieve is sending people to crime college, where fellow inmates further numb moral fiber and empathy, then release graduated criminals back into the wild. That's certainly one way to make sure that there is always demand for retribution.
I upvoted you, but I want to make sure my reasons for doing so are accurate. This was sarcasm, yes? It might not be so obvious if others read through this so just want to clarify.
I was drily sarcastic yes, as it is obvious that very few people are in prison for assault any argument that makes an appeal to the emotions with the phrasing used is somewhat deserving of being punctured. I thought my response good at indicating the absurdity.
By stating your hypothetical "Should the assaulted be happy with the fact that the inmate will get a job?" you made a condition only sometimes encountered - violent crime - a reason to treat all criminals worse.
I assumed that you did not actually believe that all criminals in America had assaulted someone, but if you did not believe it then arguing for the punishment of people who did not commit violent acts (by making it more difficult for them to get jobs when released) seems far worse than if you just did believe a ridiculous thing.
And really by using in your argument an emotional hypothetical about the assaulted to argue for denying something to people who have not committed assault it becomes difficult to know exactly how to take it.
The argument is hard to take seriously if you don't really believe it is true for all criminals, and it is difficult to believe you think it is true for all criminals.
You are building the strawman of strawmen here. I never gave a reason that prisoners should be treated worse, as that implies I am arguing for an increase in punishment compared to the situation today. Which I nowhere did.
Perhaps to nuance the discussion a bit, the majority of people in state prisons in the US are there for violent offenses, and state prisons hold a majority of all prisoners. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html
There's a program helping people prepare for getting jobs after release - you said "Should the assaulted be happy with the fact that the inmate will get a job?" it seems at least some part of you is arguing maybe this program should be done away with. I mean maybe this is not what you are arguing, but it is sort of reasonable that a lot of people seem to be taking that as what you are arguing based on what you wrote.
But I never said that, you're building a strawman.
I said that punishment is a necessary part of prison, it is the main thing of justice. You may or may not agree with that position, but unless you are willing to reply to me on a good faith basis maybe you just shouldn't. The HN guidelines say
>Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
It is not sort of reasonable that you think "some part of me"(what do you mean by that?) argues for it, because I never wrote it. If you or other people did not understand some part of my original comment, ask for a clarification instead of what has happened in these comment chains.
> I think that retribution, which is of course the principal component of justice, is a key part of prisons.
One of the arguments that Foucault makes in Discipline and Punish is that prisons, by virtue of hiding the retribution from public view, can perform nearly arbitrarily heinous retributions on people. When we tore people apart in the street as punishment it was public and could provoke outrage. Now basically nobody knows what happens inside prisons.
> I think that retribution, which is of course the principal component of justice
That ain't necessarily so, and not every penal system has that philosophy. If prisons turn out people who are unemployable, they will simply keep doing whatever they can do to make a living. If lawful society doesn't take them, someone else will. Justice has to work at the societal level.
I can empathize with how you feel (even how a victim could feel) but a public good will come from teaching prisoners a skill so they don't have to victimize someone else when they get out.
I am interested in whether there is any actual evidence retribution works, in terms of recidivism. My first guess would be that the awful experiences in prison just fuck up people more.
Given that some percentage of people in jail or prison are there for the crime of possessing drugs, something which college students seem to do regularly without consequences, I'm not really surprised that those people don't re-offend.
One way to see whether 87% is high or low might be to compare it to the rate in other countries. We seems to be near the top of that list, but not alone there.
Jail or prison itself may or may not drive people toward more crime, but the difficult in finding housing or a job with a criminal record certainly does a lot to kill hope.
It sure seems like some people on this page are very much in favor of people who've committed crimes going hungry, even after they serve their sentences.
Idiomatically, I'm also in favor of every person, inside or outside of prison, getting the education they need in a trade that suits them.
Our society would benefit enormously, far beyond the cost of providing the education. So again, free lunches for all! Literally and metaphorically!
Your post made me remember [0]. Can you get any more polarizing than suggesting that your opponent will start the nuclear anhilatiom of the modern world?
Is it that polarizing to /suggest/? I for very honest and reasonable reasons (one of his most prominent political positions prior to his presidency was aggressive use of nuclear power) worried he would and flinched anytime I saw unexpected aircraft for the last few months.
That would only make sense if they refused you at the door, or after you had sold all investments. Obviously the fact that these people hold shares complicates it.
