>Roman Empire, British Empire, Ottoman Empire, Japanese Empire, Mughal Empire
Imagine, for a moment, that each one of these had nukes. What's the probability they'd use them to make a point as an aggressor/opressor? Even risking MAD?
Probably the same, with the same knowledge available. If you just gave a Roman Emperor unlimited use of nuclear weapons, sure, he might go ham. He didn’t even know the extent of the world. But you don’t get nukes without awareness of what a nuke is.
Given everything, I think the highest likelihood outcome is that they behave similarly.
The US definitely would have used nukes, especially in Vietnam - I believe that the reason the US President is the one with the nuclear suitcase and who it the end decision maker (probably something more people are nervous about now) is because when Truman learned about the nuke project (I'm not sure he had been aware of them until he became president) and used them he was afraid the military would use even more. Former SecDef Perry does a lot around nuclear nonproliferation and has good free courses, a podcast, and a book https://www.wjperryproject.org/
>that's only 80 mental mutations between us and the Homo species that made this axe.
To this
>These guys were just about as smart as us.
You don't know how much of an influence any individual mutation could have made. Also there's no reason to suspect more than [or less than] one mutation per generation.
Just look at the range of "gifted" people in our society - mutations which likely enable savants and such. Men like Newton and Da Vinci, if their successes are due to genetic mutations (I suspect to a significant degree this is the case) placed in another time could individually make the difference between a stone and metal age.
Point being, 80 generations of mutation may be enough to drastically change the human mind - especially considering the immense selection pressure for certain kinds of intelligence, which varies with culture and technology (e.g. stone vs metal age).
Edit: I suppose this comes down to how much evolution you believe happens in the form of punctuated equilibria
>It's because normal people are not equipped to deal with the cherrypicking and manipulative narrative that these kinds of "evidence" papers show
I'm pretty sure this is the exact attitude that the poster was describing. You're just blanket dismissing out of mainstream science with accusations of bad faith.
>Telling people that only 1% of them will die so it's all okay is telling people you don't care about them - they notice, they're not dumb.
No no no no no. It's high time we stop treating everything as black and white in this country. It's not just callously disregarding the dead - it's about determining whether the literal and figurative loss of life caused by a lockdown is worth the loss of life caused by the virus. And the signal/noise ratio right now is absolutely tiny, especially considering how much damage the media has done by unambiguously turning this into an opportunity to bash Trump. Regardless of how you feel about the presidency, if you compare per capital rates ours were actually on par with most other first world nations until the recent protests (both left and right) began; and while I do believe it is shameful that we were caught with our pants down, scrambling to gather supplies nearly 3 months late, I'll remind you that so was everyone else.
Let's also not forget that a number of other countries like Sweden didn't lock down at all and are doing fine. We also shouldn't be applying the same policies to urban and rural areas.
You know what would really answer this question to me? What percent of nurses and doctors in COVID wards have gotten sick? And what is their CFR? That's pretty much worst case exposure and seeing as I haven't heard of doctors dying in droves, I'm inclined to start believing that people do have and/or develop immunity and the fatality/complication rate really is extremely low, for whatever reason. But I need data to be sure.
Now either this strategy isn't as good as you claim it to be or NYT, CNBC, Business Insider, and the WSJ and all the analysts and experts they cite are working together to cook up a conspiracy.
Except for your NYT article, these are all pieces from more than 2 months ago. And the NYT has been exceptionally poor at reporting on covid with an even hand. What it fails to mention is that though Sweden's economy will contract by the same amount as it's Scandanavian neighbors, about -8%, it's a huge win compared to UK/Italy/France which will contract by 22-30%.
It's irresponsible to believe that journalists and editorial organizations are able to cut through their own emotions and biases during what is one of the most tense times in recent history. Everyone has an opinion. The only thing without an opinion are the data.
For Sweden that data is pretty great:
- 15 deaths in the past 7 days
- ~1200 cases
If you only want to compare Sweden to its neighbors you're cherry-picking what you want your argument to say. Sweden's strategy divorced them from their neighbors and put them in the boat with us. We are apples to apples. Sweden to Norway, when they took up the strategy, became apples to oranges. Since we are both of the same strategy it's entirely reasonable to point to Sweden and say "hey, it's about as bad there as it is here and they didn't go hard lockdown and kids are still in school".
It's not like we can go back in time and follow New Zealand. That ship sailed five months ago.
To get a real look at the data I strongly recommend people get on Twitter and follow any of these accounts to get a good grasp on the overall situation as told by the numbers and as a bonus you'll get:
- how deaths are reported and what that means for the narrative
- cases and their level of significance
- hospital census, dwell, and coding
@ethicalskeptic
@aginnt
@boriquagato
@natesilver538 (we don't agree on how to handle this, but he's been fair in reporting data as it should be understood)
@MLevitt_NP2013 (Nobel laureate)
@AlexBerenson
> Sweden to Norway, when they took up the strategy, became apples to oranges.
Your logic is simply wrong here. If you want to assess the effect of the lockdown, you compare effects between similar countries that did and didn't have a lockdown. Apple trees with fertilizer vs apple trees without fertilizer. You don't learn about the effect of fertilizer by comparing apple trees with fertilizer vs orange trees with fertilizer.
I don't think anyone is arguing that Sweden's outcome is better than Norway's. I'm certainly not.
What I'm saying is that you can go without a lockdown and avoid the doomsday scenario that was so proffered about. Everyone was pointing to Sweden as though they were a cautionary tale of a state that was about to wipe out 10% of its population.
Yet here we are and that didn't play out. So the narrative switched to "but against its neighbors!". Yeah Sweden did worse, but they also showed you didn't need to go into hiding to get the same result the rest of the quasi-lockdown camp got.
What you're implying is that if the United States went full no-lockdown strategy our outcome would be different than Sweden. Whereas logically a virus does not care whether the host is Swedish, Ugandan, or American. A human is a human.
> What percent of nurses and doctors in COVID wards have gotten sick? And what is their CFR?
Largely irrelevant, because nurses and doctors should be wearing PPE, are trained to work in infectious environments, work in buildings designed to prevent disease vectors, and places that are sanitized regularly. You should see significantly less cases in healthcare than you would elsewhere.
And just in general, the economic impact of letting the virus run rampant would be astronomical. Even outside of deaths, those with severe cases are ending up with likely permanent damage to their hearts, lungs, or kidneys, which will require increased medical costs and likely people who can no longer work.
1. All sorts of problems with that Statista chart. Just for starters it doesn't take into account number of tests being performed per 1m/pp.
2. Would it be astronomical? Total speculation. That's just a hysterical statement that doesn't point to a problem or a solution.
There is some anecdotal evidence that a small fraction of those that develop symptoms but do not become fatal can have lasting effects from the virus. There is no evidence that this is widespread. However, it's a favorite place for people to point to when they want to move the goal posts when deaths aren't going up.
1) Chile, Kuwait, and Singapore have similar rates of testing to the US [1]
2) Current studies show roughly somewhere between 10-20% of hospitalized patients ending up with heart damage, increasing their future risks of heart attacks and strokes.[2][3] Up to 36% of hospitalized patients are displaying neurological symptoms, with possible damage.[4] Up to 60% are ending up with ARDS which may be permanent.[5]
Extracting that with current numbers, assuming we had a 50% infection rate, 15% hospitalization rate [6][7], and a 1% death rate, we'd have ~1.5 million dead, ~22.5 million hospitalized, ~3.375 million with heart damage, ~8 million with neurological issues, ~13.5 million with ARDS.
Obviously many of these would overlap, but it sounds pretty devastating to me.
Tests per 1mm/pop:
US - 140k
Chile - 71k
Kuwait - 106k
Singapore - 172k (most definitely not a 2nd or 3rd world country. HDI 7th in the world and GDP/pc 8th in the world. Both higher than the U.S.)
You're stacking your numbers and assuming a worst and numerically impossible scenario. When you take into account asymptomatic cases that are extrapolated via serology samples and not just the positive PCR tests you get a fatality rate of 0.24% (and falling) with a huge age gradient down to less than 0.008% for those under 40.
Knowing that the vast majority of cases are asymptomatic dramatically lowers the scary numbers you just threw out. And you must know by now the prevalence of asymptomatic cases.
Also [5] has a sample size of 36 from May, can't tell if it's peer reviewed.
[6] is a mish-mash of CDC numbers so not sure what you're pointing to.
[2] Though worth noting, I don't think 19.7% is indicative of anything out of the range of ordinary when you consider the at-risk group for covid. You would need to control this by age and all-cause mortality. Same for [4] and [5]
The question of "with" vs "from" covid is very real. Now, I'm not saying that covid is benign. It can do damage. What I'm saying that it is significantly less dangerous than people that want to remain in lock down would lead you to believe.
The sheer number of people likely to come out of this with disabilities or serious-but-not-disabled level chronic problems is really depressing. Just the lung issues (didn't know the term ARDS, thanks for that) will be terrible.
> Let's also not forget that a number of other countries like Sweden didn't lock down at all and are doing fine.
Sweden did a voluntary lock down, which was in practice pretty comprehensive. Even then they still had a death rate per capita many times higher than its neighbours, and it was economically hit just as hard.
Perhaps it was worth a try, but it didn't pan out. Their government even formed a commission to figure out why it went so bad.
This is the critical aspect of the Sweden example: the people of Sweden are rational and everything isn't hyper politicized. Even though they tried a different approach, many still took reasonable precautions. There still were significant restrictions on operations like bars and restaurants.
Sweden was never like the "COVID denier" communities in the United States.
And still its results are relatively terrible compared to its neighbours and peers.
It also wasn't completely voluntary, they closed high schools, they banned gatherings with more than 50 people, they limited how many people could visit bars and restaurants and made them sit at a table. The government didn't sit back and do nothing like many people seem to think.
These restrictions with some give or take are what the world will have to adopt until it's either eliminated or we get a vaccine.
> it's about determining whether the literal and figurative loss of life caused by a lockdown is worth the loss of life caused by the virus.
oramit said:
"The United States is currently choosing the worst possible combination of options. We locked down - causing enormous financial damage, but we didn't follow through with the lockdown nationally to actually stomp the virus. So we get to have the deaths and have the financial damage as well. Yay us!"
That only works when we have food to feed everyone ... which requires a surprising amount of people to stay at work. Besides the obvious people working in the fields/farms, there's a lot of support businesses that need to stay open. The people who repairs the tractors, the people who make parts for the feeders in the barns, etc, which need support for their own manufacturing equipment.
We can't just "shut it all down" worldwide and not run out of food.
You've been downvoted quite a bit but I think your post is a good example of the problem at hand.
Yes, we have to make choices about costs and we can't save everyone. Yes, the data is super noisy and its hard to tell what is happening. Yes, the media loves bashing Trump.
But none of that is important because then you go right into downplaying things and saying that "if you compare per capital rates ours were actually on par with most other first world nations until the recent protests". The tone-deafness of this sentence is astounding to me.
People are scared, telling them that actually we only failed as badly as other countries, is, wow.
At some point people become enough of a liability that we collectively as a society have authorized the restriction of their rights.
This is a literally subversive movement. I'm not exaggerating or choosing a side. Watch the livestreams yourself - these people explicitly seek to subvert, dismantle, and replace modern "power structures" (intentionally left vague).
Whether you agree with what these people think they're fighting for, the system has safeguards against such insurrection.
> A lot of broken windows, graffiti and fireworks.
Those are federal property and feds have full rights to do this. Also a lot of people who are being arrested are from another state. That's been the case for at least 45 days now. There's a point where the feds have to step in since the local people in that area are being terrorized. I have friends in that area and they are all planing to move out of the city because the Mayor, DA and Governor have been useless for a long time.
>At some point people become enough of a liability that we collectively as a society have authorized the restriction of their rights.
So tyranny of the majority is fine? I'm sure you can apply the same justification to what's happening in Xinjiang. Also, where's this "authorization" stemming from? Did we explicitly authorize it? Or was it implied by our inaction?
Perhaps it is preferable to tyranny by the minority.
>authorization" stemming from? Did we explicitly authorize it? Or was it implied by our inaction?
Did you authorize the taxes you pay, or where they go? Isn't this the so called social contract?
And please, my family fled true tyranny, I assure you nothing the US is doing is quite comperable to the CCP. Westerners don't know tyranny. They've grown so comfortable that they can take to the streets for weeks and complain about the very government that supports them.
Try doing that in the USSR or any Chines state outside of Hong Kong or Taiwan.
This is an egregious violation of the site guidelines and a bannable offense on HN. You can't post like this here, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are.
You've posted repeated complaints holding that HN is moderated for ideological reasons, and that users flag posts for ideological reasons, but when you pour fuel on flames like this, you're creating the very situation you're complaining about. Any discussion that degenerates to this level will correctly get flagged, because it is not what HN is for, and it destroys what HN is for.
The truth is that both sides of ideologues are creating this problem—the other side, yes, and your side, including you yourself. All of you need to accept that (1) this community is large enough that plenty of opposing views are inevitably represented here, and (2) everyone's first responsibility is to protect the container for future discussion. When you bash each other, you're destroying the container. This needs to change, regardless of how important the issues are and how strong your passions are.
Our job is prevent this place from burning itself to the ground, and your account is unfortunately standing out as one of the burners. Even apart from the other site guidelines that you routinely break, you are plainly using HN primarily for ideological battle, which is something we ban accounts for, regardless of which ideology they're battling for. Doing that is the only way to preserve any semblance of intellectual curiosity on this site—that is, any semblance of HN's mandate.
I've held off chastising you for this way longer than we do for most accounts, but it's obviously time for that to change. No, this is not because we secretly side with the worst of your enemies, alt-right trolls or whoever else—I've banned more of those than you can imagine. At the same time, you also need to follow the rules.
Wait, so an outlet which is openly at odds with the current administration performed an investigation into claims made by the current administration, found the claims to be false, and we're just going to take the conclusion at face value? Nevermind the fact that this was conducted by journalists (i.e. non specialists who have a propensity for misreporting technical information).
Conspiracy theory...what a convenient dismissal of a potentially genuine problem. All of our institutions are rife with abuse but we're supposed to believe voter fraud doesn't exist because WAPO says it doesn't and, more importantly, because Trump said it does...
Edit: and they apparently looked at 3 states. Unqualified journalists should stay away from statistics or "fact checking" - at this point they are actively harming society with their piss poor, agenda driven "analyses".
> Edit: and they apparently looked at 3 states. Unqualified journalists should stay away from statistics or "fact checking" - at this point they are actively harming society with their piss poor, agenda driven "analyses"
Those are the 3 biggest states of the 5 that use primarily vote by mail. They contain ~80% of the vote by mail population.
>The figure reflects cases referred to law enforcement agencies in five elections held in Colorado, Oregon and Washington, where all voters proactively receive ballots in the mail for every election.
Oh I see, well, clearly, if officials aren't reporting on it then it's not happening. Wapo and blue check marks make it official.
This logic isn't sound but people are happy to swallow hole anything anti-trump.
Edit: not to mention Colorado, Washington, and Oregon probably don't harbor anywhere near the same number of illegal immigrants as do states like California and Texas where this would be more of a concern.
In fact this whole debate is framed illegitimately. States like California automatically register voters when they receive IDs, they allow noncitizens of any legal status to obtain IDs, and we're supposed to pretend this isn't an avenue for illegal voting? Who's going to report these votes if they ostensibly conform to the California rules? But don't worry, Wapo and Huffpo will run their "analyses" and everything will come back squeaky clean.
We all need to hold all of our sources accountable and examine them critically, even when they tell us what we want to hear.
> States like California automatically register voters when they receive IDs, they allow noncitizens of any legal status to obtain IDs, and we're supposed to pretend this isn't an avenue for illegal voting?
Citation required. The California DMV's own website utterly contradicts what you say:
"The Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) is permitted to issue a driver license (DL) or identification card (ID) to an applicant who submits satisfactory proof that the applicant’s presence in the United States (U.S.) is authorized under federal law...DMV will not let you start a DL/ID card application unless you present your social security number (SSN) and your valid BD (birthdate)/LP (legal presence) document...DMV will mail your photo DL/ID card after all tests and requirements have been met and USCIS has verified your legal presence status. "[1]
On a personal level, I know friends who suddenly couldn't drive because their visa expired, even though they were still in legal status while they awaited renewal. Because their license was set to expire the same day as the visa/I94. That's how hard-assed they are about it. (Btw, that's an additional non-citizen "tax" - having to renew your driver's license every 2-3 years, instead of 5 years like a citizen or permanent resident).
So definitely people without legal status can't register to vote this way. How many people with legal status do you think are going to try doing this? Like they went to all this trouble to come to the US legally, and now they'll commit a crime that has very little payoff for them personally and very high risk if they're caught? Remember these are people with a legal presence: they have jobs, USCIS knows where they live, they've been fingerprinted when applying for a visa, they're in the system. Are there FB/WhatsApp groups of non-citizens in legal status coordinating this stuff? Has anyone been arrested for this? Surely if it's going on for so long and at such a scale someone should have been caught right?
From Snopes, which generously labels this as "mixture" (because it is also dominated by partisan ideologues)
>Some 605,000 undocumented immigrants who live in California were granted driver’s licenses in 2015...took effect on January 2, 2015...(DMV) expects a total of about 1.4 million people will get their license under the law by late 2017.
And here's the fun part
>That announcement renewed interest in another California law, the “New Motor Voter Act,” which was passed in October 2015. The combination of these two acts, one allowing undocumented residents to obtain driver’s licenses, the other automatically registering citizens to vote when obtaining driver’s licenses, sparked fears (which have been periodically resurrected for more than a decade) that California was allowing undocumented residents to vote.
Oh, but don't worry, because as you also indirectly point out:
>The law requires that applicants under the Motor Voter Act attest that they meet all voter registration requirements, but critics maintain that the law “lacks the necessary safeguards to keep noncitizens off the voter rolls.”
Which is a winded way of saying these illegal immigrants are bound by their honor to opt out of voter registration and/or not go out and use their IDs [and default registration] to vote.
So despite the downvotes, I'm not the one who has fallen victim to propaganda here. And the same incentive responsible for this kind of blatantly incorrect citogenesis gives cause to people to risk illegally voting against a man who has been painted by this same media as a literal far right white supremacist. And what risk is there, when media and fact check outlets create citations which allow politicians to claim that this isn't a problem, while potentially benefiting from it?
Also I don't appreciate that you've conflated legal and illegal immigration, though in both cases there is clearly potential for abuse. Under Cuomo a similar motor voter law was passed by the way. The Wapo "study" is intentionally myopic.
Again, it's not a document-free free-for-all. From your own Snopes link:
"Potential voters “have to demonstrate proof of age, the vast majority of time people are showing a birth certificate or a passport, which also reflects citizenship. That’s arguably more secure than someone checking a box under penalty of perjury."
Even people without legal status applying for a license or ID have to provide something to identify themselves. If that's not a US birth certificate or passport, it's pretty obvious they aren't citizens and they can't be registered. Stop debating in hypotheticals. Show actual proof of fraud happening at a meaningful scale.
>Potential voters “have to demonstrate proof of age
But if we are registering people who should not be voting, that's one less safeguard, and now we are relying solely on the good faith of the people at the booths and the illegal/ineligible immigrants who shouldn't be voting.
At what point are you willing to admit that this is a glaring loophole and an opportunity for massive scale abuse? Are we really just going to blanket dismiss any attempt at securing this system as "voter disenfranchisement"?
Illegal immigrants should not be registered to vote. Period. That's halfway to voter fraud - not to mention that there are other types of voter fraud which are being deliberately conflated.
That point is not under contention; let me reiterate
>the “New Motor Voter Act,” which was passed in October 2015. The combination of these two acts, one allowing undocumented residents to obtain driver’s licenses, the other automatically registering citizens to vote when obtaining driver’s licenses, sparked fears (which have been periodically resurrected for more than a decade) that California was allowing undocumented residents to vote.
So there is no question that they are registered to vote. The remaining argument is whether they are sufficiently prevent from voting after being automatically registered (failing to opt out by accident or choice.)
"How will the DMV system ensure only U.S. Citizens are registered to vote?
State law prohibits DMV from sending information for AB 60 applicants (undocumented driver license applicants) to the Secretary of State. For other applicants, state law requires each person to declare, under penalty of perjury, that they meet all voter eligibility requirements, including citizenship."[1]
If you're undocumented, the DMV already knows this fact and they're forbidden from sending your info to the Secretary of State. So undocumented people can't be registered to vote via the DMV, even if they don't tick the "Opt-out" box on the form (whether through negligence or malice).
If you're documented, it's perjury and voter fraud - very serious crimes for someone trying to stay legal and very easy to uncover with a simple query on the DMV database, joined with voter rolls to see who voted.
Again, do you have any proof of any of what you're alleging actually happening in the real world? I've already shown you your hypothetical scenario is nearly impossible and easy to investigate, yet you're trying to convince yourself and everyone else that "illegals vote in large numbers". Facts don't care about your feelings.
>yet you're trying to convince yourself and everyone else that "illegals vote in large numbers"
Not once have I said anything like this. I've been trying to show that it's a valid concern.
>tate law prohibits DMV from sending information for AB 60 applicants (undocumented
driver license applicants) to the Secretary of State. For other applicants, state law
requires each person to declare, under penalty of perjury, that they meet all voter
eligibility requirements, including citizenship.
It took some 15 comments and multiple sources before this safeguard was posted - it's not even on the Snopes page. Don't presume I'm arguing in bad faith or dismiss my arguments as "feelings" just because I disagree with you. This is the only snippet in your entire argument that actually prevents illegals from being registered to vote, which was my entire point of contention. Penalties don't matter if no one is enforcing them.
And finally, once again, I'm not suggesting that proof of fraud exists, or is easy to find - what I am saying is that Wapo's laughable absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
> Don't presume I'm arguing in bad faith or dismiss my arguments as "feelings" just because I disagree with you
You're right, and I apologize. It's a long and heated comment thread :-)
> I've been trying to show that it's a valid concern.
Are you at least somewhat more convinced now that these "concerns" are really more about casting doubts on the validity of California's elections? And on automatic registration in general? Because the facts are that undocumented people aren't registered to vote when they get a license or ID, even if they try to.
> It took some 15 comments and multiple sources before this safeguard was posted - it's not even on the Snopes page.
Agreed. It took me some digging to find the exact source too, and I'm surprised Snopes didn't have it. It should have been right at the top of the article.
> Penalties don't matter if no one is enforcing them.
If there was something to find, there would be enforcement. I've already shown that it isn't hard to find evidence of wrongdoing. Why aren't state or federal prosecutors going after them?
I've explained how undocumented people in California cannot possibly be registered to vote via the DMV further downthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23863362 Posting the link higher up for visibility.
First off, this isn't a "study", the vast majority of journalists are non-technical people with limited understanding of statistics or science.
Second, they looked at 3 states out of 50. Yes I understand that's where the majority of mail in voting happens currently. That's about to change.
Third, they ignored states with larger populations of illegal immigrants.
Fourth, they ignored opt out motor voter laws which, combined with laws which give illegals drivers licenses (in at least 2 states currently) and automatically register them to vote unless they opt out.
Long story short, wapo found what it wanted find, consumers read what they wanted to read.
I wanted to investigate this idea that states with larger populations of illegal immigrants would be more prone to voter fraud. I searched for "how many illegal immigrants voted in 2016." I can't find results suggesting widespread voter fraud anywhere in the United States. The Heritage Foundation discovered about 9,000 duplicate votes throughout the country.[0] ICE indicted 19 foreign nationals for voting illegally in 2016.[1]
Came here to make a similar comment. Scientists are not supposed to be activists - focusing on eliminating words that carry stigma from popular (or scientific) use makes me question not just objectivity but qualifications as a scientist.
Is there any space that ideologues haven't infested yet?
There's a difference between ideology and an ideologue. One may believe in something while at least attempting to compartmentalize it's influence over ones work. I feel like that sort of self-restriction is increasingly absent in much of the professional and academic world.
Yeah, sure, everything is political, but that doesn't mean you are obligated to inject your politics into everything.
Isn't it ironically racist to assign negative properties ("white fragility" and racism in particular) to an entire group of people based on their skin color? Are we really just going to ignore that fact?
The treatment of racism in the book is tantamount to original sin (we are all born as sinners:we are all born as racists [whites only]). This book [and the affiliated movement] is laying the moral foundation for the oppression of white people, who will soon be a majority minority - and already are a minority globally.
What's worse, the very concept of "white fragility" is presented as a Kafkaesque, unfalsifiable trap. If you dare defend yourself against accusations of racism, well, we won't even address whether your argument is legitimate, we just dismiss your concerns as a "fragile whiteness". Just like the recent forced redefinition of racism (privilege+power), it is an intellectually dishonest concept designed to begin any argument from a position of advantage, not to actually communicate anything of substance.
If you replaced "white" with "black" or "Jewish" or any other race, this would be a blatantly, undeniably offensive and hurtful text - yet not only do we champion it, but it is being used effectively as a textbook for ramming diversity and inclusion down an increasing number of throats. The fact that this book is a best seller only proves that a growing faction in society has completely gone off the deep end.
Why are we letting irrational, self hating ideologues influence our society to this degree?
Are you white? Robin DeAngelo defines you as evil for the color of your skin. You are fundamentally evil for you skin color. You must atone for your skin color for as long as you live. You cannot be forgiven for the sin of your skin color. You may not disagree. You may not consider this over-generalization as bad, even if it is a total over generalization. Ignore class entirely, as if it has nothing to do with how to fix the problem.
You are not to critically analyze, and you aren't supposed to think.
No the problem is your skin color and only that.
She is a divider and contemptible. What's so funny is how she's a white woman who can make broad brushstrokes but other whites cannot.
This is the racism of Robin DeAngelo and those that
speak like her. She's made a ton of money off being a racist and a bigot. But she's white, so I guess she gets to make money? There's some irony there.
And I mean the word "racism" in its plain sense, not in whatever racist redefinition of the word racism that excuses racism on the basis of race.
The problem is solved by uniting against evil, where ever it may be, and not this trash.
> Why are we letting irrational, self hating ideologues influence our society to this degree?
How do we stop them? The modern discourse has been completely hijacked by ideologues fanning the flames of division. Divide and conquer, divide and conquer. We've got people throwing themselves into a plague because they think it's some kind of political statement! The need for social belonging has always been stronger than the survival instinct, but sheesh.
I feel like it's all fundamentally the infopocalypse - pervasive fine-grained mass media is defining people's social zeitgeist more than their actual peer group. But that still doesn't point the way to a solution! It's tempting to blame the [social/incumbent] media giants for optimizing for engagement, but something tells me their bias isn't as significant as the sheer volume. The only way forward I can see is that we are all going to have to learn to adapt to the onslaught of memetic attacks and learn to ignore the feel-good (feel-something?) distractions. But it's not going to be quick process.
I'm not sure we should dismiss race because it has "no basis in science" - this is a very high bar; It means we shouldn't reply on it for specific, technical things, but as a lay-term there's no need to dismiss it.
It's also clear that the soft science are as yet in their infancy (or teens), so that we can't find a basis now doesn't mean we can't find one in the future; I mention this b/c it's clear to me the concept of "race" needn't be about genetics.
I haven’t read White Fragility and couldn’t read the entirety of the article linked here due to the paywall, so I cannot comment on those.
I have been trying to educate myself about the topic recently, though, and would strongly recommend looking into some of the excellent work on systemic racism in the US if you’re interested in learning more.
The documentary “13th” (available for free on YouTube at the moment), the 2nd season of the podcast Scene On Radio (“Seeing White”), and the book How to Be An Anti-Racist are three things I can recommend based on what I’ve read/heard from them so far.
What you’re calling the “recent forced redefinition of racism” is not especially recent. I first heard this argument around 30 years ago, and at the time dismissed it, but now understand why people want to emphasize that over the definition I recall learning as a child which was structured along the lines of a belief in superiority of one group over another.
Having a belief may impact how you feel towards someone and how you act towards them, and may even have an impact on that person if you are in a position to influence the course of their life.
Having a system that is designed and reinforced to encourage disparate outcomes is far more impactful to that group as a whole.
I’m not going to argue that both aren’t harmful, but I’ve certainly come around to the conclusion that systematic or policy-based racism (if you’re uncomfortable calling it racism, feel free to disregard the name and come up with something you’re more comfortable with) has disproportionately affected Black and non-black people of color in the US.
I would be willing to entertain the point that systematic racism exists if universities had roughly equivalent admission rates for all races for identical test scores, however black people tend to have significantly higher rates of admission than white people, and very significantly higher rates than Asian people.
If systemic racism exists in a specific direction as you imply, why do institutions have their fingers on the scale in favor of the oppressed race?
In fact, if students were treated identically without the consideration of race then black admission rates to universities would dramatically fall.
> If systemic racism exists in a specific direction as you imply, why do institutions have their fingers on the scale in favor of the oppressed race?
You are literally asking “if systemic racism exists, why are specific institutions taking specific steps to correct systemic racism”. Suggesting that you think that if anyone notices and attempts to address systemic racism, then it must not exist.
This would be v tribal thinking. (to generalise) white people are to blame for racism, but whites university applicants are not to blame for racism.
This paradox arises from the nebulous grouping of "white people" to include all whites, past and present, and ignoring any relevant differences or disproportion of blame.
Hence, a white 18 year old somehow inherits crimes of the past committed by white people in the past. That that white person may have entered the country just a few years ago is not taken into account - It is assumed they receive "white privilege" to amount that justifies any magnitude of countermeasure.
At some point people are going to wake up and figure out that we are all human, and we all have a collection of unique threads in our fabric. There is an recent and pervasive behavior in American media and MegaCorp that is now engaged in straight out Rules for Radicals:
"Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it"
The emergent behavior in media is a closed loop cycle fueled by viewership. If we can increase outrage on each end of the "political spectrum" we can keep people watching. The same feedback loop is taking place on social networks with "The Stream(tm)".
I don't know what the solution is- But Hacker News commentators. I love you all.
>I have been trying to educate myself about the topic recently, though, and would strongly recommend looking into some of the excellent work on systemic racism in the US if you’re interested in learning more.
The fact that people write about this doesn't make it necessarily true. You should bear in mind that people are at least partly incentivised to write about this topic because it gives them soft power over individuals and society when it enters the mainstream - regardless of whether it's true. In other words you should recognize that you are potentially consuming propaganda.
>The documentary “13th” (available for free on YouTube at the moment), the 2nd season of the podcast Scene On Radio (“Seeing White”), and the book How to Be An Anti-Racist are three things I can recommend based on what I’ve read/heard from them so far.
All of this theory is based on the assumption that any two demographics with different cultures (i.e. with different notions of good/evil and just/unjust, varied attitudes toward the prioritization of work/study/sport, gender roles, etc) are equally suited, on average, for any field where we expect demographic parity. This is a fundamentally unproven modern assumption - and it doesn't make much sense when you consider how much influence culture has over individual interests and practiced abilities.
Now we are extrapolating from this unproven (and I suspect unprovable) assumption and using it as justification for discrimination against whites. Not only that, but we don't even have valid metrics for the degree to which racism influences society - because again there is no scientific justification for equal representation of all demographics in groups of individuals selected by merit.
>What you’re calling the “recent forced redefinition of racism” is not especially recent. I first heard this argument around 30 years ago, and at the time dismissed it, but now understand why people want to emphasize that over the definition I recall learning as a child which was structured along the lines of a belief in superiority of one group over another.
If you want to emphasize a new concept, you create a new word, you don't hijack an existing word and use it to denigrate or gain social power over others.
>Having a system that is designed and reinforced to encourage disparate outcomes is far more impactful to that group as a whole
Even if it were true, that all, or even the majority, of outcome disparity in modern western society is due to a broken system, that doesn't change the fact that this movement is effectively labeling white people as implicitly, innately, and inescapably evil. Where does it end? Isn't this literally the foundation for violence and atrocity?
There's no proof of that. In fact there's still no proof to my knowledge that nicotine itself is harmful - to the contrary, it may have neuroprotective properties.
The noise and evidence of a broken window acts as a strong deterrent - as well as a warning system to those inside. Using a stolen/copied/fabricated key is comparatively silent.
See my other post about the local kid kicking in front doors.
Also, other than "high security" locks, it is easier to bump a lock than it is to get a duplicate key. Most people have mid grade entry sets on their house. Anybody can learn to bump those, with some practice, and it only takes about twenty or thirty seconds, particularly on an older, worn, lock.
I taught myself, decades ago, and was surprised how easy it was. My father always said, locks just keep honest people honest.
Imagine, for a moment, that each one of these had nukes. What's the probability they'd use them to make a point as an aggressor/opressor? Even risking MAD?