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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   15600 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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Standford posts about its Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (EHLI), HN Reacts

Links to EHLI source: https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/stanfordlanguage.pdf / http://web.archive.org/web/20221219160303/https://itcommunity.stanford.edu/ehli

Link to HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34039816

Note: my intent in linking to another forum isn't to create a in-group/out-group dynamic. My intent is to comment on how this is a sign about a broader cultural shift. Moderators, if this skirts too close to the offending the spirit of themotte, please let me know (or just delete it).

HackerNews is an online watering hole where a large number of Anglosphere people congregate to talk about startups, programming, and entrepreneurship. There is also no lack of plain old geeking out about cool tech, especially of the DIY variety that relates to drones, 3d-printing, or, more recently, AI.

The group skews somewhat left of center politically speaking. Over the past decade that I've been lurking it, it skewed a little bit more, in the sense that moderators became more accepting of openly political content that was aligned under the "21st century American progressive" label. I witnessed an influx of posts and comments about topics like coops, the evils of capitalism, etc. although, thankfully, that never became the main object of the community.

However, the thread I link to above has accumulated over 1200 comments in under 24h, which is a rare occasion--the death of a great contributor, a major shift in the industry, etc. More importantly, from sampling the first two pages, the overall sentiment appears to be negative toward what Stanford put out.

Before going deeper on the reaction, here's a taste of what Stanford posted:

Grandfather: This term has its roots in the "grandfather clause" adopted by Southern states to deny voting rights to Blacks.

Red team: "Red" is often used disparagingly to refer to Indigenous peoples, so its use in this context could be offensive to some groups.

Blackbox: Assigns negative connotations to the color black, racializing the term.

Brave (do not use): This term perpetuates the stereotype of the "noble courageous savage," equating the Indigenous male as being less than a man.

This kind of political weaponization should all be familiar to experienced Culture Warriors on themotte. But seeing the overwhelmingly negative reaction to this sort of thing on HN makes me adjust my likelihoods around what, excuse the cliche, I see as the pendulum swinging back away from leftist authoritarianism.

I have no idea what it's swinging towards, especially since in reality the pendulum is a 4d object zigzagging through multiple political dimensions. Still, it's a welcome sign that at least this flavor demagoguery is losing its bite.

I don't think the Culture War is in any danger of dying down. But I suspect (and hope) that the reaction on HackerNews is an omen of the CW shifting directions, so at the very least we'll have something new and exciting to debate about.

Edit: Some people have remarked in the comments that this isn't that astounding since HN has always been more grey-tribe aligned and more likely to react negatively to woke overreach like this. I find myself needing to readjust map.

Also on Stanford's list: "abusive relationship" should be replaced by "relationship with an abusive person", because:

The relationship doesn't commit abuse. A person does, so it is important to make that fact clear.

Firstly, they are breaking their own guide of "Person-First", which is the section just prior to that entry. According to the heading,

"The use of person-first language helps everyone to resist defining others by a single characteristic or experience if that person doesn't wish to be defined that way.

So, shouldn't that be something like "relationship with a person who occasionally makes an action that is perceived as abusive"?

And secondly, in my experience, it really is the relationship that's abusive, where the spiral of negative reinforcements for obsessively pushing each other's buttons cannot be laid at the feet of a single partner.

And secondly, in my experience, it really is the relationship that's abusive, where the spiral of negative reinforcements for obsessively pushing each other's buttons cannot be laid at the feet of a single partner.

This is what gets me. I've seen 0 abusive relationships in real life where it was just a single person doing the abusing. Plenty in movies of course!

The function of these shibboleths is to act as weapons in the culture war. In early stages via identifying friend and foe, in later stages by keeping the plebes in check by forcing them to use one's own convoluted language - as per Havel, a humiliated person is less likely to rebel. As is the person who has been made an accomplice.

So of course person-first language only applies to friends, not foes. It's rapists and racists, not People Who Rape or Person of a Racist Persuasion.

And give it a couple years and the terms du jour will have fallen out of favor.

I'm reminded of the fad for "black bodies" a couple years ago, which remains one of the most dehumanizing things to come off of the euphemism treadmill, which usually just produces ungainly mouthfuls that no one is really asking for.

Yes, that's another aspect of it. It gives those in the know an advantage over the plebs. It is similar to fashion. If we once and for all decided which colours are hip and trendy and which aren't, even the most common rube could be fashionable and that would take away the fashionista's edge.

And just like we can't have fashionable rubes, we can't have moral commoners either. How would our priest caste lord over them?

It goes like this:

-> Invent new euphemism -> zealots use it to gain status among other zealots -> zealots use it to identify allies -> commoners are pressured into using it -> dissidents who won't use it are ostracised -> invent new euphemism.

Highly useful, that.

deleted

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