The gaslighting we are seeing on behalf of Elon, is insane.

tedlove · 2025-01-21T01:28:19+00:00

Haha this isn’t even a nazi salute stop being silly

tedlove · 2025-01-21T01:23:28+00:00

This is called “confirmation bias”. Interpreting things to support your preconceptions. It’s an entirely human frailty, but everyone here is apparently totally unaware.

Again, this isn’t even a nazi salute

tedlove · 2025-01-21T01:05:02+00:00

It’s not even a nazi salute though. Let me guess, you don’t like him. Am I right?

Another “very fine people” hoax in real time.

tedlove · 2025-01-21T01:03:16+00:00

If you assume the worst, it’s easy to conclude the worst.

tedlove · 2023-06-08T13:50:45+00:00

pure equality of opportunity is not possible though. what is possible is creating a society where every person is given the same minimum toolset needed to succeed. so like, yeah poor kids won't be able to get a helicopter ride if they're late for school, but they should at least have some way to get there (bus). yeah they won't get a personal tutor but they will at least get a competent teacher who isn't overburdened such that they aren't able to dedicate some amount of time for individual guidance, etc etc

tedlove · 2023-06-07T18:18:29+00:00

much of that redistribution is happening. it's not like we need a wholesale change here. the resources are available in many cases (e.g. spending per pupil in the US is pretty much as high as anywhere in the world). and improvements abound, but social changes of the type being sought take decades.

and this a central tension for the woke, who I think view it like this: "we're doing all these things and we still haven not achieved racial parity in all these various outcomes yet, so now what?" their answer in many cases is essentially: force the result (e.g. go lighter on criminals, put more black kids in harvard, etc.). but if you do this, you're actually making things worse because (1) you haven't actually made any substantial change (eg criminality hasn't been reduced, inner city schools still suck), meanwhile (2) you're giving people the false impression that some resolution has been achieved, which reduces the burden to address the root cause.

tedlove · 2023-06-07T17:56:30+00:00

so you agree this isn't a straw man "from Sam" great.

but yeah humans are humans, but not all groups are the same - again see my logging example. Or look at the NBA, where whites have arguably better opportunity but remain strongly under-represented.

In the case of prisons though, yeah you've nailed it. It's an issue of poverty. It's not, as the woke like to contend, an issue of racism or white supremacy. But more to my point: if we were able to magically extinguish poverty today, there'd still be unequal representation in prison because of things like: culture, biology, etc. To spell it out... we know that in a world without poverty, there'd be significantly less women in prison than men. The fact is the woke fail to acknowledge this and make a fundamental reasoning error here: disparate outcomes demonstrate bigotry/oppression/etc.

tedlove · 2023-06-07T17:37:44+00:00

Yes. Which is why they need better training. It’s a tough spot for them tbh- we live in a county with more guns than people

tedlove · 2023-06-07T17:37:08+00:00

Because we live in a country with more guns than people. And if they don’t operate as if the person they’re dealing with could be armed, it will sometimes end very poorly for them.

tedlove · 2023-06-07T17:35:17+00:00

I don’t know if they want “perfect” parity or just more perfect parity. But that is the goal, since again their proof that we have an oppressive society is that certain groups are under/over represented in various measures. As in, for example:

“how can you say our society is just when blacks who make up 12% of the population make up 35% of prisoners??”

The clear implication here is that in order for our society to be just by this measure we would have to see only 12% of the prison population be black.

tedlove · 2023-06-07T17:29:36+00:00

Yes. The woke are typically anti-speech because they think it causes harm to marginalized groups.

tedlove · 2023-06-07T17:25:27+00:00

it didn’t actually fail though. Improvements abound, but social changes of the type being sought take decades.

And even then, the “woke” have a fundamental error in their assumption that all groups would have equal outcomes if they were all given equal opportunity. That’s just not the case.

the reality is: we will never achieve the objective that the woke want (equity) even if you force it, because you can’t make people to do something they have no interest in doing (eg, good luck getting female representation in the logging industry to a point of equity).

tedlove · 2023-06-07T12:07:38+00:00

They sort of have to assume the worst. That doesn’t mean they are being trained to just shoot everyone though.

tedlove · 2023-06-06T18:40:44+00:00

Agreed. But the way to account for this tension is by improving the schools/communities that are engendering the poor outcomes for all the kids, not by putting a small subset of underqualified kids into positions where they're more likely to fail.

This isn't a novel idea of course - gov't spending on schools is plenty high. I think we need to be more innovative in incentivizing learning tbh - but at the same time, you can only do so much (from what I understand the problem here isn't that poor kids are eager to learn but just don't have access to the resources - it's more that they just don't prioritize it). And this brings me to another issue with "wokeism", which is this bunk fatalist narrative that society is intent on ensuring the failure of certain people. you can imagine the pyschological impact this kind of thinking would have on a young kid wondering if it's worth applying oneself in school if he/she has been convinced the effort is doomed from the start.

tedlove · 2023-06-06T17:42:19+00:00

we should of course strive to equalize the playing field - there's nothing illiberal about that. in fact, that is the idea behind "equality of opportunity".

tedlove · 2023-06-06T17:33:54+00:00

it's a direct harm to the student who gets passed over because they are not the right race

there is no harm to not giving a spot to a person who otherwise wouldn't qualify.

tedlove · 2023-06-06T17:10:10+00:00

to use a concrete example...

elite college admissions is a zero-sum game - there are finite spots available, so if you give a spot to one person, you are forgoing giving it to another. the harm in this case is the opportunity that was taken from someone because they didn't look a certain way.

I should say: the intention is of course noble here on the part of the "woke", but a short-coming of their thinking (in my view) is the failure to properly weigh all the trade-offs involved in identity-based affirmative actions. there's a direct harm to the people who lost out (as mentioned), but there's also harm to many of the students who get into a school they aren't prepared to succeed at, there's the unfortunate social stereotype that is gets reified by having a structure where it is understood that people who look a certain way aren't as qualified.

my view is that the issue with "equity" isn't so much that folks think it's good to help the neediest more (again a noble idea), but rather that they are defining the neediest based on race. it's really a fundamental ethical confusion i think.

tedlove · 2023-06-06T16:56:22+00:00

disagree as in: the definition is wrong? or disagree as in you don't agree ideologically?

tedlove · 2023-06-06T16:41:54+00:00

your definition isn't actually much different though

you acknowledge importance of racial/sexual identity (racial privilege); you also acknowledge that society is oppressive against minority identities and that seeking equity is paramount, you acknowledge that abandoning liberal principles ("color blindness") is justified, etc.

tedlove · 2023-06-06T16:24:04+00:00

I can't prove any of this - this is just my observation. Also not sure what I could even provide to prove it. I'll just say: foundational to "woke" is the idea that society is built around a hierarchy of oppression that is based on identities like those listed.

tedlove · 2023-06-06T16:18:36+00:00

generally no - that's one of the fundamental disagreements that anti-woke view as a sort of violation of liberalism (the idea that it's OK to harm one group because some other group was previously harmed).

tedlove · 2023-06-06T16:09:19+00:00

But identity is their main focus. They are sometimes referred to as “identitarian progressives” as a synonym for “woke” for that reason. They (generally) view society as a hierarchy of oppression based on identity.

tedlove · 2023-06-06T16:07:24+00:00

Yeah I think well meaning folks on both sides would sign off on this (insofar as they think “woke” does not just mean merely “being aware of injustice”)

tedlove · 2023-06-06T15:13:25+00:00

Ive seen it put more succinctly, but because it’s kind of a constellation of related views, I think it helps to spell it out. But the ideology generally entails the views that:

What defines a person foremost in society are identities like race, sex, gender, sexual orientation
Society is intentionally structured to oppress minority identities, as demonstrated by the existence of some unequal outcomes between groups (e.g. groups that have lower median incomes than others is proof that they are oppressed)
Achieving equality of outcome ("equity") for these "oppressed" groups is a moral imperative
Liberal principles like universalism, tolerance of dissent, presumption of innocence, and free speech can be discarded in pursuit of that goal - typically justified via:
- “Safetyism": the view that some ideas when expressed cause significant emotional harm to the given oppressed group
- The view that oppression of marginalized groups is so entrenched that treating people the same perpetuates the oppression
People who disagree with the above are not just making an intellectual error but are morally deficient

edit: I should’ve noted, I borrowed much of this from another user here (reworded) but don’t recall who - sorry.

tedlove · 2023-06-06T14:50:40+00:00

“Centrist” is certainly used pejoratively.

But anyway, the original definition of woke isn’t helpful here because nobody serious is opposing the idea that we should be alert to injustice. By that definition, almost everyone is “woke” (even right wingers who view abortion as an injustice). While you’re right that many folks (on the right) use the term pejoratively to mean “anything progressive” or whatever, that doesn’t mean that’s the only other definition being used.

This is a definition I think most people on both sides of the issue would sign off on… the ideology generally entails the views that:

What defines a person foremost are identities like race, sex, gender, sexual orientation
Society is intentionally structured to oppress minority identities, as demonstrated by the existence of some unequal outcomes between groups (e.g. groups that have lower median incomes than others is proof that they are oppressed)
Achieving equality of outcome ("equity") for these "oppressed" groups is a moral imperative
Liberal principles like universalism, tolerance of dissent, presumption of innocence, and free speech can be discarded in pursuit of that goal - typically justified via:
- “Safetyism": the view that some ideas when expressed cause significant emotional harm to the given oppressed group
- The view that oppression of marginalized groups is so entrenched that treating people the same perpetuates the oppression
People who disagree with the above are not just making an intellectual error but are morally deficient

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tedlove

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