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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

I grew up in the D.C. suburbs, probably the single place in the country that most highly values traditional academic intellectualism. His characterization is entirely consistent with my observations growing up. In my high school, peoples' disdain for the rest of the country was open.

Even the snobs in NYC or SF are more tolerable (NYC having a pragmatic undercurrent, and SF at least having a "builder" mentality).

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Yes but both you and the person I'm responding to casually ignore the fact you are basically engaging in broad generalizations while complaining about the fact other groups make broad generalizations and his primary justification was the fact it happens on Reddit.

The sheer irony involved in that original comment and his choice of example should have been immediately obvious. The fact it wasn't makes me think, frankly, its OP who is the issue.

The fact I have to put up with bullshit from people who live in the [insert location here] on a regular basis and make condescending comments doesn't mean I assume the entire [insert location here] behaves that way in general. Rather, I recognize that its the specific individuals I deal with in that instance that are the problem and not the general population.

The fact both of you immediately jumped in to defend the generalization and expand on it, frankly, makes it even more ironic to the point of hypocrisy.

This kind of argument is verboten when it's a white person talking to a black person, say, because it's not OK to tell someone their experience isn't valid. Strangely, that rule seems not to apply when it's a progressive talking to a traditionalist. And progressives wonder why they have such a hard time talking to traditionalists? You'd have to be willfully blind.

> This kind of argument is verboten when it's a white person talking to a black person, say, because it's not OK to tell someone their experience isn't valid.

Is there some kind of large, documented body of evidence proving what the OP says is true? [ Hint: We have that for racism but we don't for what the OP is stating as far as I'm aware. ]

> Strangely, that rule seems not to apply when it's a progressive talking to a traditionalist. And progressives wonder why they have such a hard time talking to traditionalists? You'd have to be willfully blind.

I'm unaware requiring broad, systemic evidence of discrimination before applying the "this is a problem beyond a few individuals" is a strange standard.

Please, explain why this is an unreasonable standard?

> Please, explain why this is an unreasonable standard?

Because you haven't described a standard, you've asked for "broad, systematic evidence." What exactly constitutes "broad, systematic evidence"? If we were to provide you with, say, 20 instances of left wing discrimination against the right, would you admit you're wrong? How these conversations usually go is you demand evidence, we provide evidence, you say our evidence is invalid and round and round we go.

This is called "bringing dialectic to a rhetorical debate". You're not arguing logic or facts, you're arguing emotions. If I'm wrong on that fact, please, describe an exact standard that would convince you the OP is, in fact, correct.

> What exactly constitutes "broad, systematic evidence"?

Empirical research by enough different researchers that reasonable people can assume it to be true and not the product of statistical manipulation.

Hell, I won't even hold you to that standard.

Provide lots of things like this:

http://blog.linkedin.com/2015/06/17/measuring-gender-diversi...

I don't care if they are real academics.

Go for 20, I'd be interested to see if you can do it.

They picked a few very easily recognized and understood examples by most people here. What they are describing is easy to see all over the place. One of my triggers/flags is when I hear, "but now we know". Once you start watching for it, you'll start seeing smugness, over confidence and a disdain for anyone that doesn't have "hard facts" for anything they believe.

Also I would point out that since it's a given method of trolling it must be understood by a certain majority as being fact, otherwise it wouldn't get the reaction the troll would be looking for.

I'm not saying everyone or even most people in DC are like that. I'm saying enough people are like that it's a very perceptible cultural trait. And the people who aren't are tolerant enough of the attitude such that the people who are feel comfortable being that way in public.

It's not incorrect to make broad generalizations about the culture of places. While every place has a broad spectrum of people, every place has identifiable trends and modalities.

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