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Comment by yummyfajitas | Hacker News Reader

Suppose I were to write "slavery is economically beneficial, ...a bunch of evidence goes here...". Do you believe an intellectual discussion would result?

I'd gamble at 3:1 odds that I'd be downvoted and called racist. Just look what happened to Yarvin for merely comparing slavery to government (a more longwinded version of this: http://www.colorado.edu/studentgroups/libertarians/issues/no... ).

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Would you please stop provoking useless, degenerate subthreads? The word for that is 'trolling'. If you poke a stick into a machine and cause it to seize up, which is effectively what you did here, you're responsible for the effect.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13953821 and marked it off-topic.

Can you tell me concretely what you'd like me to do? A meta topic was raised by others, and I became involved. What did I do above and beyond others to be singled out?

If the topic was useless, shouldn't you be detaching at the parent of the thread (which wasn't me)?

> Can you tell me concretely what you'd like me to do?

I'd like you to optimize for the quality of the thread as a whole. You've been here for years and have more than enough information to do that.

The only way I can see to do this is to not openly state unpopular opinions. Is that really what you are telling me to do? HN is no longer open to ideas that the hecklers wish to veto?

Or is there some alternate option you are aware of which I am not? How would you propose that I make my point without resulting in eastwestmath becoming hostile?

I'm happy to discuss this but I need an indication that you're asking it in good faith and not just stonewalling (and putting words in my mouth a la "HN is no longer open to ideas").

Good faith means being willing to take some of the responsibility for these outcomes instead of putting 100% on everybody else and 0% on yourself. Self-responsibility is a conservative value and you generally espouse those, so that shouldn't be too hard.

That's the same weird meta-argument as the grandparent called out! I mean, out with it: do you want to argue that slavery is economically beneficial? If so, do so. I'll even provide you the non-judgement question I'd ask in return: beneficial to whom? (i.e. "the economy" isn't a unitary entity).

But you don't want to. You want to smear the rest of us without actually getting your hands dirty.

One of the problems with the meta-argument is you never expose your views to critical scrutiny by people with other views, and so never find out if they are mistaken.

>I'd gamble at 3:1 odds that I'd be downvoted and called racist.

Yeah, you would, so you would need to argue back. Is that so painful? And note there might be others who are not certain which side is correct, and might be persuaded by your arguments. Or they might be persuaded they are wrong. That is what open discussion is about, and it is the best system we have.

I do think you have one good point. That is that calling someone "racist" because they disagree with you on something is usually not helpful. It is better to just state points of disagreement.

Downvoting and calling someone racist is not an argument.

And note there might be others who are not certain which side is correct, and might be persuaded by your arguments.

I'm aware. I actually receive a consistent flow of emails of the form "I'd never say this in public, but you made me rethink what I previously believed." That's because I'm willing to be called racist or whatever.

Most people aren't. It significantly hinders rational discussion.

> Suppose I were to write "slavery is economically beneficial, ...a bunch of evidence goes here...". Do you believe an intellectual discussion would result?

The problem is that the distortion of your ethics and values would have to be so extreme to arrive at such a conclusion that anyone who read that sentence would know that you have an extremely "different" way of looking at the world, and not in a good way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owI7DOeO_yg

   distortion of your ethics

It's interesting to reflect on the fact that there were many slave revolts in antiquity, but the revolting slaves did not seek to abolish slavery, they merely wanted to stop being slaves and have their own slaves. In other words, even slaves had no problem with slavery as an institution.

We also should always be aware that every serious discussion of slavery must begin with the question: what do you mean by "slavery", for the term is used in wildly different ways.

Could you give examples of this. Of the slave revolts I can remember in recent history none of them wanted to replace their masters. They just wanted out.

But pondering further. If you have a successful revolt what do you believe the punishment for the perpetrators should be. Would death be a just punishment? What if the empowered slaves offered enslavement of their former masters as an alternative?

   Could you give examples of this.

Example of what? The standard text on the subject [1] says there are no known instances of slave revolts in antiquity that sought to abolish slavery as an institution. If you know counterexamples, I'd be interested to learn about them.

   Would death be a just punishment?
   What if ...

I can't see either being particularly productive. It's really very simple -- albeit unpleasant: there is a reason why some small group of people manage to enslave a large number of people: slavers are better than slaves. Better at cooperation, better at conflict avoidance, better at socially organising violence, better at dividing-and-conquering their enemies, better at science, better at engineering, better at teaching their children, better at forming and maintaining society. Slaves should learn from slavers, not kill them. But learning is hard, and not immediately emotionally gratifying.

The Haitian slave revolution of the late 18th, early 19th century lead to immediate genocide of the remaining whites and and mixed race inhabitants [2]. Haiti, which was once the wealthiest Caribbean island has been a basket case ever since.

Coincidentally, after the successful revolution, the black leadership reinstituted slavery, albeit symbolically abolishing the whip [3].

The Haitian slave rebellion teaches us a large number of lessons about humanity, most not very palatable.

[1] Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realencyclop%C3%A4die_der_clas...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1804_Haiti_massacre

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_Revolution#Free_republ...

I think you're rather making their point. Something could be both evil and economically beneficial, and while the statement only mentioned the economy you assume that they have a bad way of looking at the world.

We should be able to have a reasoned, intellectual discussion about the economic side of slavery whilst still agreeing it shouldn't be done.

I think the point made in this sketch is pretty relevant: https://youtu.be/owI7DOeO_yg

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