Comment by narrator | Hacker News Reader

Comment by narrator | Hacker News Reader

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Political correctness and affirmative action are based on the idea that pretending the world is an ideal version of itself will eventually make it that way.

In reality though, the world is a complex place and the ideal pretend version can only be implemented in a carefully controlled environment such as a movie, a theatrical presentation, a video game or a situation where all participants agree to or are pressured into behaving in a way in which that pretend world is real. When the rest of the world leaks in, it is impossible to maintain that pressure on everyone.

About the best we have so far is "safe search" since pornography and obscenity follow fairly regular patterns. Political correctness though is constantly evolving and requires a trained academic to determine if each piece of information should be censored or allowed. Ideally in the future we'll have google glass and advanced AI classifiers constantly scanning our vision and providing us with tape delayed audio of the outside world in order to present the world to us and filter any politically incorrect content 24/7.

For now we have to do it ourselves and ignore any inconvenient facts that may make maintaining the illusion difficult. This constant struggle to deal with cognitive dissonance can be tiresome and one should restrict oneself to heavily moderated news feeds and not using search features for now. To create the carefully controlled virtual world in an interface to the rest of the world such as Google is an overwhelming task because you would need a highly sophisticated trained AI agent to maintain that illusion and to even invent information, such as lists of Nobel award winners from disadvantaged peoples, in order to maintain the illusion.

>Political correctness and affirmative action are based on the idea that pretending the world is an ideal version of itself will eventually make it that way.

That is the opposite of how it works. Affirmative action is accepting that the world has bias against certain groups, and attempting to take that into account. Political correctness is about realizing that certain groups have been marginalized or traumatized and some words perpetuate that. In a perfect world neither are necessary.

The proof that a group has been marginalized is that their numbers are not representative of their presence in the population. Thus, we pretend that the ideal world exists by adjusting those numbers in situations where merit selection is the criteria in the hopes that the numbers will converge by themselves. We don't interview each participant to ask them how they were traumatized, we only look at the statistics. People from strong well adjusted minority families that value education and have protected their kids from most of the harsh realities that poor minority families are subject to receive the same special treatment with affirmative action. The reason that the inequity exists is immaterial means that we don't even have to check if a bias exists, we just assume that since the world is not ideal that the numbers need to be fixed first and then the rest of it will follow.

At least that's the way it works in reality. Maybe this reality is politically incorrect too and you are saying that we need to implement meta-political correctness in which the means of creating an ideal world must be hidden to instead pretend that the implementers know the exact and particular circumstance of each person they are selecting based on facts other than merit and are weighing all of them appropriately in correcting injustice. By pretending that this ideal world in which knowledgeable administrators skillfully and in each individual case correct injustices, this will somehow make it become a reality.

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/08/why-me...

Statistics show that man are the new minority in the campus. But it is surely will be frown upon by some AA activists if a that program is extended to cover male. If AA is said to what it is trying to accomplish, then that shouldn't be controversial at all.

>But it is surely will be frown upon

I think this is presumptuous. We can try to find out, why not?

>We don't interview each participant to ask them how they were traumatized, we only look at the statistics.

Yes, because implementing something like that would be near impossible from a legislative standpoint. Legislation has to be spelled out and enforceable or it will do nothing.

And affirmative action is not there just to prop up the numbers. It is there to push companies to hire minority groups.

There are two reasons for this. For example, on college campuses, the supreme court has upheld that it is lawful to use race as a factor in admissions because a well rounded or diverse student body is a desirable trait that will produce better outcomes for all involved. Including the white men.

The second is that it is trying to undo the many, many years of oppression (i.e. slavery) that carries generation to generation.

Programs like affirmative action are trying to tip the scales for these descendants to give them a chance to compete. After all, they were systematically disenfranchised as a race. It makes sense that we attempt to systematically bring them back up to speed with the rest of the population.

>we just assume .. numbers need to be fixed first and then the rest of it will follow

We don't have to assume anything. It is both empirically evident (as well as just "duh") that getting a higher percentage of minorities into jobs and higher education will result in a higher percentage of their children having the opportunity to do so without something like affirmative action in the future.

I feel like that's a remarkably pessimistic view of the world. I don't think optimism necessitates "filtering the world out," I think one can be optimistic about the future while being aware of actual problems.

This viewpoint has served me with a perfect success rate in all of my interpersonal reactions, including relatively combative ones (handing a beer can a drunk has thrown on the street back to him and asking if he could throw it away next time, random example).

Are there any specific example of things you think are incompatible with optimism without horse blinders?

> Political correctness and affirmative action are based on the idea that pretending the world is an ideal version of itself will eventually make it that way.

Agree. It hides problem rather than fixes it. And since it is often enforced in a top-down manner, communities that outside of the PC spectrum felt being deprived of their opportunities, this very resentment is further diving the society.

What steps would you suggest taking to fix these historical problems?

I think should AA be applicable, it should only concern with one's socioeconomic status, not ethical background.

Presumably you mean "ethnic" not "ethical", right?

I try not to get involved in these kinds of dangerous discussions but i just wanted to highlight your comparison to SafeSearch. Political correctness really does feel like having to walk around with SafeSearch on all my inputs and outputs, programmed to filter out an ever-changing and inscrutable list of wrongthink and wrongspeak from the real world. It’s so true—great comment.

I disagree, because I don't think "Political Correctness" has been sufficiently defined. I think this doubly so because of the extremism used in the OP regarding "AI goggles that block out the words that might hurt us." I see a mockery, there, and it raises my hackles. Perhaps it was unintentional.

What is "political correctness?" Are we referring right now to the alt-right manufactured bogeyman? That is my sense.

That’s what makes it so bad: despite it not being sufficiently defined, we are expected to filter our world views and interactions with others through it. Not only is it insufficiently defined, it’s situation-dependent. Political Correctness in a university or a California tech company is a totally different set of filters as Political Correctness in a Deep South Baptist Church or my rural Appalachia home town.

>we are expected to filter our world views and interactions through it

I am replying in the following manner only because I believe the discourse around this subject is usually poorly defined. It is not an attack of you or yours, but my attempt to help us all better understand what we're talking about:

By saying "filter through it," what do you mean by "it?" What are the rules of the filter you are applying?

When you say "expected," who is expecting this of you? What has indicated to you that there is this expectation, and what are the consequences of bucking that expectation?

What are the filters in California? What are the filters in the deep south? Is there any federally legal relevance? For example, you could face legal issues if you make sexually connotative comments to a female coworker, and though you are more likely to be pursued and charged in California than in the Deep South for it, is that how things should be? Shouldn't women feel comfortable with their coworkers regardless of local culture?

> Shouldn't women feel comfortable with their coworkers regardless of local culture?

The problem is what makes a woman feel uncomfortable is culturally driven - when you have such a mix of cultures at work people are bound to make innocent mis-steps.

Californian companies have a tendency of looking at it by race and gender identity. Do you assume the best of people or do you assume the worst?

If you're asking, I personally assume the best.

I understand where you're coming from - maybe you're referring to things like "micro-aggressions" and other things many of us would find silly? Yup, definitely something that needs tackling. I've never argued that there would be a clear algorithm for "this makes people uncomfortable to the point that it should be illegal, this does not."

Luckily, our judges and court system are pretty good at exactly this sort of thing. I think a law on the books that goes something along the lines of "nobody should be made to feel sexually uncomfortable at work" starts the definition, and then subsequent court cases sharpens it. Sorry, Tim saying "great haircut!" doesn't count, but oops yea Janice saying "quite the cucumber you're hiding away there, Bill," while waggling her eyebrows does. Etc.

> Luckily, our judges and court system are pretty good at exactly this sort of thing.

What makes you think that?

Millions of Americans have been negatively impacted by bad laws on the books.

> I think a law on the books that goes something along the lines of "nobody should be made to feel sexually uncomfortable at work" starts the definition

You have just killed all chance of workplace romance - and more than 50% of people have dated coworkers.

We have sexual harassment laws on the books already.

Why would you negatively impact millions so a few people don't have to feel mildly uncomfortable (and obviously it's mild or it would be sexual harassement which is already illegal)?

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