Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

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This piece opens with quotes from Yascha Mounk's Atlantic story which itself digests the "Hidden Tribes" report from More In Common. I think Mounk's article misrepresents the study; its lede is that large majorities of Americans disfavor "political correctness", but that term is never defined in the study. Meanwhile, according to the same study, a large majority of Americans --- every segment, including the politically disaffected and "traditional conservatives", excluding only the Trump-supporting "devoted conservatives" --- supported limiting dangerous and hateful speech. Notions of "white privilege" and sexual harassment and Islamophobia also find healthy support among segments that sum up to the majority of the study --- you only starkly lose support for them (in the study) among the 25% of the survey that are "conservative".

I would say that the report is actually pretty muddy on what Americans as a whole think about PC culture (no surprise, both because the term isn't well-defined and, more importantly, because studying PC culture wasn't the point of the Hidden Tribes study).

I would thus say it's pretty dangerous to try to extrapolate from Mounk's extrapolation of Hidden Tribes to conclusions about "grievance" politics.

It can never be defined, because the entire point of a politicized term is to carry a loaded definition that goads a fraction of the other team into agreeing. Most reasonable people do not think that "political correctness", meaning a need to conform to The Party, is a good thing. The difference lies in what types of situations the term is applied to and how much it is emphasized.

Good point.

The way I read the article is that yes in every society some speech is deemed acceptable and some is not. But 80% of respondents think the pendulum has swung a but too far.

Is that what Yascha Mounk thinks or what his data says? My argument is that the two things are not the same. For instance:

"Nowadays, too many ordinary behaviors are labelled as sexual harassment"? 51/49 in favor, not 80/20.

"Many white people today don't recognize the real advantages they have"? 52/48 in favor.

"Many people nowadays are too sensitive to how Muslims are treated"? 49/51 against.

"Today's feminists fight for important issues"? 54/46 in favor.

Yes, a clear majority agree with "Political correctness is a problem in our country". But a similarly clear majority, plotted on the same graph, also agree with "Hate speech is problem is our country". And, again, "political correctness" isn't defined and is a fuzzy concept.

To complicate matters even more, people's overall perceptions are the result of distinct experiences across two different mediums, the physical and the digital, each with its own characteristics. I think studies ought to differentiate between the two. The barrier to online speech is substantially lower.

Thank you for a great reply. Really.

It sounds to me like yes, the problems like racism and sexism do exist, but the way they are used to bully and shame one's political opponents is unacceptable.

Or may be I simply have fallen into this exact trap: put my own meaning into a fuzzy article and then hastly proceeded to passionately agree with myself.

So while I don't really agree with you (I would be "somewhat disagree" in an opinion poll on that question), I think it's a totally legitimate premise to have.

My objection is to the article's (really, two separate layers of articles!) claim to have clear empirical support for that premise, when the data is anything but clear.

Perhaps the 80% figure refers to people who think that political correctness has gone too far in at least one topic.

E.g. 30% think PC has gone too far for topic A, 30% think the same about topic B and 20% think both topic A and B are negatively impacted.

No, the 80% simply refers to responses to the question "political correctness is a problem in our country".

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