> The Chinese
You mean "Chinese companies". "The chinese" is just racist.
You mean "Chinese companies". "The chinese" is just racist.
> The Chinese also do this. (As in, the government seems to encourage it outright.)
Way to be outraged through your own selective reading.
I understand HN is a tech place, but since race can play a factor in practically all subjects, it can be a healthy discussion if spoken about maturely.
Knee jerk rapid reactions aren't an example of "spoken about maturely." The normalization and acceptance of such reactions is what leads to toxic community atmospheres and the "social epistemological catastrophe" of a witch-hunt mentality.
In other words, "shoot first, ask questions later" is against the stated policy around these parts of the Principle of Charity. Just look around the Internet, and tell me what you see in this regard.
I'm obliged to link this again, for the good of all:
I literally said his response was dumb so I'm not really sure what your point is by claiming I am considering his reaction mature.
I understand if you misread my comment, but I'm baffled otherwise. Thankfully, this is the internet and we can talk it through if we want.
(edit: typo)
Actually, your comment could indeed be read that way. Therefore I'm obliged to push back against such a position, even if you didn't mean it precisely that way. I'm generally having a conversation for the sake of the 3rd party. The lurkers are the majority of this site's users.
Thankfully, this is the internet and we can talk it through if we want.
My un-provable suspicion is that civil discourse itself is being targeted by nefarious forces. It's either that, or the emergent incentive structures of social media as currently constructed are having the same effect. Or both. It's bad either way.
I don't know if it's a collective of forces, but I have to agree with the opinion that civil discourse is being targeted.
There's been enormous political polarization in the past decade or less, and there is a growing list of topics or social movements that if I even LIST as debatable or in need of further discussion, would put myself in great danger of being targeted, defamed or worse.
And the worst part is, once you have been attacked and mobbed by this new public shaming tactic, very very rarely is being defensive or opening a dialogue something people want, they just want vengeance, and submissiveness.
That's a brilliant and concise way of putting it. I have a mind to steal it!
Now its the Chinese that encourage ignoring copyright/patent/trademark/trade secret laws. It helps them get their country ramped up with regards to industrialization.
Japan did so before that, in the 60s and 70s.
The USA also did so when we broke off from England. And later, Hollywood was made to get away from Edison's and others patents.
But complaining that "The Chinese" is derogatory is petty posturing and fake outrage.
Race itself is a social construct.
Nice try though!
What do people mean by this exactly? I've heard some people make the case that the exact boundaries between ethnic groups can be socially constructed, which makes sense to me (like how one draws a hard line between two groups which have some admixture).
But the idea that ethnicities have nothing to do with biology and is a purely social phenomenon sounds like a lay-person's misunderstanding of the above claim. For example, it should be obvious that using a sperm/egg donor can lead to a child of a different ethnicity even if the socialization is kept the same (which you can't necessarily do perfectly in reality, but still).
Historically, “race” was a term invented to group/categorize people by language. From there it evolved into a reference of nationality. Most recently it has become a word to define an attempt to group people by physical characteristics.
So for example you associate race with ethnicity...the question is why? Ethnicity after all is a word to group people through nationality and culture, having nothing to do with physical characteristics...for example Irish is an ethnicity (in addition to just a nationality), but there are both black and white irish.
> Historically, “race” was a term invented to group/categorize people by language. From there it evolved into a reference of nationality. Most recently it has become a word to define an attempt to group people by physical characteristics.
Do you have more information about this? It has been my understanding that throughout history, some languages became the "lingua Franca" so to speak while not introducing race conflict. So I'm curious to hear more about the origins of race as a social construct, specifically its roots in language.
1) Race from a biological/chemical perspective. Stuff like 'DNA determines race' goes here.
2) Race from the perspective of all the things that happens to a person because they belong to a particular race (as defined in 1). Apparently, being black and driving in America means it's more likely that you'll be pulled over by the cops, more likely that they'll assume you're a drug dealer, etc, etc. I wouldn't know because I'm not black, and every time I was pulled over by the cops I was clearly at fault. Differences like these are discussed under the umbrella of 'race'.
The key is that in the second case there's nothing from biology / chemistry / science that says that black people should get pulled over more. That's just how things are in America now - it's a "social construct".
Again, I'm not an expert, but I think that's what people mean by 'race is a social construct'
I made a comment about this previously in reply:
>This isn't really a good argument. Western people use lactose in a variety of ways such as a drink additive (tea), for cooking (cheese, cream-based sauces), and even consuming by the glass (good ol' fashion milk). However, there's a high prevalence of lactose intolerance in Asian countries. There are just some sensitivities, diseases, and reactions that are more prevalent in some ethnicities than others including lactose intolerance, sickle-cell anemia, and Tay-Sachs disease.[0]
That, and the idea that "races" can be clearly distinguished and defined, as you said.
Pretty spot on.
Related:
Different races have significantly different disease rates (incidence rates), such that you cannot erase them even if you control for environment (born in the same city, at the same time, went to the same school, etc).
If you were to open a large hospital in town X, you would very much want to know X's demographic structure to make informed decisions on how many highly specialized professionals and equipment you would need to effectively treat the population.
Making design mistakes at this stage would literally cost lives.
Please don’t do this here.
Not saying the original comment was racist, but in general I don't think we should be promoting racism.
If we all started calling out everything that might possibly be [X] without being absolute certain, then this stance to accept false positives would result in far too much noise in the form of one of the harshest accusations in 2019.
This sort of stance, where the Presumption of Innocence is sacrificed, to prioritize catching all the guilty, the innocents be damned, is also the stance that leads to the witchhunt mentality. It's a social epistemological catastrophe, where everyone suspects everyone and accusations for ulterior motives cannot be detected.
In 2019, it seems as if this stance is designed to and deployed to cause a social epistemological catastrophe over social media. I suspect this is actually being done!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc
This is precisely why Blackstone's formulation came to be, and why it's necessary to avoid toxic and tyrannical societies.