Comment by opportune | Hacker News Reader

Comment by opportune | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I absolutely agree that politics is everywhere and picking and choosing which type of political discussion is allowed is itself political, (I’ve also never been convinced that URMs in tech isn’t primarily a pipeline problem but ofc wouldn’t want to shut off debate on that)

I guess the difference in what is allowed is between “positive” vs “negative” politics. By that I don’t mean positive politics is absolutely the best whereas negative is stuff I disagree with, but saying “We want to empower marginalized groups” is positive and doesn’t bother that much people who.. don’t think it’s necessary, because it’s not a political position you can disagreee with per se. But negative politics might be something like “we are going to ban X because we find it abhorrent” whether X is racist stuff, antivaxx stuff, or LGBTQ stuff you are directly prohibiting beliefs.

Note that I don’t necessarily agree that positive vs negative (or, un-disagreeable vs actively disagreeing) is exactly where you should draw the line where politics is allowed, but I’m just trying to rationalize and say maybe it’s not inherently hypocritical.

I also agree with the parent comment here, but wanted to shed some light on your input.

The problem with your "negative" vs "positive" distinction is that it's quite subjective and not at all clear cut.

> “We want to empower marginalized groups” is positive and doesn’t bother that much people who.. don’t think it’s necessary, because it’s not a political position you can disagreee with per se

There are groups who have very big problems with this statement per se. See the numerous court cases over the past decade challenging affirmative action in university admissions. Many view helping one group as oppressing another (a view I find quite misinformed given the inequities in our society, but not completely irrational, given bad priors).

Maybe what you're trying to get at is progressive politics vs. oppressive politics. This distinction I can understand more clearly, however when you choose to oppress a group that is oppressing others, maybe this is justified?

For instance, banning ISIS from access to Twitter seems like a pretty morally sound decision to me as an American. Given that, is there really a difference between banning ISIS and banning white supremacists who discuss violence? Or Presidents who promote violence against journalists? What's the moral outcome of NOT banning any of these groups?

Any choice, including choosing not to act, is morally liable. I think Gitlab's stance here is quite morally lazy, if not wrong.

Yeah, I was trying to figure out if gitlab’s position is a bit more morally consistent than it might seem at first glance, but I agree with everything you said. Perhaps we can say a progressive vs oppressive split is more consistent but not fully consistent

Regarding eg affirmative action, I guess that also brings up a good point that the implementation of an affirmative/positive/progressive opinion may start to get a bit hairier than a simple platitude. Platitudes or moral statements can easily be defended but once you begin to take concrete action based on those, people may disagree with how you rationalize those actions

>> “We want to empower marginalized groups”

This also means nothing. What does "empower" mean in this context? Define it, and you are guaranteed to piss off plenty of people in the marginalized groups, to say nothing of the majority groups (whose rights today apparently are meaningless).

Don't act like this isn't defined. You empower marginalized groups by ensuring that they can't be fired just for being in that group, for starters.

Your rights aren't minimized by granting rights to minorities. I can't believe I have to explain this to you. This isn't a zero sum game.

I am a minority. Not sure why you think otherwise.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com