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Comment by Spellman | Hacker News Reader

Honest question, care to elaborate?

From my perspective opting out means no change. And no change means structures stay the same. Therefore, they persist and are maintained with your (weak) approval.

This is different from not taking a side on a subject. You can be open to and encouraging healthy debate. I recommend most rational folks to elevate the conversation and not hold strong affiliations for most topics! But removing yourself entirely to me seems to be an act that allows the status quo to persist.

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> Honest question, care to elaborate?

Many people may not think it is their place to speak. Some people may think they wouldn't be the best person to advocate. Others might think other people speak better about it. Other people might not be in a position to speak about it.

In the UK we have many people who claim to talk for the "working class" that as one of my friends put it "looked like they have never done a day of heavy lifting in their life". I wouldn't speak on behalf of the working class, I do a white collar job.

> From my perspective opting out means no change. And no change means structures stay the same. Therefore, they persist and are maintained with your (weak) approval.

Does it? Many structures fall in under their own weight, many organisation reform from within. You are assuming the world and people within them around doesn't ever change. There is a whole bunch of assumptions you are making. Sometimes the best thing you can do is to do nothing.

I used to cycle to work every day. That was more effective to get my coworkers cycling in than any amount of advocacy I may have done verbally. Just yourself being the change you want in the world is sometimes sufficient.

> In the UK we have many people who claim to talk for the "working class" that as one of my friends put it "looked like they have never done a day of heavy lifting in their life". I wouldn't speak on behalf of the working class, I do a white collar job.

Let's take this rhetorical pattern for a spin around the block.

Here in the USA in the 19th century we had many people who claimed to speak for slaves who looked like they'd never been black a day in their lives. I wouldn't speak on behalf of slaves. I'm a free person.

Here in the UK during the Potato Famine we had many people who claimed to speak for starving Irish people who looked like they'd never been starving or Irish for a day in their lives. I wouldn't speak on behalf of the starving Irish. I'm well-fed and English.

Here in Wherever we have many people who claim to speak for sexually harassed women who look like they haven't been a woman for a day in their lives. I wouldn't speak on behalf of women. I'm a man.

It doesn't seem all that robust.

People always take the most extreme examples. In the example I gave it wasn't nearly anywhere as extreme. Obviously it depends on the circumstances.

Your example was also fatally flawed because it buys into the notion that white collar work is not working class.

White collar laborers are labor; they are not capital.

I make a couple hundred thousand dollars per year. I have far more in common with a nurse or a teacher or a store clerk than I do with somebody who was born with $10MM in a trust fund, and who makes as much as I do (by selling my full-time labor) just by buying and holding VTI.

Blue collar work means physical labour typically. White collar means office work and traditionally office work has been done by the middle class and the elite.

I will concede that In the last decade or those definition probably don't make any sense.

So maybe I should have said "traditional working class" to make the distinction.

To your first point (don't feel equipped/proper place), that's definitely true. But that doesn't mean you can't support those who are better advocates instead.

In your example, by ignoring the "working class" and their issues, you implicitly leave the existing (both good and bad) structures in place.

To the second (things change anyways), structures and the world reform due to pressure from individuals within and without. So, yes, perhaps you can hope the system changes without your input (and honestly due to human limitations you really shouldn't have involvement in every issue) but my point is ignoring the issue isn't purely neutral. You are instead offloading the responsibility of change to others. So my point is to point out how being "passive" is actually an "active" choice with consequences.

Interestingly, by cycling, many would argue you made an actual statement by your lifestyle that influenced others on a topic. This is why people use the term "everything is political." Your actions, as you noted, spoke louder than any verbal advocacy and changed people's lives. This leads to a similar statement, "be the change you wish to see." Because verbal advocacy is often easy and simple and valued much less persuasively than actions and lifestyle.

Does that make sense to you? Or perhaps I'm misunderstanding your positions? These are great questions and good examples!

> To your first point (don't feel equipped/proper place), that's definitely true. But that doesn't mean you can't support those who are better advocates instead.

And it doesn't mean I have to either.

> In your example, by ignoring the "working class" and their issues, you implicitly leave the existing (both good and bad) structures in place.

No I don't. I neither leave it in place or remove it.

> To the second (things change anyways), structures and the world reform due to pressure from individuals within and without. So, yes, perhaps you can hope the system changes without your input (and honestly due to human limitations you really shouldn't have involvement in every issue) but my point is ignoring the issue isn't purely neutral.

Sometimes things literally do stop existing when you don't pay attention to them e.g. I don't watch broadcast TV because I don't want to pay the TV license for something I barely watch anyway. I live my life as if it doesn't exist. So as far as I am concerned it doesn't exist unless I choose to pay attention to it.

> You are instead offloading the responsibility of change to others. So my point is to point out how being "passive" is actually an "active" choice with consequences.

Who made it my responsibility to change anything? Again there are a bunch of presumptions you have made in that statement and I don't think you even know you made them.

> Interestingly, by cycling, many would argue you made an actual statement by your lifestyle that influenced others on a topic.

There you go again. You are inserting assumptions in with the term "lifestyle". It wasn't a lifestyle. It was just cheaper and quicker to cycle.

> This is why people use the term "everything is political." Your actions, as you noted, spoke louder than any verbal advocacy and changed people's lives. This leads to a similar statement, "be the change you wish to see." Because verbal advocacy is often easy and simple and valued much less persuasively than actions and lifestyle.

No people use the term "everything is political" because they want to make everything political because it benefits them and their political agenda to make something that is apolitical, political.

>> To your first point (don't feel equipped/proper place), that's definitely true. But that doesn't mean you can't support those who are better advocates instead.

> And it doesn't mean I have to either.

Correct. Never said otherwise.

>> In your example, by ignoring the "working class" and their issues, you implicitly leave the existing (both good and bad) structures in place.

> No I don't. I neither leave it in place or remove it.

I think this encapsulates my point and where we disagree. Non-action means leaving what exists in existence and is an active choice.

> Sometimes things literally do stop existing when you don't pay attention to them e.g. I don't watch broadcast TV because I don't want to pay the TV license for something I barely watch anyway. I live my life as if it doesn't exist. So as far as I am concerned it doesn't exist unless I choose to pay attention to it.

Hm, to quote Momento, pretty sure the world still exists when I close my eyes. I get you're making a bit of a "if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it" argument, but by choosing to ignore broadcast television it 1) doesn't mean it doesn't exist to others and 2) you are actually removing attention/power/money from broadcast television. So I'm not sure that's a particularly good counter example.

>> You are instead offloading the responsibility of change to others. So my point is to point out how being "passive" is actually an "active" choice with consequences.

> Who made it my responsibility to change anything? Again there are a bunch of presumptions you have made in that statement and I don't think you even know you made them.

OK, perhaps not my best wording. Nobody says you have the responsibility, or perhaps a better term is obligation, to change anything. But you do have the inherent opportunity, and by opting out you surrender that opportunity to others to do as they see fit.

My point isn't to say go out and do EVERYTHING. I'm trying to draw out the notion that inaction isn't completely void and has zero effect on the world around you. So, in effect, you have an opportunity cost of what things you act on and what things you ignore. I'm trying to draw awareness to those choices of things you ignore as still having an effect.

Here's the thing though, if I'm not already an effective political actor (i.e. someone with a lot of money, or a significant network of people who listen to me, or in a position of control over an institution with proxy access to either of those), the opportunity cost of doing nothing is basically zero.

The assertions that "inaction is a choice" or "political disengagement is a privilege" are coming from a place of naive idealism about the reality of affecting change in modern societies. There's an enormous threshold of activation energy one has to cross to be an efficacious actor against existing large scale power structures, and anything short of it is basically not going to make a difference.

The reality of scale in our world as currently configured is that one private individual could do all the conscientious things - boycott the right things, recycle the right things, vote for the right things - and nothing will change. Even a thousand or a million such individuals randomly distributed doing the exact same things, still wouldn't make a significant difference. Only by acting in coordinated networks would change come about, and it would be driven by the powerful individuals or organizations doing the coordinating, having expended enormous energy to do so. Most people aren't suited to or interested in expending that kind of energy to lead such efforts, and we shouldn't be made to feel guilty for just wanting to go about our lives without trying to "make a difference".

Definitely agree on these points! And I'm not trying to shift people to feeling guilty or pushing to "make a difference" as much as examine how inaction is also a choice that can matter.

As you point out, though, as an individual against the powers and machinery of society and businesses, often our single lives actions seem trivial in making a measurable difference.

Thus why others argue the correct solution is organization and coordination. Join party X! Donate to organization Y! Spread the word to your friends to boycott Z! etc etc. Then you are a part of the effort and your actions magnified, even if you aren't necessarily the leader expending all that energy.

Granted, the counter-point is usually that such organizations can become corrupted and serve other values such as self-existence and thus must also be seen with suspicion... but I won't go down hat rabbit hole.

Personally I think even a small personal live's difference does matter, even if only to myself. A bit of a Thoreau view. But that's just my personal take and I don't begrudge those over whelmed and burned out, nor those who continue to flood my newsfeed with calls to action for their causes.

But my takeaway is opting out is still a choice that has an effect. It lets what exists persist due to inertia, or at minimum gives away your vote to others who are more motivated. That is neither good nor bad, but another tool to remind yourself that you have.

> Hm, to quote Momento, pretty sure the world still exists when I close my eyes. I get you're making a bit of a "if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it" argument, but by choosing to ignore broadcast television it 1) doesn't mean it doesn't exist to others and 2) you are actually removing attention/power/money from broadcast television. So I'm not sure that's a particularly good counter example.

No it is a very good example. By me not doing anything in this case the existing system (the BBC in this case) will simply become irrelevant (which is actually happening). I didn't have to say anything or do anything. The world simply changed around it (Netflix and Youtube basically) which is what I said previously.

There is nothing active about it. You are engaging in newspeak. You are trying to define not doing something as doing something.

> Non-action means leaving what exists in existence and is an active choice.

What sort of newspeak is this? Non-action is an active choice. Next you will be telling me Freedom is Slavery or I am actively resting my posterior on the sofa.

This is newspeak and what you are trying to do is drag me into participating in how you define things. I am not playing that game.

> By me not doing anything in this case the existing system (the BBC in this case) will simply become irrelevant (which is actually happening). I didn't have to say anything or do anything. The world simply changed around it (Netflix and Youtube basically) which is what I said previously.

Conversely, if you and enough people did watch the BBC, it would stay relevant, right?

No. Because there are younger people that grew up with better alternatives. The world has moved on.

You keep on assuming the rest of the world is static. Even if the numbers in my generation stayed that watched broadcast TV until we died. Once we are dead there isn't likely to be the same number of people replacing us is there? Nothing our end needed to change but the world did anyway.

I'm actually assuming the world is incredibly non-static, and your choices make a difference.

"The world has moved on" to me says enough people decided collectively X was better than Y. Great! It's amazingly fascinating that somehow each of these individuals somehow chose the alternative. They chose alternatives due to preferences! And those choices included not watching broadcast television (or at least ignoring it). And you're one of them. Congrats, you're part of "the world."

Similarly, we could create a static world with exact numbers of population and some % always watch broadcast TV for X hours. But we seem to not like that and instead choose differently.

Obviously this doesn't stack up all the way. The world has a funny way of inserting chaos beyond our control. But by and large a lot of society is controlled by a lot of individuals making either consciously or unconsciously making choices to act or not act. And thus my point, not acting is itself a choice that has consequences.

> But by and large a lot of society is controlled by a lot of individuals making either consciously or unconsciously making choices to act or not act.

You can't unconsciously make a choice. This is patently ridiculous.

> "The world has moved on" to me says enough people decided collectively X was better than Y. Great! It's amazingly fascinating that somehow each of these individuals somehow chose the alternative. They chose alternatives due to preferences! And those choices included not watching broadcast television (or at least ignoring it). And you're one of them. Congrats, you're part of "the world."

I was clearly speaking about "the world" as things outside of my control. You again have failed to address the specific scenario I made in an ingenious manner.

This is very much like the motte and bailey tactic of argumentation.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey

> And thus my point, not acting is itself a choice that has consequences.

Your point is obvious. It is ridiculous that it somehow "proof" that you are right.

Lets go back to the core argument. Just because you don't take action at a particular time doesn't mean you are supporting an existing system.

People like yourself need to understand the difference between accepting the reality of the situation and supporting the status quo.

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