You can’t prove I meant X | Hacker News Reader

You can’t prove I meant X

lrb.co.uk

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> "this sentence could mean y as well as x so you can’t prove I meant x"

It's interesting that a lot of online debate and media commentary uses the opposite technique:

> "this sentence could—with varying degrees of plausibility—mean bad thing y as well as good thing x, so you can't prove you didn't really mean to say the bad thing." The principle of anti-charity.

I think that the problem with this as a steering wheel for discussion is that sometimes what you just said is extremely accurate but also sometimes both happen at the same time, for and against some figure by their defenders vs their offendees, and also often the sentence is part of a long pattern of behavior that has implication tendrils. No sentence exists in a vacuum, but different people have differing desires to reach further in different moments, some based on whether they like the person's face, but also occasionally by guiding principle.

Reminds me of the "motte and bailey doctrine" [1]. You make a claim; when attacked you retreat to an easy-to-hold position; when attackers leave you make the claim again.

Example: "God exist" is attacked; speaker retreats to "but God is just another name for beauty in the universe, do you disagree with that?"

[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-bri...

And of course whether charity is applied or not is all about the presumed social fault lines in the situation. For example, in the U.S. right now, if you say, "The expert predictions about the coronavirus are all over the place and changing every day," it's an uncontroversial statement when everyone's politics are assumed to be the same. Among liberals, it will be interpreted as meaning that the coronavirus is extremely dangerous and not fully understood and we need to play it safe. Among conservatives, it will be interpreted as undermining expert authority and casting doubt on social distancing. In a mixed group, though, the important aspect will not be the meaning, which nobody will bother thinking too hard about; the only thing that matters will be the presumed intent to precipitate an argument.

This is why anything partisan or partisan-adjacent in the US, which includes most current "news" events of any kind, has become so supremely boring to me.

It's literally no longer about what is factual or not, or what is actually being said, simply what it it assumed that someone is attempting to imply.

It's a terrible situation, and one that has infected a lot of other areas of USian everyday communication: https://sneak.berlin/20191201/american-communication/

If you're not fluent in euphemism and current-events context, making a plain factual statement can frequently be heard/interpreted by the listener as you saying the opposite, and the listener is usually totally unaware of the fact that they're flipping things around like this.

It's one thing when I'm acting like like the beep boop robot I am, but it's leaked out and over, into just plain speech.

This is a nicely crafted example.

Human communication is so densely laden with nuance and context and subtext that it takes soooo much work and a dose of generosity to have a real conversation that doesn’t spin off into something useless.

In a technical context you can define things clearly, but in a political context it’s just too hard, there are so many things that mean different things to different people.

My attempt in daily life to deal with this is to offer a place where my “side” is wrong to foster generosity then try to tightly circumscribe the thing we’re discussing. I think it sometimes works. But it’s a ton of conversational work with unclear payoffs.

I don’t see how we’re not doomed to usually have largely fruitless conversation in the current climate. I don’t like the approach, but I understand why people move towards a “screw convincing them, let’s rally the base.” Bit of a prisoner’s dilemma there, I think, where the whole country is left impoverished by the individually rational approach to rallying the base

> My attempt in daily life to deal with this is to offer a place where my “side” is wrong to foster generosity then try to tightly circumscribe the thing we’re discussing.

This sounds quite interesting; would you be able to provide an example?

There's a big prisoner's dilemma thing going on. If you're charitable, and the people you're discussing with are too, you can have better discussions.

If you're operating in an environment like the internet where you can more or less guarantee that there will be one comment based on the the worst possible interpretation of what you said, being charitable in advance just makes things worse for you. You're playing "cooperate" with an endless stream of "defectors". Trolling has always been "defect" in this environment.

Hence the value in having more closed environments for discussion. HN is open enough that people can make throwaway accounts and use them for valid points, and closed enough that the more obvious trolls get downvote-hammered quickly.

I've found it to be pretty effective to simply not engage with those who keep taking the worst possible interpretations of your (or others) arguments. It sort of simulates an environment where everyone is charitable.

In other words, "Don't feed the trolls"

Tit for tat has always been the solution to prisoner's dilemma. The people who think "prisoner's dilemma" means "I should be wholly and utterly selfish, because it's the logical thing to do" are just idiots who don't understand how cooperation can work over time and repeated trials to build trust.

That's alright sometimes. But there's usually a 100 (or something) readers to 1 posters ratio. If none of the "trolls" are contested that leaves the impression that it's a legitimate opinion.

I don't think the option of "don't feed the trolls" really works in such scenarios.

In those cases you are talking to the audience, not to the trolls. It doesn't matter what the trolls meant; it matters what you say.

> There's a big prisoner's dilemma thing going on. If you're charitable, and the people you're discussing with are too, you can have better discussions.

Privately, I'd very much agree.

However Cardinal Richelieu's quote comes to mind when posting to the internet at large (yes, im counting HN in this):

"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."

And that is evermore so, with concern trolls and those in mind with being 'wronged' in some way. Because, no matter how charitable you are, there is someone who isn't and will assume the worst. And then you become the brunt of a social media campaign gone awry.

I agree and I didn’t take notice till the day I learned a woman flying to ZA wrote some quick satire on twitter before departing, when she landed many hours later she learned her tweet was taken straight and was summarily fired with the tireless assistance of the twitter-rage-mob.

I agree with Cleese and Chapelle. It’s madness.

I am curious to read about this but googling “woman flight ZA twitter outrage“ is getting me nothing. Could you provide a name?

Here you go: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-t...

She was a PR rep who spewed vile racist hatred.

And she got her job back anyway.

https://www.vox.com/2018/1/19/16911074/justine-sacco-iac-mat...

This is a long yet fascinating read on how poets hacked libel laws to push their ideas.

For example:

But now, go search all Europe round

Among the savage monsters crown’d,

With vice polluting every throne

(I mean all kings except our own).

Thanks to the last line, the poet could claim plausible deniability.

Even better: due to semantic evolutions, the mere "imagining" that before meant plotting made thought crimes an attack on monarchy.

Therefore, by saying the poet was attacking the king, the prosecutors would be guilty themselves of such "imagining".

There's an interpretation of the biblical book of Revelation that it was written as a "disguised" attack on the Roman empire: https://www.educationalcoin.com/blog/the-mystery-of-the-book...

Very interesting that this page talks about serious stuff like which emporer slaughtered whom and then says you can buy those coins, the very mark of the beast!

Ha - I just googled it and didn't realize this was a "commercial" site. I can't remember where I first read it, but I see a lot of other references.

Pretty common understanding among biblical scholars. Christian scholars often understand it as dual prophecy, referring both to contemporary (i.e. Roman power structures) and later eschatological ones.

Just as a heads up, if you have cookies disabled for unknown domains, this page gives you an endless redirect loop.

I really wish sites would stop doing this.

https://outline.com/Cu4sHx

"Please enable Javascript to read the full article".

How about no.

> We notice you're using an Ad blocker

No, I'm using a Javascript blocker.

https://archive.md/Kmhr1

Two modern equivalents of this kind of thing are the use of euphemisms to bypass Chinese censorship: https://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/Main_Page and the ever-mutating set of "dog whistles" used by the far right ("fourteen words" etc.)

The historical background of the 1700s I'm a bit vague on, but it was crucial for the development of Parliamentary government in the UK through a long series of succession crises from the civil war onwards that only really ended with the childless death of the younger Charles Stuart in 1788.

Essentially there were two incompatible criteria for English monarchs to be publicly accepted: "not Catholic" and "not foreign".

> ("fourteen words" etc.)

This is signaling through lingo (keywords), very different from this article, yet also worth studying during this lockdown.

If I simply replied "88 bro", the average reader may not click, and think I was just saying I was born in 1988, like you, and we are maybe "birth year brothers".

Yet to the initiated, it would signal that I have some very special political ideas! Once you have started learning that, you will see custom license plates very differently!

As hackers, we should learn to decode such telltales, to know who may mean us harm.

Here's another one that may look totally innocent: blood type tatooed 8 inches above the elbow.

Strange tattoo example (and Google-able). Boggles my mind why someone would want to identify so strongly with Nazis, but obviously I strongly agree that we should receive those signals. What a bunch of idiots.

This is exactly why we need to learn these signals - to recognize people who so strongly want to identify, with something that would seem strange or benine to the uninitiated.

About a celtic cross and 1488 written below, someone in this thread said they can't "tell that much about a person based on an accessory."

I believe it is a grave mistake to ignore such extremely strong signals, especially the person seems aggressive or inhebriated.

That person is also defending the 14 words, saying "it's ok to be white", and throwing around phrases like "white genocide".

I'm pretty sure they're just a straight up white nationalist.

Or a troll, since they're being purposefully disingenuous. It doesn't really matter either way, though.

There might be an important social good in treating Nazis and trolls pretending to be Nazis the same - fairness, at the very least, and a desperately needed bulwark against people only pretending to be pretending to be odious.

> This is exactly why we need to learn these signals

Or, just completely ignore them. Such people and their ideas only become important if we pay them the attention they so desperately crave.

I get the 88 thing, but not the blood type tatooed 8 inches above the elbow, care to explain?

"SS blood group tattoos (German: Blutgruppentätowierung) were worn by members of the Waffen-SS in Nazi Germany during World War II to identify the individual's blood type. [...] It was a small black ink tattoo located on the underside of the left arm, [...] placed roughly 20 cm (8 inches) above the elbow."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_blood_group_tattoo

I have no idea whether it's popular with modern neo-nazis.

ah, thank you. That clears that up. Though tattooing your blood type on your skin seems a good idea.

All this dogwhistling stuff is fun and games until you start to put innocent people under fire for dogwhistling. If more people start reading Nazi propaganda just to avoid dogwhistling, you will have created more enemies as a second order effect of your actions.

A better approach would be to fill the whistles with noise, so they lose their use for the people trying to use them to identify allies. There's a reason why the phrase "normies ruin everything" is so common

How many people do you know who aren't white nationalists have gotten a 1488 tattoo?

The whole point of these signals is that they seem innocuous, but practically no one is going to signal them in other contexts. So you have the vague auspices of plausible deniability when pushed, but nearly 100% specificity too.

You are defending the Motte here, while someone on this thread is being called a white supremacist for defending the phrase "It's okay to be white". Your example is bad anyway, because 1488 does not have any clear alternative meaning.

Take the "okay" sign for instance. It has nowhere near 100% specificity and is basically useless for declaring their alignment. It's a common hand gesture for god's sake. Yet the whole thing was made to be a huge deal as it "revealed" many prominent people were actually secretly white supremacists. And I think the actual motive lies here: making the opposition make an ass out of themselves and causing the maximum possible collateral damage, without actually doing anything. The stronger you react to innocuous things, the more reasonable the other side looks. I mean, who would want to be labeled a X supremacist just because they think it's okay to be X? By stooping down to /pol/'s level just to fight against them, you lose the reasonable people from your side.

> while someone on this thread is being called a white supremacist for defending the phrase "It's okay to be white".

They're throwing around terms like "white genocide", and saying that they wouldn't judge people who wear 1488 (just so we're clear, the 88 part means heil hitler). They're either a white supremacist, or a troll just pretending to be one.

You're not making a good case for the lack of specificity.

Going to your OK sign, obviously ok signs are fine in the general sense, but if someone is on a rant about how immigrants are ruining the country, then throws up an ok sign, it's explicitly a white supremacist calling card. It's all about context.

I agree that 1488 is a signal, but don't agree that it is invisible. The implied meaning is just a google search away.

>if someone is on a rant about how immigrants are ruining the country

I'd say this is the actual reason you think they are a white supremacist, rather than deciphering their dog whistle. Going on a rant on immigrants specifically is a much clearer indicator of their political alignment (my guess would be r/theDonald poster) and I wouldn't say the okay sign adds more signal.

The real danger of dog whistles is when we start seeing things that aren't there, or when we let white supremacists or edgy shitposters dictate what our behavior means.

So you agree that the person you had previously said is just innocuously defending "it's ok to be white" is actually a white supremacist or a troll pretending to be one?

You keep pretending like there's these innocent victims, and it turns out these people where actually what we had said they were all along.

I am getting confused now. My ESL'ness might be getting in the way of us communicating.

Based on how the okay sign thing went, with all of its false positives (which are the innocent victims), I don't think the "dog whistles" give a clear enough signal. Your examples also use judgement from context rather than the dog whistles which is in line with what I've said.

The other poster turned out to be a clear troll, and arguing with them on what the dog whistles mean is giving them just what they want.

> Based on how the okay sign thing went, with all of its false positives (which are the innocent victims), I don't think the "dog whistles" give a clear enough signal. Your examples also use judgement from context rather than the dog whistles which is in line with what I've said.

Can you give an example of one of these false positive victims?

> Can you give an example of one of these false positive victims?

Sure, I can. There was a viral example when Zina Bash, a white house advisor, was sitting in a senate hearing, with her hand on her arms, in a way where her fingers kind of looked like the OK sign, but not really.

As in, she did not "flash" the OK sign. Instead she had her hand resting on her arm in a certain position. And this went viral and everyone accused her of being a white supremicist because of it, even though the situation was clearly ridiculous.

You can look it up, if you want more details.

I mean, one tweet called her out, and the left wing media and the ADL came out specifically to defend her, specifically calling out that it needed more context to be white supremacist symbol. Ie. what I've been saying this whole time.

Also, it totally is an OK sign, she's just playing the circle game.

Some defended her and some attacked her.

Thats the point. The fact that anyone was even attacking her in the first place, and this went viral at all, is still a problem.

So you agree that the left came out to defend her on this?

She isn't a victim of the this concept being called out, but instead the white supremacists who decided to start using a contextual clue that they're being explicitly racist a common sign just because of the chaos it causes, and not the people calling out that racists are doing this.

> So you agree that the left came out to defend her on this?

No. Instead I would say that some people defended here, and others on the left also attacked her, and the fact that there were basically anyone attacking her is still a huge problem.

Regardless if there were people defending her, the fact that this was even a viral issue at all, is still a big problem.

> and not the people calling out that racists are doing this.

There were many (which is not all, I didn't say all, before you strawman me) people on the left attacking her.

The example you picked, the ok symbol, is well known to have been misattributed to supremacists; another one is Pepe the Frog, which was a meme for almost ten years before it was appropriated by the alt-right (some might also throw a swastika in there, too, but usually from context it's obvious you're not discussing Indian religious symbols). As such, these make for poor dog whistles; actual dog-whistles have little or meaning outside of the context they're brought up in.

I don't know when, exactly, but I became a lot more aware of this 88 thing in the last 3 years or so, and at times, it's seemed like it's everywhere. I got a prescription filled where the pills had "HH" stamped on them and the price on my receipt ended in 88. I got a loan recently and the account number had 88 and 911 in it.

It is terrifying to me that people who think they are not clinically paranoid can say things like "100% specificity" and be sincere.

Edit: I'm not joking, trolling, or (so I believe) delusional. As far as I know, these are real coincidences that are probably meaningless. The prescription in question is supposed to help with paranoia.

How many had 1488?

I couldn't tell you because my mind was not sensitized to that as I hadn't heard of it until now.

So, never. Like it's a 1 in 10000 chance that four digits are 1488.

You're suppressing the knowledge of how little time it takes to encounter 10,000 numbers and how long you will remember a bunch of digits that seem meaningful. And how quickly the possibilities multiply when you include everyone you're in contact with that might tell you about something that happened to them.

We're not arguing about one four digit number. Nobody who is paranoid about that is paranoid about just that. Doing a statistical analysis of uses of that number might be instructive if you're really obsessed with it, but it's not the point.

I see 666 and 1337 a lot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_Law_of_Small_Numbers

I'm not chasing every 1488 windmill. I don't freak out that some random number came to 1488.

I'm saying that when someone says "1488 - Questionably racist thing" like here https://www.coloradohometownweekly.com/2020/03/19/louisville... , or wears a 1488 jewelry, or gets a 1488 tattoo, that person is broadcasting that they are a white nationalist.

Not foreign was negotiable: wasn't George III the first of the Hanovers more comfortable in English than in German?

Yes, it was negotiable, but that negotiation was the politics of the time; the Hanovers making concessions to Parliament to retain their acceptance, while being variably popular with the actual public, and unpopular with some of the polemic writers under discussion in the article.

The massive Hanoverian propaganda effort of George IV is written all over Edinburgh street names.

This is a fairly dense article, but it is a really profound intersection of "hacking", "reason", and "context". Hacking a language to sound reasonable while delivering a side-channel message through an established context. I guess I never really thought of poets and writers as hackers, but now it clicked into focus.

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