Comment by beaconstudios | Hacker News Reader

Comment by beaconstudios | Hacker News Reader

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Maybe rather than expanding your assumptions one checked privilege at a time, just drop your assumptions altogether? You simply can't know the experiences of others; even direct communication only transfers a very loose approximation of experience, and that's if both sides are both communicating earnestly and are skilled communicators. So if you can't know the experience of just one person then you certainly can't group people by their experience.

Generalisations are a poor substitute for empathy and curiosity.

But that's all very abstract so to concretise my point:

> Those assumptions will however impact my decisions - who I vote for, what charity I donate to, how I approach other people in life, etc

I try to support people who don't play zero sum games, who create lasting systemic changes. Some fraction of most political movements are based on this, while other parts are about tribalism - so try to back leaders who want what's best for all.

To cast people in terms of privilege is to make moral judgements on people based on pure circumstance.

And approach people as if you know nothing about them - because you don't. To think you know something about someone you don't know is literally the textbook definition of prejudice.

I think it's naive to believe it's possible to drop assumptions all together. Without assumptions this thread wouldn't have happened

Taking the word "privilege" as an example, you have an assumption about what I mean when I use it and that it entails "moral judgement". These are not things I've expressed in any of my posts

> try to back leaders who want what's best for all.

I'm confused how you can know what's best for all without making assumptions. Could you elaborate?

> I think it's naive to believe it's possible to drop assumptions all together.

Dropping assumptions altogether isn't what I meant and is trivially shown to be nonsense. We couldn't live our lives if we didn't assume the sun would come up tomorrow.

What I mean is making unfounded assumptions about other human beings and their experiences.

> Taking the word "privilege" as an example, you have an assumption about what I mean when I use it and that it entails "moral judgement". These are not things I've expressed in any of my posts

Then I've made a mistake, by making an assumption that was unfounded. I'm not claiming to be perfect at avoiding unfounded assumptions about people or what they say, just that it's a better ideal than growing out your set of assumptions. After all, if you take people and keep dividing them into groups based on shared characteristics, take that to its terminal limit and you're simply treating people as unique individuals.

[edit] having reflected further, I think there might be a legitimate meaning behind my thinking of it as a moral judgement, but I'm interested to see if you agree. It's on my other comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26343064

> I'm confused how you can know what's best for all without making assumptions. Could you elaborate?

I don't know what's best for all, nor do I believe that anyone else does - and I'm suspicious of anyone who claims they know what is best for any other person. What I try to do is look for people who navigate through empathy. The way I see it, politics is predominantly driven by finding the "bad people" to blame your voters' problems on and make them stop doing the bad thing. In reality people's behaviours are driven by structural incentives, so I am more inclined to trust people who, instead of pointing fingers at other humans and their moral deficiencies, focus on changing the incentives. I think a lot of green initiatives contain this kind of systems approach, as an obvious candidate; but so do some people of many different political movements. It's basically an individual rather than an ideological thing, hence why I say backing individual leaders.

> just that it's a better ideal than growing out your set of assumptions. After all, if you take people and keep dividing them into groups based on shared characteristics, take that to its terminal limit and you're simply treating people as unique individuals.

I'm confused as to how becoming aware of how my privilege, which has lead to wrong, sometimes harmful, assumptions, would lead me to expand my list of assumptions

Removing assumptions about others is exactly the goal of checking ones privilege. The reason for privilege being a focus point is that assumptions arising from social class differences causes more harm in the world than any other cognitive bias

When you write "dropping unfounded assumptions about other humans and their experiences", you're describing half of what "checking ones privilege" is about

The second part is to find out how and why those privileges are not extended to everyone by contributing to causes that promote and work towards a more fair and equal access to those privileges regardless of social class, race, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, etc

> I'm confused as to how becoming aware of how my privilege, which has lead to wrong, sometimes harmful, assumptions, would lead me to expand my list of assumptions

To be clear, I don't think privilege-checking causes more harm than not-privilege-checking. But I think it causes less good than the version of privilege-checking that is applied to everyone regardless of demographic privilege, which is to say, empathy.

By being choosy about who deserves empathy, rather than your ideal being focused on general human equality you propagate class divides but simply change which ones you value. I think it's a mixup between empathy and sympathy. You end up valuing the humanity of the disenfranchised more than the privileged, which is dangerous. You can think that people who are marginalised deserve better without either thinking those who are privileged deserve worse, or that they are active perpetrators of said marginalisation. I'm not saying you necessarily make this mistake yourself - I don't know your feelings on the matter - but I see people go down this line of reasoning all the time after acknowledging the concept of class privilege and I just think we can do better than that.

The entire point is that people are inherently unaware of many of assumptions or personal "theories of the world" they are applying to their evaluations of people, places, and things. Asking people to "drop their assumptions altogether" is like asking people "just don't behavior with any cognitive biases." You may as well punch the ocean for all the good it will do. People, like the OP, just will not be self-aware enough across contexts and moments, especially when thinking and reacting in real-time.

And I do not degree, nor do I really understand (which is likely the issue) the idea that trying to become aware of your own privileges that you take for granted others don't have is somehow tied to a moral judgment of others.

EDIT: But I do think in support of your point that all of us could do with more intentional mindfulness in how we see and react to the world. I don't want my comment to be a signal that efforts to have fewer pre-baked assumptions or biases are futile. But saying "drop your assumptions" is like telling someone upset to "just calm down."

I totally agree that fully breaking down your own assumptions is very, very hard, and basically an impossible ideal. But the great thing about impossible ideals is that they give you a goal to strive towards where the closer you get, the better you get.

The end goal is replaced with the process of gradually increasing mindful self-awareness of your biases and generalisations.

> And I do not degree, nor do I really understand (which is likely the issue) the idea that trying to become aware of your own privileges that you take for granted others don't have is somehow tied to a moral judgment of others.

My apologies, I'm still trying to formulate my thinking in this area. I think it's because considering people from the dichotomy of privilege/underprivilege leads to empathy with the less privileged but not the more privileged, which implies that people who are more privileged are less deserving of empathy. Saying that one person is more deserving of empathy than another is what I mean by a moral judgement. And while people who are less fortunate are in need of more support (inherently), failure to empathise with the privileged (key here being empathise, NOT sympathise) can lead to the bad things associated with dehumanisation - scapegoating, us vs them narratives, that sort of thing. I think this is a major failing of the progressive movement that is so very close to being a powerhouse for positive change. It's inches away from being both postmodern and system-oriented, so I'm liable to focus on its failings as a critic who wants it to improve.

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