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Comment by Jensson | Hacker News Reader

Depends on how strict your definitions for those things are. The kind of person who works hard to not be sexist, racist, transphobic or smell bad is often very boring. A person who cares less about those things will have more interesting things to say and opinions, and about the smell thing a person who doesn't dare to smell differently will constraint their hobbies and activities.

For example, you have probably heard people say they don't want to do X since it would make them sweat. That makes them more boring than a person who would just do it without caring that they might smell a bit afterwards.

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> The kind of person who works hard to not be sexist, racist, transphobic or smell bad is often very boring

Most smart people don't need to "work hard" to not be any of those, it's a bare minimum and takes barely any effort.

To think that avoiding smelling bad or being racist is some sort of mental drain that leads to people becoming boring is a silly notion. It romanticizes a kneejerk contrarian misanthropy that's just as boring.

> Most smart people don't need to "work hard" to not be any of those, it's a bare minimum and takes barely any effort.

That was exactly my point, those things doesn't take any effort. But if you put in a lot of effort to get as far away from those things as possible then you will be boring. And such people will often accuse others of being racist or sexist even when they weren't, thus forcing the entire environment to become boring.

If I didn't agree with your here I wouldn't say "depends on how strict". But of course you here is too strict, since me even talking about that made you judge me. Thankfully this website is pretty open and not very strict, so interesting opinions are allowed here, while you seem to want to shut down interesting discussions even when they aren't racist or sexist.

> It romanticizes a kneejerk contrarian misanthropy that's just as boring.

How is diversity ever more boring than monoculture? I support diversity and therefore I am against monoculture. The important part here is to not judge people. Traditional internet forums were full of feminists etc as well, they weren't mono culture, it was very rich.

> you seem to want to shut down interesting discussions even when they aren't racist or sexist

I'm not shutting down the discussion, I'm adding to the discussion by offering my opinion. You're adopting a persecution complex when there isn't one to the extent you're implying.

I do agree there are the normal people who are honest about their biases but generally try to treat people fairly, and the "hyper-PC" people who make it a game of being the most "on the right side of history" to the extent that it becomes all they care about. I know those people and they are just as annoying and vitriolic as those who are openly sexist. However my point is generally that isn't not a simple "both sides" issue. The golden mean isn't a medium amount of sexism and transphobia, it's a neutral yet accepting attitude, which by default isn't anything phobic, thus leans more towards not being either than being either.

> I'm not shutting down the discussion, I'm adding to the discussion by offering my opinion. You're adopting a persecution complex when there isn't one to the extent you're implying.

I guess you just didn't read what I wrote, that is fair, I make such mistakes all the time. If you read it you would notice that the thing I said is basically exactly what you said here, and since you disagreed with that it makes sense that I thought you wanted to shut down interesting conversations.

The anti-"isms" have a large mottle and bailey problem, so when people say they don't want you to ban racists or sexists they mean that they don't want to force everyone to tiptoe around sex or gender, it doesn't mean that they are fine with racism or sexism.

I think the level of racism and sexism on HN is roughly optimal. It isn't enough to drive people away, but discussions are still allowed. Too much and you create a racist/sexist monoculture.

You will be flagged dead, rightly, and eventually banned from the site if you engage in racist and misogynist tropes on HN. The community here isn't tolerant of it in any meaningful titration. What little of it survives here is couched, hedged, and obscured to the point of plausible deniability. If you like HN's culture, as I do, you like a culture that rigorously pushes this form of "interesting" thought out.

Nothing you said there disagrees with anything I've said though. HN is much more accepting of sexism and racism than most parts of reddit for example, and that makes HN much more interesting. I don't think that HN would become better if we moved more towards reddit style mono culture.

For example, I would have gotten banned from most subreddits for what I said here.

> sexism and racism than most parts of reddit for example, and that makes HN much more interesting

My point, in my first post in this thread, was with this point, which is what I identified as what you were implying in your first post. You have a mentality that accepting racism/sexism is what causes HN to be interesting, or at least more interesting than Reddit. Your general mental frame seems to be "Reddit is always tip toeing about racism and offending people, which neuters how interesting/dynamic their discussions are, while HN explores the full range of thought and doesn't trivialize itself with those matters"

You are claiming that accepting racism/sexism causes things to be more interesting, but I'd wager it's a symptom of the general difference in culture, not a cause.

It's still possible to have a very interesting culture of discussion without racism or sexism, it just slightly narrows the scope of discussing not what is racist/sexist, but what simply appears racist or sexist. At what point, however, would discussing the history of development in nuclear physics, or compiler libraries, or any technical topic, be more interesting if racism/sexism were tolerated vs not tolerated?

I think the few cases where things which may be considered racist/sexist being tolerated making the site more interesting are cases where HN discusses caste discrimination, or the causes of the discrepant gender ratios in the tech world, or certain aspects of human behavior. But even so, what makes those discussions interesting isn't the subset of the discussions that may be sexist or racist, but rather the general analytical and investigative culture this forum has borne out of the more libertarian edge of 2000s silicon valley and internet culture.

My gripe is that a lot of people think that the capacity to tolerate sexism/racism is an inherent strength, an inability to be phased by the squeamishness and hall-monitoring style policing that affects most people, when in reality it's just their ability to justify their normal human biases with their intellect.

Traditional "hacker" culture is anti-authoritarian. Freedom of speech is an aspect of that. And therefore the acceptance of the expression of racist, sexist, and transphobic ideas is too. It's not that "accepting racism/sexism" is a symptom or a cause of the general difference in culture. It just is the culture. A logically necessary aspect of the culture. Remove it, and you've lost the culture.

And it generalises to intellectual culture as a whole. If you have a culture of loving knowledge, you simply can't have a ban on discussion of these vast swathes of serious theories about the world. The two can't go together.

None of this is true; it's just something that people who enjoy racist and misogynist jokes say to rationalize the behavior.

My point is that freedom of speech is crucial to a great intellectual environment, and that you can't have freedom of speech and ban the discussion of vast swathes of theories about the world.

You claim that this is just something that people who enjoy racist and misogynistic jokes say. That is absurd. Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, John Stuart Mill, etc. - are these people all just racists and misogynists?

> you seem to want to shut down interesting discussions even when they aren't racist or sexist.

No one has tried to "shut you down." They're just disagreeing with you. Isn't that what you wanted? A vigorous, diverse dialogue? You can't praise diversity of opinions and then claim oppression when someone's opinion diverges from yours.

I assumed he argued that we should shut down such conversations. I am perfectly fine with people disagreeing with me, otherwise I wouldn't post these things. In fact, the whole reason I post these things here is that I know people will disagree with them, I don't post in monoculture forums.

> I assumed he argued that we should shut down such conversations.

Perhaps you shouldn't assume things that were never said.

Well, he said that the strictest versions of anti-sexism and anti-racism are very easy to adhere to and should be enforced more or less. Because that was what he argued against. However later it turned out that he didn't really read my post, meaning that he really agreed with me from the start.

So yeah, although he never said it he strongly implied it. And then we resolved the differences later. Anyway, the whole point is that people go extremely hard on you, so they misread what you say and take it you are racist or sexist etc for basically nothing, that is why these things results in so boring communities. And his post is an example of such a missunderstanding, in a less accepting community I would have been banned there and never be coming back.

Taking a shower is easy, but performing mental gymnastics 24/7 not to be have a sexist or antisemitic thought would drain my energy.

Why do you think you have so many sexist and antisemitic thoughts in the first place?

> The kind of person who works hard to not be sexist, racist, transphobic or smell bad

Agree with the sibling comment to say this isn't hard work. Generally speaking you're saying basic requirements to be a functioning human in society, which also involves a certain amount of emapthy.

> is often very boring.

I don't understand the correlation here. There are plenty of sexist, racist, smelly transphobes who are also boring.

> Agree with the sibling comment to say this isn't hard work.

Read my first sentence: "Depends on how strict your definitions for those things are."

Or do you think that the strictest versions of anti-racism and anti-sexism are easy to adhere to? If not you agree with me.

Maybe a more appropriate term would have been "pedantic" instead of strict, to avoid the miscommunication? I think I understand what you mean. I am nor racist nor transphobic nor <insert-minority>-phobic (at least I hope so), yet I think that the debate about, for example, biologically male people in female sport competitions ought to be (whatever my opinion on the matter might be) and that alone could flag me as transphobic to some people. But I'm not sure they are more "strict anti-transphobe", I just think they are more pedantic, that's all.

Anyway, in the end of the day it was clearly a miscommunication, not necessarily a divergence of opinion. Words are hard.

> The kind of person who works hard to not be sexist, racist, transphobic or smell bad is often very boring.

Yeah. That’s a weird hill to die on.

Do you agree with "racism and sexism are bad for all definitions of racism and sexism"? I disagree with that statement, I don't think it is wrong to disagree with that. But lots of people agree with it, and then define racism and sexism to be whatever they don't like and you get a boring monoculture.

That is why I hedged my comment with that it depends on how strict you are. Depending on how you define racism and sexism all of those things will change. So blanked statements that we need to ban them without properly defining exactly what we are banning is really bad, but that is what happens almost everywhere in discussions.

I think you’re painting a lot of people with a really broad brush and you should cite some specific examples of category. What, exactly, is an example of racism and sexism that shouldn’t be banned? Why?

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