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Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

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Are you aware of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Untermensch ? Might be a cultural thing to not like that word.

I have deleted this comment because this discussion is going nowhere.

He's absolutely right. As someone whose society suffered very heavy losses from the Nazis, this is the first thing that came to my mind when I read the root comment. It's like posting swastikas online and then dismissing concerned replies because "it's a Buddhist sign, what are you on about?"

I am the OP that used that word. I was unaware of this connection, my apologies. I will consider this if using the word in the future.

I was aiming for the “not having basic human morals” usage of the word, nothing more.

I am glad to read this. (I am the originally - bit snarky - commenter about your use of the word, and do indeed live in Germany) .. my snap reaction my not have been worded the best it could have been :)

Except in this case the victims (the hungry children) are not the ones being labeled that. Also the word subhuman is in the dictionary (I checked Webster's) with zero reference to the war.

And "n*gro" is the Spanish, non-slur word for "black" but yet we can't use it because US people dislike it. Slavery and such. Cultural sensitivity goes both ways.

> And "n*gro" is the Spanish, non-slur word for "black" but yet we can't use it because US people dislike it. Slavery and such. Cultural sensitivity goes both ways.

Webster's dictionary:

plural Negroes

1 dated, often offensive : a person of Black African ancestry

2 dated, often offensive : a member of a group of people formerly considered to constitute a race (see race entry 1 sense 1a) of humans having African ancestry and classified according to physical traits (such as dark skin pigmentation)

Note the "offensive" warnings. Now let's see subhuman:

: less than human: such as a: failing to attain the level (as of morality or intelligence) associated with normal human beings b: unsuitable to or unfit for human beings subhuman living conditions c: of or relating to a taxonomic group lower than that of humans; the subhuman primates

In the case of subhuman, Webster's dictionary does not give any warning. And there is no reference to any wars.

Don't try to make people say things they are not saying.

In this case the intended meaning was clearly:

"failing to attain the level (as of morality) associated with normal human beings"

Like you, probably, I got a very systemizing brain and had trouble understanding this for decades. What the dictionaries say about the words does not matter - what is offensive to other people does not follow any system, but their feelings. And that means its arbitrary and you have probably no chance to know it ahead of time.

I feel your pain, tho.

I hope you understand that by acting offended, you are offending other people, making them say things they are not saying.

Yes. This is very exploitable.

It is better to stay away from it.

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this is ridiculous. I'm a socialist and I believe that people should have far more of life's necessities provided to them by the state; I think supermarkets should be nationalised; I think water and electricity should be free up to a limit. on the other hand, this "people disagree with me about something sensitive so they're unevolved and/or subhuman" lark is childish as fuck and completely hypocritical

people think things for a reason, and it's rarely because they're sociopaths or they're unevolved or they're stupid, and assuming that it is lazy and uncritical

No, there, at least in the USA, a large amount of very dumb people. They also tend to be quite sadistic as well, thinking 'those people' deserve the sadism and torment.

This percolates through our whole society, one case of which is this scholastic food 'debt'.

And also, during some of Biden's years, there was a few years of free school lunches. And was also summarily cancelled. Even democrats have this pervasive 'those people don't deserve X'.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/free-school-lunches-set...

you're proving my point. people think these things because, as you say, they're instilled in the American national mentality. it makes sense to think that's wrong, it makes sense to think people should think for themselves and try to engage their empathy circuits for people not in their immediate family, but it's taking it a million steps too far to say they're subhuman or unevolved, and it's not helping anything anyway. perhaps it was too far to say that it's rarely because they're stupid though

A less evolved sense of humility (as I originally put it) does not equate to stupid. They are far from stupid - they are ruthless consumers of every scrap of advantage they can get, including the best education, food, clothes to name but a few things. They believe they deserve that advantage.

In fact, they see the person who can't afford lunch as stupid - after all, an intelligent person should at least be able to get lunch - it's so easy! What they don't realise is how much each person is impacted by their own starting position in life (which, I believe to be random), and how that in turn impacts where they are now.

Many "privileged" people lack empathy, because they believe the tables can never turn. They don't even want to entertain the thought. They believe their privilege is a birthright. In some cases, they are probably correct; they will enjoy privilege for their entire lives. But in exceptional circumstances, they will be caught out, and their opinion will undoubtedly change.

So, it's not stupidity, it is willful ignorance. History is full of such examples, some more chilling and devastating than others.

I feel like you're not actually replying to the things I said. I added that they may be stupid as an afterthought given that I value challenging societal norms highly as a signal of intelligence. the main points were elsewhere

How so? You said my comment was ridiculous because I was implying stupidity or a lack of evolution in the general sense, but my comment concerned the evolution of their humility, not their evolution in general. My last comment simply clarified that.

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