Comment by jniles | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jniles | Hacker News Reader

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I thoroughly disagree.

The point is that we are seeing too much PC, and it is corrupting the nature of public debate. All comments become subjective to the audience, rather than subjective to the speaker. The examples cited by the author all are encompassed in the quote

" I think it’s these very small things that reinforce cultural and racial stereotypes.. "

to which the author disagrees. You are correct, there is no appropriate scale to measure being offended, which is why unchecked (read: no scale to judge) PC results in kids being kicked out of school, a huge industry being built around PC counseling, etc. The author is not proposing removing PC altogether, just that it is being laughably abused to the detriment of everyone.

I'd be inclined to agree.

    " I think it’s these very small things that reinforce   
     cultural and racial stereotypes.. "

I tend to agree with the quote. To use a analogy to programming languages, in Python one is always tempted to use lists, whether they are the appropriate data structure or not. And experience then comes in the form of many solutions using lists.

As for too much PC, I think the problems are rather created by lazy thinking instead of PC. So in a way there is a industry which exploits PC, but the solution is not less PC, the solution is more critical thinking. ( And bad articles really do not help with that.)

What if critical thinking comes up with the "wrong" answers? Most of the biggest thought criminals on the internet merely mention facts that exist for anyone to see. What if, after running lots of multiple regressions to get rid of confounding variables, distasteful conclusions persist?

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