cauch

> Did you actually look at any of what was being measured? It's like grades and state standardized tests.

Did you? Because the meta-analysis is NOT limited to grades and state standardized tests, it also includes some studies that look at, for example, university/career paths.

> If you have kids getting straight A+s, that means they were on easy mode, and should have been asked to do more.

If the kid is not learning anything, then they skip to the next year. I believe you mention yourself that your kid skipped class years already. The problem is not about classroom mixed or not, if the kid is above the level, move them to the next mixed classroom year.

If you can't move her to the next classroom because she fails the basic test that checks if she has the basis, then it is the proof that she is learning in the previous year classroom.

> bending over backwards to defend not teaching kids at all as somehow beneficial.

WTF!?

Why on hell would I even want to "not teaching kids"? That is just so crazy. What would I gain from that?

How is that difficult to understand? You arrived in the discussion, said "it's suuuuper easy, we just have to do X, but because of the big bad 'anti-discrimination', my genius idea is rejected".

At no point I tried to defend "not teaching kids". My point is: let's look what say people who study the best way to teach to kids. That's the opposite of trying to not teach kids.

When looking there, I quickly saw you were full of it: you pretended your ideas was "obvious", when there is plenty of studies showing that it is way more complicated than that.

But your reaction was to explain how smart and exceptional you are. The people doing the studies? All idiots. The teachers? All idiots. Only you know the correct way, because you have experience with ONE kid and talked to few other parents.

Sorry, but you have no authority. You are just a parent (and because of that, you are biased, you believe that your experience with your child means that all high performing kids are the same as your child).

I'm not defending "not teaching kids". I'm just trying to explain to you that if the teachers did not accept your idea, is it not because they are evil, or idiots, or in some sort of anti-discrimination crusade (why? why would anyone even care?). It is just that your idea is not convincing at all. We already discuss here that there is no scientific ground to pretend that non-mixed classroom will magically solve all problems (and, yes, this is counter-intuitive, but this is why people have studied that so much). I've also introduced how it simply cannot be doable practically, but of course you ignored that, it is so much comfortable for you to pretend that it is because you are a genius and they are against you. (for example, the teachers claim that HP children require more resource, so putting them in the same classroom will make it impossible to provide enough resource to everyone in the classroom and impact them negatively. I know you are saying that it is impossible that HP kids require more resource, but again, you base that on ONE kid and on few chats, while people who say it is the case are literally the ones who manage these resource)

In all these discussion, you just reinforced that: you proved, again and again, that all your reasoning is only originating on your experience with ONE kid. You prove, again and again, that your reaction to different opinion is "nah, I'm the best, they are all idiots" instead of the healthy scientific honesty of reviewing your conclusion based on new data. You prove, again and again, that if someone does not agree with you, it is inconceivable for you that this person reason for not agreeing with you is not the result of some strange conspiracy where they want to ... not teach kids? ... impose anti-discrimination everywhere because of reason?

You are not interested in finding a good solution, you are interested to entertain the idea that the teachers are idiots and that you know better than them.

And again, I say it again: maybe non-mixed class is good for your particular kid. But your kid is just ONE DATA POINT. For all you know (and I know you will pretend that you know all the HP kids in the world, better than people who works directly with them), your kid is an outlier. And you have to understand that the school will not do something that is just beneficial for your kid alone (and I know "but I talked to other parents...", again, PARENTS ARE WORTH NOTHING. THIS IS NOT SCIENCE. THIS IS NOT FACTS. Often, when they behave like that, just emotional self-entitled ignorants who think they know everything better than everyone)

> I just searched for effects of tracking on high performing students.

What are the first results you get? I get an article on "engagement" (which is not really the subject), then a study that conclude "The results suggest that early tracking increases educational inequality. While less clear, there is also a tendency for early tracking to reduce mean performance." (aka dragging everyone to the bottom)

I find it surprising that you've only found studies that show tracking to be beneficial.

> Also the meta-analysis you posted basically just says that a bunch of these studies have methodological flaws and don't really show anything.

And those are not accounted in the conclusion that is still that mixed classroom is preferred over non-mixed ones.

> And again, you have to use logic here. If you don't teach kids, but still take up their time not teaching them, how are they going to learn things?

That's a fallacy. Mixing classroom is not equal to "not teaching them". Again, you said yourself that a good fraction of the class is high performance kids. 20% is a big fraction, it's 5 students over 20. You decide to frame the situation as if a good fraction was just 100% ignored, which is just you framing the situation so the conclusion is what you want to hear.

> The position you're putting forward is absurd. Literally illogical. Cannot happen.

Reality does not care about your feelings. The reality is what we measure when we measure the facts. This is what these studies have done. They have concluded that your naive logic is incorrect: they have measured that non-mixed classroom does not mean high performance students stop learning.

> ... and I think you'll find I said that I think the smart kids would thrive if you just put them in a room with each other with some educational toys/games, and maybe gave them about a half hour of instruction per day.

And this is probably exactly why mixed classroom don't damage high performing students. You are adamant to pretend that in a classroom of 20% of high performance students, the teachers will lock them in a dark room or only tell them exactly what they are telling the low performing students. But then you also explain that it is easy, just gave them stuffs to do and leave them alone. What you are saying is that basically you can easily care for a high performance student when they are in a mixed classroom.

> The original context was about people having exactly the weird visceral reaction to tracking (or "discrimination" or segregation) that you display.

Which "weird visceral reaction"? You said that non-mixed classrooms are an obvious good solution. This is a lie, this is incorrect. Even being generous and saying that "non-mixed may be a good solution", your affirmation was that "non-mixed wins with a clear margin, it is an _obvious_ solution, and people who are not convinced by it have no legitimacy for this position at all". I don't care about "discrimination", I don't care about "stopping your kid to get smart".

Again, if I'm wrong, it would be SUPER EASY for you: articles like the ones I've provided should simply not exist. If I'm wrong, those articles are IMPOSSIBLE. If indeed non-mixed classrooms are the obvious solution you pretend it to be, every single study should either say "too large uncertainty to conclude anything" or "clear benefice from non-mixed classrooms". The fact that there are studies that say "statistically significant no benefice from non-mixed classrooms" is just the reality telling you that "it's an obvious solution" is not true.

> The fact that you think it's unfulfilling to learn at the pace you're capable of instead of being made to artificially sit and wait is more of a statement about you.

How being in a mixed classroom suddenly stop your kid to learn at the pace she like? YOU SAID IT YOURSELF that she needs half-hour a day of attention per day for this to be satisfied.

This sentence was there where you went all crazy about "those devil people who want to force my smart kid to not be smart" or "those devil people who want all children to be the same, for some reason that no one knows". WHY? WHO IS DOING THAT? You seems to think that people cares about your kid learning or not, and try to stop her learning. That's why I pictured you as obsessed with competition: you assume that kid education is somehow a competition (otherwise there is no reason at all for other people to try to stop your kid to learn).

> And, yes, my kid is an outlier, as are these other kids I'm talking about.

I meant: your kid is an outlier amongst the high performance kids. No kid is the same. No high performance kid is the same. Some will need half-hour a day, some will need five hours. Some will to work out the problem by themselves, some will need guidance. Some will need to learn continuously on a long period of time, some will need scheduled short sessions with big pause in between.

And you may have talked to tens of parents. 1. that is still a ridiculous small sample to drive any conclusion. 2. based on this conversation (for example how you find reason to convince yourself that your kid is in reality smarter than other kids), I'm pretty sure you heard what you wanted to hear from these parents.

> Did you miss the part where ... Do you understand what ...

Calm down, there. I was talking about your kid being an outlier amongst the group of high performing kids. You keep coming up with "my kid don't need more resource, so if someone says HP need more resource, they are lying", "my kid was fine with half-hour of teaching, so that is what a HP kid needs", ... And again, I'm sure you will say that you have discussed that with tens of other parents. Again, tens of parents is NOTHING. It's ANECTODICAL.

But, hey, thanks for showing your true colour: I was talking of your kid being an outlier amongst the HP kids, but you did not hesitate one second to come at me blaming me for something that I did not do at all.

> The school knows this, and doesn't attempt to accommodate it.

It may be the case, but there are a lot of as equally probable hypothesis.

For example: Your kid is used to homeschooling and struggle to adapt to a classroom. Because you cannot conceive that the problem is not the result to your imaginary "bad people who, for reason no one can explain, want to stop children learn", you just jumped to the conclusion "they don't accommodate it, I'm so much smarter than them, let me come with a genius idea". Then, you met the teachers and proposed ideas that people who have tried noticed will not work, and you got angry when they politely discarded them (instead of thinking that maybe they know things you don't, you just assumed you are so much better than them). Then, you talked to other parents, some of them in the same crazy state as you, some of them indulging you, some of them probably trying to balance your position but you did only hear what suits you.

All of that fits very well all the data points. Way more that the hypothesis that, despite the fact that your kid is so easy to teach for and that it will benefit mainly to all the other kids, somehow people refused your idea.

Yeah, you googled "articles that say what I want to hear" and you've found some, and did not really understood what they say. Congrats, I will definitively change my mind now.

But obviously, you "forgot" the articles that don't go in your direction, such as https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1756-5391... (which is easier to find than one of the articles you quote, so you probably either did a search that target specific articles, or saw it and choose to ignore it). This is a meta-analysis (so it is not just one study), and it concludes that per-level classrooms does not improve high performing students while improving the low performing students. In other terms: it says that non-mixed classrooms will drag students to the bottom.

> And yeah if I'm producing better results, I'm going to go ahead and characterize myself as having more expertise, evidently.

You DON'T produce better results, you had ONE student, this is way not enough to conclude if you are producing better results.

> Your claim, basically, is that putting my child in a group of kids that is operating on a level several years beneath her somehow benefits her.

You said yourself that the class contains a big fraction of kids that are better than her (and, yeah, I know, you don't believe the experts, your kid is in fact sooooo smart). Even if your kid is smarter than them, it is a lie to pretend that your kid is in a classroom that has a level which is several years beneath her.

And again, a naive non-expert would have a naive intuition: "oh, if some students are not at her level, of course she will not learn as much new stuff at her level so of course it is not good". Experts know that this reasoning is naive: learning is not just force-feeding books in the kid's brain, and what works with kid X may not work with kid Y. At the end of the day, if what you were saying was true, it would be clearly evidenced in data. But it is not. Even if you can find some articles where they say high performing students in non-mixed classroom did a bit better, how do you explain that there are so many studies that say they don't see the clear gap that your reasoning implies? How do you explain that? Let me guess: they are all communists part of the strange conspiracy because they are afraid of how smart your daughter is.

(by the way, do you realise how stupid your argument is: neither me or my kids will ever have to compete with your daughter. And competition is not even about high-performer or smart people: the smart people often end up being uninterested in the stupid egomaniacal competition, they prefer fulfilling lives. The fact that your daughter is smart does not make her a threat to anyone, and if she is smart, the fact that she was in a non-mixed classroom will certainly not impact her opportunities. If it does, I guess it means she is not really as smart as you think she is)

This is yet another "armchair scientist" approach: in science, we know these kind of intuitions are very risky. You fall for it because you are not an expert, you are just a self-entitled "Karen" who got confirmation bias that they know better than everyone.

Again, maybe your kid (and the handful of your "social network") is one of these outliers who thrive in home-schooling or non-mixed classroom, but it does not mean it is true. It does not mean your "genius idea" is not something totally bad to apply.

Again, this is 100% armchair "specialist". If you want to know real expertise, you should _never_ listen to someone who said "I know, I've lived it". Living it does not make you an expert, it make you a biased person who think their particular limited experience can be generalised.

As a proof, you were coming with your genius idea "let's create per-level classroom". Did you even googled it? People have tried, with a scientific methodology, blind study and all, with absolutely no reason to lie and with different concurrent teams re-trying, hoping to gain from proving their competitors wrong, and yet reaching the same results. And their conclusion is that "per-level classroom" drags kids to the bottom and "mixed classroom" is just better for the kids.

You are telling me you have sooooo much expertise on the subject, but at the same time you felt head first in the first naive trap on the book.

The "I talk to parents", the "I've checked on the internet", the "I've asked ChatGPT", the "I've read a book", ... This is not expertise.

I pity the teachers who have to see you giving them lessons on things that they obviously know 100x better than you. Do you realise that when you were teaching 1-2 kids and talking to 5-10 parents, they taught HUNDREDS of gifted kids (you said yourself that in this school they have tens of those per year) and talked to HUNDREDS of parents. If what you went through gave you some expertise, then the teachers you have in front of you have 100x your expertise: they've done exactly what you've done, but 100x more than you.

As for the ending, it's so ridiculous. Why would I want to do something bad to your kid? We want the SAME thing: for the kids to get the best. You came and said "per-level classrooms are obviously the best answer". I quickly check and see "per-level classrooms is a stupid and naive idea, don't do that". Because I want to HELP your kid, I just say that maybe you should not assume you know all the answers (initially quite friendly, but the arrogance and the insults have slowly eroded that), when you apparently haven't read a book on the subject, assumed by default that the teachers are all stupid, and concluded that if anyone does not do as you say they are trying to hurt the children for no reason at all.

And this whole conversation has nothing to do with "discrimination". I SUPPORT organising classroom with the primary objective to be more useful for the students. I don't consider this being discrimination. The reason I don't think you are right is not because there would be "discrimination". I haven't said that anywhere. The reason I don't think you are right is because you are a parent with very limited expertise (a couple of children and some social network, that is all anecdotic data points) and you are proposing solutions that are naive and known to be stupid. But you are unable to even conceive that I'm not motivated by some kind of ideology. It tells so much about your capacity to analyse the reality.

> I have very deep lived personal experience with being a gifted child and having gifted children. I know what sorts of resources they need.

The fact that you are explaining that because you have experienced TWO situations, you are in a position to know better than people wo have way more experience, with a way more diverse set, shows that the main problem is you acting like a "Karen".

> I think at this point the failings of the education system with respect to phonics are widely known enough that you can just discount professional opinion entirely. We're talking mass incompetence and failure. A complete disaster.

First, you realise the conclusions I've presented are obtained by studies in plenty of different countries. Are you saying that somehow every education system all over the world (including the ones that did not do the mistakes you pretend is the proof they are unreliable) are all incompetent?

> ... when I'm wildly outperforming them as a layman dedicating a few minutes a day to the task

How many children have you taught? Because from what you said, it was ONE. You have no idea of the diversity of students, you have never experienced student for which your approach crashes and burns lamentably.

But, yeah, you are an armchair educator on the internet, so, obviously you know wayyyyyy better. You even say something (which is: it's better to have classroom separated by levels) that a simple google search demonstrates is terribly simplistic, and even risk bringing everyone to the bottom.

> So, how could a mixed classroom possibly be better for them?

That argument is the level of "how can the earth be round, I see it flat around me".

I don't care about your specific kid. You base all your conclusion on this single data point. The studies are looking at thousands of gifted kids, and conclude that mixed classrooms are better, including for the high performing ones. Maybe not for your kid, but then you are asking to bring everyone else to the bottom just for your special kid.

Also, your kid is not even on the top of her class. There is no way that the teacher don't provide tasks also for the smart ones as they are a big fraction of the classroom. But you will tell me that you know exactly what the teachers are providing, despite not being in the classroom, just because "I know better than them".

> I didn't say that; they said that to me. The fact that HP needs fewer resources is precisely why it's insane. It's exactly my complaint.

This is not at all obvious from your explanation. But also, between you and them, if I had to bet, I would say that they are way better positioned to know about resources that you do. They are the ones providing the resources, they are the ones doing the "accounting", they see, with their own eyes, what needs resource or not. Did you even consider that maybe they are right on this point?

> You still have the question of why is this large cohort of smart kids in class with kids who can't count to four? ... why aren't we teaching them at their level?

Did you do some research on this subject? Apparently, there is a lot of academic research there, and the conclusion is that grouping by levels is not as beneficial or as an obvious good idea as it seems.

Especially in young children, skills can vary very quickly and "smartness" is not one dimensional. Apparently the best recommendation is to have mixed class but with the teacher aware of the level of each kids. Which can perfectly be exactly what your school is doing: in which case, they are doing the best for your kid and you are pushing them to adopt something that is worse.

On top of that, you said that they say HP requires more resource. If it is the case, it means that having them all in one classroom may be impossible to manage. So, it would _hurt_ the HP classroom and be dragging everyone to the bottom.

> and therefore everybody just has to move at the bottom

I don't understand why you are saying this. Nothing in my argument have been about "moving to the bottom for the sake of some minority".

In my first message, I have done some math showing that, in the context where HP require more resource, it looks to me that YOUR proposal is moving everyone to the bottom.

In my second message, I argue that your proposal is based on what will be best for your child, and that another parent will ask for something different. No "moving to the bottom" there either.

What is happening is that you don't know much about the subject, but you have _decided_ that splitting classroom is "obviously" the best way to go, you've _decided_ that you better how resources are divided than people whose job is literally to provide the resource.

YOU are the one who come with a simplistic "good idea" that people have tested in past, studied, and concluded that it brings everyone to the bottom.

First, you can of course do "bad discrimination" when it comes to favouring your family and friends. That's for example the case with nepotism.

But, I don't know about you, but when I do something nice for my family or my friends, I don't have them compete with non-family or non-friend in my head. I'm never in a situation where I think "oh, X will get this, but I prefer to have my friend having this". This is a horrible situation: friendship is not a zero-sum competition where you reward your friends and punish your non-friends.

If I have the choice of giving a job to my friend or to a foreigner, I will give the job to the most qualified.

And, yes, I can "favour" my country: for example, I may support a national sport team. No discrimination there. But if I have to make a choice between two countries that deserve it equally and that this decision has bad consequence for one country, I will certainly not pick the country I like the most just because I like it the most.

So, again: there are "ok discrimination" and "bad discrimination", both can be about country/family/...

But you were saying "there are too many high performing kids in my daughter's cohort and they don't have enough resources for her to get any support". If HP needs less resource, then I would think that the more there is HP kids, the more your daughter will get resource.

I'm still not sure of your argument. You are asking to split into two classes: one with 25-30 kids (the "smart" group), which includes your daughter, and one with 15 kids (the "dumb" group). But you choose the threshold so that your daughter makes it into the "smart" group. Would you also be happy if they decide to do one class with 25 kids and one class with 25 kids, and your daughter is in the "dumb" group? And if you had to choose between only two choices: either the status quo or your kid in the "dumb" group, will you prefer the second one for the benefice of kids in the "smart" group? It feels like you are asking to redistribute for the benefit of some kids only (and in particular, yours), even if it has bad consequences on other kids. I would not use the term "discrimination" in this situation, but I think it is a terrible state of mind. You need to understand that you are not special: if the school was applying your idea, other parents whose kids are hurt by this idea will come to them and complain like you've done, and if they accepted to change things for you, they have no reason to not accept to change things for them.

I also hear your explanation about how your kid progressed well when homeschooled and all that. But you seem to jump to the conclusion that the difference is due to failure of the school or the presence of lower performing kids. That does not seem obvious to me, especially when you explain that you were not giving her more than half hour of instruction in a day and that she is years ahead (not that it is bad, but that's probably a better explanation why she is not flourishing at school).

In short, I really don't think it is a good example that shows that people who tend toward NIMBY or pro-vouchers are reasonable people.

I'm not sure I even understand your problem.

You are saying that your daughter is in a class composed of, let's say, 10 "average-performing" kids (AP kids) and 10 "high-performing" kids (HP kids), and that because there is 10 HP that require specific support, they don't have enough resources to get any support to her. You also say there are enough HP to form one classroom, so let's say there are 2 classrooms with both 20 students, 10 of which HP and 10 of which AP. But then you are saying that the obvious solution is to split differently, with 20 AP in one classroom and 20 HP in another classroom. But it is not clear to me how it would free up resources.

If 1 HP needs 3 units of resource and 1 AP needs 1 unit of resource, you will have, before, one classroom that needs 30+10 units of resource, and one classroom hat needs 30+10 units of resource. Total: 80. And after your proposal, one classroom that needs 20 units of resource, one classroom that needs 60 units of resource. Total: 80.

If we have only one teacher per classroom, and a teacher can only provide 20 units of resource, and that the teacher was giving resource proportionally, it means that, in the initial scenario, your daughter will get 50% of what she needs, and in your proposal, 100% of what she needs. But it also means that a HP will get 50% of what they need in the initial scenario, and 33% of what they need in your proposal. In this context, it does look that you are asking for a change that profit your daughter while impacting negatively other kids. And that we went for a "balanced" situation where all kids get 50% of what they need, to a situation where some kids get more than others.

Of course, it is way more complex than this. For example, what is "equality": provide the same percentage of needed resource, or provide the same absolute value of resource independently of the need (cf. the famous picture of people of different height using wooden boxes to see a football game). Both of them are equality of opportunity, but with a different metric: one says they will achieve the same success if they provide the same effort, one says they received exactly the same treatment.

But at the end, I'm not convinced the situation is really "There is an obvious good solution (my solution) and the school is being bad for not recognizing my genial idea and having concerns around fairness. That is therefore the proof that people will reject good idea because they are obsessed with the diktat of 'no discrimination'".

> There is your family, and different families, and you want to end up with your kid having the last icecream rather then some other guy having it.

I guess there are 3 possibilities:

1. You believe all discrimination are bad. But in this case, it also means that buying a icecream for you kid is bad, because you gave it to your kid and not someone else. By extension, it basically means a large fraction of our human interactions (each time the interaction profit to someone else than us) are discrimination, and therefore bad.

2. You believe no discrimination are bad. But society obviously disagree with that. If, as a group, we decide that neuroticnews25 should be treated badly and differently of someone else not based on objective reasons but just because we feel like it, it is pretty clear that it is universally recognized as an unfair situation.

3. You agree that some discrimination are ok, and some discrimination are not ok. But in this case, you need to have a relatively objective criteria.

I gave you what I believe to be a relatively good criteria. Not perfect, but way sufficiently good that I cannot "cheat" and cherry pick the discriminations that I like as "ok discrimination" and the discriminations that I don't like as "bad discrimination".

This is the important point: even if the criteria is not perfect, the important point is that the criteria is not hypocritical or opportunist: the criteria is not built to justify what I like. This is the case because the criteria is based on a logic independent of what I personally like or dislike.

This criteria is: if the discrimination is mainly, principally, based on a wish to create advantages to the in-group and/or create disadvantages to the out-group, it is bad.

Obviously, it is not the case when I buy an icecream to my kid. At no point in my mind, when I buy an icecream to my kid, I even think "what about the other kids". They are not in the picture. "other kids" would not even exist and the situation and decision would be the same to me. And my wish is to provide an icecream to my kid, not to make sure the other kids don't have one (if they end up having one, it does not matter to me).

But when you look at situation where people point out discrimination as bad things, this is the case. When people want to "not allow black people in the front of the bus, or at universities", the whole argument _needs_ the existence of black people to even exist in the first place. The argument is not "discriminating by side-effect", the argument is "discriminating on purpose", the goal is to have different situations for the two groups.

And what I'm saying is that when people are saying "it's discrimination, it's bad", it is based on this criteria (it does not mean people who said that cannot be wrong, or that we cannot discuss if indeed this criteria is fully satisfied or not). I was answering to a comment that was implying that people who say "it's discrimination, it's bad" don't have any criteria and just considered all discrimination as bad.

> But you are favouring your kid, and it would become conflictual if someone demanded your money for his kid.

But it is not the main motivation.

If Bob said to Alice they will pick them up at the airport, if Bob's car has an engine problem and Bob is unable to pick up Alice, then the consequence is that Alice is not driven back home.

If Bob said to Alice they will pick them up at the airport, if Bob drive to the airport, see Alice, slow down and make a rude gesture at Alice and drive away, then the consequence is that Alice is not driven back home.

But people will not judge Bob equally on these two situations.

It's the same here: people say "it's discrimination, it's bad" only when people created a "bad" situation, a situation where the main argument for their decision was "there is us and there is them". This is what makes it bad.

I (and probably the large majority of people who are labelled "liberal" within this discussion, not sure if it includes me or not) perfectly understand the origin of the need of building in-groups.

When I buy icecream for my kid, I don't pretend that it is because my kid is more worthy of icecream than the random kid. My objective is not to "favour my kid": I don't think of the icecream as something that my kid should deserve more than a random kid.

My point is that when you see a liberal person saying "it's a discrimination. it's bad", it is, in the large majority of the case, a discrimination where the principal motivation is "conflictual", where the principal motivation is based on "there is us, and there is them, and we want to end up with us having X and them not having it".

As proof, it is obviously not true to pretend that when you buy an icecream to your kid, the majority of liberal people will come at you and say you are discriminating.

Well, yes, liberalism is often pushing against building a society where we have "clans" or "groups" that exert authorities on individual actions.

I don't think it means that "ideas like the nuclear family are hard to define within liberalism". I think they define them as clearly as in conservative circles (if not better, in conservative circles, these notions are often "gut feelings").

And I don't think liberalism is trying to ban things like nuclear family. People can still have as much nuclear family as they want, as long as it does not impact people who don't recognise their arbitrary authority or who are not part of one (willingly or not).

For example, Black Lives Matter is a good example, as they never rejected the nuclear family itself, just said they don't recognize its authority when this structure is restricting the solidarity potential between individuals.

Same with citizenship: it is not true that liberalism struggles with this notion. Liberalism is just trying to find a fair balance and avoid cases of unfair restrictions on people whose only crime was to be born on the wrong side of an imaginary line. It does not mean citizenship is rejected in itself, but it means that you cannot arbitrarily invent rules that favourise the group you are part of.

I'm not sure it is true that "discrimination = bad" is a "liberal frame".

On the opposite, I feel that this idea is quite common amongst non-liberals who misinterpret liberals. A liberal would say "this is discrimination, this is bad", and the non-liberal would hear "this is discrimination, all discrimination is bad, this is bad". But similarly, one could say "this is sharing private information, this is bad". Does it mean that the conclusion is that sharing private information is always bad? Even when you share info with your family? Or when you open up to your partner? The mistake done by the liberals is that they assume the context is obvious. They assume that it is obvious for everyone that "that particular discrimination" is one of the bad ones.

(and, sure, I'm sure some liberal people also don't get the distinction and fall into the mistake of thinking that all discrimination is bad. My point is that it is not particularly a "liberal frame")

There is a good way to estimate if a discrimination is "the normal one" and "the bad one". A discrimination is bad if the real principal objective is to favour the in-group and disfavour the out-group.

People use that criteria themselves unconsciously. If I say "I'm not giving this to Steve because I know they don't like it", people will just think it's fine. If I say "I'm not giving this to Steve despite the fact he deserves it but I don't like him", people will notice it's unfair. I think liberal people just assume this is obvious, or even not realise it themselves.

This criteria works well. For example, in the examples you gave, none of these actions have been done because "we don't think the people we excluded from the advantage don't deserve it for not being our in-group".

But it is also true that when it comes to conservatism, there are elements where the discrimination is made to exclude the out-group not on fair principal reason, but for the principal reason that it is advantageous for the in-group and the out-group is arbitrarily considered "not worthy of it".

My approach was to show how your approach felt apart.

Do you really think that the initial comment has said: "People want the opposite of best, frictionless and most familiar experience"?

That's exactly your logic: the initial comment was simply saying "personally I just prefer to use Firefox". To which you answer "well, people want the best, frictionless and most familiar experience, can you prove me that it is an incorrect sentence".

So, I've simply shown you that this logic is stupid: I've applied the same approach with a slightly different target.

And you ended up concluding that this is a pathetic approach. Well done, you just understood why people don't like your comment.

And, to be perfectly clear, I never said you believe (or you say) that people want to be abused. I'm saying the opposite: we all agree that pretending that is crazy. The same way we all agree that pretending that people don't want the best, frictionless, most familiar experience is stupid.

People don't WANT to be abused. This is soooo stupid to pretend it is the case.

Simply, people are just making choices and no choice is perfect. They use Google Chrome DESPITE the disadvantages of Google Chrome.

And that is exactly why the argument "people use Google Chrome so Google Chrome cannot have negative consequence" is simplistic.

But more importantly, some of the advantages of Google Chrome only exist because some people are not using Google Chrome. It is not a zero sum game: the best situation is when we have an healthy balance when people are using alternative. The initial comment you answer to did nothing else, just said "me, I use Firefox", it did not even said "everyone should use Firefox".

And the fact that they are not aware of a bad consequence that is bad for them is really not a good argument. In fact, it demonstrates that your logic is flawed: the fact that the majority of people use something does not demonstrate that this product is a good idea. This is the usual race to the bottom: let's enshittify as much as the people can bare. That is just creating a shitty society. Civilisations would be so much better if this mentality did not exist.

I had this conversation so many time before, and it is so simplistic and naive. Can you not just do better?

> Since you're making rude false accusations like that, let me ask you, are you saying most people DON'T want "the best, frictionless and most familiar experience"?

People want frictionless and familiar experience. But they also want tools where they are not the product (either by having their data sold, or being fed ads, or being captured by enshittificating services because alternative services cannot compete due to artificial barriers, ...). (edit: and I'm not saying that Chromium does that, just showing that "what people want" is not so simplistic)

Can you prove me that this other statement is incorrect? Are you saying that most people DON'T want to not be abused by their tools?

Of course not. The problem is not that your sentence is not true, it is that your sentence is loaded: you just provide one obvious sentence saying "most people love having the benefices of this product", but totally ignore that 1) this product also has disadvantages that people don't like, 2) alternative products provide other set of benefices and disadvantages.

I personally agree with the previous comment: these "most people" arguments are usually very poor, and it does not reflect very well on people who make them. (the fact that "best, frictionless and familiar experiences" is an advantage can be a good point to bring to the conversation, but it is way less simplistic than that (what is "best", what is "familiar", did people did not want browser tabs because it was not familiar, is a monopolistic situation as with IE6 at the time really "frictionless" when it allowed IE6 to not progress or fix bugs, is "open in 0.62 seconds" being better than "open in 0.75 seconds" really matter for the majority of people, ...) and this discussion can easily done in a better way than with the poor "most people want" argument)

Also, was it the case during Obama? If not, why? Right now, in other countries, they have negative impacts from tariffs, wars, economical crises, ... that seem all be linked to bad management from the US government.

So, yes, in HN, when talking about some subject, for example Grok, then, yes, the fact that Grok is instrumentalised in the culture war is _on topic_ and people will discuss it. This is not the result of a conspiracy against US. This is just the result of the fact that US is really shit right now.

I don't think it can be the point, as the point was "bad things happen in other places and yet people don't care about it, they criticize US because it's the current trend".

One of my reaction was that one of their examples (immigration in UK/EU) seems to be an exact counter-examples where US people are overestimating crises that are outside of US and point the fingers.

As for the situation in UK/EU, a real reaction that happened in UK/EU is that if something like ICE was to happen in UK/EU, the population will never accept that (they may be wrong, but they are right that there is something there). Not because immigration laws are less unfair or less cruel in UK/EU, but because in US, there was not even the decency of pretending a due-process was needed. You can deport in UK/EU, but it is done by people who follow the rules and who are not particularly "against" people they deport. With ICE, it looks like cowboys who openly don't care about due-process. In UK/EU, the machine can be cruel. In US, there is no machine at all, just people openly showing they don't care.

> but my point is that here on HN, it has become a truism that Elon performed a nazi salute.

I don't think it's a correct formulation. The idea that this gesture was not a mistake is just the consensus. Here or everywhere else. Of course, "official" entities (like companies or official instance) will not openly take a position because it can hurt them. But it is just "politically correct" to avoid being clear on the subject, while the large majority, unofficially, know what happened.

Strangely, you seems to both saying that "political discussions should not happen here" and saying "people have political discussions and build their opinion also outside of HN, so if they present their opinion without redoing here the whole discussion, it is not valid". If people had discussions elsewhere and reached a conclusion, the fact that they share a consensus here does not mean that this consensus is a dogma.

Not sure what is your point: all of these are also strongly discussed.

Interestingly, "migrants in the UK and EU" seems to even be one of the favorite subject of conversation of americans (especially conservatives), totally blown out of proportion with respect to the reality of the crisis.

But importantly, people react to the conversation that is already on the table. When you see people on HN criticizing the US government, it is in the large majority of the case when the US government is a relevant subject of the conversation while crime and drugs in Latin America is not. If HN was talking more about Latin America, maybe there would be more negative reactions about their crisis around crime and drugs. In the meanwhile, the US government actions that are discussed outside of US are in the large majority actions that has a direct impact on the people discussing. Tariff and petrol cost have way more impact on European countries than drug cartel in Latin America (and often way more than even migrants in these countries).

> But my experience here is that almost all "government does something bad" posts are about the US. This is, to me, evidence of a bias.

What about an evidence that the US government is exceptionally bad while also having a lot of impact on other people's lives?

> My point was simply this: "Elon sieg-heiled showing that he's a Nazi" has become dogma around here, because nobody is engaging in constructive debate about it, because the opposing viewpoints are either not making it to the screens, or not being offered in the first place.

I think the subject is debated again and again each time it appears. There were tons of newspaper article debating the subject.

You say you don't know Musk and the context around him. Well, how can you know if there was constructive debate then? You basically say "I did not care to read any article discussing of Musk's ideology, but I conclude that if someone link Musk to one ideology, it's surely a superficial reaction".

(as for the need of having some political discussion when talking about technology, the fact that you admit not understanding the context around Musk shows that maybe in fact it is more needed that you think it is)

An interesting aspect is that not only the far-left is thinking it was a nazi salute, the far-right too, welcoming it and seeing it as Musk supporting them.

For me, the gesture is already quite suspicious (People have tried to cherry-pick similar gestures from other people, but they don't come close. The way the hand is flat at the end does not seem something that come "naturally" or "by accident", as it does not occur in others). But the reaction to the controversy is even more suspicious.

As I've said, far-right people were saying it was a nazi salute, and Musk never deny that to them. He criticized "far-left", or even instrumentalized it to attack people he does not like (for example, he attacked Wikipedia for just saying "some people compared the gesture to a nazi salute", which, according to him, is the proof that Wikipedia is part of the far-left conspiracy). He may have publicly said it was not a nazi salute, but it is clear that it is not enough to convince his far-right supporters it was not one.

So, yes, I think that "he has made a nazi salute" should be the default hypothesis. The data fits wayyyy better with this hypothesis than the one where it was an accident. No need to pretend that this hypothesis is favorised because of a conspiracy of biased people against Musk.

(Personally, I think that Musk did this gesture on purpose, in order to troll, trying to "trigger the woke". Does it make of him a Nazi? Well, some people supported the Nazi party because they were intrinsically "nazi" inside (whatever that means, probably something different for every single nazi). Some people supported the Nazi party just to troll their neighbour. They all ended up guilty of nazism all the same. So, while it can be an interesting nuance, it does not matter: if you are happy to play with the nazis, you are as toxic for humanity as them.)

I think the US, right now, is just exceptionally bad (not just the president, the whole culture, divisiveness, weaponized fake news, ...).

If a president is just being not competent, it would be normal that the majority of the posts are negative.

I wonder how it was for a "normal" president during a "normal" period. For example, Obama? From what I recall, the international comments were pretty balanced at the time.

But shouldn't anything about Grok be flagged as political then? (or rather: where do you put the threshold?)

There is a big political aspect to Grok: it does not really bring much more technologically than any other model, its existence is mainly political in the first place. And talking about it / promoting it is participating to that: not everyone who does that does it for ideological reason, but a part of people doing it clearly does.

On my side, and to build on top of what you've said here, I think the article misses the point of the fact that anger is a useful and healthy societal tool.

The naive disney approach to anger is "you should not be angry, it is baaaad". But anger is an important signal to put limits on what is not acceptable to do in society. If my neighbour throw their garbage over the fence in my garden, me being angry at them is the uncomfortable situation they will be faced with and that will teach them it is not acceptable. Alternatives don't work: any other response will signal that what they've done is in fact "not that bad afterall, otherwise people would have been angry".

I think it's what is missing in the article. Anger incorrectly directed is a bad thing. But the article implies that there is no correct direction to the anger, which makes the article sounds as naive and misdirected as people who get angry at the wrong persons.

I would even say that being angry at the wrong person is as bad as not being angry at the right person.

Being angry is a societal tool to put limits on what can or cannot be done. If there is no anger when people crosses the line, then there is no real signal for them to not cross the line. And, no, "a peaceful rational argument" is not an alternative. This is not at all the same signal, this is a signal that is sent way earlier before that specific line and it is exactly how the overton window shifts.

> The guy who initially accused me of being creepy all of a sudden understands that there's an entertainment component to how I communicate.

You realise I laugh at you and not with you, right?

For example, the hilarious fact that you try to convince me that I "refuse to let go" when not only you are the one starting talking to me, saying we're in "too deep", saying you want an "unsolicited following" of me, and now wishing to "run into each other" and implying you care enough to be interested to know where I live.

You are really obsessing over me, don't you?

> You ask me what my goal is. The question is, for someone who keeps saying they don't care -- what is yours?

What? My goal for what? For answering? It was literally the content of my previous comment, you pillock.

Your turn to answer now, what was your goal to contact me. Wait, I can do it for you: "because I'm so great that I needed to apologize to you because you are so pathetic and I worry about you and wanted to help by explaining how much you suck". Move on, bud, you are pathetic. Whatever you are looking for, you will never get it. Cut your losses and stop obsessing over me.

> The good old Cauchenator needs somewhere he can release his anger.

And yet you are the one who had the need to talk to me.

> Someone who has even the slightest desire of winning doesn't apologize bubs.

Someone who has even the slightest desire of not looking like an idiot does not pretend that the person he practices an "unsolicited following" over is the one who "cannot let go". Idiots don't always do things that align with their goal.

But, yeah, you know what, if you want to convince me that you did not contact me because I got under your skin in the previous conversation and you are still upset about it, you know what you can do: tell me what is your goal for talking to me.

> If we ever run into each other, that'll be in an interesting discussion. We're not that far from each other.

You would love that, wouldn't you? Obsessing over me much?

Responding is fun because your answers are entertaining and make me laugh. The fact that I keep putting a coin to see the little monkey dance does not mean that when the little monkey emits some sound I would take it personally.

And I enjoy thinking you get more and more convinced that I care the more I answer. Why would I stop? You are literally giving me reward for answering you.

> You care because the toxicity in your bones that you refuse to let go of needs an online enemy you can't direct your toxicity towards.

I cannot let go so much that I recontacted you out of the blue after weeks. Oh, wait, it was you. "We broke up but my ex is so not over me, it is very annoying. They even said my name and got angry when they saw me stalking them behind the bush, if it's not the proof".

Again, you did not answer: what is your goal here? What do you think you will receive? You know that it will never go further than that, that you will never feel that you've "won", that you will never be really convinced that any of your insults have ever landed. It will end like the last conversation, and it will be as unsatisfying for you.

In fact, even if I say exactly what you want to hear, you will not be satisfied, because you will always have a doubt in the back of your mind that I just said that to fool you to think you've "won".

Also, a scientist is interviewed in the documentary (I haven't seen the documentary, but my understanding is that it is the only real expert involved), Prof Katya Rubia, and they recently reacted to the documentary:

"My own contribution to this programme has been largely misrepresented as my comments were cherry-picked, truncated and presented out of context to make them fit into the programme’s narrative"

They comment further in the article, also concluding that the documentary is non-scientific and ill-advised.

https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-the-tv...

I'm still not sure what you imagine this conversation will do. What do you think will happen? You know I think you are ridiculous and pathetic, already from the previous conversation. And you're coming back after months to do this strange little dance, it just looks so unhinged. Do you really think this whole conversation will change that, and not in fact reconfirming that my first impression was correct?

I feel that you are trying to convince me that you are very wise by doing more and more unhinged things. I'm not sure why you think this would even work.

As I've said, I'm 100% fine to know that you think I'm rotten. You already insulted me previously, I got the message and I can't care less, so why come back to do it again? Why would you think I will take you seriously now? Are you "trying to save me from myself"? That's not really convincing: coming back to a stranger on the internet after few months for pure altruism, that is not something that a sane person would do (especially as you were pretending that you did not care at all). Instead of "trying to save me from myself", the readers will suspect that you came back because you still have things on your chest, and that this conversation is more for you than for me. That's sad.