I'm worried about this 'silence is violence' meme. Its seems a thinly disguised 'if you aren't for us, you're against us' which is fairly infantile thinking.
I know its intended to incite action, which is certainly overdue. But it has its downside too, mainly that it alienates folks.
Not really. It's not about being "against" anyone, it's about pretending to not have any responsibility while taking part in a structurally racist system.
A lot of white people claim to be anti-racists but are unwilling to actually act on it, including the most basic step of speaking up when they see it happen, or acknowledging the existence of structural racism. In other words, their claim is more performative and about convincing themselves and others that they are Good People, than actually being interested in challenging a status quo that obviously wrongs a lot of people.
This is also known as being an "enabler" - that is, allowing others to do wrong by looking the other way.
"Silence is violence" merely calls this out. It reminds us that we are enablers of this violence if we remain silent.
The vast majority of defensiveness I see in response to this pretty much just boils down to worrying about one's own position of being seen as a Good Person (by themselves and by others), instead of worrying about what is actually the right thing to do.
If the actual issue is that the system is "structurally" racist, why do we even care about blaming people for their silence, or lack thereof? Isn't it a basic starting point of performing a proper "structural" or "root-cause" based analysis of a problematic system, that one should avoid preemptively assigning blame? You really can't have it both ways, this whole way of thinking makes zero sense.
It’s a system of people. So obviously the “root-cause analysis” would only happen if the problem wasn’t an accepted part of society. Why would anyone seek to solve a problem that no one cares about.
If half of the population (the people with power) directly benefits from an unjust system, but says nothing about it, it will never be addressed.
There is a conflict of interest.
How can you benefit from an injustice, stay silent, and still just passively hope it will get fixed? Hundreds of years in isn’t proof enough that sitting around hoping someone else fixes it doesn’t work?
> half of the population (the people with power) directly benefits from an unjust system...
Fix what? Slavery (including the enslavement of whites) is not legal, at least not in the US. Everything is de-segregated and we have laws to protect certain classes of minorities. Beyond legalities I see black-promotion constantly in media. Everything looks perfectly fine from my perspective (I could do without the propaganda though). As a reminder our last president was (half) black.
You're imagining that the US is not beneficial historically to everyone. There's a reason people from Europe, Asia, latin america, etc. immigrated to America. They didn't come because "America is only benefits white slave-owners!" The entire point of the "american dream" is that people without power can find a way to prosper. Are we supposed to pretend none of that ever happened?
So what is this injustice du jour that suddenly, over the last few weeks, has become so pressing? Policing? I don't think there's evidence to support that blacks are targetted by cops because they're black. Poor neighborhoods probably do require more policing than non-poor neighborhoods as, naturally, criminal activity is more prevalent amongst the poor. Relative to other minorities my understanding is that blacks are underperforming in various ways. Surely you can't be so easily deluded into believing statements like "our black kids are being killed by cops every minute!" More whites are killed by cops. Blacks are overrepresented in proportion to their population. That blacks are overrepresented in certain figures does not support a radical claim like "systemic racism," contrary to Twitter logic.
Is it some other "injustice" you're so worked up about? Is it some imaginary injustice that is not even possible to resolve? Why don't you be specific about your radical claims; your statements are empty Twitter platitudes as far as I'm concerned.
Frankly, I resent the implication that I, as a white, am somehow benefiting from "injustice."
The criminal justice system needs a lot of fixing. The rate of incarceration and criminalization is insane in a Western context, and does not actually help community safety. This is something that there's broad consensus about among social scientists.
I think the problem is that it's not really in the power of regular citizens to make meaningful changes to structural/institutional racism; these kind of changes have to happen at a different level (e.g. correcting the disadvantages socio-economic status would probably my #1 thing, although I'm not 100% sure how to do this). You can "not be silent" all you want, but if that doesn't change much then, it's kinda of ... pointless.
"Looking the other way" in the face of blatant racism is of course bad and, IMHO, inexcusable, but it's usually a lot more subtle than this. Besides, that if speaking up may have real consequences for you? What if it risks alienating life-long friends, your job, your volunteer work? And will speaking up actually achieve anything?
Also some people might choose to focus on different aspects of society to improve. A day has only 24 hours, and there are many possible topics you can fight for. Not everyone needs to fight for every cause.
wouldn't a phrase like "silence is consent" or "silence enables racism" be more appropriate?
the problem is, we have multiple parties that are at odds with one another, and there are only two ways to come to an agreement. Either both parties have good will and are willing to cooperate, or one party submits to the other.
"Silence is violence" is telling me to submit, not cooperate, so why would i care to sink time into proving I'm a good person when the general attitude has no good will for my position?
further, I'm also concerned that violence is generally reciprocated with more violence. This sentiment lays the groundwork to commit real violence against good people that are just trying to mind their own business.
I think a lot of the "words are violence" types are also trying to prove they are Good People, just with a different standard of what makes one "Good".
Wow, you sure know a lot of what people actually think and what their motives really are, sometimes when those motives are unknown even to the people who have them.
Objecting to racism isn't the same as toeing the BLM party line. The more extreme variants of the BLM movement are explicitly racist. The phrase "silence is violence" ignores this distinction.
Partisans will accuse anyone who dissents of racism or self-hatred and internalized racism.
What's the plan? Do you start executing anyone who doesn't openly support your cause? I mean, their silence is violence right? It's justified if we kill them. Only by killing the racists and enablers of racism, can we tear down the old system and build a new one that is not racist. I think that's the right thing for you to do. Anything less must be perpetuating a systemically racist system, no?
Being silent does not mean they "pretend to have no responsibility". Believe it or not, not everyone uses social media and broadcasts their opinion to the world. Believe it or not, not everyone has time to protest.
Heckler's Veto[0] in another form but the results are the same, silence differing opinion but now you have an excuse to commit violence against those who hold it or have others act on your behalf; this can include using government or employers.
A very dangerous period we are entering when honest open debate is framed as anything such. We are walking right into it and worse many are find excuses for specific discussion points as warranting this behavior not fully understanding that once that genie is out of the bottle it may take a generation or more to put it back.
The worst of it is that it is happening in newsrooms where groups want stories written specific ways and certain opinions must be silenced at all cost.
This "moral majority" will go far beyond what many fear mongers thought a "religious right" could ever do because they do not inherent limits to the exercise of their authority or violence needed to administer it.
You pretty much are bound for an authoritarian regime because democracy does not survive in silence. Will we have our own Reichstag fire[1], what form would it take?
> insisting that both parties honor legally binding contracts is violence;
I'm generally a pretty big believer in upholding the law and contracts but a lot of people have been put out of work through no fault of their own, and rather unwillingly. The government did that and I think it makes sense for the government to enforce at least a temporary moratorium on evictions so that things can be done in an orderly fashion.
I find it weird the article didn't mention the violence - violence during the protests. I mean several people got killed, I imagine quite a lot got beaten up.
I don't see how this is on-topic in the slightest, nor how this could lead to any form of useful discussion on this site.
Regardless, if you agree with the article wholeheartedly, maybe stop to consider why you're getting more worked up over destruction of some property than over the decades-long oppression of black, hispanic and other minority communities by the police.
I think there's a discussion worth having on the increasing trend towards argument by analogy, where we judge things as good or bad based not on a concrete analysis of their effects but whether we can attach a label like "violence" to them. It's obviously prone to dragging people into political slapfights (which I see you're excited to engage in yourself!), but I don't know if that should be a disqualifier; a lot of important topics have that quality.
I have no interest in engaging myself, but I encourage you to reread the last line of your comment and consider how it comes across to people who don't agree with your perspective.
So you're saying that you think that some property is more important than murders of innocent people by police that have been going on for decades?
If that's not what you're saying, you should make yourself clear. Because you imply that you don't agree with my perspective, which I think is pretty straightforward and clear - people are more important than property.
I, for one, both agree with your perspective and see how the last sentence of your original comment could be taken as engaging in a "political slapfight" (a pretty vague term) when viewed from the other side. I think being able to view the world from the eyes of the other is a useful skill, even when the other is a literal fascist -- I'm not even arguing that you should necessarily come across differently, just that you should understand how you may come across to people with different perspectives.
While I don't disagree with my reading of your statement (which may differ greatly from your intent -- I'm not sure), I also don't see it as another way of putting my last comment; I was attempting to make another point entirely.
Yikes, that's embarrassing, could you possibly clarify your meaning? My point was that communicative strategy changes significantly depending on whether you account for the other person also having a perspective which is also a product of history
No prob, but if mdszy reads this I want to explicitly note that this is not meant as a caricature of their statement, I'm just trying to distill my meaning down into the most simple terms I can muster.
Alice buys a status symbol instead of donating to a charity. Bob says "Alice, stop and think about whether you care more about status symbols than charities!" Even if I agree with Bob's implicit condemnation, I can still see how Alice would feel attacked by the wording. Perhaps Bob wants Alice to feel attacked (this could be an attempt to jar Alice into recognizing her own greed), but it does Bob no good to not understand how he might be perceived by Alice. If Bob understands how he will be perceived then he will be able to craft his message in more useful ways -- ways that I would expect to be significantly friendlier on average, but which may sometimes actually be more combative. Ignorance of the perspectives of others does the message writer no good.
I also feel like I agree with your point, which is significantly more empathetic and less realpolitik than mine.
"two main arguments: damaging a person is morally more serious than damaging an object, and psychologically damaging a person is worse than physically damaging an object."
I couldn't help but think "Yes? That's exactly correct. Who would ever think otherwise?"
The quoted argument may be true, but it is not sufficient to argue that psychologically damaging someone is violence.
It's a bit like affirming the consequence. If we posit that (physical) violence causes damage, and that a person can be psychologically damaged, it's not a strong argument to work backwards that anything that causes damage is violence.
With that path of logic I could also say: pan-frying food causes it to become cooked, therefore pan-frying is a form of broiling.
We're talking about language so of course we can overload the word "violence" to mean more than exclusively physical acts.
But without hard and fast boundaries, it becomes harder to communicate. And this article is talking about a reduction in clarity to a classification.
We can expect to find that for some number of people, their moral and legislative opinions about "violence" are strictly limited to physical acts. You may disagree with those people, and that's fine. But we can't change their opinions just by unilaterally altering the descriptive boundaries of the words they use to express their opinions.
Is the meaning of this statement independent of the symbols used? Can the meaning be found in nature, outside of our minds, or is it an artifact of our minds or language?
I wouldn't say that being found in nature means that something is not made up. Issus coleoptratus evolved gears long before humans invented them, yet gears seem purely phenomenal -- I wouldn't expect the noumenon to have anything directly corresponding to gears in it, "gear" is just a useful concept we have that lets us categorize part of an insect or a bicycle (both of which are made up themselves, of course).
There may be discrete math in the noumenon, but I'm not convinced of that. For all I know the noumenon could be dealing in something else entirely, and math might just be a really useful tool we came up with (like classical physics, and probably modern physics). Math is the simplest case you can make, but I don't see a compelling reason to accept it as a given.
> I wouldn't say that being found in nature means that something is not made up.
Then define "made up".
> For all I know the noumenon could be dealing in something else entirely, and math might just be a really useful tool we came up with (like classical physics, and probably modern physics).
Suppose it is merely a useful tool. This tool then necessarily has a structure that's isomorphic to part of the structure of the noumenon, otherwise it wouldn't actually be a useful tool.
Therefore, whatever structure it models is itself mind independent, as I said. The symbols and formalisms we use are interchangeable, but the structure revealed is not.
That which is not a part of base reality. If base reality were operating using the same rules as Conway's game of life then cells would be real, but gliders would be made up. Since Conway's game of life actually runs in a simulation on some computer or another, cells are also made up.
>Suppose it is merely a useful tool. This tool then necessarily has a structure that's isomorphic to part of the structure of the noumenon, otherwise it wouldn't actually be a useful tool.
Newton's equations are now accepted as an approximation; they are not isomorphic to part of the structure of the noumenon, yet remain useful when firing cannons. Myths and legends have been useful in compelling people to wage wars and donate to charities, yet we do not suppose that this usefulness means they are isomorphic to part of the structure of the noumenon.
Perhaps fermions and bosons correspond very closely to real parts of the noumenon, but they could also be a phenomenon which is emergent on top of something else -- as made up as chemistry, biology, psychology, and economics.
> That which is not a part of base reality. If base reality were operating using the same rules as Conway's game of life then cells would be real, but gliders would be made up. Since Conway's game of life actually runs in a simulation on some computer or another, cells are also made up.
So in your view, anything that is a composite of two or more primitives is by definition "made up".
Therefore, given a standard definition of natural numbers [1], any number except zero is made up?
> Newton's equations are now accepted as an approximation; they are not isomorphic to part of the structure of the noumenon
They are actually, within the domain for which they are valid. General relativity reduces to Newton's equations in the right context.
>So in your view, anything that is a composite of two or more primitives is by definition "made up".
Yes. If we start calling higher order configurations "real" then we have to contend with all of the potentially imaginable subdivisions of the noumenon and either grant them all realness or find some arbitrary criteria upon which to deny some of those subdivisions the property of realness. If we grant that an insect is a real thing then I get to make up a new word, say, "kokirombo," that describes the front two-thirds of a grasshopper combined with the left half of a ladybug, some air, a pinch of grass, and the rear bumper of a 1998 Ford Taurus. You can come up with some arbitrary standard by which your gerrymandering of reality is allowed and mine is not, but there isn't anything that makes your standard more valid than mine. In practice we typically use usefulness as our standard for categorizing things, but dogmatically claiming this as the criteria for realness leads to absurd positions.
>Therefore, given a standard definition of natural numbers [1], any number except zero is made up?
I still haven't necessarily accepted zero as not being made up, but I think your Succ function implicitly depends on one being defined as well.
>They are actually, within the domain for which they are valid.
Strongly disagree. If you believe in quantum mechanics then you believe that things move probabilistically. I'm obviously arguing that every scale except the smallest is made up, but even if we hypothetically accepted the validity of larger scales then we would have to admit that there is an ever-so-vanishingly-small chance that any given cannonball will spontaneously jump three meters to the left thus deviating from it's Newtonian trajectory. The fact that you could launch cannonballs from now until the heat death of the universe without seeing this effect at a scale you would typically notice is inconsequential, Newton's equations are still merely a useful approximation and they are not isomorphic to the behavior of the noumenon.
So giving someone a paper cut is worse than burning down someone's store in which their life savings were invested? Come on, these issues aren't covered by such trivial sound bites.
You should try harder to give people the benefit of the doubt - you can't expect people to list every single possible caveat for every opinion they express. The article, and the parent post, both do not equate such a contrived minor injury to destroying an entire business, and you absolutely know this.
> You should try harder to give people the benefit of the doubt - you can't expect people to list every single possible caveat for every opinion they express.
The position, as stated, is literally false which my argument by absurdity demonstrates. So what I expect, is that people attempt to make true statements, and where the truth value is contextual, then their phrasing also ought to reflect that nuance, ie. damaging a person is typically morally more serious than damaging an object, and psychologically damaging a person is typically worse than physically damaging an object.
There are no qualifiers in the original claim to reflect this nuance, and like it or not, people absolutely do believe unqalified claims until they are challenged on it. Why do you think slogans and propaganda are so effective.
I agree it's an "absurd counterexample". That's the whole point of a reductio ad absurdum. It shows the fallacy at the core of the argument with which you whole heartedly agreed. Precision is important in ethics.
Furthermore, even if I were to be maximally charitable in interpreting the argument as "damaging a person is typically morally more serious than damaging an object, and psychologically damaging a person is typically worse than physically damaging an object", not everyone would even agree with that, contra your post. I don't think you appreciate how broad ethics is as a topic; virtue ethics and deontological ethics both dispute the premises from which this argument is constructed.
Finally, discrediting an argument you agreed with does not somehow discredit or insult you as a person, so not sure where you got that from.
You quoted an ethical principle, then said it was obviously true. Now you're claiming that you don't actually believe in the ethical principle that you claimed was so obviously true?
If you're now claiming that the principle was "true" in some vague unspecified way, but not literally true, then like I said, say what you mean and mean what you say, and don't get bent out of shape when people point out the problems with this sort of imprecise reasoning.
It brings my heart such great joy to know that there are people out there like you who are willing to argue about trivialities that don't actually matter.
Not everything is a deep philosophical discussion that needs to get down to absolute true statements.
Sometimes it's just someone, like me, who is sick of black people being literally murdered by police and thinks it's absurd that white assholes get more worked up over some property than over black lives.
I literally don't give a single shit about absolute ethical principles.
Yeah, who cares about "trivialities" like "my ethical principles are inconsistent or absurd"?
Apparently, all the people who criticize the ethics of the police, the ethics of politicians, the ethics of racist economic policies, and so on. I mean, it's not like consistent ethical principles might go into devising something like a Constitution that recognizes people's natural rights and restricts government from infringing on those rights.
Amazing that you managed to turn this into a partisan attack on "your side" when all that's being discussed is the logical inconsistency of your own stated principles.
Please stop posting flamewar comments to HN. You've been doing it repeatedly, and we ban that sort of account, because it destroys what the site is supposed to be for.
>Black lives matter? According to black on black crime statistics and black abortion rates, they don't
>Willing to take the L for saying the truth on this one.
>Judging by how the protests and riots have settled down already in less than 2 weeks, they are finished making use of black lives to further their political goals.
You seem sick with hatred, not to mention casting yourself as a victimized underdog who knows the Truth.
I am indeed sick of political bullshit. One day, you may open your eyes and properly understand that I, as much as you, want something to be done for black Americans to right the wrongs. However, I can't help but call out the people who are simply using the death of one garbage man who threatened a pregnant woman at gunpoint to further their political goals, and then only after 2 weeks, they go back to their regular reporting after they've made their use of the movement to do their job. Nothing has changed. They've just milked the death of a man, like they did before with the other men before him. One day, I'd like to see a real organic movement that will enact real change. Until then, this is just a spectacle in our current clown world.
If your immediate reaction to statistics (which I am not claiming the accuracy of, by the way, since you provide no sources) is "oh, it's because they're black" then congratulations, you're a racist!
Furthermore, the protests have not died down, there have been events that sparked more protests in more places. They're just not being reported as much because "oh well that's old time to move on to the next thing", says the media.
Please stop posting flamewar comments to HN. You've been doing it repeatedly, and we ban that sort of account, because it destroys what the site is supposed to be for.
Is it stupid to equate a replacing the word "sex" with "gender identity" with being punched in the face? Yes.
Is it stupid to equate police brutality with riots destroying corporate property? Also yes, though maybe arguably less so.
I don't think this is anything new though, I remember being in debates with libertarians 10-15 years ago who argued that tax is violence. If you want to get philosophical about it, anything that carries any intent or threat to harm if there's non-compliance can be violence, but at that point it becomes kind of a useless word.
Why is this post flagged? The article discusses a very real problem that is creeping into all aspects of our lives, inlcuding software development. Why can't we have a civilized discussion about it?
Why are we posting things that come from explicitly biased political websites that have nothing to do with tech? I can understand it if is breaking news, but this is an opinion piece.
I have noticed more political opinion pieces posted here recently. Did the scope of this website change in the past few months?
No, but my comment is in reference to those posts. But what makes this one especially egregious is that Reason has not pretenses about being an objective new source.
The first line of their about page is: "Founded in 1968, Reason is the nation's leading libertarian magazine."
OP has a point. The NY Times recently began a process of shedding their ideals of objectivity too. They claim the views and inclinations of whiteness are accepted as the objective neutral.
I agree that NYT has a bias. But they at least _try_ to appear objective (or at least objective with a left leaning slant). The article you linked is an opinion piece by a NYT writer and not the official stance of NYT (as far as I know).
Also, I am not fighting for NYT articles here. I wish that there would be no opinion pieces that are not tech related. This post just seemed particularly egregious because it is an opinion piece from a new outlet that is openly and explicitly biased.
Overall this site's moderation is hostile to free-market views. The goal is "promoting intellectual curiosity", as long as the goal posts are positioned according to the prevailing biases.
Without conceding that this topic should be our main focus right now I feel like we should draw a clear distinction between, say, local businesses on one extreme and police precinct buildings on the other. I see voices on the right, such as this article, invoking the destruction black-owned businesses as their examples of property damage and I can't help but feel like they tactically know this is more likely to draw a reaction than the destruction of buildings that belong to racist government institutions -- the American right wasn't too concerned when the KKK (a precursor to many southern police departments) burned down black businesses, churches, and homes. I can totally agree that the destruction of local businesses is a shame, but I'm not really worried about the big boxerinos and I'm downright ecstatic about police stations going up in flames.
I've also never seen a source for the claim of black-owned businesses being destroyed during these riots, I've begun to believe it's just intentional misinformation.
Is it that far-fetched to you that with the number of black-owned businesses there are and the number of businesses that were destroyed, that at least one of them would have been destroyed in the riots? I personally know of a black-owned business in Cleveland that had to shut down after being looted. Either you're underestimating the number of black-owned businesses, the number of destroyed businesses, both, or are simply being disingenuous
I'm disappointed by how much sympathy for cops was expressed in the video I'm about to link, but when Killer Mike tells me that the destruction of black-owned businesses is a problem in his community while wearing a "kill your masters" shirt[0], I sort of tentatively take his word that this is a real issue. I just think that some people are using it as a substitute for the issue they really want to raise, and it feels very disingenuous to me. Let's talk about precinct buildings.
I know its intended to incite action, which is certainly overdue. But it has its downside too, mainly that it alienates folks.