claudiawerner

il y a 4 ansdiscuss

It could be my own bias, but I don't see HN as a particularly progressive place, at least as compared to, say, Reddit. Granted, it can be a good or a bad thing, but HN has a far wider spectrum of opinions that get upvoted; IME trans issues in particular dominate comment threads when it comes to LGBT issues.

claudiawerner

il y a 4 ansdiscuss

>This is probably going to get downvoted to oblivion, because nobody wants to confront the idea that we can _learn_ to want to be another gender.

Did you really think this was going to be downvoted on Hacker News of all places?

claudiawerner

il y a 4 ansdiscuss

You may be interested in this review of their arguments and the context for their style of debate, which was far more interesting after watching the video: https://www.salon.com/2014/05/13/%E2%80%9Ci_was_hurt%E2%80%9...

claudiawerner

il y a 4 ansdiscuss

I've read some debates held between MPs in Hansard. I can't speak for any sizable portion, but what I did see on the topics I was interested in is a shockingly low form of discussion abound with fallacies, name-calling, and soliciting the opinions of unqualified individuals to inform the law.

Sure, they may run circles around you or me when it comes to debating some aspects of policy. But not around someone who's invested time and energy into a specific topic, which I think ought to be the bar for whether we consider these people 'well educated' and 'intelligent' when they are running the country supposedly on my behalf(!).

claudiawerner

il y a 5 ansdiscuss

Does Return to Castle Wolfenstein count as a best-seller or a AAA game?

claudiawerner

il y a 5 ansdiscuss

24k/year.

claudiawerner

il y a 5 ansdiscuss

>I have the freedom to do anything that doesn't actively restrict the freedom of others. I can walk into an empty space. I can't walk into a space you occupy.

Exactly! In this way, your freedom is limited for the sake of other freedoms. However, as with the corpse desecration example, your freedom is also limited for the sake of various freedom froms. With assault, for example, there is no freedom to write and post threatening letters. If I receive a threatening letter, my freedom to do things hasn't been impacted. However, my freedom from threats has been impacted. Even the traditional American view of freedom is very widely restrictive, and for good reason.

>We are now experiencing an attempted Marxist takeover of our own society.

If this is a 'Marxist takeover', I'd have to say the Marxists are doing a pretty poor job of it. I don't recall Marx writing that racist depictions in children's books shouldn't be sold at auction, though.

>But now, barely 6 years later, the Leftist Mob has come for Dr. Seuss, and we're all bullied to recite that Dr. Seuss is racist, was racist, has always been racist.

No, you're not. Who's forcing you to say that? In fact, who's even forcing you to accept that view? The very fact that we're having this discussion is evidence that this isn't happening.

>but to condition us to reject, ban, and shun "unacceptable" ideas, thoughts, and expressions - on social command.

This is conspiratorial thinking. We are already conditioned to shun unacceptable ideas, thoughts and expressions; it comes from two elements of our world - freedom of association, and moral autonomy.

>The overarching theme here is control: in the leftist vision, society must control and regulate the consciousness of all its members, in order to create a perfect Utopian centrally-controlled society.

I'm a leftist and I don't share that view, at least. I can't really think of anyone who does. All the leftists with influence (from Marx to academics) has never shared this view. In fact, they called out the capitalist regulation of consciousness and its control through culture. The 'leftists' were the first to systematically investigate the role of ideology in the modern world.

claudiawerner

il y a 5 ansdiscuss

>Yes, there are views of "freedom" that are paradoxical.

All views of freedom are paradoxical other than the most basic view, which is that everyone has the freedom to do anything to anyone. The law provides freedom from armed bandits, or the worry of armed bandits, attacking you at night. At least, it aims to. Property rights provide freedom from your things being appropriated by others (including a government). The right to representation at trial provides freedom to fair judgements in the legal system. This isn't a dystopia.

>In a nutshell, the woke argument is: "I should have the 'freedom' from being offended, and this 'freedom' overrides and cancels all your freedoms."

Nobody has made that argument, but as I mentioned, the canonical case is corpse desecration. People in general desire freedom from that offense, and this freedom overrides and cancels the freedom to desecrate corpses.

>For example, in this case: "I am offended by the idea that someone, somewhere, will read a book containing ideas I dislike, therefore your very important rights to publish and read such books are hereby revoked".

I don't think we should do that, and I don't think the "woke mob" in general really thinks that either. Political philosophy consists of more than a worrisome story written eighty years ago.

claudiawerner

il y a 5 ansdiscuss

>The fact that these books are oriented toward children is irrelevant, it is still an attack on the 'idea' that parents/teachers can use offensive works to a productive end.

We 'attack' ideas all the time; in fact, that's what most of us are doing on HN. There's nothing wrong with such an 'attack' on an idea. In fact, if you open Ebay right now, you'll likely find works of philosophy and law debating whether parents and teachers can use offensive works to a productive end.

>The discussion isn't about their legal right, but about what their policy should be when X group comes along saying Y is offensive.

That's a good question, but it does not demand an answer culminating in an accusation that actually rather reasonable answers constitute an attack on the very idea of freedom. We recognize 'offense' even in law in every country on the planet, and it seems to me that so long as corporations have less power than governments, there is at least some room for reasoning from moral or practical principles that are not available (nor do we wish to be available) in law.

The very fact that it's a not a legal question actually seems to tilt the scales towards reasons why a private entity should exercise moral autonomy in the market.

>The most disturbing thing to me is they did it purely because they thought it was the right thing to do. Their policy is what we're saying is wrong.

This isn't disturbing to me; the market is a big part of our social life, and with the law generally more restricted on dealing with moral issues, actors in the market can step in and make those decisions for themselves. There is nothing repugnant about acting on the basis of what you find wrong or right. There may be something wrong with the moral reasoning of Seuss' estate and Ebay (if it even is moral reasoning - to a consequentialist this wouldn't even matter). But the form of the decision (moral reasoning) and its content (the morality of facilitating the sale of racist caricatures, if the books really are that bad) are two different questions.

I have zero problem with a stock exchange refusing to sell tobacco or even alcohol or strip club stocks. I may disagree with them - maybe I think alcohol and strip clubs are not morally wrong businesses. But I can't see any reason to disagree with their exercise of moral autonomy. Their exercise of moral autonomy is a contribution to the moral discourse, and censorship of that discourse is a bigger concern, and not merely from theoretical reasons.

claudiawerner

il y a 5 ansdiscuss

>You do realize your comment perverts the very meaning of the word "freedom" to mean the opposite of its actual meaning, right?

It's not a perversion at all; in fact, this sense of freedom being more than raw ability to "do whatever you want" was recognized as early as Rousseau and possibly even earlier. This also led to the creation of the concepts of positive and negative liberty. "Freedom from" is absolutely a valid form of freedom, and a core one in our society. It's why things which aren't harms (and sometimes barely even hurts) are prohibited - public nudity, playing loud music on a bus, and other forms of nuisance. The canonical example is the fact that there is no harm-based reason to ban corpse desecration. In fact, it's a law based on the offence principle. There is some space in our society for laws like that, but we need to be careful with them, of course.

This case is even more benign - we have here a company refusing to sell these items. You speak of 'information and ideas', but these ideas can still manifest even on Ebay. No 'unacceptable idea' has been 'banned'. I'm not sure who you're saying is using Newspeak. As was pointed out by Marcuse in the 60s we're well past Orwell - now the contradiction is hidden in the noun itself.

What we describe as 'free societies' are full of restrictions on some freedom to ensure the development and use of greater freedoms. That's a core part of liberal society.

claudiawerner

il y a 5 ansdiscuss

>"these academics, and people animated by the ideas they expound, have gotten power and are using it to implement their ideas, which is eroding fundamental principles of liberalism (like tolerance of dissent) and this seems really terrible".

This seems so ironic to me. Liberals, then, out of all people, should at least tolerate the dissent of people who don't agree with it. Further, in the interest of argumentation and creating a better society (in whatever metric that may be), we should listen to the arguments and criticisms against liberalism. That's not 'really terrible' by any stretch. If your ideology can't stand up to such criticism, it's likely deficient in some way.

We've rejected fundamental principles of societies in the past, whether slave societies or patriarchal societies or theocratic societies. The mere fact of rejecting a fundamental principle with reasoned argument is not a negative, it can be a great positive.

claudiawerner

il y a 5 ansdiscuss

>And they reject the fundamental liberal, reasonable, legal, and scientific principles upon which liberal societies operate.

Is this a crime in itself? Do we really need to cancel academics over rejecting something because they find it logically or practically wrong? Isn't it a bit of a word-game to to identify liberalism with 'reasonable'?

The whole statement seems to start from the presumption that liberalism is reasonable. I can think of many arguments stipulating that it's not. As it turns out, describing your ideology (in this case liberalism) as inherently and unquestionably 'reasonable' isn't a particularly strong way to go about defending that ideology. A Communist or a Nazi could easily say the same thing about their own ideology.

claudiawerner

il y a 6 ansdiscuss

Yeah, it doesn't make sense to me. Consider this from the developer's point of view, and every single developer will tell you they'd rather make Javascript and some HTML rather than GTK application in C, especially when it'll work on every platform except maybe Plan 9.

claudiawerner

il y a 6 ansdiscuss

Generally you get some explanation with peer review, to revise and submit. It's a process of revisions and improvements. As far as I've read, not only did the authors not receive any such actionable feedback, but actually a demand to retract. In her shoes, I would think many of us would want to know who is the one behind a decision like that. Someone is putting a roadblock in the standard process and normal execution of my job.

claudiawerner

il y a 6 ansdiscuss

Exactly. Someone reading the headline and not knowing that Timnit was an empoyee of Google would just read the headline into their confirmation bias.

claudiawerner

il y a 6 ansdiscuss

>If you get off to sexually abusing a child, that is pedophilia, so essentially all CSA crimes are committed by pedophiles.

The data seems to contradict this. "Estimates of preferential attraction for children among those who offend are often in the ballpark of 25% to 50%"[0]. Granted, this is talking about preferential attraction, but estimates on the percentage of men with non-preferential attraction factor in at a much higher percentage of the population than pedophiles (and others we assume are preferentially attracted). Other than this, it still seems to leave a segment of child abusers who do not enjoy their actions sexually, but for other reasons (say, power).

>This hasn't been shown to be true.

To some degree (and I suspect, to a similar degree to pedophiles) it has, see my comment here[1]. Exposure to pornography is usually shown to trigger or at least intensify feelings of sexual agression, either physical or verbal, even in non-experimental studies.

> the consumption of CP has been shown to create the urge to engage in pedophilic acts in pedophiles.

Is this true of all pedophiles generally based on a sample of the pedophile population, or those recruited to take part in such a study after being convicted of child abuse (contact or non-contact) offences? I can very easily see the fact they've been convicted as being a huge confounder here.

Just to be clear, I'm not arguing that CP should be legal; I just think that on the basis of the available evidence, I can't see any reason to illegalize fictional representations. I think the alcohol and regular porn comparison holds quite well. The longitudinal study data which contradicts the theory that increased availability of porn does not lead to higher rates of rape is simply unavailable for child porn, perhaps with one exception, though[2]. The link between inebriation and likelihood of sex crimes is to my knowledge undisputed, though.

[0] References here: https://www.b4uact.org/know-the-facts/behavior/

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23789827

[2] http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/biblio/articles/2010to2014/2010-p...

claudiawerner

il y a 6 ansdiscuss

>For your second question: there is a fair amount of research into the effects of visual and audiovisual stimuli on pedophiles and other sex offenders.

I'm more just curious because I haven't seen anything (other than from the authors I've cited) on the effects of fictional (and in particular highly stylized) material on regular people, or even pedophiles specifically. Gary Young's book on The Gamer's Dilemma from 2010 or so also concludes there is no evidence for fictional material having these effects.

What do you mean by "stimulate demand"? For example, it would not surprise me at all that pedophiles find certain depictions arousing, but that still wouldn't be any reason to illegalize it, unless we are to go about banning everything that pedophiles also find arousing (which is a bridge I suspect many would not want to cross). Of course pedophiles are aroused, but are non-pedophilic individuals also aroused? The study on Japanese fans of lolicon manga does not so neatly indicate pedophilia as an appropriate category for their attractions, nor does it explain why they are so defensive against real depictions.

With fictional material, from what I can gather, there's something else at play which does not fit into the commonly held notion that fiction is always (or even most of the time) a substitute for the real deal.

To my mind, the difficult questions are: if the material is arousing to pedophiles, what does that arousal indicate in the risk of an offence (obtaining real CP or otherwise)? Do the effects persist? What is the persistent effect post-orgasm? Are stylized or fictional depicitions sufficient to arouse an interest in the real thing? Is it appropriate or desirable to prosecute or produce policy based on the tastes of pedophiles, especially given that the majority or a high percentage of CSA crimes are not perpetrated by pedophiles?

I've tried quite hard to find material on specifically lolicon manga or fanfiction, and a study among either pedophiles or others. If it does exist, I'd be very interested to see it, and I would have expected it to crop up in the arguments I've had so far. Especially, a study among those who are not already convicted for a crime (contact offence or otherwise). Those results would only, at best, tell us about criminals, and pedophile criminals with NC/C offences are almost reputable for showing lower impulse control.

To put it another way: access to regular porn may inflame the desires of a rapist, and they may even make him more likely to committ an offence; is this sufficient to illegalize porn for everybody? Alcohol may have the same effect, and the question still applies.

claudiawerner

il y a 6 ansdiscuss

To say that fanfic of fictional characters is merely "thinly disguised CP" not only does a disservice and insult to actual victims of child abuse, but the materials which some such victims use to relieve trauma. The conflation of fiction and reality must end if we are to do right by victims of child abuse and the harmless consumers of such content.

claudiawerner

il y a 6 ansdiscuss

Would you care to point to any of this research? Specifically the link between viewing simulated pornography and appetite for consuming real-world material, or abusing children. Further, is there any evidence that the majority of people who read simulated depictions (like underage Harry Potter fanfic) are pedophiles? Does the link similarly exist for other forms of pornography? How does fanfiction or erotica compare to visual artwork in this regard?

There's ethnographic evidence (see Patrick Galbraith, Mark McLelland, Suzanne Ost) of such fans from Japan that the assumption they are pedophiles, or that they carry over their desires from "2D" to "3D" is dubious at best. The English government, when banning virtual depictions of fictional characters, admitted they had no evidence on its effects, mode of usage, or popularity among any particular group.

claudiawerner

il y a 6 ansdiscuss

>Humans developed a highly sophisticated discernment of fruit quality for a reason.

Humans also developed a highly sophisticated way of absorbing ideas and images of their environment, some of which portray ideal fruits and vegetables as examples of what should be eaten, and anything outside that norm which was passed down by parents and through the media should not be eaten, or at least looked upon with suspicion.

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