Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

In this article, PG creates a personality test of sorts that, I think, seems intuitively true. Then, absent any real evidence, he assigns political roles and moral value to each of the categories he invented.

It’s so farcical to suggest that independent mindedness always manifests as “intellectual freedom” and conformism manifests as “political correctness.” (He doesn’t use that phrase but that’s clearly what he’s trying to get at.)

We live in a world where people with power over others (even people with pretty small amounts of power like professors) have historically been allowed shielded from the consequences of espousing hate. It is not “conformist” to advocate that people should be held accountable for what they say.

What PG has done is come up with a “good” category and a “bad” category. He then says that the people who agree with him are the good people and the people who don’t are the bad ones. He does so without considering that his support of Silicon Valley tycoons and professors who are upset that their students criticized them could actually put him in the conformist category.



> We live in a world where people with power over others (even people with pretty small amounts of power like professors) have historically been allowed shielded from the consequences of espousing hate. It is not “conformist” to advocate that people should be held accountable for what they say.

The conformity is in the process which defines what “hate” is.


I don’t understand - what is the process that decides what hate is? How is it conformist?




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: