Once one moves from a position of effective prejudice (“he will criticise me because I’m a woman”), any critical statement can be read from that perspective. It’s a bit like with conspiracy theories, where every debunking attempt can be turned into “of course THEY would say that!”.
It seems like many non-Americans simply do not make the context switch and once they leave the Ameri-sphere (e.g talk to fellow non-Americans), they talk about American topics as if they were happening locally - and is if they were directly impacted with a major stake in the issue.
Remember where you are, who you're talking to, and the context. Since non-Americans seem so eager to copy Americans however, it can be prudent to be aware of what's going on across the pond without being heavily invested. The USA is now acting like a looking glass into the future of what successes and mistakes are going to be imported wholesale by other countries and their citizens.
E.g. the cancelling and uncancelling of RMS seemed to me mainly...reasonable? Like, he says some weird stuff and defended ~~Eppstein~~ Minsky (sorry, memory got messed up, thanks skissane) in a tone-deaf manner (I have had the joy of exchanging emails with RMS and interacting with him at talks he gave at my alma mater, and he always seemed like a thoughtful and kind person whom I respect and admire, but I feel like "tone-deaf" is a fair description), maybe that's not a good thing to do if your job is to be a public figure? And very little twisting was needed to make his discussion of what really is rape reasonable? So if this is an example of what people are afraid of, it seems a very...specific fear
Curious conversation is good
The main point is that, unless you’re talking physics (maybe), nothing is so “fact-based” that it cannot be perceived in the “wrong” way by someone sufficiently determined to do that.
1. An observation that you are arguing from a position of assuming malice from the other side. "They" are trying to twist everything, therefore evidence is not required since "they" won't listen anyway
2. You can point at any public twitter mob where the real conversation was made public afterwards or where you know the inside scoop and with the caveat of anecdata it could strengthen your point
3. You seem to be dangerously close to resting on a "what even is 'fact based'?" argument repeating that "they" are determined to misunderstand statements in malicious ways
A lot of politicians or executives will only say carefully scripted sound bites to the press because they can't count on a reasonable portrayal. They give them a sentence or two that's difficult to twist into something offensive.
Here it's similar. They're afraid reasonable behavior will be portrayed as outrageous in some blog post.
If you're not from the U.S. you have to understand the background of mendacity that flows through nearly the entire culture. That's a big part of the backdrop for fairly deep levels of distrust, whether it's of a company, one's colleague, the gov't, etc.
For example-- I was watching a political show where the question was something about global warming. One of the guests gave a reply that sounded vaguely reasonable but wasn't clear. The host tried to rephrase the question, and the same respondent again gave a suspiciously confusing reply. This caused the host to drill down on a simpler question-- did the guest believe that global warming was real and that human activity has contributed to this global warming? This time the guest answered a different question, addressing the reality of global warming but ducking the issue of causes. This went on for about 45 seconds before the host finally forced the guest to give a response that revealed the guest was in fact a climate denier. Honestly, it was like watching that scene in Blade Runner with the Voight-Kampff test, except on humans.
Being an American myself, I could immediately tell what the guest's purpose was: to sound like they agreed with the other (sensible) panelists, in order to give more credibility to a climate denial talking point that their job depends on. It's a planned strategy essentially of "denial-in-depth"-- try to sneak FUD into an otherwise good faith discussion, and if that doesn't then reveal your crude talking points for what they are.
In a weird way, the process of figuring out someone's level of earnestness makes me think of the "Sie" to "du" journey in German. Except here in the U.S., it's a slow slog of figuring out exactly how a friend spouts bullshit and under what circumstances, and then figuring out if there's enough earnestness left to become close friends.
Well, sure, but then you are displaying a clear and verifyable pattern, and my original point of candor that can't be twisted into sexism remains no? You had to add a separate sexist pattern ("treats men and women differently").
Your point of high level of distrust is appreciated and one of the reasons why I'd never move there (no offense intended, most individual americans I know and read about are lovely people, but this culture of hidden BS is too much for me). But then, this is an issue in general no? Why are people only concerned about women/feminists twisting words against them? Why not christians, or veterans as well? Or men for that point, last I checked the protected group list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group does not specify women, and there are conservative mobs on social media just as much as "woke" ones. So I'm just a bit confused
You are free to not believe me and continue to live your life as you were, I honestly don’t care. Take my statements as anecdata and move on. Just don’t come crying to me when you’re cancelled because of some “fact-based” statement.
Did you figure this from the outside, so to speak, spending time abroad and immersing in a different culture? I've found that most people sort of start noticing cultural blind spots only then.
He was defending Marvin Minsky, not Jeffrey Epstein. The former was twisted into the later.
Pre-empted by the abundance of caution described in the article? It's not a very deep game, so I assume the strategy in question is readily apparent to almost any man in such a position.
But this isn't the idea at all, right? Rather, everyone seems to agree it's relatively rare, but that it's such a massively negative experience when it does happen that it tanks the expected value anyway.
E.g. I'm sure tourist issues when travelling to North Korea are vanishingly rare, and yet I bet I'm pretty good at guessing what not to do. You can glean that kind of thing from the totality of your experiences and knowledge without necessarily testing it.
That's not to say I wouldn't be over-cautious or that I'd be a perfect predictor, but that's just about the looming cost of a false negative. I don't think it's rationally faulty or circular to just act in a self-preserving and overcautious way.
Importantly the speaker and listener are not consciously aware of this happening. The net result is that you can say literal/plain thing A and the listener can hear literal/plain thing B.
Speaking to Americans requires a significantly accurate modeling of the listener's mind and expectations to be able to be clearly understood, much much moreso than any other language I have studied or even heard of.
Basically, it is very easy to be totally misunderstood when using plain, literal speech (such as is common in Germany or in Slavic countries).
I've written about it: https://sneak.berlin/20191201/american-communication/
That's not a good yes or no question, because it not only unites two different points together, but also really depends on your definition of global warming, and also ties a lot of other different issues into it. You could for example believe that humanity affects climate to some extent, but still think that it's not bad enough to support environmentalists from economics point of view. You could also believe that this climate change is real, but is not caused by human activity and is just a part of a natural process.
I just don't think that boxing a complex issue into a boolean is a good idea.
RMS literally said that its possible that Minsky did not know that she wasn't willing because she was being coerced by Epstein to appear like she was. What is tone deaf about that? It seems pretty obvious that Epstein coerced his victims into acting a certain way.
The post took this and rephrased it as "RMS said she was entirely willing", which wasn't even close to what he said.
> And very little twisting was needed to make his discussion of what really is rape reasonable?
Except he never questioned what is or isn't rape. He didn't even question whether the girl in question was a victim, it was pretty clear that he agreed that she was. He only said that, because of coercion by Epstein, Minsky likely was presented with the appearance that everything was ok, even though it wasn't and that this would have affected his judgement.
Of course, Minsky's wife also said that they were on Epstein's island together and that Minsky did not engage in any of the accused activity anyway. But that's neither here nor there.
It doesn't have to be always, it only needs to be once and then your career is ended.
You /can't/ communicate without euphemisms, and trying to will always fail and make you seem like a dick even though you're just being straightforward. That is likely where the difficulty you've experienced comes from.
(For context, your exact situation occurred this weekend. I was invited to an event and said yes, but both me and my friend knew that I would not attend)
In the US, there are some men who will say that to a woman who wouldn't say the same thing to a man giving the same performance. Most women have experienced this at least once (watch someone criticize u fairly). So, some women will assume criticism that is happening in a sexist way when it isnt.
I've observed both many times - sexist criticism by a man (which would infuriate me if I were the woman), and a woman assuming that criticism was sexist when it was fair.
We also have a generally less blunt culture in the US.
Most recent example outside of Reddit subs catering to neo-feminists that I can recall is this one:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MaliciousCompliance/comments/m7f4ln...
Not the literal exact quote, but a fine example of a story about, somebody treated the new hire intern disrespectfully, where the comments go in that direction. Oh wait, it was a woman? Well it definitely must be sexism! Downvote anyone who expresses doubt. It's not like men ever get disrespected and told to sit down and shut up in roles like new hire intern.
Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar. That's the last thing we need on top of the flamewar we already have here.
Please let's not make this about a specific group. That way lies flamewar, and I can assure you that cross-cultural misinterpretation is a huge problem here in all directions.
If you talk about this (either as a personal thing or something you've seen happen to someone else) you will get crucified, basically anywhere. It doesn't take a whole lot of extrapolating to see why there are no horror stories.
The problem is many people think that just by presenting facts they will get through to people, but that doesn’t work. You have to understand the other persons emotional state too.
This reminded me of this infamous bit from Yes, Minister, and although it's not actually entirely an example of this, it's too good not to share now i've found it:
Sir Frederick: There are four words to be included in a proposal if you want it thrown out.
Sir Humphrey: Complicated. Lengthy. Expensive. Controversial. And if you want to be really sure that the Minister doesn't accept it, you must say the decision is "courageous".
Bernard: And that's worse than "controversial"?
Sir Humphrey: Oh, yes! "Controversial" only means "this will lose you votes". "Courageous" means "this will lose you the election"!
I was kind of expecting something more...respectful? Like, that's not at all "candid advice misunderstood". That's a person disrespected in a way that happens more to women than men, and people drawing conclusions.
"I can't make it, but I appreciate the offer."
There is a reason america is number 1 in confidence, but ranked 25th in math and 21st in science out of the top 30 developed countries.