[iherbig]

It's a bit difficult to explain, but I'll try.

In the current political climate, the left and the right have been divided by the public consciousness into the following dichotomy:

The left is overly sensitive and looks for things to be offended by.

The right is concerned with maturity and personal responsibility and anti-political correctness, where those things are defined primarily in contrast to the left's perceived over-sensitivity.

Simultaneously, there have been a lot of trends in various communities (software and otherwise) to formalize rules of conduct and push out people who are more naturally aggressive in tone.

Through that lens, this behavior has been seen as "left-leaning." So in contrast, the right-leaning behavior would be letting everyone behave as they want with the "free market of ideas" being the primary driving force for change rather than any set of enforced community standard. (You can see the parallel with the typically "conservative" economic perspective.)

I hope you can see the general trend.

So what the grandparent is saying is that it's not REALLY about left vs. right, without explicitly contradicting the beliefs of the common social consciousness.

Edit: The comment above that says, "Different people have very different beliefs what is to be considered 'heated', 'hateful' and 'treating well' or not" would be considered "right-leaning" through the common lens because it's implicitly positing that there shouldn't be a common set of community standards (with the implicit supposition that you CAN'T set a common set of community standards because there will always be people who disagree). Not picking on anyone, just using an available example.

[jacobolus]

> The left is overly sensitive and looks for things to be offended by.

This is total nonsense. In the modern political climate everyone is looking for things to be offended by.

(It just happens that the “left” is offended by people getting beat up, sexually harassed, prevented from exercising their basic rights, etc., whereas the “right” is offended by the phrase “happy holidays”, by trans-gender people using one bathroom or another, by football players kneeling to protest police brutality, and so on.)

Or more to the point, media / social media that fixates on why readers should be offended and aggrieved are much more “viral” than other types of messaging. It’s hard to blame individuals for this, as they have been under intense psychological attack by a combination of deliberate propaganda and accidental harmful features of modern media. I say we need much stronger education in media literacy, and better cultural/structural systems for keeping media accountable for basic honesty.

[tomp]

You can easily find just as, and more, ridiculous examples on the left. Offended by jokes, tshirts, suggestions that unborn children's lives have value, praise of Israel, using biologically and factually correct terms for people, suggestions that people shouldn't be discriminated against, pointing out scientific/genetic facts, ...

[ivraatiems]

Who decides what examples are ridiculous and what examples aren't?

[tomp]

Exactly.

[iherbig]

I'd like to point out that the only assertion I was making was that these are the common beliefs that the public consciousness holds as truisms, irrespective of reality.

[ivraatiems]

> The left is overly sensitive and looks for things to be offended by.

> The right is concerned with maturity and personal responsibility and anti-political correctness, where those things are defined primarily in contrast to the left's perceived over-sensitivity.

I think this is the right's perspective, but it's not an accurate portrayal of the left's. I therefore disagree with the assertion that this is a fair representation of the "public consciousness" on this issue.

I'd say the left views it this way:

The left's goal is to include people who have historically been oppressed or ostracized, and to increase empathy and raise the bar for what is appropriate and professional to exclude behavior that hurts people, even if it has previously been considered acceptable.

The right's goal is to maintain the status quo and the structures and hierarchies of power (which disproportionately benefit them) and to put down any attempts to change it as "oversensitive snowflakes overreacting" instead of as well-intentioned people trying to make the world better.

To be clear - I see things as more aligned with the left's perspective in reality. But I also see so-called "snowflakes" on both sides, insofar as people are unable to take or manage fair criticism reasonably offered when it challenges their viewpoints. I vehemently disagree with the idea that adapting a code of conduct is either inherently political or, if it is, inherently left-leaning, except to the extent that various sides try to cast it that way.

Edit: On reconsideration: If you view a code of conduct that tries to equalize people and prohibit certain kinds of language the left would consider "oppressive" (e. g. sexist, racist, ageist, ableist) as inherently political, then I see the argument. But I still don't agree completely, insofar as people working together shouldn't need to insult each other to do so appropriately.

[tomp]

hehe I think his description of the left and your description of the right are the more correct ones. Both other descriptions more accurately describe the political center.

[ivraatiems]

Hmm, that's a good point. I'm not sure I agree, but something to think about.

I think it might be more accurate to say the negative descriptions accurately describe the bad-faith actors, and the positive ones describe the good-faith actors.

[tomp]

Unfortunately the "bad-faith actors" have all the media attention, and at least on the left, also a lot political power (i.e. they can get people fired/banned from Unis) (at least the media and academia seem completely left-dominated; maybe the opposite when it comes to the current US administration, although I don't see the far-right making any big progress, except maybe "the wall" and "Muslim ban"). Basically this is the "no true Scotsman" fallacy.

[ivraatiems]

I'd say in the US, the right has a lot more power-in-fact than the left, but the left may have more of the popular will. The fact that the two aren't aligned is the result of our relatively shitty system, frankly. (And even so, the right is having such an identity crisis right now, it's hard to say it has total power.)

As far as "no true Scotsman" - we can't prevent people from associating with groups, but we can call them out when their ideals don't match those of the group, and we can hold them to account if they behave in ways that contradict the group's values or are a bad-faith application of those values. I think the left is... okay... at doing that, and the right is often pretty bad, but neither is exactly great. We're also bad at doing it proportionally, and at seeing people as sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes agreeing with us, sometimes not. But that's another problem.

[iherbig]

>I think this is the right's perspective, but it's not an accurate portrayal of the left's. I therefore disagree with the assertion that this is a fair representation of the "public consciousness" on this issue.

I'm not saying it _is_ an accurate portrayal of _either_ side. The only assertion I'm making is that those are the beliefs the public consciousness holds as truisms, irrespective of their truth values.

Edit: To clarify further, I want to make explicit something implicit in what I said. You may notice that what I'm asserting is the "commonly held beliefs of the public consciousness" is rather right-leaning.

I acknowledge that that statement is also implicitly asserting that the public consciousness is, to some degree, right-leaning as well.

[andrepd]

>The left is overly sensitive and looks for things to be offended by.

>The right is concerned with maturity and personal responsibility

I think this is the perspective of the right. Specifically of that kind of right that does things "to trigger the lefties"; I'm sure you know the kind. Which is funny since those kinds of people can only be described in my head as the opposite of mature...

[iherbig]

I acknowledge that my original statement was implicitly asserting that to some degree the public consciousness is right-leaning.

[nostrademons]

You could more neutrally put that in terms of tact filters:

http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/tact.html

The left believes in outgoing tact filters, where you watch what you say to avoid offending people. The right believes in "incoming* tact filters, where you just ignore people who say things that offend you. Both approaches have particular situations where they are superior, but it's hard to identify a general strategy that works better in all situations.

[stinkytaco]

> The left is overly sensitive and looks for things to be offended by.

>The right is concerned with maturity and personal responsibility and anti-political correctness, where those things are defined primarily in contrast to the left's perceived over-sensitivity.

Judging by how the right gets upset by nfl player protests, the news media or what they feel is the "forced inclusion" approach, I disagree with the above statement. Everyone wants to get offended because if you can claim victimhood, you can claim moral high ground (sometimes legitimately and sometimes not). This is why codes of conduct are important. It's harder to claim to be the victim when personal feelings and identity are kept out of it.

[iherbig]

I would like to point out that I was not making any statements as to the validity of either of those two statements. Rather, they are commonly-held beliefs irrespective of their truth values.

[maxerickson]

A good illustration of your point is how people reacted to the study finding that there were ~3000 deaths in Puerto Rico that are attributable to Hurricane Maria.

[_emacsomancer_]

I agree that what you've said is a commonly painted picture, but (as many people have pointed out), it's more that "the left" and "the right" are often both "overly sensitive", but about different things.

[thomasahle]

> The right is concerned with maturity and personal responsibility and anti-political correctness, where those things are defined primarily in contrast to the left's perceived over-sensitivity.

I agree this is the common narrative, but surprisingly to me, it seems that the conservatives/right-wingers are getting very good at using outrage themselves. E.g. three times as many professors are being fired for expressing "liberal views" compared to "conservative views" [1], and the situation appears to be the same outside of academia, with people like James Gunn.

Not saying that all conservatives get outraged, but they certainly seem to do so a good deal more than immediately comes to mind.

[1]: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/8/3/17644180/po...