[damnyou]

The reaction to my posts is rather remarkable. I've lost 30 karma so far just for stating a bunch of facts and opinions that challenge the hegemonic narrative on "Hacker News".

Oh no, I'm being cancelled. I should go write about it on Quillette. /s

[ALittleLight]

I think you're getting downvoted because you are stating highly disputed things as if they were facts. When people question you, you refuse to engage with their arguments. You're also slandering a person (calling Charles Murray a white supremacist) on the basis that he supports welfare reform and you disagree with him on some edge cases of UBI. Downvotes are well deserved in my opinion.

[damnyou]

"Supports welfare reform" and "edge cases of UBI" are doing a lot of work there.

I, too, support modernizing our governmental assistance programs, but not in a way that's white supremacist and eugenicist. There are welfare reform ideas I disagree with that I don't think are white supremacist either. Murray's ideas and policies, however, are beyond the pale.

[ALittleLight]

See: here is an interesting case where you think I'm summarizing you unfairly or incorrectly. Do you think Charles Murray would feel you were summarizing and characterizing his arguments fairly?

[damnyou]

No, I don't, because I'm sure he's constructed post hoc rationalizations in his head about how he's not actually as bad as it seems.

I evaluate him like I do any other public figure: based on his writing and the impact he's had on public policy debates. His internal state of mind does not matter at all.

[ALittleLight]

If you accurately state what someone believes, they'll probably agree with you. I don't think you've managed that here.

[damnyou]

Well, for his accurate beliefs, let's look to another excerpt from In Our Hands:

"The libertarian solution is to prevent the government from redistributing money in the first place. Imagine for a moment that the $2 trillion that the US government spends on transfer payments were left instead in the hands of the people who started with it. If I could wave a magic wand, that would be my solution. It is a case I have made elsewhere."

His eugenicist UBI is an alternative to his ideal proposal.

As a public figure with extensive writings, his internal state of mind does not matter.

---

edit to respond because I'm "posting too fast":

> So as long as you don't write anything down or have yourself recorded as having said racist things, you can't be racist?

What? A logical statement does not imply it's converse. I'm talking about public figures like Murray here, not average private individuals. Besides, structural racism of the sort Murray advocates for has a much greater impact on material conditions than what some rando believes in their heart.

[ryandrake]

I haven’t been following this massive side-thread, but maybe you are getting downvoted because you are using white supremacy to describe anything that structurally favors white people. Policies that merely favor white people are not necessarily “white supremacist”, unless those policies are also motivated by a belief that white people are better than other people. Maybe “structurally racist” might be a better way to describe the things you are describing? But what do I know, I’m not a sociologist.

[damnyou]

Given that a number of people on this site and elsewhere insist Murray isn't racist, even acknowledging that he is would be a nice change.

[the_only_law]

HN is more about intellectual posturing than it is about having discussions on anything.