Lounge

[neongrey]

You have a really bad habit of getting defensive and making sweeping incorrect assumptions about things. This is fairly normal in kids your age, so don't sweat it too much, but try to keep it in mind. If you don't understand something, better to ask, you know? 

So, this article is saying something about language, not 'the English language', not 'a language', I'm talking about language, in the linguistic sense, and specifically in the semantic sense. It's about connotation. What the article is discussing is the lines of connotation drawn between x groups of words and y groups of words. Flowers connote nice things, bugs connote bad things, to reiterate the article's example. Snow connotes cold. Rain connotes cloudy skies. Love connotes affection. There's no such thing as a language without connotation and context because it's a property of words meaning things. Language is simultaneously a function of, created by, creates, and requires context. So the things you wave off about clusters of words taking meaning from their proximity to other words-- this is in fact a core component of how language actually works, this is a lot of where meaning is derived from. This is a basic property that makes language function on a semantic (ie, meaning) level. You can understand the sentences I am constructing not because of an intrinsic property of the words themselves but because of the patterns they form and because of the context they arrive from.

The thing about language is that it's fundamentally a construct of the people who create and use it. (and indeed this is where its relevance to my own work lies) It doesn't spring up out of nowhere-- the thing about AI work is the way as you give it the tools to parse not only language but just things created in a society in general, it's laying more bare things about those constructs that aren't as immediately visible in ourselves because we just don't think about them. This article is just discussing one of those aspects-- there've been others (that one about, what was it, sentencing done by computer).

The thing is, something created by humans is going to be created in a human context-- we can examine what that means both to ourselves and what we create but context is inescapable.

11 hours ago, aeromancer said:

quite simple to override a 'learned bias' in a computer program by systematically deleting all archived data and reevaluating everything from scratch. There's not going to be a problem.

As the old hacker koan says:

Quote

In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.

“What are you doing?”, asked Minsky.

“I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe” Sussman replied.

“Why is the net wired randomly?”, asked Minsky.

“I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play”, Sussman said.

Minsky then shut his eyes.

“Why do you close your eyes?”, Sussman asked his teacher.

“So that the room will be empty.”

At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.

 

[aeromancer]

4 hours ago, neongrey said:

What the article is discussing is the lines of connotation drawn between x groups of words and y groups of words. Flowers connote nice things, bugs connote bad things, to reiterate the article's example ... There's no such thing as a language without connotation and context

4 hours ago, neongrey said:

You have a really bad habit of getting defensive

Yes I do. And this is why. To quote from your response 'there is no such thing as language without connotation and context'. Connotation and context. They are not one and the same, they are two different properties of words, as you yourself say. Connotation refers extra meanings a word can invoke on its own, context is the meaning of the word using the language around it, this is something you likely know better than I. The reason I am 'defensive', as you put it, is because I thought you may have reached the wrong conclusion. The article you quote is discussing 'word context', only 'context'. You classify 'connotation' and 'context' differently. Yet, when discussing the article's results, you consistently use the word 'connotation', despite the word 'connotation' never being used by the article in question and the fact that the words connotation and context are not interchangeable. You leaped to the assumption that the article was proving that the connotations of language had a bias because you had a confirmation bias. It is also for the same reason you assume by age, once again, because of a confirmation bias. You wish me to be a child who doesn't understand what is being discussed (which I am not), so you look for confirmation to the case, and ignore evidence that rejects your theory.

[neongrey]

You mean you're not sixteen, seventeen? How embarrassing.

[Hobbit]

Putting the semantic confusion about context vs connotation aside...

6 hours ago, neongrey said:

it's laying more bare things about those constructs that aren't as immediately visible in ourselves because we just don't think about them. This article is just discussing one of those aspects-- there've been others (that one about, what was it, sentencing done by computer).

This one? My husband is quoted in it! He's talking about the article (which hasn't gone through peer review yet - computer science is different that way) in which researchers describe an classifier they've made, using off-the-shelf algorithms, to identify criminals by their facial features. The authors, when contacted, seemed completely unaware that they might have found a pattern in criminals' facial features because they trained their classifier on real world data, which may be (read: is) based on judges' unconscious biases. In fact, the fact that their classifier did find a pattern in criminals' faces is evidence that judges have unconscious biases.

This same research group did a study where they wrote a classifier to identify personality traits of "attractive Chinese females" based on their facial features. Here's a quote from the first version of their abstract: "our empirical evidences point to the possibility of teaching computer vision and machine learning algorithms, using example face images, to predict personality traits and behavioral predisposition." Their data sets were based on keyword searches on Baidu, and the data was sifted by male grad students. And... their data sets were labeled S+ and S-. So much is wrong here.

Luckily, in the updated version of their paper, they recognize their classifier is about perceived, and not actual, personality traits:  "Our empirical evidences point to the possibility of training machine learning algorithms, using example face images characterized by internet users, to predict perceptions of personality traits and demeanors."

18 hours ago, aeromancer said:

but it's quite simple to override a 'learned bias' in a computer program by systematically deleting all archived data and reevaluating everything from scratch. There's not going to be a problem. R

I hope my above examples demonstrate that bias in computer-generated classifiers is already a problem. And fixing it is actually not simple AT ALL. First of all, not all programmers are even trying to counteract this, even though any classifier trained on human-generated data is going to reflect our biases. But second of all, counteracting those biases is really hard. I'm not sure what you mean by reevaluating everything from scratch. Coming up with a clean data set isn't possible, so you have to counteract biases in the programs you have. But how are you going to evaluate your data? How are you going to define fairness? My husband really likes the work of Sendhil Mullainathan, a Harvard professor who's interested in this and just starting to work on it. He won the Genius Award, so you know he's smart.

So, simple? No, unfortunately not.

[neongrey]

13 minutes ago, Hobbit said:

This one? My husband is quoted in it!

Oh wow! What a small world, that's super cool-- yes, that's the one I was thinking of. I thought that was a really fascinating illustrative example of just how pernicious these sorts of things are. It's obviously not a conscious intention for this algorithm to have used race as a factor, and yet that effectively came out that way. That's my primary interest as far as the AI angle goes-- the article I linked interests me primarily from a sociolinguistic angle but it's really interesting watching these sort of issues mushroom up from the AI field. I'm not going to say it exposes problems we don't know about, because we do, but it makes them really clear. I was talking with one of my friends at Google about this about what a huge problem it is in the field.

It makes sense that it is, though-- literally anything that is created is going to be a function of the biases and priorities of its creator. There's a pop-culture notion that AI is inherently biasless or strictly objective but that is just straight-up not possible-- they're all created to the biases and priorities of the creator. And then further, when you're creating things to learn from given inputs-- well, like you said, there's no clean data sets. Literally everything is created by a society and that society has its own values and biases. There's no way to escape that being reflected in... well, anything, lol.

[kais]

@Ernei, I know we've had these conversations before, and I understand that you're looking at our social problems here in the US through the lens of an outsider, but I think its important for you (and everyone else) to understand that this video isn't okay. The demographic make up of the people in the video should have been a first clue. It also reeks of privilege that I'm kind of tired of deconstructing. Nevertheless, I shall try again.

- The man in the video says we shouldn't seek to change people, that we should just live our lives and love people. This is privilege at its finest. Black people in the USA cannot live their lives. They get shot for going to the store to buy a bag of skittles. They get shot for taking an autistic man, (that they are taking care of), out for a walk. They get shot for DWB (driving while black). Should they just ignore that? Live their lives with love and just keep letting white people kill them?! What about trans people? They can't live their lives, either, because in some states they can't use public restrooms. Should they not go out of their homes? Should queer people as a whole just sit idly by while our rights are legislated away? What about immigrants? What about Muslims in this country? What about the man on the flight just recently who needs major reconstructive surgery on his face, and got a concussion, due to our airport security? Should he just love them and laugh it off because they're never going to change?

- The arguments used by the narrator seek to invite complacency in privileged people. Why get upset over social media? Why raise public consciousness? No one is ever going to change. Racism will just always exist and we should never strive to be better. You can't affect change, silly person, so don't bother trying. Just be happy and live your life and don't worry about those around you who are marginalized because they're just grumpy, and they sound unhappy, and they're always whining. Go ahead and tone police them, because constantly being shot at by police doesn't give you the right to be angry. Go ahead and wave off trans people because you were born in the right body, and it's not your fault they weren't. Why can't they just be happy the way they are? Oh, one of them was beaten to death for wearing a dress? Guess that just happens. If only he'd been happier and just loved people more.

- Being a good person, a truly socially conscious person, takes work. It is hard. If you can avoid being a part of social justice, you are privileged, and you need to take a long, hard look at what that means. It doesn't mean silencing marginalized voices, or dehumanizing their struggles, or treating them like children. Racial equality matters. Pronouns matter (like, don't you remember what happens to S when misgendering occurs??). Being able to cover your head with a scarf because it means something to you, and your religion, and to not be beaten to death for doing so, matters. It's great that white cis, het Christians can pull wool over their eyes and pretend these things are just silly angry bickering. That sure as heck isn't what Jesus did. He didn't ignore the poor, or the sick, or the marginalized. He helped them. He hung out with them. He listened to their hardships and fought for them. He got angry! Jesus yelled! He made people listen because people were ignoring the marginalized, and here comes the son of god saying no, that's not cool. Everyone matters, everyone. Jesus was THE social justice warrior, and every time, every darn time I see something like this video, all I can wonder is if Christians can even see how far they have fallen from the god they claim to love. 

WWJD? It sure as heck wouldn't be this. 

[kais]

2 hours ago, Ernei said:

It's not aimed at you in any aspect,

Okay but it is aimed at me. Not by you, necessarily, but by the presenter. This video made me so angry I cried. I cried here at work and had to leave the building and take a walk. That is how upset it made me. The message of that video is tone policing. And the comic at the link there is a really good one, and well worth the time to read. I don't have to listen to the other side, when the other side doesn't think I am a person, and that I don't deserve human rights. Why would I give any time to someone who thinks I should be dead? Should a Jew have to debate the usefulness and importance of their life with a Nazi? No. That's asinine. We don't have to debate fundamental human rights, and if we do chose to, we do not have to do so civilly. By allowing 'the other side' to be heard, we legitimize it. We say to that side and everyone listening - look, this person has something worth hearing, and we should consider their position. That just further marginalizes people. 

This isn't about worldview, and that is part of what makes that video so hurtful. It lumps social justice, the intrinsic rights of humans that should not be under debate, along with a religion. Everyone has a right to a life free from oppression and hate and violence. Religion is something you chose, and you can follow its rules or not, but there is no parallel between someone with a view that, say, Jesus is the son of god, versus a black man's right not to be shot for buying Skittles. And you'd better believe the black community has a right to their anger. They have a right to yell, and be angry, and show their activism and discuss their experiences however they wish. As white people, it is our job to not delegitimize their pain, or make them speak gently to us because we get uncomfortable with their anger. The marginalized do not owe comfort to their oppressors. 

Sometimes you have to use violence to solve violence. Even Martin Luther King believed that. You have to understand that words can be violence. I would rather be punched than purposefully misgendered, and the physical effect on my body is the same (and the pronoun comments in that video were particularly damaging to me). That is how much words can hurt. And some words, some words cannot be allowed. Words that seek the destruction of people, that argue that groups of people are not even human? That cannot be allowed to stand, because the damage to the marginalized is too great. 

 

More on Tone Policing

On black women and white women

Good quotes from a menagerie of people

A good wiki, with links, and separate break out discussion of geek culture and civility

The Style over Substance fallacy

[industrialistDragon]

Ernei, just because your nationality didn't own slaves in the past doesn't mean that you as a person in contemporary culture don't reap the benefits of the privileged society slavery has produced, without having to do a thing on your part. That's why it's important to try not to make this worse for the people who don't reap this passive benefit. You-as-a-Pole (or you-as-a-female-looking-person) can have issues and difficulties completely separate from the benefits you-as-a-white-person receive. That's called intersectionality, and it is definitely a thing. And really, we're talking basic, floor-level stuff -- Not getting shot simply for going to the store for candy. Being allowed to exist. Having people think you are a fully-human human being. 

 

As for punching Nazis, I agree with Scalzi here (but the fact that I can make such a distinction is one of those passive benefits I was talking about).

 

Claiming "all evidence should be examined" when talking about opinions that deny other humans the basic right of being thought of as human, belies the fact that these opinions are not equal. By giving time and credence to the theories that claim "one group of humans is inherently more X than another because of Y" does not disprove them. All it does is create a false equivalency where believing subsets of humanity are inferior is somehow the same as believing humans in a majority should listen to subsets of humanity that have been historically silenced. 

 

From the majority, it seems like those in the minorities are being "too loud" or "too mean" or asking "too much," but that's because from the POV of the majority ANY incremental change is seen as dangerous. There have been studies to prove this. I've probably linked them in other posts.  It's a gut-level reaction, but the job of the people in the majority in a situation is to stop, check that reaction, and then *listen* to what is being said, even if it's being said in a way that seems "bad" or "rude."  Maybe that's the only way they can get people to hear them. 

[Eagle of the Forest Path]

Proceed as you wish, but it appears to me we've reached the Godwin Point.

[neongrey]

It's really very disingenuous to pretend there's equivalence between people who have been systemically dehumanized expressing frustration in a frankly inappropriate way and actual, demonstrated acts of systemic violence. Do you really, truly believe that those statements should be given equal weight warrant systemic police violence, that they warrant the murders by police that go unpunished? And really, even that one, single article you're locating, even that isn't calling for people to be killed. I cannot say that for white supremacists and neo-nazis.

And let's get something straight here. You're acting as if your being from Poland absolves you of all aspects of white privelege. That Poland has in no way engaged in any systemic oppression of any other people. Poland is a country with a rising tide of anti-semitism (despite having very few Jews), growing islamophobia (despiet having even fewer Muslims than Jews), that recently refused all refugees during a time of humanitarian crisis, and indeed this past fall recently came very close to criminalizing miscarriage. 

You're very desperately trying to reach for 'but I haven't done anything wrong' but the thing is, this isn't about what any individual has done, it's about what we as a society are doing. You don't get to opt out of that, and saying you have no responsibility fundamentally ignores what a society is.

Society empowers white supremacy, and it's empowering neo-nazis, and it's empowering these people who can and do act on their white supremacist beliefs. Sitting on our hands and drawing false equivalences between the people who are doing harm and the people they want to harm only enables them to continue to do harm. It's gross-- it's blaming people who have been hurt for being hurt.

My Gigi, a Pole, fought at Stalingrad to help try to stop them the first time. My Pink Baba, a Pole, machine gunned Nazis who were prowling around her property, before she ended up packing up the family and fleeing. I wouldn't be here without both of them doing those things, and I've always been proud of my family and where I came from. You make me ashamed of that heritage. You genuinely repulse me on a moral level, and I'd say that you should be ashamed of yourself, but I don't think you're capable of that. 

7 minutes ago, Eagle of the Forest Path said:

Proceed as you wish, but it appears to me we've reached the Godwin Point.

So did you actually have something you wanted to contribute, or did you just want to glibly invalidate a discussion that legitimately involves modern white supremacy and neo-nazis? 

[industrialistDragon]

5 hours ago, Ernei said:

 For instance, should I not react when they say that white people are subhuman?

I don't know, Ernei. According to the video that started this discussion, If they aren't being polite you should just laugh and walk away, since no one can change anyone else's opinions. If they are being polite, the video says you should listen to them, because all opinions are valid. 

 

According to your earlier posts, you should see if they have any evidence to back them up, and study it if it's there. They might be right, after all. 

 

My idea is that just because you can find an opinion on the internet doesn't mean that a statistically significant portion of any population believes it. Using edge cases to describe a multivarious whole and "bad things happen to my affinity groups too" arguments are both fallacious and gauche. But you do you. 

 

[neongrey]

6 hours ago, Ernei said:

 

Whoa, I'm pretty astounded because I thought that you blocked me off long time ago. But I guess it's not the case anymore (well, I suspect it'll be, but well, whatever. I don't think I'll be staying here long, anyway).

 

No, you've been blocked ever since you decided that a commentary on my work was a great place for you to spew MRA talking points, and that hasn't changed. When that died off I was content to leave it at that, but you're at the point of actually causing outright harm  to people beside myself, so I'm not at all interested in letting that noxious behaviour continue.

6 hours ago, Ernei said:

I see you read a lot of newspapers owned by German companies.

This is a frankly bonkers conclusion to leap to. No, my sources on this aren't German-owned newspapers-- they're not newspapers at all.

6 hours ago, Ernei said:

. These groups call each other names likely without even knowing what their origin is. 

That's downright monstrous.

6 hours ago, Ernei said:

But this isn't a stance that you'll find widespread, and if anything, it's actually dying out.

The Center for Research on Prejudice at the University of Warsaw will be glad to hear that from you because their studies have been showing literally the opposite.

6 hours ago, Ernei said:

The thing with refugees is that they don't want to stay in our country.

They're refugees. They wanted to stay home, but couldn't, and turning them away causes nothing but more deaths.

6 hours ago, Ernei said:

You're saying that anybody who is not a part of a marginalized group is guilty by default. You don't perceive people as individuals, you perceive them as a mass

Problems at the societal level are the responsibility of a society. Individual action is a different matter entirely.

6 hours ago, Ernei said:

Ask yourself this: are all Muslims responsible for actions of terrorists? If not, then why should I be responsible for actions of racists, or other reprehensible individuals? 

I mean your premise here is based on the fundamentally islamophobic notion that Muslims are responsible for a majority (or even significant proportion) of terrorist attacks. And the statistics don't bear that out-- not worldwide, not in the US, not in the EU.

And then the question is straight-up both intellectually dishonest and islamohobic, because it's outright taken as given that terrorist action is a function of an Islamic society. What are you basing that on?

You, and I, and everyone else are responsible for the actions of racists because racism (and sexism, and ableism, and all of that) is baked into our societies, because racists have a habit of ruining things for everybody. On a deep, deep societal level.

Edited April 18, 2017 by neongrey

[aeromancer]

On 4/16/2017 at 9:37 PM, Hobbit said:

Putting the semantic confusion about context vs connotation aside...

mumble, mumble they are two very separate things, it'd be nice to discuss this further, actually. I mean, we are a writing group, so separating what meaning context gives a word and connotation gives a word would be useful. Got that out of my system, let's discuss AI.

On 4/16/2017 at 9:37 PM, Hobbit said:

This one? My husband is quoted in it! He's talking about the article (which hasn't gone through peer review yet - computer science is different that way) in which researchers describe an classifier they've made, using off-the-shelf algorithms, to identify criminals by their facial features. The authors, when contacted, seemed completely unaware that they might have found a pattern in criminals' facial features because they trained their classifier on real world data, which may be (read: is) based on judges' unconscious biases. In fact, the fact that their classifier did find a pattern in criminals' faces is evidence that judges have unconscious biases.

That is a possibility. Definitely the other study you mention has a result which is based off of selection bias, but I'm not quite sure about this one. I've seen some very convincing arguments for physiognomy, but at the same time, as writers, we know you 'can't judge a book by it's cover'. Now, the study doesn't go in-depth as to the how they selected the criminals (they mention a confidentiality agreement) and the list of crimes they mention definitely leave cases which can be open for bias. They also (unfortunately) don't list the web-spider tool they used to gather the non-criminal photos, as I would have liked to know the margin of error for the non-criminal pictures, but alas.

I'm not sure I like the thought of hundreds of people being charged as criminals solely based on a judge's bias. Even if you wanted to assume, say 10% of the criminal set as being innocent, but wrongly profiled, the discovery still stands. In particular, I'm very interested in the fact that attention was drawn to the greater facial variance in the criminal set than the non criminal set, I think that a wealth of information can be gleaned from repeat testing in that area. I'll have to keep an eye out for this, and hopefully the research continues. Thanks for showing me this, it's not every day I come across these articles.

On 4/16/2017 at 9:37 PM, Hobbit said:

I hope my above examples demonstrate that bias in computer-generated classifiers is already a problem. And fixing it is actually not simple AT ALL. First of all, not all programmers are even trying to counteract this, even though any classifier trained on human-generated data is going to reflect our biases. But second of all, counteracting those biases is really hard. I'm not sure what you mean by reevaluating everything from scratch. Coming up with a clean data set isn't possible, so you have to counteract biases in the programs you have. But how are you going to evaluate your data? How are you going to define fairness? My husband really likes the work of Sendhil Mullainathan, a Harvard professor who's interested in this and just starting to work on it. He won the Genius Award, so you know he's smart.

So, simple? No, unfortunately not.

I'll take the flak for this, it's not simple. I said this statement as a response to a worry about corrupted algorithms. Corrupted algorithms are easy to fix. The root cause, a bit trickier. What I mean when I said simple is that, relative to a human, computers don't have a intrinsic bias, or what humans call a bias. Given a corrupted data set, computers will learn the wrong algorithms, but it only takes a few keystrokes (usually) to reset a learning algorithm back to its default state, or (better yet) just delete the algorithms and start over fresh. The clean data set is where the challenge lies, but that's a human problem to create it, not a computer problem.

 

Moving onto more recent discussion: (I really need to spend more time on the Internet. Or much less.)

@Ernei For what it's worth, I agree with most of what you say, especially your point on perceiving individuals as a whole, rather then the individuals they should be perceived as. A person is presumed innocent until proven guilty. It's one of the cornerstones of the American criminal justice system.

And I cannot believe I'm defending Richard Spencer, but I am going to do it. Let me make this clear: In America, we the people do not use physical violence against people we disagree politically with. Even if the people you are calling Nazis (presumably the alt-right) were Nazis (and they are not), they are protected by the American government to spread their ideals. The way you counter the spread of ideas is by fighting on the intellectual level. You should never punch a Nazi.

"Violence is the last refuge of cowards." - Isaac Asmiov

Edited April 19, 2017 by aeromancer

[industrialistDragon]

10 hours ago, aeromancer said:

they are protected by the American government to spread their ideals

 

No, what you are talking about is not First Amendment protection. First Amendment, "free speech," protection covers not being arrested for merely saying things. If you say stupid things that make people what to punch you, that's battery. Free speech doesn't make people have to listen to you, or force people to take you seriously, or even (for non-governmental entities) provide you a venue for your words. If you get punched for talking, you have not been censored. Your First AMendment rights have not been infringed. You now have a battery charge you can bring against the guy who hit you. Whether the common defenses to battery-caused-by-words will apply is why there are lawyers. The Nazi in question did not get arrested for saying atrocious things, he got punched. The derision the nazi has received and the support the hitter has received are also not illegal, not censorship, and not a violation of free speech. Free speech protects you from being arrested for just saying stuff, it does not protect you from the consequences of your words.

 

This discussion has veered very far from any sort of on-topic intent, and for the sanity of all involved I think it should just be tabled. Take it to reddit. I'll meet you there. 

[Hobbit]

Alright, here I go, changing the subject:

I got CHICKS today!

They are cute and fluffy and they cheep a lot, and my cat hasn't tried to eat them yet! They like to peck everything, including their own feet and each others' eyes. Also, they literally make a squelching sound when they poop. I'm super in love.  

If chickens start to appear in a lot of my stories in the future, well...  you know what's happening.

[kais]

On April 18, 2017 at 3:54 AM, Ernei said:

Jews that lived - or live here - are mostly white too.

 

12 hours ago, aeromancer said:

Nazis (presumably the alt-right) were Nazis (and they are not)

So in the space of two days, various people on this forum have argued for tone policing minorities, claimed #notallwhites, willingly, knowingly posted a video that directly mocks pronoun issues, proclaimed that Jewish people aren't white (just say that out loud. Really. Say it out loud. Do you feel like a racist? You are.), and that the alt-right aren't Nazis. 

If you, as a poster or an observer, are wondering why marginalized people can't speak to you calmly and just explain things and their side, maybe take a hard look at this thread. At every turn, either my gender or the religion that I love, has been attacked. My pain, and the pain this has caused me, has been completely swept under the rug so that cis, het, 'white' voices can be heard. I'm expected to listen to your sides, but you're not even trying to see mine. I've followed your rules, haven't I, @Ernei? And yet, where have we ended up? 

It took a lot for me to join this forum. It took even more courage to start subbing TWD. I really thought we were all on the same page, not necessarily with understanding, but in terms of respect. I don't care who you sleep with, what your gender is, how you show your gender, your religion, your skin melanin content, etc. You have the right to yourself, and your body, and your beliefs. What you do not have is right to degrade and tear down mine. You do not have the right to mock me. My gender, my religion, whether or not black people have the right to buy candy from a store, these are not up for debate. 

I expected more from this forum, and from the people I had come to see as friends. I expected more people to step in and say this was wrong. To say that I am emotionally damaged from this experience is not an exaggeration. But hey, #notallwhites, right? Or maybe #notallsffwriters ?

I have fulfilled my crit obligations for this week, and now I will be stepping out. I have asked @Silk to remove me from the e-mail list. I would encourage those of you who are here to consider what type of environment, and precedent, you set in your actions, and how that reinforces the demographics of this space. There are no PoC writers here, that I am aware of, and your three queer writers have all been hurt in this exchange. You stand to lose all of us. At the very least, that does not give you a diverse crit group, instead it forms an echo chamber. If you want marginalized voices as a part of this forum, you have to start by making it a welcoming atmosphere, taking us and our concerns seriously, and above all, not belittling our struggles because hey, you're not the ones doing the marginalizing, right? Right? 

For those who have given me crits in the past, thank you very much. Your feedback has been very helpful. I will miss many of you. 

[Mandamon]

On 2/7/2016 at 6:47 PM, king007 said:

I noticed that, in the recent period, we had some nice conversations in the threads "who are you?" and "submission dates."

I, myself, had the urge to vent off some frustration about my current work but couldn't find any appropriate place for that, and I didn't want to start a whole thread just to talk about myself. I would think that I am not alone in this matter.

Members of Reading Excuses can chat here about writing and other stuff.

You're having trouble with your project? Post something here.

You found an excellent way to improve your writing? Here is the place for you.

You want to ask a question of your beloved RE compatriots? Please, be my guest.

You have something to say but you don't think it deserves a whole thread? I hug you, you hug me.

 

If any of the above stuff made any sense, this thread would stay alive. Otherwise, if I'm the only one here who needs a hug and other things, then it will just die off by itself.

We've had this "Lounge" thread for a little over a year now. This was the original text that started it. Before that, the forum was generally more on-topic, relating only to critiquing others writing samples. Notice, the original intent for this thread was to chat about writing-related topics that didn't precisely fit into a critique of someone else's work.

In recent months, and especially with political climates the world over, the nature of this thread has changed. However, I'd remind everyone that we are still a writing critiquing forum, and the purpose is to have fair dialogue on the submitted writing samples. If it is needed to keep this forum civil, then I'd ask @Silk to close this thread to remove the temptation for our group to get (far) off topic.

@Silk, I'd also ask that you add something to the "Welcome to Reading Excuses" thread about being respectful to others and not criticizing belief/gender/sexual orientation/race/etc. We've managed to go for 5 years or so without expressly noting this. I would like to think that's obvious, but evidently not. We've (largely) moderated ourselves to this point, but that also seems not to be working. Do we need to start flagging posts so moderators step in? I hope that's not the case, but if needed, I will be the first to start.

Hopefully we can continue to be respectful to our fellow writers.

[king007]

I've been following this discussion and honestly it made me really sad. This thread was created for the purpose of bringing the members of Reading Excuses together. Before it, we mostly knew each other from the critiques that we exchanged. We didn't have a platform to express ideas related to writing outside critiquing, like @Mandamon has said. I thought creating this thread would make this place more fun to keep people submitting, and therefore enriching it.

It's worth remembering that this is a sub-forum, not the whole thing. And its function is as a critiquing circle, not as a platform for discussing political issues. We have other forum sections for that, which are more suitable and better equipped for this kind of discussions.

Although I find myself sympathizing with some of what you guys are saying here, I honestly cannot bring myself to take part in it, because that would only add salt to injury and betray the original theme of this sub-forum that I hold dearly to my heart.

I implore you all to cease this quarrel and make peace with each other. Politics have invaded every part of our lives. We're already well exposed to it and its varying problems. It has divided us and made enemies out of us. We do not need to give it yet another tribune to spread its hatred. It's got plenty already. What we need is to safeguard this place as a safe haven from the bickering and fighting. A place where we all come together in peace to celebrate our shared love for writing.

[neongrey]

I'm out.

[Chaos]

Are we talking about politics here--a thing I explicitly don't want here--and are people being disrespectful? Please PM me with details, there will be repercussions. 

I am disappointed.

EDIT: I would like to state for the record that this board is still under 17S purview and usual rules of respect are a given. It seems this has not been the case. I will be investigating this matter as I would any other on 17S and pursue our usual avenues. Please feel free to PM me always or use the report feature to get noticed by site mods/admins instantly.

Edited April 20, 2017 by Chaos

[Chaos]

Update on this stuff: I will be sending PMs to many individuals about civil discourse and a lot that went wrong from page 35 to now. I must go through the painstaking effort of explaining to people, by picking apart their words, why they were not acting with respect to others, and/or flaming. This may take me through the weekend; I am way too busy for this crap. 

As a note: DON'T BRING UP NAZIS. Why would you do that? Ugh. Really? 

[Robinski]

Honestly, I've been at a complete loss as to how to respond to the previous posts. I really thought certain individuals, who (largely) have commented on 'the work' with insight and sensitivity, and genuine desire to be helpful (I think), have so abjectly failed to do so here with something far more important. I guess that's politics for you.

We seem to have lost a member of this forum who has brought immeasurable benefits to our work, and real pleasure to many, certainly myself, with the submission of their own work. That is deeply saddening, as is the loss of other diverse voices.

Neither am I proud of my lack of comment here. Too late now, the milk is spilled, but I must apologise for not supporting those who I also like to think of as friends. You will be sorely missed.

[Chaos]

12 hours ago, Robinski said:

Honestly, I've been at a complete loss as to how to respond to the previous posts. I really thought certain individuals, who (largely) have commented on 'the work' with insight and sensitivity, and genuine desire to be helpful (I think), have so abjectly failed to do so here with something far more important. I guess that's politics for you.

We seem to have lost a member of this forum who has brought immeasurable benefits to our work, and real pleasure to many, certainly myself, with the submission of their own work. That is deeply saddening, as is the loss of other diverse voices.

Neither am I proud of my lack of comment here. Too late now, the milk is spilled, but I must apologise for not supporting those who I also like to think of as friends. You will be sorely missed.

In my opinion, there's no such thing as too little too late. It may be less timely, but that doesn't mean it is still valuable.

[kais]

In the effort of full disclosure, I am still around for the time being, and having conversations with Chaos. Anyone is welcome to PM me if they want to chat.

[Hobbit]

On 4/19/2017 at 3:12 PM, Mandamon said:

In recent months, and especially with political climates the world over, the nature of this thread has changed. However, I'd remind everyone that we are still a writing critiquing forum, and the purpose is to have fair dialogue on the submitted writing samples.

On 4/19/2017 at 4:48 PM, king007 said:

It's worth remembering that this is a sub-forum, not the whole thing. And its function is as a critiquing circle, not as a platform for discussing political issues. We have other forum sections for that, which are more suitable and better equipped for this kind of discussions.

23 hours ago, Chaos said:

In my opinion, there's no such thing as too little too late. It may be less timely, but that doesn't mean it is still valuable.

Like @Robinski, I've generally been at a loss as to what to say. But I do regret not saying anything, and so here I go, in the interests of trying to help.

I do think that the issue here, while it does play out in politics, is not a political issue at its core. It's an issue of respect. I think we should be clear: respecting people and treating people with kindness is not a political action. It is simply a human one.

As we all have seen, these kinds of heated discussions pop up in the critique threads as much as they do in the Lounge. That's because these issues, ranging from the use of pronouns to racism to how to respond to evil, do relate to our writing. They should relate to our writing. We write to reflect on and make sense of the world, and to entertain people in the meantime. I know these discussions won't go away (at least I hope they won't go away) if we just all agree to keep our discussion on this forum "non-political" or "focused on writing." I want my writing to reflect true human existence, and I want it to do so in a way that respects everyone. And I don't want anyone to hesitate to call me out, when I go wrong, in the interest of being non-political.

Letting other people read our writing, especially our developing writing, is an act of trust. And it's really sad to see people who trust each other one moment, hurt each other the next. I tend to believe the best of everyone (sometimes naively), and I do believe, even though I'm probably wrong, that these discussions go south by accident (at least at first). One person says something in ignorance of its implications. Another person is hurt. I really don't think anyone on this forum is here because they like hurting people. But it does make me sad, when someone knows they've hurt someone else, that I don't always see an apology or an effort to restore trust and respect.

I do want to say that if anyone ever gets into a discussion and is worried that they're going to respond in a way that makes things worse, feel free to PM me with questions, or a draft of your response, or just to vent. I certainly don't have all the answers, and I won't try to speak for anyone I'm not, but I'm generally more emotionally removed from these discussions, and I'd like to take the burden off of the people who are most emotionally affected and drained. (There are issues that I'm too emotional about to discuss reasonably -- but they've never come up here...) 

This forum is an amazing resource for us. I love the feedback I get here on my writing. I love being able to talk with and work with other writers in our various stages of career. I love the diversity of styles and of ideas that I get to see and learn about.

Basically, I just want to say: I love you all. Even when we fight.

P.S. Thank you @Chaos for your omniscient presence and your work here.