Redacted Squad - offensive route names on MP

Redacted Redactbergwrote:

Oh the Irony! The desire to purify history in your moral image IS the egocentrism.

You continue to try to make this about "purifying history", not what it's really about which is removing offensive names from prominent places which indicates approval. 

According to your black and white view all the places that were named after Adolf Hitler in Germany that had their names changed after WWII were purifying history and they should have left them as they were.

Hey, we worked Hitler into the conversation. Who would have guessed?

DIE initiatives are not evil as some make them out to be (which is a preposterous proposition), but are done with the idea of increasing fairness, inclusion, and equality. Do they sometimes go too far? Do they sometimes lead to unfair outcomes? Are they sometimes abused in ways that lead to unjust outcomes? Do some people disagree with them? All yes of course, and it's good to be on the lookout for negative consequences. But as soon as someone claims their main purpose is evil or they can somehow control other people's thoughts you realize you can't have a productive dialogue with them because they are looking at it in a way to justify what they want to believe. 

First Lastwrote:You're all over the place, David. Which is it? Is a vote necessary to prove an overwhelming majority, or is it oxymoronic? Are MP forum users representative when they agree with you, and non-representative when they don't? You're welcome to challenge the legitimacy of the Gunks Apps process with them, but MP accepting the claim that Gunks Apps included meaningful community engagement (or that the Gunks Climbing Coalition's involvement meets a reasonable standard of community participation in the Gunks Apps renaming effort) is not the same as MP proactively authoring new route names.

You’re disingenuously conflating two separate points that are not in contradiction at all:

1. IF 100 gumbies vote to chip Shockley’s Ceiling, they are still wrong, no matter their democratic vote.
2. You claim 100 gumbies DID vote to chip Shockley’s Ceiling, and I’m saying that you have pulled this out of your poopy hole. All you have is that propaganda you keep repeating about your “General Secretary of the Gunks Republic.” In fact, I have every reason to believe that the majority opposes this route name coup.

This is neither the FIRST time you’ve straw-manned me, and I’m sure it’s not the LAST ;)

Gloweringwrote:

DIE initiatives are not evil as some make them out to be (which is a preposterous proposition), but are done with the idea of increasing fairness, inclusion, and equality. 

Colin Quinn: “Don’t judge me what I do, judge me by what I tell you I’m thinking when I’m doing the other thing."

You think it’s a coincidence that those who fly the flag for equality of outcome are in bed with censorship and history manipulation? Everyone in history who had that set of traits were the bad guys. Including those who assure you they have the best intentions all the while. Actually, especially those who insist on their good intentions. Maybe each trait on its own, there is plausible deniability. But taken all together, we are now beginning to triangulate something quite sinister.

Jay Crewwrote:

Honestly, Firstlast, have you ever, even once, established a route? Or are you just trying to police others? 

Well,  are you just going to dodge my question altogether?

Redacted Redactbergwrote:

You think it’s a coincidence that those who fly the flag for equality of outcome are in bed with censorship and history manipulation? Everyone in history who had that set of traits were the bad guys. Including those who assure you they have the best intentions all the while. Actually, especially those who insist on their good intentions. Maybe each trait on its own, there is plausible deniability. But taken all together, we are now beginning to triangulate something quite sinister.

Ha ha. Yes. Let’s go back a half century.

Back when a divorced woman with a full time job could not get a home loan because of that status. Back to when high school sports for boys had funding but girls did not. When common jobs for adult women were limited to grade/high-school teaching and nursing. When a young white male might have  the highest paying entry-level summer jobs literally handed to him while the new McDonalds in town was the “big break” for his sisters. Or later, at “college age”, when all but one sister dropped out of college due to lack of resources, with the one making do with jobs serving alcohol and so the best money-getting job. When getting married was too often the only path for a young women to get out of her parent’s home.

Someone else can speak better to the inequalities of those days to people of color - or even how it is today. It was 40 years in a tech field for this white male before I had my first female manager. And I have never had a manager of color … though had one recently with a little Inuit ancestory.

Back to gender, the evidence is that the best performing teams have a majority of women. Not IQ, not the toast masters trained, not people who enjoy each others company, not etc.  Such a loss all those generations. Maybe we would not have had the bay of pigs, the challenger disaster, etc.

DEI was born in the 1060s with the civil rights movement. It resolved some of the above inequality. And yet the supporters of civil rights were sinister people? Really?!?  And your intensions here, David G, are for the good? With all due respect, you are bordering on ludicrous.

Bill Lawrywrote:

Ha ha. Yes. Let’s go back a half century.

Back when a divorced woman with a full time job could not get a home loan because of that status. Back to when high school sports for boys had funding but girls did not. When common jobs for adult women were limited to grade/high-school teaching and nursing. When a young white male might have  the highest paying entry-level summer jobs literally handed to him while the new McDonalds in town was the “big break” for his sisters. Or later, at “college age”, when all but one sister dropped out of college due to lack of resources, with the one making do with jobs serving alcohol and so the best money-getting job. When getting married was too often the only path for a young women to get out of her parent’s home.

Someone else can speak better to the inequalities of those days to people of color - or even how it is today. It was 40 years in a tech field for this white male before I had my first female manager. And I have never had a manager of color … though had one recently with a little Inuit ancestory.

Back to gender, the evidence is that the best performing teams have a majority of women. Such a loss all those decades. Maybe we would not have had the bay of pigs, the challenger disaster, etc.

DEI was born in the 1060s with the civil rights movement. It resolved some of the above inequality. And yet the supporters of civil rights were sinister people? And your intensions here, David G, are for the good? You’re bordering on ludicrous.

1060’s? The Norman conquest? I guess that was a kind of civil rights.

But in all seriousness, you’re confusing equality of outcome and equality of opportunity. And I never heard the civil rights or women’s rights movement say anything about censorship or having a largscale purge of names, historical monuments, etc.

Redacted Redactbergwrote:… you’re confusing equality of outcome and equality of opportunity. And I never heard the civil rights or women’s rights movement say anything about censorship or having a largscale purge of names, historical monuments, etc.

"Equality" is integral to DEI.

I guess “grab ‘em by the pu$$y” is perfectly fine speech? Or “she must be on her period”?  Or “don’t worry your pretty little head”?

Plenty of “censorship” came along with it - the "womens rights" movement.

Edit add: In the next post, David W takes something I said out of context. The full context was ...

Bill Lawrywrote:

Even in science, there will always be more to discover, always some that will remain unknown for lifetimes to come.  Wherever human judgment is involved, it will be even messier and more often impossible to completely untangle (e.g., history is written by the victors).

And this was a counterpoint to David insisting on someone answering his "tough" questions which are linked here.

Bill Lawrywrote:

Even in science, there will always be more to discover, always some that will remain unknown for lifetimes to come. 

There is nothing new to discover about doing censorship or history purging “correctly.” It’s a taboo for anyone who pays any attention to history and human nature. And even if there was something to discover, maybe one special zarathustrian tightrope to censorship and historical purging utopia, that experimentation is not worth it.

You wouldn’t trust a small child to drive your car, because of their inherent nature. So too, do not entrust any adult with censorship because of their inherent nature. We are all children in those kinds of driver’s seats, not ubermenschen.

Just because you can ask a question and observe a problem, doesn’t mean you or anyone else needs to try, or is even capable, of solving it. Have the humility to accept that some problems are best left unsolved and untouched by any human being or system, because the fallible human being always has, and always will apply solutions to certain problems, despite their best intentions, that are necessarily worse than the disease.

It isn't all that clear that humans should not address these problems including through "censorship". I offered a counter-example of the civil rights movement.  You dismissed that though your reason is not clear.

I was just typing out a response to your earlier post, didn’t see it.

Organic cultural decisions for what is appropriate speech in polite context is not censorship. People who throw out epithets at those who disagree with them are not employable. Like those who constantly throw epithets in this thread. But we are not employees of MP, nor are we employees of anyone when we go into nature and give our own blood sweat and tears to develop routes. So for this reason I don’t flag posts that hurl insults at me, nor do I flag routes that offend my sensibilities. Now if this was in a work environment between employees, it might be a different story.

(Rate limited as well)

Edit: it’s not equality, it’s equity. Read their own literature. It’s describing equality of outcome word for word. Not the same thing as equality of opportunity, and as much as we have done that, it is probably the greatest human social achievement.

Edit edit: I’m not misrepresenting you. You agreed an objective definition of hate-speech is a fool’s errand. This is exactly the point. Once you understand that, handing that wheel and clutch over to a minority of human beings, who are inherently incapable, is a recipe for disaster.

Redacted Redactbergwrote:

Just because you can ask a question and observe a problem, doesn’t mean you or anyone else needs to try, or is even capable, of solving it. Have the humility to accept that some problems are best left unsolved and untouched by any human being or system, because the fallible human being always has, and always will apply solutions to certain problems, despite their best intentions, that are necessarily worse than the disease.

It isn't all that clear that humans should not address these problems including via the use of "censorship". I offered a counter-example of the civil rights movement.  You dismissed that though your reason is not clear.

(post-limited out for the day)

Edit:  Lol'ing ... and meant 1960s for sure …

David Weisberg wrote:

Calling organic cultural decisions for what is appropriate speech in polite context is not censorship. People who throw out epithets at those who disagree with them are not employable. Like those who constantly throw epithets in this thread. But we are not employees of MP, nor are we employees of anyone when we go into nature and give our own blood sweat and tears to develop routes. So for this reason I don’t flag posts that hurl insults at me, nor do I flag routes that offend my sensibilities. Now if this was in a work environment as an employee, it might be a different story.

I would take a different path there.  Just because something is said outside  of work and in public doesn't mean it's not about some transaction involving money.  Nor do I think money is the litmus test for considering that "censorship" may be warranted … which takes us back to how messy this can be.

The fact that seeking a precise definition is a fool’s errand does not negate the merit of sometimes going with the 80% solution.  I believe that handing the “wheel and clutch” over to a good team is sometimes the best option.

And, so far, OnX / MP seems to be handling this ok albeit slowly. Bears watching for sure.  I’d heard decisions can in some circumstances be made by one person. Seems unnecessarily brittle since what is deemed offending has nothing to do with crag familiarity. Crag familiarity only invites bias.

Redacted Redactbergwrote:

You wouldn’t trust a small child to drive your car, because of their inherent nature. So too, do not entrust any adult with censorship because of their inherent nature. We are all children in those kinds of driver’s seats, not ubermenschen.

A Beautiful Mind  (2001)

Who woulda thunk a privately owned website not openly displaying racist and sexist route names would lead to the downfall of the world? Thanks for edumicating us.   

Gloweringwrote:

Who woulda thunk a privately owned website not openly displaying racist and sexist route names would lead to the downfall of the world? Thanks for edumicating us.   

Since when does a private, for profit business care about equality of outcome? At every instance MP is shoving in our faces that it’s their data to control, while we are the ones who voluntarily provide the data and give MP nearly all of its value. And then they have the cajones to come back after that, and talk down about DIE like they know better about equity, after pulling one of the dirtiest monopoly moves? Does it get any more ironic?

Also, how do you flip so fast between anarcho-capitalist “business is always right” to “DIE is pretty good, equality of outcome isn’t all that bad and has good intentions, big brother is always right”? That’s like, factor 10, next level whiplash

David, just an observation: You have some valid points, but your bulldog conspiratorial ranting kind of makes you look like an unhinged loon and ends up diminishing what you are trying to say.

Redacted Redactbergwrote:

Also, how do you flip so fast between anarcho-capitalist “business is always right” to “DIE is pretty good, equality of outcome isn’t all that bad and has good intentions, big brother is always right”? That’s like, factor 10, next level whiplash

Because I’ve never said either of those things. But that’s what you need to believe I said in order to believe you are right. Like I said you are stating things in black and white. If we lived in a world where there was only a choice between no censorship and heavy handed censorship by big brother I’d of course take no censorship, but that’s not what this is about. 

M Spraguewrote:

David, just an observation: You have some valid points, but your bulldog conspiratorial ranting kind of makes you look like an unhinged loon and ends up diminishing what you are trying to say.

Care to be more more specific? Or is this just a drive by smear shot?

Nearly everything I discuss is almost entirely factual:

1. MP hypocritically used an Equity committee, while being themselves insanely inequitable in blocking the API and controlling volunteer sourced beta. 
2. They categorically promised not to rename routes without FA's, which is a promise they’ve instantly broken with Shockley’s Ceiling. 
3. That minority is then hypocritically lecturing other climbers about justice with the Shockley Ceiling, while making no consideration for their own glaring injustice. 
4. And now you see two different admins, who admit involvement, explicitly mentioning executive action.

Where’s the conspiracy...? It’s all really straightforward, out in the open. The only thing I can think of that I’ve explicitly speculated on that might seem conspiratorial is that people might still get pissed with serial code style route names, and that might lead to further route renaming. Is that the substance of my “conspiratorial ranting”?

Upshot: If MP admins are supposed to be the upstanding representatives of the MP "community decisions" who can put their fingers on the scales with route names, the showing in this thread has been anything but flattering. If nothing else, this thread has made that crystal clear.

Redacted Redactbergwrote:

Care to be more more specific? Or is this just a drive by smear shot?

No and no.

Gloweringwrote:It is moral for MP to censor route names on their website IMO (a business making decisions what's in their best interest). 

DIE initiatives are not evil as some make them out to be (which is a preposterous proposition), but are done with the idea of increasing fairness, inclusion, and equality.

These are polar opposites, and untenable positions at that. The former claims that monopolies are moral in selfish decisions (100% capitalism). The latter claims that equality of outcome ideas are good (0% capitalism).

And these two positions are not nuanced at all. The real nuance is that equity and monopoly are both not moral, and what would be is something in between, where volunteer labor can’t be seized by a monopoly like MP for themselves, but not so equitable that FA’s route names or beta contributions will get trounced on by the tyranny of the mob. 

That nuanced place, I think, is when the volunteer data belongs to the community (not MP), while there are protections in place that don’t allow us to willy nilly edit other people’s contributions (not DIE committees). I already offered the idea of the Access Fund purchase. Maybe there could also be an infrastructure that provides distributed record keeping. That kind of decentralization seems like a stable and nuanced place, unlike the wildly unreliable whims of a centralized MP or a DIE committee, polar opposites, and yet converging in that horseshoe manner.

Redacted Redactbergwrote:

These are polar opposites, and untenable positions at that. The former claims that monopolies are moral in selfish decisions (100% capitalism). The latter claims that equality of outcome ideas are good (0% capitalism).

Again you’re trying to make this black and white. If I need to carefully craft my words so they’re not taken out of context it would be something like “most businesses operate to increase shareholder value most of the time, and will make decisions focused on that. They may sometimes make decisions for what they consider the greater good which may or may not benefit shareholder value. These decisions may or may not be considered moral by a specific group of people.” EG A big corporation may dump toxic waste in a river because it’s cheaper than disposing of it properly. This may increase shareholder value but be considered extremely immoral by a majority of people. But maybe this is in a country where it’s not illegal and the company executives still see it as moral. Even moral is not  black and white.

Equality of outcomes (or more accurately policies that promote more equal outcomes) may attract more users or prevent some users from leaving. So a business may make a decision to increase fairness and equality because they think it will end up increasing shareholder value.

MP can only control what happens on their website. If you don’t like it start your own website and show the racist and sexist names. They don’t own the route names. If a user isn’t happy their contributions have been changed they can always leave and someone else can re post the climb details.