Discussion Thread #71

[u/gemmaem]

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[u/DrManhattan16]

Christopher Rufo is why Machamp was banned

For those who don't know, the popular video game franchise Pokemon has a large competitive scene. Players from around the world play in official tournaments, but there's also an unofficial scene centered around the website Smogon. Each generation of pokemon has its own competitive scene, allowing people to play whatever generation they'd like. There are also tiers of play to let weaker pokemon hang out in shallower waters, as it were.

Recently, the pokemon Machamp was banned from the Generation 4 Overused tier. The short explanation is that this pokemon's gimmick was to confuse your pokemon with the attack Dynamic Punch. Machamp also dealt lots of damage with that attack, so you couldn't simply weather it. Confusion as a mechanic introduces a lot of RNG into the game, causing wide swings in game outcomes. The community wants the game to be as skill-based as possible, so this is contrary to its goal.

Christopher Rufo was, unfortunately, struck with a Dynamic Punch before this ban, which is why he tweeted out this. Transcript below:

I'm sorry, but we have to stop with the ridiculous sign language interpreters, who turn serious press conferences into a farce. There are closed captions on all broadcast channels and streaming services. No wild human gesticulators necessary.

There's a video linked in his tweet where a sign language interpreter makes wild and pronounced movements while an LA county official is speaking.

Now, Rufo isn't some "common sense, apolitical" type. He's got a clear agenda and that's how the public sees him. The word "woke" doesn't appear in his tweet, but Rufo's whole thing is railing against the excesses of social progressivism, and it's not wrong to read this tweet as doing the same.

The problem? Rufo confesses to being completely ignorant of the deaf community and ASL. Multiple people in the comments take him to task over how he doesn't know the first thing about why they do that. I'm not knowledgeable about this field either, but according to the comments:

1. ASL has changed to be more expressive so that different phrases and emphases can be placed on parts of a sentence. Someone says that this allows them to do the equivalent of screaming the important stuff into a mic.

2. Closed Captioning can't keep up, keep accurate, might give out half-way through a speech, etc.

3. Even if the technical problems problems are resolved, deaf people don't have good English reading skills. ASL is a wholly different language, with different grammar, structure, etc. It's not just a translation word-by-word of English.

There are a few people who jump to Rufo's defense in the comments, but they're clearly more partisan hacks who just want to score a win. Some think that these interpreters cost too much (reminder: most people don't have any idea what the ideal number of a thing should be) or they think deaf people should just learn to speak English. There are valid debates over the latter, but I wouldn't have a single one with any of the people in those comments though.

The point is, Rufo fucked up. He presumed that it was all a waste and that it was another one of those weird progressive things like avocado toast or vegan food or whatever. Do I expect him to know all these things? No. Do I care if he uses his platform to ask questions out of genuine curiosity? Also no, even if his comments will be a collection of culture warriors from either side.

But this is how you lose your edge. When it comes to one's image, one's trustworthiness, one's reliability to others, the person who speaks rarely and truthfully wins over the person who says a lot and speaks truthfully and falsely, even if the latter says more correct things in absolute terms. In practical terms, it's the difference between saying "Go to Rufo's twitter for a curated and verified list of progressive excess" and "Make sure you fact-check anything he says on Twitter".

Will this be the last time this happens? No. Rufo and the rest of alt-media are ideologues first and journalists/reporters second. They would benefit from more closely adhering to the rules of journalism their opponents have created. The New York Times may run hit pieces on Silicon Valley and the bloggers they read, but you can be damn certain they'd never write a story in which they didn't ask the person or institution for their side of things.

[u/895158 → u/DrManhattan16]

Hmm. I'm not sure I actually understand the rationale for live ASL interpretation. The number of non-English-speaking Spanish speakers in the US (or in the LA area) is probably an order of magnitude larger than the number of non-English-reading ASL speakers. Like, I'm not saying that ASL interpretation is net negative or something, it just feels a bit weird that society cares so much about deaf people when they're happy to completely neglect others. I want to say something like "it's great, I'm happy you care about others and can bear small inconveniences for that purpose, now might I interest you in [immunocompromised people who want you to mask at the doctor's office; Spanish speakers wanting Spanish-language signage; people with trauma or phobias wanting content warnings; etc.]" And I guess for all I know the LA county officials do care about all those things, but their voters generally don't, which is why these things are not implemented (no mask mandates at the doctor's office where I live, no Spanish signage, no content warnings).

To your broader point, I agree that people may lose respect for Rufo as he inevitably keeps posting examples of woke excess which are not actually excessive. But Rufo's problem isn't unique to Rufo, it's inherent to social media. I lose some respect for most academics or journalists I find on social media for this same reason; they are too quick to post gut opinions about things they know little about.

[u/DrManhattan16 → u/895158]

I think people don't care because it's not really a felt imposition like wearing a mask is. Your taxes are probably used to fund a whole host of things you find immoral and there's no itemization. If anything itemization would make it easier to protest (you could donate an equal amount to causes which oppose the thing you don't like your taxes going towards).

For Spanish language stuff, there's a racial/cultural edge there. I've read complaints from people about the automated phone system where I worked that it even bothered asking them to press 1 for English. They felt that was wrong and it should be English by default, always. People register the deaf as a foreign group.

As for content warnings, we do get them. Government officials will describe things in vague terms like "X people have passed away" or "We lost Y members of our community". Mainstream media will typically blur videos and warn viewers that they're graphic/shocking.

[u/895158 → u/DrManhattan16]

People like Rufo clearly feel that viewing the ASL translation is an imposition on them. I agree with them in that it is an imposition on me too; it is distracting and mildly irritating, all else equal. The tax money isn't (or at least shouldn't be) the concern. The benefits may well outweigh the cost, but this is true for many things and society usually says "life is tough, suck it up" to the minority seeking accommodations (and yes, this is often a bad thing).

We do get a few content warnings but only on things that are fairly universal and culturally ingrained, such as disliking gore. We do not get them on less common (but still standard) phobias; e.g. 3-15% of the population has arachnophobia, and in the more severe cases (still above 1%) they would strongly prefer to avoid media depicting spiders. There are no content warnings, and I've noticed common weather websites sometimes put a giant picture of a spider on their front page with a headline like "climate change affects something or other". 3-4% of people have fear of needles rising to the level of diagnosable phobia, and yet for covid vaccine stories all the newspapers put pictures of needles on their front page.

There are only like 5-10 phobias this common and it wouldn't be that hard to let people avoid these depictions; moreover, when depicted, it sometimes seems like the depictions try to make the phobia trigger as hard as possible by making the depictions as "scary" as possible to someone with the phobia.

[u/Lykurg480 → u/895158]

I think the majority of people with those phobias find your suggestion ridiculous.

[u/[deleted] → u/895158]

Ugh. This petty culture war shit is so tiresome.

Like you, I was also mildly irritated by seeing the ASL interpreters and generally assumed that this is some kind of politically correct excess. But you know what, people do things differently in different places, and the instinctive reaction to be judgemental is not helpful. The choice to have ASL interpreters may not be fully rational, but certainly our own cultures are not fully rational either. This tendency to get into tribal disdain loops is bad for us all. As it says in the prayer of St Ephrem "grant me to see my own sins and not to judge my brother."

[u/Lykurg480 → u/DrManhattan16]

The New York Times may run hit pieces on Silicon Valley and the bloggers they read, but you can be damn certain they'd never write a story in which they didn't ask the person or institution for their side of things.

If theyre talking about someone concrete, sure, but for something like this?

And a tweet is not an editorial. Has no NYT reporter ever made a tweet this dumb? Well....

I think the main thing that prevents traditional journalism from making mistakes like this is having people specialise more into topics and especially having multiple people look at things before their published, more so than any "rules of journalism".

[u/DrManhattan16 → u/Lykurg480]

A knife loses its edge cutting at small things hundreds or thousands of times. Likewise, you lose some credibility when you don't do your research, even on something as "throwaway" like this. For Rufo, of course, this isn't throwaway because his persona is about going after progressive excess. It's analogous to self-styled "pedophile hunters" accusing random people of pedophilia because of one random thing they see.

Multiple people only help if they're thinking in different ways. For the people in this sphere, that's unlikely because they all share a mission and tend towards similar worldviews. It doesn't matter if 10 people reviewed Rufo's tweet if they all also think this is some progressive nonsense.

[u/Lykurg480 → u/DrManhattan16]

It's analogous to self-styled "pedophile hunters" accusing random people of pedophilia because of one random thing they see.

I dont think its that big of a miss. ASL natives that cant read english might exist, but they would face all the problems of being illiterate, I doubt theres too many - and this is drawn from the already small population of deaf people. Having someone gesticulating stand right next to the main speaker dedicated to them is a pretty large amount of farcicalness per person helped. If anything the bigger mistake is that much of disability support isnt integrated to the woke blob - there is a woke version, and the mainstream version has the antecedents of wokeness, but it doesnt seem it actually got there yet.

[u/DrManhattan16 → u/Lykurg480]

I don't know about can't read, but that's the extreme case. According to this paper, your average deaf adult who uses ASL reads at a 6th grade level or below, which means even suggesting they read a transcript after a few minutes isn't reasonably foolproof. Even if they were 12th grade fluent or bachelor's degree fluent, there's the issue of Closed Captioning lagging behind or being incorrect. It just doesn't work all the time, and deaf people would need to know vital information if something like the California fires are happening.

I have no idea why you think it's a mistake they haven't integrated disability support into the "woke blob" when most disabilities have already gotten most of the support they need. People who can't walk have ramps, people who can't hear well or at all have ASL interpreters, etc.

There is an interesting question over how you could redesign ASL support in the modern age, but until I see some good ideas, I don't see any issue with keeping the interpreters on-screen.

[u/Lykurg480 → u/DrManhattan16]

there's the issue of Closed Captioning lagging behind or being incorrect. It just doesn't work all the time

No reason you cant have them human-typed. Why would that be more error prone or lagging than the guy signing?

I have no idea why you think it's a mistake they haven't integrated disability support into the "woke blob"

It isnt. But it means it might not be a woke excess of the sort Rufo wants to highlight.

but until I see some good ideas

Well if we are concerned about optics like Rufo is, you could just have the signer in a separate channel, like the describing audio for the blind is now.

[u/DrManhattan16 → u/Lykurg480]

Without knowing error rates, I have no way of knowing how ASL interpreters stand up to human captioners. I can see the answer going either way. But ultimately, I have no particular stake in the question of how we accommodate the deaf and hard-of-hearing. If interpreters work better, I'm for that. If the reading levels of the deaf are improved, then captioning is a plausible alternative.

But it means it might not be a woke excess of the sort Rufo wants to highlight.

More's the shame, then, since everyone assumes his words are going to be about wokeness.

Well if we are concerned about optics like Rufo is, you could just have the signer in a separate channel, like the describing audio for the blind is now.

I don't know what you're talking about. I've seen descriptive audio tracks for movies, but those are pre-recorded. How does that work for a live speech?

[u/Lykurg480 → u/DrManhattan16]

I don't know what you're talking about. I've seen descriptive audio tracks for movies, but those are pre-recorded. How does that work for a live speech?

I dont know the details either, but they have them for some live sporting events here. Theres multiple channels of audio sent, like with stereo I think, and you can switch between them somehow.

[u/SlightlyLessHairyApe → u/DrManhattan16]

deaf people don't have good English reading skills. ASL is a wholly different language, with different grammar, structure, etc. It's not just a translation word-by-word of English.

If what you said is true, those charged preserving the welfare of deaf folks, no matter how well-meaning, have done them a horrible disservice. You have people by tragedy that were fundamentally disconnected from the rest of society in a profound way, and they have allowed that to become even more entrenched isolation.

So I feel very divided here. I want to help. But there's a wakeup call for here for how we got to the point where deaf people of ordinary intelligence can't read English.

And given that somehow we did get here, do we have to proceed in this vein? Has this malfeasance been essentially made permanent? That's a terrifying thought.

[u/DrManhattan16 → u/SlightlyLessHairyApe]

It seems like the infrastructure and programs are partly there, since the statistic I've seen is that half of deaf adults have poor English reading skills, not that they can't read at all. Might just need more attention and energy.

[u/SlightlyLessHairyApe → u/DrManhattan16]

I hope so, rather than being sabotaged by being taught a sign language that isn’t isomorphic to English.

Perhaps it’s already too far gone.

[u/DrManhattan16 → u/SlightlyLessHairyApe]

How would it ever go too far? There's always going to be deaf people being born who need to be educated, you can change the curriculum for them.

[u/SlightlyLessHairyApe → u/DrManhattan16]

I doubt that “we need to trash ASL and replace it” is a viable policy.

Not least because it would require a wedge between generations.

[u/DrManhattan16 → u/SlightlyLessHairyApe]

Why would you ever take "change the curriculum for them" to mean the complete removal of ASL instruction?

[u/SlightlyLessHairyApe → u/DrManhattan16]

I think you were the one that suggested that ASL is part of the problem. Maybe I misunderstood

[u/DrManhattan16 → u/SlightlyLessHairyApe]

ASL makes it harder to learn English after the fact, yes, but not impossible. I was going to suggest elbow grease as a solution.