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Comment by raganwald | Hacker News Reader

But there IS changing everyone's behaviour. In my lifetime, drunk driving and spoual abuse have become socially unacceptable. Overt racism has become socially unacceptable. Two women got engaged at centre-ice in a hockey game, a bastion of blue-collar society.

All these changes happened because people said, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more!"

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You, sir are correct.

Incidentally, daenz is also correct. Albeit with a little addition to what he says:

"There is no changing everyones behaviour in a matter of days."

Which means that daenz's suggestion is the "best" (as in "highest gain") solution in the short run. It is not incompatible with simultaneously trying to change people's behaviour in the long run.

> In my lifetime, drunk driving and spoual abuse have become socially unacceptable

Seeing the change in your lifetime does not mean the entire process occurred in your lifetime. How many lifetimes is it taking for women, gays, and black people to become treated as equals, and we're still not there. Like I said, it takes lifetimes.

I'm not saying don't fight discrimination. I'm saying she should consider her health. Unless she wants to be a full-time martyr and campaign for this cause, then by all means, she should give herself 1000%. But if she doesn't, she's going to need to focus on your health in the face of this alleged behavior, and that includes not letting herself get worked up to an unhealthy level if she can help it. But by all means, continue the fight.

Hey, growing up all sorts of Black people decided to "not make waves" and all sorts of gay peple decided to live in the closet. I'm grateful for the people who made other chouces and didn't listen to the "voice of reason."

It's a game theory thing, isn't it? Fighting is cooperating, and lightening up is defecting, and the payoff for cooperating takes years or decades and only happens when enough people ooperate to make change.

Interracial marriage was illegal in much of the US until just 45 years ago. The Stonewall Riots were the same year we landed on the moon. Romer v. Evans wasn't until 1996, and Lawrence v. Texas is just eight years old. You have a poor sense of history and the passage of time if you do not recognize the staggering speed with which the world can and has changed.

I'll say it again:

> Seeing the change in your lifetime does not mean the entire process occurred in your lifetime.

When did slavery start in america, the 1600s?, and when was interracial marriage legalized, 45 years ago? That is the timeline of change for african americans. Just because you see the end of something in your lifetime, it does not mean the process also started in your lifetime.

OK, black people were literally property in mid-19th century America. That's pretty much rock bottom, just 157 years ago. For reference, a full human lifespan is something like 120 years, and the average is a little over 70. So today, a mere two lifetimes later, a guy descended from the slave owners can marry one of the slaves' descendants and nobody even bats an eye. And a first-generation African-American is running the country. In the face of all this, how can you say meaningful change can't happen on the scale of a person's life? (And most of that civil rights process did happen in raganwald's lifetime if he was born before the '60s.)

Read your history, slavery in america started in the early 1600s. That's almost 400 years ago. That's almost 6 lifetimes. That agrees with my statements.

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