That's because the author seems to be firmly anchored in a coastal elite bubble. In particular this phrase:

> invalidate someone's lived experience

...is particularly cringe-inducing. These are code words. This is not how any normal human in the English speaking world has ever spoken prior to exposure to a particular brand of (most often quite expensive) education, and let's be clear--that's the whole point. People train themselves to use this language as a way to demonstrate their membership or desired membership in the current socio-economic elite. It is not really any different from learning to use the "correct" fork at a 19th century dinner party, even to the point where watered-down versions of both trickling into middle class.

So let's say now you've gone and learned these phrases and weaponized your speech in this manner, great on you right? Wrong! You've lost your voice, everything you say is now constrained without the confines of this language and carries connotations set by someone else that overshadow whatever you may wish to express, but more importantly, your speech is now a constant performance. Just as how nourishment was not the point of dinner, what's being discussed is not the point of conversation when using this language. People who talk this way occasionally slip up and deviate slightly and you can hear in their voice how much anxiety this causes them, usually some small nervous joke follows. Crippling anxiety is perhaps the defining trait of these folks, to the point that many many of them, a far higher percentage than you'd expect naturally, are on some kind of anti-anxiety drugs. This risk of saying something that puts you out of step with the tastemakers grows enormously as your investment increases, better to say nothing of substance at all while using lots and lots of this language and drop in as many of these code words as possible.

What? That's a completely normal sentence. I don't understand what in particular triggered this rant full of strawmen.

I think you're illustrating that person's point. I'm a liberal, with-the-times person in a liberal, with-the-times city, and I cringe at the thought of ever uttering the words "invalidate someone's lived experience". Aside from anything else, what the fuck does it even mean? I don't think it's a bad rule of writing to speak in simple, clear, plain words, not glutinous agglomerations of abstract verbiage which evoke nothing.

(While we're at it, have you considered whether you might actually be a man made of straw?)

> Aside from anything else, what the fuck does it even mean?

I'm assuming this is a genuine question, so I'll answer with my genuine understanding. Invalidating someone's lived experience is the process by which someone more or less says, "that didn't happen to you", or "your interpretation of events that happened to you is wrong." Before we start to find edge cases like "they clearly left the door unlocked and believed it to be locked," no that's not what invalidating lived experiences pertains to. Invalidating lived experience pertains to social knowledge and interpretations usually of harmful events. Or in other words, overwriting someone's framing of the harmful events that happened to them. Broad categories include, "no, that wasn't racism/sexism/bigotry that you experienced", or "no that really wasn't abusive." You might think of it as a certain kind of gaslighting.

Could there be a better name for it? Maybe? Signifiers are often detached from what they signify- it doesn't matter much to me at this point that this is the case. Let me be clear. I'm not here to discuss that this is or isn't a problem in discourse. Moving from, obtuse wording to, not-actually-a-problem is a kettle logic I don't wish to engage in.

That phrase is often used to move goalposts when someone is using an anecdote to justify actions they've taken, or policy they're advocating. This can include leveling accusations at other people.

It is a linguistic tactic that attempts to bypass debate through appeal to emotion. "You can't tell me I don't feel this way!" Correct, you feel that way, but your feelings don't magically turn assertions into fact. The objection of "invalidating lived experience" is the notion that one's feeling are facts when they are not. They are subjective impressions unsuitable as the sole grounds for action.

Really good example. Thank you. This is precisely the type of thinking that goes into invalidating lived experience.

The mechanism behind invalidating lived experience is fundamentally a reality construction mechanism. It's goal is to construct a reality, namely by the person doing the invalidating. The reality being constructed is absent bigotry and abuse as a way of avoiding the task of confronting them directly. In short it says, "My reality is objectively true and yours is not" when the person doing the constructing hasn't the same personal encounters as the person being invalidated.

It appears that the end point of debates around this end in both parties having their own "lived experiences" based on fundamentally different "truths". How can anyone reach agreement on anything under these rules?

Could the element of "personal experiences" be the cause? Limiting proof points to established facts rather than subjective experience helps tremendously. Someone claiming whatever has a much more powerful voice (and is less likely to be silenced as a vocal one-off) when citing research. Similar to how academic papers don't reference the author exclusively, but rather peer papers.

Everyone has a unique and relevant perspective - lived reality is reality! But with so much noise, its far easier to dismiss individual voices than reporting on the aggregated voices of others. This filters out confounding variables and roots the hypothesis in fact (e.g. Consider an individual reporting of a nearby road keeping them awake at night. It could be they have an uncomfortable mattress, a light on in the room, or any other factor. Only when other neighbors report the same issue is the proposed cause worth a serious look).

Obviously this is more difficult in lower incident / harder to measure areas - e.g. bias, harassment, etc. Don't have a good answer here other than the burden of hard proof is unfortunately on the accuser, which leads to so many of the troubles society is grappling with today. Things like police bodycams seem to help, but resolving all disputes based on 'lived experience' doesn't seem like the best outcome.

It's rather frustrating that I specifically added in cases of "bigotry and abuse" and we're detouring into abstract epistemological discussions and trying to back fill those generalizations into the specific.

Invalidating lived experience is overwhelmingly used to describe a pattern of behavior which occurs in the realm of bias, harassment, and interpersonal conflict, not arriving at scientific or universal truths through debate.

This is much more about "Your Dad didn't hit you. That never happened," than "In my experience the Earth is flat." The suggested change in behavior also isn't "You're never wrong." It's merely the suggestion to get genuinely curious, and pausing to listen before framing someone's experience. Maybe the body cam shows otherwise, great. Getting curious tends to have a humanizing effect - the body cam evidence can wait 15 minutes.

Invalidation of Lived Experience is also what we do, and should do, to Targeted Individuals [0], people who boast of having diseases cured by crank medicine, and con game victims certain that they're beloved by overseas supermodels. Skepticism is a rational and healthy habit.

[0] https://www.wired.com/story/mind-games-the-tortured-lives-of...

Great. In agreement, but help me understand how we went from lived experiences involving bigotry and abuse to crank medicine and con game victims? I added that boundary specifically so that cases like this wouldn't be brought up and used to counter-example.

> Skepticism is a rational and healthy habit.

Agreed. Veiled-skepticism is, however in the case of invalidating lived experience, a powerful gaslighting tool. Discerning between the two is an additional hurdle targets of bigotry and abuse see layered on top of them.

> help me understand how we went from lived experiences involving bigotry and abuse to crank medicine

There's no bright line between the two. Someone claims some experiences, and someone else disputes the claims. Bigotry isn't necessarily a factor, or, there might be disagreement on whether it is. "Invalidating lived experience" seems like a thought-stopping cliche, rather than any sort of argument at all. It is a fancy way of saying "you're wrong, and I'm right!" or "you're not allowed to say that I'm wrong."

That's so interesting. For me, it's a reminder to "pause twice before telling someone how they should be interpreting their experiences relating to bigotry and abuse. Get curious instead." I guess for some people it gets translated into "You're not allowed to say I'm wrong." I feel like I have something to learn from asking, is this something that has happened to you?

As an aside, the inability to draw a clear line between abuse and other topics isn't so much of a problem for me. It is a form of Sorites paradox that we deal with in other topics all the time.

I don't exempt perceptions of bigotry from any other reported phenomena, and I think they're as valid a target for skepticism as any other.

Personally, I am liable to refrain from such discussions because they are universally fruitless, but not because of delicacy.

> I feel like I have something to learn from asking, is this something that has happened to you?

As a member of a group subject to bigotry, I see exaggerated stories deliberately weaponized, and legitimate critical thought silenced with thought-terminating cliches that include the one under discussion.

I also see folks boast "I listen to People of X!", but only paying attention to the most lurid stories, totally ignoring those who report the absence of bigotry. They're motivated by something other than the search for objective truth.

I encourage skepticism and independence of thought for all. Your curiosity should include the possibility that they're experiencing something you've never considered, but also the possibility that they're really mistaken, or exaggerating for any number of reasons.

Honestly? Don't bother. You're not going to get through to a place that doesn't instaban people who have posts like:

    > frontman1988 7 days ago | on: On Aging Alone
    > 40 is the prime age for men. You can easily get a younger gf from 
    > Thailand/Vietnam/Philippines with minimum effort. And you never know
    > you might find true love (if it exists) as well.
    > reply

or

    > frontman1988 16 hours ago | on: Can growth
    > continue?
    > The solution to tackling declining population can be by generating 
    > Genetically modified babies. This new race of humans will be smarter
    > and stronger than the current lot due to eugenics. CRISPR will make it
    > possible and it's already happening in China. The west needs to look at
    > it instead of ramping up immigration and importing instability from
    > third world countries.
    > reply

I mean, the person you're responding to hasn't taken the time to understand the base concept of "cultural appropriation", or relative disparity of experience:

    > MockObject 3 months ago | parent | context | 
    > prev | next [–] | on: The Casio employee
    > behind the “Sleng Teng” riddim ...
    > This speaks to a fatal flaw with the concept of cultural appropriation. 
    > Ok, so a "white"  person can't "speak for Native Americans", but 
    > a Native American can? Can any, or just  certain ones? Who wins if they
    > disagree?
    > reply

I'm not really sure why they would show more ability to empathize here with you than they do in other threads!

What's funny here is that these people would be probated or in the case of frontman1988, banned, on SomethingAwful these days. How times have changed!

Oh, let's not forget this zinger!

    > MockObject 4 months ago | on: Being black in tech is exhausting
    > I am a minority, and I am furious that my advancement is besmirched
    > with the asterisk of the possibility of affirmative action. But I am
    > powerless and unheard.

How would you be able to tell what’s veiled skepticism vs legitimate skepticism?

I think we all have some skill in understanding if we are being engaged with authentically or are being deceived.

> I'm assuming this is a genuine question, so I'll answer with my genuine understanding.

I'm assuming you're a genuine person and not a weird 8-foot-tall android robot, so I'll bless you with the same provisional magnanimity. Here's my answer in all its glory:

I am very tired of this line, to be perfectly honest. If you think it's not a genuine question, just say so; if you don’t think that, then I don’t need to hear about what you don’t think. Insincere insinuative rhetorical tricks at the start of a comment make me feel that you're not being genuine.

In future, you can just check the question mark at the end of the line. Think of it as a ‘checksum for questions’, if you will, or a bitmask.

> overwriting someone's framing of the harmful events that happened to them

This is a very artful smooshing-together of "question someone's feelings" and "question the external events which [avowedly] caused them to feel that way". I have to say, I was nearly persuaded by the end of it.

I obviously agree, as anyone would, that questioning someone's feelings is absurd (outside extremely specific edge cases, as you acknowledge, like malingering). I obviously do not agree that questioning the events claimed to have caused them to feel those feelings is in any way unreasonable.

My general impression is that this is slangified verbiage used by people who want to be imprecise about the very straightforward concepts they are discussing, in order not to be pinned down on the dividing line between feelings and facts in these examples. As a wise man said, the great enemy of clear language is insincerity (not necessarily on your part, personally). I think we're unlikely even to have a productive discussion about this, much less to agree, but I figured I had to post some sort of response.

> Signifiers are often detached from what they signify

Signifiers are always detached from what they signify, or else they wouldn't be much use as a signifier.

Or to be more clear, it's a phrase which means that if a person feels victimized, their anecdotal personal account supersedes any empirical evidence.

It's essentially a new form of religious anti-intellectualism, but without identifying itself as such.

In the past, you might not have been allowed to say "no, God didn't appear to you in a vision" or "no, this event wasn't evidence of divine intervention". Today you're allowed to question someone's anecdote about religious experience, but you're not allowed to question their experience of victimization under a certain set of classes.

History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.

It's very simple. I'm not sure why we're talking about visions. If someone says, "Such and such happened to me. I think it was abuse," consider stopping to think two times before responding with "No, that didn't happen." It's the very same thing already in the HN guidelines in the form of "Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine." I'm not sure why we're constructing parallels between religious interventions other than to ridicule having curious conversations instead of deciding for other people.

I have used this exact phrase multiple times, but your parent's "rant full of strawmen" did make me reflect on it. - How is "lived experience" different than "experience"? - How can an experience be "invalidated"? What does that mean? Disrespected, discounted, something else?

I think there are great discussions to be had on the subject of listening to people's experiences without necessarily ignoring factual evidence that contradicts it. My problem is specifically with that person writing two paragraphs of literal fantasy over someone expressing themselves in a way that feels foreign to them, interestingly enough contradicting the very point they're trying to make by doing so. Just very weird, in a way I haven't seen here before.

I mostly disagree with grandparent's diagnosis of the issue, but it really doesn't seem like a normal phrase to me. I live in one of these elite coastal cities, work with mostly Ph.D's, and my primary social circles have an unusual proportion (even for where I am) of educated folks as well. The phrase reads to me much like something that came out of Google Translate -- I know what it's trying to say, but it does not seem like the way a human would say it.

> the author seems to be firmly anchored in a coastal elite bubble

> These are code words

Jargon for me, code words for thee.

Aye. Policy should be based on data. In that world, lived experience has a proper word to describe it: anecdotes. The reason there's an attempt to change the language around anecdotes is that "lived experience" is intended to be beyond argument as evidence.

Part of the disjointedness comes from the writer's apparent obsession with over-simple language and very short sentences made by chopping up longer sentences. It's a good example of what happens when inexperienced writers rely on readability tools like Readable (it's on the Readable blog).

Yeah, I don't want to be cruel, in case the author is reading this, but it really is uniquely egregious writing (no toxic positivity here!). The broken-up sentences you mention are. Awkward and mostly grammatically inco. Rrect as a result. They seem weirdly unaware of the incredibly basic writer's injunction to vary your sentence length. There's no rhythm or cadence to it. You can literally feel the author grimly trudging toward the target word count.

It feels completely disconnected from anything real, full of unevocative abstract nouns connected with unevocative abstract verbs. "Don't be too hard on yourself if you're struggling with negative thoughts" - well, what the fuck do you think 'negative thoughts' are? Reading this felt like having my teeth pulled.

I think the biggest problem, though, is that they really just do not have anything valuable to say. I wouldn't be surprised if it were written at gunpoint. We used to write essays on random subjects instead of lines as a punishment at school, and I think those essays were more enthusiastic and insightful than this one. It just meanders along, with no overarching direction or purpose, from useless bromide to useless bromide, until they get to the word count and stop, and that's it.

> It’s natural to emulate what we see online. But, going overboard on the ‘positive vibes’ may affect your content.

Agreed, come on, splitting the sentence there just made it worse. Unlike many people, I'm not opposed to sentences that start with "but", but here it serves no purpose. It's not like we have an attention span of six words.

I hate this. I admit I often get carried about by combining my thoughts into massive complex sentences, but the reverse is even worse. I feel like I have to write like I’m Dr Suess.

I get why they want you to simplify your righting, but iirc they tend to want you to target a 9th grade level and if I remember correctly when I was a senior half the people in that class could barely fucking read.

One thing I could use is an autocorrect that works. My phone things it’s appropriate to randomly change worlds like die->sue but is helpless when some other word is a single character off.