So, I'm not an expert in "privilege", but I generally approach it like usability. You know how the person who built a tool simply doesn't get why it's hard for other users, who have no context or history with it, to use the tool. It's a basic flaw in human psychology.

Teaching is similar, the person who knows everything about X struggles to explain X to people who know nothing about X, even though in theory they should be the best person possible. The shared context is just not present.

Your first line, where even after being prompted, you simply couldn't imagine something worse than living with your parents is a great example of this. Put yourself, just for a moment, in the shoes of the orphan, or the kid whose parents disowned them for being gay/trans/athiest/addicted, or the kid whose loving parents simply don't have space for them in their small apartment or would be breaking social housing rules by allowing them to stay.

From their perspective, you're being a bit of an asshole, but you weren't even trying to be an asshole. You just couldn't imagine that people like them existed, probably because you, your friends, your family, your neighbours don't fit that description.

The concept of privilege exists, not to make you feel guilty about this, but to make you aware of your unconcious biases. And to stop you accidentally being a asshole by e.g. deciding that everyone should use their real names online, which solves your spam problem, and causes issues for people with abusive exes, or secret lives they need to hide from their family or community. It's about acknowledging that people have different experiences in life for all sorts of reasons and you can't assume what is "normal" for you is all there is.

Getting back to usability, apparently there is video somewhere of a programmer watching people use his application through a two-way mirror. So enraged is he, by them "using it wrong" that he ends up throwing a chair at the mirror. I'm not sure why people get so upset by having their worldview disrupted in this way, but it seems to be a thing.

Thanks for elaborating. I generally agree with the point of view you wrote in this comment, with few caveats:

> From their perspective, you're being a bit of an asshole, but you weren't even trying to be an asshole. You just couldn't imagine that people like them existed, probably because you, your friends, your family, your neighbours don't fit that description.

While I probably can't consciously put the right amount of weight to them and their situation - due to e.g. availability heuristic, like you described - I am at least theoretically aware of their existence and can emphasize in a limited way. My comments in this subthread weren't about denying their existence or their problems; they were against countering an idea with an example of people who can't apply it. I assume it's implicitly understood that tmpanon1234act's comment won't be applicable to everyone - but it will be for many, including most of the audience here.

> The concept of privilege exists, not to make you feel guilty about this, but to make you aware of your unconcious biases.

That's what it says on the box. It's not how it is used in on-line discussion. "Privilege" is most often brought up as a way to make people feel guilty and derail the discussion. I admit that I've become allergic to this word and can overreact even to legitimate usage of it, but that's due to the guilt-tripping it's most often used to induce.

> And to stop you accidentally being a asshole by e.g. deciding that everyone should use their real names online, which solves your spam problem, and causes issues for people with abusive exes, or secret lives they need to hide from their family or community. It's about acknowledging that people have different experiences in life for all sorts of reasons and you can't assume what is "normal" for you is all there is.

I agree this is a worthy goal (and something I try to be mindful of all the time - I actually thank HN for exposing me to so many various point of views that I can tell I've become much more conscious person because of it). But again, pointing out "privilege" is probably not the best way to achieve it now - that particular word has been overused for a different purpose.

To the points about usability:

> You know how the person who built a tool simply doesn't get why it's hard for other users, who have no context or history with it, to use the tool. It's a basic flaw in human psychology.

> Teaching is similar, the person who knows everything about X struggles to explain X to people who know nothing about X, even though in theory they should be the best person possible. The shared context is just not present.

Yeah, I learned to know it as the concept of "degrees of separation" and I think recognizing this is a crucial skill for teachers and tool builders. It's very much learnable - you recursively go down the ladder of abstraction until you reach your audience, and then build up from there. A lot of people don't do (or don't even care about) this, but those that do become again the best person for X - experts in X become the best teachers of X, and programmers become the best people to build digital tools for users.

> I'm not sure why people get so upset by having their worldview disrupted in this way, but it seems to be a thing.

I agree. Known psychological phenomenon that one has to be wary of all the time :). I know I sometimes get angry when I'm proven wrong, but I think I've learned to deal with it - the reward of being closer to the truth and understanding is worth it.

> "Privilege" is most often brought up as a way to make people feel guilty and derail the discussion. I admit that I've become allergic to this word and can overreact even to legitimate usage of it, but that's due to the guilt-tripping it's most often used to induce.

I've seen this claim a lot. What I find strange is that I'm a fairly "right-on" kind of guy, and hang out on some fairly "right-on" bits of the internet, yet I don't really see the word mentioned in any context that much. Yet apparently, lots of (mostly) young men with somewhat less progressive outlooks seem to be getting much higher exposure to this phrase than I am, and in a very particular kind of usage.

A few times I've tried to get to the bottom of this strange anomaly, and it seems there's popular online communities where people search the internet to locate examples of "political correctness gone mad" (or to save time they simply manufacture them) which they then submit to enrage their fellow community members with how the world is going downhill. Everyone's got to have a hobby, and many of them seem strange to outsiders, but the people who indulge in this seem to have lost perspective due to this self-selected overexposure.

Maybe there's other explanations, I'm older, maybe all the young kids hang out together online and berate each other for having privilege over snapchat or something and I just miss out on it, but the number of times the above explanation comes up is odd enough to me, without inventing even more odd explanations.

there are subreddits where people scour the depths of tumblr and feminist blogs to find crazy posts guilting people about privilege. They then pretend this is the mainstream or common view.