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E Pur Si Muove

blog.samaltman.com

221–230 of 853 posts

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#221
I'm naturally sympathetic to the sentiment, but this post fails to acknowledge, much less address, the major societal changes that have precipitated our current situation. Censorship is a reaction to our society's increasing inability to combat misinformation. Over the last 20 years, a huge, extremely influential right wing media establishment has sprung up. It has clearly demonstrated its ability to convince millions of people of things that are factually untrue, with less logic than repetition. (Ask Barack Obama, the Kenyan Muslim, about the utility of reasoning). I am worried about someone who makes an argument that gay people are evil, because it probably now means that a group of commentators have adopted that simple statement as a talking point. Furthermore, they've tacked on preposterous arguments, logical fallacies, and agreed to engage in Ad Hominem warfare against anyone who argues differently. It's been an extremely effective formula for persuading a huge portion, if not most of our society, into believing falsehoods.

Unfortunately, the John Stuart Mill marketplace of ideas is failing to distribute value as obviously as our economic marketplaces. The openness of communication made possible via technology has turned us all into Sophists. Efforts to confront and address this reality is peripheral at best. As long as this is true, censorship will be an appealing option to keep bad ideas from spreading. Is censorship worth the cost? I don't know, but I'd lean toward saying yes, while fully acknowledging that the cost is huge.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#222
post #108

I'm extremely aware of this as someone who is socially conservative in terms of abortion, gay marriage, trans issues, etc (seriously not trying to start a flame war). It's weird knowing that a large portion of the country has similar values to me, but in a major city I can never mention these things or I'll immediately become unemployable. It doesn't matter that these things have zero impact on my behavior at work; y…

From my perspective, I don't want to work in an environment where people are voicing their opinion that (e.g.) gay marriage is illegitimate or wrong. How am I supposed to work with someone who thinks a huge part of my life is immoral? I would have an incredibly hard time believing that that person was taking me seriously, really wanted to work with me, wasn't going to undercut me, or trusted me. It's not that you can…

I totally empathize with this perspective. It would never be appropriate for coworkers to criticize (directly or indirectly) your lifestyle, identity, or personal decisions.

With regards to your statement "I would have an incredibly hard time believing that that person was taking me seriously, really wanted to work with me, wasn't going to undercut me, or trusted me.", in many ways I totally respect that concern.

But I also think it may be symptomatic of how our approach to these topics has become non-constructive. We've too closely tied support for a person with support for everything they do/believe. To my thinking, whether I take you seriously or want to work with you has nothing to do with the aforementioned topics, and entirely with how you behave/execute at work. And if I'm going to undercut you at work because I disagree with your beliefs, the issue isn't that I disagree with you, it's that I'd be willing to undercut anyone I work with.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#223
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're leaving out the part where A whips up a real mob and lynches somebody. Yeah because that hasn't happened, and if it did would be met with universal condemnation and be up against full weight of law enforcement and the legal system. > And what do you think has a stronger chilling effect: the possibility of being fired or the possibility of being murdered? If the possibility of being fired for ideas is highly…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_crime#Victims_in_the_Unit...

We're discussing the situation in present-day tech culture, mostly with regards to Silicon Valley and the Bay Area as compared to China.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#224

Tech liberals created this dictatorship, so enjoy sleeping in a bed of your own making Sam

Though it may be true that some liberals who work in technology argue about pronouns, that doesn't mean the entire set of liberals working in technology did anything.

> did anything.

...except maybe tacitly agreeing with people who posited that talking about something was a bad thing, because, you know, in this particular case freedom of speech is trumped by more important considerations.

This is, of course, not limited to liberals, or any other political affiliation.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, he's asking for ideas to be criticised, and for the people presenting the ideas not to be ostracised. You can say "it's a bad idea to work on extending life", but following on from there to cast the person presenting the idea as unethical is doing more harm than good.

I keep hearing that from people saying things like... "I think black people are genetically inferior." ...followed by... "Why can't we have a free exchange of ideas?" What if the ideas are unethical? There is a lot of that going around these days. Life extension is one that comes up quite a bit, because the question doesn't seem to involve life extension for all, but life extension for a few who can afford it. Or, if…

>What if the ideas are unethical?

Propositional claims, in and of themselves, cannot be unethical. It's just a category error.

Now, if you're talking about the propositional claim, "black people are genetically inferior", well, as far as I know, it's contradicted by reams of available evidence and supported by little to none. You might as well claim the moon landings were faked, and, I suppose, many racists probably also do claim that one.

I do think there's a difference, so to speak, between heresy and quackery, and if we're treating racism as heresy, we've arrived to a very worrying place. The problem is, we treat ideas as heresy when we don't think we can actually provide evidence against them. That's why the whole notion originates with the unprovable realm of religion.

Claims like the supposed "inferiority" of some groups of people, on the other hand, were, at least as I was taught, quackery. They're just wrong, and all you have to do is point at the contradictory state of affairs in the real world.

A quack you ignore because you can prove they're wrong. A heretic you burn because you're secretly worried they're right.

Which makes me wonder how many secret racists we have around those pyres burning racists and sexists.

>Maybe we need to decide if being ultra-wealthy is moral when people are in need and there is a system in place that generates people in need.

This sorta idea? https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/06/its-basically-just-im...

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're really not.

Oh please. Y'all campaign against San Francisco values. Pelosi is basically a code word for it even though she's from a Baltimore political dynasty. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=644311... San Francisco values gets repeated by Newt Gingrich, Bill O'Reilly, Hannity, Rush, ... at every opportunity. Sorry to link to Breitbart, but here's Roy Moore ranting on about San Francisco. http://www.breitb…

Why are you associating those douchebags with the south? Newt I get, but aren't the rest of them in NYC?

The real divide in this country is rural vs. urban. Cities in the south are plenty progressive, and rural areas in the rest of the country are plenty conservative.

I've lived in Boston and Atlanta, and Atlanta is a much more tolerant, friendly place.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#227
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what world are these opinions not voiced? I don't think this argument stands up to empirical scrutiny -- there's an incredibly robust network of vocally conservative student organizations.

See this list and go to the most recent years: https://www.thefire.org/resources/disinvitation-database/ When the list started it was fairly evenly distributed between right and left leaning speakers being disinvited. Now it's much more commonly right leaning speakers.

Interesting, attempts to disinvite more left leaning speakers in 2017: 4

Attempts to disinvite more right leaning speakers in 2017: 24

At least on YouTube it does seems like there are more attempts to prevent conservative ideas from being voiced on campuses by rowdy demonstrations that interrupt speakers.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#228
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The worst you'll get is a tongue-lashing?" Not even close. It is quite ordinary for SV employees to be fired or "resign" after being caught participating in wrongthink. Eich is the most famous example, but Apple's former chief of diversity is a more recent one. No, this is not quite as severe as being arrested and imprisoned for thinking the wrong things. But career-wise, at least, it can be almost as disastrous.

Woah. I had no idea about Apple's chief of diversity; she was an African American woman who even agreed with a need for gender and race diversity, but merely added ideological diversity. Apple firing her and backpedaling on a need for ideological diversity is really disappointing to me, and this will seriously affect my decision on buying a HomePod next year / future Apple devices. It surprises me that Sam didn't inc…

Well, as I said in the other subthread, I don't necessarily blame Apple for this - they're just doing what's best for business. And what are your other options for spy-speaker providers? Amazon and Google? Do we think that they wouldn't have done the same thing if one of their employers had faced the same backlash?

You can't place the companies you buy from under too strict an ideological purity test, either in one direction or the other, or else you'll never be able to buy anything.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh please. Y'all campaign against San Francisco values. Pelosi is basically a code word for it even though she's from a Baltimore political dynasty. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=644311... San Francisco values gets repeated by Newt Gingrich, Bill O'Reilly, Hannity, Rush, ... at every opportunity. Sorry to link to Breitbart, but here's Roy Moore ranting on about San Francisco. http://www.breitb…

Why are you associating those douchebags with the south? Newt I get, but aren't the rest of them in NYC? The real divide in this country is rural vs. urban. Cities in the south are plenty progressive, and rural areas in the rest of the country are plenty conservative. I've lived in Boston and Atlanta, and Atlanta is a much more tolerant, friendly place.

Roy Moore and Newt Gingrich are about as South as South gets and they definitely campaigned against San Francisco values. Newt Gingrich essentially defined the modern Republican Party's approach to campaigning and governing.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#230
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder how much of this is an outgrowth of the current university campus climate where opinions that don't fit into the predominant liberal worldview can't be voiced. This does not seem to match the reality at university campuses - only the caricature by people who find it politically expedient to be seen as persecuted.

Just off the top of my head in the last year or so: Social scientist Charles Murray was censored then physically assaulted at Middlebury because he wrote a book about the correlation between intelligence and success [ https://youtu.be/a6EASuhefeI?t=19m25s ] Biology professor Bret Weinstein at Evergreen State College had himself and his family physically threatened because he refused to participate in a protest that a…

Please see my other reply in this thread about censoring people vs. censoring ideas. The only one on this list that's somewhat convincing is the Laurier one, since that was in the course of an academic class. Milo isn't an academic. A professor beating someone with a bike lock might be inappropriate and criminal but isn't about academic discourse unless the other person is a professor, and it seems this person was a former professor, anyway. Jordan Peterson himself has been able to spread his ideas far and wide via his YouTube channel, which as far as I know is not censored on any campus network. etc.
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