581–590 of 853 posts
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This isn't specific to Sam, you're doing exactly what he is complaining about. Stop criticising the person and try to criticise the post instead.
Why? Is the idea that Sam is morally corrupt too dangerous, too heretical to be voiced? Should we not debate ideas?
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I don't read it that way. I read it as: - Extending human lifespan harms the environment. - Harming the environment is ethically wrong. (this is elided) - Therefore, Extending human lifespans is ethically wrong. This is muddy thinking and takes a great leap when it ignores the ethical _benefits_ of extending human lifespans, but I don't think it is indefensible.
No, the issue is not that extending human lifespans is ethically wrong (it may or may not be, but that's an opinion about research.) It's claiming that people working on such research are unethical people. A very basic part about good-faith discussions is to discuss the topic at hand and not the people having the discussion.
Researchers are responsible for what they work on just like implementers are (though the nuances are different).
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Fearing damage to your reputation if your ideas are unpopular is literally how society works. Unethical ideas aren't just unethical out of the ether, they usually involve harming someone or some group. Putting those ideas forward should come with risk to yourself because it definitely comes with risks to others.
This is a reasonable point in the abstract, but it doesn't account for the current reality in which "Look, I found a heretic" affords such outsized rewards in karma (or social cachet, or the personal satisfaction of having taken down a baddie, or whatever you want to call it). Fifty years ago, you could say women are too dumb to program computers and still keep your job and be invited to dinner parties, and now you w…
[1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/computer-programmi...
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What if voicing a controversial opinion gets you fired?
You're going to have to be more specific. What kind of controversial opinion are you worried will get you fired?
IE, free speech, applied to private companies, as the controversial opinion that a person is getting fired for.
Shortly prior to the recent US presidential election, I worked next to a nice, smart young man from California who went to a well-known progressive university in the bay area. Politics was very rarely discussed at work, but in the weeks before the election, there was some cross talk in the isles. He trusted me enough to message me privately that he was planning to vote for Trump. At that time, I was quite anxious abo…
Doing something out of spite like that is a pretty miserable experience...
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> Liberals are tolerant of anything except being conservative As a non-American liberal, I'd argue 'liberals' are tolerant of anything except non-American liberals. Try bringing up progressive topics in polite company and see how long you can last before becoming a conspiracy theorist / radical. You agree with every UN member countries wrt Palestine/Israel except 2? Oh, we don't talk about that here. You want to supp…
I know you have real points but bringing them up in this way in this discussion is just going to create a flamewar. That may be part of the problem you're articulating but it's also a fact, and we have to have a fire department here or the place will burn up. So please don't. We have no choice but to work within the window of tolerance of the body of this community. I don't mean 'tolerance' in the virtue sense but in…
This is dangerously wrong. Earlier this year, I noticed something in China that really surprised me. I realized I felt more comfortable discussing controversial ideas in Beijing than in San Francisco. I didn’t feel completely comfortable—this was China, after all—just more comfortable than at home. There are many more unsayable things in Beijing than San Francisco, and the penalties for saying them are much harsher (…
What if it were hypothesized on the basis of some controversial observations say in optics, not proven mind you, but supposed based on related work, that we might be able to hit melanin molecules with certain types of radiation to allow people to change their skin color to those indistinguishable from another racial group? Would physicists be allowed to discuss and publish proposals for this? I'm not even talking IRB…
To address what I hope is your point (not really about skin colour, I assume that was simply an example of a no-go zone for your imagined liberal interlocutor), there are not many areas of research out of bounds because of social mores - there are always some at any given point in time in any given society (for example cloning or using fetal tissue in the US), and there are valid discussions to be had about whether research is ethical or not (which shifts over time).
Those hard ethical issues on the edge of science and what it means to be human are unrelated however to: novel physics ideas, almost all startup ideas, ideas for a new currency like bitcoin, spacex etc. Of course to have good ideas you need to preserve some innocence, ignore all the naysayers (of which the internet has plenty, a never-ending horde we all participate in at times), you may need to stand apart from your society (as in the case of bitcoin) or reject its tenets but that is entirely unrelated to tolerance for intolerance, to tolerance for hatred, to a happy ignorance of ethics or moral boundaries.
The writer mixes up simple cynicism and societal pressure which he experiences (which are as old as the world and easy to ignore), and real hatred leading to violence and seems to think they are somehow equivalent. Those are different categories of objection, different qualities of harm. Paul Graham or Sam feeling bad because people are dismissive, petty and wrong about good ideas he has, is simply incomparable to the real harm caused by the normalisation of the ideas in this essay (e.g. a given class of people are evil and subhuman - be that gays, jews, rich white men or something else). By giving those ideas credence, he's lending a hand to evil in the world.
In short, you don't need to allow hatred of [insert your hated group here] to allow good science.
I have no idea what this article was about. As someone who grew up in India, lived extensively in Europe and Arizona before settling down in the Bay Area, and travel to China 2-3 times a year, I find Bay Area by far to be the most open, tolerant, accepting places I have ever lived. And it is not even comparable. And it is borne out by simple stats. People vote with their feet. Bay Area is almost a majority minority a…
In America, you can criticize the government but cannot talk at all about controversial social issues. Many Americans abide by the rule: "do not talk about politics and religion among polite company." I've known people who have legitimately ended friendships over political opinions. Such a thing is almost unheard of in China. In China, you cannot criticize the government but you can talk all day about social issues,…
One of my favorite ideas here recently is a "steel man" argument. It's putting the best version of an opposing argument forward before explaining why it's wrong.
This charity to the people behind the ideas is missing when you're looking for a soundbite or worse looking to banish to an out group.
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I think everyone (including me) agrees that you shouldn't arrest or legally stop people from expressing their opinions, no matter how morally reprehensible those opinions are. However, that isn't what the blog post is talking about. It is saying people SHOULD tolerate it personally, and we shouldn't call people 'heretics' for their ideas no matter what those ideas are. I think it is ok for people to say "If you say g…
> I think everyone (including me) agrees that you shouldn't arrest or legally stop people from expressing their opinions That simply isn't the case; definitely not "everyone". > and we shouldn't call people 'heretics' for their ideas no matter what those ideas are Indeed, those people are wrong; if you want to publicly call someone a heretic, or whatever, (in a non-harassing way), that's just your freedom of expressi…
You should not be able to keep a person out of your restaurant because of their views, but the job one is tricky and nuanced.
I think there are certain beliefs that a person could hold that are valid disqualifications for hiring that person; for example, if a person is advocating that women shouldn't be allowed to work and should stay at home because they have nothing of value to offer, how can I possibly hire that person? How is a woman supposed to work side by side with someone who has expressed the view that they have no value in the workplace? I think if your opinion is that some of your coworkers have no value in the workplace, that has to disqualify you to work there.
Now, of course, the spectrum of troubling views will eventually reach a point where the answer is not so obvious as to whether they should be hired or not. I don't think I have a strong answer to where that line should be.