What a clickbait article. There's no mention at all of any specifics of "young authors" censoring their work. Instead it's a vague opinion piece about Ishiguro disliking "cancel culture" in general, because JK Rowling took some heat. It just looks like the same story of "I think cancel culture is the cause of all problems" without any specifics.
Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'
61–70 of 694 posts
Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'
#62It's really sad that in the age of unrestricted access to information public discourse is self-restricting to avoid wrong-think and dissenting opinions. If you look at the history of intellectual progress, much of it was exactly due to unpopular opinions. Now by having one you're risking your entire career and sometimes more. This is truly the dark age of the information era.
There is no era of Western history where unpopular opinions were more acceptable than today. In the past, dissenting opinions voiced loudly were often punished by blacklisting or excommunication or prison or death. Now, you get yelled at on Twitter and some companies won't work with you.
> There is no era of Western history where unpopular opinions were more acceptable than today.
I suppose it depends how fine grain you can be when considering eras, but there were periods even within my own lifetime that were much more tolerant. In the 90s, there was a period where the influence of religious prigs had waned, and the secular prigs had yet to be taken seriously. The internet in particular was pretty wide open to ideas of all sorts, and no one would seek to ruin your life over disagreements.
If you coursen the grain to wider epochs, then yes I think you're correct.
Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'
#63I am quite interested that people worry cancel culture is preventing intellectual progress more than copyright. Copyright, patents, and other forms of intellectual property have an absolute legal stranglehold on whatever you're trying to do. "Cancel culture", which honestly I've never felt like has limited me, just puts peer pressure on people. Why is the outrage towards IP not as strong as it is towards cancel cultu…
Cancel culture isn’t simply peer pressure. It’s a mob harassing employers and schools to fire or expel wrongthinkers. Cancel culture literally ruins lives.
Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'
#64It's really sad that in the age of unrestricted access to information public discourse is self-restricting to avoid wrong-think and dissenting opinions. If you look at the history of intellectual progress, much of it was exactly due to unpopular opinions. Now by having one you're risking your entire career and sometimes more. This is truly the dark age of the information era.
What kind of intellectual progress do you think we're missing out on?
I see people getting "cancelled" (aka facing consequences) for things like sexual misconduct / abusive behavior. For anti trans views. For fascistic ideas, or storming the capital to re-instate a democratically defeated politician.
Are any of these places where the next big leap in intellectual progress is going to come from?
Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'
#65It's really sad that in the age of unrestricted access to information public discourse is self-restricting to avoid wrong-think and dissenting opinions. If you look at the history of intellectual progress, much of it was exactly due to unpopular opinions. Now by having one you're risking your entire career and sometimes more. This is truly the dark age of the information era.
There is no era of Western history where unpopular opinions were more acceptable than today. In the past, dissenting opinions voiced loudly were often punished by blacklisting or excommunication or prison or death. Now, you get yelled at on Twitter and some companies won't work with you.
Exactly.
I grew up in the Midwest and outside of the city. When I visit home, I pretend to believe in God, lie-by-omission about my bisexuality, stay silent about politics, pretend to say grace at dinner, and go to Church on Sunday mornings. If I didn't, then in many ways I'd not longer be welcome in that social group. Finding a iving-wage job in the local community would certainly be impossible. There are only a few tech firms and all the owners are members of the same bible study.
Want to see real cancel culture? Live in any of America's many culturally homogeneous rural communities for a month. Put up a Biden sign in panhandle.
None of this is a defense of cancel culture, but it's worth keeping in perspective that way more "cancelling" goes on in deeply conservative communities than in extremely liberal communities. We just call it "keeping American a Christian nation" instead of "cancel culture".
Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'
#66One of the biggest issues is the lack of consistent canceling for the same offense along with the changing rules.
If you said something 10 years ago that was completely acceptable it will be used to attack you in the present. When others said the same thing they get a pass but you don't. If the rules were clear and generally agreed upon I think tnere would be less fear.
Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'
#67Isn't that what pen-names are for? They can use a new pen-name if they want to write on a topic that might not be received well and only reveal themselves after it's well received. Has something changed so that this isn't as viable of a strategy anymore?
I think it reached a certain point where even a pen-name is not enough. The author might write something completely safe(under his own name) and some people will still be able to nitpick and led a crusade against him/her. You can control what you write but not the mob trying to lynch you.
Well, yes, but not having a pen-name that's connected to a real world identity does limit the potential consequences to a significant degree. It's not perfect, especially if you do something illegal, but an online mob probably can't get you fired if they don't know your real identity.
Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'
#68It's really sad that in the age of unrestricted access to information public discourse is self-restricting to avoid wrong-think and dissenting opinions. If you look at the history of intellectual progress, much of it was exactly due to unpopular opinions. Now by having one you're risking your entire career and sometimes more. This is truly the dark age of the information era.
did you miss McCarthyism?
Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'
#69I genuinely wonder what cancel culture is going to look like in the next 5-10 years and beyond. Just about everyone I speak to about the subject agrees that cancel culture is bad but very few people seem willing to confront it. I sense that people hope the rest of society will come to its senses and we all stop being so judgemental. But as much as I loathe cancel culture and it's chilling effects on the free exchange…
I don't think it's limited to just what you say in public. Videos and audio recordings have a way of triggering human emotions that writing simply does not. To tell you the truth, I live in perpetual fear that some acquaintance could secretly record me saying some non-PC thing in private, and post it to Twitter to get me cancelled. I have deleted all social media to try to achieve "out of sight, out of mind" but I still feel unsafe.
It's truly dystopian. I do feel as if I will go insane if this continues for another 10 years.
I worked hard in school and sacrificed so that I could build myself a better life. Now, it seems like the entire thing hangs on a knife's edge. Quite frankly, I would not have tried to work hard for the last 15 years if I had known we were about to go full-blown 1984.
Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'
#70An interesting point is made way at the end: > And in fact AI could come up with the next big idea, an idea like communism or Nazism or capitalism… and what troubles me about that is that it is very difficult for humans to keep control of that situation. This to me is the best "are AI at human-level intellect yet" benchmark I've heard to date. Once AI can create a novel socio-political framework and convince humans t…
The reality is humans wouldn't believe the AI. They'd spend literal centuries arguing that the AI's parameters were wrong or the training data was bad if it meant they could protect their financial interests.
Well, I think the imaginary SF AI would have some ability to construct a superhumanly convincing argument. But also, its easy to imagine that the AI would also be protecting it's own financial interest at that point in some way. Or existential interest.