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Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

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Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#171

Post by fallingknife »

throwawaygh wrote: post #91
c06n wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And fired from your job. And yelled at on the street. And prevented from working in your field ever again. And death threats. So, blacklisting: check. Excommunication: check. I'd rather not wait till it goes down further.

All of those things happen to homosexuals and non-Christians in huge geographic swathes of the country, and with MUCH greater frequency. When CPAC starts eg hosting FFRF or ADL speakers I'll take the cancel culture bugbear seriously.

First of all nobody is saying its good when right wingers do it. But here is Bernie Sanders invited to make a speech at the right wing Liberty University: https://www.vox.com/2015/9/14/9323041/bernie-sanders-liberty...

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#172

Post by futuretaint »

omgwtfbyobbq wrote: post #99
c06n wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And fired from your job. And yelled at on the street. And prevented from working in your field ever again. And death threats. So, blacklisting: check. Excommunication: check. I'd rather not wait till it goes down further.

I think the point is this had been around for a while, and what people are calling "cancel culture" is the same old-same old, but with (hopefully) less prison/death. There's nothing new about receiving negative feedback for having and expressing unpopular opinions. That's really common in pretty much every single social group I've been in, including on HN.

this is common whataboutism. What about the dark ages ? What about burning witches ? If we claim to be a compassionate society we should be anti-censorship and let ideas succeed or fail through the strength of their argument.

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#173

Post by throwaway894345 »

read_if_gay_ wrote: post #147
throwawaygh wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of those things happen to homosexuals and non-Christians in huge geographic swathes of the country, and with MUCH greater frequency. When CPAC starts eg hosting FFRF or ADL speakers I'll take the cancel culture bugbear seriously.

That is cancel culture too. No one upthread made this about political sides. Why are you?

Agreed. And to be clear, in the early aughts society pushed back on conservatives when they tried to cancel people for criticizing the wars at the time. So critics of cancel culture aren't being inconsistent or picking on left-wing cancellation.

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#174

Post by throwawaygh »

fallingknife wrote: post #171
throwawaygh wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of those things happen to homosexuals and non-Christians in huge geographic swathes of the country, and with MUCH greater frequency. When CPAC starts eg hosting FFRF or ADL speakers I'll take the cancel culture bugbear seriously.

First of all nobody is saying its good when right wingers do it. But here is Bernie Sanders invited to make a speech at the right wing Liberty University: https://www.vox.com/2015/9/14/9323041/bernie-sanders-liberty...

In the general case, you're not allowed to teach at Liberty unless you're a very specific type of conservative christian. A statement of faith is a required component of the faculty application packet. The student code of conduct prohibits homosexual behavior.

Passing off Liberty as a bastion of free expression because they invited Sanders to give a speech is beyond disingenuous, and a perfect example of the enormous double standard in discussions of "cancel culture" right now.

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#175

Post by refenestrator »

RobLach wrote: post #114
bitcharmer wrote: post #5

It'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.

Hardly so. There's ample evidence that the current is the greatest opportunity for dissenting thought and opinion to have massive reach without much consequence or effort. The idea that we're in a dark age of thought is purely rhetorical and only serves to frame a narrative that further amplifies ideas that would never had a chance to propagate before the information era. Furthermore, we are living in a time of such…

What's interesting is that heretical liberals have the most to fear in this environment.

MAGA people can't be cancelled, and it's a badge of honor if attempted. But well-meaning unorthodox liberals really have to watch themselves.

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#176

Post by sleepysysadmin »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #14

I 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…

>So all that being said, I genuinely wonder if cancel culture is here to stay, because the next ideology to come along will also realize how powerful of a tool it is.

Here to stay for sure. There's an active group of people behind it. They are the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Left and they still exist today. The problem is that in 1989 when socialism died. They started their rebranding effort. They became Politically Correct, "democratic socialists", culutural marxists, globalists, internationalists. etc.

The reason Justin Trudeau can do black face on multiple occasions and still win an election is because he's part of the new-left. Cancel culture is a tool of political silencing opponents. Those in the fold like Trudeau, he'll get away with literally anything.

The problem or reason why it has become so much more obvious. Increasingly desperate. What has Biden done for BLM? Absolutely nothing.

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#177

Post by _-david-_ »

rrose wrote: post #94
_-david-_ wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Plenty of national newspapers are willing to give people front-page editorials to say things that are not mainstream. Do you have some examples?

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/22/opinion/bon-appetit-cance... https://www.wsj.com/articles/academic-freedom-is-withering-1... depending on if you consider george will "mainstream"- he is an establishment conservative which certainly is a dissenting viewpoint at the washington post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/unprecedented-untarg... not a newspaper, but a national magazine a front page article with a de…

>https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/22/opinion/bon-appetit-cance...

Seems like a mainstream article. Not sure what the point of this was? I didn't look at the articles mentioned in this article so if that was your point then let me know so I can review them.

> https://www.wsj.com/articles/academic-freedom-is-withering-1...

I got a paywall so I could only read part of the article. The first part of the article seems to agree with my point that viewpoint discrimination is in fact happening. I didn't get to anything about newspapers before I got the paywall so I don't know what exact this had to do with what I posted. The article seemed quite mainstream to me though.

> depending on if you consider george will "mainstream"- he is an establishment conservative which certainly is a dissenting viewpoint at the washington post

I am getting a paywall so I couldn't read the article, but it seemed mainstream. Based on what I could gather it sounds like he supports a more fiscally responsible stimulus and to have it targeted to people who actually need it rather than to everybody. Assuming that is the gist of the article then I think that is decently mainstream. I would agree that it is a dissenting viewpoint for the Washington Post though.

>not a newspaper, but a national magazine a front page article with a definitively non-mainstream message

This article was pretty long so I skimmed it (so if I missed an important detail let me know). It sounds like a mainstream message. Gun ownership and protection of oneself with guns is a mainstream message in the US. Maybe it is a bit non-mainstream since the author is a socialist, but nothing stood out as out of the norm.

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#178

Post by Karunamon »

imwillofficial wrote: post #31
manux wrote: post #4

Self-censoring is part of the frontal cortex's normal function. I only hear this word 'self-censorship' brought up as a boogeyman. If people have an axe to grind against some part of mainstream culture, why not just say it out loud instead of priming their readers with FUD? (fear, uncertainty, doubt).

I am going to charitably interpret your comment as ignorance of the topic as opposed to malicious muddying of the already confusing waters. Self censorship is indeed driven by the judgement portion of the brain, however, what is being mourned here is the constantly shifting and uncertain ground on which our current society puts its taboos. What was once a socially acceptable position to have in polite society, is no…

>What was once a socially acceptable position to have in polite society, is no long so.

To add on to this, it's not just that the standards change, it's that the standards change retroactively and you can be hounded out of your livelihood for an offhand comment made a decade prior.

I can at least sympathize, if not agree with "cancelling" when someone demonstrates unrepentant shittiness in the present day, but this kind of ex-post-facto thing happening against statements that weren't even tangentially offensive when they were made is horrid. There's no way such an environment can't lead to self-censorship.

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#179

Post by lostcolony »

Covzire wrote: post #152
cbryan wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is complete hogwash. I know and work with plenty of Christian scientists. They do just as well as everyone else in the job market.

Name one prominent scientist who is on record (and has tenure) who holds the position that the origin of the big bang as taught today is un-scientific. Of course there are Christian scientists, but Academia only promotes and gives tenure to atheists for a growing number of fields.

Name any scientist that has a position other than the big bang theory, that has any evidence backing it?

The standard isn't "can't include God", but "must fit the facts". God is unprovable and untestable; making a theory depend on a God makes the theory unprovable and untestable. Most scientists who also have religious beliefs don't see the two conflicting; their religion gives the why, their profession the how.

Or more succinctly, no one is blackballing scientists for saying "I believe God caused the Big Bang". But claims of, for instance, "I believe the world was created 6000 years ago over a period of 7 literal days" requires some evidence beyond "My understanding of the Bible tells me so", and doesn't jibe with your initial statement of empirical scientific study.

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#180

Post by qqn »

dahfizz wrote: post #46
BitwiseFool wrote: post #14

I 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…

> 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. I found this[1] article very interesting. Basically, only 2% of American adults generate over 80% of all tweets. "Cancel Culture" really is run by a few extremists who have a loud…

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