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On Being Blacklisted

aaronkunin.medium.com

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Re: On Being Blacklisted

#171

Post by monkeypizza »

schoen wrote: post #167
monkeypizza wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just bringing it up to get an admission that "there is a line". Everything else is about debating where that line is. The old ACLU set it really far into the "freedom" zone - recently people want to restrict it more, by for example talking about classifying relatively generic/common/vague speech as violence, when previously only direct incitement to violence was considered beyond the line. My main point was tha…

Thanks for the clarification! I still don't really see why this is so. Lots of people in lots of countries want a theocracy, and are allowed to say so, but only a tiny number of countries have ended up getting one as a result. (I even think a fair amount of the advocacy in Iran in favor of the Islamic Revolution was probably illegal under Pahlavi, in which case its success isn't even much of a prophecy of what happen…

Yeah, this debate has two instances of it from opposite sides: The original story claimed to feature people who were (voluntarily) not accepting speech from someone they suggested was subtly intolerant. Then someone said "we shouldn't restrict people like that, and we should restrict (or resist) people who try it".

It's hard to make self-modifying systems stable! I simultaneously want to preserve open debate, but also do want to reduce prevalence of views proposing easier rules to shut down debate (by defeating them in debate, not by law).

Re: On Being Blacklisted

#172

Post by monkeypizza »

schoen wrote: post #168
monkeypizza wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. The original comment suggested that any prohibitions made by an allegedly tolerant society invalidate their claim. I don't think that is a very useful definition of tolerance. The only stable system here, if there is one, might be something like hardcoded self-defense actions, plus otherwise general tolerance. Not saying it's logically or morally consistent.

Thanks, I think I might be gradually understanding more of what you're saying. I feel like I've often heard the paradox of tolerance invoked in regard to what U.S. free expression law would call "pure speech", but it seems like your point is more along the lines that there's no group or society that would literally do nothing at all to defend itself in any circumstances, and that that's an unachievable or unsustainab…

right - and this all started when someone who said "hey, let's stop people from shutting down discussion" was accused of being intolerant. When in fact for the existence of tolerance to continue, some self-defense is necessary.

Re: On Being Blacklisted

#173

Post by xscott »

walrus01 wrote: post #54
josephg wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He expects that by calling the publishers of some journal "craven" and "scared", that he's going to elicit a reversal of their decision Thats not my read of the situation. I agree that if his goal was to convince the authors, it would make sense for him to be more accomodating. And it wouldn't make sense to call them out in public. But thats not his goal here. To my eyes, this piece takes a shot at the culture whic…

What I find amusing is that the same center-right and right-wing mouthpieces that complain the loudest about 'cancel culture' have themselves been deeply involved in attempting to 'cancel' things for the past 40 years, anything they dislike or find distasteful, a random assortment of which includes. rap music and any music with "vulgar" lyrics (PARENTAL WARNING labels on CDs) harry potter (satanic magic messages offe…

> What I find amusing is that the same center-right and right-wing mouthpieces [...] have themselves been deeply involved in attempting to 'cancel' [...] rap music and any music with "vulgar" lyrics (PARENTAL WARNING labels on CDs)

That was Tipper Gore and her cronies (from both parties). The same Tipper Gore that married Al Gore the left-wing/Democrat. I don't think this example supports your argument.

Al Gore also participated in that shit-show of attempted censorship.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipper_Gore [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parents_Music_Resource_Center

Re: On Being Blacklisted

#174

Post by schoen »

monkeypizza wrote: post #171
schoen wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the clarification! I still don't really see why this is so. Lots of people in lots of countries want a theocracy, and are allowed to say so, but only a tiny number of countries have ended up getting one as a result. (I even think a fair amount of the advocacy in Iran in favor of the Islamic Revolution was probably illegal under Pahlavi, in which case its success isn't even much of a prophecy of what happen…

Yeah, this debate has two instances of it from opposite sides: The original story claimed to feature people who were (voluntarily) not accepting speech from someone they suggested was subtly intolerant. Then someone said "we shouldn't restrict people like that, and we should restrict (or resist) people who try it". It's hard to make self-modifying systems stable! I simultaneously want to preserve open debate, but als…

Thanks for sticking with your point -- now I understand it a lot better.

Re: On Being Blacklisted

#175

Post by ttt0 »

monkeypizza wrote: post #142
ttt0 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fine, just don't call yourself "tolerant". It's doublespeak, just like how the word "racism" is used today

In your definition of tolerant, is it required to tolerate even attempts to destroy the tolerant person? i.e. is there a line beyond which tolerance doesn't apply? Where do laws fit in here? I honestly thought that tolerance already included this concept - it actually means tolerant of difference of opinion, except for attempts to overthrow and replace the system of tolerance itself.

First of all, you're mixing up opinions and actions. Two completely different things.

Second, I think of tolerance as a personal thing. But on a level of society or government, that you're talking about - I don't know, you tell me.

Let me ask you, do you tolerate sexist jokes? Because I really doubt many of the today's proponents of this theory do. Sexist jokes are not intolerant, making them is not an attempt to overthrow any kind of system, it's just jokes. But yet, a lot of people do not tolerate them. Either don't want to be in the same room as the person who makes them or will even try to harm this person in some way. Both fit the definition of intolerance. Former is completely fine, latter probably not so much.

But as I understand it, it's not so much about petty things like this, but about intolerant ideologies. Well, communism happens to be one of those ideologies. It does not tolerate anyone who owns or argues for private ownership and seeks to overthrow any system that protects it. And if we were honest, that would mean that we should also get rid of a large part of Antifa (ironically a manifestation of this theory), because many of them self-identify as communists or subscribe to ideologies derived from it.

> Where do laws fit in here?

Speech laws, freedom of association. Criminal law in case a real harm was done. The word "tolerance" should not appear anywhere in the law.

Re: On Being Blacklisted

#176

Post by waterhouse »

alphabettsy wrote: post #144
cm2187 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cancel culture is only the symptom of those institutions being taken over by ideological extremists. The solution is competition. Universities are destroying their brand with those positions. I am probably not the only engineer unimpressed by slogans like “decolonise maths”, and I would think twice before hiring graduates that excelled in that environment. Likewise, companies that push those ideologies should be boyc…

Is that not the worst kind of cancel culture? You’re going to discriminate against graduates of a university with a professor or department you don’t like?

It depends how inclusively you define the term. It doesn't involve posting the candidates on social media or otherwise forming a mob, nor creating negative publicity to pressure an institution into doing something they wouldn't otherwise do. There may be people who use the term "cancel culture" more loosely than that, but I think the above criteria are useful—they cover many examples, yet are specific enough to justify the assertion "cancel culture is dangerous, destructive, and likely bad".

Re: On Being Blacklisted

#177

Post by throwawaygulf »

dragonwriter wrote: post #98
BitwiseFool wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's even a movement to replace the term "Blacklist" with a less problematic words such as denylist or blocklist. Of course, "Whitelist" is just as problematic - if not moreso! - and should be replaced with allowlist or safelist. Edit: The etymology of these words have nothing to do with skincolor, Blackness or Whiteness.

I wholly support “blacklist” being replaced with ”blocklist”, “denylist”, “exclusion list”, or anything else that is both more direct about the function and isn't a lazy use of a metaphorical reference to a centuries-long history of elite political and anti-labor (often both simultaneously) repression. (Ditto with “whitelist” which is itself a second-order reference to blacklisting.) Just because something isn't spec…

>Just because something isn't specifically connected to race doesn't mean it is innocuous.

No one said otherwise. Luckily, "blacklist" is innocuous, and the only ones calling for its replacement and removal are neurotic leftists.

Dragons breathe fire, and my family burned to death. For my safety, please change your username to something that won't trigger me, your username is not innocuous. I see your username and all I can think about is my family burning.

Just because something isn't specifically connected to race doesn't mean it is innocuous.

Re: On Being Blacklisted

#178

Post by Bakary »

konjin wrote: post #157
Bakary wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not criticizing Orwell or the quote itself. I'm pointing out the irony of seeing this quote and others by the same author get regularly popped out following the very same gramophone mindset he warns about. People just pop an Orwell and call it a day. Could it be called recursive irony? I don't know if that's a thing.

I look forward to the day that we can't use reheated arguments from last century about current events. It doesn't help that people who want to destroy our ability to think use Orwell as a manual - hate speech might as well be something he coined in 1984 for all the emotion and lack of logic behind it, that it's law today will be judged harshly by future generations.

History never repeats quite the same way. There are some low-hanging parallels to 1984, but if we limit ourselves to that frame of reference we miss a large range of elements that might prove to be enormously important. There's stuff like hate speech regulations and all that but there's also a million things going on elsewhere, and any patterns only seem obvious many years later in retrospect, if they ever become so.

Future generations will probably have a frame of reference completely different from what we expect them to have now. Come to think of it, it would be hard to explain all the motivations of life in 2021 to someone in 1984 who had yet to live through the intervening years...

Re: On Being Blacklisted

#179

Post by arp242 »

threevox wrote: post #57
eli wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could one possibly publish poetry in a non political way?

If your poetry is political, you're doing it wrong

I was unaware there is One True Way™ to do poetry.

It's like any other art: sometimes it's just a aesthetically pleasing series of words (or musical notes, or colours, or shapes) with no real deeper meaning, or just because it's funny. And other times it's something aesthetically pleasing intended to provoke thought about some aspect of life such as love, the nature of humanity, or something else – some of these might be deemed "political".

Different people like different sort of art, and that's okay. Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0la5DBtOVNI

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