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Cancel We The Web? (2020)

wetheweb.org

11–20 of 280 posts

Re: Cancel We The Web? (2020)

#11
post #2

Well worth reading. Lucid, clear. Didnt make me like Stallman more, but articulated some of the issues well. On the whole, I think the cancel/trigger thing has got out of hand. People need to be accountable for what they say, not what people believe they think.

>People need to be accountable for what they say, not what people believe they think. This sounds like a very Orwellian way of saying people shouldn't be fired for wrong-think if they profusely apologize afterwards. Is that what you mean?

No. That isn't what I mean.

I think your wrong-think is a very big stretch from what I said. Can you show me the chain of thinking which took you there please?

Re: Cancel We The Web? (2020)

#12
post #2

Well worth reading. Lucid, clear. Didnt make me like Stallman more, but articulated some of the issues well. On the whole, I think the cancel/trigger thing has got out of hand. People need to be accountable for what they say, not what people believe they think.

>People need to be accountable for what they say, not what people believe they think. This sounds like a very Orwellian way of saying people shouldn't be fired for wrong-think if they profusely apologize afterwards. Is that what you mean?

I think you may have read that wrong.

What the poster is saying is that people should be accountable for what they actually say, not what other people assume they must have meant.

It's subtle, but let me try to highlight the difference:

Take as an example, Stallman saying "...it is entirely possible Minsky could have been unaware of the coercive dynamic [between Epstein and the young womem] going on at the time. We'll call this P.

Also take,

"We should wait for the facts and evidence before jumping to conclusions". We'll call this W.

What Stallman said is just " We don't know if P or not P, therefore W".

There's nothing wrong that was said there. People read things though that were not said; i.e. that since Stallman said P, it must mean he thought that the young women must have been voluntarily doing it. (We'll call this V).

Much of the hulabaloo around the time came from people, (and journalists) adding in context that simply wasn't even there, which a quick perusal of CSAIL quickly made evident. Stallman never said it was the case that anyone involved was doing it of their own volition, merely that Minsky may not have picked up on the fact there was coercion going on, because if someone is being coerced, odds are they have been specifically instructed to hide the coersion. The fact is, one presupposes the knowing complicity of an individual by doing otherwise. Stallman cautioned that one should wait for evidence before coming to a hasty judgement.

Communication is hard. One must transmit, and another must receive, and both people be able to demonstrate they took from the exchange a shared understanding of a common arrangement of circumstance and subject, mapping to the same circumstances and subjects in the real world. The clincher though, is that there is so much low stakes communication that goes on in our lives where errors in reception or coding of meaning don't have readily tangible effects that become apparent within a short enough time for people to recognize a miscommunication happened, or that even if they recognize one happened, that it will adversely effect the outcome of the attempt at communication as a whole. As a result, there is a tendency to chronically underestimate the difficulty of communication overall.

EDITS: wording, punctuation, sentence flow.

Re: Cancel We The Web? (2020)

#13
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People need to be accountable for what they say, not what people believe they think. This sounds like a very Orwellian way of saying people shouldn't be fired for wrong-think if they profusely apologize afterwards. Is that what you mean?

I think you may have read that wrong. What the poster is saying is that people should be accountable for what they actually say, not what other people assume they must have meant. It's subtle, but let me try to highlight the difference: Take as an example, Stallman saying "...it is entirely possible Minsky could have been unaware of the coercive dynamic [between Epstein and the young womem] going on at the time. We'l…

Thank you. That pretty much said it, better than I did.

Re: Cancel We The Web? (2020)

#16

A different take: Microsoft, Oracle, et. al. waged a war against OSS in the 90s. They went as far as using mental illness as a weapon against the community (equating participation in the commons as an equivalent to mental illness). It’s not a coincidence the class of human that weathered the storm looks like Stallman, Linus, ESR, et. al. That’s what it took. The toxicity in these communities is a result of what was l…

On the other hand, following that logic, in times of peace the soldiers of yesteryear are out of work.

I'm not a fan of cancel culture, but it might be just a sign that priorities have changed for people. Maybe the basic software liberties are enough for most, and it's no longer enough to fight for OSS, but instead time to consider "how" to fight for it. In a sense, it could be seen as a victory.

Re: Cancel We The Web? (2020)

#17

>Progressives are right now advocating for the release of criminals, even murderers. To then have exactly the opposite attitude towards something that certainly is not committing physical violence against somebody, I don’t understand the double standard! Barabbas understood.

epic comment :)

Re: Cancel We The Web? (2020)

#18
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nadine's point was that people should not be unduly punished for making intellectual arguments for or against anything. "Being punished for what they say" is precisely what happened to Stallman.

No, I don't agree. He was partly punished for what people THOUGHT he had said, and for past transgressions, and in large part for what people were TOLD he had said. Not for what he actually said.

[deleted]

Re: Cancel We The Web? (2020)

#19
post #9

> Activists quickly found his reputation for asking women out and making jokes about “EMACS virgins." I'm all in favor of believing victims of sexual harassment and assault. Those claims are so very rarely made falsely that they should be taken very seriously. But what about claims that a man/woman made sexual jokes or "inappropriate" innuendo? Certainly they can be cause for concern if the accused is someone who has…

You also should not tell racist jokes, sexist or other off color jokes etc at work. However everyone is able to discuss how they loved the new Chappelle skit.

How does that make sense? Context maybe, but I'm not sure.

Re: Cancel We The Web? (2020)

#20

> Luckily, another co-author on the book has spent a lot of time pondering inclusion, women’s rights, children’s rights, and free speech. Her name is Nadine Strossen and her credentials run deep. She served as the first female President of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), America’s largest and oldest civil liberties nonprofit, from 1991 to 2008. When she stepped down as President, three Supreme Court Justic…

Working with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education is definitely not a “PC allocade”. They are the main organization that tries, from a legal perspective, to protect people from being canceled for their speech at colleges in the US.
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