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Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

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Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#51

Post by dandotway »

blub wrote: post #33
dandotway wrote: post #2

https://archive.ph/Jdjb9

If I do a search on ddg on this site without entering any search terms (site:archive.ph) I get results about child nudity… Can somebody please post the article or post a trustworthy link?

archive.ph is one of the archive.today domains. I got the archive.ph link using the archive.today Chrome extension. By "child nudity" do you mean illegal child sex abuse materials? If yes, might want to notify the archive.today maintainers that their archive is being illegally misused. I'm afraid to investigate your claim and try clicking any links in case there really is illegal kiddie content.

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#52

Post by glangdale »

glangdale wrote: post #17

> Schools are being pressured to remove books and cancel professors for spreading the “wrong” ideas. These sentiments are all too familiar to me, and to anyone who has survived life in a dictatorship. The only answer is more freedom, more speech, not less. This is a good sentiment, but it's worth noting that the overwhelming majority of pressure to "cancel" books and academics is directed at the left by the right, re…

Followup: I can't Google up the studies I read on this, as all the terms I can think of are either overloaded or heavily partisan ("cancel culture"), etc. But I have a strong recollection of seeing quantitative data on number of complaints brought against academics from outside with an attempt to figure out whether this was a left/right thing and seeing a tentative conclusion that the bulk of complaints about academics are that they are "too left".

If this seems tendentious and unlikely, let's remember that Bari Weiss, now advocating for the University/grift that is University of Austin as a beacon of academic freedom, made her reputation attempting to get academics "cancelled" for having the wrong views on Israel.

There are a lot of people with a vested interest in beating the drum to claim that universities are a mess of "cancel culture", but I'd be intrigued to read some actual statistics on this, rather than heavily publicized anecdotes.

I tend to agree with the poster who complained this was some sort of blame-shifting ("he started it, mom!"). But the portrayal of normal academic life as being rife with endless left-wing cancel culture is a project being done for a reason. I don't like left-wing cancel culture either - and some of the leftiest people I know dislike it from a practical perspective (I know people personally teaching at elite institutions whose teaching has become unmanageable from constant weird student political demands). But any analysis of this that doesn't take into account the fact that universities are under pressure from the whole political spectrum is dumb.

It's also worth noting that "right wing cancel culture" sometimes just manifests itself by quietly shutting whole departments in favour of, say, expanding the "trade school" elements of a university. Just nuke the whole history department and double the size of business... obviously an apolitical act, right?

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#53

Post by troutmskreplica »

acheron wrote: post #44
rileymat2 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure this generalization holds up, as the Religious Right, in particular, has a history of boycotts in attempt to “cancel.”

It's also not 1988 anymore, so the "Religious Right" is about as relevant as the Free Silver movement.

The religious right elected Trump. Without their support he would not only have lost the popular vote, but also the electoral college.

He spent his presidency attempting to keep them happy and in particular working with them on Supreme Court appointments.

I would say that makes them relevant.

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#54

Post by civilized »

javajosh wrote: post #35
fishtoaster wrote: post #13

If you want to hear more of his view, including some solid rebuttals, I highly recommend IntelligenceSquared, a debate series that gets published as a podcast. They cover motions from culture to science to politics across the spectrum and usually get excellent, well-informed debaters on both sides. Their most recent one was "Cancel Culture is Toxic"[0] and Kasparov was arguing in favor of the motion. While I ultimate…

You felt the anti-woke side made the stronger case, but you still disagree? Can you add some more detail here?

The challenge with this debate is that the meaning of "cancel culture" is too broad, verging on incoherent. Examples of "cancellation" range from people who experienced harsh consequences for minimal or imaginary "offenses", like Justine Sacco and Donald McNeil, to powerful serial sex offenders like Harvey Weinstein.

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#55

Post by AnimalMuppet »

oh_sigh wrote: post #24
glangdale wrote: post #17

> Schools are being pressured to remove books and cancel professors for spreading the “wrong” ideas. These sentiments are all too familiar to me, and to anyone who has survived life in a dictatorship. The only answer is more freedom, more speech, not less. This is a good sentiment, but it's worth noting that the overwhelming majority of pressure to "cancel" books and academics is directed at the left by the right, re…

Is it? Anecdotally, I see a lot of news about conservatives trying to "cancel" books in their kids libraries whose topics they don't like, but regarding professors, it seems like those getting cancelled are getting cancelled by the left, not the right.

Can we say that it's bad, no matter which side does it? And that both sides are doing it in different ways, and that's bad?

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#56

Post by handrous »

javajosh wrote: post #35
fishtoaster wrote: post #13

If you want to hear more of his view, including some solid rebuttals, I highly recommend IntelligenceSquared, a debate series that gets published as a podcast. They cover motions from culture to science to politics across the spectrum and usually get excellent, well-informed debaters on both sides. Their most recent one was "Cancel Culture is Toxic"[0] and Kasparov was arguing in favor of the motion. While I ultimate…

You felt the anti-woke side made the stronger case, but you still disagree? Can you add some more detail here?

If someone feels that one side had a harder path to begin with due to context outside the presentation/debate itself, that can happen. To veer dangerously close to Godwinning, but I think for good reason, consider how much better a holocaust denial argument would have to be than its opponents', for you to agree with that side. You might well come away going "damn, they really did do a better job of presenting their case" while still disagreeing.

[EDIT] To be clear, I picked something extreme so it'd be easy to see that this situation could exist without getting distracted by minutia, and am not equating anti-cancel-culture with holocaust denial. I hope that was obvious, but just in case.

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#57

Post by tankenmate »

kadabra9 wrote: post #38
salt-thrower wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the Right complains about cancel culture while also trying to cancel any book or curriculum that accurately describes the history of racism in America. They are well-practiced at suppressing school materials that make them uncomfortable, and they've been doing it for decades. (And no, I'm not talking about Critical Race Theory; they have been suppressing even the most basic topics around race for a long time).…

We can and should teach about the history of racism in America. We should not however be telling children to use an “oppression matrix” to group and divide one another by identity, teaching children that if they are white they are automatically racist, or teaching historical fabrications like the 1619 project.

I thought oppression matrices were used to highlight the non linearities of groups that fall into multiple minority / categories; i.e. female Christian Dalit living in India.

Using a sociological analysis tool that highlight corner cases of systemic racism to justify a statement that analysis is akin to saying that all white people are racist is in my eyes a straw-man logical fallacy. It is equating emergent behaviour with individual mens rea; one does not follow from the other.

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#58

Post by salt-thrower »

blub wrote: post #30
salt-thrower wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the Right complains about cancel culture while also trying to cancel any book or curriculum that accurately describes the history of racism in America. They are well-practiced at suppressing school materials that make them uncomfortable, and they've been doing it for decades. (And no, I'm not talking about Critical Race Theory; they have been suppressing even the most basic topics around race for a long time).…

Trying and failing. While on the other hand any dumbass with a twitter account can topple CEOs, established professionals, politicians, etc.

Do you have any examples offhand where this was true? To me it seems that the Twitter mob has much less real-world impact than people think. Someone loses a particular gig one day, then gets hired somewhere else like nothing happened. Half the time it ends up being free publicity.

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#59

Post by glangdale »

glangdale wrote: post #52
glangdale wrote: post #17

> Schools are being pressured to remove books and cancel professors for spreading the “wrong” ideas. These sentiments are all too familiar to me, and to anyone who has survived life in a dictatorship. The only answer is more freedom, more speech, not less. This is a good sentiment, but it's worth noting that the overwhelming majority of pressure to "cancel" books and academics is directed at the left by the right, re…

Followup: I can't Google up the studies I read on this, as all the terms I can think of are either overloaded or heavily partisan ("cancel culture"), etc. But I have a strong recollection of seeing quantitative data on number of complaints brought against academics from outside with an attempt to figure out whether this was a left/right thing and seeing a tentative conclusion that the bulk of complaints about academi…

Another good example (from a Nation article):

"Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, in a tizzy over the discontinuation by the estate of Dr. Seuss of six lesser-known books with racist content, had the audacity to gripe via social media that “the woke mob” is trying “to erase our history and cancel anyone who disagrees.” This is the same Tom Cotton who wrote a whole legislative act aimed at banning schools from teaching the 1619 Project, the initiative exploring how the United States was indelibly shaped by slavery—or what Cotton blithely describes as “the necessary evil upon which the union was built.” Cotton is not concerned about the censoring of history; he’s just picky about what parts of history get erased. What the Arkansas senator really means when he gets prickly about preserving “our history” is making sure the mythical white-supremacist recollection of American events is the only version schoolkids can read. Along with racist Dr. Seuss books, of course."

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#60

Post by joshuamorton »

systemvoltage wrote: post #37
glangdale wrote: post #17

> Schools are being pressured to remove books and cancel professors for spreading the “wrong” ideas. These sentiments are all too familiar to me, and to anyone who has survived life in a dictatorship. The only answer is more freedom, more speech, not less. This is a good sentiment, but it's worth noting that the overwhelming majority of pressure to "cancel" books and academics is directed at the left by the right, re…

You may be right about one instance, but I've never seen anything but pro-freedom of speech from the right. Leftism in colleges and academia is so rotten beyond belief. I am down with History of Racism, naked and in all its gory details. But, let's not confuse that with how fusion of Big Tech with Big Gov to move more and more towards totalitarianism - we've seen this happen in Australia in the name of COVID. Vast ma…

What's your opinion on anti "critical race theory" laws that generally speaking ban teaching important aspects of civil rights history? These are basically solely pushed by the right, and have been passed in nearly a dozen states.

The economist article you cite is interesting in that it doesn't actually explain what's wrong with the progressive approach, it just describes it as bad. It says

> Individuals, not just groups, must be treated fairly for society to flourish.

But this fails to realize that favoring "individuals" over groups disfavored the invidiuals in those groups. Intersectionality suggests that you can't treat individuals fairly without understanding how the groups they're apart of impact their identity.

And this is really just disparate impact, a well understood, classically liberal, civil rights era policy that the right is slowly scratching away at!

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