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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

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 behaviou…

This is the best rebuttal to the CRT panic I've ever read. Thank you. I, too, used to think that "oppression matrix" = "all white men are evil," but putting aside the paranoia and simply thinking about it calmly helped me realize that it's not that radical of an idea. Even as a kid I instinctively understood that as a white dude I have it easier in America than most other identities, even though I didn't have the wor…

> Even as a kid I instinctively understood that as a white dude I have it easier in America

I think Barack Obama got it right, when he recognised that talk of "white privilege", bred resentment especially amongst the working class, despite some, usually of the left leaning middle-class, willing to adopt the label to describe themselves.

> In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience — as far as they're concerned, no one handed them anything. They built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pensions dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and they feel their dreams slipping away. And in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear an African-American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=884784...

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#92
I don't know much about this, but "Democracy has never been a safe space" seems to be the key: that healthy disagreement, debate and compromises are not easy, not comfortable, and well... not the ideal (in the literal sense), but is necessary, because we should respect the other side, continue to assume they're not evil, and find some damn compromises. (at the time of the creation of the US's declaration of independence, there were big ideological differences between the north and south of the US, but folks like John Adams understood that compromising was better than being divided, so the north said: ok for slavery and other stuff, but you gotta sign to be in this together, and we'll work on it. I would recommend John Adams' biography by David McCullough for a good account of how politics back then was basically the same garbage fire as today, except the early presidents were educated and smart, and recognized that partisanship was a bad idea).

It might be that we've all become a bit tired from shouting the same things without seeing much progress. As if the left burned out from trying to convince people of the values of science, of socialism, or helping the less fortunate and so, as a result, is now playing the game of forcing the hand, almost apathetically.

The article is free on his website by the way: https://www.kasparov.com/woke-is-a-bad-word-for-a-real-threa...

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#93

> 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…

This database has a record of about 500 attempted or successful deplatforming on college campuses: https://www.thefire.org/how-to-use-the-disinvitation-databas...

Deplatforming speakers is largely the left's MO.

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#94
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's interesting phenomenon on its own that Kasparov is taking a fairly centrist stance here through a careful choice of words (cancelling books getting tends to be done by one side and cancelling professors is often done by the other side) and specifically calling out to promote more freedom regardless of what side you're on, but here in the comments people are looking at it from a bipartisan blame-shifting…

"Cancel culture" is a recent term invented by the right as a pejorative for the left, so if you're going to use that loaded term you're signaling which side of the partisan divide you are on.

Kasparov addresses that literally in the first two paragraphs:

> The search is on for new words for old ideas. “Cancel culture” and “woke” have become overused and abused, part of a struggle to define one’s political opponents in the harshest possible way, to dismiss ideas as not only wrong or harmful, but intolerable.

> As a nonnative English speaker, I am content to avoid rhetorical fashion and use older phrases

I hear the term "cancelling" being used on the radio all the time by people that are obviously left leaning, here in California. Again, to go w/ childhood analogies, I'm not childish for saying the word "poop", but a person that reacts by giggling uncontrollably on the other hand...

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#95
post #66
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's interesting phenomenon on its own that Kasparov is taking a fairly centrist stance here through a careful choice of words (cancelling books getting tends to be done by one side and cancelling professors is often done by the other side) and specifically calling out to promote more freedom regardless of what side you're on, but here in the comments people are looking at it from a bipartisan blame-shifting…

> "I don't care who started it, I only care that you stop fighting" I stopped doing that when I realized this is systematically enabling aggressor. The kid that minds own business is on the defense and effectively forced always do what aggressor wants. Because if it protects or defends itself, adult steps in to tell him he is equally wrong.

It's less harmful in family (because the assumption is that ultimately kids do love each other and won't do anything really bad). But I've mostly encountered this sentiment at school when somebody is bullied. And there it can be really bad, for a really long time. And that response is basically adults telling the victim "Nobody cares".

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#96

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…

Tangential but it’s always amusing to me to see Kasparov mentioned as a “chess grandmaster” when there are over 1000 grandmasters while Kasparov was the longest reigning world champion & widely considered the best ever. It’s like having Zuckerberg on your panel and making his title “Entrepreneur”.

It’s an established, commonly used title, kinda like Doctor. Entrepreneur not a title, only a name of an occupation. Nobody really calls anybody “Entrepreneur Smith”.

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"I've never seen anything but pro-freedom of speech from the right" This seems a very naive or disingenuous take. Here are two examples that immediately came to mind: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Endowment_for_the_Art... particularly actions against Mapplethorpe - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedagogy_of_the_Oppressed#Rece... 2006 Arizona State Legislature

I don't know if deciding whether not to fund the NEA or what books can be taught in school is really anti-freedom of speech.

Someone has to decide what to teach children. Teachers and parents both influence that decision. Teachers through what books they pick and parents through who they elect. And since Teachers are to the left the population as a whole, it makes sense that they would push books to the left of center, and elected officials would rein in that impulse.

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

The fact that you have to repeatedly and expressly clarify that you're not equating cancel culture with holocaust denial is apt given the topic at hand. No intellectually honest person reading your analogy would be able to conclude that you're equating the two topics. And yet almost all of us feel the need to include these kinds of disclaimers so we don't face backlash from anonymous strangers on a tiny message board. If we feel this way here--when we're almost all anonymous to some degree--that's an indictment as to where we are culturally.

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#99
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t know about most pressure, but when it comes to succeeding at cancelling, conservatives don’t seem to be able to cancel anything. What or who was cancelled by conservatives in the past let’s say 2-3 years?

If you zoom out you can find many more examples. A bit further back, look at the Right's behavior throughout the Bush years - the Dixie Chicks are a perfect example of someone opposing the Right from within their own culture and being summarily "cancelled" for it. More recently though, Kathy Griffin hasn't recovered from the Trump's severed head controversy. I'd also like to point out that the type of cancelling and…

This seems to be a global issue affecting many democratic countries, although the way Republicans likewise target education is probably unique to the US.

An illiberal debate culture is taking root in the West, where certain positions may be publicly held only at great risk for one’s career. In academia, which is supposed to shape the thinking of future generations, this is nothing short of an inquisition. Read Anne Applebaum’a “The new puritans” for a detailed analysis of the situation in the US. Something similar is happening in the UK and Germany for example.

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#100
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “left” cancels everywhere. The “right” cancels in their own community. Big difference IMO. Pros and cons to both of those approaches but that’s how I see it.

People choosing to no longer listen to you because you have ideas that are currently considered reprehensible to the larger society is not being cancelled. That's called consequences for my actions. You are not entitled to consequence free speech & actions. This has never been a principle of free speech. Also, there is a massive difference between using government entities to ban books, and a bunch of people on Twitt…

You see the difference between not listening to something and applying political pressure to make sure it isn't spoken right?

> a bunch of people on Twitter saying we don't like you and what you said

No one thinks this is cancel culture. It's specifically wielding economic/political power to silence people you disagree with.

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