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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

#131

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

I like Kasparov on Twitter. I think this article is bullshit.

He starts by citing two responses from what he considers to be people he disagrees with. These are "it's not happening" and "it happens only to bad people". He never actually addresses these claims directly, and instead heads off on tangential matters.

Kasparov appears (probably correctly) to be worried about "groupthink". Yet who can point me to a position that has actually been silenced? Those who believe in the lab theory, that vaccines are toxic, that covid19 is a hoax - these people all have hundreds of thousands if not millions of people reading, listening, watching presentations of these views. Are they a broadcast TV network? No. Are they on MSNBC? No. But how on earth can anyone seriously make the claim that these sort of views (or any others) are excluded from public consideration?

The major reason why only 58-60% of the US is vaccinated against COVID-19, for example, is precisely that anti-vaccination viewpoints have been widely distributed and viewed, despite being completely non-establishment.

Kasparov cites Thiel as someone who has apparently suffered from "the politics of personal destruction". Excuse me, but just how has Thiel suffered? He still publishes books, appears in what I can only assume is as wide a selection of media as he chooses to (given his historically rather reticent public persona), is frequently asked for comments about matters he appears to the world to be knowledgeable about, and continues to enjoy the benefits of his prodigious wealth (including that IRA).

Then Kasparov dives into lab-leak theory, and the way that many people considered this theory to be "pro-Trump". If his point was merely that it was rather pre-emptive to declare this idea false, it would be an excellent point.

However, that's not his point, and he chooses to ignore the way in which Trump attempted to use "the China virus" and the lab-leak theory as cover for his own administration's ineptitude, which creates a context in which a disdain for lab-leak theory is sort of inevitable. That context is arguably more important than anything else about this episode, particularly given that the origin story of SARS-COV-2 was always going to, and now is, receiving about as much scrutiny as anything like ever could (Chinese reluctance notwithstanding).

If Kasparov had actually addressed "it's not happening" and "it only happens to bad people" effectively, maybe this would have been an interesting essay. Instead, I find it intellectually weak, and basically a great example of a conclusion ("there's a threat to free flow of ideas") in search of some rather weak evidence.

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#132

Post by dlp211 »

RansomStark wrote: post #127
dlp211 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not entitled to a platform. The student body choosing who they want to listen to is, in and of itself, a form of speech. Why is this such a difficult concept for people to understand?

The difficulty with rights is where they start and where they end. The saying goes that my right to swing my arms ends where your face begins. Equally the student unions right to decide what they personally listen too ends when they prevent others that want to hear the speaker from listening. At that point they are infringing on another's right to free speech. In the case of the student unions it is an inherently pol…

If the student body doesn't approve of the student union, do something about it. The student body refusing do something about it is implicit speech that they approve. If most of the student body isn't changing the student union, that tells me that perhaps your identification of who is in the minority here might not be accurate, or is at least incomplete.

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#133

Post by ziroshima »

salt-thrower wrote: post #73
acheron wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The point is not who's currently relevant, it's that people on the cultural Right complaining about cancel culture are on par with a schoolyard bully complaining about someone else bullying them. They are happy to do it when their opinions hold sway; when they can't, they whine about other people doing it. And to be clear, I'm not taking a "both sides are equally bad" stance, I'm just describing the hypocrisy of this…

This selective application of values (e.g. being in favor of free speech, as long as you like what is being said) has been going on forever. We have had a system set up to account for this in the U.S., when the perceived threat to free speech was the government. That threat has become faceless mobs and private companies.

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#134

Post by dlemire »

dragontamer wrote: post #105
stevenicr wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You got me to wonder, thanks for providing the links. I have seen stories recently about removing Jefferson from the public view / cancelling him, based upon far-left / progressive / anti-racist/slavery ideals (I think/assume) that are removing monuments around the country (and murals and building names, etc), not right-wing censorship, so I was quite curious. sadly some of the supporting links are 404 on the thinkpr…

Say that what you will, but the Texas School Board is highly conservative and makes these decisions all the time. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/texas-lawmaker-says-850... > Along with the letter, which was first obtained by The Texas Tribune, Krause appended the book list that includes well-known titles like the Pulitzer Prize-winning William Styron novel, “The Confessions of Nat Turner” and best-sellers that…

The original claim was "the overwhelming majority of pressure to cancel books and academics is directed at the left by the right, regardless of what gets column inches and think-pieces."

Many would say that the overwhelming majority of the academy is left of center. This makes it intuitive that if there is censorship of academics, then the recipients of the censorship would be people left of center. But I do not think it follows that the censors are on the right.

I argue that most of the censorship on campus, be it people being uninvited or forced to resigned, comes from the academy itself. It is true that, quite possibly, the vast majority of the people being censored are on the left, but I think it is also true that the vast majority of the people censoring are also on the left.

The right simply occupies very little room in the academy. It mostly exists outside of the academy.

This is not to say that people on the right (mostly from outside of the academy) do not come in with censorious intentions... but my impression is that most universities are very well protected against external interventions. It is simply not the case that a business leader or a radio show host can easily censor a professor on campus.

So if we are thinking about, say, college professors, I would say that we are mostly dealing with a left-left censorship.

That is, the left is not this uniform block.

Kathleen Stock is a leftist: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-sussex-59084446 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathleen_Stock

Bret Weinstein is a leftist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bret_Weinstein

Verushka Lieutenant-Duval is a leftist: https://arts.uottawa.ca/visualarts/people/lieutenant-duval-v...

The people doing the cancelling were on the left.

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#135

Post by fishtoaster »

amalcon wrote: post #72
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…

Second the recommendation for the series. They have some misses, mostly of the sort where everyone seems to talk past each other, but I learn something from most episodes.

Agreed that they're not always perfect. I think they sometimes miss on the guests where you wind up with 3 distinguished experts and then some equivalent of Rush Limbaugh, and the debate takes a turn for the worse every 4th speaker. But yeah, I've yet to hear an episode where there wasn't at least one compelling argument by someone, and often it's all 4.

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#136

Post by JamesBarney »

dlp211 wrote: post #122
JamesBarney wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are a lot of people that think this is cancel culture. Bobby Kotick is likely going to be "cancelled"/fired from Activision if their board has any sense in the next few days. Was he cancelled, or did his past behavior finally catch up to him? You are not entitled to a job or a platform and the people who have control over those positions are well within their right to remove you for the views and actions you ta…

> There are a lot of people that think this is cancel culture. Bobby Kotick is likely going to be "cancelled"/fired from Activision if their board has any sense in the next few days. Was he cancelled, or did his past behavior finally catch up to him?

He's being fired because of his actions, not his beliefs or speech. Nixon resigned because he broke the law. There were two things that happened with Dixie Chicks, people calling into their radio stations requesting they be blacklisted, this is most definitely cancel culture. They also offended their core audience who just stopped buying their records which isn't cancel culture. Maybe in 2003 you were excited they had to face consequences for sharing their beliefs, but I wasn't enthused about it then, and I'm not now.

Would it be healthy to live in a culture where Walmart fired every worker who pro-BLM?

Where Amazon asks anyone they hire how they feel about unions before hiring them?

>The war of northern aggression

I grew up in the south. I've heard this term before but I've never seen it in a single textbook or ever heard a teacher use it.

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#137

Post by chuckee »

Levitz wrote: post #107
javajosh wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BLM's problem[1] is that it's a national movement about local problems. It's city cops, not the FBI, that kill people with impunity. The presidential election is generally not the right place to take action, IMHO [2]. In any event, it seems to me that BLM should focus on police money, and ways to put that money in the hands of people who feel that killing unarmed civilians is wrong, the militarization of the police i…

>BLM's problem[1] is that it's a national movement about local problems. It's city cops, not the FBI, that kill people with impunity. Which happens because black people are overrepresented when it comes to crime, which happens because they are overrepresented in being poor as dirt. There is racism in the police force in the US, no doubt, but constantly dealing with criminals and seeing a disparity in a race is bound…

> Which happens because black people are overrepresented when it comes to crime, which happens because they are overrepresented in being poor as dirt.

Have you tried to confirm this hypothesis, by for example looking at studies that examine the crime rate by both socioeconomic status and race?

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#138

Post by fishtoaster »

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?

Sure! Debate is a skill, and I think the, to use your term, "anti-woke" side performed it better. Debate skill is not, however, equivalent to truth.

As an extreme example, imagine a child debating with an adult. The adult asserts that the moon is made of cheese. It's entirely possible that the adult could "win" that debate by any reasonable measure because most children are (understandably) terrible debaters. This being despite the fact that the adult is clearly wrong.

Now, it's certainly harder to debate well in favor of a bad idea. Given two equivalently-skilled debaters (eg two random adults), one would expect the cheese-moon position to be soundly trounced. But given a proposition that's much more contentious (like "Cancel Culture is Toxic"), I think it's pretty easy to "win" despite being (imo) incorrect.

This is possible because I judge the best debater only by what was said in the debate, but I judge whether cancel culture is really toxic or not from years of information, experience, and many points and nuances of argument that none of the debaters hit on (or didn't hit on in depth).

Hence the disparity.

(And, as an aside, I love how IntelligenceSquared handles this when judging the debate: they poll the audience before and after the debase and whichever side moved the larger percentage of the audience to their side "wins").

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#139

Post by QuotedForTruth »

krinchan wrote: post #128
javajosh wrote: post #35

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?

Not OP but I listened to the debate. Said “anti-woke” side argued well that the vein of cancel culture that oversteps and ruins the lives of people just living pay check to pay check and posting bad takes on Twitter on their 15 minute bathroom break is toxic. Meanwhile, it’s ineffective against the people who the movement claims to be targeting. They’re right, in my humble opinion. However, I vehemently disagree that…

> They didn’t really acknowledge that the majority of cancels are just normal people who post stupid Tweets that then lose their jobs and get radicalized.

Can you provide any examples of this? I found myself agreeing with the against side because I really don’t see this happening.

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#140

Post by JamesBarney »

noelwelsh wrote: post #111
JamesBarney wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cente…

What, then, do you think is an action that is against freedom of speech? To me these are textbook examples of censorship. Note that I don't think your summary captures the relevant facts. NEA: the issue is not whether it should be funded but how the funds, which were already approved, were allocated. Exhibitions were cancelled after receiving funding due to political pressure, and 4 artists won a court case when thei…

I'm probably missing some context, but I'm not sure what about politician's arguing what artists the NEA should fund is against the 1st amendment.

> This was ruled a violation of the First Amendment: https://ncac.org/news/blog/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-a...

It looks like that ruling was just because it was racist, and has since been overturned at the circuit court. Maybe I don't understand something, but the government fundamentally determines what does and does not get taught in public schools.

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