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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

#141

Post by dlp211 »

JamesBarney wrote: post #136
dlp211 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, peopl…

Speech is an action. Saying someone got fired for their actions (which were primarily speech, not physical actions) is the same thing as firing someone for their speech.

And I don't really care about the Dixie Chicks, they were right, but people don't have to listen to them either. The same way I feel about all these people that are claiming that they have been cancelled. They might be right, I don't think most of them are, but none of us have to listen to them, they are not entitled to anything.

Walmart and Amazon could certainly try to do those things, but both of those specifics do at least have some legal questions that I am not qualified to answer.

And I'm going to go out on a limb that you haven't seen every textbook in the South. And while I will fully admit here that it may not be pervasive, it certainly was taught in some schools in the South. Another term more frequently used is the "war for southern independence". While not as objectionable, it certainly was not the intent of the Civil War.

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#142

Post by [deleted] »

noelwelsh wrote: post #48
systemvoltage wrote: post #37

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

[deleted]

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#143

Post by dragontamer »

dlemire wrote: post #134
dragontamer wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thin…

The majority of school boards and other local-government structures in the USA are conservative / on the right.

Which means that they'll levy the most censorship / control over the academics. Its the nature of the beast. If local school boards want to force the teachers to teach "intelligent design" and remove references to Thomas Jefferson, it will happen (and does happen regularly).

The whole "Critical Race Theory" stuff going on is just the newest push by the right to reshape education into their mold. Whether this works or fails, we can be certain that in a year or two, another educational issue will pop up and the right will use it as a rallying cry to change education again.

Thomas Jefferson, Intelligent Design / Creationism, Critical Race Theory. Just a few of the culture wars that the right has waged in the past decade and more will come.

-----

Welcome to educational politics. We didn't start the fire. It was always burning, since the world's been turning. This "censorship" stuff has been going on for decades.

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#144

Post by oh_sigh »

amusedcyclist wrote: post #77
oh_sigh wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Has any professor gotten fired for their views ? The worst thats happened is some people getting disinvited from conferences, hardly seems like censorship, just editorial disagreement

Is firing the only way to get cancelled?

What about being suspended? Being strong armed into "volunteering" into stepping back from teaching/speaking roles? Having career-advancing opportunities pass you by "for some reason"? Never getting a job in the first place because of your reputation?

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#146

Post by RickJWagner »

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.

The books I have seen would never have been allowed in past years.

I saw an article this week about an NPR show featuring a book that was 'cancelled' from school libraries. NPR neglected to show the most egregeous illustrations, which included explicit sex scenes.

We can't move the goalposts. Some books deserve to be kept out of reach of kids. These are the types I have seen in discussions. Nobody's on the right is trying to cancel anything that would've been acceptable in 2000.

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#147

Post by RickJWagner »

salt-thrower wrote: post #49
blub wrote: 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…

Can you please cite "demonstrably false narratives by the Right"?

I'm on the right side of the scale, I see this more from the left, TBH.

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#148

Post by Jensson »

glangdale wrote: post #124
hackinthebochs wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Deplatforming is not the only form of external pressure applied in the academic world. Getting entire university departments closed, for example, is considered a bit more final and effective. Also, it's interesting that even the very ideological "FIRE" group (not exactly a neutral player in all this) shows roughly 60% of user-submitted cases being deplatformed "from the left", which is far from overwhelming.

The scientific sciences are also more right wing, the more you go to the softer sciences where opinions are everything the more left the professors lean.

So your observation is just "left wing professors often work on unscientific subjects and therefore more often gets their department shut down". It has nothing to do with politics, if you had a department full of right wingers who called their blog posts "scientific papers" then I'd call for them to get shut down as well. Blogging is fine, just don't call it science or make university courses based on your blogs.

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#149

Post by dgfitz »

glangdale wrote: post #116
dgfitz wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sure would like to see a lot of replies to this comment, from the left and the right. That quote is quite thought-provoking. Playing the thought experiment that the former president is on to something, it seems ironic that the left claim to badly want to help the poor and underprivileged where (it seems) a decent-sized sub-group of said poor and underprivileged are of right persuasion.

It's not inconsistent to want to 'badly want to help' groups that aren't on your political side. I may be a left-liberal, but working class conservatives arguing for lower taxes are in fact arguing for an arrangement that would benefit me far more than it would benefit them.

You ignored the Obama quote. It also sounds like you’re saying you know what’s best for an entire class of people. Is that accurate?

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#150

Post by temp8964 »

glangdale wrote: post #79
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…

Some more examples: https://www.salon.com/2021/05/01/conservatives-claim-to-hate... A right-wing think tank with strong influence on Idaho legislators produces this gem of a report: 'The report doesn't just call for eliminating individual courses, however. It calls for the elimination of five whole departments — Gender Studies, Sociology, Global Studies, Social Work and History — that it claims are infused with "soci…

> You know who's not canceled? The endless parade of conservative pundits and politicians complaining about "cancel culture." You know who is canceled? George Floyd is canceled. Breonna Taylor is canceled. Ma'Khia Bryant is canceled. Andrew Brown Jr. is canceled.

Lol. This is the first paragraph of the article. Is there any intellectual honesty in the discussion any more?

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