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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

#151

Post by JamesBarney »

dlp211 wrote: post #141
JamesBarney wrote: post #136

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? 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 th…

You're trying to conflate speech with actions in a way that would make laws against sexual harassment unconstitutional.

Walmart and Amazon could do those things, but I want to live in a world where they don't because we have a culture that values freedom of expression.

There are over a million teachers in the south I'm sure at least one used that term. But it hasn't been anywhere close to common for a generation or two.

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#152

Post by dragonwriter »

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…

> Nixon resigned because he broke the law.

No, Nixon resigned because he (or, rather, his party) had done a whip count and knew he would be removed from office.

(Now, sure, that was because other people were not prepared to accept the manner in which he had broken the law, but Nixon absolutely did not resign because he broke the law.)

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#153

Post by systemvoltage »

amalcon wrote: post #86
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…

> Generally speaking, it is indisputedly obvious to me. When I catch myself saying things like this, I contemplate whether the availability heuristic is deceiving me. It might not be -- I haven't done a rigorous review of this topic either -- but I usually find it's worth introspection when I have this thought.

I am the same way but here it is just plain in day light. Regardless of whether left or right is more prone to censorship, I am a proponent of free speech and civil rights, and any progress in that area is a win for society IMO.

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#154

Post by avmich »

ajuc wrote: post #95
watwut wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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".

That's why in families it's an appropriate action, and in school isn't.

In school there is a better (worse?) chance to meet somebody particularly nasty, who's bullying kids around. That should be answered by "authorities". In families it's less of the case, so GP logic is reasonable.

I keep a high respect to Gary Kasparov. I however have a question regarding what he writes here -

"It is the coordinated, coercive attempt to win a debate by ending debate—to punish, not to educate."

Could it be that those who "cancel" just found a tool which is more effective than those before, something which they were missing in the "old status quo" of inter-class interactions? Could it be that the voices of those who do cancelling today weren't heard enough, so now they use this new opportunity to participate in the societal decisions?

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#155

Post by joshuamorton »

JamesBarney wrote: post #140
noelwelsh wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

Two things to consider:

1. There's a difference between defining a curriculum (what needs to be taught) and banning things (what cannot be taught). The government is generally allowed to determine the first, but the second is more dubious. It's difficult to claim, for example, that banning certain books has a legitimate interest in improving academic freedom, as educators already had the freedom to not teach those books.

2. This specific example is from a university, where "defining a curriculum" is even more dubious due to the existence of elective classes. If a university wants to, in addition to its core curricula, offer a class on racial or gender studies, why is that any less legitimate than a class on water polo or whatever?

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#156

Post by amusedcyclist »

oh_sigh wrote: post #144
amusedcyclist wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Can you provide some examples of these happening ? Or even better some statistics ?

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#157

Post by glangdale »

Jensson wrote: post #148
glangdale wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"Blog posts".

Your mind is going to get blown when you find out there exist whole departments at universities that aren't sciences, and that there's kinda of a tradition of academic scholarship that goes back centuries in the humanities.

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#158

Post by glangdale »

aqsalose wrote: post #125
glangdale wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So took a chance to Google the quoted phrase attributed to Cotton. It comes from an interview to Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, in context: >In the interview, Cotton said the role of slavery can’t be overlooked. >“We have to study the history of slavery and its role and impact on the development of our country because otherwise we can’t understand our country. As the Founding Fathers said, it was the necessary evil upon…

I'm not going to get into a debate about whether Cotton is an idiot with a completely ahistorical view of slavery, but I think it's intriguing that he was pushing for a federal ban on a particular bit of educational content. I got into this discussion because people were wheeling out the trope that "only lefties go after free speech", that's all.

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#159

Post by BLKNSLVR »

dlp211 wrote: post #115
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly one of the benefits of free speech. A kind of inverse of the "remain silent and be thought a fool, or speak up and remove all doubt" saying. Free and open discussion lets me know who's worthwhile listening to and who should be ignored.

And after having spoken and been declared a fool, are we not allowed to say "no more"?

You can say "no more" as much as you want. You can point out their foolishness. You can block their content from your life. It's all part of the same dance.

Without some kind of legal exemption, however, you cannot prevent them from saying more (unless you own the platform, but that level of control is limited only to the platform that you own).

Such is my understanding.

Re: Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

#160

Post by glangdale »

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…

To be clear, I don't approve of these "cancellations".

Public universities are not well-protected in the United States from conservatives seeking to defund programs with which they disagree. One might be well-protected against being fired directly for saying something controversial, but if your whole department is closed, you can be gotten rid of, even with tenure.

https://www.boisestatepublicradio.org/education/2021-04-07/l...

There's an echo chamber out there that amplifies the notion that there is some sort of epidemic of "woke cancellations" and critical race theory etc. - this is heavily emphasized by conservative media. There's plenty of ridiculous behavior by students - e.g. at Reed College - which I am aware of a massive amount of left-on-left cancellation - someone I know had their career upended by the unlimited claims of the rather stereotypically woke students there. But stupidity at places like Evergreen and Reed will beget endless think pieces and have left cancellation magnified endlessly.

Meanwhile, conservatives' own role in cancellation is minimized to the point of ridiculousness: so Bari Weiss can straight-facedly claim to be a fan of academic freedom.

There's a quieter, but considerably more effective, campaign to defund entire departments among conservatives - the model is a narrow "university as career prep". This means getting rid of the humanities and social sciences in favour of business/law/engineering/CS (good for us, I guess?).

In Australia, the conservative governments have been fairly unabashed in raising the cost of a humanities degree (paid for via our "HECS" scheme) in a way that seems pretty much Amazingly, this gets considerably less press in the echo chamber than some jackass left students acting like jackasses. I wonder why...

I'll agree with you that most of the noisiest and embarrassing cancellations are left-on-right or left-on-left, but this a narrow slice of "actions taken against academics", and their noisiness is not indicative of their effectiveness. Some of these cancellations are simply part of right-wing grift: schedule a talk from someone with credentials designed to enraged the "woke left" somewhere on their home turf, then enjoy the newfound credibility when you get cancelled and get to be a Free Speech Martyr.

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