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Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

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Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#151

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

jimbokun wrote: post #88
SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The answer, as with democracy and freedom of speech, is to make the better argument, get people to agree with you, and then use that to support the things you think are right. I find this difficult to agree with but not because of the sentiment but because of the environment. If a bad faith actor wants to smear even totally reasoned speech by spouting complete fabrications, so long as they have the bigger platform/…

Once you start increasing the power to censor "false" ideas, who do you really trust to make those decisions and not abuse that authority?

Please note I never advocated for censorship. I’m only saying the ideal solution won’t work. I don’t want censorship either, but also I don’t believe simply more speech is the solution. I don’t know what the solution is.

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#152

Post by BitwiseFool »

tptacek wrote: post #128
BitwiseFool wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"If you dismiss the demand for clarity, you can't coherently rebut his assessment of what "end cancel culture" means." I'm dismissing his standard of what counts as "clarity" because I sense he's expecting a lawyerly definition based on something akin to precedent and case law. In other words, he's seeking past examples of alleged "cancel culture" and trying to define what made each event count as, or not count as,…

If you want to erect a new societal norm around "cool", it would in fact fall upon you to define "coolness".

I'm not sure I'm trying to do that. I chose "cool" as an example because none of us came up with the term, no one can confidently define it and have everyone agree on it, and it's a word we all seem to use without truly knowing what it means.

At the risk of stretching an analogy too far, I would not need to define what "coolness" is in order to confront people who I perceive to be overly critical and who are trying to get people to stop expressing themselves in ways they perceive as "uncool". In other words, if I tell someone "If you have nothing nice to say don't say anything at all", it does not seem reasonable to expect me to define what "nice" means in order to justify chiding someone for not being nice.

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#153

Post by tines »

Latty wrote: post #126
tines wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If this is true, surely the right to not support people who's views you disagree with is just as necessary? Totally agree, but I think one of the nuances here is that what "support" means can be pretty narrow or very broad. For example, if you don't like someone's message and they're speaking at your college, you can show your disapproval by choosing a point on a spectrum of refusals. You can start light by going t…

People have a right to expression, but not a right to a platform. Not everyone can go on TV every day to talk about what they believe, so it must be curated, and that curation is an expression in and of itself. Should we try and be proportional and fair in our responses to people personally? Of course. Should we as a society try to limit people's responses? No. There used to be literal lynching, and clearly active vi…

What do you think of the argument that the nature of boycotting has changed? In your example, people might boycott a restaurant they didn't like, but there were a ton of small restaurants, no one restaurant was very big. Now, we have a handful of websites that like 90% of all written human communication goes through, and people aren't boycotting a Twitter handle, they're boycotting Twitter itself (so to speak) to force it to deplatform someone.

I guess it's somewhat related to the other argument of proportionality of punishment. Is it right to boycott someone to an unlimited extent if they're bigoted? What is the limit? would be the questions along that line.

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#154

Post by Aromasin »

TameAntelope wrote: post #118
lrem wrote: post #96

That's a lot of words to say "people are free to steer clear of people they don't like and always have been". And not much of thought into "what changed that now it is a problem perceived by some?" There has been a fundamental change to our reality over the past couple decades: things you say and do are now by default in public and permanent record. If your not-too-famous grandpa said something outrageous, he ruined…

> If you write an outrageous blog post today, you're hosed. This just isn’t true, and I’m not sure why the discussion around cancel culture is framed like it is true. It’s exceedingly hard to be cancelled if you’re acting genuinely, kindly, and with empathy for the topic you’re discussing. You can say literally anything you want if you can figure out how to be nice when you say it, but you do have to put real effort…

Could not agree more. Time and time again I've seen people broach taboo topics on various media and walk away unscathed, often lauded if anything for their tact. Likewise, I've seen many people do the same with an air of arrogance and superiority, get lambasted by the general public, and go on to preach about how they're a victim of some new, alt-left system of oppression.

Guile and wit get you just as far in today's 21st century "cancel culture" as they did in a 1800's gentleman's club, a 1400's king's court, or a BCE Roman senate. What you say is much less important to most people than how you say it.

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#155

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #87
_jal wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's pointing out that many (not all) people complaining are asking for criticism - other peoples' speech - to be shut down. There are a few sincere people out there. But most whining about cancel culture are just asking to be free from criticism. Sometimes it is blatantly obvious [1], more frequently layered with complaints about legitimately out of line acts and misdirects. The answer to bad speech is more speech.…

>"But most whining about cancel culture are just asking to be free from criticism" This assessment doesn't sit right with me because I don't sense the people 'whining' about cancel culture are trying to get out of ideological critique. I sense they're calling for tolerance because the 'critique' is laden with threats to livelihood and societal standing. From that perspective, I don't believe that calling on people to…

I don’t know if tolerance of speech is always a net gain of speech. Communities can enter death spirals where only extreme speech exists because everyone reasonable is so turned off by the extreme speech that they leave. (Edit: I’m not saying that tolerance of speech is always a net negative either. I’m just saying it might be too complex to say.)

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#156

Post by TameAntelope »

letmeiiin wrote: post #121
TameAntelope wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you write an outrageous blog post today, you're hosed. This just isn’t true, and I’m not sure why the discussion around cancel culture is framed like it is true. It’s exceedingly hard to be cancelled if you’re acting genuinely, kindly, and with empathy for the topic you’re discussing. You can say literally anything you want if you can figure out how to be nice when you say it, but you do have to put real effort…

Sometime it's basically impossible to nicely say that something is just moronic.

Sufficiently talented communicators more or less only have these "cancel culture" problems through choice, not through inability to express themselves.

Which is honestly why I have little sympathy for the "cancelled", in many cases.

Occasionally, I do feel a pang of empathy for people like Gina Carano, for example, who genuinely don't seem to know how to say what they want to, and may not have intentionally wanted to harm others, but through ego end up refusing to reword their expression or to account for how their words might hurt others.

It's a small pang, and not a long lasting one.

I can see how the confusion might happen, but even for the least articulate among us there are clean off-ramps that get ignored.

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#157

Post by anamax »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #58
anamax wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The case we're talking about is I accuse you of calling me a fatty and get a bunch of people to tell your employer that they'll boycott, costing a bunch of people their income, people who didn't do anything, unless they fire you. Note that I said "accuse". Maybe you called me a fatty, maybe you didn't. Note that "get" is too strong. There appear to be people waiting for an excuse to go after "your employer" for prett…

Let's not move the goalposts. If you hurt your boss's feelings, should you lose your livelihood?

I see your "move the goalposts" and raise a "mote and bailey".

I'm describing cancel culture as it is, which is different from "calling your boss a fatty" (or a Nazi for that matter).

We might well decide that the "right thing" in these situations is different.

Which reminds me - does someone have an obligation to hire me after I call them a fatty?

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#158

Post by krapp »

Gimpei wrote: post #129

The problem with the debate on "cancel culture" is a lack of specificity. The fact is that there are certain occasions where "canceling" seems fine, and others, where it does not. And I think a problem with the progressive argument is the refusal to acknowledge that there can ever be any excesses. For example, there is the case of Dorian Abbot, who was disinvited from an MIT lecture after he wrote an op-ed criticizin…

>The problem with the debate on "cancel culture" is a lack of specificity. The fact is that there are certain occasions where "canceling" seems fine, and others, where it does not. And I think a problem with the progressive argument is the refusal to acknowledge that there can ever be any excesses.

Actually, many progressives do acknowledge that. Plenty of people on the left feel that cancel culture sometimes goes too far, including marginalized groups who feel it appropriates their struggle and does more harm than good, primarily serving as a way for outsiders to virtue signal allyship in ways that don't really threaten their privilege, or require skin in the game as it were.

On the other hand, given a corrupt system which often protects and insulates powerful people from the consequences of their vile actions, cancel culture is sometimes the only lever people have to effect progressive change in that system. I mean, cancellation, protest and collective action are the only reason certain issues are even part of the greater cultural conversation at all.

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#159

Post by dtjb »

jimbokun wrote: post #74
Latty wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know what Popehat actually wants here. For people to stop calling it "cancel culture" whenever they face reasonable consequences for actions they take that harm others would be a good start. People not wanting to patronize or associate with you when you cause harm to people they care about is really not a bad thing, and it's not new either, and yet it is what gets called "cancel culture" by a lot of people.…

> For people to stop calling it "cancel culture" whenever they face reasonable consequences for actions they take that harm others would be a good start. Someone having an opinion different than you does not cause you harm. This is the Big Lie underlying a lot of the rhetoric that has been labeled "cancel culture". The potential harm at shutting down the opportunity to find out you were wrong about something by heari…

Nobody is getting cancelled for having a different opinion on tax rates or foreign policy.

There are very specific and narrow types of speech that lead to 'cancellation,' and it's almost always speech that attacks people's identity, race, and sexuality. Historically that type of speech has been equated with harm.

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#160

Post by tptacek »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #152
tptacek wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to erect a new societal norm around "cool", it would in fact fall upon you to define "coolness".

I'm not sure I'm trying to do that. I chose "cool" as an example because none of us came up with the term, no one can confidently define it and have everyone agree on it, and it's a word we all seem to use without truly knowing what it means. At the risk of stretching an analogy too far, I would not need to define what "coolness" is in order to confront people who I perceive to be overly critical and who are trying t…

You're getting to Ken White's point, which is that we can't reasonably call for clear norms about "cancel culture" given how poorly defined it is. Without that definition --- and maybe we'll never have it --- "cancel culture" is mostly just an undisciplined tool for shutting down criticism.

White writes at length about the fact that disproportionate responses to objectionable speech happen, and are worth discussing. His take is that you have to talk about those things in their particulars, rather than trying to write staff editorials and open letters about the phenomenon of "cancel culture" (or, in the NYT's case, a [nonexistant!] right to express thoughts without fear of shame or shunning).

White's essay is about the NYT letter. It is not an attempt to end the "cancel culture" debate once and for all. I'd ask you to scroll through this thread and try to pick out the arguments here that recognize that fact, or the ones that are clearly premised on the notion that White believes he's "solved" the cancel culture problem (or doesn't believe it's real).

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