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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

#471

Post by tptacek »

rayiner wrote: post #453
tptacek wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. But all we're establishing here is that everybody is hostile to ideological pluralism. That shouldn't surprise us. We live in a hyperpolarized society (and that's not the fault of "cancel culture", but rather preceded it by over 50 years, surviving multiple zeitgeist shifts in the interim, from the defeated cynicism of the post-Nixon 70s through the Reagan years and the post-9/11 culture of nationalism that got…

> Sure. But all we're establishing here is that everybody is hostile to ideological pluralism. But I don’t see why liberals (broadly defined) need to be so ideological or hostile. I can understand why evangelical Christians are the way they are. But liberals, especially highly educated ones, should be able to look at the facts and see what is and what isn’t. > So where does that leave us? Is your point that it's disa…

Not to be glib about this, but I mostly blame Twitter. It's a clique-forming engine.

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

#472

Post by tptacek »

xyzzyz wrote: post #468
Forgeties79 wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Cancellation is primarily a radical leftist domain. Wait, what? * Kaepernick/the NFL * “Freedom Fries” * Dungeons & Dragons * Heavy metal and rap. * Starbucks (happy holidays) I mean you can easily pick out all sorts of attempts at “cancelling” by conservatives from the last 30 years without even having to think too hard about it. It’s an American tradition to virtue signal and cancel, it’s not relegated to the left…

Actually, can you list some successful conservative cancellings from last decade? In my experience, the successful ones are many decades old, and the more recent ones are unsuccessful. I mean, I don’t think heavy metal or dungeons and dragons have been meaningfully cancelled in any sense, and last time conservatives seriously tried to do so was two decades ago. I agree that conservatives also attempt to cancel, it ju…

They just did.

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

#473

Post by mrkstu »

tptacek wrote: post #420
da39a3ee wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. A better way of saying what I intended is this: We cannot control the statistical distribution of opinions within the population and hence cannot control whether we will be shunned or shamed. However, that does not mean that we throw up our hands and define "repulsive" to be whatever gets us shunned by the majority: neither truth nor morality is completely relative. The two propositions I gave differ marke…

What I find repulsive isn't the point. There certainly are people who will avoid working with you if you make public statements in support of (2). It's not up to us to define the threshold at which people will or won't shun us. Unless you want to give up on the concept of free association --- it seems clear you don't --- you're going to have to accept that it's possible to have and express opinions that will foreclos…

I think the point should be that society benefits greatly by giving room for a wide variety of thought and opinion without shame and judgement. Opinions, generally, shouldn’t be considered odious, rather, the actions we take that impinge on others directly.

As a teen in the 80s, I was a conservative on a debate team full of liberals, including members of the Young Communists. Guess what- we were all good friends despite being ideologically at odds.

Having room to rationally discuss our differences makes for an ability for a pluralistic society to have open debate without rancor and violence. Using well formed argument rather than vitriol and public shaming to truly convince rather than force public agreement and private grievance seems to me a better recipe for a harmonious and just society.

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

#474

Post by closeparen »

tptacek wrote: post #55
abnry wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cancel culture is... targeted at individuals, for the loss of their job, invitations, or positions, for offenses that are minor in comparison to historical offenses, or offenses that are based on guilt by association or speculative inference, often for things in the past, which were things many people accepted at the time, and often which the individual disavows today.

That's a more specific and coherent definition of cancel culture, but it's certainly not the current consensus definition: many "cancel culture" debates --- probably most of them --- are about speech or opinions that the individual stands resolutely behind. And, of course, "for offenses that are minor in comparison" or "speculative" is almost always subjective; it just shifts the debate to a different set of words, b…

Cancel culture is like vetocracy: the most censorious opinion wins. Speech norms are nuanced and subjective and ought to be subject to community debate. The same for specific alleged violations of speech norms.

We manage this alright with even very serious crimes. It is okay to take the position during a murder trial that the killing was an act of self defense or that you believe the defendant’s alibi. It is also okay to take both pro and con positions about strengthening or weakening the laws in homicide edge cases, such as the castle doctrine or vehicular negligence.

In a cancel culture, onlookers feel they must echo the condemnation, or at least not challenge it, even as they privately offer support to the accused. Ideas like “even though three people are offended, this ought to be allowed” or “actually the context makes this not transgressive” are themselves outside the Overton window.

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

#475

Post by tptacek »

jimbokun wrote: post #436
tptacek wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then we've clearly flourished throughout the 20th century in spit of it and not because of it.

The countries that better practiced this norm in the 20th century flourished more than those who practiced it less.

Really? China? Thailand? Singapore? I feel bad being argumentative, but I think what you're saying actually isn't true.

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

#476

Post by juliusdavies »

tptacek wrote: post #411
slibhb wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't try to rebut the blog. And anyway, my comment doesn't hang on right to no-shunning/right to food being identical. My point was that the blog is strange because the author agrees with the spirit of the op-ed while taking pains to criticize it. I think this is clearly because he dislikes being on the same side as conservatives. If I was going to disagree with the blog, it would be over this strange idea that w…

He clearly doesn't agree with the spirit of the editorial (it's a staff editorial, not an op-ed). He thinks there are real free speech problems, but that the editorial (and the public sentiment it cites) terribly misconstrues them, succumbing to sloppy thinking in a way that not only works against their stated goal but actually further jeopardizes speech.

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"

NYT would prefer:

"I slightly disapprove, err--- I mean I very very very mildly approve of what you say, and I will defend to the death your right to say it, while also acknowledging that I must be respectful to you in all that I say regarding what you said."

(Here in British Columbia, Canada, a Jewish lawyer famously defended a holocaust denier's right to free speech (pro-bono!). I remember the lawyer telling people that he planned to be the first to piss on his client's grave, but that he also intended to defend him in the courts to the very best of his abilities.)

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

#477

Post by RobertRoberts »

Latty wrote: post #32
RobertRoberts wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But who decides what "actions they take that harm others" is? If you look up if there are nazis in Ukraine army in US news, it will claim it's false, but international news sources say it's true. Since nazis are the worst ever, don't you think it's important to get this right? And how can we tell if we can't have openly opposing sources that don't get cancelled?

Individuals make that decision, just as they do when it comes to democracy as a whole. That's the point of freedom of speech: we can't have an authority on the truth. The alternative is you aren't allowed to dislike and refuse to patronize someone because of their actions, which is obviously absurd. Everyone agrees people shouldn't face disproportionate responses, so arguing for that is nothing. Either you need to ar…

Maybe you could provide a solid point of "the actual harm done" when someone says "there are nazis in the army"? (if it's true)

If it's false, maybe you can claim slander on an entire army? Even the law doesn't protect anyone from that...

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

#478

Post by tptacek »

da39a3ee wrote: post #470
tptacek wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I find repulsive isn't the point. There certainly are people who will avoid working with you if you make public statements in support of (2). It's not up to us to define the threshold at which people will or won't shun us. Unless you want to give up on the concept of free association --- it seems clear you don't --- you're going to have to accept that it's possible to have and express opinions that will foreclos…

Yes of course I accept all of that — one can hardly have missed that in the last five or so years, since completely unreasonable positions have been raised to the status of dogma by educated liberals in the sorts of workplaces that you and I work in. One can and should remind the world that it shouldn’t be that way: shunning and shaming should be reserved for extreme opinions.

Who's to say what's "reasonable"? Marriage equality was considered absolutely unreasonable just 15 years ago. I think you need to learn to live with the fact that people can simply decide to find your opinions odious, and a consequence of that will be you not being able to work with them. You don't have a right to force people to associate with you.

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

#479

Post by TameAntelope »

Banana699 wrote: post #378
TameAntelope wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not any less capable of writing quality software if you are prohibited from using specific programming languages, I don’t think that analogy helps you as much as you think. Let’s stop being abstract; what idea is not expressable except in a way that results in effective cancellation?

>You are not any less capable of writing quality software if you are prohibited from using specific programming languages Are you implying that it's possible to write an efficient OS in a language other than the likes of C/C++/Rust? Do mention an example. >what idea is not expressable except in a way that results in effective cancellation? - A lot of Transgender people are teenagers with mental health adopting the id…

Your example of an idea that isn't expressible without effective cancellation is funny, because it's the precise position that many conservatives have expressed, who still seem to have jobs (e.g. Jordan Peterson). Honestly it's so common of an idea, it's actually odd you think such an idea results in "cancellation" at all. It's the default idea, in fact. You can't swing a dead cat in conservative circles without hearing, verbatim, what you've written here.

And the "Can you write an OS in it?" is not a good metric for, "Can I write quality software?" OSes are not necessarily "well" written software by their nature. There are lots of good examples of "good code" that aren't written as part of OS code. Why would that, of all things, be your metric? Seems utterly nonsensical, the more I think about it the less sense it makes.

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

#480

Post by gambler »

tptacek wrote: post #113
gambler wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A) Criticizing an idea so that others understand how it is flawed. B) "Criticizing" an idea to get it expunged from various media to manipulate what ideas people are exposed to. If you even pretend that there is no difference between A and B, you're not worth intellectually engaging with.

Then you shouldn't have any problem with what Ken White is saying here, because he makes that distinction at great length.

I don't need someone gaslighting me about an article that I've just read. Here is what it says:

"The Times also errs by utterly failing to grapple with the problem that “cancelling” represents free speech and free association."

It's a strawman conundrum that White constructs all on his own. It might seem very clever to people who think freedom of speech is some kind of mechanistic rule to puzzle over. Not clever at all when one considers the reason why it became a value for modern societies.

Not only White conflates the two behaviors I mentioned in my post above, he reinforces the confusion by equivocating a riot at Berkley with ridiculing someone.

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