Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times • Hacker News Board

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

#481

Post by WesternWind » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 5:55 AM UTC

_-david-_ wrote: post #313

WesternWind wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, we do carefully scrutinize refugees, very carefully. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kyleblaine/some-things-... Saying we need to do so very carefully is implicitly suggesting that that's not currently the case, and that does absolutely feed into racism against MENA/South Asian people and Islamophobia.

The person you are responding to was talking about the Afghan refugees from the Afghanistan pull out. Those refugees do not appear to have been carefully scrutinized, at least not at the same level has past Middle Eastern refugees.

"I've got in trouble with white progressives in my social circle (which is mostly white progressives) for saying we should carefully scrutinize refugees from Syria and Iraq."

He was saying he got in trouble talking about Syria and Iraq.

That said, Afghan evacuees undergo the same vetting process. https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/21_0903...

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

#482

Post by nec4b » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 6:10 AM UTC

otterley wrote: post #319

rootusrootus wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unnecessarily upsetting them That's just the first half good advice. Don't be a jerk when you talk, don't be a jerk when you listen. Don't try to offend people unnecessarily, and don't be offended unnecessarily. As soon as you decided that the only metric which matters is when someone is unnecessarily upset, offended, or whatever, everything was lost. In that case nobody can say anything .

That unfairly burdens the target of the joke. And if you take pains not to offend your work colleagues, then the "don't be offended unnecessarily" half is far less likely to be an issue.

No post body was provided.

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

#483

Post by nec4b » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 6:13 AM UTC

otterley wrote: post #450

mbrodersen wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are suggesting is impossible in practice. It is impossible to not accidentally upset somebody no matter what you say. Unless what you say is so meaningless and vanilla that you might as well not have said anything. We would have to ban all jokes, all political opinions, all scientific discoveries (because religious people might be upset), all expressions of art etc. That is impossible.

Then how do millions of people manage to accomplish this every single day ? Also, statements like this come across as a justification for not even trying. I hope that's not what you intend.

Maybe they are boring or maybe you don't have the means to hear what millions of people say every single day?

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

#484

Post by ThrowawayR2 » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 6:19 AM UTC

otterley wrote: post #469

rayiner wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m using the poll of Indian Americans to specifically to contextualize my experience with that of enraged_camel. See my post further up about 87% of Hispanics and 82% of Asians saying that “political correctness is a problem in the country.” That’s not consistent with large numbers of people in those groups feeling so burdened by the things other people say that it impairs their daily life. As to action items, have…

My comments are not advocating a race war. I’m saying, maybe don’t be a dick; and don’t be surprised if people react negatively if you act like one.

> "My comments are not advocating a race war. I’m saying, maybe don’t be a dick; and don’t be surprised if people react negatively if you act like one."

Ironically, the progressives are getting increasing pushback precisely because they're failing to heed your advice, in the eyes of the general public. The NY Times has had an increasingly alarmed stream of editorials (e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/22/opinion/politics/latinos-...) saying that minorities are drifting away from the Democrats to the GOP largely because the latter has been able to portray progressive overreach as a problem.

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

#485

Post by nec4b » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 6:40 AM UTC

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…

People in countries which had civil wars, can work together today even if they were literally fighting each other a decade ago. But disagreeing with some woke theory makes you somebody who can't be worked with?

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

#486

Post by Step888 » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 7:05 AM UTC

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…

> Actually, can you list some successful conservative cancellings from last decade?

What would be the point? You're just going to move the goalposts again once we do.

In any case, yes, the post you replied to already mentioned one recent example. The Kaepernick kneeling "scandal" happened just 4 years ago. And it's an especially egregious example because President Trump even threatened to use the power of his office and take away NFL's non-profit status if he didn't get Kaepernick fired.

Also, cancelling happens every day in America. Is your son gay? Cancel him. Is one of your classmates gay? Bully him. Is your white daughter dating a black kid? Cancel her. Did a family member stop being a Mormon/Jehovah's witness/Muslim/Scientologist/Baptist/fundamentalist Christian, cancel them. Teaching black history? Cancel the teacher. Cancel the principal. Was your kid killed in Sandy Hook? Shut the f-up, or your life will be cancelled. Did you do your job correctly as a GOP election official and call the race for the Democrats? You better watch your back.

And yes, if your teenager becomes homeless, or ends up killing him/herself. I'd say that's a pretty "successful" cancellation. It's just so common, it has been normalized.

And the abortion clinics, it's not like the threats have stopped these past 10 years. It's just old news. That kind of shunning has never stopped. If it had stopped, we'd have abortion clinics everywhere in America.

And again, we're not saying that cancelling does not happen on the left, but claiming that cancelling is a tool predominantly used by the left is just nonsense. It's not just the left doing it. If you think it is, you've been watching too much Fox News.

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

#487

Post by mook » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 7:15 AM UTC

commandlinefan wrote: post #29

noduerme wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you point out, while boycotting someone based on your perception of their opinion is not new , the modality of mass mob boycotts of individuals over things potentially taken out of context is entirely new, and that's exactly what "cancel culture" refers to. The underlying mechanism of Twitter is what gave birth to the term, regardless of whether it's used by haters to justify hate speech. One other thing that's ne…

> the modality of mass mob boycotts I was watching the news this morning and they were talking about the latest company that's boycotting Russia in response to the social media storm. It occurred to me that governments are becoming increasingly irrelevant. They don't have to impose sanctions (and their own rules make it difficult to do so) - the Twitter mob is deciding who to banish. It's a form of democracy, I guess…

> latest company that's boycotting Russia

Is it really companies boycotting Russia? Or is it that they're no longer doing business with people in Russia due to the sanctions (and therefore the likelihood that there would be no way to get paid), with some pretty marketing speak wrapped around it?

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

#488

Post by akvadrako » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 7:38 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #240

akvadrako wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are saying we shouldn't be open? That will surely lead to never ending conflict.

I can't even figure out how to connect your response to what I wrote, so I can't possibly do any good by trying to reply to it.

The thread is about the norm "be open". Seems like you're saying society flourished in spite of having that norm.

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

#489

Post by raxxorrax » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 7:49 AM UTC

otterley wrote: post #252

coffeemug wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From TFA: > Americans don’t have, and have never had, any right to be free of shaming or shunning. The First Amendment protects our right to speak free of government interference. It does not protect us from other people saying mean things in response to our speech. First, the term "free speech" is overloaded-- it means a legal right to speak free of government interference, and it also means a cultural environment o…

> We want to live in a culture where a joke on the internet doesn't lead to a struggle session at work. Everyone wants to do that, until they find themselves the target of a joke while struggling to have a good career, live in a nice place, and raise a family as a member of an unprivileged group with a lot of adverse baggage to overcome. Not everyone thinks such jokes are funny, and they have just as much a right to…

There are plainly people that abuse this and are offended because they want to. Maybe they just don't like you or have an unresolved problem with themselves. Being upset doesn't net you anything, but the a important thing is that you aren't allowed to shut people up in the name of an abstract unprivileged group and we see that too often when people want to police speech.

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

#490

Post by raxxorrax » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 7:53 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #363

rayiner wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you a "member of an unprivileged group?" If not, what exactly do you think life is like for us that we can't take a joke? Sticks and stones and whatnot: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:rP0nqe... > Whites are ever so slightly less likely than average to believe that political correctness is a problem in the country: 79 percent of them share this sentiment. Instead, it is Asians (82 percent),…

I don't understand why you're so fixated on the partisan angle here. Both right-wing and left-wing Twitter engages, viciously, in "cancellation" behavior. How is it helping us understand the phenomenon to digress into whether liberals are paternalistic towards working class people? The thread you're writing on is rooted in a comment saying that Ken White doesn't purport to have figured out the whole "cancel culture"…

I believe he explicitly mentioned the accused behavior. It is not a unified theory, it is a specific accusation that some people propose to speak over minorities and use their voice to mount attacks on speech and champion policies for more content control against nebulous terms like hate.