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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

#491

Post by gjm11 »

tptacek wrote: post #421
gjm11 wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alan Dershowitz wrote to Pinker asking "do you reckon this statute means X or Y?" and Pinker said "It obviously means X". So far as I can tell, (1) Pinker didn't know that this was specifically about the Epstein case, (2) Pinker gave an honest answer to the question, and (3) Pinker's answer was in fact obviously correct. Epstein was an awful person who did awful things and should have spent the rest of his life in pr…

I'm not interested in rehabilitating Pinker, who appeared in Epstein's flight logs and has been photographed socializing with him. My point is simply that he tends to be a bad example when brought up in these kinds of discussions. He's treated as if he's simply a celebrity scientist caught in the limelight over political tweets. But he's not just that.

Maybe you know something about them that I don't, but to me it seems alarming that someone needs to be "rehabilitated" for those things.

"Appeared in Epstein's flight logs" = "went on his plane to a TED meeting in 2002", and "has been photographed socializing with him" = "was at a few parties where Epstein 'socialized' with everyone famous he could find", so far as I can tell. From Pinker's account -- which obviously might be self-serving -- they disliked one another. What do you think Pinker did that he could reasonably have been expected not to do, given the information available to him at the time?

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

#492

Post by raxxorrax »

BurningFrog wrote: post #352
otterley wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

In reality, it's not the poor unprivileged who rise up and cancel people who broke some norm. It's by and large highly educated white people, attacking other highly educated white people. Which looks a lot a cutthroat social status game among highly educated white people.

It is. But it isn't necessarily the in-crowd of success. On the contrary, strong indignation often arise from a position of deep insecurity. Maybe the insecurity to lose social status, sure, but there could be any other reason too.

It also was always part of the internet that people pile up on others. What is new is that there are some groups that seem to get a direct endorsement for such behavior from the media landscape.

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

#493

Post by spupe »

tootie wrote: post #445
LegitShady wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thats a personal opinion of yours. I put his credibility higher than most major news orgs I can think of.

He's really not a respectable person and he was dead wrong about Russia when major news orgs were dead on. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/matt-taibbis-not-so-secret-ru...

A hit piece by the Huffington Post on a thread about cancel culture. Focused on Matt Taibbi's words from 23 years ago, for which he apologized several times. This is part of the problem, and I hope you can realize that. Every single person that has been in the public light for over 20 years will have some ugly events in their past, get over it.

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

#494

Post by traspler »

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…

> It’s exceedingly hard to be cancelled if you’re acting genuinely, kindly, and with empathy for the topic you’re discussing.

Sorry but I don't even undstand what that would mean. I can understand not being a jerk or insulting someone when voicing an opinion but to me this sounds like you want people to only voice opinions in a docile way that acknowledges all the other positions as just as valid. You can be genuine, kind and nuanced and have a firm position I think. Not being a jerk is just half of the equation, the other half is if people are even receptive to discussion.

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

#495

Post by ZeroGravitas »

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…

I'd be very interested in your take on the powell memo.

It makes exactly the same points (young liberals from Yale undermining American society etc.) but its written 50 years ago, when American business was pumping lead into the air and painting houses with it, while other nations had already phased it out. And complains that no one listens to businessmen, and politics only cares about the environment and consumer safety.

This was written by a supreme court judge (who incidentally voted for Roe Vs Wade because his secretary nearly died from a backstreet abortion) so no dummy, yet his points seem ridiculous to us now. What leads you to think you're not making the same mistakes? Especially as you seem to acknowledge that in the past things were too much on the conservative side and it's kids today that are taking it too far.

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

#496

Post by smaryjerry »

Step888 wrote: post #486
xyzzyz wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Honestly it sounds like every description of conservatives is coming from not only 10 years ago but 20 years ago. Keapernick is a terrible example because he had shoulder surgery and then lost nearly every game of the following season before he was cut by the most liberal team in the league, the San Francisco 49ers, and also to mention he had very key interceptions in playoff games that were all but won. The claim that anything bad that happens based on sex, race, religion are conservatives is patently false. These are every democrats talking points only used to demonize their opposition. Abortions are not under threat at all, unless you count those claiming that you can’t have an abortion after 8 months pregnant when the baby can be born instead. However, this is not cancel culture. It would be cancel culture if someone had an abortion and because of it they were fired from their job. When we talk about cancel culture it is very specific to overreaction, typically losing revenue from millions of views per the direction of big tech censors and even banks and credit card companies these days. I have no doubt both sides are attempting cancel culture and I have no doubt the only ones who can quantify this would be the big tech companies themselves, but the rules posted themselves by big tech align with left leaning ideas it is all but obvious who would be breaking those rules. Reddit for example specifically allows in its written rules hateful speech against whites but disallows it against all the groups you would expect.

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

#497

Post by Dracophoenix »

psyc wrote: post #73
whatshisface wrote: post #4

There has to be some kind of term for making your case against the absolute least sympathetic adversary ("We're allowed to boycott giant corporations right?") while using the same word that describes the absolute most sympathetic cases ("Are all companies allowed to get together and jointly refuse to sell food to farm animal rights activists?")

When using the same word is the main problem, that’s equivocation. When the problem is treating distinct situations as if they’re the same, that’s false equivalence.

How does one define "distinct"? When I hear the term "false equivalence" is used, it seems to be a stand in for selectively-favored arguments - even non sequiturs - rather than an objective evaluation of relevant differences. And when that doesn't work, the arguer would move the goalposts.

If we take the example given by gp, is there a relevant distinction between the between animal rights activists and corporations selling food in their respective right to boycott?

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

#498

Post by MagnumOpus »

refurb wrote: post #457
akhmatova wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scale matters. And in terms of sheer magnitude of insanity and frequency of its emission -- no one who has held that office can hold a candle to number 45.

I would seriously disagree with that statement.

Your disagreement is noted, but arguments supported by examples would better support your view.

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

#499

Post by dataduck »

Latty wrote: post #5
BitwiseFool wrote: post #3

> "Our failure to have a serious discussion about defining “cancel culture” encourages this. When some people vaguely complain about “cancel culture” in a way that lends itself to promoting this constant partisanship, other people not unreasonably see it as partisan." Popehat seems to be falling into the trap of thinking the precisely defining something will lead to clarity. It rarely, if ever, does. Each one of us h…

> 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.

What about people facing unreasonable consequences for actions that don't harm others?

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

#500

Post by nxm »

otterley wrote: post #446
rayiner wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Right-wing cancel culture” is a well understood, world-wide phenomenon. To use the example in your other post, people try to blockade abortion clinics because certain religious people understand those clinics to be engaged in mass murder. Or to use another example people freak out over cartoons of Mohammad because it’s a grave offense in Islam. That is what it is. I talk about left-wing cancel culture because it’s a…

I think you're overcomplicating the issue. When you come from an underprivileged group with a lot of baggage to overcome to be as successful as others, having to tolerate mean-spirited jokes at work on top of all of that baggage is just another thing you have to deal with. It's depressing, dispiriting, and disheartening, and can interfere with one's ability to be productive.

There are no kids of successful black parents? Do LeBron James’ kids have to struggle more than a white kid in Easter Kentucky?

Are Asian Americans, who are better off financially than whites in America underprivileged?

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