301–310 of 1001 posts
Quoted post unavailable.
You should probably go look at the current state of diagnosis and treatment of gender dysphoria before giving your hot take. If caught and treated early, gender reassignment surgery can work miracles on a child's quality of life. It really shouldn't be seen any differently than other treatable birth defects.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> who insta-blocks anyone who even mildly disagrees with him about _anything_ on Twitter. Does his block makes you lose your job? If not, you are missing the point.
“Does losing your job kill you? If not, you are missing the point.”
It puts your financial wellbeing of you and your family at risk.
You and others will probably think twice before dissenting otherwise you better dust off that resume and tap into those savings.
But I guess people aren't killing people so cancel culture is okay, is that your standard?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you explain what it means to "deny the existence" of someone? I see this expression often, but I'm genuinely puzzled by what it means in practice. I agree with you that "purposely misgendering one's colleagues" should lead to firing, but I think this article isn't about that. It's about people who are tolerant of others and in general try to be nice people, but just disagree about certain things - for example, ho…
>I agree with you that "purposely misgendering one's colleagues" should lead to firing, but I think this article isn't about that. I do think the article is about that. I think it was purposefully left vague so he could take advantage of people giving the benefit of the doubt. I don't think people's pronouns should be up for debate, and I believe PG does.
G.K. Chesterton boiled this down pretty well: “The Special mark of the modern world is not that it is skeptical, but that it is dogmatic without knowing it. It says, in mockery of old devotees, that they believed without knowing why they believed. But the moderns believe without knowing what they believe - and without even knowing that they do believe it. Their freedom consists in first freely assuming a creed, and t…
Too complicated. The culture war was explicitly born of a left-wing power grab through cultural means, and it was foisted on college students starting in like 2014, and has had remarkable success (for its proponents). College kids believe a lot of stuff without knowing what, or why, and cancel culture rules are no different.
Can somebody list “heresies” which we are not allowed to say but they are ok? I cannot find a single one. But maybe I’m missing something.
I think this is largely a social media phenomenon. Twitter flash mobs can destroy people’s lives in a vary offhanded, drive-by fashion simply because people with actual power are scared of them and capitulate to unreasonable demands. But if you talk with people in real life, you’ll find much more nuanced thinking and willingness to engage in open-minded debate. The problem is giving too much attention to extremist vi…
Paul posted this because this has escalated to getting people on the political right fired from their jobs (directly or indirectly). See his words: "Nowadays, in civilized countries, heretics only get fired in the metaphorical sense, by losing their jobs. But the structure of the situation is the same: the heresy outweighs everything else. You could have spent the last ten years saving children's lives, but if you ex…
Remarkable to see the lack of self awareness in this thread. “It’s not censorship when I do it!!!!” It scares me to have so many educated people that aren’t in touch, aren’t even in control, if their own minds. My faith in free will ever diminishes.
I think this is an important part: "Fortunately in western countries the suppression of heresies is nothing like as bad as it used to be. Though the window of opinions you can express publicly has narrowed in the last decade, it's still much wider than it was a few hundred years ago. The problem is the derivative. Up till about 1985 the window had been growing ever wider. Anyone looking into the future in 1985 would…
It is, today, challenged from all sides. What PG et al. call "free speech" was just the peace of a political moment. In every other era "free speech" is a demand with costs; we should expect that to be the default.
The behavior he's calling "heresy" here cannot be evaluated in a vacuum; these kinds of statements are all contextual, ESPECIALLY hinging on who is saying them. And the reason that is the case is because the consequences of saying something are different depending on who says them. Paul Graham is wealthy and influential, and actively tries to influence folks with essays like this. So when he says something, it is jud…
No he doesn't. He can also opt to continue being exactly the brand that he is, remain firmly in the startup game, same push back against the self-appointed "social police", who only get away with their "policing" because people usually roll over.