441–450 of 1001 posts
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…
Test. (Please downvote me).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t think people want to say bad things without consequence. They want to be able to discuss a topic without the rabid tone police descending on it. Like, I say I cannot understand trans people at all , and people will jump on me because I’m rejecting them and making them feel bad, when I’m just stating a fact. There’s a lot of this stuff.
> I say I cannot understand trans people at all Seems like a weird thing to say. I don't understand FORTRAN at all and as such I stay away from people discussing it. Why do you want to tell trans people that you don't understand them? Wouldn't it be easier to read some literature so you can gain a basic understanding?
- Palestine and how many academics have been fired or silenced for supporting them l? Nathan J Robinson was let go form The Guardian for a joke about Palestinian treatment.
- The score of labor organizers fired in the tech and food service industry for expressing their right to organize?
- Tech workers getting fired for what could be claimed to be sexism/sexual harassment?
- People fired because they are extremely right wing?
People who talk about the limiting of free speech almost never care about the first two but they sure get high and mighty when their friends get cancelled for making off color jokes.
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I think the problem with this argument is the free speech "is at an all time high if you zoom out a bit". This is much like the argument, "gun violence is at an all time low if you zoom out a bit" argument. Both of these statements are true in the macro, but if you look at the trends, they point to a very disturbing line. The call for the restriction of free speech on the right(1) and the left (2) have increased in v…
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"Free speech" does not equal "freedom from being criticized" or "right to an audience". Me making fun of your argument or calling your argument stupid and x-ist is me exercising my free speech just as much as you are exercising yours in making you argument in the first place.
But that being said, I would argue that going on campaigns to get someone fired from their job or preventing people from making their argument in the first place and the like is against free speech the ethical value, even if not against the legal principle.
A lot of times what people are really talking of when they express concerns about "free speech" is the ethical value. This is frequently countered with an argument about the legal protection, but that's kind of missing the point IMHO.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the problem with this argument is the free speech "is at an all time high if you zoom out a bit". This is much like the argument, "gun violence is at an all time low if you zoom out a bit" argument. Both of these statements are true in the macro, but if you look at the trends, they point to a very disturbing line. The call for the restriction of free speech on the right(1) and the left (2) have increased in v…
Quoted post unavailable.
Showing up to shout someone down who had people voluntarily show up to hear them speak because you feel like you are empowered to unilaterally decide and enforce through aggression who is “allowed” to speak in your city or on your campus, is inherently an act against freedom of speech. It’s also the ultimate act of “entitlement”, getting away with it is the ultimate act of “privilege” to be allowed to so utterly disrespect another person’s rights.
There is no other way to color this and very little nuance here. “Platforms” in the virtual space have more leeway as they’re mostly privately owned and extended as a privilege of access, not a right. Shouting down speakers in public (or paid and invited) venues though is unequivocally against freedom of speech.
I've extracted a paragraph below, but the whole story is quite short and well worth reading.
>Four months later, a blacksmith of Aventinus, deluded by the Histriones’ deceptions, placed a huge iron sphere on the shoulders of his small son, so that his double might fly. The boy died; the horror engendered by this crime obliged John’s judges to assume an unexceptionable severity. He would not retract; he repeated that if he negated his proposition he would fall into the pestilential heresy of the Monotones. He did not understand (did not want to understand) that to speak of the Monotones was to speak of the already forgotten. With somewhat senile insistence, he abundantly gave forth with the most brilliant periods of his former polemics; the judges did not even hear what had once enraptured them. Instead of trying to cleanse himself of the slightest blemish of Histrionism, he strove to demonstrate that the proposition of which he was accused was rigorously orthodox. He argued with the men on whose judgment his fate depended and committed the extreme ineptitude of doing so with wit and irony. On the 26th of October, after a discussion lasting three days and three nights, he was sentenced to die at the stake.
[1] https://matiane.wordpress.com/2015/08/16/jorge-luis-borges-t...
In reality, the comment reflects four important things about Newton: 1 - marriage: he never married and once complained about someone trying to set him up with a woman; 2 - heresy: he was a reformation era figure, quite religious in his Protestant (heretical to some) beliefs; 3 - crime: as master of the mint he bestowed justice high (mostly) and low on forgers and other criminals within his authority (and not in Cambridge) which leads to 4 - sin: a nice intensifying noun that encompasses not only his intense religious nature but the zeal with which he pursued and punished criminals and many with whom he disagreed, including friends.
This is a fault line that roughly follows the main party-lines in the US as far as I can see. And so pg can also be interpreted to be dog-whistling which side he is on. Which can also be the reason why the analysis comes across as a bit shallow; like when did we start to interpret historical phenomenon in terms of ad hoc personality types? (the "aggressively conventional-minded" personality type that supposedly is responsibly for crying heresy since time immemorial).
This struggle (between "the guardians of proper speech" and the "free speech advocates") has been extremely personal for several decades, but by bringing personality into it pg seems to turn flip the coin on the opponents; they are inherently bad humans (too). So it's perhaps not weird that this post has been flagged off and on, for that reason too.
But another take on this is how the political struggle has gradually invaded every nook and cranny of human existence, down to questioning the "way we are". It is likely a dead end that just might be one of the causes for increased mental illness in western societies.
I'm increasingly coming to the conclusion that we need to take a step back and not so easily be drawn into the political talking points. Perhaps the answer is: let's not engage in ad hominem attacks, not on individual level, not on group level. Easier said than done perhaps, but I seriously think we need to get there.
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Vaguely gesticulating at your stated enemy instead of identifying them is a time-honored rhetorical technique: it allows the reader to insert their individual grievances into the shape of the argument rather than reflecting on whether their grievances are actually well-founded. Edit: And to be absolutely clear: it's a lame technique. It works because it's emotive, not because it reveals any particular amount of truth…
> it allows the reader to insert their individual grievances into the shape of the argument rather than reflecting on whether their grievances are actually well-founded. Given that it's specifically about the shape of these sorts of arguments, adding specific examples would produce tangents into the merits of the specific examples; omitting them encourages the reader to consider the pattern in the context of their ow…
Graham can't make the point that it's pervasive, because he won't provide any evidence to that effect. He won't do that because he knows that hand-wringing about "heresy" is much more agreeable than the interior position: that rich and powerful men like himself shouldn't be made to bear uncomfortable thoughts.