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Heresy

paulgraham.com

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Re: Heresy

#541

Post by vasco »

softwaredoug wrote: post #454

In the 90s and 2000s it would be “heresy” to be a gay or transgendered person. I remember sadly how people in hushed tones would talk about coworkers. There was a bro-y norm to engineering culture that you didn’t defy very easily. I'm a bit surprised how easily people forget these things.

> There was a bro-y norm to engineering culture

There _was_? I'm not sure what field of engineering you're in, but in software, hardware and electrical engineering which are the ones I have the most contact within 3 countries in Europe, this is the norm today. Through friends in mechanical and civil engineering I get the sense it's even worse there.

Re: Heresy

#542

Post by blindmute »

tlogan wrote: post #271

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.

"Despite making up only 13% of the population, blacks make up 52% of crimes."

Re: Heresy

#543

Post by Turing_Machine »

Osmose wrote: post #258

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…

> If PG wanted to stop getting pushback for approaching what society thinks is an acceptable line

No one appointed you, or some random Twitter mob, to speak for "society".

Re: Heresy

#544

Post by tootie »

twofornone wrote: post #497
tootie wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fallacy that Graham is espousing seems to be that moral superiority (or even moral improvement) is utterly impossible and any attempt to raise the level of discourse is oppression. The change in tone in the 80s he refers to is the ascendance of civil rights, feminism and gay rights. All incredibly worthy movements. The fact that some adherents make mistakes is human nature. The notion that they can't be debated i…

>The anti-progress faction is still very very powerful. Plenty of unequivocal sexists and racists face no punishment. If I dared to push back on diversity and inclusion mandates in my workplace I'd lose my job. That includes explicitly racist talk about not hiring any more white guys. These "anti-progress" sentiments may exist but effectively in a parallel society, relegated mostly to blue collar work. It's dishonest…

For one that's a sample bias of HN being primarily affluent coastal elites. Half the country voted for the anti-progress candidate. Second, I do not at all believe that you'd be fired for a reasonable objection to diversity policy. Saying "I don't want diversity at all" might.

Re: Heresy

#545

Post by tomp »

ScarletEmerald wrote: post #411
UnpossibleJim wrote: post #355

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.

For some weird reason, the same people can be OK with Cloudflare or Twitter banning someone for their political views, but wouldn't be OK with a bank or electricity provider banning someone for their political views.

Re: Heresy

#546

Post by analog31 »

Beltalowda wrote: post #155

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…

Indeed, and the very concept of "heresy" has changed over the centuries, to the point where the analogy to Newton is probably meaningless. "Heresy" was considered to be an immediate mortal threat to the eternal life of the soul. It was not just a disagreement with social customs. It was the spiritual equivalent to yelling "fire" in a crowded theater, or driving a truck into a crowd.

Re: Heresy

#547

Post by ryanobjc »

zozbot234 wrote: post #476
Osmose wrote: post #258

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…

James Damore was a lowly software engineer and that did not save him from being canceled by the mob and losing his job. All the more outrageous because his working paper was an honest and forthright - and broadly accurate - response to an express request for feedback about how to improve working conditions. Shades of "let a thousand flowers bloom".

His paper was definitively broadly inaccurate. A number of dissections online have illustrated at how he grasps at evidence that doesn’t say what he claims it to say. He over emphasizes the nature of statistical evidence, and ignores the minimal strength of effect as well.

Besides which this wasn’t a “all of a sudden I wrote a paper and then I got fired” - he had been posting similar ideas into internal forums and was getting push back and disagreements. He got his editorial feedback already and he ignored it.

Re: Heresy

#548

Post by NoraCodes »

rayiner wrote: post #539
NoraCodes wrote: post #498

> The reason the current wave of intolerance comes from the left is simply because the new unifying ideology happened to come from the left. The next one might come from the right. Imagine what that would be like. I'm curious how Mr. Graham can look at a country that is in the process of reversing much of the last half-century's progress on women's rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and disability rights, and _not_ see a politic…

> reversing much of the last half-century's progress on women's rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and disability rights, and _not_ see a politics of heresy emerging from the right. Gee, how would anyone look at a Republican administration whose first Supreme Court appointee penned a seminal decision on LGBT employment protections as not trying to turn back LGBT rights? One wonders. Attempting to argue that the battles being fou…

> how would anyone look at a Republican administration whose first Supreme Court appointee penned a seminal decision on LGBT employment protections

More recently, the court seems to be looking to overturn Obergefell. [1]

> the current flash point on “women's rights” (Roe)

I was referring to the proposed reinstatement of child marriage in TN. [2]

1: https://www.educationviews.org/clarence-thomas-signals-willi...

2: https://www.wlbt.com/2022/04/06/proposed-legislation-could-l...

Re: Heresy

#549

Post by ineptech »

> Up till about 1985 the window [of what you can say without being cancelled] had been growing ever wider. Anyone looking into the future in 1985 would have expected freedom of expression to continue to increase. Instead it has decreased.

I think that whether this is or true or not depends a lot on how you define your terms. If cancel culture only means "I expressed an unpopular opinion about gay rights on TV and then lost my job", then yes, the window is narrower now than in 1985. But if it also includes "I expressed an unpopular opinion about gay rights in a bar and then got beaten up," it is not.

Re: Heresy

#550

Post by godelski »

tristor wrote: post #446
ScarletEmerald wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

“Deplatforming” is anti-freedom. It violates the free speech of the speaker, it violates freedom of assembly for the listeners, and it violates freedom of association for all of the parties involved. 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…

> “Deplatforming” is anti-freedom. It violates the free speech of the speaker, it violates freedom of assembly for the listeners, and it violates freedom of association for all of the parties involved.

Is it though? And to what extent? We don't have unlimited freedom of speech in the US constitution because we agreed that there are limits and realize that words do mean things (like a threat).

But on a platform let's be nuanced. Some people believe that saying a racist word and having their comment removed is deplatforming. Some think they can promote violence. Others think getting down voted is deplatforming. There's a lot of people getting grouped together here and many making claims of being deplatformed are not acting in good faith.

So unfortunately we need to define what deplatforming means otherwise we'll just be arguing and making assumptions because many people will be working off of many different definitions pretending that we all agree on the definition (or that we hold the true definition and others are dumb).

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