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Heresy

paulgraham.com

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Re: Heresy

#651

Post by philosopher1234 »

randomtwiddler wrote: post #610
sanderjd wrote: post #369

> The reason the current wave of intolerance comes from the left is simply because the new unifying ideology happened to come from the left. This is an (aggressively?) conventional idea that I have an (I guess) heretical opinion about. I'm somewhat persuaded that there is a recent outbreak of intolerance for differing ideas and ideals (though I suspect every generation expresses a version of this opinion as they get…

Seems a false equivalency. The majority of the personalized destruction, cancelling, firing, etc, comes from one side.

How about bills restricting voting access to people of color, or the ability to say the word “gay”? Those don’t qualify as material consequences for violating conventions/ideology? You have a one sided view.

Re: Heresy

#652

Post by rendang »

tootie wrote: post #407
galaxyLogic wrote: post #393

Another word for heresy is political correctness. The problem with it is you can attack anybody you dislike with very little cost to you because you stand with a large crowd agreeing with you. And you don't even have to understand the issues since the opinion you put out is commonly accepted. It in fact might not be your opinion but you can still use it to attack opponents. Political correctness is a quite naturally…

Political correctness was an epithet invented by conservatives who opposed things like women's rights, gay rights etc. The fact that advocates can be mistaken doesn't overshadow how wrong the other side is to be unwilling to acknowledge injustice.

We live in a pluralistic society where there is a great deal of disagreement over the fundamental principles of ethics, justice and rights. This is not an easily soluble situation, it boils down to the is-ought problem.

However it seems that today many want to pretend that these differences don't exist, e.g. a progressive talks to a conservative as if the latter agrees on fundamental presuppositions but only misapplies them. In other words, we treat our opponents like they are heretics from our religion instead of infidels who belong to a different one.

Re: Heresy

#653

Post by WalterBright »

NoraCodes wrote: post #521
twofornone wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These claims that the "don't say gay" legislation stifles free speech are dishonest. These are teachers, agents of the state, in a professional setting, not private citizens expressing opinions off the clock. If I'm paying taxes for public education then I should have a say in what gets taught, and that includes culture.

Now, wait a second - either it's bad that people get fired for expressing opinions, as Graham states in the essay, or it's not and people _should_ get fired for expressing opinions that you don't like. I don't think you can have it both ways. It's not even as if there's a conflict of interest here, as in the case of public officials being banned from certain kinds of political speech; these teachers are not hurting a…

Are you ok with teaching creationism in public schools? Being government run schools, the government decides what gets taught. It cannot be teachers teach whatever they want - they must adhere to the curriculum, which is decided by the government.

Re: Heresy

#654

Post by Kosirich »

Does HN community generally agree with a statement that current "left x-ist aggressive woke purity ideology" is an extension of white puritanism and puritanist like ideology. As portion of white protestants lost their faith they found a replacement in the "holier than thou" approach of the hippy left? As a non american I see Occupy Wall Street as being more of a catholic left movement while everything after as protestant left one.

Re: Heresy

#655

Post by malnourish »

dangoor wrote: post #406

This reminds me of a Popehat article I finally got around to reading yesterday: https://popehat.substack.com/p/our-fundamental-right-to-sham... In that article, Popehat talks about the need to define cancel culture and understand how the free speech rights of the first speaker intersect with the free speech and association rights of people that respond. I think the most useful aspect of PG's article is that he does a…

I had not seen that article; thank you for sharing it.

Re: Heresy

#656

Post by UncleMeat »

Banana699 wrote: post #644
UncleMeat wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tacitus or Voltaire are variously credited with the notion that in any epoch, to know who is in power, ask who you may not criticise. The actual source of this quote is a literal Nazi who was using this quote to claim that Jewish people run the world. It is also a silly idea. It is considered rude to make fun of autistic people at work, but autistic people clearly aren't running the world through some secret cabal.

>The actual source of this quote is a literal Nazi This is called the Genetic Fallacy, it is completely irrelevant who said anything as long as that thing is true and/or useful. Nobody owns words. Aristotle supported slavery, you don't interrupt every logic lecture with "You know the source of those funny terms is a literal slavery supporter?" do you?. >It is also a silly idea. It is considered rude to make fun of au…

> This is called the Genetic Fallacy

I'm well aware of the Genetic Fallacy. The post I was responding to was falsely attributing the quote to other sources. "Hey, somebody else said that" is relevant information. Discussion of fallacies is also largely worthless in ordinary conversation since we aren't actually making formal deductive arguments. It is completely reasonable for people to reason through other means than pure deductive logic.

And further, my post did not stop there.

> voltaire's rule of thumb

It is not Voltaire's rule of thumb. We just discussed this.

Re: Heresy

#657

Post by sicromoft »

Biologist123 wrote: post #220

This essay was somewhat high on opinion, somewhat low on evidence. Paul Graham tweets a lot about this issue, and cancel culture is something he is apparently very sensitive too. It makes me wonder what happened - as given his lack of evidence - it appears to be an emotional reaction rather than a logical one. As an aside, most examples of people being fired for expressing opinions seem to come from academia. I’ve wo…

> This essay was somewhat high on opinion, somewhat low on evidence

That's putting it mildly. It's littered with straw men and other logical fallacies.

He asserts, without any proof (because it's a faulty generalization that can't be proven), 'when someone calls a statement "x-ist," they're also implicitly saying that this is the end of the discussion'. He then wastes a bunch of time explaining the implications of his straw man.

Re: Heresy

#658

Post by derevaunseraun »

zarzavat wrote: post #345

This is one of the best reasons to learn a second language. Heretical concepts are often wrapped in layers of euphemism. For this reason, heresies tend to have problems crossing language barriers as that structure of euphemisms hasn’t necessarily been developed. One of the properties of the euphemism treadmill is that the mere existence of softer alternatives makes the original seem much worse than it was before. Spe…

Something that's really interesting: if you are bilingual read the wikipedia of the non-English language. Especially topics that are more controversial. A lot of the controversies we talk about in the US are very specific to the English language

Re: Heresy

#659

Post by faichai »

ss108 wrote: post #563
faichai wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, he didn’t say it, but this identity politics driven perspective is entirely the current thing wrong with the left. I say this as a moderate. Rather than fall back on broad principles like free speech, you concoct evermore Byzantine rules about who can say what, given their race, gender, position of power or wealth. It’s unsustainable. It’s the Terror, but using cancellation rather than guillotine. This approa…

We just had 4 years of an identity politics Republican president (which party has totally succumbed to its idiotic, tribalist, identity-driven, populist base, discarding a lot of good conservative ideas and values in the process), so your spin on this as being "entirely the current thing wrong with the left" is disingenuous. Dems are holding the line far better, though they too will fail, and the progressive wing wil…

The left has already gone too far, in my view.

From a free speech perspective the right seems to be more pro-principle and less identity-based cancellation hysteria, but they do so on the back of white, Christian nationalism and rampant hypocrisy which is a slightly different problem than heresy as per the original article.

Calling me disingenuous a bit of a reach.

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