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…
I like to point out the Sedition Act of 1918 here. About 100 years ago, a law that literally made it a crime to criticize the government was not only enacted, but upheld by the courts. Can you even imagine that today? What people are finally noticing now is that non-government entities can also have negative impacts on free speech. They're not noticing because it just started -- e.g. lots of folks lost their jobs for…
Heresy
681–690 of 1001 posts
Re: Heresy
#682Another day, another PH essay with some kind of defense for being an asshole disguised as higher discourse.
Re: Heresy
#683I wish he would just give examples or at least speak slightly more plainly about his complaint. I would understand his complaint more (and be able to decide whether I agree with him, although I’m fairly sure I don’t) if he would just say something very plainly like “I liked it better in 1985 when you could say X and have zero risk of losing your job.”
There's a quotation that "Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people." I think the problem is that PG is determined to demonstrate that he has a great mind, and must therefore discuss only abstract ideas. Lowering the discourse to include events or people is not an option. Unfortunately, the essay isn't exactly about heresy, it's about accusations of heresy, who makes them, an…
Lowering the discourse to include events or people would probably disgust people. Most of the heresies people get canceled for seem to range from pedestrian to absolutely vile.
I'm a freedom of speech absolutist, but my only sympathies towards anybody who has been canceled have either been because the people canceling them were extremely stupid, had the facts completely jumbled, and petulantly refused to be corrected; or because somebody sheltered had accidentally shared some inherited bigoted opinion that they had never really thought about in a small, relaxed context, and had that mistake blown up by cluster two clout-chasers trying to break into the opinion-haver industry.
Re: Heresy
#684Wow, 802 comments here. No way I can go through all that, but I'm really curious. If you happen to have read a significant % of the comments could you do a summary? (wasn't there a blog that had that kind of thing?)
Re: Heresy
#685Fantastic essay, as is par for the course.
Re: Heresy
#686I’ll point out that saying true statements but framing them in a racist or sexist way is an extremely common tactic. In fact, it’s the preferred tactic of many bad actors because it’s very easy to hide behind the “but it’s true!” defence. Something can be true and also presented with racist or sexist intent.
Is also a great way to get the other side to rage quit the "debate" and then you win by forfeit. Also the bullshit wrong thing gets pulled along closer to the truth by standing next to a true fact.
Re: Heresy
#687Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is "honest and forthright" really the only qualification for working at Google? What about being professional? Meaning... getting your work done in a way that you're not making other people hate you? I can totally imagine a workplace where "It's not your problem if other people hate you" is the norm. And I'm happy for people who find an employer like that and enjoy that. But does every workplace need to be like that?…
> Meaning... getting your work done in a way that you're not making other people hate you? "Making other people hate you"? Blaming a victim of vicious abuse for what his abusers were doing is very much not cool.
I hope this is intentional satire, although I fear it's not. Reversing woke discourse to protect the people you approve of isn't anti-woke, it's just more orthodoxy policing.
Re: Heresy
#688Earlier 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 political orientation of a thought is orthogonal to an honest evaluation of its accuracy. Call it a broken clock fallacy if you will. The statement was about criticism of the powerful, which is different from ridicule of the relatively weak. The concept seems facially valid to me although incomplete in that it seems to have an assumption of singular power rather than many different power domains. Taken further, a…
I'm not sure it was about criticism of the powerful. Jewish people don't run the world via a cabal. The original statement was arguing that because denying the Holocaust is socially disastrous and often illegal that Jewish people must therefore secretly be in charge of the levers of society.
Biden is currently one of the most powerful people on the entire planet. Yet people happily chant "f--- Joe Biden" in public, put stickers saying this on their cars, and put up signs on their lawns saying this.
Re: Heresy
#689Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If PG wanted to stop getting pushback for approaching what society thinks is an acceptable line, he totally can, he just needs to rebrand and get out of the startup game. 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.
I mean, I agree that practically PG will never feel any serious repercussions for saying whatever he wants _because_ of his wealth and influence. I don't think that's healthy (as wealth and influence are often afforded to people due to privilege or luck instead of ability, wisdom, or empathy) but it is how the world is currently. The cancel culture boogeyman generally doesn't destroy lives, which makes one wonder why…
> The cancel culture boogeyman generally doesn't destroy lives, which makes one wonder why people like PG feel it so important that they need to write essays decrying it.
I don’t think that’s true as there are many examples of people’s loves being destroyed, mainly through careers ended. For example, Nobel-prize winning scientist Tim Hunt [0]. He’s famous and lost his job, for saying something stupid.
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2015/6/11/8764901/tim-hunt-sexist-r...
Re: Heresy
#690Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> white, Christian nationalism
How could this possibly not be seen as identity politics?