[deleted]
Heresy
781–790 of 1001 posts
Re: Heresy
#782Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> bills restricting voting access to people of color I'm not aware of any such bill. What's its name? And why is it not dead on arrival due to the Equal Protection Clause?
I’m not playing plausible deniability games with you. Everyone knows what the point of these bills are.
Re: Heresy
#783Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Which bills restrict voting access for people of color?
Read the news some time.
Re: Heresy
#784Can 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.
(1) The concept of an inherent “gender” makes no biological nor logical sense. You can’t have been born in the “wrong body.” (2) Socrates was mostly right about democracy. (3) Seriously violent criminals, once convicted, should never bet let out of prison. (4) The US (and all nations) should have essentially open borders. (5) The US should make health insurance illegal and provide health care as a function of governm…
None of these would get you fired?
Re: Heresy
#785The biggest problem I have with Paul’s writing on these topics is the misanthropic undertones. The classification of folks as “conventional minded” mirrors other socially reductive language like referring to people as “simps,” “NPCs,” and more. Paul believes he is partly responsible for engaging a social immune response to the intolerance he perceives — forgetting that immune responses are inflammatory by nature and…
COVID has changed a lot because it brought into public debate how to evaluate deeply held beliefs about predicting the future. The discussion is high-strung because it covers a life-or-death topic, and it’s so diverse (e.g. science vs region vs conspiracy vs liberty etc) that it forced the quantization of opinions. Once you swap an opinion for a symbol, game theory takes over the conversation. What could help solve t…
Paul posted this because people are getting fired from their jobs now (directly or indirectly).
See his words: "Nowadays, in civilized countries, heretics only get fired in the metaphorical sense, by losing their jobs. ... You could have spent the last ten years saving children's lives, but if you express certain opinions, you're automatically fired."
People on the political right have moderate discussions and they are banded aggressively. Here are two examples:
* James Woods had 137,000 subscribers removed in two days, by twitter admins
* Ron Pauls' entire YouTube channel was censored and removed.
This is the "Heretic hunting" point Paul Graham is making.
Re: Heresy
#786Re: Heresy
#787Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quoted post unavailable.
Another thing that muddies the discussion is the confusion between the legal protection of free speech and the ethical value of free speech. "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. Bu…
> "right to an audience"
If Alice wants to talk but Bob doesn't want to listen to her, then he indeed shouldn't have to. But if Alice wants to talk and Bob does want to listen to her, then they should be able to without Karen being able to stop them.
Re: Heresy
#788I know this is going to sound insane, but what is the obsession with truth? Things can be true and harmful. People should be judged for saying harmful things.
Yeah but how do you get people to form a consensus on what's harmful?
You don't need to. Society will always define this for you.
Re: Heresy
#789Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Are you telling us that it was literally violence?
When you believe in an eternal soul that can be harmed, there are harms that are worse than violence.
Re: Heresy
#790> 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. In 1985 in most places in the USA a public school teacher openly supporting gay rights in the classroom would have been risking their job and possibly their entire career.
Why a high school teacher needs a position on gay rights in the classroom, in 1985 or 2022, is beyond me.
Because it is the role of a teacher to educate, and it's entirely possible that some children enter the classroom with a set of values incompatible with modern life?