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Heresy

paulgraham.com

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Re: Heresy

#891

Post by tptacek »

rayiner wrote: post #870
rectang wrote: post #858

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd never heard of this "Successor Ideology" before today. Turns out it's a straw man crafted by its originator, Wesley Yang, for the sake of tearing down: he opposes it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesley_Yang > Yang coined the term "successor ideology" in 2019 to describe an emerging ideology among left-wing movements in the United States centered around identity politics. Yang opposes this ideology and believes…

It’s like “trickle down economics.” It’s a phrase coined by its opponents to describe a real ideological trend. Obviously the people advancing that collection of ideas and policies don’t embrace the label and would describe their views differently. That doesn’t mean the label doesn’t describe a real thing. See also: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/please-just-fucking-tel... (“Please Just Fucking Tell Me What Ter…

"Wrong"?

Re: Heresy

#892

Post by at_a_remove »

tptacek wrote: post #886
at_a_remove wrote: post #879

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those feminists are so angry when they write about feminism. They seem happier when they write about other topics. Clearly, then, we know what to advise them to write about. You see how that works?

I don't understand. What do "feminists" have to do with this? There are a zillion different kinds of feminists. Did I miss something about this post, is it subtly anti-feminist?

To spell it out: just because someone seems unhappy writing about something, doesn't make them wrong, and it doesn't mean that they should stop writing about it.

I selected "feminists" as an "across-the-aisle" example.

Re: Heresy

#893

Post by alanlammiman »

jimkleiber wrote: post #881
alanlammiman wrote: post #734

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, to take the analogy a step further, if you go out on the street and start pushing people around, and one of them pulls out a baseball bat and beats you to a pulp, should you really complain that they didn't just push back? Nope. You just had it coming, and if you are such a macho street-fighter you should accept you got owned that time. Sure, if you were in a dojo practicing martial arts - an environment that i…

I like how you took it further. I agree that there may be fewer rules in interacting outside of such a dojo, but there are still some rules. For example, laws governing self-defense that often say people cannot respond to a push by beating the person to a pulp with a bat, lest they get charged for assault and maybe more. And beyond law, just norms on how we agree people should or should not fight fairly. So I think t…

Indeed - I'm all for common sense and rules. So, whether you/the OP like it or not, the present 'formal and informal rules' of intellectual street-fighting do allow for the baseball bat of cancellation, rather than mere 'pushing-back', to be used against the 'push' of perceived prejudice. So if that is the 'push' one wants to make, better find an intellectual dojo that only allows pushing, not complain that your opponent didn't behave as you wanted them to.

Re: Heresy

#894

Post by alm1 »

ss108 wrote: post #552
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…

I am not generally pro cancel culture, but a lot of the opposition to it is certainly whiney and low on evidence. For example, there's this notion that the advancement of knowledge is somehow being suppressed and that naked, barely-regulated free speech has been essential to Western dominance, and that, accordingly, to backpedal on the principle would have some material affect on society. However, no nexus between th…

One can say that Solomon Asch experiments on social conformity are great illustrations of the benefits of free speech. Diverse opinions discourage group think and encourage critical thinking and discourse. That works even if the opinion is bogus, since in that case it may encourage the individual to avoid adopting an overwhelming majority point of view. As you mentioned it is indeed a slower process, but a much more fault tolerant one. The simple analogy is the slower, complicated democratic process vs fast, simple autocratic process.

Re: Heresy

#895

Post by kemayo »

alanlammiman wrote: post #716
kemayo wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The particularly uncharitable reading of that quote that jumped to my mind when I read it is "but why can't I, a white guy, say the n-word?" But this probably isn't what Graham actually had in mind. I think Graham is trying to operate in some idealized plane of pure logical statements where you can speak truthful axioms and reason from them. He misses that in the real world statements have a context, are part of an o…

This was also the example that came to my mind. It is perhaps one of the most iconic examples, and as such, absent a concrete example or further clarification, I don't see why you shouldn't assume that this is representative of what the author had in mind.

Oh, I doubt he really wanted that. The sort of thing I suspect he was actually referencing is the "black people commit X% of all crimes" / "racial differences in IQ test scores show..." talking points. (Or their equivalents in other fields. Women-in-computer-science, etc.)

Re: Heresy

#896

Post by etherael »

amalcon wrote: post #650
ratww wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you even imagine that today? Not in the countries I guess we both live, but in some authoritarian places, definitely, unfortunately. Your point still fully stands though!

This is a great point, and I should've made it clear that I was only referring to democratic countries that profess to value free speech.

I can easily imagine such laws in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. They already exist in Australia. The consensual mass hallucination regarding those places is that they are democratic countries that profess to value free speech.

But of course, it is purely a hallucination.

Re: Heresy

#897

Post by rayiner »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #839
temp8964 wrote: post #746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> lots of folks lost their jobs for vocally opposing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000's I am not aware of this history. Is there any data or document? What kind of jobs, private? governmental? academic?

Everyone crying about people being cancelled sure didn't have a lot of words to defend the Dixie Chicks when they were against the Iraq war.

I, too, agree that progressives are moral busybodies like Bush-era evangelicals.

Re: Heresy

#898

Post by onionisafruit »

taneq wrote: post #767
aidenn0 wrote: post #753

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition, all communication is context sensitive. When a politician who needs nei-nazi votes to get elected says something questionable, it's not unreasonable to assume it was intentional. Dog whistles are why we can't have nice things.

Just struck me that the term 'dog whistle' to the general population just means something you toot to get a dog's attention, whereas to a select target audience it has far more sinister implications and acts as a call to action of sorts. Ironic.

“dog whistle” comes from supersonic dog whistles that dogs can hear but humans can’t, not just whistling to call a dog. The analogy is that a speaker can use a phrase that most people won’t notice but their intended audience will understand.

Maybe you already know this and I misunderstood your comment.

Re: Heresy

#899

Post by emmelaich »

telchior wrote: post #666
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…

Trying to give it the article a more positive reading: at least for myself, I can imagine several opinions I could express in the United States which would count as "heresy". I'd imagine that if those opinions were said out loud (whether or not I really believed them) my employers would fire me, friends would unfriend me, etc. But, I can't really think of any supporting real-world stories where that reaction wouldn't…

> Amy Cooper ...

Not saying what she did was justified, but there is more to the story.

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/the-real-story-of-the-centr...

> "May 2020 testimony provided by Jerome Lockett, a black man who said Christian had “aggressively” threatened him in the park. Among the details: “when I saw that video, I thought, I cannot imagine if he approached her the same way how she may have genuinely been afraid for her life.” He continued, “If I wasn’t who I was, I would of [sic] called the police on that guy too.”

Also see the talk page for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park_birdwatching_inci...

Re: Heresy

#900

Post by daveoc64 »

lowkey_ wrote: post #122
tedivm wrote: post #11

This thing where people want to say horrible things without consequence is just so weird. I have the right to judge your statements just as much as you have a right to say them. I have the right to leave jobs when it turns out the people working there hate people like me, and companies have the right to hire people who aren't going to alienate future potential employees. When people bring up posts like this they neve…

> People are getting called out for denying the existence of people who aren't like them. I see this a lot and it makes no sense to me. What does it mean to deny the existence of someone? To pretend they do not exist? People who make that comment usually seem to be falling into a trap of viewing a disagreement or difference in opinion as something much more extreme.

I've read comments on articles about LGBT issues (often trans topics these days), and there are a lot of people that say things like "Being gay is a choice".

If that's not denying the existence of a different kind of person to you, I don't know what is.

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