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Heresy

paulgraham.com

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911–920 of 1001 posts

Re: Heresy

#911

Post by tomcam »

keithwhor wrote: post #819
tomcam wrote: post #807

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think Paul may inadvertently be adding to the actual biggest problem in civilized discourse these days — weaponized victimization and othering. Would you mind giving me quotes from the post to back up these assertions?

Simply categorizing human beings as conventional vs unconventional and passive vs aggressive, and then establishing an enemy in one quadrant is an example. Unconventional people are the victims, aggressively conventional people are the others. I think the thing Paul really has a problem with is social brigading and mobs attacking people unfairly. Which is fine; but you can make that argument without painting yourself…

So no quotes

Re: Heresy

#912

Post by thomassmith65 »

At this point, there are more essays decrying "cancel culture" than there are rabbit's noses. On an ideological level, many of them are rousing, but if they enter the realm of everyday life by listing specific examples, the arguments weaken.

Many forbidden ideas are taboo because they, often obviously, have little potential to help society, and great potential to harm it.

  I've deliberately avoided mentioning any specific heresies here.
I'll give the author credit for bringing that to the reader's attention. Then I also wonder if he wrote a draft with examples (the heresies of anti-feminists? groypers? race scientists?), and realized he would disgust his audience.

Re: Heresy

#913

Post by Vaelatern »

philjohn wrote: post #304
javajosh wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too complicated. The culture war was explicitly born of a left-wing power grab through cultural means, and it was foisted on college students starting in like 2014, and has had remarkable success (for its proponents). College kids believe a lot of stuff without knowing what, or why, and cancel culture rules are no different.

You seem to be ignoring Pat Buchanon who literally used the term "culture war".

Waterfall development was coined in a paper describing how it is bad.

Re: Heresy

#914

Post by deanCommie »

amalcon wrote: post #568
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…

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…

I think the comparison you drew is interesting.

Restrictions to free speech used to be in place to protect the Most Powerful - the Kings (still do - in places where there are kings), The Party, even The Government (in places where democracy is but a sham)

In Western democratic nations, new restrictions to free speech are being considered to protect the Most Marginalized - the most weakest, most discriminated against, lowest represented members of society.

It is ludicrous to look at this movement and compare them like-for-like. There is no backsliding here, there is no slippery slope here. There is a very distinct difference between who is protected and who is exploited.

Re: Heresy

#915

Post by voidfunc »

otterley wrote: post #730
amalcon wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think most jurists would agree that the Sedition Act is dead for all practical purposes. Most modern First Amendment jurisprudence only started being written after the Vietnam War, commencing with Brandenburg v. Ohio , 395 U.S. 44 (1969), and the Sedition Act would be unlikely to survive scrutiny today.

The reality though is, SCOTUS can decide to trash precedent at-will once a case is in front of them. If you put political hacks into the SCOTUS and they decide the Sedition Act is legal then its suddenly back on the table.

This is the danger of an overly political SCOTUS.

Re: Heresy

#916

Post by ComradePhil »

Paul conviniently makes it seem as if it was a organic grassroots thing and not a result of the rulers directing them from the top.

There's never been stable rulers who didn't get rid of the naysayers. "Drain the Swamp" was unsuccessful and it was like the vaccine for them. Now, they just know what can be used to attack them, so they are just fixing those things, whether it's gripping technocrats by the balls or getting rid of punishments for pedophiles.

Re: Heresy

#917

Post by deanCommie »

knorker wrote: post #775
telchior wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Neither was fired for work performance. I think anything else is a distracting justification, not a reason. James Damore was fired by a mob who boldly proclaimed "I didn't read his manifesto. I didn't have to". None of these firings were for honest reasons, but all just to appease the mob. A mob who at least in the last case didn't bother to even find out what he said. There are many more examples. I could list them…

> James Damore was fired by a mob who boldly proclaimed "I didn't read his manifesto. I didn't have to".

I assure you, the vast majority of us who criticized him read his writings quite thoroughly.

Re: Heresy

#918

Post by deanCommie »

paisawalla wrote: post #703
giraffe_lady wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/105039166355267174...

Not even 500px away from here, there's this exchange from you, contradicting your clever tweet: > Can [ignoring ideas I don't like] get a doctor for my impoverished mother in law? > If not then I'm afraid I must oppose some ideas in ways other than ignoring them. [Context: "We do not show up at their talks and try to prevent them from communicating with others."]

Note: Twitter replies and suggestions are sorted according to it's recommendation engine.

So what you see 500px away might not be visible to other readers.

Re: Heresy

#919

Post by imgabe »

Avshalom wrote: post #516

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy_laws_in_the_United_Stat... just sayin'. maybe 1985 sucked a lot for a lot of people that weren't paul graham.

The idea is to make things not suck. Not to make them suck in the same way for different groups of people.

Have you considered the possibility that oppressing gay people and firing people with unpopular opinions are both wrong and should be opposed?

Re: Heresy

#920

Post by imgabe »

UncleMeat wrote: post #728
waqf wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But in actual intellectual discourse, if someone presents a point of view which is founded on a discredited idea, then we just ignore them. We do not show up at their talks and try to prevent them from communicating with others. Firstly because life's too short for that, and secondly because who knows, one day they might turn out to have been right or mostly right.

Being wrong is not absolute proof that nobody will follow or agree with these wrong beliefs. Climate scientists, for example, have spent a lot of time arguing in public about the merits of climate science and the lies of deniers. That is important work because the deniers do convince some people and denialism causes real harm.

Being popular is not absolute proof that ideas are right either. That’s why we need to leave room for the unpopular ideas too.
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