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Heresy

paulgraham.com

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Re: Heresy

#951

Post by sanderjd »

virgilp wrote: post #931
sanderjd wrote: post #856

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The question isn't "staying in good graces". While people should have friends with whom they disagree, the topic here is heresy. Heresy leads to punishment that goes beyond social consequences. Potayto potahto. I was talking about the same thing that the article called "heresy". My claim isn't that shunning and social pressure doesn't exist or isn't a problem. I'm just a bit skeptical that it's a lot worse now than…

Since you claim "gender is a social construct" or "immigrants are good" are examples of heresy - can you provide examples of people fired over stating these opinions? I'm not aware of such instances but maybe they're just not as visibly reported.

Is this the definition of "heresy" being used by the article? That at least one person has lost a job because of the belief? That would at least make me happier, to have a somewhat testable definition. But the article seems to be using it more broadly than that.

I haven't seen any examples of those specific ones in the news and I don't have examples I'm personally familiar with. But the "Parental Rights in Education" bill is a handy example of the same phenomenon coming from the right; teachers will certainly lose their jobs or be forced to resign due to having the wrong beliefs in the wrong profession in the wrong state (and other states will almost certainly pass similar laws soon). Maybe that is an isolated incident, but I'm skeptical.

Frankly, I would really like to see someone try to gather and present data on this. It's really hard because the definition of what you're even looking for is wishy washy and most of the information is private; there isn't a public database of reasons why people didn't get, were forced to resign, or were fired from jobs.

Re: Heresy

#952

Post by sanderjd »

chronolitus wrote: post #949
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…

Another take on this particular question (that I found much more interesting) https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/22/right-is-the-new-left/

Yeah his take is very interesting, but I think it's also very personal, very much coming from his own personal milieu (which contains a lot of very reactionary right wing folks...). I think it's an example of what I meant by saying this conventional wisdom seems to be more informed by "vibes" more so than data. It's definitely true that the SSC and pg crowds have are deeply convinced that this is a problem unique to the left, I'm just skeptical that their belief is as factually based as they might think. The SSC article does a good job of incorporating this uncertainty, but the OP does not, in my view.

Re: Heresy

#953

Post by tootie »

rendang wrote: post #652
tootie wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 misappli…

I disagree. Conservative values that marginalize some groups are simply unacceptable. It's not a matter of faith or perspective, it's just rational observation. When conservatives draw up explicitly racist congressional districts or pass laws banning talk about gender identity, I see those as indefensible. Doubly so because so much of the justification is based on abject lies.

No one has ever been cancelled over support for, say, charter schools or wanting lower taxes. I disagree with those but they're not morally reprehensible.

Re: Heresy

#954

Post by softwaredoug »

Skiiing wrote: post #925
softwaredoug wrote: post #454

In the 90s and 2000s it would be “heresy” to be a gay or transgendered person. I remember sadly how people in hushed tones would talk about coworkers. There was a bro-y norm to engineering culture that you didn’t defy very easily. I'm a bit surprised how easily people forget these things.

Are you talking from a US/European perspective? Being gay was entirely open and mainstream in the 90s/2000s. Although I'm not sure what that has to do with heresy which was the topic of the essay.

Gay marriage was only legalized in the US in 2015.

Barack Obama couldn't openly support gay marriage in 2012 or 2008 due to political repercussions.

Matthew Shepard was killed in 1998 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Shepard)

In my 90s high school slurs like f*g, etc were commonplace. It cropped up in popular media like Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey (where now its bleeped)

Re: Heresy

#955

Post by banannaise »

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.

...which one?

Re: Heresy

#956

Post by Werewolf255 »

I knew this was gonna be a rough read after the setup. And then he got to the part where he's "just drawing parallels" between the Cultural Revolution and college campuses, and I knew there wasn't anything else I needed to read. And of course it leads into "maybe we don't really need to make sure eeeeeveryone is vaccinated, freedom of choice" apologia.

The part he's missing, or being wilfully ignorant of, is intentionally distorting heresy and orthodoxy through bad faith and selfish uses of both. I can understand that the person who challenges the system due to experienced injustices or inequities is coming from a different place than the person challenging the system because they aren't allowed to dump mercury into the water supply. One is trying to speak to a system they perceive to be unfair while the other is trying to keep the system from performing as intended in order to further entrench their own interests. That they might seem similar is mostly window dressing.

I heard this argument in 2008 when folks loved to point out that Obama was popular with youth, just like Mao during the Cultural Revolution. It's Sinophobia, full stop.

Re: Heresy

#957

Post by orwin »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #366
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…

The speed with which society is moving is also a factor. 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. I think Graham is slightly missing the point about our period. It's not that heresy is on the up, so much as it's on the move. Outrage is a homeless beast. We're in an Orwellian age where it changes with the seasons, so what is h…

> 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.

Yeah, so the people in power currently are Ukrainians.

Look, i agree with the rest of your analysis, but this Tacitus sounds stupid (I am pretty sure Voltaire didn't write this). It's ignoring that most pamphlets and songs actually targeted people in power, historically (yeah, thinking about it, no way it's Voltaire). And people mostly take the dominated/wronged side.

Re: Heresy

#958

Post by Timwi »

virgilp wrote: post #931
sanderjd wrote: post #856

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The question isn't "staying in good graces". While people should have friends with whom they disagree, the topic here is heresy. Heresy leads to punishment that goes beyond social consequences. Potayto potahto. I was talking about the same thing that the article called "heresy". My claim isn't that shunning and social pressure doesn't exist or isn't a problem. I'm just a bit skeptical that it's a lot worse now than…

Since you claim "gender is a social construct" or "immigrants are good" are examples of heresy - can you provide examples of people fired over stating these opinions? I'm not aware of such instances but maybe they're just not as visibly reported.

Don't know about getting fired, but it's not hard to recall stories about people getting shunned by their relatives or expelled from their family for expressing such views.

Re: Heresy

#959

Post by orwin »

slibhb wrote: post #866
sanderjd wrote: post #856

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The question isn't "staying in good graces". While people should have friends with whom they disagree, the topic here is heresy. Heresy leads to punishment that goes beyond social consequences. Potayto potahto. I was talking about the same thing that the article called "heresy". My claim isn't that shunning and social pressure doesn't exist or isn't a problem. I'm just a bit skeptical that it's a lot worse now than…

The essay specifically says it's not worse than in the past. No one's being burned at stake for example. And by the way, that's one reason I continue to believe in moral progress. The essay does claim things are worse than 10 years ago. But 70 years ago? Things are better now than during McCarthyism. > I don't even think it's really a thing with a political valence, I think it's just a human thing. It's definitely a…

My biological grandfather got expelled from his private university and disinherited by his parents during the Vietnam war in 69, because he was a communist hippy basically, and went in Europe to help boat people. Lost all he had, and the only jobs he could get were basically undeclared construction/farming jobs in the Appalachians.

So anecdotal evidence to your point. If any of the deplatformed people has had a worst experience, I'd love to hear it.

Re: Heresy

#960

Post by raxxorraxor »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #905
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.

Totally. I have no idea about Paul Graham's upbringing, but back in the 80s and 90s I was a "fag" threatened with violence just for being a slightly effeminate nerd obsessed with computers and weird music, etc.. One didn't even have to be gay to be subject to homophobic hate and intolerance. I have teenagers now -- one self-identified queer high schooler and the other a middle schooler in a tiny rural school not unli…

The following generations claimed that insult but its power has been given back by many that didn't understand the subcultures that moved beyond it.
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