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Heresy

paulgraham.com

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Re: Heresy

#671

Post by chronolitus »

sanderjd wrote: post #298

> 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/

Re: Heresy

#672

Post by FerociousTimes »

deanCommie wrote: post #649
amalcon wrote: post #432

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 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,…

I still sense you advocating for coercive equity policies in your comment; i.e. redistribution of power from the slightly more fortunate to the slightly less fortunate but on a whim and flimsy excuses and without due process, because let's pretend for a moment that people at the very top; the one percenters would be affected by this cancel culture nonsense, it's always middle class people and every once in a while, a member of the upper middle class get devoured by the SJW monster and that's it.

This whole crusade is just a charade.

Re: Heresy

#673

Post by sanderjd »

chronolitus wrote: post #671
sanderjd wrote: post #298

> 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

#674

Post by softwaredoug »

Skiiing wrote: post #655
softwaredoug wrote: post #355

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

#675

Post by banannaise »

randomtwiddler wrote: post #460
sanderjd wrote: post #298

> 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

#676

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

#677

Post by orwin »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #295
Beltalowda wrote: post #134

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

#678

Post by raxxorraxor »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #646
Avshalom wrote: post #396

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.

Re: Heresy

#679

Post by Bostonian »

It's heresy to say that the races, having evolved in different environments for millennia, likely have different average levels of intelligence, consistent with patterns of scores on IQ tests and college admissions tests. Charles Murray's book "Facing Reality: Two Truths about Race in America" (2021) expounds this heresy.

The proposition can certainly be debated, but it's important that it is debated rather than shunned as heresy, because if it is true, pushing to make blacks represented according to population in high-IQ professions such as law, medicine, and engineering will erode standards and reduce productivity in those fields.

Re: Heresy

#680

Post by dbsmith83 »

tshaddox wrote: post #272

I 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.”

Which wrongthink is not the issue being discussed here and is beside the point. This is about principle. The issue is not being able to hold any wrongthink beliefs (and discuss them) while also holding a job. If you can't think of anything which may be true but also offensive enough to get someone fired for proclaiming it, you may be guilty of being a 'conventional thinker'.
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