The latest campus cancellation is different • Hacker News Board

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#151

Post by air7 » Sun, Oct 10, 2021, 2:09 PM UTC

q1w2 wrote: post #141

Causality1 wrote: post #121

Totally unacceptable and sends a message to any student that isn’t a white man that they don’t matter Fascinating. I would call this another indicator of qualitative change in the cancel phenomenon. "Classic" cancel culture was driven by highly informed activists, who in this case would've known race-agnostic acceptance benefits Asian people and is at best neutral toward white people if not harmful. Today's mobs are…

No, this is an intentional misdirection by them. The important motivation is to undermine the influence of the majority white population. In that regard, it is always important to make every other ethnic group a victim and never paint anyone but white people as benefactors of systemic racism. Inconvenient data points, such as the one you describe, are intentionally omitted.

E.g. In the orignal "Women make 70 cents for every dollar a man makes" gov memo, it was also said that Asian men make 115 cents for every dolar a white man makes. That doesn't fit the narrative so it's just ignored.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#152

Post by mkr-hn » Sun, Oct 10, 2021, 2:10 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #105

m0llusk wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This appears to be driven at a basic level by a desire for justice. Having had some thousands of years of experience with the quest for justice we can say with some level of certainty that effective justice seeking has some particular characteristics without which justice remains elusive. There must be a clear statement of the injustice which must be corrected. There should be a hearing where all involved can state t…

This is basically it; the normal mechanisms don't work properly, and nobody in the mob has any faith that engaging with any formal process is going to achieve a result, so they complain in public. (This specific incident sounds like a storm in a teacup, but there's far more serious and less visible problems with racial discrimination in academia) Similar to #metoo. Reporting sexual harassment, assault and even rape q…

Dr. King put it best: "a riot is the language of the unheard."

Some portion of the mob on Twitter is people chasing clout and performing social justice. For example: I've been attacked for "generalizing nonbinary people" by cis people while describing my own experience as a nonbinary person, so I don't doubt people like that drive a lot of the discussion, but the vast majority is sincere if sometimes misdirected anger at genuine powerlessness. A Twitter riot is much like a physical riot: some agitators, but mostly just angry people denied a voice taking one by force.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#153

Post by iammisc » Sun, Oct 10, 2021, 2:11 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #124

civilized wrote: post #61

It is time for talented teenagers to stop going to illiberal institutions. Consider getting your education at a place with values you can respect. Mission-driven schools: this is your moment.

Trying to remember the source of the quote that basically says that whenever you try to open a "free speech" area to protect from illiberal witch hunts, you end up with a community of like 3 principled libertarians and ten thousand witches. Difficult for me to imagine some sort of "mission driven school", especially advertised as a counterpoint to elite University cancel culture, didn't just turn into just as much of…

> Difficult for me to imagine some sort of "mission driven school", especially advertised as a counterpoint to elite University cancel culture, didn't just turn into just as much of an illiberal institution, but just with a hard right/conservative bias.

Perhaps what we perceive as a 'conservative' bias is just what centrist discourse used to be like before the twitter mobs?

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#154

Post by snek_case » Sun, Oct 10, 2021, 2:11 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #34

Twitter had become a powerful mechanism to lodge complaints, vid and invalid. Companies often will immediately take notice of someone they’d dismissed via traditional channels. Harassment, racism, juvenile immaturity, etc., are also called out via Twitter. Sometimes they are legitimate grievances, other times not. But there is almost never any due process and as infrequently are there repercussions for liars, people…

> Psychologically this is group bullying without consequences.

Very much so. It's mob mentality. The group diffuses the responsibility, shielding everyone, enabling the bullying to be done without consequences.

IMO it should be illegal to fire someone based on mob actions. There should be legal repercussions to this. Either against the people who did the firing, or against twitter, for enabling mobs and bullying. There's a legit case to be made that twitter has caused significant damage to people's images and careers, that they've known about this problem for a long time and did nothing about it. Victims could get together and do a class action lawsuit.

It's scary because realistically, it might take a long time for things to change. Right now, the mob can crush anyone they feel like crushing with no consequences. Does anyone really want to live in that world? This could get worse if we let it. It might even be possible to weaponize this, pay for a botnet to get someone you don't like fired.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#155

Post by aisengard » Sun, Oct 10, 2021, 2:11 PM UTC

version_five wrote: post #51

geofft wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this exactly the world that free speech / pro-liberty advocates want? I don't have any power to fire someone from their job; I'm not their boss. But I do have the right to make my views about them freely known. That's my right to free speech. And I can also decide whether to patronize their business or not. That's my right to economic freedom - to not be in an authoritarian society where the government tells me…

I don't disagree with your premise (as a libertarian) But re: > I don't see any way to cancel Twitter mobs that doesn't itself uphold cancel culture and destroy liberty. You'll see many people here are suggesting that we just don't listen to the "mob". That would be a way to "cancel" them that is completely compatible with liberty.

Okay, but people clearly do want to listen to the mob. Is the suggestion to cancel those people?

It's hilarious that the pure libertarian approach is literally "do nothing".

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#156

Post by iammisc » Sun, Oct 10, 2021, 2:13 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #113

geofft wrote: post #13

> MIT buckled, becoming yet another major institution in American life to demonstrate that the commitment to free speech it trumpets on its website The what? I'm an MIT alum and I cannot remember anything about a commitment to free speech on the website. I don't see one now, and I can hardly see any relevant search results for `"free speech" site:mit.edu` - a few blogs and research papers, but nothing about a commitm…

I think that there's a subconscious belief that US institutions should be loyal to the white race, especially as expressed through the American spirit of our forefathers and their ideals of fair play, and that any cancellation based on expressing the same racial beliefs as the country was built on is basically sedition as a prelude to white liquidation. Some white people feel like they're going to be forced out of th…

There's also a conscious belief on behalf of immigrant families like my own that the reason we came to this country is for the free speech, so when we see American institutions that do not seem to care, we wonder if America actually lives up to its promises.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#157

Post by k__ » Sun, Oct 10, 2021, 2:14 PM UTC

He wants a system based on merit?

Where should this merit come from for underrepresented groups if not from affirmative action?

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#158

Post by aisengard » Sun, Oct 10, 2021, 2:14 PM UTC

snek_case wrote: post #154

mc32 wrote: post #34

Twitter had become a powerful mechanism to lodge complaints, vid and invalid. Companies often will immediately take notice of someone they’d dismissed via traditional channels. Harassment, racism, juvenile immaturity, etc., are also called out via Twitter. Sometimes they are legitimate grievances, other times not. But there is almost never any due process and as infrequently are there repercussions for liars, people…

> Psychologically this is group bullying without consequences. Very much so. It's mob mentality. The group diffuses the responsibility, shielding everyone, enabling the bullying to be done without consequences. IMO it should be illegal to fire someone based on mob actions. There should be legal repercussions to this. Either against the people who did the firing, or against twitter, for enabling mobs and bullying. The…

[flagged]

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#159

Post by iammisc » Sun, Oct 10, 2021, 2:14 PM UTC

s_Hogg wrote: post #2

This article reads like it is trying to cancel the cancellers, somewhat ironically! Very hard to not become the thing you hate when you get tangled up in this stuff.

It's okay to cancel the cancellers. In fact, the expected outcome of this effort is to 'cancel' the cancellers, by not allowing their complaints to translate into institutional action. They are free to argue others should be canceled, but no one should listen to them. Given that they are currently listened to, preventing that is indeed a form of cancellation, and it's a good one. You cannot and should not expect to benefit from the very policy you denigrate.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#160

Post by crocodiletears » Sun, Oct 10, 2021, 2:15 PM UTC

civilized wrote: post #47

gambiting wrote: post #44

Ultimately I blame Twitter and Twitter mobs for all insanity like this. World would be a much better place without Twitter.

I blame an administrative class that is either too cowardly to stand up to the mob, or - and I fear this is more likely - actually deranged and in complete agreement with the mob. I say the latter is more likely because, in this case and so many others, there was so little at stake. There was no imminent risk to MIT's reputation for platforming a climate scientist speaking on climate change... merely because he had e…

This has been my experience working alongside University administrators. A sizeable chunk of them (I wouldn't say a clear majority, but in no way a small minority) are exactly the kinds of people who participate in these mobs, and are perfectly happy to use small spats and uproars on Twitter as political cover to legitimize their internal activism.

The people buckling out of fear are less worried about the consequences of upsetting faceless Twitter users than they are about upsetting a semi-organized and ideologically motivated fifth-column within their own organizations.