Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times • Hacker News Board

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#251

Post by throwawaygh » Tue, Mar 22, 2022, 10:41 PM UTC

zdragnar wrote: post #226

TameAntelope wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we should lose sight of just how batshit insane the NYT editorial was. We can continue to talk about Cancel Culture, but the opening assertion of the editorial was that we have a right to, "...speak [our] minds and voice [our] opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned." That's gobsmackingly wrong. It's the kind of sentence that, to me at least, grinds my mental gears to a halt. I just..…

It's not too far off. Any behavior which constitutes assault or harassment is not protected by the first amendment. Shaming and shunning can easily be considered harassment in the right context, though actually proving it in a court of law gets much trickier.

> Shaming and shunning can easily be considered harassment in the right context

Shunning is never harassment. Shaming could be, but not on its own -- it would probably have to be either extraordinarily sustained/egregious and/or paired with credible threats to person or property.

Even emergent behavior that has the same effect as blatant harassment isn't harassment. I.e., sending one person 10K letters, some of which contain (even unspecific) threats, is CERTAINLY harassment. But if 10K people each send one letter, there are probably zero instances of harassment unless one of the letters is seriously egregious (e.g., contains specific and credible threats). And even then, the other 99,999 letters aren't instances of harassment.

Organized behavior might be. It depends on the amount of coordination. But probably the case is too difficult to take on.

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#252

Post by otterley » Tue, Mar 22, 2022, 10:42 PM UTC

coffeemug wrote: post #246

TameAntelope wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we should lose sight of just how batshit insane the NYT editorial was. We can continue to talk about Cancel Culture, but the opening assertion of the editorial was that we have a right to, "...speak [our] minds and voice [our] opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned." That's gobsmackingly wrong. It's the kind of sentence that, to me at least, grinds my mental gears to a halt. I just..…

From TFA: > Americans don’t have, and have never had, any right to be free of shaming or shunning. The First Amendment protects our right to speak free of government interference. It does not protect us from other people saying mean things in response to our speech. First, the term "free speech" is overloaded-- it means a legal right to speak free of government interference, and it also means a cultural environment o…

> We want to live in a culture where a joke on the internet doesn't lead to a struggle session at work.

Everyone wants to do that, until they find themselves the target of a joke while struggling to have a good career, live in a nice place, and raise a family as a member of an unprivileged group with a lot of adverse baggage to overcome. Not everyone thinks such jokes are funny, and they have just as much a right to be pissed off about them as you think you have to make them. Getting along with your peers is an essential duty at most jobs, and that includes refraining from unnecessarily upsetting them.

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#253

Post by zeruch » Tue, Mar 22, 2022, 10:42 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #180

The comments on this thread seem to be quite wildly missing White's point. Many of the arguments taking place here seem premised on the idea that Ken White has attempted to solve, once and for all, the "cancel culture" problem --- or somehow write a dispositive argument that "cancel culture" isn't real. He's not doing any of these things. He's responding to a specific NYT staff editorial. White agrees with many of yo…

Your is so far the only comment that seems to have actually read and understood the piece. Bravo.

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#254

Post by Banana699 » Tue, Mar 22, 2022, 10:43 PM UTC

TameAntelope wrote: post #177

cowuser666 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no chilling effects here..

My point is cancel culture is not very chilling if you're a competent speaker/writer, and it ought to be even less chilling than it is (possibly not chilling at all). If you believe you're entering a conversation with positive intent, a genuine point of view, and empathy for others, you are more or less immune to being cancelled.

>If you believe you're entering a conversation with positive intent, a genuine point of view, and empathy for others, you are more or less immune to being cancelled

Any sufficiently selective style guide is indistinguishable from a censor.

It's bizarrely hilarious how "Progressives" mirror religious fundamentalists, down to the particular language used to dispel accusations of censorship and closed-mindedness. "You can say whatever you like, just in ways we like (which will sometimes include you shutting up entirely)" looks painfully familiar for any closeted atheist.

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#255

Post by olivermarks » Tue, Mar 22, 2022, 10:43 PM UTC

tootie wrote: post #239

Spinnaker_ wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He immediately and thoroughly owned up to his mistakes regarding Russia. His credibility has increased in my mind.

He's still posting Ukrainian Nazi tweets. He owned up to the thing he was incontrovertibly wrong about but doesn't seem to be rethinking his approach.

I'd suggest that openly discussing the fact that Ukraine has a huge neo nazi problem is responsible reporting. I'm frankly surprised the many BBC and other documentaries on this huge problem from the last few years have not been removed from youtube given the sudden transformation of Ukraine into white hats in the current 'western'.

This is why I read Taibbi, because the legacy media has lost so much credibility. (It should go without saying the Russian invasion is obviously appalling and wrong but many people appear to have calcified into 'any criticism of Ukraine makes you a Russian 'apologist' etc etc)

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#256

Post by tptacek » Tue, Mar 22, 2022, 10:43 PM UTC

coffeemug wrote: post #246

TameAntelope wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we should lose sight of just how batshit insane the NYT editorial was. We can continue to talk about Cancel Culture, but the opening assertion of the editorial was that we have a right to, "...speak [our] minds and voice [our] opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned." That's gobsmackingly wrong. It's the kind of sentence that, to me at least, grinds my mental gears to a halt. I just..…

From TFA: > Americans don’t have, and have never had, any right to be free of shaming or shunning. The First Amendment protects our right to speak free of government interference. It does not protect us from other people saying mean things in response to our speech. First, the term "free speech" is overloaded-- it means a legal right to speak free of government interference, and it also means a cultural environment o…

Ken White agrees with you that there are disproportionate responses to speech on the Internet and, if you follow him, isn't any more amenable to struggle sessions than you are (see: his years-long advocacy of what Lukianoff is doing at FIRE).

The problem is that the NYT here managed to articulate a different, and stupid, problem: the eroding of our supposed right to speak without shame or shunning. The NYT's arguments are in a line of similar arguments that are not in fact about free speech, but rather the opposite: they purport to defend speech, but only selectively, and in the cases they don't defend, they're an appeal to shut down speech and voluntary association.

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#257

Post by Natsu » Tue, Mar 22, 2022, 10:44 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #215

Natsu wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I watched that podcast and didn't see it. Given that it was a prosecution over a difference of opinion over what constitutes discussion of "sanctions" in a call they had a recording of, with only an FD-302 for evidence of what was said, where the only copy was from months after the fact. I don't know that I listened to every podcast, so you an point out a quote if there was one, but I sure don't remember anything lik…

Which podcast in particular? It ran for 3 years, and 18 USC 1001 was a recurring character. I don't think discussing Clark is going to do any favors for your arguments.

Not going to defend Clark here, just using that as a point of time reference and possible explanation for the notes of bitterness, since that was an ugly feud for former friends.

I was thinking of All the President's Lawyers in particular during the end of the trial (e.g. between dismissal & pardon).

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#258

Post by zeruch » Tue, Mar 22, 2022, 10:44 PM UTC

BitwiseFool wrote: post #3

> "Our failure to have a serious discussion about defining “cancel culture” encourages this. When some people vaguely complain about “cancel culture” in a way that lends itself to promoting this constant partisanship, other people not unreasonably see it as partisan." Popehat seems to be falling into the trap of thinking the precisely defining something will lead to clarity. It rarely, if ever, does. Each one of us h…

"Popehat seems to be falling into the trap of thinking the precisely defining something will lead to clarity."

It's not a trap, it's essentially true. Clarity doesn't mean solvability, but reducing ambiguity, or at the very least getting some better consensual agreement on terms among adversaries usually helps flash out the discourse beyond tropes and jabs.

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#259

Post by mrjangles » Tue, Mar 22, 2022, 10:45 PM UTC

TameAntelope wrote: post #201

tptacek wrote: post #180

The comments on this thread seem to be quite wildly missing White's point. Many of the arguments taking place here seem premised on the idea that Ken White has attempted to solve, once and for all, the "cancel culture" problem --- or somehow write a dispositive argument that "cancel culture" isn't real. He's not doing any of these things. He's responding to a specific NYT staff editorial. White agrees with many of yo…

I don't think we should lose sight of just how batshit insane the NYT editorial was. We can continue to talk about Cancel Culture, but the opening assertion of the editorial was that we have a right to, "...speak [our] minds and voice [our] opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned." That's gobsmackingly wrong. It's the kind of sentence that, to me at least, grinds my mental gears to a halt. I just..…

Yeah that's a good point. There is not a single person complaining about cancel culture today that wouldn't immediately join the snarling mob and try to cancel someone that argued something like "we should rape 1 year olds" or something like that, for example.

If we kept the arguments to "It is wrong to hate people just for holding the same opinion as 50% of the population", or "Hating someone for making a joke is wrong", it would make a lot more sense.

You know, the more I think about it, the fact that there are a large body of people who literally hate and want to destroy the lives of half the people living in the western world, simply because of their opinions about life, really rubs in how psychotically dangerous they are. It is amazing they are allowed to get away with their behavior. The reason is that people really are instinctively terrified of a ravenous mob (and rightly so), so they keep quite, but, in the age of the internet, there is less to fear from these mobs.

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#260

Post by Karrot_Kream » Tue, Mar 22, 2022, 10:45 PM UTC

throwawaygh wrote: post #147

BitwiseFool wrote: post #3

> "Our failure to have a serious discussion about defining “cancel culture” encourages this. When some people vaguely complain about “cancel culture” in a way that lends itself to promoting this constant partisanship, other people not unreasonably see it as partisan." Popehat seems to be falling into the trap of thinking the precisely defining something will lead to clarity. It rarely, if ever, does. Each one of us h…

> The opposite stance, not calling on people to end cancel culture, is also accepting a reduction in speech. I'm not sure that accepting certain spaces becoming unwelcome is the same as a reduction in speech. The quote toward the end of the article really hits the nail on the head for me: > The room felt tense... I was shaken, but also determined to not silence myself. Still, the disdain of my fellow students stuck w…

I'm going to preface this by saying that I'm a dark-skinned POC straight man that grew up in poverty (and that in the SFBA I feel like a unicorn, especially in my climbing gym where sometimes I'm the only dark-skinned POC for my entire workout).

> Feeling tense and unwelcome in a space where people disagree with you is totally normal and to be expected. A huge fraction of people grow up feeling exactly like that in virtually every space they inhabit.

I grew up very used to the idea of feeling unwelcome because of my skin color. I didn't and still do not feel the most comfortable in many spaces. That uncomfortability has made me keenly aware at how alienating the feeling is. When I see other people feel uncomfortable, I don't think "good now you feel how it's like to be me", I feel that humanity has lost yet another victim to intolerance. I do not think that normalizing this feeling helps anyone, even if the person feeling this pain is a straight, white man.

Moreover when someone hates me for my skin color (and perceived behaviors associated with my skin color), I certainly become uncomfortable and angry, but at the end of the day I realize it's something I cannot fundamentally change. My skin color and body type will stay with me for the rest of my life. But when people become uncomfortable by _my ideas_ that's what hurts more; I feel that people disapprove of the fruits of my own agency. It's why I've always felt so keenly for transgender folk who endure endless discrimination for simply choosing how to live their own lives.