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The latest campus cancellation is different

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Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#51

Post by version_five »

geofft wrote: post #24
umvi wrote: post #3

How do we neuter the power of Twitter mobs? Seems like they can bully and intimidate any organization from universities to corporations to GitHub projects to kowtow to their demands. Their demands are usually to fire, boycott, or boot people with opinions that run afoul of the mob. Not a healthy precedent to set. We will regret this later if we continue down this path.

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.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#52

Post by randallsquared »

nomdep wrote: post #19
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author is head of something he calls "Persuasion." Not everyone is impressed. https://newrepublic.com/article/158401/problem-yascha-mounks... It's free speech 101 - you can say what you like (as long as you're not inciting crime or violence.) But no one owes you a pulpit. I have far more of a problem with mob farming and Twitter incitement: see also anti-vaxing, organised climate change denial, and political rabb…

> you can say what you like (as long as you're not inciting crime or violence.) But whatever reason is to forbid inciting crime or violence is equally valid to forbid inciting firing or un-inviting someone isn’t it?

Absolutely not. Crime/violence are taking something from someone. Firing/uninviting are deciding not to trade with someone.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#53

Post by quadrifoliate »

I must admit, if there was a guy giving a lecture at my institution, and I was informed that he had made a Third Reich comparison while talking about admissions criteria, I'd be pretty opposed to the lecture going on. At the same time, I don't like the idea of succumbing to an online mob of sorts.

It seems like MIT is thinking kind of like a business here.

And perhaps that's the bigger problem – not only are campuses are becoming more like big businesses, but they are big businesses. So they tend to act more like businesses then intellectual centers of speech and thought.

Edit: After reading the letter linked in another thread [1], the support for my understanding of this as an action against "stuff that's bad for business" seems to be strengthened. To quote:

> The Carlson Lecture is not a standard scientific talk for fellow scientists. It is an outreach event, open to the public, with a speaker who is an outstanding scientist and role model. Typically held at a major venue away from campus, it is geared to build public understanding of and appreciation for climate science, and to inspire young people to consider careers in STEM. Each year students from local high schools are invited...while all of us can agree that Professor Abbot has the freedom to speak as he chooses on any subject, the department leadership concluded that the debate over both his views on diversity, equity, and inclusion and manner of presenting them were overshadowing the purpose and spirit of the Carlson Lecture.

Translation: We don't someone who compares DEI efforts to their Third Reich as our public spokesperson.

As someone who is pretty much never invited to be a public spokesperson for various reasons like physical appearance et cetera, I am A-okay with this.

--------------------

[1] https://orgchart.mit.edu/node/6/letters_to_community/importa...

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#54

Post by devdas »

zeckalpha wrote: post #49
umvi wrote: post #3

How do we neuter the power of Twitter mobs? Seems like they can bully and intimidate any organization from universities to corporations to GitHub projects to kowtow to their demands. Their demands are usually to fire, boycott, or boot people with opinions that run afoul of the mob. Not a healthy precedent to set. We will regret this later if we continue down this path.

Ah, the Paradox of Intolerance. Who cancels the cancellers? It’s almost as though we should reserve cancellation for those seeking to exclude people from society.

Ah yes, cancel those who want to cancel the intolerant.

It does help to think of tolerance as a peace treaty.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#55

Post by commandlinefan »

narraturgy wrote: post #37

It feels very strange and perhaps kind of contradictory to be presented with an individual who is vehemently against the idea of censorship while also using "the majority of people also hold this view" as their primary justification why censorship in this case is wrong. If the professor held a view that the minority if Americans supported, would there be more or less reason to support censorship in that case? Would t…

> the majority of people also hold this view

His argument is strengthened by, but doesn’t rely on, that fact.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#56

Post by sokoloff »

nomdep wrote: post #19
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author is head of something he calls "Persuasion." Not everyone is impressed. https://newrepublic.com/article/158401/problem-yascha-mounks... It's free speech 101 - you can say what you like (as long as you're not inciting crime or violence.) But no one owes you a pulpit. I have far more of a problem with mob farming and Twitter incitement: see also anti-vaxing, organised climate change denial, and political rabb…

> you can say what you like (as long as you're not inciting crime or violence.) But whatever reason is to forbid inciting crime or violence is equally valid to forbid inciting firing or un-inviting someone isn’t it?

There’s clearly a line somewhere, otherwise there’s no point in speech (if it cannot be used to influence others in even the smallest of ways).

While I don’t think MIT made the best call here, I think that Twitter users (mobs or otherwise) should be free to ask MIT to do this. I would have preferred that MIT had professionally yet firmly declined as the controversy is unrelated to the topic. (IMO, they’d be wise to avoid having a flat-Earther present at an EAPS event, but that’s not the analog here.)

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#57

Post by brongondwana »

inglor_cz wrote: post #43
umvi wrote: post #3

How do we neuter the power of Twitter mobs? Seems like they can bully and intimidate any organization from universities to corporations to GitHub projects to kowtow to their demands. Their demands are usually to fire, boycott, or boot people with opinions that run afoul of the mob. Not a healthy precedent to set. We will regret this later if we continue down this path.

Vote in or appoint new leaders who do not give a damn about them. May backfire if too callous people are the winners. Another method, create a formal method for processing complaints from Twitter that diverts the hateful energy from individuals towards a larger decision-making body. Let us say that a random 24 people jury of MIT peers had to decide by secret ballot whether the researcher in question gets approved or…

Unfortunately that last point is not strictly true so long as the mob can get their hands on the list of 24 people and then badger them to each make a public condemnation of the speaker or be assumed to be a wrongthinkist like the speaker, and hence one of those who voted incorrectly. So you'd better hope that the other 10 will stand strong and not out the 14 wronguns in their mix.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#58

Post by inglor_cz »

brongondwana wrote: post #57
inglor_cz wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vote in or appoint new leaders who do not give a damn about them. May backfire if too callous people are the winners. Another method, create a formal method for processing complaints from Twitter that diverts the hateful energy from individuals towards a larger decision-making body. Let us say that a random 24 people jury of MIT peers had to decide by secret ballot whether the researcher in question gets approved or…

Unfortunately that last point is not strictly true so long as the mob can get their hands on the list of 24 people and then badger them to each make a public condemnation of the speaker or be assumed to be a wrongthinkist like the speaker, and hence one of those who voted incorrectly. So you'd better hope that the other 10 will stand strong and not out the 14 wronguns in their mix.

Yes, nothing is foolproof, but badgering 24 people is quite a lot of work. One of the reason why Twitter mobs are so efficient is that they can concentrate on a single target or two without too much effort.

Edit: also, the show where all 24 people ritually condemn the person while everyone fully knows that 14 of them voted "yea" would be absurd enough to make some people think twice.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#59

Post by downandout »

umvi wrote: post #3

How do we neuter the power of Twitter mobs? Seems like they can bully and intimidate any organization from universities to corporations to GitHub projects to kowtow to their demands. Their demands are usually to fire, boycott, or boot people with opinions that run afoul of the mob. Not a healthy precedent to set. We will regret this later if we continue down this path.

The only way to dampen the toxic impact of social media’s radical vocal minority on the real world is to create tools that help decision makers easily contrast what they are seeing there with overall sentiment in the real world. In this case, 74% of Americans agree with the views that got this speech canceled. Had administrators been able to instantly see this fact when they saw all the angry tweets, perhaps they would have realized that the uproar they were seeing online was incongruous with the views of people in the real world.

I wrote and run a DeFi arbitrage bot for a living. There are hundreds of thousands of “pair” contracts to trade given coins through. The prices in different pairs for the same coin can vary wildly, as pairs only see their own balances, and can thus only make pricing decisions based on the rules and information within their own little silo. Arbitrage bots like mine make a profit by quickly balancing coin ratios among all pairs, which ultimately lowers the risk that a retail trader will pay an outlandish price for a given coin from a given pair.

We need the equivalent of arbitrage bots that can help balance the views of radicals on social media with those in the real world. They have tried this with fact checking, but unfortunately that, too, has been weaponized by biased actors. There has to be a better way that is provably unbiased.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#60

Post by gambiting »

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…

On second thought - I agree with you. Twitter is only a problem because companies/administrations listen to it as if a few people shouting on the internet were representative of the population in any way. Which in turn empowers those shouting the most.
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