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Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

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

#501

Post by throwaway0a5e »

ameminator wrote: post #110
pessimizer wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when it was the religious right doing it. The religious right continues to do it. They've somehow been grandfathered in while we gather lynch mobs to attack pink-haired community college liberal arts professors.

If only the people who condemned the religious right would also condemn the fanatic left, I'm sure the world would be a more consistent place.

>people who condemned the religious right would also condemn the fanatic left

There's a word those people. It's like "librarian" but with some extra letters thrown in.

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

#502

Post by nxm »

toofy wrote: post #415
coffeemug wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cancellation is primarily a radical leftist domain. For example, pro-abortion speakers don't normally need police escorts to speak at a university. It's not true that both wings engage in the behavior equally. There are many problems with radical right, but canceling people isn't one of them.

> Cancellation is primarily a radical leftist domain. No it isn’t. Not even close. There are countless examples of the right engaging in the same behaviors, including the recent massive wave of passing laws attempting to silence people.

If someone on the right speaks their views, Twitter mania will look to dox/cancel them. Folks on right still believe in speech their don’t agree with

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

#503

Post by jollybean »

gjm11 wrote: post #399
tptacek wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steven Pinker (it's Steven, not Stephen) wrote a letter that helped obtain for Jeffrey Epstein an 18-month sentence for child sex trafficking in which his cell was kept unlocked and he was allowed to leave the prison for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, to work from his own office. My point here being: maybe Pinker isn't the example you want to call out here; maybe we can argue about somebody with perhaps fewer reasons…

Alan Dershowitz wrote to Pinker asking "do you reckon this statute means X or Y?" and Pinker said "It obviously means X". So far as I can tell, (1) Pinker didn't know that this was specifically about the Epstein case, (2) Pinker gave an honest answer to the question, and (3) Pinker's answer was in fact obviously correct. Epstein was an awful person who did awful things and should have spent the rest of his life in pr…

???

You're making my case for me.

Pinker is absolutely, unconditionally a very reasonable and thoughtful person, who in absolutely no way shape or form should be contemplated for cancellation or even marginalisation.

He's a polite, thoughtful, conscientious guy with barely objectionable opinions, not only that, he's pretty smart and actually contributes to discussions.

He's maybe the last person on earth we want to cancel - but they have attempted to cancel him anyhow.

Pinker is the ultimate case of 'Cancel Culture is Insane'.

Epstein is perhaps the most obvious case of 'Legit Cancel Culture' - but we didn't need the modern form of Cancel Culture to cancel him. Child Rapists tend to be excluded from society without needing to argue about it.

That 'someone was photographed with Epstein' just isn't hugely material. People socialise, and take photos with one another. That's how that works.

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

#504

Post by jollybean »

tptacek wrote: post #421
gjm11 wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alan Dershowitz wrote to Pinker asking "do you reckon this statute means X or Y?" and Pinker said "It obviously means X". So far as I can tell, (1) Pinker didn't know that this was specifically about the Epstein case, (2) Pinker gave an honest answer to the question, and (3) Pinker's answer was in fact obviously correct. Epstein was an awful person who did awful things and should have spent the rest of his life in pr…

I'm not interested in rehabilitating Pinker, who appeared in Epstein's flight logs and has been photographed socializing with him. My point is simply that he tends to be a bad example when brought up in these kinds of discussions. He's treated as if he's simply a celebrity scientist caught in the limelight over political tweets. But he's not just that.

Rubbish - Pinker is exactly the person that should be protected and there's no need to 'rehabilitate him' from anything.

Celebrities of various kinds interact with each other, that's how that works.

If you were invited to a conference and the CEO invited you on his plane because you had something interesting to say, and 10 years later we find he was a rapist, do we cancel you?

If you're going to tell me that Pinker was 'on rape island sleeping with teens girls' - then obviously that's another matter, cancel away, but as far as I know that's not the case.

This is exactly the kind of petty, toxic, vindictive posturing exemplary of bad cancel culture.

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

#505

Post by da39a3ee »

tptacek wrote: post #478
da39a3ee wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes of course I accept all of that — one can hardly have missed that in the last five or so years, since completely unreasonable positions have been raised to the status of dogma by educated liberals in the sorts of workplaces that you and I work in. One can and should remind the world that it shouldn’t be that way: shunning and shaming should be reserved for extreme opinions.

Who's to say what's "reasonable"? Marriage equality was considered absolutely unreasonable just 15 years ago. I think you need to learn to live with the fact that people can simply decide to find your opinions odious, and a consequence of that will be you not being able to work with them. You don't have a right to force people to associate with you.

I’ve already told you that I accept that. But odious cuts both ways: people like me find people who would shun and shame someone for holding a differing view odious, and we wouldn't want to work with them. Or hire them. I would never have shunned and/or shamed them had they not started it, but I am capable of retaliation.

In fact, this conversation has inspired me. I interview for SWE positions. It's time to stand up against these people. I will argue against hiring anyone whom I suspect would engage in shunning/shaming someone for failing to fall into line with progressive dogma; I'll find excuses for making the argument on technical grounds.

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

#506

Post by da39a3ee »

RangerScience wrote: post #425
da39a3ee wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on the subject. I don't have the right to deny racial equality without fear of being shamed or shunned. But I certainly have the right to point out that transgender biological males aren't women in the normal sense and don't match many people's definitions of the word "woman" without fear of being shamed or shunned.

> But I certainly have the right to point out that transgender biological males aren't I... don't think you do, actually. I would argue that you should be able to start a conversation about the differences between trans women and cis women without that fear, but that's a) rather different than "pointing out" and b) highly dependent on how you go about that (and c), not a right, legally or morally). It's akin to me go…

Don’t be silly. A man who decides they want to be a woman is a human being who should absolutely be sympathized with and treated kindly, but simply isn’t a woman. That’s such an obviously reasonable opinion (even if you disagree with it) that there’s no need to tie yourself up in knots worrying about the difference between “pointing out” and “starting a conversation”. Yes, I mean “right” in an informal or moral sense, not legal.

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

#507

Post by mensetmanusman »

l33t2328 wrote: post #280
akhmatova wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the kind of sentence that, to me at least, grinds my mental gears to a halt. This is the cortisone rush that tptacek was referring to. You need to let it go through you (or past you) until you feel your mental gears loosen up again. Then step back and look at the bigger picture. What the editorial author meant was not some kind of absolute freedom from the threat of being shamed or shunned. But that, once upon a…

> cortisone rush This is such an outstanding term. Sometimes I’ll see a comment of someone arguing with me or insulting me and I’ll get a spike of anger and literally feel my eyes twitch for a split second and I’ve never really thought about it but that’s exactly what it is.

One trick is to internally sing the comments that you suspect might give you that reaction.

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

#508

Post by tootie »

spupe wrote: post #493
tootie wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's really not a respectable person and he was dead wrong about Russia when major news orgs were dead on. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/matt-taibbis-not-so-secret-ru...

A hit piece by the Huffington Post on a thread about cancel culture. Focused on Matt Taibbi's words from 23 years ago, for which he apologized several times. This is part of the problem, and I hope you can realize that. Every single person that has been in the public light for over 20 years will have some ugly events in their past, get over it.

That isn't true. Most public figures never have something like this in their past. Nor would you have ever forgiven an MSM publication for shouting that Russia would never invade on their front page for months. The NY Times is still living down Judith Miller after 20 years and she's been cancelled from journalism for what Taibbi has done.

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

#509

Post by raxxorrax »

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..…

I don't think it was and I believe there is a obviously missing element of letting people speak with whose opinion you disagree. Especially in the US but it also has spread beyond that. It is an intellectual requirement, it is a scientific requirement. I don't think there is much dispute to that. So especially academia has a responsibility here. And yes, the principle of free speech does not allow for retaliation aside from more speech with which you can express your disagreement with what was said.

If you need a law to adhere to the principle which is often reduced to government, you are not a proponent of freedom of speech. That is an position you can take, but you should not have any further illusion about that.

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

#510

Post by raxxorrax »

TameAntelope wrote: post #243
zdragnar wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 is not harassment, harassment is harassment which requires additional components beyond just shaming and shunning; you have to take it to an excess or compound it with other behavior for shaming and/or shunning to reach anything even remotely resembling harassment. So decidedly no; you are not granted a freedom from shaming and shunning for your opinion, not in American culture, not in Western or…

> Shaming and shunning is not harassment, harassment is harassment which requires additional components beyond just shaming and shunning

Please specify which components are necessary and where the difference lies.

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