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.
The latest campus cancellation is different
61–70 of 520 posts
Re: The latest campus cancellation is different
#62How 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.
Ban twitter and tiktok
Re: The latest campus cancellation is different
#63If you tolerate this, then your children will be next....
Re: The latest campus cancellation is different
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
The solution is for us to rise into those positions of power, and once entrenched govern our organizations to be impervious to any such mobs. There is no other solution.
The solution is to sue these people for wrongful dismissal. The solution is to stop signing contracts with integrity clauses. The solution is to stop working for companies without a backbone.
Nope. Those things just treat symptoms, not the cause.
Re: The latest campus cancellation is different
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is missing the point; it's not about you are or aren't on Twitter, it's that they are. Twitter encourages contextless "outrage", and things escalate from there. Sometimes justified, sometimes less so.
Is that one they or many they? Why should I care what they say?
You shouldn't, right up until the point you wrote something that for some reason takes off on Twitter and then you get your unrelated lecture cancelled or your employer gets calls or whatnot. And then you have no choice.
Re: The latest campus cancellation is different
#66Weak bureaucrats are going to be the undoing of so many societies until the average person realizes that they do have genuine agency in (and a responsibility to) the world, and that the weak bureaucrat is unnecessary.
Re: The latest campus cancellation is different
#67I don't see how Abbott's cancelation is different.
Re: The latest campus cancellation is different
#68How 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 see any way to cancel Twitter mobs that doesn't itself uphold cancel culture and destroy liberty.
An invited speaker could require a signed contract before accepting the invite. At a fairly small expense, some free speech advocate/org could have a contract drawn up that would protect invitees to some degree, pay to have a third party audit the contract (is contract auditing a thing?) to raise the chance that orgs with teams of lawyers find it acceptable, promote and market it, and then make it freely available to all.
That might or might not work, but there are many more ideas in the wings that could be tried.
Re: The latest campus cancellation is different
#69How 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.
I suspect we've reached Peak Woke already, and the tide has started turning. With Trump out of power, they've lost the unifying hate figure to rally against, and many SV companies (mostly prominently Coinbase, but more quietly the FAANGs as well) are starting to show the loudest extremists the door.
All that said, academia is where this all started and where it's also going to stay on the longest.
Re: The latest campus cancellation is different
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
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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