Heresy (2022] • Hacker News Board

Re: Heresy (2022]

#61

Post by programjames » Sun, Jul 19, 2026, 12:06 AM UTC

appreciatorBus wrote: post #60

programjames wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The standard can be, "don't utter words with the intent of spurring others onto antisocial actions."

Who decides whether or not there was intent behind your words? What do we do when people disagree about the intent behind a word? Who decides what is antisocial? What do we do when people disagree about what is antisocial? I don't believe there are neat clean answers to any of these. The closest we'll get will involve mutual respect, assumption of good faith, and dialogue. We can't have any of that if our starting po…

Yes, people can always claim that wasn't their intent, but what you see quite often nowadays is people openly saying their intent is to get people to take action. "I wouldn't personally... but I have massive respect for those who do. We need more people with the balls to do something about it."

This is probably less restrictive than you are advocating for in your previous comment: as long as there is plausible deniability, the speech goes free.

Re: Heresy (2022]

#62

Post by kurthr » Sun, Jul 19, 2026, 12:09 AM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #44

kurthr wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this not labeled (2022)? It sure hasn't aged well. The oppression of billionaires and owners of the media by the few non-bots left on social media is kinda hilarious. The idea that litteral nazis and racists need to have their speech normalized and platformed, but that any opposition to it should result in state threats, imprisonment, and death is a bit twee. Poor Henry Weinstein, poor Ghislaine, poor Diddy an…

"Fanfare" and "imprisonment" is a false dilemma. That you feel differently about "Milikan, Shockley, and Watson" is shocking. You really think a mentally ill rapper deserves worse than eugenicists and thieves?

Worse than? What has been done to Ye? I mean, he's known for being a nazi symp and hitler lover, but that's just facts. Should we forgive Hitler too, because he was neurodivergent?

Oh wait, you meant Diddy. Yeah, prison for serial rapist billionaires is beyond the pail. They need understanding.

What did any of these great Heresy Heroes of yours achieve? More expensive Nikes, more palatable child sex trafficking, or serial rape?

Milikan's name has actually been removed from stuff. He's accused of raping zero kids. I guess you could argue that he stole credit for the Nobel prize from his grad student, but I don't hear you supporting Zweig or asking for Gell-Mann to be censored.

Re: Heresy (2022]

#63

Post by jerf » Sun, Jul 19, 2026, 2:02 AM UTC

Levitz wrote: post #49

jerf wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a causal relationship there, often expressed in some form of the idea "the pendulum swings". Heresy-hunting inevitably produces the backlash. It's fun during the upswing to push harder to punish the heretics more and harder, but the result is that the next phase of whiplash is even worse. As well as the inevitable attempt to hold on even harder and with more righteous fury as the grasp on power fades. Of cour…

I'm not sure that's quite right, the pendulum has swung to a degree, for sure, but I find it evident to argue that the place the pendulum was at was in the benefit of liberal elites, and rather than reversing, I can see how the opposition to those liberal elites do have more freedom now, but the circles adjacent to the liberal elites have enormous leeway right now, I'm not sure there's even anything verboten. You can…

We're still in the early phases of the pendulum swinging back. We haven't even gotten to the part where the real power has shifted. I expect HN in general doesn't want to hear that but psychohistory is what it is.

"A renowned Harvard academic could argue tomorrow that all of humanity should commit coordinated suicide and I'd barely be surprised."

We got that in a previous swing, more or less. It's not exactly a renowned Harvard academic, but: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_Human_Extinction_Mov... I leave it to the reader to decide if some of the reception from various media and opinion outlets of the time are simply covering themselves with calling it crazy while expressing their true opinions in the positive coverage they give of it, or if this is a case where the search for "balance" leaves them giving more credence to an idea they consider crazy than they intended. Enough postmodern cynicism and you can read anything into anything, sometimes.

Re: Heresy (2022]

#64

Post by IshKebab » Sun, Jul 19, 2026, 11:40 AM UTC

appreciatorBus wrote: post #55

IshKebab wrote: post #26

> The clearest evidence of this is that whether a statement is considered x-ist often depends on who said it. Truth doesn't work that way. The same statement can't be true when one person says it, but x-ist, and therefore false, when another person does. That's a bit too reductionist. When people say things they often have a hidden motivation, and who they are is a strong signal about what their hidden motivation is.…

> When people say things they often have a hidden motivation, and who they are is a strong signal about what their hidden motivation is. Citation needed. The idea that most statements contain hidden meanings or only serve to cover up hidden motivations suggests an incredible level of paranoia. I would posit the opposite - when people say things you can & should generally take them at face value. Sometimes people will…

> The idea that most statements contain hidden meanings or only serve to cover up hidden motivations suggests an incredible level of paranoia.

I wouldn't say most but if you don't think this never happens that's just naivety. If you think right wing anti-immigration wasn't thinly veiled racism... Hell sometimes it wasn't even veiled.

(I say "was" because in the UK the situation has changed somewhat in the past 5-10 years - immigration has actually reached unsustainable levels. But Farage and worse were around long before that.)

Re: Heresy (2022]

#65

Post by ethbr1 » Sun, Jul 19, 2026, 2:38 PM UTC

appreciatorBus wrote: post #34

cjs_ac wrote: post #23

As someone with many heretical opinions, I’ve found it very easy to avoid accusations of heresy by just shutting up. The right to free speech is not an obligation to speak freely. As a software engineer, my colleagues don’t need to know my opinions on economic policy for me to be able to work effectively with them.

This is great individual strategy, and is an important part of being polite generally. But the article isn’t about people not wanting to be polite, it’s about perfectly polite people being told that some ideas are off limits in all context of life except sitting alone in a dark room with your thoughts. And of course, there are some ideas so extreme that they do belong there and do belong in the ranks of heresy, but t…

It seems like there are four things being conflated (for simplicity's sake, no malice) here:

- Actual day-to-day acquaintances' responses to someone's perceived ideological heresies (read: your friends having a problem with your views)

- Individual and bandwagon responses to someone's perceived ideological heresies (read: "the internet" having a problem with someone's opinions)

- Corporate responses to someone's perceived ideological heresies (read: Google banning accounts or firing an employee)

- Government responses to someone's perceived ideological heresies (read: the executive branch punitively cutting unrelated funding or the DOJ starting frivolous lawsuits)

Ordered thusly because I think people (regardless of their orientations) have increasing issue with those things the farther down the list you go.

And especially #3 (corporate) and #4 (government) seem to have gotten out of control after 2016, somewhat as a response to worsening disingenuous behavior by #2 (the internet).

It's one thing if friends decide to not be friends because of expressed views. It's worse getting mobbed by 100+ strangers from the internet. And it should probably be unacceptable that there are corporate or government consequences for some of the low-grade "Well that's just your like your opinion, man" stuff in the last decade.