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Resignation Letter

bariweiss.com

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Re: Resignation Letter

#621

Post by thephyber »

eric_b wrote: post #211

The "orthodoxy" the author writes about is real. I am a skeptic and cynic by nature. In my experience "common wisdom" is usually anything but. In software and technology I've found when you eschew dogma and "best practices" you more often than not get better results. But, in 2020 you cannot question or be skeptical of the "progressive" agenda. Merely hinting that you are not fully bought in will get you labeled as a…

> Merely hinting that you are not fully bought in will get you labeled as a racist, or even worse these days, a "Conservative".

> The group of folks that screamed to high heaven about the rise of "facism" in 2016 have become the very people they purportedly despised.

Painting with a broad brush based on small sample sizes (exactly what you are doing) is exactly what you are complaining about. There are tons of people who call Trump's words and actions "fascist" despite not being "progressive"/"liberal".

There are people on the "political right" who have been complaining about the "liberal agenda" the same way conspiracy theorists talk about the "jewish agenda". I'm not accusing you of it, but it frequently sounds the same in the tiny bites of content that exist in social media.

I, personally, think the biggest problems with the human mind on social media involve:

  - an assumption of bad faith when another commenter fails to be precise about "there exists" and "for every"
  - trolling works because we humans frequently can't disable our ego when it is attacked (rightfully or otherwise)

Re: Resignation Letter

#622

Post by fullshark »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #439
mikece wrote: post #39

"And so self-censorship has become the norm." This might be the most ironic and most dangerous effect of this "right think" regime: that the free expression and exchange of ideas is thwarted in advance because one doesn't want to deal with drama, fight, or insults that come with saying something not in lock-step with the prevailing group-think. This blunts the curiosity of the intellect and silences all true disciple…

You can see this directly on Reddit, or even here, thanks to the downvote button. It doesn't matter how right you may be, how many sources you may have, if it angers a sufficient people to lead to your post being downvoted, no one will be able to read it. And though the points are made up, it's always annoying to look at a post you spent half an hour typing and researching just to have it get down to -6 with no furth…

That's not the issue imo, the issue is how many intelligent comments we miss because someone with insight to add figures it's not worth it and doesn't share it in the first place.

Re: Resignation Letter

#623

Post by throwaway894345 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #616
throwaway894345 wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you're making a semantic argument. To you "progressives" by definition adhere to a liberal ethos (perhaps even that any who adhere to a certain liberal ethos are also 'progressives'), ergo they can't be the ones doing the (inherently illiberal) cancelling. Others are observing that the group that identifies as (and is commonly known as) 'progressives' seem to be practicing or defending cancellation. As…

No, that's a complete misstatement of what I said. I acknowledge in that comment that there are people who call themselves "progressives" whose behavior would be considered by many to not be aligned with progressive ideology. I acknowledge in another comment below that there are people who call themselves "conservatives" whose behaviour and/or beliefs do not align with the general understanding of conservative politi…

So are you making the “small vocal minority” argument? “Most progressives are principled liberals who condemn cancellation but we never hear from them”? And why are you focusing so much on doctrine as though progressive doctrine and not progressive behavior is on trial. I take very little consolation from the idea that progressive doctrine condemns cancellation or that in theory progressives ought to be tolerant and conservatives intolerant.

Re: Resignation Letter

#624

Post by blisseyGo »

She's the one who labels people without knowing what those labels mean. She labeled Tulsi Gabbard with something she didn't even know what the word meant while on JRE:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpurFfcSNfU

https://youtu.be/I-0lfxHoF5I

If she's not left enough for NYT, then I don't know what is.

Re: Resignation Letter

#625

Post by zzleeper »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #417
jrumbut wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but the grandparent doesn't say "I read the NYT but here are some flaws..." or "The Houston Chronicle is better because..." it says the entire enterprise has been directed "in support of bias". I am arguing against being blind to the news source's virtues. If we don't want to be blind to the world we have to pick our poison(s).

Fair enough. I find that Wall Street journal, Reuters, and NPR all do better jobs (in roughly that order) with respect to reigning-in their biases than the NYT.

WSJ? They do a better job at disguising their right-wing biases as reporting facts. I used to resd it daily 10-20 years ago but now I need to read it very carefully.

Re: Resignation Letter

#626

Post by mancerayder »

throwaway676789 wrote: post #598
mancerayder wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think HR departments just want to offload risk and they'll take advantage of loose labor laws to offload an employee who got mobbed online. I don't ascribe a right or left bias to them. It's the mob that has the bias (perhaps because of age or ideology or certainty or something else) and the mob uses the technology and then the HR department responds by firing the employee.

> I don't ascribe a right or left bias to them. My personal experience is a lot of HR departments do have a left-of-center bias to them, especially at the lower-levels (but at times reaching all the way to the top). A few reasons: 1) HR departments tend to skew female, and women on average skew somewhat more left-of-center than men do 2) They often have special teams for "diversity & inclusion", which inevitably tend…

Who knows, maybe, maybe not, but it doesn't necessarily follow that those ideals are being taken seriously, and more importantly that they also follow through in confirming the allegations (they often seem not to), and just are worried about their branding when a perceived 'toxic' person is associated with their brand. Companies generally worry about revenue more than they worry about ideals, no matter what is claimed. I'm not saying that cynically, either, I think that's what investors and boardmembers care about and for obvious reason.

Re: Resignation Letter

#627

Post by mancerayder »

cm2187 wrote: post #472
mancerayder wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's pretty obvious what the new orthodoxy is, and she gave some examples of it. How many more questions do you want to ask? The NYT is condoning high school student canceling each other, hiding anti-Semitism from certain writers they like based on the obvious factors, making wild narratives about US history (like their Revolutionary War revisionism), and most importantly, unlike papers like the Financial Tim…

I don't remember seeing a single pro-brexit op-ed in the FT. The FT isn't publishing competing views. It very much aligned itself to the NYT's "only the facts that fits the narrative" approach.

Hm, I definitely remember a lot of anti-Brexit pieces, and I don't remember the balance overall so I'll take your word for it. Perhaps that's a sore point for the FT, which is fundamentally not 'right' or 'left' but more classical liberal / free-trade oriented. Investors care about these things, at least many do. The NYT, though, if you do a little experiment and go to the website right now, look at the headlines displayed. The headlines alone are editorialized, but there are interpretations being done for you if you delve into the articles themselves, versus rational arguments being put forth. A paper I read daily and which I sometimes post here, Bloomberg, started doing this in a section called "CityLab". And today was an Opinions piece saying that Cancel Culture is a joke, doesn't exist and is proof of privilege that it was even mentioned.

The FT I've seen opinion pieces on completely opposite views side by side or issue to issue. Sometimes something would respond days later to something posted before, in a rebuttal. True both in the editorials and in the Letters section. Dear Sirs...

Re: Resignation Letter

#628

Post by [deleted] »

tinco wrote: post #352
eric_b wrote: post #211

The "orthodoxy" the author writes about is real. I am a skeptic and cynic by nature. In my experience "common wisdom" is usually anything but. In software and technology I've found when you eschew dogma and "best practices" you more often than not get better results. But, in 2020 you cannot question or be skeptical of the "progressive" agenda. Merely hinting that you are not fully bought in will get you labeled as a…

I don't read the WP nor the NYT, do you have an example of an article in either of them that is a caricature of leftist news? My main news source (besides HN) is the Dutch public news, which is described as left-wing, but to me it feels very objective. I find it hard to judge if that means I'm just leftist and don't see what they're leaving out, or that the right is in an alternative reality.

[deleted]

Re: Resignation Letter

#629

Post by throwaway894345 »

bsder wrote: post #618
throwaway894345 wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We should simply allow political stances that have real harm to simply run amok with "debate"? Yeah, I'm kinda done with the "debate" idea. It's time to bring "consequence" to people's political stances. At least you're open about your opposition to free speech. That's something I guess... In your mind, are your political cohorts always going to wield the power to cancel or can you imagine a world in which the far…

> At least you're open about your opposition to free speech. "Free speech" is about the government suppressing your speech. If private individuals find your speech odious, they are perfectly within their rights to shun and ignore you. > In your mind, are your political cohorts always going to wield the power to cancel or can you imagine a world in which the far right wing holds that power and persecutes you and yours…

I don’t understand what you think cancel culture has to do with the pandemic, and the debate surrounding cancel culture is about “free speech principles” not your first amendment rights specifically. The pandemic, the mismanagement, and the hoax hoax are all bad things, but they are not cancel culture.

Re: Resignation Letter

#630

Post by throwaway894345 »

zzleeper wrote: post #625
throwaway894345 wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. I find that Wall Street journal, Reuters, and NPR all do better jobs (in roughly that order) with respect to reigning-in their biases than the NYT.

WSJ? They do a better job at disguising their right-wing biases as reporting facts. I used to resd it daily 10-20 years ago but now I need to read it very carefully.

WSJ isn’t perfect, but they aren’t “right-wing”, and they at least try to mask their biases, which makes them markedly better than NYT, WashPo, etc in my opinion.
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