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The latest campus cancellation is different

theatlantic.com

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Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#91

Post by AwaAwa »

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.

Is there a paradox in 'intolerance'? Or do you mean the 'paradox of tolerance'?

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#93

Post by civilized »

lugged wrote: post #89
civilized wrote: post #61

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.

A mission driven school? Sort of like Evergreen State?

Well, do take a look at what the mission is first. And how it is lived out on campus. Due diligence like you'd do for any big life decision.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#94

Post by pjc50 »

JimmyAxod wrote: post #42
OJFord wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really an echo chamber though, or at least it's leaky as hell. For example, visit from the UK during the Conservative party conference, and you get 'Trending in the UK - #ToryScum' even without logging in, or logging in to a profile that leans right (i.e. that trending 'hashtag' is the opposite of reinforcing an echo chamber for me if I have one) and there's not even anything particular going on that I'm awa…

Maybe you missed it: At the Labour conference a week or so ago, an MP referred to Tories as “scum”. Yup, that’s the majority of the voting population, and the ones they are trying to win over, are ‘scum’. I agree twitter is a hateful place, but so is the political left. But the vast majority of twitter are also very left wing.

Tories are not a majority.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#95

Post by einpoklum »

Prima facie, this is a troubling story. But after reading it I noticed the author info at the bottom, and this made me somewhat suspicious.

The Council for Foreign Relations, of which Mounk is a member, is a highly-problematic US foreign policy think tank:

https://monthlyreview.org/product/wall-streets-think-tank/

Then another comment here on HN got me looking at Persuasion: Apparently, Mounk runs a group/community dedicated to protecting the "free society" from threats.

Now, that's all circumstantial stuff, and the story might be as bad as it sounds. But when proponents of US imperialism talk about defending freedom, I get worried.

So, I feel I would need to listen to the other side(s) regarding whether, how, and for what reasons the talk was canceled.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#96

Post by snek_case »

wepple wrote: post #15
ekianjo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do we neuter the power of Twitter mobs? Stop listening to them? EDIT: That's especially effective since the Twitter mobs keep moving targets every couple of weeks anyway. They don't have any patience.

The power they have isn’t over us, it’s over institutions and businesses who seem to bend to the will of the mob. I’d like to see some data on whether a Twitter storm in a teacup has any measurable negative consequences for a typical large organization, and whether they need to listen as often as they do.

It would be good to pass laws that make it illegal to fire someone over a twitter mob (or any kind of mob action). Anti-mob or anti-bullying laws. And/or initiate class-action lawsuits against twitter for encouraging this kind of behavior or failing to prevent it, resulting in significant damage to people's careers. It's far from being the first time this happens, so there's definitely a case to be made that twitter has known for a long time that this is a problem.

Edit: changed the choice of words.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#98

Post by xyzzy21 »

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.

Twitter et al. need to be eliminated. That simple. They can't moderate/regulate well enough even if they were unbiased. And they aren't.

The other angle is to track down every member of every Twitter mob and dox them. Then attack their attacks one-on-one and personal (not violence - just pull everyone they do out of any type of anonymity and lack of consequences).

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#99

Post by [deleted] »

CodeGlitch wrote: post #78
quadrifoliate wrote: post #53

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…

> made a Third Reich comparison while talking about admissions criteria, I'd be pretty opposed to the lecture going on. Why??

[deleted]

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#100

Post by inglor_cz »

pessimizer wrote: post #85
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…

> Vote in or appoint new leaders who do not give a damn about them. May backfire if too callous people are the winners. You're literally talking about appointing a group primarily based on their quality of not listening to people; in the ideal case, they're callous. The trap is that you'll really just appoint a bunch of right-wingers who won't cancel right-wing speakers for not being "politically correct" but will ca…

The "listening vs. not listening to people" is a spectrum and while I think it would be unwise to pull the gauge completely to the side of callousness, more resistance against mob justice might just be necessary.

Currently, Twitter mobs have a lot of power, but none of the responsibility. This is a hellish combination, almost guaranteed to bring out the worst in people.

This needs to be reined in somehow. I am not claiming that utterly callous leaders are the solution - in fact, I made a "may backfire" comment right after my first sentence.

The jury method seems to me more democratic, anyway.

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