Reading the comments, there is a definite Dark Forest (or similar) effect here, where heretics can't say what they think because it's heresy, and inquisitors can't say what they think because it doesn't stand up to sustained inquiry. Thus both sides try to goad the other into going first.
Heresy
991–1000 of 1001 posts
Re: Heresy
#992Earlier quoted context omitted.
COVID has changed a lot because it brought into public debate how to evaluate deeply held beliefs about predicting the future. The discussion is high-strung because it covers a life-or-death topic, and it’s so diverse (e.g. science vs region vs conspiracy vs liberty etc) that it forced the quantization of opinions. Once you swap an opinion for a symbol, game theory takes over the conversation. What could help solve t…
Paul posted this because people are getting fired from their jobs now (directly or indirectly). See his words: "Nowadays, in civilized countries, heretics only get fired in the metaphorical sense, by losing their jobs. ... You could have spent the last ten years saving children's lives, but if you express certain opinions, you're automatically fired." People on the political right have moderate discussions and they a…
You're omitting the detail that Ron Pauls' channel was removed by error and reinstated, and James Woods' acct is ok too.
Re: Heresy
#993He's right in that there's a very important and popular Zeitgeist here in the U.S. where person A and person B can say a particular fact P, and depending on certain external physical visual characteristics of person A or B (how the light bounces off of them or refracts), P can be taken to be false, or evidence of heresy. And what is interesting is even just raising the above objection in purely logical terms, is enough to have the dark shadow of suspicion cast upon thee.
Let's hope the liberal values prevail, and we return to our search for truth, which does exist.
Re: Heresy
#994Earlier quoted context omitted.
This was also the example that came to my mind. It is perhaps one of the most iconic examples, and as such, absent a concrete example or further clarification, I don't see why you shouldn't assume that this is representative of what the author had in mind.
Oh, I doubt he really wanted that. The sort of thing I suspect he was actually referencing is the "black people commit X% of all crimes" / "racial differences in IQ test scores show..." talking points. (Or their equivalents in other fields. Women-in-computer-science, etc.)
> "black people commit X% of all crimes"
This is your example of a "truth", correct?
Who defined "crime"?
Why is possession of crack a more serious offense than possession of the same quantity of powder cocaine?
Is the single crime of selling a loose cigarette on the street equivalent to the single crime of defrauding tens of millions of dollars from investors?
How many officers are tasked with arresting people for "quality of life" offenses like loitering and disturbing the peace vs. tasked with arresting people for wage theft through unpaid overtime and time card fraud?
Are your statistics for "committing" crime in fact statistics for convictions? Are there systemic reasons those might be very different numbers?
If all of these are more useful subjects for discussion, what is the purpose of even making the original statement?
Re: Heresy
#995Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Really? He can’t think of a statement that is racist when a white person says it and not a black person? He can't think of a statement that is false when a white person says it and true when a black person says it (or vice versa).
"I am black?"
Fair, those are the same words, but it's not the same meaning. The "I" in this term refers to two different people depending on who says it.
Are they really the same statement if they have two different meanings?
Re: Heresy
#996In the 90s and 2000s it would be “heresy” to be a gay or transgendered person. I remember sadly how people in hushed tones would talk about coworkers. There was a bro-y norm to engineering culture that you didn’t defy very easily. I'm a bit surprised how easily people forget these things.
> There was a bro-y norm to engineering culture There _was_? I'm not sure what field of engineering you're in, but in software, hardware and electrical engineering which are the ones I have the most contact within 3 countries in Europe, this is the norm today. Through friends in mechanical and civil engineering I get the sense it's even worse there.
I’ve seen glimpses of this in tech recently. Could you please give some explicit examples? I’ve been sheltered from it for a long time and I’m wondering if what I’ve seen are examples of what everyone means by “brogrammers”.
Re: Heresy
#997Earlier quoted context omitted.
> When he writes about cancel culture, or maybe really culture of any sort: different story. Is there anyone at all who writes "happily" about cancel culture? Even SJW's themselves can only give an impression of being perpetually angry and frustrated; they try to present their inner frustration wrt. the world at large as some sort of zeal for superior justice and universal social liberation, but don't quite manage to…
It's not that his writing is unhappy. It's that when he writes about it, he seems like an unhappy person. I don't know if that's the case for "SJWs"; I mostly steer clear of the "cancel culture" discourse.
I think it is you that is doing gymnastics to think he is unhappy because you disagree with his opinion
Re: Heresy
#998> The reason the current wave of intolerance comes from the left is simply because the new unifying ideology happened to come from the left. This is an (aggressively?) conventional idea that I have an (I guess) heretical opinion about. I'm somewhat persuaded that there is a recent outbreak of intolerance for differing ideas and ideals (though I suspect every generation expresses a version of this opinion as they get…
ignoring your point to nitpic but, none of these (immigrants are good", "the 2020 US presidential election ran smoothly and had a clear victor who was duly inaugurated", "gender is a social construct", "people who are attracted to others of the same sex are normal and should have the same rights as anyone else", ) are position of the right. They are the left's worst spin on the right's positions.
Re: Heresy
#999Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I (and anybody I know) are really not ok when somebody says “evolution does not end at neck”. Given how often Claire Lehmann and her coterie show up as a reviewer of his essays and their Twitter interactions with Graham, it's easy to figure out he's talking about exactly such a statement.
And Claire Lehmann seems to be anti-gay and anti-transgender? I was not aware who that person was but by reading her blog posts it seems to be way too anti-gay and racist to be considered serious.
Yes she is, but more relevantly for your original concern, her magazine ran some outright neo-phrenology articles a while back. Intellectually she's a clown, but pg and other SV thoughtbubblers take her extremely seriously.
Re: Heresy
#1000Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it was just a somewhat tongue-in-cheek reference to the fact that he was a don, who don't marry.
Sure, though to be pedantic he wasn’t a Fellow during the period referred to by the quote. Was there really a prohibition on marriage, or was that a side effect of dons being required to be priests (who in the CofE of course can marry). Interesting. In general, restoration politics were weird.
I think it Just Wasn't Done.