[HN Gopher] The latest campus cancellation is different
___________________________________________________________________
The latest campus cancellation is different
Author : killittosaveit
Score : 360 points
Date : 2021-10-10 11:59 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| jordanpg wrote:
| So much hand-wringing as the nature of power mutates and changes
| hands.
|
| I generally agree that the outcomes of "cancel culture" are
| undesirable, but I am glad to see that in our little democratic
| experiment, a new form of power has found a voice and is causing
| those previously in power to quake in their boots.
|
| I am confident that a new equilibrium will eventually be reached
| that won't have such occasional appalling outcomes. In the
| meantime, I wish those who are constantly apoplectic about
| "cancel culture" would be a little more self-aware and perhaps
| even happy to see some minority voices getting some undeserved
| wins here and there.
|
| After all, the suffering that some of these minority voices have
| historically experienced is _unthinkably bad_. Remember that:
| _unthinkably bad_. Worst imaginable. And it is absurd to argue
| that the lingering effects of that are not still with us in
| uncountable ways, big and small.
| poetaster wrote:
| An ex of mine was back stabbed so viciously in a feminist
| culture producing context funding play (the 1990s), that I have
| become very sceptical. I used to run around wearing a badge,
| Ich bin gegen mich, (I am against myself). I have stopped this.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| There are lots of problems with this perspective.
| * The loudest voices are typically not minorities * Those
| with the loudest voices aren't experiencing suffering *
| The power they wield isn't being used to reduce suffering
| * The suffering actually being experienced can be reduced
| better without chilling free speech
|
| I think you're right that we're seeing an upset in power
| dynamics, but you're wrong about who is becoming more powerful
| and what they are attempting to accomplish with that power.
| jordanpg wrote:
| While some of these observations are literally true to the
| first approximation, I'll just respond by pointing out that
| we wouldn't be talking about this were it not for the
| _unthinkable_ suffering that really did take place (and
| arguably continues in some ways).
|
| There are definitely some interesting sociological questions
| about how the power is manifesting, but I emphatically
| disagree with the proposition that the overreaction of
| "cancel culture" does not have as its root cause the
| systematic, historical oppression of minorities. To just make
| the (perhaps correct) observation that a significant fraction
| of the loudest voices are not suffering is to ignore how we
| got here.
| poetaster wrote:
| If I am being very cynical, I say that people abuse/use the
| suffering of others for their own gain. PR from corps
| aligning with progressive aims is what I have in mind. I have
| seen it working with NGOs, too. Not saying we should not put
| the pressure on. Obviously institutions need pressure
| applied. But if it is always 'both barrels', we will alienate
| the old, the conservatives and the christians. Seeing the
| destruction of the political left in germany, I doubt the
| extreme pressure wave will yield anything but reaction. Trump
| 2.0.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| As an Asian minority I am not happy that it is now taboo to
| protest racial discrimination being perpetrated against me.
| geofft wrote:
| > _MIT buckled, becoming yet another major institution in
| American life to demonstrate that the commitment to free speech
| it trumpets on its website_
|
| The what?
|
| I'm an MIT alum and I cannot remember anything about a commitment
| to free speech on the website. I don't see one now, and I can
| hardly see any relevant search results for `"free speech"
| site:mit.edu` - a few blogs and research papers, but nothing
| about a commitment, certainly nothing trumpeted. I certainly did
| not see one when I applied. I applied to a school that claimed to
| be good at science and engineering.
|
| If you want to argue that MIT or any other institution or perhaps
| all institutions _should_ champion free speech, sure. If you want
| to hold people accountable for promises they did make (cf. a
| Reddit co-founder claiming that Reddit wasn 't intended to be a
| "bastion of free speech" years after describing it as exactly
| that, Twitter calling itself the "free-speech wing of the free-
| speech party"), by all means hold people accountable. But the
| idea that everyone should be on exactly your side of what is
| actually a complex and multifaceted question because that
| particular view is obviously what everyone in our culture
| believes is, frankly, illiberal.
| wepple wrote:
| I agree that it doesn't seem trumpeted, and the author is
| really pushing his point quite far, but your point that they
| don't seem to take a stand on free speech would appear to be
| incorrect:
|
| https://handbook.mit.edu/expression
| geofft wrote:
| Fair - but my reading of that page is that it's actually
| _not_ a commitment to free speech (as the author would see
| it, at least), it 's basically saying that insisting on
| exercising your right to freedom of expression when you know
| people would be offended is unwise and discouraged in this
| subculture. If anything, the incident described in the
| article is pretty consistent with this page.
| whitexn--g28h wrote:
| Did you even read the second sentence of that page?
| q1w2 wrote:
| It is iconic that ivy league schools don't even claim to
| respect the notion of free speech.
|
| When I was a student many many years ago, it was such an
| accepted truism, that it didn't even need to be mentioned.
| geofft wrote:
| First, MIT isn't Ivy League, which I don't just mean as a
| pedantic point about a football league - the Ivy League are
| all liberal arts schools. MIT is a technology school. It
| makes sense that there are institutions whose purpose is to
| provide a platform to any speaker. It does not make sense
| that _every_ institution should do that. That 's my complaint
| - this author who claim to care that distinct points of view
| are well-represented has rounded off a specific school into
| Generic University With The Same Classical Liberal Worldview
| As Every Other University.
|
| Two, please tell me how many times in the history of your Ivy
| League school, since its founding until your attendance, they
| invited an African-American speaker.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I think that there's a subconscious belief that US institutions
| should be loyal to the white race, especially as expressed
| through the American spirit of our forefathers and their ideals
| of fair play, and that any cancellation based on expressing the
| same racial beliefs as the country was built on is basically
| sedition as a prelude to white liquidation.
|
| Some white people feel like they're going to be forced out of
| the US like the US was forced out of Vietnam and Afghanistan.
|
| Instead it's a workers' rights issue primarily (it shouldn't be
| so goddamned easy to fire people), and secondarily it's a
| problem of the commons that every venue for free speech is
| managed by an authoritarian institution solely motivated by its
| own survival and prosperity rather than any animating belief or
| core ethics. _This is your culture on laissez-faire._ Whether
| it 's MIT or Facebook managing your culture, you're still free
| to give your opinion in the shower every morning.
| iammisc wrote:
| There's also a conscious belief on behalf of immigrant
| families like my own that the reason we came to this country
| is for the free speech, so when we see American institutions
| that do not seem to care, we wonder if America actually lives
| up to its promises.
| geofft wrote:
| I'm a child of immigrants. I grew up watching my non-white
| parents adopt white mannerisms and cultural norms, join a
| white church, live in a white neighborhood, etc. in a very
| racially diverse town because any other choice would put
| them at a disadvantage. My complaint is not that this
| country fails to live up to its promises, my complaint is
| that the promise itself is twisted.
|
| There are many ways you can value "free speech." This
| author has a particular one in mind, and thinks that
| everyone should agree with that specific interpretation. I,
| too, value free speech, and an introductory step there is
| that people can and perhaps should have different opinions
| on what exactly that means. As an extreme example, if one
| person, motivated by a desire to uphold free speech, says
| that invited speakers may use racial slurs because words
| shouldn't be censored, and another person, motivated by a
| desire to uphold free speech, says that speakers may not
| use racial slurs because they insult people for who they
| are which is antithetical to meaningful debate, both of
| those views seem to me like they are valid approaches to
| "free speech."
|
| What I object to is the view that exactly one of those
| interpretations is right and that there must not even be
| debate about it. It's a short step from there to saying
| that _certain_ racial slurs or (less egregiously but more
| insidiously) stereotypes or assumptions are within the
| bounds of free speech and other ones are not, that certain
| attacks are noble and others are blasphemous, etc.
|
| That's the road that gets us to calls to cancel e.g. the
| 1619 Project from people who two minutes earlier were
| complaining about "cancel culture." That's how we get the
| fundamental dishonesty that makes a lot of people feel like
| "free speech" is a tool of white supremacy or whatever -
| because an actual illiberal approach to society is being
| called "free speech" and nobody is willing to call it what
| it is.
| LeoNatan25 wrote:
| Spoiler: it doesn't, and it hasn't for a very long time.
| iammisc wrote:
| Okay that's great, but it doesntm mean we ought to
| abandom those values out of some made up historical
| notion that only white people want such things.
| LeoNatan25 wrote:
| Of course not. But that's what the wave of woke left wing
| Twitter mobs (and the likes of AOC, etc.) are pushing
| for. You have authoritarians on the left and
| authoritarians on the right, and an ever shrinking
| center. Not sure how we get out of this predicament.
| User23 wrote:
| I find it helpful to think of prestigious colleges as hedge funds
| with strong branding and a world class associate pipeline. The
| reason why they favor legacy students and jocks is that those are
| the people who are the most likely to write huge checks to their
| alma mater and otherwise act in its interests continually after
| graduation. Perhaps that will change, but it hasn't yet. This
| professor advocating an end for legacy and athletics admissions
| is a direct attack on a wildly successful multi-billion dollar
| business model that's lasted centuries and still going strong. I
| wouldn't be surprised if whoever made this call is using the
| twitter mob as a convenient fig-leaf for chastising a boat-
| rocker.
| chmod600 wrote:
| _The Atlantic_ is an interesting publication. I subscribed and
| appreciated it for years as an independent-minded outlet, even
| though it is usually far left of my perspectives.
|
| In 2016, I unsubscribed because, well, the whole media went
| haywire and _The Atlantic_ went down with them. I thought it was
| unrecoverable.
|
| But it's nice to see a nuanced piece here that is capable of
| criticizing an idea while also criticizing the tactics of those
| who disagree with it. Maybe I should give it another chance.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Now with Trump out of office journalism as a whole has
| certainly gotten better imo. That man took the air out of the
| room from any other topic worthy of ink.
| lugged wrote:
| > Why the Latest Campus Cancellation is Different
|
| Spoiler: it's not any different at all, the author is just red
| pilling and decided to tell the world about it.
| q1w2 wrote:
| Attach the argument, not the author.
| gbrown wrote:
| Having read the article, that seems like a nonsense take. Care
| to explain?
| abrahamepton wrote:
| Mounk is famous for writing exactly this piece, over and over
| again, with only the names changed. As long as the person
| getting "canceled" is in some way conservative, Yascha Mounk
| (and Bari Weiss and Matt Taibbi) will be there to write this
| article.
| gbrown wrote:
| That's hardly red-pilling though.
| lugged wrote:
| I read it too, they're saying this is different because they
| agree with them.
|
| Pretty much every example of lecturers being cancelled in the
| last 5 years is for the same unrelated reasons.
|
| It's boring, so you're a fan of this one guy and suddenly
| it's an issue? Please.
| gbrown wrote:
| I mean, not being super familiar with this guy outside of
| what is presented in the article, there does seem to be a
| pretty important difference between someone like Milo and
| an actual academic giving an academic talk. I see why some
| would worry about cancelling a talk by the former (despite
| him being utterly repugnant and bringing nothing of
| substance to the audience), but the latter cancellation
| seems worse to me.
| rmak wrote:
| Must be the homophobe inside you.
| gbrown wrote:
| Sure... that's it.
| ramphastidae wrote:
| I think parent is saying that the progressive Twitter mob has
| been labeling and attacking people who support merit-based
| admissions policies that ignore race as racists for many
| years already. This cancellation is not "different" as the
| author says, they are only now becoming aware of the
| pervasiveness and wrongness of this type of thinking since it
| happened to someone they care about and not someone they
| didn't.
| dang wrote:
| Would you please stop posting flamewar and/or flamebait
| comments to HN? We're trying for something else here, and
| comments like this contribute directly to destroying that
| possibility. You've done it repeatedly in this thread already.
| If instead you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the
| intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
| Zigurd wrote:
| This is a mixed bag, as is MFE. Getting rid of legacies and
| sports admissions (and donor's kids) is good, but the supposed
| meritocratic admissions that are blind to disadvantaged students
| can be charitably described as naive. Bundling those goals
| together is also naive if it is not disingenuous.
|
| As another commenter noted "Some cursory searches show that FIRE
| might not be as neutral as I thought they were." I am guessing I
| will find the same applies to MFE.
| echopurity wrote:
| HN's racist and misogynist ideology upvotes up any obscure
| "injustice" against a white bro straight to the top.
|
| Cause they shadow ban anybody else. Pathetic.
| dfdz wrote:
| > John Carlson Lecture
|
| As a disclaimer I am against any censorship of academia and think
| that even Charles Murray should be allowed to speak at a
| university (assuming he is invited by an academic department or
| student group) and that the university should never have veto
| power.
|
| However, I think the example in the Atlantic is actually more
| mild than past cases: the John Carlson Lecture is a general
| audience talk that the university holds to boost its public
| image.
|
| It's not an academic talk discussing new research or a political
| perspective, but rather summarizes ideas for the public. If MIT
| wants to decide who should give such talks I don't care.
|
| In contrast, if a department or student group wants to invite a
| specific speaker for a specialized talk about politics, science,
| math, then the university censoring such discourse is what is
| truly dangerous.
|
| In this light, the cancellation of Milo Yiannopoulos who was
| invited by the College Republican club is much worse. Even though
| personally I do not think Yiannopoulos is anything but a
| provocateur, if someone (group/department) wants to invite him
| the university should not block him from speaking.
| lolinder wrote:
| The article argues, and I agree, that a university is free to
| not invite someone if they view them as controversial. Where
| the problem really is is that they invited him and then
| retracted the invitation in response to a mob. The retraction
| is what makes this problematic.
|
| EDIT: the other point that the article makes is that this
| professor's "controversial" views are held by upwards of 70% of
| the American public. The net result of applying this rule
| consistently would be that a strong majority of the American
| public cannot express their opinions on this subject because of
| a tiny vocal minority.
| cratermoon wrote:
| > this professor's "controversial" views are held by upwards
| of 70% of the American public.
|
| First of all, who says? Second of all, just because a
| majority believes something doesn't make it right. There was
| a time when the majority of Americans believed slavery was
| OK. Times change.
| f-jin wrote:
| Majority rule is kind of the underpinnings of democracy
| though, and free speech is a major factor in effective
| democratic systems.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| e.g.
|
| https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-
| matters/317006/affir...
| dfdz wrote:
| I think that every retraction of an invitation to speak in
| response to a mob is bad, so we are in agreement.
|
| My only point is that this particular "John Carlson Lecture"
| is itself a public relations event whose purpose is to
| promote MIT to the local public and enhance its image, they
| allude to this in the official statement [1].
|
| In my opinion, a PR lecture cancellation is different from
| telling a student group or department that they are not allow
| to invite a specific speaker: it is bad, but much less
| dangerous to academic discourse than previous cancellations
| (even if in past examples the speakers mentioned in the
| article had extreme or bizarre views).
|
| [1] https://orgchart.mit.edu/node/6/letters_to_community/impo
| rta...
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| I broadly think you're wrong on this.
|
| On the one hand, we have Abbot, who is an academic, being
| uninvited from a public lecture organized by the department
| that covers his field based on apparently little more than
| Twitter outrage.
|
| On the other hand, we have Yiannopoulos, who is an activist,
| whose event was canceled by the College Republicans due to
| public safety concerns after 150 protesters blocked access to
| the venue. The next day, Yiannopoulos returned to UC Davis with
| supporters and marched across the campus in counter-protest at
| the cancellation of the event.
|
| Censoring academic freedom of speech has a much more chilling
| effect on academic freedom than does restricting outside
| participation in campus speech.
|
| Yiannopoulos has a national platform for his ideas, and indeed
| this kind of incident only bolsters it. In any case, he was
| ultimately able to visit the campus and express his message the
| next day.
|
| Academics, however, depend on being able to publish, speak
| publicly, receive prizes and so on for their careers; there is
| truth in publish or perish. If their ability to participate in
| the academic discourse is going to end up limited for holding
| unpopular opinions (even unrelated to their work!), then the
| chilling effect is much larger.
| tptacek wrote:
| Thanks, this is a good detail to add to Mounk's summary, which
| does not cast the Lecture in those terms.
| ianleeclark wrote:
| > In this light, the cancellation of Milo Yiannopoulos who was
| invited by the College Republican club is much worse.
|
| This isn't how I remember it. Milo thrived off of these
| confrontations and being "cancelled," but what really made him
| drop off were his comments on pedophilia. Being hounded by
| students legitimized him in his followers mind.
| creata wrote:
| Here's what seems to be a follow-up on an MIT webpage:
|
| https://orgchart.mit.edu/node/6/letters_to_community/importa...
|
| Edit: and for what it's worth, I think many people here are too
| easily stirred into a frenzy based on astonishingly little
| information about this incident.
| q1w2 wrote:
| This letter reinforces the Atlantic article's claim that
| progressive Twitter mobs are cancelling anyone who disagrees
| with them.
| vmception wrote:
| The additional context is providing us pretty useless
| information that nobody except him would care about
|
| "Its not a _campus_ cancellation, this was _off campus_ aaaand
| this Professor is actually still invited and now to an _on
| campus_ event! "
|
| uhhh ok.
|
| My takeaway is that there is some silver lining here that
| communication was done between parties instead of a unilateral
| kneejerk cancellation. But they should have still ignored
| detractors and held that "off campus" outreach event. Let the
| detractors embarrass themselves when trying to interrupt the
| Professor's speech or ask irrelevant questions at the end.
| foogazi wrote:
| > Professor van der Hilst, after broadly consulting his
| community
|
| How often is the community broadly consulted on MIT climate
| science lecturers ?
| civilized wrote:
| The letter you link is quite clear: MIT doesn't want to hold a
| scientist up as a role model if progressive activists dislike
| him.
|
| This wouldn't have happened at University of Chicago.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't break the site guidelines by going on about
| downvotes. Besides doing no good and making boring reading,
| it ends up being uncollected garbage when the original
| comment gets corrective upvotes, as yours has.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor.
| ..
| civilized wrote:
| Understood. Deleted the offending text.
| leephillips wrote:
| Your comment is a partial answer to a question I have: are
| there any universities with any prestige who still, today,
| uphold the principles of free expression and academic
| freedom? I thought MIT might still have some institutional
| self-respect, and am saddened to find out that it does not.
| Who's left (in addition to U. of Chicago)?
| civilized wrote:
| Here are some schools that endorse the Chicago Statement on
| Freedom of Expression: https://www.thefire.org/chicago-
| statement-university-and-fac...
|
| Not all of these schools have a perfect history of
| supporting free expression, but this is a big positive
| indicator.
| geeB wrote:
| This fits MIT's historical pattern of buckling under
| external pressure, like what happened to Aaron Swartz or
| Star Simpson. Different this time because of the cancel mob
| aspect, but not too surprising.
| dqpb wrote:
| It sounds to me like they didn't want the climate lecture to
| be hijacked by people angry about something unrelated to
| climate.
| metagame wrote:
| Here, I'll give a rebuttal, even though I don't think every
| internet comment deserves a reply, your comment included.
|
| It is an _outreach event._ The majority of people in
| developed nations live in progressive cities, and hold
| center-liberal to outright progressive views.
|
| Now, if you're trying to spread propaganda, good or bad, you
| want to do it in the most efficient way possible. Just as you
| wouldn't put a radical Satanist in a government role of
| promoting birth control, you shouldn't have your PR
| representative be a man who's against the very role he's
| supposed to be playing. Both the first instance and the last
| are counterproductive. An advocate for Satan would be _just_
| the ammunition someone against birth control could use
| perfectly, and a PR representative who 's against the
| inclusion of the people he's supposed to play PR for will
| naturally alienate.
|
| The John Carlson lecture _isn 't_ an opportunity to offer the
| field cutting edge science, it's an opportunity to present to
| the rest of the world new findings in climate science, and to
| inspire others to take up the banner. It is science
| _propaganda,_ in the best way possible.
|
| Just as you wouldn't invite OJ Simpson to give a lecture on
| sentencing reform _despite his innocence_ because it would
| alienate the very people you 're trying to convince to rally
| for sentencing reform, you should aim to have the least-
| offensive and most-captivating candidate give the annual PR
| speech. This is _meritocracy,_ which is something that many
| universities aren 't big on (being filled with legacy
| admissions).
|
| My own views are probably not far from the person who was
| denied the speech, here, but I understand the value in
| propaganda, and having someone who would set PR back when
| most of the point is to captivate the public would be a net-
| negative, and anti-meritocratic. Despite their viewpoint
| being probably comparable to my own, I'm aware that PR is
| delicate, and public advocacy plays a large role in changing
| public opinion, so they should indeed step aside to let
| someone more publicly-accepted give the speech.
|
| In short: Don't alienate your audience if your goal is to
| persuade. Go with a safer bet, always. It's not a great idea
| to _fire_ controversial people, but if the goal is a good
| speech for PR, go with someone else. They 'll probably
| appreciate the time to do more research.
| civilized wrote:
| The activists who demanded this aren't the ones who need to
| be persuaded on climate change.
|
| MIT just handed the center and right-of-center, full of
| _actual_ climate skeptics who need to be persuaded, another
| cancel culture event.
|
| Your whole post hinges on the assumption that the prospects
| of fighting climate change hinge on the approval of college
| town progressives. In reality, their approval is the
| _least_ important thing.
|
| Of course, if the lecture is _really_ just pandering to
| that audience without any interest in the larger public,
| then what you say makes perfect sense. It 's also in 100%
| agreement with original comment.
|
| You're actually just agreeing with me and don't realize it
| because you're lost in your own sea of words.
| poetaster wrote:
| Sea of words was being generous. At about the first
| mention of satanism, my tolerance dropped to zero.
| metagame wrote:
| You ask for a rebuttal and you return with the laziest
| possible response. I'm starting to think you weren't
| really interested in hearing one.
|
| It doesn't _matter_ who the activists are. PR is not a
| game played between the extremist left and right wings,
| it 's a game played with the center of the field. The
| center of the field is being increasingly filled with
| people from demographics that could very well be
| alienated by the professor's public views, and who could
| be reached, converted, and more importantly, inspired to
| work in the field, if handled right.
|
| It doesn't _matter_ if a politician gets a more-fervent
| pre-established base. What matters is the influx of new
| voters and plausible future scientists. It 's hard to
| change the opinions of people set in their ways, but
| through making a good first impression you can alter the
| course of someone who otherwise wouldn't have been
| interested in the field. Making a bad impression could
| very well cause apathy _or worse._ It 's absolutely
| critical to not mess it up, and MIT made the correct,
| _meritocratic_ response.
| dang wrote:
| civilized should have taken out the "sea of words" swipe
| and you should have edited out the swipes from your
| comment here, as well as in
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28819420. Someone
| else breaking the site guidelines doesn't make it ok for
| you to do so. Please do a better job of sticking to them.
| poetaster wrote:
| I think you are missing the point that affirmative
| action, which I am for, is done a disservice when we
| descend to PR games. Knee jerk reactions serve no one.
| civilized wrote:
| As Mounk's essay notes, the vast majority of the public
| _agrees_ with the professor on affirmative action. MIT
| just told that public what it thinks of their views.
| metagame wrote:
| As I've said multiple times in the thread, my own
| viewpoints are very close to the professor's! Public
| opinion of people who are _not already in the system_ ,
| however, is a different game, and you should always go
| with the safest bet if doing propaganda. It's critical.
| civilized wrote:
| I get what you're saying and it's reasonable. I think you
| greatly overestimate the objective rigor and correctness
| of your analysis, but I get it.
|
| Sanctioning widely-held views as not meritorious
| alienates a lot of people too. They don't seem to figure
| into your calculations.
|
| Based on your other posts, you seem to think that the
| most important audience for the talk is prospective
| climate change researchers, who you believe would be
| alienated by opposition to race-based admission
| preferences.
|
| Again, you seem to be ignoring that this could go in the
| other direction, and in fact we'd expect it to, based on
| the overwhelming and diverse opposition to race-based
| preferences that we see in public polling.
|
| A possible way forward is to thoroughly vet any potential
| public speaker to verify they have never said anything
| controversial. It's sad that we could be reduced to this,
| but it's understandable.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| > alienates a lot of people too
|
| Who cares? With that attitude we wouldn't have ended
| slavery, woman wouldn't be able to vote, civil rights
| wouldn't have happened, and hetero marriage would still
| be the only option.
| civilized wrote:
| For those who see race-based preferences as an urgent
| form of social progress, this does make sense, yes. I
| don't, and most Americans don't, but that doesn't make us
| right.
| metagame wrote:
| You're wording this in a way that's _deliberately_
| representing your ideological opponents in the worst
| possible faith and light, and if nothing else it
| demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of not only
| the views of your opponents, but of people who would be
| sympathetic to your views if you would take ten seconds
| to apply tact to your words.
|
| This is the exact opposite of a good-faith argument and a
| demonstration of _exactly_ the reason why having a person
| with tact give a speech for outreach is critical.
| civilized wrote:
| I'm baffled by this response. I've done my best to
| summarize what you seem to be saying and what I see as
| the blind spots. I don't even see you as an opponent. We
| seem to disagree on a particular PR tactic and how it
| plays with the public.
|
| Is "I get what you're saying and it's reasonable"
| something that a person who is deliberately trying to
| represent your ideas in the worst possible light would
| say?
| dang wrote:
| You guys are both putting too much energy into commenting
| about the "you" at the other end of the discussion. Not
| only is it leading you to break the site guidelines, it
| makes the discussion noisier and more tedious for
| everybody else.
|
| You both have interesting points to make. If you'd stick
| to making them substantively, thoughtfully, and
| respectfully, the thread would be much better.
| "Respectfully" generally includes avoiding telling people
| things about themselves that are not likely to land well.
| There are times when that's necessary, but talking to
| strangers over the internet is not one of them.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| dang wrote:
| You guys are both putting too much energy into commenting
| about the "you" at the other end of the discussion. Not
| only is it leading you to break the site guidelines, it
| makes the discussion noisier and more tedious for
| everybody else.
|
| You both have interesting points to make. If you'd stick
| to making them substantively, thoughtfully, and
| respectfully, the thread would be much better.
| "Respectfully" generally includes avoiding telling people
| things about themselves that are not likely to land well.
| There are times when that's necessary, but talking to
| strangers over the internet is not one of them.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| civilized wrote:
| Thanks dang. I agree with you completely after seeing the
| results. If I could edit those comments at this point I
| would. I've done my best with the ones I still can.
| poetaster wrote:
| Who is imputing that a nationwide published scientist has
| no tact but is themself the model of said tact. Myopic.
| tptacek wrote:
| This "sea of words" stuff is uncivil and doesn't make
| your comment any more persuasive.
| civilized wrote:
| Thanks for saying so. I need to resist the temptation to
| poke at what I subjectively see as underlying flaws. It
| is distracting to the discussion.
| nverno wrote:
| If their goal was good PR, I'd say they have failed quite
| dramatically. This kind of thing is surprising from MIT and
| I doubt it has a lot of support among the
| science/engineering types. It is common to see this
| behavior in social sciences nowadays, but less so in
| engineering.
| [deleted]
| metagame wrote:
| Nobody who's in the demographic of people who could be
| attending university in the next ten years is going to
| see some professor getting knocked from a position as
| anything noteworthy; there's no viral potential in
| somebody _not doing_ a speech. But the speech, if it goes
| well, could have and has historically had great potential
| to inspire people to going into the field of climate
| science. Making the best impression is paramount, and you
| can 't do so if the person heading the _explicitly public
| relations-based charge_ is in a position to alienate a
| sizeable portion of the perspective candidates.
|
| Meritocracy is paramount to science and engineering, and
| having someone with such great potential to alienate
| placed in a public relations role is the exact opposite
| of meritocratic. Abbot is well-respected in his field,
| and it could be meritocratic to offer him a reward for
| his work, but it wouldn't be to put him in a critical
| social position with the baggage he brings along.
| nverno wrote:
| I disagree his ideas of merit-based entry would alienate
| a sizeable portion of perspective MIT students (the
| article also shows supporting polls). MIT, not merit-
| based, are you kidding?
| metagame wrote:
| Offering a _social, outreach-based task_ to a man whose
| views are cause for alienation against prospective
| students _not just prospective MIT students, but the
| field at large_ , which is substantially larger than the
| four-thousand undergrads MIT has, would indeed not be
| meritocratic.
|
| I'm not going to debate what his views _actually_ are,
| and I personally agree very heavily with merit-based
| admission. Like I 've said elsewhere in the thread, it's
| likely I'm not far from the professor's views. _However_
| his views have been interpreted in a way significantly
| different from how you frame them by enough people that
| MIT saw it fit to not go forward with his speech. It 's a
| PR and outreach game, not an inside baseball conference.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I'm very skeptical that the attitude can be isolated this
| way. There's a lot of people who genuinely do feel
| uncomfortable when authority figures don't share their
| political views, and that discomfort won't go away just
| because you're no longer in "outreach mode". If you shape
| your outreach efforts to target them, and you
| successfully convince them to apply to MIT (or enter the
| broader field), won't they expect their lecturers to be
| held to the same standard?
| temp8964 wrote:
| What? How is this webpage making any difference? They cancelled
| the event bc of Professor Abbot's past speech on DEI issues.
| ahefner wrote:
| Is it reasonable for institutions to begin retaliation against
| students for this sort of behavior? Unleash social justice media
| mob on faculty, risk expulsion.
| mc32 wrote:
| Twitter had become a powerful mechanism to lodge complaints, vid
| and invalid.
|
| Companies often will immediately take notice of someone they'd
| dismissed via traditional channels.
|
| Harassment, racism, juvenile immaturity, etc., are also called
| out via Twitter. Sometimes they are legitimate grievances, other
| times not.
|
| But there is almost never any due process and as infrequently are
| there repercussions for liars, people looking for someone to
| silence, or simple malicious intent.
|
| This is as bad as "disinformation". It's ruining many innocent
| peoples lives, but Twitter couldn't care any less.
|
| Psychologically this is group bullying without consequences.
| snek_case wrote:
| > Psychologically this is group bullying without consequences.
|
| Very much so. It's mob mentality. The group diffuses the
| responsibility, shielding everyone, enabling the bullying to be
| done without consequences.
|
| IMO it should be illegal to fire someone based on mob actions.
| There should be legal repercussions to this. Either against the
| people who did the firing, or against twitter, for enabling
| mobs and bullying. There's a legit case to be made that twitter
| has caused significant damage to people's images and careers,
| that they've known about this problem for a long time and did
| nothing about it. Victims could get together and do a class
| action lawsuit.
|
| It's scary because realistically, it might take a long time for
| things to change. Right now, the mob can crush anyone they feel
| like crushing with no consequences. Does anyone really want to
| live in that world? This could get worse if we let it. It might
| even be possible to weaponize this, pay for a botnet to get
| someone you don't like fired.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > Right now, the mob can crush anyone they feel like crushing
| with no consequences.
|
| Not quite. Right now the mob can crush anyone if that
| "anyone" is at the mercy of an _institution_ that will allow
| them to be crushed.
|
| Imagine this exact same situation, except that MIT tells the
| Twitter mob to get lost. What would happen? The Twitter mob
| would howl for a couple of weeks, and then their attention
| would turn elsewhere. If nobody at MIT blinks, then the mob
| can't crush anybody.
| aisengard wrote:
| Ah, so the solution to cancel culture is to...cancel more
| people, using the power of the state to instill your views
| over everyone else. How the libertarian paradise has decayed.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into ideological
| flamewar, regardless of how bad/wrong another comment is or
| you feel it is. We're trying to avoid that here (edit: and
| you've unfortunately been posting like this a lot). If you
| wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking
| the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be
| grateful.
| snek_case wrote:
| I'm not sure which part of my comment makes you think of
| cancel culture.
|
| My general gist was that we should make it illegal to fire
| someone, penalize someone or withdraw opportunities because
| an online or real-life mob told you to. Mob "justice" has
| been a problem humanity has had to deal with for
| centuries/millenia, but the internet somehow made people
| think mobs are OK, because participating is risk-free now.
| einpoklum wrote:
| 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.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| It's really OK for you to agree with someone who doesn't share
| your entire set of political beliefs. There is no need to be
| suspicious. It's probably a bad thing for the world to be
| divided into "us and them", don't you think?
| crocodiletears wrote:
| Group affiliation is a decent heuristic. It helps you to know
| what to look for when identifying whether there are
| concessions made to forward a larger agenda concealed within
| the text.
|
| I wouldn't dismiss the document out of hand by virtue of its
| author's social circles, but I also wouldn't say that
| suspicion is entirely unwarranted. Though the CFR is such a
| large organization, I would also be less immediately
| suspicious of its rank and file.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| > _Group affiliation is a decent heuristic. It helps you to
| know what to look for when identifying whether there are
| concessions made to forward a larger agenda concealed
| within the text._
|
| That's exactly where the wheels come off. The implication
| is that individual ideas or policies should be valued based
| on whether they're part of a platform at the level of party
| politics or similar.
|
| So what if the idea is part of someone else's larger
| agenda? What exactly are we threatened by?
| crocodiletears wrote:
| >So what if the idea is part of someone else's larger
| agenda? What exactly are we threatened by?
|
| If you disagree with the broader agenda or find that it
| is in conflict with your beliefs/interests you may be
| better served by pursuing alternative framings which
| don't depend on the priors of the the group with-which
| you find yourself in opposition.
|
| Just because you agree with the author's conclusion
| doesn't mean that their line of reasoning is parallel
| with yours, or that the assumptions and value judgements
| that they used to reach that conclusion don't logically
| unfold in an undesirable direction.
|
| Group affiliation can be a trigger and a compass to help
| you in that process.
|
| This doesn't mean that you have to disagree with them. It
| just means that you should take some extra time to
| understand both how and why.
| rdiddly wrote:
| It fosters confirmation bias. You will tend to find
| whatever you're looking for.
| q1w2 wrote:
| Debate the argument, not the argumentator.
| einpoklum wrote:
| But I'm not debating, I'm evaluating. And when you only hear
| one side of an argument, prudence is merited.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| https://orgchart.mit.edu/node/6/letters_to_community/importa...
|
| "...the department leadership concluded that the debate over
| both his views on diversity, equity, and inclusion and manner
| of presenting them were overshadowing the purpose and spirit of
| the Carlson Lecture"
|
| "The Carlson Lecture is not a standard scientific talk for
| fellow scientists. It is an outreach event, open to the public,
| with a speaker who is an outstanding scientist and role model
| [...] to inspire young people to consider careers in STEM."
|
| Seems fairly reasonable to me that you wouldn't want someone
| with divisive views on diversity giving your outreach lecture.
| helen___keller wrote:
| If it wasn't Twitter it would be Facebook, TikTok, Reddit, or
| whatever social network is cool tomorrow.
|
| The social media cat is out of the bag. Mob justice is,
| unfortunately, the purest form of democracy, untempered by
| government or constitution or other forms of control. The only
| paths forward are to live with mob justice or to enforce actions
| against free speech and expression (ie making it illegal to
| cancel someone on the institution side, or make it illegal to
| participate in a social media mob on the user side, or make it
| illegal to host a social media mob on the social network side). I
| don't see those happening.
| missblit wrote:
| Social Media is not the purest form of democracy because the
| people using social media, or who have a lot of followers on
| social media, are not representative
| Miner49er wrote:
| More represented then in traditional media, though. So the
| most democratic form of media we've ever had, most likely.
| rscoots wrote:
| ? Or these highly-paid & pampered university admins could
| simply grow a spine.
|
| And we can call them out on it in the interim which seems to
| have some impact.
| googlryas wrote:
| Can anyone tell me the problem the mob has with the MFE framework
| vs AA?
|
| Is it just coming from the wrong person?
|
| Is racism so bad in America that it is worse to be the black son
| of two wealthy Ivy educated lawyers, who attends private schools
| in NY, versus a white son with one parent in jail and the other
| addicted to meth in the backwaters of West Virginia who sometimes
| attends a broken public school when he isn't raising his 3 year
| old sister? Because right now affirmative action says the black
| guy needs the leg up in this scenario.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| I'm not sure that you understand the MFE framework proposal.
|
| How do you think it's going to help in your example? It'll
| clearly favor the black kid in this hypothetical case, because
| he's rich and well connected. The white kid might have made it
| in on a sports scholarship maybe, but even that slim hope will
| be ripped away from him under this proposal.
| narraturgy wrote:
| It feels very strange and perhaps kind of contradictory to be
| presented with an individual who is vehemently against the idea
| of censorship while also using "the majority of people also hold
| this view" as their primary justification why censorship in this
| case is wrong.
|
| If the professor held a view that the minority if Americans
| supported, would there be more or less reason to support
| censorship in that case? Would the author had been so quick to
| defend the professor's beliefs if they had not aligned with the
| majority's (and, likely, the author's, if I am to judge based on
| the impassioned editorializing present in the article)?
|
| I'm not certain this sort of appeal to the commons argument has a
| place in the discussion of ethics and clout-driven censorship--
| that would boil the entire issue down to a simple.tug.of war
| between which of the two sides can drum up more/louder
| supporters. That isn't a question of ethics at all.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > the majority of people also hold this view
|
| His argument is strengthened by, but doesn't rely on, that
| fact.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Popularity absolutely does not impact the logical correctness
| of an argument: an argument is true by virtue of its own
| structure, if you say popularity somehow affects its
| correctness you've basically jettisoned logic in favour of
| subjective opinion.
|
| At best popularity serves as a useful heuristic for when you
| don't have the means to carefully confirm the correctness
| yourself.
|
| (There is a fairly uninteresting special case where the
| popularity of something comes in to the argument as a factual
| statement about the world.)
| civilized wrote:
| Is it so surprising that _useful_ heuristics might be
| _used_ in lieu of careful thinking for a short mass media
| essay?
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| No, but something being expected is something else that
| is not inherently tied to the correctness of an argument.
|
| As a concrete example: wikipedia has a long list of
| common but incorrect beliefs, all of which one should not
| be surprised to hear being said but will remain incorrect
| regardless.
| bananasbandanas wrote:
| I think you are conflating popularity of an argument with
| popularity as part of an argument. For the former, it's
| easy to agree that it does not affect the correctness of
| the argument. But in the articles case, popularity is part
| of the argument: That it is especially worrying the speaker
| is uninvited for an opinion which is held by a majority of
| people, i.e is popular.
|
| Another example of this would be if we were having an
| argument about what music to play at some event we are
| hosting. I might well use the popularity of some songs as
| an argument.
| shkkmo wrote:
| The popularity of the opinion was not being used to support
| the truth of that opinion, but to point out the absurdity
| of censoring an opinion that has that much popular support.
| poetaster wrote:
| The author clearly states that Abott's position was not
| relevant to the talk he was to present. Wether his position
| on admittance us congruent with progress in client science
| has yet to be adressed.
| paulpauper wrote:
| It's out of control. Free speech will soon only be allowed for
| maybe elon musk and a few other billionaire who are literally big
| and rich enough to own the platform and be financially insulated
| from the potential backlash. Everyone else will be subjected to
| arbitrary rules and have their past dredged up against them.
| gambiting wrote:
| Ultimately I blame Twitter and Twitter mobs for all insanity like
| this. World would be a much better place without Twitter.
| civilized wrote:
| 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
| elsewhere spoken unfavorably of affirmative action.
|
| The dreadful truth is the administrators think the activists
| are _right._ Not threatening. _Morally right_.
|
| The administrators and the activists believe in the same
| ideology. They are enlisted in the same cause. _They are on the
| right side of history, mowing us down with a joyful song of
| resistance in their hearts._
|
| And still we praise and support these institutions.
| crocodiletears wrote:
| This has been my experience working alongside University
| administrators. A sizeable chunk of them (I wouldn't say a
| clear majority, but in no way a small minority) are exactly
| the kinds of people who participate in these mobs, and are
| perfectly happy to use small spats and uproars on Twitter as
| political cover to legitimize their internal activism.
|
| The people buckling out of fear are less worried about the
| consequences of upsetting faceless Twitter users than they
| are about upsetting a semi-organized and ideologically
| motivated fifth-column within their own organizations.
| gambiting wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Well many claimed that Twitter caused the Arab Spring a decade
| or so ago. That uprushing of democracy in the Arab states. And
| look how that turned out....hmm.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| What exactly did Twitter itself do other than create a unique
| platform that is arguably valuable in its own right? Are they
| secretly making it more evil to make more ad money?
| gambiting wrote:
| Just to be clear - I blame "Twitter" the platform not
| "Twitter" the corporation. The platform gave voice to people
| who want to cause outrage, whether the corporation wanted or
| intended that is only secondary. Maybe it's a distinction
| without a meaning, but it makes sense in my head.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Blame could be extended to the corporation. If they swiftly
| banned permanently anyone engaging in these sort of
| activities it wouldn't be a problem.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Their choice of algorithms also maximizes the reach of
| these people, since they use the same mechanisms that
| maximize the reach of advertisers (twitters actual
| client, users are the product).
| civilized wrote:
| https://outline.com/JfyLUb
| wayneftw wrote:
| Where is the mob though? The 2 tweets referenced by the article
| had a total of 138 likes between them.
|
| Searching twitter for Dorian Abbot, I couldn't find much else.
| prepend wrote:
| I find that to be the funniest part. MIT is so spineless they
| are capitulating to "mobs" of dozens or even hundreds of
| people.
|
| I think this is old people not understanding Twitter and
| thinking that a single alumni email will lead to thousands of
| people calling for their jobs.
|
| I'm waiting for "cancel as a service" operators who will seo
| cancellations for $50 to help winnow down job applicant fields.
| angelzen wrote:
| Dorian Abbot has his own account of the situation. One of the
| document he links is a dozen different MIT associates and
| alumni tweeting in support for the talk to be cancelled.
|
| https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/mit-abandons-its-mission-an...
|
| https://drive.google.com/file/d/13Xd01jH1UAJ4yQ2Xt5pyOFwjRcy...
|
| Please also note Dorian express wish:
|
| > I forgive the activists who led the campaign against me.
| Please do not attack them personally. They are fish swimming in
| a sea of moral confusion. Some of the responsibility for their
| behavior rests on their elders, who have not helped them form
| properly.
|
| https://twitter.com/DorianAbbot/status/1444335909244129286
| k__ wrote:
| He wants a system based on merit?
|
| Where should this merit come from for underrepresented groups if
| not from affirmative action?
| ramraj07 wrote:
| <I actually support affirmative action>
| Perhaps a system that just looks at your economic
| underpriviligedness instead of skin color could work?
|
| </I actually support affirmative action>
| q1w2 wrote:
| Affirmative action is explicitly NOT admitting people due to
| merit.
| k__ wrote:
| I know.
|
| My reasoning is:
|
| If your member of an underrepresented group, chances are you
| didn't grow up to develop merit. Affirmative action allows
| you to access institutions that help you to develop merit.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| If someone isn't of MIT-calibre merit (ie competence), then
| it's no good to them to pop them into an electrical
| engineering course that they can't handle, and it's
| especially no good for the ultra smart Asian American who
| was just racially discriminated against. They'll be better
| off at an easier institution where they'll have plenty of
| room to develop, and that unfairly excluded Asian will be
| better off at MIT.
| cratermoon wrote:
| https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-real-free-speech-crisi...
| woodruffw wrote:
| Some of the language in this article is a little breathless: it
| makes the claim that this instance is "quantitatively different,"
| but the instance is the same kind we've seen before: a
| professional or academic having dislikeable views outside of
| their field.
|
| It's also not clear whether this man (whose name I honestly can't
| remember after reading the article) has been "cancelled" in any
| meaningful sense: he now has an article in a leading liberal
| magazine defending him, written by _another_ highly titled and
| positioned academic. Oh, and then he ended up speaking on behalf
| of MIT anyways, except not in a public venue where inviting him
| could be seen as an endorsement of him _qua_ person.
| nikkinana wrote:
| Stop hiding and pretending you're the majority. You aren't.
| People know the truth.
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| 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 are
| becoming more like big businesses, but they _are_ big businesses.
| So they tend to act more like businesses then intellectual
| centers of speech and thought.
|
| Edit: After reading the letter linked in another thread [1], the
| support for my understanding of this as an action against "stuff
| that's bad for business" seems to be strengthened. To quote:
|
| > The Carlson Lecture is not a standard scientific talk for
| fellow scientists. It is an outreach event, open to the public,
| with a speaker who is an outstanding scientist and role model.
| Typically held at a major venue away from campus, it is geared to
| build public understanding of and appreciation for climate
| science, and to inspire young people to consider careers in STEM.
| Each year students from local high schools are invited...while
| all of us can agree that Professor Abbot has the freedom to speak
| as he chooses on any subject, the department leadership concluded
| that the debate over both his views on diversity, equity, and
| inclusion and manner of presenting them were overshadowing the
| purpose and spirit of the Carlson Lecture.
|
| Translation: We don't someone who compares DEI efforts to their
| Third Reich as our public spokesperson.
|
| As someone who is pretty much _never_ invited to be a public
| spokesperson for various reasons like physical appearance et
| cetera, I am A-okay with this.
|
| --------------------
|
| [1]
| https://orgchart.mit.edu/node/6/letters_to_community/importa...
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| > made a Third Reich comparison while talking about admissions
| criteria, I'd be pretty opposed to the lecture going on.
|
| Why??
| [deleted]
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| I'm thinking mostly like a business. Nazi comparisons are bad
| for business.
|
| If someone starts bringing up the Nazis in some obscure
| context during your pizza shop's pepperoni v/s margharita
| bake-off, what are you going to do? Best thing to do is to
| move on as quickly as possible, and kick out the person who
| made Nazi comparisons.
|
| Now I already concede, that perhaps this should _not_ happen
| on a campus. Perhaps we should explicitly maintain campuses
| as places where limits might be tested, and have robust
| responses.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| > Ninety years ago Germany had the best universities in the
| world. Then an ideological regime obsessed with race came
| to power and drove many of the best scholars out, gutting
| the faculties and leading to sustained decay that German
| universities never fully recovered from.
|
| I'll highlight the important and relevant bit for you:
|
| "ideological regime obsessed with race came to power and
| drove many of the best scholars out"
|
| Sounds pretty much what is happening in US / UK
| Universities right now doesn't it?
| brongondwana wrote:
| I used to think as you outlined here, and then I realised that
| I would only care if they made a Third Reich comparison that I
| disagreed with. If they said Milo is literally Hitler, I'd...
| well, I would have been very confused because Milo is a tasty
| chocolate drink. But I wouldn't have considered it an
| offense... so the offense wasn't actually the use of
| unspeakable comparisons, it was the sin of doing so while
| disagreeing with me!
|
| So I try not to judge quite so quickly now, though I probably
| still fail plenty...
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| The only things that should be compared to Nazis and Hitler
| should be the Nazis and Hitler themselves. I don't think
| that's unreasonable.
|
| [Edit: some people think it is reasonable, but they don't
| want to explain themselves]
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I guess I'll disagree with that, Nazis and Hitler are not
| some holy or taboo things that must never be compared to
| anything else, the problem is that comparison between
| things becomes difficult the more emotionally charged the
| things being compared are, so if you are going to compare
| Nazis and Hitler with something else you better be really
| clever at making comparisons and able to fight when folks
| come unglued.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| and who can do that? Logically what you are saying makes
| sense, but when applied practically it falls apart.
| Leading me to suggest a blanket taboo considering how
| hugely disrespectful and inconsiderate there comparisons
| are.
| StevePerkins wrote:
| > _" 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."_
|
| I believe that, broadly speaking, Hitler and Nazi references
| are beyond tired and cliche at this point. However,
| "disclaimers" such as this one are disappointing. Because silly
| Nazi references seem to be thrown around by _everyone_ , and
| yet somehow it's only objectionable or worthy of challenge when
| the wrong people do it.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| I mean, context matters? Nazi comparisons in a comment
| section is one thing, Nazi comparisons in a opinion piece in
| a big weekly magazine is a different thing because in the
| latter case your are supposed to have put _actual thought_
| into what you say and how you say it.
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| Wow. Should we let the bar of perfection be lifted so high that
| noone can meet those standards? No matter how long ago their sins
| were or whether they have rehabilitated themselves?
|
| Are the people who are lifting that bar really as virtuous as
| they think themselves to be?
|
| Res ipsa loquitur: 'The thing speaks for itself.'
| paulpauper wrote:
| _Then the campaign to cancel Abbot's lecture began. On Twitter,
| some students and professors called on the university to retract
| its invitation. And, sure enough, MIT buckled, becoming yet
| another major institution in American life to demonstrate that
| the commitment to free speech it trumpets on its website
| evaporates the moment some loud voices on social media call for a
| speaker's head._
|
| Two tweets does not seem like a mob. The quality of The Atlantic
| has really gone downhill. No different from the rest of the hype-
| filled media.There are 1000x more tweets about the cancellation
| than tweets that called for his cancellation.
| ncann wrote:
| That's exactly the point that the article was trying to make: a
| loud minority calling for the cancellation, and the institution
| buckles and does the cancellation despite of common sense.
| analog31 wrote:
| Amusingly, graduates of "elite" universities are the brainpower
| behind social media and its satellite industries. In turn, those
| industries are a driving behind the market value of an MIT
| degree. I sense a symbiosis.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Is there a way to access the Twitter hate sphere that actually
| contributed to this? This is the first I've heard of it and I'm
| regularly on Twitter. I'd love to actually sit and witness this
| sort of behavior myself instead of getting it second-handedly
| through reporting.
|
| It doesn't help the Twitter interface utterly sucks at collating
| and quantifying the stuff in a real manner.
| mawise wrote:
| Seems like there were two things Abbot did "wrong", one was to
| argue against affirmative action, and the other was to use a nazi
| reference to make his point.
|
| Does anyone have first-hand knowledge of what the mob said on
| Twitter? I'm curious if they differentiated between the two.
|
| For anyone who hasn't seen it, Netflix's fiction THE CHAIR
| satires cancel culture in liberal institutions and their story
| includes someone who is canceled for using a nazi reference as
| well.
| prepend wrote:
| It seemed like the nazi reference was appropriate though. In
| this case, the university system in Germany was ruined by a
| move away from merit toward an incorrect and abhorrent
| philosophy.
|
| I think that doesn't mean that affirmative action = nazism. It
| means that focusing on things other than merit has negative
| consequences and should be avoided.
|
| A recent comedy, Death of Stalin, points this out on the micro
| level when there are no competent doctors to treat Stalin
| because all doctors who didn't pledge political fealty were
| purged.
|
| Having an academic system based on political or philosophical
| fealty will result in poorer academics.
| tomerv wrote:
| It doesn't really matter if the nazi reference was
| appropriate or not, using nazism as a comparison point is
| taboo for any kind of serious discussion. Once you compare
| anything to nazism you pretty much forfeit the discussion,
| even if it's a valid comparison.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| I agree with you if we're talking about analogies, but not
| if we're talking about actual historical precedent.
| snvzz wrote:
| >Once you compare anything to nazism you pretty much
| forfeit the discussion, even if it's a valid comparison.
|
| This is an extremely stupid statement, and we shouldn't
| support it by repeating it.
| prepend wrote:
| I don't agree with this at all. I'm not a fan of
| castostrophizing, but when the analogy is relevant, it
| should still be used.
| creata wrote:
| > Does anyone have first-hand knowledge of what the mob said on
| Twitter?
|
| The article contains links to a few Twitter posts.[0][1] Keep
| in mind that they might not be representative.
|
| Edit: also consider that your use of the word "mob" (which
| isn't used in the Atlantic article) might be unfair, and that
| the word might apply to us uninvested, nameless faces better
| than it does to those students and professors putting their
| real name down against something that actually involves them.
|
| [0]: https://twitter.com/henrifdrake/status/1445520653830930438
|
| [1]: https://twitter.com/NMGasparini/status/1444688917001801730
| spamizbad wrote:
| This seems pretty tame. Not even 200 likes between the two.
| Not much of a "mob"
| everybodyknows wrote:
| Another satire, in narrative podcast format, spoken by author
| Zadie Smith. Wonderfully subtle.
|
| https://www.iheart.com/podcast/19-the-new-yorker-the-writers...
| vbacker wrote:
| The period of 1933-1938 offers a wealth of information on how
| dictatorships are set up, how a war economy is financed
| (quantitative easing), the march through the institutions,
| censorship etc.
|
| The other obvious parallel, Stalin, is more messy because a
| revolution started it all. Germany went from fragile democracy
| to full dictatorship overnight with the enabling laws (after
| the Nazis had marched through the institutions for about a
| decade).
|
| It is a perfect analogy and does not mean that all of the
| "progressive" left are Nazis (though some of them would have
| participated in the Nazi movement, too, because they are just
| power hungry and don't care about the specifics of the cause).
| scythe wrote:
| There are really only two analogies he could have used, because
| there are only two cases in (post-Mongol) history where a
| nation with the best universities in the world experienced a
| calamitous fall from grace. One was in Nazi Germany.
|
| The _other_ incident was Napoleon 's conquest of France, Italy,
| and Spain, and the damage that was done by the anti-Church
| reforms imposed on those universities. This is a closer
| analogy, since Napoleon's reforms were nominally "liberalizing"
| in that he had proclaimed the abolition of nobility and its
| continuation via said institutions. But it's unlikely that the
| Twitter mobs would have been any happier about being compared
| to Napoleon instead of Hitler.
| civilized wrote:
| This is a fantastic historical perspective. The common
| denominator here is an intellectual class that was on the
| wrong side of a political crisis?
| folkhack wrote:
| > Seems like there were two things Abbot did "wrong", one was
| to argue against affirmative action, and the other was to use a
| nazi reference to make his point.
|
| Which in the current political climate is a _horrible_ look for
| the school. I get why they dropped him - for better or worse
| lots of people are fed up with the promise of an ideal
| meritocracy... especially younger folks. And, for better or
| worse, those younger folks heavily coordinate their
| dissatisfaction in the most effective place to get their voice
| heard by institutions: the internet.
|
| Wrong or not... in the current climate I would not be making
| arguments against affirmative action publicly while expecting
| to keep my academic speaking arrangements. Especially with Nazi
| Germany comments thrown in there - _way_ too spicy. I guarantee
| MIT will find a fine replacement that has less controversy in
| their recent history, and allowing this guy to talk would have
| only been risking further public altercation with their
| students. I would have made the same business decision.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| .
| folkhack wrote:
| > It's a horrible look only according to incurious,
| oversensitive, ideological and closed-minded people.
|
| Oof - shots fired. I think you're including me in this
| group of "people" so I'm going to bow out as this is going
| nowhere productive.
| [deleted]
| FiberBundle wrote:
| I don't understand the argument of people who partly justify
| affirmative action in college admissions with the lack of a
| perfect meritocracy. So just because the ideal of a perfect
| meritocracy is illusive, decisions shouldn't primarily be
| based on merit anymore?
| folkhack wrote:
| This all is in good faith, just sharing my ever-evolving
| thoughts on the topic to answer the question:
|
| For better or worse meritocracies are exclusive in nature
| when you take systemic societal issues into consideration
| like wealth gaps. In America, we've historically done so
| much to hurt minorities I believe we've arguably held
| religions/ethnicities/classes/genders back from the same
| opportunities that I have as a straight middleclass white
| guy.
|
| Is it the fault of the meritocracy that it is exclusive in
| this arguably unfair way? Nope - and I don't think that we
| should get away with meritocracies at all. But I do think
| we have to take into account external societal conditions
| when implementing one and I see affirmative action as this
| measure.
|
| Schools are unique in society that they're a ladder up - my
| time in college was _huge_. Arguably, education is one of
| the most fair ways to lift people out of the non-ideal
| societal crap I was discussing in the first paragraph... so
| things like affirmative action are implemented to enhance
| marginalized people 's access to opportunities I often take
| for granted.
|
| This issue for me is a hard one as I can't exclude the
| reality of history and systemic societal problems along
| side a school's unique position to be the ladder up for
| people who have been crapped on like I haven't.
|
| ---
|
| > decisions shouldn't primarily be based on merit anymore?
|
| I think we still need to make decisions based on merit
| absolutely - and I think we need to strive for the ideals
| of meritocracy as a society. I just think that active
| measures are taken to try to balance things out -
| affirmative action being one of those... for better or
| worse.
|
| Affirmative action is just a really complex issue.
| Anecdotally, I admit I am glad that I am in California now
| where it's illegal in regards to employment - and
| honestly... selfishly so. In Iowa affirmative action was a
| thing.
|
| Man I really hope the Diablo 2 auth servers are back
| online....
| angelzen wrote:
| > we've historically done so much to hurt minorities
|
| Please speak for yourself. I haven't done anything to
| hurt anyone.
| angelzen wrote:
| It is a form of perverted sense of fairness. If X gets to
| skirt the rules, it's only fair that everybody (really,
| myself, but that sounds too crass) gets to skirt the rules
| as well.
| FiberBundle wrote:
| Life isn't fair by nature unfortunately.
|
| If you regard affirmative action as more fair than an
| admission system based on merit, please tell me in what
| sense you consider it fair that the more qualified person
| loses out because of their ethnicity? There are literally
| hundreds of Asian students who completely dedicated their
| youth to the goal of making it to an elite US university
| and then you're rejected because your acceptance would
| violate some quota... that just seems incredibly absurd
| and cruel to me. Not even speaking of the negative
| societal repercussions that such actions will have.
| angelzen wrote:
| _perverted_ sense of fairness.
|
| > per*vert*ed: (of a thing) having been corrupted or
| distorted from its original course, meaning, or state.
| Causality1 wrote:
| _Totally unacceptable and sends a message to any student that
| isn't a white man that they don't matter_
|
| Fascinating. I would call this another indicator of qualitative
| change in the cancel phenomenon. "Classic" cancel culture was
| driven by highly informed activists, who in this case would've
| known race-agnostic acceptance benefits Asian people and is at
| best neutral toward white people if not harmful. Today's mobs are
| obviously not being led by people of the same caliber.
| q1w2 wrote:
| No, this is an intentional misdirection by them. The important
| motivation is to undermine the influence of the majority white
| population. In that regard, it is always important to make
| every other ethnic group a victim and never paint anyone but
| white people as benefactors of systemic racism.
|
| Inconvenient data points, such as the one you describe, are
| intentionally omitted.
| air7 wrote:
| E.g. In the orignal "Women make 70 cents for every dollar a
| man makes" gov memo, it was also said that Asian men make 115
| cents for every dolar a white man makes. That doesn't fit the
| narrative so it's just ignored.
| whitexn--g28h wrote:
| The gap between white and Asian outcomes is due to
| immigration policies which make it easier for wealthy
| people to get in. The US imports rich asians who can afford
| to send their kids to MIT, the rich get richer ect. The
| gender pay gap is a different issue and doesn't need to
| address immigration policy.
| q1w2 wrote:
| > The gap between white and Asian outcomes is due to
| immigration policies
|
| source?
| fighterpilot wrote:
| Vietnamese Americans, the descendants of refugees from a
| war-torn country, make more than White Americans.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into ideological
| flamewar, let alone (god help us) race war. We're trying to
| avoid that here, for what should be obvious reasons if you've
| read the site guidelines:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
| s_Hogg wrote:
| This article reads like it is trying to cancel the cancellers,
| somewhat ironically! Very hard to not become the thing you hate
| when you get tangled up in this stuff.
| iammisc wrote:
| It's okay to cancel the cancellers. In fact, the expected
| outcome of this effort is to 'cancel' the cancellers, by not
| allowing their complaints to translate into institutional
| action. They are free to argue others should be canceled, but
| no one should listen to them. Given that they are currently
| listened to, preventing that is indeed a form of cancellation,
| and it's a good one. You cannot and should not expect to
| benefit from the very policy you denigrate.
| aisengard wrote:
| "It's okay to cancel"
|
| You can just stop right there! Either it's okay to cancel, or
| it isn't. "It's okay to cancel those that I don't like, but
| not cancel those I do like" is infantile reasoning and not to
| be taken seriously.
| iammisc wrote:
| It has nothing to with what I don't like. I don't believe
| you should extend to people those rights they argue
| against.
|
| For example, if someone wrote a comme t on hacker news
| saying "not all people should be able to comment on hacker
| news", one wonders why it is that they ought to enjoy the
| very right which they seek to deny.
|
| I have said quite clearly in my comment that those wishing
| to cancel ought to be heard... They just ought no to be
| listened to. Perhaps if you read my comment (it's only a
| few sentences long... There's no need to be thick headed),
| you would have read that part.
| wepple wrote:
| Didn't come across that way at all to me. I read it as general
| concern at the suppression of ideas. There was no call to
| action to ban Twitter hashtags or forfeit MIT.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| The author is head of something he calls "Persuasion." Not
| everyone is impressed.
|
| https://newrepublic.com/article/158401/problem-yascha-mounks...
|
| It's free speech 101 - you can say what you like (as long as
| you're not inciting crime or violence.) But no one owes you a
| pulpit.
|
| I have far more of a problem with mob farming and Twitter
| incitement: see also anti-vaxing, organised climate change
| denial, and political rabble rousing.
|
| Because those are covert rather than free - pretending to be
| independent and organic while actually being centralised and
| astroturfed.
| nomdep wrote:
| > you can say what you like (as long as you're not inciting
| crime or violence.)
|
| But whatever reason is to forbid inciting crime or violence
| is equally valid to forbid inciting firing or un-inviting
| someone isn't it?
| randallsquared wrote:
| Absolutely not. Crime/violence are taking something from
| someone. Firing/uninviting are deciding not to trade with
| someone.
| sokoloff wrote:
| There's clearly a line somewhere, otherwise there's no
| point in speech (if it cannot be used to influence others
| in even the smallest of ways).
|
| While I don't think MIT made the best call here, I think
| that Twitter users (mobs or otherwise) should be free to
| ask MIT to do this. I would have preferred that MIT had
| professionally yet firmly declined as the controversy is
| unrelated to the topic. (IMO, they'd be wise to avoid
| having a flat-Earther present at an EAPS event, but that's
| not the analog here.)
| h2odragon wrote:
| You don't think there's any real, individual, independant
| doubt about vaccines, global warming, or political causes?
|
| Just "everybody you disagree with"? or is your side also
| controlled by conspiracies of the elites dictating the
| opinions of their followers?
| whitexn--g28h wrote:
| At this point over 200 million Americans have been
| vaccinated. 700k people have died of COVID-19. In the US
| there is no independent individual who could come to a
| conclusion other than it is safer to get vaccinated than to
| get COVID-19. I'm not sure who is spreading the anti-vax
| nonsense, but at this point it seems like more of a Darwin
| Award than a conspiracy by the elite.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Those that have had COVID may legitimately feel they have
| less need for the vaccine. Some of us have other medical
| reasons not to take one. Or might just be ornery.
|
| No matter how convinced you are that "no independent
| individual" disagrees with you; it still happens.
| umvi wrote:
| 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.
| mraudiobook_com wrote:
| It's not Twitter, it's this new breed of racism.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Two things:
|
| We probably only hear the stories where they succeed, or nearly
| so, which may be anywhere from almost all the attempts to only
| a tiny number.
|
| Second, if this is a which hunt, then we should treat it as
| such and immediately lob accusations at those who start the
| accusations.
| prepend wrote:
| So having a list of people who called for witch burning and
| distributing social opprobrium might help.
|
| Make the only cancelling appropriate be for cancelling
| cancellers. So focus cancel energy on itself.
|
| Personally, I will review job applicants social media history
| and if there is any "Reeeee" I take that into account as part
| of reference checks and whatnot.
|
| It seems like someone posting "I'm an MIT alum and I demand
| this speaker be cancelled" would reflect as lack of critical
| thinking and reasoning.
|
| I fear that this leads to islands of organizations where
| there are groups that don't like this Twitter mob tactic and
| groups that do. God help those in orgs that think Twitter
| mobbing is a good thing.
| jensensbutton wrote:
| imo the issue is journalists living on Twitter. Journalists are
| becoming "creators" and trying to build their brands on social
| media like every else in an effort to parlay name recognition
| into more money/power.
|
| How do you get more popular on Twitter? Well, you write (in an
| opinionated way) about Twitter controversies. This we are
| bombarded by news and articles that are primed to be
| controversial and that the majority of people in this country
| don't actually give a crap about.
| dudul wrote:
| Companies and institutions just need to realize that Twitter is
| not the general population. How many TV shows are regularly
| trending on twitter but have no audience? How many products are
| vilified but still sell just fine?
|
| Marketing firms have been selling the lie that they analyze
| twitter to build campaigns, pr, etc. Their customers just need
| to realize that it's just BS.
| geofft wrote:
| 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 what I have to spend my
| money on. And their boss has the right to decide whether to
| employ them or not. That's the boss's economic freedom and at-
| will employment.
|
| If I'm threatening the boss with physical harm (violating the
| NAP, as some would say), then I'm clearly in the wrong. But if
| I'm making my opinion known, and their boss agrees, isn't that
| the intended effect of discourse? What is the point of free
| speech if there isn't the possibility that people might be
| influenced by listening to that speech?
|
| I don't see any way to cancel Twitter mobs that doesn't itself
| uphold cancel culture and destroy liberty.
|
| (In any case, in the article at hand, "Twitter mobs" isn't a
| fully accurate descriptor. The quoted tweet was from an alum.
| The ability for alumni to contact their university and make
| their opinions known - and have their opinions be taken with
| more weight than those of the general public - has existed long
| before Twitter and will exist long after.)
| brigandish wrote:
| > Isn't this exactly the world that free speech / pro-liberty
| advocates want?
|
| No. The main consequence of speech that is being opposed
| should be... speech, not action to get that speaker's speech
| curtailed, whether by speech or other means.
|
| > I can also decide whether to patronize their business or
| not
|
| These people didn't have to turn up to the talk. That's not
| the same as cancelling a talk because someone said they don't
| want it to happen.
|
| > And their boss has the right to decide whether to employ
| them or not > ... > But if I'm making my opinion known, and
| their boss agrees, isn't that the intended effect of
| discourse?
|
| Did MIT change its decision to host the speaker because of a
| well-reasoned argument - as you point out, one of the
| intended consequences aimed for via free speech - or was it
| due to some other kind of pressure?
| yummypaint wrote:
| This post, like many in this thread, misrepresents what
| free speech is. Free speech protects us from government
| retribution, nothing more. I agree that it's bad form to
| lobby the university directly, but it's their right to do
| so, and the university has a right to change which speakers
| it invites. Having it any other way would be an attack on
| free speech.
|
| _Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
| religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
| abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the
| right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition
| the Government for a redress of grievances._
|
| The purpose of free speech is to prevent the government
| from punishing people for their views. A similar imposition
| on citizens would violate their 1st amendment rights.
| brigandish wrote:
| I'm not American nor do I live in the US nor am I subject
| to US law - is free speech impossible for me and all the
| billions of others in the world who are also in this same
| group, or is it perhaps you that has misunderstood and
| misrepresented what free speech is by conflating it with
| a legal provision in one jurisdiction, designed to help
| protect it _from one entity_?
| twofornone wrote:
| >This post, like many in this thread, misrepresents what
| free speech is. Free speech protects us from government
| retribution, nothing more
|
| This may be the case de jure, but de facto, the spirit of
| the concept of free speech, and why it is important
| enough to enshrine in amendment, transcends the
| relationship between the government and the governed. A
| society where speech is effectively no longer free
| because of authoritarian-like control of discourse by
| non-governmental bodies requires the same protections
| that it would against the government to remain free from
| authoritarianism. Particularly when censorious or
| retributive measures by these ostensibly apolitical
| actors almost all tend to align with the machinations of
| one political party.
|
| So the fact that social media platforms (and cloud hosts
| and credit card companies, etc) effectively collude to
| control the modern, digital public square to
| preferentially suppress the political views of about 50%
| of the country is just as much of a threat as government
| censorship, since the outcome is the same.
| Jensson wrote:
| Free speech is an ideal where you are judged by what you
| do and not by what thoughts you express. USA named one of
| its laws after that ideal, but the American law isn't
| what the ideal is. The ideal would be that the first
| amendment applied to everyone, so nobody could punish
| anyone for views they express. But that is in no way
| enforceable so it doesn't exist.
|
| It means that a guy can say X. Then twitter mobs can say
| that guy X is an idiot and should get fired. Both of
| those are fine. But firing the guy because he said X is
| where the free speech line is crossed. As long as it all
| just remains speech it is fine.
|
| > What do I do about {contrived example X}?
|
| What does the government do? The government does a ton of
| stuff, like hire people, fire people, run a lot of
| organizations etc. If they can do it without violating
| the ideal of free speech then so can you.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I disagree that free speech is/ought to be free from
| other people judging you on the contents of that speech.
|
| I openly and intentionally judge people based on their
| speech/thoughts they express. Say smart, curiosity-
| invoking things and I think more highly of you. Say
| closed-minded, racist things, and I think less highly of
| you. I find it hard to imagine that most other people
| don't do exactly the same thing (possibly with a
| different fitness function, but updating their opinion of
| someone based on thoughts expressed nonetheless).
|
| If I say something that makes you think I'm an asshole, I
| think you _should_ update your opinion of me in that
| direction without waiting for me to make some physical
| action to that effect.
| yummypaint wrote:
| The government, by definition, holds the monopoly on
| legal violence. This is the fundamental difference. It
| isn't a big corporation.
|
| _But firing the guy because he said X is where the free
| speech line is crossed._
|
| There are people who argue employers have the right to
| fire anyone for any reason because of their own rights.
| The current reality in the US is that people are
| routinely fired for even mentioning the concept of a
| union in the workplace. I agree that is against the ideal
| of free speech, but not the law as it exists.
|
| The thing I have noticed over the past year is that many
| of the same people who think it's great to fire people
| for collective action suddenly get very imaginative about
| free speech when it happens to people they agree with.
| ardfard wrote:
| There's free speech in legal term as coded in US
| constitution which have nothing to do with Non-US citizen
| like me. Then there's free speech as in universal value
| that every member of civilized modern society should
| uphold. I think GP is talking about the later.
| wrycoder wrote:
| Live and let live. Be nice. Above all, follow the golden
| rule.
|
| Consider the situation where someone else is making their
| views about you known to your boss.
| version_five wrote:
| I don't disagree with your premise (as a libertarian)
|
| But re:
|
| > I don't see any way to cancel Twitter mobs that doesn't
| itself uphold cancel culture and destroy liberty.
|
| You'll see many people here are suggesting that we just don't
| listen to the "mob". That would be a way to "cancel" them
| that is completely compatible with liberty.
| aisengard wrote:
| Okay, but people clearly do want to listen to the mob. Is
| the suggestion to cancel those people?
|
| It's hilarious that the pure libertarian approach is
| literally "do nothing".
| geofft wrote:
| I'd say ironic, more than hilarious.
|
| The libertarian approach absolutely does lead to
| progressivism because people, broadly defined, want
| progressivism. You have to take a narrow subset of
| society for the libertarian approach to be genuinely
| popular, or you have to abandon the pretense that you're
| optimizing for the good of all people. Don't take my word
| for it, listen to one of the most successful libertarians
| in recent history:
|
| https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-
| thiel/educatio...
|
| > _The 1920s were the last decade in American history
| during which one could be genuinely optimistic about
| politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare
| beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women
| -- two constituencies that are notoriously tough for
| libertarians -- have rendered the notion of "capitalist
| democracy" into an oxymoron. [...]_
|
| > _The critical question then becomes one of means, of
| how to escape not via politics but beyond it. Because
| there are no truly free places left in our world, I
| suspect that the mode for escape must involve some sort
| of new and hitherto untried process that leads us to some
| undiscovered country[...]_
|
| Thiel goes on to detail how his only hope of
| accomplishing libertarian ideals is by escaping to either
| cyberspace, outer space, or the sea, leaving behind all
| those people who if asked by libertarian _means_ would
| reject his _ideals_. (And he 's gone on to invest in
| companies like SpaceX that are working on bringing this
| plan to fruition.)
|
| The whole reason you get articles like this is because
| libertarianism can't survive on the merits, and so (apart
| from Thiel's approach of escape) they have to argue that
| people aren't playing by the rules, that somehow
| universities do not have the liberty to rescind
| invitations or that if they do it's because they're bad
| people. But they are playing by the rules and they're
| exercising their liberties.
| randallsquared wrote:
| > _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.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| No institution is going to sign a contract like that. There
| are more people who would be happy to speak at events like
| this than speaking slots. If you demand a contract that
| says "you can't disinvite me," they're just going to move
| to the next person on the list.
| still_grokking wrote:
| It would be simple if you would just shadow-ban those mobs.
|
| Then they can go to implode inside their own bubble. Nobody
| would get hurt.
|
| Giving those people a broad stage and all that publicity gives
| those mobs power in the first place.
|
| The problem is: Services like Twitter literary make money on
| any drama those mobs produce.
|
| As long as it's profitable to gather attention of the masses
| with whatever shit gets thrown at the fan there will be an
| incentive to give those mobs a big stage.
|
| Let's face it: The incentive to be a drama multiplier needs to
| disappear. As this won't happen in a natural way regulatory
| steps need to be taken. The whole business model of FB,
| Twitter, and Co. is obviously harmful to society so this whole
| business model needs to disappear. Case closed once and for
| all. Simple as that...
| karaterobot wrote:
| Neuter the power of Twitter mobs by not using Twitter. If you
| don't like a thing, don't hold your noise while doing it, just
| stop doing it. For many people, I know Twitter seems like it's
| an eternal, undying force that will never go away, and we must
| learn to live with it: it's not. I promise, it will die if you
| stop feeding it.
| josteink wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Don't play the losing game. Just don't be on Twitter.
| newbamboo wrote:
| Embrace the deplorables and cancel those who join in the mob.
| Just like Jesus showed us so many years ago.
| andrew_ wrote:
| Twitter mobs, [social media] mobs have exactly as much power as
| external entities are willing to grant them.
| ksec wrote:
| >Not a healthy precedent to set.
|
| May be a precedent for MIT. UCLA [1] already had theirs and
| many more who didn't get the press coverage.
|
| Luckily the Universities in UK have remain somewhat firm on the
| issue ( at least as far I am aware ) but are also under similar
| threat.
|
| I am also glad this is the top upvoted comment. It wasn't that
| long ago majority of HN were not on the same side, I think the
| big tech censorship, while often hard to pin point the right
| and wrong of it, was a wake up call to a lot of people.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28714431
| oefrha wrote:
| > I am also glad this is the top upvoted comment.
|
| This story is only two hours old. You have to wait, at least
| until the U.S. west coast wakes up and enters the ring.
| Stories like this often swing wildly.
|
| IIRC the top comment on the "GitHub, fuck your name change"
| article was reasonable from my point of view for a very long
| time, until eventually one telling us that using the word
| master somehow implies subconscious racism "won" (the saving
| grace is that most of its top replies vehemently disagreed
| with it).[1]
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26487854
| ksec wrote:
| Yes I deliberately left that point out and try not to
| provoke some ( or even more ) negative reaction.
|
| My thought and observation is that there are silent
| majority on HN who usually dont get into these sort of
| discussions but are now vaguely aware of the consequences.
|
| Also worth pointing out today is Sunday so on HN it tends
| to be a quiet day. Just like twitter as if anger only works
| from Monday to Friday.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| I wish there was a safe and convenient way for those of
| us who agree to meet and brainstorm how to improve the
| situation. But I'm not sure how to accomplish that.
| brightball wrote:
| I honestly wonder if Twitter mobs don't walk some line of
| actual harassment, especially when trying to close a business
| or get someone fired.
| api wrote:
| People need to learn that the nuts (of any belief system) are
| always the loudest, and therefore give a distorted impression
| of actual consensus.
|
| Who are the loudest people on the left? Mobs and trolls who
| imagine grievances everywhere, which is sort of the leftist
| equivalent of conspiracy theory.
|
| Who are the loudest on the right? Qanon, Nazis, and theocrats /
| dominionists who think we should return to Old Testament law.
| smolder wrote:
| The nuts on either side aren't the loudest by their own
| virtue. They are amplified by their opponents. "This is the
| left," say the right wingers, pointing to the easiest-to-
| criticize, most ill-informed example of a leftist... and vice
| versa.
| echopurity wrote:
| Top comment is about "neutering"? LMAO. The white boy
| insecurity is overwhelming in here.
|
| I should make another account, fuck up the echo chamber, and
| get banned again.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| 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).
| pjc50 wrote:
| Good to see HN is in favour of free speech today.
| bluescrn wrote:
| Twitter has been quite harmful to the idea of free speech.
| m0llusk wrote:
| This appears to be driven at a basic level by a desire for
| justice. Having had some thousands of years of experience with
| the quest for justice we can say with some level of certainty
| that effective justice seeking has some particular
| characteristics without which justice remains elusive.
|
| There must be a clear statement of the injustice which must be
| corrected. There should be a hearing where all involved can
| state their view of the situation. The accused should be
| allowed representation. Judgements should be made by persons
| who are at some level uninvolved with the conflict and
| committed to balanced interpretation of evidence. Any
| punishments should be related to the nature and scale of the
| injustice. And so on--of course someone with more direct
| experience could summarize this and make it happen better than
| I.
|
| The point is that mob justice is not justice and all you have
| to do is give it some basic rules and constraints and it either
| gets deflected or gathers up into something that has actual
| meaning.
| pjc50 wrote:
| This is basically it; the normal mechanisms don't work
| properly, and nobody in the mob has any faith that engaging
| with any formal process is going to achieve a result, so they
| complain in public.
|
| (This _specific_ incident sounds like a storm in a teacup,
| but there 's far more serious and less visible problems with
| racial discrimination in academia)
|
| Similar to #metoo. Reporting sexual harassment, assault and
| even rape quite often isn't taken seriously by either
| employers or the police. And in the entertainment industry
| there was a tacit understanding that reporting it would be a
| career-ending move. So the route that people have started
| taking is to complain _publicly_ , in an attempt to shield
| themselves from retaliation and compel the system to address
| the complaint.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| Dr. King put it best: "a riot is the language of the
| unheard."
|
| Some portion of the mob on Twitter is people chasing clout
| and performing social justice. For example: I've been
| attacked for "generalizing nonbinary people" by cis people
| while describing _my own experience as a nonbinary person_
| , so I don't doubt people like that drive a lot of the
| discussion, but the vast majority is sincere if sometimes
| misdirected anger at genuine powerlessness. A Twitter riot
| is much like a physical riot: some agitators, but mostly
| just angry people denied a voice taking one by force.
| Aunche wrote:
| >a riot is the language of the unheard
|
| The context of this quote is in a speech that is largely
| anti-riot. It's a warning to the government to not be
| complacent, but the woke left treats as if he was
| condoning rioters.
| voakbasda wrote:
| So what should we do when the government will not listen?
| Keep talking? A warning without the backing of
| consequences is not effective.
| [deleted]
| BurningFrog wrote:
| > _Dr. King put it best: "a riot is the language of the
| unheard."_
|
| Sometimes. It can also be the language of those who know
| they're powerful enough to do what they want.
|
| Classic example: Lynchings.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| I mentioned the segment of rioters who use it as a cover
| in the comment you replied to.
| alanlammiman wrote:
| yep, you need due process. Other replies referencing metoo
| and MLK make an excellent point - that mass movements are
| usually a response to 'due process' that is in practice
| deeply flawed and biased to the point that it is ineffective.
| But a) Unlike metoo and civil rights, afaik a formal process
| that even aspires to fairness to decide issues such as
| speaker cancellation doesn't exist in the first place, b)
| even in the case of issues like metoo, surely the ideal
| outcome is to fix the structural biases and flaws in the
| processes so they work in practice, rather than rely on ad
| hoc journalistic investigations indefinitely (aside from
| preventing such crimes from being committed in the first
| place, of course)
| inglor_cz wrote:
| 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 disinvited, and that the result is 14:10 to keep him.
|
| The Twitter mob cannot really do anything with such result, if
| individual voting behavior was anonymous.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > 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 cancel every mildly-left wing
| speaker for being a terrorist or supporting terrorism.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| 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.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| I am pretty sure the mob would go after the entire group:
| those who vote for it for voting for it, and those who didn't
| for being part of such a group.
| angelzen wrote:
| This may be part of the solution, though, as other mentioned,
| juries can also be pressured on Twitter.
|
| Part of the problem is that people with visible status engage
| in public harassment of their colleagues on Twitter with no
| consequences. Unless there is a cost for appalling behavior,
| the problem will continue to degenerate.
| brongondwana wrote:
| Unfortunately that last point is not strictly true so long as
| the mob can get their hands on the list of 24 people and then
| badger them to each make a public condemnation of the speaker
| or be assumed to be a wrongthinkist like the speaker, and
| hence one of those who voted incorrectly. So you'd better
| hope that the other 10 will stand strong and not out the 14
| wronguns in their mix.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Yes, nothing is foolproof, but badgering 24 people is quite
| a lot of work. One of the reason why Twitter mobs are so
| efficient is that they can concentrate on a single target
| or two without too much effort.
|
| Edit: also, the show where all 24 people ritually condemn
| the person while everyone fully knows that 14 of them voted
| "yea" would be absurd enough to make some people think
| twice.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| This is actually the first constructive idea I've heard that
| seems at all likely to address this issue in a just way
| without infringing on the free speech rights of the people
| protesting campus speakers. Well done.
|
| The one question I have here is whether the average member of
| MIT faculty would now thing that an anti-affirmative action
| essay would be beyond the pale. It doesn't seem too
| surprising to me if 50%+1 members of such a committee would
| still vote to withdraw an invitation from this guy. But at
| least you would be defocusing the external outrage campaign a
| little, which does not seem like a bad thing.
| birtoise wrote:
| Maybe there's no way to do it. Perhaps Twitter and other social
| networks were designed this way specifically to be immune to
| social control (and by consequence, to exerce social control)
| over well-established institutions.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| the problem is that prestigious institutions are run by
| bureaucrats wearing its skin. For example this article says
| "MIT buckled", when in reality some campus admin buckled
| because to them it's not worth risking their comfy job over a
| speaker. The bureaucrats have no skin in the game, they don't
| benefit from thinking about long term damage to MIT or society
| in general. From their perspective it's logical to bow to
| Twitter mobs and collect their paychecks
| text70 wrote:
| Why does this sound like, MIT doesn't know how to use
| rhetoric? Isn't that the point of their job as
| administration, to be the interface between the public and
| the institution?
| tekacs wrote:
| According to the upstream article posted in a sibling comment
| [1], the decision was made by the department head for EAPS,
| themselves a scientist AFAICT [2].
|
| That doesn't necessarily change anything (and I'm not
| weighing in here), but given your assertion it seemed worth
| pointing out.
|
| [1]: https://orgchart.mit.edu/node/6/letters_to_community/imp
| orta...
|
| [2]: https://eapsweb.mit.edu/people/hilst
| ta988 wrote:
| Most department heads are administrators doing subpar
| research and collecting money on both sides.
| [deleted]
| motohagiography wrote:
| A pervasive lack of backbone among individuals in
| institutions is key to this. The shunning and shaming tactics
| used by online mobs are a very particular form of human
| aggression. Speculating on a correlating factor among the
| people in these institutions who seem so consistently
| vulnerable to it may be itself, problematic, but it's as
| though the organizations are missing anyone with the instinct
| to challenge or deflect hysterical twitter mobbings, and
| where we are now is a result of that absence of resistance at
| all.
| clairity wrote:
| > "A pervasive lack of backbone among individuals in
| institutions is key to this."
|
| the raison d'etre of most organizations, particularly
| bureaucracies, is to hide decisions behind a shield of
| indirection, to deflect individual responsibility
| elsewhere, which selects for and conditions the spineless.
| that those folks, when the spotlight shines on them, will
| cave, is thoroughly unsurprising.
| freebreakfast wrote:
| The most memorable example of "lack of backbone" for myself
| was Evergreen State College president, George Bridges.
|
| There was a large protest in 2017. The administration met
| to discuss the situation. Students prevented the
| administrators from leaving the meeting room unless they
| had an escort to ensure the administrators came to a
| resolution.
|
| The president mentioned his need to use the restroom to one
| of the protest leaders. The student responded, "Hold
| it."[0] He finally went to the restroom a couple of minutes
| later, but he was escorted by some of the protesting
| students.[1]
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/Msfsp5Ofz4g?t=290
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/Msfsp5Ofz4g?t=455
| WalterBright wrote:
| If a person physically prevented me from going to the
| restroom, I'd press kidnapping charges.
| akomtu wrote:
| It's not gonna work. Those who organise this activity
| have enough influence to convince AG to ignore your case.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I'd politely ask the person holding me prisoner for his
| name, and if he doesn't step aside I'll inform him that
| I'll be charging him with kidnapping. Regardless of what
| the AG does.
|
| After all, what do you think will happen to you if you
| hold someone prisoner?
| gruez wrote:
| >I'd politely ask the person holding me prisoner for his
| name
|
| "no"
|
| >and if he doesn't step aside I'll inform him that I'll
| be charging him with kidnapping
|
| You, as an individual can't charge people criminally.
| Civil suit is an option, but I suspect you won't get much
| in the way of financial compensation from a broke college
| student.
|
| >After all, what do you think will happen to you if you
| hold someone prisoner?
|
| Infliction of violence? Even if the AG doesn't make your
| life a nightmare, the optics might be bad enough that
| you'll lose your job.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > You, as an individual can't charge people criminally.
|
| I can press charges. Violently holding people prisoner is
| a felony. It's not a joke.
|
| > I suspect you won't get much in the way of financial
| compensation from a broke college student.
|
| It'll be enough to matter to him. Future wages can be
| garnished.
|
| > you'll lose your job
|
| I don't want a job where I'm required to be a
| milquetoast.
| semiquaver wrote:
| Individuals cannot press charges, only a prosecutor
| vested with the authority of the state may file charges.
| This is an extremely common misconception largely
| generated from popular media. Individuals can report a
| crime to the police, cooperate with prosecutors, and sue
| privately.
|
| https://www.thsh.com/criminal-justice-insider/as-seen-on-
| tv-...
| akomtu wrote:
| You may call them kidnappers for blocking a door in a
| public space, they'll accuse you of assault and file a
| lawsuit too (and unlike you, they'll have many buddies
| witnesses). The judge will dismiss both suits and tell
| you to not waste the court's time.
| WalterBright wrote:
| They'll be on video because I'll have my phone out and
| recording.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Lack of evidence is not the issue. A more fruitful line
| of questioning is starting with "What function do courts
| server and for whom?"
| h2odragon wrote:
| At that point, somebody should get pissed on.
| ng12 wrote:
| It's shocking, really. The blood-and-guts types are a
| dying breed, unfortunately.
| lazyeye wrote:
| These are the kinds of institutions that like to tell others
| how to think and behave.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _How do we neuter the power of Twitter mobs?_
|
| Ignore their demands (as an enterprise, business, institution,
| government, etc.), mock and derise their members (as a
| society), and stop publicizing them (as media).
| voakbasda wrote:
| So, we deplatform them? Tit for tat.
| josteink wrote:
| They can have the platform. We just don't need to care
| about it.
| zeckalpha wrote:
| 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.
| AwaAwa wrote:
| Is there a paradox in 'intolerance'? Or do you mean the
| 'paradox of tolerance'?
| zeckalpha wrote:
| I do not.
|
| The Paradox of Intolerance is expecting that you get to be
| intolerant of others while not expecting others to be
| intolerant of you.
| tomp wrote:
| We all should.
|
| I'm generally very "pacifist" (not that this is violence, but
| I don't like attacking people in _any_ sense of the word) and
| "live-and-let-live" on principle, but I also follow the _"
| reverse golden rule"_ - i.e. I assume others are following
| the golden rule. Therefore:
|
| _Bullies deserve to be bullied_ (and, yes, let 's call out
| this behaviour by what it is - _bullying_ ).
| Jensson wrote:
| In most cases the right thing to do is to ignore the
| intolerant. They benefit from a divided society with lots of
| hate, the less hate the less power the intolerant instigators
| have. Sometimes you need to put them into prison to protect
| others, but as Popper said we should leave that option only
| as a last resort since ultimately intolerance breeds more
| intolerance so it isn't a good way to create a tolerant
| society.
| devdas wrote:
| Ah yes, cancel those who want to cancel the intolerant.
|
| It does help to think of tolerance as a peace treaty.
| wrycoder wrote:
| Don't you mean, "Cancel those who want to cancel the
| tolerant."
|
| The post to which you responded said, "Only cancel the
| cancellors."
| devdas wrote:
| Ah yes, I misread the parent as desiring to cancel the
| people demanding cancellation of the intolerant.
| wrycoder wrote:
| Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies discussed
| this problem.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| Hard to imagine a legal approach that does not impermissibly
| infringe on the free association rights of all the various
| participants. The question is whether any other mechanism would
| be sufficient. If Twitter were interested, they could do
| something to inhibit the flow of the outrage mechanism, but
| there are strong free speech arguments against doing this. Also
| it is of course not in Twitter's own best interest.
|
| If we rule out government and Twitter's action, the next idea
| is to convince enough mob participants themselves that it's not
| a good idea. This actually does seem feasible. I mean cancel
| culture itself is only five or six years old, at least as we
| think if it today. Another broad shift in perspective seems
| possible.
| nradov wrote:
| Twitter management stopped caring about free speech years
| ago. They are no longer the "free speech wing of the free
| speech party". Instead they actively promote a particular
| brand of US progressive politics, and ban anyone who steps
| out of line.
|
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/05/twitter-steps-down-
| fre...
| zapita wrote:
| This article is about Twitter complying with Russian and
| Pakistani court orders. What's the connection to "US
| progressive politics"?
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| I'm not saying Twitter cares about free speech. I'm saying
| that if _we_ do, there 's probably not much we can do
| legally to address this situation.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Given the amount of right-wing tripe I find in my twitter
| feed, I'm going to say that Twitter doesn't ban people who
| don't agree with progressive politics. I think the only
| ideology they really have is money.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| It's Twitter. Free speech does not apply. Get this out of
| your heads.
|
| If you're in Twitters house you play by their rules.
| angelzen wrote:
| Dorian Abbot's crime was writing an op-ed in Newsweek. He
| did not enter Twitter's house, Twitter went after him.
|
| https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/mit-abandons-its-mission-
| an...
|
| https://www.newsweek.com/diversity-problem-campus-
| opinion-16...
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| Yes . . . that was my point. There is not a _legislatable_
| way to compel Twitter to stop this behavior without
| violating Twitter 's and protestors' free speech rights.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| No. I'm saying nothing that twitter can do would infringe
| on freedom of speech.
|
| Freedom of speech means that the government cannot
| prevent people from saying something.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| > No. I'm saying nothing that twitter can do would
| infringe on freedom of speech.
|
| I understand that that's what you're saying. But you're
| responding to my comment implying that I'm disagreeing
| with that point of view, which I did not.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Just shadow-ban any instigator, or give them an audience of 5
| people. There are an unlimited number of options related to
| reach.
| kodah wrote:
| The problem is that _some amount of people_ think this is
| activism. I call it amateur activism. As long as people find
| this to be an acceptable form of activism it will still go on,
| and anyone you hold accountable within the mob for their
| actions will be considered a martyr.
|
| I'm a veteran, there's a ton of outrageous posts I can make on
| social media that might gain traction. The fact is, those kind
| of actions don't really fuel any kind of partnership between me
| and people on the other side of what I perceive as a problem.
| It does fuel fear though, fear in administrators and
| representatives that they could be unhirable in a capitalist
| economy where your desirability as a worker is tantamount to
| your existence. I don't really desire a paradigm where I'm
| threatening someones life for my own desires and happiness. So,
| instead, I pay professional activists to help by being part of
| the discussions I don't want to have with people, and more
| importantly remove potentially tenuous discussions and
| convincing I'd have to do of regular people who don't
| understand the veteran world or experience. They're called
| lobbyists.
| tasogare wrote:
| > How do we neuter the power of Twitter mobs?
|
| Ignore them. They have no power except the one you allow them
| to have on you.
| ggreer wrote:
| I ignore them but my employer doesn't.
| farmerstan wrote:
| I think Dave Chappelle and Joe Rogan are setting the standard
| for ignoring cancel culture, and are being rewarded for it. I
| think most moderate people are sick of cancel culture and will
| support those that won't buckle to it.
| ta988 wrote:
| I only hope these will not be the voices of the opposition of
| cancel culture. As much as I don't want to see cancellations
| like that, I found that these two are not elevating the
| debate either.
| ch33zer wrote:
| The twitter mob in this case could have a legitimate impact on
| MIT donations. Quoting a tweet included in the article:
|
| As an alum, I'm asking you to fix this--now. Totally
| unacceptable and sends a message to any student that isn't a
| white man that they don't matter and that EAPS isn't serious
| about (and is actively hostile towards) DEI
|
| Presumably MIT cares what it's alums care about since they are
| a major source of donations. I express no opinion on anything
| else in the article, just that alums being mad is a negative
| outcome for MIT.
| angelzen wrote:
| 1 dude making wild claims on Twitter != MIT alums.
| downandout wrote:
| The only way to dampen the toxic impact of social media's
| radical vocal minority on the real world is to create tools
| that help decision makers easily contrast what they are seeing
| there with overall sentiment in the real world. In this case,
| 74% of Americans agree with the views that got this speech
| canceled. Had administrators been able to instantly see this
| fact when they saw all the angry tweets, perhaps they would
| have realized that the uproar they were seeing online was
| incongruous with the views of people in the real world.
|
| I wrote and run a DeFi arbitrage bot for a living. There are
| hundreds of thousands of "pair" contracts to trade given coins
| through. The prices in different pairs for the same coin can
| vary wildly, as pairs only see their own balances, and can thus
| only make pricing decisions based on the rules and information
| within their own little silo. Arbitrage bots like mine make a
| profit by quickly balancing coin ratios among all pairs, which
| ultimately lowers the risk that a retail trader will pay an
| outlandish price for a given coin from a given pair.
|
| We need the equivalent of arbitrage bots that can help balance
| the views of radicals on social media with those in the real
| world. They have tried this with fact checking, but
| unfortunately that, too, has been weaponized by biased actors.
| There has to be a better way that is provably unbiased.
| peter_retief wrote:
| Not just on twitter the mob is alive and well on HN.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| "Apparently they dragged me on Twitter. I don't give a fuck,
| because Twitter is not a real place." - Dave Chappelle
|
| I also enjoyed this recent article from _The Atlantic_
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/disinforma...
| cyberpsybin wrote:
| Ban twitter and tiktok
| ncann wrote:
| Why Tiktok? 95%+ of these incidents came from Twitter. FB,
| Tiktok, Instagram, for all their shortcomings, is rarely the
| place where these incidents happen.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Delay showing a public post P from person X to viewer Y until
| time T has passed, T defined as a time proportional how long a
| physical letter from X to Y would take to travel.
| angelzen wrote:
| Bring back friction into the world.
| abacadaba wrote:
| Hold twitter accountable for harm caused by their 'trending'
| algorithm?
| lugged wrote:
| You know Twitter is not a real place right?
| brylie wrote:
| The Internet, and all existing services, is based in physical
| locations, subject to local and international laws, governed
| by the decisions of real people with diverse motivations, and
| capable of influencing real-world outcomes on many scales.
| lugged wrote:
| I don't have an account, what are you gonna do? @ my name?
| tux3 wrote:
| You posted "k.", and then edited it into this comment,
| but both of those are very low-effort.
|
| If Twitter had no impact on the real world whatsoever, do
| you think everyone else would be writing so much about
| it?
| lugged wrote:
| Wasnt sure how to respond, sue me.
|
| My original post was a reference, I guess ya'll haven't
| caught the special yet.
| arp242 wrote:
| 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.
| lugged wrote:
| Is that one they or many they?
|
| Why should I care what they say?
| arp242 wrote:
| 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.
| papandada wrote:
| I do hope Dave Chappelle might start a trend of "ignore
| Twitter and suffer no consequences"
| ta988 wrote:
| I do hope we would all move on to better things than those
| massive social networks. They have impacted really
| negatively the lives of many around me, and continue to do
| so.
| exar0815 wrote:
| Well, we might know, but the people in charge choose to
| ignore it. Shitstorms only have power because the people in
| power believe they have.
| xwdv wrote:
| 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.
| lugged wrote:
| 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.
| xwdv wrote:
| Nope. Those things just treat symptoms, not the cause.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > 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.
| wepple wrote:
| 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.
| pessimizer wrote:
| They don't have any power, other than to annoy the
| institution. The only power here is the power that MIT has
| over the people they book to speak, and since MIT doesn't
| want to be annoyed, they canceled the speaker.
|
| The problem with cancel culture is a problem with bad
| employment law, and a problem with cultural institutions
| without any core ethical beliefs.
| AwaAwa wrote:
| The paradox of ethical relativism. Seems to run parallel
| with the paradox of tolerance.
| no-dr-onboard wrote:
| I agree. Absolutionistic ethics, of which I am a
| proponent of, would largely throw out "the paradox of
| tolerance".
|
| Cancel culture serves to highlight the inevitable
| orthodoxies that arise from proponents of "the paradox of
| tolerance". Ultimately people need to ask themselves, "By
| what standard?"
| jwond wrote:
| > They don't have any power, other than to annoy the
| institution. The only power here is the power that MIT
| has over the people they book to speak, and since MIT
| doesn't want to be annoyed, they canceled the speaker.
|
| The ability to get others to do what you want them to is
| absolutely a form of power.
| whatshisface wrote:
| I can't believe that Twitter culture has this much power
| but they're using it all on cancelling MIT speakers and
| not even trying to improve US policy.
| Gigachad wrote:
| They don't have any power over the government or the
| average US voter. They only have power over random
| corporate employees and universities.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It's Brownian-cancel culture, a random walk of cancels
| just to see what happens...
| abacadaba wrote:
| mobs aren't known for being logical
| angelzen wrote:
| A large number of US universities make signing a DEI
| statement a precondition for employment. Some also
| require an annual progress report on DEI targets. Dorian
| Abbot had the temerity to propose an alternate framework,
| MFE. Some factions can't tolerate alternative
| perspectives, and thus Dorian had to be cancelled.
|
| https://www.newsweek.com/diversity-problem-campus-
| opinion-16...
| api wrote:
| Institutions and especially businesses have always bent to
| the will of the mob when it is cheap or even profitable to
| do so.
|
| The only time they don't is when it costs something.
| version_five wrote:
| The more decoupled an organization's or its leaders'
| incentives are from the "market" - the more risk averse
| they become. Everything is about keeping your head down and
| avoiding controversy.
|
| The goal for many orgs now is not to make customers happy
| anymore, it's to avoid the ire of a small group, and keep
| rent seeking.
|
| As we move towards post-capitalism this will only get
| worse.
| hallway_monitor wrote:
| Nobody ever got fired for canceling a controversial
| speaker
| hanklazard wrote:
| This is basically the problem, as I see it.
|
| On one hand, keep the speaker. The potential downside:
| social media outrage that may escalate and get covered on
| MSM if it gets big enough. You and your dept / uni get a
| lot of bad press or if things go really sideways, your
| job could be on the line.
|
| The potential upside of this decision? People go to a
| talk and consider some issues, but it's not like you (the
| committee / administrator / dean etc) get any real
| tangible incentive from this outcome. You basically just
| did your job, if you're lucky, everyone just moves on.
|
| On the other hand, cancel the speaker. The upside: MSM
| will congratulate you or ignore it, but regardless,
| you'll be seen as making the "right" decision by most
| people you interact with. Some free speech types (a dying
| breed it seems) might get upset but they don't seem to
| have much power over the general public's perception or
| decisions about firing made by the university.
|
| So the decision is obvious and it's the one that gets
| made time and time again. And it's the way the Twitter
| mobs continue to hold sway, especially because so much of
| the MSM lives on Twitter.
|
| A similar rubric occurs in a large corporation by the C
| suite. Once the mob forms, there is everything to lose
| and almost nothing to lose by taking a stand on an issue
| seen as unwoke. If this is to change, incentives need to
| change, mainly creating disincentives for cowardly execs
| / deans and incentives for those who make principled
| and/or courageous stands.
|
| (None of this is a carte blanche endorsement against
| activism, it's just to say that there are reasons that no
| one stands up against Twitter mobs and we may want to
| explore ways to change this dynamic unless we desire a
| future ruled by mobs)
| coldtea wrote:
| They should.
| snek_case wrote:
| 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.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > llegal to fire someone over a twitter mob [...] Anti-
| lynching laws
|
| Are you really comparing getting fired from your job to a
| lynching? Because one of them seems a whole lot less
| serious than the other...
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| I think there some subliminal need for people to mention
| lynching when it's innapropriate. Happens far too much to
| be coincidence.
|
| Guy gets protested because he says 'providing support for
| historically discriminated-against groups in America is
| just like the Nazi regime' and you can almost guarantee
| someone is going to call it a lynching. I initially
| thought people were doing it to be intentionally
| provocative, but it appears to be some unintended
| impulse, probably the same 'imp of the perverse' thing
| that drove the initial guy to bring the Nazis into a
| discussion about affirmative-action as if that was going
| to add some clarity to his approach to the topic.
| ewindal wrote:
| Who told you that you can only compare things of equal
| severity? That would maje comparisons largely useless.
| beakerbreaker wrote:
| Nobody was lynched here so anti-lynching law would not
| apply. Given we're discussing mobs getting riled up over
| the wrongs of the "other", it also seems appropriate to
| place the actual outcome in a less exaggerated way.
| snek_case wrote:
| Kind of ironic that people are getting offended over my
| choice of words here, but we could call these anti-mob or
| anti-bullying laws instead. The point remains, it might
| make sense to make it illegal for institutions to fire
| people over the call of a mob.
| dudul wrote:
| They surely are not equal, but I find them very
| comparable. When twitter mobs try to get people fired
| they're trying to prevent them from making a living, what
| are they after? Do they want the target to kill
| tthemselves?
|
| Also "comparing" by definition can be done between any 2
| things, even if they don't have the same "value". I can
| compare oranges and dogs if I want to.
| ResearchCode wrote:
| Yes, they are very comparable. One tries to kill you
| outright, one tries to kill you by starvation or drive
| you to suicide.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Are you really comparing getting fired from your job
| to a lynching?_
|
| Blacks used to get fired (or not hired) from jobs, or
| thrown out of towns and establishments for being black on
| the demand of racist white mobs.
|
| Is that serious enough for someone to make a comparison
| with a historical issue like lynching, or it should
| involve a hanging too?
|
| Lynchings didn't always involve death, sometimes it was
| "just" beatings, not to mention the term has had a
| metaphorical issue for collective violence/threats, even
| merely verbal, for a century now.
|
| And the "right to work" (not to mention feed yourself and
| your family) is as important as the right to live.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Lynching was part of a framework of racial terror that
| kept (and by its legacies, continues to keep) black
| people from attaining social and economic equality. I'd
| say that _very_ few things meet a sufficient standard for
| comparison with lynching, least of which is the
| occasional (and generally management-class or higher)
| white person losing their job.
|
| > And the "right to work" (not to mention feed yourself
| and your family) is as important as the right to live.
|
| "Right to work," at least in the US, is a series of laws
| designed to curtail labor rights by weakening unions
| (i.e., the institutions that usually keep people in their
| jobs, particularly in at-will countries like the US). Are
| you sure that's what you meant?
| newbamboo wrote:
| Before lynching were stonings. Bob Dylan said that he
| wouldn't feel so all alone, if everybody got stoned. He
| was on too something.
| ResearchCode wrote:
| Yes, it is largely a labor law issue. Twitter mob is not
| just cause for terminating the employment of someone.
| Using anti-defamation laws against individual bullies is
| another possibility.
| ghaff wrote:
| In general, in the US, there doesn't need to be a "just
| cause." Someone has become a headache or embarrassment
| for us--for whatever unprotected reason--is sufficient.
| coldtea wrote:
| In the US sodomy was a crime too. Laws can change. Labour
| law is not written in stone.
|
| And even with current laws, where there "need not be a
| just cause", there are protections against unjust causes
| (e.g. because they found out you're jewish, or you're
| fat, or whatever) and "because a mob campaigned against
| one" can be added to that. "But, under current law the
| business could just say they fired them for their own
| neutral reasons?" Sure. Let them defend that in a
| lawsuit, if it happened to coincide with a mob campaign.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| You're arguing for something that in all likelihood
| requires a constitutional amendment.
|
| Anti discrimination clauses only overrule the first
| amendments freedom of association due to the equal
| protection clause, and there's no reading that suggests
| that firing someone due to public pressure is implicitly
| discrimination.
| shkkmo wrote:
| And what about twitter mobs that point out legitimate
| fireable offenses (like police brutality )? Would the
| fact that a twitter mob raised the issue help prevent the
| legitimatw firing?
| still_grokking wrote:
| But there is than the next obstacle in the US system: You
| need to have very deep pockets to actually take a case in
| court. "Justice" is only available to the rich in the US.
| (And this doesn't seem to be a construction error if you
| look closer. But that's another topic).
| ResearchCode wrote:
| Other countries have unions that will handle those cases
| for the laid-off employee. Doesn't work perfectly but
| it's another idea worth considering.
| kodah wrote:
| > "Justice" is only available to the rich in the US.
|
| I disagree. I think we can all agree the government has a
| monopoly on violence which it is relatively inclined to
| use. The US system depends on the idea that someone will
| challenge the use of that monopoly in their particular
| instance, which we call precedent. It is true that people
| not-of-means may be subject to that violence unjustly but
| it only takes the government messing with the wrong
| person once to establish precedent. The wrong person
| could be rich but they could also just be a person who
| catches public support.
| ta988 wrote:
| It is much more complicated when someone is tenured, and
| there was a reason academics were protected by that (but
| it is thinning now).
| ghaff wrote:
| Right. Hence, "in general." Getting rid of a tenured
| faculty member is _much_ trickier than getting rid of
| some junior corporate employee.
| Causality1 wrote:
| Probably not a large organization, but plenty for a small
| to medium one. The case of Tripwire Interactive is a good
| recent case study.
| refurb wrote:
| Precisely.
|
| Just because you have a Twitter account doesn't mean your
| ideas or opinions are well thought out, rationale or even
| coherent.
| tsss wrote:
| I would argue the opposite is the case. What political
| opinion expressible in less than 500 characters can be
| worth listening to?
| fighterpilot wrote:
| It's not that simple. We have a collective action problem.
| The first mover sticks out like a sore thumb (or tall poppy)
| and takes all the heat from the mob. If everyone
| simultaneously became sensible and simultaneously refused to
| bend to the mob, the problem would go away, but it's
| difficult for heterogeneous agents to coordinate in this way.
| Being brave and taking the first step entails a lot of
| private cost and a lot of public benefit, which is why so few
| choose to do it.
| zeven7 wrote:
| I don't understand why this isn't the norm. It seems obvious
| that if you ignore them, they'll go away. But nobody's trying
| it.
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| Exactly. Considering Twitter accounts and likes and retweet's
| can be bought amplifying a particular message might only
| represent less than 10 actual people.
|
| Additionally I've never discussed with someone in real life,
| person to person, about a single Twitter "cancelation"
| effort. If these issues were truly significant, they would
| engage the (actual) media, engage (in this case) with
| official university complaint systems, etc.
|
| These things take more time and effort than retweeting a
| hashtag though, and most people won't follow through with it.
| Which tells me they're really not all that bothered about it
| in the first place.
| dartharva wrote:
| >Stop listening to them?
|
| You can, but institutions and businesses won't. That's the
| entire problem.
| effingwewt wrote:
| To quote[1] Dave Chappelle- 'Twitter's not a real place.'
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kS-E6VtD_rE
| silisili wrote:
| Exactly. To quote Dave Chappelle, out of context to avoid
| further debate...
|
| "...they dragged me on Twitter. Well I don't give a fuck
| because Twitter isn't a real place."
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| Well, what if Netflix had comments and likes?
| rdtwo wrote:
| Use the same Twitter mob to target and destroy the spineless
| administrators what made the decision in the first place.
| phtrivier wrote:
| It's possible to assume that most twitter mobs are harmless
| and insignificant.
|
| The problem is that once in a while, the twitter mobs becomes
| the yellow jackets.
|
| So you need a way to jauge how likely it is that the keyword-
| activists will get up over a particular topic.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Seems like a very simple solution. I struggle to see any
| material effect to MIT had they simply ignored these
| complainers.
| civilized wrote:
| Many such cases. That's why we need to look more closely at
| why the professional administrative class so eagerly does
| the wishes of activist mobs.
|
| Could it be that the activists and the administrators
| believe the same things?
| pessimizer wrote:
| They do the wishes of right-wing activist mobs, too, and
| the original victims of campus "cancel culture" were
| Palestinians.
|
| Could it be that the administrators believe in nothing?
| [deleted]
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Or the admin feel like they are taking the easiest way
| out? But if I was an admin, the easier thing would be to
| ignore it.
| AwaAwa wrote:
| I thought it was because, if the mob doesn't get their
| way, they single out the 'admins' as the next target. At
| least that's what I remember before I cut out on
| following twitter as a first party platform.
| civilized wrote:
| It's very conceivable, but I haven't seen any examples in
| a long time, if ever.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| That could be part of it. According to surveys the
| administrators are _very_ left-wing, even more than the
| professors who are already almost completely left-wing
| themselves.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Yeah. Over the years I've seen a number of incidents
| where (someone in) the Harvard administration assumes
| that the student body, professors, and alumni universally
| share their view that Affirmative Action is an
| unquestionable good and then gets caught off guard when
| this turns out not to be the case.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| I had the same thought. Maybe the mob is just the excuse
| the administrators can point to to do what they wanted to
| do already. Perhaps they both understand their role.
| SteveDR wrote:
| Or administrators don't want the mob's fight to be
| amplified into mainstream national news. I'm sure this
| would upset donors.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Are these "mobs" organized (which by definition flirts with
| _not_ being a mob)? Or do they manifest and are fed by the
| algorythm? Or a bit of both?
|
| The point being, there seems to be a steady stream things that
| get a free pass. On the other hand, seemingly random - and
| often less impactful - things / people get canceled. Mind you,
| the media is often guilty of the same disconnect. But they too
| are driven by engagement and profit.
| akomtu wrote:
| There are a few rich people who's sponsoring this by running
| "open foundations" that donate (or not donate) to
| universities and legislatures. MIT's got addicted to
| recurring donations, so the big contributors can tell MIT how
| to run things. Same story with mob leaders who are in it for
| the money. The rank and file mob members do it for free,
| though (for feeling being right and being part of something
| big and important).
|
| If the end beneficiaries change their mind, or find another
| hobby, this "movement" will fold overnight without donations.
| ghaff wrote:
| Or just someone who made a stupid joke or otherwise set off
| someone with enough followers. The corresponding antibody
| reaction of a lot of institutions, especially companies, is to
| make the offending thing go away before the next news cycle--
| especially if the person involved isn't senior. Easier to fire
| someone than have to publicly defend their behavior. And, if
| the organization is going to take any other sort of material
| action, might as well fire the person anyway as they're done
| with the organization.
| mattlondon wrote:
| Just don't read it - be the better person and just rise above
| it.
|
| These opinions are not new - they existed before Twitter was a
| thing. Just now the opinions have a platform that amplifies
| their visibility.
|
| As the quote goes, the only winning move is not to play.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| I already don't read Twitter, and yet the MIT admins
| "buckled." It looks like not reading it doesn't actually
| accomplish much real world change.
| dustintrex wrote:
| 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.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| This is a free speech context right so surely the answer is to
| convince the mobs that this current approach is counter-
| productive?
|
| Edit: I'm also unsure if this was caused by people on Twitter
| or staff and students at MIT who are also on Twitter. It seems
| like the latter is more correct and the Twitter side of things
| might be a red herring.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| I don't think you can really reason with left-wing
| authoritarians. They have a lower than average verbal
| intelligence and authoritarian personality traits as well as
| a higher chance of dark triad traits (narcissism mostly but
| also psychopathy) according to psychology research into them.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| I don't think it's been confirmed that these people are
| left wing authoritarians. It also seems like a dangerous
| way to think about this as a problem rationally. You're
| basically deciding the facts of the matter outside of any
| actual evidence or argument.
|
| Further writing people off sounds pretty authoritarian.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| I regret making such a sweeping statement. I do think
| there are many decent people that get caught up in the
| cancel mob who are primarily motivated by genuine
| egalitarianism, and these people can surely be reasoned
| with.
|
| However, at the same time I do believe that some (perhaps
| a small minority) of the agitators are cynically
| motivated by narcissism and sadism, and there's quite a
| bit of research which points in this direction. For
| example, the close connection between virtue signalling
| and grandiose narcissism. Reasoning with this particular
| subset (however small they may be) is probably not going
| to be productive because their actions aren't coming from
| a place of real egalitarianism.
| ta988 wrote:
| That's the problem people on all colors of the political
| spectrum, followers are influenced by minorities with too
| much rage and anger. Sometimes this rage and anger comes
| from an important societal issue, but that's not an
| excuse for shitty behavior you wouldn't like the another
| political opinonated mob to use.
| wussboy wrote:
| Neuter Twitter.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Start collecting data projecting the actual harm these people
| can cause if stood up to. I suspect it's minimal if analyzed
| rigorously. Then publish it. Promote it to data analysts. Blow
| away the paper tiger.
| civilized wrote:
| 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._
| lugged wrote:
| A mission driven school? Sort of like Evergreen State?
| civilized wrote:
| 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.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| I agree but for a different reason: you're probably gonna get a
| better education than in most of these football down in the
| goonies universities. If football is what drives the funding
| and the students guess what drives the priorities as well?
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| It can actually be good to go to a football school if its
| large enough. That wing of the university prints money to
| support all the other branches that otherwise would be
| starved of funding. Ironically, its probably disinterest
| liberal arts students who benefit the most from their
| school's football program. Ohio State is very much a football
| school and it has great academics especially in engineering,
| business, cancer research, a national leader in agricultural
| sciences too, with brand new buildings all over its massive
| campus. Other public schools in the great lakes region that
| aren't in the B1G ten football conference look like satellite
| campuses by comparison.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Trying to remember the source of the quote that basically says
| that whenever you try to open a "free speech" area to protect
| from illiberal witch hunts, you end up with a community of like
| 3 principled libertarians and ten thousand witches.
|
| Difficult for me to imagine some sort of "mission driven
| school", especially advertised as a counterpoint to elite
| University cancel culture, didn't just turn into just as much
| of an illiberal institution, but just with a hard
| right/conservative bias.
| civilized wrote:
| Here are some schools that endorse the Chicago Statement on
| Freedom of Expression: https://www.thefire.org/chicago-
| statement-university-and-fac...
|
| It's a diverse mix of state universities and a few elite
| private ones. No right-wing captured institutions as far as I
| can tell.
|
| Being right-wing is not even a positive indicator for liberal
| values and support of free speech, IMO. Right wingers just
| cancel people for different reasons. Liberal values are not
| on the left-right spectrum in 2021, if they ever were.
| teddyh wrote:
| The quote you are thinking of is from the Slate Star Codex
| article " _Neutral vs. Conservative: The Eternal Struggle_ "
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-
| conservativ...
|
| "The moral of the story is: if you're against witch-hunts,
| and you promise to found your own little utopian community
| where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will
| end up consisting of approximately three principled civil
| libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible
| place to live _even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong_."
| iammisc wrote:
| > Difficult for me to imagine some sort of "mission driven
| school", especially advertised as a counterpoint to elite
| University cancel culture, didn't just turn into just as much
| of an illiberal institution, but just with a hard
| right/conservative bias.
|
| Perhaps what we perceive as a 'conservative' bias is just
| what centrist discourse used to be like before the twitter
| mobs?
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| Before Twitter conservative religious groups in the United States
| had and used such power to get those ideas and people they didn't
| like censored. This isn't a new thing brought about by Twitter,
| it is just more noticeable these days.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Which opens the question, is it a good thing that a tool like
| twitter is able to make these groups voices much more noticably
| amplified? It was one thing when this stuff was limited to the
| AM bands of radio or tabloids that everyone knew were nuts. Now
| we have given these people the equivalent platform of anyone
| else and there's no learned cultural knowledge to ignore these
| voices like we've learned to do with AM radio crazies, since
| its being amplified on the same platform used by even the POTUS
| and all sorts of official sources of communication which acts
| as a signal of legitimacy for a lot of people buying into this
| crap.
|
| With platforms like twitter we've in effect removed editors
| from the paper of record and let anyone contribute articles,
| which has turned it into a tabloid rag at best and outright
| propaganda at worst, but guised as where legitimate truths are
| found since officials and legitimate businesses and
| professionals have sanctified the platform with their own use.
| brrt wrote:
| If you tolerate this, then your children will be next....
| pessimizer wrote:
| My children are at no risk of having their MIT speaking gigs
| canceled because of their public positions on race-influenced
| admissions policies.
| why_is_it_good wrote:
| And they better not think about it, lest they think wrong and
| end up in the situation OP mentioned and you chose to
| dismiss.
| oogabooga123 wrote:
| They are at risk of being canceled because of positions you
| are teaching them that _currently_ seems reasonable to you.
| dgellow wrote:
| At what point should this kind of social media bullying be
| considered as actual harassment? I personally cannot see the
| difference with the brigading 4chan or some toxic Reddit
| communities do to attack people. This type of attack always seem
| wrong, should not be given any weight or power, or tolerated
| IMHO.
| nimbius wrote:
| just for clarification, the speaker has a newsweek peace that
| rails against diversity, equality, and inclusion as a sinister
| regime that actually works against diversity and actually hurts
| the public trust. he then goes on to insist universities are
| 'diverse' enough, so dont worry about them. his citations
| are...tentative at best.
|
| https://www.newsweek.com/diversity-problem-campus-opinion-16...
|
| The guy also made a godwin claim about race and college
| admissions earlier in his career, so its probably fair to say
| that no matter how insightful any of your research is on climate
| change no one wants to give you the platform because your
| comprehension of social sciences is antithetical to the reason we
| care about climate change in the first place.
| rscoots wrote:
| How would you respond to this point then by the author?
|
| >If every cringeworthy analogy to the Third Reich were grounds
| for canceling talks, hundreds of professors--and thousands of
| op-ed columnists--would no longer be welcome on campus.
| morelisp wrote:
| It's a weak argument. First, there's a big gap between
| "canceling talks" and "no longer welcome on campus."
| Secondly, it's not like it was a recanted off-the-cuff remark
| or an ill-advised mailing list post dredged up from his grad
| student days - he published it in a national periodical[1]
| not two months ago. This _at least_ suggests he 's not a good
| communicator.
|
| [1] With all the usual caveats about Newsweek today being a
| weird semi-propaganda arm of The Community and not
| particularly reputable despite its brand and reach. If that's
| the place you go to get published, maybe that's already a
| sign you don't have the banger essay you thought you did.
| rscoots wrote:
| You'll admit that the category of 'anyone who has compared
| mainstream American politics to Nazism in a published
| article' is a pretty wide net though?
|
| Although we find it distasteful it seems to be a pretty
| common refrain/analogy of those in politics & media.
| morelisp wrote:
| > You'll admit that the category of 'anyone who has
| compared mainstream American politics to Nazism in a
| published article' is a pretty wide net though?
|
| No, I won't. "Published an article in a national
| periodical about mainstream American politics _at all_ "
| is already a really small net! "Did it in the past two
| months" vanishingly less so! "And is giving a PR speech
| for their university" and I bet we're down to population
| size ~1.
|
| I think universities as a whole _would_ be a lot better
| off if they stopped considering this body of op-ed-cum-
| think-tank-writers pretending to be journalists worthy of
| serious attention at all, Nazi comparisons or no. And I
| think it says a lot about Mounk 's own social circles
| that he considers this behavior de rigueur.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| .
| morelisp wrote:
| > a very similar situation
|
| You're saying university DEI initiatives are "a very
| similar situation" to the rise of the Nazi party in
| Germany. Do you really think this? Not only no difference
| in kind, but close in degree?
| [deleted]
| rscoots wrote:
| You seem to be adding in additional, somewhat frivolous
| conditions that none of the parties involved even alluded
| to. So yes that might drive down the number to a
| conveniently hard-to-research amount.
|
| Let's start with your "2 months" figure. Who cited that
| as part of the reason for the disinvitation?
| morelisp wrote:
| The timeframe and forum makes it fair to characterize
| this as his current, considered, strongly-held opinion.
| That has bearing on whether we consider this a situation
| of "we disinvited him because we don't want our PR
| handled by people currently advancing opinions contra
| political sensitive aspects of our university admissions
| policy" vs. "we disinvite everyone who made a
| cringeworthy analogy to the Third Reich" (Mounk's
| characterization).
| rscoots wrote:
| That's what you think, but I'm asking who at MIT has
| taken that position re timeframe that you have evidence
| of?
| morelisp wrote:
| You have moved the goalposts immensely from "is Mounk's
| conclusion about Nazi comparisons accurate?" to "do you
| have proof from the horses's mouth that MIT would not
| have done this had he written this 5 years ago?"
| rscoots wrote:
| I was rate limited.
|
| You brought up timeframe (and many other conditions) as a
| rebuttal to the author. I'm just pointing out that you
| can't be sure that _any_ of those considerations even
| entered the minds of MIT 's admins. I hope we can at
| least agree that this opaqueness is an issue and could
| inspire future, less-careful censors.
| morelisp wrote:
| If you're taking a position of absolute radical
| skepticism, you should be asking the same questions of
| Mounk's claim to know MIT's exact conditions, not using
| such hearsay as your own argument's starting point.
| rscoots wrote:
| Glad you agree you and Mounk have both made assumptions u
| can't back up.
| q1w2 wrote:
| Argue the argument, not the argumentator.
| whitexn--g28h wrote:
| OP is literally criticizing the citations. Reading and
| comprehension are important.
| exar0815 wrote:
| Twitter is a massive echo-chamber, reinforcing their belief in
| themselves and most people believe them because the internet-
| oligarchy hides and censors different outlooks on society (not
| that I necessarily agree with those outlooks, but still).
|
| Best example: All of the twitter-mob was hyping themselves up
| about the german election, the young generation being all green,
| all "Generation Greta" as some called it. There was no way that
| anyone except the greens would get ALL the votes of ALL young or
| first -voters. Except reality hit and they found out that an
| equal percentage voted for economic liberalism and less state
| instead of state intervention and illiberal politics. Somehow,
| the calls of the left for lowering the voting age have been
| conspicously absent since then...
| joenathanone wrote:
| I echo your sentiment.
| OJFord wrote:
| 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 aware of to incite it.
| It's just a hateful place.
| JimmyAxod wrote:
| 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.
| OJFord wrote:
| Oh. Well I don't have to look it up to guess who that would
| be, but I think my point stands - it's not 'people are
| talking about that she said that', but a 'hashtag' used
| presumably to echo the sentiment. I wish it _were_ confined
| to its chamber.
|
| (And fwiw I don't want to see '#LabourScum' either.)
| pjc50 wrote:
| Tories are not a majority.
| adaml_623 wrote:
| Two factual errors in your comment:
|
| 1. "Tories" refers to the party members not the people who
| voted for them.
|
| 2. Only 44% voted for the Tories so not a majority.
|
| I can't disagree that twitter is full of hate but I can
| laugh at your stated impression about the political left
| and the political leanings of twitter. It's like
| complaining that environmental scientists are biased in
| their belief in climate change.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I'm starting to believe internet in general does this. Being in
| your room leads your thinking to different roads. When closer
| to other people you aim for something else. Deeper more subtle
| connection with others.
| q1w2 wrote:
| I wonder how raising the voting age might help solve this wave
| of online political radicalism.
| escot wrote:
| The universities won't change. Uncensored talks are done off
| campus or online.
| mactavish88 wrote:
| Weak 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.
| jefftk wrote:
| The decision was made by the chair of the department that was
| organizing the talk
| mactavish88 wrote:
| Why does the chair of the department get more of a say in who
| gets to speak than those who were going to come listen?
| lr4444lr wrote:
| I don't see how Abbott's cancelation is different.
| throwaway984393 wrote:
| Actually it's not different. University lecturers have been
| protested or cancelled for decades for reasons unrelated to their
| topic, usually due to political beliefs or corporate interests
| that clashed with students' ideals. "Cancel culture" is
| specifically about "personal" societal reforms, which is what
| makes it different than the older complaints about general
| politics.
|
| Back in the day it was "edgy" to protest or cancel a speaker due
| to their support of the Vietnam war. People were just as angry
| (or more so!) at Vietnam protesters as people are today about
| "cancel culture" protesters, and vice versa. At the time, it was
| those young freaks with the long hair who were clearly nuts and
| extremists and going to erode the country's moral decency.
| Counter-culture folk in the 60's and 70's were a tiny but vocal
| minority of young people who were largely put down for their
| radical views about war and the environment. It's only in
| hindsight that protesting the Vietnam war seems socially
| acceptable.
| milesvp wrote:
| I'm not sure you're correct that nothing is different. I saw a
| lecture recently by someone whose organization does mediation
| between student groups and universities with regards to free
| speech. He was saying that a few years ago for the first time
| his organization was starting to mediate in the opposite
| direction.
|
| Was a very interesting talk. The speaker had tried to commit
| suicide and in the process of recovering from that realized
| that the speech patterns that are associated with sucidal
| tendencies, extreme consequences to minor events, were being
| used by student groups. Things like "if so and so comes to
| campus, people will die". And they weren't being hyperbolic,
| like they were honestly afraid someone would die if a speaker
| were allowed to speak. So the mediations required finding ways
| to bring nuance back to the conversation.
|
| I honestly don't know how different these objections to
| speakers are than in the past, but I thought it was interesting
| that there was a shift in the balance of power between
| university administrations and student groups in the US.
|
| Edit: Thanks to mrosett for pointing out this was Greg
| Lukianoff who is with FIRE. Please take care researching this
| topic, it is a large lightning rod for alt-right and heavily
| conservative view points. Some cursory searches show that FIRE
| might not be as neutral as I thought they were.
| zeckalpha wrote:
| Mediation with a "direction" isn't good mediation.
| milesvp wrote:
| Absolutely. Apologies for poor paraphrasing. I think it was
| something like instead of students suing to be heard, they
| were suing to exclude.
|
| Mediation should really be neutral, but the organization is
| dedicated to free speech. It's very possible that such an
| organization, or any organization with an agenda, does not
| make for good mediators. Would be an interesting topic next
| time I see my friend who acts as a mediator.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| > Some cursory searches show that FIRE might not be as
| neutral as I thought they were.
|
| FIRE were actually big fans of Obama. Yeah, they're all about
| free speech on college campuses -- that's their thing. But
| "alt-right" is a bit much.
| judahmeek wrote:
| Any particular reason you choose not to name the speaker
| you're supposedly talking about?
| mrosett wrote:
| Quite clearly Greg Lukianoff who is with FIRE and wrote The
| Coddling of the American Mind
| milesvp wrote:
| Apologies, I don't think I can easily find the talk. I did
| some cursory looking based on what I could remember of the
| talk before posting. I like to link to things when I can.
|
| Worse, is the topic is a current lightning rod for alt-
| right, so there's a lot of garbage to sift through. I will
| see if I can get lucky and find the talk again.
|
| Edit: mrosett answered this. Yes it was a lecture by Greg
| Lukianoff of FIRE. I might have been click-baited to watch
| it, but he seemed credible enough to quote, and seemed to
| genuinely care about actual free speech.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| Was the talk by Greg Lukianoff by any chance? He has a book
| called "The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good
| Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for
| Failure" that expands on these ideas.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| So you think there's nothing different between advocating for
| war and criticizing how universities admit students?
| still_grokking wrote:
| We all know why you're posting this form a throwaway account...
| civilized wrote:
| I get the historical analogy with anti-Vietnam War protesters.
| I just don't agree that they are _actually_ the moral
| equivalent of anti-anti-racial-preference protesters. And I
| definitely don 't believe that the majority will see it that
| way in a few decades.
|
| The moral foundations for Vietnam War opposition are much
| intellectually deeper and ideologically broader than those
| supporting racial preferences. A medieval Catholic could have
| opposed the Vietnam War on grounds of just war theory.
| [deleted]
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| This is very different from protesting Vietnam war or
| anything else that is specific. What we are seeing is a pure
| manifestation and exercise of power.
| unclebucknasty wrote:
| > _...much intellectually deeper and ideologically broader
| than those supporting racial preferences. A medieval
| Catholic..._
|
| Sure, if you narrow the topic of racial preferences down to
| the literal instantiation of exactly that mechanism, then
| broaden the topic of the Vietnam War out to historical
| philosophies of War in general, then of course the latter
| reads "intellectually deeper" and "broader".
|
| But, these are all just discussions about what is morally
| just and, when society fails to provide justice, what we
| consider appropriate remedies.
| whatshisface wrote:
| I have no idea what people are meaning when they say
| "racial preferences" in this thread but the Vietnam war was
| objectively awful and gets more awful with every detail you
| learn.
| unclebucknasty wrote:
| Sure. But, not sure how to process that as a reply to my
| comment.
| throwaway984393 wrote:
| For what it's worth, I'm not trying to draw moral
| equivalence. I'm hoping to demonstrate that we just don't
| know what protests will be acceptable or not in the future.
| mint2 wrote:
| > University lecturers have been protested or cancelled for
| decades for reasons unrelated to their topic
|
| I'm not sure this is the case here, it depends whether that
| means the specific topic they are giving the talk on or topic
| as in area of claimed expertise. I would say it's fair game to
| consider them to be claiming an area of expertise if they are
| publishing articles on the topic, and this valid to consider
| the quality and impact of that work when inviting them for
| talks
| cnppt wrote:
| Protesting against a war is nowhere comparable to demanding
| speech (correct pronouns and affirming the original sin of
| inevitable white racism). In fact, people from that era are
| marginalized because _their_ brand of wokeness is no longer
| sufficient and too libertarian.
|
| Back in those days one could also see Chomsky discussing with
| William Buckley (impossible today) and Enoch Powell discussing
| with people on the left.
| tsss wrote:
| It was wrong then and it is wrong now. The Vietnam war
| protesters were free to protest, but they can not demand to
| restrict the freedom of speech of others.
| bluescrn wrote:
| Social media has completely transformed this type of protest.
| People who have nothing to do with the university can now join
| a 'cancel mob' to attack a political opponent on the other side
| of the world.
| klyrs wrote:
| Oldsters remember when this was a slower process, where
| people would write angry letters. They would undertake
| letter-writing campaigns, persuading others to take up the
| literary torch. They'd write to newspapers and magazines,
| where "free speech" was subject to the gatekeeping editor.
| Shorter screeds would appear in classified ads, again, to be
| censored if the editor didn't want to print what you had to
| say. It's faster, it's more transparent, the gatekeeping is
| more often post-facto and more there are more platforms to
| try if one blocks you. Writing quality and wit has definitely
| declined, though. But I wouldn't say that this is a complete
| transformation. My dad would fume over his letters for days
| before sending them.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Writing quality and wit has definitely declined
|
| I concur. The skewering of Sarah Palin "I can see Russia
| from my house!" by SNL was brilliant. SNL's skewering of
| Trump just wasn't funny.
|
| Edit: Ok, if you disagree, note that everyone recognizes
| the SNL "I can see..." quote. Any memorable ones from SNL's
| Trump skits?
| mhh__ wrote:
| Alec Baldwin was pretty good, no?
|
| I always found Trump-satire a little bit symbiotic. He
| thrives on non-boring politics, satire only normalizes
| his actions - i.e. mocking war hero's, regardless of what
| you make of the war they fought in, is just inhuman and
| satire only serves to form a grotesque hyperreality which
| we saw explode at the beginning of this year with all
| this nonsense over the election.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Was he? I didn't watch all his Trump skits, but the ones
| I did were not memorable.
|
| Trump should be a gold mine for parody, but SNL muffed
| it.
|
| Jay Leno was always good and skewering both sides. He
| never took it seriously, and his targets usually found
| them funny, too. Perhaps Baldwin's jokes fell flat
| because they sounded more like a "let's all pile on him
| because we hate him" form of bullying rather than funny.
| mhh__ wrote:
| FWIW I think that says more about SNL than Trump, just
| seems a bit crap really from my admittedly non-nostalgic
| European-elitist perspective.
|
| If you've heard of the private eye, they had some very
| well observed pieces on trump e.g. Trump likes it when
| people call him an orange racist because it plays to his
| base, call him a poor businessman and a fraud and he's
| not so happy.
|
| P.S. on the subject of trump, Michael Lewis's book "The
| fifth risk" is very good. It's a good insight into the
| man, his team, and basically everything you shouldn't do
| in their shoes.
|
| My favourite piece of trivia from the above book is that
| Trump never fires anyone personally. The whole "Yuh
| fired"-schtick from the TV show is just pantomime.
|
| He was also apparently unable to understand that money
| raised in his name to fund a transition team wasn't his
| own personally, which didn't exactly surprise me but
| should shatter any illusion of rationality.
| klyrs wrote:
| FWIW, I don't think your reply is quite on-topic here. I
| was talking about wit in letters to the editor in decline
| in contrast to short-form platforms like Twitter etc.,
| that is, writing by the masses distributed to the masses.
| SNL is an entirely different beast; 'ordinary folks'
| don't get a platform there.
| [deleted]
| wussboy wrote:
| Yes, it was slower. And that slower speed gave more time
| for people to reflect, to calm down, to see if their moral
| passions had longevity. I think social media has perfect
| "outrage" because it can be so immediate. There's no time
| for cooler heads to prevail. And we are the worse for it.
| deadpannini wrote:
| Protesting isn't addressed in the article.
|
| Who in the 60s and 70s was invited to speak at a college or
| university, then later had their invitation withdrawn due to
| their support of the Vietnam war or corporate interests?
| krainboltgreene wrote:
| This is actually extremely googable and definitely happened
| way more than you think.
| peter_retief wrote:
| I wonder when this will get flagged?
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| The problem with affirmative action is - its transitive.
|
| If not the most capable applicant is choosen, instead by another
| criteria (e.g. race) then all who search the most capable outcome
| of research or education (for example a capable doctor) are
| forced to engage in what can only be described a racist filter to
| find the capable applicant.
|
| Affirmative action ever treated the symptom. What i would
| recommend, is a proportional study place system. Every "group"
| gets places, proportional to its representation in the public
| population. If this group has not enough capable applicants, due
| to societal wrongs (bad schools in the inner citys), all other
| groups are shrunk down by the same percentage, to encourage
| investment into the source of the problem.
| bitwize wrote:
| You have to remember that one of the major activist groups in
| support of affirmative action is called, in full, the Coalition
| to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration & Immigrant Rights, and
| Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary.
|
| By _Any_ Means Necessary.
|
| There really is no way for a bureaucratic institution like a
| university to win against such a committed, devoted movement. If
| the university didn't "buckle", the activists would find a target
| higher up the chain to pressure to punish the university -- grant
| and endowment sponsors, that sort of thing. Get students to rally
| on or near the residences of the professors who approved the
| talk. Send activists to physically blockade the building where
| the talk is supposed to be given. And on and on. When nothing is
| off the table -- when there are "no bad tactics, only bad
| targets" -- there are plenty of fallbacks to employ if your first
| plan fails.
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