[HN Gopher] What You Can't Say (2004)
___________________________________________________________________
What You Can't Say (2004)
Author : whatyoucantpost
Score : 91 points
Date : 2022-03-16 18:28 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.paulgraham.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.paulgraham.com)
| betwixthewires wrote:
| I read this in it's entirety every time I see it. It is timeless.
|
| I try. We all fall short. Getting there is approaching a limit.
| But still, we must continue.
| sirspacey wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. I love PG's authenticity. His thoughtfulness
| is inspiring.
|
| In this piece there are a few items that jump out as glaring
| oversights and they speak to how brittle the entire structure of
| the argument is.
|
| First, his conclusion is "if you think you shouldn't say
| something, don't."
|
| Pragmatic advice, but it essentially means that this piece is not
| an argument against self-censorship.
|
| His solve of "have a few friends to share verboten thoughts with"
| is already how closed door social systems work. In-group
| signaling with taboo beliefs is a core feature of tribalism.
| Coupled with historic wealth/power inequality it is a de facto
| abdication of how the social bubble we create around ourselves
| enables us to imagine we are doing what is best for all when we
| have no idea (nor curiosity) about what other people's actual
| experience is. That's why we need DEI first principals.
|
| I find it interesting that he references two domains in a
| hypothetical sense that are very, very different in experience.
|
| First, parenting. He wasn't a parent when he wrote this.
| Imagining we need to see children as innocent seems like a
| reasonable explanation. But in my experience the issue with
| cussing is that when you become a parent a protective instinct
| kicks in - you don't want the social group to punish your child
| in your absence & you worry about collective ostracism if the
| group concludes you are a "bad parent." It's warranted. I've
| experienced it and it is brutal.
|
| Second is fashion. Fashion is only invisible to those who don't
| care about it. For those who do, it is an art form. There is a
| vast difference between "the fashion of the day" and the
| function/philosophy of fashion. In this respect he both misses
| and catches the point - fashion is architected by active
| participants and consumed by passive ones. "Moral fashion"
| captures the "issue of the day" of the IYKYK crowd that runs
| corporate/tech communities. It's signaling, little more. He's
| spot on in calling out that no issue that everyone talks about
| deserves to be regarded as "the issue" on its own merits. But he
| misses the point that fashion is amazing and an incredible
| expression of the human experience. I don't get the sense he
| personally cares much about fashion.
|
| The subtext to all of this is that there has been a powerful,
| violent set of social groups deciding who was allowed to be
| treated as a person and who was not.
|
| Where we are today as a society has been deeply shaped by that.
|
| Some of the people in those exiled groups are co-opting shame &
| blame. I think his point is that doing so only creates a new
| power structure that repeats old patterns, it doesn't solve for
| something better.
|
| So we are back to his first conclusion - which is you either
| actively or passively participate, but you don't argue with it.
|
| I think there's another choice:
|
| I will not shame anyone, for any reason.
|
| Shame is the tool we keep reaching for & its cost is clear - we
| lose connection with our own humanity & each other's.
|
| That's what I see as the new choice we can make for ourselves -
| letting go of the assumption that we can anticipate how our
| actions and words affect others, being open to learning, and
| taking responsibility for ourselves.
|
| For me that has meant a studious avoidance of participating in
| media culture.
|
| It is possible to contribute to making society a more inclusive
| and supportive experience w/out chasing the latest outrage fad.
| In fact, it might only be possible if we let go of "allyship" -
| which no one seems to want - and instead:
|
| * make space for others to share their feelings * let go of blame
| (of ourselves or others) * support the voice of those with first-
| hand experience
|
| A really cool new TV show that explores all of this is "Work in
| Progress." Alongside "Schitt's Creek" it's really profound how
| friendly it can be to embrace a variety of identities in society
| without making ourselves or others wrong.
| deanCommie wrote:
| You have to go one layer deeper.
|
| Is it fair to judge a historical figure for owning slaves in the
| 1600s? No. The ethical quandries of racism and the Abolitionist
| movement didn't start in earnest until the late 18th century.
|
| Is it fair to judge American historical figures for owning slaves
| at a time when half of the country had already made it illegal?
| YES. You're now judging that person by the standards of their
| time. See also, Christopher Columbus.
|
| Let's fast forward 200 years.
|
| Is it fair to judge someone for being racist if they've grown up
| in the deep south, and are a product of the Jim Crow era, and
| were surrounded by propaganda about how the Civil War was not
| fought over slavery, and so forth? No.
|
| Is it fair to judge the same person who goes to university, reads
| about the decades of systemic discrimination that endured even
| after ostensibly the Civil Rights Act passed, and whose reaction
| to "Black Lives Matter" is "No, All Lives Matter" based on an
| uncharitable superficial reading of the message? Yes.
|
| The question isn't about whether you hold some opinions today
| that are considered "not woke". The question is whether you are
| holding the line for progress too low:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiSiHRNQlQo
| bob34 wrote:
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "A Dutch friend says I should use Holland as an example of a
| tolerant society. It's true they have a long tradition of
| comparative open-mindedness. ... And yet, I wonder. The Dutch
| seem to live their lives up to their necks in rules and
| regulations. There's so much you can't do there; is there really
| nothing you can't say?"
|
| The reason for all their regulations are likely, that they live
| very crowded. The closer people live together - the more rules
| they come up after a while, to keep things somewhat stable.
|
| Otherwise there are of course plenty of things you cannot say in
| holland, if you don't want people to be shocked.
| [deleted]
| humanistbot wrote:
| > What scares me is that there are moral fashions too. They're
| just as arbitrary...
|
| There is an argument that people should not be held responsible
| for decades old views, as well as the argument that people should
| be given an opportunity to learn new social norms instead of
| being immediately canceled. But to say that these issues are just
| as arbitrary as fashion is a completely different argument ---
| and a specious one at that.
| civilized wrote:
| Except he didn't say "all moral views are moral fashions", he
| said "there are moral fashions", or equivalently, "some moral
| views are moral fashions".
|
| Some != All.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| And the viewpoints that get you cancelled _are_ as arbitrary
| as fashionable clothing.
| librish wrote:
| To the people who are worried about woke-ism going too far:
| what's your best specific example?
|
| What opinion was uttered and what consequence followed?
| noxer wrote:
| Over the years many people pointed to "Real Time with Bill
| Maher - Ben Affleck, Sam Harris and Bill Maher Debate Radical
| Islam" as the start of public toxic woke-ism.
|
| I suggest watching it if you have not seen it (10min long) but
| it basically boils down to that if you disagree with someone
| you can call it racists instead of formulating an argument.
| There is ofc no evidence that anyone on that show on that day
| is actually a racists but somehow people just accepted that it
| was valid to say anyway.
|
| The consequences is that people said it more and more and other
| similar terms whenever it somehow fit. An opinion if it can be
| made to look like it affects a specific group of people is
| attacked as being against these people. It basically made a
| subset of he most pathetic and weak ad hominem fallacies
| acceptable and thus broke the way people had public discourse.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I think it is hard to beat this case, when it comes to
| absurdity:
|
| https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/sdge-worker-fired-ove...
|
| A Mexican driver was fired for stretching his fingers when
| driving. Somebody thought he was making a white supremacy sign
| and started the classical social media shitstorm.
|
| For a blue collar immigrant worker, losing their job overnight
| might be pretty serious. They usually have fewer savings to
| rely on.
| boppo1 wrote:
| I told a close, longtime friend(A) that a mutual friend(B) was
| not an avowed, violent white supremacist. Friend A ended our
| relationship and told me I am a white supremacist. Friend A has
| also expressed a willingness to commit acts of direct violence
| against white supremacy.
|
| A lost friendship is benign, I guess.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| I suppose jk rowling and her views about women's rights and how
| trans-rights are clashing into them? The consequences are that
| have been many attempts to cancel her (some successful).
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| How has Rowling been "cancelled"? I'm aware of people saying
| she's bad, but what actual opportunities has she lost as a
| result?
| rkk3 wrote:
| Academia always gives the best examples...
|
| Oberlin Administrators & Bakery incident found the school owing
| 44 Million in Damages.
|
| Honorable mentions
|
| USC's Business School for being offended at the Chinese word
| "Na Ge"
|
| Yale Law School for the Native American Law Students
| Association party invite
| FFRefresh wrote:
| (casual observer passing through..)
|
| A few questions for you personally:
|
| 1) When _you_ use the term woke-ism, what are _you_ referring
| to?
|
| 2) What would 'going too far' look like, to _you_ in
| particular? '
|
| 3) In your worldview, is it possible for _uttered opinions_ to
| have consequences that 'go too far'?
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| https://www.bostonherald.com/2021/10/05/mit-cancels-professo...
|
| Is one to come to mind. Students and other teachers are
| deprived of a lecture because a small vocal minority of
| students are upset that in an unrelated interview, the
| professor expressed a fairly mainstream view of preferring
| "equality" over "equity".
| Marazan wrote:
| Am I wrong? No, it is the children who are out of touch.
| overgard wrote:
| I think using the phrase "out of touch" is pretty telling here.
| Out of touch with what? The general cultural consensus? If you
| read this essay, the _entire point_ is it 's better to be out
| of touch, and if you're too in touch, you probably aren't
| actually thinking for yourself.
| hereforphone wrote:
| The children can say whatever they want. Their ideas are hip.
| It's the more conservative leaning (older) folks who'll have
| their car tires slashed, or be hit in the face, or just be
| cancelled (deleted from social media) for supporting the wrong
| candidates and causes.
| InitialBP wrote:
| "Deleted from social media" is a pretty weak definition of
| "being cancelled".
|
| Regardless of whether you agree or not "cancelling" is more
| about large scale boycott of a person and the media or
| services associated with them. It's not "Just" about blocking
| someone on social media, and it often has significant impacts
| on the business or the individuals who are being cancelled.
| detcader wrote:
| Tech giants deciding what political ideas are delete-
| worthy, in the places where most people get their
| information and hear political arguments, is not the same
| as boycotting...
|
| > In the digital age, we are nearing the point where an
| idea banished by Twitter, Facebook and Google all but
| vanishes from public discourse entirely, and that is only
| going to become more true as those companies grow even
| further. Whatever else is true, the implications of having
| those companies make lists of permitted and prohibited
| ideas are far more significant than when ordinary private
| companies do the same thing. [1]
|
| [1] hhttps://web.archive.org/web/20161012220046/https://the
| interc...
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Cancelling a person is something with strong impacts on
| their professional and social lives.
|
| Blocking people's speech on social networks is a very
| different thing.
| detcader wrote:
| There's a difference for sure, though in some cases one
| follows the other. I agree that there should be
| consequences for powerful people who preach hatred, when
| the consequences don't require giving even more power to
| tech giants and employers (a good example might be
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DaBaby#Homophobic_remarks)
| RajT88 wrote:
| As near as I can tell, people complaining about being
| "cancelled" are being punished for violating the TOS of the
| social media platforms they are on.
|
| If you are spouting heresies in a respectful good-faith
| debate, the worst that generally happens is you get yelled
| at/laughed at, and usually by community members and not the
| mods.
| domador wrote:
| That brings up the question of whether these social media
| platforms' terms of service are themselves censorious and
| intolerant to some degree. The first answer to that would
| be "yes", since otherwise terms of service wouldn't even
| exist and no one would ever be banned for anything they
| said or did in or out of the platform. The second answer
| would be "maybe", especially for platforms that pride
| themselves on being paragons of open discussion. (I think
| that "maybe" should be a permanently ongoing, self-
| reflective maybe.)
| RajT88 wrote:
| Having frequented a few of the paragons of open
| discussion, I can tell you that they regularly ban users
| as well.
|
| My takeaway isn't necessarily hypocrisy (although a few
| of them are certainly full of that), it's that moderation
| is hard because of the never-ending wave of people trying
| to clog up public discourse for a variety of crappy
| reasons.
|
| Jeff Atwood (one of the founders of Stack Overflow, Stack
| Exchange, developer of Discourse) has some pretty
| insightful things to say about community management.
| IE6 wrote:
| Yes. Anecdotally I have noticed (in real life and online)
| some people view being "cancelled" (deleted) from a
| Social Media as a badge of honour and will gladly
| enumerate the accounts they have had that were banned but
| their ever-important message that got them to boot is
| never mentioned. If you dig deeper it's usually some form
| of TOS or hate-speech.
| noxer wrote:
| There is no such thing as "hate-speech" there is just
| speech that (some) people hate and almost anything fall
| user that if it has some kind of complexity. That's one
| of the core problems with hate-speech laws and ToS. You
| can not moderate it fair because its entirely subjective.
| setgree wrote:
| Has the observation that moral fashions are invisible held up
| well? I feel like a preponderance of my Twitter feed is
| commentary on moral fashions -- wokeness, the drive towards
| cancellation and deplatforming, the pernicious effects of
| Trumpism on our norms of discourse -- or responses to that
| commentary.
|
| Of course you could just push it back a level and say that the
| fashions underpinning that commentary are invisible. But that
| feels a little bit like Sagan's " there's a dragon in my garage"
| parable: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Dragon_in_My_Garage
| detcader wrote:
| I think the idea is that they're invisible in the sense that
| nobody announces them to the general public. Moral challenges
| to the status quo used to be communicated explicitly by heads
| of reform movements or revolutionary struggles. You had anti-
| slavery leaders, anti-Satanist leaders, feminist leaders, AIDS
| epidemic leaders and so on. Now the moral changes are spread
| online memetically and are implicitly adopted by people along
| the tried-and-true liberal-vs-conservative lines (usually with
| a minimal level of understanding), and then power structures
| start to implement them as rules to look good to what they
| perceive is their important audience.
| hirundo wrote:
| "I want to find general recipes for discovering what you can't
| say, in any era."
|
| A recipe for this era would simply be to list banned posts on
| Twitter. Which we can't peruse because they are banned, proving
| the essay's point. You can't say what you can't say, but you can
| speculate on recipes for discovery.
|
| It would be a valuable public service for someone to collect
| banned utterances and publish them to provide assistance to those
| of us who can't read the room any better than Sanskrit, so that
| we can avoid non-obvious heresies. But then they'd have to
| publish things that can't be said.
| escapedmoose wrote:
| Do non-obvious heresies really get people banned/canceled? I
| can't remember any examples of when I've seen something banned
| and didn't think "that was uncalled-for and they definitely had
| it coming." But I'm happy to be disproven. Does anyone have
| counter-examples? Situations where people got banned for truly
| innocuous things?
| philovivero wrote:
| Yes.
|
| Person-A was in an online forum I was part of. Person-A said
| to Person-B, who was getting emotional in a discussion, to
| not act emotional, as it was a factual discussion.
|
| Person-B accused Person-A of being insensitive to women, as
| it turns out Person-B was female.
|
| Person-A did not know Person-B was female, as Person-A didn't
| use forum avatars, and the name Person-B used wasn't an
| obvious female name in Person-A's culture. In other words,
| Person-A could prove not knowing the gender of Person-B.
|
| This was not sufficient, and Person-A was banned from the
| forum.
|
| Ironically, Person-B was one of those loud "women and men are
| as competent as each other" sorts, which leads one to wonder
| why she needed special handling.
|
| The icing on the cake: Person-C defended Person-A, knowing
| that the gender of Person-B was not known at the time of the
| comment. Person-C was banned from the forum.
|
| The forum, by the way, was a professional forum of one of the
| largest tech companies. Everyone here would know the name of
| the company, and being banned from this forum essentially was
| a light way of getting onto a blacklist of several other tech
| companies. This actually eventually led to Person-C quitting
| technology entirely a year or two later.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > You can't say what you can't say
|
| And you can't find out what you can't say until you're already
| being punished for having said it.
| klyrs wrote:
| That would be simple if twitter was the only forum. There's
| things that can't be said on Parler and Gab, too: stuff that
| was a minority (soft-censored) opinion 10-20 years ago, stuff
| that's still illegal to say in authoritarian regimes like Saudi
| Arabia, but approaches plurality in certain Western contexts.
| jkubicek wrote:
| Browsing banned posts on Twitter wouldn't be effective at all.
| Twitter openly and freely allows content that most of us would
| find abhorrent (racism, nazism, violent threats) and regularly
| ban content that is misleading and dumb and dangerous but not
| offensive at all (covid is fake, vaccines are more dangerous
| than the disease, etc)
| SomeCallMeTim wrote:
| At least Dictionary.com validates the concept that "gyp" is from
| "Gypsy" [1]:
|
| > Origin of gyp > An Americanism dating back to 1885-90; back
| formation from Gypsy.
|
| Same with Miriram-Webster: [2]
|
| > History and Etymology for gyp > > Noun > > probably short for
| gypsy
|
| In either case, it _is_ rude for the word to be used, contrary to
| what PG implies.
|
| [1] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/gyp
|
| [2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gyp
| bhelkey wrote:
| > At least Dictionary.com validates the concept that "gyp" is
| from "Gypsy" [1]:
|
| How does this relate to the article? I found 0 matches with
| Control+F.
| pfkurtz wrote:
| His historical examples of when you need to keep your opinion to
| yourself: in circumstances of chattel slavery, totalitarianism,
| world war.
|
| His problem in 2004 (the year the United States launched an
| attack on a foreign country): people disagree with him and that
| makes him uncomfortable.
|
| The idea that all humans don't self-censor by default in front of
| all sorts of people is pretty myopic.
| invalidOrTaken wrote:
| I'm not sure what you're implying---that pg is seeing
| censorship where there isn't, or that he's naive for not
| intuiting that it's everywhere, all the time.
|
| In my understanding, he's _worrying_ that it 's everywhere, all
| the time, in the self-censor sense.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> In my understanding, he 's worrying that it's everywhere,
| all the time, in the self-censor sense._
|
| I don't think he's worried about self-censorship in itself.
| If he's worried about anything in this essay, I would say
| it's the possibility of losing the option he describes here:
|
| "The trouble with keeping your thoughts secret, though, is
| that you lose the advantages of discussion. Talking about an
| idea leads to more ideas. So the optimal plan, if you can
| manage it, is to have a few trusted friends you can speak
| openly to. This is not just a way to develop ideas; it's also
| a good rule of thumb for choosing friends. The people you can
| say heretical things to without getting jumped on are also
| the most interesting to know."
| pfkurtz wrote:
| I am implying, and in no way do I take myself to be doing
| anything more noble than shitposting here, that the kinds of
| forbidden opinions he is probably imagining himself to suffer
| for, are radically different from the kinds of opinions that
| people who actually end up suffering for their opinions have.
|
| MY big opinion that I'm violating right now: Never Post.
| Especially about "cancel culture".
|
| Cheers
| pdonis wrote:
| _> The idea that all humans don 't self-censor by default in
| front of all sorts of people_
|
| ...is not the idea pg's essay is talking about. In fact he
| calls the advice _to_ self-censor by default (Wooton 's advice
| to Milton) "wise advice". He's obviously aware that people
| self-censor and he obviously doesn't think that's a bad thing
| in itself.
|
| _> people disagree with him and that makes him uncomfortable._
|
| Where are you getting that from?
| pfkurtz wrote:
| The word "defeatist", for example, has no particular
| political connotations now. But in Germany in 1917 it was a
| weapon, used by Ludendorff in a purge of those who favored a
| negotiated peace. At the start of World War II it was used
| extensively by Churchill and his supporters to silence their
| opponents. In 1940, any argument against Churchill's
| aggressive policy was "defeatist". Was it right or wrong?
| Ideally, no one got far enough to ask that.
|
| We have such labels today, of course, quite a lot of them,
| from the all-purpose "inappropriate" to the dreaded
| "divisive." In any period, it should be easy to figure out
| what such labels are, simply by looking at what people call
| ideas they disagree with besides untrue. When a politician
| says his opponent is mistaken, that's a straightforward
| criticism, but when he attacks a statement as "divisive" or
| "racially insensitive" instead of arguing that it's false, we
| should start paying attention.
|
| So another way to figure out which of our taboos future
| generations will laugh at is to start with the labels. Take a
| label -- "sexist", for example -- and try to think of some
| ideas that would be called that. Then for each ask, might
| this be true?
| strogonoff wrote:
| If we blame the author for a work focusing on an abstract topic
| not directly concerned with injustices happening at the time,
| no scientist or philosopher should have done anything since no
| one would be free of guilt by that measure (including, of
| course, us forum commenters).
|
| I doubt humans can even socially function (let alone progress)
| if we let the countless injustices happening every second
| occupy the entirety of our minds at all times--and it is the
| seemingly abstract works in philosophy, science that lay the
| necessary foundation for concrete progress that hopefully
| contributes to resolving those injustices.
|
| That said, is this just an elaborate justification for my own
| inaction? Should it be the next obvious thing that used to be
| unthinkable to talk about (like racial equality in the early
| times of chattel slavery) that a conscious person ought to
| withhold meaningful but not-directly-helping contributions to
| humanity until--I don't know the exact measure here--say, the
| world is free of suffering and violence?
| pfkurtz wrote:
| This is a fair point, that he is discussing abstractions.
|
| I almost wrote "I wish people would read moral philosophers
| on moral philosophy, not tech founders."
|
| He does give some examples, and they seem to fit in two
| categories: things done by tyrants, and other people thinking
| you should expand one's moral categories.
|
| I think it's clear that the ones that bother him, in his
| actual life, are the latter.
| kodah wrote:
| Censorship takes a lot of different forms imo. Self-censorship
| usually takes place because one or more other forms of
| censorship are already at play.
|
| There's authority based censorship, like the banned books list.
| People legitimately believed that Catcher in the Rye caused
| serial killers at one point and definitely cast judgement on
| those willing to admit they'd read it. At the time, reading the
| book could cost you in social capital which I think is what PG
| is alluding to. From what I read, PG just wishes we didn't
| exercise moral judgement - which I get. I came from a religious
| background that weaponized their morals for ostracization or
| for hate, meanwhile, nobody within the system recognized they
| were doing that because they were blinded by the righteousness
| of their morals. In that way, morals are sticky webs.
|
| My curiosity drifts in a different way - assuming you can't rid
| the world of moral addiction - why were the people who believe
| such foolish morals (like banning books) not punished post
| facto? Folks with a laundry list of morals will often use the
| word "consequences", but where are their consequences when this
| moral falls out of style and has senselessly ruined lives?
| pfkurtz wrote:
| We don't need to look to Catcher in the Rye.
|
| Conservatives are banning books and outlawing kinds of self-
| expression, kinds of self-identity, in many countries, RIGHT
| NOW.
|
| What opinions, in 2004, or 2022, does Paul Graham not think
| one can express safely? I'm skeptical it's the list of
| opinions that the state is actually being used to suppress,
| just opinions that many people find morally objectionable.
| Animats wrote:
| Useful reading on the twists and turns of gay marriage policy in
| the US.[1] People have been fired for being a few years out of
| step with the timeline.
|
| The U.S. State Department has classes for returning overseas
| staff to get them up to speed on changes in the US since they
| left.[2] This is said to be especially hard for teens.
|
| [1] https://guides.ll.georgetown.edu/c.php?g=592919&p=4182201
|
| [2] https://2009-2017.state.gov/m/fsi/tc/c56076.htm
| archhn wrote:
| You will die and be forgotten. Everything you do will be erased
| by entropy. Billions and billions of years, endless collisions
| and mutations, a cooling down of the universe until time itself
| stops.
|
| Human beings are very sensitive because we all live on top of a
| foundation of delusions which protects us from the life-
| invalidating truth.
|
| I've come to believe that every single person is insane. When you
| look into minds and see a humanity dripping with delusions spun
| up by life seeking a way to avoid confronting its futility...you
| can't help but feel this way.
|
| I was only able to see it after I had a near death experience.
| Those who have never gone beyond the threshold won't ever get it
| until the very end.
| apocalypstyx wrote:
| May I offer one proposition? Sanity and insanity (as with
| morality) are meaningless propositions outside of social
| interaction. So there is no sanity or insanity in the nature of
| the universe except in this regard. It is merely the evolution-
| bequeathed state of human consciousness as a survival machine.
| archhn wrote:
| I'm using insanity as a description of a delusional state of
| mind, i.e., a mind that is constantly playing make believe.
| "I'm a free person...I'm a good person...What I'm doing is
| important...etc."
|
| Strictly speaking, you're correct. If a mad man talks to
| coconuts on an island, and no one is around to observe him,
| is he really mad?
|
| However, we are a part of nature and social contexts will be
| with us as long as we survive. I think the separation between
| us and the universe is artificial. We are the universe. What
| else would we be?
| apocalypstyx wrote:
| I understand that.
|
| But what I think I'm trying to get at is that utterances
| such as "I'm a free person...I'm a good person...What I'm
| doing is important...etc." can be truth statements within
| the context of their respective systems. 'I am free, a good
| person, important' etc are meaningless outside of this
| context, of course.
|
| I'm thinking the disconnect here is with being.
|
| As an example, let me reference a king. What is a king? A
| son of king? That's one way. Appointed by a constitution?
| That's another. But is there an inherent 'kingship' outside
| of such definitions? Heredity is a property of the idea,
| not of kingship. So we can have a king but never a king
| which _is_ a king. But regardless he can order my head cut
| off. In terms of a king as we define a king is the son of a
| king, then it is a truth claim to state that Arthur is a
| king. A social construct, a fantasy, is not precluded from
| instantiating something with 'power' in the world.
|
| In a way, I think experience by definition is to 'play make
| believe'. Our experience by definition is always going to
| be at least one step removed. We do not perceive the world;
| we perceive constructs derived from sensory data.
|
| Why I state insanity/sanity is meaningless in terms of
| being is that I don't see such as being applicable. As an
| example of what some might call insanity let us take:
| _believing something is present which in fact is not
| there_. Such is defined as irrational. It is contrary to
| the senses, as there is no sensory input to indicate such.
| However, if a hominid cognizes a lion in a bush, aka
| paranoia, and runs, there are generally two possibilities:
| 1) fruitless expenditure of energy decreases the individual
| chance of survival or 2) believing a predator near which
| cannot be perceived provides instances of escape where
| reliance on purely sensory data would have proved
| inadequate. Here what can be termed insanity has a chance
| of informing mental models of reality in ways that sensory
| data is too limited to do so. In this way, it can often
| enough better represent 'reality' in terms of survival.
|
| Even our man with the coconut could derive a survival
| advantage from these activities, in the sense that social
| creatures generally require socialization or risk cognitive
| decline, therefore impairing their chances of survival.
|
| (Survival is, of course, a short-term proposition which we
| extend implicitly into eternity, in one fashion or another,
| but evolution is a moment-to-moment phenomena.)
|
| Anyway, I'm by no means trying to argue with you. I'm more
| musing than anything.
| apocalypstyx wrote:
| I'm going to say the unsayable:
|
| Paul Graham has a sophomoric understanding of art and philosophy,
| at best.
|
| As with people such as Elon Musk, he attempts to leverage success
| in one narrowly defined area into an authority over vast domains
| of human knowledge.
|
| When I was fifteen, I thought his essays were profound. When I
| was fifteen, I thought many things were profound. It has been
| many decades since I was fifteen.
| overgard wrote:
| While that may or may not be true, you haven't actually offered
| any sort of refutation or insight into the topic at hand. While
| I'm not 15, who should I find more credible, the guy making a
| dispassionate general argument that makes sense, or the old
| hipster being like "whatever pg is laaaammme"?
|
| (Also how is what you're saying unsayable? People say this on
| practically every PG essay here. It's very obviously quite
| sayable)
| ggm wrote:
| But a lot of HN readership are much closer to 15 than you (or
| I) and so the trivial->trivium comparison might hold?
| apocalypstyx wrote:
| At this point, I think it more resembles lying to children
| about Santa Claus. I don't understand why people do it.
|
| I feel no need for subsequent generations to recapitulate my
| mistakes. I may have learned something the hard way, but I
| have little interest in encouraging or participating in what
| amounts to a de facto practice of 'cogitational embryological
| parallelism'.
| llbeansandrice wrote:
| >The church knew this would set people thinking.
|
| This sentence carries a lot of weight and I don't think it's
| terribly truthful, or at best, speculative.
|
| Galileo wasn't in trouble with the church because "it would get
| people thinking". He was in trouble because he was directly
| opposing the power and teachings of the church. Whether people
| would "think" about it I don't feel is terribly relevant, let
| alone something you can definitively say. Do we really know that
| the church was worried people would "think for themselves", or
| just that.
|
| This implication is that the church knew Galileo was right. It
| also implies that these "things you can't say" are universally
| good and beneficial to society. With falsehoods neatly hand-waved
| away by conflating them with "people in Pittsburgh are 10 feet
| tall". Well, people believe the earth is flat, vaccines cause 5G,
| that Donald Trump won the 2020 election, and a whole host of
| other things that are harmful to society in varying degrees.
|
| Being shunned for your ideas isn't evidence that you are Galileo
| leading the world into a bright new future. More likely you are,
| at best, the eccentric who should be ignored and your idea is
| that people in Pittsburgh are 11 feet tall.
| apocalypstyx wrote:
| Even this isn't correct. The only thing the Church told Galileo
| was that he couldn't state his hypothesis as fact. And this was
| correct; the science/technology to prove the hypothesis was not
| yet extant. (We tend to misapply our own hindsight here.)
| nme01 wrote:
| Good remark. Many people believe that Galileo was burned but
| it's simply not true (I don't even know where it comes from).
|
| IIRC the most serious punishment he got was a home-arrest
| which he got after being rude to pope (which he was after he
| was forbidden to state his hypothesis as fact).
|
| Also as a side note: Galileo didn't form a hypothesis good
| enough as it predicted planets' movements poorly. It was
| Kepler who formed much more accurate model and it got
| accepted by the Church.
|
| There are also some other misbelieves about the Church like
| that they forbidden spreading the theory of evolution (while
| in fact they forbade priests to criticize it openly).
| Yoofie wrote:
| If someone wants to get better informed about such common
| myths like you mentioned, what books or material should I
| read?
| hpvic03 wrote:
| This essay is so prescient.
|
| Does anyone else think wokeism has gone too far, and we're
| sliding into a 1984-style era full of newspeak, wrongthink, and
| thoughtcrimes?
|
| I feel a little afraid to even write that, even as a question
| mark, even at that level of abstraction.
|
| That right there is probably an indication that it perhaps has
| gone too far.
|
| To be clear, this is coming from a person who is hispanic,
| supports gay-rights, and voted for Bernie. Not that any of that
| should matter.
| lashloch wrote:
| After reading your comment, I think it hasn't gone far enough.
| hpvic03 wrote:
| ... and my crime is?
|
| Mentioning the _idea_ of wrongthink?
|
| You're kind of proving my point.
| lashloch wrote:
| Your "crime" is over-acting as you nail yourself to an
| imaginary cross.
|
| Can you be specific about some of the things you believe
| are "wrongthink" in the eyes of "wokeism"? (Only if you
| feel safe doing so, of course...)
| fennecs wrote:
| What has possibly gone too far? That comment is more like a
| dogwhistle.
|
| Plenty of people in power are definitely not "woke". Eg the
| last American president was a right wing racist Nazi
| sympathising conservative, who's got a good chance of
| coming back. The government of Texas seems to hate trans
| people. Seems plenty of people agree with them. Bernie did
| not get elected. Delusional to thing the majority of people
| are "woke".
|
| I think saying "woke has gone too far" is just a subtle way
| to signal that you probably fall into one of those groups.
| overgard wrote:
| I think your post encapsulates what irks a lot of people
| about the "woke". There's no room for nuance or analysis,
| just a lot of overdramatized labels (nazi? really? you
| are aware of what the real nazis did right? stop
| cheapening history just to increase the temperature of
| the debate)
| fennecs wrote:
| What is the nuanced thing you want to discuss?
|
| Maybe just talk about something specific instead of just
| some broad "woke has gone to far".
| overgard wrote:
| > What is the nuanced thing you want to discuss?
|
| Huh? Clearly this entire topic is a meta-topic. I have no
| particular axe to grind at the moment.
|
| > Maybe just talk about something specific instead of
| just some broad "woke has gone to far".
|
| Well, I'm not the one regularly calling anyone I disagree
| with a Nazi Sympathizer. I'm not sure I've ever needed
| to, because the actual nazi sympathizers tend to be
| pretty explicit and proud of their views, and easy to
| avoid. People are free to lob that around labels like
| that if they want, but it's going to result in me not
| taking them seriously. To me, when I hear someone being
| called a "nazi sympathizer" I just assume that means "I
| really dislike that person"; which is very unfortunate in
| a boy-who-cried-wolf sense because I absolutely would
| like to know who the true nazi sympathizers are.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Would current white supremacists be for or against being
| conflated with Nazis of times past? Don't they still do
| the whole swastika thing, even? Do they reject the label?
| And if so, is that only because of the baggage that comes
| with it?
| zozbot234 wrote:
| By and large, the "woke" subculture hates Bernie. They
| view themselves in opposition to the dreaded
| "Berniebros".
| ncmncm wrote:
| A subset of people have discovered they can harm other
| people by exercising "wokeism". They should not be
| confused with people who work to be woke. There are very
| strong differences among the latter over Bernie, or
| almost any other political axis.
| philwelch wrote:
| > The government of Texas seems to hate trans people.
|
| They banned sex changes for minors. That's not "hating
| trans people", that's just a policy you disagree with
| when it comes to defining the degree to which a minor is
| legally capable of consenting to an adult irreversibly
| altering their body.
| moltke wrote:
| >the last American president was a right wing racist Nazi
|
| If you go and ask the actual Nazis (or NatSocs as they
| prefer) they'll tell you they don't like him because he
| was not a right wing racist Nazi. CivNat _maybe_ (but if
| he really is he toned it done a lot to pander to
| minorities) certainly not a Nazi.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Does anyone else think wokeism has gone too far
|
| Yes, because it is locked in a feedback loop with the folks who
| have recently decided to start saying the quiet part out loud.
| If people could just all around stop acting like jerks,
| everything would be much quieter. But nobody thinks _they_ are
| the jerk.
| screye wrote:
| It certainly did. Although, it seems like the opposition to it
| is in full swing.
|
| Wokeness (as portrayed in popular culture) hit its peak during
| the George Floyd protests and subsequent publishing of the
| Harpers letter. Since then, an entire ecosystem has risen in
| opposition to ideas of wokeness.
|
| Alas, the reaction to this opposition has not been to find a
| new consensus. Rather, communities have sharded and further
| polarized. Now, fervent ingroup loyalty is mandatory while the
| difference between each ingroup keeps expanding.
|
| This is especially noticeable in the most radical communities
| on the left and the right. From draconian Trans-bans to radical
| no-questions asked trans-acceptance, these communities have
| started dealing in absolutes. The more nuanced anti-woke have
| coalesced around Substack and honestly make good money. But,
| they rely on word of mouth to reach their readers. The other
| side of the anti-woke use viral video and aggressive youtube
| algorithms to reach their viewer base. However, the nature of
| these algorithms means that strong emotion is promoted over
| nuance and reason. Finally, there are celebrity faces like
| Rowling, Chapelle and Rogan, who can't really be deplatformed
| and serve as lightning rods for criticism, while smaller voices
| get the necessary protection to build out their platform.
|
| The sad part of this, is that you can't be apolitical anymore.
| There are only 3 acceptable positions. 1. Strong support and be
| embraced, 2. strong opposition and lose your friends but gain
| new anti-woke friends and lastly 3.stay silent while nodding to
| those in strong support.
|
| Now, if your profession is one is wholly in-group for the woke,
| then you will be in a difficult situation. Academia, print
| journalism and legacy media practically force you to be #1 or
| #3. If you are in a more technical field like tech, it doesn't
| really affect your life. But, if you choose to interface with
| social-sciencey aspects of big-tech such as ResponsibleAI, DEI
| or hiring, then you will also be forced into #1 or #3.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Also, Trump's visibility in media has been reduced.
|
| I believe that Trumpesque utterances were driving certain
| demography crazy and it overcompensated by going all in into
| wokeness and doubling down. And while Trump was president,
| there wasn't a chance to escape his daily, uh, serving of
| wisdom, which served as an irritant that had to be scratched,
| scratched, scratched, scratched.
|
| Nowadays Trump is much less prominent in the media and some
| people started rethinking their previous fervor.
| rspeele wrote:
| The "gone too far" wokeism stuff seems to be _openly mocked_ ,
| almost everywhere, all the time.
|
| Just because I can find people expressing goofy ideas like
| "saying 'my concerns fell on deaf ears' is ableist language" or
| "deadnaming a trans person is violence" on Twitter, doesn't
| mean that's mainstream. Those posts get shared 100x more by
| people mocking them than by people agreeing with them.
|
| Maybe you could give an example of something specific?
| [deleted]
| bob34 wrote:
| "Transwomen are women" is a religious precept on the left yet
| the overwhelming majority of people can see the obvious truth
| that they are in fact men in dresses with a serious
| disturbing sexual fetish.
| rspeele wrote:
| The overwhelming majority of people just don't care at all.
| What does it matter to me if you want to dress as a woman
| and be called "she"? It neither picks my pocket nor breaks
| my leg. Life is very short and if somebody finds that way
| of living theirs to be fulfilling, I see no reason to waste
| mine being agitated by it.
| [deleted]
| ManuelKiessling wrote:
| There are two comments above mine, one by a person who
| has learned some very important life lessons and is at
| peace with himself and the world, and one by - someone
| else.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Is there any adult alive who does not have a potentially
| disturbing sexual fetish? Even "asexuals" get tarred that
| way. So, you cannot distinguish them on that basis, even
| where it is true. (I know a trans person who is also a
| furry. Figure that one out!) It is of course possible that
| some subset of trans people are as you say. Is it your
| business to sort out which are and which are not?
|
| What will you say about a trans person who is also "ace"?
| It is far from uncommon for people to come out as trans in
| their 70s, long after fetishes have lost their grip on most
| people.
|
| So, if you are among that "overwhelming majority", you are
| just obviously wrong, on several counts.
| [deleted]
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| Sure. There have been numerous mainstream articles as well as
| a recent segment on John Oliver that liken teaching CRT to
| teaching about the fact racism exists. This is becoming a
| mainstream viewpoint, that "banning CRT" in classrooms is
| banning talk of racism.
|
| None of these articles mention _any_ of the more
| controversial CRT viewpoints that you can find by...reading
| the wikipedia article. It isn 't exactly a hidden secret that
| CRT purports that any racial disparities _must_ be due to
| systemic racism, though we can use some logic to quickly
| falsify some its main beliefs.
| paulpauper wrote:
| employers have much more power than individuals. even if the
| public is mostly opposed to wokeism , companies, fed. govt.,
| and universities still seem intent on pushing it.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| That still doesn't disprove wokeism's influence on the whole
| "things you can't say" dynamic. Leo Strauss has famously
| pointed out that censored ideas often end up being conveyed
| in a disguised manner, generally involving some kind of
| reverse psychology where a purposely clumsy or hyperbolic
| argument for X is used as a signal of believing not-X. So it
| may be that these seemingly "extreme woke" ideas are being
| purposely targeted to an unsuspecting Twitter audience as a
| broader challenge to wokeism itself, and that much of the
| mockery simply misses the point.
| lubesGordi wrote:
| Openly mocked? Definitely not.
|
| I know someone who knows someone who ran an art gallery on
| the west coast. Most of the artists were black and the
| gallerist was a white man. At one point he made some
| offhanded remark that "don't worry, the white artists have an
| area over there..." Guess what happened to his career after?
|
| These stories are everywhere, and are why people think things
| have gone too far.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Isn't _deadnaming a trans person_ literally a bannable
| offense on Twitter?
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/27/18113344/twitter-
| trans-u...
| ncmncm wrote:
| Is there anything not a bannable offense on Twitter? I pre-
| banned myself just for existing, and am happy to have done
| it.
| jkubicek wrote:
| Twitter (rightfully, imho) banned target harassment
| campaigns, not some coworker accidentally using the wrong
| pronoun.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| That's like saying "I tried to kill you, but you survived, so
| what are you complaining about?"
|
| The Twitter mob has ruined lives and is doing everything they
| can to ruin the ones they target.
| humanistbot wrote:
| > Just because I can find people expressing goofy ideas like
| "saying 'my concerns fell on deaf ears' is ableist language"
| or "deadnaming a trans person is violence" on Twitter,
| doesn't mean that's mainstream.
|
| Do a thought experiment: Your company is a player in a
| certain language/framework ecosystem (python, react,
| whatever). As part of that, many of your employees attend and
| sometimes host meetups for that ecosystem. A fellow highly-
| involved meetup organizer from another company announces that
| they are transitioning gender, and that they would like to be
| called by a new name. Almost everyone does. A few people make
| mistakes, but are sincere and apologize -- they want to do
| better, but memory pathways are hard. But one employee at
| your company objects to using their new name and pronouns on
| moral grounds. They keep using the organizer's dead name and
| old pronouns, and when they are asked to use their new name,
| they refuse.
|
| Do you think that is the way that a professional should act
| towards others in their profession?
| betwixthewires wrote:
| Yes.
|
| I think if I find myself in a profession that is overly
| concerned with things other than the work of that
| profession then it is time to find a new profession, or at
| least find new circles within the profession to associate
| with.
| rspeele wrote:
| > Do you think that is the way that a professional should
| act towards others in their profession?
|
| No, that is rude. Calling it _violence_ remains ridiculous
| hyperbole.
| thelopa wrote:
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/violent
|
| I would describe that experience for the trans person as
| a "vehement feeling or expression", and inflicting a
| violent state on someone qualifies as "an instance of
| violent treatment or procedure".
| overgard wrote:
| The problem is, when you start referring to things that
| used to simply be considered "rude" as "violence", then
| there's no sense of scale to everything, and the people
| using that terminology tend to come across as hyper
| sensitive.
| rspeele wrote:
| I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this one.
| Sure, words can be used in less literal context, like "an
| ocean of thoughts swirled violently in his head". But
| simply declaring "deadnaming is violence" because it
| causes "vehement feeling or expression", would make
| millions of things violence. Your partner breaking up
| with you is violence. Your boss giving you a bad
| performance review is violence. Etc.
| civilized wrote:
| These are good illustrations of the problem with the
| popular "NYT op-ed" type arguments for the claim "speech
| that upsets someone is violence".
|
| These folks argue (with scientific citations!) that words
| can cause physical pain and stress, and that actions that
| cause such things are basically tantamount to violence.
| What's the difference, right? If I feel bad, what does it
| matter whether you said mean words to me or you punched
| me?
|
| The problem is, words can cause stress in all sorts of
| situations because social interactions can be inherently
| stressful. There is no non-stressful way to end a
| relationship or deliver a bad performance review. But
| sometimes it needs to be done.
|
| Punching someone is extremely different. It's not at all
| something that normally has to be done, unless perhaps
| you were just punched first. Physical violence is
| fundamentally different from speech because speech has an
| absolutely vital dual purpose of communication, which
| physical violence doesn't have.
|
| To avoid calling a huge variety of legitimate speech acts
| violence, we'd have to redefine violence in some tortured
| way, like "stuff that causes harm and stress unless it
| was necessary/justified".
|
| I don't think we should redefine the most emotionally
| salient words in the English language just so that
| activists' favorite slogans can be retroactively deemed
| logical.
| bob34 wrote:
| Animats wrote:
| _deadnaming a trans person_
|
| The other side of that being "gender fraud".[1]
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/23/well/mind/is-sex-by-
| decep...
| [deleted]
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Do you think that is the way that a professional should
| act towards others in their profession?
|
| That's beside the point, since not being rude to others for
| no reason is very much part of mainstream professional
| norms. The question you might ask yourself is rather: "is
| this one person acting _violently_ towards the meetup
| organizer by not using their preferred pronouns and updated
| name ". There are people who would answer this in the
| affirmative, but this implies a pretty loose understanding
| of what qualifies as "violence" in the first place, which
| leads to all sorts of unforeseen implications. There's a
| very good reason why etiquette is generally regarded as
| trivial when compared with more tangible ethical
| challenges, and "use the correct pronouns, styles and
| honorifics when addressing So-and-so" is the quintessential
| example of etiquette.
| spiznnx wrote:
| It's not professional, it's abusive and it's harassment.
| But it is literally not violence by the common definition.
| Slogans like "silence is violence" are designed to provoke
| attention to an issue by intentionally shifting semantics
| from where they are normally understood.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Maybe it's not so much an indication that reality has gone too
| far so much as it is that we aren't all equally aligned with
| reality.
|
| You say that you are a little afraid to speak up but
| realistically you are being deliberately dramatic. Shall we
| start a campaign to get you booted from your job tomorrow
| because you are being dramatic? It's not a crime nor a reason
| for outrage. You face at worst a down vote
| overgard wrote:
| People get in trouble for decade old social media posts all
| the time. There's a lot of weird vindictive people that will
| go through ten years of twitter posts to be like "gotcha".
| The only way to not worry is to never have a high profile, or
| be extremely careful what you say in writing.
| nperez wrote:
| I think the term "woke" has been hijacked by some people to
| refer to anything minorities do in a disparaging manner, so I
| would need more concrete examples of what that means.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Linguist (and heterodox thinker) John McWhorter has written
| about this shifting usage:
|
| > _For example, it's only recently that he noticed the term
| "woke" being used beyond black Americans in just the way that
| "politically correct" was used before it was a pejorative.
| And already, he observed, it is beginning to take on the same
| baggage as PC once did._
|
| from https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/06/the-
| futili...
| overgard wrote:
| I think the vast majority thinks that, but the extremists (for
| or against) are the ones carrying the megaphones because media
| craves controversy.
| robbyking wrote:
| I don't think "wokeism" has gone too far, I think accusations
| of it have. There are plenty of high profile sex offenders and
| homophobic/transphobic celebrities who continue to get work.
|
| Instead what I see is misrepresentation of what "wokeness" is;
| I often hear conservatives say they're "not allowed" to discuss
| race/sexuality/etc., when in actuality what has happened is
| most of American has just moved on from finding homophobia and
| racism entertaining.
| moltke wrote:
| We knew where it was going decades ago but it was considered
| too fashionable.
| majormajor wrote:
| Discussions of "wokeism" should keep in mind that one of the
| most visible cases of being "canceled" is Colin Kaepernick, and
| you'd hardly call those blackballing him "woke." Meanwhile
| other less-accomplished QBs still bounce around from at least
| backup job to backup job...
|
| But beyond that... people have been getting blackballed forever
| in this country.
|
| So it's very important in this discussion to make it clear if
| you're complaining about just:
|
| a) people facing repercussions for saying 'conservative' things
|
| or
|
| b) people facing repercussions for other things as well
|
| or even just something like
|
| c) the outsize influence of random anonymous people and mobs on
| Twitter
| philwelch wrote:
| Kaepernick's career was going downhill before he started
| protesting. He was already the backup by then and frankly
| already had a reputation as an egotistical jackass. If you
| want to be an egotistical jackass in the NFL, it's possible,
| but it will limit your career options even if you have the
| talent to back them up, which Kaep didn't at the end. He's
| also went on to sabotage his own comeback opportunities at
| least once. Probably the best comparison I could make is
| Kyrie Irving, and the only reason Kyrie isn't out of the
| league is the NBA CBA.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > c) the outsize influence of random anonymous people and
| mobs on Twitter
|
| Ding ding ding! This is the fundamental problem. We
| collectively seem to care entirely too much about the fringe
| people who bother to vent their minds on Twitter.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| A lot of influence _with no responsibility_ , that is the
| hellish combination. If the Twitter mob drives somebody to
| suicide, no one is going to punish them.
|
| Power without responsibility is a wild combination, very
| unstable.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > Colin Kaepernick
|
| If he had been winning football games, he'd still be playing
| football. Witness the legions of other non-cancelled football
| players who've done way worse (but still win).
| overgard wrote:
| Right, like, teams are still courting Deshaun Watson who
| is, if the accusations are true, a pretty awful person.
| Because Deshaun won games. I think the ostracism of
| Kaepernick was super unfair and ugly, but I also think he
| was playing himself into being a career backup.
| overgard wrote:
| I don't think Kaepernick is really relevant here because he
| didn't piss off most people, he pissed off 32 mostly white
| billionaires in their 70s and 80s. IE, it's less that he got
| "cancelled" by society in general but rather he got cancelled
| by an insular cabal. That culture really doesn't reflect the
| culture of society as a whole.
| ncmncm wrote:
| They are little different from millions of others, aside
| from their excessive power. Wokeism enforcement (as
| distinguished from being woke, itself) could even be
| interpreted as a defense against their hegemony.
|
| The Iraq War minted hundreds of them, mostly in Dick
| Cheney's camp. We will be living with that legacy for
| generations.
| erehweb wrote:
| There are plenty of things you "can't say" in San Francisco which
| are self-evident truths in conservative parts of the U.S., and
| vice versa. On the other hand, anyone can watch Fox News, or read
| The Nation, so those ideas get around everywhere. Probably people
| mostly migrate to communities where they feel comfortable / agree
| with others too. So how big of a problem is this now?
| chernevik wrote:
| "Move or shut up" -- wow, we've come a long way from "I
| disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your
| right to say it."
| fknorangesite wrote:
| > we've come a long way from "I disapprove of what you say
| but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
|
| We weren't ever "there" in the first place.
| klyrs wrote:
| That ideal hasn't been a reality in my lifetime, nor in my
| parents'. How do you think non-religious folks were treated
| in rural parts in the 1960s? Even some cities -- my dad
| couldn't get a job in Salt Lake City because he wasn't
| Mormon. In 1917, women were beaten and tortured for picketing
| for suffrage. Martin Luther King was assassinated for voicing
| the wrong opinion.
| chernevik wrote:
| So we should just give up on it?
|
| It's an ideal, and as with every ideal, we're constantly
| striving to better meet it.
| klyrs wrote:
| Did I say we should give up on it? You said we've come a
| long way from that. I'm disagreeing with the notion that
| we've ever _been_ there.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > How do you think non-religious folks were treated in
| rural parts in the 1960s?
|
| Poorly. And it was as wrong then as the opposite is today.
| jl6 wrote:
| The ACLU historically defended many unpopular speech cases,
| and even now they will fight for some types of unpopular
| speech, and this was all definitely within our lifetimes.
| kurthr wrote:
| Liberal orthodoxy is to defend nazis. Nazi orthodoxy is
| to drive over liberals.
| kbelder wrote:
| Liberal orthodoxy is quite the conservative stance,
| today.
| klyrs wrote:
| "Move or shut up" is not the ACLU's position today, is
| it?
| jl6 wrote:
| It's a big problem if people start sorting themselves into echo
| chambers instead of listening to each other.
| kodah wrote:
| I would say it's still a substantive issue. I live in SF and I
| came from a very conservative state; moral community wise I fit
| into neither and it does make the areas I mentioned a tad
| uncomfortable to be in. That said, I'm only forced to work in
| one.
| amirkdv wrote:
| > Such obviously false statements might be treated as jokes, or
| at worst as evidence of insanity, but they are not likely to make
| anyone mad. The statements that make people mad are the ones they
| worry might be believed.
|
| There's some truth to this that's worth pausing on.
|
| But it's a fallacy (probably with a fancy name) to say "it made
| you mad therefore you worry it's true".
|
| A statement could be false yet incite anger because it's
| demonstrably harmful.
| [deleted]
| escapedmoose wrote:
| Also the statements that people "worry might be believed" may
| not intersect with the statements that could be judged as
| plausible by an intelligent, rational person. There are a
| loooooot of dumb people out there, with uncomfortable levels of
| individual and/or collective power. When that cohort falls for
| something that smarter people see as blatantly false, it still
| can have nasty consequences. We should be angry at anyone who
| deliberately attempts to make them fall for it.
| runevault wrote:
| In a world of modern disinformation, we can no longer presume
| mad vs non-mad statements based upon our own worldview.
| Different people have been told different things throughout
| their lives, and if nothing from another PoV pierces that
| bubble, then it simply seems normal to them. And that can go
| for any person, not just "the other side" be it R vs D or any
| other two groups.
| oehpr wrote:
| Exactly. This whole essay seems to provide no way to
| distinguish between moral fashion and actual morality.
|
| Is he trying to say that there's nothing moral under the sun?
| That there are no evil ideas? Do I even need to put forward
| examples?!
|
| And providing no framework or tools to distinguish between the
| two and just telling everyone "go for it" is dangerous. I'm mad
| at the idea. And no. I don't think it's because it might be
| true.
| noxer wrote:
| Mostly all of the "morality" people live by are fashion. Sure
| you can craft some example of "pure evil" if you want to but
| they hardly have any relevance in people every day life. For
| all the popular "morally right" things to do or not to do we
| just craft a set of exceptions that are in fashion.
|
| "You should tell the truth" yes, probably you should but
| should you always? what if you can prevent trouble if you
| lie? what if you can save someone form getting hurts by
| lying? what if you omit something etc. etc.
|
| "You should not take a life" except if self-defense, defense
| of someone else, if the person poses an imminent danger to
| you or someone else, the person is military personnel form a
| different country, the person is unborn etc. etc.
| amirkdv wrote:
| A lot of morality is of course fashion (and "relative", if
| you want).
|
| But failure to articulate universal moral rules concisely,
| doesn't mean there's no concensus.
|
| Circumstances and relevant context can be very complicated
| and laborious to describe, but there are still many cases
| where overwhelming majority of people would agree on what's
| right and what's wrong.
| noxer wrote:
| But morality claims to define right and wrong based on
| logic not consensus. Consensus changes and is also often
| confused with "acceptance" like for example a majority of
| people accepts some kind of legal abortions that doesn't
| mean they think it is morally right to do it.
| strogonoff wrote:
| Anger is a manifestation of fear, which in turn stems from
| insecurity. If you are confident, there is nothing to be afraid
| of and becoming irate about.
|
| This makes it a useful measure sometimes. If a thing you say
| causes anger, it may or may not be true--but it definitely
| indicates your counterpart's sensitivity to and bias against it
| being true; the chance of it being false is thus elevated.
| msla wrote:
| Were I to spread lies about horrible things the Jews were
| doing, Jewish people around me would become angry and, yes,
| fearful, depending on my ability to make or find platforms,
| not because they'd be afraid I was telling the truth, but
| because, historically, those lies have been early warning
| signs for violence against Jews, including state violence.
|
| Making it more personal: Would you get angry were someone to
| falsely accuse you of a crime? Would it frighten you? Would
| those emotions come from a lack of confidence in the truth,
| or a lack of confidence in your support system and,
| ultimately, the justice system to separate fact from fiction?
| strogonoff wrote:
| Hate speech: I have encountered that at times, have you?
| Anger is pointless, because that is what they want.
| Allegation of a crime: probably not going to anger me if I
| did not commit it, but may make me afraid if it is made by
| law enforcement.
|
| Fear is natural if hate has the potential to spill into
| action, but anger is a signature behavior of a cornered
| creature--it will not lend credence to any of your counter
| statements and is useful in a very, very limited range of
| scenarios. Keep your cool.
| msla wrote:
| Hot anger is pointless, except as a social signal, cool
| anger drives action and is very powerful.
| strogonoff wrote:
| Now I am not sure where you are going.
|
| To circle back to the topic at hand, any anger stems from
| fear/insecurity (which may or may not be warranted); when
| it happens unexpectedly when discussing a random topic,
| like in TFA--no one wishes death to anyone, and yet
| someone gets mad--then it is a useful indicator.
| philwelch wrote:
| Empirically, many people seem to be willing to believe
| deranged conspiracy theories about Jews. That doesn't mean
| those theories are correct or credible in any objective
| sense, but the risk is exactly that people might believe or
| take seriously those claims.
|
| The thing is, if you really want to prevent antisemitic
| violence, censorship is not going to help. If someone
| claims that the Jews rule the world, you can argue, "so why
| did the Jews end up on the wrong side of the Shoah" and if
| they claim the Shoah didn't happen, you bring out all the
| documentary evidence that it _did_ happen. If censorship is
| on the table, the anti-Semite can--as he does in many
| countries already--censor all of the documentary evidence
| that demonstrates the barbarity of his position.
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