Anil Dash's analysis of Sam Altman's free speach essay
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* He really doesn't seem to understand the difference between free speech and being free of consequences, and as a result he's in danger of suppressing free speech. He wants people to be able to say controversial things without there being blowback, but the only possible way to accomplish that is by suppressing the free speech of people who disagree. You're either for free speech- which includes the right to criticize ideas- or he's arguing that specific people's speech (the person with the "novel physics idea" for example) are more important than others.
* His example of China, one of the worst human rights violators who has been known for violently suppressing free speech, is just a continuation of that. He's happy because as a privileged person with money China is super excited to hear his ideas, but he's also ignoring the fact that China literally jails and kills people who speak out with ideas that their government doesn't like.
* He completely ignores the damage done by hate speech. Just completely ignores it. If you were to read this blog as is it seems like he thinks people being driven out of companies, schools, education programs, and development communities by bigotry and sexism were never going to contribute or that their losses aren't as important as the ideas being lost to people uncomfortable being called out for bigotry.
* The blog seems to put a higher value on innovation and corporations than it does people.
> Earlier this year, I noticed something in China that really surprised me. I realized I felt more comfortable discussing controversial ideas in Beijing than in San Francisco.
It's entirely relevant that stating the wrong 'controversial ideas' in Beijing can get you killed or imprisoned.
the original post is about discussing these topics in person-to-person situations... not about posting politically motivated speech online, not about challenging the government.
This is silly. He's not saying you can't criticize ideas, he's saying don't assume ill-intent.
The examples were clear. If someone wants to extend life, you can't assume they don't care about the environment. If someone wants to send a rocket to Mars, you can't assume they don't care about poverty.
China was used as a counter-example explicitly because of their lack of freedom of speech. The entire point is that when people feel more free to discuss ideas in China than in San Francisco, we have a problem, because China is not an exemplar.
> This is uncomfortable, but it’s possible we have to allow people to say disparaging things about gay people if we want them to be able to say novel things about physics. [1] Of course we can and should say that ideas are mistaken, but we can’t just call the person a heretic. We need to debate the actual idea.
Not every idea is worth debating in every setting. Someone who just wants to go to work and program shouldn't have to spend their day debating people who think their lifestyles are a sin- they should be able to focus on their job. If you're building rockets for SpaceX what should it matter whether the dude two seats over knows how much you really dislike gay people?
And again, if you have a bunch of people bashing gay people in your company and you just allow it you are going to push those gay people out. All of their "novel physics ideas" are going to go out the door with them.
As to his entire point about China- it is patently false! It is literally not true. If a bunch of people in the bay area want to talk politics they can do so. If you do it in china and it goes against certain things you go to jail. His example and claim that china has more free speech is a slap in the face to all of the people murdered in china for that speech.
I fully agree, but I didn't read it as Sam advocating that people should feel free to discuss highly sensitive subjects in every setting, but rather that he feels that said ideas can't be discussed in any setting. (For this post, I specifically don't take any position on this.)
>As to his entire point about China- it is patently false! It is literally not true. If a bunch of people in the bay area want to talk politics they can do so. If you do it in china and it goes against certain things you go to jail. His example and claim that china has more free speech is a slap in the face to all of the people murdered in china for that speech.
I think he's implying that even though in China the government will jail you for speech they deem subversive, people don't feel like they can't approach taboo subjects in normal social situations. On the other hand, in a politically free environment like California, you can be excluded by your friends or colleagues for speech they don't like.
I completely disagree with him then. It is possible that his own professional and social circles are like this, but there are 7.5 million people in the bay area. There are people outside of his group. I have had "difficult" discussions with plenty of people, both in professional and social settings. Perhaps this is the disconnect- maybe the dude just needs better friends.
"When we move from strenuous debate about ideas to casting the people behind the ideas as heretics, we gradually stop debate on all controversial ideas."
It's the ability to even discuss them without being branded a heretic that he desires, rather than a lack of criticism.
2) He's saying that the people he knows in China were more willing to hear about his ideas than the people he knows in SF. He did not mention anything about privilege, nor do I think it is fair to assume that the Chinese are only more willing to accept his ideas based on his money. Many people do that, not just the Chinese. He's mentioning (anecdotally) that the people he spoke with in China were more open-minded than the people of SF. Perhaps we should take it as a wakeup call rather than an indication of Altman's privilege.
3) Hate speech != "driven out of companies, schools, education programs, and development communities by bigotry and sexism". How can you equate what is strictly speech with that of hateful action?
4) Would you like to pick a quote as an example for why you might feel that way? The common refrain in this essay to me seems to be "we can’t just call the person a heretic", which seems very focused on the individual rather than a theoretical corporation.
2) It is entirely anecdotal, and it completely skips over the fact that China does not have free speech. You know those NFL protests that are happening here? In china that would get you three years in prison[1]. Being an American in China alone is enough to grant privileges that don't exist to the people born there. Shoppinglifting is an offense that carries a minimum sentence of three years, maximum of ten, and the American college students caught there were let go.[2] It's naive to think that his experience was typical in any way.
3) If speech didn't have consequences we wouldn't be having this discussion. If the "anti gay" physicist wasn't hurt by the words directed at him then he would just ignore them and keep doing his thing. If the founders working on life extension weren't upset at being told there are environmental consequences to this then maybe the blog post would never have been written.
If someone who is gay walks into a company and is told by another employee that they are deviants in the eyes of god then the gay person is likely to leave. If a woman is told to "go make us sandwiches", even in a joking way, she's not going to feel respected. Bigots who are given free reign drive away the minorities they target.
4) The simple fact that this blog did not discuss any of the consequences of the hate speech shows that he doesn't think they are legitimate. He argues that we need to be more lenient in allowing bigotry if it means that we also get more innovation.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/04/china-disrespe... [2] https://newsone.com/3757629/china-shoplifting-laws-liangelo-...
Think more about what it was like during McCarthyism. If you were accused of being Communist, you became an outcast. You would no longer get invitations to events. If you were applying for a job, it would suddenly be filled already. If you wanted to get coffee with a friend, they would suddenly be busy.
As a more recent example of this, look at what happened to Rachel Dolezal, the "trans-racial" woman who was born white and claimed she identifies as black. After the media fiasco, she couldn't get a job, and most recently I saw an article about her struggling to get by on food stamps, and about to be homeless. There was no government action against her, and yet, nobody would say she hasn't felt the consequences of what she did.
Note: I'm not suggesting that Dolezal and Communism are related, just using them as two separate examples to support the larger point.
How could you not consider speech an action?
When the blowback is to smear your character, conflate it with other unrelated negativities, and avoid actual discussion on the topic at hand who can disagree?
Edit: several assertions therein, feel free to debate :)
* The entire point of civil liberties and human rights is that we, as a liberal society, have deemed some freedoms so important that the damage done by allowing them to be restricted almost always outweighs the damage done by their free exercise. There are exceptions, but these tend to be very severe in nature—ones freedom to travel around and associate with others might be restricted if they are infected with Ebola, or one’s freedom to keep the police from breaking down their door might be restricted if the police see and hear someone in the window yelling and screaming for help.
Along that vein, there are some obvious limits to freedom of expression: you can’t literally yell “fire” in a crowded theater, you can’t lie under oath, and so forth. But it stretches things too far when you make up categories like “blasphemy” or “sedition” or “hate speech” to block out actual ideas, regardless of the danger you think their free expression presents to society. The infamous “shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater” analogy was used in a Supreme Court case that upheld the conviction of a man who advocated resisting the draft during World War I. That decision was later, and rightly in my view, superseded by a different ruling.
So let’s break that down a bit. If you use your freedom of speech to convince people to resist the draft, you impair the ability of the country to win the war, which only extends the war, which causes real suffering and death for a large number of people. And ultimately, that wasn’t considered enough “damage” to outweigh restricting free speech.
They still are, for that matter. People today seem to be extremely worried about the so-called "KKK" and "Nazi" groups, most of which consist of about five yokels meeting in somebody's garage. They're nasty pieces of work on an individual basis, certainly, but hardly an existential threat to the country as a whole. There haven't been any real Nazis in close to 70 years, and there hasn't been a real KKK for about a hundred.
Communists, on the other hand, not only racked up a far higher body count than Nazis and the KKK combined, they still control entire countries, with standing armies and nuclear weapons.
If we're going to start ejecting people from the public sphere on the basis of their ideas being dangerous, pragmatism would seem to dictate that we start with Marxists.
I don't actually advocate that Marxists be ejected from the public sphere. I'm merely pointing out that if we are going to start ejecting people for "dangerous speech", they are the obvious first candidates.
No, actually, I don't "need" to do that.
Communists have murdered more people than any other single group in the history of the world. Sorry, but they have.
The Middle East has been a bloodbath since the dawn of recorded history, and likely before.
"American Indian genocide" had nothing to do with capitalism per se, nor does slavery have any connection whatsoever with a free market. It is, in fact, quite antithetical to it.
Communist _regimes_ have killed a a lot of people.
I'm not sure why the American Indiana genocide is in quotes. As if there weren't policies at the federal and state level that promoted the theft of land from the original inhabitants and the ensuing displacement and murder of them?
You're corroborating my point that those violent acts weren't expressly mandated by the underlying political philosophy but were instead carried out via the state powers who latched onto those philosophies in order to gain populist support for the policies that would ensure their power.
And Nazi _regimes_ have killed a lot of people. So you're saying that Nazis are okay, then?
"I'm not sure why the American Indiana genocide is in quotes."
Because most of the Indians were killed by diseases, not by deliberate genocide. Most of them died without ever seeing a white person (e.g., the former inhabitants of some of the Missisippian culture cities). There were certainly genocidal incidents, some of which were horrifying, but that's not what caused the large-scale depopulation.
In any case, that had little or nothing to do with "capitalism". The colonization of the Americas (and, indeed, much of the world) was primarily driven by mercantilism, not capitalism. I'm trying really hard not to sound condescending here, but do you even know what "capitalism" means? It doesn't just mean "not communism".
Besides, my argument had to do with current threats, not things that happened hundred of years ago. That Nazis (the real ones) no longer pose a threat while Communists do was the whole point.
Can you name a Nazi regime that is constantly threatening to launch ICBMs at the United States, as North Korea does on a seemingly daily basis?
Citation needed
Conversely, what if instead of censoring all Marxists, we just censor the various apologists for Stalin, Mao, Castro, etc., ban that “heroic” portrait of Che Guevara, and just focus on the glorification of these actual regimes that murdered people?
I believe something different: that free speech is open discourse between people, and that anything which prevents people from talking to each other openly and honestly stands in the way of free speech, be it bigotry or be it no-platforming. To say something and receive "mean words" or "consequences" can usually means that nobody is engaging your argument.
Sama gives the example of the controversial physicist, where someone has one good idea and some terrible ideas, and asks whether the good idea should be ignored because of the bad ideas. I don't think this means that the physicist has more important ideas as a whole, but rather that the ideas should be engaged in isolation to one another lest we throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Advocating genocide (e.g.) is not deserving of engagement.
Anyone attempting to persuade you that genocide is in any way beneficial to humanity is not going to be persuaded by your "open and honest" counterargument. Their intent isn't even to persuade you. Their intent is to persuade other viewers of your argument that "reasonable people can disagree"
> He really doesn't seem to understand the difference between free speech and being free of consequences, and as a result he's in danger of suppressing free speech. He wants people to be able to say controversial things without there being blowback, but the only possible way to accomplish that is by suppressing the free speech of people who disagree. You're either for free speech- which includes the right to criticize ideas- or he's arguing that specific people's speech (the person with the "novel physics idea" for example) are more important than others.
Sam's article is a criticism of the form of criticism received when on the "losing" side of a controversial topic. The criticism is not of the opinion (which leads to actual discussion) but of the person. That criticism of the person tends to be over-the-top.
Pushing back against this over-the-top criticism will open up free speech by letting people who are scared to share their opinions for risk of extreme consequences (being fired?).
> His example of China, one of the worst human rights violators who has been known for violently suppressing free speech, is just a continuation of that. He's happy because as a privileged person with money China is super excited to hear his ideas, but he's also ignoring the fact that China literally jails and kills people who speak out with ideas that their government doesn't like.
I think you're making Sam's point for him. He feels more comfortable in a place as bad as china for speech than San Francisco. What does that imply? China's treatment may not be equal, but this is not the implication. The implication is in how uncomfortable he feels in SF.
> He completely ignores the damage done by hate speech. Just completely ignores it. If you were to read this blog as is it seems like he thinks people being driven out of companies, schools, education programs, and development communities by bigotry and sexism were never going to contribute or that their losses aren't as important as the ideas being lost to people uncomfortable being called out for bigotry.
You are ignoring the damage of calling someone a bigot for sharing their opinion. I think we both have a point here, and a further discussion would be interesting.
> The blog seems to put a higher value on innovation and corporations than it does people.
I'd assert it's putting a higher value on the quality of society which he asserts is improved when controversial topics are free to be discussed without risk of extreme personal attack. People make up society (and corporations btw), so it can be assumed that assertion of higher value applies to them as well.
What this really comes down to is people's ability to compartmentalize. If I'm willing to be on your software team even though I think you're a sinner who is going to hell, I'm compartmentalizing. If you're willing to serve on a school board with me, even if you think I'm evil for eating meat, you're compartmentalizing. This sort of compartmentalizing is how we build a functional society that provides what we all need even though we don't all agree on everything.
If you fight words with words, that is good. If you fight words with actions against the people who said those words, then you are against free speech.
Note: the principle of free speech is much broader than just the Bill of Rights.
(Writing this with an expectation of backlash) (irony?)
Everyone expects the judgement of their peers for their controversial opinions, which is one reason why people tend to have like-minded friends (as much as possible). Or at least friends open to a discussion.
The issue is judgements on controversial opinions turn into all-too-public smears on a person's character and that character is conflated with (over-the-top) negativity, which misrepresents the original context (sliding). Naming any such example bears the risk of the same thing happening to yourself (you know what I mean).
Anil is guilty of it himself, calling Sam's position "actually dangerous". When in fact, that labeling is the exact thing Sam is arguing against. Perhaps Sam isn't dangerous, but just opinionated?
TLDR: Controversial opinions lead to ad hominem attacks that use conflation with extremely negative topics to attack even the possibility that the position is debatable.
I read this first line and already knew I disagreed with this essay. Speech is the one thing that can equalize rich and poor, and has the ability to evaporate decades of work and reputation.
I generally don't like much coming out of the Bay Area right now, and have an especial distate for YC's contributions to this mess, but I am impressed with Sam Altman's essay. He's going to get a lot of backlash for it, but I believe he is correct.
"why it's dangerous and wrong"
"most awful example"
"become actually dangerous, in ways he is unwilling or unable to understand"
The author intentionally (mis)interprets sama's writing in the least charitable way and then spends the rest of it arguing a strawman (with insults sprinkled throughout) ending with a comparison to nazis.
If I wasn't sure I agreed with Sama before, I'm definitely more inclined to now.
I feel like this is a bit of a passive way of saying this.
If someone says something, _they said it_. It evaporates their reputation because _they did something_.
And when saying things, it's to communicate the idea to others. I don't really think that speech exists in a vacuum. If you know saying something to somebody could offend them, you're kinda signing up to the criticism.
It feels like a lot of the essay is trying to say "we should listen to other people with controversial opinions." We were doing this in another domain for a while, with sexism.
A lot of us have just nodded and grimaced when our coworkers would make "those comments". When we'd see the berating of female colleagues. Even the words already had such an obvious effect.
I'm not saying "ban bad speech", but I do think as society we should be reinforcing the fact that words _are_ important, especially in this political climate. And that people are responsible for what they say. And... you can always apologize and change! And the world will be better for it.
We all should be making sure we're hearing stuff properly. I don't think many of these things are _really_ about misunderstanding, but it has happened.
Inversely, just because the speaker says "I meant X, but I didn't mean for it to offend" doesn't completely absolve the person. The words have meanings, and if you want to share you ideas, it's important to do it properly (just like you should know how to drive before going out there with your car).
In terms of speech that offends, we can only control what we say, not what people think about it, nor whether their thought is reasonable. Therefore, punishing someone for what they say because it offended someone seems pretty illogical, unless you can make a damned good case, based on context, that it was probably going to offend.
A simple way to resolve that question is to ask the person who said it, "Why did you say that?" If they have a response that is not "because I wanted to offend" that is also reasonable, then I'd suggest the onus falls at least equally on the person who claims offense.
Unconsidered speech from the rich and influential can disproportionately hurt the poor and disadvantaged. For example, the US President is not a shining example of "using influence for good." His behavior and speech has lowered the bar across the board for how we expect our politicians to behave, has given confidence to racists and those who would commit hate crimes, and has claimed all criticism to be invalid with faulty reasoning.
A major fault in @sama's essay is a false dichotomy: that we must choose between some sad world of uncontested ideas (even if they have major faults e.g hurting marginalized groups in society a la "gay people are evil" -- his example not mine) and one where innovation can happen. It paints political correctness (which is a movement couched in concern for peoples' well-being) as being antithetical to being able to make technological / societal progress.
This is just not true. In fact you NEED a world where people give a shit about each other so that people who would otherwise be excluded by jerks and awful behavior can be productive, moving us forward.
And he uses Galileo, who was silenced by religious elements, as a comparison point vs a small group of startup ideas perhaps lambasted by media for being out of touch. It's not an accurate comparison.
"When we move from strenuous debate about ideas to casting the people behind the ideas as heretics, we gradually stop debate on all controversial ideas." I'm curious to hear just which cases comprise his experience of valid ideas being cast as heretical.
Is it unscientific for me to not "strenuously debate" with someone who is a flat earther out of judgement for how well my time is spent? And does it hurt progress for society to brand flat earthers as unscientific (which influences our "worth my time" metric)? I don't think it is. There's a lack of nuance in Sam's argument.
But that is precisely what is happening. The aim of political correctness seems to be to make things "safer" for other people. I would argue that safety and freedom are inversely related: a free society is inherently unsafe. But in the same way that we learn and get stronger by making mistakes, I think that erring on the side of freedom helps to strengthen individuals in the long term.
The other issue that comes up with these topics is arbitration. If you're going to cast a safety net across speech, you have to figure out who decides what the standards are, and how they are enforced. And if you disagree with those standards, what recourse do you have?
The idea that "safety and freedom are inversely related" is not true. You're saying we move along a curve. Why not push the curve instead? Here's a way: freedom strictly increases when you give it more equally to all people. Security doesn't decrease from that in actuality; people who were taking unfair advantage of their relative privilege are the only ones who feel "unsafe."
For example: in the current state of things women face disproportionate amounts of mental load when interacting at work. "Am I coming across as sexually interested via the way I dress or talk?" << This is something that actually has to cross womens' minds from forever ago to now.
Given today's societal landscape, many men claim "I feel unsafe" because now that same thought has to cross their mind -- society is shifting toward less tolerant toward bad male behavior so you have to be careful not to make mistakes.
But when men consider/improve how they communicate and how their words may make others feel, they really increase freedom and safety for all women. And in net we are all both more free and more safe.
If you argue that the man is now less safe than he was before, you have to ask yourself, is it fair that he was more safe than a corresponding woman to begin with? And is he really being deprived of anything at all, other than a gross privilege he had (to not be accountable for his actions toward others)?
It's all well and good to talk about maximizing freedom, but if that freedom is not equally distributed it becomes significantly less noble.
I think what is reasonable to say is that while we are all created equal in the sense that we are human, that's far as as natural equality extends. Some of us are taller, shorter, we have different interests, etc.
So this begs the question, what is the role of government. Should government treat us all equally, in the sense that we are humans and thus rational beings? Or should government (a set of formalized rules and people who enforce them) attempt to equalize the playing field, and thus treat us all unequally? In your own example, by ensuring in your model safety for women, we must treat men differently from women, and therefore ensure that for women to be safer, men must be less free. IMHO government should treat us equal in the human sense, and no other.
On the obvious response that government and society are different, I would reply that government is at least in theory a set of formalized rules intended to reflect what the informal rules of society are. Therefore, while the match might not be 1:1, it's still quite relevant.
Here's a link to a discussion with FA Hayek, who describes this far more eloquently that I can: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnMd40dqBlQ
Your observation that "humans aren't all the same" is orthogonal to the ideal that humans should be treated equally despite their physical characteristics which are outside of their control. I cannot control what gender, sexual orientation, or ethnicity I'm born as, and you should not assume anything about my abilities based on those characteristics.
Good and bad are things we decide together because we're stuck living together; that's what society is. Equality is something a lot of us decide is good. It's not "natural" but that doesn't make it bad. I think it's good to aspire for a more equitable society.
Racism is bad exactly because it assumes things about people based on a physical characteristic outside of their control (skin color). That concept is general.
> > Or should government (a set of formalized rules and people who enforce them) attempt to equalize the playing field, and thus treat us all unequally?
Equalizing the playing field does not "treat us all unequally." That's the point of equalizing. A government trying to equalize the playing field is a government that acknowledges the playing field is already unfair. If you're born rich you are already advantaged. If you're born white you're already advantaged. Government is within its rights to say "oh shit 1% of the citizens who participate in this system have disproportionate power compared to the vast majority; we should equalize it so everyone can have a better life." << This is what a progressive income tax is for.
> In your own example, by ensuring in your model safety for women, we must treat men differently from women, and therefore ensure that for women to be safer, men must be less free.
Wrong. By ensuring model safety for women, we must hold them to the same standards that we hold women to. Both women and men who harass people should be ostracized. Historically only women had to bear the burden of "how do I come across" because of men. Today men should equally bear the same burden and be responsible for how their words and actions make others feel.
Men aren't "less free" in this model, they just have to be "more responsible." A level of responsibility women have already been forced to have. E.g why is it that women have to watch what they wear? Feminists aspire to a world where men should not assault or harass women, regardless of what they wear. We should all be equally responsible for our own behavior.
> government is at least in theory a set of formalized rules intended to reflect what the informal rules of society are
Agreed, this is a fact. Which is exactly why people who seek equality lobby government to update laws, to reflect our evolved societal norms. Laws should protect LGBTQ from discimination in the workplace for example, and help bridge the pay gap for women in the workplace. Laws were responsible for first freeing slaves in the US and then ensuring equal rights.
Maybe you misunderstand my point. I mean that humans are all the same in the way that there is a Platonic form "human", which manifests itself in different ways. So one could say that they are all the same in that they share in humanity, and differ in application. I'm far more interested in a system that focuses on the common humanity than whether someone is tall or short.
>"Equalizing the playing field does not "treat us all unequally." That's the point of equalizing. A government trying to equalize the playing field is a government that acknowledges the playing field is already unfair. If you're born rich you are already advantaged. If you're born white you're already advantaged. Government is within its rights to say "oh shit 1% of the citizens who participate in this system have disproportionate power compared to the vast majority; we should equalize it so everyone can have a better life." << This is what a progressive income tax is for."
I very strongly disagree with this. I believe a government should equalize the playing field by focusing exclusively on the platonic form "human" rather than whether someone is tall or short. I think it is reasonable to say that someone's background might play a role in how they wind up, but it is by no means conclusive. I'm all about creating opportunities for people who work hard, such as scholarships for people who meet all standards for school except financial, but all those opportunities require someone to voluntarily choose that path.
These points, as well as the progressive income tax, ultimately lead to the tax dodges and loopholes that rich people slip into the system to get around them. They punish people who honestly work hard and reward the crooked.
>"Wrong. By ensuring model safety for women, we must hold them to the same standards that we hold women to. Both women and men who harass people should be ostracized. Historically only women had to bear the burden of "how do I come across" because of men. Today men should equally bear the same burden and be responsible for how their words and actions make others feel."
And how precisely can you ensure their "safety"? I'm a huge fan of individual empowerment, but not of infantilization. I'm not in favor of protecting anyone but myself unless the other people ask for it. It begins a slippery slope that leads to a boy in the bubble effect, which the helicopter parents of the 90s/00s, tried, which IMHO is one of the major factors that has lead to the mess of "safe space" nonsense on college campuses to begin with.
I have more opinions on this topic, but I defer to Camille Paglia, who is far more eloquent than me.
>"Agreed, this is a fact. Which is exactly why people who seek equality lobby government to update laws, to reflect our evolved societal norms. Laws should protect LGBTQ from discimination in the workplace for example, and help bridge the pay gap for women in the workplace. Laws were responsible for first freeing slaves in the US and then ensuring equal rights."
This sounds like a reasoning that we need more laws to fix injustices, which implies that laws are reactions to said injustices. Shouldn't laws be elaborations of first principles upon which a society has agreed? Otherwise we get a long list of laws that become out of date, and a government which no longer reflects the society it is supposed to represent.
You think women have one "application" and men have another. I disagree. We have what application we choose, that's real freedom.
> I think it is reasonable to say that someone's background might play a role in how they wind up, but it is by no means conclusive
What is the purpose of that kind of speculation? All it does is cast doubt on other members of that group. "Oh that's an Asian who's bad at math." "Oh that black guy is surprisingly successful." "Oh this woman is surprisingly unemotional." << These kinds of things perpetuate harmful stereotypes. These are not helpful in society. It's not reasonable to assume / "say" anything about a person based on their physical characteristics. They don't capture nuances like: black people make up of less of our GDP because, I dunno, the _legacy of slavery_? Women have less scientific achievements than men in history because, I dunno, _society didn't give them career opportunities and forced other responsibilities on them_?
Instead of giving people the freedom to define themselves, you do the injustice of pre-defining them.
> These points, as well as the progressive income tax, ultimately lead to the tax dodges and loopholes that rich people slip into the system to get around them. They punish people who honestly work hard and reward the crooked.
You think progressive income tax leads to tax dodges that rich people slip into? Think again. It's the fact that rich people earn lots of money from capital gains and capital gains isn't progressive. Progressive income tax as an algorithm does not cause inequity.
> And how precisely can you ensure their "safety"? I'm a huge fan of individual empowerment, but not of infantilization.
You ensure the safety of members in your society by making it socially unacceptable to harass and assault people, and punishing people who violate these basic requirements. You hold individuals responsible for individual behavior. For example, allowing men to get away with harassment is the real infantalization; "boys will be boys" takes responsibility away from them and puts it on the people they hurt.
> IMHO is one of the major factors that has lead to the mess of "safe space" nonsense on college campuses to begin with.
Crash course on safe spaces: speech is free so we can say stuff. But society is free and we can organize into groups and run those groups. For educated society there is a wide consensus that intolerant speech has chilling effects and silences others, and is ultimately at odds with free exchange of ideas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
So the rational response is: create safe spaces. Reject intolerance. Those voices have been heard enough, they have other platforms and groups, they have no place on college campuses which need to allow free exchange of ideas.
> I have more opinions on this topic, but I defer to Camille Paglia, who is far more eloquent than me.
Thanks for citing this woman. I disagree with her views and web comments are probably not going to solve our disagreements here.
> This sounds like a reasoning that we need more laws to fix injustices, which implies that laws are reactions to said injustices. Shouldn't laws be elaborations of first principles upon which a society has agreed?
American society originally agreed that slaves were not human. And then 3/5 human. You said it yourself; laws are loose reflection of societal norms, but norms change and laws need to be pushed. Therefore yes, laws ARE reactions to injustices, because injustices are addressed by changing norms, and then laws.
I wasn't actually referring to sex here, I was using this to explain why everyone is different. Some are tall, some are short, etc.
> What is the purpose of that kind of speculation? All it does is cast doubt on other members of that group. "Oh that's an Asian who's bad at math." "Oh that black guy is surprisingly successful." "Oh this woman is surprisingly unemotional." << These kinds of things perpetuate harmful stereotypes. These are not helpful in society. It's not reasonable to assume / "say" anything about a person based on their physical characteristics. They don't capture nuances like: black people make up of less of our GDP because, I dunno, the _legacy of slavery_? Women have less scientific achievements than men in history because, I dunno, _society didn't give them career opportunities and forced other responsibilities on them_?
I focus on individuals and individual circumstances rather than groups and group identities. Identity is complex and multifacted, and while we are indeed influenced by our upbringing, I also believe that individuals with drive to succeed can surpass things that might hold other back. Thomas Sowell is probably my favorite example of this, but there are many others.
> Crash course on safe spaces: speech is free so we can say stuff. But society is free and we can organize into groups and run those groups. For educated society there is a wide consensus that intolerant speech has chilling effects and silences others, and is ultimately at odds with free exchange of ideas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
I generally answer this reference (and have elsewhere on this page) with that of "On Liberty" from John Stuart Mill. This goes back to one of my original questions which I don't think you answered, which was about arbitration. If you consider limits of tolerance, who do we trust to judge where those limits are, and why do we trust them with this?
> So the rational response is: create safe spaces. Reject intolerance. Those voices have been heard enough, they have other platforms and groups, they have no place on college campuses which need to allow free exchange of ideas.
This is actually not true for publicly funded universities, which is one of the reasons the deplatforming that UC Berkley did has drawn so much ire. I'm still impressed that they managed to get both Bill Maher and Bernie Sanders defending Ann Coulter.
> Thanks for citing this woman. I disagree with her views and web comments are probably not going to solve our disagreements here.
Yep, we can agree to disagree. But thankfully we're able to do so with civility, through our use of free speech. It's a pity there aren't more such discussions these days, so thank you!
> American society originally agreed that slaves were not human. And then 3/5 human. You said it yourself; laws are loose reflection of societal norms, but norms change and laws need to be pushed. Therefore yes, laws ARE reactions to injustices, because injustices are addressed by changing norms, and then laws.
Which is why I push back and suggest that the laws need to also be based on first principles of some sort. One of the reasons the 1957 Civil Rights Act was passed is because the only thing it actually did was reaffirm the right for blacks to vote, which was a first principle the South couldn't argue against.
On a side note, it sounds like you believe the purpose of laws is to enable freedoms, something with which I could not disagree more. I argue the purpose of laws is to restrain government from infringing on our freedoms. Notice how in the US Bill of Rights, the statements are all "Congress shall make no law..."
If a Nobel prize winning physicist speaks about the inferiority of gay people, he is not necessarily a "threat to their safety". You don't have to like him, you don't have to be friends with him -- hell I wouldn't. But he has a right to not be fired as a physics researcher, because he is good at it. If he was a student counselor you can bet he should be fired.
If he actively discriminates against a gay physics student should he be fired? Absolutely. But I don't think he should be fired for simply holding the opinion. But he would be in todays world.
That's the problem I have with the politics of today -- it's that people get fired or disregarded if they make even a statement that makes other people feel bad, and disaligns with the majority opinion.
It doesn't even have to be the majority opinion. Just the opinion of someone with a loud enough voice.
> But I don't think he should be fired for simply holding the opinion. But he would be in todays world.
Sadly, he would be fired, publicly smeared, and become unemployable.
> gross professional misconduct or serious failure of a faculty member to discharge his or her obligations
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/jun/11/nobel-laur...
Especially pernicious is the idea that even entertaining rational discussion on these topics is harmful. When some things are too sacred to even discuss rationally, we are really lost in our ability to discern the truth about the world.
Dash falsely equates the "lives" of gay people, with "disparaging things" about them.
Link is a wonderful example of exactly the type of conversation suppressing blowharding that the Bay Area is encumbered by.
it's literally that. if you live in the Bay Area, and find that you can express countervailing opinions without encountering blowhardism, then I challenge you to make the case (in public) that nazi-punching is a bad idea.
To be honest I'm wondering if Sam Altman just needs to expand his social and professional circle a bit and get out of his own bubble. There's 7.5 million people in the bay area, and it's a joke to think they are all alike.
https://twitter.com/rvagg/status/887652116524707841 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15073022
This is the kind of thing Sam is talking about - we should be able to discuss things that are controversial without getting mobbed for it.
>This is uncomfortable, but it’s possible we have to allow people to say disparaging things about gay people if we want them to be able to say novel things about physics. [1] Of course we can and should say that ideas are mistaken, but we can’t just call the person a heretic. We need to debate the actual idea.
>[1] I am less worried that letting some people on the internet say things like “gay people are evil” is going to convince reasonable people that such a statement is true than I fear losing the opposite—we needed people to be free to say "gay people are ok" to make the progress we've made, even though it was not a generally acceptable thought several decades ago.
Of course Sam doesn't actually think it's acceptable for people to say these things (he's gay himself, but even if he weren't I'm sure he still wouldn't find it acceptable). But this leaves a lot of questions. If you're gay and in a work environment where your boss incessantly makes disparaging comments gay people and homosexuality - even if none of them are directed at you or anyone else there - you could still feel very uncomfortable and hurt. Does this boss really deserve a debate and an exchange of open ideas? If you tell them you disagree and they just continue mocking gay people, what are you supposed to say or do? In a scenario like this, it kind of makes sense to brand this boss as a heretic.
This kind of situation is far away from your example (discussing potential downsides of CoC). There's a spectrum of hurtful speech and ideas, and while most Americans would agree these things should be legal to say, many would also agree that the worst of them should result in ostracization (in a very extreme example: self-identifying as a neo-Nazi). So should we really "allow" people to make disparaging remarks about gay people beyond physically letting them say it? Do we also need to allow them into our social circles and workplaces?
In my opinion, Sam wanted to share this with the least possible likelihood that it would blowback (in a big way) on YC.
He did this by picking examples that would stimulate thought without a large possibility of himself being branded in some way regarding a controversial topic.
Last year while hiring people I gave was going to give someone an offer but before I could they dropped out of the process. The reason they cited was that we got funding from Peter Thiel, who helped Trump get elected, and that this person could not work at a company that ultimately helped profit Theil.
There are always consequences to speech. If you advocate for allowing hate speech then people will assume that you won't take hate speech against them seriously.
Does this boss really deserve a debate and an exchange of open ideas?
If you tell them you disagree and they just continue mocking gay people, what are you supposed to say or do?
Now, suppose you come out of the discussion about homophobic slurs, and the boss was not at all receptive. Perhaps he uttered a slur to you as you left. Then you must leave the company, and rightfully declare him a homophobe when appropriate.
Let's get to the meat of the issue. Do you pre-judge your slur-uttering boss? Do you assume him to be homophobic, and begin attacking his character in all avenues? Do you never attempt discussion, instead tweeting about how he's committing hate crimes?
Or. Do you approach him honestly with your guard down, to admit both your sexual orientation and your devotion to your job, while requesting that he try and restrict his use of the word ft? Do you listen silently while he riffs against political correctness, nodding and acknowledging, until he comes around and apologizes for making you uncomfortable?
You may take the path of the coward, or the path of the hero.
This is the exact opposite of the point being made by the blog post, which is why people think it's an awful blog post.
He was not fired, and he didn't "say" controversial things about marriage. Again: he took action to remove (the time line was: gay people can marry in California, prop 8 removes that, prop 8 is ruled unconstitutional) rights from people.
thanks. seriously.
The important fact is that he was forced to leave based on his political contributions supporting prop 8. Call it fired or resign or whatever you want, that’s the h important part of the story.
ETA: also the difference between resigned and fired is significant without a large number of Mozilla Corp. Board members being on record as saying they would have fired him if he hadn't.
This is very interesting and I believe I tend to agree.
When a person is branded as a "heretic" for their ideas, doesn't it increase the division between those two groups? The winning group (the one doing the branding) begins to dehumanize and rage towards the losing group. The losing group has to find other ways to fight back or remain in insolent silence.
In reality however, racist murderers rapists and Nazis are a minority, and the majority of people who hold views in opposition to Anil's are not criminals. They're people who support same-sex marriage but don't want any gays living on their block. They're people who don't go to Nazi rallies (yet) but think it's dangerous that no one's talking about how most crime is committed by blacks.
The quickest way to turn these people into real extremists is to bar them from public discourse. Because they value their opinions as much as you value yours, and they're not going to stop talking about these things -- if they're not allowed to discuss their ideas in public, they're going to discuss them with a Nazi instead, which will lead to their radicalization.
When they're part of the public sphere you have the opportunity to engage them, entertain their ideas, present counterpoints, and generally treat them like a human being with whom you merely have differences of opinion -- this is the path to changing hearts and minds, or at least getting them to peacefully coexist.
When they're not their speech goes underground into an echo chamber and being cut off from the rest of society really does foment extremism.
Unless Anil plans on running for governor of CA and seceding from the Union, he needs their hearts and minds -- otherwise they'll keep on voting for guys like Trump, who's President in no small part merely because he was willing to tell sanctimonious guys like Anil to go f*ck themselves.
One of the original long reads on this matter is Federalist No. 10 and it's just as relevant today.
Quoting Altman http://blog.samaltman.com/e-pur-si-muove
'It is bad for all of us when people can’t say that the world is a sphere, that evolution is real, or that the sun is at the center of the solar system.'
It is therefore equally bad for all of us when people can’t say that the world is flat, question evolution, or argue the sun isn't at the center of the solar system...
Some ideas are obviously wrong.
Imagine people saying prison rape is part and parcel of the person sentence.
Imagine people saying Holocaust denial never happened.
Of course, we can't stop people from saying stupid things but to say that we can't criticize careless or even dangerous ideas is a violation of my free speech.
The reason that his essay sucked was that this isn't about free speech. Free speech protects you from the government restricting you from saying something, and he never once cites anything about an American government[1], it's always complaints from other regular old people. Other people judging you and finding you an asshole[2] is totally consistent with free speech.
If someone says something bad about gay people (or women, or black people, or...), then by all means make them feel bad for saying something like that. Try to make sure that they never say something like that again, because they are so socially embarrassed and isolated. One of the lessons I've learned over the past two years is that people feel emboldened when they hear other people say something bad about some minority, and so if you make a big deal about one person doing it, you prevent other people from even trying to say something similar.
1: Other than starting out in China, where the government actually does limit your ability to say things, and does not have free speech.
2: Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1357/
If you're OK with your self-appointed right to restrict others' freedom of speech, then you also have to be OK with me suppressing your speech. And you'd better believe that this will be speech you care about. You have to be OK with the 1950s version of me ostracizing you for saying the positive things you believe about the protected groups you enumerate in your post.
It does you no good to claim that you're one of the good guys. Freedom of speech means everyone is a good guy when it comes to expression of ideas. You don't get to pick which speech is free.
Do you honestly want to live in a society where ideas you disagree with are withheld from expression because those who hold them are "so socially embarrassed and isolated"? Is that really your idea of a free society? Again, assume that the person being ostracized is you because of what you believe today.
If you do want a genuinely free society, don't ostracize the bigots. Instead, respect them. Debate them. Change their minds if you're right. Nobody is saying you have to have them over for dinner or be friends; ignoring them is perfectly fine, as well. The price -- and in the long term the benefit -- of a free society is that people get to live normal, ordinary lives even if they have despicable, reprehensible, even dangerous beliefs.
As for your ideas on how to win over bigots, I've lived my entire life surrounded by them, and I have to say that respecting them does not work. Debating them and treating them as equals just encourages others that it's all okay. Forcing them to hide in the darkness does work, because it makes them less likely to express their ideas at other times, when you aren't around, and other people will then hear it and be more likely to say it themselves.
Bigotry is a communicable disease.
Why is it that Paragraph 1's suppression leads to an explosion of progress, but Paragraph 2's suppression is the only way to exterminate ideas you don't like?
Which is why I'm so sure that P2 is an effective strategy- because I've observed how well it works.
I don't think you want a fairer game. You just want to win the current one.
Best of luck.
Except that doesn't work, does it? If it did, right-wing movements wouldn't be burgeoning all across the globe. _You cannot threaten a human into sharing your beliefs._ All your stance does is buy a frightened silence through intimidation and in that silence grow the seeds of resentment and anger.
It's so obviously self-sabotaging, not to mention morally repugnant, that it is nearly beyond belief that people calling themselves liberals would advocate it.
You mean like women have felt for thousands of years? And look where it got them. Just ignoring it and hoping that the creepy guy would pick on someone else didn't work. What did work was standing up, saying what happened to them, and forcing people to stop groping them or making inappropriate comments to them for fear of losing their jobs.
For damn sure no one like Judge Kozinski or Al Franken was going to be changed by reasoned, impassioned debate about the nature of personhood. What prevents future young women from being harassed by them and other creepy powerful men is seeing people like them losing their jobs. Seeing consequences for what they've done and said is what is protecting minorities from being hurt, and it is morally repugnant to allow other people to be hurt.
Mmm-hmm. And what happens when your social movement loses steam over time or public attitudes toward it change and you lose your power to tear down these powerful men? Are those individuals going to remain enthusiastic supporters of your beliefs afterward? You know, deep down, what the answer is.
No. The First Amendment (in the United States) protects you from the government suppressing your speech. Government suppression is far from the only free speech issue.
> Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1357/
Yeah, that was when I stopped reading XKCD.
Both had really quality work and clear thoughts and then the disingenuousness of these items made me rethink my own perception of them.
What if Trump was the same Muslim-hating, gay-hating person he is, but also a brilliant physicist? Would he than be OK in Sam's book?
I believe Anil Dash is propagating hate speech when he accuses Asian men as a group of being responsible/complicit in the exclusion of minorities and women from tech.
There are many dangerous stereotypes about Asians and he promotes harmful stereotypes. An Indian man was even murdered in Kansas because of Asian stereotypes.
Because of his embracing of hate speech, I urge that he either step down as CEO of FogCreek or he be fired. We cannot tolerate such hate speech.
"Maybe not today, but sometime we’re gonna have that conversation about Christian supremacy in this country, too."
https://twitter.com/anildash/status/928800919810117632
Kind of reminds me of a drunk in the neighborhood where I grew up who always wanted to have "that conversation" about Jewish control of the banking system.
Anil Dash is the CEO of Fog Creek Software, BTW.
https://twitter.com/anildash/status/942040324645572609
As a Trump supporter, I feel that Anil Dash has placed my life in danger.
My question to him is: what if a proper study was done and it found that suppression of hate speech actually emboldened racists and bigots to commit more violence against minorities? Would he advocate then Altman’s proposal?
It appears that his entire thesis is based on his own conjecture. I would love to know if there are any studies that support his theory.
Look up the history of the Rwanda genocide for one of the clearest studies.
it seems like a lot of folks were encouraged to go out and kill, given machetes and told to kill, and in the end there's one study that suggests 10% of the violence could be attributed to the radio station (which was created to broadcast racist propaganda and obscene jokes).
specifically, I take issue with the notion that "hate speech" is a meaningful descriptor of a way of talking. racism, bigotry, etc... are more specific.
tangentially, I did find this:
> On March 20, 2017, Pope Francis acknowledged that while some Catholic nuns and priests in the country were killed during the genocide, others were complicit with it and took part in preparing and executing the genocide.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide#Preparation_f...
I’m not sure what you are expecting here. Social sciences aren’t clean, you can’t go back in time and setup control groups etc, and being able to clearly show a causal link like that is pretty decisive.
Put it another way: 10% of the violence is at least 60,000 deaths.
First, SpaceX wasn't founded in SF because SF would have been a lousy place for it to start. It was founded in El Segundo because of the talent base there working for companies like TRW.
Second, if the success or failure of SpaceX or any other company is dependent on the mean things people say when checking their iPhones at morning coffee then that's more a judgment of the weak backbone of the startup founders + employees. Blow it off and get back to work. I personally think the vast majority of BitCoin and Ethereum work ranges from crap to fraud. I doubt that anyone cares about that opinion and it's such an important opinion.
Anil is wrong. That essay wasn't dangerous. It was drivel. If what you do has merit it will come out regardless of what people say. This isn't high school.
We break laws and social conventions to disrupt entire industries.
We dictate how billions of people interact and transact.
But don't dare criticize us, we're so fragile we can't take it.
I think life extension is great, but I think leaving because people disagree with that is close to the definition of "unable to take it".
I'd assert the latter...
If someone is unable to find people who agree that helping people live longer then perhaps there is something else going on, because that doesn’t seem a hard argument to make.
OTOH, if they are making the argument that Hitler was correct, then yes I would unashamedly hope there are social consequences.
But his writing indicates that he's only thought from the perspective of some innovator he's perceived to have been unfairly branded a heretic.
But the consequences of "higher tolerance" for harassing and alienating speech is a chilling effect on another section of the population (people who get harassed and alienated). More "freedom" for one group comes at the cost of depriving another.
And, pray tell, who gets to decide which opinions are "valid"? How do we find out in advance which opinions we are permitted to discuss?
This obviously leads to a productive and long lasting society.
Society decides what's valid by responding to what you say. If what you say is bad, you'll get mostly negative responses. If what you say is good, you'll get mostly positive. If you disagree with most of society, you can hang with your niche. If you give a shit about what society mostly agrees on, you get with the program.
Seems like right now we mostly agree "be considerate of one another." It's not much to argue against.
> How do we find out in advance which opinions we are permitted to discuss?
This isn't rocket science. Some ideas for you:
1. Ask a friend. "Am I an asshole for saying this?"
2. Think critically. "Am I an asshole for saying this?"
3. Own mistakes. "Shit sorry I was an asshole, please forgive me."
4. General education. You learn from history, interacting with other members of society 1:1, stories of perspectives beyond your own, etc.
Is that really the heuristic you want to advocate?
- If, a millennium ago, an individual had questioned the divine right of kings to rule, s/he would have been called an asshole.
- If, 750 years ago, an individual had called into question the primacy of the dominant religion for his/her region, s/he would have been called an asshole.
- If, 500 years ago, an individual had suggested women's suffrage, s/he would have been called an asshole.
...etc...
In short, all your heuristic says is that the opinions that are "valid" are whatever the current status quo for your local societal norms happens to be. Forgive me for saying this, but that seems more like a conservative viewpoint than a liberal one.
I'm not advocating for a heuristic, I'm saying how functionally it works. Liberal / educated society has a different opinion than conservative society, for example. In your examples, societies of different time periods had different measuring sticks. Clearly we don't agree with the opinions of those societies but that's not surprising.
If modern liberal/educated society agrees that flat earthing and anti-vaxxing beliefs are unfounded and dumb, then people who believe those things will find themselves better accepted in niche groups who share their views. Similarly political correctness arises out of a subset of society saying "wow we find some things to be hurtful" and contrary to how it's being painted in Sam's writing it's not some minefield of things that hinder free thought; it's just that there are ways we interact that can hurt and silence others. Being mindful of these things is, in some opinions including mine, a low bar and not much harder to achieve than observing what's going on and concluding "gee the world is round and we should be kind to one another."
> In short, all your heuristic says is that the opinions that are "valid" are whatever the current status quo for your local societal norms happens to be.
Again no espousing of any heuristic here, only a description of functionally how society works. The great thing is the the subject here is specifically _modern liberal silicon valley educated society_ and what it finds acceptable. The thread is mostly to discuss whether this specific society's net opinions today are chilling on innovation or beneficial for innovation. Sam thinks it's chilling; Anil and many others think it's beneficial / necessary.
The "for no reason" part here is actually throwing me off. Not sure what you're implying.
I've made the statement that discussion on the topic is preferable to branding, even in the case where people feel alienated.
It implies that Harvey Weinstein should be branded and ostracized. That abusers are rightfully alienated.
> I've made the statement that discussion on the topic is preferable to branding, even in the case where people feel alienated.
Right. You made that statement in response to 'What if your "controversial opinion" harasses and alienates other people?' -- so it follows that you're OK with giving airtime to hateful views even at the expense of chilling others' free speech and/or you don't recognize that this chilling effect is real.
My previous statement stands.
So then, as the victim, are you cleared to harass and smear whoever you please?
> he's only thought from the perspective of some innovator he's perceived to have been unfairly branded a heretic
Ah, so his identity as a wealthy man invalidates his opinion, and his writing should be disregarded?
No, and that was not any part of what I wrote.
However as a victim you ARE entitled to share your story. You are entitled to tell people "hey this person did something bad and it hurt me." And people can choose to respond to that. That's OK.
> Ah, so his identity as a wealthy man invalidates his opinion, and his writing should be disregarded?
Nowhere did I mention wealth or that it would invalidate his opinion. The quoted sentence merely indicates that the argument he made failed to consider other sides and nuances.
> as a victim you ARE entitled to share your story. You are entitled to tell people "hey this person did something bad and it hurt me."
An employee at a SV company writes on a forum that he's not a fan of diversity quotas and equity. Then, someone reads it, and claims that they feel harassed and alienated by that quote. They tweet an angry message accompanied by a screenshot of the forum post. Then, a twitter mob forms, calling the employee a Nazi. He's conflated with real racism now, though he originally was talking about diversity quotas and equity. Because his language was "harmful", the victims have their justification; by any means necessary they must remove this hateful Nazi.
The employee gets fired for PR reasons. Other employees stay away from those topics, self-silencing for fear of retaliation like the 1st employee received. Ideas are stifled; democracy is weakened.
Can you see how your chain of logic leads to this?
It’s like there’s this bro-Catholicism where everyone has original sin of racism or whatnot and must be punished through ex-communication. And the whole moral system is understood and agreed to.
I only hope that some sort of racism/redeemer emerges who can wash away the sins of bigotry and allow the excommunicated to no longer cause racism and be allowed to work again within society.
So you're referring to the James Damore situation, and I take it that you felt his firing was unjust. Your characterization makes it clear that you don't think his writing was actively disparaging and harassing of huge swaths of people, or objectively discrimination. We're probably done discussing then if you don't see that, a lot of good treatment has been given to this subject if you look at it's not my responsibility to educate you.
His firing and silencing of sexists makes the workplace a lot safer for people who are guilty of nothing but being born women. It makes it a lot less safe for people who espouse views that hurt others. I'm 100% OK with that -- that should be how the world works.
>Ideas are stifled; democracy is weakened.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
^ Actually it's the opposite of what you think.
The agreement I referred to was in that others are also scared of the consequences of sharing their opinion here.
If you’re completely off the grid it can be difficult to get jobs in tech.
He shouldn’t have used the term “Political Correctness.” He also shouldn’t have provided the examples he used because they distracted from what he was trying to say.
I am sad that he took an opportunity to have this conversation (finally) and gave the people who are actually ruining Silicon Valley more ammunition to push their agenda.
What Sam is talking about is the insane level of unidirectional groupthink that has invaded Silicon Valley and turned everyone against one another under the guise of protecting minorities and other victims.
Proponents of this approach - which, frankly, overwhelmingly demonizes and targets white men - will point to the endless list of infractions that keep surfacing in the media.
They have a great point. There is abundant evidence that minorities and women are being unfairly treated in Silicon Valley.
Unfortunately, the constant warring against this unfairness has gutted Silicon Valley and now no one trusts one another. Everyone looks at white people as the enemy and the level of discourse has become so toxic that everyone is fleeing the state.
I have experienced this myself in interacting with my Bay Area colleagues. I feel that every word I say is being policed for content, that I have to walk on eggshells constantly with certain people or risk getting drawn and quartered on Twitter the next day.
So Liberals can have this version of safety. People focused on building things aren’t willing to live in a cultural police state.
The biggest problem in attempting to argue against this trend is that it is an argument of degree. These are the hardest Arguments to have because your opppnent automatically rounds everything up to the “nearest Hitler.”
Example:
You: Hey we shouldn’t focus so much attention on gender diversity.
Them: you hate women.
You: Maybe your theories on diversity and privilege re not entirely true or accurate.
Them: You hate minorities.
You: Maybe we shouldn’t excommunicate this person because he tried to hit on someone at a company party while drunk, men do stupid things and are motivated by sex genetically.
Them: You hate women. Don’t give bad men a pass, you are enabling rape culture.
You: I am really sick of having 80% of conferences focus exclusively on diversity topics, I can’t stand being lectured to constantly.
Them:You are Hitler.
So I don’t see a resolution. It is impossible to push back on what has happened to Silicon Valley’s culture without being labeled a bigot.
Arguments of degree are the hardest to have, and at this point I think only a severe economic downturn and reset is going to fix it.
The culture of the Bay Area is dead, it was caused by having the culture of our educational institutes teach these ways of viewing the world.
I have no hope that will change. We are living in the most privileged country in the world but we have taught all our kids that they are oppressed. It’s a lie.
How are we to solve our problems if we replace the reason of thoughtful discussion with the power of social censure?
In fact, when it comes to government regulation of speech, the philosophical approach taken by the First Amendment, and the very thoughtful jurists who have interpreted it, is the opposite: that we must tolerate intolerance.
And as for the social sphere, where legal freedom of speech does not apply of course, the problem with too liberally being intolerant of "intolerance" is that the definition of "intolerance" is itself a political thing, inevitably expanded and wielded as a weapon against dissent. For example, opposition to more immigration becomes branded as inherently intolerant.
Our political order can do a lot to stymie such attempts, but it cannot replace the need for personal virtue. No constitution can save a people from itself.
Cultural grassroots swells of a certain flavor on Twitter and YouTube in particular were quickly handicapped when they started to go viral. I think the cultural/political discrepancy reflects this.
the problem with too liberally being intolerant of "intolerance" is that the definition of "intolerance" is itself a political thing
It can be, but it can also be an attribute of the text. The fact that "Jews should be eradicated" advocates an intolerance of the very existence of Jews isn't a political interpretation because it's right there in the text. The advocacy, the desire to utter the sentiment, is political for sure, but the words that express those politics leave no room for interpretation.
If "too liberally" was meant to communicate this, it's kind of doing a lot of work for its mention in passing.
For example, opposition to more immigration becomes branded as inherently intolerant.
Is this an actual thing? Most of what I see is about a reduction in current immigration, including the deportation of people who have already been here for decades, which is indeed a kind of intolerance for the status quo of border policy. If there's a more charitable interpretation of this state of affairs I'm all ears/eyes.
> In 1971, philosopher John Rawls concludes in A Theory of Justice that a just society must tolerate the intolerant, for otherwise, the society would then itself be intolerant, and thus unjust. However, Rawls also insists, like Popper, that society has a reasonable right of self-preservation that supersedes the principle of tolerance: "While an intolerant sect does not itself have title to complain of intolerance, its freedom should be restricted only when the tolerant sincerely and with reason believe that their own security and that of the institutions of liberty are in danger."
> In a 1997 work, Michael Walzer asked "Should we tolerate the intolerant?" He notes that most minority religious groups who are the beneficiaries of tolerance are themselves intolerant, at least in some respects. In a tolerant regime, such people may learn to tolerate, or at least to behave "as if they possessed this virtue".
> Thomas Jefferson addressed the notion of a tolerant society in his first inaugural speech, concerning those who might destabilise the country and its unity, saying, "...let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."
I believe we should tolerate the intolerant, for we may get them to change their minds. If we push them away, they won't get any closer to tolerance.
It is easier for one to be forgiving when the problem is abstract and one's life is not directly threatened by the intolerance (please forgive the unwieldy "one"'s, I don't want to make any assumptions about "you"). I have a lot of respect for people who are able to hold forgiveness in their hearts, I also understand the value of the self preservation in drawing a firm boundary in saying "I will not be attacked". It's complicated.
And preventing the restriction of ideas such that "augmenting intelligence" or "radical life extension" are not suddenly unspeakable is very much unlike being intolerant of others anyway.
Self-preservation is important, but it's also important for people to avoid being drunk on their own self-righteousness.
There also degrees to this. There are certainly instances of people being drunk on their own self righteousness.
- If I were a non-christian and you were to wish me "Merry Christmas", if I took the interpretation that you were threatening my life that would be unreasonable.
- If you were to announce "I'm not killing anybody, but I pray that all the gays are killed" I think my understanding of that as endangering my life (as a gay person) is totally reasonable.
This is a nuanced conversation, it helps to remember that different people have different things at stake, and it's difficult to say things that apply to every level.
A: Yes, but the Constitution of the USA also guarantees freedom after the speech.[6]