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Comment by chasing | Hacker News Reader

> Voices are being silenced.

I think we've got to be cautious in defining what "being silenced" means. Because I see a world in which people are saying all sorts of things out loud. There was a protest with a bunch of people waving Nazi flags in a public park in Virginia a few months ago.

I don't think people are being silenced.

I think community norms are shifting quickly in many parts of the country and, again, it's disorienting for certain people who have held certain views without problem for most of their lives. Suddenly they're being told it's not okay to say something and it feels like they're being silenced. They're not, of course. But I understand that it can feel like it.

[Edit: This is in response to your original comment, which you edited.]

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The White Nationalist march on Charlotte is actually an example of voices being silenced. Photos of people there were distributed, their names were found (sometimes incorrectly), and their places of work contacted. Then they were fired.

If people see that people who share the same views are losing their livelihoods, they are more likely to be silent. Only the independently wealthy wouldn't consider losing their job risky.

And just to be clear, I in no way support their views, desires, or actions. But claiming the goal isn't to silence them is disingenuous.

That's a good point to bring up.

I don't think those people were silenced.

They went to a public protest in a public place to make a statement. That statement was broadcast across the country and the world. The opposite of being silenced.

Now, they faced consequences for what they said. But that's what happens when you say things. Words have meaning and you can say words which will cause people to no longer want to associate with you.

It is not just those people being silenced though. It is people who stayed home, maybe their views are not quite as radical as someone who would protest, or maybe they tend to be more politically apathetic (ie most people).

When those people watch Fox News (http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2017/08/14/twitter-users-identif...) and see what is happening to those people for their speech and actions, they are being silenced.

These are also probably the people more amenable to changing their views. It's got be pretty hard to swing someone with a tiki torch marching down the street, but someone who feels sympathetic to their views could maybe be reasoned with if they would talk about it.

When they are watching Fox they are not being silenced, they are being programmed. They start to believe they are being silenced, but their views are just being opposed and offended and that they are (at long last) being told that other people think their positions are discriminatory. And without the visible and palpable sense that their views are not mainstream any longer, what is their incentive to change?

Predictably, I've offended you and you've downvoted. I win.

No, that wasn't me. I think you are incorrect, though. Fox was only an example, this story was carried by most national outlets. And I've never met anyone who changes their mind because the majority is against them and is silencing them. It just brews resentments and causes people to dig in.

If people changed their minds just because everyone else disagrees with them loudly and violently, how would any previous social change have come about? New thoughts and perspectives always start as minority views. So majority consensus must not be enough to change someone's mind.

Also, this really isn't about winning. We're all losing right now.

Sorry I wasn't talking to, but the people not commenting, I should have made that clear.

I don't mean angry disagreement and antifa, I mean social disapproval.

Would you please not post unsubstantive or flamebaity comments to HN?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Some of those that do not want to associate with the unpopular kid genuinely dislike him, or the way she acts or thinks. But most ostracise the bullied in fear of being bullied themselves. I have not learned much in highschool, but I do remember that.

> Now, they faced consequences for what they said.

And what of those who were incorrectly identified by the vigilantes? Do their fates not matter?

"Of course we shouldn't say people said things they never actually said. But that's not what we're talking about." - Abraham Lincoln

[cite needed]

By that standard Saudi Arabia has freedom of speech. There's just consequences - sometimes beheading.

Getting fired is only marginally better.

But glad you support repression when it supports you.

Except there's a huge difference between being punished by the government for your opinions and being judged by your peers and coworkers for your opinions.

If I were a huge proponent of NAMBLA I'd recognize that being a public advocate of such would negatively effect my social status as well as potentially attract negative attention to any brand I associate myself with. That doesn't mean I'm being silenced or censored.

Let me ask it very directly then. If I report your comment to your employer, and convince them to fire you, would you consider that just ?

I think we both know the answer.

“Silenced” here means any manner of active suppression (shaming, ridiculing, verbal abuse, social bullying, even physical violence, etc) of an idea, rather than simply (1) ignoring it on a personal level, or (2) responding to it with argument via evidence and reason.

If an idea we disagree with is rare or harmless, we often ignore it. If an idea we disagree with is more common and worth refuting, we should respond to it with debate. If all parties involved in a debate are reasonable, consensus is possible. In aggregate, humans are capable of being reasonable, thus society progresses over time (amortized).

Sadly, there is often difficulty reaching consensus immediately — especially with deeply entrenched viewpoints. However, given time, history has proven over and over that truth prevails though patient use of rational argument. It is only through presentation of evidence and calm, rational argument that society progresses.

Other, more heavy-handed means of ideological conquest have more often than not made the world a much worse place. In fact, more than just a few million deaths have resulted from what we could call “non-rational ideological conquest” (which inevitably manifests in progressively more violent ways).

Rational argument doesn't scale, bots and memes scale. Blocklists do scale, and it's only because identity platforms (fb, twitter) are also locked down content control platforms that we haven't seen more global blocklists.

I fully expect decentralised social behaviour blocklists to emerge in the near future. Who would want to (employ/socialise with/do business with) a (trumptard/libtard)? Why take the risk of employing someone with racist tendencies, etc.

It might even use a distributed cryptographic ledger.

Rational argument is difficult to scale (certainly more so than memes and propaganda bots), but not impossible. Real social progress takes real work, but it’s worth it.

Your last two paragraphs sound an awful lot like the book 1984. If you haven’t read it, I recommend you check it out.

I think Trumpism and climate denial are good counter-arguments to that. I think we (humans, not any one society) are fundamentally vulnerable to propaganda, and we've opened a Pandora's Box of next level propaganda tools (micro targeting, social distribution, anonymous participants) but have not evolved educational defences yet.

"You can fool some of the people all the time," as said by Unknown -- probably not Lincoln, but one of the things continually misattributed to him, in an earlier style of meme misinformation. It is ironic that people thought that the internet would purge misinformation (by making sources easier to check) but instead it has made it worse, by bypassing expertise, analysis and references altogether.

1984 isn't really about tribal groupings using computerised social credit systems, but I take your point. From the authoritarian POV, China already has nascent systems to score each citizen's thought correctness factor.

Reminds me of that Black Mirror episode where you could block people. Sounds horrible.

Excellent series, though I'd not seen that one. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Christmas_(Black_Mirro...

Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequence.

So Stanford Medical School should retract this article about the overwhelming evidence of the biologically based cognitive differences between men and women then? http://stanmed.stanford.edu/2017spring/how-mens-and-womens-b...

Science Denialism is just the new community norm, I guess.

I'm not sure what you're responding to in my comment.

Why is CS different from other disciplines and why did that only emerge in the mid-80s?

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/0*H5PrnnEAD7GteRHf.

It is the same as engineering, physics, and higher math

No it isn't. Unfortunately, HN stripped the period off the end of that url.

    https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/0*H5PrnnEAD7GteRHf.

Edit: Better graph off of twitter: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DRIYIx7UQAEARX3.jpg:large

Look at your graph. It is is the same as engineering. And in that graph, Math and Physics don't separate out education degrees.

I'm just hoping that amateurs with agendas, trying to cherry pick studies with outcomes they like, is not seen as science. Because they are ones that seem like anti-vaxxers to me.

You're calling this Stanford piece 'amateurs with agendas'?

> There was too much data pointing to the biological basis of sex-based cognitive differences to ignore, Halpern says. For one thing, the animal-research findings resonated with sex-based differences ascribed to people. These findings continue to accrue. In a study of 34 rhesus monkeys, for example, males strongly preferred toys with wheels over plush toys, whereas females found plush toys likable. It would be tough to argue that the monkeys’ parents bought them sex-typed toys or that simian society encourages its male offspring to play more with trucks. A much more recent study established that boys and girls 9 to 17 months old — an age when children show few if any signs of recognizing either their own or other children’s sex — nonetheless show marked differences in their preference for stereotypically male versus stereotypically female toys...

No, I'm talking about Damore and his ilk.

And you still seem to be implying that, because there are biological differences in preferences or some task skill at a statistical population level, any one individual can be categorised, based on their gender alone, as having different ability at a different technical and education dependent task.

If that is the case, a cite from a Cochrane study that linked specific brain characteristics to intellectual task performance would have some weight. A pop sci piece does not.

> And you still seem to be implying that, because there are biological differences in preferences or some task skill at a statistical population level, any one individual can be categorised, based on their gender alone, as having different ability at a different technical and education dependent task.

I am not and neither was Damore, who in fact went out of his way to talk about population level differences, including providing bell curve distribution graphics

I kinda understand what you mean, but i don't get why it is relevant in this conversation, do you mind being more explicit?

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