1. There are lots of other cases where we would agree there’s some form of silencing going on, even as a group has many supporters and rich, famous spokespeople
2. In fact, taboo opinions seem to promote a culture of celebrity
3. Fame lets people avoid social repercussions, but that doesn’t mean those repercussions don’t exist for ordinary people
4. If you spend decades inventing a powerful decentralized network to allow unpopular voices to be heard, sometimes you end up with unpopular voices being heard
5. When the IDW claims they are threatened, harassed, and blacklisted, people should at least consider that they are referring to the actual well-known incidents of threats, harassment, and blacklisting against them rather than imagining this is code for “they demand to be universally liked”
6. The IDW probably still censor themselves
7. Nobody in this discussion seems to really understand how silencing works.
The man has one of the most popular podcasts in the world, but still can get the times to write an article about how he's some underground thinker.
If you dig deeper into these kinds of complaints from these kinds of people, it usually turns into "The people _I_ want to like me do not". They expect universal admiration, and when they don't they yell about some sort of conspiracy.
The fact that everyone even knows about the popular people making these complaints disproves the thesis that they can't get out there and make their arguments.
It just turns out that none of these alternative thinkers can handle any sort of criticism against their ideas, and think there's a mass conspiracy. Ocamm's razor suggests otherwise
The problem is not that they can't accept criticism, the problem is other people disenfranchising them for their opinions.
He's a fairly blatant racist - I think that's a bit more than "unpopular" when it comes to views.
> livelihoods destroyed and lives ruined > Curtis Yarvin was disinvited from Strange Loop
In what way did "not being invited to speak at a conference" destroy his livelihood or ruin his life?
When I met Curtis Yarvin, he told me about some efforts he’d been taking to reduce the risk of violence to him and his family. I disagree with him on pretty much everything, but it saddened me that he had to worry about that.
I mean, sure, that's inconvenient but it's really nothing in the grand scheme of things.
> some efforts he’d been taking to reduce the risk of violence to him and his family
If people have threatened him or his family, that definitely sucks and I cannot condone or support those people.
If you spout bad opinions people like you less. If you show bad judgement people won’t want to hire you.
If you preach an ideology that implicitly concludes that a certain set of people are biologically inferior, it’s not a surprise that people who disagree will fight you about it. What else do you expect? What other outcome? “Oh cool yeah you think I’m subhuman. awesome. Let’s get to work.” In what universe does _that_ align with free association?
These sorts of conversations contrast mainstream media (TV and headline news) because the participants are free to speak for hours, not minutes, and are not put on their heels the entire time.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/sep/25/bath-spa-u...
Also, Bath Spa University is a relatively small, relatively new university with a less established research tradition than most of the UK's universities. It wouldn't surprise me if its ethics committees were less confident too.
None of which is to say that the student isn't right, just that we currently only have his word for it and the university is quite correctly saying nothing. But I'm pretty sceptical.
I don't really care whether celebrities feel persecuted or not. (I believe there's too much cult of celebrity already, so I do not feel any more sympathy for them than I do for everyone else.) I'm not really sure why a few different people thought my comment was relevant specifically to that NY Times IDW article.
The danger I was referring to is the danger to _anyone_ and the reason behind an academic journal being created to allow regular academics to publish under pseudonyms. This is a far more serious issue than celebrities feeling unloved and blaming a conspiracy.
For instance I've personally seen multiple people ostracized from their predominantly-left-leaning friend groups for saying something mildly positive about something Trump has done in office, or for arguing that not everyone who voted for Trump is a racist. I'm not sure how rational political discussion can be held when saying such innocuous things as I've mentioned can result in instant ostracization. Fortunately I noticed this happening before I too said something that would end the same way for me. (I already learned not to discuss politics with my very right-leaning dad, so adding "most of my friends" to the do-not-discuss-politics-with-them list was fairly easy.) Although I'm in a very liberal area so I see this primarily happening in fervently left-leaning circles, I understand that similar happens in fervently right-leaning circles as well. I can only imagine how much one has to censor themselves when publishing something that shouldn't be controversial at all in an academic journal! This is seriously not good.