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Comment by amachefe | Hacker News Reader

In this time of ultra conformism and cancel culture. It is refreshing to read an articulate alternative view points.

Sowell has an experience of with sides of the debate and brings that experience to his writing.

I can't recommend him enough

Indeed. I cross a lot of party lines with my beliefs and it's almost a case of diglossia with the way I have to phrase arguments towards the group I'm talking to. You can have one central idea but the way you have to word it makes it sound repulsive to the counterpart of the group you're addressing.

What objective measure of conformism are you using?

Sum of squares of the differences on all important issues between you and the average?

So basically the same formula as variance in probability theory.

Well I mean at that level what counts as a difference and what’s the measure of that distance. I like that this is an attempt to define it even if is isn’t op and we do t actually have any actual numbers, past or present for comparison.

Doesn't seem to be that hard.

On abortion it would be 1 if you're in favor of total ban and 0 if you're in favor of no regulation whatsoever.

On free healthcare it would be 0 if you want no state involvement whatsoever and 1 if you want free tax-payed healthcare for every citizen.

Etc.

It doesn't even matter which way the 0 and 1 are.

With enough issues, no one will be at the average, by the curse of dimensionality. On the other hand, making it obvious that we're all nonconformists (à la https://www.abelard.org/e-f-russell.php And Then There Were None?) might be an improvement.

Not any measure that makes sense to me, and I've lived through a few decades now. I don't even think America represented such a menagerie of viewpoints in the late '60s.

That’s what I’m wondering. The internet has sharpened so many viewpoints (not in a good way) . My question is sincere and curious. There might be lots of pressure to push opinions in one direction or another but that’s not conformism, quite the opposite.

I think a lot of people are rightly sensing a shrinking of the Overton window[0]. For example, I think the following is a perfectly reasonable position to hold: "It would be a remarkable happenstance if, in a perfectly free society, men and women were found in equal proportion in every industry. Indeed, the default expectation should be that there will be variability in this regard."

Saying that in today's environment with my name attached would get me fired, so I keep my mouth shut. A perfectly reasonable position, and I cannot speak it for fear of losing the ability to care for my family.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

It's probably a reference to http://paulgraham.com/conformism.html.

What do you mean by "Cancel culture" here and what specifically do you think might apply to Sowell?

It's just an excuse to complain about how bigotry is becoming less socially acceptable.

Be charitable, he could be talking about the Dixie Chicks or anchors that were fired for questioning the Iraq war. Or for the biggest example of modern cancel culture, Kaepernick's firing after targeting by the president.

Well exactly - it's a phrase that seems to cover so many different situations it's meaningless without further qualification.

I think it’s a formula for poisoning the well. First, make vague complaints about conformism and “cancel culture.” Then, anyone who disagrees with you from that point must clearly be a conformist who approves of cancel culture.

Vague?

First of all, we can omit anything dealing with real sexual harassment, abuse, or obvious discrimination by people in power; although I think the social witch hunt phenomenon of things like #metoo is problematic, I'm not going to defend any of the people caught up in that kind of thing. So I think it's fair to exclude people like Lawrence Krauss, Louis CK, and definitely people like Harvey Weinstein.

That leaves us with people cancelled for ideological reasons because of things they've said or written, because that ideology is felt to have a chilling effect on anyone interacting with them.

James Watson: cancelled

Tim Hunt: cancelled for sexist joke

Lawrence Summers: cancelled

Bret Weinstein: cancelled (from Evergreen, at least)

Erika Christakis: quasi-cancelled (left Yale voluntarily a year after the Halloween incident).

J. K. Rowling: ongoing attempted cancellation[1] due to being a trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF), despite the fact that she didn't seem to be exclusionary at all, and definitely nothing at all like Camille Paglia who is more definitively a TERF.

Among numerous others. Including that PR rep who was fired within the span of her plane trip to Africa after making a racial joke about HIV on her personal twitter account.

That's to say nothing of people who would be cancelled if today's culture were transported back in time. Starting with William Shockley, and extending to a large number of notable historical figures.

[1] For some tweets and later elaborated on in a blog post, all detailed here: https://www.glamour.com/story/a-complete-breakdown-of-the-jk... . Basically, her crime seems to be an attempt to frame her experience and sexuality around her biological gender.

This diatribe has nothing to do with what we’re discussing.

Puritans left England to escape the English Cancel Culture. Upon arriving, most of them then implemented their own cancel culture. After Massachusetts cancelled him, Roger Williams founded Rhode Island on the belief that religious persecution by the majority was wrong (note: moral, religious, ideological -- whatever you call it, it's the same idea).

This idea of personal tolerance is itself a moral position. Republic government reflects the will of the governed with emphasis on the will of the minority as a FUNDAMENTAL moral belief of the majority. "Free speech only applies to the government" is untrue because that is simply an outgrowth of the governed. When the governed majority actually start believing that "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from results", you have opened Pandora's Box by shifting that fundamental moral belief.

Once you have decided Cancel Culture is moral, you are simply negotiating the terms.

The majority of the US believes homosexuality is morally wrong, but it's a personal decision/action. What if freedom to come out as gay doesn't mean freedom from consequences? What if the majority of people who believe abortion is immoral decide to lay on the consequences? There's a huge list of moral disagreements where the majority could decide to cancel the minority.

Finally, Cancel Culture ALWAYS leads to violence. If tolerance isn't part of the mix (and Cancel Culture literally means you aren't being tolerant), then either someone must change their fundamental morals or must start a conflict. Saying "I'm tolerant" and then persecuting everyone who doesn't say and do exactly as you think they should might be cognitive dissonance, but it isn't tolerance.

> Or for the biggest example of modern cancel culture, Kaepernick's firing after targeting by the president.

Kaepernick was "fired" because he was poor at his job. Defenses started to understand his 1-dimensional attack and then shut it down. He was cut after the 2016 season, but had been benched in 2015 because the 49ers offense was struggling.[1] This was nine months before he ever took a knee before a game.[2] Did the 49ers look into a crystal ball and decide to bench him in favor of a demonstrably mediocre quarterback because of something that wouldn't happen for nine months? If he didn't show actual improvement on the field, were the 49ers obligated to keep him? Is an employer obligated to keep any employee who says something controversial regardless of performance?

> Be charitable, he could be talking about the Dixie Chicks or anchors that were fired for questioning the Iraq war.

Which anchors lost their jobs for questioning Iraq? Dan Rather stepped down for his role in publishing a hoax memo about George W. Bush's National Guard duty.[3] Brian Williams was quasi-fired for embellishing a story about his time as an embedded journalist in Iraq.[4]

The Dixie Chicks were actually blacklisted by country music radio stations, so we'll give you that one.

Still, .333 isn't great unless you're playing baseball.

[1] https://www.nfl.com/news/niners-bench-colin-kaepernick-blain...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/06/01/colin-kaepe...

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/11/business/media/analysis-p...

[4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/brian-william...

Kaepernick was blackballed by the league, full stop. Find me another instance of an uninjured QB under the age of 35 who led a team to a Super Bowl 3 years prior who was not only cut by his current team but not signed for even a backup role by another club.

There's a reason that Cam Newton has a job today and Kaepernick doesn't, and it's because Newton didn't get cancelled.

Both players debuted in the NFL in 2011. In 2015, Kaepernick led the 49ers to a 2-6 start, while Newton led the Panthers 8-0 (and to a Super Bowl berth). Sure, the QB isn't the only player responsible, but he is the single point of failure. Isn't it possible that Cam Newton is just a much better player than Kaepernick, all else being equal? If Kaepernick were so good and such a talent that teams should have been picking him, why wasn't he winning?

In 2013, Kapernick lead his team to the Super Bowl. By the end of 2016, he was completely out of the league after being blackballed. He hasn't played for a team in any capacity since. While one can argue whether his stats were great or not, he certainly was not anywhere near the worst STARTING quarterback in football.

From 2012 to 2016, Newton's Adjusted Net Yards per Play were .04 higher than Kaepernick's, a virtually statistical dead heat. After the 2015 season, Newton got a shiny new $100M contract for those efforts, and Kaepernick was shown the door after 2016.

In Kaepernick's 11 starts during the 2016 season, his team gave up more than 30 points 9 times. He had a new head coach that had just gotten run out of Philly for having no chemistry with his team, and he had one of the worst receiving corps in NFL history. He still managed 16 TDs to just 4 INTs.

So, for having one of the worst defenses in the league, coached by one of the worst coaches in the league, and throwing to easily the worst group of receivers in the league, his team didn't do so hot. But there's no reason why he shouldn't have immediately found another competition elsewhere, because he WAS a starting-caliber QB, and unlike Newton who was a similar player, Kaepernick had no outstanding injury issues. He wasn't coming off of foot surgery and shoulder surgery like Newton is today.

Except that he spoke up.

And that was the end of his career.

> Which anchors lost their jobs for questioning Iraq?

Ashleigh Banfield, Phil Donahue (should have called him a host, not anchor).

Yes, "cancel culture" exists on both the Left and the Right.

'Cancel Culture' here seems to refer to the rash of firings and administrative punishments for academics who question the progressive dogma, especially w/ regards to BLM, the gender pay gap, institutional racism, etc.

Here is an academic 'cancellations' tracking document by the National Association of Scholars:

https://www.nas.org/storage/app/media/New%20Documents/academ...

> Here is an academic 'cancellations' tracking document by the National Association of Scholars:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Association_of_Schola...

> The National Association of Scholars (NAS) is an American non-profit politically conservative advocacy group, with a particular interest in education.[2][3] It opposes a perceived political correctness on college campuses and supports a return to mid-20th-century curricular and scholarship norms, and an increase in conservative representation in faculty.

What exactly is your point by posting that? Is it that these people should not have advocates?

> What exactly is your point by posting that? Is it that these people should not have advocates?

That I wanted to know the orientation of the group, and thought I might save others the trouble of looking it up? I didn't know people would be so sensitive about seeing the first two sentences of a Wikipedia article.

I'm not implying this was your original intention, however without providing any commentary other than the Wikipedia quote your reply read to me like a "rebuttal" or counterargument to the OP. Furthermore, it comes across like a lazy one (perhaps explaining the downvotes?).

While interpreting it as such goes against the "assume the best" ethos of HN, in an argumentative thread such as this it's an understandable reflex.

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