I'm always curious about this line of thinking. What exactly do you think people are gaining by - say - denouncing sexism or other kinds of awful behavior? What's so wolfish about that?
As per the article, "punishment should be proportional to the offence", and punishments should ensure the offender will "constructively come to understand, repent, and make amends for an infraction". The first group can be relied upon to see transgressions in light of their broader moral principles. They won't always seek punishments that are proportional and restorative, because those are moral principles in themselves, but they'll at least be trying to do what they believe is a good thing.
The second group is scary because they just don't stop. They'll keep doing things in order to get the reward of social approval or social media, for as long as that reward lasts. Even worse, because they don't have good introspection about the underlying rewards that incentivise them, they'll reward each other for escalating. They'll tear people's lives apart without a shred of guilt, because they're getting something out of it, which is why they're seen as predators.
If people are making the case that RMS is neurodivergent and therefore his behavior should be tolerated, shouldn't we be making exactly the same argument about the people you put on the latter group? Or is it only people we agree with that get the benefit of being 'neurodivergent'?
That being said, I don't think he expected to benefit socially from the opinions that got him cancelled in general, or from complaining about the term "assaulting" in particular. His autism is less relevant than there being no real gain for him. It being a costly opinion for him to express is evidence he genuinely believes it. Whether or not he should be tolerated is another question, but I don't think he's the metaphorical wolf here.
Do you think the people now being attacked in this thread because they originally called for Richard Stallman to face consequences are being 'canceled'? I see a lot of people claiming nobody should take them seriously ever again, blah blah blah. Sounds like 'canceling' to me. Is this mob any better than the supposed 'cancel culture' mob?
In other words: should we stop using the term 'cancel culture' only in one direction?
Additionally, nobody in this thread has been removed from any boards, fired, barred from attending conferences, or in any way cancelled, to the best of my knowledge. If that happens it will be bad. It hasn't happened. Donglegate got both parties fired, and that was also bad. I don't think cancel culture is used only in one direction, it's just that tech industry workers don't cancel the left very often. Steve Klabnik is allowed to go around calling himself a communist without getting removed from anything, for example.
You keep implying that the only possible reason people would denounce RMS's behavior is because they 'get rewarded' for it. I'm surprised you can be so certain about it, when it's perfectly possible they are doing it because they've suffered abuse themselves or have a genuine concern that certain arguments - even when made in good faith by a supposedly autistic person - might make other people feel uncomfortable or unsafe.
Imagine being a young freshman woman at your alma mater and someone starts waxing philosophical about whether a 50 something year old man having sex with a minor is assault or not depending on whether 'they presented themselves as willing'. Would you feel safe? What if the same guy is known around your alma mater as somewhat of a creeper? What if he's defending someone who is associated with a guy who owns an island where people go to have sex with underage girls and is now accused of having had sex with one of them? How safe would you feel then?
> Steve Klabnik is allowed to go around calling himself a communist without getting removed from anything, for example.
Weird that you'd somehow equate being a self-declared Communist (a political ideology) with defending pedophiles (a literal crime).
Some people criticise RMS because they don't like the things he said for moral reasons, whether intuitive or explicitly thought through. Those people mostly act in a way that they believe is effective at stopping the thing they don't like. I support these people, even though I don't agree with them all the time.
Some people criticise RMS because they've been trained by the Skinner box that is social media to dogpile onto anyone who's the target of criticism, or because all their friends don't like RMS and they want to fit in, or because they've made a career out of outrage. I don't like these people and view them as pack-hunting predators.
With regards to the rest of the post, I feel like you're fishing for things to be angry at me for, on the basis of a fundamental miscommunication.
Sure, but this behavior isn't any different from people dogpiling on attacking perceived 'SJW' behavior. Somehow Hacker News seems to be very sensitive to one kind of dogpiling while completely ignoring the other.
For example, I didn't see anyone here screaming about Timnit Gebru's being forced out of Google because her research didn't align with the company's vision. Most of the comments about the topic were people either defending Google or accusing her of being 'too lefty' and therefore deserving of the outcome.
So it seems that Hacker News isn't so much concerned about 'free speech' in the work place, but rather about certain kinds of free speech being allowed, while others... they are pretty ambivalent about.
> With regards to the rest of the post, I feel like you're fishing for things to be angry at me for, on the basis of a fundamental miscommunication.
Nah, I just thought your example was a bit apples and oranges, but no bad feelings.
Unfortunately this can be entirely orthogonal to making genuine improvements in how humans relate to each other.
You're dealing with some deep seated flaws in human social psychology, and the polarised morality of cancel culture doesn't leave room to explore potential solutions which are based on that uncomfortable truth.
You're either an insider who agrees with The Cause or an outsider unbeliever who must be reeducated or destroyed.
This can feel great for participants, in a slightly manic way. But there's no space for a more nuanced view, and that makes stable solutions unlikely.
This can be also said of the 'anti-anti' crowd. Their whole objective is to moralize about how bad the 'anti' crowd is and telling them to shut up, while throwing a number of perfectly valid concerns out the window in the process. While most people in HN might leave it at denouncing the behavior, people have been doxxed, harassed online and in person for 'canceling' someone or something before.
BTW, I hate the 'cancel culture' term. I hate how it is used by people who - given the opportunity - would 'cancel' LGBT rights, immigration, etc. Every time I see someone using the term, I can't help but feel they've fallen for Propaganda 101.