The Most Dangerous Censorship

Extraordinary generalizations require extraordinary evidence.

There is little, if any, forgiveness for the well-intentioned mistakes.

Billionaire Jerry Seinfeld can't seem to relate to the kids these days, blames the kids.

The tech industry was just an exception for a decade or so because it was fairly non-corporate. Go to any conservative law firm or traditional management and try to start a fiery political debate, and see how that goes. There was never any lively democratic discourse or tolerance in any corporate environment, or any other private environment for that matter, ask any gay person that's older than 25 and doesn't live in a liberal state. George Carlin made a career of saying 'shit' on television, that's how free-wheeling discourse was.

Also as a sidenote on that Damore debacle, he got canned because of his presentation. You can cite 100 studies, when you start to argue that women drop out of high stress jobs because they're neurotic you might as well commit seppuku. He should have passed that manifesto by someone who isn't on the spectrum because anyone could have seen that trainwreck coming a mile away.

Cancel culture will make racism and sexism worse. Even the most well-intentioned will fail to learn when they are afraid of expressing the wrong answer.

Try to teach someone mathematics where every time they get the wrong answer, they get shocked. Not a good learning environment.

And that's exactly what we have now. Repeat a few buzzwords and you are safe. But when problems manifest in a new way, you won't be able to understand or correct them because you don't really understand.

Being wrong is part of the path to being right. If you are cancelled for being wrong, you'll never be right. You'll just have to be quiet.

I think you're confusing lost tolerance for free speech with 'raising the value of the speech of traditionally marginalized groups.'

A man at Atari in 1976 who argues women are worse engineers than men mostly broadcasts to an audience of empowered men and disempowered women. So his 'free speech' is respected while those women's is not.

A man at Google in 2018 who argues the same thing has to deal with the consequences of women's speech, but to him, that feels like a chilling of his free speech.

I'm fine that we are in scenario 2, having listened to a lot of other ill-informed white men give heir 'opinion' on things for no true reason.

Any person may or may not like that but it's been true forever so I'm not sure how it indicates that free speech is now in some sort of novel danger.

We haven't lost our tolerance for free speech, we've lost our tolerance for listening to people who claim society has to listen to their bullshit because of the first amendment rather than because they present a compelling argument in a positive way.

Getting fired for insulting your co-workers is not censorship.

In society today, we have a "paradox of tolerance". If we tolerate everything, then we tolerate people being intolerant, and many people in our society will suffer. So we must be intolerant of intolerance. This is the only way to build a society of equality and justice.

Like, in the same way I learned not to post personal stuff on Livejournal (then MySpace and Facebook), will we just... log off half the time, and treat the rest as a resume? Or will we hole up in private discords/IRC/Matrix/etc groups?

(* and for anyone wondering, we're all fairly left-leaning, pro-social-justice people. we're not hiding from Cancel Culture, we just feel more free in smaller groups.)

The politician needs a framework to control other people and fake enforced wokeness serves that purpose quite well.

I wonder if their focus on mind-numbing algo questions in interviews also contributed to this? Somebody willing to spend months grinding Hackerrank, Leetcode or the like to get a job probably isn't a bastion of criticial thinking.

It's easy to allow and promote freedom of expressing thoughts, any thoughts, even controversial thoughts, if you're an underdog in an underdog industry, whose existence and success depends on being free to think up and try weird things. FAANG of today is not that.

FAANG is a bunch of good ol' megacorps now[0]. They're very sensitive about their stock price, about their relationships with investors, customer base. These things are strongly and negatively affected by media controversies, so corps obviously want to minimize such stories. This is how you get a trigger-happy HR: they become the internal enforcement arm of company's ongoing PR efforts.

I haven't seen a company that's actually ruled by their HR department. All I've seen is HR protecting their company - and the way this protection looks depends on the company's position and culture. They will absolutely fight for freedom of expression for as long as the company itself needs it to survive and grow.

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[0] - I think it's important to repeat because people old enough to remember how they started, who were adjacent to hacker culture back then, sometimes cling to that image of a bunch of geeks trying to make something about the world better. I know I do, I have to keep reminding myself that Big Tech is just a collection of run-of-the-mill multinationals. They may happen to employ a lot of software developers, some (few) of which work on cutting-edge problems, but they're just corporations, like all other corporations, like all the corporations the hacker culture of yore used to mock.

Fauci disagrees with you.

Show HN: Find Your Hacker News Doppelgänger

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27568709

The saddest part is that the USA is the least racist country in the history of the world, and were in our least racist era only 20 years ago. Seems like most of the progress of the Civil Rights Movement has been lost since.

One of the key takeaways from Mr. Andrew Ng's course on AI was that AI is not some kind of magic. There's always someone who attributes magical abilities to "lie detectors" and such wonders of technology. I think he was cautioning against such thinking. AI cannot do things a human expert is not capable of, for example predicting the stock market with 100% accuracy. It can only make predictions approximately as good as human experts.

In other words, if someone wanted to match your writings with linguistic analysis, and that were possible with AI, then they can do that today with human experts. The fact that you don't see it happen, and if anyone even tried they'd be met with great skepticism, means what you imagine probably isn't possible.

Realistically, using language models to change your writing style is probably going to stay a lot easier than using them to identify people.

Most revolutions I've read about, large and small consist of an authentic breakdown in or reorganization of, society. Here and now, seems like we're actually discussing an antifeature of manufactured social technologies combined with capture or weakening of traditional media.

My feeling is that the poster is on the right track. Ideological groups, (not trying to pick on politics, but they are usually political ideologues), have become the new pseudo-religions. As people in the West have fallen away from church, we've witnessed the rise of ideologue communities on the right and left.

You can't argue with them. You can't question them. Some want to kill off half the people in the country. Others want draconian control over the other half.

And people are surprised that the only option available to a reasonable person is to opt-out?

If anything, I think people are being shortsighted in viewing the threat. For some people in the US, this ideology war is not only about a right to speech, it can come down to a right to live. Those people have to oppose the ideologues, or die.

I don't claim to know the solution, I do know that it's a tough, tough problem.

But on the banner on this religion is not Love, but Justice. So, forgiveness is hard to obtain. It takes either converting into a zealot, or hiding in oblivion. "If God were to show justice instead of His endless grace, we would all end up in Hell", wrote one medieval theologician.

This whole thing is thoroughly medieval, if you look at it at a certain angle. While declaring that it stands for progress, it rejects the values of the Enlightenment much more deeply than many alt-right philosophers who flaunt this rejection.

If you ever wondered what highly westernized Iran might look like before the revolution, this may provide a glimpse. Feeling righteous and rejecting doubt is a powerful and addictive drug :(

What “Religion” believes in is very hard to define.

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

Usually? There's boatloads of sermons recorded out that that preach hate and fear. Very selective reasoning on both sides of this equation.

Yes, they will forgive you, allow you to repent for your "errors" and then they will burn you at the stake.

Religion is just another belief system.

No organized belief system (includes any religion) is noteworthy for forgiveness and repentance. Such gems as the religious wars in Europe, CCP treatment of Uighurs today, the Inquisition, the Crusades, Genghis Khan, the current Middle East all showed little mercy for unbelievers.

They'll forgive you, maybe let you repent. But then they will kill you, your family, your friends and your business associates.

What I see as troubling is the "cancel culture", the force of the righteous mob. I believe that a society with more justice and grace than we have now can be built entirely without it, and that the intolerant fighters for inclusion and tolerance make the prospects of building such a society weaker.

You can't force people to be just, loving, and caring. You can force them feign that, but I suppose you very well understand how fraught such a society would be. There is a number of historical examples, all sad.

you'll never be able to reconcile all the beliefs of a "side" with your own, or another side with your "opponents", so are relegated to either paralysis by cognitive dissonance or selective rationality.

most people are generally decent and most people have some odd beliefs and proclivities. that's just life. it's not reducible to some "sides", much less two sides, no matter what the dominant mediopolitical narratives want you to believe.

two sides are chosen by tribal groups like political parties because it simplifies the quest for power. 2 is the lowest common denominator of power, and it's chosen exactly to simplify choices, and neatly bypass the inherent frictions of nuance and humanity. it's done for power, not to realistically represent the world or to cleanly align with your beliefs. instead, each side exerts pressure on you to conform to it (that is, coalescing its own power). in exchange, you get little random hits of dopamine, which is oddly as lopsided as it is surprisingly effective.

Sure, now tell that joke to Giordano Bruno.

The left and the right today share so many traits with how religions operate that it freaks me out.

In that framework, the people comparing wokism to a religion might point out several unfalsifiable beliefs that it's adherents generally hold. For an example of a fairly common one, "[inequality] is the result of discrimination."

The contrast I'm making is that the state in the U.S. does not do that, but citizens themselves seem to act coercively and force the norms of their faith on anyone who voices any doubts loudly enough.

What consequences do they face? Does anyone go to their boss (times 100) and say, what this person is doing isn't right, and is making your company look bad? Does anyone dox the doxxers?

I'm not saying it doesn't happen to Social Justice types. I'm saying, whoever it's done to, do the people doing it face consequences of their own? (If the Social Justice types are doing this themselves, then in their case the answer is yes.)

It's easy for a group of 100 angry people to cover one person they decide to destroy. It's less easy for the one person to return the favor to all 100 of them.

You say (paraphrased) that free speech still has the consequences of the feedback. That's fine. But the feedback has to also have the consequences of feedback.

The poster is talking about things more akin to, say, a non-trans person speaking about the experience of being trans or someone who has never went to college speaking for college graduates - when really, they shouldn't try to speak for groups they aren't a party to.

In other words, I can talk about prejudice and racism I've experienced and witnessed, but this doesn't mean that I have the credentials to talk about what it is like to, say, have dark skin in the US and experience that sort of racism. It just isn't the same, and I don't have that experience. After all, I can (in the US) basically just be a face in the crown in a small town.

The easiest way to escape the Basilisk's control is to say "Future simulation of me? Screw that guy; he sucks and gets whatever's coming to him."

> Social media also affords users the ability to type out and review their thoughts prior to sharing them. This feature adds an additional phase of filtering that is not available in face-to-face communication: filtering after a thought has been formed and expressed, but before it has been shared. … Last-minute self-censorship is of particular interest to [social networking sites]…

> In this paper, we shed some light on which Facebook users self-censor under what conditions, by reporting results from a large-scale exploratory analysis: the behavior of 3.9 million Facebook users.

https://sauvikdas.com/uploads/paper/pdf/4/self-censorship_on...

Fight me XorNot

I would draw the discussion lines more around those in power versus the people and would further argue that this model is really the defining conversation of modern politics today.

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

The emotional reaction to harmless words is not an intrinsic aspect of human biology. If someone says mean things in a malicious attempt to hurt you, it is natural to be emotionally disturbed or upset at the fact that someone has malicious intent toward you. But in some cultures you can tell someone their haircut is messed up and they understand that you don’t have malicious intent. It’s a cultural artifact, albeit a widespread one. It tripped me up for a long time too because I was born in a country that doesn’t know any better.

My friends would expect me to say this, yes, and I have the same expectation. If everyone thought my haircut looked bad, I would want to know.

There's a middle ground: you can be honest if asked, but not volunteer negative opinions.

Imagine a spectrum where on one side you can’t say anything that would offend someone or put your immediate interests at risk, and on the other side you blurt out the truth even if you don’t want to.

In the former, corruption is inevitable. Nothing gets called out. In the latter, corruption is impossible. You obviously want to be closer to the latter. Just because you pull up some examples where they are pretty close but not all the way doesn’t really say anything about my argument. But thank you for calling out my hyperbolic use of the word “invariably,” like a good Scandinavian.

Without getting into the "cancel culture" aspect (which seems like a red herring), in order to even get to a point where "pure reason" comes into play, you have to force your adversary to engage on that level.

For instance, a powerful politician isn't going to take the risk of engaging in any argument unless there is something that makes ignoring it costly. If anything, they'll especially ignore a well-reasoned argument against them if they can get away with it. They're not going to get into a debate with someone because their points seem interesting or insightful; they're going to avoid engaging altogether. It's not worth the risk.

Insults are one of the tools that can create enough negative publicity to diminish their standing, and to force them to engage, in order to avoid further diminution.

The view of law enforcement as going easy on the far-right may have been true in 1970s America, but it does not appear so 2021. Far-right militia movements have been subject to intense scrutiny and violence (and some allege, entrapment) since their growth in the 1990s [0][1]. In the case of the Capitol riot, 525 people have now been federally charged [2]. Arrested rioters have been "savagely beaten" in jail by prison guards, to the point of skull fractures and permanent blindness [3].

It's true that fringe Congressional Republicans such as Josh Hawley or Marjorie Taylor Greene have tried to blame antifa for the Capitol insurrection. They hold no powerful Senate or House positions, and appear "prominent" mainly due to the attention the the press gives them. The actual Republican Congressional leadership swiftly denounced the insurrection, and placed blame for the attack on President Trump [4][5].

In contrast, President Biden and prominent Senators such as Jerry Nadler have repeatedly denied the existence of organized far-left violence at all [6][7], describing events such as the month-long nightly siege of the federal courthouse in Portland "a myth" and "imaginary." Speaker Nancy Pelosi has acknowledged antifa gangs' existence in the past, after they vandalized her house and sprayed it with pig blood.

As rioters threw Molotov cocktails and firebombs at the federal courthouse in Portland, attacked federal agents with hammers, lasers, and bricks, beat and stabbed journalists, set fire to the Mayor's condo building, and were arrested carrying illegal firearms, the Washington Post gave them a glowing photo shoot [8]. They were praised as morally virtuous freedom-fighters. In Seattle, anarchists occupied several city blocks for weeks with assault rifles, and shot dead an unarmed black child [9] before destroying the evidence and concealing the killer's identity. These stories disappeared from the Washington Post, NPR, and even Fox News within days, yet we still get frequent updates on the Capitol insurrection.

Finally, it makes no difference whether cops arrest more left-wing rioters if the local DA and US Attorney decide to release them and dismiss all charges [10][11]. There's been little such leniency applied to violent actors in the Capitol insurrection. This has not gone unnoticed by either the far-right or far-left.

The exasperation I feel watching this unfold as someone on the center-left is a shadow of what I sense from the actual right wing. I think anger at the leniency given to far-left violence last summer is what propelled a lot of people to attack the Capitol, in a "if they can get away with it, why can't we?" sort of tantrum. This emotional potential still remains. The risk of an eventual organized right-wing backlash, which so far has not reached the level of burning down buildings, executing people in the street, or occupying city blocks with armed militants, is what worries me most about the chance of more far-left violence. The extreme right is watching the extreme left get away with it, and they are taking notes.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25839889

[1] https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2021/06/07/w...

[2] https://www.insider.com/all-the-us-capitol-pro-trump-riot-ar...

[3] https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/06/capitol-riot-defend...

[4] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/mitch-mcconnell-blam...

[5] https://www.newsweek.com/kevin-mccarthy-tells-gop-stop-claim...

[6] https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2020/07/27/nadle...

[7] https://news.yahoo.com/biden-says-antifa-idea-not-025049929....

[8] https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/08/08/trump-sent-...

[9] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25671284

[10] https://www.wweek.com/news/courts/2020/08/11/district-attorn...

[11] https://www.kgw.com/article/news/investigations/portland-pro...

>Mainly since White Americans are still the majority and by and large supporters of the right, I don't see movements like BLM gaining much power.

You'd be surprised. Most violent actors who call themselves antifa are white, especially in the Pacific Northwest [1]. During last summer's Portland courthouse siege, a white BLM/antifa rioter stabbed a black Trump supporter in the stomach [2]. This stabbing wasn't reported in outlets like NPR or the Washington Post, even as they praised rioters and criticized the police response.

[0] https://www.rules.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Jan%206%20HSGAC%2...

[1] https://twitter.com/AntifaWatch2/status/1302964750817652739

[2] https://heavy.com/news/2020/07/blake-hampe/

Sure, and quoting things out of context is of course also free speech /s

I do, at every opportunity. But in the meantime we live in an imperfect world and should adjust our social norms accordingly.

I have no doubt Russia is milking this for all it’s worth (wouldn’t you in their place?) but Snowden really didn’t have a totally free hand in where he ended up after his passport was cancelled — just America or Russia.

First and for most the left absolutely believes cancelling in effective, infact they believe it is very effective and have used it to great effect, their problem is that for a few perculiarly popular indivuals, the one you kinda of highlight in your comment about "reaching millions" are insulated from the lefts ability to cancel them simply because they have more social power than the groups on the left

However that has not stopped the left from canceling in the 100's, 1000's or more from de-platforming on the popular social platforms of people with little to no following, small youtube channels, to getting people fired from their mundane jobs due to a twitter they did not like.

To deny the real world impact cancel culture has had to more or less irreverent people, people that do not have millions of followers, it is to deny reality itself

Sure for those creators, pundits, personalities that have a fan base in the millions "cancelling" may be ineffective, but I am not talking about those select few people.

I am talking about the school teacher that happened to support Trump in 2016, or 2020. I am talking about the marketing person they may have a controversial political view on immigration or abortion has dares to say so on twitter. I am talking about sub 100,000 subscriber you tube channel that may have said "hey that lab leak theory may have some merit" before the "authoritative sources" approved saying that, I am talking about a facebook user that happened to quote Ben Shapiro...

The examples are endless, real, and provable.

To give children the tools to deal with harmful words and not break down.

I think that is worthily en devour which I am sure is very controversial in the age of Safe Spaces, and participation trophies where by we weaken not strengthen the emotional foundation of children to be able to handle real world situations. The Coddling of the American Mind is setting Up a generation for failure

It's funny how people just invent shallow concepts like this and it always end up doing nothing but protecting - and extending - the privileges of the wealthy. It's just a predetermined outcome looking for a theory to justify it.