Mob justice is trampling democratic discourse | Hacker News Reader

Mob justice is trampling democratic discourse

theatlantic.com

277 pointstysone273 comments

The problem is that now we have all of these discussions on a stage in front of a mob.

Discourse is no longer a tool we use to approach a better mutual understanding, it’s a gladiator match where there has to be a loser and a winner.

I’ve run into this problem with people who use a lot of twitter. They would keep asking me to “state my position”, and also demand it to be about 1 sentence long. The problem being…I don’t usually have a “position”, but rather I have a set of things which haven’t yet been proven false. So it’s really a body of existing understanding, not an individual idea, which should be examined as part of a discussion. (I run into this problem with young people, in real life).

An prescient example might be my dislike of electronic voting machines. If I say this in public, to the audience that grew up on twitter, they’ll accuse me of being a Republican, an insurrectionist, racist, ivermectin conspiracist anti vaxxer.

I’m none of those things (although ever day I become close to being some sort of Republican), but the more complex discussion isn’t really possible on twitter. Because that is where so many people learn how to interact with others, snd where they learn to derive understanding, it doesn’t matter. And even trying to explain that some of these ideas can be bad independently springs some sort of Kafka trap.

Here’s a fantastic article that I think lays out a version of the problem: https://newdiscourses.com/2020/07/woke-wont-debate-you-heres...

It's kind of a youthful trait, isn't it? An idealism that may carry a ton of insight, really, but no understanding of application.

So they think complicated things shouldn't be complicated and get angry about it. (I did. The Great Recession landed at a critical age in my life)

They demand simple answers, because complicated ones take too long and require real attention and dedication.

People grow out of that. While their politics may not change, usually their approach and understanding do.

For any of the good it's done, it seems like Twitter has arrested that other process. Maybe it's the immediacy, or the audience, or the format, or a combination—don't know. But it used to be the only place you found that kind of squabbling was talk radio, cable TV, or a bar—easily avoidable and not as polluting of regular discourse.

Twitter has certainly accelerated it. I recently lost a previously intelligent and talented long-time friend who struggled with mental illness to Twitter.

He only started seriously getting into it a year and a half ago when the pandemic started, but the difference was stark. Gone was his usual curiosity and desire to engage in debate -- his interactions began to simplify into snarky one-liners. And to disagree with anything he said was to invite the real life equivalent of a quote tweet clapback. It's like dealing with a cult member.

I used to like Twitter. I still do. But now, feeling personally the way it exacerbates things for those who struggle with mental illness -- it's hard to not feel like it (and Facebook) are deeply complicit in harvesting mental illness for the attention economy. I was fortunate to not have family members or close friends radicalized by media outlets into becoming insufferable people to be around, but now that my luck has run out, I feel a lot more empathy for the pain so many others have gone through.

There's nothing new about it besides the scale (other media obviously predates it). But society and especially the most vulnerable members are not handling or even recognizing this mental contagion very well if at all.

I'm sorry for your loss.

I am hopeful that within our lifetime, humanity will figure out that social networks as currently implemented are a net loss in terms of damage to mental health, communication skills, isolation from meaningful human contact, and time wasted.

> It's kind of a youthful trait, isn't it? […]People grow out of that.

I wish you were right, but I've met enough angry mobs of 50 to 70 people online to know you aren't unfortunately.

Face to face, people are usually pretty civil and they don't easily call name on one another (because you know, a punch in the face is just painful), but even in real life, when the discussion happens in front of a group, discussions are quickly getting hotter. And being separated by a screen and an internet connection make things far worse.

> Face to face, people are usually pretty civil and they don't easily call name on one another

It used to be the case that this was true even with written and remote (telephone) communication. Now with the way people behave on facebook and twitter (and yes, hacker news), snark, insults and exaggerated outrage are the "new normal" for non-business written communication.

The younger generations haven't known anything different, so part of me wonders if we'll see a shift in face-to-face communication that more closely mirrors how we see people (poorly) behave on social networks, or whether the threat of real physical violence of an in-person confrontation will keep that in check.

I don't know if it's true that face-to-face communication is actually better when you begin to talk about controversial, political subjects. There's a reason why it's been common courtesy not to talk about politics or religion at any large family gathering.

The key word here is “large” I think. It's deeply irrational, but in front of people, discussion usually become a contest to assert one's status among the group, and it's just too hard to “surrender”.

But importantly, face-to-face doesn't do anything to mollify that, which is against what the GP says.

Oh fortunately it does, people don't usually insult each other in real life at family events. Yes people are speaking louder and louder, and ends up using a ton of sophism and Ad hominem but that's it. On Twitter this is what a civil conversation looks like…

It's the speed of information, it's inhuman. Even if the amount of information is the same, it's presented in tiny bits of info that are largely overlapping and with no depth. There is no end to the list of factoids, so people never learn to make confident conclusions, so they go with gut feeling.

Good insight! Putting it in that frame, it sounds like encoded data reaching an endpoint in the wrong packet order.

In many of our daily jobs, that would be considered a bug and would result in removal of dependent features, or active reworking until resolution.

Yeah that’s definitely a part of it, I read at one point that the human brain doesn’t develop nuance until a persons late 20s

Another ultimate irony is that people who can see part of the problem will say "it's always the other side that polarizes things" without seeing that this makes the problem.

It often feels to me like the more recent brand of this behavior is something like perfectly valid study of social phenomenon (revolving around social justice at this point) on a macro level where it makes sense .... then taken by some to use on a micro level with individuals where it stops making sense.

Obama had a speech where he noted the futility of talking to someone about their privilege ... when that person as far as they're concerned has had a hard life and everything stacked against them. And maybe that person is right, they did have a hard life / quite the opposite of privilege.

The macro study and ideas aren't wrong, but they don't work at a micro level.

The same extends now to phrases / patterns or any indicators at a macro level we associate with injustice ... and folks take them out like a guy with only a hammer to use and apply them to groups and individuals at a micro level that stops making sense.

A family member of mine is a teacher. They recently had a big discussion about how minority students (a specific minority actually) were more likely to be assigned to special ed services. Some folks identified this as troubling behavior as it was seen as a path where students would be stereotyped or other undesirable things might happen because of it.

The teachers listened to the concerns and presentation by some groups... but they're left wondering what to do when the 4th of 10 students who is this minority comes in to be evaluated and clearly needs help ...

On a macro and even historical level the concerns are valid and sometimes special ed in the past was used poorly. On a micro level now what do these teachers do with kids who need help?

Applying these concepts on a micro level without understanding the individual / individual situation isn't justice...

> Obama had a speech where he noted the futility of talking to someone about their privilege ... when that person as far as they're concerned has had a hard life and everything stacked against them. And maybe that person is right, they did have a hard life / quite the opposite of privilege.

This resonates true in tech. I know (white) developers who grew up poor. Poor as in, hide anything you have else it'll get pawned. Poor as in it doesn't matter the fridge is broken: since the electric bill is late the whole house is freezing anyways.

Then they get invited into diversity trainings and told that they are privileged, oppressors and should acknowledge it. Ohh and there's now a diverse hiring program which, so far, has hired three Ivy League educated sons of wealthy Nigerians.

This is what intersectionality is supposed to be about: the notion that privilege and discrimination aren't one-dimensional, but are complex products of many intersecting and possibly conflicting experiences, attributes, and contexts. Unfortunately this is a very nuanced idea, and we hate nuanced ideas -- especially about people -- because they require time, energy, rapport-building, context sensitivity, holistic thinking, and the ability to grab hold simultaneously of opposing ideas. (And worst of all for some, they require cutting off a supply of intoxicating self-righteousness.) None of that is going to happen in a one-hour workplace training session. If it's going to happen at all, it's going to unfold gradually over a lifetime. Since timelines of that scale are intolerable, we end up with the sort of ham-fisted oversimplifications you've experienced.

> This is what intersectionality is supposed to be about

Intersect enough and you start dealing with individuals

And no one has time for that

The individual is the most oppressed minority.

The issue with intersectionality is the same as the issue with affirmative action: a person is treated as an RPG character where the desired outcome is to "save" the person with the "lowest" stats or compensate for some real or perceived loss in that person's life. In the case of intersectionality, the "winner" is the person who can stack the most "undesirable" traits on his/her bingo card of victimhood (i.e. the victim Olympics) without any consideration given towards his/her personal agency. Intersectionality, both in premise and application, is, in my view, a collection of x-isms of low expectations masquerading as some grand revelation about societal functions.

And I don't think your longterm timeline, even with the nuance and consideration you believe to missing from its application, would bring you to a world where people understand one another's circumstances and integrate these observations into their personal livelihood. Instead what you'll have is a world beset with the reinvention of tribalism and original sin. While intersectionality may have some merit as a sociological observation (even if I though I find its claims to be unfalsifiable), a sociological observation cannot be treated a deterministic inevitability supplanting human agency.

> In the case of intersectionality, the "winner" is the person who can stack the most "undesirable" traits on his/her bingo card of victimhood (i.e. the victim Olympics) without any consideration given towards his/her personal agency

This is a completely insane lie about intersectionality.

Where is the lie? Please be more specific.

I quoted it directly.

Let me rephrase. What makes my statement a lie?

Intersectionality is about marginalized groups working togther and supporting each other. Basically when Caeser says "Apes alone weak. Apes together strong" in Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

The "Oppression Olympics" narrative is an offensive and bizarre strawman.

>Intersectionality is about marginalized groups working togther and supporting each other. Basically when Caeser says "Apes alone weak. Apes together strong" in Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

That may be the theory, but "victim olympics" is the actual practice.

That's a category mistake on your part, if not an obvious lie with malicious intent.

Priveledge is such a stupid choice of words that using it for outreach instead of academia frankly seems like they are trying to start conflict for the sake of self-righteousness and one-upmanship purity spiral. The word "priveledge" implies that nobody deserves it by default when really it is the exact opposite. "Hidden Problems" is a clumsy top off the head synonym which would get the idea across better. It still fails to get across "what you take for granted they don't have" but it lacks the many sins of priveledge phrasing. Heck there are issues which aren't neccessarily anybody's fault like say being a minority in an area and finding it difficult to find people with the same related experiences.

...and they didn't get arrested for no reason, lived to adulthood, and when they tried to get a job they were taken seriously and evaluated mostly on their ability.

You are making a lot of assumptions.

Try showing up at a hiring event with a southern accent, no matter your race.

Try showing up to do anything at all without that southern accent and and without a professed love of jeebus where those accents come from.

This sad story of the unfairness of prejudice somehow inspires not a single tear.

That doesn’t match my experience in over four decades of living and working in the south.

But it is the same kind of story I hear time and time again from folks who don’t live in the south about the south. So it must be true I guess.

If you live and work in the south for over 40 years, then you are by definition no visitor.

Meanwhile, you don't even have to get out of your car to get told you're not welcome when people have big signs on the south bound side of the road proclaiming "You're in TRUMP COUNTRY now!"

Enjoy your denial.

Like I said, despite my long experience to the contrary it must be true because somebody on the internet said so.

And I’m sorry that stupid signs frighten you so…most people I know just ignore them.

Interpreting that observation as fear on my part rather than fear or ignorance on the part of the property owner is an excellent example of the very incivility you attempted to deny.

Why didn't I ever have the equivalent Obama sign on my yard, gloating in the face of anyone who came by that might not have liked it?

What is the person who does that doing exactly? Have you ever even taken 11 seconds to wonder where actions come from?

It's curious how when I give an example of someone getting off on insulting everyone who drives by their house, your reaction was to excuse that behavior and add your own insult to theirs, attempting to say something about the thickness of my skin, which in the end just says something about the thinness of your own.

Let’s recap. You mentioned that (paraphrasing here) that is difficult to near impossible to get hired in the south without a southern accent and a love for Jesus. I mentioned that wasn’t my experience. You take my response and turn into an anti-trump rant. Again, I mention have never found the south inhospitable, but acknowledged your opinion. I also mention that most people I know ignore stupid signs (because they do). Apparently you don’t or perhaps “can’t”—and that’s your reaction to own. Then you end this with some sort of assumption that the tiny percent of idiots that might place Trump signs in their yards are somehow representative of an entire region of the country. Including wrapping me into this group because I simply choose to ignore the idiots. You finish your obviously thin skinned rant by trying to project it on to me.

So again I say, I find your initial premise about employment difficulties in the south for folks without a southern accent or without a Christian faith to be be completely counter to my experience.

As for the rest of your diatribe and opinions, I think I am just going to ignore them. Frankly, it reminds me just a little too much of the kind of attitudes and binary thinking that cause certain people to post “Trump country” signs in their yards.

Wait, being against electronic machines is a Republican position? Back in the 2000s this felt more like a tech literate position with most supporters being Democrats. My recollection is that Republicans under Bush oversaw a significant largest expansion of electronic voting (which probably explains the larger Democratic opposition at the time vs it being some genuinely held principle).

I'm not a Republican but I'm certainly only for some forms electronic voting where it's possible to manually verify[1] (e.g. Scantron). The more complicated machines that print a scantron for you should be reserved for the minority of people who actually need it for accessibility or language purposes.

[1] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/04/securing_elec...

People seemed to have forgotten the Diebold voting machines, and their provably insecure implementation... and the conspiracy theories about Bush benefiting from it. Odd how that was a liberal position at the time, and nobody called them names.

> Odd how that was a liberal position at the time, and nobody called them names.

I was with you until you threw in a blatant lie. Being against electronic voting has always been a position that got negative comments, insults etc. (unless foolish, luddite, naive, afraid, and so on are not insults anymore? Or maybe you don't consider them insults when your side issues them?). Perhaps you didn't experience that, or maybe you are just doing the whole "rose-colored glasses" view on the past thing. Either way, your statement about how no one called "them" names is just a sad attempt at throwing in a little dig, one that has no basis in reality, no real facts behind it, and only serves to divide everyone.

I think you're failing to apply the appropriate context to the situation back then.

Your framing of the Hursti Hack [0] and how socially acceptable it is to discuss its merits does not seem to consider the very different way society tended to handle things like this in those days. Society has changed a lot. During the Bush/Kerry race I distinctly remember that being against the voting machines was decidedly counter-culture, but definitely not indicative of being a luddite or naive. Back then, being counter-culture was "cool," and only a sliver of the population actually cared to take a position against it.

The considerable research and publication [1] related to this incident helps demonstrate that society saw this issue in quite a different light a mere 15 years ago.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hursti_Hack [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20161202140146/https://www.suppo...

Good deflect, but it completely ignores the point - I and many others were insulted for being against voting machines.

Also - which is true?

* only a sliver of the population even cared

* it was the liberal position back then

Your personal experience of your thoughts is not in any way related to the statement: "Odd how that was a liberal position at the time, and nobody called them names." They are just a tangential anecdote.

Since you do somehow think anecdotes are super duper relevant though:

I was an adult for bush/kerry. I remember too. Things were very different on the surface, but the divide was there then too - it was deep and it was pervasive. I remember coming out of a screening of 'Fahrenheit 9/11' and being yelled at by a crowd of people who thought I was a 'dirty liberal' and 'scumbag' for even seeing it. I remember having people threaten me because I was against the Iraq war and Afghanistan occupation. I remember being told my volunteer work to help underserved communities get access to the internet was pointless because "those people will never learn". The sides and arguments haven't changed - what has changed is the volume. The language of "us vs them" hasn't changed. The ignorant argument style of "here's my one personal viewpoint as proof that you are wrong" hasn't changed. The talking heads are still east coast liberal elites in an ivory tower (or fascist assholes just spewing lies and stirring up hate).

Perhaps my experience is an outlier. Perhaps you are just doing that "good old days" thing. Either way, neither of our stories have anything to do with the very specific point you replied to.

> Your personal experience of your thoughts is not in any way related to the statement: "Odd how that was a liberal position at the time, and nobody called them names." They are just a tangential anecdote.

The statement in and of itself is also an anecdote. A hyperbolic one, at that.

The amount of butthurt people are displaying in this thread indicates to me that my point is quite on the money. The degree of controversy and rudeness that comes across in your own posts in particular is astonishing.

You're clearly older than I am, by the way. That's pretty sad.

I'm not sure this is the appropriate context, though. There are plenty of people today who think it's "cool" to be counter to the dominant culture, including active research and security analyses claiming to show flaws in voting security. The difference is that the dominant culture has shifted strongly in a direction that you and I favor, so we care about being excluded from it in a way we didn't in 2005.

> Being against electronic voting has always been a position that got negative comments, insults etc. (unless foolish, luddite, naive, afraid, and so on are not insults anymore?

Is that really true? I always thought it was a pretty popular position, at least in the tech community. I might be biased, but I don't know how anyone who has a modicum of understanding about computer (in)security and has performed an update query could ever be dismissively enthusiastic of electronic voting.

Moving the goalposts is a fun game, but not helpful in this situation. I guess if you only limit yourself to counting those of a particular career with a particular set of interests as people, then sure you may have a point. I tend to think of humans (no extra qualifiers) as people though, so your point makes no sense to me.

That's because most of the criticism wasn't in the form of conspiracy theories or accusations, but instead in the form of technical or at least logical arguments against their use. It was, "this is a problem and it isn't being addressed at all."

With the 2020 election, it was -- after the fact -- "all these machines are now corrupt because I lost". And I use the term "I lost" because it was the Trump campaign and it's most adherent supporters that were making the claims. And then there were recounts and investigations... which turned up nothing, but the complaints continued into court cases... which also turned up nothing, but the complaints and court cases turned into rallies... which became riots and insurrections.

So the difference is that the first group was largely rational and reasonable -- you'll note the distinct lack of injury and death -- while the second group ignored the facts, didn't care about the actual problem of the machines, and used it as a scapegoat to fuel insurrection, violence, and populism.

I'm sorry if you can't see it, but it's really not very subtle.

Fake populism.

Also the entire year before the election concluded, one side was openly talking about contesting the results only on the basis that they didn't like not winning.

Equally important to whether the vote is fair is whether people believe it is fair.

No one but the world's best computer security experts have a hope of comprehensively understanding a computer voting system. Even on the odd chance the entire software and hardware platform were open source and verifiable, it's probably beyond 90% of us here on Hacker News to even begin going about that independently.

The result is the election is no longer constructed out of an understandable system based on folk physics we all comprehend instinctively. We all understand the integrity of a physical ballot box, physical papers, and the difficulty of mass fraud against such a decentralized system.

Switch to fully-electronic voting and we lose that. It becomes a black box. Press a button. Get a result. With no faith in the process that rendered it. Our democratic result ceases to be the result of average citizens counting papers and becomes something just handed down by experts.

I'm not American, but if my country ever moves to eliminate paper ballots I will protest. I do like the idea of a terminal that prints your human-readable ballot for you as an assistive device, though.

The voting machines that americans are talking about [1] aren't "fully electronic black boxes", they're "paper ballots + a vote counting machine + maybe a machine that acts as an overly fancy pencil (but let's you verify the paper ballot afterwards, i.e. what you talk about in your last paragraph).

The paper audit trail, physical ballot box, etc still exists.

I don't know if these machines exactly justify their cost... but they don't seem to be security risks.

[1] So by this I mean "only the republicans are complaining right now" and "they aren't complaining about states where non-paper voting machines used". In fact it looks like that of the 7 states with some form of non-paper voting machines, all but New Jersey went for Trump. New Jersey was never going to be close enough that the republicans feel like they can complain about it.

[2] List of states and how they use voting machines here: https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_stat...

Kentucky, Lousiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Tenessee and Texas are the ones with "DRE without VVPAT" (voting machines that are more than a fancy pencil and/or paper ballot counter).

[3] Election results from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidentia...

Having a paper record helps, but only if it actually gets used to manually validate the results from the counting machine. (And if you're doing a manual count anyway, why bother having a counting machine in the first place?)

> And if you're doing a manual count anyway, why bother having a counting machine in the first place

Because that way you can report preliminary results faster? I guess you also get the "two independent ways of counting say the same thing" benefit, but I'm pretty sure that they're primarily there because the news likes it.

Doing manual counts of states that at are at all close or suspected to be at all close is... normal.

Sure, why not? I have no problem with counting machines that aren't actually used to produce the official count.

Doing manual counts only when it's close isn't good enough though, as that leaves you open to a vulnerability where the attacker simply arranges for it to not be close.

> a vulnerability where the attacker simply arranges for it to not be close.

That attack, for state and federal elections, involves falsifying multiple independent organizations' poll results, including exit polling on the day of. Otherwise the "not close" results will not be credible and they will be investigated.

I think they sample for validation and only do a full recount when fraud is suspected.

I think most positions like "electronic voting machines" are just ... issues of convenience and not really tied to any political ideology.

Frankly I think that's most political situations.

"No nation building" was a vary big part of Bush Jr's platform ... and then he started some nation building that we only just got out of 20 years later.

You might be noticing that the media does not demand any logical consistency from democrats.

Democrats don’t operate on a spectrum of logic, instead they operate on a spectrum of virtue signaling.

I’d modify this to say that for the last 30 years they tended to view success of their party’s platform more on the virtue of their good intentions rather than the outcome that platform or policy achieved.

Distrusting electronic voting machines only marks you out as a Republican conspiracy theorist when a Democrat is president, like now. It was a perfectly respectable position held by tech-literate Democrat supporters in the 2000s under Bush, became one again the moment Trump took office, and ceased to be one as soon as it seemed like Biden won. It really is that simple and that partisan.

On Twitter, where literally everything is a political shibboleth.

If you're security conscious, it's entirely possible to know there's no reason to believe anyone successfully tampered with voting machines, AND know that it's something that could happen one day if we don't take it seriously.

> On Twitter, where literally everything is a political shibboleth.

Left unchecked, that kind of thinking will destroy America. If too many people look at everything through the lens of partisanship, paralysis follows, and that eventually leads to death.

And it's a both sides thing. I've seen a lot of people act like anyone who has problems with the implementation of the Afghanistan withdrawal is a Trumper clone of Stephen Miller. That kind of thinking has led to some truly awful things said in apologia for it.

> Distrusting electronic voting machines only marks you out as a Republican conspiracy theorist when a Democrat is president

I'd modify this.

Distrusting electronic voting machines only marks you out as a conspiracy theorist (of any political leaning) when you only care about the issue if an election doesn't go your way.

People who actually care about the issue continue rallying for changes to election security even if their party won.

If you stop caring once things go your way, you don't actually care about election security, you're just using conspiracy theories to comfort yourself when you lost.

I work in computer security and I see a lot of experts like Matt Blaze being inundated by crazy conspiracy theorists. These are people who have spent years working against the tide to improve voting technology -- primarily by advocating for paper trails in electronic voting systems. Now, having seen many of these goals achieved, these experts are being attacked on Twitter by conspiracy theorists who are attacking even voting machines with a paper record based on insane theories (involving the President of Venezuela). These positions have nothing to do with the security of voting machines, they're crazy nonsense. Much of which is being promoted by supporters of a candidate who refuses to accept that he lost.

To pretend that a bunch of people just "switched sides on the issue of voting machines" is totally counterfactual. It's perfectly reasonable to want to improve insecure DREs, and many people on all sides of the political spectrum wanted this. It is not reasonable to decide (en masse) that the family of Hugo Chavez owns a voting machine company, and that somehow they're conspiring to change votes in ways that can't be detected in the paper trail -- and moreover believing all of this insanity without the slightest shred of evidence.

I don't expect much from HN, but I do expect much, much better.

You got to deal with them the same way you deal with a herd of Buffalo. As long as the herd is running in circles, its not going to run of a cliff or into the sea.

So keep them running in circles and stay out of the center.

Stone age man knew how to do that, so I am quite confident we will survive Twitter and the stampeding herds it generates.

Also, if you try to say neither side is right on some issue, you'll be called an "enlightened centrist" ironically. Because you know, you're supposed to pick one side and believe they're right on everything, like some sort of school rivalry.

It always amuses me how the prevailing criticism of moderates or centrists is always some compliment levied in a scathing tone. Those dastardly centrists, always waiting for conclusive information before jumping to conclusions!

> Those dastardly centrists, always waiting for conclusive information before jumping to conclusions!

While it is appealing to believe that moderates/centrists really did look at all available data and came to a principled conclusion from first principles, I somehow doubt that that is the case.

That’s not necessary. Centrism and moderation are justified merely by a lack of evidence. E.g., I don’t know enough so it’s imprudent to make a drastic change in either direction.

The moon is made of cheese, agreed?

I'm either too smart or not smart enough to understand your quip.

The average person does not have enough evidence to refute that the moon is not made of cheese. That does not mean one should hear out a lunarcheesist.

My argument is that we shouldn’t make drastic changes without ample evidence. Your moon cheese analogy doesn’t address this at all.

You should still use common sense to determine courses of action when you don't have evidence.

Absolutely, common sense is almost always avoiding drastic, often absurd changes (e.g., abolishing police). You might say that common sense is fundamentally a moderate position.

>Those dastardly centrists, always waiting for conclusive information before jumping to conclusions!

The problem isn't that they are waiting for conclusive information -but that they pick "both sides" out of moral cowardliness. When people accuse them of "both sides" it's cowardice that they're being accused of.

Cowardice aside, Centrists and Moderates are not people who are sitting on the sidelines carefully weighing the issues.

Far from it!

It would be useful to do some reading on who and what "Centrists" really are about:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-moderate-middle-is-...

https://novaramedia.com/2019/12/11/the-centrist-delusion-mid...

https://www.vox.com/2014/7/8/5878293/lets-stop-using-the-wor...

It’s not cowardice, it’s that centrists or moderates are looking at issues rather than teams, so on some issues they’ll vote Republican and others Democrat. But partisans don’t understand the concept of “trying to do what’s best for one’s country”, so they can only understand this as “fear of committing to a team”.

It is cowardice when it's used as an excuse to not commit to a stand on an issue, and a lot of people do take issue with that.

But this is a strawman. There’s no evidence that any significant portion of centrists are so motivated.

Off-topic story time: A few years back I had a conversation with a friend of mine. I knew we both leaned left on a lot of the same things but this particular day we started talking about politics. Turns out he was a rather devoted democrat. I eventually came around to mentioning my belief that the two-party system was the worst thing about our democracy and that both parties basically exist only to fight each other, which means rationality is by default excluded from US politics.

Wow, he did not like that one bit. I'm pretty sure we would still be speaking today if I just lied and said I was a republican!

Well, I wouldn't stop talking to you for thinking that - if you are a decent person with the attempt to defend your points, I wouldn't want to sever that for a single misunderstanding or disagreement.

To move off-topic, it is infuriating that people think the Democratic party (and the people who vote for that party) are effectively the same in their stated policy goals as the Republican Party.

I believe the two party system is awful, and I think the need for large reforms of our voting systems to something (anything) other than first-past-the-post is critical. Golly Gee, which party is advancing infrastructural changes to voting and districting for the advancement of democracy?

Two party system is bad. Democratic party has its own issues of political machinery and infighting. ALSO they are objectively a hell of a lot more pro-democracy and pro-America than the Republican party.

One can be again EVMs without holding the position that they were used to transfer votes to Biden illegally and stole the election from Trump. Was that your position? Did you try stating that?

Unfortunately I'm finding this sort of us-vs-them mentality starting to creep up even around HN, even though the guidelines suggest to assume good faith.

It's particularly weird when you play devil's advocate on some topic (which is really just a tool to promote evaluating topics from a different perspective) and people start jumping at you with pitchforks assuming you're "against" them.

Last year, some thinktanks were saying that Trump giving voice to far-right was dangerous precisely because it shifted narratives in ways that extremists from both sides would start to feel validated and come out of the woodwork, and now here we are. I've read about a similar trend regarding portrayal of China in western media and their sentiment towards us in return. Frankly it's everywhere now.

On the one hand we try to teach our kids that calling each other names and escalating fights leads nowhere, but then we turn around to look at social media and it feels like people never got that memo themselves. I'm always trying to avoid falling into that trap. A quote from Dalai Lama that always stuck with me is "I'd rather be kind than right, you can always be kind". There's a bunch of other similar quotes, and it's interesting that a lot of them are about self-improvement (ironically, self-improvement the same spiritual aspect that people criticize "religious" zealots for ditching nowadays)

HN is the most good-faith forum I visit. I think there is some allergy to centrism/both-sides-ism because there are so many trolls on other forums trying to subvert true discussion, by slipping in one centrist/contrarian viewpoint then use that as a wedge to support all their other stances.

That's a great quote. For me, it usually ends up that I need to just be silent and ask questions. And yet more and more, people are forcing an opinion, essentially taking the "If you're not with us, you're against us" stance, regardless of if I agree or disagree or how much I validate their own thought process.

Just pondering, why are people not allowed to keep their opinions to themselves now, especially if they are doing so to be kind to the other person? My own opinion is often that the reality of people and situations is nuanced, and blanket policies don't work at all levels. But even that is an unacceptable position in peoples' eyes.

> creep up even around HN It's happening in this very thread!

On a few occasions, I have quit interesting arguments with people I respect, because it was in public Facebook comments and I could feel (and see, via reactions) the baying crowds forming camps on either side. And sure, hypothetically it could go to PMs, but these weren't close friends. "Gladiatorial" is exactly the kind of feeling I get from it.

I don't think messageboards used to be this way before the proliferation of 'share' buttons and engagement-tracking algorithms. In the old days, people had to choose based on the thread title whether they wanted to read it. Today, Facebook notifies you: Trevor and Dan are going at it again.

Probably I am lucky but I don't meet a lot of people who use Twitter outside Twitter.

I believe that Twitter is not a cultural influencer as much as a product used by people who already have a rather shallow philosophy. So I do not buy into the cultural decadence argument since they fail to convince me that Twitter-like media significantly influence people behavior.

I don't know, I think Trump was Twitter incarnate. It's the ideal platform him: shallow philosophy represented in short, attention grabbing snippets. Naturally, it's where he first grew into popularity as a political figure.

What do you make of academia’s complete embrace of Twitter?

Just an anecdote, but on Friday I posted a tweet about a research paper we did jointly with University. Both the main researcher (post-doc) and the professor we cooperated with do not have twitter accounts.

Is there a stat somewhere about how many academics use twitter?

I forwarded that article to someone and they pointed out that much of it could also apply to the right -- particularly in the anti-vax, anti-mask, stop the steal segments.

> Debate and conversation, especially when they rely upon reason, rationality, science, evidence, epistemic adequacy, and other Enlightenment-based tools of persuasion are the very thing they think produced injustice in the world in the first place. Those are not their methods and they reject them. Their methods are, instead, storytelling and counter-storytelling, appealing to emotions and subjectively interpreted lived experience [...]

Having seen much of the education system focus in the past on writing how you "feel" about a subject rather than "evidence based" writing (thank goodness for common core!)... I'm not surprised.

> writing how you "feel" about a subject rather than "evidence based" writing

... but ... these are both important. a healthy human mind has and needs both. it's important to look at data, evidence, useful models, and then it's also very important to accept that sometimes (and nowadays many times!) it conflicts with our gut instinct, this makes us feel frustrated, and yeah, we need to learn to process this.

one without the other is either complete dogmatic rage/jihad or literally just mindless computation ("fact finding").

> Discourse is no longer a tool we use to approach a better mutual understanding, it’s a gladiator match where there has to be a loser and a winner.

This is affecting all parts of our culture.

High school debate is starting to see the same sort of techniques seen in online discourse: Winning at all costs. Which leads to talking over people, steamrolling, shouting matches, the gish-gallop.

I still think you can have good discussions, but you have to enforce the Chattenham house rule and be willing to boot anybody who breaks it. With the rule in place, and perhaps a moderator, it is very hard to play politics and very easy to learn something.

With a chaotic neutral AI, optimized for engagement (Twitter), you can only have conflict.

That "AI" is more like a mythical demon that feeds off anger, so it does everything it can to create that anger.

An interesting site, and I don't want to reject it out of hand, but I find it humorous that a site run almost entirely by one person, and whose author claims to be a "leading expert" on CRT and thus rejects it, and which hosts articles entirely deriding the "woke" and "CRT" movements, claims to be apolitical and open-minded in nature.

> I’ve run into this problem with people who use a lot of twitter. They would keep asking me to “state my position”, and also demand it to be about 1 sentence long. The problem being…I don’t usually have a “position”, but rather I have a set of things which haven’t yet been proven false.

It's like choosing between two bad options at a restaurant. Then you suggest going to a completely different restaurant and all you get is blank stares, like you suggested something they can't imagine. Quite like the "NPC" meme that was deemed so "problematic"

Reminds me of Yann LeCun quitting Twitter [0] after basically getting mobbed by "AI ethicists" (you'll recognize some names in the article...). Yann, of course, responded with explanations and technical expertise but realized at some point he was battling with a non-technical crowd that were trying to turn the conversation into identity politics.

[0] https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter...

Every discussion on the internet is an argument and it is automatically treated that way by now.

Sometime if you write a response to an answer and agree with it, the original author still justifies himself because it is perceived as a counter argument. Happens more on certain platforms than on others.

> they’ll accuse me [...]

Because they are afraid. They need this rigidity to feel safe and another symptom is becoming an authoritarian mind. A simple image of an enemy helps too.

Consider:

*Twitter is a small but vocal slice of politics, mostly left-leaning.

*Publishing to Twitter means throwing yourself at the mob.

*The mob is motivated by many things, one of which is one-upping the other for sport.

But THE WORST part of the whole thing is people take it seriously and companies take it seriously and organizations take it seriously.

It would not be so bad if Twittering stayed in Twitter, but it doesn't, it bleeds into life in real ways.

That means you cannot use it as a way to "think out loud". People will find what you said 10 years ago when something was okay and judge you on today's mores.

People have not co-developed and matured enough with Social media to be able to judge what comes from it appropriately.

My wish is we grow out of it much quicker than it took the "East" to grow out of Leninism.

I believe the article details a lot of examples where twitter had nothing to do with the 'crime' at all. Twitter is just where the echo chamber resides.

I don't know how much I would "blame" twitter.

But I do think that "the medium is the message" and Twitter's medium is short, curt, over simplified, and encourages exaggeration and even worse.

It also encourages piling-on. And, for unknown reasons, companies and organizations feel beholden to the Twitter mood.

We see this with technical support issues as well as tangential social issues: someone from the company was seen acting rude towards someone -Outrage! (As if the accuser never, ever engaged in such uncivil behavior, ever! And especially never become part of a Twitter mob to seek something as crass as revenge)

Sure I agree. I just meant you can be 'charged with a crime' in the context of TFA without even having a twitter account. Maybe I just misunderstood what the initial poster meant.

I believe the article details a lot of examples where Twitter had nothing to do with the 'crime' at all but public discussions on Twitter had a lot to do with creating the mob justice - and that is how Twitter undesirably "bleeds into life in real ways" as the parent post asserts.

People should be free to discuss various allegations on Twitter and demand various actions to be taken; but where it goes wrong is that it should not be acceptable for institutions to act/react/overreact on their employees solely based on these social media allegations and demands, actual due process should still be a thing.

> mostly left-leaning

Are you seeing a different Twitter than I do?

Of course you are.

The examples of this kind of "run them out of town" reactivity is.

I dunno, I see it coming from all sides. Even the normal people in my life have become very political, and it doesn't matter which angle they're starting from.

I see my original comment didn't get any love. I was just making a snarky remark about how Twitter probably uses algorithms to make sure your feed and mind are outrageous in their own specific-to-us ways.

Snark is against HN guidelines, hence the cold reception.

It was an observation that Twitter most likely uses algorithms to curate each individual feed, so any given reader is likely to sense a different trend. Very much on point for HN.

From the HN guidelines: Don't be snarky.

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

So. Could you have made the same point without snark?

It wasn't snark, I misused the term.

Hmm. I read recently how terrorist organizations compete - by trying to do a more violent, headline-catching act than the other organizations. That's how they attract new recruits.

> The mob is motivated by many things, one of which is one-upping the other for sport.

It's not for sport. It's for followers (which extend their power to attract more followers).

And one of the ways their one-upping each other is by expressions of outrage. (One could justly call this "performative", since the point is to be seen.)

This is a good article. It's well-researched and it tries to be as even-handed as possible.

Trying to move beyond the immediate issues, something a lot of people don't talk about is the resulting lack of quality in those institutions affected by mob rule. I go to places for quality information that I used to go 20 years ago and in many cases it's a horrible pile of substandard, inadequate crap.

It's not a coincidence that the people who do the worst things are many of the same folks that sing the hymns that their side wants to hear. People in various professions and organizations are learning to play on the emotions of others. More troubling, they are learning that this public emotional manipulation is much more than adequate for their jobs. The quality of the jobs themselves suffer. We need those folks to actually do their jobs, not become or stay popular.

Yeah, it's all cool when a mob punishes some person. But when it then happens to one of the people in that mob, oh no, wtf is this injustice, where's the law?!

I've had to listen to rants about sterilizing alcoholics, shooting immigrants at the border, deporting people, having one strong leader like in a monarchy (but somehow it's not dictatorship).

Idiocy runs deep. Walk on a busy street and look around, more than half the people hold some of these views. 3/4 I'd even say.

I do, too, I believe all drugs should be legal (even if I sign away all my other healthcare), the death penalty should be a choice vs life imprisonment for example. Is that as dumb as sterilizing alcoholics? I can't really tell since I'm me. I like to believe I stop at not dictating how other people should live their own lives.

the problem is, many, very many people love to tell others how they should live, speak, and especially how they should feel. I have come to the conclusion that my own political preferences are not with the left, the right or any other particular pole. I just dislike people trying to force their opinion on me, and especially those who try to do it by manipulating my feelings. Doesn't matter what their beliefs are.

I think it's important to be careful, when one identifies as "outside the system", that one is not actually advancing the cause of one of the "sides". In particular, when the status quo is unjust, saying that you don't identify with either the left or the right often means that you're OK with the status quo. I'm not saying this is an inherently wrong position, just that it's important to be aware of whose interests are served by you standing on the sidelines.

You'll notice the post you're responding to never mentioned anything close to "standing on the sidelines".

A common tactic used by evangelist partisans is to paint centrists as 'undecided' on some issues and therefore just as evil as the enemy.

In reality these people are as opinionated as any partisan on individual topics.

> You'll notice the post your responding to never mentioned anything close to "standing on the sidelines".

That's a fair criticism. I suppose I was responding to the attitude I perceived from the comment rather than the words themselves. I'll admit that what I said may not apply to the GP at all.

Let's say I care about people more than politics. And let's say it plays out this way in my thinking: I'm pro-life, because I see a fetus as a person, or at least a person-in-the-making. And I'm pro-law-enforcement, because I see crime hurting people. And I'm pro-welfare and pro-raising-minimum-wage, because I see poverty hurting people. And I'm anti-death-penalty, because I see that as killing a person. And I'm anti-gun-rights, because I see guns killing people. (Note well: Not all of these are my positions, so let's skip debates about the specifics.)

In the great Red-vs-Blue battle, I'm on the sidelines, because I'm on Team People, not Team Red or Team Blue. Both sides have positions that I agree with, and both have positions that I disagree with. I can't be fully on either team, because neither is fully on my team.

But I'll get involved on individual issues. I'm not "undecided" on individual issues.

Why is that a problem? (I mean, I see that it's a problem for someone who's wholly sold out to Team Red or Team Blue, but why should the rest of us care?)

I’m not the person you’re replying to, but I certainly agree with their post. My opinion is that people on the edges of the political spectrum, who have strong opinions and are active in politics, in fact do nothing to change society, and actually entrench the existing power structures.

The reason I have come to that conclusion is that politics is tribal, if you want to be part of a group, you have to have exactly the right beliefs, you cannot have an opinion other than the ones shared by the group, if you think a bit differently than the group, but agree with them on a large degree of things and are willing to work with them, the group will reject you. They do not want free thinkers, they want foot soldiers for their culture war.

All the culture wars have done is act as a set of wedge issues politicians use to divide their opponents base. When you become politically active, you become a tool for politicians. And somehow, very predictably, midterm elections are already bad for incumbent presidents parties, we always alternate between democratic preaidents and republican presidents, my cities local politics will always be democratic, my state will always be controlled by republicans. The people in power seem to be happy with this status quo, perhaps just because it is predictable.

> The reason I have come to that conclusion is that politics is tribal, if you want to be part of a group, you have to have exactly the right beliefs, you cannot have an opinion other than the ones shared by the group, if you think a bit differently than the group, but agree with them on a large degree of things and are willing to work with them, the group will reject you. They do not want free thinkers, they want foot soldiers for their culture war.

If a group is like that, then they're right - I'm not part of their tribe.

This reads like an overly polite way of saying "you're either with us or against us."

That's a little reductive. I just think it's important to be aware that you can't really escape politics, and in a representative democracy there is often someone who will benefit from your choices one way or another. In the US this breaks down into us vs. them because of the two party system.

For an example, consider how Nader is sometimes blamed for Bush's victory in 2000. And indeed, whether intentional or not, Nader's campaign probably hurt Gore's chances. But my point is not to condemn (in this example) Nader voters. Just that it's important to be aware of who is likely benefiting from your actions and not pretend that by remaining "neural" or "independent" you're somehow above the fray.

you can't really escape politics

Nah, I'm really tired of seeing this cop-out. It can't be escapted because people like you take joy in reducing every conversation down to politics so you can then steer it to your liking.

Just that it's important to be aware of who is likely benefiting from your actions and not pretend that by remaining "neural" or "independent" you're somehow above the fray.

I'd wager most of those voters voted for Nader because they wanted him to win, not because they were spiting Bush/Gore (while all the same being ignorant of the fact that 3rd party candidates don't work in first-past-the-post systems).

I think he was just saying try to be less ignorant. Which sounds like good advice to me.

The problem is the idea that you can't be above the fray. It's clearly false as a literal claim - I've never met anyone who struggles to avoid discussing communism with their coworkers from China or Modi with their coworkers from India. In practice, whenever I've seen people say that it's impossible to be above the fray, what they mean is that suchandsuch issues are very important so they think everyone ought to be dragged into the fray.

Yeah. There needs to be a middle ground. Terrible things are happening around the world, and nobody has the time or energy to attend to all of them. On the other hand, if somebody is calling a co-worker some racist term, looking aside is pretty cowardly. Everybody should probably think this through for themselves and figure out what they can live with.

> I'd wager most of those voters voted for Nader because they wanted him to win...

Yes. I didn't say otherwise. But voting for Nader probably benefitted Bush as well. Something that's important to consider if you want to vote for Nader. To be clear, despite this, I think that the 2000 Nader campaign was a good thing.

I think the worst thing about "first past the post" electoral systems is that sometimes you end up voting "strategically" because of the above calculus.

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor." --Desmond Tutu

given that injustices are perpetrated worldwide every second of the day, doesn't that just reduce down to "everybody is an oppressor"? I'm not particularly active in the Sudan conflict, so I guess I must be passively helping out whichever side is the bad guys? Times that by a thousand for all the other conflicts I'm not involved in, and I must be just about the worst person there is.

No, you choose a side when you choose a side. The fact that, conceivably, you could have an influence on an outcome does not mean you are picking a side. That oppressor you "should" have opposed is the one oppressing. Even if you side with the oppressed in secret, there usually is a cost in outwardly aiding them. To demand that someone pay a price is to assert that one's life is not one's own. To voluntarily offer one's life may be heroic, but to demand it is slavery.

You can just say, “If you’re not with us, you’re against us.” It’s shorter, and less weasely.

If I wanted to say that, I would. Clearly I failed at getting my point across.

Out of curiosity, who do you think "us" is in this case?

The "us" is clearly the people inside the system you're referring to (left / right).

And for people outside the system, the "us" is often both the left and right interchangeably.

us = the left or the right; the system; etc.

You're basically advocating that someone should be on one pole or the other. I think your premise seems dishonest:

First you gave an assumption about an 'unjust' system and explain why not choosing a side is bad, but then later on you say that not choosing a side isn't 'inherently wrong' to try to not seem judgemental. It comes across a little manipulative tbh.

The OP said nothing about standing on the sidelines -- just that their views don't neatly fit one way or another.

However, if I witness a game where two teams are repeatedly smashing into each other at midfield, causing harm to themselves and making no visible progress, standing on the sidelines seems like a perfectly valid and rational choice.

Making the argument that I could have helped / hurt one of the teams by participating holds no water. I'll join the game when it makes more sense.

>In particular, when the status quo is unjust, saying that you don't identify with either the left or the right often means that you're OK with the status quo.

The correct answer to this view is "so what?" If I choose to watch cartoons tonight rather than evangelize about whatever causes on Twitter, does that mean that I'm "OK with the status quo"? I guess in some sense it does - but again, so what? If you want to cast aspersions on me for this choice, I would just say that you have unreasonably high expectations regarding how much people should care about your cause, and I'd strongly suspect you of being a hypocrite on the matter.

> saying that you don't identify with either the left or the right often means that you're OK with the status quo

To me, saying that you do identify with either the left or the right (or conversely, that you don't identify with both the left and the right, on some points) means you're OK with the status quo. They're both led by political machines that attract people's mindshare by talking about grassroots problems, and then transmute that support into the policies their sponsors paid for. There's no money to be made in solving the real grassroots problems, and doing so would actually diminish their recruitment.

Vote pragmatically all you want, but don't mislead yourself into thinking either political team is actually fighting against the status quo.

The status quo may be broken. That doesn't mean I agree with any given side's approach to fixing it. (And "we have to do something, this is something, therefore we have to do this" is stupid logic.)

If the status quo is bad, that doesn't mean we can't make it much worse by applying the wrong fix.

This is an underhanded way of saying, “If you’re not with me, then you’re against me.”

I had a number of extremely unpleasant conversations online that went like this on some well-known tech sites.

No room for nuance. Just a constant blast of attacks on character, strawman, and hysterics.

So far Hacker news readers don’t tolerate this but sometimes I wonder for how long.

This is an underhanded way of saying, “If you’re not with me, then you’re against me.”

It’s toxic and intolerable.

What about people who leave you alone but try to push their opinion on others with less political power?

In war games, the only winning move is not to play.

True, and this is an age old argument.

Here is the relevant XKCD, just with a narrow scope: https://xkcd.com/386/

>But when it then happens to one of the people in that mob, oh no, wtf is this injustice, where's the law?!

This has always been one of the more-grating aspects of cancel culture. When my tribe does it to yours, it's just "actions having consequences", "fucking around and finding out", "consequences culture", etc. When your tribe does it to mine, it's criminal harassment / death threats / bigotry / gaslighting / etc etc.

> Yeah, it's all cool when a mob punishes some person. But when it then happens to one of the people in that mob, oh no, wtf is this injustice, where's the law?!

Maybe this is just part of the maturing process that most of us go through.

There's a painfully large number of times in my life where I've been a total ass about someone else's beliefs, failings, etc., until something in my own life made me more empathetic on the topic.

The outcomes for people who were never charged or convicted of any crimes seems pretty...brutal. Having your livelihood taken away among other sanctions over an allegation would be very upsetting. It seems a safe bet that in an arbitrary amount of time(say, 36 months), this will happen to the "wrong" person - the sort of person who gets upset and kills people they believe(whether right or wrong) to be responsible.

I don't think that would change anything though, other than further vilifying the person - if they weren't a legitimate bad actor before, they would have become one. The social pressure to ostracize someone who is already being ostracized by the majority is a real pressure that affects people.

Managers who bow to Twitter pressure and fire people are more of a problem than the Twitter mob. The twitter mob is the indirect cause, the boss is the direct cause of someone being fired.

The whole show is being run by an insane level of computational power whose main purpose is to addict, distract, and coerce. Advertising, persuasion, the siren-song that hits your brain right in its dopamine loop.

It's everywhere, on every screen, all the time. Little interruptions and nuggets to get you back into the cycle of addiction so the machine can pump more impressions past your eyeballs into your brain and make you a good little consumer.

What I find remarkable is that this isn't part of any grand conspiracy - it's simply the natural outcome of having social media.

We really do need a better architecture for social media that rewards mature discussion, rather than the outrage machine we've currently cursed society with.

...and I think we need to stop trying to create a platform that's for everyone. Less is more. As adults, we do not need to share a platform with hormonal teenagers. ...of course age is a very simplistic broad-brush segmentation. At heart, what makes sense is some sort of meritocratic forum.

Are we sure? Even if you remove the advertising i think there's a distinct lack of interest in debate, hence why forums failed, why reddit has become a monoculture, and why atomized media like twitter are the last refuge where people can try to shout at each other. The next iteration will not involve any talk at all.

Ironic that the Atlantic of all places is publishing this. While their general assessment is correct, they've certainly done their part in feeding the outrage mob. Over the years their reporting has gotten less and less nuanced and significantly more click-baity.

That last sentence feels like it applies to pretty much everybody.

The problem as I see it is that everybody acts like their pet issue not only matters more than any other but more than all of them put together. Thus you get somebody posting something about LGBTQ+ issues, then somebody else trying to shut them down over a phrase that could be interpreted as racially insensitive, then they in their turn are accused of being able-ist, and so on. I see this merry-go-round every day on Twitter or Tumblr.

Fun fact: nobody scores 100% on any test of "right thinking" across a wide range of issues, by any political faction's definition of what "right thinking" would be. Wouldn't it be amazing if they did? But they can be right on the vast majority, they can be articulate and effective as advocates on all of them, but then that one wrong answer is used to hang them and all of that positive effect is lost. What's left is just the negative, which we're drowning in.

By all means, advocate for what you believe in. Call out people whose behavior you believe is harmful. But have some perspective, have some proportion, and don't casually throw out due process whenever it suits you.

"How much intellectual life is now stifled because of fear of what a poorly worded comment would look like if taken out of context and spread on Twitter?"

Since when has Twitter become a platform for intellectual discourse?

The sentence you quoted is not describing Twitter as the platform for intellectual discourse, it's describing it as the platform where the mob gathers their pitchforks to demand banishment.

I think that line indicates that intellectual discourse that occurs anywhere is harmed by a comment taken out of context and spread on Twitter. Not that any intellectual discourse occurs on Twitter.

That aside, I think the answer to the question is still "very little". People engaged in these crazy ideological battles on either side are out of touch. Most people are, in fact, reasonable.

When I hear this I don't believe they're talking about grammar errors or malapropisms.

You can replace "poorly worded comment* with racist/misogynist/ableist/transphobic/etc comment and see that this is a euphemism.

How much of intellectual life is now stifled because of fear of what a racist/misogynist/abelist comment would look like if taken out of context and spread on Twitter?

Context is important. One can dig up a quote from David Bowie that would paint him as a supporter of fascism. And indeed, at one point in his life, that may have been true. He later rescinded those comments and apologized and did his best, it seems, to make up for it in his later life.

But we're talking about people in the here-and-now in positions of power with terrible opinions saying horrible things about other people and they downplay it by acting like the people holding them accountable are the overly-sensitive ones.

It's not trampling democratic discourse. It's making it better in my accounting.

> He later rescinded those comments and apologized and did his best, it seems, to make up for it in his later life.

I'm not sure why apologies would be needed for merely having an idea or belief that was incorrect. It's a core part of "cancel culture", but it turns thinking and honest discussion into an activity fraught with danger, and inhibits building a common understanding.

I think it's ultimately based on the fundamentally wrong assertion that incorrect thoughts or speech cause equivalent harm to actions.

> But we're talking about people in the here-and-now in positions of power with terrible opinions saying horrible things about other people and they downplay it by acting like the people holding them accountable are the overly-sensitive ones.

You're cherry picking. Powerless individuals have also been targeted by such mobs. The responses to transgressions have also been disproportionate or preferential, ie. a transgression by "enemies" is treated far more harshly than transgressions by "friendlies".

This is not any reasonable form of justice I recognize. Even if it has had positive impacts in some ways, it has also had negative effects, and this is what deserves legitimate criticism as "cancel culture".

> But we're talking about people in the here-and-now in positions of power with terrible opinions saying horrible things

Are we? How can you be so sure. Perhaps sometimes that is true, but it clearly is not in many cases.

I'll bite, in the spirit of discourse. Two issues I have with this take. First, David Bowie can afford in terms of money and in "social credit" to apologize and move on. A lowly first year prof or reporter who lost her job, friends, ability to publish, and ability to get a job besides flipping burgers despite apologizing is stuck with a metaphorical "Scarlet A" on her chest. If not for life, then for a very long time.

Second, who decides what is ___ist and how, and how is that enforced? If one disagrees fundamentally that saying "X" is ___ist, or what their anonymous accuser is saying happened at that party ages ago, where do they appeal their cause? As the article notes, these standards have changed _wildly_ over the past 5 years. There is no democratic process deciding these rules - it's just social evolution, amplified and sped up by today's communication technology. Even if one believes every new standard and the Twitter mob enforcing them is well-reasoned and morally right, I would hope they would want some due process before using these rules to take away a person's livelihood. I would hope one would be gracious toward people who for whatever reason don't immediately adjust their views to the "right" side every year. Have some consideration for us slower-evolving lifeforms, and realize you, too could eventually be on the that side of the equation some day.

Do some people cry "cancel culture" to gloss over truly stupid or downright evil things? Absolutely. Is every prof denying being __ist telling the truth? No. But it's also true that we live in a period of rapid social change, and are repeating some aspects of mob mentality that have caused problems in the past.

Did Twitter make democratic discourse better by banning feminist author Meghan Murphy? I don't necessarily endorse her opinions and I know some people think she's terrible, but I fail to see how locking her out of the conversation improves anything.

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

Meanwhile there are active Taliban representatives still happily tweeting today...

(And I do understand that Twitter as a private company has a legal right to ban anyone they want. My point is about broad societal effects rather than legal rights.)

The wikipedia article says she was banned for breaking the rules. I'm not clear what your point you're trying to make?

Some of the rules she allegedly broke were put in place after she was banned, as but one example. Let's not pretend that Twitter's rules are fair or impartial, or that they are fairly and impartially applied.

I think one way "poorly worded" can be interpreted is in the sense that choosing words poorly can leave the audience with an idea that was not intended. By replacing "poorly worded" with "racist/misogynist/ableist/transphobic/etc", we skip the question of "Did this person say what they really mean?" and jump straight to "This person thinks a bad thing and needs to be punished". I think this is exactly the mentality that the author thinks is trampling democratic discourse, because it causes some to seek retribution before they understand what the person they are retaliating against was trying to say.

Right, and any attempt to say "that's not what I meant" will be met with "You're a latent X-ist, you don't realize it, but it comes out in your words".

First, there are people who attempt to have discourse on important subjects on Twitter. Whether you think that is silly is irrelevant.

Second, the point is that /any/ comment made or repeated by someone on Twitter, if found to be improper by some standard by some mob, can hurt you in all walks of life, so people keep quiet everywhere, lest they be "retweeted" out of context.

Randy and Amy had spent a full hour talking to Scott and Laura last night; they were the only people who made any effort to make Amy feel welcome. Randy hadn't the faintest idea what these people thought of him and what he had done, but he could sense right away that, essentially that was not the issue because even if they thought he had done something evil, they at least had a framework, a sort of procedure manual, for dealing with transgressions.

To translate it into UNIX system administration terms (Randy's fundamental metaphor for just about everything), the post modern, politically correct atheists were like people who had suddenly found themselves in charge of a big and unfathomably complex computer system (viz, society) with no documentation or instructions of any kind, and so whose only way to keep the thing running was to invent and enforce certain rules with a kind of neo Puritanical rigor, because they were at a loss to deal with any deviations from what they saw as the norm. -- Cryptonomicon, 1999

Rehashing the PC wars of the mid-90s has been a continual experience of deja vu combined with a fairly appalled horror at finding out how many of my peers fell for it twice.

I'm not even sure if it is PC wars of the mid 90s as much as a sort of flavor of puritanism like behavior where folks just substitute their cause / identity and go looking for whatever is wrong.

I fear it is human nature.

its facinating to see a big problem solve little people

It is a bit worse than that -- because these were largely people who did not fall for the religious-based Puritanism. D&D is Satanic. Now it is problematic.

It appears that people will fall for this Puritanism as long as the flavor packet that comes with it is to their taste.

I once had a conversation that went like this:

> Well that's problematic

How is it problematic?

> I don't know, it just is

Can you describe it without using the word problematic?

> No, it simply is problematic

Do you maybe mean you simply disagree with it?

> No, it's PROBLEMATIC

I've taken to ignoring any phrase with the word problematic, unless it's followed with a meaningful description of what is the problem.

I feel the same way about "processed" food.

Processed food is "problematic". The problems are well known and documented though

https://www.lhsfna.org/index.cfm/lifelines/may-2019/the-many...

Processed food includes both McDonalds cheeseburgers and wholegrain bagels.

It also describes the "processed" rack of ribs I slow cooked last night after cleaning and seasoning them (processing steps).

Is it frustrating going through life assuming a superficial understanding of words and phrases without considering how they are intended to be understood by the writer/speaker?

The article I linked clearly explained that "processed" is not a binary flag, but rather a continuum. And that the harm is done by processing that adds excessive sugar, salt, and fat (and even then only when you consume that type of processed food to the exclusion of all other food).

It was not a good word choice. Cooperative speaking means both sides have to be cooperative, and hijacking and loading well known terms is not cooperative.

> The article I linked clearly explained that "processed" is not a binary flag, but rather a continuum. And that the harm is done by processing that adds excessive sugar, salt, and fat (and even then only when you consume that type of processed food to the exclusion of all other food).

So then don't try to campaign againt "processed" food but against excessive sugar, salt and fat. If you use existing words with existing meanings then you can't expect people not to take those words literally.

Cooking food can be considered processing it. The problem is that the verb "processing" can mean nearly anything and isn't helpful for discussion. It often gets invoked as some kind of nonspecific boogeyman.

Problematic is often a weasel word for "causes difficult emotions"

That word is doing a lot of work. I think this explains the phenomenon well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSAWylw8dwQ

I was having a conversation with a friend the other day about how, because it was founded by puritans, puritanism in general seems to have become part of the US' national/cultural character. You see it in many forms throughout the years in ways you just don't see in the UK, even though we otherwise share a great deal of cultural background.

It's more complicated than that, of course, though the point is taken:

- the US was equally well founded by irish and scots debtors who couldn't get shipped off to australia because we hadn't found that yet.

- ... or west africans in chains.

- ... or money-grubbing mercantilist businessmen who had to be legally compelled to farm things that weren't tobacco after the first lot all starved to death by failing to plant food.

- or by deists and quakers and catholics (who especially represent what passes for religious tolerance in the colonies, c.f. Maryland in particular)

Puritans, of course, also came from the UK (some by way of the mainland when they got kicked out for being too uptight)

I think a difference is: Cromwell lost, and the UK kept their Tories rather longer than we kept ours (and many subsequently left for Nova Scotia and the like), so the fallback position that wasn't puritanism in the UK was an explicitly theocratic state religion that had to be a denomination of compromise because everyone knew perfectly well what happened when it wasn't. (this motivation had a different effect in the US: IMO it almost completely explains the establishment clause)

The difference is that today there is an all-powerful AI that has managed to infiltrate every screen and mediate every digital interaction as a monetization opportunity with advertising. In other words, an endlessly profitable persuasion machine that dances to the tune of dollar bills and will happily push whatever narrative is most effective at widening and strengthening that conduit, i.e. maximizes engagement. It twists our preferences gradually, a little at a time, knowing full well that to risk it all with bold and obvious propaganda risks shattering the ruse and scaring you off.

> every screen

Not every screen. You know how to turn it away. Help your friends and family do the same.

I love Randy's blunt social commentary.

To give a technical slant to the current woke agenda: my work place recently planned a Hackathon, and asked for contributions for tasks to work on. From a younger colleague: "how about a bot that monitors all online chat channels, highlighting instances where people have used non-pc words or terminology"

I didn't sign up.

Aren’t the kids supposed to be rebellious?

Dude's just an ass trying to signal. Nothing to see here.

>What many of these people—the difficult ones, the gossipy ones, the overly gregarious ones—have in common is that they make people uncomfortable. Here, too, a profound generational shift has transpired. “I think people’s tolerance for discomfort—people’s tolerance for dissonance, for not hearing exactly what they want to hear—has now gone down to zero,” one person told me. “Discomfort used to be a term of praise about pedagogy—I mean, the greatest discomforter of all was Socrates.”

Yep. I read this article in horror, even though I've heard many of the stories before. I am someone who likes to think out loud, to play devil's advocate, and who likes to flirt. It seems I should reconsider my thoughts of going into journalism or education!

Honestly, it is scary to see this country go in such a direction. I wonder if it will simmer down in 10-15 years. My theory is that a lot of the accusations flying around (especially with #metoo) relate to things that occurred before there would be proof of wrongdoing, and before people had the support structure and institutional trust to report it quickly. Now that we live in a country where people can feel more comfortable reporting their abuses more quickly, we won't have cases like Brett Kavanaugh, where it's a he-said/she-said from 30 years ago.

To the other points in the article, it does seem to be coming mostly from "the youth". People who have come of age at a time when lots of social norms and forms of interaction have changed, and where Twitter and Facebook have always existed. They don't know a world where, if you don't like something, you just live with it. Now, no matter how foolish it is to expect to never be offended, people can now find thousands of supporters online for any kind of inane qualm one has with their employer, coworker or professor. And it's wrapped in moral superiority.

Is there a country in Europe that is beautiful, intellectual, and doesn't yet suffer from this cultural disease?

reddit is a huge elephant in the room that contributes to this polarization.

mods have 0 accountability and ban people that don't share same political views with impunity (even in non political subs, especially big deal in regional local subs).

True, but this is why so many 'alternate' subs have been created over the years, and why you also can (for now) still create one if you see a need.

I've found that mods in smaller communities are often much more approachable than I expected, as well.

Unfortunately, you are right that mod abuse in larger subs has become a pretty awful problem. Part of the issue is that some have found ways to monetize their positions (which of course eventually ruins everything), but there's certainly no shortage of egotistical maniacs, trolls and idiots who are happy to unfairly hassle others without pay. It can be hard to pull subscribers away once a place reaches critical mass, too.

Honestly, I see no solution to the problem other than to steer clear of larger spaces-- or at least watch for biases and don't take them seriously. Any attempt to create a 'vetting' system for mods will not only break anonymity but also give reddit's paid admins even more power.

you cant really create alternates of local subs because a) national ones grew their audience via auto-subscribe and b) names of localities are unique

Well the solution is to have expiration dates for mods or have them voted. moderators should be clerks, not dictators

> especially big deal in regional local subs

Yeah about that, it's so bizarre. American political culture has corroded it so much, that the mods of local or national subs have named themselves expert epidemiologists now. They will shut down even perfectly civil discussion if they dont like it for arbitrary reasons (because they themselves are clueless so rely on their feels)

Mods even pre-ban people who've never participated in a particular subreddit due to their views/comments in other subs. Zero accountability, for sure.

I'm surprised no one here is talking about context collapse, which I think does a good chunk to explain the mob justice behavior.

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

it isn't -- context is intentionally left out for greater mob effect. nobody stopped a mob by providing context

> anyone who tries to shoehorn these stories into a right-left political framework has to explain why so few of the victims of this shift can be described as “right wing” or conservative... All of those I spoke with are centrist or center-left liberals.

I agree that it's not simply an example of the left attacking the right, since the accused are in many cases left-leaning themselves. But, that shouldn't be taken to mean that conservatives are somehow immune. The reason that all her sources were liberal was because she talked to university academics and journalists, professions where conservatives were driven out decades ago. Sure, they exist, but they're rare enough that it makes sense she wouldn't catch any in her sample. This supports her point, which I agree with — I just think she missed that this isn't a new phenomenon.

Many have no faith in their peers to make up their minds for themselves. I doubt they have that faith in themselves. This is an easy conclusion to come to, if you believe there's a better source of Truth.

Used to be that source of Truth was a church, but now it has become some notional distributed consensus. We still have our priests and saints, but we don't know why they're elevated, or why they fall...

Where #metoo applies only to some people; where being photographed with a finger pose has meaning if you're "right wing", but not if you're "left wing"; where "Trump is Gay!" is an acceptable insult but everyone else has Gay Pride... that isn't hypocrisy to those doing it.

It's the application of a different standard of morality. The notion that we are all people, we are all pretty much the same, and we all have pretty much the same flaws; has fallen away. Rulers and leaders and celebrities are supposed to be better than everyone else, and when they prove not to be; either the messenger must be punished and their human flaw ignored; or they must be pulled down from their elevated position.

This new wave of social discourse that's being labelled "cancel culture" (in spite of the protests of the people at the forefront of it) is often justifiably compared to a religion, just as in the linked article. My read of history is that religion is only ever overturned by a stronger religion - I won't be entirely shocked if we see a return to right-wing Christian conservatism in my lifetime that will make the 50's seem like a liberal utopia.

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad-- the church has way better music.

> I won't be entirely shocked if we see a return to right-wing Christian conservatism in my lifetime that will make the 50's seem like a liberal utopia.

This is my prediction, although I’m not completely sure about the lifetime part. If it does come to that, I’m not completely unopposed to the crazy prepper life though.

From a non US outsiders perspective I do have to say that it looks like the US civil war never really ended. The country is still largely divided along the same lines (with maybe California as a third entity) and I don't really see it reconciling any time soon.

Kind of like Belgium over here in Europe, which is usually say is not so much a country as it is a cold civil war :)

The geographic lines of division today have changed tremendously since the Civil War. The divide is now more rural versus urban rather than north versus south. In the last presidential election rural California was mostly "red" while southern cities were mostly "blue".

https://brilliantmaps.com/2020-county-election-map/

California's /land/ was mostly red...in terms of actual people it was 2:1 voting blue:red. Land doesn't vote.

Land does vote in the senate though.

I thought this too until I looked at US presidential electoral maps for the past century, and then ran across a study of political division in the US that showed a dramatic increase beginning around 1980. (Don't have a link handy unfortunately.) It seems the degree and nature of division in the US really has changed in a fundamental way.

I'm totally unfamiliar with Belgium. Can you point me to something illustrative? That sounds quite interesting.

In 2021 you'll lose your job for saying a specific word, in the context of discussing the word, definitely not using it as a slur, while openly being materially anti racist and deploring the use of the word as a slur.

Even the fools on Capitol Hill on Jan 6, if you were to poll them, I suggest >95% of them would consider it inappropriate to use that word as a slur.

So that's the furthest thing from what you are imagining.

I think this kind of fear-mongering is tantamount to a kind of bigotry because it mostly misunderstands the nature of the Capitol Hill rioting, and all those other kinds of 'scary' activities. And FYI that was scary, just for other reasons then you are suggesting.

Words do have power, surely, but the conflation of 'someone said something' into a giant national war is just hyperbolic.

We're confusing 'someone said something dumb, maybe because they were angry and shooting their mouths off' - with 'the return of slavery!'.

Ta-Nehisi Coates tells this tale of a very minor confrontation between he, his child in an elevator, it was the most inconsequential encounter, but he elevated to the status of ultimate importance. In his deluded view, it wasn't even a 'symbol' of racism, rather an act of deep rooted power that a white person could actually 'lay hands' on a black person as if they 'owned their bodies'. God forbid someone who might step on someone's toes as brutal act of racism?

The paradox is that the legitimate observation of 'Critical Theory' as applied to the propagandist narratives that we've told ourselves in the past, could just as easily be used against those who want to elevate every action towards some ideological importance.

Most people I speak to in person are actually kind of reasonable, I think we are all getting sick of this, maybe over the next few years we'll start to be desensitized to elite huffery on Twitter.

> Ta-Nehisi Coates tells this tale of a very minor confrontation between he, his child in an elevator, it was the most inconsequential encounter, but he elevated to the status of ultimate importance. In his deluded view, it wasn't even a 'symbol' of racism, rather an act of deep rooted power that a white person could actually 'lay hands' on a black person as if they 'owned their bodies'. God forbid someone who might step on someone's toes as brutal act of racism?

Can you point me to the book & page number (or chapter)? I recently lost a lifelong friend to just this sort of delusion and am trying to understand it. However I'm already bad at managing my time and believe reading through an entire Coates book will have diminishing returns.

>My read of history is that religion is only ever overturned by a stronger religion

There's gotta be a valve somewhere. If that were true, how is our current culture (or at least the culture of '85 to '05) more liberal than the right-wing Christianity of the 50s?

Applebaum talks about Twitter and cancel culture. Of course, her bemoaning of "judgement" on Twitter is odd, because she has used Twitter to throw mud at "Russian spy" and "Russian propaganda" tool Edward Snowden ( https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Aanneapplebaum%20snowden&... ), "apologist for Milosevic" and Nobel laureate Peter Handke ( https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Aanneapplebaum%20milosevi... ), "bizarre" Noam Chomsky ( https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Aanneapplebaum%20chomsky&... ) etc.

Ok for her to judge and cancel on Twitter, not for the "mob" that judges her and her friends.

I think there's a difference between noting someone else's choices and actions as wrong or 'bizarre' vs. the outcomes we see with the sort of mob justice that results in people losing their jobs over misquotes or sincere questions that might be uncomfortable.

I'm not a part of any cancel culture because I call someone 'bizarre'.

Well, until enough other people start calling the same person bizarre.

None of the people you mention were "cancelled" on Twitter. Criticising or expressing a negative opinion about someone is not "cancel culture."

> "Russian spy"

> "Russian propaganda"

> "apologist for Milosevic"

ie "What they say doesn't matter because it's to serve motive X"

Using a label to dismiss all messaging of an actor (abstract), as it suits an agenda, is the defining characteristic of "cancel culture".

This is generally a precursor to a bandwagon/snowball to de-platform the individual. This happens when a portion of individuals begin picking a side by taking action, sometimes out of caution. ie The proactive individuals don't want to face the possibility of similar behavior within a social network.

How specific does this get, you can't label things?

This isn't about labeling. My response is also not, specifically, about the story.

This is about what is and what is not cancel culture. "Cancel culture" describes a culture, which necessarily exists in a community. It's been around since before the term "pariah" existed. There are cultures where specific acts have the effect of irrevocably excluding you from a community (exile). Now the rumor of an act or thought is, amplified by communication channels, to result in the same stigma.

The defining characteristic of cancel culture is harassing someone’s place of employment until the ‘offender’ gets fired.

The defining characteristic of cancel culture is people with massive platforms who spend a lot of time trying to get people fired for saying then they disagree with complaining when people are rude to them on twitter (at best, much the time they are crying about people politely pointing out mistakes in what they are arguing).

>Using a label to dismiss all messaging of an actor (abstract), as it suits an agenda, is the defining characteristic of "cancel culture".

No, it isn't. The defining characteristic of cancel culture has always been using collective online action to have someone ostracized from social or political circles, removed from their job or professional relationships, etc.

>This is generally a precursor to a bandwagon/snowball to de-platform the individual. This happens when a portion of individuals begin picking a side by taking action, sometimes out of caution.

Correct. that is cancel culture, and that part never happened in any of these cases. Simply calling someone names isn't cancel culture. If it were, every opponent of cancel culture referring to "witch hunts", "pearl-clutching mobs" or "Marxist SJWs" would be engaging in the very activity they denounce by denouncing it.

>The defining characteristic of cancel culture has always been using collective online action to have someone ostracized from social or political circles, removed from their job or professional relationships, etc.

That's because the whole thing is a moral panic imagined by liberals in the media who were mad that people could reply to them without the filter of the NYT letter pages editor (it was then embraced by conservatives as well for similar reasons and because "you can't even say X anymore" is convenient way to push the buttons of older conservatives). Most of the supposedly dire results of being 'cancelled' are utterly irrelevant to the vast majority of people because most of them are various forms of 'not getting as many media gigs'. Ordinary people can't get 'cancelled' because we don't make a living going on CNN or giving talks at universities.

Sure you can cherry pick examples of people saying something stupid on social media and their workplace massively overreacting (similarly you could find real examples behind the moral panics of the 80s and 90s - well ok, maybe not actual demonic possession but most of the rest of it was based on at least a few semi-real cases). That's not what any of the people crying about cancel culture care about. If it was they'd be advocating for stronger protection for employees.

The desired solution is of course always to regulate social media so that the nasty mob can no longer reply to opinion columnists and they can go back to splitting their time between writing poorly researched rants and trying to get academics who disagree with them fired.

> Using a label to dismiss all messaging of an actor (abstract), as it suits an agenda, is the defining characteristic of "cancel culture".

Only if the label by itself causes sufficient harm to silence, exile or otherwise ruin someone, eg. "white supremacist".

I'd say cancel culture is any widespread or coordinated attempt to silence, exile, or ruin someone for non-overtly harmful speech or behaviour. Sometimes that's attempted by applying a label, but not always.

I think we can all agree that someone who engages in harmful actions should be silenced, exiled or ruined, although the legal system is supposed to adjudicate that (accounting for proportionality, remorse, recompense, etc.).

The disturbing part of cancel culture is that this is now being extended to speech and thoughts, and there's no check on the mob's power.

> Only if the label by itself causes sufficient harm to silence, exile or otherwise ruin someone, eg. "white supremacist".

There's no "only if" because in any sized community that can and does apply, even if it's not on TV. It's often part of a modern culture, which has unspoken or explicit rules that result in this behavior. eg Getting banned from a conservative subreddit because you point out what a piece of garbage Rush L was.

I'd say the qualifier is applicable and important. It distinguishes between cases where the label has little effect, like a evangelical preacher calling someone a "sinner" (who isn't?), and calling someone a white supremacist.

Even your example of being banned from a conservative subreddit can be ruinous if conservatives are the primary market for your goods or services, but no big deal if you have nothing to do with conservatives.

The point is that I think the effect or intended effect of the label should dictate whether it qualifies as cancel culture, I don't think just any label should do.

For instance, if I try to dismiss your argument here because I think you love "My Little Pony", I don't see how that should qualify as cancel culture.

judging is kind of her job, but did she cancel someone? Not trying to defend her but this is interesting, if she is a professional canceller, then that makes this article more accurate

Democratic Discourse isn't enough. The collective wants actual democracy not just talk about it. If the mechanism fails (or we fail the mechanism) it will be replaced by something else, something new, something old... It might not be pretty, it might get a lot more ugly but its going to happen.

I think she pulls punches here, but why wouldn't she, because that's what she's writing about.

The underlying factor is that the Private sphere has been eroded, and there are generations of people who have no concept of it. They exist in the Public sphere, and so the thoughts and conversations of others are suddenly subject to "accountbility." There is no conventional notion of what is ones business and what is not. As though for these atomized people with few close relationships and a lack of personal boundaries, that nothing is their business because they are not invited into intimate relationships means everything is because they don't know there is a difference between what is and what isn't.

Appelbaum says:

> A decade ago, I wrote a book about the Sovietization of Central Europe in the 1940s, and found that much of the political conformism of the early Communist period was the result not of violence or direct state coercion, but rather of intense peer pressure. Even without a clear risk to their life, people felt obliged—not just for the sake of their career but for their children, their friends, their spouse—to repeat slogans that they didn’t believe, or to perform acts of public obeisance to a political party they privately scorned.

Even Appelbaum, who wrote a scathing survey of this very phenomenon, hedges herself as not being overly sympathetic to wrongthink, lest she be expelled from the intelligentsia circles she works in for a lack of fervency. What bothers me is that even smart people like her are not seeing the forest for the trees, and how this is a managed phenomenon.

> Despite the right-wing rhetoric that says otherwise, these procedures are not being driven by a “unified left” (there is no “unified left”), or by a unified movement of any kind, let alone by the government.

While I can see why she would want to avoid risking the attention of the people behind this, it is in fact co-ordinated, and the "left," is only one of the hosts and funnels used for it.

Anyway, it's not a discussion or discourse. There is an entire generation of young people who understand attention as power, and any engagement at all is just an enabler. The solution is to form personal networks of intimate relationships based on establishing incremental trust, without permanently recording every second of it, and try to restore some of the Private sphere as an overall effect. If Anne Appelbaum has been cowed by these people, we are much further down the road to perdition than we know.

>The underlying factor is that the Private sphere has been eroded, and there are generations of people who have no concept of it.

Monsters from the Id. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2BYyeS-fIU

> it is in fact co-ordinated

Who is doing this and how?

This is a question in good faith. I’m not sure if your comment expects me to know the answer and I don’t.

Indeed, and my answer is also in good faith: short version is Hannah Arendt covers the whole progression.

Long version is: Regarding the who, naming individuals just invites mobs, but they aren't of a particular ethnicity or nationality (other than being mostly of european descent), and of no particular religion other than mostly non-religious, as the thing they have in common is a simple ideology, because to scale it needs to be simple. They aren't a shadowy conspiracy, they're in plain sight, they write books, give talks, and publish everything.

Arguably it's just this prevailing generation of leaders responding to recent massive technology change with a new alignment to technocratic governance that tech makes possible. Perfectly well intentioned, like when Hollerith (now IBM) enabled a new kind of agility for government in the 20's with their punch card systems that enabled states to finally solve problems they couldn't previously without massive co-ordination and automation, and elevate all of humanity into a new age, once they got rid of some pesky holdouts, many of whom were our grandparents.

So how are these people different from just regular people with beliefs participating in democratic processes? Their intent is to dissolve distinct and diverse nations and subvert democracies by destroying the discourse that makes it possible. The goal is one humanity under a single co-ordinated bureaucracy, not unlike modern China. The Davos/WEF people and their networks are very public about their admiration of that system.

If you are a leader and you see what China has done with over a billion subjects in the space of a few decades, how do you argue they've got it wrong? Sure, terrible things happen, but with over a billion people working in harmony, the edge cases of a few million people here and there aren't significant. In that view, the only people standing in the way of this shared prosperity for hundreds of millions are the hereditary elites, the exceptional, the individual, and the nationalist. What leader wouldn't give a few years of turmoil in exchange for being on top of a machine like that?

What the article talks about is mainly members of the mob who are in academia, and not the faction who sponsors and directs their attention. Some of the the cancel crowd believe this, but mostly they're on the tactical subversion edge of this alignment and are content to just see stuff burn without much thought as to why or in whose interest.

Regarding the how, for anything to scale it needs to be simple, and the popular presumption is that if there is intent, there must also be a static command and control structure operating it, and if you can't identify the C&C, then there must be no co-ordinated intent - which is wrong, and this is a stealth tactic by design.

The mechanism is an alignment of interests between an elite faction who have co-opted the mob(s), where the faction directs targets and the mob piles on. By now it's metastasized into a kind of an economy and culture. The directing faction has a gradient of intent and membership, where the objective is to subvert the US and its allies, and replace it with their own systems and membership that do not have the constraints and volatility risk of a democracy - not unlike the way the EU imposes regulations on its member states that are against the will of the local populations. The ideology is technocratic and secular (mostly nihilistic), and only uses movements and nations as hosts and stepping stones. Meaning and truth itself are fluid to them because power is its own end, and once you have the power, truth is what you make it. To adapt a quip that summarizes their ideology, "when we have our boot on the necks of the world, what does it matter whether it's the right boot or the left boot? It's all for their own good."

Long comment about complex ideas, but I hope you found it chilling, and if nothing else, at least it shows how it's simple enough to scale.

>Anyway, it's not a discussion or discourse. There is an entire generation of young people who understand attention as power, and any engagement at all is just an enabler. The solution is to form personal networks of intimate relationships based on establishing incremental trust, without permanently recording every second of it, and try to restore some of the Private sphere as an overall effect.

That's part of the solution, but it probably isn't enough on its own. In the Soviet Central Europe of the late 60s and early 70s, there were moderately active spheres of private thought sharing samizdat amongst themselves (leading to initiatives like Charter 77, etc.), but one of the major points Václav Havel made in "The Power of the Powerless" is that ultimately people need to be able to express themselves in the public sphere to effect meaningful change.

What i don't understand is why people get so emotional and tribal about politics at least in the USA. Both sides as of recently have been enthralled by conspiracy theories and world views that seem untethered to reality or reasonableness. This doesn't mean a lukewarm center is right either. Politics specifically disinterests me because it is all about your side winning not coming up with the best solutions to problems. I guess most people just want to have a tribe to be part of.

Is it surprising that it feels like our society is drifting closer to anarchy when hundreds of millions of people spend hours a day on platforms that are inherently not democratic?

My workplace isn't democratic, few are... not sure that has bright society closer to anarchy.

Your workplace isn't used as a platform for "democratic discourse"

How many places are democratic that are a platform for democratic discourse?

Local town halls, city council meetings, and things of that nature. Which is to say: not many (and over the duration of our democracy, they have not scaled with technology in the way that propaganda has: newspapers, then talk radio, then evening TV news, then 24/7 TV news, and now the rage-o-sphere)

When you look at courts in the South (but really anywhere in the US - just that for the stronger historical context), the length of time it takes people to get trials, the amount of money in major cases and the political careers of attorney generals justice has always been mob-like. Just focused on powerful mobs.

Also looking at the power of lobby (mostly the power of big biz) in politics, combined with the two-party system (where big biz can easily support both sides), I think we see a much bigger enemy of democratic discourse.

Mob rule is maybe "the people" finding a way get around the broken system.

Bad headlines with inaccurate, overhyped verbs are trampling straightforward reasoning

Half of the sub Reddit’s went private to protest for censorship.

It's all probably just a sign of the shifting attitudes in the past few generations. Public is shifting away from liberalism in favor of popularity, and away from the christian-atheist value of forgiveness in favor of block-lists. The digital world has definitely played a part here - block lists were not possible in the analog world which forced people to reevaluate each other even if they still found each other abhorrent. But this is probably the new normal, which inevitably means erosion of collective institutions in favor of atomized ones. This will never be fixed, the mob behavior is here endemic, as there is no force rolling it back. What will happen is probably a fracturing of public opinion (and democracy itself) into separate, safe but insulated bubbles.

What nonsense. "Christianity" has been the cause for many, many abhorrent crimes throughout history.

Also, what is "Christianity" if not a big cult fueled by populism?

interesting that a single word evokes such response. As an atheist i always found the principle of forgiveness rather peculiar as it's not natural to humans, but i guess it's one of the many reasons of its quick success before it became the roman religion. In fact i don't think any historians considers the quick early spread of christianity was due to mob behavior. OTOH, any religion can be described as big cult fueled by popular lies.

I've been assured by many HN commenters that there's actually no problem, but there doesn't seem to be a coherent reason for the ambivalence.

1. It's all in my imagination / they haven't seen it. It's a bogeyman created by the alt-right and their mouthpiece, The Atlantic.

2. Cancel culture is actually 'consequence culture', therefore it is right and just and nothing to worry about, unless I deserve it.

3. It's nothing new because whatabout the Dixie Chicks.

Who considers The Atlantic to be an alt-right mouthpiece? They unabashedly lean left.

Really? I don't see minimum wage laws going up, even though social media has been demanding it. The only thing I see is politicians sucking up to anti-vaxxers.

Twitter etc is great, but they don't really have much power. The BLM movement was a massive uprising, but didn't really achieve anything afaik.

The real power is still with the elected officials

yeah, i saw a guy get beat, he seemed like a kind person, i saw him get provoked like fight club style, it sucked. there was a crowd mocking him while he was getting beat, someone said it was because he didn’t have a vaccine card on him, i would have helped but it was over by the time i got there. someone called that police but the police were too busy or something. i am surprised that it’s gotta so acceptable to beat people as a group. i thought that was illegal?

"Just don't be an asshole."

-- Assholes

Funny how these articles only ever complain about censorship of conservative viewpoints, and never about, say, history textbooks being revised to sugarcoat American and Canadian genocide of indigenous people, or of slavery.

Eg: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2021/08/30/i-have-done-nothi...

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2021-06-...

Liberal democracy has never been about "democratic discourse".

Is 'please don't commit arson at your protest' a conservative viewpoint?

There is a three-way mutual submissive relationship between corporations, the intelligentsia, and the mob on Twitter. The good thing is that you can mostly ignore it without any meaningful negative impact on your life. Sure, the syrup product in your local supermarket might now be called “Pearl Milling Company” but you’re probably better off avoiding the extra calories.

That's rather rich coming from a magazine (like all of them really) that has so decidedly chosen a team for the culture wars.

I can't say that it's a matter of 'democracy' but simply human nature on the large scale. Personal and mass behavior (personal in the aggregate I guess) is going to be steered by a combination of top-down force and bottom-up culture. Diversity implies a lack of bottom-up control systems so, if anything, you need less democracy in modern states.

Obviously social media makes it easier to gin up a mob, and there's always been the truth that small yet loud contingents can punch above their weight, but it seems to me that there's nothing really new here. Social media appears to allow impolite behavior at lower cost, but that poor behavior was always built into the individual.

Perhaps what I'd like to hear is some insight from a participant in the Yugoslavia breakup.

That’s kind of how the media works. Invent problems, harp on them for weeks, then either move on or offer your own new “commentary” about solutions. All while making big bucks off the advertising eyeballs.

The Atlantic is actually much better than, say, Mother Jones/Slate/Salon. Back in 2015, they ran "Coddling of the American Mind" which was one of the first big articles detailing this shift in public discourse.

Like all moral panics, this is really quite overblown. The podcast You're Wrong About did a great episode on this recently about "cancel culture" https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cancel-culture/id13800...

In it, they specifically call out The Atlantic's editors for their handwringing

Is the scale the issue?

It really isn't overblown. The foaming outraged extremists that torture any individual or company that deigns to disagree with their current ideals is a huge issue.

I think like most things, none of it is as big as you might think. It makes for an interesting story, so it gets heavily reported, but honestly, it seems over-represented in the media. Do you *personally* know anyone that has been "canceled" and suffered severe long-term consequences for it? Same question, but about local businesses? People are entitled to their opinions and actions barring actually violating laws. It's the balance of free speech and the free market. Any person, business, organization, etc. can take a stance and hold an opinion publicly, but that may hold consequences due to the perceptions and behavior of others that cannot be controlled. Locally I see unions and protest groups trying to shame businesses all the time. Those businesses are doing fine. I see local politicians raise money on the idea that "the left is trying to cancel them" pretty successfully.

Yes, I personally know several people who were targeted by these extremists. Some went so far as to call their employers and lie about them to try and have them cancelled.

By cancelled here it sounds like you mean fired. Ideally if those people were lying, it should be possible to hold them accountable in court.

> Do you personally know anyone that has been "canceled" and suffered severe long-term consequences for it?

That's a loose definition. I know someone who was beaten up very badly and spent weeks in a hospital with a good chance of not making it through. A few years later and they look totally normal. Were there severe long-term consequences? After all, you couldn't even tell just by looking at them.

I don't think the "long-term outcome" should be relevant in judging anything of that nature, and cancelling is similar. Sure, they might not commit suicide, their career might even recover, but they've gone through a lot of shit that was totally unnecessary.

Assaulting someone is a crime, so is criminal harassment in my state and I assume others. It sounds like we need to define what is meant by "canceling" someone.

I would say that you don't have to be cancelled to be affected. When you see the cancelling of others, it mutes all discourse. When you can lose your job for not having the correct opinions, it creates a self-censorship. THis limits discussion and discourse, and eventually limits the range of thought. This is what limiting language was all about in the book 1984, limiting language limited thought. Specifically the diversity of thought, which I will argue is necessary for cultural and human advancement. Without which we enter a new dark age. This affects us all, cancelled and not.

This is true and has been. It's not illegal to hold certain opinions, but you aren't legally protected from subcultures or even large swaths of society deciding not to do business with you. Collectively through some ad hoc process, social groups decide what will and won't be tolerated in discourse within their sphere. In society at large, that tends to mean that for controversial topics, some groups will absolutely back you while others will shun you. If the state is supposed to fix it, the state will have to pick a side. The result tends to be authoritarian toward one side or another. The compromise we seem to have reached is that people taking specific actions to cause you physical harm or to induce some sort of trauma or concern for your own safety are illegal regardless of why. There may have been local fluctuations over time, but this trend has lead to now being one of the safest times in history to have and express a variety of views in many societies.

You use a phrase like "any individual or company" yet you probably couldn't name more than a handful who've actually been hindered. And most of them richly deserved it. Half the time it doesn't even work. Some liberals have tried to cancel Chick-fil-A and Hobby Lobby and it hasn't worked.

And I also think that casual disdain for "current ideals" is pretty callous. We're barely getting our heads above water on centuries of racism, misogyny, ableism and other classic prejudices. The fact that we're only getting around to punishing people now isn't an excuse.

Overblown? Depends who you ask.

What I've noticed is that it can be highly selective and random in both it's targets and intensity.

See Apple's firing of Antonio García-Martínez while simultaneously employing Dr. Dre and giving him billions of dollars.

> Like all moral panics, this is really quite overblown

This seems like a paraphrase for you just being ok with it.

Even if we believe it's overblown, it seems to me cancel culture is THE preeminent gripe against our side that gains traction virtually anywhere it is invoked.

For this reason alone it's essential to fight and fight hard.

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