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Comment by s_Hogg | Hacker News Reader

This article reads like it is trying to cancel the cancellers, somewhat ironically! Very hard to not become the thing you hate when you get tangled up in this stuff.

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Didn’t come across that way at all to me. I read it as general concern at the suppression of ideas. There was no call to action to ban Twitter hashtags or forfeit MIT.

The author is head of something he calls "Persuasion." Not everyone is impressed.

https://newrepublic.com/article/158401/problem-yascha-mounks...

It's free speech 101 - you can say what you like (as long as you're not inciting crime or violence.) But no one owes you a pulpit.

I have far more of a problem with mob farming and Twitter incitement: see also anti-vaxing, organised climate change denial, and political rabble rousing.

Because those are covert rather than free - pretending to be independent and organic while actually being centralised and astroturfed.

> you can say what you like (as long as you're not inciting crime or violence.)

But whatever reason is to forbid inciting crime or violence is equally valid to forbid inciting firing or un-inviting someone isn’t it?

Absolutely not. Crime/violence are taking something from someone. Firing/uninviting are deciding not to trade with someone.

There’s clearly a line somewhere, otherwise there’s no point in speech (if it cannot be used to influence others in even the smallest of ways).

While I don’t think MIT made the best call here, I think that Twitter users (mobs or otherwise) should be free to ask MIT to do this. I would have preferred that MIT had professionally yet firmly declined as the controversy is unrelated to the topic. (IMO, they’d be wise to avoid having a flat-Earther present at an EAPS event, but that’s not the analog here.)

You don't think there's any real, individual, independant doubt about vaccines, global warming, or political causes?

Just "everybody you disagree with"? or is your side also controlled by conspiracies of the elites dictating the opinions of their followers?

At this point over 200 million Americans have been vaccinated. 700k people have died of COVID-19. In the US there is no independent individual who could come to a conclusion other than it is safer to get vaccinated than to get COVID-19. I’m not sure who is spreading the anti-vax nonsense, but at this point it seems like more of a Darwin Award than a conspiracy by the elite.

Those that have had COVID may legitimately feel they have less need for the vaccine. Some of us have other medical reasons not to take one. Or might just be ornery.

No matter how convinced you are that "no independent individual" disagrees with you; it still happens.

It's okay to cancel the cancellers. In fact, the expected outcome of this effort is to 'cancel' the cancellers, by not allowing their complaints to translate into institutional action. They are free to argue others should be canceled, but no one should listen to them. Given that they are currently listened to, preventing that is indeed a form of cancellation, and it's a good one. You cannot and should not expect to benefit from the very policy you denigrate.

"It's okay to cancel"

You can just stop right there! Either it's okay to cancel, or it isn't. "It's okay to cancel those that I don't like, but not cancel those I do like" is infantile reasoning and not to be taken seriously.

It has nothing to with what I don't like. I don't believe you should extend to people those rights they argue against.

For example, if someone wrote a comme t on hacker news saying "not all people should be able to comment on hacker news", one wonders why it is that they ought to enjoy the very right which they seek to deny.

I have said quite clearly in my comment that those wishing to cancel ought to be heard... They just ought no to be listened to. Perhaps if you read my comment (it's only a few sentences long... There's no need to be thick headed), you would have read that part.

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