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Comment by chmod600 | Hacker News Reader

I haven't done enough research to really add to this discussion, other than I feel any reasonable or commonly-held belief is better discussed than cancelled. I'm glad that the author shares her perspective.

The first step to being right is being wrong. That's also the second step, and probably the next dozen or hundred steps are also wrong. If we cancel people for being wrong, nobody will truly be right, they will just mimic correctness like an overfit ML model.

I am not saying that the author is wrong or that she's right. Just that it's a reasonable or common enough belief to be discussed.

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> If we cancel people for being wrong, nobody will truly be right, they will just mimic correctness

And that's assuming that the angry mob majority's viewpoint is actually right. When it's wrong, they'll mimic incorrectness.

Agreed. The issue I see is that the internet has allowed everyone to more directly participate in public discourse, and that sadly hasn’t scaled as well as we would have hoped. It’s hard having nuanced, constructive discussions with strangers online. Social networks aren’t incentivized for it, and our monkey brains aren’t wired for it.

I do think that allowing people to be wrong works better than beating people over the head—assuming the person making the argument is actually interested in having a discussion versus simply digging their heels—but I don’t know where this type of discourse is supposed to happen in today’s world.

In other words, you're glad she was brave enough to put her name on a position, instead of being bullied into silence after an insincere apology.

>they will just mimic correctness

This depends on the culture. Mimicking mainstream opinion is not a traditional ideal in many parts of the world, which is why some geographies are underrepresented.

I see how awkward you are when saying this

> I haven't done enough research to really add to this discussion, other than I feel any reasonable or commonly-held belief is better discussed than cancelled

The problem is, what is "reasonable and commonly-held belied"? I'm certain theories that some "races" are better than others or that the Jews something something banks global domination are commonly-held ( certainly not by the majority of people, but a not insignificant amount of them nonetheless). What do you do then? Personally i don't think there's a point in arguing with such people ( you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't use reason to get into).

(Just starting a philosophical debate on the very serious issue by giving a dark example of how quickly it gets dirty. I think that the issue discussed by JK Rowling is much more nuanced, and i see her point, unlike the not hypothetical idiots who send racial slurs to footballers on Twitter whose point i don't see and think they deserve to lose their jobs and Twitter accounts)

"The problem is, what is 'reasonable and commonly-held belief'?"

If it is held by lots of well-meaning people who are open to hearing reasonable arguments and potentially changing their mind over time.

If an opinion really only survives by pure belief and faith, then not much will be learned by discussing it.

Take something like trans atheletic competition. A lot of people haven't thought much about it. Maybe they are worried that girls' atheletics will suffer because the top athletes will all be trans (in many sports), which could be discouraging for the lower levels of competition, and basically make them no fun.

If someone comes up with a plan that's still fun and inspiring for everyone, then I think many people will change their minds. But there's no widespread knowledge and consensus on what that might look like, so I'd say people resistent to trans athletics for that reason are still reasonable people.

I'd also like to be clear that pure beliefs can still be "right" and moral, but it's just not worth discussing them because nobody's mind will change based on reason.

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