Hacker News Reader

Comment by ss108 | Hacker News Reader

I am not generally pro cancel culture, but a lot of the opposition to it is certainly whiney and low on evidence.

For example, there's this notion that the advancement of knowledge is somehow being suppressed and that naked, barely-regulated free speech has been essential to Western dominance, and that, accordingly, to backpedal on the principle would have some material affect on society.

However, no nexus between the kinds of speech and people being "cancelled" and any sort of practical benefit of the speech is ever identified. Nor do they consider the fact that the proper result of intellectual discourse is that some ideas get discarded, and that to constantly have to rehash debates, reestablish the credibility of basic authorities, etc, drags down intellectual discourse and in fact moves us backwards.

View on HN

But in actual intellectual discourse, if someone presents a point of view which is founded on a discredited idea, then we just ignore them. We do not show up at their talks and try to prevent them from communicating with others.

Firstly because life's too short for that, and secondly because who knows, one day they might turn out to have been right or mostly right.

Being wrong is not absolute proof that nobody will follow or agree with these wrong beliefs. Climate scientists, for example, have spent a lot of time arguing in public about the merits of climate science and the lies of deniers. That is important work because the deniers do convince some people and denialism causes real harm.

That is a fairly bad excuse and exactly why I think that cancel culture, even if exaggerated, is of concern. Because you just admitted the motivation to deny people opportunity to state their opinion and I believe this shouldn't take too much influence in any academic discourse and a lot of protesters disqualify themselves here.

That is a tragedy not because the targets are indeed often wrong, but because it has a negative impact on when student activism is required and can have positive influences as it so often had in the past. I can be dismissed with references to incidence like those where people just were shouted down.

Being popular is not absolute proof that ideas are right either. That’s why we need to leave room for the unpopular ideas too.

How much room do we leave for phrenology?

Should we fire anyone who thinks phrenology is real? How about flat earthers? Should they be unable to feed or shelter themselves because they’re wrong about something?

Are you right about everything?

I've already decided you're right, now we just need to find out how much room we leave for these topics.

The whole idea of free speech is that there is no “we” who decides what topics are allowed and “how much room” particular topics get. Free speech means it’s free, and people can talk about whatever they want, however much they want.

If you don’t like what people are saying, you can use your free speech to explain why your ideas are better.

Okay so your solution is to give as much room as phrenology wants. If it gets incredibly popular then so be it, let the masses think that certain races are less intelligent due to head sizes.

Who could that possibly hurt.

Phrenology already had its chance, man. Look, the apocalypse didn’t happen.

You think you’re smart enough to determine which ideas should be allowed? How do you know you won’t be the Church burning Galileo at the stake? Hint: you don’t know that. That’s why you have some humility. Ultimately ideas that don’t work will fail.

I love people who haven't read a lick of history.

Sure, Phrenology just died out on it's own. You got it.

Enlighten me. Please do describe the concerted efforts by governments and institutions to ban discussion of phrenology. What was the punishment for unauthorized phrenology lectures? Are you not violating all these anti-phrenology laws right now by even bringing it up?

> Phrenology was banned in Vienna for a variety of reasons, including the overenthusiasm of Gall's followers, and the treatment of women.

https://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?refere...

In fact in places where it wasn't banned it flourished.

> The ban seemed to make phrenology more popular, and it spread to other European countries.

Literally the very next sentence. Banning things doesn’t work.

Phrenology died out because it was openly discussed, debated, and debunked. If you are confident you can prove you’re right about an issue, you don’t need to ban anything, you just go ahead and prove that you’re right. When you start banning things people only take that as evidence that it’s some secret forbidden knowledge that threatens the existing power structure and they’re even more motivated to pursue it.

> But in actual intellectual discourse

Well, where is that? I live my life surrounded by "discredited" ideas with much popularity and power. I don't know shit about intellectual discourse, can it get the police to stop killing my friends? Can it get a doctor for my impoverished mother in law?

If not then I'm afraid I must oppose some ideas in ways other than ignoring them.

> If not then I'm afraid I must oppose some ideas in ways other than ignoring them.

True. But trying to prevent further expression of those ideas, or retaliating against those who express them ("cancel culture" IIUC), isn't necessarily the best type of opposition. For example, disability rights isn't an academic issue for me and some of my friends. But when someone expresses opposition to the idea that websites should be required to be accessible, I don't try to silence them; I try to engage with them for the purpose of changing either their mind or mine.

> I don't try to silence them; I try to engage with them for the purpose of changing either their mind or mine.

To strong-man "Cancel culture" - trying to remove people from decision-making roles after they have signaled they intend to make harmful decisions is not - on the face of it - a ridiculous idea.

> expresses opposition to the idea that websites should be required to be accessible

If someone openly holding this view applies for a job in charge of your website, are you going to seriously consider their application?

The point of cancel culture isn't to convince the person being cancelled, or to coerce those who agree with them by threat of losing their job. The point is to remove perceived political opponents from positions of influence.

I'm more on your side here, but in the typical "cancel culture" scenario, the type of stuff people are trying to silence (e.g. re illegal immigrants) is much less nuanced and much more aggressive. The analogue would not be "websites shouldn't be required to be accessible", it's more often something like "websites shouldn't be accessible".

> But in actual intellectual discourse, if someone presents a point of view which is founded on a discredited idea, then we just ignore them. We do not show up at their talks and try to prevent them from communicating with others.

I (for the most part) agree; like I said, I am not generally a fan of contemporary cancel culture.

Are you Muslim btw, or is your username a coincidence?

One can say that Solomon Asch experiments on social conformity are great illustrations of the benefits of free speech. Diverse opinions discourage group think and encourage critical thinking and discourse. That works even if the opinion is bogus, since in that case it may encourage the individual to avoid adopting an overwhelming majority point of view. As you mentioned it is indeed a slower process, but a much more fault tolerant one. The simple analogy is the slower, complicated democratic process vs fast, simple autocratic process.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com