Comment by crassus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by crassus | Hacker News Reader

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At the heart of the matter is that witch-burnings are popular (turn into clicks) and that Gawker has a witch quota to keep up.

I'm glad to see such a thorough, intelligent reply from PG. He is extremely careful and precise in his language, without coming across as robotic or inhuman. It's impressive.

But this kind of thing is going to continue to happen. There is no market for taking an honest man at his word without reading subtext into it. The opinion ecosystem is a cesspool of the worst pieces of humanity. "Reporting" on Silicon Valley from the east coast would be hubristic and a folly if the organs involved had any intention of doing so honestly.

PG is fortunate that he is self-employed which provides some barrier against the power of the easily-offended. Somehow the talkers have gained power over the doers, and it is wrong. We live in a time when a person lower in an organization could easily find himself out of a job for an off-handed remark.

Teddy Roosevelt most eloquently described what is wrong with Gawker:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

> The talkers have gained power over the doers, and it is wrong. Somehow critics have grown in power to be able to extract punishment and concessions from people actually on the ground.

Agreed, although I don't think it's the talkers vs. the doers; it's the talkers' audiences vs. the doers.

Here's your "somehow": The lack of critical thinking skills in the general population (not new), combined with the power of instant global communication (new).

The lack of critical thinking skills leads people to seek absolutes, simplicity, and swift action in areas where shades of gray, nuance, and care should be called for. Again, nothing new here: mob justice is a well-understood, if regrettable, characteristic of human society.

Instant global communication much more swiftly connects 1) the easily-manipulated with 2) those who lack experience and maturity but who nevertheless possess the gift of persuasion.

In short, I blame the listeners, not the talkers. It would be a Good Thing(tm) if people were generally more skeptical of everything they heard and read, and even better if they knew how to ask the right questions to resolve that skepticism. It would make it harder for unworthy critics to hold power, and easier for worthy ones to be heard.

Here's another quote, from Joseph de Maistre: "Every nation gets the government it deserves." A similar thing could be said for culture and civil society.

I blame the listeners, not the talkers.

I blame both. The listeners for not exercising critical thinking, as you say, and the talkers for spending their time and effort (not to mention sucking in the time and effort of many other people) on these useless witch hunts instead of adding actual value.

To blame the listeners is one step short of accepting things as they are. In this case, it is most certainly the talkers, since it is they who immediately profit from their deeds. Don't forget that every listener is also a talker (I bet there is a Nietzsche quote about it somewhere).

> To blame the listeners is one step short of accepting things as they are.

I disagree:

- If the talkers are the problem, then the solution is... less speech? Muzzling/censorship? I'll pass, thanks. Better to have the frenzied finger-pointers grow hoarse blathering to a crowd that's ignoring them, than to give them the very attention that they crave and that drives their fortunes.

- I didn't mention solutions to the problem because my post was already long enough.

Solutions would involve (at least):

- Persuading people to take their media viewership and loyalty away from the worst offenders (MSNBC, Fox News, etc.). Hit them where it hurts, in the pocketbook. Do this by pointing out the emperor's nakedness. - Persuading people to give their media viewership to sources and outlets that don't pander to them (not quite the opposite of the first point). This gives influence (money) to media voices who, eventually, can credibly call our leaders to task for their race-to-the-bottom mentality. - Improved critical thinking curricula in formal education at all levels.

The above improvements would have gradual second-order effects on civic life, e.g. you might eventually end up with real town hall meetings instead of staged, scripted tripe. It really wouldn't take much overt change to see results -- you don't have to boil the ocean.

No one is talking about Soviet-style suppression of free speech. To see my direction, compare media-enabled witch-hunts and mob politics to an immune reaction of an organism. A small, appropriate dose of it is good for the body. A disproportionate immune reaction (like what we're seeing here), is an inflammation, and should probably call for administration of cortisone (while a Soviet-style reaction would be cutting out the whole inflamed tissue and harming everything in the process). It gets worse. If left unchecked, we can have an auto-immune disease. Someone has to be watching the watchers.

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