8 ms·

Now if we can just get around to fixing why we need such anonymity in an academic journal in the first place... It's absurd that there's such danger in saying s

by joemi 8y ago

Now if we can just get around to fixing why we need such anonymity in an academic journal in the first place... It's absurd that there's such danger in saying something that doesn't entirely align with either the left or the right (at least in the US). It feels quite a lot like McCarthyism to me (or what I imagine it was like at that time, since I'm not that old).

yasp 8y ago
Because liberalism is a religion and people that expose the flaws in the ideology are modern-day heretics. Fortunately heretics are no longer burned at the stake. Instead you just get fired, socially ostracized, your career ruined, etc.
- joemi 8y ago
  It's more than that though. Liberalism is a religion, sure, but there's a right wing equivalent too that's just as fervent. (No, it's not Nazism, though that isn't to say that's not a threat too.) I think it's just the polarization of the parties. Both of the main sociopolitical parties in the US have become so vehemently polarized that they view each other as the greatest threat to the country. In turn, you're either entirely 100% with them, or your clearly someone from the other party and you're the enemy.
  - yasp 8y ago
    What is the right-wing ideological equivalent where its adherents would attempt to deplatform, smear, etc. someone for violating its dogma, and what is the dogma?
    - joemi 8y ago
      Put simply: Pretty much most of what Trump stands for. In a way, he's even the "religious leader".
    - rootusrootus 8y ago
      "patriotism"
    - happytoexplain 8y ago
      There's plenty of extreme harassment, attacks, and "shouting down" coming from the right in response to any ideological disagreement from the left. Worse, explicit calls to violence (that have been answered) and encouragement of hatred from people all the way up and down the chain, from anonymous internet posters to the president. I'm not saying this is worse than the equivalent from the left, but to say it's not there is naive. Additionally, as far as I can tell, nearly all of the major instances of deplatforming of "the right" have really been deplatforming of meaningless hateful garbage or calls to violence that violate terms of service, but have been framed as attacks on the right, which seems like a really awful mischaracterization of the right.
    - root_axis 8y ago
      The president is the leader of a right-wing ideology and he attempted to deplatform and smear kneeling players in the NFL. He explicitly asked the NFL to fire kneeling players and smeared them by deliberately misrepresenting their stated position (that they are kneeling to protest police violence).
    - slavik81 8y ago
      Anita Sarkeesian is an example. She received a barrage of violent threats over her feminist critique of video game stories. The threats basically destroyed any hope of a rational conversation.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    - Sacho 8y ago
      The controversy over abortion rights is way beyond deplatforming and smearing, there's actual murders by self-described anti-abortionists. In George Tiller's case, his clinic was firebombed("deplatforming"?) and O'Reilly had criticized("smearing"?) him heavily, before the assassination.
    - yesenadam 8y ago
      Gee. The US spent most of the 20th C invading countries, mostly for 'violating its dogma' - for being too democratic, for not being subservient enough, in the service of US business interests, mainly. Supporting dictators, giving a lot of weapons, training torturers, subverting democracy, assisting/staging coups, etc etc from Guatemala to Iran. It's a long and well-known story.[0] Millions died. [0] Although not well-known enough. Good starting points might be the Chomsky's political books (they're extensively referenced - don't just take his word for things, read his sources too), and Scott Noble's documentaries: http://metanoia-films.org/ http://metanoia-films.org/
  - ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
    As a non-US person with zero interest in the US at all, the whole Left vs Right thing over there looks EXACTLY like a religious war from here. Both sides are violently trying to force their beliefs on everyone else, and both sides think they're right and anyone who doesn't believe the same things as them is outright wrong and deserves to be destroyed. Anyone who doesn't take a side, is basically considered to be worth nothing, and either mocked or considered as bad as the enemy. The sheer amount of HATE that flows out of the US is mind boggling.
    - vokep 8y ago
      Its Russia, and others too probably. No not that "They haxed our election!" but that they are stoking the fire. Right wing discussion is filled with cartoon-style representations of the left, and the left is vice-versa. I feel that I've seen communities of too high an overall intelligence become overtaken by the lowest quality stuff. People who attempt to discuss nuance get shouted at as being from the other side. I guess it is possible that genuine consensus in these groups has lowered in quality, but I personally can't believe that, communities I've been in for awhile changed and got very intense within the last 3 years. It's unfortunate to see.
    - derefr 8y ago
      I feel like a religious war is the wrong model for the US, mostly because I've never heard of a place with a pair of religions that both have roughly half of the followers, and are just fighting over the allegiance of the last one-to-five percent; and especially a place where this is somehow a long-term equilibrium state.
      - dvtrn 8y ago
        Munster's (Germany) Rebellion comes close? As far as a moment in history, I mean.
      - LukeShu 8y ago
        Campaigning actually involves fairly little persuasion; very little fighting over that last one-to-five percent. It's mostly identifying which half of the people are already your side's followers, and encouraging/motivating them to show up and vote.
- KerrickStaley 8y ago
  You're making a vague, sweeping claim here without any evidence to back it up. Also, I think you're misusing the term "liberalism" here. Liberalism is an ideology that supports freedom of expression and diverse viewpoints. The illiberal leftist ideologies that you seem to be referring to are not a part of liberalism (the issue is that liberalism and the political left tend to get conflated in American usage).
  - yasp 8y ago
    s/liberalism/progressivism if you care that much about labels. In my opinion they are rather fluid, and 19th century / early 20th century liberalism is not present day liberalism, which I find to be perhaps only a slightly milder form of progressivism. And as far as providing an argument or evidence goes, I think the essay "How Dawkins Got Pwnd" [1] makes the case better than I could, so I'll simply refer you there. [1] https://gist.github.com/jart/b73868081a5e1a1c5cf0 https://gist.github.com/jart/b73868081a5e1a1c5cf0
  - taneq 8y ago
    > The illiberal leftist ideologies that you seem to be referring to are not a part of liberalism I actually think it's incredibly telling that a group that used to identify themselves as "liberal" have renamed themselves "progressive". Rather than freedom of expression and ideology, they now espouse a mandated direction "forward" and no longer value freedom.
rtpg 8y ago
This reminds of the that NY Times "intellectual dark web" article, with such obscure figures as Joe Rogan. The man has one of the most popular podcasts in the world, but still can get the times to write an article about how he's some underground thinker. If you dig deeper into these kinds of complaints from these kinds of people, it usually turns into "The people _I_ want to like me do not". They expect universal admiration, and when they don't they yell about some sort of conspiracy. The fact that everyone even knows about the popular people making these complaints disproves the thesis that they can't get out there and make their arguments. It just turns out that none of these alternative thinkers can handle any sort of criticism against their ideas, and think there's a mass conspiracy. Ocamm's razor suggests otherwise
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- leibwiht 8y ago
  Uh, people have their livelihoods destroyed and lives ruined for having unpopular views all the time. James Watson literally had to sell his Nobel prize because he was destitute, Curtis Yarvin was disinvited from Strange Loop, to name two examples. Another example of the difficulty people have in going against the status quo is this article, which was on HN several months ago: https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-published-paper-down-the-memory-hole/ https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-p... . The problem is not that they can't accept criticism, the problem is other people disenfranchising them for their opinions.
  - zimpenfish 8y ago
    > unpopular views > James Watson literally had to sell his Nobel prize He's a fairly blatant racist - I think that's a bit more than "unpopular" when it comes to views. > livelihoods destroyed and lives ruined > Curtis Yarvin was disinvited from Strange Loop In what way did "not being invited to speak at a conference" destroy his livelihood or ruin his life?
    - 8y ago
barry-cotter 8y ago
http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/23/can-things-be-both-popular-and-silenced/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/23/can-things-be-both-popu... 1. There are lots of other cases where we would agree there’s some form of silencing going on, even as a group has many supporters and rich, famous spokespeople 2. In fact, taboo opinions seem to promote a culture of celebrity 3. Fame lets people avoid social repercussions, but that doesn’t mean those repercussions don’t exist for ordinary people 4. If you spend decades inventing a powerful decentralized network to allow unpopular voices to be heard, sometimes you end up with unpopular voices being heard 5. When the IDW claims they are threatened, harassed, and blacklisted, people should at least consider that they are referring to the actual well-known incidents of threats, harassment, and blacklisting against them rather than imagining this is code for “they demand to be universally liked” 6. The IDW probably still censor themselves 7. Nobody in this discussion seems to really understand how silencing works.
- joemi 8y ago
  I don't really care whether celebrities feel persecuted or not. (I believe there's too much cult of celebrity already, so I do not feel any more sympathy for them than I do for everyone else.) The danger I was referring to is the danger to _anyone_ and the reason behind an academic journal being created to allow regular academics to publish under pseudonyms.

by joemi 8y ago

yasp 8y ago

Because liberalism is a religion and people that expose the flaws in the ideology are modern-day heretics. Fortunately heretics are no longer burned at the stake. Instead you just get fired, socially ostracized, your career ruined, etc.

joemi 8y ago
It's more than that though. Liberalism is a religion, sure, but there's a right wing equivalent too that's just as fervent. (No, it's not Nazism, though that isn't to say that's not a threat too.) I think it's just the polarization of the parties. Both of the main sociopolitical parties in the US have become so vehemently polarized that they view each other as the greatest threat to the country. In turn, you're either entirely 100% with them, or your clearly someone from the other party and you're the enemy.
- yasp 8y ago
  What is the right-wing ideological equivalent where its adherents would attempt to deplatform, smear, etc. someone for violating its dogma, and what is the dogma?
  - joemi 8y ago
    Put simply: Pretty much most of what Trump stands for. In a way, he's even the "religious leader".
  - rootusrootus 8y ago
    "patriotism"
  - happytoexplain 8y ago
    There's plenty of extreme harassment, attacks, and "shouting down" coming from the right in response to any ideological disagreement from the left. Worse, explicit calls to violence (that have been answered) and encouragement of hatred from people all the way up and down the chain, from anonymous internet posters to the president. I'm not saying this is worse than the equivalent from the left, but to say it's not there is naive. Additionally, as far as I can tell, nearly all of the major instances of deplatforming of "the right" have really been deplatforming of meaningless hateful garbage or calls to violence that violate terms of service, but have been framed as attacks on the right, which seems like a really awful mischaracterization of the right.
  - root_axis 8y ago
    The president is the leader of a right-wing ideology and he attempted to deplatform and smear kneeling players in the NFL. He explicitly asked the NFL to fire kneeling players and smeared them by deliberately misrepresenting their stated position (that they are kneeling to protest police violence).
  - slavik81 8y ago
    Anita Sarkeesian is an example. She received a barrage of violent threats over her feminist critique of video game stories. The threats basically destroyed any hope of a rational conversation.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - Sacho 8y ago
    The controversy over abortion rights is way beyond deplatforming and smearing, there's actual murders by self-described anti-abortionists. In George Tiller's case, his clinic was firebombed("deplatforming"?) and O'Reilly had criticized("smearing"?) him heavily, before the assassination.
  - yesenadam 8y ago
    Gee. The US spent most of the 20th C invading countries, mostly for 'violating its dogma' - for being too democratic, for not being subservient enough, in the service of US business interests, mainly. Supporting dictators, giving a lot of weapons, training torturers, subverting democracy, assisting/staging coups, etc etc from Guatemala to Iran. It's a long and well-known story.[0] Millions died. [0] Although not well-known enough. Good starting points might be the Chomsky's political books (they're extensively referenced - don't just take his word for things, read his sources too), and Scott Noble's documentaries: http://metanoia-films.org/ http://metanoia-films.org/
- ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
  As a non-US person with zero interest in the US at all, the whole Left vs Right thing over there looks EXACTLY like a religious war from here. Both sides are violently trying to force their beliefs on everyone else, and both sides think they're right and anyone who doesn't believe the same things as them is outright wrong and deserves to be destroyed. Anyone who doesn't take a side, is basically considered to be worth nothing, and either mocked or considered as bad as the enemy. The sheer amount of HATE that flows out of the US is mind boggling.
  - vokep 8y ago
    Its Russia, and others too probably. No not that "They haxed our election!" but that they are stoking the fire. Right wing discussion is filled with cartoon-style representations of the left, and the left is vice-versa. I feel that I've seen communities of too high an overall intelligence become overtaken by the lowest quality stuff. People who attempt to discuss nuance get shouted at as being from the other side. I guess it is possible that genuine consensus in these groups has lowered in quality, but I personally can't believe that, communities I've been in for awhile changed and got very intense within the last 3 years. It's unfortunate to see.
  - derefr 8y ago
    I feel like a religious war is the wrong model for the US, mostly because I've never heard of a place with a pair of religions that both have roughly half of the followers, and are just fighting over the allegiance of the last one-to-five percent; and especially a place where this is somehow a long-term equilibrium state.
    - dvtrn 8y ago
      Munster's (Germany) Rebellion comes close? As far as a moment in history, I mean.
    - LukeShu 8y ago
      Campaigning actually involves fairly little persuasion; very little fighting over that last one-to-five percent. It's mostly identifying which half of the people are already your side's followers, and encouraging/motivating them to show up and vote.
KerrickStaley 8y ago
You're making a vague, sweeping claim here without any evidence to back it up. Also, I think you're misusing the term "liberalism" here. Liberalism is an ideology that supports freedom of expression and diverse viewpoints. The illiberal leftist ideologies that you seem to be referring to are not a part of liberalism (the issue is that liberalism and the political left tend to get conflated in American usage).
- yasp 8y ago
  s/liberalism/progressivism if you care that much about labels. In my opinion they are rather fluid, and 19th century / early 20th century liberalism is not present day liberalism, which I find to be perhaps only a slightly milder form of progressivism. And as far as providing an argument or evidence goes, I think the essay "How Dawkins Got Pwnd" [1] makes the case better than I could, so I'll simply refer you there. [1] https://gist.github.com/jart/b73868081a5e1a1c5cf0 https://gist.github.com/jart/b73868081a5e1a1c5cf0
- taneq 8y ago
  > The illiberal leftist ideologies that you seem to be referring to are not a part of liberalism I actually think it's incredibly telling that a group that used to identify themselves as "liberal" have renamed themselves "progressive". Rather than freedom of expression and ideology, they now espouse a mandated direction "forward" and no longer value freedom.

rtpg 8y ago

This reminds of the that NY Times "intellectual dark web" article, with such obscure figures as Joe Rogan. The man has one of the most popular podcasts in the world, but still can get the times to write an article about how he's some underground thinker. If you dig deeper into these kinds of complaints from these kinds of people, it usually turns into "The people _I_ want to like me do not". They expect universal admiration, and when they don't they yell about some sort of conspiracy. The fact that everyone even knows about the popular people making these complaints disproves the thesis that they can't get out there and make their arguments. It just turns out that none of these alternative thinkers can handle any sort of criticism against their ideas, and think there's a mass conspiracy. Ocamm's razor suggests otherwise

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
leibwiht 8y ago
Uh, people have their livelihoods destroyed and lives ruined for having unpopular views all the time. James Watson literally had to sell his Nobel prize because he was destitute, Curtis Yarvin was disinvited from Strange Loop, to name two examples. Another example of the difficulty people have in going against the status quo is this article, which was on HN several months ago: https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-published-paper-down-the-memory-hole/ https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-p... . The problem is not that they can't accept criticism, the problem is other people disenfranchising them for their opinions.
- zimpenfish 8y ago
  > unpopular views > James Watson literally had to sell his Nobel prize He's a fairly blatant racist - I think that's a bit more than "unpopular" when it comes to views. > livelihoods destroyed and lives ruined > Curtis Yarvin was disinvited from Strange Loop In what way did "not being invited to speak at a conference" destroy his livelihood or ruin his life?
  - 8y ago

barry-cotter 8y ago

http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/23/can-things-be-both-popular-and-silenced/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/23/can-things-be-both-popu... 1. There are lots of other cases where we would agree there’s some form of silencing going on, even as a group has many supporters and rich, famous spokespeople 2. In fact, taboo opinions seem to promote a culture of celebrity 3. Fame lets people avoid social repercussions, but that doesn’t mean those repercussions don’t exist for ordinary people 4. If you spend decades inventing a powerful decentralized network to allow unpopular voices to be heard, sometimes you end up with unpopular voices being heard 5. When the IDW claims they are threatened, harassed, and blacklisted, people should at least consider that they are referring to the actual well-known incidents of threats, harassment, and blacklisting against them rather than imagining this is code for “they demand to be universally liked” 6. The IDW probably still censor themselves 7. Nobody in this discussion seems to really understand how silencing works.

joemi 8y ago
I don't really care whether celebrities feel persecuted or not. (I believe there's too much cult of celebrity already, so I do not feel any more sympathy for them than I do for everyone else.) The danger I was referring to is the danger to _anyone_ and the reason behind an academic journal being created to allow regular academics to publish under pseudonyms.