10 ms·

I was just thinking about this now after reading attacks on Yann Lecun on twitter. He's a prominent AI figure (head of facebook research and turing award recipi

• holtalanm 6y ago
  It has been this way for a while. Outrage/cancel culture is an absolute pox upon our population that really needs to stop.
  • Consultant32452 6y ago
    If silence is violence, then destroying a person's ability to maintain employment is also violence. And should be treated as such by the courts.
  • nogabebop23 6y ago
    Isn't a large part of this down to the forum of communication vs. the level of discourse? I mean, if you want to have a nuanced, balanced discussion about a potentially sensitive topic you just can't do that on twtter, SMS, message board, etc. Even on HN you see issues and that's will pretty tight tribal norms, moderation and topics where commenters aren't usually deeply or emotionally involved. I agree with your overall opinion, but i think that change actually starts with people reflecting on the impact of the chosen medium on their message. Not self-censorship but "positioning"
    • holtalanm 6y ago
      that is a fair statement. I don't think you're wrong about it, by any means. I do think that we can't lay the entire blame on the medium of communication, though, either. People really need to take a step back when they find themselves falling into this mindset and reset. Part of the issue, I believe, is a genuine lack of critical thinking and compassion on most online platforms that spills over into everyday communication. Instead of getting angry about what you may think someone is trying to say, maybe make sure they said what you think they said before being outraged about it. Also, this whole 'staying silent is the same as being against us' notion is toxic as hell. I've seen many who have a decent platform on twitter or youtube get attacked for simply remaining quiet about some of the more visible topics lately.
    • throwaway894345 6y ago
      > I mean, if you want to have a nuanced, balanced discussion about a potentially sensitive topic you just can't do that on twtter, SMS, message board, etc. Lots of people are canceled because they said or did something in the real world that was dragged onto Twitter, the New York Times, Reddit, or some other cesspool. It's not as easy as "don't expect substantial debate from toxic platforms". Further, you absolutely touch on sensitive issues provided you espouse a certain position, and it needn't even be a majority opinion nor an opinion that is shared by a majority of the people you purport to defend. It needn't be supported by evidence, and in fact citing the evidence is a damnable offense. Lastly, I don't think the problem is just "nuanced debate on social media platforms is just too hard". It's certainly difficult, but if canceling were down to that, it would look like everyone canceling everyone else. Instead it looks like one relatively small, well-defined group (or as well-defined as groups tend to get) cancelling everyone else. Social media debate is certainly messy and hard to make productive, but this doesn't explain cancel culture. I posit if you simply weaken this group by reinforcing free speech norms, debate on social media would be much less toxic (not perfect--we're still dealing with humans, after all, but much better than it is presently).
    • smsm42 6y ago
      I think if by some divine miracle Twitter disappeared and some mysterious supernatural force prevented re-creating it by any means - our culture probably would be much better off. There are some excellent people on Twitter but by now they're just giving legitimacy to the cesspool. Twitter adds nothing to them and they'd be as well - probably much better - on a different platform.
  • ISL 6y ago
    Is that request not a call to cancel cancel-culture?
    • holtalanm 6y ago
      i see we are in a conundrum.
      • ISL 6y ago
        Understanding apparent paradoxes seems like an important place to start. The best history/government teacher I had in school had a recurring throughline for our classes. Paraphrasing: "It is better, in the long run, to be for something than against something." To be against something is to highlight a problem. To be for something is to offer a possible direction for the future.
        • holtalanm 6y ago
          o.0 I like that a lot.
          • deleted 6y ago
            [deleted]
        • Der_Einzige 6y ago
          That belief is directly hostile to critical thinking. Critical thinking is the ability to critique - specifically, to explain what is wrong or bad about a particular system.
          • mooseburger 6y ago
            Critical thinking is supposed to be just one tool, everyone should have more than that in their mental toolbox. It's useless on its own, we need the capacity to build systems more than we need the ability to tear them down. It's also even harmful when only applied selectively (e.g. never to one's own, or to popular, positions(s)).
  • cuspycode 6y ago
    I am very likely naive in these circumstances, but I honestly don't understand how cancel culture can work at all. So there are some voices on twitter who loudly express their immature mob mentality. Why don't all the sane people just block them and ignore them, and then go on with their lives as if nothing happened?
    • zozbot234 6y ago
      > Why don't all the sane people just block them and ignore them, and then go on with their lives as if nothing happened? They can't afford to do that, because this "mob" is actively dangerous. They will slander their enemies with all sorts of baseless accusations, call their workplaces to try and get them fired, manufacture false flag harrassment/cyberbulling and try to attribute it to them, etc. It's no different from the 8chan trolls - in fact they come from adjacent Internet subcultures, quite literally.
      • redisman 6y ago
        I don't see why would you not include the 8channers who do the exact same thing to prominent women in games or anti-vaxxers trying to destroy the lives of doctors/researchers. There's no difference in tactics or goals.
        • wutbrodo 6y ago
          Probably because 8channers and anti-vaxxers aren't successful in getting people fired, because they don't wield any power among legitimate institutions. They are successful at making people's lives miserable through harassment like death threats and swatting, and unsurprisingly, those tactics are universally reviled.
          • sinity 6y ago
            > Probably because 8channers and anti-vaxxers aren't successful in getting people fired, because they don't wield any power among legitimate institutions. Notable exception: Donglegate; a person was cancelled, then the person cancelling got cancelled - her company was DDoSed until she was gone* Hilarious. * well, that's what I want to believe because it's more interesting; it's possible backlash of people against first cancellation had it's part in that.
  • JohnBooty 6y ago
    It reminds me of the (nearly cliche, but timeless) quote from MLK about riots: "I think that we’ve got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard" I don't think anybody, even "cancellers," think it's a remotely ideal solution. But when groups go unheard, feel a system is unjust, and feel unable to change the system they understandably seek to go outside the system. Please note that I have specifically used the term "understandably" above as opposed to, say, "justly." You may feel a particular instance is or isn't just, but even if one vehemently disagrees with the practice it is typically understandable. Consider that "cancelling" is often invoked in response to acts (sexual assault, racism) that have been regarded as wrong and/or illegal for millennia. And yet, those acts persist. Clearly the current system doesn't do enough to prevent them. So folks feel the need to go outside the system. "Cancel culture" is best understood as a symptom and not the problem.
    • trinityd 6y ago
      Is this not victim blaming? If you attempt to ruin someone's life because they said "guacamole nigga penis" I don't think you can use "we live in a society" as justification. Seems like a flimsy excuse. Literal KKK members feel like they need to "go outside the system" to harm black people, does that make lynching okay? Beyond that, characterizing cancel culture as "going outside the system" is silly. It's literally tattling, how much more sucking up to the system could one be? If "the system" (aka the overall collection of people in positions of power) was a-okay with sexual assault and racism cancel culture wouldn't exist because you wouldn't be able to complain to bosses, schools, etc. about people raping or being racist.
      • JohnBooty 6y ago
        Literal KKK members feel like they need to "go outside the system" to harm black people, does that make lynching okay? Absolutely not, of course. My initial post said nothing to indicate that cancel culture was a good thing, or that it always represented a just cause. Nor did it say that "going outside the system" always represented a just cause, etc.
    • factsaresacred 6y ago
  • groby_b 6y ago
    Yes. However, it cannot stop as long as a large segment of the people in power do with abandon whatever they feel like, without any repercussion. This is the only way it is possible for many people to get anything remotely resembling justice (although often it's revenge). As long as we don't fundamentally address inequality and deeply unjust systems, I don't think it will stop.
• CapriciousCptl 6y ago
  I don't even think he said "model's don't cause bias," he just said "ML systems are biased when data is biased."
• nlpprof 6y ago
  I'm in the field - though not as prominent as Yann (who has been very nice and helpful in my few interactions with him) - and your interpretation is off. People are disagreeing with his stance that researchers should not bother exploring bias implications of their research. (He says this is because bias is a problem of data - and therefore we should focus on building cool models and let production engineers worry about training production models on unbiased data.) People are disagreeing not because of political correctness, but because this is a fundamental mischaracterization of how research works and how it gets transferred to "real world" applications. (1) Data fuels modern machine learning. It shapes research directions in a really fundamental way. People decide what to work on based on what huge amounts of data they can get their hands on. Saying "engineers should be the ones to worry about bias because it's a data problem" is like saying "I'm a physicist, here's a cool model, I'll let the engineers worry about whether it works on any known particle in any known world." (2) Most machine learning research is empirical (though not all). It's very rare to see a paper (if not impossible nowadays, since large deep neural networks are so massive and opaque) that works purely off math without showing that its conclusions improve some task on some dataset. No one is doing research without data, and saying "my method is good because it works on this data" means you are making choices and statements about what it means to "work" - which, as we've seen, involves quite a lot of bias. (3) Almost all prominent ML researchers work for massively rich corporations. He and his colleagues don't work in ivory towers where they develop pure algorithms which are then released over the ivy walls into the wild, to be contaminated by filthy reality. He works for Facebook. He's paid with Facebook money. So why draw this imaginary line between research and production? He is paid to do research that will go into production. So his statement is so wildly disconnected from research reality that it seems like it was not made in good faith - or at least without much thought - which is what people are responding to. Also, language tip - a "woman researcher" is a "researcher".
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • tinyhouse 6y ago
    Don't have a lot of time to respond now, but will try to do it later. Just a quick note. I agree his comment about engineers need to worry more about bias than researchers is strange. But in my opinion it wasn't the focus of what he was tying to say. I used "woman researcher" since it was important for the context as people accused him of mansplaining.
• kofejnik 6y ago
  >>"Here is a story I heard from a friend, which I will alter slightly to protect the innocent. A prestigious psychology professor signed an open letter in which psychologists condemned belief in innate sex differences. My friend knew that this professor believed such differences existed, and asked him why he signed the letter. He said that he expected everyone else in his department would sign it, so it would look really bad if he didn’t. My friend asked why he expected everyone else in his department to sign it, and he said “Probably for the same reason I did”. this post is no longer available, of course
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• Palptine 6y ago
  I don't understand how people can defend his detractors in this particular case. Are you telling me that an image upsampling model that does not contain hard coded bias, and trained on unbiased data will produced biased result? Especially the kind of biased result represented by the error made by the original tweeter who fucked up?
  • zozbot234 6y ago
    Just curious, but what "error" did the original tweeter make? Did anyone really expect the model to accurately reconstruct the original photo starting from a pixelated mess? That makes no sense to anyone with even a passing knowledge of ML. You're always going to get craploads of bias and variance (i.e. blatant inaccuracy, over and above the bias) in such a setting, even starting from "ideal, unbiased" data. The problem domain is at issue here.
    • Palptine 6y ago
      Yeah I get your point. But I guess for this model you can kinda have a concept of the "ideal" training set, where all high frequency features appear at the same rate as in real world.
• vl 6y ago
  >will request FB to fire him... (which thankfully won't happen) Corporations don't fire this fast, give it couple weeks and he will move to other position "for personal reasons", where he will rest-and-vest for the few months, before finally being let go.