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Society has always, always had social norms which entailed consequences if countered. And often times in the past, the norms were strict and dissent was punish

Society has always, always had social norms which entailed consequences if countered. And often times in the past, the norms were strict and dissent was punished by jail, torture, or death. Today, we've much improved. If you express an opinion that is contrary to the norms, you get made fun or or ostracized by the community, you don't get killed. Which is how it should be, say what you want, but people are completely within their rights to shut you out, ignore you, or boo so loudly as to drown you out. Freedom of speech protects you from people who attempt to silence you by jailing, torturing, or killing you. It doesn't mean people are forced to put up with your stupid and unpopular opinions. Complaining about 'cancel culture' screams of entitlement to me. If you want to be heard, say something worth listening to.

Proziam 6y ago
I understand your point but can't get on board with it. The main issue I have is that people make organized attempts to cause harm to others as part of the 'canceling' rather than a personal choice. Not wanting to work with me is one thing, trying to convince the whole world not to work with me might cause me to become homeless. The second issue is that the "reasons" for canceling people are so often petty or outright not true. For example, the people that call Joe Rogan a Nazi or alt-right. Either they know nothing about National Socialism and the alt-right or they know nothing about the person they want to cancel. And third, canceling people is outright stupid. You don't want people with evil ideas and intentions hiding in the dark and invisible to you. You want their bad ideas as visible as possible so you can avoid them or shine a light on them. Sending everyone with a bad idea to another website only serves to embolden them and gives them a way to say 'see, we really are persecuted!' And this is completely skipping over the de-banking people. That goes into a whole new level that I think people don't fully appreciate.
- joshuamorton 6y ago
  On your third point, I want to reiterate something I've said before: Nazi's aren't stupid. They take advantage of people who want unrestricuted free speech without consequences and use it as a recruiting tool to radicalize more nazis. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23722215 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23722215) Kicking them off of a site raises the threshold for someone to be exposed to radicalizing factors. We have evidence that this is actually, really, effective at reducing rates of radicalization.
JoshuaDavid 6y ago
> Society has always, always had social norms which entailed consequences if countered. And often times in the past, the norms were strict and dissent was punished by jail, torture, or death. > Today, we've much improved. If you express an opinion that is contrary to the norms, you get made fun or or ostracized by the community, you don't get killed. "Things are better now than they were at some point in the past" does not mean that we should stop trying to improve, since things have already improved by a nonzero amount. If I said "Deaths due to infectious disease now are much lower than they were 100 years ago and therefore we shouldn't worry about infectious disease now", my faulty logic would immediately be spotted and called out. The general environment for free speech is much better today than it was in years past. There are, however, specific worrying trends now that did not exist in the past, and I think people are right to point them out. I'm not a huge fan of the term "cancel culture", because it implies a lot more intentional group behavior than I think happens, but the term does point to a real phenomenon where certain controversial speech gets amplified to absurd degrees, and a very small fraction of the people who see it and disagree with it try to cause disproportionate harm to the speaker (e.g. lying to their employer to try to get them fired, calling in false reports to try to get a highly armed SWAT team sent to their place of residence, sending death threats, etc.). Complaints about "cancel culture" are not so much about people complaining about not being heard as people complaining about having something they said taken out of context and amplified to millions of people, and the consequences of the consequent rage of millions and actions of the most extreme dozens of people out of those millions. Losing your job and getting death threats is an improvement over being jailed, tortured, or killed, but it's still not ideal, and we're still allowed to want better.
throwaway894345 6y ago
> Freedom of speech protects you from people who attempt to silence you by jailing, torturing, or killing you. It doesn't mean people are forced to put up with your stupid and unpopular opinions. You (like many) misunderstand the debate. "Free speech" proponents aren't advocating for a prohibition of criticism--to the contrary, criticism is free speech. Rather, free speech proponents are arguing against intimidation (e.g., harassment, doxxing, petitioning one's employer to fire them for wrongthink or false allegations, etc). Anyway, you concede that things have improved in the past, but you criticize people for opposing regression to a more limited-speech state. This seems remarkably overtly inconsistent. EDIT: This is cancel culture: https://twitter.com/wokal_distance/status/1281480650566987776 https://twitter.com/wokal_distance/status/128148065056698777...
- CathedralBorrow 6y ago
  If I inform a corporation that I will not do business with them while a person is in their employment, am I oppressing that person or am I using my freedom of speech?
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    If I say "it would be unfortunate if something happened to your job", am I issuing a veiled threat or am I using my freedom of speech? It's possible that I'm not making a threat, but we know it's unlikely. Technically it amounts to intent (do you intend to ruin someone's livelihood or are you just making a bizarre statement for indecipherable reasons?).
    - CathedralBorrow 6y ago
      I agree with everything you said. Can you comment on my question though?
      - throwaway894345 6y ago
        I did. I said it technically depends on intent; however, in practice it's implausible that you weren't issuing a threat, and threats don't constitute free speech.

Proziam 6y ago

I understand your point but can't get on board with it. The main issue I have is that people make organized attempts to cause harm to others as part of the 'canceling' rather than a personal choice. Not wanting to work with me is one thing, trying to convince the whole world not to work with me might cause me to become homeless. The second issue is that the "reasons" for canceling people are so often petty or outright not true. For example, the people that call Joe Rogan a Nazi or alt-right. Either they know nothing about National Socialism and the alt-right or they know nothing about the person they want to cancel. And third, canceling people is outright stupid. You don't want people with evil ideas and intentions hiding in the dark and invisible to you. You want their bad ideas as visible as possible so you can avoid them or shine a light on them. Sending everyone with a bad idea to another website only serves to embolden them and gives them a way to say 'see, we really are persecuted!' And this is completely skipping over the de-banking people. That goes into a whole new level that I think people don't fully appreciate.

joshuamorton 6y ago
On your third point, I want to reiterate something I've said before: Nazi's aren't stupid. They take advantage of people who want unrestricuted free speech without consequences and use it as a recruiting tool to radicalize more nazis. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23722215 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23722215) Kicking them off of a site raises the threshold for someone to be exposed to radicalizing factors. We have evidence that this is actually, really, effective at reducing rates of radicalization.

JoshuaDavid 6y ago

> Society has always, always had social norms which entailed consequences if countered. And often times in the past, the norms were strict and dissent was punished by jail, torture, or death. > Today, we've much improved. If you express an opinion that is contrary to the norms, you get made fun or or ostracized by the community, you don't get killed. "Things are better now than they were at some point in the past" does not mean that we should stop trying to improve, since things have already improved by a nonzero amount. If I said "Deaths due to infectious disease now are much lower than they were 100 years ago and therefore we shouldn't worry about infectious disease now", my faulty logic would immediately be spotted and called out. The general environment for free speech is much better today than it was in years past. There are, however, specific worrying trends now that did not exist in the past, and I think people are right to point them out. I'm not a huge fan of the term "cancel culture", because it implies a lot more intentional group behavior than I think happens, but the term does point to a real phenomenon where certain controversial speech gets amplified to absurd degrees, and a very small fraction of the people who see it and disagree with it try to cause disproportionate harm to the speaker (e.g. lying to their employer to try to get them fired, calling in false reports to try to get a highly armed SWAT team sent to their place of residence, sending death threats, etc.). Complaints about "cancel culture" are not so much about people complaining about not being heard as people complaining about having something they said taken out of context and amplified to millions of people, and the consequences of the consequent rage of millions and actions of the most extreme dozens of people out of those millions. Losing your job and getting death threats is an improvement over being jailed, tortured, or killed, but it's still not ideal, and we're still allowed to want better.

throwaway894345 6y ago

> Freedom of speech protects you from people who attempt to silence you by jailing, torturing, or killing you. It doesn't mean people are forced to put up with your stupid and unpopular opinions. You (like many) misunderstand the debate. "Free speech" proponents aren't advocating for a prohibition of criticism--to the contrary, criticism is free speech. Rather, free speech proponents are arguing against intimidation (e.g., harassment, doxxing, petitioning one's employer to fire them for wrongthink or false allegations, etc). Anyway, you concede that things have improved in the past, but you criticize people for opposing regression to a more limited-speech state. This seems remarkably overtly inconsistent. EDIT: This is cancel culture: https://twitter.com/wokal_distance/status/1281480650566987776 https://twitter.com/wokal_distance/status/128148065056698777...

CathedralBorrow 6y ago
If I inform a corporation that I will not do business with them while a person is in their employment, am I oppressing that person or am I using my freedom of speech?
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  If I say "it would be unfortunate if something happened to your job", am I issuing a veiled threat or am I using my freedom of speech? It's possible that I'm not making a threat, but we know it's unlikely. Technically it amounts to intent (do you intend to ruin someone's livelihood or are you just making a bizarre statement for indecipherable reasons?).
  - CathedralBorrow 6y ago
    I agree with everything you said. Can you comment on my question though?
    - throwaway894345 6y ago
      I did. I said it technically depends on intent; however, in practice it's implausible that you weren't issuing a threat, and threats don't constitute free speech.