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Steven Pinker: Cancel Culture Is Orwellian

29 points by fermienrico 6y ago

fermienrico 6y ago
Archive: http://archive.is/rhc5P http://archive.is/rhc5P
- nkurz 6y ago
  Good article, thanks for posting. Could you possibly fix the spelling in the title while you still have time?
  - fermienrico 6y ago
    Done.
  - eesmith 6y ago
    Really? I found Pinker's points entirely too meta to be understandable. Does Pinker have "a willingness to “dismiss and downplay racist violence”"? Yes or no? His response is that the accusation is "utterly ludicrous." But rather than demonstrate why it's ludicrous, perhaps by pointing to research publications which support him (instead of an NYT article) he instead asserts that his critics are using Orwellian tactics. That's a meta argument, and that sort of switch is a technique people use to distract people from the underlying argument. His critics explicitly say they don't want to "cancel" him, but he in essence says that's doublespeak. While on the other hand he rejects "dog whistling", saying “It means that it doesn’t matter what anyone says, you can always accuse them of having dog whistles of your own invention.” So he's reading between the lines, in essence arguing that these are dog whistles of their own - yet his own logic says that's a bad faith interpretation. And if the argument has any merit it can be applied to accusations like "Orwellian" and "doublespeak" - "It doesn't matter what anyone says, you can always accuse them of being Orwellian." That's why I hate meta arguments which don't start by actually demonstrating the validity or invalidity of the underlying argument. Or, consider "A large number of people have been appalled at the firings". Are those firings appropriate? Is there a list of these suspect firings, with evidence that it was due to Orwellian accusations? Because those "cancellations" I know about appear due to the reasonable consequences of their criticisms. Without those details, the actual argument is too amorphous to be actionable. For example, when he points to "junior scholars who say, ‘Well, this is what I think, but I dare not say it.’" -- what are the things they want to say, and why shouldn't they suffer consequences of making, say, unfounded, unjustifiably, and racist statements. I'm sure Pinker agrees that some things deserve chastisement, since he himself is chastising. Since he took the argument to a meta-level, we must also ask about how many junior scholars want to speak out against bigotry, sexism, racism, and more but don't dare not say it for having senior people like Pinker speak against them. And given the people who have talked about, for example, sexism in the academic workplace which they have felt powerless to oppose for fear of losing their job and career, we know that's an issue, so Pinker's argument isn't actually a strong one. Finally, look at the quotes "I wouldn’t go too far in tasteless comparisons to the Chinese cultural revolution or the European witch hunts, but ... I don’t want to say that the criticism of journalists and academics is the same as burning a real witch, [but] some of the underlying dynamics overlap.” That's the "I'm not saying it was aliens... but it was aliens" meme. It's an argument style which lets you say something, but not actually say it. Which is disingenuous at best, and "some of the underlying dynamics overlap" with Godwin's law.
    - nkurz 6y ago
      You raise good points, but it's well past midnight here on the East Coast of the US and I need to go to sleep. So in lieu of attempting an adequate response, did you see Scott Aaronson's parallel piece: https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4892 https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4892. I think it tries to answer some of your questions, although I'm not sure if it succeeds. And this one by Sarah Jeong is more sympathetic to the cancelling side, but might do a little better on the "amorphousness" aspect: https://www.theverge.com/21320338/letter-harpers-writers-free-speech-canceled-social-media-illiberalism https://www.theverge.com/21320338/letter-harpers-writers-fre....
      - cycomanic 6y ago
        This is such great post which should be shared widely.
      - eesmith 6y ago
        I read Scott Aaronson's piece but don't see how it fits. Pinker says that he's safe in his position and does not worry about being canceled. The people doing the criticism specifically say they are not trying to cancel him. Quoting from the open letter linked by Aaronson: > We want to note here that we have no desire to judge Dr. Pinker’s actions in moral terms, or claim to know what his aims are. Nor do we seek to “cancel” Dr. Pinker, or to bar him from participating in the linguistics and LSA communities (though many of our signatories may well believe that doing so would be the right course of action). They are: > calling for the removal of Dr. Steven Pinker from both our list of distinguished academic fellows and our list of media experts. We, the undersigned, believe that Dr. Pinker’s behavior as a public academic is not befitting of a representative of our professional organization, that the LSA’s own stated goals make such a conclusion inevitable, and that the LSA should publicly reaffirm its position and distance itself from Dr. Pinker. Even if that action were taken, how is that meaningfully "canceling" someone? Aaronson argues that it's a first step to test their power, and a veiled threat of what might be to come if they actually have power. Which I cannot distinguish from the age-old rhetorical technique of pointing to the extremists of any movement, then argue they are representative of everyone in the movement, in order to dismiss the entire movement. Aaronson's piece uses a similar argument to Pinker, with: > Again and again, spineless institutions have responded to these sorts of ultimatums by capitulating to them. Can we have a list of examples please? Without concrete definitions and examples, we can read anything into this topic. We know there are many cases where spineless institutions did not intervene despite public outrage, eg, MIT's fondness for a certain rich convicted pedophile, so it's hard to think there's a systemic capitulation to the demands of cancellers.
- GaryNumanVevo 6y ago
  I can't seem to read the article and the archive link isn't resolving for whatever reason. Mind making a new one?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
smt88 6y ago
I still haven't seen anyone suggest a solution to so-called "cancel culture" that doesn't involve equally Orwellian restrictions against various important freedoms (e.g. speech, what to buy, whom to employ, etc.) If you can "cancel" someone by writing about them, refusing to employ them, refusing to buy their products, or refusing to subscribe to them, then isn't cancellation inevitable? It's certainly not new. There has always been fame and infamy. It seems like the major difference now is that large social networks enable the amassing and coordination of groups at a speed and scale that was never possible before. If that's the case, then Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey are essentially the only people capable of changing the dynamic without infringing on anyone's rights.
- cameldrv 6y ago
  Or someone who is building the next social network. It is becoming apparent to a lot of people that the things that cause Facebook and Twitter to make a lot of money are corrosive to people's psychological integrity and society. The time is ripe for them to be replaced.
  - smt88 6y ago
    > The time is ripe for them to be replaced. You can't replace companies that have up to 2 billion combined users and buy any competitors that get any traction at all. All you can do is legislate.
- robjan 6y ago
  The entity who performs the act of cancelling isn't the employer who fires the "offender", but the angry mob who lobbies the employer to fire said person. The only solutions I can think of involve limiting the dissemination of false or exaggerated information and fact checking.
  - krapp 6y ago
    > The entity who performs the act of cancelling isn't the employer who fires the "offender", but the angry mob who lobbies the employer to fire said person. Boycotting, publicly denouncing or even attempting to convince an employer to fire someone falls within the bounds of legitimate free speech. The effects of cancel culture lie within the power of employers, platform owners, etc. The angry mob isn't putting a gun to anyone's head, they're just complaining loudly. >The only solutions I can think of involve limiting the dissemination of false or exaggerated information and fact checking. Which would, itself, be cibsuderedd Orwellian and denounced as an attempt to create a Ministry of Truth to punish wrongthink, all while questioning who gets to define what "falsehood" or "exaggeration" is, and who watches the watchers? That's a solution, but it's one that the opponents of cancel culture would probably vehemently oppose as being no different than cancel culture itself.
yoav 6y ago
Isn’t “cancel culture” just a new word for “capitalism” and “let the market decide”?
- orwin 6y ago
  "Cancel culture" is a new word for boycott and voting with your wallet.
orwin 6y ago
"Cancel culture" is what you get when you tell a whole generation that the political apparel can't do anything and the only way of beating either climate change/racism/sexism is voting with your wallet. It was inconsequential when the millenials were between 5 and 25, now its not anymore. This is the same thing as those 2010 pieces "the millenials are killing restaurants". They're just voting with their wallet. It was poor food when they were mostly student or young workers. Now it's Nike, or anything caught doing thing that some millenials find immoral. That's what the previous generation kept saying. The millenials just listened (and have tools to organize). I'm not agreeing with this, i'm just understanding. I'm voting with my wallet too. And this is a powerful tool. If some millenials (or now the next generation, whatever its name) chose not to go to an university because of what a professor said and this is causing financial loss, well to bad. It's sad for the professor, but what can you do? If it is not defamation, people have the right to talk and organize, no?

29 points by fermienrico 6y ago

fermienrico 6y ago

Archive: http://archive.is/rhc5P http://archive.is/rhc5P

nkurz 6y ago
Good article, thanks for posting. Could you possibly fix the spelling in the title while you still have time?
- fermienrico 6y ago
  Done.
- eesmith 6y ago
  Really? I found Pinker's points entirely too meta to be understandable. Does Pinker have "a willingness to “dismiss and downplay racist violence”"? Yes or no? His response is that the accusation is "utterly ludicrous." But rather than demonstrate why it's ludicrous, perhaps by pointing to research publications which support him (instead of an NYT article) he instead asserts that his critics are using Orwellian tactics. That's a meta argument, and that sort of switch is a technique people use to distract people from the underlying argument. His critics explicitly say they don't want to "cancel" him, but he in essence says that's doublespeak. While on the other hand he rejects "dog whistling", saying “It means that it doesn’t matter what anyone says, you can always accuse them of having dog whistles of your own invention.” So he's reading between the lines, in essence arguing that these are dog whistles of their own - yet his own logic says that's a bad faith interpretation. And if the argument has any merit it can be applied to accusations like "Orwellian" and "doublespeak" - "It doesn't matter what anyone says, you can always accuse them of being Orwellian." That's why I hate meta arguments which don't start by actually demonstrating the validity or invalidity of the underlying argument. Or, consider "A large number of people have been appalled at the firings". Are those firings appropriate? Is there a list of these suspect firings, with evidence that it was due to Orwellian accusations? Because those "cancellations" I know about appear due to the reasonable consequences of their criticisms. Without those details, the actual argument is too amorphous to be actionable. For example, when he points to "junior scholars who say, ‘Well, this is what I think, but I dare not say it.’" -- what are the things they want to say, and why shouldn't they suffer consequences of making, say, unfounded, unjustifiably, and racist statements. I'm sure Pinker agrees that some things deserve chastisement, since he himself is chastising. Since he took the argument to a meta-level, we must also ask about how many junior scholars want to speak out against bigotry, sexism, racism, and more but don't dare not say it for having senior people like Pinker speak against them. And given the people who have talked about, for example, sexism in the academic workplace which they have felt powerless to oppose for fear of losing their job and career, we know that's an issue, so Pinker's argument isn't actually a strong one. Finally, look at the quotes "I wouldn’t go too far in tasteless comparisons to the Chinese cultural revolution or the European witch hunts, but ... I don’t want to say that the criticism of journalists and academics is the same as burning a real witch, [but] some of the underlying dynamics overlap.” That's the "I'm not saying it was aliens... but it was aliens" meme. It's an argument style which lets you say something, but not actually say it. Which is disingenuous at best, and "some of the underlying dynamics overlap" with Godwin's law.
  - nkurz 6y ago
    You raise good points, but it's well past midnight here on the East Coast of the US and I need to go to sleep. So in lieu of attempting an adequate response, did you see Scott Aaronson's parallel piece: https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4892 https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4892. I think it tries to answer some of your questions, although I'm not sure if it succeeds. And this one by Sarah Jeong is more sympathetic to the cancelling side, but might do a little better on the "amorphousness" aspect: https://www.theverge.com/21320338/letter-harpers-writers-free-speech-canceled-social-media-illiberalism https://www.theverge.com/21320338/letter-harpers-writers-fre....
    - cycomanic 6y ago
      This is such great post which should be shared widely.
    - eesmith 6y ago
      I read Scott Aaronson's piece but don't see how it fits. Pinker says that he's safe in his position and does not worry about being canceled. The people doing the criticism specifically say they are not trying to cancel him. Quoting from the open letter linked by Aaronson: > We want to note here that we have no desire to judge Dr. Pinker’s actions in moral terms, or claim to know what his aims are. Nor do we seek to “cancel” Dr. Pinker, or to bar him from participating in the linguistics and LSA communities (though many of our signatories may well believe that doing so would be the right course of action). They are: > calling for the removal of Dr. Steven Pinker from both our list of distinguished academic fellows and our list of media experts. We, the undersigned, believe that Dr. Pinker’s behavior as a public academic is not befitting of a representative of our professional organization, that the LSA’s own stated goals make such a conclusion inevitable, and that the LSA should publicly reaffirm its position and distance itself from Dr. Pinker. Even if that action were taken, how is that meaningfully "canceling" someone? Aaronson argues that it's a first step to test their power, and a veiled threat of what might be to come if they actually have power. Which I cannot distinguish from the age-old rhetorical technique of pointing to the extremists of any movement, then argue they are representative of everyone in the movement, in order to dismiss the entire movement. Aaronson's piece uses a similar argument to Pinker, with: > Again and again, spineless institutions have responded to these sorts of ultimatums by capitulating to them. Can we have a list of examples please? Without concrete definitions and examples, we can read anything into this topic. We know there are many cases where spineless institutions did not intervene despite public outrage, eg, MIT's fondness for a certain rich convicted pedophile, so it's hard to think there's a systemic capitulation to the demands of cancellers.
GaryNumanVevo 6y ago
I can't seem to read the article and the archive link isn't resolving for whatever reason. Mind making a new one?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

smt88 6y ago

I still haven't seen anyone suggest a solution to so-called "cancel culture" that doesn't involve equally Orwellian restrictions against various important freedoms (e.g. speech, what to buy, whom to employ, etc.) If you can "cancel" someone by writing about them, refusing to employ them, refusing to buy their products, or refusing to subscribe to them, then isn't cancellation inevitable? It's certainly not new. There has always been fame and infamy. It seems like the major difference now is that large social networks enable the amassing and coordination of groups at a speed and scale that was never possible before. If that's the case, then Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey are essentially the only people capable of changing the dynamic without infringing on anyone's rights.

cameldrv 6y ago
Or someone who is building the next social network. It is becoming apparent to a lot of people that the things that cause Facebook and Twitter to make a lot of money are corrosive to people's psychological integrity and society. The time is ripe for them to be replaced.
- smt88 6y ago
  > The time is ripe for them to be replaced. You can't replace companies that have up to 2 billion combined users and buy any competitors that get any traction at all. All you can do is legislate.
robjan 6y ago
The entity who performs the act of cancelling isn't the employer who fires the "offender", but the angry mob who lobbies the employer to fire said person. The only solutions I can think of involve limiting the dissemination of false or exaggerated information and fact checking.
- krapp 6y ago
  > The entity who performs the act of cancelling isn't the employer who fires the "offender", but the angry mob who lobbies the employer to fire said person. Boycotting, publicly denouncing or even attempting to convince an employer to fire someone falls within the bounds of legitimate free speech. The effects of cancel culture lie within the power of employers, platform owners, etc. The angry mob isn't putting a gun to anyone's head, they're just complaining loudly. >The only solutions I can think of involve limiting the dissemination of false or exaggerated information and fact checking. Which would, itself, be cibsuderedd Orwellian and denounced as an attempt to create a Ministry of Truth to punish wrongthink, all while questioning who gets to define what "falsehood" or "exaggeration" is, and who watches the watchers? That's a solution, but it's one that the opponents of cancel culture would probably vehemently oppose as being no different than cancel culture itself.

yoav 6y ago

Isn’t “cancel culture” just a new word for “capitalism” and “let the market decide”?

orwin 6y ago
"Cancel culture" is a new word for boycott and voting with your wallet.

orwin 6y ago

"Cancel culture" is what you get when you tell a whole generation that the political apparel can't do anything and the only way of beating either climate change/racism/sexism is voting with your wallet. It was inconsequential when the millenials were between 5 and 25, now its not anymore. This is the same thing as those 2010 pieces "the millenials are killing restaurants". They're just voting with their wallet. It was poor food when they were mostly student or young workers. Now it's Nike, or anything caught doing thing that some millenials find immoral. That's what the previous generation kept saying. The millenials just listened (and have tools to organize). I'm not agreeing with this, i'm just understanding. I'm voting with my wallet too. And this is a powerful tool. If some millenials (or now the next generation, whatever its name) chose not to go to an university because of what a professor said and this is causing financial loss, well to bad. It's sad for the professor, but what can you do? If it is not defamation, people have the right to talk and organize, no?