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An Open Letter to the Communications of the ACM
- adultSwim 6y agoThe scientific community has long operated without proper regard to ethics and bigotry.
- 323454 6y agoIs there a specific incident that this letter is protesting?
- smitty1e 6y agoI understood the point directly. The culture at large is going to do what it does. There is way to support liberty and deny the right to be a ninny. But technology should be about the code. It is better to be diverse, because being a cool, gentle, adult human being is simply the Golden Rule applied; rather than flogging diversity. We see endless codes of conduct, statistical analyses, and innocents getting thrashed for some purely Kafka-esque infraction. I would say: "to hell with that" except that in many ways, hell has arrived.
- smitty1e 6y agoEdit: There is NO way to support liberty and deny the right to be a ninny.
- happytoexplain 6y agoOnly if you hold the view of absolutism, which is incongruous with society on a fundamental level.
- smitty1e 6y agoI'm not sure we're communicating. Repackaged, my point is that once I set myself up un control of definitions, I can always label your behavior a threat to public safety and effectively jail you.
- M2Ys4U 6y ago>But technology should be about the code. Should it? Technology doesn't exist in a vacuum, it is used by people. Ignoring that fact doesn't make the ethical implication of the technology magically go away.
- smitty1e 6y ago. . .which point I intended to go after when I said: > It is better to be diverse, because being a cool, gentle, adult human being is simply the Golden Rule applied
- eeZah7Ux 6y ago> But technology should be about the code Science does not get a special exception to turn off one's moral compass and ignore the ethical impact of research and publication.
- smitty1e 6y agoIndeed, my next sentence addresses the moral compass in the form of the Golden Rule. Any formulation of my point is that action excels words.
- DoofusOfDeath 6y agoI'm confused as well. I think a letter like this would be improved by adding some supporting references or examples.
- navait 6y agoYeah - I'm confused if this is a general sentiment going on, or a recent incident going on. I did like "Quantum Computing Since Democritus"
- AlanYx 6y agoIt seems to be at least partially in response to the blacklist of researchers/students that Anima Anantkumar prepared and circulated and then eventually retracted about three weeks ago.
- threwaway4392 6y agoRelated discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25419844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25419844
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- incompatible 6y agoAnd presumably because she is one of many on the ACM Communications Editorial Board: https://cacm.acm.org/about-communications/editorial-board/ https://cacm.acm.org/about-communications/editorial-board/
- Jtsummers 6y agoYeah, I'm trying to find some context but it's difficult. Many keywords paired with "Communications of the ACM" just result in articles from CACM instead of about CACM. I'm checking out the blogs of some of the signatories but haven't seen anything yet.
- jonathankoren 6y agoThis is all fall out from the Timnit Gebru firing (I'm including Anima Anandkumar posts are also part that fall out.), and specifically a Twitter fight between Pedro Domiguez and Timnit Gebru, and others. The biggest hill that Domingos has staked out is that asking researchers to include a discussion of impacts and potential abuse of systems to be "wasteful" and "ill-conveived"[0]. Also, he has decided to make a stand on the hill that the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems should not go by the acronym NeurIPS[1]. [0] https://twitter.com/pmddomingos/status/1338204976733032450 https://twitter.com/pmddomingos/status/1338204976733032450 [1]https://twitter.com/pmddomingos/status/1337594183033389058 https://twitter.com/pmddomingos/status/1337594183033389058
- sciurus 6y agoFrom another comment: https://www.geekwire.com/2020/retired-uw-computer-science-professor-embroiled-twitter-spat-ai-ethics-cancel-culture/ https://www.geekwire.com/2020/retired-uw-computer-science-pr...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- rosstex 6y agoThe only reference to this I can find: https://twitter.com/pmddomingos/status/1344028996850180097 https://twitter.com/pmddomingos/status/1344028996850180097 Notably, Pedro Domingos recently fought against NeurIPS' ethics/social impact requirement in research papers. The argument here is likely related, that science be portrayed in a vacuum and not be diminished based on possible societal harm or political biases.
- joshuamorton 6y agoWhich is truly an exceptionally dumb position to take. Many other sciences have IRB and human factors approvals for experiments that involve or may involve humans. Computer Science (and specifically ML, a lot of HCI research does involve human subjects approval) ignores all of the potential for harm here. We've seen that go terribly wrong in other fields, and in the ML field.
- croissants 6y agoI agree with the general conclusion that machine learning (just like any way of making decisions) involves ethics, but I disagree with the conclusion that every NeurIPS submission should have a concluding 1-2 paragraphs about the ethics of the submission. I reviewed for NeurIPS this year, and almost all of the ethics sections consisted of vacuous stuff along the lines of "uh, I guess...being efficient is good, might save some energy? and our method is pretty efficient, so that's nice". I think a system where area chairs skim abstracts and solicit these ethics paragraphs where they seem necessary -- so, not for the billionth paper obtaining pretty bounds for some variant of convex optimization -- makes more sense. I know that "think of the machine learning researchers!" is not a take that engenders sympathy, but we're probably talking thousands of human hours spent writing these things. It's not nothing.
- joshuamorton 6y agoFair enough (I'm not a Neurips reviewer or author), but I can accept the idea that convex optimization papers likely don't need to pre-write a societal impact statement (although I think that, as controversial as the paper may be, stuff like the Gebru et. al. paper on large language models ethical concerns shows that there probably is room for more interesting thought than just "ehhh, efficiency" in many places). But the subtext of this letter goes fairly deep (and to be clear this isn't meant as a response to you specifically): - While it doesn't specifically say it, this letter does appear to be at least somewhat anti-ethical concerns in general, which isn't good. - At least one of the signatories of this letter has not, in my opinion at least, followed the guidelines in this letter. Insinuating that a colleague of holds an opinion because they watch too much online porn is in no way civil, and is absolutely a personal attack. - Given the "disagreement" between Domingos and Anandkumar, who as others mention, sits on the ACM editorial board, this could be an attempt to censure or "cancel" her for her personal views. This is antithetical to the values held in the letter itself, and leaves a sour taste.
- mellosouls 6y agoHmmm. I'm not sure how successful this can be since the 3rd principle about not discriminating on identity etc (though righteous) is often that used to suppress research in the past. Without some Asimovian style "except where that counters the 1st principle" appended to "lower" principles it will continue to be abused by those who would constrain science that offends them.
- incompatible 6y agoAsimov himself has been accused of sexual harassment, although I haven't yet seen a sign that his three laws are now guilty by association.
- threwaway4392 6y agoImportant context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25419844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25419844 The author of the blacklist retracted the list and apologized.
- sjcoles 6y agoFunny, I get the feeling someone who looked different would be immediately dismissed from their position.
- itronitron 6y agoMight be the right time for any associated professional associations to review their code of conduct.
- google234123 6y agoIs she still trying to cancel stephen pinker? I found it ironic that she associated a jewish scientist with neo-nazism.
- mzs 6y agoan apology: https://animakumar.wpcomstaging.com/2020/12/16/my-heartfelt-apology/ https://animakumar.wpcomstaging.com/2020/12/16/my-heartfelt-... much more of the back story: https://www.geekwire.com/2020/retired-uw-computer-science-professor-embroiled-twitter-spat-ai-ethics-cancel-culture/ https://www.geekwire.com/2020/retired-uw-computer-science-pr...
- lemonspat 6y ago> "I want to assure you that I bear no animosity." That's a lie. NVidia should let the author go
- kodah 6y agoGenerally speaking this where the PC culture folks step in to write degrading and dehumanizing messages about the quality of an apology. Honestly, I would like to hope this example gets elevated and shown to everyone, especially in tech, as to why this behavior and everything that surrounds it is abysmal. Then everyone who has participated in this behavior can write out their own full throated apologies, we accept them, drop the issue, and move on. I doubt that will happen though.
- forrestthewoods 6y agoGoogle Docs on iOS Safari is unreadable garbage. Here's what this post looks like on my phone. I wish I could hide docs.google.com links from HN. https://i.imgur.com/7cuifN3.png https://i.imgur.com/7cuifN3.png
- say_it_as_it_is 6y agoMany industries are having the "and then they came for me"[1] moment, but it is particularly pronounced in academia. Intellectual giants such as Steven Pinker are attacked regularly by fellow academics on the basis of not conforming. People such as the group here must take a stand to stop this behavior. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_..
- throwawaysea 6y agoMore on the attempt at cancelling Steven Pinker can be read at https://reason.com/2020/09/06/steven-pinker-survives-attempted-cancellation/ https://reason.com/2020/09/06/steven-pinker-survives-attempt... (titled "Steven Pinker Survives Attempted Cancellation "). This article includes the transcript of an interview of Pinker himself.
- DoofusOfDeath 6y agoThanks for the link - I found the interview interesting. In it, Pink describes two competing mindsets for approaching social issues. One prioritizes analysis and understanding as first steps; the other prioritizes activism unrestrained by fact-checking. I'd be interested to hear his accusers' response to that interview. Experience tells me to withhold judgment until I've heard from all sides, and that interview was only with him.
- gfodor 6y agoThis stuff is just a cold religious war, between the believers and non-believers. The sooner we recognize it as such, and properly cap the blast radius as we have with prior religious differences, the better. Until then this category error will plague us all. https://newdiscourses.com/2020/09/first-amendment-case-freedom-from-woke-religion/ https://newdiscourses.com/2020/09/first-amendment-case-freed...
- pdonis 6y agoI don't see it as a religious war between believers and non-believers, so much as a sectarian war between different sects of believers. The academics who wrote this open letter are still quite happy to arrogate to themselves the power to decide what constitutes "scientific research" that should be freely debated, and what constitutes "unacceptable opinions" which can be freely suppressed. In other words, all of the believers agree that some speech should be suppressed; the various sects just disagree on exactly where the line should be drawn. The non-believers are just unlucky enough to be within the blast radius.
- gfodor 6y agoI see this particular dustup as just a regional conflict between sects on opposite sides of the wider conflict - but the wider cold war going on is motivated by people who have strong, largely un-falsifiable beliefs about how the world works, and who are acting with a unilaterial goal of re-structuring society around these assumptions and eliminating views in conflict with them (and eliminating those who hold them from the public sphere, or creating a sufficient chilling effect such that they censor themselves.) Once you see it as a religious war it's by far the best analogy to understand the dynamics, at least to me. It's also potentially more than an analogy to the point where the underlying belief system ought to be treated as a religion from a legal standpoint, for the benefit of everyone involved, including the believers.
- pdonis 6y ago> Once you see it as a religious war it's by far the best analogy to understand the dynamics, at least to me If "religious war" means a sectarian war, in which both sides are believers, just believers in different sects (often different only in details so minor that outsiders can't even see what the fuss is about), then I agree. I'm not aware, historically, of anything called a "religious war" that wasn't a sectarian war in that sense. This might just be a difference in terminology. However, it might not. If you think one of the sides in the "religious war" we are talking about is "unbelievers", then we disagree on something of substance. "Unbelievers" in this context would mean people who just think we should have free speech, period; that nobody should be suppressed simply because of what they are saying. But, as I said in my previous comment, I don't think either side in the current "religious war" meets this criterion; both sides agree that some speech should be suppressed, they just disagree on exactly which speech. Note that this applies not just to the particular "dustup" referenced in the open letter, but to the larger "cold war" you describe. Nobody is fighting for free speech, period. The different sides are just fighting for different rules about what can be suppressed. One side's rules currently seem a lot more draconian than the other's, but both sides want some such rules.
- mola 6y agoOne of the signers, Aryeh Konterovich is associated with a right wing Israeli NGO that conducted witch hunts against Israeli professors and artists who were deemed too leftist by its crooked standards. This was a massive well funded campaign on facebook and traditional media singling out these people as traitors. It's extremely ironic he is now taking this anti cancel stance. Oh the hypocrisy. He is also promoting a constitutional law in israel that will say jews have more rights than non jewish CITIZENS of israel.
- jimktrains2 6y agoI'm not sure what they did with the formatting, but it's near unreadable on mobile because of how narrow thr column is.
- tziki 6y agoI wonder if the only way to meaningfully oppose cancel culture is actively cancel the proponents. It's hard to fight a movement that's willing to go to such extremes while holding on to ideals which restrict your own response.
- DoofusOfDeath 6y agoThat's an interesting idea. I don't know much about game theory, but I'm curious if it has useful application to this problem.
- baryphonic 6y agoI agree. While I hate "canceling" as a tactic, tit-for-tat is a dominant strategy for ensuring cooperation in repeated games. Cancel culture only works because, like the Gestapo/Stasi/NKVD/KGB, the targets are seemingly random and the agents show up in force. But they don't torture or kill, and they don't really possess the level of asymmetric power of actual totalitarian state actors. As such, canceling the cancelers would likely be useful under the following constraints: 1) Publicly state your intention to cancel anyone who cancels you; and 2) Only cancel people defensively, never on offense; 3) If the canceler professes a change of heart, cease the cancellation, accept the apology (forgiveness/mercy and relatively simple reintegration for offenders is one asymmetric advantage the free speech side has going for it); 4) Form a mutual-aid alliance with likeminded people, such that the cancelation of one implies the cancelation of all; 5) Never under any circumstance apologize or "bend the knee" to a cancel mob, even if you are not completely in the right - you are not dealing with people who want to treat you as an equal, but totalitarians who want to control you. I think if people who are in favor of free speech (myself included) followed those rules, cancel culture would at least plateau. A couple of prominent cancelers like Anima Anandkumar getting stung would probably allow cooler heads to prevail.
- kodah 6y agoI take it public shaming/harassment/brigading is regarded as an extension to cancel culture?
- kodah 6y agoIt's easy to distill this down to religious wars but I think that distillation ignores popular bad behavior that creates these problems in the first place. Anyone who engages in shaming, suppression, bregading/harassment/abuse is arguably not looking for discourse. In modern politics there are entire camps of people, even pre-Trumpism, who think discourse is dead primarily because they feel galvanized by the emotionality of their views. This concept has always existed but has grown quite a bit in popularity in recent years and has begun to underpin mainstream issues in science, politics, society, and more. The irony is that people will like and despise these things simultaneously, which is why I believe it's derivative of galvanization. The fact that science is caught up in this, where discourse is at the heart of the process, tells me some group or some thing is instigating this co-opting. I hope we begin to reject these practices and accept them for the low effort anti-democratic efforts that they are.
- nsajko 6y agoWhat is the purpose of a document like this one? Seems to me that nothing constructive can be accomplished without giving much more context and specific examples to discuss, while this open letter contains nothing substantial like that.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- eeZah7Ux 6y agoExcellent point. There's hundreds of comments here falling for the "two sides" fallacy and few asking what's the real point.
- throw7 6y agoThe letter says that science has nothing to say about human values, wordviews, or paradigms. Whether you believe that statement is where you stand.
- arduanika 6y agoWhere does it say that? I skimmed...
- kaitai 6y agoAs I've said before, at what point can we just have an old-fashioned fight without throwing this snowflakey "cancel culture" criticism at it? I'm a strong advocate for free speech. The only way that free speech works is that people feel free to vociferously disagree. Given the volume of, say, Domingos' tweets, he certainly feels free to disagree. At this point the same can be said of Gebru and Anandkumar. Great! What's the problem here? Can't we just all just argue and get along? Where is the mob attack? Oh, someone said someone mean to you. For heaven's sake, if Anita Sarkeesian can take it then the rest of you sure can. If no one here is upset about public health directors in Kansas having their children threatened, then why the dustup about some feelings on Twitter? Great, someone puts you on a block list on Twitter. Congrats. Until you've gotten your first rape threat you haven't really made it anyways. What a bunch of whiners.
- boxmonster 6y agoYou do know that's it's more than hurt feelings? People are being fired for saying something that didn't meet someone's interpretation of the Code of Conduct.
- kaitai 6y agoName some names. Who is fired?
- anon7725 6y ago> I'm a strong advocate for free speech. Many of us who have been following these developments are as well. At issue is the attempt to chill speech based upon the identity of the speaker. If more institutions adopted the “Chicago Statement," then this would be less of an issue (at least in academia). > Great, someone puts you on a block list on Twitter. You are being disingenuous. "Go destroy the careers of these people on my block list" is a much different thing.
- kaitai 6y agoWho is off Twitter? Turns out it's only Anima Anandkumar. No one else in this particular saga. Whose career is destroyed? Pedro is still doing fine. Enumerate the damage for me, please, in dollars or jobs.
- n0tif 6y agoPedro Domingos uses fake Twitter accounts to astroturf support of his own viewpoints. Anything he does, regardless of academic merit, is a fucking joke.
- knolax 6y agoAs some was who was recently #canceled I gotta say stuff like this does nothing. Rallying against "cancel culture" is as pointless as waging a war on drugs. There is no such thing as a "culture" of cancelling; it's just a reaction people have, justified or not. People who rally against "cancel culture" seem to just be rallying against vaguely progressive beliefs they disagree with. From the comments in this thread it seems the context is that the ACM started requiring an ethics section on papers. Hardly has anything to do with cancelling itself if you ask me.
- madhadron 6y agoI feel confused about this whole issue. People are acting like "cancelling" someone is a new thing, but this is something I saw happen all the time in academia. It just used to be the purview of small cliques of powerful professors who had chokeholds on particular fields. Immunology is particularly bad. Say something bad about professor X's proposal? You're never getting a grant funded again. Professor Y harassed you when you were a grad student and you're upset? Best get out of the field and don't make a fuss. What's different now other than larger groups with nontraditional forms of power are trying to impose consequences in return?
- evouga 6y agoSwapping out a small group of people abusing traditional power for a larger group of people abusing non-traditional power does not sound like a great "fix" to me.
- KirillPanov 6y agoIt sounds good to people who are (a) in the larger group and (b) not in the small group and (c) shortsighted. People seem to be getting increasingly shortsighted these days.
- madhadron 6y ago> larger group of people abusing non-traditional power does not sound like a great "fix" to me. Sounds reasonable. How do we define abuse? Do we have a clear notion of when consequences for your speech is abuse? Some things are clear. Mobs threatening your children because of what you said is clearly abuse. But what about customers of your employer demanding that you be fired? There are clearly cases where that would be legitimate. Up until a couple years ago, flying the swastika and wanting to start up the Nazi party again would result in you being "cancelled" pretty thoroughly. Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences. It's freedom from the government taking you away because of what you said (though even that isn't universal if your speech is a direct incitement to an act, such as shouting fire in a movie theatre or calling for someone's death with an expectation that someone listening to you will go do it). You still get all the legal protections of any other member of our society. Maybe that's a better way of coming at it? If large groups abusing non-traditional power is a problem, should we define a larger set of individual legal protections to define what the consequences of speech cannot be?
- danbmil99 6y agoIs this really related to that idiotic nips controversy? That makes for a Sad Panda
- DanBC 6y agohttps://twitter.com/sanitarypanels/status/1343865692051816448 https://twitter.com/sanitarypanels/status/134386569205181644... person A: "I want to commit genocide against Muslims" person B: "You are fascist scum" person C: "Woah woah, let's not resort to name calling, let's calmly discuss the pros and cons of genocide".
- iso947 6y agoCan’t read it. Opened on my phone and there are at lost 7 letters per line - communications is split over 3 lines for example. Rather ironic that a letter to a group that is about communication can’t use an appropriate technology to communicate.
- dcassett 6y agoI used the links2 browser (doesn't support JS) and was prompted to download the PDF, which is perfectly readable. Perhaps there is an issue of conversion of the PDF to google docs.
- blippage 6y agoI'm not sure what prompted this in the first place.Had the ACM done anything that was perceived as wrong? In my view, the letter seems to be a contradictory admixture of Progressivism and Rationalism. > Such actions have included calls for academic boycotts, attempts to get people fired, inviting mob attacks against ‘offending’ individuals That's a Rationalist perspective, which I endorse. And, as a "rationalist", it's been my observation that it's the progressive that indulge in this kind of behaviour. The so-called "cancel culture". > Scientific work should be judged on the basis of scientific merit Sure, but obvious comment is obvious. Why bring it up? > No individual should suffer harassment or attack based on their personal or political views, religion, nationality, race, gender, or sexual orientation. Oh, here we go. The statement, whilst logical and indisputable enough in its expression, betrays a pushing of a Progressive agenda. > Scientific discourse should be based on mutual respect Sure dude, whatever. Do you really need to write that in a letter? And why the ACM in particular? > In short, challenging and debating ideas is always acceptable and ought to be encouraged. Imagine going up to Isaac Newton and saying this. I imagine he'd give you a puzzled look as if you were slightly backwards. Are the signatories rationalists, or progressives? It's difficult to tell. My suspicion is that although it is rationalist on its surface, it is covertly progressive. Progressivism: always pushing an agenda covertly, never speaking in plain words. That's my take, anyway. I don't have much karma to burn.