5 ms·

As 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 advo

by kaitai 6y ago

As 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 ago
You 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 ago
  Name 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 ago
  Who 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.
Chazprime 6y ago
> 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? Well, given that Anandkumar tried to publicly shame a number of people over these discussions, clearly we can't all argue and get along if this is what it devolves into. And that's kind of the point. Why can't we have innocuous discussions that end in "let's agree to disagree" without someone deciding that public humiliation and threats to people's careers are now okay? Why are the stakes suddenly inflated to "the future of female involvement in STEM" in these squabbles? We can go around and around over who said what, but clearly Anandkumar crossed an ethical boundary here, and it's important to call that out. Creating a more diverse and inclusive community does not involve public threats. I wish that didn't need to be said, but apparently it does.
- kaitai 6y ago
  What are the public threats that you are citing? And what is the recourse Anima has in this fight? Pedro tweets sexual innuendo about her porn habits, and truly, what is there to do? All these fights are asymmetrical. That is why I am angry. I see women fired for "not following procedure", women harassed out of their jobs, women failing to advance, women failing to be funded, and then on top of it any important, well-respected guy can tweet about my sexual preferences, my porn habits, what he thinks about my body, what he'd like to do to my body, ON TOP of the professional disrespect, and... that's just dismissed in this farce of a letter that says harassment is bad and is signed by people who are explicitly and publicly guilty of harassment. There is no acceptable recourse for a woman in this fight -- you understand that, right? If I don't speak up, I'm complicit or agreed to ill treatment. If I do speak up, I'm participating in "cancel culture", haha. This letter seriously says, "Scientific discourse should be based on mutual respect, use of civil language, and professional conduct. Indeed, all disagreements in the scientific community, however heated or fraught, should be addressed through argument and persuasion and not through personal attacks or by coercively shutting down those with dissenting points of view," and is signed by a man who Tweeted, among other things, "So you get porn sites and I don't? Must be Google's personalization algorithm," and "There is no oppressor here, only deranged activists." I frankly don't see anything wrong with shaming people online, because that's the only tool many folks have got. Always I get told that the polite, private correction that doesn't embarrass or shame is optimal; but those corrections just don't work. If that worked, "the ladies" would have had the vote in 1776 in the US, as Abigail Adams so politely requested of her husband. Instead it took marches, hunger strikes, arrests, and all sorts of unpleasantness. If it's going to be unpleasant if we speak up online or stay silent online, what is there to lose? At least one way we get to keep our integrity. Pedro Domingos is the kind of guy who thinks he is oppressed because of his viewpoint. He is in fact disliked because of his unkindness. But it's oh so easy to cloak himself in words about "respect" while his words & actions show the opposite.

by kaitai 6y ago

boxmonster 6y ago

You 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 ago
Name 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 ago
Who 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.

Chazprime 6y ago

> 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? Well, given that Anandkumar tried to publicly shame a number of people over these discussions, clearly we can't all argue and get along if this is what it devolves into. And that's kind of the point. Why can't we have innocuous discussions that end in "let's agree to disagree" without someone deciding that public humiliation and threats to people's careers are now okay? Why are the stakes suddenly inflated to "the future of female involvement in STEM" in these squabbles? We can go around and around over who said what, but clearly Anandkumar crossed an ethical boundary here, and it's important to call that out. Creating a more diverse and inclusive community does not involve public threats. I wish that didn't need to be said, but apparently it does.

kaitai 6y ago
What are the public threats that you are citing? And what is the recourse Anima has in this fight? Pedro tweets sexual innuendo about her porn habits, and truly, what is there to do? All these fights are asymmetrical. That is why I am angry. I see women fired for "not following procedure", women harassed out of their jobs, women failing to advance, women failing to be funded, and then on top of it any important, well-respected guy can tweet about my sexual preferences, my porn habits, what he thinks about my body, what he'd like to do to my body, ON TOP of the professional disrespect, and... that's just dismissed in this farce of a letter that says harassment is bad and is signed by people who are explicitly and publicly guilty of harassment. There is no acceptable recourse for a woman in this fight -- you understand that, right? If I don't speak up, I'm complicit or agreed to ill treatment. If I do speak up, I'm participating in "cancel culture", haha. This letter seriously says, "Scientific discourse should be based on mutual respect, use of civil language, and professional conduct. Indeed, all disagreements in the scientific community, however heated or fraught, should be addressed through argument and persuasion and not through personal attacks or by coercively shutting down those with dissenting points of view," and is signed by a man who Tweeted, among other things, "So you get porn sites and I don't? Must be Google's personalization algorithm," and "There is no oppressor here, only deranged activists." I frankly don't see anything wrong with shaming people online, because that's the only tool many folks have got. Always I get told that the polite, private correction that doesn't embarrass or shame is optimal; but those corrections just don't work. If that worked, "the ladies" would have had the vote in 1776 in the US, as Abigail Adams so politely requested of her husband. Instead it took marches, hunger strikes, arrests, and all sorts of unpleasantness. If it's going to be unpleasant if we speak up online or stay silent online, what is there to lose? At least one way we get to keep our integrity. Pedro Domingos is the kind of guy who thinks he is oppressed because of his viewpoint. He is in fact disliked because of his unkindness. But it's oh so easy to cloak himself in words about "respect" while his words & actions show the opposite.