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Open letter from computer scientists to ACM opposing cancel culture
- MattGaiser 6y agoIs there some context attached to why this is being done now?
- tmoaad 6y agoI tried to provide context and got downvoted to hell. Wow!
- hannob 6y agoSo you think github renaming its default branch restricts their freedom of speech? I'm confused...
- africanboy 6y agoIMO it doesn't. But if it becomes the default for the 56 million GitHub developers, is it really freedom of speech? I don't disagree with renaming the default branch and I've been using the name develop as the default branch for 2 years now, but I am still not sure that changing it globally on a global platform qualifies as "good behaviour". Edit: If you disagree, can you please write a comment stating why you do? It would be very helpful, if I am saying something obviously wrong I would love to understand why. Thanks!
- chrisseaton 6y agoDid you just guess at what it's about out of thin air with absolutely no context of your own? Because it's very clearly not about GitHub and branch names - it's the ongoing thing with Pedro Domingos. If you don't know, best to not just guess especially when it's a contentious subject where people are already clearly super frought. That's probably why you got down-voted heavily.
- pc86 6y agoThis is the only comment of yours I see in this thread.
- MattGaiser 6y agoThe comment was edited. It was originally about Github renaming master to main.
- wetpaws 6y agoPeople are getting sick and tired of sjw, I guess
- pawsed 6y agoSeeing the name of Pedro domingos and how he got cancelled for expressing his views in the recent incident involving Google and timnit gebru, makes me think it's probably related to that.
- pseudalopex 6y agoWhat consequences has he suffered? It looks like he's still employed. He's still tweeting.
- softwaredoug 6y agoHow specifically was he canceled? I ask because googling him he seems gainfully employed... are his papers being rejected? Did something else happened?
- astura 6y agoCan you elaborate?
- throwawaysea 6y agoThis began from a controversy where Anima Anandkumar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anima_Anandkumar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anima_Anandkumar), Director of AI at nvidia, posted a list of people she blocked on Twitter, encouraging her followers to "cancel" them. I wrote more about this and linked to her tweets in a past discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25419871 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25419871, but Anima Anandkumar has since deleted her tweets and then her account. One of her targets is Pedro Domingos, who is a professor at the University of Washington and a well-known expert in the space (he authored "The Master Algorithm"). Domingos is also known for being against the infiltration of "woke" culture into academic institutions, because it corrupts the purity of research and introduces political biases. This came up recently because NeurIPS (an AI conference) is going to require an "impact statement" for all submitted research papers, which has raised concerns about political bias at the conference, since researchers will likely include pandering progressive impact statements just to get through the process without controversy. Anandkumar has been one of the prominent activists pushing for NeurIPS to include impact statements, and was formerly involved in a campaign to push NeurIPS to be renamed from NIPS to NeurIPS (https://www.wired.com/story/ai-researchers-fight-over-four-letters-nips/ https://www.wired.com/story/ai-researchers-fight-over-four-l...). This new letter to ACM was already discussed on Hacker News (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25575321 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25575321). The letter includes Domingos as an initial signatory, and the group the letter is being sent to (Communications of the ACM) lists Anima Anandkumar (who tried to cancel him) on their Editorial Board (https://cacm.acm.org/about-communications/editorial-board/ https://cacm.acm.org/about-communications/editorial-board/).
- caffeine 6y agoRequest to downvoters: could you explain why? This seems like an interesting and relevant comment. Are there factual inaccuracies? Do you disagree with the characterization of Anandkumar? It would be useful to know what's wrong, as this comment will otherwise be pretty strongly informing my opinion on this topic.
- happytoexplain 6y ago>Do you disagree with the characterization Surely this is why - there's nothing else subjective in the post.
- coolspot 6y agoNow watch these scientists being cancelled for speaking up. Cancel culture doesn’t accept any arguments - that’s the whole point of the cancel culture - you don’t discuss with the opponent, instead you ask a platform, where the interaction happened, to ban the opponent.
- postpawl 6y agoI thought cancel culture was also not buying stuff from companies you think are not acting ethically. You might agree it’s good to “cancel” facebook by not using their product?
- whatshisface 6y agoIn the context of this letter, it's about institutional boycotts of individuals, not individuals boycotting institutions. From the text, >calls for academic boycotts, attempts to get people fired, inviting mob attacks against ‘offending’ individuals, and the like. These are all referring to the many coming down on the few, not the other way around.
- postpawl 6y agoThe parent comment seems to be speaking about cancel culture more generally though: “Cancel culture doesn’t accept any arguments - that’s the whole point of the cancel culture” I’d argue that’s not the point of cancel culture. I think cancel culture is the result of unethical actors not getting punished by the people in charge any more. The only way you can punish them is to not buy their products.
- whatshisface 6y ago>The only way you can punish them is to not buy their products. I'm sure that's related to the definition of cancel culture in some contexts, but none of the people signing or intended to be swayed by this letter sell any products. This letter is specifically talking about academic bullying as a means of intellectual suppression. That has little if anything to do with products like Facebook, I really don't see the connection.
- afuchs 6y agoDupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25575321 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25575321
- floatingatoll 6y agoEmailing the mods about dupes using the footer Contact link ensures that they see and respond to the report, as opposed to comments that may be interpreted by an algorithm as reason to keep it on the front page.
- joshuamorton 6y agoDupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25575321 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25575321
- cambalache 6y agoDupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25597142 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25597142
- pjc50 6y ago> No individual should suffer harassment or attack based on their personal or political views, religion, nationality, race, gender, or sexual orientation sigh One of those things is not like the others. I agree that people should not be hounded out of science. That means not publishing papers, articles or comments to the effect that "women can't do science" or bell curve arguments about some races being less intellectually capable than others. That is also hounding people out of science.
- pc86 6y agoWhich one is not like the other? I see a couple things that are choices. A couple that are innate. A couple that are considered sensitive information, and a couple that are public information. No one of these things sticks out to me as different from the others.
- yibg 6y agoDoesn’t that prevent a lot controversial discussions of those topics? Eg what if these things are true or potentially true? Do we just put a blanket ban on publication?
- africanboy 6y ago> That means not publishing papers, articles or comments to the effect that "women can't do science" I completely agree on the topic, but why shouldn't they be published and disproved by someone else with better arguments? Bad science has always been fought with good science.
- zug_zug 6y ago>> That means not publishing papers, articles or comments to the effect that "women can't do science" or bell curve arguments about some races being less intellectually capable than others. Suppose you manage a school district and you find that, after controlling for socio-economic income, your students' SAT scores are drastically predicted by race. Suppose you don't publish it, because you fear it might be used as fuel for some racist. What if it turns out that a geographic area that happened to correlate with race was getting an inferior water supply with lead in it, and because nobody was willing to look any further, the problem went on for an extra decade before being fixed?
- cubano 6y agoMaybe there should just be a movement to "cancel" cancel culture? Sometimes you just have to fight fire with fire.
- whatshisface 6y agoWhat would that mean, refusing to hire associate professors with a history of calling for institutions to refuse to hire associate professors with histories of calling for things? Sounds paradoxical to me.
- happytoexplain 6y agoIt seems impossible that anybody could really have both thoughts at once: That some of the things these victims do are not bad enough to be worthy of the social consequences, and also, the people amplifying those social consequences are bad enough to be victims of those same consequences.
- africanboy 6y agoI come from the country that put Galileo's books on the "Index Librorum Prohibitorum". I don't believe canceling culture is culture, even when the culture being canceled is bad. It's much better to make them illegal, like we did in Italy with facism and nazism, than to "cancel" them. They are still available as a subject of study, they haven't been cancelled, they have been found inappropriate and as such only a minority still believes that they've been made illegal in absence of good motivations, because anybody can check what are the reasons why it happened. But the majority of people that were fascist before the war ended in Italy haven't suffered discrimination for being wrong, after it was obvious they were.
- cubano 6y agoI really like this comment because your calling this exactly what it is...fascism. Cancel culture should be perhaps be renamed cancer culture, because history has shown that these things never end well.
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- antiterra 6y ago‘Cancel culture’ is fundamentally volatility in the lines between a disagreeable opinion and an abhorrent one. In the past, cancel-worthy offenses were generally scandalous behaviors as dictated by more religious and conservative social forces. I doubt the authors of the letter would so vigorously defend against the ‘cancelling’ of advocates of genocide, exploitation of minors, or cannibalism. And where are the footprints of this supposed cancellation sasquatch anyway? Brendan Eich? Doesn’t seem to be doing that poorly to me.
- cambalache 6y agoOK this is the cynic inside me talking, but let's suppose for a moment you are a Chinese(or Russian) geopolitical strategical planner. The current cancel culture is a gift from the gods, you send several undercover agents over there, and help to amplify this ridiculous state of affairs, start cancelling "dangerous" scientists or lines of research and help your country to gain long-term scientific and technological advantage over a society more interested on the correct number of new genders or on what is the minimum % needed of women speakers in a conference in order to not boycott it.
- rscho 6y agoOh, we have trouble in the USA?? After really thinking about it very hard, our conclusion is that it must be the evil work of corrupt foreign powers. CoMmUniSm!!!
- Felony_Fred 6y agoTextbook example ^ and right on the money, I think. You barely even have to send anyone " over there " just take what they produce and roll with that. Free goodies. Of course if you have a few idle provocateurs, it's probably a good return on investment. Honest question ; why is this thread [flagged] ? I get the answer might be obvious and disappointing, but surely the thread is not being cancelled right ?
- softwaredoug 6y agoI wish we had a better working definition of “cancel culture” because it seems to encompass everything from boycotting advertisers, to organizations restricting individuals access to “neutral” platforms... to firing individuals for their views
- drewcoo 6y agoThat's the point. It's a bogeyman. We'd likely have a war on cancel culture but nobody has figured out how to make a buck on that yet.
- LandR 6y ago> Scientific work should be judged on the basis of scientific merit Depressing that this even has to be said. Reality has no obligation to be politically acceptable.
- Rochus 6y agoWhy is this flagged? This is a reasonable, decently worded request. I see no reason why it should not be posted and discussed here.
- afuchs 6y agoIt's a duplicate of previous discussions, the one gaining the most traction being https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25575321 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25575321 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25597144 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25597144 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25597142 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25597142 Another possibility is that political topics (in this case "cancel culture") tend to be controversial enough, to be flamebait, that these topics tend to get flagged
- Rochus 6y agoDuplicate discussions don't seem to be an issue (I see a lot of them, and someone usually posts a hint to previous discussions). It's also not an arbitrary "political" topic, but a request of recognised computer scientists to the Association for Computing Machinery. If everything would be flagged that anyone could get upset about, soon we wouldn't be discussing anything at all.
- dang 6y agoIf a story has had significant attention in the last year or so, we bury reposts as duplicates. After a year (or so), it's fine, and that's why you're seeing links to previous discussions. This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.
- whatshisface 6y agoOne very, very noteworthy signatory: Scott Aaronson David J. Bruton Centennial Professor Department of Computer Science University of Texas at Austin That's the guy who writes the quantum computing posts that regularly show up on the HN front page.
- dekhn 6y agoHe's been tangentially involved in cancel culture before. See this article https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/01/the-blog-comment-that-achieved-an-internet-miracle/384539/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/01/the-blo... and also his original post https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4892 https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4892 which demonstrates his prior interest in this.
- bra-ket 6y ago@dang why is this flagged
- dang 6y agoIt had a major discussion just two days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25575321 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25575321 One way to find that out would be to look at https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=docs.google.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=docs.google.com. Another is HN search, of course. e.g. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=Open%20letter%20acm&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]