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It is reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution. Liu Cixin lived through that period, which inspired one of the scenes he wrote in the Three Body Problem. In it,

It is reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution. Liu Cixin lived through that period, which inspired one of the scenes he wrote in the Three Body Problem. In it, a physics professor is submitted to a struggle session by his students for teaching counter-revolutionary science (relativity and quantum mechanics) and beaten to death. While this story is fictionalised, it certainly was no exaggeration of the climate at the time.

no_butterscotch 5y ago
That scene really stuck out to me when I read it. It enraged me. It reminds me of some of the "softer" floggings going on today when Professors won't adhere to the new collectivism of our University system.
- jahnu 5y ago
  I find these comparisons unhelpful. What happened in China during the Cultural Revolution is on such a different level of awfulness it just isn't even the tiniest bit comparable to anything controversial or problematic happening in West right now. Even today what is happening in China, and even the freer parts like Hong Kong, is still far removed from issues in the West. Even as a "thin end of the wedge" argument it's just weak. It hurts legitimate and necessary criticism of actual authoritarian countries and it hurts legitimate and necessary criticism of real issues (such as that raised in the article above) in free, Western countries.
  - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
    [flagged]
    - elefanten 5y ago
      I don’t support or agree with the far left, or any of the identity culture warrior / critical theory / wokeness or whatever other adjacent thing you wanna roll up in that. But this comment is just unhinged nonsense. This is akin to the claims that Jan 6 was a coup attempt. “The left” is not a homogenous organized force (rofl, come on, the trope is that the left eats itself) which has organized militants on standby. Antifa and Patriots are both larping idiots alike. It’s the contagion and mutation of bad ideas that’s a bigger problem. A semantic pandemic.
      - mannerheim 5y ago
        The Red Guards were mostly larping idiots, too. Many were literal children. The difference is they had substantial support both societally (either out of fear or ideology) and from the top by Mao, who saw them as a weapon he could harness. America isn't at that point, but we do ourselves no favours by pretending that it can't happen here. The ingredients are available, even if the execution isn't yet.
        bangkoksbest 5y ago
        Uhhh China has centuries of history of peasant movements rising up in improvised make-shift revolts. I don't think you understand how real revolution was for people in China. It was absolutely not a LARP. Just looking from 1850 to Mao, there was: The Taiping Rebellion (30m dead), 2nd Sino-Japanese War (20m dead), Dungan rebellion (15m dead), Miao rebellion (5m dead), Red Turban rebellion (1m dead), Panthay rebellion (1m dead), Punti–Hakka wars (1m dead), Nationalist purges (1.5m dead), various Warlord Era conflicts (500k dead), 1911 revolution (200k dead), Boxer Rebellion (100k dead), and 1st Sino-Japanese war (50k dead). Not to mention residual deaths from the two World Wars not directly attributable to the conflicts above, but which would still number more than the losses the USA suffered in both wars. The American Civil War was about ~750k dead. There is absolutely no comparison between the traumatic social conditions of 1940s China with even 21st century China let alone the United States. They were definitely not "role playing".
        mannerheim 5y ago
        Regardless of China's history, I find it hard to regard literal children who grew up in peacetime styling themselves as revolutionaries as they fought to further entrench the most powerful man in the country as anything less than LARPing.
        mbg721 5y ago
        The ingredients were always there; we're a nation founded by Puritans. What's supposed to save us is a robust system of checks and balances, coupled with strong protection of individual rights.
    - bangkoksbest 5y ago
      As a former Antifa-kid (I don't go to punk shows anymore as 30 something, unfortunately), it's pretty surreal how off base and delusional this is. Antifa is primarily made of: i) dweeb grad students who have read too much Left "theory" but are really just liberals, ii) liberal punks whose primary goals are keeping cryptofascism out of their communities and cooking veggies from the local farmers market (not necessarily in that order), and iii) anarchist punks whose primary goals are keeping Nazi punks out of dive venues and cooking vegan chili from dumpster veggies (not necessarily in that order) You will have more success herding cats than in getting that motley crew to agree on a single policy action, let alone organizational action. That such a group have invokes for you a specter of Weimar-era Nazis is kind of embarrassing, and speaks to an utter lack of diversity in social experiences. The teen smoking weed in a Dead Kennedys hoodie down the street from you has probably has an Antifa sticker on his laptop, and perhaps he'd love to throw a brick through a Starbucks window... but that's not Kristalnacht. Taleb btw is nowhere near as fragile as to fear Antifa as some vanguard force for e.g. Nazism or sectarian ethnic militancy. He's literally more concerned about random bitcoin fanatics.
      - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
        The threaten people with political affiliations they don't like on a regular basis, with violence. And they have government support in my country (Germany). Turns out even "dweeb grad students" sometimes like to beat up folks, apparently.
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    I find it somewhat amusing, in that the attacks on someone like Wilson for his minor prejudices and ill-chosen wordings looks petty and out of proportion when considering all the worse offenders in the world, just as the attacks comparing this situation to the acts of authoritarian regimes is out of proportion. There is a nice sort of proportionality to how everything is hysterically overdone and out of proportion! That said everything is on a sliding scale here, and the worst enforcement of orthodoxy on the mildest offenders can certainly be compared to much lesser attacks if they stem from similar impulses. If you cannot make a comparison of this sort then the world would be a place with unconnected events and patterns, and no real way of defining or discussing how situations move from a not bad condition to a very bad one, or in the other direction. There would never be such a thing as warning signs or worrying trends, because those things would not be relatable to absolutely awful things they might lead to. Conversely if you were living with awful things there would be no reason to discuss how they could improve, because the improved version of life would not be comparable. How can you make legitimate and necessary criticism of actual authoritarian countries if you cannot compare bad with less bad?
    - guelo 5y ago
      I just don't see how you can make a slippery slope argument when comparing dictators with the power of massive governments to changing political youth culture. Especially when this left culture keeps losing politically and has little state power. The anti-CRT hysteria has resulted in a bunch of laws mandating changes to curriculums without input from educators, to me that's closer to the old communist dictators.
      - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
        Many of the worst parts of the Cultural Revolution were driven by the Red Guards, a political youth culture group with no formal government power. I don’t think American youth are gonna start beating their teachers to death, but it’s wrong to think that only things the government does can matter.
  - nverno 5y ago
    The story of the turmoil at Evergreen college [1] a few years ago has enough similarity. Kids there cornered, berated, and essentially held hostage professors- it's pretty unbelievable. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5Wny9TstEM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5Wny9TstEM
    - andi999 5y ago
      What I dont understand, if you have a hostage situation can the police not handle it appropriately?
      - HideousKojima 5y ago
        Not in anarcho-tyranny world.
    - reportingsjr 5y ago
      The last time the evergreen college protests were brought up to me, it was by a friend who had started leaning right and he mentioned something similar to what you said. When I looked more deeply in to it, the only mentions of people being held hostage came from far right sources, such as the youtube channel you linked, with little credibility. Watching recordings of what happened it's hard to take you seriously when you say people are being held hostage.
      - no_butterscotch 5y ago
        The president was kept in his office by students, and wasn't allowed to go pee: https://youtu.be/SS_85aSeZjI?t=45 https://youtu.be/SS_85aSeZjI?t=45. Though he swears ignorance to this (see the clip).
  - roenxi 5y ago
    The same emotions and scenes that played out under communism play out everywhere, they are depressingly human scenes. The triumph of liberalism is coming up with systems that, if followed, transcend the natural monkey-isms of humans. Things like law courts that decide based on evidence rather than common knowledge or deciding tricky questions by vote rather than by what "good people" think. And giving people freedom to do icky things and then letting the good be remembered with the bad. It can simultaneously be true that the West is a long way from communism and that these scenes look a lot like what happened in times when communism was seriously tried. These are the same dynamics that got out of control and into the halls of power.
  - alushta 5y ago
    The comparison is very apt. My mother always says how this current climate in the US reminds her of the Cultural Revolution, and told me on many occasions about how one of her physicist friends got "struggled" against because he had the temerity to claim that the sun had black spots, and it was taken a a veiled criticism against Chairman Mao and the party. It was just a struggle session where he had to wear the dunce cap--no jail time, but I'm sure it was quite a frightful experience.
fastball 5y ago
> It is reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution. Which is not at all surprising given how many young people in the West like to style themselves as Marxists.
- scroot 5y ago
  Is your position that the adopting of a Marxist analytical framework necessarily leads to phenomena like the Cultural Revolution?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - fastball 5y ago
    Necessarily? No. But historically it doesn't seem to lead to much else when adopted by a society wholesale.
hownottowrite 5y ago
The end of that chapter had me in tears.
publicola1990 5y ago
Not just that, see how Louis Aggasiz's reputation is being hounded down in recent years. Renaming schools and pulling down statues of him.
- throwoutway 5y ago
  If you’re going to mention that then Id also have to mention these “do-gooders” renaming Abraham Lincoln schools… of all the presidents to cancel..
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
> It is reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution. That's right. People are being beaten to death, locked up in labor camps, mysteriously vanished and worse, all because they don't bow down to people who think there are different metrics worth using at least some of the time when judging science (or anything else). It's absolutely terrifying!
- etangent 5y ago
  You make an excellent point. Let's wait until people are actually beaten to death and imprisoned (and not just one, like a good few thousands of them!), and only then start complaining.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    That's right! Because there are just 1 or maybe 2 steps from Scientific American publishing a godawful article about Wilson & refusing to print a rebuttal (+), to peole being actually beaten to death. We need to take action, right now. (+) and let's not overlook that UPenn is actively considering changing tenure rules just because a poor law professor made some actually racist remarks. Labor camps could be here by 2023!
    - etangent 5y ago
      You know, I started out thinking that very bad language should indeed be censored. But considering what I see -- how eagerly language is used to eliminate one's political opponents from the public sphere, and how expansive definitions become over time (e.g. what happened to "literally violence") -- I now believe in complete freedom of speech, even down to fully genocidal rhetoric (and yes, that includes freedom from civilian consequences, not just government-imposed consequences). As a free speech absolutist, I now believe that the government should perform a proactive role in ensuring that the 1st amendment is obeyed -- not just a passive one.
    - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
      I don’t think anyone’s gonna die soon. What we are a couple steps away from, I think, is an environment where this rebuttal would be considered hate speech and the signatories would be fired for endorsing it. (We might be only half a step away, honestly; I give it a 50% chance that one of the signatories faces a Title IX complaint about it by next week, although I understand that such an unconfident prediction doesn’t really mean much.)
zozbot234 5y ago
> It is reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution. It's quite literally a mindless zombie remnant of the actual Cultural Revolution ideology of Lin Biao and the criminal Gang Of Four. That whole ideological memeplex was taken up by young radical leftists throughout the West in the late 1960s and 1970s. A generation has passed, and now those leftist students have grown up and become respected "liberal" and "progressive" leaders. Do the math, it's not rocket science.

no_butterscotch 5y ago

That scene really stuck out to me when I read it. It enraged me. It reminds me of some of the "softer" floggings going on today when Professors won't adhere to the new collectivism of our University system.

jahnu 5y ago
I find these comparisons unhelpful. What happened in China during the Cultural Revolution is on such a different level of awfulness it just isn't even the tiniest bit comparable to anything controversial or problematic happening in West right now. Even today what is happening in China, and even the freer parts like Hong Kong, is still far removed from issues in the West. Even as a "thin end of the wedge" argument it's just weak. It hurts legitimate and necessary criticism of actual authoritarian countries and it hurts legitimate and necessary criticism of real issues (such as that raised in the article above) in free, Western countries.
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
  [flagged]
  - elefanten 5y ago
    I don’t support or agree with the far left, or any of the identity culture warrior / critical theory / wokeness or whatever other adjacent thing you wanna roll up in that. But this comment is just unhinged nonsense. This is akin to the claims that Jan 6 was a coup attempt. “The left” is not a homogenous organized force (rofl, come on, the trope is that the left eats itself) which has organized militants on standby. Antifa and Patriots are both larping idiots alike. It’s the contagion and mutation of bad ideas that’s a bigger problem. A semantic pandemic.
    - mannerheim 5y ago
      The Red Guards were mostly larping idiots, too. Many were literal children. The difference is they had substantial support both societally (either out of fear or ideology) and from the top by Mao, who saw them as a weapon he could harness. America isn't at that point, but we do ourselves no favours by pretending that it can't happen here. The ingredients are available, even if the execution isn't yet.
      - bangkoksbest 5y ago
        Uhhh China has centuries of history of peasant movements rising up in improvised make-shift revolts. I don't think you understand how real revolution was for people in China. It was absolutely not a LARP. Just looking from 1850 to Mao, there was: The Taiping Rebellion (30m dead), 2nd Sino-Japanese War (20m dead), Dungan rebellion (15m dead), Miao rebellion (5m dead), Red Turban rebellion (1m dead), Panthay rebellion (1m dead), Punti–Hakka wars (1m dead), Nationalist purges (1.5m dead), various Warlord Era conflicts (500k dead), 1911 revolution (200k dead), Boxer Rebellion (100k dead), and 1st Sino-Japanese war (50k dead). Not to mention residual deaths from the two World Wars not directly attributable to the conflicts above, but which would still number more than the losses the USA suffered in both wars. The American Civil War was about ~750k dead. There is absolutely no comparison between the traumatic social conditions of 1940s China with even 21st century China let alone the United States. They were definitely not "role playing".
        mannerheim 5y ago
        Regardless of China's history, I find it hard to regard literal children who grew up in peacetime styling themselves as revolutionaries as they fought to further entrench the most powerful man in the country as anything less than LARPing.
      - mbg721 5y ago
        The ingredients were always there; we're a nation founded by Puritans. What's supposed to save us is a robust system of checks and balances, coupled with strong protection of individual rights.
  - bangkoksbest 5y ago
    As a former Antifa-kid (I don't go to punk shows anymore as 30 something, unfortunately), it's pretty surreal how off base and delusional this is. Antifa is primarily made of: i) dweeb grad students who have read too much Left "theory" but are really just liberals, ii) liberal punks whose primary goals are keeping cryptofascism out of their communities and cooking veggies from the local farmers market (not necessarily in that order), and iii) anarchist punks whose primary goals are keeping Nazi punks out of dive venues and cooking vegan chili from dumpster veggies (not necessarily in that order) You will have more success herding cats than in getting that motley crew to agree on a single policy action, let alone organizational action. That such a group have invokes for you a specter of Weimar-era Nazis is kind of embarrassing, and speaks to an utter lack of diversity in social experiences. The teen smoking weed in a Dead Kennedys hoodie down the street from you has probably has an Antifa sticker on his laptop, and perhaps he'd love to throw a brick through a Starbucks window... but that's not Kristalnacht. Taleb btw is nowhere near as fragile as to fear Antifa as some vanguard force for e.g. Nazism or sectarian ethnic militancy. He's literally more concerned about random bitcoin fanatics.
    - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
      The threaten people with political affiliations they don't like on a regular basis, with violence. And they have government support in my country (Germany). Turns out even "dweeb grad students" sometimes like to beat up folks, apparently.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  I find it somewhat amusing, in that the attacks on someone like Wilson for his minor prejudices and ill-chosen wordings looks petty and out of proportion when considering all the worse offenders in the world, just as the attacks comparing this situation to the acts of authoritarian regimes is out of proportion. There is a nice sort of proportionality to how everything is hysterically overdone and out of proportion! That said everything is on a sliding scale here, and the worst enforcement of orthodoxy on the mildest offenders can certainly be compared to much lesser attacks if they stem from similar impulses. If you cannot make a comparison of this sort then the world would be a place with unconnected events and patterns, and no real way of defining or discussing how situations move from a not bad condition to a very bad one, or in the other direction. There would never be such a thing as warning signs or worrying trends, because those things would not be relatable to absolutely awful things they might lead to. Conversely if you were living with awful things there would be no reason to discuss how they could improve, because the improved version of life would not be comparable. How can you make legitimate and necessary criticism of actual authoritarian countries if you cannot compare bad with less bad?
  - guelo 5y ago
    I just don't see how you can make a slippery slope argument when comparing dictators with the power of massive governments to changing political youth culture. Especially when this left culture keeps losing politically and has little state power. The anti-CRT hysteria has resulted in a bunch of laws mandating changes to curriculums without input from educators, to me that's closer to the old communist dictators.
    - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
      Many of the worst parts of the Cultural Revolution were driven by the Red Guards, a political youth culture group with no formal government power. I don’t think American youth are gonna start beating their teachers to death, but it’s wrong to think that only things the government does can matter.
- nverno 5y ago
  The story of the turmoil at Evergreen college [1] a few years ago has enough similarity. Kids there cornered, berated, and essentially held hostage professors- it's pretty unbelievable. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5Wny9TstEM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5Wny9TstEM
  - andi999 5y ago
    What I dont understand, if you have a hostage situation can the police not handle it appropriately?
    - HideousKojima 5y ago
      Not in anarcho-tyranny world.
  - reportingsjr 5y ago
    The last time the evergreen college protests were brought up to me, it was by a friend who had started leaning right and he mentioned something similar to what you said. When I looked more deeply in to it, the only mentions of people being held hostage came from far right sources, such as the youtube channel you linked, with little credibility. Watching recordings of what happened it's hard to take you seriously when you say people are being held hostage.
    - no_butterscotch 5y ago
      The president was kept in his office by students, and wasn't allowed to go pee: https://youtu.be/SS_85aSeZjI?t=45 https://youtu.be/SS_85aSeZjI?t=45. Though he swears ignorance to this (see the clip).
- roenxi 5y ago
  The same emotions and scenes that played out under communism play out everywhere, they are depressingly human scenes. The triumph of liberalism is coming up with systems that, if followed, transcend the natural monkey-isms of humans. Things like law courts that decide based on evidence rather than common knowledge or deciding tricky questions by vote rather than by what "good people" think. And giving people freedom to do icky things and then letting the good be remembered with the bad. It can simultaneously be true that the West is a long way from communism and that these scenes look a lot like what happened in times when communism was seriously tried. These are the same dynamics that got out of control and into the halls of power.
- alushta 5y ago
  The comparison is very apt. My mother always says how this current climate in the US reminds her of the Cultural Revolution, and told me on many occasions about how one of her physicist friends got "struggled" against because he had the temerity to claim that the sun had black spots, and it was taken a a veiled criticism against Chairman Mao and the party. It was just a struggle session where he had to wear the dunce cap--no jail time, but I'm sure it was quite a frightful experience.

fastball 5y ago

> It is reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution. Which is not at all surprising given how many young people in the West like to style themselves as Marxists.

scroot 5y ago
Is your position that the adopting of a Marxist analytical framework necessarily leads to phenomena like the Cultural Revolution?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- fastball 5y ago
  Necessarily? No. But historically it doesn't seem to lead to much else when adopted by a society wholesale.

hownottowrite 5y ago

The end of that chapter had me in tears.

publicola1990 5y ago

Not just that, see how Louis Aggasiz's reputation is being hounded down in recent years. Renaming schools and pulling down statues of him.

throwoutway 5y ago
If you’re going to mention that then Id also have to mention these “do-gooders” renaming Abraham Lincoln schools… of all the presidents to cancel..

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

> It is reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution. That's right. People are being beaten to death, locked up in labor camps, mysteriously vanished and worse, all because they don't bow down to people who think there are different metrics worth using at least some of the time when judging science (or anything else). It's absolutely terrifying!

etangent 5y ago
You make an excellent point. Let's wait until people are actually beaten to death and imprisoned (and not just one, like a good few thousands of them!), and only then start complaining.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  That's right! Because there are just 1 or maybe 2 steps from Scientific American publishing a godawful article about Wilson & refusing to print a rebuttal (+), to peole being actually beaten to death. We need to take action, right now. (+) and let's not overlook that UPenn is actively considering changing tenure rules just because a poor law professor made some actually racist remarks. Labor camps could be here by 2023!
  - etangent 5y ago
    You know, I started out thinking that very bad language should indeed be censored. But considering what I see -- how eagerly language is used to eliminate one's political opponents from the public sphere, and how expansive definitions become over time (e.g. what happened to "literally violence") -- I now believe in complete freedom of speech, even down to fully genocidal rhetoric (and yes, that includes freedom from civilian consequences, not just government-imposed consequences). As a free speech absolutist, I now believe that the government should perform a proactive role in ensuring that the 1st amendment is obeyed -- not just a passive one.
  - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
    I don’t think anyone’s gonna die soon. What we are a couple steps away from, I think, is an environment where this rebuttal would be considered hate speech and the signatories would be fired for endorsing it. (We might be only half a step away, honestly; I give it a 50% chance that one of the signatories faces a Title IX complaint about it by next week, although I understand that such an unconfident prediction doesn’t really mean much.)

zozbot234 5y ago

> It is reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution. It's quite literally a mindless zombie remnant of the actual Cultural Revolution ideology of Lin Biao and the criminal Gang Of Four. That whole ideological memeplex was taken up by young radical leftists throughout the West in the late 1960s and 1970s. A generation has passed, and now those leftist students have grown up and become respected "liberal" and "progressive" leaders. Do the math, it's not rocket science.