56 ms·

Heresy

• odonnellryan 4y ago
  I know this is going to sound insane, but what is the obsession with truth? Things can be true and harmful. People should be judged for saying harmful things.
  • derevaunseraun 4y ago
    Yeah but how do you get people to form a consensus on what's harmful?
    • odonnellryan 4y ago
      You don't need to. Society will always define this for you.
      • derevaunseraun 4y ago
        But doesn't society defining this consist people deciding what's harmful?
        • odonnellryan 4y ago
          Yes absolutely. My point is it doesn't matter if we create a system unless we really think society is going to use it.
  • prepend 4y ago
    I don’t know about obsession with truth, but I think having a shared reality is the basis for relationships, trust, and many accomplishments. I don’t think truth is something that people should obsess over, but it is very important to seek and hopefully gain understanding. I remember reading 1984 and the breaking of people to admit that “2+2=5” was an interesting way that people accepting false things as true is very bad. I think intent matters a lot as judging people for being mean is different from someone saying “the sky is blue today” and the listener is harmed because they hate blue or whatever. That’s a completely made up example, but I think real, although dangerous, example is trans issues. There are bigots who say things like “women aren’t men” or whatever to hurt people and I don’t think that’s right. But then someone will say “men are generally stronger than women” to discuss some scientific principle and people feel harmed there because they don’t want any differences to exist.
  • the_optimist 4y ago
    Once you start deviating from truth, you enable a wide range of extremely horrifically bad things. Things you have not witnessed, but humanity has. Do not do this. "Here be dragons," for the true idiots who don't bother understanding this.
• throw_away_lol 4y ago
• throwaway543209 4y ago
  The comment you want to read: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30977924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30977924
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• galaxyLogic 4y ago
  To lighten up this discussion a bit here's perhaps the greatest song written about and against Heresy: https://youtu.be/s8leF4zV6lQ https://youtu.be/s8leF4zV6lQ
• lil_dispaches 4y ago
  What is the name for people who call you a heretic? This forum is full of them.
• _Microft 4y ago
  Minor criticism: I wonder why including a statement like "like a vector field whose elements become aligned" was thought necessary. It does not make much sense technically and it does not even add to the content. If anything it makes me doubt the rest of the essay by suddenly making me aware that Gell-Mann amnesia is a thing. From my point of view it is absolutely net-negative.
  • mjburgess 4y ago
    He's sort of thinking of a phase transition. I imagine it's included as a symptom of how he's visualizing the situation. The idea of a phase transition here makes sense, and I suspect is a fair description of some social phenomenon.
• turbinerneiter 4y ago
  Is the situation in the US that insane or is he fighting strawmen strapped to windmills?
  • emerged 4y ago
    It’s pretty insane. Notice any comment which is against witch hunt culture is being downvoted. The tech industry is fairly heavily ideologically captured because of where startup culture is largely based (SF). Edit: and now it’s flagged.
  • kylemh 4y ago
    Just read the comments in here. This is a whole lot of words to say: "I wish I could say things without facing consequences." As somebody else said in this thread, it's really rich to see Paul write about "implicitly ending the discussion" when he instablocks anybody on Twitter so easily.
    • ekianjo 4y ago
      > it's really rich to see Paul write about "implicitly ending the discussion" Misquote. He said "implicitly ending the discussion by calling someone a x-ist", which is not the same at blocking someone who is annoying - blocking someone is just shutting your door, not making them lose their livelihood by defaming them.
      • malnourish 4y ago
        Simply calling someone x-ist does not cause them to lose their livelihood by defaming them. If you know of any instance where someone has lost their livelihood due _only_ to being called an x-ist, please share.
    • Aeolun 4y ago
      > instablocks anybody on Twitter This is hardly implicit.
  • guelo 4y ago
    strawmen
• mmastrac 4y ago
  What I find most interesting are those arguing against "cancel culture" and the revival of heretics don't find issue with things like the "critical race theory" boogeyman and the "don't say gay"-style bills preventing teaching of sexuality topics. It's interesting how consistency of free thought isn't really the important thing here.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • jimmygrapes 4y ago
    Both of those topics are fraught with gaslighting ("nobody is teaching X") and misrepresentation ("don't say gay") along with outright fabrication ("it's a right").
    • XorNot 4y ago
      > and misrepresentation ("don't say gay") Exactly like you're doing here when you rode on in to "both sides!" this argument.
      • bradleyjg 4y ago
        You condemn “both sides” but the fact of the matter is that large groups of human being suck. It’s impossible to maintain any kind of nuance or individual compassion at scale. So, yeah not just both sides, all sides. If you think there’s some large group of people that all wear white hats and aren’t being shitty or ruining anyone’s life, you are being willfully blind. Furthermore, when you engage in this whataboutism garbage (“what’s always interesting to me”, yeah I’m sure it’s fascinating) when someone tries to point out something your “team” is doing wrong, you are part of the problem. Yes, Trumpists suck—-that means everyone else should get a free pass? By that token shouldn’t Trumpists get a free pass because Putin is out there committing atrocities?
        • deleted 4y ago
          [deleted]
• bryant 4y ago
  It seems like Paul is confusing intolerance of intolerance with heresy in this essay. Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance Expression of just about anything is met with fairly minimal consequence at least in much of the US, but nonetheless, there's a difference between not accepting something versus being intolerant of it. E.g not accepting [way of living] in one's own daily life v. not tolerating it in the world around oneself. Are both of these rejections abhorrent? Probably. But the line is crossed when someone transcends a refusal of acceptance in one's personal sphere into a refusal of tolerance of such in the world around them. (I had a specific thing in the brackets, but pulling a page from Paul's essay, I figured I'd blot it out to make it a neutral point. Fill the blank with [religion] or [suspect classification] or [politics] and it still holds.)
  • ByteJockey 4y ago
    I think you're the one who is confused here. The paradox of tolerance was not conceived to describe people who merely hold opinions. To quote Popper (this is also quoted in the wiki link you posted): > In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. Which is fair. If someone is going to respond to you by beating and shooting you, you shouldn't have to tolerate them. The justification for the intolerance of the intolerant is that the intolerant use violence to get their way. But rounding up a mob because someone holds an opinion is not what Popper is describing. It is much closer to hunting down heretics.
    • snerbles 4y ago
      In practice it seems Popper's Paradox is frequently cited as a justification of force against heretics, accompanied by claims that the heresy is in and of itself a form of violence.
• edent 4y ago
  I mean, this is the only real response to people posting this sort of nonsense. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkCBhKs4faI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkCBhKs4faI
  • toomuchtodo 4y ago
    YouTube blocked in the US based on copyright grounds.
    • Apocryphon 4y ago
      Cancel culture strikes again
      • solarengineer 4y ago
        It is a copyright block by the BBC. This video contains material created by BBC Studios that an individual then uploaded into their channel.
    • dijksterhuis 4y ago
      Title: Stewart Lee - These days, if you say you're English ... Is a clip from a BBC show (Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, worth a watch if you enjoy British comedy) so copyright block not too surprising depending on where you're located. He basically takes the piss out of a taxi driver. The stereotype goes that a taxi driver will share their "bloody immigrants" opinions with their fares whether the fares care about hearing it or not. Cabbie says: "These days, you get arrested and thrown in jail if you say you're English, don't you." Stewart "wears him down" in the bit by repeating the question back with increasing incredulity and after about 3 minutes the cabbie character eventually just says, "no, you don't actually get arrested." It's fckin hilarious.
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
• fpiazza 4y ago
  Excellent read
• shadowgovt 4y ago
  Graham has forgotten his own essays if he thinks that this is a rebirth. "What you can't say" [http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html] is one of the first of his essays I ever read. It eventually directed me to this site. At the time, I thought it was brilliant. 18 years on, I think it's a good piece of writing but he's only got half the story. Sadly, today's essay suggest to me he hasn't found the other half in the intervening nearly two decades. Taboo is a powerful tool. Some taboos, to be sure, outlive their usefulness. But some compress lifetimes of experience into easily remembered lessons for people who have not yet had that experience so that we can ever progress... If every generation has to keep relearning the same lessons over and over, there's no time for more. The counterweight to the philosophy Graham is espousing here is this one (https://www.ted.com/talks/ernesto_sirolli_want_to_help_someone_shut_up_and_listen/transcript?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/ernesto_sirolli_want_to_help_someo...). A taboo is a social analogy to a fence. Someone built it at some point for a reason. That reason might be gone, in which case the fence is unnecessary. But if you're going to tear down a fence, understand why it's there. 18 years on, I don't think Paul is wrong, but the repeated mistake I see people in my field make is assuming that they're the smartest person in the room when they encounter a heresy or taboo and falling right into the consequence that taboo was intended to protect against.
  • kijin 4y ago
    Graham didn't say it's a "recent" rebirth in the sense that we often use that word in the technology sector. It's "recent" in the sense that historians use it, i.e. sometime in the last generation or two. In TFA he places the cultural shift somewhere in the late 80s, long before his 2004 essay on the matter. I've read both essays and it seems that Graham's opinion on the topic hasn't changed much over the last 18 years. We can probably all guess which "recent" event prompted him to revisit the topic, whether we agree with him or not.
    • stareatgoats 4y ago
      Sorry, can't guess, not in the US. Care to enlighten us?
  • 4y ago
• pkulak 4y ago
  When you say or do socially unacceptable things, there can be consequences. Is that “heresy”? I always associated that word with religion, myself, but it’s interesting that religion is so out of favor right now that you can use it as a comparison to argue that any action not explicitly illegal should be free of negative consequence.
  • Aeolun 4y ago
    > Is that “heresy”? Depends on whether you get put to the stake for this socially unacceptable thing. At some point it was socially unacceptable/heresy for a woman to float when thrown in a pond.
    • krainboltgreene 4y ago
      That actually never happened, much like cancel culture it's a myth made up by people trying to sell books.
  • Koshkin 4y ago
    Yes, heresy by definition is an opinion that is deemed socially unacceptable.
    • pkulak 4y ago
      Not any definitions I can find: > belief or opinion contrary to orthodox religious (especially Christian) doctrine.
      • skellington 4y ago
        It doesn't require a great intellectual jump to see how the word 'heresy' which has a tradition of being applied towards organized religion is an appropriate description of people that behave in a religious way in general. Religion is just a belief system. So is Marxism. Libertarianism. Etc.
        • 4y ago
• tedivm 4y ago
  This thing where people want to say horrible things without consequence is just so weird. I have the right to judge your statements just as much as you have a right to say them. I have the right to leave jobs when it turns out the people working there hate people like me, and companies have the right to hire people who aren't going to alienate future potential employees. When people bring up posts like this they never say what the "heresies" are. People aren't getting "cancelled" for their takes on taxes. People aren't getting fired for picking nomad over kubernetes. People are getting called out for denying the existence of people who aren't like them. When someone gets fired for, as an example, purposefully misgendering their colleagues- that isn't getting fired for having a bad opinion, that's being fired for making a hostile work environment. What's always interesting to me is that these "free speech absolutists" are explicitly calling out the left here, when the right is the one passing "don't say gay" legislation and refusing to allow trans children the healthcare needed to save their lives. The right is also kicking everyone out of their party who doesn't bow before Trump. To say that the left is creating heresies while ignoring that the right is literally creating new dogma is just delusional to me.
  • ekianjo 4y ago
    > This thing where people want to say horrible things without consequence is just so weird. Define horrible.
  • baggy_trough 4y ago
    Here's one: I don't believe that gender identity is a valid concept. Does that make for a hostile work environment or "deny the existence" of anyone? I submit to you that the answer is no, except for die-hard adherents of the new ideology. Well, that simply isn't my religion, and I resent attempts to force it on me.
    • eganist 4y ago
      > Here's one: I don't believe that gender identity is a valid concept. Does that make for a hostile work environment or "deny the existence" of anyone? I submit to you that the answer is no, except for die-hard adherents of the new ideology. Well, that simply isn't my religion, and I resent attempts to force it on me. Here's the question: Are you tolerant of people who do? Or do you make the lives of those people (who viscerally feel their gender identity to be true) more difficult than those who share your belief? The line is crossed with the latter.
• Cpoll 4y ago
  > I've deliberately avoided mentioning any specific heresies here. Which, looking at the replies, is a mistake, because everyone projects the least charitable interpretation and/or assumes the article is dog-whistling. The problem is that there are heresies and heresies, and conflating everything together isn't helpful. To give one extreme of a "heresy": It's reasonable to not want to associate with someone if they're (in your perspective) ideologically reprehensible. In that sense, it was a bit aberrant that in the past most people would look the other way at stuff like racism and antisemitism in academia or the workplace ("none of my business," "not related to their professional skills," etc.) But when other people think of "heresies" they might be talking about approving of a right-wing policy in a left-wing environment, or (moreso in the past) being labelled "communist," or taking contrary stances on things like wage equality. So to reiterate my point, the article is flawed and can only lead to noisy nuance-less arguments until it spends more time defining "heresy."
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • blockwriter 4y ago
    It is the infinite regress of orthodoxy that puts the essay’s rhetoric in jeopardy. I think the essay is internally consistent. American culture has built up an unsolvable Zeno’s paradox that no one seems interested in thinking through because barbarians prefer to live in a state of supernatural ignorance. “All conversation about this topic is flawed, therefore the original idea and the response is unable to influence my priors.”
  • CPLX 4y ago
    If it’s a dog whistle it’s the loudest one I’ve ever heard. Beginning of the actual framing of the issue: > There are an ever-increasing number of opinions you can be fired for. > For example, when someone calls a statement "x-ist," Is there any genuine confusion what he’s talking about here? How many commonly used words fit the “x-ist” framing? I mean he’s a white pontificating boomer billionaire active on Twitter worried he’ll eventually say something dumb and get cancelled. Which, indeed, is a concept that’s having a cultural moment right now. The problem is he’s adding literally nothing to the discussion. I think most sane people can realize that the fringe “woke” elements of the discourse can veer into ridiculousness. Maybe that matters a lot maybe it matters a little I dunno. To the extent there’s an actual problem here it’s really focused on those who are potentially at actual risk. Examples of actual problems that could be created by excessive wokeness include the increasing degree to which HR is able to divide and control the most vulnerable elements of the labor force, or the highly cynical ways in which jargon laden intersectional language is used to obscure a hegemony of corporate and wealthy donor interests over leftist or activist organizations. Would be interesting if he had opinions on that. But instead we’re again talking about how the most powerful economic forces in our culture are being trolled on Twitter. That isn’t an actual fucking problem. Like really it isn’t. PG is clearly a very smart guy. I’ve read his books I want to like him. Sure is a terrible pity he’s not spending his twilight years being introspective about the horrifying legacy of inequality and misery that’s been inflicted on society by the tech sector, where he has an actual ability to have a positive influence.
• jroblak 4y ago
  Genuinely funny coming from the dude who insta-blocks anyone who even mildly disagrees with him about _anything_ on Twitter.
  • ratww 4y ago
    I'm really wondering why this is a problem. Sure, that might insulate him and put him in an echo chamber, but blocking is entirely his right, and he's the one who'll get the consequences from that. I also tend to do a similar thing in spaces I curate, and it's honestly better for mental health. Someone comes out from nowhere with something completely 180 degrees from what I say? That's not reality TV, that's my private [social network page]. I'm not gonna be baited. Saying someone "can't block" is an asshole move. Nobody should be forced to talk and see messages by anyone.
    • mwcampbell 4y ago
      > I'm really wondering why this is a problem. To take an example from my own experience, if I automatically tuned out anyone who said something bad about the requirement to make things accessible for blind people, I would deny myself the opportunity to learn how they think and become more effective in my advocacy or, possibly, revise my position.
      • ratww 4y ago
        Yes, I mention that in the second paragraph. That's his to decide. If you're interested in hearing the other side in all cases, then of course blocking is counter-intuitive. Wether he wants or not, it's his choice. However, even if you were to block everyone, you could still curate the experience of hearing from the other side in other situations: by consuming articles, by asking someone privately, by not blocking some of the replies. I also would disagree 100% that social networks are a proper venue for this kind of exchange. He still has 100% the right to block and saying this is akin to cancellation is bullshit.
    • Osmose 4y ago
      The problem is that he has way more influence in the world than you or I due to his status, money, connections, etc. The amount of harm resulting from him being in an echo chamber is much larger, especially since he actively posts in order to influence large amounts of people. People judging you for your blocking is one of the prices you're socially expected to pay in return for those privileges.
• afc 4y ago
  > The clearest evidence of this [that some x-ist statements may be true] is that whether a statement is considered x-ist often depends on who said it. Truth doesn't work that way. The same statement can't be true when one person says it, but x-ist, and therefore false, when another person does. The argument doesn't support it's conclusion: it _could_ be that all potentially x-ist statements are false, but they are only x-ist when certain people say them. In other words, whether they are x-ist depends on who says them, but they may still be all false (regardless of who says them).
  • skellington 4y ago
    You mis-paraphrased the argument. Your paraphrase insertion [] is incorrect. It should be: [that such x-ist labels are applied to statements regardless of their truth or falsity] Your conclusion is roughly his point, but his point holds independently of the "truth" of the underlying statement.
  • mjburgess 4y ago
    It's a "truth vs. order" debate. PG is in highly stable environments where order isnt an issue, so he is more concerned about truth. Generally, when "x-isms" are accused, the issue is the break down of social order in the environment in which the accusations are made. It really doesnt matter if your x-ist point is true, if saying it, is an action which destabilizes (eg.,) the workplace. Most spaces aren't for discussing what's true, they're for getting-things-done. Stating truths in those spaces may, seemingly quite rightly, be prohibited.
    • Ancapistani 4y ago
      > It's a "truth vs. order" debate. > It really doesnt matter if your x-ist point is true, if saying it, is an action which destabilizes (eg.,) the workplace. I think this is pretty insightful. There are two things at play here that I think are being conflated - one is challenging certain concepts, and the other is challenge the social order that is predicated upon them. Let’s take racism as an example. Arguing that racism doesn’t exist, in whole or in part, is challenging the concept. Rightly or wrongly, that is one of the “heresies” from the article. It’s also a very difficult thing to discuss respectfully and productively in the workplace, and in most every case I can think of off the top of my head, unproductive. Arguing that the actions taken in response to that conclusion, in my opinion, is and should be a different thing entirely. We have a work environment today that seeks to offset historical/systemic racism through positive steps such as affirmative action. I believe that challenging the implementation, scope, or even the continued existence of affirmative action should be acceptable - because it is a specific action that is in the scope of the course of business and has a demonstrable impact on the work environment itself. From my reading of the article, I think what PG is saying is that it should be much more acceptable than it is to openly and honestly discuss the system that we have built that creates our work environments. I don’t believe that someone who argues against affirmative action - or any similar workplace policy, explicit or implicit - should be anathema. This example of racism/AA is only one example. There are others with similar stigma associated. Personally, I feel a great deal of social pressure not to discuss anything related to COVID in the workplace. I work for a company based in SF, but live in a small town in the South - very different social environments. I have had COVID, have verified that I have demonstrable antibodies on par with what is expected from vaccination + boosters. I also have a history of systemic inflammation that I’ve struggled with my whole life, and both my GP and the specialist I see agree that vaccination poses at least a slightly higher risk for me than for the general population. As a result I’ve decided not to get the vaccine. I have absolutely zero desire to try to sway anyone to see things my way, and honestly don’t want to talk about it at work lest it turn into a political argument. With few exceptions, I avoid discussing politics with colleagues. A while ago we were planning a team outing in California. I wasn’t going to be able to attend, but I absolutely didn’t want to discuss that the reason was that I wasn’t vaccinated and don’t want to be. This is the kind of heresy that concerns me. I feel like it should be reasonable for me to say that I am not vaccinated and don’t intend to be. I shouldn’t have to justify that. I may be excluded from some activities, and that’s acceptable to me - but it’s a discussion that I don’t even feel like I can have. Instead I have to hide this decision, avoid discussion of it, and hope I’m not put into a position where I’m forced to. If I do have to reveal it to my employer I expect that at the very least I’ll be viewed negatively in their eyes and it will harm my social environment. It shouldn’t be seen as heresy to hold a different opinion.
• ratww 4y ago
  I feel like a pariah sometimes in those discussions. I agree with PG in that I'm also not too happy with the "only X can be x-ist", but on the other hand I'm also not a conspiracy nut that talks non-stop about "critical race theory". I'm also not free speech absolutist, as I'm ok with things like European law criminalizing Nazism or glorification of genocide. I feel like I'm constantly against three very radical groups, and there's nobody representing me. I'm tired of radicalism coming from three different directions.
  • Apocryphon 4y ago
    When liberalism, conservatism, and libertarianism have all failed you, perhaps the only path left is communitarianism.
    • PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
      Anarchism also remains.
      • mordae 4y ago
        But we desperately need more anarchists. :-) Perhaps people should read David Graeber and Cory Doctorow more? The whole culture wars thing is a prime example of complementary schismogenesis in action, which was rather nicely presented in the Dawn of Everything from Graeber on couple thousand years old tribes.
      • falcolas 4y ago
        Personally, I’d rather not be murdered for my resources, thanks.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  • mordae 4y ago
    Hahaha, same here. Have you noticed how the discussion here is fairly civil? It's very similar to most Reddit places, lobste.rs and other *moderated* fora as well. Most of these extremes only arise in unmoderated spaces such as Facebook and Twitter. Or the original /b/. Similar things are happening in the news comment sections wherever they don't care to moderate. It radicalizes people long-term. I am no fan of censorship, but EU will probably step in eventually.
• muglug 4y ago
  > Can a statement be x-ist, for whatever value of x, and also true? If the answer is yes, then they're admitting to banning the truth I disagree. The statement “very few women are capable of running a Fortune 500 company effectively” is factually true, but implicitly sexist (very few men are capable either). By banning those sorts of statements you’re not banning the truth, you’re just quieting assholes.
  • pikma 4y ago
    Is the reason it's sexist because it can be interpreted as "women are less capable than men"? You would say this other statement is false and sexist, correct?
    • happytoexplain 4y ago
      I know you didn't ask me, but I just wanted to say that language is nothing without context. "Less capable" is very subjective and context-dependent, so without more specifics it can't really be "true" or "false" except very colloquially. As for "sexist" - in a void with no context, it's apparently sexist, but that doesn't mean the sentence can't exist in a non-sexist context.
    • CrimsonCape 4y ago
      "Women are less capable than men" is sexist; "The majority of women are physically and mentally incapable of running a Fortune 500 company" is a neutral hypothesis that can be asserted with anecdotal evidence, sociological studies, and if modern corporate leadership wasn't silent on the issue, there would also likely be firsthand testimony. <--- heresy But on the other hand, you could likely present evidence to the contrary. The comparison of the opposing evidence, and the careful scrutiny of the facts that provide that evidence, is the most truthful approach to the question. For the record, the commenter above who casually states that "most women can't run Fortune 500 companies because most men can't either" <---THAT is sexist
      • happytoexplain 4y ago
        Please try not to misquote people you disagree with. The GP did not say most women can't because most men can't - they said most women can't and most men can't. I.e. most women can't because most people can't, which seems uncontroversial. It's a very hard job. Unrelated: I don't understand what you mean by a "neutral" hypothesis. The hypothesis can be made for neutral or non-neutral goals, by a neutral or non-neutral person, but that's all true of any hypothesis.
• tlogan 4y ago
  “Heresy” is not when you purposefully say things which make some other group a less human. We as a society kinda decided that is wrong. But there some people who do not think that is wrong and they call it “heresy”.
  • Koshkin 4y ago
    An opinion that is "wrong" from the society's standpoint is indeed what is called "heresy."
• anonu 4y ago
  The missing component not mentioned in PGs essay is the acceleration and amplification of cancel culture via the Internet. Even a decade ago, tribes were geographically local. Today, your tribe is literally global. It knows no borders. Thus social media amplifies the effect of cancel culture and "same think".
  • throwoutway 4y ago
    > Today, your tribe is literally global. What's worse is tribes also have strongarms inside corporations. If the Internet mob wants to get someone fired for saying something, they just reach out to the local chapter of strongarms and make demands/walkouts against the company until they get their way.
  • oasisbob 4y ago
    The internet accelerated and amplifies many other things as well, including the free exchange of ideas and information. I would argue this may dominate over the effect you assume and drive the same simply because if one wants to become outraged over an act, they need to know it occurred in the first place. I'm not sure I'd agree that the overall effect of the internet is to drive cultural consensus.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• vinceguidry 4y ago
  This essay would have been more useful had it included a treatment of actual Catholic heresy accusations and trials. I could give my own account of how I understand it, but I would have liked to have heard PGs characterization. Instead we're stuck with an modernist take ungrounded in history.
  • falcolas 4y ago
    Yeah, while I’m not a huge fan of modern radicalization (or perhaps just it’s resurgence) I still find “cancel culture” more tolerable than torture and murder.
• MrSlonzak 4y ago
  We live in New Middleages. Just substitute religion for ideology and suddenly it all makes sense.
  • micromacrofoot 4y ago
    maybe read a book or a wikipedia article about what the middle ages were like
    • emerged 4y ago
      what they ended up like, or how they got there? because I’d rather note and correct the trend /before/ we start torturing and killing people in public display.
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      • otterley 4y ago
        The two eras and their initial conditions aren’t even comparable. We have strong state constitutions and the procedural rule of law now. We use science instead of religion to explain mysterious phenomena. Those aren’t being torn down any time soon over spite. We’re simply not going to end someone’s life over a differing opinion; our entire system of government would have to change first. Your argument is basically a “slippery slope” argument, and this is a good example of why these types of arguments are so weak and problematic.
        • emerged 4y ago
          Oh ok. I was thinking patterns have occurred throughout history and that we could learn to identify those patterns to avoid repeating history. But good point, no two times in history are completely identical so we shouldn’t bother.
          • otterley 4y ago
• rs_rs_rs_rs_rs 4y ago
  • vinceguidry 4y ago
    You should probably go look at the current state of diagnosis and treatment of gender dysphoria before giving your hot take. If caught and treated early, gender reassignment surgery can work miracles on a child's quality of life. It really shouldn't be seen any differently than other treatable birth defects.
    • zozbot234 4y ago
      The notion that young kids necessarily have a completely formed and stabilized "gender identity" (which is necessary for "trans kids" to even be a meaningful concept) is entirely driven by ideology. It doesn't even pass the most cursory test of plausibility.
      • otterley 4y ago
      • teraflop 4y ago
        Of course it's not necessary for gender identity to be "completely formed and stabilized" to be able to talk about it. Do you think it's meaningless to describe a child as "short" or "tall" because their body is still growing?
        • Karunamon 4y ago
          I think that's a poor comparison, as those things are objectively measured, while gender identity exists in the mind and cannot be.
          • teraflop 4y ago
            Sorry, I don't really get the relevance of that objection. In everyday life, most of us are happy to accept the "reality" (in whatever philosophical sense you choose to use) of all sorts of personality traits that exist only "in the mind": kindness, eloquence, sense of humor, willpower. If you likewise accept the reality of "gender identity" as a mental trait, then I don't understand why it makes sense to insist that trait is only meaningful when it's "fully formed" -- can we say that about any aspect of our personality? I don't know if this exact question has ever been scientifically studied, but it seems pretty clear that if you offered people the choice to push a magic button and permanently change their body to the opposite sex, the vast majority of us would pretty confidently say, no, and a small minority of people would be equally confident in answering the opposite way. That's close enough to "objectively measurable" for me.
• ruined 4y ago
  wow, pg banned from his own webbed side
• metmac 4y ago
  Why was this post flagged?
  • SmileyJames 4y ago
    It's heretical
    • metmac 4y ago
      But like. Seriously @dang, can you provide context here. Is this a matter of heated discussion or what…
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • Koshkin 4y ago
      Is it heretical to call a heresy "heresy"?
  • falcolas 4y ago
    Because many users flagged it. That’s usually all there is to it. Personally I flagged it because it’s conversational flame bait where two radicalized groups will argue past each other endlessly, which will serve only to reinforce their radicalization. (Yes, me too)
• osipov 4y ago
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• javajosh 4y ago
• yojo 4y ago
  Woo boy. Generally liked the concept for the essay, but this piece jumps out as problematic (or just poorly written): > The clearest evidence of this is that whether a statement is considered x-ist often depends on who said it. Truth doesn't work that way. The same statement can't be true when one person says it, but x-ist, and therefore false, when another person does. Really? He can’t think of a statement that is racist when a white person says it and not a black person? Many (most?) statements embed some of the speakers attributes, either explicitly or implicitly. At a trivial level, saying “I am hungry” can be true when one person says it and false when another does. Obviously “I” statements are not what Graham is talking about, but the idea that your lived experience cannot qualify or disqualify you for passing certain judgements seems suspect.
  • jimmar 4y ago
    Maybe you chose your "hunger" example in haste, but it's not a great counterexample to the points in the article. Only the person making the statement about being hungry can know the truth. The focus of the article, as I read it, is on shared truths that must be evaluated in public sphere.
  • prtkgpt 4y ago
    Ghost writing?
    • falcolas 4y ago
      Might be simpler. PG no longer has to censor his own speech in fear it will rebound on his business.
  • newbamboo 4y ago
    You are expressing a literally racist opinion. “Only race y can express idea x.” Unlike others, I don’t want to cancel you for being racist, though you clearly are, by your own admission. This tolerance I show towards others allows dialog and thus enables human progress. Cancelling racists does the opposite. I support your right to think out load and bless the sacredness of your inner spirit even though you think racistically about free speech which imo is not really “free” speech.
• tomlockwood 4y ago
• Apocryphon 4y ago
  Has anyone considered this whole phenomenon from a materialist analysis? Global society is more interconnected than before. The public discourse on social media platforms is huge. It’s also hugely polarized for multitudes of reasons. People (on the Internet) are getting into arguments with more people than ever before, usually with strangers. From that perspective, canceling/labeling heresy could potentially be thought of simply an act of automation. People identify reoccurring patterns of arguments, classify their adversary, and use a cached response. Thus, instead of spending the costly time and energy to respond to every argument in detail, you tag, use the appropriate function, and move on. And because modern society is so polarized, those functions tend to be fairly absolute- who wants to get dragged into another argument they’ve had before? The problem is that modern discourse just can’t scale.
  • themanmaran 4y ago
    Agreed on the individual side. It's a response to decision fatigue. You cannot effectively understand every individual, their opinions and intentions, while scaling your personal "social network" up to thousands of people. So instead you apply a label and move on. But "modern discourse just can't scale" is a bit of a defeatist mindset. Surly there is a solution out there for reducing polarization.
    • Apocryphon 4y ago
      I think polarization can be decreased, I just think one of the prices to pay might be we need to collectively agree to refrain from the luxury of arguing with random strangers.
    • idleproc 4y ago
      > Surly there is a solution out there for reducing polarization. Well, there's compassion. But that's always been rather difficult, and seems to have fallen out of fashion... Maybe you meant a technical solution though.
  • jimkleiber 4y ago
    I appreciate how you bring up the point of efficiency. One of the things that challenges me in communication and resolving conflict, especially on the internet, is that it often works better if I use more precise language, which often requires more words. So, for example, adding qualifications can show uncertainty and humility, yet adding "often works" is longer than "works" both from a character limit and a typing it on a phone keyboard. Another example, saying "that's annoying" can be quicker than "that annoyed me" or more so "that annoyed me and may annoy others like me." As much as I try to catch myself taking these linguistic shortcuts, I still may give in to the quickness of them, especially when I'm in a rush, and sometimes, especially online, conversations can move so quickly they put me into a heightened rush state. Anyway, I'm grateful you pointed out this element of efficiency and scalability. I think these conversations can scale better by taking a little extra time to communicate than by always taking the shortcut. Maybe akin to how code can become more legible, and thus easier to maintain and scale, if the developer takes the time to more precisely name things. The name may be longer but may be more precise and prevent future problems.
• prtkgpt 4y ago
  Why is it flagged?
  • stareatgoats 4y ago
    People thought it would be like a joke perhaps. Anyway, it's unflagged now.
    • stareatgoats 4y ago
      And now it is flagged again. This really seems to rub some people (dare we say the "the aggressively conventional-minded"?) the wrong way ...
      • falcolas 4y ago
        It’s flamebait, and will never incite civil discussions. Why would we want it on the front page?
        • hunterb123 4y ago
          there's plenty of civil discussion in this thread. imo banning an article about cancel culture would only bolster its point. but I'm curious, why do you think it's flamebait and not a topic warranting discussion?
  • zozbot234 4y ago
    Because heresy.
  • cultpfog 4y ago
    Probably people irritated at HN being a cult of personality for Paul Graham. He's not that interesting a writer, but people here swallow his literary turds like they're pure gold.
• ISL 4y ago
  There is a certain joy in seeing that this submission is presently titled: [flagged] Heresy
  • prtkgpt 4y ago
    define “joy” lol
    • xqcgrek2 4y ago
      amusing irony
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• kache_ 4y ago
  flagged.... lmao
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• edmcnulty101 4y ago
  Heresies are inherent to tribalism. Violating the tribes bigger rules gets one rejected or killed. This ties into the identity of the society.
• prtkgpt 4y ago
  It’s no longer [flagged]. Thank you.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • eliseumds 4y ago
    It's been flagged again. What a mess.
    • prtkgpt 4y ago
      Unflagged again. This is super weird.
• larry_mulgrave 4y ago
  [flagged]
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • junofan 4y ago
    Cut it out.
  • Aqueous 4y ago
    Thank you for very clearly demonstrating his point, that the people who point out these tactics are often accused of being heretics themselves.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• newbamboo 4y ago
  Remarkable to see the lack of self awareness in this thread. “It’s not censorship when I do it!!!!” It scares me to have so many educated people that aren’t in touch, aren’t even in control, if their own minds. My faith in free will ever diminishes.
  • Aeolun 4y ago
    The best moment is when you become aware that you aren’t yourself immune to everything you critize others for.
• ricardo81 4y ago
  I'll preface my comment by saying maybe (certainly) some people are more nuanced on the matter. I think the baseline is equality. Anything after that, we celebrate our differences and the debate is about a future direction for us all. Extremely generic I know, but better than trying to homogenise us into a singular point of view.
• Beltalowda 4y ago
  I think this is an important part: "Fortunately in western countries the suppression of heresies is nothing like as bad as it used to be. Though the window of opinions you can express publicly has narrowed in the last decade, it's still much wider than it was a few hundred years ago. The problem is the derivative. Up till about 1985 the window had been growing ever wider. Anyone looking into the future in 1985 would have expected freedom of expression to continue to increase. Instead it has decreased." Many people proclaim that "free speech is dead" and all of that, but it's still at an all-time high if you zoom out a bit. You don't even need to go back a few hundred years; look at the number of people persecuted by the government (both through the courts and outside of it) for things like blasphemy, subversion, civil rights, sexual deviancy (homosexuality, among other things), etc. just a few decades ago. In the US burning the flag was illegal in many states until the late 80s when the SCOTUS declared it was legal under the 1st (and only by a 5-4 majority). Yes, there are some developments I am not especially pleased with either, but it's also important to remember the historical context. Anyway, I liked this piece of nuance.
  • morelisp 4y ago
    • Beltalowda 4y ago
      I don't see how someone's year of birth is related, or important? If anything, I find it valuable to see perspectives that fall outside of my own experience. I was born in 1985. I don't remember what the world was like in 1985, or 1975, but I'm eager to learn about it to see what we've gained since then, or maybe lost, to better guide the path we should take in the future.
      • xboxnolifes 4y ago
        > I don't see how someone's year of birth is related, or important? It's related because people are incredibly biased toward liking things "as they were" when growing up. I'd be more impressed by accounts of people growing up in a time before the one they are praising.
• Pxtl 4y ago
  It's important to remember that this particular kind of "heresy" is not about hurting an imaginary God, but actual real people. Questioning the legitimacy of geocentrism is a victimless crime. Questioning the legitimacy of gay marriage or gay adoption or sexual transitioning has very defined, specific victims that face real actual harms from these attitudes. Right now parents of trans children are being accused of being abusers, with legal threats to that effect. Gay parents and their supporters are being called groomers. Clamping down hard on that is defensible. You may believe that this is an unjustifiable restriction of speech, but it is materially different from old concepts of "heresy".
  • ratww 4y ago
    There is an OCEAN of difference between saying what this article is saying and being okay with the recent wave of anti-trans/anti-LGBT conservatism in the US. Someone saying that "teaching about sexuality is akin to grooming" is clearly telling a lie. If someone gets shit for it, then the hubbub/cancellation is definitely not taking priority over the question of truth or falsity. Heck, if anything, the anti-trans/anti-LGBT conservatism you're referring to also falls into the same issue: it's also bullshit "Heresy" that people use to punish others over truth.
    • hunterb123 4y ago
      > "teaching about sexuality is akin to grooming" is clearly a lie. Out of curiosity is there an age limit on this statement for you? Because while we're talking about heresies I'd like to say teaching sexuality to young children without parental consent is grooming. What happened to asking for a permit slip signed by the parents if you want to give a sex talk. It's a parent's rights issue, not a LGBTQ issue.
      • otterley 4y ago
        I’m always amused when I see people who say that “abortion is not a legitimate right because it’s a court-created right that’s not enumerated in the Constitution” are the same people who have no trouble finding a “parent’s right” where no such enumerated right exists, either. Also, this word “grooming” gets dispensed a lot lately when discussing this issue, and I’m not sure that the people who say it know what it means. Or, alternatively, they are afraid to say what they really think the consequences of talking to children about all the different relationships people have because they know it is wrong and would subject them to fierce ridicule.
• aaron695 4y ago
  Interesting how he chose to name nothing except anti-vaxxing. Body autonomy is incredibly important. But when people start ranting about anti-vaxxers that concept doesn't even enter their little heads. It's never I understand their rights and how important that is, but... Because any complex thoughts on the issue are heresy.
• version_five 4y ago
  I think what's missed is that most of the extreme, even if common, cases of people demanding heretics be punished, are really just trolling. Trolls are continually pushing the boundaries, and institutions are afraid to stand up to them for fear or being labeled heretical (ironically) so we have this feedback of more and more ridiculous stuff that nobody actually believes becoming mainstream. By fighting it the way PG is, it (trolling) gets legitimized. Feeding the trolls doesn't work, we need to to better to collectively tune them out, picking a fight with them puts you in their territory and you've already lost.
  • javajosh 4y ago
    The evidence doesn't support your view that SJWs are "just trolls". A lot of SJWs genuinely believe that cancelling people for espousing wrong view is a real force for good. And they have some superficially good reasons for that belief. Trolls will use any weapon they can, so it's less interesting to debate them (except, maybe, about the nature of sadism).
• dasil003 4y ago
  I think this is largely a social media phenomenon. Twitter flash mobs can destroy people’s lives in a vary offhanded, drive-by fashion simply because people with actual power are scared of them and capitulate to unreasonable demands. But if you talk with people in real life, you’ll find much more nuanced thinking and willingness to engage in open-minded debate. The problem is giving too much attention to extremist views.
  • seaourfreed 4y ago
    Paul posted this because this has escalated to getting people on the political right fired from their jobs (directly or indirectly). See his words: "Nowadays, in civilized countries, heretics only get fired in the metaphorical sense, by losing their jobs. But the structure of the situation is the same: the heresy outweighs everything else. You could have spent the last ten years saving children's lives, but if you express certain opinions, you're automatically fired."
    • UncleMeat 4y ago
      “Political right” is doing a lot of work here. People aren’t getting fired for supporting lower taxes or environmental deregulation.
      • kemayo 4y ago
        The good old "a state's right to what exactly?" comeback. :D
    • kevingadd 4y ago
      Fired from their jobs for what, exactly? Being too fiscally conservative? Most people in the US are under at-will employment, so they can be fired at any time for almost any reason. So if we're going to argue that they are being fired due to political persecution from the hard left, you have to make a thorough case there because you're saying their employer shouldn't be free to hire and fire whomever they like.
• cs702 4y ago
  We should all strive to keep an open mind, especially to ideas contrary to our own. But it’s not easy, because every group, in every society, organically develops its own heresies – things you cannot say without consequences. For example, here are some heresies common in the Silicon Valley startup community: * Heresy: “Government regulations are, on the whole, a net force for the good of humanity.” * Heresy: “All entrepreneurs in the US owe much their success to past government spending on infrastructure and education, so they should be personally taxed at high rates to repay their enormous debt to society.” * Heresy: “High redistribution of wealth via government spending is necessary for sustaining economic growth.” * Heresy: “Silicon Valley is an exclusionary club, not a meritocracy.” Proclaiming any of these things, say, at a dinner party with startup CEOs, is socially equivalent to jumping on top of the table, pulling your pants down, and passing gas. In fact, the latter may be more socially acceptable -- it's less threatening to the startup zeitgeist.
  • xqcgrek2 4y ago
    All of those statements can be easily refuted factually, so no, they are not heresies.
    • beaconstudios 4y ago
      This is the thing - everybody thinks the heresies they are opposed to are also false. Many of which are based purely on ideology.
  • glogla 4y ago
    > For example, here are some heresies common in the Silicon Valley startup community: You're basically just saying it is heresy to be moderately left-wing in Silicon Valley. Which I don't doubt is true, even if I hope it is not quite as dire. Just wanted to point out the connection. EDIT: though if we're talking "in front of CEO", that might be like talking about French Revolution in front of a monarch, or mentioning Mao in front of landlord, so I can understand why the CEO would not like it.
    • morelisp 4y ago
• Biologist123 4y ago
  This essay was somewhat high on opinion, somewhat low on evidence. Paul Graham tweets a lot about this issue, and cancel culture is something he is apparently very sensitive too. It makes me wonder what happened - as given his lack of evidence - it appears to be an emotional reaction rather than a logical one. As an aside, most examples of people being fired for expressing opinions seem to come from academia. I’ve wondered if that might be due to a change in the cost of university education, which means universities are more akin to businesses servicing clients. And the first thing you’ll always hear in a client-facing business is… _”Don’t piss off your customers”._ A sad commercial reality because a diversity of opinion in education is valuable.
  • phillipcarter 4y ago
    I have a far less positive view of education and many of the professors who have traditionally occupied it in the US. A whole lot of entrenched people with tenure who have formal authority over people (grad students) without even a hint of manager training and it really shows. Many of these people are downright childish, intentionally put blinders on the world immediately around them, and cause countless students unnecessary pain just so that their own eccentric personalities are accommodated.
  • ryanobjc 4y ago
    I’ve looked at some of these academic circumstances and the ones I looked at were very misleading. Often times the only account we have is from the fired person, who is obviously going to push the most favorable narrative. When you dig in, there is something else amiss. But this focus - deliberately engineered btw - on right wing firing is misleading. There is an order of magnitude more firing and suppression of left wing voices at college. It’s just there is no Fox News of the left to focus culture war agitprop on those cases.
    • byecomputer 4y ago
      > There is an order of magnitude more firing and suppression of left wing voices at college. Unless we're including religious colleges, this seems hyperbolic. While I did find this[1], which appears to support the idea that left-wing voices are more likely to get fired/kicked out of universities for their speech (though not by a magnitude), I have no idea how that study split up which speech was 'censored by right'/'censored by left', because when I tried to do so myself with the dataset[2], the results were closer to 55/45 (left-wing firing/right-wing firing) for 2015-2017, which was the years the study chose to focus on, but almost exactly 50/50 for the entire 2006-2020 dataset. [1] https://www.niskanencenter.org/there-is-no-campus-free-speech-crisis-a-close-look-at-the-evidence/ https://www.niskanencenter.org/there-is-no-campus-free-speec... [2] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eeTHZQOh9faZ2P3C_O3sVBuRAG1LzIZnsq6LB50NUHk/edit#gid=122618086 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eeTHZQOh9faZ2P3C_O3s...
• civilized 4y ago
  I like Paul and am very sympathetic to this essay. But I want to make some points that may subvert his thesis, in the hope that we can nuance things a bit, hopefully in an interesting way. 1. Some things may be true (or at least potentially true) but not appropriate to point out in a given social situation. Example: "Avi did a good job on this project in part because of his Ashkenazi Jewish heritage, which conferred a genetic intelligence advantage." This could be true, it has some scientific support, but it seems to be not a good idea to say. It would probably still not be a good idea to say even if we definitely knew it to be true. A person who habitually says things like this might reasonably risk reputational and professional consequences. 2. Paul says there are more heresies than in decades past. Is that true, or are they just different? 3. Are there some things that should be heresies, like arguing vigorously for the legalization or destigmatization of adult-child sexual relationships? Don't those things provide some insight into why people might see themselves as legitimate in making X-ism a heresy? Will add more as I continue reading.
• vmception 4y ago
  > For example, when someone calls a statement "x-ist," they're also implicitly saying that this is the end of the discussion. They do not, having said this, go on to consider whether the statement is true or not. I’ve been asking, practically begging people, to comment on the accuracy or inaccuracy of my statements than the way it makes them feel. Looks like Paul Graham wishes for this too.
• gottebp 4y ago
  G.K. Chesterton boiled this down pretty well: “The Special mark of the modern world is not that it is skeptical, but that it is dogmatic without knowing it. It says, in mockery of old devotees, that they believed without knowing why they believed. But the moderns believe without knowing what they believe - and without even knowing that they do believe it. Their freedom consists in first freely assuming a creed, and then freely forgetting that they are assuming it”. Noteworthy to add that for Chesterton “heresy” is defined as the obstinate rejection of a dogma.
  • javajosh 4y ago
    Too complicated. The culture war was explicitly born of a left-wing power grab through cultural means, and it was foisted on college students starting in like 2014, and has had remarkable success (for its proponents). College kids believe a lot of stuff without knowing what, or why, and cancel culture rules are no different.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • morelisp 4y ago
      > The culture war was explicitly born of a left-wing power grab through cultural means The current culture war got stoked in the early 90s by conservatives because it got them votes, and has been escalating since then because it still does. Or are you going full Buchanan to claim black and gay people getting equal treatment in the civil arena is a "left-wing power grab"?
      • javajosh 4y ago
        • tomrod 4y ago
          You might be missing the point. Business leaders encouraging inclusivity is a winning strategy for their business, as it helps them get the best skills. This is not a war, it's simply honest to goodness market forces getting things right. The decision in the US of the GOP to stoke division while as a party deciding to be deliberately obstructionist caused things to go off the rails. That is why you get shenanigans like Republicans claiming that Obama would never nominate a centrist like Garland the day before the announcement, then pivoting 180 to prevent their constitutional duty to advise and consent. They are lucky Obama respected the Constitution as they have opted to be derelict in the performance of their duties. Your point on terminology isn't the problem in your statement. It's that you project towards cultural division the real issue of classist division.
• 1970-01-01 4y ago
  Great essay as always, however the deliberate withholding of examples is irritating me. I'm not looking for witches to burn, but names or examples of "grumpy, censorious people in a group — the ones who are always first to complain when something violates the current rules of propriety." would be helpful to identify the described mentality.
  • Koshkin 4y ago
    Giving examples is left as an exercise for the reader.
  • woodruffw 4y ago
    Vaguely gesticulating at your stated enemy instead of identifying them is a time-honored rhetorical technique: it allows the reader to insert their individual grievances into the shape of the argument rather than reflecting on whether their grievances are actually well-founded. Edit: And to be absolutely clear: it's a lame technique. It works because it's emotive, not because it reveals any particular amount of truth.
    • randallsquared 4y ago
      > it allows the reader to insert their individual grievances into the shape of the argument rather than reflecting on whether their grievances are actually well-founded. Given that it's specifically about the shape of these sorts of arguments, adding specific examples would produce tangents into the merits of the specific examples; omitting them encourages the reader to consider the pattern in the context of their own experience (as you say), but by removing the actual "grievance", this technique reduces emotion, and gives us more opportunity to consider the pattern dispassionately. This would actually be more "emotive" if it forced us to confront examples which we might violently agree or disagree with. Providing specific instances of the pattern would only be necessary if the pattern itself has few enough examples that the typical reader hasn't encountered any. Given that Graham's entire point appears to be that this pattern is increasingly pervasive, by providing examples, he would undermine his own conclusions.
• Osmose 4y ago
  The behavior he's calling "heresy" here cannot be evaluated in a vacuum; these kinds of statements are all contextual, ESPECIALLY hinging on who is saying them. And the reason that is the case is because the consequences of saying something are different depending on who says them. Paul Graham is wealthy and influential, and actively tries to influence folks with essays like this. So when he says something, it is judged in a harsher light because those words have a much stronger effect than if, say, some L2 software engineer on Twitter said them. If PG says something that _could_ be interpreted as racist, it threatens to normalize believing that in the minds of the people who follow him. If L2 says something that is on the fence, at worst some of their immediate friends will pile on to them about how uncool that was (barring the rare occasions of people going viral for bad takes, which is an outlier). I think that's reasonable social policing to keep our discourse healthy. Having that influence over people demands a price in return. If PG wanted to stop getting pushback for approaching what society thinks is an acceptable line, he totally can, he just needs to rebrand and get out of the startup game.
  • kspacewalk2 4y ago
    > If PG wanted to stop getting pushback for approaching what society thinks is an acceptable line, he totally can, he just needs to rebrand and get out of the startup game. No he doesn't. He can also opt to continue being exactly the brand that he is, remain firmly in the startup game, same push back against the self-appointed "social police", who only get away with their "policing" because people usually roll over.
    • Osmose 4y ago
      I mean, I agree that practically PG will never feel any serious repercussions for saying whatever he wants _because_ of his wealth and influence. I don't think that's healthy (as wealth and influence are often afforded to people due to privilege or luck instead of ability, wisdom, or empathy) but it is how the world is currently. The cancel culture boogeyman generally doesn't destroy lives, which makes one wonder why people like PG feel it so important that they need to write essays decrying it.
• skybrian 4y ago
  The complete lack of examples means that essay doesn't work very well now, and I doubt it would work any better in the future. It's an extreme form of watering down your complaints via overgeneralization, to the point where it's very difficult to "read between the lines." All that's left is a bunch of bare, generic assertions. It would be very difficult to convert them into falsifiable statements.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• tlogan 4y ago
  Can somebody list “heresies” which we are not allowed to say but they are ok? I cannot find a single one. But maybe I’m missing something.
  • xqcgrek2 4y ago
    A simple one is that evolution doesn't stop at the neck.
  • 3qz 4y ago
    It just means not having the right opinion on the current issue of the month. Or anything about the groups of people you’re not allowed to criticize.
    • tlogan 4y ago
      Can you please be more specific? I really do not know what would be “heresy” now. Maybe I’m tweeting something which is “heresy” (and knowing that since nobody reads my tweets).
      • gonehome 4y ago
        David Shor’s firing is the common example since it’s the most egregious case (getting fired for retweeting a black professor's paper arguing riots are bad for black political movements). See: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/stop-firing-innocent/613615/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/stop-firin... Nastiness directed at JK Rowling and Jesse Singal because of trans stuff [0][1]. I’d add Bari Weiss to this list too. [2] If the mob could destroy these people and get them fired they would. As it is the pressure from the mob makes things unpleasant for them. Most people would not continue to fight back against it. Sam Harris gets a similar level of hostility for what are very nuanced conversations and it’s why he has his own platform. James Demore at Google is another more controversial case (actually read the memo - it’s way more benign then you’d think from the meta conversation and imo a reasonable thing to discuss). AGM wrote chaos monkeys and comes across as an ass in it so he had his offer rescinded from apple - I personally don’t care as much about this one since there’s some risk here with what you write and how it represents you when it comes to a hiring decision (though Apple handled it poorly). Depending on where you work not adhering to Kendi style anti-racism can also be heretical. Then there are pressures for other things like being forced to state pronouns in tech interviews or be unlikely to move forward. The song and dance around land acknowledgements (I think they're dumb, but that's likely a heretical view in these circles). Being given side eye or “corrected” if you don’t say “Latinx” at work. There are lists of stuff like this at work, told not to say “sanity check” because it offends insane people, don’t say “left hand side” because it hurts one handed people. If you don't agree you can find yourself labeled ableist, racist, transphobe, etc. specific arguments from you are then ignored and your job can be at risk. Lots of stupid shit imo and pushing back against it will often have harmful career consequences so you have to be quiet about it. Most of the people loudly complaining about this stuff are on the right, but it affects a lot of people across the political spectrum. I suspect the right complains the most about it because they paradoxically have the least to lose (they're just in a separate tribe anyway with their own political support structures). The people that get hurt by this the most imo are earnest people that are interested in things that are true despite tribal affiliation, they're more exposed. This permeates the culture and makes it hard to have interesting conversations about anything that comes anywhere close to a third rail topic. It also makes it harder to understand what’s true. I find Sam Harris, Bari Weiss, Scott Alexander, Yascha Mounk, Andrew Sullivan, Coleman Hughes, Kmele, to be good examples of people engaging on this stuff in a nuanced way across the political spectrum. For what it's worth this is a comment I would not have historically been comfortable writing before getting a new job where the risk from this kind of thing blowing up and having career consequences is reduced. That's likely the most common negative affect of this kind of heresy. When you put penalties on sharing ideas sure you block some truly horrible stuff, but you also snuff out anything that doesn't align with the current cultural beliefs about what is correct and true. The issue with that is what's currently believed to be true is almost certainly not 100% correct and rigidly enforcing cultural beliefs will slow down our ability to struggle closer towards things that are more correct. That's why holding free speech up as a virtue is better on net (and engaging in in-good-faith discourse on difficult topics is a good thing). When you limit speech you put a subset of people in the position to choose which speech to limit - even those with the best intentions will do this poorly, it's better to have robust systems that don't require this centralized speech control. The promise of the web was to enable this (and in a lot of ways it has), but the failure of the web is that problems with our computing stack incentivize centralized services that bring this problem back. Either way, mobs pushing to silence/fire people that disagree with them is probably something we should work to avoid. [0]: https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/ https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-... [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M18mvHPN9mY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M18mvHPN9mY [2]: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/watching-lia-thomas-win/id1570872415?i=1000553066075 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/watching-lia-thomas-wi...
• 3qz 4y ago
  > There are many on the far left who believe strongly in the reintegration of felons (as I do myself), and yet seem to feel that anyone guilty of certain heresies should never work again. This is a great point. I’ve seen the same with attitudes towards homeless people where they can harass people on the street all day long and get treated like they’re a poor victim who has no agency, but a “normal” person can get fired over an awkward compliment. It makes no sense to me.
  • deleted 4y ago
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  • multiplegeorges 4y ago
    It makes no sense if you completely ignore context.
• the_gipsy 4y ago
  This can also be interpreted as an interesting piece on perceived martyrdom and persecution fetish.
  • typon 4y ago
    The plight of powerful white men in positions of power is nothing to scoff at
• kalimanzaro 4y ago
  Kind of sleepy but maybe heresies are sort of like a self-published but hard to verify/reproduce social zero day. Imagine NSO describing their iphone exploit in vague terms on their very own homepage.. that would get a rise out of concernable folks for sure
• tptacek 4y ago
  I've deliberately avoided mentioning any specific heresies here No, you didn't.
  • lekevicius 4y ago
    Can you quote any he mentioned? I can't find any specific. Or, do you mean just general existence of "anti-vaxx" is a specific example?
• tshaddox 4y ago
  I wish he would just give examples or at least speak slightly more plainly about his complaint. I would understand his complaint more (and be able to decide whether I agree with him, although I’m fairly sure I don’t) if he would just say something very plainly like “I liked it better in 1985 when you could say X and have zero risk of losing your job.”
  • tlogan 4y ago
    I think by not mentioning examples he clearly communicate them to the people who are “x-ist”.
  • bmm6o 4y ago
    There's a quotation that "Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people." I think the problem is that PG is determined to demonstrate that he has a great mind, and must therefore discuss only abstract ideas. Lowering the discourse to include events or people is not an option. Unfortunately, the essay isn't exactly about heresy, it's about accusations of heresy, who makes them, and if the incidence is rising. So the essay can't really get to its subject.
    • pessimizer 4y ago
      Lowering the discourse to include events or people would probably disgust people. Most of the heresies people get canceled for seem to range from pedestrian to absolutely vile. I'm a freedom of speech absolutist, but my only sympathies towards anybody who has been canceled have either been because the people canceling them were extremely stupid, had the facts completely jumbled, and petulantly refused to be corrected; or because somebody sheltered had accidentally shared some inherited bigoted opinion that they had never really thought about in a small, relaxed context, and had that mistake blown up by cluster two clout-chasers trying to break into the opinion-haver industry.
  • batty 4y ago
    Relevant tweet: https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/1050391663552671744 https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/105039166355267174...
• zarzavat 4y ago
  This is one of the best reasons to learn a second language. Heretical concepts are often wrapped in layers of euphemism. For this reason, heresies tend to have problems crossing language barriers as that structure of euphemisms hasn’t necessarily been developed. One of the properties of the euphemism treadmill is that the mere existence of softer alternatives makes the original seem much worse than it was before. Speaking another language often exposes you to people expressing taboo (to you as an outsider) concepts in a blunt and direct manner. This may strengthen or weaken the taboo to you, but at least it will make you think. To give a very mild example, in English it’s taboo to mention someone’s weight. Even if they are a public figure that you will never meet. So we have a structure of euphemisms: “overweight”, “larger”, “plus-sized”, etc. But there are other languages where people literally do call each other fat, to their face, and it is not taboo. As you can imagine, this principle extends to political and social concepts too.
  • qsort 4y ago
    +1. Another related reason is that zealots love words. Big important-sounding words, preferably starting with capital letters (which kind of makes sense: arguments low on logic need to be high on rhetoric and wordplay to sound convincing). Useful concepts easily translate: "chair", "sky", "screwdriver", "surjective function" are words in any language. On the other hand, difficulty in translation is a strong indication that the underlying message would be more appropriately described as "noise". There are a few false positives (humor, contextual references) but they are fairly easy to spot.
  • deleted 4y ago
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  • darkengine 4y ago
    The exact example you mentioned (a person's weight being taboo) was my first "culture shock" when learning Japanese. My mind was opened to the multitude of prejudices carried just by speaking English many times after that. At one point I kept a Twitter account where I tweeted random thoughts about the world only in Japanese. Even though it hardly had any followers, there was something really freeing about this. It forced me to choose my words precisely (lacking a deep abstract vocabulary, it required careful perusal of the Japanese dictionary), and I also didn't feel subject to the cultural burdens of English (as for the burdens of Japanese, I wasn't yet aware of what they were). I definitely recommend to language learners keeping a little diary in their second language, once they get to a point where they are able to.
• tomrod 4y ago
  I don't read too much of PG's recent work. Does he attack classism with the same vigor as he does the left?
  • kemayo 4y ago
    Mysteriously enough, the rich old man has his priorities aligned differently there. Tangentially, I'd like to note "rich old man" as an example of one of those "just speaking an objective truth" things this essay supports, and the reason it can be problematic. Because objectively, Graham is a rich old man. (You could quibble about the precise boundary on "old", but he's 57 currently and that counts to me.) However, my saying it and calling attention to it certainly implies things, doesn't it?
  • odonnellryan 4y ago
    He's insanely detached from reality. Dude should not be making social commentary lol
  • Skiiing 4y ago
    It's telling that you interpret an attack on heresy as an attack on the left.
    • tomrod 4y ago
      Nah, he clearly defined the rise in heresy to his perception that liberals instituted changes in academia in the 1980s. Why do you feel it is "telling" to accurately and concretely identify something that the article was explicit about?
• noelsusman 4y ago
  >There are aggressively conventional-minded people on both the right and the left. The reason the current wave of intolerance comes from the left is simply because the new unifying ideology happened to come from the left. The next one might come from the right. Imagine what that would be like. The implication here is there is currently no significant wave of intolerance coming from the right, which is baffling to say the least. I see this a lot in modern free speech advocates. They seem to almost exclusively focus on censored speech that goes against liberal dogma and completely ignore similar behavior from the right. Is it just because liberals have more cultural power than conservatives?
• sanderjd 4y ago
  > The reason the current wave of intolerance comes from the left is simply because the new unifying ideology happened to come from the left. This is an (aggressively?) conventional idea that I have an (I guess) heretical opinion about. I'm somewhat persuaded that there is a recent outbreak of intolerance for differing ideas and ideals (though I suspect every generation expresses a version of this opinion as they get older and become out of step with cultural evolution), but I don't think it has any particular political valence. I have to watch my tongue just as much around "aggressive conventionalists" on either side, they just have different conventions. It's just as disqualifying as the x-isms from the left, if you care about staying in the good graces of convention on the right, to express opinions like "immigrants are good", "the 2020 US presidential election ran smoothly and had a clear victor who was duly inaugurated", "gender is a social construct", "people who are attracted to others of the same sex are normal and should have the same rights as anyone else", etc. etc. Honestly I think this whole thing is as simple as, people just have different views and lots of people of all stripes don't want to agree to disagree with the people they spend most of their time with.
  • randomtwiddler 4y ago
    Seems a false equivalency. The majority of the personalized destruction, cancelling, firing, etc, comes from one side.
    • sanderjd 4y ago
      This is a common claim that seems to be based more on vibes than on evidence.
      • SauciestGNU 4y ago
        Yeah there are laws being passed to prohibit certain concepts from being discussed in private corporate trainings. Those laws are being passed by those same partisans who loudly claim to oppose cancel culture. I don't think we can have an honest discussion on the topic without acknowledging one side is using voluntary dissociation as a means of punishment while the other is using the power of the state to prohibit the expression of certain ideas.
• alignItems 4y ago
  The fundamental fallacy at play here is the human mental bias that we are at the peak of ethical advancement - and the corollary meta-bias that the historical witch hunters didn’t have this exact same bias themselves. It doesn’t help that drama likes to portray them as intentionally evil. In reality, most Christian zealots (or any historical enforcers of heresy) must have been very confident that they are doing the right thing. That their acts are sacred and justified. That they are on the right side of history. Tolerance thrived when people realised that although you feel certain in your convictions you should have enough humility to let others express theirs, because everyone always thinks and always thought that they are right, yet they were obviously wrong most of the time. And we are likely to be too.
  • tootie 4y ago
    The fallacy that Graham is espousing seems to be that moral superiority (or even moral improvement) is utterly impossible and any attempt to raise the level of discourse is oppression. The change in tone in the 80s he refers to is the ascendance of civil rights, feminism and gay rights. All incredibly worthy movements. The fact that some adherents make mistakes is human nature. The notion that they can't be debated is patently false. The anti-progress faction is still very very powerful. Plenty of unequivocal sexists and racists face no punishment.
    • jimkleiber 4y ago
      How I understood his essay was that he actually wants more debate about things and finds statements such as "that is X-ist" to end debate. Did you read that differently?
    • oh_my_goodness 4y ago
      Points. On the other hand, how carefully did you read the comment you're responding to?
      • tootie 4y ago
        I'm not arguing with the above poster. I'm expounding. The confidence people have in their moral compass may be overinflated but that doesn't mean it's without value. I'd take the judgment of a social justice warrior over the Church of England any day of the week. But also you have to recognize that not everyone is so self-important and can be rational. Modern liberal values are a massive improvement over the past even if not everyone applies them sensibly.
• epicureanideal 4y ago
  I’m happy to see Paul Graham taking this position. One of the reasons I haven’t applied to YC is that I was getting the sense that he and YC might have the opposite opinion. It seems plenty of SF Bay Area based startup, founder, investor networking groups are uncomfortable for people with opinions that might be considered heresy.
• ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  I'm not pitching in my $0.02 here (although I have plenty to say, as I seem to be an irredeemable heretic). Emo Phillips was never my favorite comic, but he did have one bit that dovetails quite nicely, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANNX_XiuA78 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANNX_XiuA78
• intrepidsoldier 4y ago
  Why does this site not have a SSL certificate?
• deleted 4y ago
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• galaxyLogic 4y ago
  Another word for heresy is political correctness. The problem with it is you can attack anybody you dislike with very little cost to you because you stand with a large crowd agreeing with you. And you don't even have to understand the issues since the opinion you put out is commonly accepted. It in fact might not be your opinion but you can still use it to attack opponents. Political correctness is a quite naturally occurring phenomenon. People oppose other people. There's not much we can do about it except try to point it out. But that's not what Paul Graham is doing, he's talking about it in the abstract, only. That is not a bad thing but I see an issue with it: It gets you far away from actual issues that harm us greatly. It is not the biggest problem that political correctness occurs. The problem is some of the things it is used for. For instance in Russia it is the ultimate heresy to say that Russia is fighting a war on Ukraine. The war is a real big problem. It is not caused by political correctness, supporters of the war are simply using political correctness to support the war. And state-sanctioned official heresies, yes that's what we need to fight and expose in general. The real problem is not political correctness but using it for bad purposes. Like using it to support an unprovoked military attack on your neighboring country and putting the "heretics" into prison.
  • tootie 4y ago
    Political correctness was an epithet invented by conservatives who opposed things like women's rights, gay rights etc. The fact that advocates can be mistaken doesn't overshadow how wrong the other side is to be unwilling to acknowledge injustice.
    • galaxyLogic 4y ago
      Exactly, it is most likely an attempt to shift the conversation to something else. Ad Hominem.
    • deleted 4y ago
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    • lukifer 4y ago
      It does not follow that every reaction to injustice is inherently justice. As an exaggerated example, if the punishment for shoplifting was death, I can oppose that punishment without being in favor of shoplifting. Obviously, those who criticize overreach of responses to injustice, will inevitably find themselves in common cause with reactionaries who do genuinely oppose progress, whether they want to or not. But that's all the more reason to be tolerant of good-faith dissent: the alternative is no one trusts anyone, and good-faith dissent itself becomes coded as a reactionary trick.
• deleted 4y ago
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• dangoor 4y ago
  This reminds me of a Popehat article I finally got around to reading yesterday: https://popehat.substack.com/p/our-fundamental-right-to-shame-and https://popehat.substack.com/p/our-fundamental-right-to-sham... In that article, Popehat talks about the need to define cancel culture and understand how the free speech rights of the first speaker intersect with the free speech and association rights of people that respond. I think the most useful aspect of PG's article is that he does actually define what he means by heresy: > Structurally there are two distinctive things about heresy: (1) that it takes priority over the question of truth or falsity, and (2) that it outweighs everything else the speaker has done PG doesn't give any examples, but I do think that trying to be clear around definitions in order to be able to say "is this an example of heresy at work?" or "has this person been unfairly cancelled?" is a valuable exercise. FWIW, my main reason for commenting is that I find Popehat's article to be a valuable addition to the conversation because it's specifically addressing the "cancel culture" terminology rather than trying to swirl a new term (heresy) into the mix.
  • malnourish 4y ago
    I had not seen that article; thank you for sharing it.
• tlogan 4y ago
  By reading comments here it seems like racists and sexists think this blog is written with intent to support their agendas. I wish PG clearly spell out that is not ok to say that other people are less of a human. And with “heresy” he meant “vax mandates”, “gun control” and other general issues. I’m ok dicusssing gun control, taxes, etc. but I (and anybody I know) are really not ok when somebody says “evolution does not end at neck”.
  • morelisp 4y ago
    > I (and anybody I know) are really not ok when somebody says “evolution does not end at neck”. Given how often Claire Lehmann and her coterie show up as a reviewer of his essays and their Twitter interactions with Graham, it's easy to figure out he's talking about exactly such a statement.
    • tlogan 4y ago
      And Claire Lehmann seems to be anti-gay and anti-transgender? I was not aware who that person was but by reading her blog posts it seems to be way too anti-gay and racist to be considered serious.
      • morelisp 4y ago
        Yes she is, but more relevantly for your original concern, her magazine ran some outright neo-phrenology articles a while back. Intellectually she's a clown, but pg and other SV thoughtbubblers take her extremely seriously.
  • 0xy 4y ago
    Which ideas/thoughts should be banned and should result in immediate firing? You're suggesting gun control is okay, what's not okay?
• Seattle3503 4y ago
  This read a lot like Eric Hoffer's "True Believer". I highly recommend the book to anyone who liked this essay.
• marricks 4y ago
  He really needs examples provided. Which group do you think is on his mind? - Palestine and how many academics have been fired or silenced for supporting them l? Nathan J Robinson was let go form The Guardian for a joke about Palestinian treatment. - The score of labor organizers fired in the tech and food service industry for expressing their right to organize? - Tech workers getting fired for what could be claimed to be sexism/sexual harassment? - People fired because they are extremely right wing? People who talk about the limiting of free speech almost never care about the first two but they sure get high and mighty when their friends get cancelled for making off color jokes.
  • c1b 4y ago
    So you just gave three examples off the top of your head but you need to make sure he picked the right one..?
    • marricks 4y ago
      Sorry, I thought it’d be obvious to everyone reading he clearly isn’t talking about: - labor organizers getting fired - Palestine - Folks getting sexually harassed
    • woodruffw 4y ago
      I believe the author was pointing out that pg is selective in his application of "heresy."
      • stale2002 4y ago
        So you agree that the issue of heresy is a problem, but instead of addressing the actual issue, you are more interested in knowing which team PG is in, in the ongoing pattern of treating politics like team sports.
        • woodruffw 4y ago
          I am first and foremost interested in consistency, a property that is consistently in short supply with pg.
• Aidevah 4y ago
  One of my favourite short stories by Borges is "The Theologians"[1], which deals with a contest between two theologians in suppressing heresy. It's absolutely wonderful how Borges managed to turn dry scholastic debate into a fascinating and gripping narrative. It also contains this wonderfully ironic scene when one of the theologian's past writings which was used to eradicate a previous heresy but have since fallen out of fashion was unearthed. The poor fellow insisted that it was still orthodox but everyone except him have moved on and under the latest opinion the old writing now appeared hopelessly heretical. I've extracted a paragraph below, but the whole story is quite short and well worth reading. >Four months later, a blacksmith of Aventinus, deluded by the Histriones’ deceptions, placed a huge iron sphere on the shoulders of his small son, so that his double might fly. The boy died; the horror engendered by this crime obliged John’s judges to assume an unexceptionable severity. He would not retract; he repeated that if he negated his proposition he would fall into the pestilential heresy of the Monotones. He did not understand (did not want to understand) that to speak of the Monotones was to speak of the already forgotten. With somewhat senile insistence, he abundantly gave forth with the most brilliant periods of his former polemics; the judges did not even hear what had once enraptured them. Instead of trying to cleanse himself of the slightest blemish of Histrionism, he strove to demonstrate that the proposition of which he was accused was rigorously orthodox. He argued with the men on whose judgment his fate depended and committed the extreme ineptitude of doing so with wit and irony. On the 26th of October, after a discussion lasting three days and three nights, he was sentenced to die at the stake. [1] https://matiane.wordpress.com/2015/08/16/jorge-luis-borges-the-theologians/ https://matiane.wordpress.com/2015/08/16/jorge-luis-borges-t...
  • neumann 4y ago
    Thanks! That is a wonderful read.
• gumby 4y ago
  The quotation about Isaac Newton was a poor choice for this essay as it was clearly allegorical about Newton himself. Even if you don’t know anything about the man, it should be clear from the claim that marriage might be a sin. In reality, the comment reflects four important things about Newton: 1 - marriage: he never married and once complained about someone trying to set him up with a woman; 2 - heresy: he was a reformation era figure, quite religious in his Protestant (heretical to some) beliefs; 3 - crime: as master of the mint he bestowed justice high (mostly) and low on forgers and other criminals within his authority (and not in Cambridge) which leads to 4 - sin: a nice intensifying noun that encompasses not only his intense religious nature but the zeal with which he pursued and punished criminals and many with whom he disagreed, including friends.
  • cpr 4y ago
    I think it was just a somewhat tongue-in-cheek reference to the fact that he was a don, who don't marry.
    • gumby 4y ago
      Sure, though to be pedantic he wasn’t a Fellow during the period referred to by the quote. Was there really a prohibition on marriage, or was that a side effect of dons being required to be priests (who in the CofE of course can marry). Interesting. In general, restoration politics were weird.
      • cpr 4y ago
        I think it Just Wasn't Done.
• stareatgoats 4y ago
  The way this post gets flagged repeatedly seems to underline the point pg is making. But the repeated unflagging also signifies something: that there is strong opposition to branding things as heresy in the current landscape. This is a fault line that roughly follows the main party-lines in the US as far as I can see. And so pg can also be interpreted to be dog-whistling which side he is on. Which can also be the reason why the analysis comes across as a bit shallow; like when did we start to interpret historical phenomenon in terms of ad hoc personality types? (the "aggressively conventional-minded" personality type that supposedly is responsibly for crying heresy since time immemorial). This struggle (between "the guardians of proper speech" and the "free speech advocates") has been extremely personal for several decades, but by bringing personality into it pg seems to turn flip the coin on the opponents; they are inherently bad humans (too). So it's perhaps not weird that this post has been flagged off and on, for that reason too. But another take on this is how the political struggle has gradually invaded every nook and cranny of human existence, down to questioning the "way we are". It is likely a dead end that just might be one of the causes for increased mental illness in western societies. I'm increasingly coming to the conclusion that we need to take a step back and not so easily be drawn into the political talking points. Perhaps the answer is: let's not engage in ad hominem attacks, not on individual level, not on group level. Easier said than done perhaps, but I seriously think we need to get there.
  • deleted 4y ago
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• softwaredoug 4y ago
  In the 90s and 2000s it would be “heresy” to be a gay or transgendered person. I remember sadly how people in hushed tones would talk about coworkers. There was a bro-y norm to engineering culture that you didn’t defy very easily. I'm a bit surprised how easily people forget these things.
  • vasco 4y ago
    > There was a bro-y norm to engineering culture There _was_? I'm not sure what field of engineering you're in, but in software, hardware and electrical engineering which are the ones I have the most contact within 3 countries in Europe, this is the norm today. Through friends in mechanical and civil engineering I get the sense it's even worse there.
    • randomsearch 4y ago
      I’ve seen glimpses of this in tech recently. Could you please give some explicit examples? I’ve been sheltered from it for a long time and I’m wondering if what I’ve seen are examples of what everyone means by “brogrammers”.
  • catears 4y ago
    I also thought about transgender and gay rights. Heresy to me sounds like it comes from an intolerant society. At least in regards to LGBTQ+ rights it feels like society has (thankfully!) become more tolerant. How many people would be fired from their job today if they said they are gay compared to 30-60 years ago? Maybe PG is talking about specific contexts like academia, media, or tech companies though?
  • odonnellryan 4y ago
    Yes great point. What we do is trade off "wrong-being" for "wrong-thought" or "wrong-talk."
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• darepublic 4y ago
  Make sure to use main instead of m*****
• giorgioz 4y ago
  Paradox of tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly paradoxical idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance. Paul Graham is intolerant of intolerants of intolerance. I think to solve the paradox the way to go is not to solve by principle but weight on how much intolerance you are applying in order to prevent some other intolerance to someone else. "Your freedom ends where someone else begins" EXAMPLE Person A: People from group X are more likely to be BAD at math. Person B: Don't be racist/sexist/x-ist. Person C (Paul Graham): Hey B, you are using x-ist but is the statement true or false? If the statement from A is true, then A should be allowed to say it without B calling him/her x-ist. Well it depends on what's the approximation and opinionated consequences. Maybe group X is worse at math by a small percentage 1% and A is removing numbers to make a larger generalization that loose its context and is just demeaning of the group X. This is solvable by stating actual figures without implying consequences from it. Person A should have said: The study ALFA showed results where group X was 10% more likely to be BAD at math than group Y and Z. I will pass you the link to the paper of the study so you can review it.
• photochemsyn 4y ago
  I think the author rather exposes his ideological biases in this paragraph: > "The most notorious 20th century case may have been the Cultural Revolution. Though initiated by Mao to undermine his rivals, the Cultural Revolution was otherwise mostly a grass-roots phenomenon. Mao said in essence: There are heretics among us. Seek them out and punish them. And that's all the aggressively conventional-minded ever need to hear. They went at it with the delight of dogs chasing squirrels." A more balanced approach would have included the rise of authoritarian fascism in Germany as an example of the persecution of the heretics, namely any who opposed the power of the Party or questioned the validity of the 'untermenschen' concept that relegated so many groups - Slavs, Jews, homosexuals, political dissidents to 'unperson' status. Indeed, Hitler's acolytes - like Mao's - also 'went at it with the delight of dogs chasing squirrels.' A rather popular book was published about this phenomenon that's worth reading, called "Hitler's Willing Executioners." https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/784848.Hitler_s_Willing_Executioners https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/784848.Hitler_s_Willing_... In any case, whenever a commentator chooses to exclusively focus on fascist atrocities or communist atrocities when examing '20th century atrocities', you can be sure they have a severe ideological bias and are hardly honest interlocutors. In this context, 'x-ist' could refer to either communist or fascist, although I suspect the author is implying 'racist' or perhaps 'classist'?
• NoraCodes 4y ago
  > The reason the current wave of intolerance comes from the left is simply because the new unifying ideology happened to come from the left. The next one might come from the right. Imagine what that would be like. I'm curious how Mr. Graham can look at a country that is in the process of reversing much of the last half-century's progress on women's rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and disability rights, and _not_ see a politics of heresy emerging from the right. I'm curious how he can look at anti-"critical race theory" laws and "don't say gay" laws, which quite literally restrict freedom of speech among academics and teachers, and _not_ view this as a damaging and dangerous politics of conventionality. I'm curious as to how he can take a religious metaphor like 'heresy' and not apply it to the US American right which, in no small part part, advocates for a literal theocracy. These essays often seem very reasonable, to me, when stated in the abstract. Of course we should support freedom of speech! Of course we should be sure that nobody is fired for expressing harmless opinions! But, consistently, the proposed solutions are uninformed, unfeasable, ineffective, or even counterproductive. The best way to make sure people are not fired for speech is not to make it unacceptable for minorities to argue vehemently with their oppressors; it is to end right-to-work, end at-will employment, and give labor more power. The largest threat to the academy is not "mobs" of students expressing their disagreement with their schools' administrations' policies, it is the systematic defunding and devaluing of the humanities, the pure sciences, and the arts.
  • hikingsimulator 4y ago
    I have nothing to add. Thank you.
  • jacobolus 4y ago
    Paul Graham grew up in a time when rich middle-aged white men with no relevant experience or credential could spout off about whatever topic they wanted, including pseudo-intellectual racism/misogyny, and everyone would be forced to listen to their nonsense unable to respond with more than an eye-roll for fear of reprisals. (For that matter, when Graham grew up those powerful white dudes could beat people up, sexually assault people, etc. with no consequence.) Now when they spout similar nonsense, such dudes are publicly criticized, and the criticism deeply shocks and distresses them, to the point that whiny white/male supremacist grievance has now entirely taken over a whole US political party, which is trying to outlaw public criticism of white/male supremacist ideology. Edit: Disclaimer to satisfy rayiner: I am a 6'2" married 36-year-old straight white male homeowner with 2 kids and a car. Edit #2: Folks may enjoy https://popehat.substack.com/p/our-fundamental-right-to-shame-and https://popehat.substack.com/p/our-fundamental-right-to-sham...
• jzdziarski 4y ago
  Graham seems to have missed the mark here. What he’s describing as the unjust labeling of x-ism usually isn’t related to the deviation from a norm, insomuch as it is the prejudices behind that deviation. He argues that truth is ignored, but it’s not the truth that’s usually at issue in such matters, it is the manner of delivery of whatever truth may be, filtered through a set of prejudices the hearer is offended by. The hearer then can either utilize the thought terminating x-ist label, and walk away, or attempt to address those prejudices directly. In the former, they are saying, “because I have identified these prejudices in the way you’ve presented your case, I cannot give credence to any of the truth you are arguing”. Reasonable, but less than ideal. The latter - and often better response is, “that’s x-ist and let me tell you why.” That’s how you cut through the BS and have a productive conversation. I hope this is what he was trying to convey, but didn’t quite get there. What he seems to have missed in separating truth from prejudices is important to recognize. This is an expected communications problem in a society that struggles with decency, and decency is what’s at issue here - not truth. Because at least one party lacks decency, they’ve lost their credibility to convey any truth. The other party may lack tolerance, but that intolerance is, at least usually, about those prejudices, and not any underlying truth. Regardless, actual heresy - of the biblical type that Graham is trying to use to support his argument here - has historically been more based on threatening a power structure, such as was the case with Martin Luther, for example. Ironically here, the tables were turned, and the “heretic” (Luther) presented factual information while it was the hearer that reeled with prejudice. The two cases are about as much alike as a camel and a spork. I am surprised he tried to make the comparison. Nonetheless, if that is what he’s trying to argue, then he’s seemingly suggesting the fault is always on the listener for being offended. In the cases Graham is describing though, it is far more likely to be the speaker who wraps whatever truth there might be into vitriol brought into the conversation. It at least would have made for a good essay to point out both possibilities. Tl;Dr: truth always falls victim to prejudice, on either side, which is why we should work to identify and root out our own prejudices before engaging.
• codedeadlock 4y ago
  "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." - George Bernard Shaw It's difficult to build strong opinions on a topic. Mostly we go with the safe opinions that are acceptable by society. And problem comes up when we mix belief, perspective, facts and opinions. https://binaryho.me/opinion/ https://binaryho.me/opinion/
• Avshalom 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy_laws_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy_laws_in_the_United_Stat... just sayin'. maybe 1985 sucked a lot for a lot of people that weren't paul graham.
  • jounker 4y ago
    Yup. Paul Graham doesn’t seem to have a very accurate memory of historical conditions.
  • cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    Totally. I have no idea about Paul Graham's upbringing, but back in the 80s and 90s I was a "fag" threatened with violence just for being a slightly effeminate nerd obsessed with computers and weird music, etc.. One didn't even have to be gay to be subject to homophobic hate and intolerance. I have teenagers now -- one self-identified queer high schooler and the other a middle schooler in a tiny rural school not unlike where I grew up -- and today's society is an amazingly tolerant dream compared to what I grew up with.
    • raxxorraxor 4y ago
      The following generations claimed that insult but its power has been given back by many that didn't understand the subcultures that moved beyond it.
  • imgabe 4y ago
    The idea is to make things not suck. Not to make them suck in the same way for different groups of people. Have you considered the possibility that oppressing gay people and firing people with unpopular opinions are both wrong and should be opposed?
    • krainboltgreene 4y ago
      One still happens today and has received zero essays from PG, despite it still being an issue in the tech community, and the other doesn't actually happen.
• erikpukinskis 4y ago
  > For example, when someone calls a statement "x-ist," they're also implicitly saying that this is the end of the discussion If that's how Graham reads such statements, isn't he basically saying "It's heresy to call a statement x-ist" in his presence? What am I missing, this seems totally hypocritical given the rest of his argument?
  • rendang 4y ago
    Does Graham say people who make those statements should be ostracized and fired? I don't see the parallel at all.
    • erikpukinskis 4y ago
      No, he’s not saying that. I interpreted it as saying, for him, as soon as he hears one of those words, the conversation is over. Which… sounds like… if not heresy, then taboo?
      • AnimalMuppet 4y ago
        No, he's not saying that. He's saying that, when person A says something, and person B says that the statement is x-ist, person B intends that to end the conversation. In particular, person B intends that they not have to actually refute person A's statement. PG's reaction isn't the point at all. The point is the speaker's intent.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• dorianmariefr 4y ago
  Isn’t grouping people’s behaviour as heresy a start to look at them as heretic?
• chasing 4y ago
  I’ll point out that saying true statements but framing them in a racist or sexist way is an extremely common tactic. In fact, it’s the preferred tactic of many bad actors because it’s very easy to hide behind the “but it’s true!” defence. Something can be true and also presented with racist or sexist intent.
  • sitkack 4y ago
    Is also a great way to get the other side to rage quit the "debate" and then you win by forfeit. Also the bullshit wrong thing gets pulled along closer to the truth by standing next to a true fact.
  • daenz 4y ago
    >intent assuming you know someone's intent suggests a bias against the part that you disagree with. give me an example of a truth that can be perceived as racist or sexist, and i'll show you how easy it is to ascribe intent to it.
  • vannevar 4y ago
    Yes, I think pg gets off on the wrong foot here---essentially saying that if something's true, it can't be x-ist---and proceeds in a circle. As you point out, many statements made with racist intent are at least partially true. This should also explain to Graham why whether something is x-ist can depend on who's saying it (and therefore what their intent is likely to be), while something that is true is presumably universal to the speaker: x-ism and truth are orthogonal dimensions.
• native_samples 4y ago
  One of the interesting things about this essay is the way it criticizes orthodoxy and heresies, then casually throws in people who refuse vaccines as "extremists" equivalent to people who enforce the concept of heresy. But that doesn't really make sense because "thou shalt never question the divinity of vaccines" is a modern day orthodoxy, and those who do in fact question them are the modern day heretics, with scientific institutions being the modern Church. Heretics aren't actually set on fire these days but they are e.g. currently banned from entering the United States and many other countries, and just a few months ago they were banned from all public places etc. A man truly dedicated to the abolition of heresy would recognize that by calling people as "extremists" is in fact (perhaps unrealising) the exact same behavior he is criticizing. After all, has he talked to these people to understand their heresy? My guess is no. Rather, he just feels in his bones that by Following The Science™ he is a morally and intellectually superior creature. When an essay that thinks it's arguing for the ending of heresy cannot even avoid damning some heretics, I see no particular reason for optimism, as Graham does. Rather this problem will get worse before it gets better, if it ever does.
• dragonwriter 4y ago
  > I want this essay to work in the future, not just now. And unfortunately it probably will It doesn't work now; it might work better in the future when the current claims (which are right-wing propaganda) are irrelevant, and only the vague, not particularly actionable, generalities. > Back in the day (and still, in some places) the punishment for heresy was death It still is. Did you miss 1/6 and the “hang Mike Pence“ chants? Did you miss the Pizzagate lies and the violence they instigated? Did you miss the current “groomer“ propaganda directed at the LGBTQ+ community and allies from the right for merely existing openly, including the Disney “bring ammo“ shirts being marketed? (All of which—at least, promotion of the ideas, if not the actual execution of the violence—is not limited to the fringes of the right, but mainstream major party political and media figures. > The reason the current wave of intolerance comes from the left There can't be a reason for a thing that isn't true. Falsely portraying the intolerance as primarily a left-wing phenomenon is the central element of the persecution propaganda that is the common underlying foundation of all of the right-wing violent intolerance efforts going on; while PG is pretending to be above the fray and neutrally negative on the left only because of the dynamics of current condition, he is actively participating in the things he is criticizing by knowingly validating the false premises underlying the most violent, dangerous anti-“heresy” movements. > There are many on the far left who believe strongly in the reintegration of felons (as I do myself), and yet seem to feel that anyone guilty of certain heresies should never work again. “Many...seem“ is pretty weaselly, but I (and I bet I have more experience with the far left than PG, despite not being a far leftist) know of no one on the far left who believes in reintegration of felons for whom there is reason, at least negative, to believe are reformed that does not believe that for non-criminal moral wrongdoers. Those who have neither reformed nor even acknowledged their acts or the wrongness of them are...not the same.
• ineptech 4y ago
  > Up till about 1985 the window [of what you can say without being cancelled] had been growing ever wider. Anyone looking into the future in 1985 would have expected freedom of expression to continue to increase. Instead it has decreased. I think that whether this is or true or not depends a lot on how you define your terms. If cancel culture only means "I expressed an unpopular opinion about gay rights on TV and then lost my job", then yes, the window is narrower now than in 1985. But if it also includes "I expressed an unpopular opinion about gay rights in a bar and then got beaten up," it is not.
  • Skiiing 4y ago
    The article was about heresy which he defined as a factually correct statement that will destroy your life if stated. It wasn't about being an unpleasant person with unpopular opinions.
    • ineptech 4y ago
      PG is implying that the phenomenon of getting shunned for having said something right-wing on Twitter is new/different enough that it implies some shift in societal attitudes. I'm arguing that it is not, and the 1985 equivalent would be a progressive being shunned for being, let's say, pro-gay-rights in small-town Missouri. The mechanism changes with technology, but the cause has not changed since Hester Prynne at least.
• RichardHeart 4y ago
  Mr. Graham writes an essay supporting free speech. Thus the comments here, ironically, attack his speech, with tons of words found no where in his essay at all. The comments here literally prove the spirit of his essay.
  • moolcool 4y ago
    I don't see the irony. I don't think anyone is denying PG's his right to speak freely, they're just disagreeing with him.
  • stareatgoats 4y ago
    Freedom of speech is the freedom to disagree, including on completely irrational grounds (from someone's perspective). You seem to hold a common misconception about what it means to criticize someone.
• scarecrowbob 4y ago
  Feeling that there are more "heresies" now than, say, 25 years ago says a lot more about the orthodoxy of ones' opinion than it says about the state of the world.
  • Skiiing 4y ago
    I don't think you need to put "heresies" in vague quotes. He's defined it quite clearly as factually correct statements which will destroy your career and social life if stated.
    • scarecrowbob 4y ago
      I have little confidence that the author and I wholly agree on the set of "factually correct statements".
• hintymad 4y ago
  > The clearest evidence of this is that whether a statement is considered x-ist often depends on who said it. Truth doesn't work that way. This is such a great summary on the hypocrisy that went rampant in the past few years in the US media and US politics.
• nabla9 4y ago
  Example: More than 1,500 books have been banned in public schools, and a U.S. House panel asks why https://coloradonewsline.com/2022/04/09/more-than-1500-books-have-been-banned-in-public-schools-and-a-u-s-house-panel-asks-why/ https://coloradonewsline.com/2022/04/09/more-than-1500-books...
• adrianwaj 4y ago
  "Thanks to Marc Andreessen, Chris Best, Trevor Blackwell, Nicholas Christakis, Daniel Gackle, Jonathan Haidt, Claire Lehmann, Jessica Livingston, Greg Lukianoff, Robert Morris, and Garry Tan for reading drafts of this." Why so many people?
• ykevinator2 4y ago
  Did Paul cheat on his wife with Jessica? Is heresy bad?
• fassssst 4y ago
  This is an essay about what is largely a social media phenomenon. You can avoid the whole thing by just not participating. Seems like a waste of energy to even discuss vs just realizing that arguing publicly on a global scale is not a good use of your limited time on Earth.
  • ethbr0 4y ago
    Public policy, and the power stemming from it, is a social phenomenon. Which isn't to say that Twitter is important to the United States' future, but also is to say that it's not unimportant. Commons sway votes, which sway policy in a democracy.
    • Barrin92 4y ago
      >Commons sway votes, which sway policy in a democracy. Evidence suggests otherwise[1]. In the US (and really anywhere else) public policy is elite driven, and if anything public discourse and public opinion is amorphous and shifts as a response to whatever is passed down by institutions, be that corporate, academia, the media or what have you. This very intuitively is visible in the 'topic of the day/week/month' nature of American discourse where everyone seemingly synchronized goes into a frenzy only to move on to the next thing a while later. The 'commons' are a giant entertainment machine where people who have practically zero influence on anything meaningful can spent their time, that's about it. [1]https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...
  • derevaunseraun 4y ago
    > You can avoid the whole thing by just not participating. Except when people don't participate they get nothing out of the exchange and there's no discussion or progress
    • fassssst 4y ago
      Progress happens offline.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• atoav 4y ago
  > For example, when someone calls a statement "x-ist," they're also implicitly saying that this is the end of the discussion. I tried to recall the few times I called someone out on being sexist, racist or whatever, and it was never a discourse or a discussion: the majority were tasteless jokes in the presence of someone would have been affected (e.g. tasteless joke about how all women are $X in the presence of a women which very clearly was the polar opposite, or how all people with a certain enthnicity have a certain negative trait etc. These people were not guilty of heresy they were insensitive assholes (when done on purpose) or at least ignorant. In an honest discussion with someone about e.g. the differences between men and women, I never called someone a sexist, just because their ideas were outdated and flawed as long as it actually was an discussion. The thing is, that more often than not the goal of people spouting such things is not getting to the bottom of things, but validating their own opinion. This is of course out of insecurity, which is why calling someone sexist is not a good way to respond in such an situation. Better is to ask them what they mean and have them explain it to you. And if they realize themselves they are sounding a bit odd, you can just tell them this is not your experience.
  • smugma 4y ago
    There’s a big difference between calling it out in person and over the Internet. You were rightly calling out the person’s language as unacceptable. Maybe the hope was to change their behavior (unlikely, at least in the short term) or at least stand up for what you thought was right. When this is done over a mass medium, there are many other motivations. Could be to make themselves look good within another group, attempt to cancel, etc. It may come from similar positive/good faith motivations but easily becomes distorted.
  • sillysaurusx 4y ago
    It’s tempting to point out a few heresies. My hunch is that you’d err on the side of feeling uncomfortable. “Ignorant” and “insensitive” are telltale signs of orthodoxy, the way that clouds are telltale signs of a thunderstorm. I had a relationship with a much older woman when I was younger. It was long distance, and after a few years we met up for a wonderful trip down a river. It was one of the best memories of my life. Swimming with her, making a fire and cooking our own food, laughing the days away. When she had to leave, we sobbed our eyes out at the airport in front of everyone. I was 16. This experience enriched my life. Ditto for the years leading up to it. Today, the universal conclusion would be that I was groomed, taken advantage of, manipulated, and so on. In a word, she’d committed heresy. I don’t think most people would want to have an open discussion on the merits of teenagers dating older women. The teen’s feelings don’t matter; whether the teen initiated it and pursued them doesn’t matter; the question of whether it’s a net benefit for their life certainly doesn’t matter. What matters is the power imbalance. Do you see what happened? This is equivalent to saying that certain truths aren’t allowed to matter. The question of truth becomes irrelevant. You can’t have public conversations about it without summoning a thunderstorm. Swap the genders in the above story, and it’d be a firestorm. Everyone would gleefully watch you burn. The reason pg didn’t dare mention any specific heresies is because you can’t mention examples without immediately making the conversation about that, and not the bigger question of why so many opinions need to be so closely guarded now, when they didn’t need to be before. I can think of at least five other heresies. But I wouldn’t dare point them out publicly. It’s worth trying to force yourself to think of some. I say “force” because the ideas are uncomfortable by definition. And if the ideas you think of are also very popular, that should worry you — what are the odds that we happen to live in the precise decade when we got our morals exactly right? Or even a little bit right? There’s a reason pg started with fire as a metaphor. We’re fortunate to live in a time where it’s merely a metaphor. And I think we should worry whether we’re burning people for the right reasons, the same way you’d worry if your neighbors set fire to a house while arguing that it’s okay —- the people inside really deserved it, right? Sometimes they do. But if your moral compass just so happens to point in the same direction as all of your peers, it’s important to occasionally ask ourselves whether we might be mistaken.
• jounker 4y ago
  > Up till about 1985 the window [of what you can say without being cancelled] had been growing ever wider. Anyone looking into the future in 1985 would have expected freedom of expression to continue to increase. Instead it has decreased. In 1985 in most places in the USA a public school teacher openly supporting gay rights in the classroom would have been risking their job and possibly their entire career.
  • pessimizer 4y ago
    I know, it's a very common but very bizarre centering of the general concept of intolerance on China and on lib college students. States make laws denying work to people who support BDS. Announcing that you don't give a shit about whether Russia takes over Ukraine could get you fired, especially if you're ethnically Russian, but announcing that Ukraine should fight until the breath of the last Ukrainian is spent and the last blade of Ukrainian grass is burned will get you a spot on local TV news in Milwaukee, WI, USA. The BBC had MI5 vet its employees for correct political opinions and associations into the 90s, and won't deny that they do it now. https://www.thenational.scot/news/16176527.revealed-mi5-vetted-bbc-staff-right-1990s/ https://www.thenational.scot/news/16176527.revealed-mi5-vett... http://tonygarnett.info/mi5-and-secret-political-vetting-at-the-bbc/ http://tonygarnett.info/mi5-and-secret-political-vetting-at-... https://www.theguardian.com/media/2001/nov/14/bbc.research https://www.theguardian.com/media/2001/nov/14/bbc.research The major difference is that captains of industry used to be able to almost completely dictate orthodoxy, and now in the age of the internet there are competing orthodoxies - some of which don't consider power and wealth synonymous with wisdom and genius. It also turns out that plenty of powerful people who control institutions don't care about being seen as philosopher-kings, and are happy to let their PR and HR departments deal with controversy. They will happily capitulate to all orthodoxies in order to protect the institution. The problem is that labor rights have been overrun by freedom-of-contract at-will libertarians, so instead of people just hating you for things you've said and done, everyone also has to deal with apolitical sociopathic corporations that will excise you like a suspicious mole at the first whiff of controversy.
  • chernevik 4y ago
    Why a high school teacher needs a position on gay rights in the classroom, in 1985 or 2022, is beyond me.
• WalterBright 4y ago
  I've also noticed that these things are taking on the aspects of religion, i.e. they are faith-based.
• Kosirich 4y ago
  Does HN community generally agree with a statement that current "left x-ist aggressive woke purity ideology" is an extension of white puritanism and puritanist like ideology. As portion of white protestants lost their faith they found a replacement in the "holier than thou" approach of the hippy left? As a non american I see Occupy Wall Street as being more of a catholic left movement while everything after as protestant left one.
• philosopher1234 4y ago
  The issue isn’t consequences for speech. Conservatives like Paul Graham are perfectly fine with consequences for certain kinds of speech (speaking out against a company in his portfolio, for instance.) The issue under debate is what kind of speech merits what kind of consequence. The idea that there should be no consequences for speech oils only remotely believable when you are a member of the white, cis, wealthy class who’s lived without consequence for speech for their whole lives.
  • Skiiing 4y ago
    The article was about heresy which he defines as something which is factually true, not generic notions of free speech. If I can respectfully say something here: you're making sweeping statements about people based on their race etc. It's going to be difficult to make persuasive arguments if that is your debating starting point.
• Animats 4y ago
  Part of the problem in the US is the decline of routine democracy. Democracy works properly when you have a vote, you get a decision, and the issue is settled and done. That's rare today. It leaves us with no way to settle things and go on. Useful question: do you belong to any democratically run organization, defined as one where the members can fire the leadership?
• alanlammiman 4y ago
  Wow, 802 comments here. No way I can go through all that, but I'm really curious. If you happen to have read a significant % of the comments could you do a summary? (wasn't there a blog that had that kind of thing?)
• alkonaut 4y ago
  "Hi, I'm important and I find it's hard to be an asshole these days without someone immediately calling me an asshole" Did I read this right?
• jstummbillig 4y ago
  The thing that makes x-ism x-ism is not truthiness (or the lack thereof), but intent and omission and what it implies. The thing that is explicitly being said is always accompanied by a lot more that is not being said and this makes all the difference. Let's stipulate that group A has statistically more X than group B. This is the truth, measurably. If we state this fact on public television, but omit, overlook or belittle the (also stipulated) fact, that this is due to unfair advantage Y (which then accelerates development that furthers the unfair advantage of group A) that's X-ism. The devil is in the cherry picking and context. The outcome might not even be intended. Or it might be. The crux is: Saying "that's not what I meant" is just as easy as saying "that's what you meant" (or "that's sexist") and neither is a sign of sincerity.
• whatever_dude 4y ago
  Another day, another PH essay with some kind of defense for being an asshole disguised as higher discourse.
• evocatus 4y ago
  Fantastic essay, as is par for the course.
• randcraw 4y ago
  I think what Paul is describing is blasphemy more than heresy. Blasphemy is a single public statement contrary to official doctrine while heresy is the public endorsement of a school of thought that contradicts official doctrine in some nontrivial way. Paul's connotation for heresy is: A dismissing B due to a specific statement from B (blasphemy) that contradict A's canon of orthodox beliefs (religion). But I think that incorrectly conflates individual opinion into an unforgivable sin, punishable only with excommunication or death. Historically, cases of heresy arose when someone like Gallileo proposed a viable model of the universe that contradicted dogma, not when they made a single isolated statement of dissonance. The latter were commonplace in secular writing even early in the Enlightenment. (Blasphemy did alienate freethinkers like Voltaire to the Church and Royalty; but it didn't get him imprisoned or killed. It was direct opposition to Royal dogma that did that, like Sir Thomas More's excommunication by Henry VIII). BTW, 1918's Sedition Act was passed after the US entered WWI, as an emergency expedient intended to squelch open opposition to the war. It isn't really comparable to the concepts of heresy or blasphemy against a canon of beliefs, since Wilson's decision to go to war wasn't a persistent dogma that needed protection. The Act was a temporary martial law (like Lincoln's suppression of the Maryland government for the duration of the Civil War) to be lifted after the immediate threat to fighting a war had passed.
• keithwhor 4y ago
  The biggest problem I have with Paul’s writing on these topics is the misanthropic undertones. The classification of folks as “conventional minded” mirrors other socially reductive language like referring to people as “simps,” “NPCs,” and more. Paul believes he is partly responsible for engaging a social immune response to the intolerance he perceives — forgetting that immune responses are inflammatory by nature and often destroy large amounts of healthy tissue and in some cases, entire organisms. I don’t think his assertions are wrong but I don’t think castigating people as “aggressively conventional minded” is the right approach. In creating an us-vs-them mentality I think Paul may inadvertently be adding to the actual biggest problem in civilized discourse these days — weaponized victimization and othering. It’s not enough to have an opinion, there has to be a bad guy or an evil group of people intent on destroying society. I’m not sure how to solve this problem — open to suggestions and brainstorming, it’s just something that’s been on my mind a lot recently.
  • AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    I think, in your second paragraph, you kind of contradicted yourself. If "weaponized victimization and othering" are the problem, well, victimization doesn't weaponize itself. Somebody is doing those things. So now we're at "a group of people are causing these problems". That means that, yes, we kind of do arrive at an us-vs-them mentality - even you do, if you think a step or two further. Now, you could be pleading for the Christian "love the sinner, hate the sin" idea - people are doing these things, but we need to not "other" the people. And that may be a real point - if "othering" is what they are doing, and we think it's wrong, then we need to be careful not to "other" them. At the same time, while we try to figure out how to help them not destroy society, we still need to keep them from destroying society.
  • bendbro 4y ago
    > aggressively conventional minded An aside: One thing I love about VCs is the perfectly fitting, memorable terms they coin. This is a perfect example, I can't stop laughing.
  • choppaface 4y ago
    COVID has changed a lot because it brought into public debate how to evaluate deeply held beliefs about predicting the future. The discussion is high-strung because it covers a life-or-death topic, and it’s so diverse (e.g. science vs region vs conspiracy vs liberty etc) that it forced the quantization of opinions. Once you swap an opinion for a symbol, game theory takes over the conversation. What could help solve this? Real reconciliation of the different perspectives. There’s a common overlap: we all want to live, and we all have nonzero ignorance. The tragedy is that the inordinately rich like paulg continue to divide with these self-serving essays instead of helping other to grapple with the K-shaped recovery we’re in now. The place to innovate now is not in blue-sky futurism but to innovate the recovery of those who COVID hit the hardest.
• incomingpain 4y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaHLd8de6nM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaHLd8de6nM Obama is a very smart dude. 2 years ago he saw it building and he misidentified this as activism. John Mcwhorter I believe better identified this as a religion: https://www.vox.com/vox-conversations-podcast/2021/11/2/22728801/vox-conversations-john-mcwhorter-woke-racism https://www.vox.com/vox-conversations-podcast/2021/11/2/2272... As an atheist you see the same pattern often. Here's a hour long video of sam harris and john talking about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPHUu9sAGKo&t=2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPHUu9sAGKo&t=2s This new religion has the christians, muslims, atheists, and others all worked up. It's unusual for a new global religion to form, nothing there to really prevent it. The big difference this time is they got really big while remaining undercover. I guess my prediction as well. You could become a preacher for this new religion, set for life to serve. Just need to figure out how to. If you do try this, make sure you are following the golden rule every day. Make sure you're 100% positivity. Try to merge religions, I'm pretty sure 'coexist' is a big part of this.
• b0rsuk 4y ago
• FerociousTimes 4y ago
  I wish he touched on the point of how public discourse on social media platforms is inevitably doomed to descend into a cesspool of populist rhetoric, and the more masses the platform attracts, the more hierarchical it gets, the more emphasis it puts on vanity metrics, the likelier it would be a breeding ground of populists of all stripes, and that this cancel culture and mass-produced outrage is symptomatic of a greater social problem, and the witch hunts conducted by the vindictive online mob in pursuit of a perverted sense of justice that he so lamented in this essay is just one manifestation of the underlying issue of the infliction of populism that struck the society in our modern times.
• d--b 4y ago
  At some point one has to ask about the coincidentality between the rise in “heresy” (since he calls it that way) and the rise of social media platforms and new technology in general. It’s one thing to complain that it exists, and another to discuss the roots of the phenomenon and how to address it. Yes, I am implying that the guys at Silicon Valley with all their non-evil intentions are a major part of the problem. That the incentives of making money off data collection somehow got aligned with creating mobs of think-alike people who suddenly felt empowered to just shut everyone out of their bubbles. Ask people to stay off facebook and twitter, Paul. Or are you in too deep?
• femiagbabiaka 4y ago
  When has freedom of expression ever been promised within the workplace? Genuinely curious.
• titzer 4y ago
  I was nodding along up until this: > The clearest evidence of this is that whether a statement is considered x-ist often depends on who said it. Truth doesn't work that way. The same statement can't be true when one person says it, but x-ist, and therefore false, when another person does. [2] I think there is a ton of nuance that contradicts this. For example, a white, upper-middleclass college graduate could proclaim: "College graduation rates are lower for black people. It must be difficult for them to finish." And a black person with a low income background who has failed to finish college can utter the exact same words and it means something totally different. The first might be considered subtly racist, depending on how its delivered, who it is delivered to--maybe even flagrantly racist under the right circumstances. The second might be considered exactly the opposite, alleging racism while not itself being racist. The context and speaker matter a lot for these value judgments, not to mention tone, implication, insinuation, etc. Paul is bordering on socially crippled here.
  • aidenn0 4y ago
    In addition, all communication is context sensitive. When a politician who needs nei-nazi votes to get elected says something questionable, it's not unreasonable to assume it was intentional. Dog whistles are why we can't have nice things.
    • taneq 4y ago
      Just struck me that the term 'dog whistle' to the general population just means something you toot to get a dog's attention, whereas to a select target audience it has far more sinister implications and acts as a call to action of sorts. Ironic.
      • onionisafruit 4y ago
        “dog whistle” comes from supersonic dog whistles that dogs can hear but humans can’t, not just whistling to call a dog. The analogy is that a speaker can use a phrase that most people won’t notice but their intended audience will understand. Maybe you already know this and I misunderstood your comment.
• voidhorse 4y ago
  pg employs this style of argumentation so frequently that it's almost time to devise a new term for it; for those sympathetic to his argument, realize that it is not an argument for free speech but rather an argument for free speech without consequences. pg likes to do this thing where he takes some noble instance of a counterexample (e.g. Newton being declared a heretic for important scientific discoveries) and uses it to butter up the audience to be sympathetic to what ultimately becomes a defense of racism/sexism/whatever-ism you want without consequences because, wait a minute kids, the homophobes and racists might be right! What he manages to do rather surreptitiously, is attempt to get abstract enough that he can bring all forms of discourse to the same level. He reduces all discourse to the "search for truth" but if he had even a passing knowledge of speech act theory, any linguistics, Wittgenstein's later philosophy etc. he'd quickly recognize that much of the speech and discourse human beings are engaged in is not about finding the truth. Ultimately, we determine our own values, and just because something is true does not mean it aligns with our values. Can a statement be "xist" and true? (let's call it what it is, pg means the negative isms here, racism, sexism, etc. (see how suddenly it's hard to agree with him when he says what he means and doesn't hedge? he hedges and hides behind abstraction because he realizes his position is indefensible to most "conventional minded" (read not bigoted) people)) yes of course. a statement can be totally racist and somehow true. Does that mean we should accept all these statements in all realms of discourse and that such the authors of these statements should be free of consequences because the statement happens to be true. But we don't just live in the world, as humans we have agency and we might decide that when truth and morals conflict, we prefer morals. Is calling someone ,e.g. racist an attempt to stonewall their speech? Of course it is. People don't like racism. Paul claims this is a "wave of intolerance" while conveniently ignoring the fact that the positive content of "xism" speech is also a vehicle of intolerance, and usually a much more aggressive one at that, to the point that your speech is trying to do the work of not tolerating the very existence of classes of people in society. Human society is an amalgam of all sorts of discourse. Even we "conventional minded" simpletons can recognize that the intent of a "xism" discourse is usually not truth seeking so much as it is the active exclusion of certain classes of people from equal participation in society. It's nice to think everything is reducible to something like "Newton V. the Church" but this is a reductive move that ignores all the particularities of such discourse and tries to make things that are fundamentally distinct (scientific process v. racism, sexism, all manner of exclusionary discourse) equivalent. Should scientific exploration be punished with the stake? No. Should racism be punished with loss of a career? Possibly. As with every moral problem, we often need to judge case by case. Can "cancellations" be a way too severe given the violation? Of course. Can they also be appropriate? Sure. Moral problems are not reducible to a abstract mathematics that removes human particulars from the equation or to technical description and the part of your brain responsible for empathy must be pretty lacking if you think otherwise. Morality is not some abstract calculus. That's why we have juries and judges. I'm really sick of pg using his platform to come up with these absolutely piss-poor pieces of sophistry that are ultimately defenses of horrible shit veiled behind "smart" abstract language so that "conventional minded" people are tricked into thinking this guy actually has something interesting to say about society and isn't secretly a massive bigot. Continue being a great capitalist or whatever but keep the pseudo-intellectualism to yourself, please.
• langsoul-com 4y ago
  I wonder if people are becoming less forgiving to others. That is the concept of redemption doesn't exist for everyone. Ie, is Harvey Weinstein redeemable? What if he saved 1,000 others from sexual abuse, to redeem his sins, in the next year. Can his past sons be forgiven?
• deleted 4y ago
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• quantum_mcts 4y ago
  > when I reread it 20 years later it sounded like a description of contemporary employment Here is my problem with it: It is not something that "appeared in the last 20 years". It was always like that. You just from a group that was completely shielded from it. Now the protective shield that you so used to starts to dissolve. You start to realize how the real world works. Not so perfect. Not so happy. And think that it is some new ill destroying your perfect happy world.
• noduerme 4y ago
  While the logical proof is interesting - of x-ist statements being acceptable or not based on who says them, and therefore potentially true and worth evaluating - it naively presumes that the general interest values truthseeking over ideological conformity. I think a lot of collective activists will freely admit that to them, capital-T Truth is less important than unity, and by this avoid the apparent contradiction. As to the charge of undue weight being given to certain statements: Is there no statement that should result in the firing of an otherwise excellent employee? None? What about praising Hitler or advocating sacking the Capitol? If there is one, is there more than one? Lastly, I hate to bring this up, but I was silently shadow-banned (had all my posts publicly censored) on this board by Mr. Graham himself for the heresy of criticizing some of his business approaches. Sure, it was his right to do that, as the moderator. Isn't it an employer's right to fire someone for a statement that will harm the company - true or otherwise? There have always been consequences for unpopular speech, some of which strike us as unjust. The line has shifted radically away from valuing free expression in recent years, unfortunately. But to say that "heresy" in this sense ever went away is a false statement. The only question that's ever been in play is where the line is drawn, and that's what should be addressed, by anyone claiming to seek justice; case by case, individual by individual, and not by countering one hyperbole - "you're an x-ist" - with its opposite, e.g. "you're the Spanish Inquisition".
• honkycat 4y ago
  This is pathetic. Why is multi-millionare Paul Graham bothering to write trite generalizations about "the left's cancel culture?" It is boring and tired no matter now pretentiously you dress it up. At lest Tucker Carlson knows how to deliver the goods in less than 500 words. And I'm sorry but: what specific opinions does this guy hold that he is so angry about? It feels dishonest to whine like this without expressing any of the heresy himself. Also, it isn't "cancel culture" if your belief system is trying to dispossess and devalue people I care about. It is self defense. 30 years ago you could wear blackface and speak open hatred towards non-binary people. I think it is a good thing we don't tolerate hate anymore. Apparently Paul Graham disagrees. > For example, when someone calls a statement "x-ist," they're also implicitly saying that this is the end of the discussion. I can't think of the last time a thing like this happened to me. I seriously doubt it has ever happened to Paul Graham outside of social media. If you are being kind and honest, I can guarantee someone will be interested in having a conversation with you about the subject. Unless they are an asshole. I get the feeling Paul is main-lining Fox News and not actually having discussions with that many people. The TV man is making him angry about dumb culture war issues. I've spoken before about how I feel the left can have shitty priorities and be extremely whiny. But here is the thing: There are a lot of mentally ill people on social media who do nothing but harass and terrorize others based on their narrow world-view. This happens on both the left AND the right. It is impossible to know if these people are acting in good faith, or trying to give the left/right a bad name by being annoying and reactionary. Every time you see someone say something controversial, they complain about "death threats on social media." While that IS vile and disgusting, it happens all the time. Every time. You can get death threats for saying Super Mario World is overrated. Why are we still taking these pathetic social media people seriously? Answer: Because they are a useful tool for the opposite side to use as a cudgel to while about "cancel culture." You don't need a straw man anymore. You can always find an idiot or crazy person to represent an insane world-view and present it as if this person is The Pope of Leftists/Conservatives. Candice Owens is a great example. She doesn't exist for CONSERVATIVES. Sure, they like her ( maybe ), but that isn't why she is famous. Her job is to have reactionary takes that gets picked up by centrist / left leaning orgs so the TV man can make the TV viewers angry. "Cancel culture" is a TV show that has been doing nothing but re-runs since the 80s when it was called "political correctness."
• renewiltord 4y ago
  My ultimate problem with all these heretics is that their heresies are ultimately just reactionary - There is a constant thread of the “good old days” and “in the past” and essentially their ideal is some past state. It just feels a bit meh to me. But perhaps that’s how all things are. I have a view which I think is heretical: I believe that banning organ trade is unethical and exploitative and that bringing organs to the market in a safe way is not only possible but required by us. I think it doesn’t fall into this fallacy because there is no time when this was considered except one year before NOTA passed. But perhaps you all think that is boring.
• grappler 4y ago
  paulg, despite saying "There are aggressively conventional-minded people on both the right and the left", immediately follows that with a fixation on the left: "The reason the current wave of intolerance comes from the left is simply because the new unifying ideology happened to come from the left. The next one might come from the right. Imagine what that would be like." We don't need to imagine. We're over a year into a wave of moral panic from the right focusing on local school boards in the united states, in which they seek to purge reading materials dealing with subjects that make them uncomfortable, fire people for raising those subjects, and impose rules against raising those subjects, in some cases carrying criminal penalties. Looking over at Russia, we see the worst case scenarios Paul references in the esssay playing out quite explicitly, today. The example of how we'll know we're really in trouble ("Damn right we're banning ideas, and in fact here's a list of them") and the example of Mao saying "There are heretics among us. Seek them out and punish them"? Putin and his followers have already entered that territory [1] [2]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/16/world/europe/putin-russia-ukraine-protests.html [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/09/world/europe/putin-russia-war-ukraine.html
• rsanek 4y ago
  >There are always some heresies — some opinions you'd be punished for expressing. But there are a lot more now than there were a few decades ago I see this sentiment expressed often to the point where it seems to just be accepted as true without the need to provide proof. Is anyone familiar with a methodology that attempts to examine this view with more rigor other than just, "boy it seems like more people are being cancelled these days"?
• krallja 4y ago
  > the current wave of intolerance comes from the left Banning Critical Race Theory, teaching kindergarteners about gay people, and removing certain books from school libraries are all being done by the far right, today, via legislative bodies.
• thawaya3113 4y ago
  The idea that people could speak freely in jobs earlier without getting fired is beyond laughable. The only thing being exposed by this is that a certain group of people were exempt from the rules most faced and are now having to face some small fraction of that.
• jensensbutton 4y ago
  > For example, when someone calls a statement "x-ist," they're also implicitly saying that this is the end of the discussion. What a load of shit. So he sets up this opinion piece with a poorly constructed straw man (quite literally a false statement in every _discussion_ I've been part of) then uses this as an anchor for the rest? I mean, this is one of the most aggressively conventional takes on cancel culture I've read over the past year. Maybe he should get back to being active with YC again so he has less time to embarrass himself like this.
• lookalike74 4y ago
  To disable heresy you'd need to disable personal or moral offense. But it's as unrealistic to think that could ever happen as it is to blame "the left" for reacting to the deliberate incitement and cultivation of prejudice that's so popular right now. People die because of "x-ism" and pretending "the left" are to blame is ludicrous in the worst possible way.
• cheatwjessica 4y ago
• cheatwjessica 4y ago
• unityByFreedom 4y ago
  This is the pot calling the kettle black and serves to divide more than it does unite. In the past PG was heavy handed on HN, later handing over the reigns to dang et al. That doesn't mean his influence is gone, or that the initial thumb on the scale had no lasting impact. More competing tech from non-SV sources would be a boon for everyone including YC. There's no motivator like healthy competition.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• mjirv 4y ago
  > Structurally there are two distinctive things about heresy: (1) that it takes priority over the question of truth or falsity, and (2) that it outweighs everything else the speaker has done. I would amend #1 to “the adherents of the conventional view are convinced its truth is beyond question.” Truth is actually really important, maybe the most important thing for heresy. A defining feature of heresies is that those enforcing them believe strongly that the heresy is untrue.¹ Take PG’s example of doubting the divinity of Christ. Truth isn’t secondary in that case - just the opposite. Believing it, literally, is the core feature of Christianity. > The clearest evidence of this is that whether a statement is considered x-ist often depends on who said it. Truth doesn't work that way. The same statement can't be true when one person says it, but x-ist, and therefore false, when another person does. This is a fallacy. Insofar as this phenomenon exists (less than people think), it’s because the belief content of the statement is different depending on who says it. There’s a common view on the identitarian left that “minorities can’t be racist because racism is about power and they don’t have any.” But a Latino professor who spends his time arguing that Black people are genetically inferior to other groups will get cancelled just as quickly as a white one. ¹Or need to be seen as believing it 100%
• DenGorbachev 4y ago
  > They went at it with the delight of dogs chasing squirrels. Indeed, some people chase heretics to take their wealth / power.
• thomassmith65 4y ago
  At this point, there are more essays decrying "cancel culture" than there are rabbit's noses. On an ideological level, many of them are rousing, but if they enter the realm of everyday life by listing specific examples, the arguments weaken. Many forbidden ideas are taboo because they, often obviously, have little potential to help society, and great potential to harm it. I've deliberately avoided mentioning any specific heresies here. I'll give the author credit for bringing that to the reader's attention. Then I also wonder if he wrote a draft with examples (the heresies of anti-feminists? groypers? race scientists?), and realized he would disgust his audience.
• ComradePhil 4y ago
  Paul conviniently makes it seem as if it was a organic grassroots thing and not a result of the rulers directing them from the top. There's never been stable rulers who didn't get rid of the naysayers. "Drain the Swamp" was unsuccessful and it was like the vaccine for them. Now, they just know what can be used to attack them, so they are just fixing those things, whether it's gripping technocrats by the balls or getting rid of punishments for pedophiles.
• 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
  There seems to be some irony in this essay since the viability of today's "heresy" is particularly dependent on the use of computer networks, individuals, software and websites that are actively promoted by or otherwise connected to the author, e.g., through investments, mentoring and the like. Because the "business" of these websites is to generate web traffic for the benefit of web advertising, the operators can profit from the traffic that "heresy" generates. Imagine a "social media" or similar UGC-based website today that forbade the use of the website to identifiy "heretics". If that was the norm, would this essay have been written. Using the internet to pursue "vigilante justice" comprises such a large portion of UGC and associated traffic that it is arguably crucial to the "tech" company "business model." There are other uses of the internet. They might not be as profitable in terms of generating large amounts of traffic, satisfying advertisers and lining the pockets of "tech" companies and investors, but they might be equally or more beneficial to users.
• Werewolf255 4y ago
  I knew this was gonna be a rough read after the setup. And then he got to the part where he's "just drawing parallels" between the Cultural Revolution and college campuses, and I knew there wasn't anything else I needed to read. And of course it leads into "maybe we don't really need to make sure eeeeeveryone is vaccinated, freedom of choice" apologia. The part he's missing, or being wilfully ignorant of, is intentionally distorting heresy and orthodoxy through bad faith and selfish uses of both. I can understand that the person who challenges the system due to experienced injustices or inequities is coming from a different place than the person challenging the system because they aren't allowed to dump mercury into the water supply. One is trying to speak to a system they perceive to be unfair while the other is trying to keep the system from performing as intended in order to further entrench their own interests. That they might seem similar is mostly window dressing. I heard this argument in 2008 when folks loved to point out that Obama was popular with youth, just like Mao during the Cultural Revolution. It's Sinophobia, full stop.
• Bostonian 4y ago
  It's heresy to say that the races, having evolved in different environments for millennia, likely have different average levels of intelligence, consistent with patterns of scores on IQ tests and college admissions tests. Charles Murray's book "Facing Reality: Two Truths about Race in America" (2021) expounds this heresy. The proposition can certainly be debated, but it's important that it is debated rather than shunned as heresy, because if it is true, pushing to make blacks represented according to population in high-IQ professions such as law, medicine, and engineering will erode standards and reduce productivity in those fields.
• Geste 4y ago
  Sometimes, all I wish is to have the life of a rich white guy. How your mind could be free to go to such lengths !
• Connor_Creegan 4y ago
  The values assumed by the author of this essay are so far removed from my own that it would be useless to attempt to engage it on its own terms in this forum, but I do find this piece interesting from the perspective of an anthropological study of language. Graham's criteria for heresy are : "(1) that it takes priority over the question of truth or falsity, and (2) that it outweighs everything else the speaker has done." This obviously has nothing to do with the classical conception of heresy most pronounced in the Christian tradition, which is well-defined and well-documented. Anyone with intellectual honesty can discover on their own that "heresy" simply denotes teaching that is markedly false in virtue of being contrary to dogmatic teaching, almost the opposite of what is implied in point (1). Based on many of the underlying assumptions in this piece, I think it would be entirely fair to describe Graham as some kind of liberal. This is evidently something he would bemoan me doing (see: the bit about "x-ism" in discourse), but the ideas expressed, the value-judgments made, and the characterizations of medieval Europe made in this piece are by no means original or historically-unprecedented. The liberal or perhaps whiggish historiography (a conception of history, in this case, in terms of the degree of negative liberty allotted to individuals not only by the state but the body politic as a whole) implicit in this piece appears at least prima facie to lead to its author's either mistaken characterization or perhaps purposeful recharacterization of the notion of "heresy". Liberalism ad absurdem would, in performance, consider a classical conception of "heresy" nonsensical, because it assumes the truthhood of a dogmatic teaching which isn't immediately obvious to everyone. However there is something that, at least if pushed on it enough, no one will deny without performative contradiction, and that is that certain things are good and true, and others not. No systematic thought can be non-dogmatic, because the dogmatic rejection of dogmas is a dogma (it is, in truth, only the dogmatic rejection of dogmas existing in some form on the present world-stage). Of course, the dogmas of the varieties of liberalism are, more or less, incompatible with orthodox Christianity, which popularized the term "heraese" in the Latin West, and this accounts for the different notion of "heresy", which appears to me now as a corpse of a term, once mostly denoting false teaching, now emphasizing the persecutory aspect of espousing teaching contrary to certain dogmas. Similarly, "paganus" once referred to a rural, bucolic person in the Roman Empire, and through pejorative use by Christians simply began to denote those who practiced the religion common among the rural Romans. Now, the so-called "neopagan" movement self-identify as such, appropriating the term entirely. I have also witnessed the phenomenon of some "far-right" people I know crying about being labeled "fascists" because they were not "fascists" as defined in the doctrinal document ghost-authored by Gentile, but then years later willingly adopted the term, accepting that the nuanced differences between their worldview and the IFP's were negligible from the perspective of people who use the term "fascist" pejoratively. I think a similar thing is going on here with the use of "heresy". The author clearly believes that the dominant thought-forms during the middle ages are "antiquated" (his word), and because the differences between traditions with different declared dogmas probably appear to him negligible from the perspective of his values and historiography, the only thing the word "heresy" signals to him is the mere existence of socially-imposed consequences for expressing this or that belief. Quite fascinating how we, as a species, use language.
• mib32 4y ago
  People in the West, please, don't complain. In Russia right now, if you just call a war in Ukraine a "war", you'll get arrested. Please enjoy what you have now, it's so much better. Left wing people are WAY much more soft than from the right.
• mosew 4y ago
  "when someone calls a statement 'x-ist,' they're also implicitly saying that this is the end of the discussion." This thesis is the real "throwing the baby out with the bathwater". I can respect that it applies truthfully to many would-be SJWs, and the labels are indeed used to end conversations. However, meaningfully calling something racist, sexist, etc. is a start of a process, not an end. This meaningful discussion (and, much more frequently, reflection) is too often precluded when one party is too defensive to look honestly, openly, and beyond themselves, at their own biases.
  • engineeringwoke 4y ago
    So you let people control your life by letting them intelligently split interest groups by race and gender so that you can't effectively fight a class war? Bravo, you really fell for it.
  • jimkleiber 4y ago
    The challenge I have when someone calls something racist or sexist, or even good or evil or beautiful or ugly, is that a person seems to be taking how they feel about a thing and labeling that thing as if everyone feels the same way with regards to that thing, which I think is rarely if ever true. Which can lead to this: Person 1: That thing is beautiful. Person 2: No it's not beautiful. Person 1: Yes, it is beautiful. Person 2: No, it is not beautiful! or slightly better, this: Person 1: For me, that thing is beautiful. Person 2: Well, for me, that thing is not beautiful. Person 1: Why don't you find that thing beautiful?? Person 2: I just don't see it as beautiful. or much better, this: Person 1: I feel so much joy when I see that thing. Person 2: I don't feel joy, I actually feel disgust. Person 1: I'm confused, why do you feel disgust when you see that thing? Person 2: It reminds me of this one thing that caused me a lot of pain before. So while yes, I don't think labeling something as universally X necessarily ends the conversation, I think it can lead people to a binary debate about universals instead of open up the conversation for people to share their own experiences and more personal perspectives.
• Epiphany21 4y ago
  This was a very interesting read, but I think there are some base assumptions left unanalyzed. In my opinion, the reason why "cancel culture", or heresy as the author calls it, is so dangerous is because it legitimizes A) dehumanization, B) the idea that any evolutionary strategy is off the table, and C) the idea that you are not obligated to explain yourself if you want people to listen and take you seriously. A) Society is regressing to the point where the mere utterance of a word or phrase can be deemed so offensive that it justifies murder, permanent injury and/or sexual violation being perpetrated against the speaker. This is a level of barbarism most would associate some distant dark age or the fauna of an unexplored jungle, yet here it is. B) By evolutionary strategy, I am referring to the knowledge, experience and skill we apply individually and collectively for the purpose of survival, and the decision making processes we engage in along the way. People do not have to believe what you believe. They don't have to pray to what you pray to, or eat what you eat, or wear what you wear, or speak your language. And that's perfectly okay as long they aren't stepping your toes, and vice versa. There are many paths that can be taken to attain fitness and fulfillment. Monocultures suck, and stifled speech breeds them like there's no tomorrow. C) A lack of transparency deprives us of the chains of logic used to reach a given conclusion, whether it's true or not. Tying this back into point B, in nature there is generally more than one right way to do something, yet the ugly monoculture that has come out of American social media and acadamia would seem to disagree. There is an all-pervasive "my way or the highway" attitude. When everyone is fearful and secretive it creates a chilling effect in every strata of society. It doesn't matter if you're a burger flipper or an electrical engineer. In all environments poisoned by this culture of hosility it becomes impossible to build enough trust to get the work done, let alone innovate or do it efficiently. Human beings are smart enough to choose our own whetstones and sharpen ourselves in a controlled manner that leads to a lot less pain, suffering and death. But apparently not smart enough to overcome misplaced pride and petty tribalism. In my opinion this is the great filter. Not aliens, not an energy crisis, not space travel. Just learning to work well with others is going to be the hardest thing in the universe.
• gverrilla 4y ago
  Early 2000's I was in school as a teenager and reading about feminism. It looked to me very obvious, even before that, the oppression of women, and the need to stop it, alongside all violence - which demanded consciousness and dialog. I tried to advertise the concept to the females in my classroom, and with only 1 or 2 exceptions they ridiculerized me and feminism, and some even told me I was a "fag" or some equivalent. I would tell them that the "level of emancipation of women in a society is also a measure to this society's general level of emancipation" [0], and they would reply: "ok, nerd. why would you even care if you are a man, supposedly?". I'm pretty glad with the deep advances we've been able to produce since then. Love produces love, and vice-versa - and that's universally desireable. On our way to Harmonia[1]. [0], [1]: Charles Fourier
• bobthechef 4y ago
  [dead]
• invalidOrTaken 4y ago
  Reading the comments, there is a definite Dark Forest (or similar) effect here, where heretics can't say what they think because it's heresy, and inquisitors can't say what they think because it doesn't stand up to sustained inquiry. Thus both sides try to goad the other into going first.
• mancerayder 4y ago
  He's right in that there's a very important and popular Zeitgeist here in the U.S. where person A and person B can say a particular fact P, and depending on certain external physical visual characteristics of person A or B (how the light bounces off of them or refracts), P can be taken to be false, or evidence of heresy. And what is interesting is even just raising the above objection in purely logical terms, is enough to have the dark shadow of suspicion cast upon thee. Let's hope the liberal values prevail, and we return to our search for truth, which does exist.