5 ms·

A rather elaborate hypothetical, but since cancel culture is purportedly rampant, can we have a real world example?

by jonathankoren 4y ago

bombolo 4y ago
https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/ https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/
- jonathankoren 4y ago
  So what happened in the end? RMS returned to the FSF board in March 2021, where he remains. In other words, a return to the status quo. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ https://www.fsf.org/about/staff-and-board https://www.fsf.org/about/staff-and-board
- jakelazaroff 4y ago
  I read through the first quarter or so of this article and man — despite the author’s best efforts, it makes RMS look real bad. Here’s a particularly awful direct quote: > Giuffre was 17 at the time; this makes it rape in the Virgin Isiands. Does it really? I think it is morally absurd to define rape in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17.
  - sillysaurusx 4y ago
    It gets worse. I actually came here to say pretty much the same thing — happy you did. Before I get into that, I do want to counterbalance it by saying that I agree with Stallman in that specific context. The context being key. The question is whether a 17yo can morally consent to having sex (not legally). Unless one truly believes that a switch flips the day you turn 18, you’ll be hard-pressed to form an argument that a 20yo having sex with a 17.99yo is not merely illegal, but also immoral. But the problem of course is that Stallman has a room temperature social IQ. I hate to phrase it so bluntly, because it’s like staring into my future when I’m 60. I bet I’ll run my mouth one too many times and get into some hot water, and it’s all too easy to take potshots at someone who’s willing to risk saying controversial-but-true things. And yet. > It seems that [Stallman’s] general points are two. > 1. … > 2. And that, depending on the context, what is technically child pornography didn't cause anyone harm. >> This child pornography might be a photo of yourself or your lover that the two of you shared. > He then says that the mere possession of child pornography does not harm anyone. I assume he is implying that only the production of child pornography harms people. >> But even when it is uncontroversial to call the subject depicted a child, that is no excuse for censorship. Having a photo or drawing does not hurt anyone, so and if you or I think it is disgusting, that is no excuse for censorship. > I would disagree with that, but it's his personal blog. He is not speaking for MIT or the free software foundation. “Disagree” is a rather benign term for the emotions one tends to feel at that sentiment. It’s an interesting experience to consciously try to override one’s own tendency to raise a “conversational exception”. (From http://paulgraham.com/heresy.html http://paulgraham.com/heresy.html, “Using such labels is the conversational equivalent of signalling an exception. That's one of the reasons they're used: to end a discussion.”) Yes, it’s technically true that possessing CSAM does not physically harm anyone. And that’s worth pausing to consider the implications. For example, I’ve spent a lot of time considering whether AI models should be allowed to generate CSAM. After all, isn’t it tempting to think you could train one Final Model on Forbidden Content, with the justification of “See, now no one needs to go and produce this training data anymore; we have an endless supply that harms nobody”? It’s at least worth considering, if only to disagree with it. Then you get into the really weird questions. If you train a model to produce loli hentai porn (which 4chan is actually doing), is it morally reprehensible? (Turns out, it’s often illegal.) After all, it’s just drawings. No real people were even involved. How do you even argue against that from a moral standpoint? Yet all of this context seems completely lost on Stallman, who spends two seconds to type two paragraphs and clicks “reply” without pausing to consider how it might sound. It’s so frustrating to see someone bring up so many valid points in a way that’s not merely tone deaf, but existing in a universe absent of undertones and nuance. At times like these, I like to reread http://paulgraham.com/say.html http://paulgraham.com/say.html: > If you said them all you'd have no time left for your real work. You'd have to turn into Noam Chomsky. I despise AI safety filters, but they exist because we can’t afford to ship a Richard Stallman model out to the real world and have it generate an endless list of reasons why child porn doesn’t hurt anybody. We’d have no time left to do actual research, because we’d have to spend it all defending ourselves for the decision to release such a model.
    - modo_mario 4y ago
      >But the problem of course is that Stallman has a room temperature social IQ. I hate to phrase it so bluntly, because it’s like staring into my future when I’m 60. He's autistic. Apologised afterwards. etc Which one would expect a crowd championing (neuro)diversity would keep in mind. The author of the original accusations for the petition latched onto every bit of tone-deafness they could tho. Saying he was transphobic since at some point where pronouns were only just becoming a thing in public discourse he discussed about the use of a default since something else seemed linguistically better to him. This because....well he was/is around a decent amount of trans people given he's very much not transphobic. He had again apologised publically about that one but it didn't matter.
      - sillysaurusx 4y ago
        Autism as a defense works up to a point. I’m certainly sympathetic, being a narcoleptic. But I also plan my life carefully around those constraints. It’s why I only missed exactly one meeting due to oversleeping during my time at Groq. Stallman appears to be aware of his condition, but takes no steps to actively counter his tendencies. This works well for building emacs. Perhaps it even works well for leading an open source software movement. But it’s mystifying that he seemed to be caught completely off guard by the entirely-predictable backlash. To put it another way, is autism a reasonable defense for believing that obtaining CSAM harms no one? It’s unrelated to the question. Even if we’re extremely generous and set aside how CSAM was obtained, him being autistic wouldn’t be more than a footnote. Being neurodivergent is hard. That’s why it’s called divergent. It’s why I don’t try to get a job in sales, despite being pretty good at it. Because that would require me to be a reliable 9am to 5pm person; I wasn’t born that way.
      - bombolo 4y ago
        yeah he got called transphobic because he says "they" for singular is ambiguous and a new word instead would be clearer.
    - Tams80 4y ago
      I think the main thing to take away is that if it's possible, someone is going to try it eventually. Rule 34 is a meme, but also a very astute, if simple, observation if you think about it. So really the only questions we should be asking are: 1. How can we limit the harm from people doing such things as much as possible? 2. While doing so not infringing on people's liberties and freedoms, and risking falsely accusing people? But neither have simple answers and have many sub-questions within them that are specific to any particular case.
  - bombolo 4y ago
    rms called epstin a "serial rapist"… > Here’s a particularly awful direct quote: So, if I understand you correctly, you'd be ok with rape if it was not against the law?
    - bitwize 4y ago
      The journalist's cheatcode: "So what you're saying is..."
    - jakelazaroff 4y ago
      If you’re gonna make a bad faith interpretation of my comment like that, you need to make it sound more plausible. Here’s what I’m actually saying: it is morally absurd to define rape in a way that excludes an adult in their 50s having sex with a 17 year old. Just so you understand me correctly.
      - bombolo 4y ago
        > If you’re gonna make a bad faith interpretation of my comment like that, you need to make it sound more plausible. Yes this sort of things feels bad when it happens to us… which is ironic because you were ok doing it to someone else :) > Here’s what I’m actually saying: it is morally absurd to define rape in a way that excludes an adult in their 50s having sex with a 17 year old He was arguing against the fact that statutory rape in USA is a boolean value basically. You are making it sound like rape is legal if it happens to someone old… when in fact rape is always illegal.
  - ta8903 4y ago
    Posts like this remind me of high school where I argued against some hypothetical and got bullied because people got weirded out by it.
    - kuhewa 4y ago
      "how can they arrest the guys on To Catch A Predator since there was no actual minor they were chatting to before coming over to the sting house where they thought a 13 year old lived with handcuffs and wine coolers"
llimos 4y ago
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/brendan-eich-steps-down-as-mozilla-ceo/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/brendan-eich-steps-down-...
- mrcrumb1 4y ago
  > Brendan was not fired and was not asked by the Board to resign. Brendan voluntarily submitted his resignation. The Board acted in response by inviting him to remain at Mozilla in another C-level position. Brendan declined that offer. The Board respects his decision. Yes this guy was left in absolute shambles by the woke mob
  - smsm42 4y ago
    Oh, firing - and yes, it absolutely was firing firing the position - isn't enough? His suffering doesn't measure up to your standards? Ok, we're moving from "it never happens, all lies" to "it happens frequently, but it's not too bad, at least for me sitting here in a comfortable chair and suffering no consequences of it".
    - jonathankoren 4y ago
      No one is saying the later. Thats a straw man. But let’s address the moving goal post argument, because that’s worth a serious examination. The problem touted about “being canceled” is that cancelee’s life is destroyed. They’ve going to suffer long term irreparable effects. But when you look at what actually happens it’s nothing. So if the problem is the harm, and there is none, and in fact sometimes profits from their notoriety? Then how is the goal post set out by the “victims” even met? So yes, I believe they’re is goal post moving, just not the goal posts you’re implying.
  - kbelder 4y ago
    Well, I think there's a path that leads from that woke mob to the absolute shambles that Firefox is in now. Can you imagine where Firefox could be if there was a competent technologist who cared about their product in charge?
PeterisP 4y ago
This one is the one I remember the most - https://www.westernjournal.com/latino-truck-driver-fired-white-power-symbol-simply-cracking-knuckles/ https://www.westernjournal.com/latino-truck-driver-fired-whi...
gadders 4y ago
Laura Loomer? Kathleen Stock? Toby Young? Milo Yiannopoulos?
- pjc50 4y ago
  All of whom we're better off without? And isn't Toby Young still employed at his job at the disinformation factory? https://www.spectator.co.uk/writer/toby-young/ https://www.spectator.co.uk/writer/toby-young/
  - gadders 4y ago
    Who gets to judge that? And the Spectator is no more a disinformation factory than, say, the New Statesman.
    - jonathankoren 4y ago
      I would say their victims.
  - rabuse 4y ago
    What if some people decided they're better off without you and your opinions? Should we cast you from society, de-bank you, and make sure you're destitute?
- jonathankoren 4y ago
  Gez man, why didn’t you just add Alex Jones and Nick Fuentes to this list of conspiratorial hate mongers? It’s a shame they’re all still employed… among other things.
smsm42 4y ago
https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/12/anti-racism-online-mob-bullies-editor-in-chief-of-major-psychology-journal-to-resign-over-contrived-racism-accusations/ https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/12/anti-racism-online-mob... Literally seen it today. I don't remember having a week without something like that happening. It's routine by now - somebody got a flu, somebody got cancelled by online mob.
- smsm42 4y ago
  Also the case Oberlin college recently paid millions for (after stonewalling for years). Look it up. In that case, they literally, non hypothetically, tried to run a store out of business because if accusations they knew to be false. They overplayed their hand so much it was actually possible to prosecute them for it, but this is very rare (the only case I know, in fact).
Auracle 4y ago
Speaking of AI, it just happened with Unstable Diffusion. It was kicked off of Kickstarter and Paterson after an uproar, and while as far as I know the project is still taking donations through their website I wouldn’t doubt the credit card processors will cut them off soon too.

A rather elaborate hypothetical, but since cancel culture is purportedly rampant, can we have a real world example?

bombolo 4y ago

https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/ https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/

jonathankoren 4y ago
So what happened in the end? RMS returned to the FSF board in March 2021, where he remains. In other words, a return to the status quo. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ https://www.fsf.org/about/staff-and-board https://www.fsf.org/about/staff-and-board
jakelazaroff 4y ago
I read through the first quarter or so of this article and man — despite the author’s best efforts, it makes RMS look real bad. Here’s a particularly awful direct quote: > Giuffre was 17 at the time; this makes it rape in the Virgin Isiands. Does it really? I think it is morally absurd to define rape in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17.
- sillysaurusx 4y ago
  It gets worse. I actually came here to say pretty much the same thing — happy you did. Before I get into that, I do want to counterbalance it by saying that I agree with Stallman in that specific context. The context being key. The question is whether a 17yo can morally consent to having sex (not legally). Unless one truly believes that a switch flips the day you turn 18, you’ll be hard-pressed to form an argument that a 20yo having sex with a 17.99yo is not merely illegal, but also immoral. But the problem of course is that Stallman has a room temperature social IQ. I hate to phrase it so bluntly, because it’s like staring into my future when I’m 60. I bet I’ll run my mouth one too many times and get into some hot water, and it’s all too easy to take potshots at someone who’s willing to risk saying controversial-but-true things. And yet. > It seems that [Stallman’s] general points are two. > 1. … > 2. And that, depending on the context, what is technically child pornography didn't cause anyone harm. >> This child pornography might be a photo of yourself or your lover that the two of you shared. > He then says that the mere possession of child pornography does not harm anyone. I assume he is implying that only the production of child pornography harms people. >> But even when it is uncontroversial to call the subject depicted a child, that is no excuse for censorship. Having a photo or drawing does not hurt anyone, so and if you or I think it is disgusting, that is no excuse for censorship. > I would disagree with that, but it's his personal blog. He is not speaking for MIT or the free software foundation. “Disagree” is a rather benign term for the emotions one tends to feel at that sentiment. It’s an interesting experience to consciously try to override one’s own tendency to raise a “conversational exception”. (From http://paulgraham.com/heresy.html http://paulgraham.com/heresy.html, “Using such labels is the conversational equivalent of signalling an exception. That's one of the reasons they're used: to end a discussion.”) Yes, it’s technically true that possessing CSAM does not physically harm anyone. And that’s worth pausing to consider the implications. For example, I’ve spent a lot of time considering whether AI models should be allowed to generate CSAM. After all, isn’t it tempting to think you could train one Final Model on Forbidden Content, with the justification of “See, now no one needs to go and produce this training data anymore; we have an endless supply that harms nobody”? It’s at least worth considering, if only to disagree with it. Then you get into the really weird questions. If you train a model to produce loli hentai porn (which 4chan is actually doing), is it morally reprehensible? (Turns out, it’s often illegal.) After all, it’s just drawings. No real people were even involved. How do you even argue against that from a moral standpoint? Yet all of this context seems completely lost on Stallman, who spends two seconds to type two paragraphs and clicks “reply” without pausing to consider how it might sound. It’s so frustrating to see someone bring up so many valid points in a way that’s not merely tone deaf, but existing in a universe absent of undertones and nuance. At times like these, I like to reread http://paulgraham.com/say.html http://paulgraham.com/say.html: > If you said them all you'd have no time left for your real work. You'd have to turn into Noam Chomsky. I despise AI safety filters, but they exist because we can’t afford to ship a Richard Stallman model out to the real world and have it generate an endless list of reasons why child porn doesn’t hurt anybody. We’d have no time left to do actual research, because we’d have to spend it all defending ourselves for the decision to release such a model.
  - modo_mario 4y ago
    >But the problem of course is that Stallman has a room temperature social IQ. I hate to phrase it so bluntly, because it’s like staring into my future when I’m 60. He's autistic. Apologised afterwards. etc Which one would expect a crowd championing (neuro)diversity would keep in mind. The author of the original accusations for the petition latched onto every bit of tone-deafness they could tho. Saying he was transphobic since at some point where pronouns were only just becoming a thing in public discourse he discussed about the use of a default since something else seemed linguistically better to him. This because....well he was/is around a decent amount of trans people given he's very much not transphobic. He had again apologised publically about that one but it didn't matter.
    - sillysaurusx 4y ago
      Autism as a defense works up to a point. I’m certainly sympathetic, being a narcoleptic. But I also plan my life carefully around those constraints. It’s why I only missed exactly one meeting due to oversleeping during my time at Groq. Stallman appears to be aware of his condition, but takes no steps to actively counter his tendencies. This works well for building emacs. Perhaps it even works well for leading an open source software movement. But it’s mystifying that he seemed to be caught completely off guard by the entirely-predictable backlash. To put it another way, is autism a reasonable defense for believing that obtaining CSAM harms no one? It’s unrelated to the question. Even if we’re extremely generous and set aside how CSAM was obtained, him being autistic wouldn’t be more than a footnote. Being neurodivergent is hard. That’s why it’s called divergent. It’s why I don’t try to get a job in sales, despite being pretty good at it. Because that would require me to be a reliable 9am to 5pm person; I wasn’t born that way.
    - bombolo 4y ago
      yeah he got called transphobic because he says "they" for singular is ambiguous and a new word instead would be clearer.
  - Tams80 4y ago
    I think the main thing to take away is that if it's possible, someone is going to try it eventually. Rule 34 is a meme, but also a very astute, if simple, observation if you think about it. So really the only questions we should be asking are: 1. How can we limit the harm from people doing such things as much as possible? 2. While doing so not infringing on people's liberties and freedoms, and risking falsely accusing people? But neither have simple answers and have many sub-questions within them that are specific to any particular case.
- bombolo 4y ago
  rms called epstin a "serial rapist"… > Here’s a particularly awful direct quote: So, if I understand you correctly, you'd be ok with rape if it was not against the law?
  - bitwize 4y ago
    The journalist's cheatcode: "So what you're saying is..."
  - jakelazaroff 4y ago
    If you’re gonna make a bad faith interpretation of my comment like that, you need to make it sound more plausible. Here’s what I’m actually saying: it is morally absurd to define rape in a way that excludes an adult in their 50s having sex with a 17 year old. Just so you understand me correctly.
    - bombolo 4y ago
      > If you’re gonna make a bad faith interpretation of my comment like that, you need to make it sound more plausible. Yes this sort of things feels bad when it happens to us… which is ironic because you were ok doing it to someone else :) > Here’s what I’m actually saying: it is morally absurd to define rape in a way that excludes an adult in their 50s having sex with a 17 year old He was arguing against the fact that statutory rape in USA is a boolean value basically. You are making it sound like rape is legal if it happens to someone old… when in fact rape is always illegal.
- ta8903 4y ago
  Posts like this remind me of high school where I argued against some hypothetical and got bullied because people got weirded out by it.
  - kuhewa 4y ago
    "how can they arrest the guys on To Catch A Predator since there was no actual minor they were chatting to before coming over to the sting house where they thought a 13 year old lived with handcuffs and wine coolers"

llimos 4y ago

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/brendan-eich-steps-down-as-mozilla-ceo/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/brendan-eich-steps-down-...

mrcrumb1 4y ago
> Brendan was not fired and was not asked by the Board to resign. Brendan voluntarily submitted his resignation. The Board acted in response by inviting him to remain at Mozilla in another C-level position. Brendan declined that offer. The Board respects his decision. Yes this guy was left in absolute shambles by the woke mob
- smsm42 4y ago
  Oh, firing - and yes, it absolutely was firing firing the position - isn't enough? His suffering doesn't measure up to your standards? Ok, we're moving from "it never happens, all lies" to "it happens frequently, but it's not too bad, at least for me sitting here in a comfortable chair and suffering no consequences of it".
  - jonathankoren 4y ago
    No one is saying the later. Thats a straw man. But let’s address the moving goal post argument, because that’s worth a serious examination. The problem touted about “being canceled” is that cancelee’s life is destroyed. They’ve going to suffer long term irreparable effects. But when you look at what actually happens it’s nothing. So if the problem is the harm, and there is none, and in fact sometimes profits from their notoriety? Then how is the goal post set out by the “victims” even met? So yes, I believe they’re is goal post moving, just not the goal posts you’re implying.
- kbelder 4y ago
  Well, I think there's a path that leads from that woke mob to the absolute shambles that Firefox is in now. Can you imagine where Firefox could be if there was a competent technologist who cared about their product in charge?

PeterisP 4y ago

This one is the one I remember the most - https://www.westernjournal.com/latino-truck-driver-fired-white-power-symbol-simply-cracking-knuckles/ https://www.westernjournal.com/latino-truck-driver-fired-whi...

gadders 4y ago

Laura Loomer? Kathleen Stock? Toby Young? Milo Yiannopoulos?

pjc50 4y ago
All of whom we're better off without? And isn't Toby Young still employed at his job at the disinformation factory? https://www.spectator.co.uk/writer/toby-young/ https://www.spectator.co.uk/writer/toby-young/
- gadders 4y ago
  Who gets to judge that? And the Spectator is no more a disinformation factory than, say, the New Statesman.
  - jonathankoren 4y ago
    I would say their victims.
- rabuse 4y ago
  What if some people decided they're better off without you and your opinions? Should we cast you from society, de-bank you, and make sure you're destitute?
jonathankoren 4y ago
Gez man, why didn’t you just add Alex Jones and Nick Fuentes to this list of conspiratorial hate mongers? It’s a shame they’re all still employed… among other things.

smsm42 4y ago

https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/12/anti-racism-online-mob-bullies-editor-in-chief-of-major-psychology-journal-to-resign-over-contrived-racism-accusations/ https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/12/anti-racism-online-mob... Literally seen it today. I don't remember having a week without something like that happening. It's routine by now - somebody got a flu, somebody got cancelled by online mob.

smsm42 4y ago
Also the case Oberlin college recently paid millions for (after stonewalling for years). Look it up. In that case, they literally, non hypothetically, tried to run a store out of business because if accusations they knew to be false. They overplayed their hand so much it was actually possible to prosecute them for it, but this is very rare (the only case I know, in fact).

Auracle 4y ago

Speaking of AI, it just happened with Unstable Diffusion. It was kicked off of Kickstarter and Paterson after an uproar, and while as far as I know the project is still taking donations through their website I wouldn’t doubt the credit card processors will cut them off soon too.