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Thank you for your thoughtful feedback. My suggestion would be to write a book (you sort of already did) because you seem to want to dive deep into some of thes

Thank you for your thoughtful feedback. My suggestion would be to write a book (you sort of already did) because you seem to want to dive deep into some of these issues and a non-HN format might give you a better platform for that. Lacking the time to more fully respond, I'll just give my quick thoughts on 3 quick points. > J. How do you prove censorship? How do you prove media manipulation? The current business model of the media guarantees bad behavior. Once the technology was invented to "count clicks" and directly see what caused somebody to visit them, the media figured out a way to drive their own profit. This makes it impossible to not have unethical behavior. I don't really need to prove anything when the system guarantees bad behavior. You don't need to have a formal scientific study and citations to know that an ice cream cone left outside on a hot day will melt. The environment its in guarantees it. > S. Understand that many people complaining about "woke culture" are often parroting talking points. These are not usually people who are pausing think about the issue deeply. Such people are upset and have plenty to be upset about. Much of their discomfort comes from disagreeing with how the world is changing. I'd just like to point out that the people who are complaining about woke culture are caught in a very painful situation. They see the world changing, but then the censorship largely forbids them to fully complain about that. And the world only ever responds by wanting to minimize their voice, firing them from their job, and calling them names like racist. Whatever you want to say about the ethics of this situation, this is not a recipe for a good social outcome. If you want to create a pile of socially alienated people with nothing left to lose (never a good outcome) the current course we're on is the perfect trajectory for that. > V. Now if someone does a clearly inappropriate thing -- saying a racist or sexist comment -- we should not assume they do this repeatedly. We should treat them as irredeemable. We should not pretend like "we" have always been perfect either. Did you mean to say "We should not treat them as irredeemable"?

xpe 4y ago
Excellent point about how people feel trapped where they can't say what they feel. This gets overlooked. Yes, media dynamics are predictably dysfunctional. Thanks for discussing. I'll try to write more. Yes, I got (V) wrong. Whoops. I meant that we should view people as redeemable. On a second look, I don't like my word choice of "redeemable" ... the word itself suggests that a wrong belief or statement by a person makes them less worthy of respect. I don't mean that.
xpe 4y ago
Any thoughts on this quote from [1]? > Similarly, Hector Cantú, best known for his Latino-American comic Baldo, said he believes in freedom of speech, but not freedom from repercussions. > "Don't gloss this over by saying it's politics or it's cancel culture," he said. "If you're going to offend people, you risk paying the price." Sub-questions: - Does it matter if the offensive comments are "out of band?" i.e. on a YouTube channel, not in the cartoon? - Did the various publishers explore other options besides dropping Dilbert altogether? Should they have? - Media outlets may claim that they are acting morally. Still, to a large degree, they are responding to societal and commercial pressures. Does this weaken their argument? - Free speech is easy to support when no one cares about what you say. When it strikes a nerve, that's when we have to confront the issue. - What happens when more content producers use pen names to limit their risk of public backlash? [1]: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/28/1159605012/dilbert-cartoonist-scott-adams-rant-rebuke https://www.npr.org/2023/02/28/1159605012/dilbert-cartoonist...
- logicalmonster 4y ago
  I think what's often labeled as "free speech/wokeness/cancel-culture" sort of issues would best be called a "freedom of association" issue. And I support freedom of association. But either you have freedom of association or you don't. Now, the problem from my libertarian-ish perspective, is that the government has meddled in freedom of association significantly. There's obvious types of examples (Bake the cake, bigot!) and far less obvious examples like the government enforced credit card cartel that gives a small number of financiers significant artificial power to shape the world. I'm fine living with the consequences of a society with freedom of association, however that turns out, if only we had that. But I suspect that most people on the political left who currently champion ideas like "Actually, freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom of consequences" don't actually want freedom of association. It seems like they like that there's a system where they have their cake and eat it too. As far as Scott Adams comments, I have been busy lately and haven't had the chance to listen to the full podcast and his followup arguments, but I strongly suspect that few people have actually really analyzed his arguments and are just feigning moral outrage. Personally speaking, I'd say it's a big fucking problem for me too if 50% of black people can't agree with a statement like "It's Ok to Be White".

xpe 4y ago

Excellent point about how people feel trapped where they can't say what they feel. This gets overlooked. Yes, media dynamics are predictably dysfunctional. Thanks for discussing. I'll try to write more. Yes, I got (V) wrong. Whoops. I meant that we should view people as redeemable. On a second look, I don't like my word choice of "redeemable" ... the word itself suggests that a wrong belief or statement by a person makes them less worthy of respect. I don't mean that.

xpe 4y ago

Any thoughts on this quote from [1]? > Similarly, Hector Cantú, best known for his Latino-American comic Baldo, said he believes in freedom of speech, but not freedom from repercussions. > "Don't gloss this over by saying it's politics or it's cancel culture," he said. "If you're going to offend people, you risk paying the price." Sub-questions: - Does it matter if the offensive comments are "out of band?" i.e. on a YouTube channel, not in the cartoon? - Did the various publishers explore other options besides dropping Dilbert altogether? Should they have? - Media outlets may claim that they are acting morally. Still, to a large degree, they are responding to societal and commercial pressures. Does this weaken their argument? - Free speech is easy to support when no one cares about what you say. When it strikes a nerve, that's when we have to confront the issue. - What happens when more content producers use pen names to limit their risk of public backlash? [1]: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/28/1159605012/dilbert-cartoonist-scott-adams-rant-rebuke https://www.npr.org/2023/02/28/1159605012/dilbert-cartoonist...

logicalmonster 4y ago
I think what's often labeled as "free speech/wokeness/cancel-culture" sort of issues would best be called a "freedom of association" issue. And I support freedom of association. But either you have freedom of association or you don't. Now, the problem from my libertarian-ish perspective, is that the government has meddled in freedom of association significantly. There's obvious types of examples (Bake the cake, bigot!) and far less obvious examples like the government enforced credit card cartel that gives a small number of financiers significant artificial power to shape the world. I'm fine living with the consequences of a society with freedom of association, however that turns out, if only we had that. But I suspect that most people on the political left who currently champion ideas like "Actually, freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom of consequences" don't actually want freedom of association. It seems like they like that there's a system where they have their cake and eat it too. As far as Scott Adams comments, I have been busy lately and haven't had the chance to listen to the full podcast and his followup arguments, but I strongly suspect that few people have actually really analyzed his arguments and are just feigning moral outrage. Personally speaking, I'd say it's a big fucking problem for me too if 50% of black people can't agree with a statement like "It's Ok to Be White".