5 ms·

It's somewhat odd that one has to explicitly say they're not "anti-climate change" when presenting any kind of perspective that could be perceived as such. As i

It's somewhat odd that one has to explicitly say they're not "anti-climate change" when presenting any kind of perspective that could be perceived as such. As if they're afraid of the somebody punishing them for daring to think such "problematic" and "destructive" thoughts...

tsunamifury 4y ago
The internet in general and this forum in particular is prone to pedantic misinterpretations— just heading it off.
- bheadmaster 4y ago
  I understand why you said it. It just seems that the general atmosphere of the internet is that of self-censorship and fear. It just doesn't sit well with me. The intolerance of different views is driving the hostile and divisive atmosphere in the social media. Let's say there's a person who's really anti-climate change. How is that person supposed to change their mind, if they get attacked every time they voice their opinions, instead of being approached in a civil manner? People can't be bullied people into agreement, only silenced and driven further away into their own echo chamber, at which point you lose any chance you had of ever changing their minds.
  - Loughla 4y ago
    Legitimately, do you believe that people posting on internet forums is an effective means of getting someone to change their minds? My take is that by the time the poster goes through the effort to post, they have adopted [insert view here] into their personal belief system; they're not seeking answers. Don't most studies show that fact based arguments only cause people with faulty beliefs to dig in further?
    - bheadmaster 4y ago
      > Legitimately, do you believe that people posting on internet forums is an effective means of getting someone to change their minds? Some percentage of them? Yes. Unfortunately, there's no way to know when that happens, so it's very easy to assume it doesn't. > My take is that by the time the poster goes through the effort to post, they have adopted [insert view here] into their personal belief system; they're not seeking answers. If what you're saying is true, what's the logic behind censoring people? Nobody is able to convince anyone of anything anyway.
      - Loughla 4y ago
        >If what you're saying is true, what's the logic behind censoring people? Because at some point, arguing the same topic over and over and over is exhausting. The impact of greenhouse gases and climate change, for example, has been established as 'a thing' for my entire adult life. And yet people still want to argue about it even existing.
        bheadmaster 4y ago
        > arguing the same topic over and over and over is exhausting Is that, by itself, a good enough reason to censor people? Nobody is forcing anybody to argue.
  - carapace 4y ago
    I'm not saying it's right or useful, but I think a lot of people (especially young people) are just really sick of climate change denial-ism. I know I am. I'm nearly half a century old and the handwriting has been on the wall my whole life. I don't want to quash discussion (interesting and informative discussion is the main reason I use HN) but, yeah, it's not a bad thing to differentiate yourself from the climate deniers, if you want people to hear you these days.
    - bheadmaster 4y ago
      Being really sick of a certain group of people just because they hold different beliefs than you is exactly what causes the division. Why are you sick of them? That's a fairly strong emotion. Do you hold resentment because they are the ones who are going to bring the apocalypse to the world? Is it annoyance from hearing too many incorrect opinions? Or something else entirely? Honest question - why are you, personally, sick of them? I'd really like to know.
      - bloaf 4y ago
        1. Their existence is the political justification for inaction. 2. They form an unholy alliance with other anti-empiricist groups (e.g. anti-vaxxers, young earth creationists) to undermine reality-based policies, including in education. 3. Their denialist opinions are typically held in bad faith. That is, they are held because if they were true they would confirm some pre-existing belief (e.g. that scientists are tools of a global elite cabal), not because an independent evaluation of the facts has led them there. This reinforces their hostility towards whatever group they think is lying. 4. Denialists typically engage in a perverse form of virtue signaling. The greater and more well evidence a claim is, the greater the "cred" they get for denying it. This creates a fertile field for sham experts to sell lies to members.
      - ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
        the existence of santa claus is a "belief" climate change isn't
        4y ago
psychphysic 4y ago
The real effect of cancel culture is the chilling effect it has even on relatively anonymous conversation. Humans are social beings and the spectre that someone could be outcast for sounding like they are from the wrong clan is an innate phobia.
- carapace 4y ago
  "Cancel culture" was e.g. gays getting beaten up by random strangers just for existing, and now it's e.g. getting fired for telling a homophobic joke in public.
- Loughla 4y ago
  What I find fascinating about the current debates about cancel culture is that it ignores, on both sides, the fact that it isn't new. The only thing that has changed is the balance of power. From a US perspective - In the past, social shunning and ostracizing was used as a way to norm the culture for the predominately white, christian culture. Cancel culture was literally being run out of your town, and/or excluded from social and religious events. This had a huge chilling effect. Now, the power belongs to a previously marginalized group (lgbtq/minority individuals) to 'cancel' people. It's not new; the only difference is that the people who used to have to power are pissed that their views aren't the popular views anymore. It's a symptom of a massive societal change that has occurred and the subset of people who refuse to let go of their outdated ways.
  - bheadmaster 4y ago
    > It's not new; the only difference is that the people who used to have to power are pissed that their views aren't the popular views anymore. It's a symptom of a massive societal change that has occurred and the subset of people who refuse to let go of their outdated ways. I think this is an extremely skewed perspective on the whole issue. It's not us vs. them - cancel culture was, and still is, driven by ignorance and sensationalism. People like the rush of a good story, regardless of whether it's true or not - that's what makes cancel culture so unjust. Whether it's a gay person being called a Satan's spawn, or Richard Stallman being called a pedophile, or any other case - all cases have one thing in common: exaggeration for the sake of sensationalism, and punishment being completely out of proportion with the crime (note that by "crime" here I strictly mean "the act that is condemned by the group doing the cancellation", regardless of its actual criminality). If you're a member of the previously-oppressed-now-powerful group, you may rejoice at the thought of retribution on those that caused you (your group) so much injustice in the past, but I hope you realize how hypocritical that makes the whole "tolerance" story that your group has been pushing for the last few decades. But I guess that power corrupts, no matter who's wielding it.
jacob019 4y ago
During the Trump era, conspiracy theories became a prominent part of mainstream conversation, while scientific knowledge was often dismissed as just one perspective among many. In my opinion, a societal culture that treats truth as malleable poses a greater threat than individuals on the internet who are hesitant to publicly express anti-scientific beliefs.
- beginnings 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - dbtc 4y ago
    Then why?
  - mcguire 4y ago
    Some days I wish I could contemplate the possibility of roughly 80,000,000 deaths with such equanimity.
    - jacob019 4y ago
      Right? We should consider the added worth of each life saved by slowing down the virus's spread, which allowed time to develop vaccines. Although the worldwide response was far from perfect, I'm truly thankful for the technology and measures that protected numerous people. While I value freedom and individual rights, it's challenging to compare those principles to the importance of preserving a life.
      - mcguire 4y ago
        I mean, that's roughly 800,000,000 years of life lost. "YLLs per death increased from 9.2 in the first year of the pandemic to 10.8 through the first 2 years." (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35640260/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35640260/)
    - beginnings 4y ago
croes 4y ago
Because therr are people who use such theories to claim that climate change always existed and that mankind has nothing to do with it. But usually that ignore the speed of climate change

tsunamifury 4y ago

The internet in general and this forum in particular is prone to pedantic misinterpretations— just heading it off.

bheadmaster 4y ago
I understand why you said it. It just seems that the general atmosphere of the internet is that of self-censorship and fear. It just doesn't sit well with me. The intolerance of different views is driving the hostile and divisive atmosphere in the social media. Let's say there's a person who's really anti-climate change. How is that person supposed to change their mind, if they get attacked every time they voice their opinions, instead of being approached in a civil manner? People can't be bullied people into agreement, only silenced and driven further away into their own echo chamber, at which point you lose any chance you had of ever changing their minds.
- Loughla 4y ago
  Legitimately, do you believe that people posting on internet forums is an effective means of getting someone to change their minds? My take is that by the time the poster goes through the effort to post, they have adopted [insert view here] into their personal belief system; they're not seeking answers. Don't most studies show that fact based arguments only cause people with faulty beliefs to dig in further?
  - bheadmaster 4y ago
    > Legitimately, do you believe that people posting on internet forums is an effective means of getting someone to change their minds? Some percentage of them? Yes. Unfortunately, there's no way to know when that happens, so it's very easy to assume it doesn't. > My take is that by the time the poster goes through the effort to post, they have adopted [insert view here] into their personal belief system; they're not seeking answers. If what you're saying is true, what's the logic behind censoring people? Nobody is able to convince anyone of anything anyway.
    - Loughla 4y ago
      >If what you're saying is true, what's the logic behind censoring people? Because at some point, arguing the same topic over and over and over is exhausting. The impact of greenhouse gases and climate change, for example, has been established as 'a thing' for my entire adult life. And yet people still want to argue about it even existing.
      - bheadmaster 4y ago
        > arguing the same topic over and over and over is exhausting Is that, by itself, a good enough reason to censor people? Nobody is forcing anybody to argue.
- carapace 4y ago
  I'm not saying it's right or useful, but I think a lot of people (especially young people) are just really sick of climate change denial-ism. I know I am. I'm nearly half a century old and the handwriting has been on the wall my whole life. I don't want to quash discussion (interesting and informative discussion is the main reason I use HN) but, yeah, it's not a bad thing to differentiate yourself from the climate deniers, if you want people to hear you these days.
  - bheadmaster 4y ago
    Being really sick of a certain group of people just because they hold different beliefs than you is exactly what causes the division. Why are you sick of them? That's a fairly strong emotion. Do you hold resentment because they are the ones who are going to bring the apocalypse to the world? Is it annoyance from hearing too many incorrect opinions? Or something else entirely? Honest question - why are you, personally, sick of them? I'd really like to know.
    - bloaf 4y ago
      1. Their existence is the political justification for inaction. 2. They form an unholy alliance with other anti-empiricist groups (e.g. anti-vaxxers, young earth creationists) to undermine reality-based policies, including in education. 3. Their denialist opinions are typically held in bad faith. That is, they are held because if they were true they would confirm some pre-existing belief (e.g. that scientists are tools of a global elite cabal), not because an independent evaluation of the facts has led them there. This reinforces their hostility towards whatever group they think is lying. 4. Denialists typically engage in a perverse form of virtue signaling. The greater and more well evidence a claim is, the greater the "cred" they get for denying it. This creates a fertile field for sham experts to sell lies to members.
    - ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
      the existence of santa claus is a "belief" climate change isn't
      - 4y ago

psychphysic 4y ago

The real effect of cancel culture is the chilling effect it has even on relatively anonymous conversation. Humans are social beings and the spectre that someone could be outcast for sounding like they are from the wrong clan is an innate phobia.

carapace 4y ago
"Cancel culture" was e.g. gays getting beaten up by random strangers just for existing, and now it's e.g. getting fired for telling a homophobic joke in public.
Loughla 4y ago
What I find fascinating about the current debates about cancel culture is that it ignores, on both sides, the fact that it isn't new. The only thing that has changed is the balance of power. From a US perspective - In the past, social shunning and ostracizing was used as a way to norm the culture for the predominately white, christian culture. Cancel culture was literally being run out of your town, and/or excluded from social and religious events. This had a huge chilling effect. Now, the power belongs to a previously marginalized group (lgbtq/minority individuals) to 'cancel' people. It's not new; the only difference is that the people who used to have to power are pissed that their views aren't the popular views anymore. It's a symptom of a massive societal change that has occurred and the subset of people who refuse to let go of their outdated ways.
- bheadmaster 4y ago
  > It's not new; the only difference is that the people who used to have to power are pissed that their views aren't the popular views anymore. It's a symptom of a massive societal change that has occurred and the subset of people who refuse to let go of their outdated ways. I think this is an extremely skewed perspective on the whole issue. It's not us vs. them - cancel culture was, and still is, driven by ignorance and sensationalism. People like the rush of a good story, regardless of whether it's true or not - that's what makes cancel culture so unjust. Whether it's a gay person being called a Satan's spawn, or Richard Stallman being called a pedophile, or any other case - all cases have one thing in common: exaggeration for the sake of sensationalism, and punishment being completely out of proportion with the crime (note that by "crime" here I strictly mean "the act that is condemned by the group doing the cancellation", regardless of its actual criminality). If you're a member of the previously-oppressed-now-powerful group, you may rejoice at the thought of retribution on those that caused you (your group) so much injustice in the past, but I hope you realize how hypocritical that makes the whole "tolerance" story that your group has been pushing for the last few decades. But I guess that power corrupts, no matter who's wielding it.

jacob019 4y ago

During the Trump era, conspiracy theories became a prominent part of mainstream conversation, while scientific knowledge was often dismissed as just one perspective among many. In my opinion, a societal culture that treats truth as malleable poses a greater threat than individuals on the internet who are hesitant to publicly express anti-scientific beliefs.

beginnings 4y ago
[flagged]
- dbtc 4y ago
  Then why?
- mcguire 4y ago
  Some days I wish I could contemplate the possibility of roughly 80,000,000 deaths with such equanimity.
  - jacob019 4y ago
    Right? We should consider the added worth of each life saved by slowing down the virus's spread, which allowed time to develop vaccines. Although the worldwide response was far from perfect, I'm truly thankful for the technology and measures that protected numerous people. While I value freedom and individual rights, it's challenging to compare those principles to the importance of preserving a life.
    - mcguire 4y ago
      I mean, that's roughly 800,000,000 years of life lost. "YLLs per death increased from 9.2 in the first year of the pandemic to 10.8 through the first 2 years." (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35640260/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35640260/)
  - beginnings 4y ago

croes 4y ago

Because therr are people who use such theories to claim that climate change always existed and that mankind has nothing to do with it. But usually that ignore the speed of climate change