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Ironically, a whole bunch of people have spent their formative years in a cancel-culture world and this now shapes their actions. But at an art gallery, Picass

Ironically, a whole bunch of people have spent their formative years in a cancel-culture world and this now shapes their actions. But at an art gallery, Picasso is near worshipped despite his torrid misogyny and abuse in his personal life which was terrible even by the standards of his day. The views on his art were formed at a time before cancel-culture was a thing. Realising: - everyone has performed good and bad actions - having performed a good action doesn't "make up for or cancel out" a bad action. You can save thousands of people, but murdering someone still should mean a life sentence. - you can be appreciated for your good actions while your bad actions still stand. : all these take some life experience and perhaps significant thought on the concepts.

hexer292 10mo ago
> You can save thousands of people, but murdering someone still should mean a life sentence. I've struggled with this point of view since my early teens, and possibly even earlier. There is no amount of good one can do to compensate for even the slightest misdeed. As much as I may agree, however, it's probably the most damaging and destructive moral framework you can possibly have, because it just consumes anything positive.
- empthought 10mo ago
  This sounds more like scrupulosity than a moral framework. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrupulosity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrupulosity
  - hexer292 10mo ago
    People have always told me I'm too hard on myself. Then again, I've made mistakes to know I wasn't hard enough on myself. If you're worried about causing a negative effect on someone and then you do, the solution isn't to not worry about that.
    - watercolorblind 10mo ago
      As someone who has been quite hard on myself too: To err is to be human. If you minimize your life to minimize negative impacts on others, you are hurting yourself (and your friends and family). If you make a mistake, learn from it and try to be better. None of us are born with the skill and knowledge to do the right thing all the time, and sometimes there is no right thing, just different tradeoffs with different costs.
      - HWR_14 10mo ago
        > If you minimize your life to minimize negative impacts on others, you are hurting yourself (and your friends and family). Mind expanding on that?
        empthought 9mo ago
        I'm not the commenter, but I interpret it as: The benefit that others get by you reaching your potential is greater than the risk to others of you making space for yourself to reach your potential.
- deleted 10mo ago
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- ztjio 10mo ago
  This is pure nonsense. The moral distance between a good deed and the level of bad deed that receives a meaningful penalty, socially (e.g. felonies) is enormous and there is plenty of fungibility of good vs. bad actions in that space. That said, it is strange to even consider being good, which is generally a rather easy thing to be, to be some kind of task you should be paid for even virtually. Being basically good is the trivial cost to avoid becoming anti-social. Why should a social group even tolerate you otherwise? With that in mind, as mentioned before, I think you'll find that social groups are highly tolerant of many misdeeds.
  - hexer292 10mo ago
    Moral distance is an interesting concept, because it implies two acts are comparable at some level. If someone cured cancer, do you think they couldn't be tried for murder?
    - fc417fc802 10mo ago
      It depends on if your question is about legality, morality, social stability, privilege of some sort, or perhaps something else. If someone offered to cure cancer, but only if you permitted them to commit a single specific murder, is that a reasonable trade? All you've got there is yet another trolley problem.
      - hexer292 10mo ago
        I think it's different to the trolley problem in terms of trying to measure the outcome. If we make decisions based on what will have the best outcome, well the trolley problem is trivial; minimise the negative outcome. In the scenario of murder for the cancer cure, you're still left with someone who was murdered. My take is that this isn't any less bad than someone who was murdered for something other than the cure for cancer, which in turn means I would stop this murder even if it meant not curing cancer.
        fc417fc802 10mo ago
- skeeter2020 10mo ago
  forget about murder, you make a terrible comment or single mistake in your young adulthood and you are done for ever. Kids are not allowed to make mistakes anymore.
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
  - embedding-shape 10mo ago
    That's not true though, no one "Has their life ruined forever" because of one off-hand comment. Eventually, social media moves on, and people stop haunting you, if that's what you're encountering. Great way of avoiding 99% of the harm with that, is literally getting off social media, if that ever happens to you. Most people around you in real-life won't know about it, nor recognize you, or anything else, unless you had a pattern of bad behavior for a longer period of time. But you can still make mistakes, even online, and eventually people forget about it.
    - skeeter2020 10mo ago
      >> Eventually, social media moves on, and people stop haunting you, if that's what you're encountering. That's only true if you fade with your misdeeds. Try doing anything that raises your profile and watch them jump back to the surface.
      - nemomarx 10mo ago
        People will talk about it, but how much does it really matter? Many actors and other figures credibly accused of sex crimes or whatever just wait a few years and then start getting work again. Kevin Spacey seems to be going alright as an example. The gap years certainly hurt, but at a sufficient level of money and power you're broadly fine I think. The real risk of cancelling is for people without money and status who could be shunned by family or friend groups mostly.
      - embedding-shape 10mo ago
        No, it's true if you want to remain a normal person, instead of becoming a celebrity or "celebrity-lite" or whatever we call them today. But yeah, if you try to become a "public figure" or similar, then people will try to find skeletons in your closet, but it's always been like that, and very different from "you make a terrible comment or single mistake in your young adulthood and you are done for ever" which was the initial claim.
- fwip 10mo ago
  Good does not cancel out bad, but bad does not automatically outweigh all good.
  - hexer292 10mo ago
    How would you compare the two? I think no matter what the good was, you're still left with "yeah, but x happened".
    - fwip 10mo ago
      Quick aside - you can also do the inverse, excusing whatever bad because "x good thing still happened." That framing probably feels more obviously incorrect to you, because of your outlook. One metric is just by if people still want to hang out with you. Sure, you made a mistake and hurt their feelings before. But they're still your friends, and still talk to you because they, on balance, predict that interacting you will be good for them. Said less cynically - they genuinely like you. Or - if the "you" is too difficult to accept (as it often is with mental health issues), you can see it in relationships of people around you. Human beings are messy, and relationships (of all types) even more so. We all have brought both joy and sadness to those important to us. Trying to avoid harm above all else, will necessarily also reduce the joy you bring to others - you become withdrawn, isolated, cautious in all interactions. Separately - hurting another person is not always a sign of a moral sin. Accidents and misunderstandings happen, no person can predict every result of their actions, and also - sometimes two people are genuinely in conflict, and there won't be a happy end to it.
  - worthless-trash 10mo ago
    In the eyes of the law, it clearly does.
    - account42 10mo ago
      Are you sure? Judges and juries consider the perpetrator's character beyond the bad deed all the time, both to reduce or increase the penalty.
- selcuka 10mo ago
  > I've struggled with this point of view Because it is much easier for people to universally accept a system where good or neutral deeds are expected by default, and misdeeds are punished. It is very difficult to construct an alternative system that humans could internalise. Where would you draw the line? What about saving 50 people, and then killing 49? Should they cancel each other, too?
  - hexer292 10mo ago
    There is no line. Killing one person while saving a thousand is just as bad as killing one person.
    - Filligree 10mo ago
      By that metric, doctors doing triage at a disaster site should be jailed.
      - darkwater 10mo ago
        This is even more out of touch of the comment you are answering to.
    - btilly 10mo ago
      This is a failure to think, disguised as moral judgment. If a police sniper shoots a mass shooter in the middle of their mass shooting, that's a hero. Not a villain.
      - kelnos 10mo ago
        To be fair, though, some moral frameworks (not mine) proscribe that any killing is bad, even to save oneself or others. I don't mean this as a "gotcha", but as a reminder that morality is a human invention, and different humans will take different moral stances on things.
      - HWR_14 10mo ago
        There is a clear difference between "I had to kill someone to save 50 lives" and "I saved 50 lives, so I'm allowed to murder one person as payment"
- unwise-exe 10mo ago
  I intend to do this very bad thing. How much karma do I need to accrue in advance, so that I don't go into the red from doing it?
  - hexer292 10mo ago
    I guess my point is you will always be bad as a result of doing this very bad thing, no amount of karma can counter it.
    - codebje 10mo ago
      You can't just "do good" like it's a spreadsheet, managing your karmic balance as the parent comment joked. You're only worrying about your personal consequences in that model, not the harm to others. But I think it should be possible for a human to reflect on their actions, find remorse, and strive to do better in the future. They will always have done a bad thing, but they might not always be a bad person.
- Nursie 10mo ago
  > I've struggled with this point of view since my early teens, and possibly even earlier. There is no amount of good one can do to compensate for even the slightest misdeed. I think there's a hole in the thought somewhere. If you save thousands of people and murder one, you should serve time for that murder, but you should still be appreciated for your other work. The error is thinking of actions and life like a karmic account balance, even though it's an appealing metaphor, people are complex beings and seeing them reductively as good or bad is probably wrong. Scott Adams was an asshat in later life. I don't know all the controversy he stirred because I drifted away from paying attention to him years ago. He gave me a lot of laughs, he had some great, fun insights into office life, he has some weird pseudo-scientific ideas in his books, and then he devolved into a bit of a dick. Maybe a lot of a dick. His is a life that touched mine, that I appreciate in some ways and am sad for in others. Bye Scott, thanks for all the laughs, thanks for nurturing my cynicism, but it's a shame about what happened with you after twitter came along.
- deleted 10mo ago
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- _carbyau_ 10mo ago
  > because it just consumes anything positive. I was perhaps not as clear as I'd wish. The next dot point after you quoted me was meant to convey that equally, the good actions cannot be cancelled/consumed by bad ones. Life is a complex thing.
- 21asdffdsa12 10mo ago
  ? What strange moral posturing is this? Of course there is good that can exists in parallel to bad deeds. Invent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process fertilizer that feeds the planet and your contributions to poison gas are forgotten. Not forgiven. But science and progress are decoupled from whatever a person contributes. And even a disgusting person, while it should be kept from power, should be capable to contribute to science and progress. Even a insane nazi can feed half africa, while the most saint like person, may give humanity nothing. The value society assigns is not the value a person has. The value is determined by the objective outcomes the person produces. Werner von Braun has done more for humanity then all of the socialist icons combined. He is still a disgusting person. Imagine humanity like a spacestation. Science and Industry forming the hull, society on the interior, hard physics on the outside. The things a EVA worker contributes to all life inside the hull, can be substantial while he is a useless drunk on the inside. And somebody with a fishbowl over his head, cosplaying astronaut on the inside contributes nothing. Somebody yelling - redistribute the spacesuits, its cold in here - does more damage to society, then the useless drunk ever will.
- deleted 10mo ago
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necovek 10mo ago
> You can save thousands of people, but murdering someone still should mean a life sentence. Not if you murder someone to save a thousand people ;) (though you might still get one as you need to prove that there was no other way to save them)
pkulak 10mo ago
First off "cancel culture" is way too unserious a phrase to warrant a response, but I will anyway. > The views on his art were formed at a time before cancel-culture was a thing. No they weren't. "Cancel culture" (your social actions having social consequences) has and always will exist, but despite your assertion that he was terrible "even for his day", I'd bet that a misogynist Frenchman in the early 1900s wasn't going to ruffle that many feathers. John Brown got "cancelled" for opposing slavery. Now you can get "cancelled" for supporting it. The difference is that now "cancelled" means a few commentators call you out and your life and career are never affected in the slightest. It's actually one of the best times to be a horrible person. Hell, you can be president.
- specialist 10mo ago
  I'm still upset over the canceling of Socrates. Never forget.
- fc417fc802 10mo ago
  > "Cancel culture" (your social actions having social consequences) Those aren't the same thing. The former is abusing the latter as a pretext for a (social) lynch mob. > I'd bet that a misogynist Frenchman in the early 1900s wasn't going to ruffle that many feathers. GP wasn't referring to people of the time but rather people of the present day. There have been some surprising contradictions in what has and hasn't been "cancelled".
  - kenjackson 10mo ago
    Cancel culture is simply social consequence. That's it. It can be harsh and at times probably too harsh. But I don't see how you can't have cancel culture w/o also not greatly limiting free speech.
    - fc417fc802 10mo ago
      We don't have to accept or reject all manner of social consequence as a single unit. That would be absurd. > w/o also not greatly limiting free speech. Indeed it would be exceedingly difficult to legislate against it. But something doesn't need to be illegal for us to push back against it. I'm not required to be accepting of all behavior that's legal. For example, presumably you wouldn't agree with an HN policy change that permitted neo nazi propaganda despite the fact that it generally qualifies as protected speech in the US?
account42 10mo ago
Also: - What actions are good and bad is much more subjective than activists want you to believe. - It's beyond absurd to discount someone simply for expressing an opinion even if you vehemently disagree with that opinion.
p0w3n3d 10mo ago
There's a song called "Cancer culture" by Decapitated - I recommend
ghostDancer 10mo ago
Not from the USA so I don't know exactly how this cancel culture is working but do they have his books banned from libraries cause I have seen a list of books banned or cancelled and the organization chasing them but can not find his works and there are comics like "Maus"
andyjohnson0 10mo ago
I generally agree with your post, but: > But at an art gallery, Picasso is near worshipped despite his torrid misogyny and abuse in his personal life which was terrible even by the standards of his day. Picasso's work is the thing that is generally venerated, not so much the (rather loathsome) man himself. Similarly for Eric Gill, who produced great artistic work despite being an truly awful human being. Scott Adams seems to have confined himself to merely expressing prejudiced views, amplified somewhat by his modest fame. But then his creative work doesn't in any way match Picasso's or Gill's either.
- _carbyau_ 9mo ago
  > Scott Adams seems to have confined himself to merely expressing prejudiced views, amplified somewhat by his modest fame. But then his creative work doesn't in any way match Picasso's or Gill's either. Scott's body of work spans many years and - like music bands - the early stuff is much different to the later stuff. To say he confined himself to "expressing prejudiced views" seems to overlook a whole lot of that early work. To say his work doesn't "match" other artists work is subjective. I got/get the occasional giggle out of Dilbert - more often in the earlier ones. I don't care for Picasso's art at all but I recognise that other people do. Who's body of work should I personally rate higher? The top comment mentions feeling like Scott was family, while acknowledging all the flaws of Scott. This is why I mention that good and bad actions can both stand.
  - shiroiuma 9mo ago
    Picasso's art looks to me like something a deranged child might draw. Scott's work in the 1990s (i.e. ~30 years ago) was genuinely very funny at the time for anyone who worked in an office, including myself, when I was working as an engineering intern at a company. One strip I remember in particular came out just when our company had announced some silly new initiative and gave out free sweatshirts to motivate everyone, and the Dilbert strip that Sunday was almost exactly the same thing except it was t-shirts there. The timing was eerie. It's sad to me how Adams fell, which largely seemed to happen after the popularity of Dilbert waned and may have been a reaction to that, but his work was funny and lovable in its earlier days.
Throaway1982 10mo ago
If you aren't willing to separate art from the artist, you are admitting that your bias is more important than your ability to appreciate nuance.
qarl 10mo ago
You know, I think I disagree. I didn't give Picasso the benefit of the doubt because he was an amazing artist. I did so simply because I was ignorant of how horrible he was. Some people have trouble updating their feelings when new information arrives. I like him -> He causes harm -> I want to continue liking him -> his harm wasn't so bad. That's all. Picasso made some cool stuff. I will never display any of it in my home because he was horrible.
- _carbyau_ 9mo ago
  This is kind of what I meant by good and bad actions don't cancel out. I think people are perfectly allowed to appreciate the art while knowing he was not nice as a person. People are multifaceted, both as actors and in judgement of others. So where to draw the line is the question. And the answer is: this isn't linear. Context matters and is different for spaces and people. For example, you state seeing the art first, finding out he was not nice later and how that shaped your judgement. ------ Spaces Not having Picasso art in your house is clearly fine. It's your space, your personal choice what you put there. Demanding his art be removed from all art galleries around the world is not fine. Art galleries are mostly public spaces whose role is specifically to view artistic results largely from an artistic point of view. They are allowed to acknowledge his personal life and usually do - but that is not how you judge art. And so we have two perfectly fine and yet contradicting choices towards housing the art of Picasso. ------ People A victim of similar abuse as Picasso dished out may not want to see his art in the gallery due to association - this is fine. A person who simply doesn't care for that style of art may be indifferent or also not want to see it - also fine. A person who thinks Picasso fundamentally moved the art world forward may definitely want to see this art - also fine. And so differing people's attitudes towards Picasso are also easily understandable and fine.
  - qarl 9mo ago
    > Demanding his art be removed from all art galleries around the world... Well, are you saying people shouldn't complain? Certainly if an overwhelming majority think he was too horrible to display his art, you would agree that it's fine to remove his art, right? And before that overwhelming majority is convinced, people may spend effort trying to convince them. So where exactly is your problem with this process?

hexer292 10mo ago

> You can save thousands of people, but murdering someone still should mean a life sentence. I've struggled with this point of view since my early teens, and possibly even earlier. There is no amount of good one can do to compensate for even the slightest misdeed. As much as I may agree, however, it's probably the most damaging and destructive moral framework you can possibly have, because it just consumes anything positive.

empthought 10mo ago
This sounds more like scrupulosity than a moral framework. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrupulosity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrupulosity
- hexer292 10mo ago
  People have always told me I'm too hard on myself. Then again, I've made mistakes to know I wasn't hard enough on myself. If you're worried about causing a negative effect on someone and then you do, the solution isn't to not worry about that.
  - watercolorblind 10mo ago
    As someone who has been quite hard on myself too: To err is to be human. If you minimize your life to minimize negative impacts on others, you are hurting yourself (and your friends and family). If you make a mistake, learn from it and try to be better. None of us are born with the skill and knowledge to do the right thing all the time, and sometimes there is no right thing, just different tradeoffs with different costs.
    - HWR_14 10mo ago
      > If you minimize your life to minimize negative impacts on others, you are hurting yourself (and your friends and family). Mind expanding on that?
      - empthought 9mo ago
        I'm not the commenter, but I interpret it as: The benefit that others get by you reaching your potential is greater than the risk to others of you making space for yourself to reach your potential.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
ztjio 10mo ago
This is pure nonsense. The moral distance between a good deed and the level of bad deed that receives a meaningful penalty, socially (e.g. felonies) is enormous and there is plenty of fungibility of good vs. bad actions in that space. That said, it is strange to even consider being good, which is generally a rather easy thing to be, to be some kind of task you should be paid for even virtually. Being basically good is the trivial cost to avoid becoming anti-social. Why should a social group even tolerate you otherwise? With that in mind, as mentioned before, I think you'll find that social groups are highly tolerant of many misdeeds.
- hexer292 10mo ago
  Moral distance is an interesting concept, because it implies two acts are comparable at some level. If someone cured cancer, do you think they couldn't be tried for murder?
  - fc417fc802 10mo ago
    It depends on if your question is about legality, morality, social stability, privilege of some sort, or perhaps something else. If someone offered to cure cancer, but only if you permitted them to commit a single specific murder, is that a reasonable trade? All you've got there is yet another trolley problem.
    - hexer292 10mo ago
      I think it's different to the trolley problem in terms of trying to measure the outcome. If we make decisions based on what will have the best outcome, well the trolley problem is trivial; minimise the negative outcome. In the scenario of murder for the cancer cure, you're still left with someone who was murdered. My take is that this isn't any less bad than someone who was murdered for something other than the cure for cancer, which in turn means I would stop this murder even if it meant not curing cancer.
      - fc417fc802 10mo ago
skeeter2020 10mo ago
forget about murder, you make a terrible comment or single mistake in your young adulthood and you are done for ever. Kids are not allowed to make mistakes anymore.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- embedding-shape 10mo ago
  That's not true though, no one "Has their life ruined forever" because of one off-hand comment. Eventually, social media moves on, and people stop haunting you, if that's what you're encountering. Great way of avoiding 99% of the harm with that, is literally getting off social media, if that ever happens to you. Most people around you in real-life won't know about it, nor recognize you, or anything else, unless you had a pattern of bad behavior for a longer period of time. But you can still make mistakes, even online, and eventually people forget about it.
  - skeeter2020 10mo ago
    >> Eventually, social media moves on, and people stop haunting you, if that's what you're encountering. That's only true if you fade with your misdeeds. Try doing anything that raises your profile and watch them jump back to the surface.
    - nemomarx 10mo ago
      People will talk about it, but how much does it really matter? Many actors and other figures credibly accused of sex crimes or whatever just wait a few years and then start getting work again. Kevin Spacey seems to be going alright as an example. The gap years certainly hurt, but at a sufficient level of money and power you're broadly fine I think. The real risk of cancelling is for people without money and status who could be shunned by family or friend groups mostly.
    - embedding-shape 10mo ago
      No, it's true if you want to remain a normal person, instead of becoming a celebrity or "celebrity-lite" or whatever we call them today. But yeah, if you try to become a "public figure" or similar, then people will try to find skeletons in your closet, but it's always been like that, and very different from "you make a terrible comment or single mistake in your young adulthood and you are done for ever" which was the initial claim.
fwip 10mo ago
Good does not cancel out bad, but bad does not automatically outweigh all good.
- hexer292 10mo ago
  How would you compare the two? I think no matter what the good was, you're still left with "yeah, but x happened".
  - fwip 10mo ago
    Quick aside - you can also do the inverse, excusing whatever bad because "x good thing still happened." That framing probably feels more obviously incorrect to you, because of your outlook. One metric is just by if people still want to hang out with you. Sure, you made a mistake and hurt their feelings before. But they're still your friends, and still talk to you because they, on balance, predict that interacting you will be good for them. Said less cynically - they genuinely like you. Or - if the "you" is too difficult to accept (as it often is with mental health issues), you can see it in relationships of people around you. Human beings are messy, and relationships (of all types) even more so. We all have brought both joy and sadness to those important to us. Trying to avoid harm above all else, will necessarily also reduce the joy you bring to others - you become withdrawn, isolated, cautious in all interactions. Separately - hurting another person is not always a sign of a moral sin. Accidents and misunderstandings happen, no person can predict every result of their actions, and also - sometimes two people are genuinely in conflict, and there won't be a happy end to it.
- worthless-trash 10mo ago
  In the eyes of the law, it clearly does.
  - account42 10mo ago
    Are you sure? Judges and juries consider the perpetrator's character beyond the bad deed all the time, both to reduce or increase the penalty.
selcuka 10mo ago
> I've struggled with this point of view Because it is much easier for people to universally accept a system where good or neutral deeds are expected by default, and misdeeds are punished. It is very difficult to construct an alternative system that humans could internalise. Where would you draw the line? What about saving 50 people, and then killing 49? Should they cancel each other, too?
- hexer292 10mo ago
  There is no line. Killing one person while saving a thousand is just as bad as killing one person.
  - Filligree 10mo ago
    By that metric, doctors doing triage at a disaster site should be jailed.
    - darkwater 10mo ago
      This is even more out of touch of the comment you are answering to.
  - btilly 10mo ago
    This is a failure to think, disguised as moral judgment. If a police sniper shoots a mass shooter in the middle of their mass shooting, that's a hero. Not a villain.
    - kelnos 10mo ago
      To be fair, though, some moral frameworks (not mine) proscribe that any killing is bad, even to save oneself or others. I don't mean this as a "gotcha", but as a reminder that morality is a human invention, and different humans will take different moral stances on things.
    - HWR_14 10mo ago
      There is a clear difference between "I had to kill someone to save 50 lives" and "I saved 50 lives, so I'm allowed to murder one person as payment"
unwise-exe 10mo ago
I intend to do this very bad thing. How much karma do I need to accrue in advance, so that I don't go into the red from doing it?
- hexer292 10mo ago
  I guess my point is you will always be bad as a result of doing this very bad thing, no amount of karma can counter it.
  - codebje 10mo ago
    You can't just "do good" like it's a spreadsheet, managing your karmic balance as the parent comment joked. You're only worrying about your personal consequences in that model, not the harm to others. But I think it should be possible for a human to reflect on their actions, find remorse, and strive to do better in the future. They will always have done a bad thing, but they might not always be a bad person.
Nursie 10mo ago
> I've struggled with this point of view since my early teens, and possibly even earlier. There is no amount of good one can do to compensate for even the slightest misdeed. I think there's a hole in the thought somewhere. If you save thousands of people and murder one, you should serve time for that murder, but you should still be appreciated for your other work. The error is thinking of actions and life like a karmic account balance, even though it's an appealing metaphor, people are complex beings and seeing them reductively as good or bad is probably wrong. Scott Adams was an asshat in later life. I don't know all the controversy he stirred because I drifted away from paying attention to him years ago. He gave me a lot of laughs, he had some great, fun insights into office life, he has some weird pseudo-scientific ideas in his books, and then he devolved into a bit of a dick. Maybe a lot of a dick. His is a life that touched mine, that I appreciate in some ways and am sad for in others. Bye Scott, thanks for all the laughs, thanks for nurturing my cynicism, but it's a shame about what happened with you after twitter came along.
deleted 10mo ago
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_carbyau_ 10mo ago
> because it just consumes anything positive. I was perhaps not as clear as I'd wish. The next dot point after you quoted me was meant to convey that equally, the good actions cannot be cancelled/consumed by bad ones. Life is a complex thing.
21asdffdsa12 10mo ago
? What strange moral posturing is this? Of course there is good that can exists in parallel to bad deeds. Invent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process fertilizer that feeds the planet and your contributions to poison gas are forgotten. Not forgiven. But science and progress are decoupled from whatever a person contributes. And even a disgusting person, while it should be kept from power, should be capable to contribute to science and progress. Even a insane nazi can feed half africa, while the most saint like person, may give humanity nothing. The value society assigns is not the value a person has. The value is determined by the objective outcomes the person produces. Werner von Braun has done more for humanity then all of the socialist icons combined. He is still a disgusting person. Imagine humanity like a spacestation. Science and Industry forming the hull, society on the interior, hard physics on the outside. The things a EVA worker contributes to all life inside the hull, can be substantial while he is a useless drunk on the inside. And somebody with a fishbowl over his head, cosplaying astronaut on the inside contributes nothing. Somebody yelling - redistribute the spacesuits, its cold in here - does more damage to society, then the useless drunk ever will.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]

necovek 10mo ago

> You can save thousands of people, but murdering someone still should mean a life sentence. Not if you murder someone to save a thousand people ;) (though you might still get one as you need to prove that there was no other way to save them)

pkulak 10mo ago

First off "cancel culture" is way too unserious a phrase to warrant a response, but I will anyway. > The views on his art were formed at a time before cancel-culture was a thing. No they weren't. "Cancel culture" (your social actions having social consequences) has and always will exist, but despite your assertion that he was terrible "even for his day", I'd bet that a misogynist Frenchman in the early 1900s wasn't going to ruffle that many feathers. John Brown got "cancelled" for opposing slavery. Now you can get "cancelled" for supporting it. The difference is that now "cancelled" means a few commentators call you out and your life and career are never affected in the slightest. It's actually one of the best times to be a horrible person. Hell, you can be president.

specialist 10mo ago
I'm still upset over the canceling of Socrates. Never forget.
fc417fc802 10mo ago
> "Cancel culture" (your social actions having social consequences) Those aren't the same thing. The former is abusing the latter as a pretext for a (social) lynch mob. > I'd bet that a misogynist Frenchman in the early 1900s wasn't going to ruffle that many feathers. GP wasn't referring to people of the time but rather people of the present day. There have been some surprising contradictions in what has and hasn't been "cancelled".
- kenjackson 10mo ago
  Cancel culture is simply social consequence. That's it. It can be harsh and at times probably too harsh. But I don't see how you can't have cancel culture w/o also not greatly limiting free speech.
  - fc417fc802 10mo ago
    We don't have to accept or reject all manner of social consequence as a single unit. That would be absurd. > w/o also not greatly limiting free speech. Indeed it would be exceedingly difficult to legislate against it. But something doesn't need to be illegal for us to push back against it. I'm not required to be accepting of all behavior that's legal. For example, presumably you wouldn't agree with an HN policy change that permitted neo nazi propaganda despite the fact that it generally qualifies as protected speech in the US?

account42 10mo ago

Also: - What actions are good and bad is much more subjective than activists want you to believe. - It's beyond absurd to discount someone simply for expressing an opinion even if you vehemently disagree with that opinion.

p0w3n3d 10mo ago

There's a song called "Cancer culture" by Decapitated - I recommend

ghostDancer 10mo ago

Not from the USA so I don't know exactly how this cancel culture is working but do they have his books banned from libraries cause I have seen a list of books banned or cancelled and the organization chasing them but can not find his works and there are comics like "Maus"

andyjohnson0 10mo ago

I generally agree with your post, but: > But at an art gallery, Picasso is near worshipped despite his torrid misogyny and abuse in his personal life which was terrible even by the standards of his day. Picasso's work is the thing that is generally venerated, not so much the (rather loathsome) man himself. Similarly for Eric Gill, who produced great artistic work despite being an truly awful human being. Scott Adams seems to have confined himself to merely expressing prejudiced views, amplified somewhat by his modest fame. But then his creative work doesn't in any way match Picasso's or Gill's either.

_carbyau_ 9mo ago
> Scott Adams seems to have confined himself to merely expressing prejudiced views, amplified somewhat by his modest fame. But then his creative work doesn't in any way match Picasso's or Gill's either. Scott's body of work spans many years and - like music bands - the early stuff is much different to the later stuff. To say he confined himself to "expressing prejudiced views" seems to overlook a whole lot of that early work. To say his work doesn't "match" other artists work is subjective. I got/get the occasional giggle out of Dilbert - more often in the earlier ones. I don't care for Picasso's art at all but I recognise that other people do. Who's body of work should I personally rate higher? The top comment mentions feeling like Scott was family, while acknowledging all the flaws of Scott. This is why I mention that good and bad actions can both stand.
- shiroiuma 9mo ago
  Picasso's art looks to me like something a deranged child might draw. Scott's work in the 1990s (i.e. ~30 years ago) was genuinely very funny at the time for anyone who worked in an office, including myself, when I was working as an engineering intern at a company. One strip I remember in particular came out just when our company had announced some silly new initiative and gave out free sweatshirts to motivate everyone, and the Dilbert strip that Sunday was almost exactly the same thing except it was t-shirts there. The timing was eerie. It's sad to me how Adams fell, which largely seemed to happen after the popularity of Dilbert waned and may have been a reaction to that, but his work was funny and lovable in its earlier days.

Throaway1982 10mo ago

If you aren't willing to separate art from the artist, you are admitting that your bias is more important than your ability to appreciate nuance.

qarl 10mo ago

You know, I think I disagree. I didn't give Picasso the benefit of the doubt because he was an amazing artist. I did so simply because I was ignorant of how horrible he was. Some people have trouble updating their feelings when new information arrives. I like him -> He causes harm -> I want to continue liking him -> his harm wasn't so bad. That's all. Picasso made some cool stuff. I will never display any of it in my home because he was horrible.

_carbyau_ 9mo ago
This is kind of what I meant by good and bad actions don't cancel out. I think people are perfectly allowed to appreciate the art while knowing he was not nice as a person. People are multifaceted, both as actors and in judgement of others. So where to draw the line is the question. And the answer is: this isn't linear. Context matters and is different for spaces and people. For example, you state seeing the art first, finding out he was not nice later and how that shaped your judgement. ------ Spaces Not having Picasso art in your house is clearly fine. It's your space, your personal choice what you put there. Demanding his art be removed from all art galleries around the world is not fine. Art galleries are mostly public spaces whose role is specifically to view artistic results largely from an artistic point of view. They are allowed to acknowledge his personal life and usually do - but that is not how you judge art. And so we have two perfectly fine and yet contradicting choices towards housing the art of Picasso. ------ People A victim of similar abuse as Picasso dished out may not want to see his art in the gallery due to association - this is fine. A person who simply doesn't care for that style of art may be indifferent or also not want to see it - also fine. A person who thinks Picasso fundamentally moved the art world forward may definitely want to see this art - also fine. And so differing people's attitudes towards Picasso are also easily understandable and fine.
- qarl 9mo ago
  > Demanding his art be removed from all art galleries around the world... Well, are you saying people shouldn't complain? Certainly if an overwhelming majority think he was too horrible to display his art, you would agree that it's fine to remove his art, right? And before that overwhelming majority is convinced, people may spend effort trying to convince them. So where exactly is your problem with this process?