> You can lose jobs, friends, and clients simply for being a jerk. There's nothing illegal about being an asshole, but plenty of people refuse to work with assholes.

Sure, but the current cancel culture results in people refusing to associate with the accused out of fear, not because they think he or she is a jerk.

I heartily support freedom of association. I don't support a mob of people, completely unrelated to either the victim or the accused, exacting punishments for any third party who exercises their own freedom of association. Made all the more worse when the mob then moves on in a coordinated fashion to the next "accused".

I cannot see a future where I ever support mobbing and witch-hunts, even if I happen to believe their accusation.

I guess I think you can coherently believe that without somehow implicating the justice system. People have different thresholds for this stuff.

> I guess I think you can coherently believe that without somehow implicating the justice system. People have different thresholds for this stuff.

So why are their thresholds more important than others'?

This is literally why we have a justice system - people have different ideas about what is wrong and what is right. The justice system, with its set of laws, is the final arbiter o right and wrong.

If you cannot get enough support for adding in your personal moral code to the set of laws, then perhaps it's not as universally moral as you seem to think it is.

It doesn't have to be universally moral. People are free to retain professional connections with this person. In effect, what people seem to be arguing on this thread is that people should be enjoined from exercising their own freedom of association when someone is deemed to be unfairly targeted online. I think you can coherently argue that, but I don't think you can reasonably argue it.

What's muddying the discussion is the invocation of the criminal justice system. We all implicitly understand that you can lose your job for being incompetent (not a crime), for calling your boss names (not a crime), for disparaging your company (not a crime), for flying a swastika flag from your car's antenna (not a crime). But because sexual assault is in fact a crime, people move the goalposts: now, for someone to face social and commercial consequences, they need to first be found guilty in a court of law.

That's a strange and, I think, indefensible standard.

> People are free to retain professional connections with this person.

Only if they want to also be mobbed. I did say earlier that the mob ensures ostracization via fear.

There is nothing redeeming or respectable about being in a mob, but the current cancel culture is attempting to overturn generations of social norms by trying to portray mobbing and witch-hunting as the moral high-ground.

Believe me, no matter how many big words are used to philosophize about the moral superiority of mobbing, at the end of the day the mobbers are no different to any other mobbers.

> But because sexual assault is in fact a crime, people move the goalposts: now, for someone to face social and commercial consequences, they need to first be found guilty in a court of law.

Well, yes. It's much more serious to be a criminal than a non-criminal. You are equivocating non-criminal acts with actual criminal acts and then appear surprised that for accusations of actual criminal acts people require evidence.

It's not shades of gray - there's a thick and visible line between "He's a criminal" and "he has different opinions to me".

You're damn right - for someone to face serious consequences, there had better be evidence that convinces a court that the person committed the crime of which they are accused.

I don't think this response is very coherent. As I pointed out, you can face the same "serious" consequence simply for calling someone a bad name. What you're saying would make sense if we were discussing convicting him of a crime, but that's not what we're talking about; instead, his defenders are moving the goalposts, so that we use the standards of evidence of criminal conviction and imprisonment to enforce standards of social and commercial behavior. That doesn't make sense, sorry.

> coherent

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

> instead, his defenders are moving the goalposts, so that we use the standards of evidence of criminal conviction and imprisonment to enforce standards of social and commercial behavior.

No goalposts are being moved. The "defenders" as you put it, are simply saying "You are accusing that person of a crime. Where's your evidence?"

We're literally at the point where you appear to be claiming that asking for evidence is "moving the goalposts".

Not coherent, in that it doesn't cohere. For instance: your argument accepts implicitly the fact that you can be fired just for being a jerk (as happens every day in every field), or otherwise hard to work with. But if someone commits an actual sexual assault, an organization seeking to terminate them assumes a heightened burden of proof. That doesn't make sense.

The fact is, nobody is required to meet a standard of proof to choose not to associate with this person. You can keep associating with them if you'd like.

An irony here is that the law actually provides this person with a tool, if people have stopped associating with him commercially because of false statements of purported fact ("he groped someone", or "he attempted to have sex with someone too intoxicated to consent" certainly qualifies, per se in fact, as both are crimes): he can sue for defamation.

>Not coherent, in that it doesn't cohere. For instance: your argument accepts implicitly the fact that you can be fired just for being a jerk (as happens every day in every field), or otherwise hard to work with. But if someone commits an actual sexual assault, an organization seeking to terminate them assumes a heightened burden of proof. That doesn't make sense

Well, yes, there is a higher burden of proof required for criminal accusations. Why do you want it any other way?

> An irony here is that the law actually provides this person with a tool, if people have stopped associating with him commercially because of false statements of purported fact ("he groped someone", or "he attempted to have sex with someone too intoxicated to consent" certainly qualifies, per se in fact, as both are crimes): he can sue for defamation.

Sure, unless the person making the accusation simply responds with "that was my opinion, which I stand by". You can't win a slander/libel lawsuit in many jurisdictions against someone for holding an opinion.

It's also free to make the accusation, while it is costly to defend - the element of fear is what makes the mob powerful.

There's a burden of proof for criminal convictions.

And that's not at all how defamation defenses work.

The justice system's mechanism for protecting from the "someone's speech cost you clients" scenario is libel (or slander). Both protect a person from defamatory, factual, untrue statements.

"That guy is an asshole" isn't one of those, and the only protection American law offers in that case is "People should think for themselves."

And, of course, the mirror image of the terribly stupid argument that if there isn't a criminal trial, no assault could have occurred is the argument that if the accused doesn't win a suit for libel, the accusation must be valid.