> I remember years ago you could have a discussion and express your opinion and it was fine.
I also remember when racism, xenophobia, slandering women, and generally ignorant talk was accepted and chuckled at. Thankfully, women are now expected to express opinions at dinner parties and minorities aren't run out of town for having the audacity to exist in the same neighborhood.
Hacker News is a discussion forum. Not only that, but it's one where the culture is defined by a contrarian-yet-intellectual spirit. It's the last place anyone should come to share opinions without expecting a response, likely a critical one.
> It's the last place anyone should come to share opinions without expecting a response, likely a critical one.
Sure, but this topic is "special" in the sense that the response GP is complaining about is about the most uncritical, non-contrarian, obvious possible one. If you view conversations as a multiplayer gradient descent, then making an accusation - even an implied and/or non-specific - of racism, sexism, bigotry and associated "sins", is like making a huge sinkhole on the optimization surface: a very deep local minimum, nearly impossible to walk out of.
It's so easy for anyone to do this, and the effect is both immediate and so obvious, that when someone does that, it's hard not to see it as a deliberate attempt at shutting down the conversation. It's equivalent of someone pulling a gun in the middle of what the other person thought was friendly sparring.
So free speech to express any opinion but not free speech to respond to opinions expressed?
99% of the time that someone decries the "death of free speech", it boils down to them not wanting to hear criticism for expressing ignorant or hateful ideas.
Just because you can say something doesn't mean you should. And if you do say something that is stupid or is harmful to others, you should expect push back. If you have no defense for that push back, it's a clear sign that you should either re-evaluate your opinion or express yourself in a more thoughtful manner.
This is a lesson that most people learn in grade school. But one of the big issues today is that a lot of people believe that others not accepting their opinion is a form of persecution. They are so self-centered that criticism of what they say is taken as an insult to them personally. Criticism of these people lead to no moments of self-reflection and no moments of personal growth.
The big question for me is how do we move past this moment without a large number of people realizing that they are acting like spoiled children. Speech is as free as it's ever been. What's different is an entitlement behind expressing opinions that destroys any meaningful discussion.
> it boils down to them not wanting to hear criticism for expressing ignorant or hateful ideas.
Or, in actuality, it mostly means they’re tired of people stripping all of the nuance away from their ideas, casting them in the most extreme light, and then deriding them as hateful and bigoted without any critical thought.
I understand the person you originally were responding to, because I feel much the same way. I used to be able to engage in conversations with random people about the world, and while this still happens occasionally, most people either self-censor or blatantly straw man you to score points.
The types of deeply nuanced, sometimes multiple day/week long conversations and debates I used to see on IRC in my youth have ceased to exist online, and can really only be had in person now with close friends who will not immediately act in bad faith.
This sounds more like the medium/channels that you use for discussion have changed. The type of people who had internet and knew how to use something like IRC 20-30 years ago is a pretty distinct sub-group of people vs the general population. And the atmosphere in specific chat rooms is very different than current large social media platforms.
I would also chalk a lot of it up to you changing over the last few decades. All of us have a habit of being nostalgic for things past. But a lot of that nostalgia isn't because things were better, it was because we were in better health, were not as jaded to the world, and monotony of life had not yet kicked in. When you were growing up you also didn't have to take full responsibility for what you said and a lot of times didn't understand the implications of what you were saying.
Providing an existential proof that a claim is not universally true is not “stripping the nuance off”, it’s called rational argumentation.
Lol wtf is up with people these days thinking that they have zero responsibility for the precision or correctness of the words that they use in discourse to ensure that they are saying exactly what they mean? Grow up and stop making excuses for your lack of self-awareness.
Indeed. My wife, whom i consider relatively open-minded in today's society, is somewhat offput by the fact that I engage with and consider 'conservatives' friends. There is a pervasive and insidious association with disagreement with 'evil' or 'wrong' in society today. People who espouse themselves as tolerant, are not. Any opposition to a held belief is considered 'wrong', inherently.
This attitude is destroying society. There is no place for nuance in general discourse anymore. It bothers me greatly. I have no solution, only an ability to despair.
I wouldn't consider your wife that open minded if she is off put by you engaging with "conservative" friends. There is nothing off putting about that.
But if your "conservative" friends happen to drop openly misogynist, racist, and/or xenophobic things inappropriately into casual conversation - she might be justified in feeling a little off put since she is probably worried that you also hold similar hurtful views but are more careful with what you say.
> But if your "conservative" friends happen to drop openly misogynist, racist, and/or xenophobic things inappropriately into casual conversation
The problem is that today, unlike a decade or two earlier, the conversation on-line (and increasingly off-line) is dominated by people who will happily choose to call anything they feel like as "misogynist, racist, and/or xenophobic", using it to invalidate what others have said wholesale (and in some contexts, also make an implied threat).
You are, I assume unintentionally, doing that too, this very moment: the problem with calling something "misogynist", "racist" or "bigoted" is that it's an asymmetric superweapon - once you say, or even vaguely suggest, that I'm saying something racist, it's impossible for me to argue my way out: any attempt of proving it's not is considered an admission of guilt. "Kafkatrap", I believe, used to be a term for this.
There are severe consequences to being seen as a misogynist or a racist or a bigot. There are no consequences whatsoever for accusing someone of being a misogynist or a racist or a bigot, for any reason whatsoever, including just for shits and giggles. No third party wants to challenge the accusation either, because it carries a risk of becoming seen as guilty by association.
> she might be justified in feeling a little off put since she is probably worried that you also hold similar hurtful views but are more careful with what you say
And herein lies another problem: fear of people secretly committing wrongthink. There is no way one can prove whether or not a person is nice, or is a wrongthinking racist bigot who's just being careful with what they say. By finding reasons to assume the latter, one is not only making their own life worse, but also that other person's, and their combined social circle.
He said his wife felt off put by him engaging with them. I said that was wrong, but also put forward a hypothetical situation where her feelings would be justified. That is not the same at all as saying "they are misogynist, racist, and/or xenophobic".
> There are no consequences whatsoever for accusing someone of being a misogynist or a racist or a bigot, for any reason whatsoever, including just for shits and giggles.
That's just how accusations work. I can just as easily say: "There are no consequences whatsoever for accusing someone of being woke, for any reason whatsoever, including just for shits and giggles."
> And herein lies another problem: fear of people secretly committing wrongthink.
Well I would be concerned if my partner had misogynist, racist, and/or xenophobic thoughts. Because those are not the thoughts of a kind, secure, and empathetic person (the type of person who I wish to share my life with). But you may have different morals where having misogynist, racist, and/or xenophobic thoughts is not an issue.
Really, I think it's just a consequence of living so long in what I consider an echo chamber. It's jarring to move back out of a huge, exceedingly left/liberal metro area into a much more politically mixed area.
And yeah, as an immigrant, certain conservatives have absolutely espoused views that are... antagonistic towards her family, even though they didn't know it at the time. You're basically on the money with your last sentence. It's really more of an apprehension that my political views are shifting (or I hid them) as a result of hanging out with those who hold contrary views.
1) Other ideologies are not immune to having people with such views, so I'm not sure why to single out conservatives for those kind of worries.
2) A truly open mind might be open to 'racist' viewpoints, such as blacks are more likely to suffer from sickle cell anemia and this trait is inferior to whites in regions without mosquitoes. That's just a straight up racist viewpoint (by the dictionary definition) coupled with the assertion whites legit have a characteristic here that is racially superior in places without malaria. I wonder how many other biological traits like this, of any 'race' (to the extent such a concept exists), we've thrown aside because scientists are just too scared to investigate it.
I only "singled out" conservatives because I was replying to a comment that specifically mentioned conservatives. I didn't think it would be relevant or useful to generalize or list the stereotypical flaws of every political belief system.
I'm really struggling to follow what you're trying to say in your second point. Honestly, if I'm hanging out with a friend of my wife and she starts going into "racially superior" traits of whites vs blacks - I'm going to either look to change the conversation or excuse myself to grab a beer because that's a strangely detailed and long example to get into.
That's certainly your choice to bow out. My wife is a different race from me, one that has a significantly different composition and cultural background than mine. We spend a lot of time comparing our physical and cultural differences and how they are superior in different situations, and I feel like I learned a lot from it. It's unfortunate others aren't able to appreciate diversity in this way.
I'm pretty sure the person you replied to said nothing about their friends being misogynist/racist/xenophobic. The only thing we know is they were conservative, so your statement "I only singled out..." is a complete sidestep from your process conservative -> "If your conservative friends happen to drop misogynistic/racist/xenophobic ..."
When literally the only thing we know is the person's political ideology and you go straight to talking about if they were saying racist stuff we all know what the implication is, and we all know it was said in a weird way to create plausible deniability that just maybe it wasn't being made.
> The only thing we know is they were conservative
Well no, that's not true. We also know that his wife was "off put" by him engaging with them. And if you re-read my rely, you'll see that I specifically mention her being "off put" 3 different times because that was the main part that I was replying to.
And if someone tried to shoehorn a long winded discussion about "racial superiority" into an unrelated conversation (much like you are doing right now on a discussion about free speech), I would certainly bow out because it's irrelevant and weird.
>Well no, that's not true. We also know that his wife was "off put" by him engaging with them.
No being off put was a description about the wife not them. All we know about them is they were conservative.
>And if you re-read my rely, you'll see that I specifically mention her being "off put" 3 different times because that was the main part that I was replying to.
There was no mention of xenophobia/racism/etc that was entirely your introduction.
>And if someone tried to shoehorn a long winded discussion about "racial superiority" into an unrelated conversatio
My guy, racism was your introduction, why did YOU shoehorn it in. Don't get upset you brought up racism and now you have to deal with replies including the subject you roped in.
What's pretty telling is that after I mention racism in passing, and you immediately jump in to say "a truly open mind would be open to racist view points". Then you go on giving examples of what you think are "racially superior" genes, as if this helps argue that conservatives being racist is an incorrect stereotype.
What's telling is that when I even number something as an entirely separate point and explicitly state in reference to talking about an "open mind" you immediately go back into your rant about "conservatives" stereotype no matter that point was entirely devoted to open minds and not about conservatives.
> 99% of the time that someone decries the "death of free speech", it boils down to them not wanting to hear criticism for expressing ignorant or hateful ideas.
OP hasn’t made any claims (that I can see) that they wish to avoid criticism for their ignorant and hateful ideas, and you’re slinging shade at them. Maybe they’re in the 99%, but… maybe they’re in the 1%. You can’t be too upset when people react to you negatively - if you say something harmful to others, you should expect pushback too.
I think you seriously misread my comment if you thought that everything I talked about was a direct reply to the parent comment and specifically about the person who posted it.
I was not upset or objecting to push back. I was, as people often do in replies to non-substantive comments, using it as an opportunity to expand on what I previously posted.
"But one of the big issues today is that a lot of people believe that others not accepting their opinion is a form of persecution. They are so self-centered that criticism of what they say is taken as an insult to them personally. Criticism of these people lead to no moments of self-reflection and no moment"
Well under oath in court, DeSantis General Counsel Ryan Newman defined woke as: “the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them”
> What do you think is wrong with the belief that there are systemic injustices in American society that should be addressed?
Nothing. What's wrong here is you making a sleight of hand (also known as "Motte-and-bailey"): whatever someone said in a court, under oath or not, about the definition of a word, has zero relevance to what the word means in regular conversation. It has even less authority than a dictionary, which tries to be generally descriptive, because it's just making an operational definition for the purposes of the court case.
I imagine you understand perfectly well the meaning of "woke" GP used, and you surely realize it is close to how this word is understood in general by those who don't subscribe to this particular group of ideologies - otherwise you wouldn't have to try and substitute an alternative meaning, from some court case no less, that just happens to be maximally inoffensive and agreeable, and also very much not the thing people are talking about.
> I imagine you understand perfectly well the meaning of "woke" GP used, and you surely realize it is close to how this word is understood in general by those who don't subscribe to this particular group of ideologies
To the best of my understanding, "woke" is now used by people to signal pretty much anything that they don't agree with. It's more frequently used when the subject matter is a black, gay, trans, women, or minority rights. But it's current usage is so incredibly broad, it is pretty much meaningless beyond "liberal nonsense I don't approve of". Hell even M&Ms, sidewalks being shoveled before roads, and not wanting to expose your kids to gas fumes (I can keep going with dozens of additional absurd things...) are all now called "woke".
Do you have a better definition than the one above? Because the fact that you fail to offer a counter-definition is pretty damn telling.
I'd just as well say "jimbokum"'s post has zero relevance to what the word means in conversation.
Which is not to say he wasn't making a worthwhile observation - that those who complain the loudest about wokeism/cancel culture arguably share quite a bit in common with those they perceive as being the primary promoters. Certainly it's always struck me that a lot people on both sides of the debate really are exceedingly thin-skinned (or at least worry excessively that those they feel they're trying to protect are thin-skinned).
Not arguing about facts and opinions, just about who was more "harmed" by the other parties speech. Not that the arguments presented are dumb and ridiculous, or even ridiculing a person for holding those views. But an attempt to litigate harms based on their individual identities.
(The label "white panther" I find pretty funny and a good example of battling bad speech with counter speech.)
Somebody is dead and somebody else is alleged to have killed them and you're asking someone on the other side of the world about injustice in this specific case?
Apparently only the top-level GP is allowed to push back on what other people say or do, but when the OP you're replying to exercises their right to free speech to do the same, it's the end of the world.
It's not the end of the world, I was just poking fun at a goofball who didn't see the irony in his kneejerk response. I'm a free speech absolutist, so I support his right to say whatever the heck he wants. That's how I know he's a goofy dude, I read a bunch of his replies in this thread and he CONTINUES to put his foot in his mouth.
Also, this hyperbolic style of response (end of the world, racism, xenophobia, the other million examples in the thread) is part of what the OP was saying is a problem today. Nuance in dialog seems to be lost, and the second someone disagrees instead of coming back with a well reasoned response, it's "oh so you YEARN for the days when minorities weren't even considered human?!" and the conversation ends.
That's boring. Strive to be less boring. It's not comfortable but it's worthwhile.
Pointing out that there was never a time when everything was all rosy and dandy is not a non sequitur. It's pointing out that their view of history is naive and not grounded in reality. To call these two points unrelated is to not understand the subject at hand.
> Pointing out that there was never a time when everything was all rosy and dandy is not a non sequitur.
But it is. Also, no one was making such a claim, either, so why point it out in the first place?
> It's pointing out that their view of history is naive and not grounded in reality
Says who? You? I'd venture to guess GP's view is grounded in reality much more than yours is. For instance, there is plenty of racism today, and it's mainly from the people of the same political party that's been most racist from its beginning: https://www.socialjusticesurvivalguide.com/2018/01/08/the-de....
All that's changed is that in this party it's now in vogue to be racist against whites.
> To call these two points unrelated is to not understand the subject at hand.
You could in fact relate them. You could say probably what you meant, which is: "today's censorship is great because it silences all those evil racist bigots that used to be able to speak their minds." And to that, I would reply that your view is not grounded in reality! Take, for instance, this lawsuit:
"Stacy Deemar, a middle school drama teacher, sued the school district over its curriculum allegedly forcing students to participate in “privilege walks” separated by race, comparing “whiteness” to the devil, and other lessons that pit “different racial groups against each other,” according to the suit."
Unfortunately, this kind of racism thrives under today's speech police.
"Sally Field ... apologized for being white during her acceptance speech for a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2023 Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday."
Why is she apologizing for being white? That sounds awfully racist!
"A California emergency room doctor out for a ride on his mountain bike was allegedly murdered Wednesday by a man who police said struck him from behind with his vehicle, then jumped out and repeatedly stabbed him while, according to a witness, decrying “white privilege.”"
It looks like this kind of openly accepted hate speech is getting people killed! The present day certainly isn't rosy either. Maybe it's even worse than it used to be!
...then they should be expected to back it up with a reasonable argument and supporting facts. If they can't do that, then they should expect push back. Even if they can do that they should expect push back - because that is how conversations work.
After all, what is the point in discussing something if ideas are not challenged or expected to have a sound argument behind them? To feel that you should be able to say anything you want and people cannot make a counter-point is absurd and quite selfish.
Do you have any evidence that they were actively censored as a conscious decision by employees of the largest social media platforms? Or did their opinions expressed simply lose them following and/or not generate their normal engagement?
If their "censorship" was a conscious decision by employees of the platform - how is that not also an expression of free speech by those employees and/or the platform? Should private companies not be allowed to moderate content on their platforms as they see fit?
If the "censorship" was a result of them losing following and/or not generating normal engagement - what do you expect to happen here? People can express any opinion they want, but people are also completely free to not listen or engage.
Those people were deplatformed and deamplified, rather than debated.
GP definitely has a valid point as do you. Speech was not equally free if the counter points weren’t allowed, which allowed a lot of people to say anything they want for a long time.
1. Do you have an example of someone who has been deplatformed (kicked off Youtube, Twitter, etc) for simply saying that COVID came from a lab outbreak? Because I'm pretty sure they also had some strong opinions on other topics and/or engaged in online harassment.
2. Do you have any evidence that they we "deamplified" as a conscious decision by employees of the platform? Or did their opinions expressed simply lose them following and/or not generate their normal engagement?
If their deamplification was a conscious decision by employees of the platform - how is that not also an expression of free speech by those employees and/or the platform? Should private companies not be allowed to moderate content on their platforms as they see fit?
If the deamplification was a result of them losing following and/or not generating normal engagement - what do you expect to happen here? People can express any opinion they want, but people are also completely free to not listen or engage.
Here is an example of person who got deplatformed from Twitter because they expressed virus came from a lab. There are numerous such examples which did not had news articles published for them.
So a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Hong Kong posted a self-published, non-peer reviewed paper, which was subsequently shown to not be supported by the underlying data cited. She also fled Hong Kong after publishing that paper.
This sound a lot less like she was deplatformed from Twitter by Twitter employees, and a lot more like Twitter was given a legal order from the Chinese government to deplatform her. Which is a very different conversation than employees of social media companies suspending someone because of their personal beliefs.
Despite her being suspended from Twitter, "Yan’s paper on Zenodo — despite several blistering scientific critiques and widespread news coverage of its alleged flaws — now has been viewed more than 1 million times, probably making it the most widely read research on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic" [0]
She also proceeded to appear on the most viewed national evening news segment multiple times as well as dozens of podcasts and live streams.
So I don't really see how going from having a Twitter account to being a national conservative hero as a whistle-blower is really feeling any negative reproductions from her speech. In fact, her speech seemed to make a name for herself and win her a lot of positive publicity.
The reasonable argument and support facts back then was the same as today. China had a research lab researching SARS-CoV viruses in the same location as the first cases of SARS-CoV-2.
People just didn't like the political implication, and that is not something which reasonable argument and supporting facts can solve.
I also remember when racism, xenophobia, slandering women, and generally ignorant talk was accepted and chuckled at. Thankfully, women are now expected to express opinions at dinner parties and minorities aren't run out of town for having the audacity to exist in the same neighborhood.