It started with not allowing anyone to agree or even argue that vaccines cause autism because people can die if they believe they shouldn’t get vaccines. Then, we couldn’t argue that the Holocaust didn’t happen because that could give rise to a new Holocaust. Then, we couldn’t argue that Black crime was self-inflicted. Now, we can’t argue that police brutality is overstated.
In each case, I tend to agree with the mainstream opinion. However, I only got to be that way because I heard both sides’ arguments and came to my own conclusion.
There is an idea that these ideas are inherently dangerous and that holding these ideas could lead to lives lost. While that may be true, entirely censoring one side of a discussion makes everyone feel like evidence is being withheld and suspicion only grows. Even worse, ruining lives by doxxing is what was sought to prevent by stifling discussion in the first place.
The only way forward is to accept that these ideas must be openly discussed, no matter how dangerous the opposing conclusion may be. If the truth really is self-evident, then there is nothing to fear, provided all sides are afforded ample opportunity to make their case. Otherwise, perhaps those who seek to censor are not, themselves, as correct and righteous as they might think.
Edit: Even the Amish let their kids roam free temporarily in Rumspringa so that they don’t feel like they’re missing the truth.
I don't agree fully with your explanation as I don't think the problem has been posed, in general, in terms of avoiding putting people's lives in danger. The issue is instead that empathy has become the attitude and quality that needs to take precedence over any other, including any amount of skepticism, inquisitive attitude and reason.
We have become a world where the ultimate element of truth are someone's subjective feelings (usually negative) as the person reports them. (Google finds 3710 results for the exact phrase "I was in tears, shaking" which is not a bad number for such a precise description of an extreme state of distress). The problem with this is that of course, when you state a fact, it's possible to debate its truth rationally; but no rational debate is possible about a subjective feeling (short of calling the person reporting it a liar).
For example, the problem that led to the sacking of the NYT's opinion editor over Tim Cotton's piece is not that the piece itself was putting lives in danger- that could have been up for debate; it's that some people objected that they felt it was putting lives in danger. While you could argue that stopping violent demonstrations is meant to preserve lives, the feeling is instead outside of any rational debate- you cannot argue that I'm not feeling what I say I'm feeling.
So now whoever has a grievance or feels to have been wronged or is afraid of something, can claim his or her own feelings as the ultimate proof of the fact. It should be obvious to everyone that feeling something, being totally certain of it, doesn't really prove anything, that the whole point of discussion and rational inquiry is to separate what we feel from what is actually true. But refusing to fully acknowledge someone's negative feeling has become the ultimate sin.
We used to negotiate negative feelings with others; sometimes this would bring acknowledgment, but other times sharing and debating them could actually help seeing a different side and attenuate them, or even change our attitude and make us grow. But when every single negative feeling is invariably received as the ultimate proof of a valid grievance, a positive feedback cycle starts: I only need to say how bad I feel to be comforted and assured that I am in the right and something is owed to me. This cannot but lead to an explosion of grivances. Which is what we're seeing now.
>> The issue is instead that empathy has become the attitude and quality that needs to take precedence over any other, including any amount of skepticism, inquisitive attitude and reason.
This is the key point.
What I don't get is how it ended up this way? A person might empathize, but why should it take precedence? And if indeed it did, why doesn't that person's skepticism or criticism hold the same weight? Why should that get disregarded?
From one side empathy is a very popular emotion; trash tv for example has always been peddling in cheap empathy. I suspect that for a vast majority of people empathy comes natural, while logical analysis requires an effort. We had established venues in which rational discourse was the only acceptable way of addressing issues, but social networks have lowered the bar of entry into the public debate and given everyone the means to participate- all the competence needed being that of clicking a like or retweet button.
Empathy also allows to hide your own personal issues behind the very handy screen of someone else's emotions. "Will someone think of the children", "what about the elderly" are a classic examples of a mechanism allowing you to disguise your personal attitudes (for example homophobia, prudishness, fear of change) as an altruistic attention to someone else's needs, again without the need to provide any kind of rational explanation. So whoever has personal issues with something doesn't need to argue for it any more, they can just point to someone else's distress and ask to empathize with it.
So, essentially, as discourse becomes more visible to a larger section of people, that discourse then has to pander to the more trivial, petty or rather those emotions which require lesser effort.
The social networks rely mostly on network effects. There is really no way to, for example, discern, prior to a person joining a network, whether they are actually qualified to be able to participate in it. Sometimes, the network is visible, for example, a forum whereas there is a very low barrier of entry in terms of membership.
That is interesting to think about!
Your second point, I think, ties up to the first. Those people, who out of inclination, capability or training, are unwilling, incapable or unable to exert the effort rational analysis, will end up resorting to, as you say, "hide personal issues behind a show of empathy".
There is one more point I'd like to add though. In circles where a high amount of training is required, not only is it not possible to contribute in a meaningful way, but also there was no inclination for anyone to opine about others' comments. Whereas now, any statement, any remark, any comment, anybody feels that they can comment, criticize, or debate about. That is, the earlier inhibition, or should I say humility, seems to be disappearing. This is, in my opinion, is another reason for deterioration of debate and discussion.
Probably along with this, I'd like to add this quote from another comment in a different HN thread [0].
>> Cynicism tends to look smart to outside observers
Thank you for the wonderful and thought provoking discussion.
I think I mostly agree with you, but two nitpicks:
1. Allowing anti-vaxxers to have and discuss their ideas should be (and is?) allowed. But perhaps the risk to society is high enough that vaccination should be mandatory. I don't know enough to believe this strongly, but from what I understand the risks are there.
2. I always thought the 'rumspringa' approach was nice, but I've come to believe that it's deceptive, whether intentional or not. Throwing a teen into the deep end with no experience of the 'real world' strikes me as a very clever way to give them an experience that is intense, and perhaps usually skewed in favor of returning to the fold.
It reminds me of the 'cool' speakers I was inundated with as an evangelical teen: they would talk about their 'worldly' lives filled with drugs, sex and booze, and how they ended up in various horrible situations and, obviously, how we should just avoid it altogether.
What I learned later in life is that drugs, booze and sex are various degrees of danger, but also awesome. And because I 'went in' with a good amount of experience and education, a decent childhood, and at a slightly older age, for the most part none of these things actively harmed me.
any position that doesn't losslessly compress into a chant or a rally cry or 240 characters is effectively censored by its own unfitness for the infrastructure of mass propagation.
like the demotivation poster quip, none of us is as dumb as all of us.
it does not matter that there is structural promotion of epistemic shallowness on both/all sides of hot-button issues, because there is, and it's getting worse as the noise floor steadily rises. swing a dead cat and hit a dozen informal fallacies in all directions.
what does matter is that, in most cases, only one side is openly indulging and channeling our most degenerate impulses of cruel-mindedness and domination. eventually the other side may be forced to do the same.
I don't find this comparison of "cancel culture" or "performative wokeness" to living in a totalitarian state very persuasive. People who are losing their jobs over voicing a controversial opinion are not facing anywhere near the same kind of oppression as those who face imprisonment for speaking out against the state.
It's notable that the examples Sullivan cites held or hold fairly high-profile positions in the first place. He's not exactly talking about the struggles of the average person here. I understand that the intelligentsia is the environment in which he lives, so it's natural he would be more familiar with and identify with others in that class, but it still comes across as out of touch to me. Most Americans did not attend university, and do not read the New York Times.
Despite its many flaws, one thing that America very much still has going for it - and I'm glad Sullivan at least recognizes this - is a free press. For sure the press follows trends and reports on issues through some lens of bias, but people can still publish independently, and they are largely free to say whatever they like to whoever wants to listen. It's hard to overstate how much of a difference that makes. The fact he is able to write his column and we are able to discuss it shows that he is not - in fact - living in a totalitarian state.
It's mentioned at the beginning of the article, but Vaclav Havel's "Power of the Powerless" and particularly its parable of the greengrocer is worth a read:
This part seems true and seems to be easier for non-Americans than Americans to see, which I suppose is not surprising.
Americans have always been good at policing uniformity by and among themselves. The puritanical streak of shaming and stigmatizing and threatening runs deep. This is the country of extraordinary political and cultural freedom, but it is also the country of religious fanaticism, moral panics, and crusades against vice. It’s the country of The Scarlet Letter and Prohibition and the Hollywood blacklist and the Lavender Scare.
The "puritanical streak" is making one of its periodic historical comebacks right now.
Nope. We've lost the ability to criticize an idea without the other side assuming it's an attack.
I say De-fund/Disband the Police is a stupid idea to the wrong person, I get branded as a Republican/Trump Supporter/Nazi/Bootlicker. There is a chance my professional career would end.
I say being transgender is weird or something to the wrong person, I get branded as a homophobic bigot. There is a chance my professional career would end.
Those are two hot button issues that I just came up with due to the news. There's a reason I don't have a public profile associated with myself. The wrong person sees something, and they're up their ass just enough, something can be taken out of context and used to destroy my future.
I'd rather be two-faced then risk what I've built.
It depend on your position. Some sensitive topics are okay at some levels of your career (like when you're a student or entry-level employee), while other topics are basically fire-able offenses for people in semi-public roles like startup executives, academics, politicians, directors of various non-profit organizations including sports clubs, partner-level people at white shoe firms including VC and law, or middle managers and above at larger companies.
For the latter group, more things are sensitive: the seriousness of the pandemic, nature vs nurture for certain skills/intelligence, being dismissive about ethical issues (robotics, computer vision, privacy, etc.), border control and foreign policy in general, saying the wrong thing about minimum/living wages, usual hot topics like abortion and gun rights (especially during some news cycles), opinion about public funding for certain institutions, agreement with diversity/inclusion initiatives, opinions about laws around discrimination, and taxes and social welfare.
Yes, if you advocate for political positions that hurt people then the people hurt by your ideology are unlikely to be happy with you.
> taken out of context
This seems orthogonal to the problem you've described. Just because you're getting ripped for your opinions doesn't automatically mean that your positions are taken "out of context".
Obligatory: It's impossible to argue with hypotheticals. Please point to a position you've taken and how it's backfired and we can take a look at who was in the wrong.
"that journalism needs to be rebuilt around that moral clarity, which means ending its attempt to see all sides of a story, when there is only one, and dropping even an attempt at objectivity"
So, what all encompassing media are they referring to here? Fox News? OAN? Reason? Obviously not. Just the fact that FN itself is the most watched cable news source makes this whole premise rather dubious.
The short form, as an overall answer to his article: No.
The longer form answer: His article makes several mistakes about the US and ignores the bloody and dark history that we have today. I frequently see this sort of ignorance (whether feigned or not) in these sort of arguments because people are convinced that we're somehow past a lot of these issues. We're not. There's this terror of a new 'liberal orthodoxy' while we see black men beaten and killed by the police, rights taken away from LGBT people and more. Rather than fear the government boot coming down on people, they fear the people showing rightful anger against the government doing something about it.
One of his first claims is
>And we are not defined by black and white any longer
If you were to ask a black man this question, the answer would likely be far different. He says that we have 'no secret police', but ask someone who's had experiences dealing with ICE or someone who's been harassed by the police solely because of the color of his skin. Ask any of the women who've had to deal with sexual harassers and predators in their job. You'll find out that there exists two Americas: One for a very specific type of citizen, and another for the rest of us.
Anger is never simply the result of people living in luxury and opulence. Anger is a build up of pressure among the people. And people are angrier than ever because these problems have persisted for decades and have kept persisting.
> The reason some New York Times staffers defenestrated op-ed page editor James Bennet was that he was, they claimed, endangering the lives of black staffers by running a piece by Senator Tom Cotton, who called for federal troops to end looting, violence, and chaos, if the local authorities could not. This framing equated words on a page with a threat to physical life — the precise argument many students at elite colleges have been using to protect themselves from views that might upset them.
Hold on now: words do incite violence. Media does incite violence. Remember how it became standard practice to not publish the names of mass-shooters? That's because copycat crimes ARE a thing, and because quite a few school shooters and the like mention getting their face in the news as one REASON for doing the shooting.
So, as a journalist you ought to inform me. Give me an accurate picture of what people outside my bubble are seeing and thinking right now. But you absolutely cannot claim to not be responsible for the consequences of your words. That's why journalism has to be so nuanced.
> In these past two weeks, if you didn’t put up on Instagram or Facebook some kind of slogan or symbol displaying your wokeness, you were instantly suspect.
I didn't do any of these things. I wasn't harassed. Nobody cared.
> That’s why this past week has seen so many individuals issue public apologies as to their previous life and resolutions to “do the work” to more actively dismantle “structures of oppression.” It’s why corporate America has rushed to adopt every plank of this ideology and display its allegiance publicly.
What happens when a company doesn't voice support of BLM? Do they get harassed on Twitter? Did you know that the tweets on Twitter only represent about 2% of Americans [1]? I wonder how many sales you actually lose if 0.01% of those Twitter users bash on you for a single day and then forget all about you by the next day.
> We have employers demanding our attendance at seminars and workshops to teach this ideology.
This concern, I can appreciate. But in the same angle as my previous paragraph, most employers haven't demanded these seminars. I imagine you're looking at that 0.01% and letting it get to you again. Also, what happens when you decide to silently not attend these seminars? I'll bet a lot of these mandatory seminars become not-so-mandatory once you quit tolerating your employer's BS.
But again, let's be nuanced. My work is my contribution to society. I absolutely want my contributions to society to be nuanced. You won't find me working for the NSA. You won't find me working for a petro company. In fact, I'd quite like it if the company I'm working for refused to sell their product to either of those two things, because that's an easy thing I can do to limit some of my greatly negative contributions to society.
So IF the majority of an organization wanted to focus on doing some small thing to address police brutality or systemic racism (like, actually, and not just as a show), and they go about it at an organization-wide level, would that be a bad thing? That kind of just sounds like being principled, which I'm pretty on board with. It'd be cool to have more opportunities to work for an organization that care about their contributions to society beyond what's measured by money.
> And then his tone-deaf, tin-pot dictator act in reaction to the Floyd protests and subsequent riots put him beyond the pale for many of the persuadables. Left-wing activists, for a change, didn’t play into his hands — although they’re doing their best in Minneapolis and Seattle.
Have you been to the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone (in Seattle)? Or have you only seen what's portrayed of it in the media (TV, Twitter, etc)? Spoiler alert: I've watched what's on Fox, I've watched what's on Twitter, I've watched what's on the local news, I've been there in person: each medium portrays a significantly different view of things. You can't really put more than 20% of the blame on the people on the ground for whatever image Seattle's developed. The media is so much more responsible for what things look like to everyone more than a mile away from events.
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Anyway, my answer is yes: there is still room for debate. Do you have friends? Do you talk to them? It turns out that most people I talk to in real life actually have decently nuanced views! And a number of them are willing to discuss those views with you, and they might even ask you for your thoughts if you show that you understand them.
Mass media is the problem. The one-to-many broadcast style of "dialogue" is the problem. 280-character limits are the problem. Sending your thoughts to the whole world and then being surprised when more than a handful of people disagree with you is the problem.
> Hold on now: words do incite violence. Media does incite violence.
Words and media can incite violence. Now that you've stated this fact, it's still up to you to argue that a particular op-ed is inciting violence and, in case, whether that violence can be worse than the violence its author says he wants to prevent or stop.
See? Now we have a debate. You argue some facts, and you have to prove them rationally. Convince others. Find answers to counter-arguments. Bring data. Maybe discover you're wrong after all.
That's not much of a counterargument. The question could be phrased as "How much room is there still for debate?" and the answer is clearly: less and less, and dwindling rapidly.
Why are we debating if anti-racism has gone too far? In the last two weeks local, state and federal police and soldiers were tear gassing, firing rubber bullets and beating peaceful protestors up.
Being assaulted and arrested by the police for free speech is a clear first amendment violation. Being fired for saying something racist is much more constitutionally (and morally) ambiguous.
The author's point is that "racist" is being stretched to include being neutral: if white silence = violence, then you're now a racist if you don't actively plaster your social media with BLM slogans. "If you're not with us, you're against us! Burn the witch!"
Isn't it possible for some to have their ability to communicate freely strangled by political correctness and their legitimate fear of being treated as a racist while others are literally strangled by actual racists for being black often with few consequences?
It often seems like hypocrisy not baseball is the national pastime.
> It often seems like hypocrisy not baseball is the national pastime.
I would say that failing to properly identify the root problem is the national pastime.
We gave the government vast powers over everyone's lives, believing that that power would be used to fix social problems.
Instead that power is used by corrupt government officials (cops are by no means the only ones) to act out whatever prejudices they happen to have (racism is by no means the only one) with impunity.
The root problem is the power. Humans simply cannot be trusted with that level of power over other humans. Such power will always be misused. You can't fix that by fixing a particular prejudice. Even if you could wave a magic wand and guarantee that no cop anywhere would ever be racist again, that wouldn't fix the corruption; the corrupt cops would just find some other excuse to harass citizens for no good reason. You have to fix the corruption. And that means limiting the power that government has over people's lives.
In each case, I tend to agree with the mainstream opinion. However, I only got to be that way because I heard both sides’ arguments and came to my own conclusion.
There is an idea that these ideas are inherently dangerous and that holding these ideas could lead to lives lost. While that may be true, entirely censoring one side of a discussion makes everyone feel like evidence is being withheld and suspicion only grows. Even worse, ruining lives by doxxing is what was sought to prevent by stifling discussion in the first place.
The only way forward is to accept that these ideas must be openly discussed, no matter how dangerous the opposing conclusion may be. If the truth really is self-evident, then there is nothing to fear, provided all sides are afforded ample opportunity to make their case. Otherwise, perhaps those who seek to censor are not, themselves, as correct and righteous as they might think.
Edit: Even the Amish let their kids roam free temporarily in Rumspringa so that they don’t feel like they’re missing the truth.