[Obdigore]

Macros, on 03 February 2020 - 09:06 PM, said:

I feel like this all ties back into the meta discussion thread.

It's seems like we're in a circle jerk of 'NO YOU' based on an argument about an artist.

I think Yang's a politician

[QuickTidal]

Obdigore, on 03 February 2020 - 07:49 PM, said:

I'm not going to respond to most of this, because I think we both see where each other are, but I just wanted to suggest that if someone makes a statement you either don't agree with or don't understand, you don't claim they are Inflammatory or Insane or many other words you didn't use but could have.

Perhaps just say 'I don't understand why you think this, can you please explain'. It accomplishes a better effect, keeps heads cool, and urges that person to post reasoning that can generate discussion.

Hopefully you can understand where I'm at with that. I just find the reaction from a bunch of people to that statement as more attempts to shut down conversation.

This is entirely fair, and I shall endeavor to do this in future instead.

[Maark Abbott]

QuickTidal, on 03 February 2020 - 10:08 PM, said:

Obdigore, on 03 February 2020 - 07:49 PM, said:

I'm not going to respond to most of this, because I think we both see where each other are, but I just wanted to suggest that if someone makes a statement you either don't agree with or don't understand, you don't claim they are Inflammatory or Insane or many other words you didn't use but could have.

Perhaps just say 'I don't understand why you think this, can you please explain'. It accomplishes a better effect, keeps heads cool, and urges that person to post reasoning that can generate discussion.

Hopefully you can understand where I'm at with that. I just find the reaction from a bunch of people to that statement as more attempts to shut down conversation.

This is entirely fair, and I shall endeavor to do this in future instead.

Your mad endeavour is insanity and I am calling you on it. Put up your dukes, sir. Fisticuffs it shall be.

[Kanese S's]

Obdigore, on 03 February 2020 - 07:49 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 03 February 2020 - 07:18 PM, said:

Obdigore, on 03 February 2020 - 04:26 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 03 February 2020 - 02:45 PM, said:

Obdigore, on 03 February 2020 - 02:17 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 31 January 2020 - 11:12 PM, said:

the point is you provided nothing to back up what you said. This is the discussion board...so YES you need to do that. Otherwise you're just swinging your opinion around like it's some well known written in stone fact.

Back yourself up. Cite sources of an inflammatory statement. Or don't say it. Simples.

Did you just claim that correctly labeling Yang as a technocrat is 'inflammatory'?

https://www.merriam-...ary/technocracy

I'd label him more as a 'tech-bro' myself, someone who thinks technology will magically solve problems, ignoring the plethora of social issues that need to be addressed. Honestly he is very much 'reddits top voted comments as president', which is an interesting, if misguided experiment.

Kanese's first comment was "Andrew Yang is a silicon valley shill". That's the main thrust of the conversation around "You need too cite things and source it".

Anything they said after that is not at issue.

I'm not sure hes a Shill, but he is a 'tech-bro', like Zuckerberg and Musk, and to an extent Gates, who think tech can fix everything.

While I'm all for increased technology, and actually for experts in positions of power in the government, technology by itself doesn't fix much, and certainly isn't going to fix our current unsustainable capitalist society unless we somehow push past scarcity.

If you think that everyone is running around with this information in their heads without context, you're wrong. The point is, don't make blanket statements in the discussion forum expecting that everyone is going know what you are talking about. Because not everyone knows all of that.

I don't care about the particulars, or if the eventual term technocrat is correct...I was defending the notion that Apt stated that without context, it was inflammatory with nothing to show for it. It was a shutdown term...because the conversation was never "Who Andrew Yang is and how that's somehow worthy of shutting down mention of him"...it was "Andrew Yang, a POC, dislikes identity politics"

So you're saying you aren't an expert on something, and thus when someone else has a different opinion than you doesn't link 15 articles for you to peruse, they are 'inflammatory'? I mean I guess my point here is correctly labeling someone as a technocrat, who is clearly a technocrat, isn't inflammatory nor does it require a source. It's also something you could investigate before writing angry messages about how you can't post stuff like that. I mean I remember the huge blow-up about drive-bys from a couple months ago, and I don't see any changes to the posting requirements in the DB Forum.

Since you apparently don't like to do your own research, let me go ahead and give you some light reading about Andrew Yang, and who and what he is.
https://quillette.co...ratic-populist/

Then you are welcome to come back and discuss his policies, and where they both shine and fall short.

What huge blow-up? I only just started posting again. What's a drive-by?

[Studlock]

This is my bi-yearly post about how you're being fucking had by far-right grifters about 'political correctness', as either being politically important (its not, in any positive way, and positive being the universal emancipation of the working class, and the oppressed colonized people of the world, here), or even politically corrosive. I read this, frankly, bizarre thread since I last posted, and I'm sure you don't give a shit, but I do. I care, partially, because I genuinely care about the various weirdo regulars who post here after the fact (shout-out if you remember when worrywort had a suicide scare, that literally kept me up all night refreshing the page to see any updates), I care to the point that I actively think that believing any of the claptrap in this thread will be actively hurt you, unless you're a millionaire, or billionaire, in the long run. Andrew Yung, a man who wants to replace all social assistance in America with a 1000 dollars is a technocratic dirtbag. People will die because of that policy, no if, ands, or buts about it. Someone will get hurt.

Other champions of 'anti-political-correctness', Trump, Boris, various mass-shooters around the world, actively hate the working class, hate the oppressed, and when you champion 'anti-political-correctness' you champion them. And why? Sincerely why? I'm First Nations and I know one of the big fights here in North America is religiously significant war bonnets. What do you gain arguing for young white festival goers to wear war bonnets beyond arguing for a far-right political agenda? What is fucking worth that?

I think this might be my last 'bi-yearly' post because I geniuely just don't understand the bleeding of humanity out of this sub over the years, despite our shared interest, and in some cases, as in mine, devotion to Malazan stories. The world is burning, people are being hurt, and you're cheering on the people who have the noose around the neck of the most vulnerable.

[amphibian]

Not a Sheep, on 05 July 2020 - 08:12 PM, said:

Whose lives did the sexual assaulters destroy? The people grooming children? The racists who quietly deny opportunity or even equality to people?

[Maark Abbott]

I dislike the term cancel culture because it appears designed to handwave the fact that the people getting 'cancelled' have dome some pretty reprehensible shit for which repercussions are due.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'The "vogue for public shaming" is stifling liberal society, according to an open letter by a group of authors including Sir Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood and JK Rowling.

The authors said they were speaking out against "the intolerant climate that has set in on all sides".

Martin Amis, John Banville and Noam Chomsky were also signatories to what was billed as "A Letter on Justice and Open Debate", published by Harper's magazine in the US.'

https://www.telegrap...tening-liberal/

'it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement.

This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time. The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away. We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other. As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes. We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences. If we won’t defend the very thing on which our work depends, we shouldn’t expect the public or the state to defend it for us.'

https://harpers.org/...nd-open-debate/

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 07 July 2020 - 09:04 PM

[Andorion]

I found this interesting
http://anildash.com/...nce-is-fluency/


“You can’t say anything anymore! You can’t even make jokes!”

There’s a constant complaint from people in positions of power, mostly men, who keep making the ridiculous assertion that they’re not able to speak in public. What they actually mean is they no longer understand the basis of the criticisms they face. And it’s a phenomenon we see from so many people who have a public platform, whether they’re CEOs or comedians or other cultural figures.

Some of this is a familiar issue: the powerful think that ordinary people have no right to criticize them. There’s nothing new there, and certainly a lot of the dismissive reactions are simply these people thinking that they’re better than their critics, and so don’t have to listen to the pushback. But even those who think they should still be at least pretending to take feedback from the public are mystified by what they’re hearing.

But there is something new that's also helping cause all this fuss: the rate of change in culture is increasing......"

[stone monkey]

This is imply The Marketplace Of Ideas in action. You put you ideas out into that marketplace and some people don't want to buy them. And they can convince others - using ideas that they too have put out into the marketplace - not to buy them.

You can always choose to say, and think, and do the things that you want want to do. The thing is that other people don't have to like it, and they can also say, and think, and do the things that they want to in response to your actions and words.

The vast majority of complaints about the so-called Cancel Culture generally seem to boil down to imo: I'm special, and therefore I can do exactly as I please, why do I have to face consequences?

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

stone monkey, on 08 July 2020 - 03:46 PM, said:

This is imply The Marketplace Of Ideas in action. You put you ideas out into that marketplace and some people don't want to buy them. And they can convince others - using ideas that they too have put out into the marketplace - not to buy them.

You can always choose to say, and think, and do the things that you want want to do. The thing is that other people don't have to like it, and they can also say, and think, and do the things that they want to in response to your actions and words.

The vast majority of complaints about the so-called Cancel Culture generally seem to boil down to imo: I'm special, and therefore I can do exactly as I please, why do I have to face consequences?

That's not an apt analogy. Cancel culture goes beyond criticizing ideas or convincing people not to 'buy' certain forms of entertainment; it goes after the platforms allowing it to be published and aims to ruin the lives of those whose ideas it disagrees with. A better 'marketplace' analogy would be one 'idea vendor' having employees protest outside another's shop, and outside the shopping center it's enclosed in, and outside the houses of the shop owners and shopping center owners, and harass them online until they persuade the shopping center to forcibly close the shop. I'm not particularly fond of the 'marketplace of ideas' conceptual metaphor, but there is one aspect of it that is apt: the market needs to follow some regulating principles (for example, 'no fraud' maps to 'truthfulness and rigor', 'don't allow monopolies to stifle competition or new companies' maps to 'allow for the exploration of new ideas', the ban on anti-competitive practices maps to... you should get the idea by now).

[Lady Bliss]

Andorion, on 08 July 2020 - 08:31 AM, said:

I found this interesting
http://anildash.com/...nce-is-fluency/


“You can’t say anything anymore! You can’t even make jokes!”

There’s a constant complaint from people in positions of power, mostly men, who keep making the ridiculous assertion that they’re not able to speak in public. What they actually mean is they no longer understand the basis of the criticisms they face. And it’s a phenomenon we see from so many people who have a public platform, whether they’re CEOs or comedians or other cultural figures.

Some of this is a familiar issue: the powerful think that ordinary people have no right to criticize them. There’s nothing new there, and certainly a lot of the dismissive reactions are simply these people thinking that they’re better than their critics, and so don’t have to listen to the pushback. But even those who think they should still be at least pretending to take feedback from the public are mystified by what they’re hearing.

But there is something new that's also helping cause all this fuss: the rate of change in culture is increasing......"

I think that most people that complain that you “can’t say anything anymore” are finding it hard not to make racist, sexist, and discriminatory comments “anymore”.

[QuickTidal]

I think Ricky Gervais says it best:

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

QuickTidal, on 08 July 2020 - 04:39 PM, said:

I think Ricky Gervais says it best:

The difference between that and 'cancel culture' is that 'cancel culture' goes beyond criticism into deplatforming (not just by persuading people not to watch, but going after the network, publisher, academic institution, etc. to prevent distribution or publication, even if it would be profitable), trying to get people fired from unrelated jobs (and generally ruin their lives), and harassment.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 08 July 2020 - 04:49 PM

[amphibian]

QuickTidal, on 08 July 2020 - 04:39 PM, said:

I think Ricky Gervais says it best:

I don't get it.

What happens when three police go to the memorial for Elijah McClain and make a joke photo of one choking the other in order to send to one of the officers who choked McClain as he died?

Rosenblatt said "ha ha". https://www.washingt...273b_story.html

Jokes aren't always just jokes. Ricky's worldview there in that tweet is a tunnel vision'ed comedian's and it doesn't map well to the real world.

[QuickTidal]

amphibian, on 08 July 2020 - 05:08 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 08 July 2020 - 04:39 PM, said:

I think Ricky Gervais says it best:

I don't get it.

What happens when three police go to the memorial for Elijah McClain and make a joke photo of one choking the other in order to send to one of the officers who choked McClain as he died?

Rosenblatt said "ha ha". https://www.washingt...273b_story.html

Jokes aren't always just jokes. Ricky's worldview there in that tweet is a tunnel vision'ed comedian's and it doesn't map well to the real world.

Amph, he's talking about comedy and saying things that are not to people's taste and getting a bad reaction, he is most certainly not referring to something as tragic as what you've brought up. Fucks sake man.

Quote

that tweet is a tunnel vision'ed comedian's and it doesn't map well to the real world.

No, you've just chosen to apply it to something tragic that makes it not really work and then ripped down the comedian for the broader notion. Bravo, but it doesn't make you right.

The point of "Say whatever you want, but don't expect people to like it" is valid, and taking it to some nth degree to prove our your weird point is pretty rank.

[Andorion]

Lady Bliss, on 08 July 2020 - 04:09 PM, said:

Andorion, on 08 July 2020 - 08:31 AM, said:

I found this interesting
http://anildash.com/...nce-is-fluency/


"You can't say anything anymore! You can't even make jokes!"

There's a constant complaint from people in positions of power, mostly men, who keep making the ridiculous assertion that they're not able to speak in public. What they actually mean is they no longer understand the basis of the criticisms they face. And it's a phenomenon we see from so many people who have a public platform, whether they're CEOs or comedians or other cultural figures.

Some of this is a familiar issue: the powerful think that ordinary people have no right to criticize them. There's nothing new there, and certainly a lot of the dismissive reactions are simply these people thinking that they're better than their critics, and so don't have to listen to the pushback. But even those who think they should still be at least pretending to take feedback from the public are mystified by what they're hearing.

But there is something new that's also helping cause all this fuss: the rate of change in culture is increasing......"

I think that most people that complain that you "can't say anything anymore" are finding it hard not to make racist, sexist, and discriminatory comments "anymore".

Yup. A lot of people getting called out nowadays are simply outraged that the problematic things they did and said before which got a pass are now going to be made public.

I think that one thing Metoo and its offshoots has been able to make clear is that how deeply sexism and sexual harassment is rooted into different institutions of society.

This shift in power balance is important not just in giving the previously unheard a platform but for exposing the skewed power dynamics and normalized abuse the powerful took for granted.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Also, for many progressive critics of 'Cancel Culture' the issue isn't that deplatforming (or protesting to get someone fired, etc.) is always bad, but that it's applied to minor perceived transgressions, that in many cases plausibly should not be considered morally reprehensible (for example, a Chinese-American woman writing a fantasy novel with slavery in it, based on the history of slavery in China, which was considered verboten not because of racist content, but because of the idea that a non-Black person should not be permitted to write a novel about slavery).

https://www.nytimes....ons-racism.html

This thread has provided many other examples....

[stone monkey]

Deplatforming is entirely fair game, I'd argue. People are simply using their power as consumers. Platforms would tell deplatformers to fuck off if they didn't see the harm to their bottom line via reputational damage from continuing to provide platforms for certain voices - these are entirely profit driven entities, after all. Given this is textbook market capitalism in action, it's entirely ironic that the most strident voices raised against deplatforming are very often from those who are the most vehement supporters of unfettered markets.


These same people were also, quite often, very committed to deplatforming voices they disapproved of back in the 20th century (and in some cases, still) - think of all those organisations with "family" in their names.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

stone monkey, on 08 July 2020 - 06:03 PM, said:

Deplatforming is entirely fair game, I'd argue. People are simply using their power as consumers. Platforms would tell deplatformers to fuck off if they didn't see the harm to their bottom line via reputational damage from continuing to provide platforms for certain voices - these are entirely profit driven entities, after all. Given this is textbook market capitalism in action, it's entirely ironic that the most strident voices raised against deplatforming are very often from those who are the most vehement supporters of unfettered markets.

These same people were also, quite often, very committed to deplatforming voices they disapproved of back in the 20th century (and in some cases, still) - think of all those organisations with "family" in their names.

If we're using the 'marketplace of ideas' metaphor: if the pressure to deplatform were coming from a competitor---for example, if Microsoft threatened to pull its products from a store if that store allowed a competing product to be sold---that would anti-competitive, and should be illegal in a well-regulated market. If Microsoft also harassed the competitor and their customers online and in person in an attempt to force them to stop selling the competing product, that would also be anti-competitive and should be illegal.

Personally, the last few years have made me much more sympathetic towards censorship in some areas. But whether that's the best or most effective strategy or not is a complicated ethical and empirical question.