Can Things Be Both Popular and Silenced?

> “That other monkey has status that should be my status!” – nobody ever went broke peddling that.

Well said. Who needs facts when you can fling shit at the opposing group?

It feels our older biological subsystems don't know what to do with the latest evolutionary upstart: rationality. Some tension there.

I like the distinction between "obviously true" and "common knowledge" the article draws:

> My favorite Soviet joke involves a man standing in the Moscow train station, handing out leaflets to everyone who passes by. Eventually, of course, the KGB arrests him—but they discover to their surprise that the leaflets are just blank pieces of paper. “What’s the meaning of this?” they demand. “What is there to write?” replies the man. “It’s so obvious!”

Coming from the former Soviet block, this is spot on. It's as if societies and social norms have inertia and strive for their own preservation, like an organism. Even at the cost of the individuals (people) who comprise them. In the extreme case, social norms can go against the interest of all individuals and still prevail, as the article points out. How weird!

Or not weird? I guess humans themselves are just such conglomerate of trillions of "individuals" (cells). We can do shit that hurts all of them, and they'll still comply. It's just weird to think of societies as "doing their own thing", because we're so grounded in our human-level perspective.

Yes, they can be both popular and silenced.

Steven Pinker mentions in the Better Angels of Our Nature (and possibly also elsewhere) that a group of people (even relatively small one) can be in a situation where everybody disagrees with some policy, yet everybody follows it, because they believe that everybody else agrees with it.

That's why allowing dissent is important, to get out of such tricky situations.

> These donations can add up. Mr. Rubin said his show makes at least $30,000 a month on Patreon. And Mr. Peterson says he pulls in some $80,000 in fan donations each month.

It won't be long until the censors find out and start demanding Patreon to no-platform them.

>But shutting up is of course is the exact opposite of what the people involved are doing – as the Times points out, several IDW members have audiences in the millions, monthly Patreon revenue in the five to six figures, and (with a big enough security detail) regular college speaking engagements.

That's beside the point though, as I don't think the complain/claim is that they are silenced from everywhere and have no audience.

Rather it is that while their opinions are popular, they are still unrepresented and silenced in the mainstream media -- including the Times itself.

It takes a bit of reading to get there, but the article resolves in the affirmative; yes things can be both popular and silenced. The absurdist scenario to show how at the end rather catches my fancy.

That little gem captures quite a complicated interaction about how society orders itself: that the enforcement of conformity shouldn't be so strong that opposition cannot form against it.

I suppose the flip side of this is that political groups have a responsibility to self-regulate their own more extreme elements so that external action is clearly not needed. It'd be lovely to see more of that on the left and right of politics.

> the people at Vox (highly-polished, Ivy-League-educated mutants grown in vats by a DARPA project to engineer the perfect thinkpiece writer)

He left out "neoliberal corporate sponsored" but that really hits the nail on the head.

Favorite quote: "Really, what sort of moron wastes their time suppressing a leaderless movement that nobody believes in or cares about?"

As someone who reads and listen these people who are called "the intellectual dark web" I would not call them a group of intellectuals. Haidt and Pinker being exceptions.

I like to listen Sam Harris and have read a little Mr. Peterson and even listen Joe Rogan who gets into the list somehow. If I criticize these guys it does not mean that I think their net contribution is net negative.

Sam Harris is smart and nice to listen and read, but he identifies with his opinions very strongly. He has very clear tendency to "shut down intellectually" when challenged. His inability to see the other point of view cripples him. I have listened enough of his podcasts to realize the moment when he turns defensive. The rest of the podcast is just him repeating his point of view in different ways until the quest leaves it to be. He goes from rational to rationalizing (as in psychological defense) very fast and loses the ability to listen. Harris was always the weakest link among the "Four Horsemen". Dennet & Dawkins were the intellectuals, Hitchens was incredible writer and attack dog. Harris was just edgelord even then.

I really appreciate what Jordan Peterson is doing. He actually concentrates on the positive for a group of people who are fed confrontation and anger. But his approach is motivational/charismatic, not scientific or highly intellectual even if he has the credentials. That's not a bad thing if he can reach people.

Joe Rogan is the purest case of "manly bullshit". Why he gets mentions is a mystery. It's entertaining if you like the entertainment value. He is smart version of Alex Jones without negativity or ill intent. I think his net positive effect comes from attracting people who fall into every conspiracy theory away from the negative emotions.

Conclusion: Opinionated or charismatic is not intellectual and critical thinking involves emotional control and checking your attitude. Intellectually these guys are punching below their weight class. As a group they are not challenging intellectually. They provide identification service.

The word for the phenomenon he describes is "heresy." For example large numbers of fairly influential people in European history disagreed with official church doctrine, but had to keep quiet or risk persecution of various types.

E.g. Newton had qualms about the Trinity, but he could not talk openly about them, or he would have lost his fellowship at Oxford. (Ironically, he was a fellow Trinity College.)

Some observations from somebody who both writes internet software and has been a member of HN since almost the beginning.

1. With a large enough audience, somebody will get upset about something. Sometimes I am wrong. Sometimes I made my point poorly. Sometimes they just don't get it. Sometimes they've just had a bad day and whatever my point, they're not going to like it. Sometimes? Sometimes they feign having their feelings hurt as a way to control conversation. With a large enough audience, you get all of that. Tons of it. You can't say anything to a large enough crowd without in some way it being wrong for some consumers.

2. Every minority group will tell you how oppressed they are. Whether it's greybeard COBOL programmers or hipsters grooving on whatever the other cool kids are, they are all misunderstood, put down, and oppressed. It's a mantra. (That doesn't mean that it's not true. It means that you're going to hear it whether it's true or not)

3. The interests of providing a public forum and the interests of society to hear minority opinions and evolve are in conflict. They always have been. The minute the first city built the first city park there was some kind of Nazi-like group wanting to demonstrate there. Such is the nature of public spaces. (Long discussion here about bullshit internet sites pretending to be bulletin-boards when in fact they're publishers and seek to shape and control what appears on their sites)

4. Sharp contrast, conflict, and passion is what drives clicks. PG once said that he wished more folks would publish stuff about Erlang innards and less political/emotional stuff. It was a great sentiment. The problem is that nobody clicks on those stories or upvotes them. But if I run a school for earthworm jugglers, and a link comes up titled "Earthworm schools under attack again!" I'm going to vote that up before I even click on the link.

What does that mean? For internet sites with any volume at all, owners focus on making the fewest people possible upset. Over time this always ends up with a site full of people who look, feel, and act just like the owners do. Good for the site, good for the readers (perhaps), terrible for society. No bad guys, evil plots, bigotry, or malice required. It's just a natural result of the system.

So yes, you can be both popular and silenced. The mob always find a way to shut out what it doesn't want to hear. That's why open access and free speech for everybody to everybody is so important.

I think the ludicrousness that people really MEAN to point out is not that they have viewership yet claim to be silenced - it’s that the views of these people are often exactly that of the mainstream, yet they claim to be silenced. For example, Peterson explicitly represents ‘common sense’ and a return to the supposedly natural values we’re all familiar with. And the (obviously somewhat generalised, here) views that monogamy is good, LGBT is bad, women should be homemakers and men are good at tech, political correctness has gone mad, and (in the case of Sam Harris) bombing the Middle East might be a good idea, aren’t exactly radical viewpoints, so claiming they’re being silenced is laughable.

Their opinions are not really taboo, and are popular (especially with the more powerful groups in society) precisely because of it. The comparisons in this article to, say, transgender, workers rights, or peace activists therefore don’t really jibe with me.

It's ridiculous because they are incredibly powerful, have won the debate, and continue winning. I mean, social justice is now considered a bad thing. Your evil has won, congratulations.