My Enlightenment Fanaticism
scottaaronson.com
scottaaronson.com
Scott Aaronson is smart, left-of-center and thoughtful. It’s well worth reading
The 'one side' has enough quasi-radical and aggressive voices with 'useful fodder followers' who probably are not as far fetched, I think a lot of personal politics, with an ever increasing sense of righteousness and entitlement.
If Chomsky had real integrity, instead of refusing to sign, he would have come to Pinker's defence and taken a stand. If he's too afraid, well then who will?
Most of the press is taking a side, corporations are mostly just fearful.
This is not a meme, it's an 'existential' deal as the movement purports to literally change what the our institutions are, and what the meaning of the Truth is.
It's disturbing also because many of us are otherwise quite sympathetic to many causes, but what happens if you're given a choice of either supporting the 'radical liberation and overthrow of the Enlightenment' vs. possibly some plain, centre-right voice, who's maybe not very interested in progress but has other, pragmatic concerns?
I'd like to see some data behind this assertion. Even what proportion of Trump voters used "anti cancel culture" as even ONE of, if not the main, reason why. Vs. "not hillary", or he was the name on the Republican side of the ballot, or "he says what he thinks" or "the wall"
What's ironic about America is that working class White and Black folk are both weary of white-collar professionals telling them what to do. Strangely, neither group thinks of businessmen or other instances of rich people as white-collar (both groups express veneration for the "businessman"/"hustler"), as somehow closer to themselves and values than middle-class professionals (like Obama).
Class underwrites so much in this country, but because class discussion has largely and for the most part been verboten since the 50s, we instead get this weird conflation of race and class.
This gets even more interesting when you realize Official BLM is just the bourgeois representation of working-class Black interests and there are many many YouTube videos of those Black interests expressing exactly that[0].
Of course, people think all Black people must be one big monolith, both owing to de facto segregation and the loudest minority problem, (they simply don't know enough Black people) because that's what Bourgeois profiteers want you to think; just like how people still actually think there was an clear, firm relationship between the protests and the riots, as much as protesters want to claim there is in order to hold some vague threat of further violence when they in all likelihood were not also the ones doing the rioting and vice versa.
[0] Here's one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9YcB1pJ69A
You have to establish your bona fides up front ("Trump's real bad, hell, he might declare himself dictator if he loses the election!!!") before saying this sort of thing, as a sort of preemptive defense against getting called a Nazi.
i hope we have all learned a valuable lesson here
This article is so unbalanced. It defends Pinker but it doesn't bother trying to even understand his detractors in this case. Just goes on a diatribe that sounds so much like all the other white persecution complex arguments I hear all the time.
1) "You confuse the idea that your freedom to express your mind with the idea that your expressions have no consequences. "
There is no confusion. This is a straw-man - nobody is denying that 'speech should have no consequences'.
Pinker and others are being attacked for making very reasonable, civil claims, not any kind of fanaticism which deserves 'consequence'.
2) "Do you deny the fact that those concepts and systems are not inherently racist".
Are you implying people can't disagree with your Orthodox Truth?
I'm not an academic, but I would. Guns are far more disproportionately likely to kill young black men, does that make guns racist? Juvenile systems and such problems exist basically all over the world, there are racial elements but that doesn't make them racist. It's a complicated problem.
3) "Sure trying to cancel Pinker is wrong but the proponents of racial justice are approaching the problem in the only way they know how."
The 'only way they know how' is to crush ideas, dismiss facts, destroy individuals, the Truth, our most trusted institutions in pursuit of their Orthodoxy? That's 'the only way they know how', and a defence of the approach?
4) "The only way to pursue justice is to find those cornerstones that uphold the system and remove them. "
Yes, this is the scary zealotry we're concerned about. First, it's entirely possible that systems can achieve reform without fanaticism, and second, it's also fair that there is debate, consternation, dialogue, experiments.
Fanatical ideas are great, fanatical movements are not.
I'm not stating a truth, I am not interested in the truth, I am interested in the facts. Do you deny the existence of institutional racism inherent in the justice system?
> Guns are far more disproportionately likely to kill young black men, does that make guns racist?
A gun is not a person and does not have an opinion. The only indisputable fact of a gun is that the direction you point it in shoots bullets when the operator pulls the trigger.
Also deflecting the question of racial injustice by bringing up black on black violence is bullshit. What are the crime statistics on white on white violence. The science shows that poverty is the leading indicator of gun violence not race. The fact that poverty is higher in black neighborhoods is also an indisputable fact and the cause of black poverty has a lot to do with systemic racism in America. These are not truths save your truths for you ministers. These are facts...