Comment by koheripbal | Hacker News Reader

Comment by koheripbal | Hacker News Reader

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> When both parties believe their position is true and is good for the world, and their arguments for it are genuine, then I think it slows progress to cancel them.

This doesn't seem to be the case. Those who disagree are simply lumping everyone they disagree with into the big "racist" bag, claiming they are arguing in bad faith, dismissing the conversation, and then calling on others to censor it outright.

I see no evidence that contra-theocracy dialogue is being tolerated at all.

> "Cancel culture" and deplatforming are important tools to defend against these bad faith exploitive uses of public communication.

I find this argument to be odd. Who do we allege we are protecting when we deplatform someone? Are we protecting ourselves from false arguments? Are we not adults? What gives you the right to decide for others what they should and should not see/read?

This is the fundamental illogic of censorship. No one should have the right to tell others what to see or read.

> Who do we allege we are protecting when we deplatform someone?

Those harmed by the actions that follow from the beliefs of the deplatformed person.

For example, if you de-platform who says that all green-eyed people should be thrown in the ocean to drown, you do so to protect green-eyed people.

> Are we protecting ourselves from false arguments?

The argument that green-eyed people should be thrown in the ocean is neither false nor true. It is an ought claim, not an is claim. The intent is not to protect people from the argument, it's to protect people that would be harmed if others believed the argument.

I think it's worth looking at how deplatforming happens here. Whether it is someone being fired or a tweet deleted or a community banned, the "cancellation" is almost always done by a company.

Companies operate more like amoral optimization functions than they do moral beings. In this case, the incentive driving them is bad press...companies are terrified of being on the wrong end of a media cycle. The driver of bad press, in an era where tweets are constantly used as primary sources in news articles, is social media.

The result of all this is that speech in society is now partially governed by twitter outrage. There is some benefit to this, as the loudest voices on twitter are willing to stand up to power (as opposed to letting the elites determine who should be fired for speaking out on their own), but it's also horrifying to think that twitter anger is, to a growing degree, governing speech in our society and setting the standard for right and wrong.

Twitter mobs are incapable of handling nuance, and yet productive policy discussions can't happen without it. That's a pretty serious problem.

It's telling that you can't point out one specific example; that you have to make one up.

If it was protecting you, or others, it seems it would be easy (or at least possible) to rattle off several examples.

GP chose green-eyed people in order to be inoffensive. It doesn't take much imagination to realize who they're really talking about.

GP is also defending a weapon. I've formerly been a gun enthusiast. I could link to specific articles showing their effectiveness in preventing home invasions. Similarly, this is a "social gun" – why is it effective? Who is it protecting?

I think the metaphor makes it comfortable to believe that it must be protecting someone, when in reality the green-eyed people might not exist.

So you're arguing that Jews, Blacks, and LGBT don't exist?

> Are we protecting ourselves from false arguments?

In some cases I do think we can and should protect ourselves from arguments for intolerance.

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