> “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.
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.
Ah a change.org petition. The PC left is out of control!
This is a great example of what bugs me about this crowd. They seemlessly move from actual problematic behavior (like a few famous examples of deplatforming at a few elite college campuses) to Twitter mobs and not entirely supportive op-ed pieces, as if it's all of a kind. Every public person gets Twitter mobbed, but they talk about mean people on Twitter as if it's more evidence that the entire American left has become deranged.
In so many cases, including in this article, they refuse to look at data and just point to anecdotes on top of anecdotes to pretend they're uniquely aggrieved.
You could easily come up with data that might be interesting to look at when discussing this question:
- are college liberals more or less likely to answer survey questions supportive of free speech than they were in the past
- has the annual rate of incidents of college activist excesses (such as violence over unwelcome speech) been increasing over time, or has the media environment just made it seem that way?
- are liberals more or less likely to support free speech than conservatives?
and so on. All we hear about is the same few anecdotes over and over again. Don't get me wrong, if there has been backsliding on support for free speech on the left than it's something I think we should be concerned about. I'm just not convinced that the panic we're seeing is justified. Certainly not when you compare this problem to the other problems we're currently facing as a society.
edit: formatting
edit: ironic that I've found no other topic on the internet where people are more likely to downvote you without engaging in reasoned debate than on the question of whether _other people_ are willing enough to engage in reasoned debate.
Thanks, I'll look at this, though I would advise retaining some skepticism when evaluating data from a single source, especially when that data is confirmatory of that source's stated mission. Here's some more to evaluate:
Twitter mobs on their own are indeed mostly harmless. Employers and other organizations that can have an actual impact on the target of the mob and who are complicit with it to avoid the possibility of making the life of PR people more difficult by having to defend the distinction between corporation and the personal opinions of low level employees are not.
Of course both sides are guilty of that and they basically crib from each other's playbook in the spirit of "having them taste their own medicine". In the end it it is never what one would call civilized discourse, no matter who is doing it and who you disagree with.
>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.
Misrepresentation is another way to silence someone, since you're not making that real person viewes visible, but some fictional, and obviously bad views. Happens a lot with Peterson, being called alt-right and all that. So many people believe this and take it from media misrepresentation.
Is there really such a thing as "mainstream" anymore? What I think the Internet has done is allowed many, many microcosms to exist -- and exist in ways that are often unknown to the vast majority, even if they are extremely big in their own sphere.
In music, I have heard "who?" reactions from folks reacting to news about artists as well known as Avicii and One Direction. And it's true: if you don't follow any of the worlds they represent (stadium-style EDM and teen pop), you wouldn't have a clue who they are.
This, I feel, is more of how entertainment choice has expanded so rapidly. You are no longer limited to three channels of TV and a handful of radio programs. People thus gravitate to more specific niches that suite them. Therefore, you can both be enormously popular in your own niche and be quite unknown outside of it.
I would argue that the "true mainstream media" of the Internet has nothing to do with politics at all (eg, it's funny memes, cute pics, music and other general entertainment, etc.), and even within this mainstream, there's a lot of microdivisions. So is it surprising that specific right-wing political commentary is just another niche? (Political commentary as a whole is a niche.)
That's not really non-representation and silencing. It's more like we live in a world of niches, and increasingly you don't hear much of the niches beyond your sphere, because there's already an overwhelming amount of material in the niches you like already.
>Is there really such a thing as "mainstream" anymore?
Yes.
>In music, I have heard "who?" reactions from folks reacting to news about artists as well known as Avicii and One Direction.
That's because music in general is not as important in pop culture anymore (we now have games, apps, social media, netflix, and so on to pass time as well -- before it was either music/radio or some (limited in number) tv channels for everyday entertainment).
In any case, Avicii and One Direction will make it into most people's news (e.g. everybody show some piece about the death of Avicci, even if they don't know who he was), because everybody in the end will see one or all of these 5-10 news sources. And of course everybody knows others, like Kanye, even if they don't follow hip-hop news sources.
But much much fewer would hear news about this or that obscure artist, say Marc Ribot, or Phil Elverum.
The names you mentioned (and others, from Kanye to U2) are all over mainstream media, the others are mentioned only/mostly on specialist or fringe outlets and media.
Twitter has a market cap of $24 billion to the New York Times’ $3.85 billion.
The “mainstream media”, especially print journalism, is made up of underpaid people making sacrifices for a career they believe in. If you think they are doing such a terrible job, quit your high paid engineering job and try freelance journalism for a few years.
The David and Goliath narrative the New Right Wing loves so much is wearing a little thin.
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.
I like the distinction between silencing and censorship, since it just lets you focus on the reality of the situation instead of focusing on the legal meaning.
Instead of "I don't care for what you are saying but I will fight to death for your right to say it," you really do have a lot of people behaving in the manner of "I don't care for what you are saying and I will go out of my way to stop you from saying it," while they may be legally consistent, they don't seem to be consistent in ideal.
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.
You mostly got blowback in response, but as someone who also read almost all of these people (and listened a bit) I want to say that your descriptions resonated with me. I don't know if it's very important to distinguish who's an "intellectual" and who isn't, but I think your brief assessment is thoughtful and mostly on the money from my perspective.
My political views align with them mostly and as I said I think most of them are net positives.
I was trying to point out the low quality of people identified as "intellectuals". People who oversimplify ideals that I agree should be criticized just as much as people who I disagree with.
I am an elitist in a sense that I seek improvement and intellectual challenge and I don't think popular ways to present them has intellectual value. I think that people who are most principled thinkers should get most of the recognition, and lead others, not pundits.
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.)
The thing that’s new and exciting enough to get New York Times articles written about it is that the anti-PC movement has spread to friendly coastal liberals. From the Democrats’ perspective, the IDW aren’t infidels, they’re heretics.
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 find it interesting that the ("alt")right-wingers that elected a president and rule the internet media and half of TV (have you head of a popular left-wing forum? I sure haven't) are still pretending to be underdogs.
Trump constantly gets negative press coverage. If his views were actually popular with the internet media and tv media this wouldn't be the case. The media is overwhelmingly against him.
And as for popular left-wing forums /r/politics currently has ~20,000 viewers. At 7am. I'd call that popular.
I mean, I do feel like my ideas/community are the underdog and I'm not even all that rightwing (I'm pro stuff like basic income, but also against minimum wage).
The thing about underdog is this.
Our culture as produced in books/film/tv/music is dominated by left leaning beliefs.
If your conservate the media that naturally surrounds you does not reflect or celebrate your values.
Though I'm not saying they don't exist.
If you look at a demographic map of blue vs red, you will notice that blue = cities, red = rural. Even many blue states are only blue becuase of their cities.
This can create a feeling of "underdog" in both directions. Blue may feel like islands in a sea of red, red may see as wealth and power bring concentrated in blue lands.
The academic establishment is left leaning. That is a big one you leave out.
Finally regarding the lack of prominent left wing internet communities, this.
I live in the bay. If I want to have a honest discussion about say, basic income I can just step outside.
The same is not true of say, opposition to minimum wage. That will only get vitriol thrown at me and damage my personal reputation.
The left has few prominent internet communities because they don't need them. The right leaning people do, they are either very spread out in real life, or exist in communities that don't agree with them.
The same is true online. I don't need a left wing forum to discuss left wing ideas because every internet community I'm part of is predominantly left wing.
Basically if there is an internet community that's not expressily rightwing, it's community will be leftwing, so leftwing people don't need a space for themselves.
The lack of a prominent left wing forum is simply because the left is so dominant they don't need it.
Finally I we would note that "elite need the common man" is an accusation leveled at both parties.
For example my mother who is really right wing that most politicians who are pro immigration aren't interested in the welfare of immigrants, but just want more people to vote for them.
This lack of sincerity the motives both sides perscribe to each.
It doesn't to me tbf; UBI and no minimum wage means that employers are allowed to hire people for no wage. Then again, there's already loads of ways to get around minimum wage laws, see the gig industry, hospitality (e.g. anyone that depends on tips) industry, and prison labor (modern slavery).
> no minimum wage means that employers are allowed to hire people for no wage
With a backstop of "now you won't starve if you turn it down", that is much less problematic.
Today, if someone's skills only create $6 of value per hour, they are economically unemployable. With UBI and no minimum wage, someone could pay them $5/hr and both would be better off than today.
I wouldn't really consider HN particularly left wing. It's fully capitalist and any thread that discusses social issues is full of libertarians. Anything that has a faint whiff of anti-capitalism is promptly removed from the front page.
Sure there are _some_ wide-spread beliefs here that happen to align with the left, but I would suggest that HN is far more libertarian than it is left-wing.
The opposite of libertarian is authoritarian, not left. The general trend here seems to be more free speech, less government surveillance, more socialized medicine and Universal Basic Income (and by extension, more taxes). If you had to reduce that to a single label, it would be left-libertarian.
> Our culture as produced in books/film/tv/music is dominated by left leaning beliefs.
This could either be a conspiracy comprising of every author of every medium...
OR
It's because stories need sympathetic characters, and current Republican values aren't sympathetic.
I'm not trying to be divisive or flippant, though I'm sure this will be the effect. But success in media is driven by believable sympathetic characters (alternatively explosions), the only two that currently come to mind was John Goodmans character in Alpha House, and Ron Swanson (clearly libertarian) in Parks & Recreation, both of whom are very sympathetic characters, that put people before politics, and neither of whom would accept the last couple of years of their party's behavior.
TL;DR: It's either caused by a vast conspiracy, or the effect of what works in story telling, whichever you think is more reasonable.
I'm unsure, but I'm guessing you're saying that because they won the electoral college they're sympathetic?
The results of the prior three elections had the winner also recieve the popular vote, and this voter turnout was at a 20 year low, involving the two most unpopular candidates since at least 10 election cycles back.
But most of all, I don't think the voting (in general) was motivated by sympathy, but by discontent.
"Basically if there is an internet community that's not expressily rightwing, it's community will be leftwing, so leftwing people don't need a space for themselves"
I'd argue the exact opposite. Most of the big internet forums, reddit, 4chan, gaming forums are all right leaning to greater or lesser degrees, and most of the smaller forums I've come across in many many years of wasted time on the internet follow this pattern. The lack of a left wing forum is perhaps more due to the demographics of internet forums in general and the fact that forums as a medium are inherently a little abrasive and open to trolling.
The largest internet forum Reddit is ridiculously left leaning and the mods actively suppress conservative opinions. (1)
HN is left leaning, but I haven't seen any moderator action against right wing opinions. 2nd amendment rights posts used to eat a dozen downvotes each though.
You have to understand the true nature of American power.
America invades Iraq, slaughters a million people, fundamentally destabilizes the ME leading to the rise of ISIS, and then caps this off by dumping billions of dollars of advanced weapon systems on the region's two fiercest aggressors, Saudi Arabia and Israel.
But if you talk to most Americans it becomes very clear that they sincerely believe that China is the most significant aggressive threat to the world and Iran is responsible for chaos of the ME.
The interesting thing here is that Americans aren't trying to fool or mislead anybody else, only themselves. They don't really care what anybody else thinks and as long as they remain wholly isolated they can preserve the illusion. Every once in a while Americans will hear that the rest of the world believes they are the greatest threat to world peace [1] but this is met only by a moment of blank bewilderment or assertions that the rest of the world is just jealous. But this total disconnect between actual reality and obsessive paranoid fantasies isn't a symptom -- it's the whole point. That's the game.
A French friend describes it best: "Americans are super-heroes of bad faith."
It's what explains articles like this. Again, these people aren't pretending. It's what they really believe. In the author's mind, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X -- both threatened, imprisoned, and ultimately assassinated -- were "celebrity spokespeople" for the left. (I won't even go into wackiness where Malcolm X is "more famous" than Coates, at this point I suspect that the author himself doesn't understand what he's writing.) In the author's mind, being anti-PC is somehow a deeply "taboo" stance. In the author's mind all of the fundamental, "Orthodox" institutions are controlled by liberals who control the "airwaves and pulpits and universities." In the author's mind, the big problem with silencing is that people censor themselves rather than being actually censored by powerful corporations and governments. The conclusion is tragic: anti-PC ideologies, despite being secretly super popular, have ultimately failed to "penetrate to anywhere they might actually have power."
All of this has absolutely no relationship to reality and this is the point. The true goal here is to promote and validate an alternate reality such that communication with the reality-based community becomes impossible. All of this nonsense isn't meant to convince or persuade reasonable people, that's why it's nonsense. The nonsense serves only to isolate the author and his readers. The question itself, and the plea -- "won't somebody think of the brave anti-PC youtubers!" -- is so disconnected from reality and contravenes all objective measurement that it will only attract the true believers. That anti-PC and anti-liberal ideologies are heavily popularized and pushed 24/7 in the vast majority of Youtube videos, the most popular news networks, the majority of state governments and ultimately by the President himself is what gives the entire exercise its power.
> America invades Iraq, slaughters a million people
No they didn't. They were incredibly naive and thought that the Iraqis would jump for joy and become just like America when Saddam was taken out. Instead they decided to kill each other.
> In the author's mind all of the fundamental, "Orthodox" institutions are controlled by liberals who control the "airwaves and pulpits and universities."
Are you suggesting the media, hollywood, and universities aren't left-leaning?
Yes, it's all the Iraqis fault. And I'm sure you sincerely believe that despite it being utterly insane.
> Are you suggesting the media, hollywood, and universities aren't left-leaning?
Ironically, you've aptly demonstrated the entire point. If you asked this question to most people outside of America (you know, the other 7.3 billion people on the planet) I think many would probably agree that no, American media, Hollywood and universities are not left-leaning at all, not even in the slightest. But in America perception has been so completely warped that it's become a "common-sense truth" that the media is left-leaning. This whole banal game, as Chomsky describes it quite clearly[1], is to use propaganda to create a wholly isolated and controllable alternative reality.
BTW I also have to point out, though I don't give a shit about HN points, the genuinely humorous irony of downvoting these comments. I mean come on.
Nice anecdote. I have one, the conservative billionaire Koch brothers use donations to force conservative curriculum and the hiring of conservative professors at several universities.
>The reason you're passive aggressive isn't clear to me.
The alt-right is a white nationalist/Nazi movement. You flippantly labeled half the country as Nazis, and you're surprised someone would call this out?
>I used the "alt" prefix to reinforce the irony of the name "alternative" right being the mainstream right movement.
After Charlottesville, I checked reddit conservative, which has a variety of conservative viewpoints, and found mostly what-aboutism.
When I presented my own moderate Dem perspective, I was shouted down and then banned.
100% agree most conservatives are not racists or fascists -- but in their tribalism, they have allowed themselves to become complicit fellow travellers.
It's not a conservative thing. "Fan" subreddits are places where like-minded people congregate to talk about the thing they are fans of. Those kinds of subreddits are usually purposely setup to discourage debate against the central idea because otherwise it would just be noise and detract for talking about the thing. So a Conservative subreddit is there for Conservative discussions, not to field anti-Conservative arguments from a Dem perspective. Try going to a left-wing or a progressive subreddit and putting forth an argument against what the subreddit advocates (e.g. post anti-feminist arguments in a feminist subreddit, or anti-Democrat arguments in a Democratic subreddit) and you'll get similar treatment.
It's not even a political thing. If you find a subreddit for trumpet aficionados and try to start a debate on why trumpets are terrible, you may get banned as well.
>100% agree most conservatives are not racists or fascists -- but in their tribalism, they have allowed themselves to become complicit fellow travellers.
"They" say the EXACT same thing about left-wing and progressive circles. And "they" aren't wrong either with the additional bonus of lefties being very liberal about placing a Nazi label on anybody they disagree with - case in point: OP.
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.
Partly for openly and tactlessly disagreeing with company hiring policies! Still, he found rather widespread dissemination and some amount of support for his views. Is that silencing? And can “women are naturally uninterested in/poorer at science” really, over the recent course of human history, be regarded as NOT a common or mainstream opinion? I remember a Feynman quote where he was amazed that women could understand graphs in sewing patterns!
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.
Social justice has been a "bad thing" for a few hundred years now. That's why our courts try every case on its individual merits, and sentencing is taken under consideration of the convicted's own past record. We no longer have a justice system wherein certain classes of citizens are de iure above the law by virtue of their class membership. That abhorrent idea has been willfully confused by many loudmouths who might otherwise have a few good points about systemic social problems into seeking a flat-out unacceptable violation of core principles of equal treatment under the law.
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.