First, as someone who just (class of 2019) graduated college at a very liberal, highly regarded, private U.S. institution, the description above definitely does not match my experience. In my experience, I found that dissenting opinions and avid discussion were highly encouraged. That being said, I suspect Mudd may be particularly good on that axis due to factors such as being entirely STEM-focused (also Debra Mashek was one of my professors).
Second, I think it is worth pointing out that there are definitely instances where, at least in my opinion, “canceling” is a valid tactic. Deplatforming violent rhetoric (e.g. Nazism, Holocaust denial, etc.) comes to mind as an obvious example.
Third, that being said, I do think there is a real problem along the lines of what you’re pointing at. For example, one thing I saw recently was what’s been happening to Natalie Wynn, a YouTuber who goes by the name “ContraPoints.” She’s a very popular leftist YouTuber who mainly talks about various left-wing social issues, particularly transgender issues (she herself is transgender). In one of her recent videos, she cast a transgender man named Buck Angel as a voice actor for part of it, and people (mostly on Twitter) got extremely upset at her because Buck Angel had at one point previously said something that maybe possibly could be interpreted as anti-non-binary-people. I think that Natalie’s recent video responding to her “canceling” is probably the best analysis of the whole phenomenon that I’ve seen, and aligns pretty well with my views on the topic, though it’s quite long.
There are a lot of things about Natalie’s canceling that give me hope, though. First, it seemed like her canceling was highly concentrated on Twitter, which makes a lot of sense to me—I tend to think that it’s almost impossible to have good discourse in any sort of combative/argumentative setting, especially when it’s online, and especially when everyone is limited only to tiny tweets, which lend themselves particularly well to snarky quippy one-liners without any actual real substance. Second, it was really only a fringe group of people canceling her—it’s just that the people who were doing it were very loud, which again strikes me as exactly the sort of thing that is highly exacerbated by the internet, and especially by Twitter. Third, I think there’s a real movement on the left towards rejecting this sort of thing—I think Natalie is a good example of a very public leftist strongly rejecting “cancel culture,” though I’ve met lots of other die-hard leftists who think similarly while I was in college. There are a lot of really smart people on the left and I think it’s quite reasonable to expect that this will broadly get better over time—especially if people move to better forms of online discourse than Twitter (or Facebook, which I also think is pretty bad). YouTube and Reddit, though, are mainstream platforms that I think produce significantly better discourse than Twitter, so I do think there’s hope there.
As a counterpoint to the ‘cancelling is mostly online’ paragraph (or really to [EDIT:] a conclusion that would be natural to draw from it), I think it’s worth noting that the University of California (UC) system seems to be moving more towards a system where academic hiring is predicated on holding “social justice”-ish views on demographic diversity in academia. For evidence of this, see:
this blog post about pilot programs run in the UC system where significant majorities of applicants seem to have been rejected purely based on the contents of their diversity statements.
this tweet thread linking to this opinion piece in the Notices of the AMS about how the UC system is ensuring that central administrators can filter applications for math faculty jobs before math departments see them, administrators who appear to be invested in promoting demographic diversity.
in the same twitter thread, a discussion of the backlash to this opinion piece in the Notices of the AMS (by the same author, Abigail Thompson, as the one above) opposing the use of diversity statements to screen candidates, leading to a professor of mathematics to write this blog post advocating a letter-writing campaign to push for the removal of Thompson from her position at UC Davis.
(Note that I am currently employed at UC Berkeley)
Second, I think it is worth pointing out that there are definitely instances where, at least in my opinion, “canceling” is a valid tactic. Deplatforming violent rhetoric (e.g. Nazism, Holocaust denial, etc.) comes to mind as an obvious example.
If the people who determine what is cancel-able could consistently distinguish between violent rhetoric and non-violent rhetoric, and the boundary never expanded in some random direction, I would agree with you.
In practice, what often happens is that someone is cancelled over accusations of being a Nazi (or whatever), even when they aren’t. Since defending a Nazi tends to make people think you are secretly also a Nazi, the people being falsely accused tend to get little support from outsiders.
Also, given that many views that EA endorse could easily fall outside of the window of what’s considered appropriate speech one day (such as reducing wild animal suffering, negative utilitarianism, genetic enhancement), it is probably better to push for a blanket acceptance of free speech rather than just hope that future people will tolerate our ideas.
Also, given that many views that EA endorse could easily fall outside of the window of what’s considered appropriate speech one day (such as reducing wild animal suffering, negative utilitarianism, genetic enhancement), it is probably better to push for a blanket acceptance of free speech rather than just hope that future people will tolerate our ideas.
I think it was better to push for a blanket acceptance of free speech, but now that we’re already in the process of sliding down the slippery slope, I’m pretty skeptical this makes sense now. Not sure if you also meant “was”, but if not, can you explain more? For example would you endorse making LW a “free speech zone” or try to push for blanket acceptance of free speech elsewhere?
For example would you endorse making LW a “free speech zone” or try to push for blanket acceptance of free speech elsewhere?
I think limiting free speech for specific forums of discussion makes sense, given that it is very difficult to maintain a high-quality community without doing so. I think that declaring that a particular place a “free speech zone” tends to invite the worst people to gather in those places (I’ve seen this over and over again on the internet).
More generally, I was talking about societal norms to punish speech deemed harmful. I think there’s a relevant distinction between a professor getting fired for saying something deemed politically harmful, and an internet forum moderating discussion.
Aside from Daniel Filan’s example, I gave four examples in my post, all of which occurred mostly or substantially in the real world as opposed to online. If cancel culture was confined to Twitter I would be less worried, except that Twitter seems to be winning over every other discussion platform (aside from maybe YouTube, but YouTube is inherently limited to hosting oral as opposed to written debates). From what I’ve seen, all journalists and academics who participate online at all are on Twitter. I really don’t understand the attraction myself, but it seems to be extremely attractive to many. Even Eliezer has moved from LW to FB and now to Twitter.
First, as someone who just (class of 2019) graduated college at a very liberal, highly regarded, private U.S. institution, the description above definitely does not match my experience. In my experience, I found that dissenting opinions and avid discussion were highly encouraged. That being said, I suspect Mudd may be particularly good on that axis due to factors such as being entirely STEM-focused (also Debra Mashek was one of my professors).
Second, I think it is worth pointing out that there are definitely instances where, at least in my opinion, “canceling” is a valid tactic. Deplatforming violent rhetoric (e.g. Nazism, Holocaust denial, etc.) comes to mind as an obvious example.
Third, that being said, I do think there is a real problem along the lines of what you’re pointing at. For example, one thing I saw recently was what’s been happening to Natalie Wynn, a YouTuber who goes by the name “ContraPoints.” She’s a very popular leftist YouTuber who mainly talks about various left-wing social issues, particularly transgender issues (she herself is transgender). In one of her recent videos, she cast a transgender man named Buck Angel as a voice actor for part of it, and people (mostly on Twitter) got extremely upset at her because Buck Angel had at one point previously said something that maybe possibly could be interpreted as anti-non-binary-people. I think that Natalie’s recent video responding to her “canceling” is probably the best analysis of the whole phenomenon that I’ve seen, and aligns pretty well with my views on the topic, though it’s quite long.
There are a lot of things about Natalie’s canceling that give me hope, though. First, it seemed like her canceling was highly concentrated on Twitter, which makes a lot of sense to me—I tend to think that it’s almost impossible to have good discourse in any sort of combative/argumentative setting, especially when it’s online, and especially when everyone is limited only to tiny tweets, which lend themselves particularly well to snarky quippy one-liners without any actual real substance. Second, it was really only a fringe group of people canceling her—it’s just that the people who were doing it were very loud, which again strikes me as exactly the sort of thing that is highly exacerbated by the internet, and especially by Twitter. Third, I think there’s a real movement on the left towards rejecting this sort of thing—I think Natalie is a good example of a very public leftist strongly rejecting “cancel culture,” though I’ve met lots of other die-hard leftists who think similarly while I was in college. There are a lot of really smart people on the left and I think it’s quite reasonable to expect that this will broadly get better over time—especially if people move to better forms of online discourse than Twitter (or Facebook, which I also think is pretty bad). YouTube and Reddit, though, are mainstream platforms that I think produce significantly better discourse than Twitter, so I do think there’s hope there.
As a counterpoint to the ‘cancelling is mostly online’ paragraph (or really to [EDIT:] a conclusion that would be natural to draw from it), I think it’s worth noting that the University of California (UC) system seems to be moving more towards a system where academic hiring is predicated on holding “social justice”-ish views on demographic diversity in academia. For evidence of this, see:
this blog post about pilot programs run in the UC system where significant majorities of applicants seem to have been rejected purely based on the contents of their diversity statements.
this tweet thread linking to this opinion piece in the Notices of the AMS about how the UC system is ensuring that central administrators can filter applications for math faculty jobs before math departments see them, administrators who appear to be invested in promoting demographic diversity.
in the same twitter thread, a discussion of the backlash to this opinion piece in the Notices of the AMS (by the same author, Abigail Thompson, as the one above) opposing the use of diversity statements to screen candidates, leading to a professor of mathematics to write this blog post advocating a letter-writing campaign to push for the removal of Thompson from her position at UC Davis.
(Note that I am currently employed at UC Berkeley)
If the people who determine what is cancel-able could consistently distinguish between violent rhetoric and non-violent rhetoric, and the boundary never expanded in some random direction, I would agree with you.
In practice, what often happens is that someone is cancelled over accusations of being a Nazi (or whatever), even when they aren’t. Since defending a Nazi tends to make people think you are secretly also a Nazi, the people being falsely accused tend to get little support from outsiders.
Also, given that many views that EA endorse could easily fall outside of the window of what’s considered appropriate speech one day (such as reducing wild animal suffering, negative utilitarianism, genetic enhancement), it is probably better to push for a blanket acceptance of free speech rather than just hope that future people will tolerate our ideas.
I think it was better to push for a blanket acceptance of free speech, but now that we’re already in the process of sliding down the slippery slope, I’m pretty skeptical this makes sense now. Not sure if you also meant “was”, but if not, can you explain more? For example would you endorse making LW a “free speech zone” or try to push for blanket acceptance of free speech elsewhere?
I think limiting free speech for specific forums of discussion makes sense, given that it is very difficult to maintain a high-quality community without doing so. I think that declaring that a particular place a “free speech zone” tends to invite the worst people to gather in those places (I’ve seen this over and over again on the internet).
More generally, I was talking about societal norms to punish speech deemed harmful. I think there’s a relevant distinction between a professor getting fired for saying something deemed politically harmful, and an internet forum moderating discussion.
Aside from Daniel Filan’s example, I gave four examples in my post, all of which occurred mostly or substantially in the real world as opposed to online. If cancel culture was confined to Twitter I would be less worried, except that Twitter seems to be winning over every other discussion platform (aside from maybe YouTube, but YouTube is inherently limited to hosting oral as opposed to written debates). From what I’ve seen, all journalists and academics who participate online at all are on Twitter. I really don’t understand the attraction myself, but it seems to be extremely attractive to many. Even Eliezer has moved from LW to FB and now to Twitter.