You can say any of those things in Silicon Valley.
I mean, people might make some judgments about you. But that happens whenever you state any opinion, especially if it isn't the mainstream.
I think a lot of people are used to saying what's on their mind without consequence. They're used to other types of people remaining quiet on certain topics -- especially topics related to race, gender, and sexuality. And that's changing.
So: For some people it's a shock and they suddenly feel attacked from all sides for opinions they've been vocal about for years. Feels weird. But in many cases what's actually happening is people who have historically been silent are suddenly speaking up and offering their own differing opinions.
For example, it used to be acceptable to behave in certain ways towards women. Some men didn't see the problem because women wouldn't or couldn't speak up to make their opinions known. Now many women feel more empowered and it turns out many attitudes men have about women that seemed mainstream are in fact controversial (or, worse, actually destructive). And they always were. The opposing voices just hadn't been speaking. Now they are.
I 100% agree with your premise that “the more voices the better” (i.e. the fewer voices that are silenced, the better). What you describe certainly covers much of what’s happening, but something else is happening too: Voices are being silenced.
And to respond to your opening sentence, I don’t mean anyone is silenced physically (who does that?), but rather psychologically, culturally, and socially. That’s not a good thing.
Giving everyone a voice is good precisely because it facilitates debate, such that good ideas rise to the surface and bad ideas sink. Silencing voices opposed to your own views may serve you in the short term, but as a principle it’s incredibly dangerous and almost certainly harmful in the long run.
Edit: P.S. This doesn’t mean that bad ideas shouldn’t float down to a point where their advocation questions ones’ rational credibility, nor does it mean we should be entitled to say anything we want (no matter how extreme) without consequence.
For example, if you blurted out “The earth is flat - it’s all a conspiracy!”, most people would shake their heads in pity and keep walking away. But if someone presents evidence or ideas to a claim so extreme, the degree of our interest must be proportionate to the credibility of the evidence and the logical consistency of the argument — not the social stigma attached to the topic. This is a subtle distinction, but so important.
Social stigma can serve perhaps as a caching mechanism of consensus, but it is a tool we must wield with extreme caution.
I think we've got to be cautious in defining what "being silenced" means. Because I see a world in which people are saying all sorts of things out loud. There was a protest with a bunch of people waving Nazi flags in a public park in Virginia a few months ago.
I don't think people are being silenced.
I think community norms are shifting quickly in many parts of the country and, again, it's disorienting for certain people who have held certain views without problem for most of their lives. Suddenly they're being told it's not okay to say something and it feels like they're being silenced. They're not, of course. But I understand that it can feel like it.
[Edit: This is in response to your original comment, which you edited.]
The White Nationalist march on Charlotte is actually an example of voices being silenced. Photos of people there were distributed, their names were found (sometimes incorrectly), and their places of work contacted. Then they were fired.
If people see that people who share the same views are losing their livelihoods, they are more likely to be silent. Only the independently wealthy wouldn't consider losing their job risky.
And just to be clear, I in no way support their views, desires, or actions. But claiming the goal isn't to silence them is disingenuous.
They went to a public protest in a public place to make a statement. That statement was broadcast across the country and the world. The opposite of being silenced.
Now, they faced consequences for what they said. But that's what happens when you say things. Words have meaning and you can say words which will cause people to no longer want to associate with you.
It is not just those people being silenced though. It is people who stayed home, maybe their views are not quite as radical as someone who would protest, or maybe they tend to be more politically apathetic (ie most people).
These are also probably the people more amenable to changing their views. It's got be pretty hard to swing someone with a tiki torch marching down the street, but someone who feels sympathetic to their views could maybe be reasoned with if they would talk about it.
When they are watching Fox they are not being silenced, they are being programmed. They start to believe they are being silenced, but their views are just being opposed and offended and that they are (at long last) being told that other people think their positions are discriminatory. And without the visible and palpable sense that their views are not mainstream any longer, what is their incentive to change?
No, that wasn't me. I think you are incorrect, though. Fox was only an example, this story was carried by most national outlets. And I've never met anyone who changes their mind because the majority is against them and is silencing them. It just brews resentments and causes people to dig in.
If people changed their minds just because everyone else disagrees with them loudly and violently, how would any previous social change have come about? New thoughts and perspectives always start as minority views. So majority consensus must not be enough to change someone's mind.
Also, this really isn't about winning. We're all losing right now.
Some of those that do not want to associate with the unpopular kid genuinely dislike him, or the way she acts or thinks. But most ostracise the bullied in fear of being bullied themselves. I have not learned much in highschool, but I do remember that.
Except there's a huge difference between being punished by the government for your opinions and being judged by your peers and coworkers for your opinions.
If I were a huge proponent of NAMBLA I'd recognize that being a public advocate of such would negatively effect my social status as well as potentially attract negative attention to any brand I associate myself with. That doesn't mean I'm being silenced or censored.
“Silenced” here means any manner of active suppression
(shaming, ridiculing, verbal abuse, social bullying, even physical violence, etc) of an idea, rather than simply (1) ignoring it on a personal level, or (2) responding to it with argument via evidence and reason.
If an idea we disagree with is rare or harmless, we often ignore it. If an idea we disagree with is more common and worth refuting, we should respond to it with debate. If all parties involved in a debate are reasonable, consensus is possible. In aggregate, humans are capable of being reasonable, thus society progresses over time (amortized).
Sadly, there is often difficulty reaching consensus immediately — especially with deeply entrenched viewpoints. However, given time, history has proven over and over that truth prevails though patient use of rational argument. It is only through presentation of evidence and calm, rational argument that society progresses.
Other, more heavy-handed means of ideological conquest have more often than not made the world a much worse place. In fact, more than just a few million deaths have resulted from what we could call “non-rational ideological conquest” (which inevitably manifests in progressively more violent ways).
Rational argument doesn't scale, bots and memes scale. Blocklists do scale, and it's only because identity platforms (fb, twitter) are also locked down content control platforms that we haven't seen more global blocklists.
I fully expect decentralised social behaviour blocklists to emerge in the near future. Who would want to (employ/socialise with/do business with) a (trumptard/libtard)? Why take the risk of employing someone with racist tendencies, etc.
It might even use a distributed cryptographic ledger.
Rational argument is difficult to scale (certainly more so than memes and propaganda bots), but not impossible. Real social progress takes real work, but it’s worth it.
Your last two paragraphs sound an awful lot like the book 1984. If you haven’t read it, I recommend you check it out.
I think Trumpism and climate denial are good counter-arguments to that. I think we (humans, not any one society) are fundamentally vulnerable to propaganda, and we've opened a Pandora's Box of next level propaganda tools (micro targeting, social distribution, anonymous participants) but have not evolved educational defences yet.
"You can fool some of the people all the time," as said by Unknown -- probably not Lincoln, but one of the things continually misattributed to him, in an earlier style of meme misinformation. It is ironic that people thought that the internet would purge misinformation (by making sources easier to check) but instead it has made it worse, by bypassing expertise, analysis and references altogether.
1984 isn't really about tribal groupings using computerised social credit systems, but I take your point. From the authoritarian POV, China already has nascent systems to score each citizen's thought correctness factor.
I'm just hoping that amateurs with agendas, trying to cherry pick studies with outcomes they like, is not seen as science. Because they are ones that seem like anti-vaxxers to me.
You're calling this Stanford piece 'amateurs with agendas'?
> There was too much data pointing to the biological basis of sex-based cognitive differences to ignore, Halpern says. For one thing, the animal-research findings resonated with sex-based differences ascribed to people. These findings continue to accrue. In a study of 34 rhesus monkeys, for example, males strongly preferred toys with wheels over plush toys, whereas females found plush toys likable. It would be tough to argue that the monkeys’ parents bought them sex-typed toys or that simian society encourages its male offspring to play more with trucks. A much more recent study established that boys and girls 9 to 17 months old — an age when children show few if any signs of recognizing either their own or other children’s sex — nonetheless show marked differences in their preference for stereotypically male versus stereotypically female toys...
And you still seem to be implying that, because there are biological differences in preferences or some task skill at a statistical population level, any one individual can be categorised, based on their gender alone, as having different ability at a different technical and education dependent task.
If that is the case, a cite from a Cochrane study that linked specific brain characteristics to intellectual task performance would have some weight. A pop sci piece does not.
> And you still seem to be implying that, because there are biological differences in preferences or some task skill at a statistical population level, any one individual can be categorised, based on their gender alone, as having different ability at a different technical and education dependent task.
I am not and neither was Damore, who in fact went out of his way to talk about population level differences, including providing bell curve distribution graphics
It really depends on the context. For example, I think there's a certain kind of racist, sexist, and homophobic talk which simply adds nothing good to the world. I don't think it should be illegal necessarily, but I'm fine if people are ostracized for holding such views. I certainly don't want to be exposed to that kind of shit.
And there are many situations which require learning and understanding to participate. A software developer would be appalled if they had to continue to have debates at work about software development with someone who had no idea how computers work -- especially if that person was adamant that their views much be heard and listened to. "Why is my opinion that we should write our iOS app in ActiveX being SILENCED?" Again, that dumb opinion shouldn't be made illegal. But maybe that person doesn't need to be invited to developer meetings any more.
I don't see the analogy. In the rule of law you have a code of law, judges, juries and long deliberations. In criminal law the bar of evidence is preponderance of evidence, while in mob rule you need no evidence and you do not have to listen to both sides.
Let's be clear here. We're not talking about where to eat lunch or controversial scientific theories, a la Galileo or Darwin. We're talking about "is race X smarter than race Y", "is gender X smarter than Y". Bigoted ideas.
Some have been comfortable espousing bigoted views. Now they are forced to think about what they say and how they say it. As a white man, this has affected my own behavior (for the better IMO): I've been forced to be more thoughtful of others.
The Paradox of Tolerance shows we must be intolerant of such bigotry.
That is one way to phrase the question. Another way to phrase the question is "what are the average IQs of the races in the USA and why are they different?" This question can be used as a starting point to help change things so that those who are below average can be helped.
The above is a question that I would not bring up in my workplace for fear of being fired. That is why there is an article called "Stuff You Can't Say in Silicon Valley."
> We're talking about "is race X smarter than race Y", "is gender X smarter than Y". Bigoted ideas.
Let's hypothetically say that a sapient alien species, with the full range of emotions and thoughts a human being can have, was discovered that was also demonstrably not as smart as human beings after centuries of scientific study. Would saying "humans are smarter than these aliens" be bigoted?
Flip it around. If different sapient aliens were demonstrated to be more intelligent than human beings by an order of magnitude, would it be bigoted to say "These other aliens are smarter than humans."?
In other words, can facts be bigoted?
> The Paradox of Tolerance shows we must be intolerant of such bigotry.
Must we? If you've studied the paradox of tolerance, you should know that it has no universally agreed upon answer.
I don't have a dog in this fight, but what irks me is how, on the one hand, one can claim to accept evolution, a process that works precisely by variation and natural selection, and at the same time rule out, not the actuality, but the very possibility IN PRINCIPLE that there can ever be statistically significant sexual or ethnic variation. If you are of a secularist, materialist bent, you are absolutely bound to accept that possibility lest you fall into holding incoherent beliefs.
To be clear, I am neither rejecting evolution nor advocating racism or sexism. I am merely pointing out that secularism-materialism binds you to accept the very real possibility of things being true about sex, race, ethnicity, etc, that those holding secularist, materialistic views categorically and in principle reject (at least verbally, if not in action) as a matter of principle even though they are bound BY THE VERY PRINCIPLES THEY CLAIM TO HOLD to accept these things as possibilities, if not present actualities.
This is but one of many absurdities in vogue in circles like the SV circuit and its allies. You can't have your cake and eat it, too, and you can be sure that repeating mantras and going on the offensive only works for so long. You have to reexamine your foundational beliefs. The truth will, sooner or later, exact its revenge and come for its pound of flesh. The tension forces of contradiction will cause the facade to cave no matter how much stucco you use to conceal the growing cracks.
On the contrary, silencing voices is a necessary thing. All societies have to determine what speech is allowed and what isn't. There are lots of things you can say in general American society that will get you censured. Claiming that black people are biologically inferior to white people, for example. Claiming that women are biologically inferior to men, though? Some still seem fond of that one.
This all boils down to the fact one group is trying to add a number of new entries to the list of censurable topics. It's fine to disagree with that, but then you have to state a) what topics you think shouldn't be added to the list and b). why. When people walk around loudly complaining about how they can't say anything anymore without being specific as to what they want to say, it suggests that perhaps they know that those positions are not really defensible.
[EDIT: To explain things a little more. Societies must limit some forms of speech because some speech limits who can be a member of a society. "We should murder all Asian people" is not compatible with a society that contains Asian people. And no, it is not fair to expect Asian people to have to constantly defend their humanity to others who have nothing to lose in the argument. Much as it's nice to think about abstractly entertaining every possible idea, when some of those ideas actively push out or dehumanize members, the society is forced to choose between accepting debate on the idea or excluding those members. So yes, if you want to complain about how SV society shuns people for not wanting to experiment on human embryos or whatever, go ahead. But assuming that all ideas should be up for debate is ignoring the fact that some ideas are incompatible with your fellow society members. And you get to choose between debating those ideas or having those people in your society as equals. You do have a choice, but you can't have both.]
> On the contrary, silencing voices is a necessary thing. All societies have to determine what speech is allowed and what isn't. There are lots of things you can say in general American society that will get you censured.
In the 1950s, during the Red Scare, saying or doing things that showed that an indivdual was a socialist or Communist, including labor union activism, would have been enough to cost a person their job and get them ostracized from society. Quite a few were even jailed. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism)
Had you been a member of the left in that era, would you have have agreed that the loss of your job / jailing was a, in your own words, "necessary thing"? Would you have agreed that leftist positions were, again in your own words, "not really defensible"?
I mean, honestly, I don't get it. Do modern liberals really think McCarthyism was a good idea that just happened to be aimed in the wrong direction?
>
On the contrary, silencing voices is a necessary thing. All societies have to determine what speech is allowed and what isn't. There are lots of things you can say in general American society that will get you censured. Claiming that black people are biologically inferior to white people, for example. Claiming that women are biologically inferior to men, though? Some still seem fond of that one.
It is unclear that either of those notions are false. It is also unclear that either of their opposites is false. An environment that squelches debate of interesting, but sensitive questions is not a healthy one. The question of whether men are inferior to women (or vice versa) is definitely an interesting one, though perhaps poorly posed. Men and women are different in various ways, some of those differences may adapt each better to different tasks. Boiling that down to 'inferior' and 'superior' is facile. But the enterprise of elucidating those distinctions should not be taboo. It should be treated carefully, because the knowledge that may come from its investigation can lead people down dark paths, but that does not mean the question shouldn't be asked.
I could not disagree more. You do not preserve your right to free speech by defending the popular opinions. The way you loose your rights is when someone that hold unpopular opinions gets their rights limited. Are you so sure that all the opinions you hold and will hold can be expected to be rightthink for as long as you live?
If you study history the decline of many great countries have started with a censorship of unpopular opinions and shaming as well as ostracizing of anyone that think wrong:
- Struggle session in Communist China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session
Utilitarianism will let you justify anything if you frame it right, including white supremacy, fascism, etc. This isn't something evidence and reason alone can handle.
Ethically and morally, as a society, we have to choose what behavior is okay and what isn't. What's happening right now is that we're verbalizing the changing of those definitions to include things like "'Grab them by the pussy' and other transparent actions of sexual harassment are not tolerable ways to treat women in 2017," in response to a wide number of people coming forward to complain about it all at once, for possibly the first time in history.
And understandably some conservative people who grew up in the "Mad Men" era (when these kinds of things were acceptable) are unhappy with those changes and inevitably writing articles like this one, thinking that the vast majority of people being upset with them for their now antiquated beliefs and speech is equal to the suppression of that speech. No, we aren't chilling your speech. Society is asking you to change your behavior and mocking you for not being able to. We went through this with women's suffrage, the civil rights movement in the 60s, and now we're going through it again with the #MeToo movement.
I'll defend to the death your right to say something stupid. That is your constitutional right in this country, and we have to stand by that to keep our democracy alive. But you had better believe I will call you stupid to your face for saying it, probably with a sarcastic and mocking tone befitting your stupid statement.
What many are having an issue with is that we see some agendas pushed using techniques from totalitarian regimes.
When two sides have different solutions to a problem or opinions, but one side feel morally justified to seek the firing of the other and have the power to do so we are not talking about an abstract concept of moral theory anymore.
There is a reason why functional societies follow the rule of law instead of the rule of the mob.
That's what's happening: bad ideas are being defeated. But if those bad ideas are still near and dear to you even while society moves on, it feels bad.
Not everyone has to be persuaded. Some will have to be left behind.
I think part of the issue is the tactics. The original post was pointing out that the way that bad ideas are being defeated is through force, not through reason. If the law says "Be happy or else" everyone is "happy". The problem being pointed out is that SV is becoming a place where you must believe the right things or else. The or else part is what makes it McCarthyistic.
It seems that you have chosen to ignore upthread accusations of McCarthyism by the same author. That's not constructive criticism over tactical disagreements, it's concern trolling.
If you are pointing to my comment I was not trolling at all. McCarthyism had some of the same properties when it comes to suppressing free speech, but the current environment is also very different in that it is done outside the court system by a mob with no due process. That is more worrisome to me.
If you disagree I would like to hear an argument for how it is different. How do you think the way opinions are suppressed does not violate basic rights of free speech and due process? How do you think calling for someones firing for having an opinion with no due process is a rule of law?
Would you please stop perpetuating flamewars on Hacker News? This site is supposed to be for good-faith conversation, not smiting enemies. I realize other people don't behave well either, but taking that as license to respond in kind or worse is the wrong way to react here.
I am asking you to answer the questions I posed instead of making counteraccusations. If you make a good argument I am happy to listen and change my position.
Denying everything, never admitting to what other observe even if it might have merit, and making counteraccusations instead of answering direct questions that are reasonable does not make a position any more correct. This kind of tactic to avoid shining light on an agenda and discussing it is very dangerous to a democracy, and to be honest it kind of proves my point.
Would you also please stop perpetuating flamewars on Hacker News? This site is supposed to be for good-faith conversation, not smiting enemies. I realize other people don't behave well either, but taking that as license to respond in kind or worse is exactly the wrong way to react here.
Many of the opinions listed in this article are held by sometimes a majority of the population, so this is not about the rule of the many because if so you could legislate this and resolve it through the courts. As MLK said, you do not drive out darkness with darkness.
Our democracy is fragile and is not the default state of our society, and speech is central to democracy. I defend all sides right to speak and if appropriate advocate for a change of laws.
One of the last times this happened it was McCarthyism, and many communists and socialists had their freedom of speech taken away. However, that time it was done through the judicial system so this time is arguably more dangerous as it is done in an extrajudicial manner.
I think what you are arguing for is a non-inclusive society where democratic discourse is not possible, and where mob-rule is tolerated and rule of law is not expected.
Edit: I would like to point out that MLK was a strong believer in democracy and justice.
Many people continue to be treated worse today. But those who are accustomed to dominance cannot tolerate even a single setback without screaming bloody murder. Their endurance is paltry compared to that of the historically oppressed, and their empathy and perspective even more lacking.
Care to bet what the historical trend has been for the percentage of the population that claim the earth is flat? If evidence didn't work it would be flat or random.
I think there should be a difference between having a thought and doing something illegal based on that thought.
Someone can talk about selling illegal or unproven drugs and have opinions on how illegal drugs should be legal even if they are dangerous. That should all be allowed even if in practice it would be negative to society at large.
On the other hand if they acted on that belief then that should not be accepted by society and should be punishable.
Likewise, someone could have the opinion that whites are inferior racquetball players, so long as when selecting racquetball players in a professional team they do not select based on that opinion (given discrimination/selection based on race/skin is illegal).
Silicon Valley is not silencing the voices that claim that the round earth conspiracy is brought to you by the lizardoids that rule the Earth because their spaceships are spraying you with radioactive toxins in the contrails. Silicon Valley is silencing the voices that are saying things that literally billions of people on planet Earth believe, and on the order of half of the country that Silicon Valley happens to be located in believes. In some cases quite a bit more than half, if some surveys are to be believed.
I'm seeing this line a lot on HN today, but I think it's a dangerous rationalization of why it's OK to take away their free speech rights, and absolutely, positively nothing more. There is no other philosophical virtue to this position.
I think it's a reasonable line to say that if Silicon Valley is outright silencing something a billion people believe, and doing it quite frequently, there is quite likely a problem. You are welcome to deplore the fact that a billion people believe it, and will probably find another billion people standing with you on whatever matter you are deploring, because that's how this goes.
"When people walk around loudly complaining about how they can't say anything anymore without being specific as to what they want to say, it suggests that perhaps they know that those positions are not really defensible."
No, it's because they're avoiding an obvious trap. You trick someone into naming the list of censurable thoughts, then you immediately grab a big ol' mob of censorious folk anxious to score some political points (and they are readily available and hot to trot) and start censoring them because they said the bad things. It is impossible to name the topics being censored without the conversation immediately becoming exactly the one you are trying to turn it to, about how the censored topics really deserve it, and so it's not really censorship, right?
First commit to not censoring the topics, then perhaps you can get some discussion going. In the meantime, you are being deprived of that discussion, and perhaps should be less confident that you understand the issues than you think you do, because... how would you know? You probably don't actually know what your opposition thinks. What you know is almost certainly (statistically speaking, based on my interactions with the ever-more-doctrinaire and ever-more-insular HN) what your side wants you to think the opposition thinks, which is very, very far from the same thing.
Further, I acknowledge that ender7 may not personally have the power to censor very much. However, Silicon Valley as a whole does, and it is actively using it, and it is not only not ashamed, it has used faulty logic like this to convince itself it is being positively virtuous in the process of statistically removing the opinions it doesn't like from the Internet.
I think the fact that this thread is already flagged says a lot. To keep silicon valley competitive we need to be open to diversity and also be inclusive to different ways of thinking, because in this way we are set up to learn and explore many different ideas.
I think fact that you get fired if you bring up biology at your company's brown bag on diversity (a la Damore), means, just maybe, that you can't actually say some of those things.
Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences. Damore made some factual statements (this is OK), but then attempted to draw some non-factual conclusions from those statements that made his continued employment impossible (what if he was part of a promotion or hiring committee for a female employee? his prior statements would be pretty damning)
Read Damore's treatise and replace every mention of gender with one of race, and see how it reads.
> I think a lot of people are used to saying what's on their mind without consequence.
No, it's simpler still. What is happening is that conservatives feel awkward and nervous being a minority (irony much?), so they look to strawman arguments to make themselves feel better.
Obviously you can have those fights if you want. You just can't find many people to agree with you. This is like walking into a megachurch in Mississippi and complaining that no one wants to listen to your opinions on reproductive health care.
I couldn't agree more. In a town like SV where almost everyone is liberal, the problem is conservatives.
Oh, do I need to state that was sarcasm?
> This is like walking into a megachurch in Mississippi and complaining that no one wants to listen to your opinions on reproductive health care.
How can you not see the irony in this? Your example is a bad outcome. SV doing the reverse is bad. Not there are ideas that are OK and ideas that are bad, contextually, and alienating people is all good and fine, where my badness is OK if it is proportional and opposite to your badness. Intolerance ITSELF is the problem, fullstop, no matter the "rightness" of the idea.
We live in a diverse world, and finding ways to get along is the key. How can we do that when any form of alienation is defended?
Argument isn't the same as "alienation" though. The post is a bunch of whining about how you "can't say" stuff because people won't like you if you do. Well, duh.
What you and the poster say you want is Free Speech in some kind of abstract principled sense. What you actually want is a safe space where people won't argue with you for believing different things.
I mean, people might make some judgments about you. But that happens whenever you state any opinion, especially if it isn't the mainstream.
I think a lot of people are used to saying what's on their mind without consequence. They're used to other types of people remaining quiet on certain topics -- especially topics related to race, gender, and sexuality. And that's changing.
So: For some people it's a shock and they suddenly feel attacked from all sides for opinions they've been vocal about for years. Feels weird. But in many cases what's actually happening is people who have historically been silent are suddenly speaking up and offering their own differing opinions.
For example, it used to be acceptable to behave in certain ways towards women. Some men didn't see the problem because women wouldn't or couldn't speak up to make their opinions known. Now many women feel more empowered and it turns out many attitudes men have about women that seemed mainstream are in fact controversial (or, worse, actually destructive). And they always were. The opposing voices just hadn't been speaking. Now they are.