There's authority based censorship, like the banned books list. People legitimately believed that Catcher in the Rye caused serial killers at one point and definitely cast judgement on those willing to admit they'd read it. At the time, reading the book could cost you in social capital which I think is what PG is alluding to. From what I read, PG just wishes we didn't exercise moral judgement - which I get. I came from a religious background that weaponized their morals for ostracization or for hate, meanwhile, nobody within the system recognized they were doing that because they were blinded by the righteousness of their morals. In that way, morals are sticky webs.
My curiosity drifts in a different way - assuming you can't rid the world of moral addiction - why were the people who believe such foolish morals (like banning books) not punished post facto? Folks with a laundry list of morals will often use the word "consequences", but where are their consequences when this moral falls out of style and has senselessly ruined lives?
Conservatives are banning books and outlawing kinds of self-expression, kinds of self-identity, in many countries, RIGHT NOW.
What opinions, in 2004, or 2022, does Paul Graham not think one can express safely? I'm skeptical it's the list of opinions that the state is actually being used to suppress, just opinions that many people find morally objectionable.
I agree, conservatives and liberals using morality as an excuse to cause harm are problematic.
> What opinions, in 2004, or 2022, does Paul Graham not think one can express safely
If I had to guess he's probably thinking on the war and what he's allowed to and what he's not allowed to say. The USG certainly wasn't telling him no; it was individuals and their morals who created an environment of fear and walking on eggshells. I'm not sure how that differs from what we experience today. That said, I think what PG is talking about is the long-term frailty of morals. They change constantly, because they're largely based on hegemonic personal perceptions. To me, the overarching argument is to let morality take a backseat and let people question the world for themselves.
If he can't take a public stand on an issue of the day, because some people will disagree with him—why should we listen to him on any issue? What's he self-censoring? Something important? Millions protested the invasion of Iraq; why didn't they self-censor? And if he were standing with me in 2004, talking about WMDs and how right Bush and company were to have plotted this—he would face my moral disagreement.
Morals are not "long-term frail". Just the morals of rich men like Paul Graham. Right and wrong exist. There's a battle in the public space right now because some of the things happened are wrong.
You either get good and evil, or you don't.
But honestly, I stated my "priors" unequivocally, with specific examples of current legislation that's coming from only one side, and you went "both sides", didn't answer a specific thing, and left in a huff?
What conclusion do you actually think I'm drawing about this interaction. You posted on my comment.
> you went "both sides"
I don't know why people like you act like this is a bad thing. The left isn't good, or really great. In fact, it kind of sucks, just a little less than the right. White-bashing has become common place and acceptable in left-leaning circles, misandry has taken off like never before, when I was living in San Diego I watched self-proclaimed leftists in Ocean Beach dressed in all black, helmets, and baseball gear beat the shit out of people with bikes, knives, and CS gas. A prominent antisemite has been allowed to not only stay in office but also continue in committees and receives praise to this day.
On the other hand, you're right that the right has allowed bad behavior to make it into the actual representational ranks with those like MTG (there are more, just an example). From my perspective, that doesn't make the left any much better than the right, other than that they have some material functions within the DNC that allow them to keep those kinds of people (who are still constituents) away. I do think the RNC needs to implement these functions, and I understand why they didn't, but the US never would've gotten a world with Donald Trump had the right implemented super delegates the way the left does.
Maybe instead of acting like the left is a rosy and immaculate institution you should examine the fractures in the facade that people try to cover up with warm rhetoric.
https://freedomforallamericans.org/legislative-tracker/schoo...
https://freedomforallamericans.org/legislative-tracker/anti-...
FindLaw is a pretty ideologically neutral resource:
https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/law-and-life/book-banning...
https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/law-and-life/understandin...
https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/law-and-life/can-academic...
I could go on and on but you'll see it or you'll find reasons not to.
This comes from one political quadrant.
There is no other side to this issue, which is the issue I've been discussing.
I don't know what to tell you to get you to see that substituting some rioting anarchist self-proclaimed leftists who have no representation in our politics for the liberals I referred to is insulting to my intelligence.
> I don't know what to tell you to get you to see that substituting some rioting anarchist self-proclaimed leftists who have no representation in our politics for the liberals I referred to is insulting to my intelligence.
I guess one primary differentiator in our views is that you view the actions of representatives as more important than the actions and hegemony of constituents. I do not.
One side is making laws banning speech and criminalizing identity, yet every single article about this talks first and foremost about some nebulous threat to free speech, and when questioned for real examples, real measure of the phenomenon, are only met with dissembling.
I absolutely do question liberal politicians; their failures are extremely frustrating. Far left antics don't touch them at all; as for The Squad, they're some of the most responsible politicians in this country. Those are my judgments. What I don't countenance is that anything like the problems with liberal and left-wing politics measures up against the systemic assault on human freedom being waged around the world by right wing political parties, making actual policy.
If you had an example of a liberal or even left-wing law that suppresses speech I feel like you would have supplied it. Some things are not balanced. Some things are not true. Some things are not right.
I don't even know what black bloc is. These are the folks: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/public-safety/stor...
That area is near where I lived and where I'd visit often. I guess to you it's not a problem, but to me it was very visible. Also entirely anti-liberal and they faced very little if any formal condemnation.
> Far left antics don't touch them at all; as for The Squad, they're some of the most responsible politicians in this country.
Ilhan Omar is the antisemite I was talking about, and it wasn't some one-time occurrence either [1]. AOC, to me, is an agitator similar to Matt Gates or Ted Cruz. As for the rest of the "the squad" I have no idea what they do.
Liberals suppressing free speech is almost entirely grass roots, it's a certain type of liberal constituent that's grown over time. As I said earlier, the DNC generally has a mechanism for keeping them out of office, but there are notable exceptions. I don't think constituency is something to ignore though.
A notable example of how these constituents do things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich#Appointment_to_CE... While I don't agree with Brendan on a lot (if you search through my account I've argued with him on here before), using extra-legal measures to force someone out of a position especially after they've tried to make amends was fairly sickening. The cherry on top was that it was over two past political donations during a time when those views were certainly mainstream. Examples like this aren't really hard to find and, no, I'm not going to sit here and enumerate them for you. Especially as you've been bragging about how intellectually superior you are.
1: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/6/18251639/il...
8 arrests. Wow. Looks like they burned your whole town down. Except that didn't happen, and the police won. The Democrats did this to you? No. Far left activists in masks.
Seems like Brendan Eich had a raw experience. He also seems like he's doing fine. "Extra-legal"? Nonsense word.
Maybe too many people are losing their jobs due to accidentally saying mean things about gay people; maybe this is politically lopsided; if so, quantify it.
Again, if you think it's anything like the equivalent of the laws listed in those prior links, you're simply refusing to reckon with what I'm saying.
I think I'm finished. Wish HN allowed for account deletion.
I doubt humans can even socially function (let alone progress) if we let the countless injustices happening every second occupy the entirety of our minds at all times—and it is the seemingly abstract works in philosophy, science that lay the necessary foundation for concrete progress that hopefully contributes to resolving those injustices.
That said, is this just an elaborate justification for my own inaction? Should it be the next obvious thing that used to be unthinkable to talk about (like racial equality in the early times of chattel slavery) that a conscious person ought to withhold meaningful but not-directly-helping contributions to humanity until—I don’t know the exact measure here—say, the world is free of suffering and violence?
I almost wrote "I wish people would read moral philosophers on moral philosophy, not tech founders."
He does give some examples, and they seem to fit in two categories: things done by tyrants, and other people thinking you should expand one's moral categories.
I think it's clear that the ones that bother him, in his actual life, are the latter.
...is not the idea pg's essay is talking about. In fact he calls the advice to self-censor by default (Wooton's advice to Milton) "wise advice". He's obviously aware that people self-censor and he obviously doesn't think that's a bad thing in itself.
> people disagree with him and that makes him uncomfortable.
Where are you getting that from?
We have such labels today, of course, quite a lot of them, from the all-purpose "inappropriate" to the dreaded "divisive." In any period, it should be easy to figure out what such labels are, simply by looking at what people call ideas they disagree with besides untrue. When a politician says his opponent is mistaken, that's a straightforward criticism, but when he attacks a statement as "divisive" or "racially insensitive" instead of arguing that it's false, we should start paying attention.
So another way to figure out which of our taboos future generations will laugh at is to start with the labels. Take a label — "sexist", for example — and try to think of some ideas that would be called that. Then for each ask, might this be true?
But honestly: the stuff about "racial insensitivity" and the words "divisive" and "inappropriate" DO get somewhere in the ballpark of "uncomfortable". I'm trying for a neutral word to capture it. None of this is anything like the historical examples—totalitarianism, religious persecution—that inflate his abstract case. These are still problems today on a scale that dwarfs "cancel culture" and "self-censorship".
He gives historical examples. Instead of giving contemporary examples, though, he hand-waves in a way that absolutely will make one side nod vigorously with their priors. Its BS. Tech executives keep getting treated like moral philosophers because they wink and say "why not phrenology?" in order to pose as victims. Galileo was oppressed by religious conservatives engaging in a moral panic. That's happening now, too.
Why do you think that his giving a variety of examples with different moral weights is a problem? The fact that big moral issues exist does not mean small ones don't, nor does it mean all small ones should be ignored until all of the big ones are fixed.
> Instead of giving contemporary examples, though, he hand-waves in a way that absolutely will make one side nod vigorously with their priors.
He addressed the question of contemporary examples in a follow-up here:
I am not saying that he is giving different "moral weights" to anything. I am saying he is invoking an extreme moral context: religious persecution, totalitarian wartime governments. Then he starts talking about how some things (he won't give any example but adverts to some social justice code words as bad) are moral threats like this, insofar as they make us hide our beliefs.
They are not. He is making a bunch of category mistakes. There are in fact numerous specific threats to free speech and human freedom in 2004 and 2022: there are people with specific beliefs, specific identities actually being targeted today. It seems to me that people who want to discuss censorship in the abstract aren't interested in the actual moral challenge this poses.
Taking it at it's word, PG's article should prompt you to explore a thought space you think should be self-censored in many environments. Can YOU give me an example that might convince me? This is a safe space ;)
I'm not sure we read the same article. (For example, the things pg says people in the 1830s would be horrified to hear do not include the thing you mention--and of course there were plenty of people in the 1830s who agreed with the viewpoint you mention and said it, loudly, so it was hardly something "you can't say" in that time period.) I don't agree with your vituperative criticisms, but I doubt we'll get anywhere with further discussion.
The way I put it is a legitimate if somewhat more abstract (but historically literate) gloss on this. My point is that PG is saying is dumb and ignorant and does not support his fantasizing about being Galileo. I have no idea what point you're trying to make.
In my understanding, he's worrying that it's everywhere, all the time, in the self-censor sense.
I don't think he's worried about self-censorship in itself. If he's worried about anything in this essay, I would say it's the possibility of losing the option he describes here:
"The trouble with keeping your thoughts secret, though, is that you lose the advantages of discussion. Talking about an idea leads to more ideas. So the optimal plan, if you can manage it, is to have a few trusted friends you can speak openly to. This is not just a way to develop ideas; it's also a good rule of thumb for choosing friends. The people you can say heretical things to without getting jumped on are also the most interesting to know."
MY big opinion that I'm violating right now: Never Post. Especially about "cancel culture".
Cheers
His problem in 2004 (the year the United States launched an attack on a foreign country): people disagree with him and that makes him uncomfortable.
The idea that all humans don't self-censor by default in front of all sorts of people is pretty myopic.