Could not agree more. Time and time again I've seen people broach taboo topics on various media and walk away unscathed, often lauded if anything for their tact. Likewise, I've seen many people do the same with an air of arrogance and superiority, get lambasted by the general public, and go on to preach about how they're a victim of some new, alt-left system of oppression.

Guile and wit get you just as far in today's 21st century "cancel culture" as they did in a 1800's gentleman's club, a 1400's king's court, or a BCE Roman senate. What you say is much less important to most people than how you say it.

We have no idea what the prevailing norms and taboos will be 20 years from now. Something you write today that is benign and uncontroversial, might be utterly offensive in 20 years, and all someone has to do is dig back in the internet archives and find it. I think back to 20 years ago, and I know I've told some (at the time) harmless, slightly off-color jokes, which today would get me fired instantly. You don't know which way the sensitivity wind will blow in the future, so your only safe play is to limit yourself to Rated-G "genuine, kind, and with empathy" speech, as you put it.

Sometime it's basically impossible to nicely say that something is just moronic.

Sufficiently talented communicators more or less only have these "cancel culture" problems through choice, not through inability to express themselves.

Which is honestly why I have little sympathy for the "cancelled", in many cases.

Occasionally, I do feel a pang of empathy for people like Gina Carano, for example, who genuinely don't seem to know how to say what they want to, and may not have intentionally wanted to harm others, but through ego end up refusing to reword their expression or to account for how their words might hurt others.

It's a small pang, and not a long lasting one.

I can see how the confusion might happen, but even for the least articulate among us there are clean off-ramps that get ignored.

no chilling effects here..

My point is cancel culture is not very chilling if you're a competent speaker/writer, and it ought to be even less chilling than it is (possibly not chilling at all).

If you believe you're entering a conversation with positive intent, a genuine point of view, and empathy for others, you are more or less immune to being cancelled.

>If you believe you're entering a conversation with positive intent, a genuine point of view, and empathy for others, you are more or less immune to being cancelled

Any sufficiently selective style guide is indistinguishable from a censor.

It's bizarrely hilarious how "Progressives" mirror religious fundamentalists, down to the particular language used to dispel accusations of censorship and closed-mindedness. "You can say whatever you like, just in ways we like (which will sometimes include you shutting up entirely)" looks painfully familiar for any closeted atheist.

> Any sufficiently selective style guide is indistinguishable from a censor.

Completely disagree. Censorship is the prohibition of the expression of certain ideas, not the prohibition of the expression of specific language.

> "You can say whatever you like, just in ways we like (which will sometimes include you shutting up entirely)"

The parenthetical is a strawman, and not what I said, nor is it true.

>Censorship is the prohibition of the expression of certain ideas, not the prohibition of the expression of specific language

You completely missed the point, the "selective" part is doing most of the work. By having a vague and ill-defined rulebook that nobody but an ideologically homogeneous group of people can invoke and enforce, this group acts as a censor that selectively switches on and off certain expressions it deems "not polite".

You also uncritically assume that polite language is universal, capable of expressing any possible issue. If I told you "you can write any program you want, just don't use C/C++/Rust" I have effectively banned you from writing a huge variety of programs, from OSes to Interpreters. Similarly, some things are inherently non-polite to say, because they express non-polite truths, and those truths will always exist because the universe is under no obligation to be polite. You can never discuss (say) Putin's human rights abuses in polite language, nor can you ever discuss how sexual predators use a trendy identity to escape retribution in a polite way using nice words.

>The parenthetical is a strawman, and not what I said, nor is it true.

Not at all, see above for my reasoning for why this is a natural implication of your words. You are free to dispute the major 2 points it rests on.

You are not any less capable of writing quality software if you are prohibited from using specific programming languages, I don’t think that analogy helps you as much as you think.

Let’s stop being abstract; what idea is not expressable except in a way that results in effective cancellation?

>You are not any less capable of writing quality software if you are prohibited from using specific programming languages

Are you implying that it's possible to write an efficient OS in a language other than the likes of C/C++/Rust? Do mention an example.

>what idea is not expressable except in a way that results in effective cancellation?

- A lot of Transgender people are teenagers with mental health adopting the identity for attention and validation, with gross bodily harm as a result

Your example of an idea that isn't expressible without effective cancellation is funny, because it's the precise position that many conservatives have expressed, who still seem to have jobs (e.g. Jordan Peterson). Honestly it's so common of an idea, it's actually odd you think such an idea results in "cancellation" at all. It's the default idea, in fact. You can't swing a dead cat in conservative circles without hearing, verbatim, what you've written here.

And the "Can you write an OS in it?" is not a good metric for, "Can I write quality software?" OSes are not necessarily "well" written software by their nature. There are lots of good examples of "good code" that aren't written as part of OS code. Why would that, of all things, be your metric? Seems utterly nonsensical, the more I think about it the less sense it makes.

>who still seem to have jobs (e.g. Jordan Peterson).

Do you want a list of examples of other academics who were harassed and fired for saying this same idea to be convinced it's actually quite a cancellable idea, or is one academic not being fired (and not for lack of trying) enough for you to be convinced that "kindness" is an effective cancel shield?

>You can't swing a dead cat in conservative circles without hearing, verbatim

It's kinda a natural position when you can't swing a cat (dead or alive) in a trans community without both you and the cat changing gender. I, for instance, am not traditionally conservative (atheist and vegetarian, which are not traditionally conservative positions where I live. Also a moderate trans supporter.) and I still arrived at such an idea purely by observation.

>And the "Can you write an OS in it?" is not a good metric for, "Can I write quality software?"

My analogy was meant to convey the fact "Banning certain kinds of languages effectively bans certain kinds of expressions", no more and no less. You can't write an OS in a programming language that doesn't expose low-level memory primitives, and you can't talk about sexual predators grooming teens in a natural language that doesn't expose quite a lot of non-polite primitives.

You saying that you could write quality software without them being OSes is like saying that you could say truths in China without them being truths about Tiananmen square, yes off course you can, but if you do want to talk about Tiananmen square, you're out of luck. Nobody ever said censorship suppresses the full 360-degree field of conversation, just a very particular cone that upsets the censors.

If I have a log across a river, most people with decent balance can reasonably expect to cross it. Therefore, adding crocodiles to the river will not make anyone less likely to use the log bridge.

For the lack of a better expression, you are full of *it.

The bar you are setting for people to speak without a mob ending them is so high it's not even funny.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante

> It’s exceedingly hard to be cancelled if you’re acting genuinely, kindly, and with empathy for the topic you’re discussing.

Sure, but that isn't the premise of what I wanted to express. You've had a bad day, or are a genuine jerk, and wrote something that you really shouldn't have. Passage of time, personal growth, change of opinions, conduct that demonstrably disagrees with the post and an apology does not prevent that from possibly ruining your future.

Who of us wasn't an easily influenced jerk as a teenager? Well, right, some weren't. But many more outgrew that. Some took more time than others. Some remained jerks, at least for now. But I prefer to hope they will change for the better. And would prefer if we recognized the change in those who succeeded.

> It’s exceedingly hard to be cancelled if you’re acting genuinely, kindly, and with empathy for the topic you’re discussing.

Sorry but I don't even undstand what that would mean. I can understand not being a jerk or insulting someone when voicing an opinion but to me this sounds like you want people to only voice opinions in a docile way that acknowledges all the other positions as just as valid. You can be genuine, kind and nuanced and have a firm position I think. Not being a jerk is just half of the equation, the other half is if people are even receptive to discussion.

That’s just privileging people with really good social skills alongside Orthodox Privilege.

http://www.paulgraham.com/orth.html

>It’s exceedingly hard to be cancelled if you’re acting genuinely, kindly, and with empathy for the topic you’re discussing.

This a hypocritical Isolated Demand For Rigor[1], or in this case for Niceness. Many people doing the cancelling don't have to be and don't bother with civility or politeness, they are entirely ok with the worst slurs if it came from mouths they support. The kindness they demand is a thin wrapper over ideological conformity, and the demands are demonstrably done in bad faith to silence the discussion not to shape it.

It also, rather naively and hilariously, imagines potential cancellers as ideal rational censors who will read all of your words before arriving at a fair judgment. This is in stark contrast with what actually happens, where cancellers read a headline and then reach a red 100 Celsius before reading a single additional word. The off-the-top-of-my-head example is a whole ironic saga of twitter cancelling a trans scifi author[2] because a pro-trans story just so happened to have an "offensive" title (that turned out to be literally true in the world of the story.)

>Getting canceled isn’t a landmine, it’s a tar pit

Both are public dangers that civilised societies hunt and eradicate.

[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/14/beware-isolated-demand...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Sexually_Identify_as_an_At...

There's no difference between the people doing the cancelling and the person being cancelled, from a "what are their fundamental rights?" perspective. Both must be kind, and both can face shame and shunning for failing to do so. "The Demand for Rigor" here is not Isolated.

More "cancellers" should be shamed and shunned for failing in this way. Isabel Fall should not have been ridiculed for her work, Ken White would agree with you on that.