Open Letters- "Cancel Culture"

[Heartofice]

Great post @Knight Of Winter

[DanteGabriel]

@Knight Of Winter it looks like there were multiple things in my posts or things I alluded to from the thread that you missed or didn't see. In that case it makes your hot and hostile entry into the thread and the wide accusations of laziness and cowardice even more ridiculous. You act surprised about some of the nuanced stuff I mentioned, and admitted you might agree (so very generous to bless a cowardly, stupid peon like me with your pearls of assent). But all that stuff was there. You just missed it because you saw people talking about Nazis and went to full condescending asshole mode.

There may be something worth engaging with, beyond the ridiculous and overblown finger-wagging you engaged in about Nazi discussion (people in this thread seem capable of talking about how Nazis suck and also engaging in more nuanced discussion, if you'd bothered to notice) but you're just not worth the effort.

Next time read what other people have actually said before you start talking down to us about how lazy and cowardly we are. 

[karaddin]

I'm going to be charitable and say that if you think James Damore was acting "with the best of intentions" then you're more charitable than me. I view him as acting to preserve male dominance of IT spaces and everything I saw of him after the initial memo release just reinforced that interpretation for me.

[JoannaL]

50 minutes ago, Knight Of Winter said:

 

This leads me to have certain amount of humility and acknowledgment that, although something that someone say may seem "morally wrong", maybe that person has a point. And even if he doesn't - maybe there's some small part of his argument that is valid and bears consideration. I think that's a good principle for a society to have.

Thank you!!! In history the people who thought that they know the absolute truth and could say for sure what is absolutely good and evil , often committed out of this self-rightousness horrible crimes.

There is no reason to weaken the good democratic civilised achievement of free speech and the culture of free discussing of views and arguments for any absolute truth.

[Knight Of Winter]

29 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

@Knight Of Winter it looks like there were multiple things in my posts or things I alluded to from the thread that you missed or didn't see. In that case it makes your hot and hostile entry into the thread and the wide accusations of laziness and cowardice even more ridiculous. You act surprised about some of the nuanced stuff I mentioned, and admitted you might agree (so very generous to bless a cowardly, stupid peon like me with your pearls of assent). But all that stuff was there. You just missed it because you saw people talking about Nazis and went to full condescending asshole mode.

There may be something worth engaging with, beyond the ridiculous and overblown finger-wagging you engaged in about Nazi discussion (people in this thread seem capable of talking about how Nazis suck and also engaging in more nuanced discussion, if you'd bothered to notice) but you're just not worth the effort.

Next time read what other people have actually said before you start talking down to us about how lazy and cowardly we are. 

I like how you skipped the parts where I asked you to provide a quote or admit to putting stuff in my mouth. Especially considering you accused HOI of doing exactly that earlier in the thread and then hounding him for a few pages. You're right about one thing though: we both think each other not worth the effort.  Let's keep it at that

[karaddin]

Your comment on the need for nuance is all well and good, but do you agree that there have been all manner of examples of human behavior from the last 150 years that should be able to be called "condemnably and demonstrably evil" by any reasonable society? The Nazis both past and present aside.

I'm not directly tying this to things we should censor, but the statement

Quote

In history the people who thought that they know the absolute truth and could say for sure what is absolutely good and evil , often committed out of this self-rightousness horrible crimes.

Kinda suggests to me that we can't even label the evil, and I'm pretty ok with saying grossly unethical science experiments which would never even get to be heard by an ethics board are sufficiently bad for us to determine they were evil.

[DanteGabriel]

12 minutes ago, Knight Of Winter said:

I like how you skipped the parts where I asked you to provide a quote or admit to putting stuff in my mouth. Especially considering you accused HOI of doing exactly that earlier in the thread and then hounding him for a few pages. You're right about one thing though: we both think each other not worth the effort.  Let's keep it at that

You did not call us dishonest. You called us lazy, ignorant and cowardly. I'm not sure there's so much of a difference, but sure. I misquoted you. Mea culpa, O Valiant Crusader for Balanced Discourse.

Nursing your pathetic pride over a minor misquote helps you avoid thinking about what a dumb shitpost you fired off at the other posters on this thread because you missed or ignored what we were saying. I guess you really needed to skip to the chase of telling people off for spending a couple of pages denouncing Nazis while still reviewing the substance of Damore's posts, acknowledging that some cancellations may have been unjust, and discussing the democratization of ostracism. We're all *checks notes* lazy, ignorant, and cowardly for bothering to talk about Nazis.

By the way, I am still waiting for @Heartoficeto show me where I defended the beating of Andy Ngo. Since I've acknowledged my misquote of you, and since you wish everyone would try harder to be civil and give the benefit of the doubt (do as you say not as you do I guess), I am sure you will bend your considerable powers of persuasion to get your buddy to acknowledge he falsely accused me.

[Knight Of Winter]

 

21 minutes ago, karaddin said:

I'm going to be charitable and say that if you think James Damore was acting "with the best of intentions" then you're more charitable than me. I view him as acting to preserve male dominance of IT spaces and everything I saw of him after the initial memo release just reinforced that interpretation for me.

Long story short (from what I know): he attended one of diversity seminars organized by Google ans was, like other attendees, asked to provide his feedback on a matter. His feedback was his memo, which he later sent to everyone in the Google after being unsatisfied by their lack of response with his memo. 

Now, writing this memo took significant amount of time, effort and research - so he was obviously genuinely invested in it.  But the question is why? So you can either believe that he despised women in STEM so much that he spent days of research and writing just to shit on them and them circulate his memo out of spite; or you can believe he did it out of genuine, if misguided attempt to help and provide some food for thought for the matter he considered important.

I get that we'll probably disagree here, but I just can't see him as former option, as someone who went to so much trouble just to spite women. I think he deserves the benefit of doubt.
 

3 minutes ago, karaddin said:

Your comment on the need for nuance is all well and good, but do you agree that there have been all manner of examples of human behavior from the last 150 years that should be able to be called "condemnably and demonstrably evil" by any reasonable society

Not an easy question to answer (and I'm genuinely not trying to be flippant here). On one hand, there are many things that happened in last 150 that IMO deserve unequivocal negative judgement: gulags, racism, concentration camps, genocides, brutal exploitation of colonized lands and people etc. On the other hand (and this is the reason I'm saying it's not an easy question): the very frameworks that we use to judge this events were formed, also in the last 150 years.

Not to go too much into abstraction here, simple answer is: yes, there are, and we should take a stand against them.

[Knight Of Winter]

10 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

Nursing your pathetic pride over a minor misquote helps you avoid thinking about what a dumb shitpost you fired off at the other posters on this thread because you missed or ignored what we were saying

You sure you're talking about me here?

[DanteGabriel]

5 minutes ago, Knight Of Winter said:

You sure you're talking about me here?

Did you or did you not miss a bunch of things I pointed out to you, that would indicate that the thread was not the wasteland of Nazi denunciations that you tried to characterize it as?

Is it so hard to admit you fucked up, Mr. Benefit of the Doubt?

If you're accusing me of f selective editing so as not to respond to tougher points, maybe try setting an example and respond to my points.

[karaddin]

@Knight Of Winter My assessment of his motives aside, I honestly can't wrap my head around the arrogance you'd need to pen that memo under those circumstances and send an unsolicited entire company email with it. And someone with that level of arrogance including the comments about women that he did in the memo? Absolutely zero chance I think that had even vaguely positive motives.

[mormont]

An aspect of this I haven't seen raised is that 'cancelled', as a term, is understood to have been coined and become popular on Twitter, but by a particular group of Twitter users - specifically, black female Twitter users, who were usually using it about wealthy celebs (largely male and/or white) who had expressed racist views.

I think that absolutely illustrates the point made earlier, about how the context and particularly the power dynamic in which complaints about 'cancel culture' need to be seen. Don't kid yourself: that phrase is being used as a dog-whistle. People are threatened by the idea that traditionally disempowered groups could have an influence on their careers.

[Knight Of Winter]

1 minute ago, DanteGabriel said:

Did you or did you not miss a bunch of things I pointed out to you, that would indicate that the thread was not the wasteland of Nazi denunciations that you tried to characterize it as?

I didn't say this thread is only a wasteland of Nazi denunciations (which is, btw, unsarcastically really cool phrase), I said that this thread turned into wasteland of Nazi denunciations after a promising start. I viewed it as significant degeneration of once promising and interesting discussion. Main purpose of my post was to propose the redirection of the way discussion was going and return it back to the original track.

And if that's what's bothering you: yes, I admit to not reading or not remembering specific points you made about Damore or nuances of leftist approach to cancel culture in general. (and I'm sorry about that, one reason being that this is the stuff that I would have like to discuss instead of going on and on about how Nazis are bad)

 

[DanteGabriel]

7 minutes ago, Knight Of Winter said:

I didn't say this thread is only a wasteland of Nazi denunciations (which is, btw, unsarcastically really cool phrase), I said that this thread turned into wasteland of Nazi denunciations after a promising start. I viewed it as significant degeneration of once promising and interesting discussion. Main purpose of my post was to propose the redirection of the way discussion was going and return it back to the original track.

And if that's what's bothering you: yes, I admit to not reading or not remembering specific points you made about Damore or nuances of leftist approach to cancel culture in general. (and I'm sorry about that, one reason being that this is the stuff that I would have like to discuss instead of going on and on about how Nazis are bad)

 

I am sure there was a way to steer discussion back towards the topics you'd like without calling people lazy, ignorant cowards, so maybe we don't spend a couple of pages trading accusations of assholery. It's pretty rich to get someone pleading for us to be kind to James Damore when you won't be kind to the people you are talking to.

And since we're coming clean and owning mistakes, I'd still like @Heartofice to address his false accusation about me. Or is this the part in the cycle where he can't rebut me so he'll pretend he's too above it all to respond to me?

[Heartofice]

25 minutes ago, karaddin said:

@Knight Of Winter My assessment of his motives aside, I honestly can't wrap my head around the arrogance you'd need to pen that memo under those circumstances and send an unsolicited entire company email with it. And someone with that level of arrogance including the comments about women that he did in the memo? Absolutely zero chance I think that had even vaguely positive motives.

I think you can level a few accusations at James Damore, and he can be criticised for a number of things. Was he arrogant to send around his memo? Maybe a little, but maybe that is just who he is. He wrote the memo in response to a diversity program that asked for feedback, so it wasn't unsolocited at all. It was also leaked to the wider public which is where the actual outcry originated from. 

You can also critique the science he was using to base his decisions, and there is plenty of debate even in this thread about the validity of it. But he wasn't pulling this stuff out of his ass either, he had done some research. 

He can say he made a number of mistakes in understanding the reaction to his memo and anticipating how it might upset people. However, social skills are something he has a problem with as has been mentioned and I think it only fair to give him some leeway there.

What I do think is an absolutely unfair critique of him, is that his motives were to in some way reduce the amount of women in his field or to maintain some sort of all boys club, or that he is a sexist. I see nothing in his memo or anything he has said since that suggests that. One of his prime motivators which is pretty clear, was to fix Google's misplaced attempts to get more women in tech, and he suggested ways in which they might do a better job to increase diversity. Not exactly the actions of a sexist pig hell bent on getting women back into the kitchen. 

Honestly I think the Damore case is a real example of how 'cancel culture' can get well out of hand and just destroy peoples lives. It has all the hallmarks right there: Naive individual expressing non conformist views, views get leaked to the wider press, ignorant mob pushback leading to extreme over reaction by employers in order to appear to be on the right side of the moral line. Add in the inability to of some individuals to give even an inch of good faith in the name of moral certainty and it's all there.

I really started to pay attention to these patterns after the Damore case.

[Heartofice]

Just now, DanteGabriel said:

And since we're coming clean and owning mistakes, I'd still like @Heartofice to address his false accusation about me. Or is this the part in the cycle where he can't rebut me so he'll pretend he's too above it all to respond to me?

Ok I mean we can clear it up right here. Do you think Andy Ngo deserved to have his head caved in by an Antifa thug?

[DanteGabriel]

5 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Ok I mean we can clear it up right here. Do you think Andy Ngo deserved to have his head caved in by an Antifa thug?

No. I never said he did. You claimed I defended it. If I had, you'd be able to quote something to me and wouldn't fucking need to ask me about it.

I just said I don't particularly mourn that a propagandizing shit-stirrer got punched in the face and had milkshakes and silly string thrown on him after he provoked confrontation.

And please: head caved in? From the footage I saw, he was punched in the face, then a couple other "Antifa thugs" protected him and got him out of the group he'd put himself in the middle of.

I thought it was contemptible you didn't respond when I initially posted about him being caught on camera hanging out with white supremacists as they prepared to assault the cider brewery. Now you just claim you don't care, which is how you retreat from an issue where you can't defend your claims any more.

But this is progress for you! You addressed something without having to be hectored "3000" times. Congratulations, you're growing as a person.

[Heartofice]

1 minute ago, DanteGabriel said:

No. I never said he did. You claimed I defended it. If I had, you'd be able to quote something to me and wouldn't fucking need to ask me about it.

I just said I don't particularly mourn that a propagandizing shit-stirrer got punched in the face and had milkshakes and silly string thrown on him after he provoked confrontation.

And please: head caved in? From the footage I saw, he was punched in the face, then a couple other "Antifa thugs" protected him and got him out of the group he'd put himself in the middle of.

I thought it was contemptible you didn't respond when I initially posted about him being caught on camera hanging out with white supremacists as they prepared to assault the cider brewery. Now you just claim you don't care, which is how you retreat from an issue where you can't defend your claims any more.

But this is progress for you! You addressed something without having to be hectored "3000" times. Congratulations, you're growing as a person.

Right... your not defending it.. but you don't mourn him getting assaulted... 

Twisty.

[DanteGabriel]

Just now, Heartofice said:

Right... your not defending it.. but you don't mourn him getting assaulted... 

Twisty.

Nuance is tough, isn't it?

This is pathetic. So you can't actually find anything where I "straight-faced" defended Ngo being punched. You falsely accused me.

DON'T YOU KNOW THAT IN CANCEL CULTURE, PEOPLE'S LIVES CAN BE RUINED BY FALSE ACCUSATIONS?

[Heartofice]

3 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

Nuance is tough, isn't it?

This is pathetic. So you can't actually find anything where I "straight-faced" defended Ngo being punched. You falsely accused me.

DON'T YOU KNOW THAT IN CANCEL CULTURE, PEOPLE'S LIVES CAN BE RUINED BY FALSE ACCUSATIONS?

Its really easy. All you have to say is 

"I condemn the violent assault of Andy Ngo"

And I will apologise and retract my statement.