Comment by entropyneur
6 years ago
I love "What You Can't Say" and have incorporated the conformist test into my moral compass. But I think the shift to use of shame for society regulation is a positive development. I'd much rather be downvoted on HN or called names on Twitter than beaten up or deprived of freedom. But maybe that's just me.
> But I think the shift to use of shame for society regulation is a positive development. I'd much rather be downvoted on HN or called names on Twitter than beaten up or deprived of freedom.
It's easy to require due process prior to anyone being deprived of freedom, and we generally see this as a positive development, compared to the alternative. Using "shame" (aka witch hunts, cyber bullying and the like) to punish unwelcome views is the opposite of due process.
It's not easy at all. Even in a democratic country with highly functional legal system like the US due process is not available to many (e.g. George Floyd).
Also my idea of shame doesn't include death threats let alone more extreme things like swatting.
It's the impulse that's lead to more shaming that's also pushing to make the police come and arrest you for saying offensive things- at least, this is already the case in europe.
And why not swat someone? If you're going to go after their livelihood and try to stop them from ever having a job again, you're half killing them anyway. People murder each other for less. Be honest and just have their dog shot already ;)
It is certainly no positive development. Shame requires a central authority or is based on the minimal consensus of the majority of society. I wouldn't recommend it. To regulate society, we have laws. Far better and objective system. Doesn't protect you from social prosecution which is restricted to people with a public or know persona on Twitter as it seems. There are also pretty shameless people.
does it include losing your job for wrongthink?
You are pretty far from the mark here... A study as far back as 2002 recognised the US as an oligarchy — i.e. not a democracy. And to call their legal/judicial systems or process “highly functional” is also pretty laughable.
George Floyd shouldn’t have come into the line of fire of these systems, he was an innocent man. The fact that it was and is so difficult to prosecute the responsible officer shows how dysfunctional the system is.
Using shame as a system of justice relies on emotional charge at the point of infraction. I would argue that’s how mob justice starts, not how we end injustice.
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Regulating speech via social means is strongly preferable to regulating speech via legal means, in my opinion.
strongly disagree; it is mostly universally agreed that regulating crime via society means (i.e. lynch mobs) is bad; same applies to speech, I believe
If somebody is saying hurtful things, what's the due process to address that? Before the digital age, didn't we always manage that kind of thing through a type of social contract?
> I'd much rather be downvoted on HN or called names on Twitter than beaten up or deprived of freedom.
This blog post is literally about someone fearing that it'll escalate to "beaten up" or "fired" if their name is published.
Yeah, my comment was only in reference to this subthread.
How about you and your partner being fired from your job because your 13 year old wrote 1 year ago in Instagram : "Guacamole nigga penis". Is that shame treatment good enough or you prefer it more severe?
Well as far as our rational, atheist and activists who believe in 'science' go something more severe is absolutely required to clean earth off these scums.
An important bit is that it must be restricted to US sensibilities without any regard to other cultures. The woke are the true patriots here.
It's not simply being called names (though that can cause some level of psychological distress). The big concern is economic consequences. People are losing their jobs, losing access to the platforms their customers are using, being canceled by payment services, etc.
There's also some level of physical safety concerns as well, but (as of yet) that's not as big of a concern.
Maybe it is like police and tasers?
In theory, tasers are good because they can substitute shooting.
In practice, you had 5 shootings, and now you have 4 shootings and 200 taser uses
I get the overall point you're trying to make, but for the person who was going to be that #5 shooting and gets to live instead, that's a positive outcome for that person at least.
Overall there's certainly a larger discussion about the use of force, and maybe tasers contribute to that in some negative ways, but most of the time they're used everybody gets to live at the end of the day.
You shoot 200 people with tasers, a few are going to die.
You get 200 people fired from their jobs and make it hard for them to get employment elsewhere, a few are going to kill themselves. (Or see if they can get revenge first.)
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The problem is that cops in the US are shooting way too often. Less lethal weapons just give them more opportunities to shoot.
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Luckily, one can never lead to the other.
It's irrelevant whether one thing can lead to the other. What's important is how often it does. If there's significantly less violence, it's a win.
I guess it could be a bit difficult to see from the US where you had the first amendment forever. But the rest of the world is not like that.
The claim that cancel cultures appearance is single handedly responsible for a drop in violence that was entirely the fault of a more permissive attitude towards open debate seems quite a stretch to put it as politely as possible.
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Bruises heal and prisons have limited terms. Twitter lasts forever.
> I'd much rather be downvoted on HN
Would you also like being hellbanned on HN?