Comment by entropyneur
6 years ago
> violence that was entirely the fault of a more permissive attitude towards open debate
Where did I say anything that can even remotely be interpreted this way?
Whether you think it's appropriate or not, I wasn't referring to the blog post. I also don't think it's what the blog post is about: Scott is worried about his patients knowing his political views interfering with his work as well as death threats, none of which has anything to do with shame.
Where I live cancel culture coexists with violent regulation of expression. I'm not sufficiently familiar with the US history but I doubt that whatever golden age you have in mind was sufficiently long even if it existed. Larry Flint was shot in '78 so that leaves 30 years max if that.
You claimed these new shaming tactics lead to less violence as I have quoted above. Shaming tactics are the diametric opposite of debate, it is fundamentally zero sum; you support them, you oppose the other and you equated their growth with a reduction in violence; again I have quoted this.
Now perhaps I overshot the gun and we could state that your interpretation of shamming tactics was something else but right now they have a very public face so you'll have to specify if you mean something else.
This blog post is a symptom of the lean towards shaming tactics over debate; the problem has evolved to the point that scott has to worry about his career being destroyed because of it.
And re times, how about the 2000s then? we built and debated online without the need to destroy one another's lives because of the POV we took on a political argument.