Comment by tptacek
5 years ago
The broadening circle of people willing to exercise their free speech to condemn Pinker's recurrent and insidious appeals to race-informed genetic determinism is a bright spot, as are the numerous people dunking on Pinker for cosigning an open letter that decries "ostracism and public shaming" as injuries to our culture of free expression, rather than expressions of that culture.
Ken White had some smart things to say about this today, with respect to "the problem of the preferred first speaker". Worth tracking down.
That's not to say there aren't dark spots; David Shor's firing certainly appears to be one of them. But I don't think any of those dark spots put Pinker, the T-1000 version of Charles Murray, above criticism. Which is, of course, what an open letter against "public shaming" purports to do.
It's disappointing to read this thread. Even tptacek, a prominent speaker on Hacker News, exhibits bizarre ignorance regarding this topic.
Generally speaking, it seems to me that much sloppy thinking in the current debate involves the mixture of the following basic errors:
1) Ignorance about biology. Evolutionary biology has been an exceptionally fertile section of science for the last decades, and provided deeper understandings on many biological phenomenon, including human behaviors. The accusers' understanding of biology (e.g. condemning it as "genetic determinism") is at least 50 years behind.
2) Poor understanding of the due process. Calling a random petition to condemn a person publicly is exactly a witch hunt. History proves that it's a very error-prone way to punish someone, and no civilized country accept it as a proper procedure anymore.
As to (2) I'd recommend everyone to read DJB's "The death of due process". It is very important, because it may be you (or your family) to be hung by lynch mobs next time.
https://blog.cr.yp.to/20160607-dueprocess.html
I guess I don't see the problem of the preferred first speaker in practice.
Let's take the examples in question: I've never seen either Murray or Pinker come out of the gates swinging with poorly framed appeals to genetic determinism (if they make reference to such things at all it's almost always in response to criticism, and it never seems to be more than very light handed considered speculation). I've also never seen them lob insults, outright support mob justice, or make a targeted cherry-picked attempt to discredit a particular individual (admittedly I'm only so plugged in so it's possible I'm missing something). Yet their critics seem frequently guilty of this.
In other words, I don't think I'm holding them to a lower standard for having spoken first. Am I misunderstanding the argument? Or am I actually doing this and I'm just not aware of it?
Edit: Perhaps it's also worth stating that I do hold these two people in high regard which definitely lowers my defenses when it comes to quickly evaluating their various claims. Mainly based on how they have engaged in good faith. That said, I disagree with both of them a lot. Recently I've put a lot of effort into identifying a group of folks that I disagree with but respect, since it seems like almost nobody does that and it seems like a big problem that people only respect those they agree with.
You are as free to stick up for Pinker (and Murray) as I am to condemn them, which is the beauty of the system. Nobody is, or should be, immune to "public shaming". But those are the plain words the letter uses! It's a bit rich, coming as it does from people like JK Rowling, who have threatened to sue strangers for their Twitter opinions.
(I strongly disagree with your take on Pinker and Murray! But that's neither here nor there as far as my argument goes.)
The claim is not that anyone should be immune to public shaming. The claim is that as a culture, we are reaching for public shaming far more often than we should.
Imagine there are two college campuses. On campus A, when students disagree, the students in the majority say they felt unsafe, demand that the students in the minority be expelled, and on occasion succeed. On campus B, when students disagree, they... talk about the issue at hand with each other.
There is free speech on both campuses - after all, the government isn't involved here. Yet I think it's safe to say that orthodox thought (whatever it happens to be at the time of lock-in) is more secure at campus A than campus B. And I think it's reasonable to talk about the difference between the cultures, and advocate for one over the other.
Of course people should be free to vehemently argue against Steven Pinker's ideas. The problem is that people are instead descending to personal attacks on him, including circulating a petition (with forged signatures, to boot) to get the Linguistic Society of America to strip him of his Fellow status.
People are free to circulate petitions, including those making demands about someone's Linguistic Society status. People are not required to express only opinions you approve of. Though, of course, you're free to circulate a counter-petition against them!
What's less free is threatening to use a billion dollar fortune to file a defamation lawsuit against someone for expressing an opinion on Twitter, which at least one of the signatories did.
>People are free to circulate petitions, including those making demands about someone's Linguistic Society status. [...] Though, of course, you're free to circulate a counter-petition against them!
People are free to insult others and you are free to counter-insult them. And you are also free to write an open letter asking people to try to discuss their issues, rather then insulting each other, circulating petitions against each other or getting each other fired.
>People are not required to express only opinions you approve of.
This is what you might call the "doctrine of the second speaker". Alice expresses a view Bob finds offensive. Bob calls for Alice to be fired. John says that people shouldn't be fired for expressing offensive views. Then Tom points out that "People are not required to express only opinions you approve of." After all, Bob's call for Alice to be fired is protected by the first amendment, therefore (?) it's wrong to critizise people for calling for others to be fired for offensive views.
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