Randy was forever telling people, without rancor, that they were full
of shit. That was the only way to get anything done in hacking. No one took
it personally.
Charlene's crowd most definitely did take it personally. It wasn't
being told that they were wrong that offended them, though. It was the
underlying assumption that a person could be right or wrong about _anything_.
So on the Night in Question the night-- of Avi's fateful call -- Randy had done
what he usually did, which was to withdraw from the conversation.
In the
Tolkien, not the endocrinological or Snow White sense, Randy is a Dwarf.
Tolkien's Dwarves were stout, taciturn, vaguely magical characters who spent
a lot of time in the dark hammering out beautiful things, e.g. Rings of
Power. Thinking of himself as a Dwarf who had hung up his war ax for a while
to go sojourning in the Shire, where he was surrounded by squabbling Hobbits
(i.e., Charlene's friends), had actually done a lot for Randy's peace of
mind over the years. He knew perfectly well that if he were stuck in
academia, these people, and the things they said, would seem momentous to
him. But where he came from, nobody had been taking these people seriously
for years. So he just withdrew from the conversation and drank his wine and
looked out over the Pacific surf and tried not to do anything really obvious
like shaking his head and rolling his eyes.
But you see," said Roark quietly, "I have, let’s say, sixty years to live. Most of that time will be spent working. I’ve chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I’m only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is a matter of standards—and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one.
---
Listen to what is being preached today. Look at everyone around us. You've wondered why they suffer, why they seek happiness and never find it. If any man stopped and asked himself whether he's ever held a truly personal desire, he'd find the answer. He'd see that all his wishes, his efforts, his dreams, his ambitions are motivated by other men. He's not really struggling even for material wealth, but for the second-hander's delusion - prestige. A stamp of approval, not his own. He can find no joy in the struggle and no joy when he has succeeded. He can't say about a single thing: 'This is what I wanted because I wanted it, not because it made my neighbors gape at me'. Then he wonders why he's unhappy.
---
Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received — hatred. The great creators — the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors — stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.
This really resonates with me. One reason I like working in software is that many of the limitations of other engineering disciplines (the strength of materials, the weight of concrete, etc) don’t limit our creations. Our limits are our own ability to manage complexity and the limits of what we can dream to do.
Me too! But more on a personal level. It was the first time I got a really good description of how thinking of yourself and taking your own interests seriously and putting them on top (of course respecting that other have that right as well) is not only ethical but can also make you and the people you love more happy. I really tended to be overly social, putting others needs over mine, and it made things very difficult in relationships. When you always do what she wants, somehow you start to resent it and then you realize it is you that should invest in finding out what you truly like. Otherwise, what is your love worth if it is not from the most selfish of reasons "I love you because I deeply want to be with you, I'm not doing it for you." To say ‘I love you’ one must first know how to say the ‘I.’
Ok, one more that is nice from our software point of view then and matches your comment:
---
"Look, " said Roark. "The famous flutings on the the famous columns—what are they there for? To hide the joints in the wood—when columns were made of wood, only these aren't, they're marble. The triglyphs, what are they? Wood. Wooden beams, the way they had to be laid when people began to build wooden shacks. Your Greeks took marble and they made copies of their wooden structures out of it, because others had done it that way. Then your masters of the Renaissance came along and made copies in plaster of copies in marble of copies in wood. Now here we are, making copies in steel and concrete of copies in plaster of copies in marble of copies in wood. Why?"
Sometimes, sure. But sometimes it takes years of effort and loneliness, that is at least where the "and yet it moves" quote comes from. I my mind at least, Galilei was alone, with unpopular, dangerous views, against a huge number of people with another opinion. It is what the piece is about, it is what the Fountainhead is about.
To me, and I'm entitled to my own feeling about "E Pur Si Muove" ;), it also stands for a strong believe in one's own observations, a strong will that is not swayed by the masses and the loneliness that comes with it. The sentence "E Pur Si Muove" may provide people with the strength needed to voice their unconventional theories.
I think Sam is right and the quote (from 1999) also points to the issues. However, many comentors are pointing out that this is some 'culture war' thing that has infected SF. I think it's just a natural progression of maturing companies. They become managerial, not entrepreneurial. As such, stability is valued more than innovation, and you get a stifling environment. In essence, the Gervais principle[0] comes into effect as the 'graphite control rods' that are middle managers are lowered into place to help control the nuclear reaction that is capitalism.
Aside: It seems that HR departments (as an idea) have not been doing a good enough job a 'graphite control rod' (to help control the capitalistic reaction) in reference towards the #MeToo movement. Some better invention than an HR department is needed to prevent/control these harassments. Perhaps better surveillance/monitoring at work will help?
I've noticed similar, that a lot of people here in SF live in a fairly-well-intentioned bubble and are super vocal sometimes to the point of socially castrating when you don't agree with them.
Next time he's in China maybe he should think about donating some money to a local union and see how free the speech is there. I'm no fan of the Bay Area but comparing to China freedom of speech is a bit weird.
In China, you can even get disappeared in your own home. It’s called “residential surveillance at a designated location” — indefinite house arrest under police watch. It’s used routinely against both irrelevant dissidents and high-profile targets like artist Ai Weiwei and Nobel prize winner Liu Xiaobo.
Maybe, in Altman’s Panglossian view, house arrest is just an opportunity to think deeply about inconvenient truths.
I'd refer you to my response below. If he didn't think it through, then it points to how thin his argument is and how weak his thinking is on this issue.
That's not what is being talked about here. The topic is about social ostracization based on opinions you hold, rather than the ability to challenge authority over public broadcast mediums.
Then he's wrong about that too. There are plenty of heterodox ideas that would get you ostracized socially as well as imprisoned in Beijing, they just aren't the ideas that are heterodox in SF and vica versa, so he's ignoring them. Also, the blurry line between state and society in China means that social heterodoxy is a challenge to authority. He's missing the point.
Furthermore, what is he really ostracized from? He never makes that clear. His anecdote about " radical life extension" relies on literally the worst version of criticism of life extension, the kind you would get from the angriest and least informed type of person. It's a bad argument.
Furthermore his argument about Newton undermines itself. Newton hid his work on alchemy and it was uncovered after his death, because he'd have literally been imprisoned for it. That wouldn't happen if Musk tried to turn lead into gold today.
Again, the mention if Elon Musk is ridiculous, because plenty of people ridiculed SpaceX when he started it, but he push on anyway.
Sure, occasionally good ideas get shouted down throughout history by small minded reactionaries, especially slightly transgressive ones, but that's just the hurdle you have to cross to execute on brilliant ideas sometimes. This whole thing seemed extremely thin skinned and petulant to me, and I definitely have diminished respect for Sam after reading it.
And, if indeed he is correct and SF has entered a phase of reactionary response to new ideas, then that change hasn't happened in a vacuum.
I lived in Beijing for 9 years and I never once felt threat for my ideas, those of which I spoke to pretty much anyone. And I'm definitely anti-authoritarian. You really are only gonna get busted if you hold up signs or organize protests. The topic of this post is not about public protests.
Don't get me wrong. I don't agree with China's treatment of public protests, and think it's despicable. And I find that free speech in the US is one of the only things that we are right about when it comes to exceptionalism. It's maybe the last thing that is special about the US, and that's why I don't like attacks against it. Only a few weeks ago during "free speech week" at Berkeley and the South Carolina protests I had leftist friends and acquaintances advocate for limitations on speech, and violence towards those who use hate speech, despite the fact that the first amendment protects hate speech. It's ass backwards, and exactly what China's faux-leftist policies advocate. In any case, that is not the topic of this post, which is topics of daily conversation.
Yeah, I also know a number of extremely left leaning folks who advocate some authoritarian nonsense, and I agree that they're wrong. I don't care to address the free speech week which was clearly set up to provoke the response they got.
However, none of that changes the fact that Sam Altman is playing loose with some sloppy analogy. No one is stifling his speech.
No one is stifling his speech because he is richer than god. But a plebian such as myself won't bring up current affairs with most friends and coworkers anymore though. It's not really a topic of conversation anymore. And I'm pretty confident that tolerance of differing views is a casualty of the last election. Propaganda campaigns on social networks mobilized the easily swayed on both sides and drew a hard line down the middle that no one is allowed to cross anymore.
Or conversely, maybe we should listen to people who are pointing out that we arn't as free as we think we are, and people who we think are more constrained may not be.
It would be a funny assertion to say that you're less free to speak in SV where the worst you'll get is a tongue-lashing vs China where the worst you'll get is quite a lot worse.
How would you even fix this freedom? Somehow constrain people to not speak their mind when they disagree with you? Constraining them through government would obviously make us less free so that's out. Constraining them through culture is no different than what's already happening, it just makes people like Sam the winner instead of people who disagree with him. So again no freedom difference.
"The worst you'll get is a tongue-lashing?" Not even close. It is quite ordinary for SV employees to be fired or "resign" after being caught participating in wrongthink. Eich is the most famous example, but Apple's former chief of diversity is a more recent one.
No, this is not quite as severe as being arrested and imprisoned for thinking the wrong things. But career-wise, at least, it can be almost as disastrous.
Okay but how do you solve that? You take away the right of companies to fire people for speech? I see no way to increase freedom from the status quo here.
In most of these cases, I don't think the company itself really wants to fire the employee. But the wrongthink the employee has done gets so notorious among a certain group of people that it becomes a face-saving measure.
That's exactly what you do. Maybe we could use some employee protection laws to protect employees exercising their right to free speech. E.g., protection from being fired when they are not acting as official representatives of their employers, or talking privately, or using personal social media accounts. Don't we already have similar anti-discrimination laws?
Woah. I had no idea about Apple's chief of diversity; she was an African American woman who even agreed with a need for gender and race diversity, but merely added ideological diversity. Apple firing her and backpedaling on a need for ideological diversity is really disappointing to me, and this will seriously affect my decision on buying a HomePod next year / future Apple devices.
It surprises me that Sam didn't include instances like that in his essay; maybe he wanted to avoid specifics so his argument couldn't be attacked on an individual case level, but nonetheless.
Side note: Are there any other alternatives that take privacy as seriously as Apple?
Well, as I said in the other subthread, I don't necessarily blame Apple for this - they're just doing what's best for business. And what are your other options for spy-speaker providers? Amazon and Google? Do we think that they wouldn't have done the same thing if one of their employers had faced the same backlash?
You can't place the companies you buy from under too strict an ideological purity test, either in one direction or the other, or else you'll never be able to buy anything.
I recall Facebook arguing that Peter Thiel offered diversity to their board, and I don't think anyone was fired for it.. sadly, though, they're also arguably the most frightening behemoth when it comes to tracking users.
It is quite ordinary for SV employees to be fired or "resign" after being caught participating in wrongthink. Eich is the most famous example
Eich was free to think whatever he wanted, and he spent many years doing exactly that. What he turned out not to be free to do was enforce certain ideals he held on others.
Here's a difference - in the US, this is a power that corporations have over you that they can exercise randomly, and outside of general visibility. In China, iut's a power that the government has, which they can exercise randomly (but less so recently) but very visibly.
In the US, there is a long history of self-appointed leaders in moral and political panics shutting down dissent via social norms and pressure, with or without the blessing of a government institution.
The beauty of the U.S. is in its freedom, and as such, individuals cannot be constrained.
That's why we have an appeal from Sam who is suggesting that people willingly open their minds to debating ideas and not demonizing the people espousing them.
This is a freedom that could be fixed only through the people's choice to acknowledge it and fix it.
Yes, the argument really lost me by mentioning feeling more comfortable in Beijing than SF. I am sure it's not intended that way, but one of the things it reminded me of is the bimonthly "Why are all these homeless people in front of my startup when I pay taxes?" posts from Valley success stories. 100 floors up in Beijing isn't exactly my idea of grounded in reality.
I believe he is mostly talking about day to day could conversations among friends, acquaintances, and coworkers. I lived in Beijing for 9 years and I can tell you those types of conversations are absolutely more free in China. It's common to tell someone they are fat or ask them how much money they make without people taking offense. You can discuss various social topics and take a less popular opinion without being ostracized.
Are they really more free, or do they just seem more free because the taboos don't quite match up, and you see them violating yours without thinking about the fact that they have their own which they're avoiding?
You say it's common to talk about weight or salary without people taking offense. Fair. On the other hand, in the US it's common to talk about the misdeeds of the President, express disagreement with the legislature, or question the government's policies. These are day to day conversations too. I don't think I've ever heard anything like that in China.
With older crowds you need to be familiar before talking politics. Younger people talk pretty freely about politics in social settings. To be fair that's not much different from the US.
That's definitely not been my experience. I haven't heard anyone talk politics at all, with me or with each other, aside from occasional bits about American politics. And that covers a wide range of ages and social familiarity.
Is Sam saying that there's more free speech available to Chinese citizens within China than there is to American citizens within the US, in general? Or, is he saying that, within the expat-heavy Beijing startup community (a constituency the PRC government really doesn't want to alienate), people are freer to discuss certain controversial ideas about the future of technology than they are in San Francisco?
He's talking about "discussing controversial ideas" with people around you which is a very different think than challenging authority through public broadcast channels. This partisan stance that China is all bad and US is all good is ridiculous.
The SF type of free speech is just of a very different kind. In China the wrong political ideas can cause you trouble with the government and potentially in jail. In SF the wrong ideas or words can lead to rejection from your social circle and loss of your career. To a lot of people the latter is just as scary, if not scarier than facing a hostile government. A year in jail doesn't sound as bad to some as becoming a social pariah.
And the government is at least sort of predictable, and is unlikely to make you disappear without any warnings. Social circles and careers can flip at a moments notice based on criteria no one is exactly sure of. A less than favorable opinion on any racial or sexual minority group or gender? A too favorable opinion on something sexual? Some comment regarding a woman's appearance? Support for a certain political party? Not thinking some individual woman/minority is amazing? Desiring the (il)legality of guns? Desiring the (il)legality of abortion? Other opinions on healthcare? Expressing a preference to (fe)males for some occupation? Acting on the belief it is okay to flirt in a workplace environment? Believing 'political correctness' is bad? Thinking human engineering is a good thing? Being for/opposed to the trans movement? Having some religion? Not having a religion?
You never know which one of these is capable of killing off your career/social group. In your average environment today, you really just can't tell which of them will set off the bomb. So you're silent on all.
This resonates what I am thinking as well. I used to put my point of view on things on social media and such but I kind of had to stop doing that because of the latter reason.
I think this is a radical simplification of what is a complex problem. Genetic engineering as a whole is known to be an area strewn with moral hazards, and not least harks back to some of the darkest days of 20th century science.
Having an ethical outlook isn't a form of heresy, it's a form of societal safety. We need to accept that some of these ideas (probably not all - it's always difficult to get on the right side of the line) are inherently dangerous.
Particularly when we start involving healthcare, a "move fast/break things" type approach can be extremely detrimental, for example.
> We need to accept that some of these ideas are inherently dangerous.
We created atom bombs. Some say AI can destroy humanity (perhaps Sam himself) but here we are, I don’t think you can stop science.. it’s what makes us human.
I thought yours a very interesting, worthwhile and thought-provoking comment. I'm puzzled why it's voted down. Maybe too succinct. 3^4 words good, 3^2 words baad?
And to yours, I'd add "for values of 'anymore' smaller than last 30 years", and kindly remind everyone that US military used to spray pathogens on its own, unsuspecting populace, in order to experimentally explore the areas of bioweapons defense and offense.
yeah honestly puzzled why that's so downed since there are still living person whom did that shit, it is not even one generation past and this place is like "we're the supreme moral force of the world! hurr durr"!
Having an ethical outlook is a great idea. And it's good to criticise ideas you think are unethical.
The point of the post is that just because a person presents an unethical idea doesn't make that person universally unethical. The point is to separate the ideas from the person presenting them, so that people can feel free to present novel ideas without fearing damage to their reputation if the ideas are unpopular.
> The entire point of the post is to separate the ideas from the person presenting them.
But that wasn't the entire point of the post. The post also didn't like people criticizing life-extending research, when the examples were people criticizing the direction of the research itself.
The post was hazy about what, exactly, it wanted people to stop doing, but it seemed to dislike any criticism.
Whether the "life extension is bad for the environment" argument was a good argument or not, criticism of the ethics of work must be part of free discussion.
The article made the distinction between criticism of an idea and criticism of the person behind the idea. "Of course we can and should say that ideas are mistaken, but we can’t just call the person a heretic. We need to debate the actual idea." It says right there that criticism of an idea is welcome.
Moreover, "heresy" implies that a person becomes heretic - socially despicable - by embracing an idea. This is what the author opposes. And for good reason - embracing the concept of heresy means you're only allowed to think things sanctioned by the current sociopolitical philosophy. And since every society has some amount of batshit insane ideas it believes, allowing for heresy means cutting out the safest / most peaceful way of correcting that insanity.
It's fine to criticise the ethics of the work. Beneficial, in fact. The problem arises when you can't separate the ethics of the work from the ethics of the person doing the work.
When "this is a bad idea, maybe you should stop" becomes "you are a bad person".
It's fine in theory to criticise the ethics of the idea alone, but there can be a limit to that.
If the CEO of a mining company has the "ingenious, un-PC idea" to increase mining profits by lobbying Congress and donating to sympathetic lawmakers to ease EPA regulations so he can dump mercury directly in the river, my ethical argument against the idea is that it damages the environment and the people in the communities, possibly for generations.
If his answer is "I know that, but I value profits more," what is left to discuss about the ethics of the idea? We agree on the facts of the matter.
All that's left is for me to say "I think your moral framework is very different from mine," which is really not that different from my saying "I think you are a bad person."
But can't you see the difference here? There is no argument that dumping mercury in a river is good for society, the environment or anything else. It's only "good" for this companies profits and even the real value there is a question given the impact on most people working there.
But extending human life? Maybe it will be bad. Maybe people will keep having children at the same rate and with no one dying anymore the whole planet is completely full of selfish people who don't care about others of the environment. Maybe only the rich will have access, block everyone else from getting it and control the world by simply out living anyone who is in their way.
But what comparable things do we actually see in history? In every country I'm aware of, once basic survival is taken mostly for granted people stop having kids as quickly and often as they can. In fact these days people often wait so long they depend on science to make birth even possible in their advanced age. And most people have, at most, 2 kids.
Imagine if we lived 10k years. Some people might say "well, lets have our kids right now so we can give up 18 years or so now and then have the rest to ourselves" but I suspect most people would say "what's the rush?". Some would even say "why invest 18+ years to extend my legacy to someone I can't control, can only marginally influence for a decade or two? In 10k years they're bound to solve death all-togher. I'll be my own legacy! And if, after 9,900 years they still haven't done it, I can always reproduce then". Imagine not wondering if there was a Troy, we could just ask the people who lived there. In society, we tend to be safe from some tragedy until most people who lived it are dead then we fall in the same trap again. What if they didn't die?
I say all that to say, it is not remotely obvious that extending human life is in the same category of behavior as dumping mercury in the river to make a few bucks so the consequences should not be the same or even similar.
On the other hand, people not only drive, but also oppose progress; as a smarter than me person (don't remember who it was) said: Science advances one funeral at a time (it's basically like evolution). If people stop dying (barring accidents), we'll basically stop advancing as well.
Aging eventually impairs the brain. If life extension is possible, it will have to protect pretty much all your organs from aging, and why would the brain be excluded?
Again, you're preseenting assumptions. We don't know that things will still work that way if people lived radically longer. You certainly don't know that well enough to shun people who try to find out.
Sure, life-extension is a nuanced question, but the topic under question is whether we should ever criticize the person presenting an "outside-the-box, maybe un-PC" idea, rather than criticize the idea itself.
My mining company example was much closer to the kinds of ideas that are actually pushed by people in the real world, quite frequently, more so than the article's anecdote about life-extension being criticized.
I'm saying that some people seem to pursue profits in such a way that they clearly have a moral framework that doesn't match mine, and arguing over the ethics of the idea with them is fruitless.
Did whoever it was at Volkswagen who had the bright idea to make cars have a system to detect when they were being tested, and change their emissions accordingly, really need someone to debate with about the ethics of the idea? I don't think that was a case of someone with a simple lack of knowledge of the ethical arguments.
These are the kinds of "innovations" people are coming up with in the real world, more-so than life-extension. People are going to create new apps that allow microloans with Bitcoin, with usurious rates, and market them to poor people. People are going to create dolls that listen to your kids and use the info to market toys to them. People are going to create devices to allow you to monitor your health, and sell the info to drug companies, or even to employers. There are going to be plenty of Bad Ideas where the people peddling them know the ethical arguments against them. At some point, we get to criticize the people coming up with these ideas as well.
Fearing damage to your reputation if your ideas are unpopular is literally how society works. Unethical ideas aren't just unethical out of the ether, they usually involve harming someone or some group. Putting those ideas forward should come with risk to yourself because it definitely comes with risks to others.
In the old days it was thought that only the implementation of an idea could cause harm. The only evidence I've seen presented that the idea itself is harmful rests upon an assumption it will obviously be implemented or you wouldn't be thinking about it. It's aenthema to a free thinker.
It is not clear or obvious that allowing people to live longer is unethical. Resorting inmediately to an ad hominem is not an appropriate form of debate.
No individual has a moral obligation to debate ideas. However if debate is shut down with fallacious arguments it limits the ability for the idea to progress.
If this happens too often then progress will be slowed. That is the point of this post.
But the argument isn't fallacious and it's not an ad hom...
Extending life expectancy will increase human population and harm our environment and that harm to the environment will harm future generations so individuals working towards extending life expectancy are hurting future generations and that's unethical which makes them unethical. You can disagree with the argument but it's not fallacious.
Regardless ideas need to be discussed divorced from the people presenting them. Medical care is no more or less ethical because Hitler is making the argument.
Yes but this isn't about presenting an argument, the one example given in this blog post is about someone working towards a goal. If that goal is unethical and the person is working towards it we should be able to call them unethical. It's not about whether Hitler is saying medical care is good, it's about whether someone working to exterminate the Jews can be called unethical.
Everyone has done something that caused harm at some point. If that is the bar to declare a person unethical then we all are. In this framework you are right but it makes the label useless.
Most people would require action which creates direct (not second order as in this example) harm of a large magnitude before applying the label to a person.
In any case labels mean different things to different people in emotionally charged subjects. Which is why they don't have a place in honest debate.
>Most people would require action which creates direct (not second order as in this example) harm of a large magnitude before applying the label to a person.
That doesn't make any sense. If I directly try to eradicate the Jews I'm immoral, if my actions just have a second or third order effect of eradicating the Jews then I'm not? Most people probably use the direct vs second order distinction when it's themselves who are doing something unethical via second order effects but that's just to save some cognitive dissonance. If I know my actions have second order effects of hurting lots of people and I still do it that's unethical.
>In any case labels mean different things to different people in emotionally charged subjects. Which is why they don't have a place in honest debate.
Reality isn't an honest debate, reality is realpolitik. People are likely to be emotionally charged when they're told that it's okay they're being hurt because it's just a second order effect after all. Learn to deal with that emotion and argue against it, not make posts on the internet opining for something which never existed.
> If I directly try to eradicate the Jews I'm immoral, if my actions just have a second or third order effect of eradicating the Jews then I'm not?
This is a common moral principle; it is found in, for instance, the classical Christian doctrine on homicide, where directly willed killing is (leaving aside war and capital punishment) categorically prohibited, but killing (even when it is a certain result, or as nearly so as practically occurs) incidental to some act with a different end is not categorically prohibited, but judged according to the proportionality of the risked harm of the act with the harm it was avoiding. (Self-defense doctrine in American, and some other, law is ultimately strongly influenced by this principle, though it diverges a bit from it.)
First order effects are easily anticipated such that intent can be assumed. Second order effects are not always obvious even to experts in the field and so require debate and consideration. Intent is unlikely in this case without evidence to the contrary.
Of course If your definition of unethical doesn't require intent to harm then this is a meaningless distinction. Another Reason why labels are unhelpful.
>Extending life expectancy will increase human population
[citation needed]
>harm our environment
[citation needed]
>individuals working towards extending life expectancy are hurting future generations
[citation needed]
We don't know any of those things. You can debate it. Even passionately so, but it's wrong and dangerous to assume your unproven beliefs are facts and label people based on them.
This is a reasonable point in the abstract, but it doesn't account for the current reality in which "Look, I found a heretic" affords such outsized rewards in karma (or social cachet, or the personal satisfaction of having taken down a baddie, or whatever you want to call it).
Fifty years ago, you could say women are too dumb to program computers and still keep your job and be invited to dinner parties, and now you would be fired and shunned. Progress, right? The problem is, that power - the power to destroy careers of people who have done something bad - is not being wielded consistently or sparingly. We're aiming it at misogynists and homophobes, and also their defenders, and also people aren't defending them per se but kinda sound like they are if you only read the headline.
(But the point of the essay is not that Brendan Eich and James Damore shouldn't have been fired; it's that the "Brendan Eich and James Damore should be fired" position has caused a chilling effect on open dialogue.)
Nitpicking here, but your example was somewhat ironic, as 50 years ago, Computer were predominantly programmed by women [1] , so the heretical idea would have been to say that men should be programming computers.
"Programmer" was a data entry job that we automated away. They were basically compiling flowcharts that were written by "systems analysts" doing the work we would call programming.
It's like an "EPROM programmer", which is a tool to make the hardware run the software.
And yet here we're discussing an idea for which you personally believe that someone or some group will be harmed but it is not certain, some of us would say it's not even likely. Some of us would even say it would be a great benefit to society and have the opposite affect you claim.
But because you believe (perhaps even irrationally) that the idea could harm you give yourself, and anyone who thinks as you do, the right to damage people's reputation. History has shown this to be very dangerous behavior.
Complex indeed, it's a multidimensional balancing act.
Both technology and ethics can progress and regress across a huge range of concepts. Too much unexamined progress (of either tech or ethics) in one area can lead to terrible outcomes.
Being able to debate and have these conversations is essential to finding the balance.
I'm reading this as complaint about opinions condemning discussion of certain concepts, which is fair. But to ignore that other concepts face the same type of condemnation in China is... amazing.
> We need to accept that some of these ideas (probably not all - it's always difficult to get on the right side of the line) are inherently dangerous.
ostracizing hypothetical talks is the problem here, not pursuing the unethical goal; just talking about what part of the goal makes it unethical is being shut down (according to the article)
> We need to accept that some of these ideas ... are inherently dangerous.
This line of reasoning leads to censorship. It's the same line of reasoning used by every dictator and demagogue as well as China today. Why? The idea of democracy seems dangerous to a king.
Ideas are not dangerous. Ideas are never dangerous. Ideas acted upon might cause danger or harm, but an idea itself never does, never has, and never will cause harm directly.
Open debate of ideas, or the testing of opposing ideas to find the best among them, is necessary for progress... not only to find and establish new ideas, but to question widely held ideas today in the hopes of finding something better. To have open debate--to find the best ideas--you need to listen to ideas with which you might not agree, or which you might find--if acted upon--dangerous.
Yes, some ideas are inherently dangerous. An idea of atoms splitting leads to an atomic bomb, for instance.
Some substances, tools, machines, etc are also inherently dangerous, and can't be made not to be.
Does this mean that we should never use a saw, light a fire, or discuss [insert a controversial topic here]?
Somehow people came up with protocols to work with inherently dangerous material things that lower the risk of a serious injury to acceptable bounds. I don't see why this would not apply to inherently dangerous ideas.
I'd hazard to say that for the last 2500 years quite a few devices were invented in this space, allowing to think much of the previously unthinkable without turning into ravaging monsters or becoming insane. I suspect that we could just continue using these devices (e.g. "freedom of speech", "critical thinking", separation of author's personality form their ideas, etc), instead of running in terror from "dangerous ideas" while swinging a banhammer.
> Yes, some ideas are inherently dangerous. An idea of atoms splitting leads to an atomic bomb, for instance.
You're missing the parent's point. An idea not being acted upon is not dangerous. The idea of splitting atoms is not dangerous and the atomic bomb is not dangerous: An atomic bomb getting built (the idea being acted upon) is dangerous.
Why are full disclosure policies recommended by security researchers? Why is open source healthy for security in general? Why is "security through obscurity" frowned upon? Because it is important to be able to discuss threats in order to better protect yourself from them.
Burying your head in the sand is just a shitty tactic for dealing with danger. Being able to discuss controversial ideas is extremely important, whether it's to better protect yourself from them (eg. extreme-right ideology) or to independently research facts hidden from you by people who don't have your best interests in mind (eg. north korean censorship).
And let's be honest here, from what I've seen of my (left leaning) twitter feed, Sam is being attacked extremely harshly for his "controversial" post. If people here think that the article is wrong, this is a terrible way to prove it so.
Leave the security community out of it. Your rhetorical questions are not at all settled dogma in the community.
> Why are full disclosure policies recommended by security researchers?
This is still a somewhat controversial issue. Coordinated or "responsible" disclosure appears to be advocated by most security researchers. Meanwhile, the full-disclosure mailing list still exists, but the activity on the list is far lower than it once was.
> Why is open source healthy for security in general?
This is also controversial. Open source software has its fair share in-the-wild 0days. The "many eyes" theory only works if there actually are many friendly eyes, and so far, it seems like that is not true. Nobody does this crap for free.
> Why is "security through obscurity" frowned upon? Because it is important to be able to discuss threats in order to better protect yourself from them.
"Security through obscurity" does not come from the "information must be free" community. The phrase comes from the idea that you should assume that your adversary knows everything about the defenses you have set up.
A gun not being fired is not dangerous. A deadly virus that is contained is not dangerous. Ideas are seeds; action is impossible without them. All you're doing is pushing the responsibility one step further; instead of preventing the spread of ideas we have to prevent their effects. Now instead of dealing with the cause, we have to deal with the symptoms.
A meme like "immigrants are the source of all our problems" is a dangerous idea, because of the actions it can directly cause. Preventing its spread is just good mental hygiene.
Cults are another place where ideas are most certainly dangerous; but this time for the individual. So is any religion/ideology people are willing to die for.
Most ideas are not dangerous. Also, I might be completely wrong; if I lived in Galileo's time, I might be claiming heliocentricity is a dangerous idea.
Beyond what 'scrollaway wrote, I'd add that even granting some degree of danger inherent to an idea, it's only because dangerous is synonymous with powerful, which - in case of science and technology - is usually synonymous with useful.
So the idea of atoms splitting leads to atomic bombs, which - when used on people - are evil, but it also leads to nuclear power plants (and by extension, to fixing current energy problems in an environmentally-friendly way), it leads to new scanning methods in medicine, it leads to improvements in agriculture, etc., and it leads to many similarly powerful spin-off ideas. Hell, it could open up the Solar System for us if people weren't scared shitless of it. Sure we got MAD, and we pointed a lot of nukes at each other, but we survived, and so far we're much better off with the idea of splitting atoms than without it.
And genetic engineering, while opening us up for new kinds of dangers, also has so much more potential than nuclear physics. It has the theoretical capacity of solving most of the problems of humanity, from food supply and environmental damage, to sickness, decay and death. I'd say that the biggest moral hazard here is not pursuing it.
And ultimately, let's not forget that scientific ideas are either good or bad models of the world, and whatever practical danger that comes of it is because of people who go apeshit and exploit achievements of science and technology to further their insanity. So maybe let's focus on restricting the impact of dangerous groups of people. As for the ideas themselves, to quote Eugene T. Gendlin:
What is true is already so.
Owning up to it doesn't make it worse.
Not being open about it doesn't make it go away.
And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with.
Anything untrue isn't there to be lived.
People can stand what is true,
for they are already enduring it.
The criticism quoted wasn't about ethical problems in genetic engineering research. It was about life extension as a goal.
I can imagine a debate about that, but I can't see how it is appropriate to create a toxic environment for life extension advocates.
Apparently these researchers / advocates found the environment so toxic they were motivated to move. Perhaps they were over-reacting but it seems likely something is wrong.
And "move fast / break things" applied to human biology research is entirely an insertion of the commenter, not remotely an implication of Altman's piece.
It's critical to understand that it's not an intentional simplification. Altman and the rest of the rarified VC-connected people on both coasts are very, very disconnected from what its like to live in the lower or middle classes and especially what it's like to be a part of a systemically marginalized community.
What do you mean by "ethical outlook?" Who doesn't have one? You may not agree with their ethics, but they're there. If you're talking about shared ethics, that's known as morality.
That's exactly what the blog post wasn't realizing. Throwing out ethics is like throwing out law and order because it inhibits you from doing whatever you'd like to do. Does anyone really think they can stand upright against the winds when the weather turns nasty?
Just like laws, ethics are there for a reason, and the social changes going on are happening for a reason.
The problem isn't the critique of ideas, most people are happy to have an intellectually honest debate about their merits and shortcomings.
The issue is instantly accusing someone of serious moral failings and painting them as a social pariah to be ostracized, the instant they put forward a locally unorthodox view.
One group is constantly expanding the area of topics that are taboo, the other believes that having taboos is a bad long term plan for society.
Maybe Sam just has serious moral failings? If everywhere he goes people have a visceral reaction to what he's saying maybe there is some ethical shortcoming there. He's the common denominator in all the situations.
The point is that it's not everywhere, it's very much specific to the Bay area. The claim is that the Bay was a lot more open to controversial ideas in the past, and it's closing down as of today to only leave room for local ideological orthodoxy. Many of those ideas aren't controversial in most other parts of the world.
The point, I'm assuming, is that Sam doesn't want to pack up his stuff and leave, he wants the Bay to become more open.
I'm pretty serious with this argument, though. The entire point of the post here is that no idea is too odious to be considered unworthy of polite debate. Life extension? Sure! Gay people are evil? Sure! (For some reason, and against all evidence, we hope nobody will be convinced of that.) Eugenics is great? Sure! People of a certain race are genetically inferior and unworthy of human rights? Sure! Those who are apostate from my religion should be killed? Sure! This article advocates for literally no bounds on what should be considered an idea worthy of protection, because who knows when a "wacky" idea might be secretly good. I don't believe I'm exaggerating one bit from what the article says. (I might be exaggerating from what the author means, but only because we're supposed to self-censor some of those ideas, and the article is unclear on which ones remain worthy of self-censorship.)
So why are we treating "This person is morally bankrupt" as the sort of argument that is unworthy of polite debate? What fundamentally makes it a worse idea than any of the above?
I think there's an incompleteness problem here, yes - but I think that problem genuinely applies to the original argument. I'm just pointing it out. (And the gist of The Abolition of Man, which I mentioned in another comment, is essentially an incompleteness argument against the idea that you can have an ethical society evaluate its own ethics without a base moral code.)
If you feel that you can no longer participate in HN at all because you advanced this opinion about Sam, then you might have a point. Sam's post was written in the context of people being fired from corporate jobs or feeling forced to move out of San Francisco.
Because it turns out it is too dangerous to be voiced, I guess? It confused me too—it's currently at +4, hasn't been negative (as far as I've seen), and hasn't been flagged. The HN mods have also not emailed me out of band to tell me to cut it out or to say anything else. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
He's the central character of the post. Literally the entire idea here is filtered through events as they happened to him and how he interprets those events.
No, he's asking for ideas to be criticised, and for the people presenting the ideas not to be ostracised.
You can say "it's a bad idea to work on extending life", but following on from there to cast the person presenting the idea as unethical is doing more harm than good.
I keep hearing that from people saying things like...
"I think black people are genetically inferior."
...followed by...
"Why can't we have a free exchange of ideas?"
What if the ideas are unethical? There is a lot of that going around these days.
Life extension is one that comes up quite a bit, because the question doesn't seem to involve life extension for all, but life extension for a few who can afford it. Or, if it is being presented as a public good, the owner of the tech gets to become a new robber baron.
Maybe we need to decide if being ultra-wealthy is moral when people are in need and there is a system in place that generates people in need.
I completely agree. The exchange seems to go like this:
A: "I think black people are genetically inferior."
B: "I think that's a bigoted thing to say that has historically caused a lot of harm to a lot of people."
A: "Why can't we have a free exchange of ideas?"
Person B is engaging with that idea, it's just that they think it's completely indefensible. I have a hard time understanding how Person A thinks this conversation is supposed to go -- like are we supposed to entertain everything as if it were serious? If I go up to a physics professor and say "I think physics is completely inferior and wrong" what is she supposed to say?
Ah, we come to the heart of it. If Sam had said, "Twitter is a problem because it enables dangerous groupthink, promotes overreaction, and stifles meaningful discourse" then (a) his argument would have been a lot more clear and (b) I would have been 100% onboard
I'm not sure twitter is the cause, more the primary avenue. People can be dangerously groupthink-y and overreacting in person or on social media, and our culture certainly seems to be moving more in the direction of instant reactions and emotional self-satisfaction over engaging in nuanced debates.
Well, is twitter actually the problem, though? Twitter's biases are a problem, but that's a separate issue. Twitter can't be expected to prevent all forms of propaganda from its users, and even if they could the problem is not just twitter specifically, it's all social media. While the parent made a pithy comment using Twitter as an example, in reality instigators rely on an array of platforms to spread the message and whip up the proverbial mob.
And more importantly, people with decision-making power have shown a remarkable tendency to submit to the will of these capricious and volatile online mobs.
Why is Twitter the problem if a company fires an employee.
If I can just ignore Twitter (and I do) then Twitter mobs don't directly affect me. But if my management does things because of Twitter mobs (or anything else like that) we have a big problem.
> You're leaving out the part where A whips up a real mob and lynches somebody.
Yeah because that hasn't happened, and if it did would be met with universal condemnation and be up against full weight of law enforcement and the legal system.
> And what do you think has a stronger chilling effect: the possibility of being fired or the possibility of being murdered?
If the possibility of being fired for ideas is highly likely while the possibility of being murdered for ideas is essentially zero, then the possibility of being fired has a stronger chilling effect.
The broad history of violent bigotry in the United States does not get magically forgotten by people just because they write code for a living. And that history and that present reality means that many things are not just abstract propositions but are direct threats.
> And that history and that present reality means that many things are not just abstract propositions but are direct threats.
Historical context alone does not make a direct threat. A direct threat is a direct threat, and right now being accused of racism (no matter the truth of it) is far more scary than racism itself.
> Yeah because that hasn't happened, and if it did would be met with universal condemnation and be up against full weight of law enforcement and the legal system.
True they haven't actually murdered anyone yet but The Twitter Mob (aka Antifa) has assaulted quite a few wrong-thinkers, or people they thought were wrong-thinkers, or people just walking to work minding their own business who may or may not have wrong-thunk in the past.
You might agree, but you're both completely wrong. As James Damore proved, the exchange goes like this:
A: Statistically speaking, there are some genetic explanations for trends we see between men and women.
B: That is a sexist thing to say that women can't do tech, so you are harming women in tech. You need to be fired.
A: But... that's not what I said...
(A is fired)
B: SO COURAGEOUS of the company to fire that employee for those bigoted ideas
C: Why can't we have a free exchange of ideas?
D: Every time someone says something bigoted, they're like "muh free speech!" Stop saying bigoted things!
Note: D never read the original post and has no first-hand knowledge of what A may or may not be guilty of.
There are obviously genetic differences between races. That's how AncestryDNA can tell where you came from. So if there are obviously genetic differences, why can't I talk about the pros/cons of being black without being hateful? Some differences are going to be objectively better or worse, why I can't we talk about them without going into full blown racism? If we acknowledge the fact that there are physical differences due to genetics, maybe there are mental differences too (that's a real touchy one)?
Pro: some localized African phenotypes make for world-class athletes in certain sports- a single tribe in Kenya is vastly over-represented in marathon running.
Con: Africans are worse at living in the Arctic Circle compared to Nordic people. Their dark skin isn't suited to producing enough vitamin D with limited skin exposure.
Con: Black people with high blood pressure don't respond well to beta blockers and ACE inhibitors. Instead they need to be prescribed diuretics and calcium blockers, but these have worse side effects.
It seems like today if we mention that there are actually genetic differences between races it automatically gets shut down because they assume we're going to start making the conversation about hate instead of what we can do to fix some of the cons.
I think it's completely fair to think that a lot of these thoughts are coming from a good place. But the people who are espousing these perspectives need to understand that there's a lot of really intense history behind ideas like this. When these ideas have surfaced in the past, it usually hasn't really been about "fixing the cons" -- and even when it has, it often has major unanticipated and unintended consequences that cause serious harms.
I guess what I mean is that even when folks are talking about these things in good-intentioned ways, they're not appreciating the weightiness of the ideas they're throwing around -- and depending on your priors, it's reasonable to worry about that.
So, to be clear: your ideas are dangerous and must be suppressed. An easy way to do that is to fire you after we all complain rending our clothes. See: Damore.
Then argue the case for that position and tease out the ethical ramifications with your interlocutor. Bring a lot of evidence to back up that argument. Argue against the strongest form of the opposing idea(s), don't just create straw men to knock down or attack simple weak spots for easy points.
Unless the person advancing an unethical idea is intentionally trolling, take them seriously and seek to engage & explain your point. But it also requires truly understanding the other side (hence why you should be able to both articulate and argue against the strongest form of their argument).
Humanity has had some pretty awful ideas over its brief history. We have a mixed record when it comes to eradicating them by dialogue vs fighting. Usually we try dialogue for as long as we can. Too often, we wind up fighting when dialogue fails. Changing hearts/minds isn't an easy task. But the more we vilify, insult, ostracize, and otherwise verbally (or physically) attack those whose ideas we deplore, the more they frequently dig in on their position because they've tied their own identities to their beliefs. It's a funny condition with people that they often hold their identity as a believer in thing X far more strongly than they actually hold thing X.
The best argument for life extension here would probably be to say that technologies like cell phones, which we now consider to be liberating technologies that almost everyone can afford -- even people living in poverty -- also started out as affordable only by the ultra-wealthy, and there's simply no way to arrive at a new tech without going through that stage.
If the tech were only useful to the ultra-wealthy once developed, that would be a flaw demanding criticism. But criticizing a technology for having a first stage of not being affordable before it becomes more affordable later seems to miss the mark.
> I keep hearing that from people saying things like...
Are you actually hearing that, or are you reading someone else's disingenuous over-simplified interpretation of what someone else said? Maybe just doing the incorrect reading yourself? Or are you reading an anonymous 4chan one-liner that could have been posted there by anyone for any reason?
> What if the ideas are unethical?
Then explain why. If you can't explain why something is unethical without resorting to intimidation of the people expressing those ideas, then maybe they are more ethical and your concept of righteousness is flawed or missing something important.
Definitely, some ideas should fall out of the Overton window, and I'm glad that they do, even if there should be any truth to them (e.g., re: possible genetic inferiority/superiority of some groups -- whether true or not, it falls outside the window today, and that's a very very good thing).
I disagree as to inequality. You just can't get equality; get over it. But life extension can still be problematic. E.g., life extension w/o extension of working years is a tremendous burden on everyone else, especially if such life extension is/becomes low-cost, and the only way out is to automate more and more so that we might provide for enormous elderly populations. On the other hand, we'll end up automating as much as possible, so it may be that this is a non-issue. Life extension w/ extension of working years would certainly be better. Another issue is whether we can correspondingly extend fertility years, otherwise we might risk negative population growth (which might or might not be a good thing anyways).
I'm not, and I don't think most other people are, advocating for total equality. There has to be democratic push-back against the drive towards massive accumulation in capitalism or you don't get to have functional capitalism. It's a catch 22. Without some non-capitalist institution with a lever of power to redistribute, capitalism has a built in tendency towards self-destruction.
Workers can't afford to buy the products and businesses lose demand in a downward spiral.
That's what worked about the New Deal. If capitalist's want to continue getting to be capitalists, they have to sacrifice large amounts of profit to the common good. They still get to be wealthier than every one else, just by a smaller amount.
I really just consider life extension a wealthy vanity project. All of them contribute some money to defeating death, just in case...It really makes you think you should be in the business of promising immortality to wealthy people.
Propositional claims, in and of themselves, cannot be unethical. It's just a category error.
Now, if you're talking about the propositional claim, "black people are genetically inferior", well, as far as I know, it's contradicted by reams of available evidence and supported by little to none. You might as well claim the moon landings were faked, and, I suppose, many racists probably also do claim that one.
I do think there's a difference, so to speak, between heresy and quackery, and if we're treating racism as heresy, we've arrived to a very worrying place. The problem is, we treat ideas as heresy when we don't think we can actually provide evidence against them. That's why the whole notion originates with the unprovable realm of religion.
Claims like the supposed "inferiority" of some groups of people, on the other hand, were, at least as I was taught, quackery. They're just wrong, and all you have to do is point at the contradictory state of affairs in the real world.
A quack you ignore because you can prove they're wrong. A heretic you burn because you're secretly worried they're right.
Which makes me wonder how many secret racists we have around those pyres burning racists and sexists.
>Maybe we need to decide if being ultra-wealthy is moral when people are in need and there is a system in place that generates people in need.
The average of several traits in different populations are (obviously) different. Sometimes with more than 1SD difference. OTOH variance withing the same group is bigger.
If you say this, you'll be ostracized in academia and fired at your work by mob pressure. Even Altman can freely speak about how chilling is the PC culture. Mentioning China as a place where he can speak "freely" should have been a hint to you.
This distinction seems very fragile. I notice you've switched the act from "working on" in the original quote to "presenting". I don't think your distinction works anymore if you remove that change you made.
Why would it be wrong to regard someone dedicating most of their time to actively accomplishing ("working on") an unethical thing as an unethical person? What else could "unethical person" possibly mean?
The issue is that what we're discussing is not objectively unethical. If we were discussing disecting live babies, then no one would disagree that anyone for that is unethical and even evil. But extending human life? We don't know exactly what would happen if we did that. Some people think it would be the end of the world, others (like me) think it would actually bring about positive change. Given that it's controversial, the problem is stating "I believe it's dangerous and wrong" and combinding that with "and therefor you are a bad/unethical person". That is censoring and shutting down the argument. Who are you to make that call?
>I haven't censored anyone or shut down any argument by saying this
You haven't shut down any argument by saying "anyone who works on this is a bad person"? Seriously? I happen to think the exact opposite: life extension is probably one of the most noble things we could possibly be working on. Imagine if Einstein were still alive. We never learn from history, maybe because the people who lived it are all dead now. But in your mind, thinking this way probably makes me unethical (i.e. bad)! It's no problem when we're both two blobs of text on a forum, but I certainly wouldn't want you to be a boss or someone I was forced to interact with on a regular basis. And if enough people behave as radical as you are they will likely want to go beyond simply labelling people (e.g. see all the "hate crime" talk).
It is fine that you think the opposite and I'd be happy to keep talking about it. You're probably overestimating how much it means (to me) for me to regard someone as unethical.
I don't see how I can stop extrapolating from "action X is unethical because the expected consequences look like bad ones" to "this person who dearly wants to bring about action X is behaving unethically". I simply don't see them as being meaningfully different statements.
First of all, it's not you specifically. On a forum it never is. When we post here we represent a certain portion of the population. And things like censorship have proven to be very dangerous so we have to be careful.
In your second paragraph you've deviated from what I'm talking about (perhaps I was responding to the wrong person? EDIT: I didn't). "Person X is behaving unethically" is perfectly fine. "This person is an unethical person because they engage in action X" is where I draw the line (asuming action X is controversial and not very clearly evil like first degree murder) because it assigns a trait to someone by which they will be judged by their peers.
EDIT: Actually no:
>people dedicating their lives to it today are unethical people.
You said that. So your revised statement is moving the goal posts.
How so? Stating your thoughts with conviction ends any hope of a reasonable discussion? Maybe if you're afraid of confrontation. For me it's an invitation to debate.
You find labelling people is in invitation to a debate? So if you find yourself in a position where you desperately need a job but upper management says "I think people of race X are <racial slur>" you would take that as an invitiation to a debate? Saying a person is unethical is labelling them. That's what I object to, not debate or confrontation.
No individual owes me that, but this goes far beyond that. You have to keep in mind that any oppinion shared on line represents more than the person expressing it. And it may change the minds of others reading it. If anyone who works on controversial subject X gets a label of unethical that's not just "not owing them a reasonable discussion", you're impacting their life. Potentially ruining it.
Given your stance here, you're perfectly ok with the baker refusing to sell a wedding cake to a gay couple, right? Because the law was effectively the sea lion in your comic.
Doesn't it depend on how strongly your belief about the ethics are? We all place ethical considerations on a scale - murder is worse than littering. The exact placement of an action on the moral spectrum, however, is subjective (e.g. some people place eating animals very high on the spectrum as being very immoral).
Everyone is going to have some threshold where they think 'an act that is this immoral means the person doing the action is also immoral', where actions that are below that threshold are treated as 'this action is unethical, but the person doing it could still be good'
Most people think someone who murders is a bad person (the act is immoral, and the person doing it is immoral). However, as the we move down the line, EVERYONE has to 'make the call' as to where the action becomes something that doesn't immediately make the person doing the action immoral. It isn't wrong that we have to make that call, it is the only way.
At the very least we need to consider the culture. In our culture there are things where we consider them unambigously immoral and anyone engaging in them or even defending them is as well. But we have other things that are at least controversial to most people (e.g. eating animals). In the latter case, I find it perfectly fine to argue against it, even passionately so. But it's absolutely not ok to demonize or ostracise people for it. I feel like, as a society, we knew this until recently. At least most of us did.
Maybe this is Altman's response to being savaged over his "everyone should get a share of GDP" idea? Who knows (besides Altman)?
To be sure, there is a lot of self-censorship -- the Overton window is real, and it's not advisable to say things fully outside the Overton window. Perhaps Altman is saying that the Overton window is closing on some opinions that he thinks we should be able to discuss openly, but because they're now outside the window he feels unsafe mentioning them. That would be a fair argument, though it'd be nice to make a list of things that can and cannot be said publicly, then we could argue whether we should widen the Overton window.
I happen think the Overton window is a good thing, even if I'm not always happy as to what falls inside and what falls outside of it. And, of course, the Overton window is a natural result of human nature, so it's hard to argue that there shouldn't be an Overton window. We can affect the Overton window, and sometimes we really should try to.
I agree that speech should be totally free, but, really, are we supposed to treat overtly racist ideas the same way we treat any relatively non harmful but perhaps mistaken theory?
If person A is a white supremacist, and person B thinks ether exists, am I supposed to treat them equally because otherwise I would be "ostracizing" person A?
I think you're exactly right. His argument is completely self-defeating: it's a perfect example of shutting down criticism on the basis of tone. He's just dismissing critique out of hand (because it's "politically correct") without actually engaging with its substance.
Assuming these people actually exist, don't you think they should have a little more backbone? If you can't handle any criticism of your ideas, how can you be an effective advocate?
The problem isn't the discourse, but to categorize the people themselves - "people working on this must be really unethical". It's only that last part he is against.
It should go like this:
Me: let's extend life
Someone else: If people live a lot longer it will be disastrous for the environment
Me: Ok lets talk about that...
But you can't do that if now you're already unethical, etc.
>Isn't this just asking for your ideas to not be criticized?
No, he's asking not to be critisized for his ideas. And it's troubling to me that you think what you presented is a proper discourse but I guess that's where we are today. The "someone else" in your example is simple minded and potentially dangerous in large enough numbers. It is not at all a given that people living longer would be disasterous for the environment [1] and therefor, no, people working on this may not be unethical.
Your "someone else", whom you seem to think responds in a completely reasonable manner, makes a highly oppinionated statement and then judges people based on that oppinion. How far is it from "they must be unethical" to "we should boycott their means of feeding their family" or even "we should probably put them in jail before they do something bad".
[1] In fact I find the idea beyond ludicrious. If people live longer, they're likely to put off having children until much much later (people in the west already wait about as long as they physically can). Further, if people like the Koch brothers knew they would have to stay on this planet for 10k years maybe they wouldn't be so willing to destroy the next 50-100 years for a nice 5-10 now.
>How far is it from "they must be unethical" to "we should boycott their means of feeding their family" or even "we should probably put them in jail before they do something bad".
Well the jail comparison is really far away. The boycott one probably isn't so far but who cares? If people band together to boycott someone they view as unethical that doesn't seem wrong to me.
>No, he's asking not to be criticized for his ideas. And it's troubling to me that you think what you presented is a proper discourse but I guess that's where we are today. The "someone else" in your example is simple minded and potentially dangerous in large enough numbers.
Or we're dangerous in large numbers huh? How long until you start jailing us?!?!
Anyways somehow I don't think people are calling just any idea unethical. Usually the idea that provokes this kind of response is an idea which involves hurting some one or some group. The idea that I can work towards something which hurts a lot of people and not be criticized for it? Come on man.
>It is not at all a given that people living longer would be disasterous for the environment [1] and therefor, no, people working on this may not be unethical.
Then make the argument. Where Sam cuts this conversation is totally arbitrary but it invokes the feeling that calling someone unethical ends the conversation. No, it's a claim. You don't think it's unethical then argue back. Maybe the someone else is convinced, maybe not, that's called a conversation.
People in the west, right now, are going to jail for expressing oppinions. Right now those oppinions are universally seen as bad (e.g. rascism) but does that justify going to jail?
>boycott one probably isn't so far but who cares? If people band together to boycott someone they view as unethical that doesn't seem wrong to me.
You don't find it bad that a bunch of people, based on their own non-objective oppinion get to ruin someones business and/or career? I feel like I'm talking to a Hitler youth right now. If the person is behaving objectively unethically, that's one thing but this is not at all settled.
>Or we're dangerous in large numbers huh?
Yes, when you become a voting block and start outlawing thought, as is already happening. It's distasteful thought at the moment, but this entire discussion shows that things that are potentially great can be targetted.
>Usually the idea that provokes this kind of response is an idea which involves hurting some one or some group.
Not in the case of life extention. The objections are based on people assuming the worst possible case there but the evidence I see suggests the opposite.
>The idea that I can work towards something which hurts a lot of people and not be criticized for it?
Which is not what we're talking about. Only in your own mind. But here is the issue again, as soon as you decide, on your own, that something is "harmful" for however you decide that, now you get to do whatever you want.
>Maybe the someone else is convinced, maybe not, that's called a conversation.
When is shut down when you start off by claiming anyone who believes what you saying is unethical. Do people not understand how to think anymore?
> You don't find it bad that a bunch of people, based on their own non-objective oppinion
What is an 'objective opinion'?
> get to ruin someones business and/or career?
Are you saying that it's a bad idea for people to boycott businesses, or that boycotting businesses shouldn't be allowed? If it's the former, how do you distinguish between 'good' and 'bad' reasons to refrain from purchasing from a business? If it's the latter, what would that even mean? Should people be forced to buy from a particular company?
> I feel like I'm talking to a Hitler youth right now
If calling someone unethical is "shutting down a conversation", what is comparing someone to the Hitler youth?
> Which is not what we're talking about. Only in your own mind. But here is the issue again, as soon as you decide, on your own, that something is "harmful" for however you decide that, now you get to do whatever you want.
As opposed to (objectively?) determining if something is 'objectively unethical'?
Look, things like murder or pedophilia are unabigiously evil. So it's not out of line or particularly dangerous to say that a person who engages in one of those activities or supports/defends those who do is unethical and possibly even evil.
Extending the life of humans? That's not objectively evil. It has not been clearly demonstrated to be a negative on anything. In fact there are plenty of arguments that it could fix a lot of problems we have. So to come out and attach a label to someone who dares work on such a thing, before we even know what it would mean is dangerous. I feel like society, at least a larger portion of it, understood this in the past. Your creating taboos. Things we don't dare talk about or explore because we fear having our lives destroyed by twitter lync mobs and the like.
>Are you saying that it's a bad idea for people to boycott businesses, or that boycotting businesses shouldn't be allowed?
No one should force you to have to shop where you don't want to. But what you actually want to do is knowing as "mobbing" in Europe and it's generally illegal (at least in some countries). The issue is one of power. With twitter flash mobs and so on today, you can quickly destroy someone's life with this kind of behavior. Most people don't mind if what that person is doing is obviously unethical but this thread is applying this to things that are completely unsettled. No one knows what will happen if we extend life because it's never existed before.
>what is comparing someone to the Hitler youth?
I appologize. This was certainly well over the top but please understand the context of what I'm saying: Hitler was able to come to power, in part due to people behaving this way. If you said something critical of Hitler, certain people took offense. They felt Germany had been in a bad way for a long time and this man was doing something about it. Why would you question him unless you wanted to destory Germany? So they started supressing thought. If your paper was critical of the Fuhrer brown shirts would storm in, trash the place and assualt people. As we know, eventually there was no one left to say anything eventually.
I hope you can see the parallel here: people felt their view was sufficient to begin censorship. It wasn't made illegal to question Hitler, it didn't need to be. Society had effectively shut down such behavior on their own.
>As opposed to (objectively?) determining if something is 'objectively unethical'?
Live and let live. There are people out there with different views than you. Some of those views might be down right offensive if you really thought about it. But society has always been this way and until recently we still managed to avoid getting so polarized about it and trying to censor everyone.
>Look, things like murder or pedophilia are unambiguously evil.
But they're absolutely not. What's the one thing everyone says they would do if they could time travel? Kill Hitler. Those actions are unambiguously evil to you which makes them subjectively unethical.
>So it's not out of line or particularly dangerous to say that a person who engages in one of those activities or supports/defends those who do is unethical and possibly even evil.
>Extending the life of humans? That's not objectively evil. It has not been clearly demonstrated to be a negative on anything. In fact there are plenty of arguments that it could fix a lot of problems we have. So to come out and attach a label to someone who dares work on such a thing, before we even know what it would mean is dangerous. I feel like society, at least a larger portion of it, understood this in the past. Your creating taboos. Things we don't dare talk about or explore because we fear having our lives destroyed by twitter lynch mobs and the like.
Here I begin to question whether you know what objective and subjective really mean. You're basically using "objective" to mean anything that agrees with your subjective opinion. All ethics is subjective, there is no objective base on which to call someone unethical.
>No one should force you to have to shop where you don't want to. But what you actually want to do is knowing as "mobbing" in Europe and it's generally illegal (at least in some countries). The issue is one of power. With twitter flash mobs and so on today, you can quickly destroy someone's life with this kind of behavior. Most people don't mind if what that person is doing is obviously unethical but this thread is applying this to things that are completely unsettled. No one knows what will happen if we extend life because it's never existed before.
This has nothing to do with boycotting which is what we're talking about. Mobbing != a boycotting campaign and I think you know that. So put away the crazy comparisons and make a case for why people shouldn't be able to participate in a boycotting campaign.
>If you said something critical of Hitler, certain people took offense. They felt Germany had been in a bad way for a long time and this man was doing something about it. Why would you question him unless you wanted to destory Germany? So they started supressing thought. If your paper was critical of the Fuhrer brown shirts would storm in, trash the place and assualt people. As we know, eventually there was no one left to say anything eventually.
This is so stretched... You're making the jump from me exercising my individual freedom to call someone out to brown shirts. Come down to earth please.
>Live and let live. There are people out there with different views than you. Some of those views might be down right offensive if you really thought about it. But society has always been this way and until recently we still managed to avoid getting so polarized about it and trying to censor everyone.
Read a history book, polarization is not a new thing, censorship is not a new thing and people exercising their freedom of speech to decry unethical people and actions is not censorship, it's the opposite. What you want: removing my ability to boycott, removing my ability to speak freely is censorship though.
Fine. I was going for "things society generally accepts to be evil".
>there is no objective base on which to call someone unethical.
If you want to get this technical but I'm obviously using the words loosely here: I'm using "objective" as a short cut to mean "things that are outright proven or agreed on by practially everyone". So nearly everyone would be ok labelling a criminal as such but I don't think most people believe extending life to be evil. In fact, I'd consider such a position quite niche in general since everyone is for it at least to a limited extent (i.e. medicine).
>So put away the crazy comparisons and make a case for why people shouldn't be able to participate in a boycotting campaign.
I think social media has made the random person too powerful. Any random person can decide that someone else is "evil" based on literally anything they want and if they have some means of organizing a flash mob they can destroy that person's life. The victim doesn't even have the ability to sue who ever did it. So it's a major imbalance of power. Normally this kind of power to destory people's lives is limited to the justice system.
>So put away the crazy comparisons and make a case for why people shouldn't be able to participate in a boycotting campaign.
Well, labelling someone is defamation of character and it's not a protected right. You can be successfully sued for doing it (though not arrested afaik).
>censorship is not a new thing and people exercising their freedom of speech to decry unethical people and actions is not censorship
Social media has changed this. Decrying someone everyone knows to be unethical is not the issue here. Getting a flash mob to attack someone doing something that some consider unethical while others consider it some of the most important work humans will ever work on is an entirely different thing.
You never had the right to "speak freely" in the way you're trying to twist it. Defemation of character will potentially land you in civil trouble and no nonsense about "first amendment rights" will save you.
> Look, things like murder or pedophilia are unabigiously evil
If by 'murder' you mean 'unjustified killing', then that's trivially true. If, on the other hand, you just mean 'killing', then it's far from obvious that killing is 'unambiguously evil' (self-defense comes to mind).
> I feel like society, at least a larger portion of it, understood this in the past. Your creating taboos. Things we don't dare talk about or explore because we fear having our lives destroyed by twitter lynch mobs and the like.
Harassment on social media is certainly an issue, but it's ridiculous to describe 'people criticizing me on the Internet for what I say' to 'censorship'.
> But what you actually want to do is knowing as "mobbing" in Europe and it's generally illegal (at least in some countries)
No, what I 'actually want to do' is allow people to chose which companies to purchase from, and to allow them to advocate for others doing the same. What exactly do you mean by 'mobbing'?
> If your paper was critical of the Fuhrer brown shirts would storm in, trash the place and assualt people
Are you really going to compare online speech to physical violence?
> Live and let live. There are people out there with different views than you. Some of those views might be down right offensive if you really thought about it.
How do you determine which of those are 'unambiguously evil'?
I don't, I was going for "things everyone, pretty much everywhere, accept as evil".
>but it's ridiculous to describe 'people criticizing me on the Internet for what I say' to 'censorship'.
First of all it's not "people criticizing me", it's "people applying a detramental label to me". And, no it's not (yet) government sanctioned censorship but I'm sure you realize it has an effect of shutting down the discussion.
>and to allow them to advocate for others doing the same. What exactly do you mean by 'mobbing'?
But in modern times with social media, I think we need to begin to realize that this is too much power for individuals to have. Anyone can simply decide that someone is bad for any reason and all and then advocate for others to get them fired, boycott their business, etc. To apply these kinds of consequences to people used to require going through the justice system.
>Are you really going to compare online speech to physical violence?
That's not what I was talking about here. I was describing a case where a group of people started deciding what kind of speach was ok and how that turned out. If there were brown shirts today they wouldn't engage in those tactics, they'd probably get lots of online accounts to brow beat and shut down any conversation they don't like. It would probably be even more effective than trying to go beat everyone into submission.
>How do you determine which of those are 'unambiguously evil'?
As a scientist that has worked for a medical lab and pharma in the past, I actually have somewhat similar reasons for leaving the industry and I actually feel like my reasons are controversial and I’m “not allowed to talk about them.”
Scientists get paid like children, seriously most in medium size cities can’t afford a mortgage on the crappiest house in the cities they work in. I will not build products to extend the lives of NIMBYs that vote against high-density housing and public transportation all for a shit salary that can’t even get me a house!
I’m basically extending the lives of selfish people while simultaneously making it harder for me to ever buy a home. Die NIMBYs Die. I’d love to help you live longer if you’d let me own a home, but you’ve proven you’ll prevent that as long as it benefits you.
An example that comes to mind is that Apple's chief of diversity (a black woman) was recently fired and replaced by a white woman for the following comment:
> "There can be 12 white, blue-eyed, blonde men in a room and they’re going to be diverse too because they’re going to bring a different life experience and life perspective to the conversation."
I find this to be a pretty mundane statement, and it's fairly spectacular to me that a 20 year veteran of the company was fired for saying it. I also think there's a lot of irony in the fact that Apple removed a black woman from a position of power just because she suggested that diversity as a concept should not be reduced completely to skin color and gender.
---
So the problem is not with the criticism of ideas. It's that folks are being fired or completely ostracized for ideas that deviate even slightly from established consensus.
Sam gave an example of someone feeling sufficiently ostracized that they left the region. I don't see how that's very different. Feeling forced out of the city or region is very similar to being fired from a corporate job.
The constant pursuit of ideological purity in the Bay, the desire for diversity of skin tones and orientations, but not of ideas, taking offense as a viable way of establishing social hierarchies. It's all very tiring.
> The constant pursuit of ideological purity in the Bay, the desire for diversity of skin tones and orientations, but not of ideas, taking offense as a viable way of establishing social hierarchies. It's all very tiring.
Well said, so well said that I'd like to tweet it and share it, but I won't, because of the exact problem it describes.
yep. It is getting that bad.
I would love to tweet this and debate this with people but I know that if I do so there is a high chance it might impact my career and my overall life here in the bay.
Sometimes I'm wondering how many people like me just pretend to blend in and go with the mainstream political correctness just because we don't have the guts//strength to fight this fight right now.
My guess? a LOT from what I can see in my circle of friends over here.
This doesn't describe my experience of the Bay Area (2004-present) at all. Here's a sincere tip: start attending the Seminars About Long-term Thinking organized by the Long Now Foundation. Take a friend or two. Sitting in those (packed!) theaters, listening to big, bold, and really very challenging ideas -- not just presented and left at that, but also opened up and interrogated -- I really don't think you'll feel you're surrounded by people in "pursuit of ideological purity" who don't value interesting new ideas.
If you're going to that sort of event, you're intentionally going out of your way to be around people who are interested in, as you said, big, bold, and challenging ideas.
The issue is that the next day, when you're back to your 9to5 at BigCo (or even a random startup in the area), you are not back among people who support authoritarianism and will shoot you down (possibly getting you fired) for not having the same viewpoint as they do.
Wait. What does the Long Now Foundation have to do with supporting authoritarianism? Or how do you get from "big, bold, and challenging ideas" to authoritarianism?
YC could open up an office in Padova, where Galileo spent the 'happiest years of his life'. Be happy to help, although we're pretty content here in Bend these days.
Regarding Beijing: I think he may have been in something of an 'expat bubble'. Speaking with other entrepreneurs far from home, it's easy to focus on that. Try criticizing the political leadership, though.
With other westerners or with Chinese people? I think that is a crucial detail that was left out.
Anyway, some people are building a future that others do not want to live in, so it is no wonder that some ideas are going to be received harshly. Nonetheless I understand that we cannot predict the future, so maybe, what people think will happen, won't. But people are fearful of a possible Pandora Box event.
I personally do not like those who are so excited, by the business or technology they are building, that they never stop and think about the consequences. I also do not like those who think, "my intentions for the use of this technology are wholesome, therefore I am not responsible for any harm that can be caused by others using this technology maliciously".
imo Sam could have been almost anywhere outside of San Francisco (and Berkeley), even still within the SF Bay Area metro, and still have had the same conversation he had in Beijing. Places like SF and Alabama tend to be in the extreme left or right instead of the center. It's hard talking to or even around zealots
Your comment exemplifies what the OP is criticizing. By writing off the people in SF and Alabama as "zealots," you've closed the door to reasoned debate and to educating them on their miscues. I don't disagree that people occasionally take unjustifiable stances, but that doesn't make them unreasonable people. You have to understand their reasons and convince them of yours.
As someone who has lived in Alabama, I assure you that long term economic uncertainty, lack of good public education, entrenched mistrust of the government, and familial loyalty signaling do more to shape opinions than a logically sound argument and upstanding ethical principles.
> Your comment exemplifies what the OP is criticizing.
I'm not sure how writing about my opinion is the same as shutting down discourse
> By writing off the people in SF and Alabama as "zealots," you've closed the door to reasoned debate and to educating them on their miscues.
I have lived in both the South and SF for years and I'm posting based on my experience. Yes there are always exceptions. At the same time, I don't find it useful to ignore the culture or trends at large. Different places have specific, unique cultures.
> people occasionally take unjustifiable stances, but that doesn't make them unreasonable people.
I could be wrong, but the point of Sam's post is that more people in places like SF and Alabama don't just occasionaly take strong stances. It happens a lot more often and these stances are so entrenched that they're more akin to religious beliefs, where it's just hard to even entertain alternative view points without offending people. It shuts down discourse and thought.
In terms of having conversations, I'm not on a mission to change the status quo; I just want more freedom to think & speak especially when I'm trying to relax. Logically for me, it makes little sense to be in an environment where everyone will suffer due to the topic. I'm not saying that it's wrong or bad to 'educate people on their miscues'. I'm just saying that it's not for me.
> This is uncomfortable, but it’s possible we have to allow people to say disparaging things about gay people if we want them to be able to say novel things about physics.
I think you'd end up with a lot more of one than the other. Personally I don't think there is a pressing need to encourage people's homophobia in order to gain some speculative amount of "innovative thinking", or whatever.
I wonder how much of this is an outgrowth of the current university campus climate where opinions that don't fit into the predominant liberal worldview can't be voiced. I don't mean this as a criticism of liberals or liberalism specifically here, since I realize many conservatives would do the same about issues they care about if they had the power and numbers to.
At the meta level this is a symptom of the fact that the polarization of our culture is extremely deep. We are polarized on epistemology, metaphysics, and what it means to be human, with the left favoring various forms of scientific or empirical epistemology and a mutable model of human nature and the right favoring revelatory or traditionalist epistemology and an immutable model of human nature.
The latter is true of the secular right as well. Just substitute "evolution" and "history" for God and mystical revelation. The secular right believes that human inborn characteristics are immutable and culture is a product of evolutionary processes that cannot or should not be rationally understood or modified. All the Neo-racists and HBD types are basically evolutionary-historical conservatives or reactionaries who see inequality as a revealed result of a process that is beyond human understanding.
It's getting to the point that it is not even possible for the two sides to communicate because they do not agree on language, logic, or basic rules of discourse. The left and the right are cognitively inhabiting different universes.
Humans subjectively experience extreme cognitive dissonance as actual discomfort. I think this explains the intolerance. People are emotionally reacting to the level of cognitive dissonance this divide generates as if ideas from the opposing side are physical attacks. I agree that the right is no different. Go into one of their bubbles and voice liberal ideas and you'll get the same reaction Milo gets on a Berkeley college campus.
Those things are part of the reaction I describe. The right is also creating its own enclaves.
I would not be surprised to see the United States physically fragment and balkanize in the next 10-20 years. I get the sense that some on the hard-right and possibly also the hard-left have that as a goal.
In what world are these opinions not voiced? I don't think this argument stands up to empirical scrutiny -- there's an incredibly robust network of vocally conservative student organizations.
When the list started it was fairly evenly distributed between right and left leaning speakers being disinvited. Now it's much more commonly right leaning speakers.
That's about speakers being disinvited from campus, not views not being represented. There are a number of problems with that analysis:
1. Several speakers are overrepresented (I see a bunch of Milo invitations), which could well just reflect their aggressiveness at getting themselves invited / the strength of their own PR team. If one political side wants to make persecution their thing, they'll show up more commonly in that database.
2. In recent years, we've had a bunch of new forums for dissemination of ideas, which is a good thing. Twitter didn't exist in 2002. YouTube didn't exist in 2002. Podcasts didn't exist in 2002. Smartphones in people's pockets didn't exist in 2002. Today, anyone who wants to know what any of these speakers' opinions are can find out, easily, what they are, without needing them invited to campus. (And anyone who doesn't will just skip the talk anyway.)
3. In Milo's case specifically, he wanted to out a bunch of undocumented students on-stage. That I think doesn't fit the profile of political views being censored. (I agree that preventing him from speaking technically counts as censorship, but it's a very different discussion.)
4. Fundamentally, this list and the original article here both suffer from a blind belief in the "Great Man" theory. If person X doesn't express an opinion, or publicize their idea, or something, chances are absurdly high that someone else will have the same opinion or idea, too. If Newton were imprisoned for his alchemy, however unjust that might have been for Newton as a person, Leibniz would still have invented calculus. What I'd like to see is if certain types of ideas are being censored, not whether certain individuals who happen to hold those ideas are being censored.
It's true that some speakers are over-represented, but I don't think that changes the trend substantially. I also don't see how you can draw a distinction between disinviting speakers and censoring the ideas they came to talk about.
And yes, there are new forums for dissemination of ideas, but that doesn't mean they are equally open to all ideas. Some things you can't write without being shouted down. This is distinct from criticism of the idea. These are personal attacks on the person who voiced the idea in the first place.
I don't understand your last point. There are absolutely things you can't talk about freely at universities, for example: immigration, gender differences in personality, variations in IQ across races, etc. I don't see how you can take an objective look at university culture and say anything otherwise.
> I also don't see how you can draw a distinction between disinviting speakers and censoring the ideas they came to talk about.
Milo is perhaps the best example here: Milo comes to campuses to cause a spectacle, not to spread new ideas. Sure, he's talking about some ideas. But that's not his primary motivation.
Milo is not an academic. Would he be happy with letting some academic go in his stead and present his same ideas in the form of an academic lecture?
> There are absolutely things you can't talk about freely at universities, for example: immigration, gender differences in personality, variations in IQ across races, etc.
Do you have any evidence for this?
(Note that you can't talk about things like variations in IQ across races as if they existed more strongly than they actually do or mean something they don't, and expect to be taken seriously. But that's not universities censoring dissident politics, that's universities expecting basic scientific literacy instead of people pushing a political agenda in the guise of science. The concept of IQ is an idea that came from the academy and has been refined by the academy; using an old understanding of IQ and what it means is essentially an abandonment of science.)
I believe this evidence is consistent with my point that a robust (and perhaps growing!) network of campus conservatism exists.
Specifically, this evidence could be explained by an increasing rate of conservatism on campuses. The rate of disinvitation could be the same, it's just that there's a greater number of conservative speaker invitations going out from a greater number of conservative students. And right leaning speakers are disproportionately invited by right-leaning student organizations.
Interesting, attempts to disinvite more left leaning speakers in 2017: 4
Attempts to disinvite more right leaning speakers in 2017: 24
At least on YouTube it does seems like there are more attempts to prevent conservative ideas from being voiced on campuses by rowdy demonstrations that interrupt speakers.
If the US Academic reaction to such a straight forward request was so hostile, then I can imagine many people feeling unable to voice actually difficult opinions
This was in no way a hostile response. The operative sentence from the complaint is "I find the use of the term as the catchy title of an academic conference with no bearing on their situation unfortunate and write to encourage the conference’s organizers to change its name."
"Unfortunate." "Encourage the conference's organizers to change its name."
I'm a researcher. I'm also unusually thin-skinned. Compared to the naked brutality that is the peer review process, that's nothing.
Is your concern that people shouldn't be wasting their time arguing about trivia? I'm afraid academia's definitely guilty of that. Or that you disagree with the complaint? Perfectly fair, but then so did lots of the other people on the list. Or is it something else? I'm finding it hard to parse.
> I wonder how much of this is an outgrowth of the current university campus climate where opinions that don't fit into the predominant liberal worldview can't be voiced.
This does not seem to match the reality at university campuses - only the caricature by people who find it politically expedient to be seen as persecuted.
The results of a straw poll after a debate are not evidence for anything beyond what the people who saw the debate thought of the debaters. People vote for all kinds of reasons - the underlying merits of the case, the impressiveness of the speakers that they've found to present it, even sympathy for someone who got obviously crushed by their opponent. When I was a debater I've seen some truly outrageous motions get passed simply because one side was funnier.
I understand. I was responding to comment that said its totally baseless caricature.
I think debaters did a good job of presenting evidence for their case. Why not give it a chance instead of saying its "staw poll", isn't any poll "straw poll" by that account?
Also I never said it evidence of anything. What is an example of "evidence" in this particular case for you?
Ah, sorry. You said "results of this debate disagree with you", so I took that to be the debate's results (the vote), not the debate itself.
(And as a side point, no to the straw poll question - there are certain statistical guarantees on the representativeness of polls as long as they're drawn from a random sample of the public, with debates about how far you can deviate from a random sample and still have results that are useful. Self-selected polls, on the other hand, pretty much mean nothing.)
If few enough people vote, arguably yes (though that's a fairly complex question and depends a lot on what your conception of democracy is). But in essence, an election is a full-population poll: like a random sample with probability 1 of being chosen. So it's statistically maximally valid. We (political scientists) tend to squint a bit and say the opportunity to vote is equivalent to actually voting, so non-voting doesn't harm the legitimacy of elections. I don't personally buy that, but it's a tricky problem to fix.
Because I, for one, didn't know it was happening and therefore could not participate. My chance of having my opinion count was zero. So pretty much by definition the poll is not representative of the universe of people-who-include-me. And by induction of all the other people who had no chance to participate.
There's a single democracy. There's no shortage of random polling websites. Telling me "You are ruled by this person, who was selected in a process you knew about since childhood" is one thing; telling me "This is likely true because people on this website you've never heard of say it's true" is another.
(And yes, governments where there are ad-hoc rationalizations for who gets to vote or where the procedures aren't publicly announced are in fact illegitmate and widely recognized as such.)
I claimed a thing was true. You said that the results of a debate disagree with me. Either you meant that my position was likely to be untrue as a result, and in turn the position advocated by the "winner" of the debate was likely true, or you didn't mean anything relevant at all. Which is it?
Just off the top of my head in the last year or so:
Social scientist Charles Murray was censored then physically assaulted at Middlebury because he wrote a book about the correlation between intelligence and success [https://youtu.be/a6EASuhefeI?t=19m25s]
Biology professor Bret Weinstein at Evergreen State College had himself and his family physically threatened because he refused to participate in a protest that asked all white people to leave campus for a day [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq4Y87idawk]
A professor at Diablo Valley College smashed a dude with a bike lock just because he was on the different side of the political spectrum as he was. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug34vogS3Fw]
Everything that Jordan Peterson had to go through at University of Toronto because he publicly opposed a draconian bill to forces professors to use specific pronouns when referring to students [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsG71YrB_Nw]
Lindsay Shepard at Laurier University had to face a star chamber from a 'diversity committee' because she showed a video clip of Jordan Peterson in class [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpFUvfAvKs4&t=1m18s]
Please see my other reply in this thread about censoring people vs. censoring ideas. The only one on this list that's somewhat convincing is the Laurier one, since that was in the course of an academic class. Milo isn't an academic. A professor beating someone with a bike lock might be inappropriate and criminal but isn't about academic discourse unless the other person is a professor, and it seems this person was a former professor, anyway. Jordan Peterson himself has been able to spread his ideas far and wide via his YouTube channel, which as far as I know is not censored on any campus network. etc.
Not necessarily - they're being censored because of their refusal to engage with the scientific community and insistence on presenting their views as scientific when they're not (e.g., Murray) or because their purpose is antics and not ideas (e.g., Yiannopoulos). Both of those are things that a university should disinvite speakers for.
I went to my sisters graduation at Northwestern where Stephen Colbert was the keynote speaker. I don't see a difference between the antics of Colbert and Yiannapoulos other than what tribe they represent. One is a keynote graduation speaker, one has riots that prevent them from speaking on campus.
To be honest, I don't think I can defend inviting Stephen Colbert, either. (Especially if he's in character.)
However, commencement speeches do not have a high reputation for academic rigor to start with, so I think inviting an entertainer to speak at one is sort of different from inviting a speaker with some specific experience (either academic, or political/industrial/etc.) to give a lecture.
All that said, keep that Yiannopoulos wanted to read out the names of students without legal immigration status on stage at Berkeley. That's the sort of thing I mean by "antics." I don't think Stephen Colbert does anything of the sort. His partisanship and his satirical character mean that I have trouble saying that anything of value will be lost if he stops being invited to speak at college campuses, but he seems qualitatively different from Yiannopoulos.
Maybe I'm old and grumpy, but things seem pretty crazy these days on campuses.
When I entered university in 1989, there was an extremely controversial professor at my school [1]. There was outrage accompanied with generally peaceful protests.
How it was handled at my school back then was that they organized a live TV debate with someone to argue the side against the professor's position.
In other words, we the students (and the public for that matter) were treated like adults and we were expected to be able to hear and process ideas we may not agree with without overreacting or having our heads explode. IIRC, the whole notion of going to university, among other things, was to further develop our critical thinking skills. That seems to be hard to do in an echo chamber.
It's interesting that the word "liberal" has morphed so much in America to mean the opposite of its original meaning.
Liberalism is rooted in liberty and freedom, and yet here we are in 2017 discussing how non-"liberal" ideas cannot be freely expressed in the most "liberal" cities.
I say we stop calling these people liberal, because they're anything but.
Maybe in China Sam
had less opportunity talking with people outside his bubble. If the purpose of the visit was to meet and see entrepreneurs then of course he’ll not run into people opposing these ideas. Especially when he doesn’t speak the native languages. Here in the Bay Area most people outside of tech are familiar with it and constantly interacting with “the techies” so it’s harder to exist undisturbed in your bubble.
Well said! Sam posted a great defense of what I view as the second leg of "freedom of speech". There's the legal sense of the term – which is limited to government suppression of speech – and then there's the idea of what private society allows of its own volition.
California has been ridiculous for as long as I can remember.
Come to New York, we have 20 million or so people who don't give a fuck about you and what you do all day as long as you don't clog up the subway stairs. It's quite lovely.
This is a pretty good point. People complain about Californian culture being too sensitive but choose to stay there. If your startup can't survive unless it's right next to Silicon Valley then it probably deserves to die anyway.
NYC has plenty of tech talent to work with. Altman is not staying in SV because he can't afford to move. He's staying in the area because he actually prefers working with the people he's complaining about.
You just classified a statement that includes "probably" as absolutist. Perhaps you should reexamine it and consider whether your own context is causing you to interpret it slightly differently than intended.
And yet I don't think it's clearly inflammatory. Again, perhaps what you are interpreting as clearly inflammatory was meant to express something other than that.
Of course, this could all be cleared up if you actually explained what you thought was so horrible about the original comment. So far you've called it "absolutist" and "clearly inflammatory" but not actually explained why you think so. Obviously, at least one person disagrees, so perhaps backing up your statements with your reasoning would help.
I'm cool with it being considered inflammatory to oversensitive Californians. Their reaction is exactly why people in the other 49 states don't like California. You can't remotely criticize CA at all, it's a wonderful magical land where everything and every person is better than everywhere else. They'll take offense even when they don't meet the profile that the criticism was intended for, just because it might offend someone else in CA.
Yes, I believe that statement. There are two things that being located in SV gets you:
1. Ability to hire elite programmers that are a few percent better than those in NYC. You'll pay for that quality though. Plus the cannon fodder programmers that you'll hire if you get big cost more in SV for the same quality as NYC.
2. VC money that is a bit easier to get for tech startups compared to NYC.
Your business is not robust if it would be successful if you hired a 99th percentile programmer and had $5mm in investment in SV, but it would fail with a 95th percentile programmer and had $3mm in investment in NYC. People that don't think they could make their idea work in NYC aren't confident in their idea and just playing entrepreneur.
Well that, and he runs a company whose value proposition is very explicitly tied to SV being the best place to start a startup, so it would be kind of awkward if he moved.
"Can we do it without moving to where you are?
Sorry, no. We tried this once, and by Demo Day that startup was way behind the rest. What we do, we have to do in person. We would not be doing a startup a favor by not making them come to YC events in person."
Their stated reason is more about dealing with people face to face, and less about SV. It also sounds like they only tried it once, which probably isn't a big enough sample size considering that most startups aren't successful in the first place. It sounds like they never gave places other than SV a fair shake.
Agreed on the face-to-face point, but YC also used to have very strongly worded language on the FAQ that said, essentially, that setting your startup on the path to success meant moving to SV, due to the strong network effects. I can't find it now (probably because they've updated it) but it pretty closely tracked the language in this PG essay: http://www.paulgraham.com/startuphubs.html
Exactly why I moved to NYC after 10 years in the Mission.
It’s an elegant way to avoid dominant cliques, tribalism, etc. of which I already had my fill. No one can truly own or define the Culture or the Right Way to live in New York, it’s simply too big and too diverse for that.
But your work for hire laws suck. Do something on the side while you have a main job, and guess what. By default your current employer owns the code that you wrote!
A competent lawyer can fix this if your NY-based employer attempts to put such language in your employment agreement. Speaking from experience several times over.
If there is no such language in your employment agreement, that is the default arrangement.
I'm not going to bother having to get a lawyer to fix something that shouldn't be a problem in the first place. In California it isn't a problem. I'm firmly convinced that this fact is one of the reasons why Silicon Valley is in California and not New York.
Silicon Valley is in California because of historical reasons related to a) US defense R&D spending following WWII and b) the 60's counterculture, not because of differences in each respective state's employment law.
IANAL, but declining to hire a lawyer out of principle because you think that certain aspects of a given state's employment law "shouldn't be a problem in the first place" is really dumb.
Whatever the history, startups are fragile. Were California law different, it would definitely have a chilling effect on startups.
As for hiring a lawyer, most of the people who really need to know this don't know up front that they should negotiate such terms. And most employees, including me, don't really want to start off a new job haggling over the contract. It really doesn't make a good first impression.
> And most employees, including me, don't really want to start off a new job haggling over the contract. It really doesn't make a good first impression.
Important to note that this is not true. If you, say, have a side project and want to ensure that it remains your property after you join the company, and that you can keep working on it and keep having it belong exclusively to you, having a lawyer review the draft contract a potential employer sends with your offer is not going to piss off anyone you would ever want to work for.
Companies that hire quality engineers are used to potential employees having lawyers, and do not get ruffled when those lawyers do their jobs. If they do, it's a major red flag.
I completely agree, but when I was walking to the train station this morning with a 25F blast of wind going straight through my coat I was actually thinking how great CA would be. :)
Nobody can possibly be as free to speak their mind as a wealthy American investor in a developing country. I suspect the lack of freedom the author is feeling is the fact that in San Francisco his disapproval doesn't represent an existential threat for the people around him.
It's impossible to only question those ideas you personally really need to question, while ignoring other ideas you hear that seem wrong. You either develop a habit of questioning or not. Habits need to be simple, you can't have a habit of showering every day, except when the date is a prime number.
Though it may be true that some liberals who work in technology argue about pronouns, that doesn't mean the entire set of liberals working in technology did anything.
...except maybe tacitly agreeing with people who posited that talking about something was a bad thing, because, you know, in this particular case freedom of speech is trumped by more important considerations.
This is, of course, not limited to liberals, or any other political affiliation.
Freedom of speech is part of a legal framework. It means you won't be arrested for something you say or express. Doesn't mean anyone has to have a positive response to everything anyone says.
I might have more sympathy for this post if I only knew about it in the abstract and wasn't familiar with specific cases. For example, lately among Bay Area types, and especially the Rationalist community, there's been a surge of interest in eugenics and scientific racism, now euphemistically rebranded as "human biodiversity". It tends to take the form of hand-wringing about how "people from certain regions" have lower IQs and just how dreadful that is.
Just keep in mind that when Valley "thought leaders" complain about the lack of freedom to discuss ideas, those are the kinds of ideas they're talking about.
My reaction to that would be to tell them there’s exactly one correct way to treat people. As soon as you categorize someone not by what they reveal about their individual characteristics you’re being prejudicial. An individual will reveal that they’re more likely to commit crime in individualistic ways, for example. Ie pulling up a criminal background check is Ok (though you’ve got to read the contents), but segregation by skin color is very definitely not.
In general people from certain regions do have lower IQs... What makes this bad thing to study? Is the cause culture? Genetics? Education? I think the entire point of article is that asking the question somehow makes you a bad person, instead of a person with a controversial idea.
>In general people from certain regions do have lower IQs
It's been 23 years since The Bell Curve and I am still waiting for someone who makes this statement and seems to have a solid grasp on the problem of general IQ scores across wildly different populations. I think there's a reason I never see it . . .
I don't think people from different regions or types have different IQs, but as a thought experiment, suppose it was proven that (to pick a random example) all Capricorns born on a Tuesday were below average intelligence. Should discussion of that fact be suppressed?
> [1] I am not worried that letting some people on the internet say things like “gay people are evil” is going to convince any reasonable people that such a statement is true.
Wait, but why not? Isn't this the crux issue of our time? The Russians and the RNC have spouted fake propaganda so loudly that ~40% of the US believe falsehoods already. And the main reason they believe things that aren't true is because they are said 1000x on the internet every day.
I'm not saying we should restrict free speech or anything like that. No way. But how can you ignore the problems of the world? Many people are not 'reasonable' and they do believe false things. That the do so matters, because our collective society is interconnected.
It doesn't matter if no "reasonable people" believe a false or bad statement is true. It matters that they believe it because they have and affect on everything. We all do.
Now we have President Trump because so many educated people thought that "no reasonable person" would vote for him. But here we are.
I think the lies on the internet thing will have to defeat itself. I remember being led astray by internet “wisdom” back in the first dot com bubble. Then I went and tried to apply that knowledge IRL. I don’t remember any single particular example, but I remember feeling downright embarrassed for believing something off the internet. I then learned to always take anything from the internet with hefty doses of salt rocks.
Of course - we are all responsible for ourselves. The problem is that critical thinking is not taught in schools, and children grow up without it by the millions. A problem doesn't "defeat itself" and people who have trouble thinking critically cause problems for those who can do it naturally. Saying that there is nothing to worry about from having tens of millions of people believe lies, or saying "that problem will not receive a solution from ME or ANYONE I know!" (basically, "will have to defeat itself") is going backwards.
The world, the whole world, has a problem with fake information on the internet right now. The answer is not "oh well, too bad" and the answer is not "I'm not worried".
I feel like this article is trying to advocate for both "ideas don't matter" and "ideas matter a lot" without adequately distinguishing the cases. There's definitely an attempt at distinction, but I don't get the sense that it really works.
For instance, both "radical life extension is worth working on" and "gay people are evil" are ideas that certain people consider toxic to society - not just ideas they disagree with, but ideas that, if they are considered and debated and experimented with, will result in harm even if they're defeated in the long term. (And yes, the responses to these ideas will be themselves "toxic;" you get rid of toxins by killing them.) What distinguishes one from the other?
The article is clearly advocating for us not just to tolerate "radical life extension is worth working on," but to support an environment where an advocate of that idea can draw other people to that cause without public opposition and can publicly espouse that cause without social judgment. Someone who believes this should be able to be viewed as a great thinker, as someone doing worthwhile research, as someone who's not a "heretic".
But then the article turns around and says, "I am not worried that letting some people on the internet say things like 'gay people are evil' is going to convince any reasonable people that such a statement is true." Why? Plenty of people both on the internet and off say that and do convince people of it. (I was one of the people convinced by this; if you haven't had the experience of growing up in an environment which isn't a cult by any means but enforces religious-cultural orthodoxy, I do strongly recommend talking to such people about how that environment operates and propagates its beliefs if you're going to have opinions about "heresy".) Why should we believe that nobody will be convinced by "gay people are evil" but people will be convinced by "radical life extension is worth working on"?
And what about other ideas like "gay people aren't evil, we love gay people, but they're demon-possessed and conversion therapy will successfully fix them towards heterosexuality, which has been the norm throughout all of human society?" That idea is definitely going to get you a toxic response in SF culture. Should it not?
If we're simply going to judge ideas by whether other people are likely to be convinced by the ideas, and nothing else, we're not going to drive society in a productive direction. We have to be willing to say that certain things are good and certain things are bad. C. S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man is somewhat relevant here (and is a worthwhile read) - either we have our standards, our things we value, or we will let ourselves be ruled by whatever ideas seem defensible, and those ideas will start controlling how we are open to new ideas. Of course this is not to say that we have no problem with discourse, that the way that we approach "this idea is bad actually" or "this idea is good actually" is not broken. But that's very different from saying that all such judgments should be banished.
(Preemptive response: I do realize that the author is gay, and I don't think that invalidates this comment.)
As someone with many “heretic ideas”, I disagree with this article - people that execute on crazy ideas are thick-skinned. Hard to believe that smart people would actually leave SF because of PC culture (although it is annoying). Even from Altman’s examples, Newton stayed in England and did what he wanted, despite the social norms.
It was also odd to see Altman use China as the bastion of freedom, a place with widespread internet censorship and where things like democracy are considered heretic.
I hardly see him presenting China as a bastion of freedom. But I do understand how one could feel safer voicing their mind on a certain subset of topics among a crowd of Beijingren versus a crowd of San Franciscans.
Morality is always relative to culture. Sometimes cultures change though and it’s really hard to make them move back. Given enough resources you can find the morality that you want in any culture .
This problem will resolve itself because there are brave people willing to weather the controversy caused by thinking in public.
Long unedited podcasts are turning out to be the best platform, with people like Sam Harris, Dan Carlin, and even Joe Rogan becoming the most important public intellectuals alive today. All three have financial and editorial independence. They reach millions of people on a weekly basis. Carlin is in Oregon, from Los Angeles, where Rogan and Harris are.
Sam Altman could obviously run a podcast where he discussed his controversial ideas. Many like minded people would rally around him. Some idiots would call him a monster. It would be great.
If you have FU money and you're complaining about PC culture, you're being unnecessarily cowardly. Start a podcast and help change things.
still. Even if you are wealthy, Fighting this is very taxing for your life. you are constantly under attack by every other person that wants to feel like they are bringing progress to society by agreeing to the latest PC trend from SF.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 360 ms ] threadIf you care too much about what other people think of you, then you possibly aren't spending enough time thinking about things that aren't people.
In the Tolkien, not the endocrinological or Snow White sense, Randy is a Dwarf. Tolkien's Dwarves were stout, taciturn, vaguely magical characters who spent a lot of time in the dark hammering out beautiful things, e.g. Rings of Power. Thinking of himself as a Dwarf who had hung up his war ax for a while to go sojourning in the Shire, where he was surrounded by squabbling Hobbits (i.e., Charlene's friends), had actually done a lot for Randy's peace of mind over the years. He knew perfectly well that if he were stuck in academia, these people, and the things they said, would seem momentous to him. But where he came from, nobody had been taking these people seriously for years. So he just withdrew from the conversation and drank his wine and looked out over the Pacific surf and tried not to do anything really obvious like shaking his head and rolling his eyes.
-- Cryptonomicon, 1999.
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Listen to what is being preached today. Look at everyone around us. You've wondered why they suffer, why they seek happiness and never find it. If any man stopped and asked himself whether he's ever held a truly personal desire, he'd find the answer. He'd see that all his wishes, his efforts, his dreams, his ambitions are motivated by other men. He's not really struggling even for material wealth, but for the second-hander's delusion - prestige. A stamp of approval, not his own. He can find no joy in the struggle and no joy when he has succeeded. He can't say about a single thing: 'This is what I wanted because I wanted it, not because it made my neighbors gape at me'. Then he wonders why he's unhappy.
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Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received — hatred. The great creators — the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors — stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.
This really resonates with me. One reason I like working in software is that many of the limitations of other engineering disciplines (the strength of materials, the weight of concrete, etc) don’t limit our creations. Our limits are our own ability to manage complexity and the limits of what we can dream to do.
Ok, one more that is nice from our software point of view then and matches your comment:
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"Look, " said Roark. "The famous flutings on the the famous columns—what are they there for? To hide the joints in the wood—when columns were made of wood, only these aren't, they're marble. The triglyphs, what are they? Wood. Wooden beams, the way they had to be laid when people began to build wooden shacks. Your Greeks took marble and they made copies of their wooden structures out of it, because others had done it that way. Then your masters of the Renaissance came along and made copies in plaster of copies in marble of copies in wood. Now here we are, making copies in steel and concrete of copies in plaster of copies in marble of copies in wood. Why?"
It means that the material world is what it is, and that reality is not modulated by human decree.
I think Sam is right and the quote (from 1999) also points to the issues. However, many comentors are pointing out that this is some 'culture war' thing that has infected SF. I think it's just a natural progression of maturing companies. They become managerial, not entrepreneurial. As such, stability is valued more than innovation, and you get a stifling environment. In essence, the Gervais principle[0] comes into effect as the 'graphite control rods' that are middle managers are lowered into place to help control the nuclear reaction that is capitalism.
Aside: It seems that HR departments (as an idea) have not been doing a good enough job a 'graphite control rod' (to help control the capitalistic reaction) in reference towards the #MeToo movement. Some better invention than an HR department is needed to prevent/control these harassments. Perhaps better surveillance/monitoring at work will help?
[0] https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/
Maybe, in Altman’s Panglossian view, house arrest is just an opportunity to think deeply about inconvenient truths.
Furthermore, what is he really ostracized from? He never makes that clear. His anecdote about " radical life extension" relies on literally the worst version of criticism of life extension, the kind you would get from the angriest and least informed type of person. It's a bad argument.
Furthermore his argument about Newton undermines itself. Newton hid his work on alchemy and it was uncovered after his death, because he'd have literally been imprisoned for it. That wouldn't happen if Musk tried to turn lead into gold today.
Again, the mention if Elon Musk is ridiculous, because plenty of people ridiculed SpaceX when he started it, but he push on anyway.
Sure, occasionally good ideas get shouted down throughout history by small minded reactionaries, especially slightly transgressive ones, but that's just the hurdle you have to cross to execute on brilliant ideas sometimes. This whole thing seemed extremely thin skinned and petulant to me, and I definitely have diminished respect for Sam after reading it.
And, if indeed he is correct and SF has entered a phase of reactionary response to new ideas, then that change hasn't happened in a vacuum.
Don't get me wrong. I don't agree with China's treatment of public protests, and think it's despicable. And I find that free speech in the US is one of the only things that we are right about when it comes to exceptionalism. It's maybe the last thing that is special about the US, and that's why I don't like attacks against it. Only a few weeks ago during "free speech week" at Berkeley and the South Carolina protests I had leftist friends and acquaintances advocate for limitations on speech, and violence towards those who use hate speech, despite the fact that the first amendment protects hate speech. It's ass backwards, and exactly what China's faux-leftist policies advocate. In any case, that is not the topic of this post, which is topics of daily conversation.
However, none of that changes the fact that Sam Altman is playing loose with some sloppy analogy. No one is stifling his speech.
It's a good thesis to try and prove.
How would you even fix this freedom? Somehow constrain people to not speak their mind when they disagree with you? Constraining them through government would obviously make us less free so that's out. Constraining them through culture is no different than what's already happening, it just makes people like Sam the winner instead of people who disagree with him. So again no freedom difference.
No, this is not quite as severe as being arrested and imprisoned for thinking the wrong things. But career-wise, at least, it can be almost as disastrous.
It surprises me that Sam didn't include instances like that in his essay; maybe he wanted to avoid specifics so his argument couldn't be attacked on an individual case level, but nonetheless.
Side note: Are there any other alternatives that take privacy as seriously as Apple?
You can't place the companies you buy from under too strict an ideological purity test, either in one direction or the other, or else you'll never be able to buy anything.
I recall Facebook arguing that Peter Thiel offered diversity to their board, and I don't think anyone was fired for it.. sadly, though, they're also arguably the most frightening behemoth when it comes to tracking users.
Eich was free to think whatever he wanted, and he spent many years doing exactly that. What he turned out not to be free to do was enforce certain ideals he held on others.
In the US, there is a long history of self-appointed leaders in moral and political panics shutting down dissent via social norms and pressure, with or without the blessing of a government institution.
That's why we have an appeal from Sam who is suggesting that people willingly open their minds to debating ideas and not demonizing the people espousing them.
This is a freedom that could be fixed only through the people's choice to acknowledge it and fix it.
You say it's common to talk about weight or salary without people taking offense. Fair. On the other hand, in the US it's common to talk about the misdeeds of the President, express disagreement with the legislature, or question the government's policies. These are day to day conversations too. I don't think I've ever heard anything like that in China.
I think it's pretty obviously the latter....
And the government is at least sort of predictable, and is unlikely to make you disappear without any warnings. Social circles and careers can flip at a moments notice based on criteria no one is exactly sure of. A less than favorable opinion on any racial or sexual minority group or gender? A too favorable opinion on something sexual? Some comment regarding a woman's appearance? Support for a certain political party? Not thinking some individual woman/minority is amazing? Desiring the (il)legality of guns? Desiring the (il)legality of abortion? Other opinions on healthcare? Expressing a preference to (fe)males for some occupation? Acting on the belief it is okay to flirt in a workplace environment? Believing 'political correctness' is bad? Thinking human engineering is a good thing? Being for/opposed to the trans movement? Having some religion? Not having a religion?
You never know which one of these is capable of killing off your career/social group. In your average environment today, you really just can't tell which of them will set off the bomb. So you're silent on all.
Having an ethical outlook isn't a form of heresy, it's a form of societal safety. We need to accept that some of these ideas (probably not all - it's always difficult to get on the right side of the line) are inherently dangerous.
Particularly when we start involving healthcare, a "move fast/break things" type approach can be extremely detrimental, for example.
We created atom bombs. Some say AI can destroy humanity (perhaps Sam himself) but here we are, I don’t think you can stop science.. it’s what makes us human.
and I'd also add "to the best of our armchair knowledge"
"usa did nothing wrong"
Religion is the anathema to science.
Yes, it's subtle, but the current shift in the US is towards ideas being dangrous
The point of the post is that just because a person presents an unethical idea doesn't make that person universally unethical. The point is to separate the ideas from the person presenting them, so that people can feel free to present novel ideas without fearing damage to their reputation if the ideas are unpopular.
But that wasn't the entire point of the post. The post also didn't like people criticizing life-extending research, when the examples were people criticizing the direction of the research itself.
The post was hazy about what, exactly, it wanted people to stop doing, but it seemed to dislike any criticism.
Whether the "life extension is bad for the environment" argument was a good argument or not, criticism of the ethics of work must be part of free discussion.
When "this is a bad idea, maybe you should stop" becomes "you are a bad person".
If the CEO of a mining company has the "ingenious, un-PC idea" to increase mining profits by lobbying Congress and donating to sympathetic lawmakers to ease EPA regulations so he can dump mercury directly in the river, my ethical argument against the idea is that it damages the environment and the people in the communities, possibly for generations.
If his answer is "I know that, but I value profits more," what is left to discuss about the ethics of the idea? We agree on the facts of the matter.
All that's left is for me to say "I think your moral framework is very different from mine," which is really not that different from my saying "I think you are a bad person."
But extending human life? Maybe it will be bad. Maybe people will keep having children at the same rate and with no one dying anymore the whole planet is completely full of selfish people who don't care about others of the environment. Maybe only the rich will have access, block everyone else from getting it and control the world by simply out living anyone who is in their way.
But what comparable things do we actually see in history? In every country I'm aware of, once basic survival is taken mostly for granted people stop having kids as quickly and often as they can. In fact these days people often wait so long they depend on science to make birth even possible in their advanced age. And most people have, at most, 2 kids.
Imagine if we lived 10k years. Some people might say "well, lets have our kids right now so we can give up 18 years or so now and then have the rest to ourselves" but I suspect most people would say "what's the rush?". Some would even say "why invest 18+ years to extend my legacy to someone I can't control, can only marginally influence for a decade or two? In 10k years they're bound to solve death all-togher. I'll be my own legacy! And if, after 9,900 years they still haven't done it, I can always reproduce then". Imagine not wondering if there was a Troy, we could just ask the people who lived there. In society, we tend to be safe from some tragedy until most people who lived it are dead then we fall in the same trap again. What if they didn't die?
I say all that to say, it is not remotely obvious that extending human life is in the same category of behavior as dumping mercury in the river to make a few bucks so the consequences should not be the same or even similar.
My mining company example was much closer to the kinds of ideas that are actually pushed by people in the real world, quite frequently, more so than the article's anecdote about life-extension being criticized.
I'm saying that some people seem to pursue profits in such a way that they clearly have a moral framework that doesn't match mine, and arguing over the ethics of the idea with them is fruitless.
Did whoever it was at Volkswagen who had the bright idea to make cars have a system to detect when they were being tested, and change their emissions accordingly, really need someone to debate with about the ethics of the idea? I don't think that was a case of someone with a simple lack of knowledge of the ethical arguments.
These are the kinds of "innovations" people are coming up with in the real world, more-so than life-extension. People are going to create new apps that allow microloans with Bitcoin, with usurious rates, and market them to poor people. People are going to create dolls that listen to your kids and use the info to market toys to them. People are going to create devices to allow you to monitor your health, and sell the info to drug companies, or even to employers. There are going to be plenty of Bad Ideas where the people peddling them know the ethical arguments against them. At some point, we get to criticize the people coming up with these ideas as well.
"people working on this must be really unethical"
No individual has a moral obligation to debate ideas. However if debate is shut down with fallacious arguments it limits the ability for the idea to progress.
If this happens too often then progress will be slowed. That is the point of this post.
Extending life expectancy will increase human population and harm our environment and that harm to the environment will harm future generations so individuals working towards extending life expectancy are hurting future generations and that's unethical which makes them unethical. You can disagree with the argument but it's not fallacious.
Regardless ideas need to be discussed divorced from the people presenting them. Medical care is no more or less ethical because Hitler is making the argument.
Most people would require action which creates direct (not second order as in this example) harm of a large magnitude before applying the label to a person.
In any case labels mean different things to different people in emotionally charged subjects. Which is why they don't have a place in honest debate.
That doesn't make any sense. If I directly try to eradicate the Jews I'm immoral, if my actions just have a second or third order effect of eradicating the Jews then I'm not? Most people probably use the direct vs second order distinction when it's themselves who are doing something unethical via second order effects but that's just to save some cognitive dissonance. If I know my actions have second order effects of hurting lots of people and I still do it that's unethical.
>In any case labels mean different things to different people in emotionally charged subjects. Which is why they don't have a place in honest debate.
Reality isn't an honest debate, reality is realpolitik. People are likely to be emotionally charged when they're told that it's okay they're being hurt because it's just a second order effect after all. Learn to deal with that emotion and argue against it, not make posts on the internet opining for something which never existed.
This is a common moral principle; it is found in, for instance, the classical Christian doctrine on homicide, where directly willed killing is (leaving aside war and capital punishment) categorically prohibited, but killing (even when it is a certain result, or as nearly so as practically occurs) incidental to some act with a different end is not categorically prohibited, but judged according to the proportionality of the risked harm of the act with the harm it was avoiding. (Self-defense doctrine in American, and some other, law is ultimately strongly influenced by this principle, though it diverges a bit from it.)
Of course If your definition of unethical doesn't require intent to harm then this is a meaningless distinction. Another Reason why labels are unhelpful.
[citation needed]
>harm our environment
[citation needed]
>individuals working towards extending life expectancy are hurting future generations
[citation needed]
We don't know any of those things. You can debate it. Even passionately so, but it's wrong and dangerous to assume your unproven beliefs are facts and label people based on them.
Fifty years ago, you could say women are too dumb to program computers and still keep your job and be invited to dinner parties, and now you would be fired and shunned. Progress, right? The problem is, that power - the power to destroy careers of people who have done something bad - is not being wielded consistently or sparingly. We're aiming it at misogynists and homophobes, and also their defenders, and also people aren't defending them per se but kinda sound like they are if you only read the headline.
(But the point of the essay is not that Brendan Eich and James Damore shouldn't have been fired; it's that the "Brendan Eich and James Damore should be fired" position has caused a chilling effect on open dialogue.)
[1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/computer-programmi...
It's like an "EPROM programmer", which is a tool to make the hardware run the software.
But because you believe (perhaps even irrationally) that the idea could harm you give yourself, and anyone who thinks as you do, the right to damage people's reputation. History has shown this to be very dangerous behavior.
Reminds me of a Kill the Poor sketch by Mitchell and Webb.
Both technology and ethics can progress and regress across a huge range of concepts. Too much unexamined progress (of either tech or ethics) in one area can lead to terrible outcomes.
Being able to debate and have these conversations is essential to finding the balance.
I'm reading this as complaint about opinions condemning discussion of certain concepts, which is fair. But to ignore that other concepts face the same type of condemnation in China is... amazing.
ostracizing hypothetical talks is the problem here, not pursuing the unethical goal; just talking about what part of the goal makes it unethical is being shut down (according to the article)
This line of reasoning leads to censorship. It's the same line of reasoning used by every dictator and demagogue as well as China today. Why? The idea of democracy seems dangerous to a king.
Ideas are not dangerous. Ideas are never dangerous. Ideas acted upon might cause danger or harm, but an idea itself never does, never has, and never will cause harm directly.
Open debate of ideas, or the testing of opposing ideas to find the best among them, is necessary for progress... not only to find and establish new ideas, but to question widely held ideas today in the hopes of finding something better. To have open debate--to find the best ideas--you need to listen to ideas with which you might not agree, or which you might find--if acted upon--dangerous.
Some substances, tools, machines, etc are also inherently dangerous, and can't be made not to be.
Does this mean that we should never use a saw, light a fire, or discuss [insert a controversial topic here]?
Somehow people came up with protocols to work with inherently dangerous material things that lower the risk of a serious injury to acceptable bounds. I don't see why this would not apply to inherently dangerous ideas.
I'd hazard to say that for the last 2500 years quite a few devices were invented in this space, allowing to think much of the previously unthinkable without turning into ravaging monsters or becoming insane. I suspect that we could just continue using these devices (e.g. "freedom of speech", "critical thinking", separation of author's personality form their ideas, etc), instead of running in terror from "dangerous ideas" while swinging a banhammer.
You're missing the parent's point. An idea not being acted upon is not dangerous. The idea of splitting atoms is not dangerous and the atomic bomb is not dangerous: An atomic bomb getting built (the idea being acted upon) is dangerous.
Why are full disclosure policies recommended by security researchers? Why is open source healthy for security in general? Why is "security through obscurity" frowned upon? Because it is important to be able to discuss threats in order to better protect yourself from them.
Burying your head in the sand is just a shitty tactic for dealing with danger. Being able to discuss controversial ideas is extremely important, whether it's to better protect yourself from them (eg. extreme-right ideology) or to independently research facts hidden from you by people who don't have your best interests in mind (eg. north korean censorship).
And let's be honest here, from what I've seen of my (left leaning) twitter feed, Sam is being attacked extremely harshly for his "controversial" post. If people here think that the article is wrong, this is a terrible way to prove it so.
> Why are full disclosure policies recommended by security researchers?
This is still a somewhat controversial issue. Coordinated or "responsible" disclosure appears to be advocated by most security researchers. Meanwhile, the full-disclosure mailing list still exists, but the activity on the list is far lower than it once was.
> Why is open source healthy for security in general?
This is also controversial. Open source software has its fair share in-the-wild 0days. The "many eyes" theory only works if there actually are many friendly eyes, and so far, it seems like that is not true. Nobody does this crap for free.
> Why is "security through obscurity" frowned upon? Because it is important to be able to discuss threats in order to better protect yourself from them.
"Security through obscurity" does not come from the "information must be free" community. The phrase comes from the idea that you should assume that your adversary knows everything about the defenses you have set up.
A gun not being fired is not dangerous. A deadly virus that is contained is not dangerous. Ideas are seeds; action is impossible without them. All you're doing is pushing the responsibility one step further; instead of preventing the spread of ideas we have to prevent their effects. Now instead of dealing with the cause, we have to deal with the symptoms.
A meme like "immigrants are the source of all our problems" is a dangerous idea, because of the actions it can directly cause. Preventing its spread is just good mental hygiene.
Cults are another place where ideas are most certainly dangerous; but this time for the individual. So is any religion/ideology people are willing to die for.
Most ideas are not dangerous. Also, I might be completely wrong; if I lived in Galileo's time, I might be claiming heliocentricity is a dangerous idea.
So the idea of atoms splitting leads to atomic bombs, which - when used on people - are evil, but it also leads to nuclear power plants (and by extension, to fixing current energy problems in an environmentally-friendly way), it leads to new scanning methods in medicine, it leads to improvements in agriculture, etc., and it leads to many similarly powerful spin-off ideas. Hell, it could open up the Solar System for us if people weren't scared shitless of it. Sure we got MAD, and we pointed a lot of nukes at each other, but we survived, and so far we're much better off with the idea of splitting atoms than without it.
And genetic engineering, while opening us up for new kinds of dangers, also has so much more potential than nuclear physics. It has the theoretical capacity of solving most of the problems of humanity, from food supply and environmental damage, to sickness, decay and death. I'd say that the biggest moral hazard here is not pursuing it.
And ultimately, let's not forget that scientific ideas are either good or bad models of the world, and whatever practical danger that comes of it is because of people who go apeshit and exploit achievements of science and technology to further their insanity. So maybe let's focus on restricting the impact of dangerous groups of people. As for the ideas themselves, to quote Eugene T. Gendlin:
I can imagine a debate about that, but I can't see how it is appropriate to create a toxic environment for life extension advocates.
Apparently these researchers / advocates found the environment so toxic they were motivated to move. Perhaps they were over-reacting but it seems likely something is wrong.
And "move fast / break things" applied to human biology research is entirely an insertion of the commenter, not remotely an implication of Altman's piece.
Just like laws, ethics are there for a reason, and the social changes going on are happening for a reason.
Me: let's extend life
Someone else: If people live a lot longer it will be disastrous for the environment, so people working on this must be really unethical
Isn't this exactly how it's supposed to work? Why would Sam complain about an encounter like this?
The issue is instantly accusing someone of serious moral failings and painting them as a social pariah to be ostracized, the instant they put forward a locally unorthodox view.
One group is constantly expanding the area of topics that are taboo, the other believes that having taboos is a bad long term plan for society.
The point, I'm assuming, is that Sam doesn't want to pack up his stuff and leave, he wants the Bay to become more open.
Open a YC branch in another city. Sam and other partners can spend more time there and find out if it really is more conducive to new ideas.
If the other location(s) really does turn out to be more conducive, ramp it up and close down the Bay Area operation.
Maybe the Bay loses out, but other places and the wider world win.
So why are we treating "This person is morally bankrupt" as the sort of argument that is unworthy of polite debate? What fundamentally makes it a worse idea than any of the above?
I think there's an incompleteness problem here, yes - but I think that problem genuinely applies to the original argument. I'm just pointing it out. (And the gist of The Abolition of Man, which I mentioned in another comment, is essentially an incompleteness argument against the idea that you can have an ethical society evaluate its own ethics without a base moral code.)
(If you take Gödel seriously, then you can't take Gödel seriously, in which case he's correct and you must take Gödel seriously, &c.)
You can say "it's a bad idea to work on extending life", but following on from there to cast the person presenting the idea as unethical is doing more harm than good.
"I think black people are genetically inferior." ...followed by... "Why can't we have a free exchange of ideas?"
What if the ideas are unethical? There is a lot of that going around these days.
Life extension is one that comes up quite a bit, because the question doesn't seem to involve life extension for all, but life extension for a few who can afford it. Or, if it is being presented as a public good, the owner of the tech gets to become a new robber baron.
Maybe we need to decide if being ultra-wealthy is moral when people are in need and there is a system in place that generates people in need.
Downvotes away!
A: "I think black people are genetically inferior." B: "I think that's a bigoted thing to say that has historically caused a lot of harm to a lot of people." A: "Why can't we have a free exchange of ideas?"
Person B is engaging with that idea, it's just that they think it's completely indefensible. I have a hard time understanding how Person A thinks this conversation is supposed to go -- like are we supposed to entertain everything as if it were serious? If I go up to a physics professor and say "I think physics is completely inferior and wrong" what is she supposed to say?
And more importantly, people with decision-making power have shown a remarkable tendency to submit to the will of these capricious and volatile online mobs.
If I can just ignore Twitter (and I do) then Twitter mobs don't directly affect me. But if my management does things because of Twitter mobs (or anything else like that) we have a big problem.
And what do you think has a stronger chilling effect: the possibility of being fired or the possibility of being murdered?
Yeah because that hasn't happened, and if it did would be met with universal condemnation and be up against full weight of law enforcement and the legal system.
> And what do you think has a stronger chilling effect: the possibility of being fired or the possibility of being murdered?
If the possibility of being fired for ideas is highly likely while the possibility of being murdered for ideas is essentially zero, then the possibility of being fired has a stronger chilling effect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_crime#Victims_in_the_Unit...
Historical context alone does not make a direct threat. A direct threat is a direct threat, and right now being accused of racism (no matter the truth of it) is far more scary than racism itself.
True they haven't actually murdered anyone yet but The Twitter Mob (aka Antifa) has assaulted quite a few wrong-thinkers, or people they thought were wrong-thinkers, or people just walking to work minding their own business who may or may not have wrong-thunk in the past.
There are obviously genetic differences between races. That's how AncestryDNA can tell where you came from. So if there are obviously genetic differences, why can't I talk about the pros/cons of being black without being hateful? Some differences are going to be objectively better or worse, why I can't we talk about them without going into full blown racism? If we acknowledge the fact that there are physical differences due to genetics, maybe there are mental differences too (that's a real touchy one)?
Pro: some localized African phenotypes make for world-class athletes in certain sports- a single tribe in Kenya is vastly over-represented in marathon running.
Con: Africans are worse at living in the Arctic Circle compared to Nordic people. Their dark skin isn't suited to producing enough vitamin D with limited skin exposure.
Con: Black people with high blood pressure don't respond well to beta blockers and ACE inhibitors. Instead they need to be prescribed diuretics and calcium blockers, but these have worse side effects.
It seems like today if we mention that there are actually genetic differences between races it automatically gets shut down because they assume we're going to start making the conversation about hate instead of what we can do to fix some of the cons.
I guess what I mean is that even when folks are talking about these things in good-intentioned ways, they're not appreciating the weightiness of the ideas they're throwing around -- and depending on your priors, it's reasonable to worry about that.
Then argue the case for that position and tease out the ethical ramifications with your interlocutor. Bring a lot of evidence to back up that argument. Argue against the strongest form of the opposing idea(s), don't just create straw men to knock down or attack simple weak spots for easy points.
Unless the person advancing an unethical idea is intentionally trolling, take them seriously and seek to engage & explain your point. But it also requires truly understanding the other side (hence why you should be able to both articulate and argue against the strongest form of their argument).
Humanity has had some pretty awful ideas over its brief history. We have a mixed record when it comes to eradicating them by dialogue vs fighting. Usually we try dialogue for as long as we can. Too often, we wind up fighting when dialogue fails. Changing hearts/minds isn't an easy task. But the more we vilify, insult, ostracize, and otherwise verbally (or physically) attack those whose ideas we deplore, the more they frequently dig in on their position because they've tied their own identities to their beliefs. It's a funny condition with people that they often hold their identity as a believer in thing X far more strongly than they actually hold thing X.
[edit: wording & a little extra explication]
The best argument for life extension here would probably be to say that technologies like cell phones, which we now consider to be liberating technologies that almost everyone can afford -- even people living in poverty -- also started out as affordable only by the ultra-wealthy, and there's simply no way to arrive at a new tech without going through that stage.
If the tech were only useful to the ultra-wealthy once developed, that would be a flaw demanding criticism. But criticizing a technology for having a first stage of not being affordable before it becomes more affordable later seems to miss the mark.
Are you actually hearing that, or are you reading someone else's disingenuous over-simplified interpretation of what someone else said? Maybe just doing the incorrect reading yourself? Or are you reading an anonymous 4chan one-liner that could have been posted there by anyone for any reason?
> What if the ideas are unethical?
Then explain why. If you can't explain why something is unethical without resorting to intimidation of the people expressing those ideas, then maybe they are more ethical and your concept of righteousness is flawed or missing something important.
I disagree as to inequality. You just can't get equality; get over it. But life extension can still be problematic. E.g., life extension w/o extension of working years is a tremendous burden on everyone else, especially if such life extension is/becomes low-cost, and the only way out is to automate more and more so that we might provide for enormous elderly populations. On the other hand, we'll end up automating as much as possible, so it may be that this is a non-issue. Life extension w/ extension of working years would certainly be better. Another issue is whether we can correspondingly extend fertility years, otherwise we might risk negative population growth (which might or might not be a good thing anyways).
Workers can't afford to buy the products and businesses lose demand in a downward spiral.
That's what worked about the New Deal. If capitalist's want to continue getting to be capitalists, they have to sacrifice large amounts of profit to the common good. They still get to be wealthier than every one else, just by a smaller amount.
I really just consider life extension a wealthy vanity project. All of them contribute some money to defeating death, just in case...It really makes you think you should be in the business of promising immortality to wealthy people.
Propositional claims, in and of themselves, cannot be unethical. It's just a category error.
Now, if you're talking about the propositional claim, "black people are genetically inferior", well, as far as I know, it's contradicted by reams of available evidence and supported by little to none. You might as well claim the moon landings were faked, and, I suppose, many racists probably also do claim that one.
I do think there's a difference, so to speak, between heresy and quackery, and if we're treating racism as heresy, we've arrived to a very worrying place. The problem is, we treat ideas as heresy when we don't think we can actually provide evidence against them. That's why the whole notion originates with the unprovable realm of religion.
Claims like the supposed "inferiority" of some groups of people, on the other hand, were, at least as I was taught, quackery. They're just wrong, and all you have to do is point at the contradictory state of affairs in the real world.
A quack you ignore because you can prove they're wrong. A heretic you burn because you're secretly worried they're right.
Which makes me wonder how many secret racists we have around those pyres burning racists and sexists.
>Maybe we need to decide if being ultra-wealthy is moral when people are in need and there is a system in place that generates people in need.
This sorta idea? https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/06/its-basically-just-im...
Why would it be wrong to regard someone dedicating most of their time to actively accomplishing ("working on") an unethical thing as an unethical person? What else could "unethical person" possibly mean?
I haven't censored anyone or shut down any argument by saying this, and neither was I attempting to, so your point seems to be confused.
You haven't shut down any argument by saying "anyone who works on this is a bad person"? Seriously? I happen to think the exact opposite: life extension is probably one of the most noble things we could possibly be working on. Imagine if Einstein were still alive. We never learn from history, maybe because the people who lived it are all dead now. But in your mind, thinking this way probably makes me unethical (i.e. bad)! It's no problem when we're both two blobs of text on a forum, but I certainly wouldn't want you to be a boss or someone I was forced to interact with on a regular basis. And if enough people behave as radical as you are they will likely want to go beyond simply labelling people (e.g. see all the "hate crime" talk).
I don't see how I can stop extrapolating from "action X is unethical because the expected consequences look like bad ones" to "this person who dearly wants to bring about action X is behaving unethically". I simply don't see them as being meaningfully different statements.
In your second paragraph you've deviated from what I'm talking about (perhaps I was responding to the wrong person? EDIT: I didn't). "Person X is behaving unethically" is perfectly fine. "This person is an unethical person because they engage in action X" is where I draw the line (asuming action X is controversial and not very clearly evil like first degree murder) because it assigns a trait to someone by which they will be judged by their peers.
EDIT: Actually no:
>people dedicating their lives to it today are unethical people.
You said that. So your revised statement is moving the goal posts.
> I haven't shut down any argument by saying this
You're being naive if you think that saying this doesn't end any hope of a reasonable discussion.
One person's reasonable discussion is another person's interminable sea lion. http://wondermark.com/1k62/
Given your stance here, you're perfectly ok with the baker refusing to sell a wedding cake to a gay couple, right? Because the law was effectively the sea lion in your comic.
Everyone is going to have some threshold where they think 'an act that is this immoral means the person doing the action is also immoral', where actions that are below that threshold are treated as 'this action is unethical, but the person doing it could still be good'
Most people think someone who murders is a bad person (the act is immoral, and the person doing it is immoral). However, as the we move down the line, EVERYONE has to 'make the call' as to where the action becomes something that doesn't immediately make the person doing the action immoral. It isn't wrong that we have to make that call, it is the only way.
If people aren't allowed to state that 'behavior X makes person Y unethical', then how are we supposed to determine what is 'objectively unethical'.
To be sure, there is a lot of self-censorship -- the Overton window is real, and it's not advisable to say things fully outside the Overton window. Perhaps Altman is saying that the Overton window is closing on some opinions that he thinks we should be able to discuss openly, but because they're now outside the window he feels unsafe mentioning them. That would be a fair argument, though it'd be nice to make a list of things that can and cannot be said publicly, then we could argue whether we should widen the Overton window.
I happen think the Overton window is a good thing, even if I'm not always happy as to what falls inside and what falls outside of it. And, of course, the Overton window is a natural result of human nature, so it's hard to argue that there shouldn't be an Overton window. We can affect the Overton window, and sometimes we really should try to.
If person A is a white supremacist, and person B thinks ether exists, am I supposed to treat them equally because otherwise I would be "ostracizing" person A?
It should go like this: Me: let's extend life Someone else: If people live a lot longer it will be disastrous for the environment Me: Ok lets talk about that...
But you can't do that if now you're already unethical, etc.
No, he's asking not to be critisized for his ideas. And it's troubling to me that you think what you presented is a proper discourse but I guess that's where we are today. The "someone else" in your example is simple minded and potentially dangerous in large enough numbers. It is not at all a given that people living longer would be disasterous for the environment [1] and therefor, no, people working on this may not be unethical.
Your "someone else", whom you seem to think responds in a completely reasonable manner, makes a highly oppinionated statement and then judges people based on that oppinion. How far is it from "they must be unethical" to "we should boycott their means of feeding their family" or even "we should probably put them in jail before they do something bad".
[1] In fact I find the idea beyond ludicrious. If people live longer, they're likely to put off having children until much much later (people in the west already wait about as long as they physically can). Further, if people like the Koch brothers knew they would have to stay on this planet for 10k years maybe they wouldn't be so willing to destroy the next 50-100 years for a nice 5-10 now.
Well the jail comparison is really far away. The boycott one probably isn't so far but who cares? If people band together to boycott someone they view as unethical that doesn't seem wrong to me.
>No, he's asking not to be criticized for his ideas. And it's troubling to me that you think what you presented is a proper discourse but I guess that's where we are today. The "someone else" in your example is simple minded and potentially dangerous in large enough numbers.
Or we're dangerous in large numbers huh? How long until you start jailing us?!?! Anyways somehow I don't think people are calling just any idea unethical. Usually the idea that provokes this kind of response is an idea which involves hurting some one or some group. The idea that I can work towards something which hurts a lot of people and not be criticized for it? Come on man.
>It is not at all a given that people living longer would be disasterous for the environment [1] and therefor, no, people working on this may not be unethical.
Then make the argument. Where Sam cuts this conversation is totally arbitrary but it invokes the feeling that calling someone unethical ends the conversation. No, it's a claim. You don't think it's unethical then argue back. Maybe the someone else is convinced, maybe not, that's called a conversation.
People in the west, right now, are going to jail for expressing oppinions. Right now those oppinions are universally seen as bad (e.g. rascism) but does that justify going to jail?
>boycott one probably isn't so far but who cares? If people band together to boycott someone they view as unethical that doesn't seem wrong to me.
You don't find it bad that a bunch of people, based on their own non-objective oppinion get to ruin someones business and/or career? I feel like I'm talking to a Hitler youth right now. If the person is behaving objectively unethically, that's one thing but this is not at all settled.
>Or we're dangerous in large numbers huh?
Yes, when you become a voting block and start outlawing thought, as is already happening. It's distasteful thought at the moment, but this entire discussion shows that things that are potentially great can be targetted.
>Usually the idea that provokes this kind of response is an idea which involves hurting some one or some group.
Not in the case of life extention. The objections are based on people assuming the worst possible case there but the evidence I see suggests the opposite.
>The idea that I can work towards something which hurts a lot of people and not be criticized for it?
Which is not what we're talking about. Only in your own mind. But here is the issue again, as soon as you decide, on your own, that something is "harmful" for however you decide that, now you get to do whatever you want.
>Maybe the someone else is convinced, maybe not, that's called a conversation.
When is shut down when you start off by claiming anyone who believes what you saying is unethical. Do people not understand how to think anymore?
What is an 'objective opinion'?
> get to ruin someones business and/or career?
Are you saying that it's a bad idea for people to boycott businesses, or that boycotting businesses shouldn't be allowed? If it's the former, how do you distinguish between 'good' and 'bad' reasons to refrain from purchasing from a business? If it's the latter, what would that even mean? Should people be forced to buy from a particular company?
> I feel like I'm talking to a Hitler youth right now
If calling someone unethical is "shutting down a conversation", what is comparing someone to the Hitler youth?
> Which is not what we're talking about. Only in your own mind. But here is the issue again, as soon as you decide, on your own, that something is "harmful" for however you decide that, now you get to do whatever you want.
As opposed to (objectively?) determining if something is 'objectively unethical'?
Look, things like murder or pedophilia are unabigiously evil. So it's not out of line or particularly dangerous to say that a person who engages in one of those activities or supports/defends those who do is unethical and possibly even evil.
Extending the life of humans? That's not objectively evil. It has not been clearly demonstrated to be a negative on anything. In fact there are plenty of arguments that it could fix a lot of problems we have. So to come out and attach a label to someone who dares work on such a thing, before we even know what it would mean is dangerous. I feel like society, at least a larger portion of it, understood this in the past. Your creating taboos. Things we don't dare talk about or explore because we fear having our lives destroyed by twitter lync mobs and the like.
>Are you saying that it's a bad idea for people to boycott businesses, or that boycotting businesses shouldn't be allowed?
No one should force you to have to shop where you don't want to. But what you actually want to do is knowing as "mobbing" in Europe and it's generally illegal (at least in some countries). The issue is one of power. With twitter flash mobs and so on today, you can quickly destroy someone's life with this kind of behavior. Most people don't mind if what that person is doing is obviously unethical but this thread is applying this to things that are completely unsettled. No one knows what will happen if we extend life because it's never existed before.
>what is comparing someone to the Hitler youth?
I appologize. This was certainly well over the top but please understand the context of what I'm saying: Hitler was able to come to power, in part due to people behaving this way. If you said something critical of Hitler, certain people took offense. They felt Germany had been in a bad way for a long time and this man was doing something about it. Why would you question him unless you wanted to destory Germany? So they started supressing thought. If your paper was critical of the Fuhrer brown shirts would storm in, trash the place and assualt people. As we know, eventually there was no one left to say anything eventually.
I hope you can see the parallel here: people felt their view was sufficient to begin censorship. It wasn't made illegal to question Hitler, it didn't need to be. Society had effectively shut down such behavior on their own.
>As opposed to (objectively?) determining if something is 'objectively unethical'?
Live and let live. There are people out there with different views than you. Some of those views might be down right offensive if you really thought about it. But society has always been this way and until recently we still managed to avoid getting so polarized about it and trying to censor everyone.
But they're absolutely not. What's the one thing everyone says they would do if they could time travel? Kill Hitler. Those actions are unambiguously evil to you which makes them subjectively unethical.
>So it's not out of line or particularly dangerous to say that a person who engages in one of those activities or supports/defends those who do is unethical and possibly even evil.
>Extending the life of humans? That's not objectively evil. It has not been clearly demonstrated to be a negative on anything. In fact there are plenty of arguments that it could fix a lot of problems we have. So to come out and attach a label to someone who dares work on such a thing, before we even know what it would mean is dangerous. I feel like society, at least a larger portion of it, understood this in the past. Your creating taboos. Things we don't dare talk about or explore because we fear having our lives destroyed by twitter lynch mobs and the like.
Here I begin to question whether you know what objective and subjective really mean. You're basically using "objective" to mean anything that agrees with your subjective opinion. All ethics is subjective, there is no objective base on which to call someone unethical.
>No one should force you to have to shop where you don't want to. But what you actually want to do is knowing as "mobbing" in Europe and it's generally illegal (at least in some countries). The issue is one of power. With twitter flash mobs and so on today, you can quickly destroy someone's life with this kind of behavior. Most people don't mind if what that person is doing is obviously unethical but this thread is applying this to things that are completely unsettled. No one knows what will happen if we extend life because it's never existed before.
This has nothing to do with boycotting which is what we're talking about. Mobbing != a boycotting campaign and I think you know that. So put away the crazy comparisons and make a case for why people shouldn't be able to participate in a boycotting campaign.
>If you said something critical of Hitler, certain people took offense. They felt Germany had been in a bad way for a long time and this man was doing something about it. Why would you question him unless you wanted to destory Germany? So they started supressing thought. If your paper was critical of the Fuhrer brown shirts would storm in, trash the place and assualt people. As we know, eventually there was no one left to say anything eventually.
This is so stretched... You're making the jump from me exercising my individual freedom to call someone out to brown shirts. Come down to earth please.
>Live and let live. There are people out there with different views than you. Some of those views might be down right offensive if you really thought about it. But society has always been this way and until recently we still managed to avoid getting so polarized about it and trying to censor everyone.
Read a history book, polarization is not a new thing, censorship is not a new thing and people exercising their freedom of speech to decry unethical people and actions is not censorship, it's the opposite. What you want: removing my ability to boycott, removing my ability to speak freely is censorship though.
Fine. I was going for "things society generally accepts to be evil".
>there is no objective base on which to call someone unethical.
If you want to get this technical but I'm obviously using the words loosely here: I'm using "objective" as a short cut to mean "things that are outright proven or agreed on by practially everyone". So nearly everyone would be ok labelling a criminal as such but I don't think most people believe extending life to be evil. In fact, I'd consider such a position quite niche in general since everyone is for it at least to a limited extent (i.e. medicine).
>So put away the crazy comparisons and make a case for why people shouldn't be able to participate in a boycotting campaign.
I think social media has made the random person too powerful. Any random person can decide that someone else is "evil" based on literally anything they want and if they have some means of organizing a flash mob they can destroy that person's life. The victim doesn't even have the ability to sue who ever did it. So it's a major imbalance of power. Normally this kind of power to destory people's lives is limited to the justice system.
>So put away the crazy comparisons and make a case for why people shouldn't be able to participate in a boycotting campaign.
Well, labelling someone is defamation of character and it's not a protected right. You can be successfully sued for doing it (though not arrested afaik).
>censorship is not a new thing and people exercising their freedom of speech to decry unethical people and actions is not censorship
Social media has changed this. Decrying someone everyone knows to be unethical is not the issue here. Getting a flash mob to attack someone doing something that some consider unethical while others consider it some of the most important work humans will ever work on is an entirely different thing.
You never had the right to "speak freely" in the way you're trying to twist it. Defemation of character will potentially land you in civil trouble and no nonsense about "first amendment rights" will save you.
If by 'murder' you mean 'unjustified killing', then that's trivially true. If, on the other hand, you just mean 'killing', then it's far from obvious that killing is 'unambiguously evil' (self-defense comes to mind).
> I feel like society, at least a larger portion of it, understood this in the past. Your creating taboos. Things we don't dare talk about or explore because we fear having our lives destroyed by twitter lynch mobs and the like.
Harassment on social media is certainly an issue, but it's ridiculous to describe 'people criticizing me on the Internet for what I say' to 'censorship'.
> But what you actually want to do is knowing as "mobbing" in Europe and it's generally illegal (at least in some countries)
No, what I 'actually want to do' is allow people to chose which companies to purchase from, and to allow them to advocate for others doing the same. What exactly do you mean by 'mobbing'?
> If your paper was critical of the Fuhrer brown shirts would storm in, trash the place and assualt people
Are you really going to compare online speech to physical violence?
> Live and let live. There are people out there with different views than you. Some of those views might be down right offensive if you really thought about it.
How do you determine which of those are 'unambiguously evil'?
I don't, I was going for "things everyone, pretty much everywhere, accept as evil".
>but it's ridiculous to describe 'people criticizing me on the Internet for what I say' to 'censorship'.
First of all it's not "people criticizing me", it's "people applying a detramental label to me". And, no it's not (yet) government sanctioned censorship but I'm sure you realize it has an effect of shutting down the discussion.
>and to allow them to advocate for others doing the same. What exactly do you mean by 'mobbing'?
But in modern times with social media, I think we need to begin to realize that this is too much power for individuals to have. Anyone can simply decide that someone is bad for any reason and all and then advocate for others to get them fired, boycott their business, etc. To apply these kinds of consequences to people used to require going through the justice system.
>Are you really going to compare online speech to physical violence?
That's not what I was talking about here. I was describing a case where a group of people started deciding what kind of speach was ok and how that turned out. If there were brown shirts today they wouldn't engage in those tactics, they'd probably get lots of online accounts to brow beat and shut down any conversation they don't like. It would probably be even more effective than trying to go beat everyone into submission.
>How do you determine which of those are 'unambiguously evil'?
I go with well established societal consensus.
Scientists get paid like children, seriously most in medium size cities can’t afford a mortgage on the crappiest house in the cities they work in. I will not build products to extend the lives of NIMBYs that vote against high-density housing and public transportation all for a shit salary that can’t even get me a house!
I’m basically extending the lives of selfish people while simultaneously making it harder for me to ever buy a home. Die NIMBYs Die. I’d love to help you live longer if you’d let me own a home, but you’ve proven you’ll prevent that as long as it benefits you.
So, die NIMBYs die.
> "There can be 12 white, blue-eyed, blonde men in a room and they’re going to be diverse too because they’re going to bring a different life experience and life perspective to the conversation."
I find this to be a pretty mundane statement, and it's fairly spectacular to me that a 20 year veteran of the company was fired for saying it. I also think there's a lot of irony in the fact that Apple removed a black woman from a position of power just because she suggested that diversity as a concept should not be reduced completely to skin color and gender.
---
So the problem is not with the criticism of ideas. It's that folks are being fired or completely ostracized for ideas that deviate even slightly from established consensus.
2) Is that a problem of speech or a problem of the authoritarian nature of corporate power?
https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/16/apple-vp-of-diversity-and-...
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/11/16/apple-vp-of-diversity-l...
Please post a source documenting that person being fired.
Toxic environment motivating you to move to another town: Tends to create an unhealthy society.
Every few months living in the Bay reminds me of the importance of Paul Graham's http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html .
The constant pursuit of ideological purity in the Bay, the desire for diversity of skin tones and orientations, but not of ideas, taking offense as a viable way of establishing social hierarchies. It's all very tiring.
Well said, so well said that I'd like to tweet it and share it, but I won't, because of the exact problem it describes.
Sometimes I'm wondering how many people like me just pretend to blend in and go with the mainstream political correctness just because we don't have the guts//strength to fight this fight right now. My guess? a LOT from what I can see in my circle of friends over here.
The issue is that the next day, when you're back to your 9to5 at BigCo (or even a random startup in the area), you are not back among people who support authoritarianism and will shoot you down (possibly getting you fired) for not having the same viewpoint as they do.
Regarding Beijing: I think he may have been in something of an 'expat bubble'. Speaking with other entrepreneurs far from home, it's easy to focus on that. Try criticizing the political leadership, though.
Anyway, some people are building a future that others do not want to live in, so it is no wonder that some ideas are going to be received harshly. Nonetheless I understand that we cannot predict the future, so maybe, what people think will happen, won't. But people are fearful of a possible Pandora Box event.
I personally do not like those who are so excited, by the business or technology they are building, that they never stop and think about the consequences. I also do not like those who think, "my intentions for the use of this technology are wholesome, therefore I am not responsible for any harm that can be caused by others using this technology maliciously".
New ideas should be explored, but with caution.
As someone who has lived in Alabama, I assure you that long term economic uncertainty, lack of good public education, entrenched mistrust of the government, and familial loyalty signaling do more to shape opinions than a logically sound argument and upstanding ethical principles.
I'm not sure how writing about my opinion is the same as shutting down discourse
> By writing off the people in SF and Alabama as "zealots," you've closed the door to reasoned debate and to educating them on their miscues.
I have lived in both the South and SF for years and I'm posting based on my experience. Yes there are always exceptions. At the same time, I don't find it useful to ignore the culture or trends at large. Different places have specific, unique cultures.
> people occasionally take unjustifiable stances, but that doesn't make them unreasonable people.
I could be wrong, but the point of Sam's post is that more people in places like SF and Alabama don't just occasionaly take strong stances. It happens a lot more often and these stances are so entrenched that they're more akin to religious beliefs, where it's just hard to even entertain alternative view points without offending people. It shuts down discourse and thought.
In terms of having conversations, I'm not on a mission to change the status quo; I just want more freedom to think & speak especially when I'm trying to relax. Logically for me, it makes little sense to be in an environment where everyone will suffer due to the topic. I'm not saying that it's wrong or bad to 'educate people on their miscues'. I'm just saying that it's not for me.
I think you'd end up with a lot more of one than the other. Personally I don't think there is a pressing need to encourage people's homophobia in order to gain some speculative amount of "innovative thinking", or whatever.
The latter is true of the secular right as well. Just substitute "evolution" and "history" for God and mystical revelation. The secular right believes that human inborn characteristics are immutable and culture is a product of evolutionary processes that cannot or should not be rationally understood or modified. All the Neo-racists and HBD types are basically evolutionary-historical conservatives or reactionaries who see inequality as a revealed result of a process that is beyond human understanding.
It's getting to the point that it is not even possible for the two sides to communicate because they do not agree on language, logic, or basic rules of discourse. The left and the right are cognitively inhabiting different universes.
Humans subjectively experience extreme cognitive dissonance as actual discomfort. I think this explains the intolerance. People are emotionally reacting to the level of cognitive dissonance this divide generates as if ideas from the opposing side are physical attacks. I agree that the right is no different. Go into one of their bubbles and voice liberal ideas and you'll get the same reaction Milo gets on a Berkeley college campus.
What is scientific or empirical about safe spaces and identity politics?
I would not be surprised to see the United States physically fragment and balkanize in the next 10-20 years. I get the sense that some on the hard-right and possibly also the hard-left have that as a goal.
When the list started it was fairly evenly distributed between right and left leaning speakers being disinvited. Now it's much more commonly right leaning speakers.
1. Several speakers are overrepresented (I see a bunch of Milo invitations), which could well just reflect their aggressiveness at getting themselves invited / the strength of their own PR team. If one political side wants to make persecution their thing, they'll show up more commonly in that database.
2. In recent years, we've had a bunch of new forums for dissemination of ideas, which is a good thing. Twitter didn't exist in 2002. YouTube didn't exist in 2002. Podcasts didn't exist in 2002. Smartphones in people's pockets didn't exist in 2002. Today, anyone who wants to know what any of these speakers' opinions are can find out, easily, what they are, without needing them invited to campus. (And anyone who doesn't will just skip the talk anyway.)
3. In Milo's case specifically, he wanted to out a bunch of undocumented students on-stage. That I think doesn't fit the profile of political views being censored. (I agree that preventing him from speaking technically counts as censorship, but it's a very different discussion.)
4. Fundamentally, this list and the original article here both suffer from a blind belief in the "Great Man" theory. If person X doesn't express an opinion, or publicize their idea, or something, chances are absurdly high that someone else will have the same opinion or idea, too. If Newton were imprisoned for his alchemy, however unjust that might have been for Newton as a person, Leibniz would still have invented calculus. What I'd like to see is if certain types of ideas are being censored, not whether certain individuals who happen to hold those ideas are being censored.
And yes, there are new forums for dissemination of ideas, but that doesn't mean they are equally open to all ideas. Some things you can't write without being shouted down. This is distinct from criticism of the idea. These are personal attacks on the person who voiced the idea in the first place.
I don't understand your last point. There are absolutely things you can't talk about freely at universities, for example: immigration, gender differences in personality, variations in IQ across races, etc. I don't see how you can take an objective look at university culture and say anything otherwise.
Milo is perhaps the best example here: Milo comes to campuses to cause a spectacle, not to spread new ideas. Sure, he's talking about some ideas. But that's not his primary motivation.
Milo is not an academic. Would he be happy with letting some academic go in his stead and present his same ideas in the form of an academic lecture?
> There are absolutely things you can't talk about freely at universities, for example: immigration, gender differences in personality, variations in IQ across races, etc.
Do you have any evidence for this?
(Note that you can't talk about things like variations in IQ across races as if they existed more strongly than they actually do or mean something they don't, and expect to be taken seriously. But that's not universities censoring dissident politics, that's universities expecting basic scientific literacy instead of people pushing a political agenda in the guise of science. The concept of IQ is an idea that came from the academy and has been refined by the academy; using an old understanding of IQ and what it means is essentially an abandonment of science.)
Specifically, this evidence could be explained by an increasing rate of conservatism on campuses. The rate of disinvitation could be the same, it's just that there's a greater number of conservative speaker invitations going out from a greater number of conservative students. And right leaning speakers are disproportionately invited by right-leaning student organizations.
Attempts to disinvite more right leaning speakers in 2017: 24
At least on YouTube it does seems like there are more attempts to prevent conservative ideas from being voiced on campuses by rowdy demonstrations that interrupt speakers.
https://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/free-speech-th...
plenty of examples by the side arguing for the motion.
http://quillette.com/2017/12/11/problematic-poor-taste/
If the US Academic reaction to such a straight forward request was so hostile, then I can imagine many people feeling unable to voice actually difficult opinions
"Unfortunate." "Encourage the conference's organizers to change its name."
I'm a researcher. I'm also unusually thin-skinned. Compared to the naked brutality that is the peer review process, that's nothing.
Is your concern that people shouldn't be wasting their time arguing about trivia? I'm afraid academia's definitely guilty of that. Or that you disagree with the complaint? Perfectly fair, but then so did lots of the other people on the list. Or is it something else? I'm finding it hard to parse.
This does not seem to match the reality at university campuses - only the caricature by people who find it politically expedient to be seen as persecuted.
https://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/free-speech-th...
I think debaters did a good job of presenting evidence for their case. Why not give it a chance instead of saying its "staw poll", isn't any poll "straw poll" by that account?
Also I never said it evidence of anything. What is an example of "evidence" in this particular case for you?
(And as a side point, no to the straw poll question - there are certain statistical guarantees on the representativeness of polls as long as they're drawn from a random sample of the public, with debates about how far you can deviate from a random sample and still have results that are useful. Self-selected polls, on the other hand, pretty much mean nothing.)
Isn't our democracy built upon "self selected polling" , people who chose to go excesrice their right to vote. Its all meaningless?
Previously you said "any self selected polling is meaningless"
Now you are saying "Self selected polling is meaningful when people who didn't self select had the opportunity to do so" .
Ok. So by that definition the poll I linked, everyone had the opportunity to participate in the debate, theoretically. What makes it meaningless ?
PS: Fixing democracy ect is not interesting to me in this context, I want to focus your claim self-selected = meaningless.
If you want to know more, I recipient looking up the 1936 Literary Digest poll for US President, one of the most famous screwups caused by non-random sampling: https://www.math.upenn.edu/~deturck/m170/wk4/lecture/case1.h...
Perhaps explain how you are defining * opportunity to participate* .
(And yes, governments where there are ad-hoc rationalizations for who gets to vote or where the procedures aren't publicly announced are in fact illegitmate and widely recognized as such.)
"Undecided" went from 8% to 24% for the motion.
Social scientist Charles Murray was censored then physically assaulted at Middlebury because he wrote a book about the correlation between intelligence and success [https://youtu.be/a6EASuhefeI?t=19m25s]
Biology professor Bret Weinstein at Evergreen State College had himself and his family physically threatened because he refused to participate in a protest that asked all white people to leave campus for a day [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq4Y87idawk]
A professor at Diablo Valley College smashed a dude with a bike lock just because he was on the different side of the political spectrum as he was. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug34vogS3Fw]
Everything that Jordan Peterson had to go through at University of Toronto because he publicly opposed a draconian bill to forces professors to use specific pronouns when referring to students [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsG71YrB_Nw]
Lindsay Shepard at Laurier University had to face a star chamber from a 'diversity committee' because she showed a video clip of Jordan Peterson in class [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpFUvfAvKs4&t=1m18s]
And then there were the psychos that literally lit University of Berkeley on fire when Milo Yiannopoulos went to give a talk there [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pi_vX0tknJM&t=4m45s]
etc...
etc...
However, commencement speeches do not have a high reputation for academic rigor to start with, so I think inviting an entertainer to speak at one is sort of different from inviting a speaker with some specific experience (either academic, or political/industrial/etc.) to give a lecture.
All that said, keep that Yiannopoulos wanted to read out the names of students without legal immigration status on stage at Berkeley. That's the sort of thing I mean by "antics." I don't think Stephen Colbert does anything of the sort. His partisanship and his satirical character mean that I have trouble saying that anything of value will be lost if he stops being invited to speak at college campuses, but he seems qualitatively different from Yiannopoulos.
I don't think this was ever true, and your whole stance on this hinges on it.
When I entered university in 1989, there was an extremely controversial professor at my school [1]. There was outrage accompanied with generally peaceful protests.
How it was handled at my school back then was that they organized a live TV debate with someone to argue the side against the professor's position.
In other words, we the students (and the public for that matter) were treated like adults and we were expected to be able to hear and process ideas we may not agree with without overreacting or having our heads explode. IIRC, the whole notion of going to university, among other things, was to further develop our critical thinking skills. That seems to be hard to do in an echo chamber.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Philippe_Rushton
This, in fact, happens as the move to criminalize speech against Israel on campuses and eslwhere shows.
Liberalism is rooted in liberty and freedom, and yet here we are in 2017 discussing how non-"liberal" ideas cannot be freely expressed in the most "liberal" cities.
I say we stop calling these people liberal, because they're anything but.
Come to New York, we have 20 million or so people who don't give a fuck about you and what you do all day as long as you don't clog up the subway stairs. It's quite lovely.
- An Irish tourist I met in a bar.
NYC has plenty of tech talent to work with. Altman is not staying in SV because he can't afford to move. He's staying in the area because he actually prefers working with the people he's complaining about.
Do you actually genuinely believe these absolutist statements, or you make them just coz they make for good sound bites?
Of course, this could all be cleared up if you actually explained what you thought was so horrible about the original comment. So far you've called it "absolutist" and "clearly inflammatory" but not actually explained why you think so. Obviously, at least one person disagrees, so perhaps backing up your statements with your reasoning would help.
1. Ability to hire elite programmers that are a few percent better than those in NYC. You'll pay for that quality though. Plus the cannon fodder programmers that you'll hire if you get big cost more in SV for the same quality as NYC.
2. VC money that is a bit easier to get for tech startups compared to NYC.
Your business is not robust if it would be successful if you hired a 99th percentile programmer and had $5mm in investment in SV, but it would fail with a 95th percentile programmer and had $3mm in investment in NYC. People that don't think they could make their idea work in NYC aren't confident in their idea and just playing entrepreneur.
"Can we do it without moving to where you are? Sorry, no. We tried this once, and by Demo Day that startup was way behind the rest. What we do, we have to do in person. We would not be doing a startup a favor by not making them come to YC events in person."
Their stated reason is more about dealing with people face to face, and less about SV. It also sounds like they only tried it once, which probably isn't a big enough sample size considering that most startups aren't successful in the first place. It sounds like they never gave places other than SV a fair shake.
It’s an elegant way to avoid dominant cliques, tribalism, etc. of which I already had my fill. No one can truly own or define the Culture or the Right Way to live in New York, it’s simply too big and too diverse for that.
Been there, done that. Never again.
I'm not going to bother having to get a lawyer to fix something that shouldn't be a problem in the first place. In California it isn't a problem. I'm firmly convinced that this fact is one of the reasons why Silicon Valley is in California and not New York.
IANAL, but declining to hire a lawyer out of principle because you think that certain aspects of a given state's employment law "shouldn't be a problem in the first place" is really dumb.
As for hiring a lawyer, most of the people who really need to know this don't know up front that they should negotiate such terms. And most employees, including me, don't really want to start off a new job haggling over the contract. It really doesn't make a good first impression.
Important to note that this is not true. If you, say, have a side project and want to ensure that it remains your property after you join the company, and that you can keep working on it and keep having it belong exclusively to you, having a lawyer review the draft contract a potential employer sends with your offer is not going to piss off anyone you would ever want to work for.
Companies that hire quality engineers are used to potential employees having lawyers, and do not get ruffled when those lawyers do their jobs. If they do, it's a major red flag.
But I am certain that it has done a lot to help maintain our startup culture.
...except maybe tacitly agreeing with people who posited that talking about something was a bad thing, because, you know, in this particular case freedom of speech is trumped by more important considerations.
This is, of course, not limited to liberals, or any other political affiliation.
Just keep in mind that when Valley "thought leaders" complain about the lack of freedom to discuss ideas, those are the kinds of ideas they're talking about.
It's been 23 years since The Bell Curve and I am still waiting for someone who makes this statement and seems to have a solid grasp on the problem of general IQ scores across wildly different populations. I think there's a reason I never see it . . .
Wait, but why not? Isn't this the crux issue of our time? The Russians and the RNC have spouted fake propaganda so loudly that ~40% of the US believe falsehoods already. And the main reason they believe things that aren't true is because they are said 1000x on the internet every day.
I'm not saying we should restrict free speech or anything like that. No way. But how can you ignore the problems of the world? Many people are not 'reasonable' and they do believe false things. That the do so matters, because our collective society is interconnected.
It doesn't matter if no "reasonable people" believe a false or bad statement is true. It matters that they believe it because they have and affect on everything. We all do.
Now we have President Trump because so many educated people thought that "no reasonable person" would vote for him. But here we are.
The world, the whole world, has a problem with fake information on the internet right now. The answer is not "oh well, too bad" and the answer is not "I'm not worried".
For instance, both "radical life extension is worth working on" and "gay people are evil" are ideas that certain people consider toxic to society - not just ideas they disagree with, but ideas that, if they are considered and debated and experimented with, will result in harm even if they're defeated in the long term. (And yes, the responses to these ideas will be themselves "toxic;" you get rid of toxins by killing them.) What distinguishes one from the other?
The article is clearly advocating for us not just to tolerate "radical life extension is worth working on," but to support an environment where an advocate of that idea can draw other people to that cause without public opposition and can publicly espouse that cause without social judgment. Someone who believes this should be able to be viewed as a great thinker, as someone doing worthwhile research, as someone who's not a "heretic".
But then the article turns around and says, "I am not worried that letting some people on the internet say things like 'gay people are evil' is going to convince any reasonable people that such a statement is true." Why? Plenty of people both on the internet and off say that and do convince people of it. (I was one of the people convinced by this; if you haven't had the experience of growing up in an environment which isn't a cult by any means but enforces religious-cultural orthodoxy, I do strongly recommend talking to such people about how that environment operates and propagates its beliefs if you're going to have opinions about "heresy".) Why should we believe that nobody will be convinced by "gay people are evil" but people will be convinced by "radical life extension is worth working on"?
And what about other ideas like "gay people aren't evil, we love gay people, but they're demon-possessed and conversion therapy will successfully fix them towards heterosexuality, which has been the norm throughout all of human society?" That idea is definitely going to get you a toxic response in SF culture. Should it not?
If we're simply going to judge ideas by whether other people are likely to be convinced by the ideas, and nothing else, we're not going to drive society in a productive direction. We have to be willing to say that certain things are good and certain things are bad. C. S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man is somewhat relevant here (and is a worthwhile read) - either we have our standards, our things we value, or we will let ourselves be ruled by whatever ideas seem defensible, and those ideas will start controlling how we are open to new ideas. Of course this is not to say that we have no problem with discourse, that the way that we approach "this idea is bad actually" or "this idea is good actually" is not broken. But that's very different from saying that all such judgments should be banished.
(Preemptive response: I do realize that the author is gay, and I don't think that invalidates this comment.)
It was also odd to see Altman use China as the bastion of freedom, a place with widespread internet censorship and where things like democracy are considered heretic.
Long unedited podcasts are turning out to be the best platform, with people like Sam Harris, Dan Carlin, and even Joe Rogan becoming the most important public intellectuals alive today. All three have financial and editorial independence. They reach millions of people on a weekly basis. Carlin is in Oregon, from Los Angeles, where Rogan and Harris are.
Sam Altman could obviously run a podcast where he discussed his controversial ideas. Many like minded people would rally around him. Some idiots would call him a monster. It would be great.
If you have FU money and you're complaining about PC culture, you're being unnecessarily cowardly. Start a podcast and help change things.