Haidt is not the world's most careful data analyst [0], so a determined skeptic would probably not find this persuasive. But I think he's been directionally correct about all his major points in the past decade:
* Cancel culture is not compatible with democratic norms [1]
* Social media is making many people a little worse off and it makes some people a lot worse off
* having our phones on us all the time is bad for just about everything that requires sustained attention [2], including flirting and dating [3]
* Technology won't solve this problem. AI will make things worse [4]. If TikTok gets banned and some slightly more benevolent version takes it place, we're still headed in the wrong direction. What we need is culture change, which Haidt is trying his darndest at. Hats off to him.
> Cancel culture is not compatible with democratic norms
This one is VERY morally and emotionally weighty, and I think you have to do quite a bit of work to ACTUALLY understand what is going on here, but I agree.
In the middle of a fight, no one wants to look reasonable. In a fight, reasonable looks weak. In a fight, no one wants democracy, we just want to win.
Unfortunately that fight mindset also shuts down the whole thinking part of the the brain; which is how you get people who gleefully vote for a king, because they feel like the king is their champion in the fight.
It's also especially vulnerable to "motte and bailey" arguments. Harassing people over competing fandoms is out of order. However, a lot of #metoo gets filed under "cancel culture" when often there is no other working means of getting redress for sexual harassment or assault other than going public, and hoping the perpetrator gets worse backlash than the victim.
> when often there is no other working means of getting redress for sexual harassment or assault other than going public, and hoping the perpetrator gets worse backlash than the victim.
This is by definition cancel culture. Unfortunately some bad actors will abuse this as a way to hurt someone. I've seen this happen twice, and fear of this happening is enough for good men to be unnecessarily distant towards women. That said, people getting away with sexual assault seems to be significantly more common.
i mean, 1 in 3 women have a chance of experiencing sexual violence in the US. it sucks that some men now fear interacting with women because of n=2 false accusations, but a grassroots movement was literally created because women aren't getting justice for the egregious crimes which are committed against them at alarmingly high rates (and who themselves are ostracized and whose careers are destroyed for just reporting those crimes).
Men are more often victims of violence in general than women by far yet sexual violence if given precedence because society likes to be sexist and group all men together. It doesn't matter if I'm a male victim of crime because most criminals are men and that makes me somehow complicit.
As a man who will never rape a woman, I care a little about the possibility of a random stranger having a small possibility of being raped, but I care much more about myself getting potentially unjustly accused of sexual abuse and suffering consequences. If engaging in any interaction with a woman will get me an acquaintance at best and ruin my career at worst, then this sounds like a very bad deal.
Eh, that's a difficult one. When I was a kid I'd often be friends with girls, I usually had more friends who were girls than boys. Now as an adult I have more friends who are men than friends who are women, and I have to say, I don't see why I'd expand on the latter, even ignoring all of what I wrote above. Dealing with a person of the opposite sex is just so much more demanding. I'd really need a woman to give me something unique if I were to be friends with her. When I started hanging out with dudes, it surprised me how easy it is. I pretty much put my brain on autopilot mode, whereas with a woman I need to actively engage my brain for successful communication. This is particularly important considering the fact that I suffer from chronic exhaustion.
This is a ridiculous take. Defamation suits still exist. Not interacting with colleagues of a different gender, on the other hand, will get you disciplined and eventually fired. Just don't be a creep like Joel Kaplan, allegedly.
It's precisely the risk/reward calculation that is wrong. If you get accused of doing something you didn't do, you can file a defamation lawsuit. If you stop interacting with people, you will get fired.
> If you get accused of doing something you didn't do, you can file a defamation lawsuit.
Are you aware of anyone who has successfully done this and maintained their standing in life?
The example that comes to mind for me is Steven Galloway, a UBC Professor who was accused of sexual assault in 2015 and filed a defamation lawsuit about it in 2018. That lawsuit has spent the last 7 years making its way through the courts; after many attempts to have it dismissed, it will finally proceed to trial. Meanwhile Galloway's career basically ended: he went from being a celebrated and award-winning author and professor to doing manual labor like cleaning swimming pools. His publisher cancelled a three-book contract in 2018.
Even if the defamation lawsuit succeeds, how will he ever be made whole? He will never get the last 10 years of his life back.
His case wasn’t just sexual assault, and he admitted having an affair with a student which even if it’s not a criminal offense is a career-limiting move at many universities. I think he deserves his day in court but it sounds like there’s more to it than a single accusation.
As I understand it, all of the allegations were investigated by Madame Justice Boyd who found that none of them were substantiated except for the affair, which I agree is far from advisable, but on its own seems unlikely to have ended his career so completely. There is no way to go back to 2015 and find out what would have happened if the affair had been the only accusation.
Galloway, by his own admission, did far more than interact with a woman at work. That's not what we're discussing here. Getting in bed with somebody requires far more vetting than simply interacting with them, and this has always been the case.
Fair point. But I think it does illustrate that defamation lawsuits are unlikely to be an effective defense in the (admittedly unlikely) case that you are falsely accused of something.
I'd say this is a naive take, it probably happens but I've never heard of someone getting a defamation lawsuit through in Sweden. And even if you end up being right and winning all bridges will be burned and some excuse to keep you fucked will be made.
It's a losers game, and you don't have to play. Which doesn't necessarily mean "don't interact with women" but maybe "keep it to the bare minimum, don't be alone and cover your ass"
Considering how fucked up things are everywhere on so many levels I think any way to get through the day with a positive end is a great way to do it
However cancel culture is 100% going to evolve once you create an internet, and then leave things to the market to solve.
Cancel culture is ... i guess the best democracy in a broken system. Its people realizing the lever of power that is left is the levers as a consumer. So by choosing what they consume, they are sending signals to the system of society.
For some reason, I am not bugged by cancel culture, for me its an inevitability. As is the natural irritation and opposition which would appear to it. I suppose, all of it, cancel, counter cancel, is just the invisible hand at work?
One huge problem with cancel culture is how mercurial it is. So we get to witness spectacles like an attempt to cancel Nike for selling products in Israel[1] or for hiring Colin Kaepernick[2] instead of for their ongoing record of labor abuses. And, in general, "cancelling" often seems to focus on topical, hot-button issues instead of deeper-rooted problems.
The whole phenomenon is ripe for manipulation and viral marketing - leveraging short-term outrage to build brand identity[3]. One could argue it's the commodification and commercialization of "real" protest. It's less democracy and more idiocracy.
I agree people are reaching for the limited power available to them, but the objections to cancel culture aren't usually around voluntary consensual boycotts but rather the use of "social force". Destruction of reputation, demands for firing, deplatforming, doxxing, swatting, etc... the methods of harming a person over the internet.
>Destruction of reputation, demands for firing, deplatforming, doxxing, swatting, etc
That last sentence comes across as disingenuous; you've mixed in things which are crimes, dont by individuals with things that are ACTUAL parts of boycotts.
Destruction of reputation is the reason why demands for firing appear, as do deplatforming.
Doxxing and swatting are different beast, both compared to the reputational losses and work losses, and when compared to each other (dox vs swat).
> Destruction of reputation is the reason why demands for firing appear, as do deplatforming.
No it isn't, if you say something bad to a random person you just hurt your reputation with that person a little bit. But if that person now starts to organize a hate campaign against you over what you said, that is what we call cancel culture and that is what destroyed your reputation, your reputation was fine until they started that hate campaign.
For example, lets say you tell a coworker you vote republican, that coworker then posts a mail to to everyone "Hey this guys voted for republicans, can we have a sexist racist around here? We must fire him!", who destroyed your reputation? You or them?
Such hate campaigns only creates conflict, it doesn't make people change it just creates fear and resentment that leads to electing people like Trump.
How do you think people in smaller communities work? Why do you think the town gossip is well known, and how social boycotts worked before?
Analogy: I’m making the point that if you leave these logs in the river, eventually they will hit this point, and they will create a log jam.
You can argue that this is or is not the definition of log jam, which is an issue of definitions.
Cancel culture is how the average person was told for decades to wield power. Capitalism would fix it. Finally, people started doing precisely that, and that was the start of cancel culture.
In your first example, isn’t this how people get into trouble in small communities, or villages? You were immune to this in bigger cities because you didnt have smaller communities.
Your second example is entirely dependent on people not liking Republicans. If people are OK with republicans that email dies in shame and embarrassment. If you are a repub, in a place where people are highly antagonistic to republicans, then your reputation is already at risk!
The other person broke your trust, you lost your anonymity. Same if you changed switched the party names.
> Such hate campaigns only creates conflict, i
The conflict is already there man. Republican strategy since the 60s has been high partisanship, and a full on media and information war. It’s been take no prisoners for a long time. Even if you tried to make peace, and have reasoned discussion, the deeper information tides wash out those efforts with the evening news. This is publicly stated by repub strategists. Hell Bannon talked about flooding the zone in the past few months!
The left is CATCHING UP to the right, and still has a way to go before it can match the alt right pound for pound in political power.
For some reason, I am not bugged by cancel culture
To someone whose formative years came before the internet, cancel culture looks a lot like plain old boring boycotts? So there would be a lot of confusion as to why it's so big a deal?
I tend to agree. You need cancel culture. You need people who oppose cancel culture. You need it all. If you don't have any given one of these kinds of civil freedoms, then you actually don't have a democracy.
So a lot of it is just branding. You have to call it cancel culture, because if you were to try and ban the organizing of boycotts, people would laugh at you. It's plainly obvious that you need the freedom to boycott and you need the freedom to oppose the boycott to have a democracy.
Haidt's argument in this regard is non-sensical in that boycotts are, pretty much, a democratic norm in and of themselves.
Yes, this is how social boycotts worked. They aren’t nice. Ostracized is an OLD Greek Civ word. Shunning is another.
I am beginning to suspect people are unaware of how messy any form of mass activism ends up being. Mass being the keyword here.
The point being made was about the inevitability of this form of collective action.
Cancel culture is fundamentally about the little guy exerting collective power, based on the older rhetoric limiting people to consumers. That bell has been rung.
Never said that the little guy is going to get it right, or that it’s easy to wield this power.
>Never said that the little guy is going to get it right, or that it’s easy to wield this power.
It's worse than that. For instance in the UK the Establishment itself is dominated by people who regard themselves as victims in one way or another. As victims they are the de facto little guys and act with impunity.
I felt you could see this be figured out in real time, if you looked at how people spoke online. You had many phases online, like the Libertarian phase, and people constantly talking about capitalism being great, and markets being great etc. Then you had 2008, and people started learning about things worked, and you started seeing people and different age brackets coming to terms with their reality and agency.
The agency that had previously been defined in market terms! So with everything from anonymous to flash mobs, people put two and two together and figured they could boycott things that they disagreed with.
The only time this became an issue is when it started exerting ACTUAL social force. At that point people had to have the difficult conversation of what people were mad about, AND the new manner in which people were exerting force.
As is inevitable with any use of force, it gets enmeshed with other people who weild force and power and it becomes just another thing that is seen as oppresive and broken.
But its essentially effective (or ineffective) social boycotting.
This seems highly revisionist. Cancel culture isn't just about boycotting or being selective about what one consumes. It's not even about holding people accountable.
It's about destroying people and tearing them down in order to make examples of them. It results in antagonists showing up at people's homes, writing letters to employers, creating petitions, attacking people in the nastiest ways possible with out engaging with ideas or arguments.
It's the disproportionate and graceless reactions that distinguish cancel culture from past methods of accountability.
What do you think happens when people get boycotted in villages or “back in the day”? Collections of people get MANY things wrong. Just see relationship advice vs AITAH vs CMV.
Are people used to some benign, harmless, ineffective version of social boycotts? Grace? The Scarlet letter describes what society did to adulterers.
see what happened in 2008 when large groups got together, or the police protests or any number of movements. They start when there is something easy and clear to work with, and soon smash into (and past) nuances.
I agree with the parent poster, these are modern day boycotts, influenced by the malaise of being seen primarily as consumers, and super charged by the emotional polarization of the internet.
Oh, give me a break with all the whining about cancel culture!
Cancel culture used to be called social exclusion/ostracism, and it has been how people police themselves against undesirable people in pre-internet communities where most everybody knew everybody. If you were considered an ass, eventually the only person listening to you was you.
Not saying this as a value judgement, just that this practice is ancient.
While you have a right of free speech, the rest of us have the right not to listen to you, nor to be forced to listen to you, nor to interact with you.
> While you have a right of free speech, the rest of us have the right not to listen to you, nor to be forced to listen to you, nor to interact with you.
This conception of "cancelling" has little relation to how it actually happens, where the offending messages are often spread as far as possible first. If the goal is not to listen to someone, muting/blocking is almost always an option. Cancelling is trying to convince everyone else to shun the person as well often with misleading or reductive narratives about what they said/did and use of guilt by association.
My favourite example is Contrapoints getting cancelled for featuring a short VoiceOver by a controversial trans person[1] in a video.
It reminds me of Plato's Apology. It is the dialogue where Socrates is on trial for corrupting the youth. The end result is the citizens of Athens convict him and his options are to drink hemlock poison or ostracization. He chooses death.
I think it is worth deeply pondering why a man as wise as Socrates would choose death over ostracization.
> It reminds me of Plato's Apology. It is the dialogue where Socrates is on trial for corrupting the youth.
Plato's Apology was not meant to be a wholly accurate account [1]. It's a partially fictional, philosophical account meant to demonstrate Socrates' intended message. But I digress.
> The end result is the citizens of Athens convict him and his options are to drink hemlock poison or ostracization.
My understanding is that Socrates chose death where he had the option of requesting legal exile, which in the context of "cancel culture" is not nearly the same as social ostracization.
As for why Socrates would choose death, a superficial search gave me possible explanations (e.g. "death is not so bad" but more formal [2] or moral integrity toward family/friends [3]) that didn't center on the personal suffering or cruelty of exile or ostracization. I would add "moral integrity toward sticking to the truth" as another possible explanation (though I'm not entirely sympathetic to choosing suicide for any of these explanations).
The point of Plato's dialogues (whether fictional, based on a real-story or otherwise) is to encourage thought and not to forward a conclusion with the aim to stop thought. I encourage people not to outsource their own thought to Wikipedia (or other sources).
As the comment I was responding to suggested, ostracization is ancient. Ancient enough that it is the topic of one of the most famous dialogues by one of the most famous philosophers.
I will add that the Apology is quite short and freely available online. It is worth the quick read, Then, as I suggested, I encourage people to deeply think about why Socrates chose death (rather than accept quick answers in HN comments).
Can you please point me to the text where Socrates chooses death over exhile?
I have read Apology of Socrates in its entirety[0] and a few text analysis and I can find no evidence of this. It seems to me that Socrates suggested a fine[1], and it was his prosecuters which argued for death[2]
He states that he won't accept it as part of his argumentation (See passages 37c, 37d):
> And if I say exile (and this may possibly be the penalty which you will affix)
One commentary I read suggested that it wasn't uncommon for political opponents to bring these kinds of charges against people in order to silence them. The idea being the accused would end up groveling and begging for their lives, promising to hold their tongues. It is assumed by the reader that Socrates could have done this and used his military service as a form of pathos. This passage implies that he will do neither, beg for clemency nor accept exile.
One could read the passage as Socrates giving up hope in humanity, for he goes on:
> I must indeed be blinded by the love of life if I were to consider that when you, who are my own citizens, [37d] cannot endure my discourses and words, and have found them so grievous and odious that you would want to have done with them, others are likely to endure me. No, indeed, men of Athens, that is not very likely.
But, as I have implied, seeking simple answers in Plato is literally going against the point.
edit, also 38e:
> But I thought that I ought not to do anything common or mean in the hour of danger: nor do I now repent of the manner of my defense, and I would rather die having spoken after my manner, than speak in your manner and live. For neither in war nor yet at law ought any man to use every way of escaping death.
Sorry I dont agree with this analysis. There is no need to try to read between the lines of Socrates intentions here when there is very specific passages which state them:
> Because I am afraid of the penalty of death which Meletus proposes?
Which is to say, the plaintiff. No different than in court today where the prosecution asks the court for a sentence that is up to the judge to decide. And just like our own courts the defense can offer a counter proposal, which Plato goes into a discussion why he won't do that (well, he proposes a fine which would clearly not satisfy the crime he was accused of). The entire next passages are his reasons rejecting the likely mercies he could be offered (and would be expected to plead for).
Just like making a plea for a guilty sentence comes with the expectation of a potentially lighter sentence in our own court systems, a plea for extenuating circumstances during sentencing is often made by the defense. For example, an elderly person requiring care may avoid prison and plead for home arrest.
Now imagine the circumstance where pre-sentencing, facing a recommendation of the death penalty from the prosecution, the defendant stands before the judge and explains in great detail why he won't accept any of the potentially lesser sentences he might get, rejecting them one by one. That is explicitly what Plato is showing Socrates to have done.
Consider: does it makes sense to argue against a more lenient sentence when your life is on the line, especially when it is likely you would receive it? Why would Socrates seemingly act against his own interests?
Yes, this is what I originally stated, that it is his prosecuters arguing for death.
You seem to be ignoring the passages where he explicitly suggests a fine as the sentence, however you may also argue that he does this in jest/sarcasm.
Yes he argues against exile etc, but in no way does he ever suggest death is a prefered option in my opinion.
I would argue his suggestion of a fine isn't to be taken seriously. The options of imprisonment, exile and death are the reasonable alternatives.
Let's examine your opinion here, which of course you are entitled to. Socrates could have three opinions: Exile is worse than death, exile is equivalent to death, exile is better than death.
Let us consider the first case, where Socrates actually believes that exile is better than death. You could make the argument: Socrates would choose exile but he is too proud to beg for his life. That is, his subsequent explanation as to why he believes a life of exile would not be worth living is a ruse. It would render the famous line "the life which is unexamined is not worth living" as just pure cope. Actually, we are to see Socrates not as a principled man but rather a vain one. Otherwise, how do we explain his refusal to argue for that which is better? You could argue: Socrates is not wise as we have been led to believe in countless dialogues by Plato, but rather a fool who does not speak honestly.
Maybe you have a better argument for that case? I would be interested to hear it.
But if we take his explicit rejection of the option during his counter-plea at face value, it seems unreasonable to stake the position that he thinks exile is better than death (although, you may decide to hold that opinion and even forward a better case for it than I have).
That leaves the two options: Socrates thinks exile is equivalent to death and Socrates thinks exile is worse than death. I think a case for the first is possible but a stretch.
But let's not worry about resolving that, since Socrates attacks the problem in a different manner:
> When I do not know whether death is a good [agathos] or an evil [kakos], why should I propose a penalty which would certainly be an evil?
It seems clear to me that Socrates is saying: I know that exile is bad but I do not know that death is bad. If you do not see that as a preference towards death over exile then I would like to hear your counter argument.
edit: I will add, since it may not be clear or obvious to some, that the logic that separates the final two options only applies when the initial option (exile is better than death) has been removed. Which is more or less the question that Plato (and my original comment which kicked off this thread) wants us to ask: why would Socrates discard that first option?
You convieniently left out the next part in your quote.
> why should I propose a penalty which would certainly be an evil? Shall I say imprisonment? And why should I live in prison, and be the slave of the magistrates of the year—of the Eleven? Or shall the penalty be a fine, and imprisonment until the fine is paid? There is the same objection.
He was not talking about exile at this point, but every punishment which is considered evil[kakos], shown by the fact that he mentions fines and imprisonment immediately after. He goes on to mention exile third after these 2. This leads me to believe he thinks death is better than any punishment, as death is the only punishment which contains an unknown.
After mulling the outcomes of imprisonment, fines, and exile, he settles on proposing a fine (be it in sarcasm or not).
In my opinion there is nothing specific about death vs exile here, only a man showing he is not afraid of death.
> Socrates could have three opinions: Exile is worse than death, exile is equivalent to death, exile is better than death.
You know what? He could also have the opinion that death is better than a kick in the testicles, but in the same way it is not mentioned in this text ;)
> This leads me to believe he thinks death is better than any punishment
The fact that he proposes a fine is strong evidence that he doesn't (and is one reason it may be included at all, to counter this assumption effectively). Nor would he reasonably think a slap on the wrist would be worse than death. I don't think your use of "any" in this context is appropriate and only serves to advance your case rather than engage honestly.
> He could also have the opinion that death is better than a kick in the testicles
Again, as I have said time and time again, Plato is asking us to consider particular alternatives to death. He spends one sentence on imprisonment and then two large paragraphs on exile. That is evidence of the relative importance he places on the specific alternatives. Note he does not bother addressing your "kick to the testicles" opinion. Perhaps you can write an essay on that which will stand the test of thousands of years of consideration.
I think you are committed to exile in a personal sense and you are refusing to engage with this dialogue as it was meant in order to avoid facing its implications. I am sorry to treat you so cynically and I wish you luck in your continued intellectual journey.
Possibly he was anti-democratic, and was put on trial by the democratic government in troubled times (the Spartans had only recently gone away) because he was a threat, and he declined to be exiled by ostracism (from ostrakon, a clay pot, because pot shards were voting tokens), that is to be voted out, because he had no respect for a democratic process.
Instead of guessing you could read the dialogue where Socrates outlines his reasons in detail. But that doesn't mean you should accept his reasons, since the point is to feed your own curiosity rather than accept hand-fed answers.
Sure, but if your guess is "He probably hated democracy so much that he would rather die than accept it" (correct me if I'm implying something other than your meaning), then you should probably read the dialogue to check and see if that guess is reasonable based on the context provided.
Not in my opinion, but it isn't for me to decide. I want to encourage people to keep thinking. It is possible to consider many motivations for Socrates' decision, and the goal is to encourage the consideration of a wide array of possibilities rather than guess at one.
Where he has Socrates saying dismissively "perhaps kill me or banish me or disfranchise me", as if those are all just as bad (well, they all ruin his life of hanging around Athens harassing people philosophically), and saying that the Athenians will only hurt themselves if they by any means get rid of him.
As I quoted above, in 37c, 37d and 38e, Plato insinuates that Socrates had the option of groveling for his life. He explicitly refuses to do so.
Why would he choose death before groveling? As he states:
> But I thought that I ought not to do anything common or mean in the hour of danger: nor do I now repent of the manner of my defense, and I would rather die having spoken after my manner, than speak in your manner and live. For neither in war nor yet at law ought any man to use every way of escaping death.
Was he overly proud? Did he want to be a martyr? Had he lost faith in humanity? Did he want to challenge to process of law that was practiced in his own time, believing that justice in disputes between independent parties could not be adequately served through a majority vote?
Further, what would you do in that circumstance? Say you had a deeply held belief yet upon expressing it publicly you found yourself thrust in front of the entire city being taken to account with your own life on the line. Would you beg, promise to never mention that belief again in order to save your life? Would you accept exile and seek a life in another city, away from your friends and family, at the mercy of foreigners/strangers who you have no connection to?
Would you have voted for Socrates death? Would you have argued they accepted his proposal for a fine? Would you have attempted to persuade him to beg for the option of exile or clemency for a promise of silence? Would you vote to acquit?
Of all of the principles worth dying for, why did Socrates choose this one? Are there any principles that you hold that you would choose death over silence?
We live in a time where people want to skim Wikipedia for easy answers, like skipping to the back of a text book looking for the answer. Plato is giving questions, not suggesting answers.
You were considered an ass by people that actually knew you. The internet lynch mob takes a 30 second clip of a person they don't know and demand that the person have their life destroyed.
> While you have a right of free speech, the rest of us have the right not to listen to you, nor to be forced to listen to you, nor to interact with you.
Does this also justify hundreds or thousands of people calling your minimum wage employer trying to get you fired?
> Cancel culture used to be called social exclusion/ostracism, and it has been how people police themselves against undesirable people in pre-internet communities where most everybody knew everybody.
Even if this were true, its application was typically reserved for people already infamous for doing something heinous, eg. murderers, despots, thieves, etc. Social media virality has applied this to individuals whose worst crime was maybe making an off-colour joke. The disproportionate response to the transgression is what most people dislike about modern cancel culture, and I don't think this disproportional response was that common in the past.
Let's look back at who these "undesirable people" who were being excluded/ostracized were throughout history, shall we, and see how well your "While you have a right of free speech, the rest of us have the right not to listen to you, nor to be forced to listen to you, nor to interact with you" dismissal holds up.
You can certainly ostracize people who don’t deserve to be ostracized, but it doesn’t follow from that that all social ostracization is inherently bad. Freedom of association and freedom of speech can be used for bad ends as well as good, like most freedoms.
I don't think anyone decides that as such. Organizations and individuals decide who they do or don't want to associate with. If it turns out that very few people want to associate with you, then you've been ostracized. Your question is like asking "Who decides which people should be friends?", or "Who decides who should be popular?"
Hmm? There are laws against some forms of discrimination, but organizations have freedom of association just as individuals do. For example, political affiliation is not a protected class, so (in some states and some contexts) it is perfectly legal for a private company to decline to hire someone on the basis of their political views.
Thinking in terms of the US constitution and the laws built on top if it, ostracization by the government is forbidden and ostracization by private citizens and entities is not.
> ostracization by the government is forbidden and ostracization by private citizens and entities is not.
So its fine to fire all black people to ostracize them? No, of course not, so no you are wrong here, there are more limitations than that, people have rights protecting them from a lot of ostracism.
> This works because people can choose to not be jerks, but they can't choose to not be black.
What if they could? People can change gender identity nowadays, and it's not outside the realm of possibility that people could change their phenotypical characteristics (transracialism is a hotly debated topic).
Ostracization is an absolutely critical tool in the marketplace of ideas.
I'm sympathetic to the argument that the dynamics of the Internet have made some tools more or less suitable for purpose as what they used to be, but the idea that we can just assert "no ostracization" is flatly insane and totally antithetical to the marketplace of ideas.
Like I said "Not saying this as a value judgement, just that this practice is ancient."
Heck, downvotes here in HN are basically the same thing. If a statement doesn't comply with both the explicit rules and implicit assumptions and culture here, it will be downvoted to oblivion. And it is one of the major mechanisms that HN uses to ensure this site remains useful and relevant even with the large number of participants.
Just because something applies some negative pressure on diversity of thought doesn't mean it necessarily "leads to a monoculture and echo chambers."
If you're in a car that's going way too fast, do you tell the driver not to touch the brakes because it "leads to us never reaching our destination?"
Anyway, we're currently seeing the reign of the "cancel culture is the big problem" crybabies. Turns out they just thought the state should have the power to decide who's allowed to have an opinion.
Except this is not the case. If someone whom half of the country thinks is the best person to become their president could get "cancelled" and blocked from twitter, it is hard to argue that he got cancelled the pre internet way where no one wants to listen to him.
Cancel culture today for both parties is not form of not listening or even social exclusion, but kind of active shaming.
1. Some people definitely deserve to be cancelled/ostracized/socially punished.
2. Social media cares about engagement, not right and wrong. If content of a type is sought for, content of that type will be made.
3. Social media has trained people to simply react to the perceived message - "Oh, give me a break with all the whining about cancel culture!"
4. Concern trolling is very real. Social media is a low trust environment. You have no reason to think of me as a serious person, or take the time to engage with my reasoning.
5. Shame is incredibly motivating, but the shamer does not get to choose the direction that shame moves the target. You can certainly say that they are reacting wrongly, but you are not their parent/priest/custodian.
6. Once enough people are made to feel shame, they may band together. You are free to say that this is morally wrong or detestable.
7. This is all very very unsatisfying, so people usually take a more satisfying offramp and just blame someone. Blame and responsibility are very very slippery topics. Blame is about moral satisfaction and dropping a heavy, prickly, stinky and noxious emotional burden.
Blame typically falls on the person with the least social capital (relative to the blamer) who is closest to the problem.
Blame is the easiest thing to reach for in a low trust environment.
Responsibility requires a high trust environment. Responsibility can be forward and backward - who WAS responsible for this incident, who WILL BE responsible for improving the situation. In a low trust environment, responsibility will randomly transmute into blame.
8. It's easier to fight than it is to work. If someone is morally wrong, you do not owe them any emotional labor.
9. A fight does not require real harm as a trigger; a perceived social slight or lack of respect is more than enough to start a fight. Pain can be endured, shame cannot.
10. Anger and fighting form a feedback loop. Does the anger or fight come first?
11. This sort of thing has historically gotten VERY VERY bad before it gets better, even when people see it coming. It is very unsatisfying to say, but life can just really suck for a lot of people for a while. This is a heavy, noxious emotional burden, so by all means preserve your emotional health and find someone to blame.
----
So what is the solution?
I don't have a satisfying solution, but I have noticed something.
I have noticed that gravity is the weakest force/interaction in the universe per scale unit.
I have noticed that gravity is responsible for the largest objects and systems in the universe.
I have noticed that people mostly do not change their views in the middle of a fight.
"That's odd" is the most power phrase in science. The greatness of humanity has followed curiosity, patience, empathy and humility.
----
I won't tell anyone to stop fighting, but I will say that I strongly believe that fighting is only ever part of a solution.
I believe that fighting cannot ever fix anything or make anything better on the large scale.
Fighting can only make things less worse, for some people, in some place, at some time.
> Haidt is not the world's most careful data analyst
This is a massive understatement. The ironic thing about Haidt is that his writing is heavily geared towards social media. He writes a good headline and usually has a few facts in there, but is fundamentally non-rigorous. It’s science for skimmers and people who clicked on an article already agreeing with the conclusions and so won’t challenge the “evidence” he provides no matter how weak.
I agree that Haidt is a poor champion for the cause.
He’s popular because we are seeing something real happening to our kids and Haidt is the only person who is trying to describe whatever’s going on. We agree with the conclusions because we see it in our own kids, not because of the “moral panic”. It’s a shame he gets there in such a sloppy way, but he’s describing a real phenomenon.
I, as a parent, do not need articles and longitudinal studies and double blind peer reviewed studies to tell me that the thing I can observe with my own eyes is real.
I wonder whatever happened to Nicholas Carr, of The Shallows fame. I guess he's got a new book out this year but his critique is more "democracy in distress" now rather than "save the children!"
I think your statement is reasonably reflective of his web articles (especially his SubStack) but I've really enjoyed the books of his that I've read, which felt well researched and founded, especially The Righteous Mind.
> If TikTok gets banned and some slightly more benevolent version takes it place
I don't have TikTok on my phone. I don't have an account. But I have YouTube, Twitter, Instagram all locked down on my phone (my SO has the Screen Time code).
I did this because the best minds on earth get paid based on how much I doom scroll. If I don't do this, I routinely have times where I scroll for an hour+.
I have argued that the only solution to this is to either ban any sort compensation based on increased engagement of a social media product (probably impossible to enforce or unconstitutional if that still matters). OR to add regulation around infinite video scrolling. We regulate gambling because it hacks our dopamine loop (although usually associated with much more severe consequences). I think it's ok to regulate the video scroll. Start small with something like enforcing a scroll lock after 30 minutes. To enforce it, just regulate the largest companies.
> OR to add regulation around infinite video scrolling.
I really don’t want the government telling me what I can or can’t do on my phone, or that an app I enjoy can’t exist. Alcohol exists, gambling exists, cigarettes exist, porn exists, cars can drive fast, and yet because I have self control and good judgement, I haven’t allowed any of those things to get a hold over me either. I don’t want the government to be my dad. And even if you did, can you really trust our technophobic corrupt out-of-touch lawmakers to get such regulation right? These are consumption-side problems in my opinion, and individuals need to bear the responsibility rather than trying to pawn it off on big tech companies or regulators.
And is taxed to minimize consumption, and recoup losses from negative externalities
> gambling exists
Yes and is banned or highly regulated in many counties. It is also age restricted.
>cigarettes exist
same as alcohol
> cars can drive fast, and yet because I have self control and good judgement
Cars today are much safer than they were in the 50s because many many people have died leading to regulations. It's difficult to create a car for the American market because of how many specific American safety regulations there are.
Traveling by car is probably one of the most regulated things we do. There are speed bumps, cops, speed cameras, red light cameras etc. It's not like it's the wild west out there.
>and yet because I have self control and good judgement, I haven’t allowed any of those things to get a hold over me either
Congratulations? Because you are perfect I guess we can just assume everyone else is and should be as well?
I am not saying the government should tell you what you can or can't do with your phone. I'm saying the government should do something against very large private corporations hacking the dopamine loop on individuals. This could be an engagement tax. This could be just pausing scrolling every 30 minutes for 30 seconds. I know it's a slippery slope. They say television killed the neighbor in the 60s. We have a chance to not repeat the same mistakes of the past.
> And even if you did, can you really trust our technophobic corrupt out-of-touch lawmakers to get such regulation right?
If we are voting in "technophobic corrupt out-of-touch lawmakers" then that seems to be a bigger problem. Why are we voting these people in? Lawmakers are representatives of the people. Not everything they do is dumb. America has done pretty well so they must've done something right in the last 250 years.
I'm very much in the pro liberty, pro individual camp, but there is no developed country on earth that has 0 regulation. It is in the nation's best interest to not have a major part of the populace have 6-7 hours of their day sucked by TikTok, Youtube, and Instagram. 6-7 hours a day on the phone probably the norm for children. Children are actually losing their ability to read from this [1].
There are movements to ban phones in schools, which I wholeheartedly agree with. Do you think we should not ban phones in schools because you have "self control and good judgement" therefore children in schools should simply have "self control and good judgement?"
> Cancel culture is not compatible with democratic norms
Look around the world at where democratic norms are actually being undone. It’s often the people who are most opposed to so-called ‘cancel culture’ who are busy with the undoing. But perhaps you are willing to be an unusually bipartisan wielder of the term and concede that the major instances of cancel culture in recent times are such things as Hungary banning pride parades, Trump bullying universities and deporting people for holding the wrong political views, and school libraries banning books with LGBTQ themes.
Trump and the right wing engage in cancel culture. Ben Shapiro tried to cancel James Gunn, Bill Ackman tried to cancel Ivy League graduates that protested in support of Gaza, there are many examples. The American right wing simply just doesn't have the cultural cachet in major institutions such as academia, Hollywood, publishing houses, and generally in major US cities to enforce their cancellation attempts.
> Bill Ackman tried to cancel Ivy League graduates that protested in support of Gaza
I mean, the US government is now actively (and illegally) imprisoning/deporting Ivy League students who protested in support of Gaza, so I think "having the cultural cachet" is irrelevant at this point. They have the political power and that's what really matters.
But for a less dramatic counterexample, I'd offer something like whatever group (was it Moms For Liberty?) that orchestrated book bans in libraries nationwide.
That’s exactly what’s changing now that the right is in power. People are already being deported for protesting in support of Gaza. We shall see how long academia is able to maintain any degree of independence. The Trump administration is not exactly being subtle about it.
> The American right wing simply just doesn't have the cultural cachet in major institutions such as academia, Hollywood, publishing houses, and generally in major US cities to enforce their cancellation attempts.
The part of this you should be worried about is that they've realized they now have enough hard power to use violence against ideological enemies instead of rhetoric.
They're being completely open that they plan to extend this treatment to native born U.S. citizens too [1].
> Haidt is not the world's most careful data analyst
We can, and probably should, just end the discussion there. Haidt is really good at finding data to support his claims, but then failing to mention that the correlation he's describing as "definitive" is, actually, really weak. This happens throughout "The Anxious Generation," at least.
Calling him "directionally correct" when he's pretty bad at actually showing the work as to why he is correct is just saying that you think he has a good point because his vibes match your vibes.
I don't think I'm just saying that. I'd say instead:
1) evidence in favor of reasonable, unsurprising priors does not need to be held to the same standards of rigor as it would for less likely hypotheses. Put differently, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You can call my agreement with Haidt on the big picture "vibes" but I'd say instead that I just judge the likelihood that the underlying claims are true to be high.
2) the "Haidt production function" faces tradeoffs between making big points, writing books, and attending to every detail. When I read people's critique of his meta-analytic techniques (the first link I posted), I saw a lot of folks saying, he's not even doing meta-analysis because he's not weighting by precision! Reading that, I thought, he very much is doing meta-analysis: even if he's not doing "random effects meta-analysis" that you'd learn in a textbook, he's synthesizing many quantitative results, which is the core of it. (I have written three meta-analyses and RA'd for a fourth.) And when the 'proper' technique was applied, it shrunk the effect size estimate from like 0.2 to 0.15, which, like, if whatever hypothesis was true at 0.2, it's probably also true at 0.15. Social science theories don't generally stand or fall on differences like that. So I thought he came out looking like the wiser person there. Academics have a tendency to get bogged down in implementation details. Haidt doesn't.
(I don't expect this to be persuasive, just explaining why I don't find his data 'errors' to be a nonstarter.)
IIRC the effect size at 0.15 was narrowly for pre-teen girls on social media. Every other age, and all boys, were below 0.1 when looking at total screen time (i.e. games, youtube). Parents should check up on young girls, but most kids will be fine.
Does it seem plausible to that a system that is intentionally, systematically, algorithmically optimized to keep your attention and drive engagement really has so little affect on us?
> Cancel culture is not compatible with democratic norms
One's position on "cancel culture" tends to reveal a lot about somebody's politics. Complaining about cancel culture tends to correlate highly with conservative political views. The idea is that some people can't freely express their opinions. This is the same idea that leads the likes of Elon Musk to complain about the lack of "free speech".
When right-wingers say "free speech" they mean "hate speech", more specifically "the freedom to express hate speech". And when they complain about "cancel culture", what they're really complaining about it there being consequences to their speech [1].
So if somebody goes on a racist screed and they lost their job because their employer doesn't want to be associated with such views, that gets labelled as "cancel culture".
The very same people defend cancelling the permanent resident status of somebody who simply protested war crimes committed by Israel (ie Mahmoud Khalil) with no due process, a clear First Amendment violation.
As a reminder, the First Amendment is a restriction on government activity. For some reason, the same people who were vaccine experts 2 years ago who are now constitutional experts don't seem to understand this.
The unstated major premise of your screed is that "conservative political belief" are inherently wrong, factually and morally. Not everyone agrees with that.
Is it not clear that cancel culture played a role in the broader misinformation landscape? The argument seems to be undermining itself.
Take, for example, the early discussions around the origins of COVID-19. Legitimate scientific hypotheses—such as the possibility of a lab leak in Wuhan—were swiftly shut down. Scientists were canceled because they didn’t align with a dominant narrative.
People are still taking shots at the cancel culture boogeyman in 2025? It's just an organic response to people not wanting evil slop shoved in their faces on an unregulated internet.
>Cancel culture is not compatible with democratic norms
Cancel culture is a myth.
It is a label used to denigrate people and organizations who exercise the fundamental right to distance themselves from associations they find distasteful or non-beneficial.
There is not a single "cancelled" person who does not retain the ability to work and exercise their speech rights.
This is not opinion it is fact.
I welcome any attempt to prove me wrong.
I will respond with acting credits, tweets, and photographs of the cancelled person serving in a position of authority and/or being chauffeured between media appearances where they complain about being cancelled to an audience of millions.
"Cancel culture" is the same bullshit as "virtue signaling": made up nonsense intended to poison any discussion and blunt criticism without needing to do or say anything substantive.
> "Cancel culture" is the same bullshit as "virtue signaling": made up nonsense intended to poison any discussion and blunt criticism without needing to do or say anything substantive.
That sounds exactly like the same made up language of "sealioning" and "concern trolling" weaponized by the same people accusing the other side of making up "cancel culture" and "virtue signaling". Maybe you don't hold the ethical high ground and never did.
The effects of cancellation primarily fall on people who don't have as much power as the Weinsteins or P-Diddys of the world. If it happened to you or me, we wouldn't take a month break from speaking at awards ceremonies then make four movies.
> I can only speak for me, but it is extraordinarily unlikely to the point of impossibility that I will commit rape.
That's great.
What do you think are the odds that someone will accuse you of rape? I suspect they're higher than "unlikely to the point of impossibility". Cancellations usually happen based on the accusation, not the conviction.
I'm saying that they're so powerful that they can get away with that for decades, but we could face actual consequences if a political group misinterpreted a tweet. You could look in to the death threats and harassment received by scientists studying politically relevant subjects for an example.
You're moving the goalposts. Being cancelled doesn't mean you literally stop existing or can't ever get work again. But it often does mean curtailed career opportunities or losing x years of your life while people forget and lawsuits work their way through the system.
It's like saying jail isn't real because some ex-convicts have successful careers.
If you want a name: an interesting, recent example is Gina Carano because she's actually suing her former employer (Disney) for going along with a cancellation. We'll see what the court thinks her cancellation was worth.
I won't presume you're purposely misunderstanding my argument, so let me be clearer: the language you're using, where you accuse one side (not your side) of making up language is not constructive.
You're choosing not to engage in good faith with those who you disagree with by claiming the very basis of their language is made up and therefore invalid.
Do you really think that's an appropriate vehicle to engage with anyone if the goal is constructive dialog toward resolution?
You can do better than this, as can everyone else on both sides of the aisle who others the opposition to a state of incoherent invectives. You can certainly do much better than engaging with me in the patronizing and insulting way you have.
Cancel culture is not compatible with democratic norms
Democracy protects the majority against a minority. "Cancel culture" does the same. They are bedfellows.
Liberalism is what protects a minority against the majority.
Liberal Democracy strikes a balance between them. Typically the majority gets to determine who is in charge (democracy), and enshrined legal protections protect minorities from the bias and wrath of the mob (liberalism).
If someone insults people or breaks norms, and there's a lot of blow back, it doesn't surprise me. Few people complain that they are forbidden from walking the streets nude with a raging erection. The majority doesn't want that kind of freedom of expression.
What this has to do with social media companies, don't ask me. I mainly care about the ability of people to make arguments without the government locking them up.
> Liberalism is what protects a minority against the majority.
> Liberal Democracy strikes a balance between them. Typically the majority gets to determine who is in charge (democracy), and enshrined legal protections protect minorities from the bias and wrath of the mob (liberalism).
* Cancel culture is not compatible with democratic norms [1]
* Social media is making many people a little worse off and it makes some people a lot worse off
* having our phones on us all the time is bad for just about everything that requires sustained attention [2], including flirting and dating [3]
* Technology won't solve this problem. AI will make things worse [4]. If TikTok gets banned and some slightly more benevolent version takes it place, we're still headed in the wrong direction. What we need is culture change, which Haidt is trying his darndest at. Hats off to him.
[0] https://matthewbjane.github.io/blog-posts/blog-post-7.html
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/23/business/jonathan-haidt-s...
[2] https://thecritic.co.uk/its-the-phones-stupid/
[3] https://www.sexual-culture.com/p/its-obviously-the-phones
[4] https://www.npr.org/2019/06/04/726709657/sometimes-fascinati...