Amplifying this argument historically a bit, we find that a lot of morally independent folks find themselves on the wrong side of the law. Jesus is the most famous example of the Good finding themselves afoul of the law. Crucifixion is very dramatic and iconic Cancellation!
Inside vs outside the Overton Window. Funny thing is even many famous people with views outside the window aren’t cancelled until they say something that pisses someone off enough to bring the hammer down. Then their whole POV gets put on blast and everything they’ve ever said is looked at through that lens.
Thank you for those old Scott Alexander links from the archive - I was not aware of him back in 2015 and that piece on nerd-hating feminists was a really fascinating and enjoyable read.
Really liked the Geoff Miller article. In undergrad I played the devil's advocate card all the time in class discussion, but ran into the buzzsaw of not being able to read the room in grad school... quite problematic in a small program of just over a dozen people.
I am broadly in favor of an intellectually permissive culture on close-to-deontic grounds, but:
1) Much outrage farming, negative polarization, etc acts as a subsidy to the same views cancellation taxes - it's not clear which "distortion" (so to speak) is greater. Certainly there's no shortage of people loudly agreeing with each other that they hold x unacceptable view.
2) Some of the people with the most interesting views also don't have a high cancellability quotient, because they're obsessed with questions that are orthogonal to those currently polarized. Perhaps Brian Tomasik has some cancelable views (I have no interest in conducting an audit), but he has extremely interesting views that are downstream of looking into questions that current popular consensus simply has not paid enough attention to, to develop taboos about in the first place.
I think there are a few distinctions that can be teased out here:
1. Someone can be cancellable because they have a belief that others find very objectionable. I agree this tends towards censoriousness; this is just tyranny of the crowd (consider the kinds of views that were cancellable in Victorian times).
2. Someone can also be cancellable because they've done some egregious thing. Kevin Spacey wasn't inherently more interesting because of all the sexual assault.
3. Someone can be very nonconformist without necessarily being cancellable. In analytical philosophy departments every single professor will have some weird position on something that won't be shared by most other people (they'd be out of a job if they didn't have their own pet positions). These people are often quite interesting because they've thought a lot about something... but that something is often not in the realm of cancellable opinion. No one in wider society cares if you're a panpsychist or a qualia fiend or you think the world is the totality of facts not things.
I'm a deontologist who believes in magical things called rights, but I think there's a strong utilitarian argument that at least some societies should be cancel cultures. Consider the following.
Utilitarian argument against free speech:
Most democracies do not permit free speech. People under authoritarian governments are less supportive of free speech than people under democratic governments. By revealed preference therefore, the majority of people lose utility from the existence of free speech. It is *possible* that the people who desire free speech, value it by more than the anti-free-speech-people disvalue it, but given the discrepancy in numbers, it is likely that the overall utility of free speech is negative.
Counterargument:
The above calculus ignores the unborn. Free speech allows for moral and technological innovations that benefit future people, so the overall utility is positive.
Additional counterargument:
Societies that restrict free speech, free-ride off the innovations and interesting things that are generated by the unrestricted societies. By revealed preference, we know people lose utility from free speech in *their* society, but we don't know their preferences over restricting free speech in *all* societies.
Resolution:
The utility-maximizing setup is that free speech should be allowed in some societies but not all. However, the problem is that the free-speech society internalizes all the costs, but not all the benefits.
Note that this is broadly the setup we have today. We have one society (the US) that allows free speech, many societies that place moderate restrictions on speech, and many societies that severely restrict speech. Interestingly, the society that allows free speech has a very robust cancel culture, which might be a way of ameliorating the costs.
The headline and main point is persuasive, but the opening is *way* too strong - not having cancellable views is a lower bar than you think and many people aren’t that cancellable just because they either genuinely have positions within the non-cancellation window or don’t care enough to *have*an option. Interesting people often have positions in lots of areas, it’s that which makes them more cancellable
Why is the opening too strong? It's not guaranteed that those with uncancellable views are more interesting, but they're way more interesting on average.
The part about Bob being a milquetoast liberal conformist who has acceptable views etc comes across as saying that he, or the hypothetical person you talk about in the rest of the post, just accepts what won’t get him cancelled. I’d say most of the time those beliefs aren’t conformist, they’re either genuine or nonexistent (e.g, a ton of people don’t have a strong opinion on something because it seems super complicated and so they don’t think about it). I think the best counterexample Is beliefs formed because that’s what it seems like the expert consensus is, but I wouldn’t call that conformist
I think if you don't form any controversial views because your sense is that experts disagree on them, and just agree with the consensus, then you are a conformist. And most people aren't like that--they have strong views about things without strong reasons to have them.
Sometimes, sure, but even those people often don’t have views on things because they don’t have time or care enough to look into them. I think if your *default* is to not have a view or go with consensus expert opinion if it exists, but to form your own views when you care or have time, that’s not really that conformist
Really, probably most people who have strong (cancellable) views are *also* being conformist in your sense, they mostly haven’t independently formed their own views, they’re just conforming to a different social group
I really appreciate how often you use norm macdonald in your posts!
He's hilarious.
And also very smart.
Amplifying this argument historically a bit, we find that a lot of morally independent folks find themselves on the wrong side of the law. Jesus is the most famous example of the Good finding themselves afoul of the law. Crucifixion is very dramatic and iconic Cancellation!
Inside vs outside the Overton Window. Funny thing is even many famous people with views outside the window aren’t cancelled until they say something that pisses someone off enough to bring the hammer down. Then their whole POV gets put on blast and everything they’ve ever said is looked at through that lens.
Thank you for those old Scott Alexander links from the archive - I was not aware of him back in 2015 and that piece on nerd-hating feminists was a really fascinating and enjoyable read.
Yeah that was great!
Really liked the Geoff Miller article. In undergrad I played the devil's advocate card all the time in class discussion, but ran into the buzzsaw of not being able to read the room in grad school... quite problematic in a small program of just over a dozen people.
Thanks for sharing it!
I am broadly in favor of an intellectually permissive culture on close-to-deontic grounds, but:
1) Much outrage farming, negative polarization, etc acts as a subsidy to the same views cancellation taxes - it's not clear which "distortion" (so to speak) is greater. Certainly there's no shortage of people loudly agreeing with each other that they hold x unacceptable view.
2) Some of the people with the most interesting views also don't have a high cancellability quotient, because they're obsessed with questions that are orthogonal to those currently polarized. Perhaps Brian Tomasik has some cancelable views (I have no interest in conducting an audit), but he has extremely interesting views that are downstream of looking into questions that current popular consensus simply has not paid enough attention to, to develop taboos about in the first place.
I think there are a few distinctions that can be teased out here:
1. Someone can be cancellable because they have a belief that others find very objectionable. I agree this tends towards censoriousness; this is just tyranny of the crowd (consider the kinds of views that were cancellable in Victorian times).
2. Someone can also be cancellable because they've done some egregious thing. Kevin Spacey wasn't inherently more interesting because of all the sexual assault.
3. Someone can be very nonconformist without necessarily being cancellable. In analytical philosophy departments every single professor will have some weird position on something that won't be shared by most other people (they'd be out of a job if they didn't have their own pet positions). These people are often quite interesting because they've thought a lot about something... but that something is often not in the realm of cancellable opinion. No one in wider society cares if you're a panpsychist or a qualia fiend or you think the world is the totality of facts not things.
Yes, that's right, I was primarily talking about 1.
I think that authentic creativity is strongly correlated with contrarianism, or at least an indifference to contemporary standards.
I'm a deontologist who believes in magical things called rights, but I think there's a strong utilitarian argument that at least some societies should be cancel cultures. Consider the following.
Utilitarian argument against free speech:
Most democracies do not permit free speech. People under authoritarian governments are less supportive of free speech than people under democratic governments. By revealed preference therefore, the majority of people lose utility from the existence of free speech. It is *possible* that the people who desire free speech, value it by more than the anti-free-speech-people disvalue it, but given the discrepancy in numbers, it is likely that the overall utility of free speech is negative.
Counterargument:
The above calculus ignores the unborn. Free speech allows for moral and technological innovations that benefit future people, so the overall utility is positive.
Additional counterargument:
Societies that restrict free speech, free-ride off the innovations and interesting things that are generated by the unrestricted societies. By revealed preference, we know people lose utility from free speech in *their* society, but we don't know their preferences over restricting free speech in *all* societies.
Resolution:
The utility-maximizing setup is that free speech should be allowed in some societies but not all. However, the problem is that the free-speech society internalizes all the costs, but not all the benefits.
Note that this is broadly the setup we have today. We have one society (the US) that allows free speech, many societies that place moderate restrictions on speech, and many societies that severely restrict speech. Interestingly, the society that allows free speech has a very robust cancel culture, which might be a way of ameliorating the costs.
The headline and main point is persuasive, but the opening is *way* too strong - not having cancellable views is a lower bar than you think and many people aren’t that cancellable just because they either genuinely have positions within the non-cancellation window or don’t care enough to *have*an option. Interesting people often have positions in lots of areas, it’s that which makes them more cancellable
Why is the opening too strong? It's not guaranteed that those with uncancellable views are more interesting, but they're way more interesting on average.
The part about Bob being a milquetoast liberal conformist who has acceptable views etc comes across as saying that he, or the hypothetical person you talk about in the rest of the post, just accepts what won’t get him cancelled. I’d say most of the time those beliefs aren’t conformist, they’re either genuine or nonexistent (e.g, a ton of people don’t have a strong opinion on something because it seems super complicated and so they don’t think about it). I think the best counterexample Is beliefs formed because that’s what it seems like the expert consensus is, but I wouldn’t call that conformist
Although I should temper my first comment a bit; It’s mostly the third graph that I object to, which i suppose is not the opening exactly
I think if you don't form any controversial views because your sense is that experts disagree on them, and just agree with the consensus, then you are a conformist. And most people aren't like that--they have strong views about things without strong reasons to have them.
Sometimes, sure, but even those people often don’t have views on things because they don’t have time or care enough to look into them. I think if your *default* is to not have a view or go with consensus expert opinion if it exists, but to form your own views when you care or have time, that’s not really that conformist
Really, probably most people who have strong (cancellable) views are *also* being conformist in your sense, they mostly haven’t independently formed their own views, they’re just conforming to a different social group