"Those trying to cancel Hanania ignore the interesting things he’s been saying for years, focusing exclusively on some offensive Tweets and old articles that he’s since apologized for. Hanania, as a thinker, is more than his worst Tweets"
What the hell? This is such an incredibly superficial thing to say, you are much better than this. People don't mainly criticise Hanania for things he said 10 years ago, but because he is very obviously a right-wing nutcase to this day... as he just demonstrated few days ago, by stating his preference for voting for someone who - hopefully you agree that the case for this is quite strong - is arguably a fascist.
Surely you don't think that simply endorsing Trump is grounds for cancellation? And I'm all for criticizing Hanania, in the sense of arguing that he's wrong about stuff, but those are different from smears of the kind I was criticizing.
You acted as if people are only hostile to Hanania due to some far-gone thing he did in his youth (as can be seen by the word "exclusively", btw). This is something I expect from Charlie Kirk, not from a smart person like you.
I was talking about the people trying to cancel Hanania, and not referring to every single one, obviously. The phrase exclusively was applied to the things they were trying to cancel him for, not the group as a whole. I didn't say "exclusively, those trying to cancel Hanania focus on offensive tweets."
What do you mean by "cancelling"? Either you define it so broadly that Hanania SHOULD be cancelled (if you just mean heavily criticised) or you define it more narrowly (e.g. deplatforming), in which case almost no one wants to cancel Hanania at the moment... in the latter case the article would be highly misleading and just furthering conservative propaganda.
I mean, most terms are sort of difficult to define, but it's when you try to either argue that a person should be associated with based on things they've said or try actively to get them not to be associated with.
I'm not trying to do a Jordan Peterson here, but it once again hinges on what you mean by "not associate": If by "associate with X" you mean "being nice and non-confrontational when engaging with X", then I 100% think Hanania "shouldn't be associated with". If, however, by "not associate with X" you rather mean the usual definition "should not be talked with, not even as part of a debate where you massively challenge them", then my estimation is that there are no more than a few dozen people in the entire world who say one shouldn't associate with Hanania... which takes us back to the point I initially made.
Hanania extensively criticizes Trump, though, including stating that he sees him as a threat to democracy, and only endorsed him because he sees Democrats' economic policy as making Trump the least bad choice. Not the kind of glowing endorsement you seem to be implying.
It's very reasonable to try to make a holistic judgment of someone's character based on their whole body of work and public persona, especially if they are a public figure. This judgment (for example, that a certain right-wing substacker is a sharp and fluent writer but used to be an avowed white supremacist, and still seems to have strong pre-rational animosity towards certain races) should at least be a major part of your prior when you read their arguments. This prior is particularly important when those arguments might have pragmatic implicatures, or when parts of their argument are unavoidably vague and subjective and you need to decide how to interpret them.
This is completely compatible with the idea that if you can wholesale take a good argument or technical tool from anyone, you can and should do it, and it could be really valuable even if they're otherwise unpleasant or wrong about a lot of things. Of course, the more you judge them to be unpleasant and wrong about stuff, the more confidence you need to have in the argument itself.
The actor Matt Damon makes a similar point, applied to screenwriters and actors: don't judge me on my dozens of lousy ideas; judge me on the few great ideas I had, which are, hopefully, the main ones that made it into the movies.
People often think like a hitpiece writer when they should think like a journalist
Can’t we measure thinkers by their average idea, so that we can take into account both their best and worst ideas?
If Hitler had a decent idea or two about painting, I don’t think we’d measure him by that.
Edit: Okay, y’know what, we’re both being bad utilitarians, shame on us. Speakers should be measured by the net utility they generate duh.
"Those trying to cancel Hanania ignore the interesting things he’s been saying for years, focusing exclusively on some offensive Tweets and old articles that he’s since apologized for. Hanania, as a thinker, is more than his worst Tweets"
What the hell? This is such an incredibly superficial thing to say, you are much better than this. People don't mainly criticise Hanania for things he said 10 years ago, but because he is very obviously a right-wing nutcase to this day... as he just demonstrated few days ago, by stating his preference for voting for someone who - hopefully you agree that the case for this is quite strong - is arguably a fascist.
Surely you don't think that simply endorsing Trump is grounds for cancellation? And I'm all for criticizing Hanania, in the sense of arguing that he's wrong about stuff, but those are different from smears of the kind I was criticizing.
You acted as if people are only hostile to Hanania due to some far-gone thing he did in his youth (as can be seen by the word "exclusively", btw). This is something I expect from Charlie Kirk, not from a smart person like you.
I was talking about the people trying to cancel Hanania, and not referring to every single one, obviously. The phrase exclusively was applied to the things they were trying to cancel him for, not the group as a whole. I didn't say "exclusively, those trying to cancel Hanania focus on offensive tweets."
What do you mean by "cancelling"? Either you define it so broadly that Hanania SHOULD be cancelled (if you just mean heavily criticised) or you define it more narrowly (e.g. deplatforming), in which case almost no one wants to cancel Hanania at the moment... in the latter case the article would be highly misleading and just furthering conservative propaganda.
I mean, most terms are sort of difficult to define, but it's when you try to either argue that a person should be associated with based on things they've said or try actively to get them not to be associated with.
I'm not trying to do a Jordan Peterson here, but it once again hinges on what you mean by "not associate": If by "associate with X" you mean "being nice and non-confrontational when engaging with X", then I 100% think Hanania "shouldn't be associated with". If, however, by "not associate with X" you rather mean the usual definition "should not be talked with, not even as part of a debate where you massively challenge them", then my estimation is that there are no more than a few dozen people in the entire world who say one shouldn't associate with Hanania... which takes us back to the point I initially made.
Hanania extensively criticizes Trump, though, including stating that he sees him as a threat to democracy, and only endorsed him because he sees Democrats' economic policy as making Trump the least bad choice. Not the kind of glowing endorsement you seem to be implying.
Oh, good - so he criticises the authoritarian he votes for, what a relief!
It's very reasonable to try to make a holistic judgment of someone's character based on their whole body of work and public persona, especially if they are a public figure. This judgment (for example, that a certain right-wing substacker is a sharp and fluent writer but used to be an avowed white supremacist, and still seems to have strong pre-rational animosity towards certain races) should at least be a major part of your prior when you read their arguments. This prior is particularly important when those arguments might have pragmatic implicatures, or when parts of their argument are unavoidably vague and subjective and you need to decide how to interpret them.
This is completely compatible with the idea that if you can wholesale take a good argument or technical tool from anyone, you can and should do it, and it could be really valuable even if they're otherwise unpleasant or wrong about a lot of things. Of course, the more you judge them to be unpleasant and wrong about stuff, the more confidence you need to have in the argument itself.
The actor Matt Damon makes a similar point, applied to screenwriters and actors: don't judge me on my dozens of lousy ideas; judge me on the few great ideas I had, which are, hopefully, the main ones that made it into the movies.
***Human biology*** has a bias towards the negative.
Non cancel advocate
https://youtu.be/PU8M128s4vU?si=UMdFfXp1iff-VvCp