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Luckily, one can never lead to the other.



It's irrelevant whether one thing can lead to the other. What's important is how often it does. If there's significantly less violence, it's a win.

I guess it could be a bit difficult to see from the US where you had the first amendment forever. But the rest of the world is not like that.


The claim that cancel cultures appearance is single handedly responsible for a drop in violence that was entirely the fault of a more permissive attitude towards open debate seems quite a stretch to put it as politely as possible.


Are you implying it's a claim I've made? Because it isn't.

On the contrary, my claim is that if you take the world as a whole there has never been more permissive attitude towards open debate than today. But even in the so-called free world... Compare the treatment of JK Rowling got to the treatment MLK got.


> But I think the shift to use of shame for society regulation is a positive development

> If there's significantly less violence, it's a win.

Don't try and back away from your claims once you've made them.

And taking this debate from the point of view of the world as a whole is disingenuous, don't try to latch the damage done by one onto the overall good done by others and claim a net good for the first who caused the damage.

Also we aren't comparing now to the 1960s; yes now looks fabulous compared to then as does it compared to the purges in the USSR but we arent comparing those; we're discussing the recent devolution in free expression as pointed out in the blog this post is about.


> violence that was entirely the fault of a more permissive attitude towards open debate

Where did I say anything that can even remotely be interpreted this way?

Whether you think it's appropriate or not, I wasn't referring to the blog post. I also don't think it's what the blog post is about: Scott is worried about his patients knowing his political views interfering with his work as well as death threats, none of which has anything to do with shame.

Where I live cancel culture coexists with violent regulation of expression. I'm not sufficiently familiar with the US history but I doubt that whatever golden age you have in mind was sufficiently long even if it existed. Larry Flint was shot in '78 so that leaves 30 years max if that.


You claimed these new shaming tactics lead to less violence as I have quoted above. Shaming tactics are the diametric opposite of debate, it is fundamentally zero sum; you support them, you oppose the other and you equated their growth with a reduction in violence; again I have quoted this.

Now perhaps I overshot the gun and we could state that your interpretation of shamming tactics was something else but right now they have a very public face so you'll have to specify if you mean something else.

This blog post is a symptom of the lean towards shaming tactics over debate; the problem has evolved to the point that scott has to worry about his career being destroyed because of it.

And re times, how about the 2000s then? we built and debated online without the need to destroy one another's lives because of the POV we took on a political argument.




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