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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   30078 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 19, 2024

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Scott posted Lukianoff And Defining Cancel Culture. He takes one of the given definitions of cancel culture and tries to see how it applies to edge cases, and whether it makes sense as a definition. I thought the comments on the slatestarcodex reddit thread were pretty good. I tried to post a synthesis of the ideas I got while reading the comments:

Cancel culture is speaking about and coordinating your disassociation with a person.

You have the right to not associate with people. You should feel free to exercise that right when you personally notice them doing something you don't like.

To avoid being a part of cancel culture:

  1. If you choose to disassociate with someone you should not try and get others to pile on as well.
  2. If someone else notices a reason to disassociate with someone and tells you, then you should ignore that, or possibly try to mentally dismiss it like it is bad evidence presented to a court.
  3. Spread these two things as politeness norms, and resist attempts to undo them.

Supplemental section.

Applying these to Scott's examples:

  • A1-A6 are not cancel culture. The actor is taking personal steps to change their association with someone they don't like.

  • A7-A12 are cancel culture. The actor is trying to coordinate and spread their disassociation with someone.

The other ones are a bit more complex.

  • B1-B2 The university admin isn't really the prime source of "cancel culture" in this example. It is the newspaper that is trying to publish a juicy story. I think the university admin is fine to resist as much as they feel comfortable resisting, but is not obligated to resist at all. The newspaper is bad, and you should cancel your subscription from that newspaper (and only tell the newspaper why you are cancelling).

  • B3-B5 It is cancel culture to write the article and focus it on the grad student or any particular person as the problem. If you are able to anonymize the grad student and others involved then it is not very cancel culture. If others then dig deeper and de-anonymize the grad student, they are cancel culture. If you wish to be part of the anti-cancel-culture alliance, probably don't write it at all. If you just wish to follow politeness norms anonymize the people involved to the best of your ability. If you want to be a part of cancel culture make the article entirely about the grad student.

  • C1 The New York Times was doing cancel culture against Scott. His friends did cancel culture against the New York Times. Scott in his articles about the situation did not encourage cancel culture. Tit-for-tat strategy can be good for getting people to not do things. But it needs to be handled carefully. Retaliate for specific instances against exact people. Do not retaliate for general attacks by generally attacking the other direction.

  • C2 Scott can personally cancel his subscription and never associate with the Atlantic again. That is not cancel culture. Telling us about it is cancel culture.

This is a good definition. Other commenters have mentioned that punishment being disproportionate is a key aspect of cancel culture, but I don't think it's necessarily bad. Punishment being disproportionate is how people build moral systems that are effective in keeping people from breaking them all the time. 'Cancel culture' is a pejorative term for this process, used when the speaker doesn't like the moral system being developed. But the same process is responsible for creating the morals we all take for granted.

Punishment being disproportionate is how people build moral systems that are effective in keeping people from breaking them all the time.

Whatever happened to "an eye for an eye"? Or to use Scott's preferred historical example:

Chen Sheng was an officer serving the Qin Dynasty, famous for their draconian punishments. He was supposed to lead his army to a rendezvous point, but he got delayed by heavy rains and it became clear he was going to arrive late. The way I always hear the story told is this:

Chen turns to his friend Wu Guang and asks “What’s the penalty for being late?”

“Death,” says Wu.

“And what’s the penalty for rebellion?”

“Death,” says Wu.

“Well then…” says Chen Sheng.

And thus began the famous Dazexiang Uprising, which caused thousands of deaths and helped usher in a period of instability and chaos that resulted in the fall of the Qin Dynasty three years later.

Whatever happened to "an eye for an eye"?

It fell to the Chicago Way. "He pulls a knife, you pull a gun, he sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue."

I didn't like that movie at all.

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