I think you and Khorton are misinterpreting the analogy. Buck focused on a practice that is unequivocally bad precisely so that he can establish, to the satisfaction of everyone involved in this discussion, that Will’s reasoning applies only up to a point: if a practice is judged to be sufficiently harmful, it seems appropriate to have lots of posts condemning it, even if this has some undesirable side effects. Then the question becomes: how should those who regard “cancel culture” as very harmful indeed respond, given that others do not at all share this assessment, and that continuing to write about this topic risks causing a split in the community to which both groups of people belong?
(I enclose ‘cancel culture’ in scare quotes because I am hesitant to use a term that some object to as having inappropriate connotations. It would be nice to find an expression for the phenomenon in question which we are all happy to use.)
Sure, I do appreciate the point that Buck is bringing. I agree with it in fact (as the first part of my first sentence said). I just additionally found the particular X he substituted not a good one for separate reasons to the main point he was making. I also think the real disagreement with Buck and myself is getting closer to it on a sister branch.
I do think your question is good here, and decomposes the discussion into two disagreements: 1) was this an instance of ‘cancel culture’, if so how bad is it? 2) what is the risk of writing about this kind of thing (causing splits) vs. the risk of not?
On 1) I feel, like Neel below, that moving charities ratings for an evaluator is a serious thing which requires a high bar of scrutiny, whereas the other two concerns outlined (blogpost and conference) seem far more minor. I think the OP would be far better if only focused on that and evidence for/against.
On 2) I think this is a discussion worth having, and that the answer is not 0 risk for any side.
EDIT to add: sorry I think I didn’t respond properly/clearly enough to your main point. I get that Buck is conditioning on 1) above, and saying if we agree it’s really bad, then what. I just think that he was not very explicit about that. If Buck had said something like, ‘I want to pick up on a minor point, and to do this will need to condition on the world where we come to the conclusion that ACE did something unequivocally bad here...’ at the beginning, I don’t think the first part of my objections would have applied so much. EDIT to add: Although I still think he should have chosen a different bad thing X.
I think you and Khorton are misinterpreting the analogy. Buck focused on a practice that is unequivocally bad precisely so that he can establish, to the satisfaction of everyone involved in this discussion, that Will’s reasoning applies only up to a point: if a practice is judged to be sufficiently harmful, it seems appropriate to have lots of posts condemning it, even if this has some undesirable side effects. Then the question becomes: how should those who regard “cancel culture” as very harmful indeed respond, given that others do not at all share this assessment, and that continuing to write about this topic risks causing a split in the community to which both groups of people belong?
(I enclose ‘cancel culture’ in scare quotes because I am hesitant to use a term that some object to as having inappropriate connotations. It would be nice to find an expression for the phenomenon in question which we are all happy to use.)
Sure, I do appreciate the point that Buck is bringing. I agree with it in fact (as the first part of my first sentence said). I just additionally found the particular X he substituted not a good one for separate reasons to the main point he was making. I also think the real disagreement with Buck and myself is getting closer to it on a sister branch.
I do think your question is good here, and decomposes the discussion into two disagreements:
1) was this an instance of ‘cancel culture’, if so how bad is it?
2) what is the risk of writing about this kind of thing (causing splits) vs. the risk of not?
On 1) I feel, like Neel below, that moving charities ratings for an evaluator is a serious thing which requires a high bar of scrutiny, whereas the other two concerns outlined (blogpost and conference) seem far more minor. I think the OP would be far better if only focused on that and evidence for/against.
On 2) I think this is a discussion worth having, and that the answer is not 0 risk for any side.
EDIT to add: sorry I think I didn’t respond properly/clearly enough to your main point. I get that Buck is conditioning on 1) above, and saying if we agree it’s really bad, then what. I just think that he was not very explicit about that. If Buck had said something like, ‘I want to pick up on a minor point, and to do this will need to condition on the world where we come to the conclusion that ACE did something unequivocally bad here...’ at the beginning, I don’t think the first part of my objections would have applied so much. EDIT to add: Although I still think he should have chosen a different bad thing X.