
The forehead-slappingly stupid attempt to cancel Steven Pinker - dynamic_sausage
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/the-forehead-slappingly-stupid-attempt-to-cancel-steven-pinker/
======
perl4ever
What Pinker apparently has said, and is a popular opinion these days that I
see all over the place, which some people see as extremely racist and others
don't, is that police killings being proportional to arrests is evidence
against bias in using deadly violence, _given_ there is an interaction in the
first place.

It seems like a complete non sequitur to me, is the problem. Even with strict
framing where you don't look at/think about bias in the arrests. One can
imagine a world where anywhere from 0% to 100% of killings were justified, but
regardless having the exact _same_ number of deaths. The casualty number
logically tells you _nothing_ about whether any of the actions were
appropriate or necessary.

So rightly or wrongly, it makes sense to me if a lot of people think nobody
could be this obtuse and assume bad faith. Especially when, you know, it's
someone widely believed to be smart.

~~~
wutbrodo
It seems like you've misunderstood the conversation about these killings. The
mainstream of the discourse about police killings of black men is rooted in
the notion that they're being killed because policing is a malevolent,
explicitly racist institution whose racism manifests in a proclivity to kill
black men at higher rates than white men. This is what a very large fraction
of my affluent, nominally-educated social circle believes, and it's dominated
the conversation about these protests. This isn't a new line; the original
round of BLM protests were even more statistically illiterate on the point
than the current ones.

I've always found it ludicrous for people to tar a statement as offensive on
grounds of being a non sequitur and thus in bad faith. This relies on being
confident that both you and the accused have an aligned and 100% accurate
sense of the discourse, and that there's no way that any reasonable number of
Pinker's more than half million followers could hold the belief he's
addressing.

(Not that it matters, but since this is a pretty high-emotion subject, I'll
just lay my cards on the table: As far as I can tell, the notion that police
kill unarmed men _at all_ is abhorrent. I am and long have been a strident
supporter of greater limits on the police (and carceral system), but
fantasizing that police killings are racialized is just going to lead you to
the same blind alley of pseudoscience and IATs that BLM is in. That doesn't
mean that I think the racial skew is a non-problem: the higher arrest rate is
largely mediated through a higher crime rate in the black community, a problem
whose roots lie in a much larger racial justice problem that is similarly
disserved by misinterpreting reality).

~~~
perl4ever
No, I haven't misunderstood the conversation; I'm not interested in it at all,
just in one specific point about what Pinker specifically wrote.

I guess that's not what you want to talk about, but I wish you wouldn't reply
to me if you don't want to engage.

~~~
wutbrodo
It appears you've also misunderstood my comment (or I've misunderstood yours).
Your claim is that Pinker's comment was a non sequitur, as arrest-proportional
killings don't convey information about whether the killing were necessary.

But in the context of a conversation that assumes that the population-relative
skew of killings is driven by racism, it's not a non sequitur at all: it
provides evidence against the ubiquitous, confident claim that the population
skew is due to explicit racism by the police. It's still possible that a black
men being arrested has a higher chance of being killed _relative to the
necessity of doing so_, but nobody has even tried to make that case
statistically.

If I've misunderstood your point, perhaps you could clarify, instead of giving
a petulant, low-effort response.

~~~
perl4ever
It seems you are suggesting it's possible for _killings to be driven by
racism_ , but for the _skew_ of killings _not_ to be driven by racism.

It's a very fine distinction, which I am not interested in validating or
invalidating, but I'm thinking it's not relevant to why Pinker's tweet was
ill-received when he wrote: "Data: Police don't shoot blacks
disproportionately." and "Problem: Not race...". He just wasn't that finely
tuned.

~~~
wutbrodo
> It seems you are suggesting it's possible for killings to be driven by
> racism, but for the skew of killings not to be driven by racism.

Well more precisely, I'm happy to accept that population-disproportionate
killings of black men are due to racism, but understanding the facts is
important to understanding how that racism manifests. Ie, if it matches the
arrest rate and/or the violent crime rate, we're facing a much broader racial
justice problem than simply throwing an IAT at every cop in the country. I
don't understand why Pinker's tweet wouldn't be interpreted in that light.

------
throwawaysea
I commented about the coming cancellation of Steven Pinker 6 days ago, as it
has been developing for a little bit on social media and follows several other
campaigns to censor and oppress other professors:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23788095](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23788095).

The charge of “scientific racism” leveled against Pinker is simply rhetorical
warfare, waged using an emotionally charged term like “racism”. The pursuit of
objective, quantitative, rational, scientific analysis is now under attack
using this label. It is the mob burying their head in the sand, unwilling to
yield when reality disagrees with their ideological stance. It is anti-
science. But these days, even being objective and scientific is seen as
offensive to the progressive mentality. And I mean this literally, as seen in
the recent Smithsonian chart that they took down
([https://www.newsweek.com/smithsonian-race-guidelines-
rationa...](https://www.newsweek.com/smithsonian-race-guidelines-rational-
thinking-hard-work-are-white-values-1518333)).

Cancel culture isn’t a recent trend - there are entire websites dedicated to
cancel culture on college campuses, such as
[https://www.thecollegefix.com/](https://www.thecollegefix.com/). Free
thought, free inquiry, and open debate are under attack from those that want
only their worldview to prevail. It is a direct threat to a free society and
much has been written about it recently from Quillette
([https://quillette.com/2020/07/01/on-steve-hsu-and-the-
campai...](https://quillette.com/2020/07/01/on-steve-hsu-and-the-campaign-to-
thwart-free-inquiry/)) and Harper’s ([https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-
and-open-debate/](https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/))
and others.

I’m not sure how to fight back except to create direct consequences for those
pursuing cancellation. Perhaps we need to shame and demand the firing of
everyone who signs such letters, demanding censorship and cancellation of
others.

~~~
eesmith
The "Open Letter to the LSA" by what what you describe as "crazed and
radicalized students at Harvard" asks:

> to remove Dr. Pinker from the LSA fellows list and the list of media experts
> falls within the purview of the LSA because of the goals that the LSA has
> set for itself ...

> We want to note here that we have no desire to judge Dr. Pinker’s actions in
> moral terms, or claim to know what his aims are. Nor do we seek to “cancel”
> Dr. Pinker, or to bar him from participating in the linguistics and LSA
> communities (though many of our signatories may well believe that doing so
> would be the right course of action).

If that's "cancel culture" \- how do I tell the difference between "cancel
culture" and any other sort of advocacy which results in removing someone from
a couple of lists?

Because I've been trying hard to understand what "cancel culture" means, and
the descriptions of it don't seem to make any sense.

~~~
throwawaysea
There is some debate as to whether cancel culture is real and what its exact
definition is. This article from RealClearPolitics discusses it and includes
links to some opposing views as well:
[https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/07/15/cancel...](https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/07/15/cancel_culture_is_real.html)

To me, cancel culture is the notion of introducing
political/ideological/personal stances into various spheres where it doesn’t
belong (is not directly relevant) and using it to suppress certain views,
punish those who harbor those views, exclude certain lines of research/debate
from being pursued, and instill fear (of reprisal) in those who might
otherwise explore those areas. It is not focused on correctness of views or
resolution of conflicting conclusions, but rather blind censorship,
suppression, and use of fear.

In this case, the LSA recently introduced a “racial justice” policy and now
the signatories of this letter are claiming that inclusion of Pinker is not
aligned to this new policy. What does racial justice have to do with the LSA’s
core field that isn’t already included as part of the pursuit of truth? Very
little. It is the injection of a political and ideological view into a
scientific sphere. Adoption of such a policy enables the weaponization of the
organization’s structure/laws against Pinker.

The specific incidents (statements made by Pinker) that are called out in the
letter are issues that can be debated without such a policy in place. The
correctness of some claim (like “there is no racial bias in police shooting”)
is worthy of scrutiny independent of this campaign to cancel Pinker. After
all, isn’t that the point of research - to develop ideas, gather facts, form
arguments, and compare against other findings? Why isn’t that sufficient -
shouldn’t the truth set us free? Researchers and professors are both allowed
to be wrong and allowed to form opinions that disagree with the prevailing
sentiment. Without that there is no environment for honest learning and
expansion of societal knowledge. But cancel culture precludes such exploration
by taking ideological opinions as fundamental factual presumptions. And there
is no room for error in these situations - someone like Pinker can have a
lifetime of achievement and correctness and then be judged on a couple tweets
by a random selection of engineers, grad students, and assistant professors.

As for Pinker’s specific claims - it is fairly trivial to validate them, or at
least agree that there is substantial grounds to hold those opinion. The
letter itself makes no serious argument against those statements that they
find so problematic. I don’t want to derail this post by analyzing each claim,
but my point is that it is about ideology not facts.

~~~
eesmith
Thank you for your answer.

In my wrestling with the topic, I've tried to understand why certain things
are called "cancel culture" while others are not.

For example, is the opposition to Colin Kaepernick part of cancel culture?

To go to your definition, we have to ask if standing up for the national
anthem in order to play a football game is a sphere where it doesn’t belong -
which is clearly true. People play football games all the time without an
anthem. So the anthem is there for some other purpose.

We can see that the ritual around the activity - standing up for the anthem -
suppresses the views of those who think the flag is not worth that respect.
And we have court cases which show that in other circumstances, not standing
for the flag is protected free speech and protected religious speech.

And we see how adherence to the ritual is used to punish those who harbor
those with other views, where the "mob" reaction in this case includes Trump's
call to fire those who refuse to stand.

Yet, while Kaepernick's case seems to fit your definition, that isn't what
people seem to mean by "cancel culture."

(I could go on with other cases, but my comment is already too long.)

You write that they say that Pinker's views are "not aligned to this new
policy". But all they are calling for is to have his name removed from a
couple of lists where the LSA privileges some LSA members over others. They
are not calling for him to be removed from the LSA, but only not given special
ranking. Pinker himself says he's not worried this will cancel him.

So what does "cancel" even mean here? Is _any_ loss of even minor status
equivalent to "cancel"? Because it reads like the people involved are
snowflakes who can't stand the least bit of possible negative consequences to
their speech, and I can't figure out why anyone outside the LSA would care.

You write: "What does racial justice have to do with the LSA’s core field that
isn’t already included as part of the pursuit of truth? Very little."

Now, I know squat about the LSA but your argument comes across as a 19th
century view of science. Science ethics classes often use the Tuskegee
syphilis experiment as an example where the 'pursuit of truth' lead to racial
injustice. If truth sets us free, how were the African-American men involved
any more free as a result of the study? And Guatemala considers its sibling
experiments there to be a crime against humanity. So no, I don't think simple
"pursuit of truth" is the right framework to think about this topic.

Again, I know squat all about the LSA. But going right to "must defend the
unhindered investigation of truth" \- which has been proven time and again to
be wrong for other fields of science - just doesn't seem like a good defense.

You write "Researchers and professors are both allowed to be wrong and allowed
to form opinions that disagree with the prevailing sentiment." I looked at
William A. Jacobson essay you linked to. Jacobson writes that he faces "no
adverse employment action because of my academic freedom and job security".

Since he's free to 'form opinions that disagree with the prevailing sentiment'
\- how is he "cancelled"?

And I see that elsewhere - Stephen Hsu resigned from his administrative
position at MSU but retains his tenured faculty position. Yet that's still
called part of "cancel culture" even though he can use his job to form
opinions that disagree with the prevailing sentiment.

It seems like tenured positions are a strong weapon against being cancelled,
so why aren't the people who complain about cancel culture also pushing for
more tenured positions, and stopping the exploitative adjunct teaching
position where people with opposing viewpoints aren't "canceled" so much as
"don't have their contract renewed for the next term"?

But it feels like many of those who complain about cancel culture also want to
remove tenure in teaching positions and increase uncertainty in the ability to
express ideas - which comes across like "cancel culture" is (re-using your
phrase) "simply rhetorical warfare".

