
Orthodox Privilege - razin
http://paulgraham.com/orth.html
======
seibelj
What has been especially frustrating to me is identity politics, where being
member of Groups A, B, and C means you _must_ hold Ideas X, Y, and Z because
those _must_ be the views you hold as a member of those groups. It completely
removes all agency and individuality and instead classifies you entirely as a
set of labels. The smallest minority truly is the individual, and every
individual can make their own decisions regardless of their race, gender,
sexual orientation, etc.

~~~
hintymad
Or worse, if you hold idea X, Y, or Z, then you're a racist. See this:
[https://twitter.com/byronyork/status/1283372233730203651?s=2...](https://twitter.com/byronyork/status/1283372233730203651?s=21)

"The National Museum of African American History & Culture wants to make you
aware of certain signs of whiteness: Individualism, hard work, objectivity,
the nuclear family, progress, respect for authority, delayed gratification,
more."Oh, and emphasis on scientific methods.

So, for the sake of identity, let's attack modern civilization. This. Is.
Fucking. Insane.

~~~
escape_goat
There is a lot — a LOT — to criticize about the infographic tweeted by Byron
York here (based on a table produced by Judith Katz in 1990) and frankly this
entire page [1] of relentlessly abstracted and ahistorical discussion of
'Whiteness' and cultural identity is a dumpster fire even from the perspective
it is attempting to communicate, and I am shocked to see scholarship of this
quality featured at the Smithsonian.

However, absolutely nothing about it suggests that "internalizing aspects of
white culture" makes you a racist. It's fine if you don't respect or
understand the idea that the web page is trying to communicate here because
frankly they did a shamefully bad job. They are preaching to the choir. But
absolutely nothing about it suggests the thing that angers you. You are
bringing that idea to the infographic with you.

[1] [https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-
race/topics/whiten...](https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-
race/topics/whiteness)

~~~
hintymad
Actually, you may well be right. The infographics didn’t explicitly judge
“whiteness”. I may indeed have brought the idea with me given how whiteness is
used and connotated nowadays.

I hope I’m totally wrong about my interpretation about the infographics and I
hope my frustration is unsubstantiated.

~~~
x3n0ph3n3
By calling it whiteness, it implicitly discourages "brown" people from
adopting the enumerated values.

~~~
scruple
I am unsure how else to parse it, too. Is this infographic telling black
children that "doing science" is "acting white?" This entire infographic reads
like white supremacist rhetoric. What the hell...

~~~
Acrobatic_Road
White nationalist Jared Taylor has repeatedly stressed that the woke left is
doing his work for him.

------
munificent
In all of the many arguments swirling around cancel culture, I have yet to see
anyone raise what I think is the most important distinction: _good faith_.

Open debate and public disagreement is a healthy vital tool of progress when
the claims and argument are made in good faith. When both parties believe
their position is true and is good for the world, and their arguments for it
are genuine, then I think it slows progress to cancel them.

But if you assume _all_ arguments are in good faith, then you leave the public
sphere ripe for exploitation. This is what white surpremacists and others have
clicked to recently. A bad actor can exploit a presumption of good faith to
add legitimacy to their position. "Look, famous person X rebutted me. My claim
must be at least significant enough to be worth rebutting." Or they can use it
to make the other party look bad by sea-lioning. "I am merely politely asking
questions. Why are you so angry? Aren't you able to control your feelings?"

"Cancel culture" and deplatforming are important tools to defend against these
bad faith exploitive uses of public communication.

The challenge is that as we get increasingly polarized and tribal and as the
bad faith actors get more savvy, _everything_ starts to look like a bad faith
argument. And at some point, people start concluding that the only foolproof
algorithm for determining if an argument is in bad faith is "does it disagree
with me?" And then you start seeing the banhammer swung freely.

That in turn increases polarization and tribalism because good faith
dissenters, people with middle ground positions, and people who aren't sure
where they stand self-censor to avoid taking friendly fire.

It is a very nasty feedback loop we're in, exacerbated by the already bad
feedback loops of social media AIs being trained to show us content we already
agree with.

~~~
_bxg1
> "Cancel culture" [is an important tool] to defend against these bad faith
> exploitive uses of public communication

I would say it's more like a social cytokine storm. If distrust in general is
an immune-system, we're reaching a point of autoimmune disease.

But I do think deplatforming is an important tool. At the risk of stretching
the metaphor, it's more like antibiotics. It reduces inflammation instead of
increasing it, and while some non-destructive entities may get caught up in
it, they're generally nonessential, it's generally a small portion, and
they'll recover.

~~~
ajhurliman
If we're using an autoimmune disease as the metaphor, may I suggest steroids
as the analog to deplatforming instead of antibiotics?

~~~
_bxg1
But steroids _only_ decrease the inflammation, they don't combat the original
problem. If the inflammation is there because of a real pathogen, steroids are
dangerous. Antibiotics decrease inflammation by tackling the original problem
without a need to also increase inflammation.

(It is at this point I'd like to point out that I don't have a medical
background and may be going out of my depth for the sake of analogy :P)

~~~
lliamander
Steroids are a typical treatment option for auto-immune conditions. The
steroid Dexamethasone has proven effective at decreasing the mortality rate
among COVID-19 patients who experience a cytokine storm leading to severe
respiratory illness. Sure you may want to use antivirals/antibiotics
alongside, but I don't know if it's always necessary.

I don't have a medical background but from what little I do understand, the
cytokine storm is the result of a secondary immune response kicking into high-
gear when the primary immune response fails to respond in a timely manner
(perhaps due to poor health). Suppressing the secondary immune response enough
to keep it from killing the organism allows the primary immune response to
catch up and defeat the infection.

In other words, clamping down on cancel culture will grant reasoned discourse
a chance to convince people to abandon right-wing ideologies without imposing
severe economic penalties.

Of course, this assumes that right-wing ideology is a pathogen that is
uniformly harmful to the body politic (which it may not be) but all metaphors
have their limitations.

EDIT: I should clarify that I see the deplatforming as the cytokine storm.
I.e. an unhealthy immune response that is damaging to our social organism.

~~~
_bxg1
> this assumes that right-wing ideology is a pathogen that is uniformly
> harmful to the body politic (which it may not be)

In the context of the discussion I was treating "bad-faith participants" as
the pathogen, which I would absolutely say are uniformly harmful to the
discourse. Of course subjectively the far right seems to take this approach
more often than the far left, but that's not at all clear-cut and isn't the
point I'm trying to make here.

~~~
lliamander
> In the context of the discussion I was treating "bad-faith participants" as
> the pathogen

Oh, I see. Fair point.

------
duxup
Maybe I've internalized what "orthodox privilege" means but ... yes things
that go against the grain often receive push back.

Is that bad? Isn't that sometimes just the nature of having to prove a
different idea in the face of another idea that may be proven?

On the other hand let's say it is Orthodox Privilege then we get to the next
step, give it a name and ... tell others they're engaging in 'orthodox
privilege'?

Any kinda 'you're doing <insert privilege term>' seems like a non starter.

In the meantime anyone and everyone who gets push back seems to already feel
they're oppressed by 'the system' or 'the media' and anyone who views their
ideas as poor somehow is biased, pushing an agenda, something is wrong with
them.

I feel like a lot of 'privilege' talk sort of leaked out of good / valid ideas
and areas of academic study and now are sort of used as a magic wand (or
sometimes a baseball bat) that really don't solve anything when talking to
other people outside of say macro study and etc.

~~~
dleslie
Privilege isn't necessarily bad; it's the lack of access and opportunity that
is afforded by privilege that is a problem.

Consider the thread the other day regarding the privilege of beauty: it's not
bad to be beautiful, and it's not bad to find beauty aesthetically pleasing,
but it becomes a problem when individuals are denied access and opportunities
because they lack beauty but where beauty should not be a factor.

~~~
jonny_eh
If the problem isn't privilege, but the lack of it, then we should be focusing
on that lacking and try to raise everyone up.

~~~
malyk
But the problem with that is the people with the privilege are blind to what
the problems are.

It took a simple conversation with someone of color for me to even begin to
understand this. The conversation was something like:

"The 15th time the guy behind the deli counter calls over your head to the
person behind you in line instead of you really understand that you are not
only different, but _invisible_ to people because of your difference."

Sure, we've all had something happen a few times. But this is an _everyday_
occurrence to people who aren't a part of the dominant group.

To me, a WASP, I couldn't even fathom that ever happening. It's just not part
of my lived experience. How could someone just skip over the next person in
line? It doesn't make any sense.

But, that was, and is, my privilege blinding me to the daily plight of so many
people.

So yes...we should work to "raise everyone up", but simply being the person
with privilege blinds us to the problem entirely.

------
tenaciousDaniel
Good post. A point of clarification though: we are seeing (at least in
America) the emergence of two orthodoxies/conventions. Which of the two holds
more institutional power is up for debate, and of course either side is going
to say that the _other_ is the one with all the power.

~~~
throwawaygh
Exactly.

Insisting on politeness about guilt-free homosexuality or abortion isn't going
to get you very far in many particularly conservative Presbyterian churches or
Baptist colleges.

Note well: those institutions explicitly instruct people to "love thy
neighbor" and to "not cast stones". Those calls are just empirically only so
effective and there will always be a significant percentage of people for whom
those commandments don't work.

I therefore believe that politeness is probably a similarly ineffective
solution to newer forms of orthodoxy (e.g., cancel culture).

Consider conservative college campuses. Not because I don't believe cancel
culture exists at Harvard or wherever, but because it's a point of reference
that is much more numerous and carries similar culture power within certain
geographies/communities. In many of these institutions:

1\. being an openly gay student can result in being expelled (or at least
suspended and bullied into leaving by admin)

2\. faculty need to submit statements of faith in their job applications.
These statements of faith are not aptly named, since they're also political
ideology litmus tests. E.g., supporting abortion publicly would definitely be
cause for dismissal.

None of this is to dismiss or deny that maybe Harvard has its own orthodoxy,
but I just have zero percent trust in someone like Jerry Falwell waxing poetic
about free speech or cancel culture. His university cancels gay people.

The orthodoxy of silicon valley and elite college campuses exist in only a few
relatively small parts of the country that are over-represented in places like
HN.

I'm pointing this out for a specific reason: _stifling social norms are
nothing new_. If you leave those places where implicit restriction on speech
is a relatively new phenomenon and go to places where unspoken norms about
what can/cannot be said has been the de facto norm for hundreds of years, you
see why "simply giving it a name" and calls to "being polite" aren't going to
help.

Try going to a conservative christian university and pointing out that
"abortion is murder" is "orthodoxy" and that people who believe it are
exercising an "orthodox privilege" not available to people who believe
"abortion is a human right".

It an _NOT_ saying that cancel culture isn't a problem. It's more that it's
__always__ been a problem, for hundreds of years, just not from the left in
the USA until recently, and __history is a good tutor__.

The proposed solution probably isn't going to work.

~~~
amadeuspagel
Nobody cares about private christian colleges. The fact that you have to speak
of "private christian colleges", rather then naming any, is revealing. No one
even knows their names. Harvard is the most powerful institution on earth. Try
to name a more powerful one, and ask yourself where the people running it come
from.

~~~
throwawaygh
_> The fact that you have to speak of "private christian colleges", rather
then naming any, is revealing_

wheaton cedarville liberty byu gove city college of the ozarks point loma
king's college convenant oral roberts...

Brand recognition is not always a good measure of power. Those institutions
have _a lot_ more cultural/political power in many circles than harvard.

~~~
amadeuspagel
What circles?

~~~
throwawaygh
Pretty much any conservative christian community. Which, as a reminder, is a
huge percentage of the country. Maybe close to half.

Do you really doubt that the BYU alumni network is a lot more powerful than
the Harvard alumni network in SLC, for example?

The same is true for other colleges in their own conservative regions.

------
Kapura
pg has been opining about so-called "cancel culture" on twitter, and the last
paragraph makes it clear that this entire post is his attempt to formulate a
response:

>Once you realize that orthodox privilege exists, a lot of other things become
clearer. For example, how can it be that a large number of reasonable,
intelligent people worry about something they call "cancel culture," while
other reasonable, intelligent people deny that it's a problem? Once you
understand the concept of orthodox privilege, it's easy to see the source of
this disagreement. If you believe there's nothing true that you can't say,
then anyone who gets in trouble for something they say must deserve it.

"Orthodox privilege" is, he sees, why some people are not worried about being
"cancelled." In his mind, these people are saying what is considered correct,
so they don't fear cancellation. Perhaps this is true for some people, but I
think that it is inventing (or at least overscoping) a phenomenon to answer a
question that has another, simpler answer.

Some people are able to honestly assess their past positions and statements,
understand why things could be construed as problematic, and make efforts to
better themselves. That, and a sense of what conversations are appropriate for
public forums versus informal conversation over drinks, act as pretty great
cancellation buffers.

~~~
tinalumfoil
Some parts of the US have culture such that a working class utility worker can
get fired for unintentionally making the OK symbol, because a Twitter mob
decided it's racist and harassed his employer [0].

It's McCarthy 2.0 (although not the entire US), driven by employers worried
about their brand. Talk of "understand[ing] why things could be construed as
problematic, and mak[ing] efforts to better themselves" is detached from this
realty.

[0] [https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-
room/news/502975-cal...](https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-
room/news/502975-california-man-fired-over-alleged-white-power-sign-says-he-
was)

~~~
Kapura
the twitter mob didn't "decide it was racist," racists started co-opting that
symbol to identify themselves to one another in a way that flies under the
radar[1]. The term is "dog-whistle."

I can't speak to the case in question, but my guess is that there were other
dynamics in play if the "ok symbol" was enough to get him fired.

[1] [https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-
symbols/okay-h...](https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/okay-
hand-gesture)

~~~
emiliobumachar
> but my guess is that there were other dynamics in play if the "ok symbol"
> was enough to get him fired.

Hypothetically, if it turned out that there were no "other dynamics in play",
would you then agree that his firing was wrong and every single twitter user
who demanded it is morally responsible?

~~~
llbeansandrice
No, that's ridiculous. The twitter mob didn't fire them, their employer did.
This premise is flawed.

~~~
luckylion
"The lynch mob demanding they hang the person didn't murder them, the actual
two guys doing the hanging did, of course they shouldn't bear responsibility."

------
getpost
Is there a high-pitched sound, or not? If the people in power say there's no
high-pitched sound, and the people out of power are suffering from the high-
pitched sound, what is "true"? There is "a truth," or "two truths," but not
"the truth."

The ideal of polite conversion is that people who disagree can come to a
conclusion, a "truth," that was previously inaccessible to either of them.
Asserting "the truth," is a dominator paradigm privilege.

~~~
082349872349872
Famous visual examples of two truths:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23843723](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23843723)

~~~
malandrew
This is a great one:
[https://gfycat.com/softklutzyblackbird](https://gfycat.com/softklutzyblackbird)

------
scarmig
One interesting part of living in China has been the different sets of
orthodoxies and heresies people have. Things that are unspeakable in the US
are conventional wisdom here, and things that are unspeakable in China are
conventional wisdom in the US.

Of course, the conventional wisdom in the US as it exists among upper-middle
class, college-educated white folk in 2020 is exactly right about everything,
but it's interesting to see just how wrong people in a different society can
be without even realizing it.

~~~
Invictus0
I'm curious, can you give some examples of Chinese conventional wisdom that
are unspeakable in the US?

~~~
peacefulhat
Talking with Chinese expats in America, one that really sticks out for me is:

Despite massive economic backslide under Mao, China would not have
industrialized without him. I've heard people who are otherwise very critical
of Mao say this, seems ubiquitous. The American perspective of course is that
Mao was only a negative and stunted Chinese growth. I think the idea is that
land owners were overly conservative with capital investment and
Taiwanese/Hong Kong growth is explained by foreign investment that Republican
China would not have received.

And not as ubiquitous but several have said that the Japanese military is a
major threat to China, which seems absurd. Haven't gotten a real justification
for this other than "they make good technology", like they're secretly
developing a Gundam.

~~~
scarmig
Interestingly, the people I've spoken to here are perfectly happy to criticize
the Cultural Revolution. My impression is that saying anything negative about
Mao in his later life would be fine, so long as you couched your denunciation
in a way that didn't implicate the contemporary CCP.

I suspect that an impassioned defense of the Red Guard would get more blow
back here than in the USA, actually, based on my friends' opinions.

------
NhanH
Related, and still one of pg's best writing imo: "What you can't say" \-
[http://paulgraham.com/say.html](http://paulgraham.com/say.html)

This one, in additional with the previous essay about 2 different kind of
centrists really make me curious of what unorthodox opinions PG is holding and
can't say right now.

~~~
StavrosK
Probably largely the same everybody else is holding.

~~~
neoplatonian
It is pretty clear, if you read Paul Graham's twitter feed, what is it that he
wants to say but feels he cannot say. I see where his point of view
completely, but having not seen the the other side of privilege: the very real
and lived experiences and feelings where cancel culture stems from, I feel
this is an issue where he is totally blindsighted. The problem in the US
currently, I feel, is not cancel culture per se, but widespread and ever
growing narcissism which makes one less questioning about their fundamental
worldview than one should be.

Paul Graham is somewhat a victim of this himself.

For example, the assumption behind this very essay is that there is such a
thing as a rigid, singular concept of "truth" in the moral, cultural and
political sphere, that there is a "fact of the matter" whether a belief (say
one PG holds) is correct or not. Or that that we live in a static world where
such truths can even exist, and not, in a fluid, dynamic, politically messy
world where contrasting viewpoints interact and produce something not
something ever lasting, but something which is fragile and must always be
fought for, this fight being a necessary feature for a functioning democracy.

~~~
StavrosK
But it's kind of moot what he, specifically, wants to say, no? Shouldn't we
instead try to work towards a society where no opinion is taboo?

It seems to me that the biggest reason why some opinions are taboo is that
we're worried (usually for good reason) they'll find supporters. Instead of
making opinions taboo, we should work on an educational system that doesn't
let harmful opinions take hold of people.

~~~
gjulianm
> Shouldn't we instead try to work towards a society where no opinion is
> taboo?

There will always be taboo opinions. For example, I can't imagine a civilized
society where an opinion like "capital punishment for every minor fault is ok"
is not taboo.

> Instead of making opinions taboo, we should work on an educational system
> that doesn't let harmful opinions take hold of people.

How? I think the problem is that this is impossible at all. Not every opinion
is based on reason and education will not be a shield from them.

~~~
StavrosK
> I can't imagine a civilized society where an opinion like "capital
> punishment for every minor fault is ok" is not taboo.

This one isn't. Here, I can say "there should be capital punishment for every
minor fault!" and nobody will bat an eyelid. Nobody will agree, which is why
it's okay to say this.

"Taboo" means "opinions you can't talk about", not "opinions that won't be
popular". Many taboo opinions are extremely popular, such as "homosexuality
shouldn't be a crime" a few decades ago.

~~~
gjulianm
It's not taboo because you are not taking it seriously. Now, would a newspaper
let me write this? Would my family treat me the same if I were serious with
this opinion?

~~~
StavrosK
Maybe I don't have a good grasp of the cultural context, but it seems to me
that you would be much better off tweeting "I believe that capital punishment
should be used for even minor crimes" than something like "I think it's okay
to own black people".

Hell, I spent a full thirty seconds wondering whether I should even post the
latter under my name, even if it's clearly in a hypothetical context and I'm
just mentioning it as an example.

------
t0astbread
A lot of this seems to focus on ideas and worldviews but I think there's a
more general truth in Orthodox Privilege: If you're in the majority it's easy
to overestimate the quality of life in the minority (and this applies to many
kinds of majorities and minorities).

I think a lot of politics (at least in my country) also work this way. Simply
by not addressing real problems, a politician can look like a winner because
hey, there are no problems when they're in charge! Addressing problems not
only becomes a political liability, it's in fact hardly possible at all
because the majority of people wouldn't believe you if you told them about it
and would accuse you of making up problems.

~~~
bravo22
This also reveals a fundamental bug in naive democracy (i.e. we should do
everything that the majority wants). It creates an implicit tyranny against
the minority by the majority. Of course the same person can be in a majority
group in one category but minority in the other.

U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and other similar fundamental laws were
conceived as essentially a way to fix this problem; to keep the minority safe
from the majority. You wouldn't be able to solve slavery with democracy. The
majority would vote to maintain it.

------
bob33212
"Joining as employee number 15 or later at a startup pretty much guarantees
that you will get screwed over on equity if the company needs to raise money
again"

Can you say that and also still be accepted to ycombinator?

~~~
jbob2000
This is the problem with this post; Paul isn’t getting into specifics, so it’s
easy for anyone to read this and say “ah yes, it is them who have the problem
and not me”.

I gather he wants to tell all of these people casting platitudes down on
everyone to fuck off, but he could also be talking about the people that want
to tell those people to fuck off.

~~~
rurp
This was my impression as well. The main point made sense but was so general I
didn't really get much out of it. Maybe it's because I don't follow Twitter or
movements like "cancel culture" much, but I couldn't readily think of any
specific real world situations that this article gave me any new insight on.

~~~
jonny_eh
Exactly! I want to be charitable, but I can't help but feel he really really
wants to say something awful, James Watson style.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watson#Comments_on_race](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watson#Comments_on_race)

------
rexreed
Here's something for you: HN has groupthink (er, I mean PG-branded Orthodox
Privilege) in spades. If you agree with the Group (orthodoxy) you get upvotes
and lots of kudos. If you don't, you get downvotes and criticism.

~~~
non-entity
> If you don't, you get downvotes and criticism.

Heh, if you're lucky. Often you get just the downvotes.

~~~
skissane
The incentives encourage people to downvote rather than criticise. If they
post a critical response, they run the risk of being downvoted by those who
disagree with that criticism. You can't get downvoted for a silent downvote.

------
ot
I'm not sure what the point of this post is. It says

> And yet at every point in history, there were true things that would get you
> in terrible trouble to say. Is ours the first where this isn't so? What an
> amazing coincidence that would be.

and then goes on to argue that saying certain things could get you in trouble.
I'm sure that the orthodoxy-aligned people at any point in time believed that
they couldn't say anything that would get them in trouble as well.

So it may be an unfortunate dynamic, but the post contradicts itself in
presenting it as a product of our time. If anything, things got better: in the
past you'd be imprisoned or killed, today people yell at you on Twitter and in
the worst case you may have to switch jobs.

~~~
jeffmcmahan
> but the post contradicts itself in presenting it as a product of our time.

No. It doesn't. Nope. It presents the phenomenon as something that's always
true - recall the discussion of time traveling and meeting the same dynamic
with different particulars in each time and place.

Moreover, "the point of this post" is abundantly clear: the more closely your
views adhere to the mainstream, the more blind you'll be to the costs of
holding opinions outside the mainstream because you don't encounter those
costs. It's a good point and not hard to understand.

------
everdrive
I sometimes wonder if this is not just the novelty of social media, but rather
the new normal. ie, perhaps social media will always be this divisive? This is
a very limited metaphor, but it reminds me of how a moth circles around a
flame. Usually, a moth would use the Moon (or Sun) to navigate, which is
focused to infinity. The flame is close by, and the way the moth's natural
circuitry works causes it to malfunction. A straight line becomes an inward
spiral, towards the flame.

The basic problems of social media are nothing new to human behavior:
tribalism, moral judgement / righteousness, extremist viewpoints.

But I wonder if it's a bit like the moth and the flame. With so many extreme
opinions from so many strangers, we begin spiraling to more extreme positions,
and taking sides in a more extreme fashion. Under normal conditions extreme
opinions can still exist, but they are usually tempered by contact with other
people. Even when extremity existed in the past, it at least appeared to be
stable over time. ie, you'd have single group with unified (albeit extreme)
ideas. People are normally meant to be socially and morally judgemental. (to
what degree, and about what is up for some debate, but as an animal we like to
make moral judgements.) But, they're also meant to find consensus within a
community. Well, the internet breaks down some of that consensus building,
while also introducing and amplifying more and more extreme positions. I
really wonder that like the moth, social media breaks our normal intuition for
social judgement and coalition building.

And lastly, I wonder if it's any surprise that things seem to have gotten
crazier since most have been on quarantine -- away from normal people, but
glued to our screens. Maybe that's just anecdotal on my part, though.

------
jes5199
ooh a bait and switch! I was going to talk about how people with different
kinds of brains (you think anyone in this forum is on the autism spectrum?
no?) have to code-switch and perform the normal cognitive style to be taken
seriously...

but that’s not actually relevant, because this post is about “cancel culture”.
Should a person get twitter mobbed for admitting that they’re a bigot?
probably not! should a person who says “damn that sounds kinda bigoted” to
someone famous get mobbed for saying _that_ in public?? No I’d say no to that
too.

but we’ve got both sides saying “my mob is good people telling the truth, your
mob is cruel trolls running an inquisition” but somehow that devolves into
saying “cancel cultures does/doesn’t exist” as if that explained why your mob
has the right to wield pitchforks and the other one doesn’t

~~~
bob33212
I see it as "My mob should be judged by the most moderate and thoughtful of
us, your mob should be judged by the worst of you"

------
baddox
> It's safe for them to express their opinions, because the source of their
> opinions is whatever it's currently acceptable to believe.

The premise is not sound. Not everyone who has a conventionally accepted idea
has that idea because the idea is conventionally accepted. It could be, for
example, that there is some other cause that leads to me having an idea and
that idea being conventionally accepted.

As an obvious example, I don’t think that one plus one equals two because I
observe that to be conventionally accepted. I have good reasons to think
that’s true even if most people disagreed. And I certainly wouldn’t think
anyone who disagrees was being discriminated against for having unconventional
ideas.

~~~
bhelkey
It sounds like you are interpreting Paul Graham to mean, 'if one of a person's
ideas is conventionally accepted, then the source of that opinion is whatever
it's currently acceptable to believe'.

I interpreted this to mean, 'if _all_ of a person's ideas are conventionally
accepted, then the source of their opinions are whatever it's currently
acceptable to believe'.

Part of why I interpreted this passage the way I did was because this builds
on Graham earlier post titled 'What You Can't Say':

> Let's start with a test: Do you have any opinions that you would be
> reluctant to express in front of a group of your peers?

> If the answer is no, you might want to stop and think about that. If
> everything you believe is something you're supposed to believe, could that
> possibly be a coincidence? Odds are it isn't. Odds are you just think what
> you're told. [1]

[1] [http://paulgraham.com/say.html](http://paulgraham.com/say.html)

~~~
baddox
I think what both of his sentiments are missing is that we should try to shape
society such that the good beliefs are also the conventional ones, instead of
praising people for having unconventional beliefs for its own sake.

------
carlisle_
This is such a strange post. Mr. Graham speaks in vague generalities, then
finally hones in on a specific idea seemingly out of the blue:

> For example, how can it be that a large number of reasonable, intelligent
> people worry about something they call "cancel culture," while other
> reasonable, intelligent people deny that it's a problem?

Why “cancel culture” when there’s any number of issues this is equally true
for? Why is it only “reasonably intelligent people” oppose it in this example.

This post just seems intellectually lazy. Making sweeping generalizations and
then throwing in some appeal to popularity is not a well made point.

~~~
Tokkemon
It's just a topical example given the New York Times and resignation of Bari
Weiss.

------
woodruffw
A glaring omission: the views and positions that paulg is (obliquely)
referring to _just aren 't orthodox._ He's upset that a small, vocal
minority[1] is _challenging_ a set of _orthodox_ social norms that continue to
enrich and empower him.

The average American is doesn't read Twitter daily, and is somewhere between a
moderate liberal and a moderate conservative[2]. _These_ people represent
orthodox privilege.

[1]: Case in point: they continue to lose primary elections within their own
(ostensible) party.

[2]: On the American political scale, which is uniformly further "right" than
European left-right divides.

~~~
wwright
It's frustrating because he is _so close_ to really getting it.

"Cancel culture" is not a thing, in my opinion, because the things that people
cry are "cancelled" are almost universally orthodox!

\- Gender critical feminism: the orthodox view that trans men are not men and
trans women are not women

\- Rape, sexual assault, harassment: the orthodox view that women are the
property of men (if you don't think this is orthodox, you should really study
the history of laws around women)

\- Racism: the orthodox view that those of European decent deserve more and
better (orthodox since Europe spent most of the last 500 years conquering and
exploiting the rest of the planet)

Because all of these things are orthodox and hurt others, it is a _privilege_
you have to defend them. If you write a national NTY editorial that is
explicitly and disgustingly racist, _you will be fine_! Racism is orthodox!
Racists are in power everywhere! The president is racist! His friends are
racists! Being "cancelled" is not a thing in this context!

Meanwhile, if you speak out against violence against black bodies (which we
know still happens because it _never stopped happening!_ ), the government
will actively spy on and harass you, and in some cases there is evidence they
will even kill you ([https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-ferguson-
acti...](https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-ferguson-activist-
deaths-black-lives-matter-20190317-story.html)).

~~~
AnimalMuppet
"Orthodox" isn't global. Orthodox is only orthodox within a set of people.

Gender critical feminism: the view that trans men are not men and trans women
are not women is orthodox, if you look at all of history. It's orthodox in
many parts of the US today. It's heresy in progressive circles.

Women as property: that may have been orthodox historically. In almost all
circles in the US, it's heresy today.

Racism: it was orthodox historically. I would guess that in the majority of
the US, it's heresy today - but it's orthodox in more circles than it should
be.

You seem to be mostly using historical examples. That's not particularly
relevant - we don't live there now. What's relevant to our lives now is that,
within a given circle of people we interact with now, there is an orthodoxy
for that circle.

~~~
wwright
I use the historical perspective to illuminate how far back the orthodoxy
goes; we can‘t undo that orthodoxy within two or three generations. Women are
raped, stalked, harassed, and murdered because men feel they are property, and
they feel that way because of lingering orthodoxy. Black people are cut out of
spaces and disallowed the same dignity as others because people feel they are
uneducated or dangerous, and they feel that way because of lingering
orthodoxy.

Yes, the orthodoxy of one’s immediate circle is important, but human society
is interwoven across many levels. Some orthodoxies result in uncomfortable
Twitter arguments. Other orthodoxies lead to the election of a sociopathic
dimwit who has led a completely failed pandemic response that has left 140,000
dead and triggered the greatest economic crisis of the last century (if not
more).

To say that a progressive orthodoxy is a threat at this time is to claim that
a fire ant is a threat in a wildfire.

~~~
Tainnor
I am not from the US, so Trump does not really affect my directly that much
and yet, when he got elected, I donated to the ACLU, I have been in numerous
heated arguments about why I think he's cancerous to society and I would vote
for Biden and would have voted for Hillary if I was American. Similarly, I've
cut off contact with an uncle after it became clear he was supporting the
homophobic backlash in Poland, I have unfriended people over non-stop blaming
refugees for everything, I am in deep horror of gays being rounded up and
killed in Chechnya and Uyghurs being interned in China, and so on.

And yet, I am at the same time still perfectly capable to lament a
deterioration of political discourse not only on the right, but on the left as
well.

You seem to assume that because people criticise "cancel culture", they think
racism or sexual violence or homophobia are not also bad, and yes, also worse
and more dangerous. But that is nothing more than a strawman. I've been
strawmanned like this before and I find it just really tiring.

I think Trump is worse than even the worst excesses of cancel culture. But
that doesn't mean I can't still worry about the latter. And crucially, I do
also believe that "cancel culture" only serves to drive more moderate right-
wingers further and further into the fold of the far right. In some respects,
I think Trump is a monster of the left's own creation.

Luckily, where I live, politics is not yet as polarised as I perceive the US
to be. But it's changing, I feel, and I partially blame US cultural influence
for it.

------
analyst74
Internet mob rule definitely has its problems, but it's also particularly
disliked by people who previously had the "Orthodox" privilege, because losing
privilege feels terrible, which can be summed as:

"I used to be able to say anything honestly, now I can't."

------
wbharding
The world has been hard up for terminology to describe what’s bad about the
forces that have dragged down SSC and driven Weiss away from NYT. “Cancel
culture” was a good start, as evidenced by those who have been rankled by the
suggestion of its existence. My fave part of this essay is that it offers a
shiny new tool, “orthodox privilege,” that allows us to enumerate the case for
a countervailing force against this age of outrage.

~~~
awb
It's not clear to me the difference between "cancel culture" and legitimate
outrage.

The complaints about cancel culture feel vague: a mob, a loud minority making
demands, a court of public opinion, etc.

Aren't those present for for both legitimate and illegitimate criticism? I
guess I don't know how the "cancel cancel culture" folks want the "cancel
culture" folks to express themselves when they see an injustice but aren't
represented in positions of power that can affect change.

It seems like it's those in positions of power and privilege that don't like
protests, cancel culture, or anything that could upset their status and net
worth.

I'm just confused by the outrage and attempt to cancel the folks who are
outraged and attempting to cancel people.

I understand from history that it can go too far: political arrests, burning
books, etc. But no cancelling seems like an extreme where were asking folks to
let people stay in positions of power no matter what they say or believe.

Happy to be wrong about this.

~~~
josephcsible
> It's not clear to me the difference between "cancel culture" and legitimate
> outrage.

Legitimate outrage is "I think an opinion you currently hold or thing you
currently do is bad, so I'm going to try to cut you off from society until you
walk back the opinion or stop doing the thing."

Cancel culture is "I think an opinion you once held or thing you once did is
bad, so I'm going to try to cut you off from society forever, even if it
wasn't considered bad at the time, and even if you've since walked it
back/stopped/apologized."

In a nutshell, cancel culture is refusing to forgive.

~~~
awb
Thanks. I've never heard it explained like that.

It reminds me of the debate about elderly Nazis being sent to prison.

------
not2b
I'm not impressed with this argument, which we are seeing more of these days.
Expressing one's opinion on controversial issues risks that people will be
pissed off, but it isn't just the originally expressed opinion that is "free
speech"; the furious criticisms of the original opinion are also "free
speech". Refusing to associate with people because of their expressed opinions
is also a right.

And there isn't one orthodoxy, there are many. The range of opinions that can
be expressed in the vicinity of Paul Graham without risking that he won't fund
your startup is very different from the range of opinions that an assistant
professor going for tenure in a humanities department may express, but it's
not clear whether Graham is conscious of the orthodoxy he himself imposes, by
his economic power.

~~~
seibelj
It's not enough to merely criticize someone. The fear is that you are fired
and your career is destroyed, which is very bad for you and your family. When
expressing even a minor deviation from the party line can result in life-
destroying consequences, all dissent and discussion is stifled out of fear.
This is the chilling effect.

~~~
not2b
Yes, if it were true that "expressing even a minor deviation from the party
line can result in life-destroying consequences", that would be bad. But it
really isn't. You can get fired from a company by disagreeing with its party
line on some issue, but that doesn't destroy your life.

------
muxl
The core message of this article is that it's possible for even large groups
of people to be wrong about things and that those people won't think they're
wrong (they're wrong about being wrong). The author summarizes this mechanism
as: these people are so accustomed to being "right" by appealing to consensus
that they can't imagine being wrong.

This argument seems to generalize not just to large groups but also to small
ones. The problem I see is that in the case of large groups the author calls
this "privilege" and in the case of small groups he doesn't. Since the size of
the group doesn't really effect the nature of group orthodoxy and adherence
the argument seems to collapse to "large groups are privileged."

I agree that large groups are privileged but to claim that part of privilege
is not being able to conceive of your group as being wrong seems tangential
and potentially just incorrect.

Perhaps the author is assuming that people in small groups more frequently
encounter other groups which (1) they disagree with (2) they eventually
determine are right

but it isn't obvious to me that (2) would be more likely to occur in a small
group than in a large group. There have been fanatical large groups and small
ones which do not tolerate deviation on certain points.

~~~
jlawson
It has nothing to do with the size of the group.

It's about whether a member of the group will ever have to encounter or
understand views that are unorthodox in that group.

If not, they assume they can't be wrong. It's the "way things are" which
nobody disputes.

This creates a mental blindness where they can't possibly imagine someone
wanting to say something in good faith that was against this "way things are",
to them it would be like saying the Earth has no moon or that cats can fly.
Why would you claim that? What's wrong with you?

------
greenail
Learning about the underlying theories of Postmodernism and Critical Theory
helped me get a better understanding of some of the "cancel culture" behavior
and illiberal-ism which seems to be trending. It has also helped me avoid
falling into traps I would otherwise have blindly stumbled into.

~~~
ponker
Have any links to overview resources?

~~~
greenail
this may help. Keys are the rejection of objective truth and other
"enlightenment" ideas. [https://www.britannica.com/topic/postmodernism-
philosophy](https://www.britannica.com/topic/postmodernism-philosophy)

------
ivankirigin
"Things you can't say" is interesting because the reason it's dangerous is
that a mob might react badly to it. Who is to say that the specific wave
washing over social media will hit some people with this orthodox privilege or
not?

I think you can mine these things by looking at diverse conversations -
including those you don't find online. What sentence would you be afraid might
be misinterpreted?

~~~
andreilys
The best part is that an innocuous statement in 2006, can actually be a
dangerous one in 2020.

Norms change. Nobody knows how but one day something is okay to talk about and
the next it’s not.

~~~
mc32
Progressive statements from 2006 can today be considered dangerous.

People don’t care about context at all. But, interestingly, they’ll also
gladly ignore massive taboos (from their POV) if it’s in their favor. For
example because Bernie makes some good arguments for progressive causes that
he was against immigration undercutting wages many years ago, is ignored
today, but if someone else had that history as a politician they potentially
would be brought down, if they were more moderate (in either party).

------
donatj
Paul Graham as always says the things I want to say, more clearly and concise,
and with the privilege wealth brings of being able to more freely speak.

------
rexreed
Sounds like just another way of saying "groupthink".

It's a rebranding of the concept of groupthink which has been around as long
as hominids have been in groups and have been thinking. It's not a form of
privilege. Rather, it's the nature of our brains. We are social animals. We
prefer not being ostracized. We self-censor as a result. This is not a
privilege. People who groupthink are not more privileged than those who don't.
The only privilege is the ability to say "yes" to the group more frequently.

------
Isamu
Lots of things at work are sacred, I have to avoid talking about them openly.
This makes meetings uncomfortable for me when the very orthodox-privilege
leader wants you to open up.

Things like Agile for instance can’t be discussed unless you have a near
orthodox view.

------
Tenoke
The post points to a true thing, Orthodox Privilege definitely exists and we
see examples of it quite often. However, to some extent it exists within
bubbles.

For example the orthodox position to the _statement_ 'All lives matter' is
'this is a racist dog whistle' within one bubble and 'this is an obviously
true statement' within another.

~~~
dsr_
It's both obviously true AND a racist dog whistle.

Stripped of context, it is obviously true, and utterly harmless.

Placed in the context of BLM, it denies that anything unfair is happening to
people because of their skin color.

~~~
faitswulff
> Placed in the context of BLM

80 to 90% of the times I’ve seen this phrase, it’s been used in response to
Black Lives Matter. As opposed to being used in the positive for, say,
universal healthcare, food assistance programs, and initiatives to house the
homeless.

~~~
StavrosK
I made the mistake of saying "but police brutality is a general problem, why
make it specific to black people rather than try to solve all of it? Isn't it
true that all lives matter?", and the person I was talking to basically heard
"I'm racist", so it's not only true that it's both true _and_ a racist dog-
whistle, but it's also true that after the whistle has been blown, it doesn't
matter what else you say.

The whistle should be a red flag, rather than surefire proof that you now know
everything the person is going to say, therefore you shouldn't listen any
more. I think one of the problems in the US is the pervasiveness of the
mindset of "I think you're X, therefore I refuse to listen to anything else
you say".

~~~
zrail
That's an unfortunate reaction to what should have been a teachable moment.
You're not wrong, in so far as all lives truly do matter. The statement "Black
lives matter" seems to have an implicit "more than yours" tacked on in a lot
of people's heads, and that's what seems to grate.

It's not that Black lives matter _more_, it's that systemic institutionalized
racism dating back to the origins of the US make it so that Black lives matter
_less_ than white lives when dealing with organs of power.

~~~
StavrosK
> It's not that Black lives matter _more_, it's that systemic
> institutionalized racism dating back to the origins of the US make it so
> that Black lives matter _less_ than white lives when dealing with organs of
> power.

This is definitely true, I'm just puzzled as to why you'd focus efforts on
solving a subset of the problem rather than the whole problem. Wouldn't that
lead to fragmented movements of "<race> lives matter" rather than one single
effort?

~~~
crdrost
I hear what you're saying, but I think you misunderstand what the protesters
are saying.

“Black lives matter” is not just asserting that black lives are among the
lives that matter. Like, it IS asserting this and that observation IS somewhat
banal and that IS kind of the point.

The banality of the statement is meant to invite you to think, “wait, why do
we even have to say this?” which exposes a deeper meaning.

That deeper meaning is more like “We occasionally get hunted and killed out in
the streets like rabid dogs by the very institutions that are supposed to
protect people from violence—and this can only be understood as the
culmination of America’s vast history of trying to ignore and bury and forget
about its racist history rather than talk about it and address it, to the
point where that «we don’t wanna talk about it» inclination has metastasized
into an active implication that our lives are valueless to the culture at
large. And we cannot breathe this stifling choking smog of «oh well another
black man was shot but let’s not put it in the news, they don’t matter enough
for that» any more, as happens when death transitions from stories into
statistics. Fuck that. We DO matter.”

In turn the deeper meaning of “Blue lives matter” is “we respect our police
enough to give them unconditional arbitration of who lives and who dies in
cases where they feel their lives are at stake and sorry black people but we
don't see a way for your needs to not die be satisfied without good honest
police officers losing their lives because some of y’all shoot them—like, not
the majority, I am sure most of you are good, but like when I think of inner
city gang members shooting the police I think of black men stereotypically.
Fix your gang problems first and then you won’t get shot by police.” You can
see why that seems to have a kernel of truth but really came across as tone-
deaf (see how it takes a statistical view rather than a story view?) and not
understanding that most of these actual stories are about getting shot in the
back while walking away or being strangled slowly while being totally
immobilized and protesting that you are being strangled and could they please
not do that, others involve very young innocent children being killed as
collateral damage or worse.

Meanwhile “all lives matter” is a similarly banal statement but it serves the
function, when used as a response to “black lives matter,” of saying that “no,
you know, I really like our racist history being buried, I liked it when we
didn't talk about race. We should focus on the global human condition and
forget the specific gruesome stories of what’s happening to folks of your race
right now as just the smaller problem of what’s happening to you right now.
But I find myself very worried that if I am sharing these black stories
someone is going to get mad at me for not sharing the Mexican stories of
police injustice and then the poor white stories of police injustice and,
well, can’t we just go back to a time where we didn’t talk about the race
problem that we were having?”

The basic response to this I suppose is “we have been _trying_ the ‘all lives
matter’ approach for hundreds of years and we don’t seem to be improving,
meanwhile cultures with similar race dynamics, like South Africa, are actually
processing their difficulties over much shorter time scales, possibly because
they are willing to talk about it and be frank. There is no reason to believe
at this point that the mentality of ‘all lives matter’ leads to a better
outcome for the black lives that are hemorrhaged today in such quantities that
it becomes numb statistics rather than individual stories if we don’t make a
point of getting outraged over every single damn death.”

~~~
zrail
Every time I see the thin blue line flag or a "support our police" sign (or
both combined, as in several yards just outside of town) I get angry. It's
willfully ignoring everything you just wrote about, at best.

~~~
philwelch
I think people are operating with incomplete, non-overlapping sets of
information.

A day or two ago, a police officer in my area was killed on duty in a
gunfight. Some of the reactions on Twitter were deranged and vile, literally
celebrating that an officer was killed. I saw the same shit the day or two
before when a police department near me tweeted about one of their police
_dogs_ dying, apparently of old age.

People deliberately try to ambush and murder police on a fairly regular basis.
It doesn’t get reported much—partly because it doesn’t fit any popular media
narrative, partly, I suspect, to not encourage copycats, and partly because
it’s not really news. In 2013 a man in Southern California—you might recognize
his name but I won’t give him the dignity of using it—carried out a brief
campaign of murdering police officers and their families in a self-declared
campaign of “unconventional and asymmetric warfare” against the LAPD.

I used to personally be very strongly biased against the police. I’m less so
now, and part of the reason for that is that I’ve had the opportunity to see
dozens of dashcam and bodycam videos of actual officer-involved shootings. The
vast majority of the shootings I’ve seen were situations where the officer’s
life was very much at risk.

I can even pick out patterns when people post videos of police _not_ shooting
people, presumably because those people are white. It’s not because they’re
white, it’s because while they might have a bladed weapon and occasionally
lunge in an officer’s direction, cops usually hold their fire and maintain
distance until the guy breaks into a full-on sprint to try and close that
distance.

I’m not trying to minimize or dismiss the actual police brutality that takes
place, and I agree that we need higher standards and accountability. But from
actually listening to some of the people on that side of the issue and seeing
their evidence, I can understand where they’re coming from.

~~~
zrail
Sure. Stories are important. It's really not all that common, though, if we're
being honest. According to this random memorial page[1] 48 police officers
were killed in the line of duty last year in the US, an annual fatality rate
of 0.006% assuming 800,000 active officers.

[1]:
[https://www.odmp.org/search/year?year=2019](https://www.odmp.org/search/year?year=2019)

~~~
philwelch
The numbers aren’t that low for lack of trying, though. The majority of
attempts fail because the police are better-equipped and better-trained than
the people trying to kill them. That’s part of why there are so many officer-
involved shootings in the first place.

------
pyb
It's not the first time that pg alludes to "what you can't say". It would be
nice if he could at least outline what it is that he believes he's not allowed
to say. Otherwise the discussion remains exceedingly abstract. Furthermore,
some may assume the worst of whatever he had in mind that "can't be said"

~~~
wry_discontent
Nobody who complains about cancel culture can actually do that cause they'll
out what they really mean, which is something like "I want to say
racist/sexist shit but can't cause I'll get in trouble now."

~~~
ksdale
From the essay: "The more extreme will even accuse you of specific heresies
they imagine you must have in mind, though if there's more than one heresy
current in your time, these accusations will tend to be nondeterministic: you
must either be an xist or a yist."

~~~
wry_discontent
Yes, in life I make inferences on incomplete data. Racists online regularly
complain about PC run amok and cancel culture, so if you complain about
"cancel culture" too much in purely abstract terms, I don't really trust you.
There exist people I'd like to cancel in the harshest sense. Cite specific
instances, and maybe we can be on the same side.

~~~
ksdale
I think your inference-making algorithm doesn't distinguish between people who
earnestly hold strong beliefs about speech, and racists. Perhaps there are so
many more racists that it doesn't matter...

------
carapace
What? Is this a cry for help? Is it ax-grinding? Are there "unorthodox and
true" statements that pg would like to make but is afraid of "terrible
trouble"? I find the idea of "orthodox privilege" an oxymoron. I don't
understand what the phrase captures that isn't just "privilege". Maybe the
whole essay is just going over my head. Or perhaps I don't hear the same
"high-pitched noise"?

Look, I do something called "Reiki". For some people it's commonplace, for
others it's crazy-town. I also do something called "computer programming". For
some people it's commonplace, for others it's crazy-town. (Being a computer
nerd used to be cause for abuse and shunning, now we're celebrated. So it
goes.)

My point is, there are lots of ways to rile up the mob and get them to pick up
their pitchforks and torches. In some places all you have to do is exist and
be black or gay or a woman or white or straight or a man or neither a man nor
a woman, or both-at-the-same-time (hermaphrodite), or be both black and white
(Trevor Noah's autobiography of his childhood in S. Africa, "Born a Crime", is
worth reading, IMO), or be a computer nerd in the locker room at the wrong
time, or wear the wrong kind of hat.

Mob-ism, with the pitchforks and torches, is a problem (this is hardly news
though, eh?)

------
haunter
That's why I really don't like the "white privilege". Poor white people are
just as fucked as any other minority in the US yet they're being lumped with
the rich white people as if they have the same privileges

When you're poor as fuck and having a shit life and everyone keeps telling you
how privileged you are, you stop believing those people and turn to
alternative sources for information

~~~
Spivak
But they're not! At this point I think we should just scrap the word privilege
and call it "shit I don't have to deal with because I'm X" since it's
apparently too politically charged to have a discussion about it.

Just one example.

As a white person I have never in my life cared about getting a receipt from
any store I shop at, have ever been accused of shoplifting, have never had the
self-checkout person have even the _slightest_ suspicion even when I was broke
in college and ringing up way too many bananas, and when the sensor things
beep the workers _apologize_ and tell me to just go.

This is not the experience of black Americans where children have to be taught
to always get and keep their receipts because they get stopped so frequently.

~~~
belorn
You can fix that by going into stores dressed as a homeless person or any
other out-group that contain white people that the store owner/employees in-
group has likely an negative emotional response to.

For maximal negative response, portrait yourself as a male with, low social
economic status, different race, different biological markers, and signals of
different cultural values. As per research this will likely result in
activation of fear, disgust and low activation of empathy.

~~~
Spivak
Am I missing something because I feel like we're agreeing? Because everything
you mentioned are good examples of other forms of privilege, or I guess lack
thereof.

I'm always so surprised in internet discussions that people will readily
acknowledge lots of forms of privilege but then turn around and be like "white
privilege" or "male privilege" \-- naaah anything like that can be explained
by these other 300 types of privilege. Like "black privilege" and "female
privilege" exist too -- it's just a language for describing how the different
facets of ourselves change how we're treated.

Privilege being the word for describing when that facet helps you not
experience "worse than normal" treatment than people without it might --
contrasted with "advantage", when you get "better than normal" treatment for
having it.

~~~
belorn
Yes, we might be agreeing on most points.

To me it is biology. A set of factors contribute to fear and disgust when
people meet and an other set of factors trigger empathy and cooperation. We
can use the word privilege to mean, in a given environment, having more
triggers than someone else for the positive effects and less triggers for the
negative effects. The resulting individual experience is the sum of
interactions.

Some trait has stronger effect than others such as social economic status and
kinship. Close to that comes gender, although sometimes it can also be the
strongest factor. Research into this subject generally show a strong
environmental aspect to this as well.

I would not use "white privilege" in an online discussion because it often
than not lead the discussion away from the complexity of in-group and out-
group interactions and into the realm of blame and over simplification. The
most insightful thing anyone can really make about white privilege is that
being rich, healthy, appeasing appearance, surrounded by a strong majority of
in-group members (preferable kinship) that have similar cultural values, then
being white is also a benefit as long as the other in-group members are also
majority white.

------
dexen
_> If someone says they can hear a high-pitched noise that you can't_

I guess this is an accidentally in-apt example...? It certainly detracts from
the essay ( _mildly_ and in oh so many words) pushing against accusations of
wrongthink - which includes accusations of _dogwhistling_.

------
skybrian
I guess a weak form of this fallacy would be "there is nothing true you can't
say, provided that you are very careful about how you say it." That is,
assuming that the people who get in trouble were speaking too bluntly or
imprecisely.

------
loourr
Beating around the bush Paul...

------
emiliobumachar
Great essay, useful concept I never noticed before. But I cannot agree with
the last sentence.

"If you believe there's nothing true that you can't say, then anyone who gets
in trouble for something they say must deserve it."

Even if one is 100% convinced that true statements are 100% safe, there
remains the possible beliefs that being wrong is _okay_ to some degree, and
that becoming right is a hard process that may involve believing false
statements and saying them.

------
gringoDan
> It's safe for them to express their opinions, because the source of their
> opinions is whatever it's currently acceptable to believe. So it seems to
> them that it must be safe for everyone. They literally can't imagine a true
> statement that would get them in trouble.

It seems to me that this stems from two interrelated issues:

1\. People defaulting to their tribal position (red/blue in the US) without
thinking deeply and engaging in rational discussion of issues.

2\. A lack of empathy.

What is "currently acceptable to believe" is determined by your ingroup. And
rather than trying to understand why someone in the outgroup would hold a
different opinion, the ingroup paints all of them as crazy/stupid/X-ist. While
the red tribe is generally more criticized in this regard, the blue tribe is
just as complicit (look at the smug superiority of John Oliver and other
political comedians).

While this tribal fighting occurs, power is consolidated. The people with keen
insights (that may be construed as controversial) will make them privately,
rather than take on public risk. In the words of Jessica Livingston, "I don't
have time to fight with people who are trying to misunderstand me." [1]

I hope that there is a solution to this problem, so that the internet can
reach its potential to democratize access to information and data, rather than
becoming a mechanism to virtue signal acceptable tribal beliefs.

[1] [https://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/the-sound-of-
silence](https://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/the-sound-of-silence)

~~~
makomk
It's less a lack of empathy and more a _redefinition_ of it, at least on the
woke blue tribe side. In those circles, not rejecting ideas outside the
orthodoxy and dehumanizing those who hold them is seen as a failure of empathy
because the correct ideas are, by definition, required in order to treat the
people who matter with decency. I'm not familiar enough with other groupthinks
to know if this applies there too, but probably not.

------
greenie_beans
he's smart and i always like reading his insight but his writing is so cryptic
and always dances around his point without fully committing to it

~~~
calebm
He's probably choosing not to say some stuff because it's heresy :)

~~~
greenie_beans
he's very obviously saying those things if you read between the lines so how
is that not committing "heresy"?

------
bhntr3
Orthodox privilege probably exists but, at least in the US, we also see a lot
of people who fetishize independent-mindedness to a degree that's irrational
as well.

I have advocated before for epistemic learned helplessness
([https://scienceforsustainability.org/wiki/Epistemic_Learned_...](https://scienceforsustainability.org/wiki/Epistemic_Learned_Helplessness)).

> thinking for ourselves is over-rated in most cases. In most cases, for most
> of us, good science and pseudoscience, good history and pseudohistory are
> going to be equally convincing. Bayesian logic suggests that sticking with
> mainstream experts and consensus thinking is a safer bet than rolling the
> dice on the Galileo Gambit.

So PG seems to be arguing that orthodox privilege is bad and independent-
mindedness is important while Scott Alexander seems to be arguing that
conventional mindedness should be the default. They're both very convincing
essayists. Who is saying something true that can't be said and who is saying
something popular but false?

------
chrisallick
The concept is not overused. Privilege, and the abuse of it, is _that_
pervasive.

------
smitty1e
> The spectral signature of orthodox privilege is "Why don't you just say it?"
> If you think there's something true that people can't say, why don't you be
> brave, and own it? The more extreme will even accuse you of specific
> heresies they imagine you must have in mind, though if there's more than one
> heresy current in your time, these accusations will tend to be
> nondeterministic: you must either be an xist or a yist.

That's not "orthodox privilege". That's fear.

> How do you respond to orthodox privilege?

Wait for the storm of folly to blow over. The nihilistic idiocies that I
cannot name shall have destroyed themselves in their madness before much
longer, like the French Revolution before them.

> If you believe there's nothing true that you can't say, then anyone who gets
> in trouble for something they say must deserve it.

The best generals are quite choosy where/when they engage. But stand by for
the silent majority to weigh in some months hence.

------
josephhurtado
Good argument, but the naming is wrong.

It is NOT orthodox privilege, but the complete opposite we are dealing with
today.

Let's remind ourselves what orthodox means: "Following or conforming to the
traditional or generally accepted rules or beliefs of a religion, philosophy,
or practice."

Well nowadays the non-traditional views are trending, and shutting down the
traditional views. So the "orthodox privilege" actually belongs to the NON-
ORTHODOX folks who like to push their opinions to everyone else, and have the
backing of major media, and academia behind them.

That is the reason why freedom of speech is dying in society today, and is
being replaced with conformance, and silence. This is dangerous, and bad for
democracy. Democracies require an open, respectful sharing of people's views.
When those views are persecuted, the people are cancelled, the companies are
boycotted, we have a problem. That problem is UN-ORTHODOX PRIVILEGE.

------
luckylion
I believe that there's one big flaw in this essay, and it's these two
sentences: _But they can 't overcome orthodox privilege just by learning more.
They'd have to become more independent-minded._

I don't necessarily disagree, but from reading a few comments here, I believe
that they are counter-productive in so far that nobody likes to think of
themselves as somebody who isn't independent-minded.

When somebody now reads about something they haven't experienced (having
opinions they know they can't share without undue pushback) and then goes on
to read that this is because they're not "independent-minded", it'll
automatically trigger their ego-defenses, making it hard for them to even
accept that the author isn't just arguing in bad faith because their horrific
beliefs are rejected, and at the same time makes them double down in the
belief that there is no such thing as an Orthodox Privilege.

------
asdfasgasdgasdg
Not my favorite essay ever. Most unorthodox beliefs aren't on the list of
things you "can't say." A small subset of unorthodox statements might make you
the subject of anger from various groups. The essay seems to suggest that
anyone who doesn't have a problem with this is ignorant of "orthodox
privilege." IMO, that's uncharitable. I think most people understand that it's
easier to have orthodox beliefs. The folks who have no problem with cancel
culture view the things being cancelled as a bigger problem than the challenge
of having heterodox beliefs.

I'll also just note that the vast majority of heterodox beliefs and statements
are not on the list of things you "can't say." A small subset of them,
especially relating to race and gender, are risky. Maybe there's a good reason
for that?

~~~
david927
I couldn't disagree more. In fact, I would say that most unorthodox beliefs
are absolutely on the list of things you "can't say." Most people don't have
strong egos (i.e. as "sense of self") and most have frail foundations for what
they perceive to be "truth."

Nearly everyone, if they wrote out a list of truths, could have that list
divided into "universal truths" (e.g. 1+1=2), "group (e.g. cultural) truths"
(you flip up on a light switch to turn a light on), and "individual truths"
(things only you believe, often wrongly).

It's not that you "can't say" a unorthodox statement (one that runs counter to
one of these truths), but since all of these truths are held roughly at the
same level, it will be the equivalent of saying "1 + 1 = 3," and you'll be
dismissed and seen as crazy. The reaction will be visceral and abrupt. There
will be little interest in hearing your side of the story; you're just talking
nonsense.

I'm not a fan of Paul but he's right here. If someone says, "humans didn't go
to the moon," it's extremely hard for most Americans to hear that. Their
reaction isn't, "Why do you think that?" but "When did you lose your mind?"
and all willingness to discuss it is off the table. That's not a normal
reaction. The person poked an accepted truth, and in doing so, committed
heresy.

~~~
asdfasgasdgasdg
> The person poked an accepted truth, and in doing so, committed heresy.

That's not an accurate characterization, though. In the case of the particular
statement you mentioned, what happened is that the person said something that
clustered with things said by a lot of silly people. It is rational (in a
Bayesian sense) to take that as evidence that the person making the statement
is also silly. The main reason people won't engage in argument about it is
because nobody cares that much whether you believe some weird unlikely thing
about history. It doesn't affect anything, even in the unlikely event that you
were right.

There are plenty of heterodox statements that don't have this effect to the
same degree. For example, "dark matter doesn't actually exist, and instead
serves as a kind of scientific 'god did it' get out of jail free card." This
is a heterodox view, but one that doesn't get you cancelled or immediately
called crazy. People will be skeptical of the view, and you'll need to bring
some pretty heavy arguments, but that's basically tautological. If it were not
so, the view would not be heterodox.

~~~
david927
Ah! But that's because dark matter existing was never accepted as truth! We
know that we're in the early stages of discovery.

And, again, as Paul mentioned, we know throughout time that things we have
considered absolutely true were false, how different is the current age?

Here's a more obvious example: When the heliocentric theory was proposed,
every textbook, every paper, every discussion ever held on the subject, not
only talked about the Ptolemaic universe but expounded and clarified how it
all worked and how it all fit together. It was the well-known truth. It was
also wrong.

What's funny is that your reaction is that, "All current truths are absolute
truths so any deviation from that is false and wrong." You're literally
confirming what Paul is saying.

Further, no one is saying you have to engage in active dialog with someone
committing heresy. But if you dismiss it straight out of hand, you're really
no different than a church official in the time of Galileo. The truth is on
your side; silliness on the other.

~~~
asdfasgasdgasdg
> What's funny is that your reaction is that, "All current truths are absolute
> truths so any deviation from that is false and wrong."

I don't think I said anything even remotely close to that? Please don't put
words in my mouth.

> And, again, as Paul mentioned, we know throughout time that things we have
> considered absolutely true were false, how different is the current age?

I'm afraid this is all a bit abstract for me. Perhaps reifying the discussion
will help us come to a more agreeable conclusion. Can you share an example of
a person who has been cancelled solely for making a fact claim?

~~~
david927
I'll quote you, "... the person said something that clustered with things said
by a lot of silly people. It is rational (in a Bayesian sense) to take that as
evidence that the person making the statement is also silly."

~~~
asdfasgasdgasdg
So, in that quote, I discussed how it was reasonable to react to a particular
claim of fact in a particular way. How did you make the leap from me talking
about a reaction to a single exemplar to me accepting all current orthodox
beliefs as absolutely true?

------
KboPAacDA3
Related: Overton window -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window)

"The Overton window is the range of policies politically acceptable to the
mainstream population at a given time."

~~~
chasingthewind
At the moment it seems that we have a "double-hung" overton window. The right
sash and the left sash overlap less and less all the time.

------
raldi
There are true statements that are rightly unacceptable because placed in
certain rhetorical contexts, there's an implied argument that they're making
which has been rejected by society.

For example, JK Rowling's statement that "there used to be a word for people
who menstruate" was essentially true (menopause aside), but had a hefty
implied message about the legitimacy of transgender women, one which is
rightly considered offensive to most of modern society.

Edit: Since people are nitpicking, here's an even starker example: Can you
imagine contexts where it would be rightly offensive for an African-American
to be told the true statement "My ancestors used to enslave people like you"?

~~~
tomp
_> legitimacy of transgender women_

What does this even _mean_? Like, how can someone not be "legitimate"? Does it
mean "illegal" as in illegal alien? Is anyone claiming that trans citizens
should be deported? Or does it mean "imaginary"? Trans people obviously exist.

JKRowling is simply pointing out that the word "woman", which used to have the
clear and simple meaning of "female human" (or sometimes "adult female
human"), was now not only redefined & politicized to basically mean "opinion"
(or "a woman is someone who thinks they're a woman" which is a clearly
nonsensical recursive definition) and is used for Orwellian speech control.

~~~
JoeSmithson
> "a woman is someone who thinks they're a woman" which is a clearly
> nonsensical recursive definition

This is a perfectly meaningful recursive definition.

~~~
tomp
Maybe, but it appropriates the word "woman" for political purposes. Could just
as easily have been "a _blurb_ is someone who thinks they're a _blurb_ " if
the intention wasn't a sneaky subjugation of people's existing speech &
thought patterns (basically a real-life "dark pattern"). That itself is reason
enough to oppose it, IMO.

You _could_ claim that the word "woman" was chosen because it represents an
existing concept that some people want to approximate because of their
feelings, but a more appropriate response would be to point out that these
feelings are factually incorrect. Maybe it's easier to see the absurdity if
you consider a non-politicized version "a tree is someone who thinks they're a
tree" (laughably wrong) or differently-politicized "a Jew is someone who
thinks they're a Jew" (this is somewhat less incorrect, because it's referring
to a social "fact" that _can_ change, not a physical fact).

~~~
maxsilver
That's how most things work though? You can't "appropriate" a word for
political purposes, when the root word is political in the first place.

A conservative is someone who thinks they're a conservative, a centrist is
someone who thinks they are a centrist. Other people can try to label you one
way or another, but ultimately, you decide what you are. It's inherently self-
referential.

> "a Jew is someone who thinks they're a Jew" (this is somewhat less
> incorrect)

But that's not incorrect _at all_ , that is exactly how it works in real life.
"A Christian is someone who believes they're a Christian", is a wholly true
statement. Just as, "an atheist is someone who believes they are an atheist".

There's a bunch of these statements of identity that are, effectively, 100%
self referential. No one can tell you who you are, ultimately you have to
decide that for yourself.

> Maybe it's easier to see the absurdity if you consider a non-politicized
> version

It's not. Even in a non-political, meaningless context, it's 100% equally as
self-referential.

Insert the "what is a sandwich" meme - [https://talkthetalkpodcast.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/05/sa...](https://talkthetalkpodcast.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/05/sandwich-alignment-chart-1024x704.jpg)

------
082349872349872
For an example of a US southerner speaking from orthodox privilege in 1860:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23739361](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23739361)

For an example of a Nazi speaking from orthodox privilege in 1943:
[https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-
archive/goeb36...](https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-
archive/goeb36.htm)

"The West is in danger. It makes no difference whether or not their
governments and intellectuals realize it or not. ... We also know our historic
responsibility. Two thousand years of Western civilization are in danger. One
cannot overestimate the danger. ... The only choice now is between living
under Axis protection or in a Bolshevist Europe."

For an example of Athenians speaking from the Most Orthodox Of All Privileges
in 431 BC:
[https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/melian.htm](https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/melian.htm)

"right ... is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do
what they can and the weak suffer what they must."

------
grugagag
To keep my sanity I tuned out of this conversation. I get easily confused by
diverging opinions and I came to become afraid to say anything at all publicly
because someone may feel hurt. I don't want to cause that to anyone but I get
a general sense of going crazy when I think of what to say: huge cognitive
dissonance. And that is not because I have some views that are not in sync
with other peoples views, their views are simply confusing to follow.

Wake me up when this is over. I will do a last effort when things stabilize so
I get on the same page with everyone or basically the general consensus.

------
temac
I'm wary of social hypotheses that place an irrefutable / indefensible burden
on "me" (well, actually, on anybody), especially if the only reason is by
association because of correlations with arbitrary traits.

I can very well admit that some cultures (in a very broad sense of the term)
have agressive characteristics perceived by people used to others and, to the
extend the advantages are greater than potential drawbacks (which are often
not even present or can be short term, granted), try to be careful about that
in hopefully a benevolent way. Also, people classified as privileged might
also perceive tons of things as aggressive against them, and mere injunctions
to stop or act as if not in all regard, are not productive -- it does not
really matter who is "wrong" or "right" if an action is de-facto antagonizing
and polarizing over and over (well, from an individual ethic pov it _does_
matter very much, but from an outcome that's debatable...), unless you are
ready to escalate, and that seems a terrible idea.

So I don't believe people with characteristic X or Y shall be approached all
the time as if they are a mean representative of their "group" and shall as a
result apply a parody of Bayesianism blind to all other traits, and blind to
individual variance, and blind to the knowledge of themselves.

I don't see why, from time to time, there would not be people who are "true"
about things they won't even say, but that does not seem a very powerful thing
to act upon. I just don't know what to do with that, and especially I'm not
sure I understand where to go from that to the conclusion.

Some intelligent people think X and other intelligent people not X?

Yes, that happens. Very often. Extremely often.

But is there even an absolute truth when "cancel culture" is concerned, and
what even is the precise definition? The wording is typically used to talk
about things believed excessive. For example it's one thing being associated
with Epstein and people not wanting to work with you anymore; it's another
thing to be fired because you told a silly joke to a friend during a
conference, and a third party ears it.

Absolute truth in social subjects is rarely to be seen, especially when we
talk about blurry concepts.

(edit: typos)

------
francoisp
kudos to Paul for this one. Writing about a very very charged and divisive
social phenomenon and putting out a meta-conception that casts a better light
in a very adroit, objective angle. True free thinker stuff. This is prolly how
enlightened individuals had to softly tread their way also in other times,
although one on one and small groups allows more forgiveness and time to
practice wording your conception than big bad internet.

------
nayuki
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window)

------
neilk
pg has (for a long time) asserted that he has opinions that would get him
pilloried in the public square. He's advocated that one shouldn't share those
opinions. And he's continued to frequently allude to their existence.

Having already dismissed the common people's ability to process unorthodox
beliefs, he then goes on to complain that people shouldn't speculate or make
assumptions about those beliefs that he keeps alluding to?

He further asserts that people who advocate open discussion must be dullards,
whose minds are only filled with the opinions of others?

I don't agree. What should a rational, Bayesian person conclude about someone
who keeps alluding to beliefs they can't say? What's the most frequent such
belief?

    
    
        Conservative: I have been censored for my 
        conservative views
        
        Me: Holy shit! You were censored for wanting
        lower taxes?
    
        Con: LOL no...no not those views
        
        Me: So....deregulation?
       
        Con: Haha no not those views either
    
        Me: Which views, exactly?
    
        Con: Oh, you know the ones
    

\--
[https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/105039166355267174...](https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/1050391663552671744)

Caveats: I'm not saying that pg holds any particular views, racist or
otherwise. I don't know what it's like to be someone in his position. I expect
there are a lot of people who are eager to take his statements out of context
and that can be wearying. And although the above tweet is a pithy
illustration, I don't think pg qualifies as a conservative either.

But I'm pretty sure that pg is not hiding a belief like "Amazon should be
broken up", or "recycling is mostly a sham" or "actually nuclear power is
green" or even "I oppose reparations for slavery". The beliefs at issue these
days on social media tend to be about _personhood_ - acceptance of trans
people, the acceptance of certain identities as oppressed, and so on. Someone
popping up in the discussion and saying that he holds beliefs he can't say -
well, what am I supposed to think?

And if I was being generous and assuming they were constructive views that
were inexpressible right now, what am I supposed to do? What action does pg
want us to take to fix that? I don't even know what direction pg wants the
discussion to go in.

~~~
luckylion
This comment sounds a bit like you feel attacked by the idea he lays out and
are going for an offense. "I'm not saying that pg holds any particular views,
racist or otherwise" while quoting a tweet implying just that does smell a
little bit.

I don't know whether he holds any problematic opinions. Those essays sounded
more like PSAs to me, essentially "hey, Robespierre, before you start going
after those people, remember that you might not be right on everything, so
having an opinion that differs from your own doesn't really mean that somebody
is an evil agent of the reactionary forces".

~~~
neilk
Contexts matter, and this is I guess what we're all concerned with.

In my own experience, since the mid-2010s or so there's a steady undercurrent
of elitism and fascism in techland that I had not been expecting at all. There
are some nerds who want us to be "rational" about it, that we should be
willing to debate everything, up to and including the basic humanity or worth
of people who are... just not white techies. I've been shocked to discover
some of my colleagues and friends have fallen into these tendencies of
thought. Fascism is less of a viewpoint and more of a viral strategy for
smothering tolerance under the guise of allowing debate.

Like, from my perspective, there's a hint of that elitism even in what pg was
saying, as he dismisses his critics as simply less-nimble thinkers who don't
have original ideas.

So yes, I'm skeptical when I see people saying, "I have all these wonderful
ideas, that you're unworthy of because you just won't be tolerant of them."
I've been down that road a few times with a few colleagues and it always ended
in something like a grand theory of why the West is at war with Islam.

But I also acknowledge there are other contexts, where one might feel under
attack by the impersonal forces of social media outrage, for totally different
reasons. And (as I've revised this comment many times) I've also expressed, in
public, that cancel culture is a real thing, and it does stifle some
viewpoints and can be exploited by nefarious people. I wish I had a tidy bow
to wrap this up with, but I don't.

------
chrischattin
Excellent essay. I think the qualifier for an unorthodox view/idea/opinion is
that it’s a little bit scary to say in public.

Something like... I think the coronavirus reaction is way overblown. It’s not
nearly as dangerous as the media would lead you to believe, and wearing masks
is basically ineffective and is just a thing to make people feel like they’re
doing something.

;)

------
intopieces
This article seems to praise people for not being "conventional minded," as if
being unorthodox in itself is something to be cherished and rewarded. That is
too low of a bar to clear. There are lots of opinions and viewpoints that are
unorthodox for good reason -- because they are just bad ideas, or are
factually untrue no matter how many times you argue it. It's as if PG is
saying to us "Think Different," and just stopping there. What he should be
saying is "Think Different, but be prepared to prove it," as well as "Be a
little tolerant of people who are doing their best to prove it."

The problem is that, unless you're speaking to someone with whom you have a
great deal of trust, that second part -- the earnestness of their unorthodoxy
-- is difficult to prove.

~~~
carlmr
>reason -- because they are just bad ideas, or are factually untrue no matter
how many times you argue it.

I think that's why he specifically said, uttering things that are unorthodox
and true.

~~~
intopieces
To the earnest speaker, many abhorrent things are both unorthodox and true.
So, I can’t see that as a uncontroversial qualifier itself.

------
xtat
The irony here is that PG loves the valley and one of my biggest frustrations
with the valley is how cargo culty everything is - how hard you have to fight
to do anything different from the SV way.

(Edit: I should add that I also enthusiastically agree with what he's saying
here.)

------
platz
> If you believe there's nothing true that you can't say, then anyone who gets
> in trouble for something they say must deserve it.

I'm having a hard time parsing the logic in this sentance. Is there something
like affirming the consequent going on here?

------
newacct583
I was about to post a rant about bothsidesism here, bemoaning the fact that pg
is talking about a problem without example, as if it's something that
"everyone" does in various contexts.

Then I caught the reference in the second to last paragraph. Clever.

------
voidhorse
Essays like this are always enticing to people who consider themselves
“reasonable”, “logical”, or “intellectual” because they seem to defend the
virtues of reason on the surface—flout convention—ally yourself with reason,
science!

Then you start to realize that while the slef-aggrandizing, implicit, unstated
analogy is to someone like Galileo—the mytho-legendary figure of
“unconventional wisdom”—the sage that rose us out of the muck—the _actual_
analogy falls apart very quickly because the stances being defended, generally
when people rage against “cancel culture” are _not_ progressive,
scientifically backed, or methodologically carefully won informed positions,
but rather regressive values, such as arguments for the subordination or
mistreatment of certain classes of people, the objectification of people, etc.

Galileo was a progressive flouting conventional regression— _most_ (not all)
whiners about cancel culture are regressive flouting conventional progression.

If you think about the broader context in which this article was written you
really have to wonder what the so-called “unconventional views” being defended
are. As many views that are positive, progressive, evidence based, and
generally in service of a more equitable world are in this period finally
reaching the status of being “orthodoxy”.

pg seems to want to ascribe some inherent moral value in being heterodox
without actually questioning the contents of that heterodoxy—which is really
foolish. It’s a view that abuses history by viewing it in the abstract in
order to, at worst, build up extremely flimsy defenses of bad behavior, and at
best, state nothing more than the extremely obvious “some people in history
were right when the majority of people were wrong”

I also think right and wrong are the completely incorrect categories to use in
this context—going back to Galileo—it makes sense to say he was “right” in
matters of science while the church was “wrong” because science is rigidly
defined, verifiable, etc.—politics and moral questions are not rigidly defined
and there is no completely agreed upon system for working out binary
categories of “right” and “wrong” when it comes to political and ethical
matters—people subscribe to tons of different moral systems many of which
yield incompatible views over the same issue—pg seems to assume everyone
operates using the same moral/political calculus—it would be different if we
were discussing matters of science but its very clear that the intended topic
zone here is political—pg just never states these things explicitly since
being concrete about it would demolish his position and reveal how ridiculous
it is.

~~~
amadeuspagel
> Galileo was a progressive flouting conventional regression—most (not all)
> whiners about cancel culture are regressive flouting conventional
> progression.

> If you think about the broader context in which this article was written you
> really have to wonder what the so-called “unconventional views” being
> defended are. As many views that are positive, progressive, evidence based,
> and generally in service of a more equitable world are in this period
> finally reaching the status of being “orthodoxy”.

Replace "whiners about cancel culture" with "counter revolutionaries" or
"reactionary forces" and this could have been written during the stalinist
purges or the cultural revolution.

------
Liron
‪I’m seeing more complaints about the abstract concept of “things you can’t
say” than actual object-level things-you-can’t-say said anonymously.‬

‪How come, if the internet makes anonymous publishing so easy and safe?‬

------
myth_buster
AKA, nothing to hide argument.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument)

------
apexalpha
>The spectral signature of orthodox privilege is "Why don't you just say it?"
If you think there's something true that people can't say, why don't you be
brave, and own it? The more extreme will even accuse you of specific heresies
they imagine you must have in mind, though if there's more than one heresy
current in your time, these accusations will tend to be nondeterministic: you
must either be an xist or a yist.

Well. This kind of hit a snare with me... I'm the kind of person that would
say this to people. I'm not entirely sure what to think of it as a whole, the
letter. I might have to read it again later.

~~~
newacct583
> I'm the kind of person that would say this to people.

Recognize that this is probably a combination of: (1) your opinions aren't as
unorthodox as you think, they're just a little controversial, and (2) you're
the kind of person who _can_ just "say this to people" without significant
repercussions.

Both of those traits constitute the state described by the linked article:
you're "privileged", to use the vernacular. It's not something true of
everyone.

In fact, were something you said to produce a real, big reaction from offended
people, you'd probably be really upset. You just don't know it. Probably 90%
of the "cancel culture" paranoia we're seeing on the right is exactly this:
people used to being able to exercise their "Freedom to Offend" suddenly
finding it's not so fun when the other side hits back.

~~~
apexalpha
I've read the letter again and if its goal was to make me think it succeeded.
Although I'm generally weary of labeling everything "privileged", I get the
authors' point.

Having thought about it I do live in a culture that is considered extremely
blunt, honest or even just rude depending on who you ask. That might change my
perspective as well.

------
d_burfoot
One important thing that the essay doesn't mention is that our current
orthodoxy isn't democratic. The orthodoxy is dictated by newspapers and
universities, with some help from Hollywood and tech companies. None of those
institutions are remotely democratic (if they were, they wouldn't be so
strongly aligned with the left). Perhaps we need to establish some limitations
on what people are allowed to say, but if so, those limits must be decided by
formal democratic processes.

------
jarmitage
For a list of 46 other privileges (some that overlap with this proposal), see
this classic article:

White privilege and male privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See
Correspondences Through Work in Women's Studies (1988) by Peggy McIntosh
[https://www.collegeart.org/pdf/diversity/white-privilege-
and...](https://www.collegeart.org/pdf/diversity/white-privilege-and-male-
privilege.pdf)

~~~
vertbhrtn
Sounds like a very fundamental work!

------
raxxorrax
Sneaky use of orthodox. There has always been the problem of finding words so
that the targeted group doesn't know they are talked about.

I don't really think the solution of being polite is working for anonymous
internet comments for obvious reasons, but for other places it has been the
classical solution.

------
mellosouls
I don't really understand what this concept is adding that ideas like
"blinkeredness" don't already cover, as orthodox in this case (as has been
pointed out by others here) is context-dependent.

I've read it a couple of times and am still a bit unsure of what new idea it's
getting at.

------
1xdeveloper
I would love to know Paul's definition of a "true thing".

------
hashkb
Does pg reach many people who don't want his money or favor?

------
mlang23
Using "blind" as a negative figure of speech is about as intelligent and
empathic as is using "crippled". Talk about priviledged people that can not
see the POV of outsiders.

\-- a blind admin/coder

------
Fiveplus
minor follow-up: How do you distinguish an orthodox privileged person from the
herd (besides them telling you to speak your mind)?

~~~
sneak
I’d venture to guess that a good indicator are people in America who are
comfortable using “call the police” as a solution to certain common problems.

------
honkycat
What a bad take. I would expect Paul Graham to be more educated on a topic
before he says something so tired and uninsightful.

It comes from BOTH SIDES. The right wing also cancels people with social
media. A few well-placed articles by right-wing publications and their targets
will have a months long harassment campaign of people trying to break into
their social media and bank accounts, constant death threats and hate messages
and photographs of their house, insults, harassment at their place of work.
Convenient that always gets left out of the "cancel culture" discussions.

We need to stop acting like conservatives have no power in this country. They
do, they literally run the country and arguments like this are just people
getting in additional body-blows against liberal opponents. You want to see
what "performatice victimhood" looks like, look at the extremely rich Paul
Graham whining that people get mad at him when he says things we don't like.
We do not like the way we are treated, and we are going to continue to speak
out. If that gets you fired: GOOD.

I understand it is frustrating, and I have said before: I don't like the cry
bullies and woke-scolds on the internet. I do not think they actually care
about the cultural movement, and I think they should go outside and get a
life. But I honestly believe the progress we have made in the cultural
consciousness for gay, trans, and people of color has been phenomenal, and it
arises from the new "woke culture."

I think the cry-bullying and woke-scolding days are numbered, they are
starting to eat their own and even allies are getting sick of it.

------
known
Always post your opinions anonymously on Internet. Nobody wants you to
succeed.

------
__alexs
Great piece. I frequently find myself withholding opinions about inequality
because they'd get me in trouble. The orthodoxy really has the debate on lock
down, glad the Trump situation has really got the debate moving again though.

------
dilandau
Twitter is perfectly designed for coordinating attacks on individuals. The
problem is that so many organizations tend to yield to the slightest hint of
twitter outrage, which reinforces these kinds of cancellations.

------
peisistratos
The a priori to all of this current hubbub is a large number of people who are
not of an upper class or upper middle class white American background, who are
not even heard at all.

One example would be Tulsi Gabbard. We do not hear what she says. We hear from
a New York Times columnist who went to exclusive prep schools and then to an
Ivy League college (where she tried to "cancel" Arab professors by testifying
against them that they were antisemitic) before landing her plum role, that
Gabbard is an "Assad toadie". After years of throwing mud from her aerie, she
herself finally feels some criticism come in, and quits her job in a huff,
with ramblings about the end of freedom.

Hillary Clinton not so indirectly implied Gabbard was some sort of stalking
horse of Putin's as well. Saturday Night Live joins in. This is all not
considering canceling though. It's not, in a sense, the notion that the US
should not have military bases all over the world was never out there on the
corporate controlled media channels . There's nothing to cancel - that show
was never allowed on to start with.

Pushback against this mudslinging is considered canceling though. This is the
threat to freedom we hear Sturm and Drang about.

The channels of media out there all blast forth establishment views,
benefiting a minority of privileged people. They are born upper and upper
middle class, white, and are American if not by birth then by coming to the
US. Other voices are excluded. All that is left and that can finally be
faintly heard is some criticism of these establishment narratives. That this
pushback is causing demonstrations around the country and criticism of the
establishment narrative is very distressing for these people.

(A tangential example - in the days after 9/11, the New York Times published
excerpts of an Osama bin Laden statement. As the whole world seemed to be
pivoting on this dialectic, I tried to find the full statement somewhere. I
was unable to. I could not even find it on the net. Perhaps it has surfaced in
the past 20 years. It reminds me of the old Irish republican cartoon of an
Irishman with a British gag over his mouth representing BBC voice bans etc.
When the gag is removed a dove of peace comes out. NATO bombing Serbian press
is not considered censorship. Satellite installers jailed for installing al-
Manar is not censorship. Privileged people who tried to cancel Arab professors
getting criticism is considered censorship.)

In the current dialectic, we have to-the-manor born, white, more or less
American establishment types suddenly having to contend with voices who are
not necessarily white or American, who went to public schools and grew up
middle class or working class or poor, who are finally having their voices
heard and who are challenging the establishment hegemony. I know which side I
am on.

------
staycoolboy
The last paragraph is nefarious:

"Once you realize that orthodox privilege exists, a lot of other things become
clearer. For example, how can it be that a large number of reasonable,
intelligent people worry about something they call "cancel culture," while
other reasonable, intelligent people deny that it's a problem? Once you
understand the concept of orthodox privilege, it's easy to see the source of
this disagreement. If you believe there's nothing true that you can't say,
then anyone who gets in trouble for something they say must deserve it."

Wow, talk about a word-salad to defend privelege.

Who would suspect more wisdom on privilege from proud sexist Paul Graham.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/paul-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/paul-
graham-revives-sexism-tech-talk/356541/)

He's STILL complaining about "things you can't say" in this article:

[http://paulgraham.com/say.html](http://paulgraham.com/say.html)

And completely missing the boat on "right to free speech" != "right to no
consequences".

He's learned nothing. Not a self-reflective bone in this man's body.

~~~
sakian
Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't understand why his comments are
deemed sexist. Isn't he saying that 13 year old girls aren't as interested in
computers as much as 13 year old boys? What am I missing?

~~~
staycoolboy
Because it isn't true. It is him inventing a cause of a problem by simply
ignoring many, many womens' experiences with discrimination in STEM that
starts at a young age, which is extensively documented. This is what privilege
looks like: "I never experienced it so it doesn't exist."

~~~
sakian
What isn't true? Do you believe that girls are equally interested in computers
compared to boys at 13 years old?

~~~
staycoolboy
Dude, you're missing the point. Women are actively chased out of tech. This
has been going on for decades. Don't you remember a few years ago when half of
the guys of 4chan doxxed and threatened to kill dozens of female gamers
because those women dared to ask if games could treat women a little more
fairly? I mean, its not like this is ancient history.

Can't you take some responsibility and educate yourself rather than asking me
to educate you? I'm sure you taught yourself how to program by researching
online, why can't you do the same thing to understand how shitty girls and
women are treated in tech domains? Unless you just don't care? I don't get it.
smh.

~~~
textgel
No no they aren't; there is an enormous political, academic and corporate
movement to get and keep them and they certainly haven't dealt with anywhere
near the general BS any nerd deals with growing up or being in tech; 90% of
the time it's just complaints identical to yours; \- Complete fabrications to
appear a victim. \- Complaints about things that everyone else deals with but
due to equality feeling like oppression, suddenly the treatment equal to
others feels oppressive. \- Complaints about consequence for doing shitty
things.

Re your point about 4chan; provide the story or it's just another fabrication

------
leafboi
I was actually warned by the HN administrator for saying something "True" and
slightly negative about a race/culture. I threw a bit of "privilege" around
because that race was basically my race. Perhaps it was also an example of
"orthodox privilege."

I'm Chinese, the topic was about educational fraud in China and I made a
negative comment associating corruption and Chinese culture in general:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23781696](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23781696)

I felt the reaction by dang was out of hand and overblown especially given the
fact that he likely has no actual first hand knowledge about the topic. It's
also a reaction that I feel is unique to the culture in the United States.
Definitely, there are racial issues in the United States with issues like
Floyd, but I'm not commenting about that issue, I'm talking about freedom of
speech and when it's appropriate to say things that are the result of
"orthodox privilege."

The united states is one of the least racist countries in the world. This is a
very commendable trait that every citizen should be proud of but every citizen
should also be aware that in being the least racist country in the world, the
United States, as a result, also has one of the most irrational opinions on
race and equality.

A black person is generally bigger, taller and stronger than an asian person.
Black people are so much further to the right with the bell curve on these
traits that the olympic gold medals in strength based sports are typically
taken by people of African descent while even rich countries like China with
targeted programs to win gold medals rarely bring home gold for strength based
sports. These are just biological generalities that are true and that are
accepted that not all people/races are equal from a physical standpoint.

However if I say an one race generally has higher biological IQ then another
race... I crossed a line. What black magic allows people to be biologically
different physically but doesn't allow them to be biologically different
behaviorally or mentally?

Sure, maybe none of the IQ differences are real and there might be research
somewhere that normalizes racial IQ scores when you account for things like
socioeconomic background... However, the backlash for even bringing up a topic
on biological and racial IQ is outright vicious and as I said before: unique
to the United States in terms of the level of intensity.

There's definitely government oppression in China in terms of what you can and
cannot talk about, but there's none of this irrational touchy touchy equality
stuff you get in the United States. Speech in the united states is regulated
by culture and society rather than centrally like in China.. It Changes the
overall nature of what is censored and what you can and cannot talk about...

For example if you're born with a big nose in China, that basically becomes
your nickname in China. I literally have a friend with a big nose and everyone
just calls him "Big Nose." I also have a friend in China who's fat and his
Chinese nickname is Fatass. People just call him "Fatass" by name and it's
considered slightly derogatory, inline with "Big Nose" but otherwise not a big
deal because it's also the physical reality. This is in stark contrast to the
states where there's a whole Body positivity movement is trying to change
reality as we know it.

I'm not going to comment on whether being obese is healthy or not, it could or
it could not be... but I will say that the Body positivity movement exists not
because of there's scientific proof that being obese can be healthy... it
exists because people are so scared of being insensitive and having their
precious feelings hurt that they want to rewrite reality into viewing fat
obese people as culturally normal. Again this phenomenon is uniquely prevalent
in the United States and not only unique to race and weight. Another example
of this occurs in gender pronouns but let's not get into that, I'm sure you
already get the point.

I have a different conclusion than Paul. I would say that you're conventional
minded if you're afraid to talk about or think about very real yet hard to
stomach taboo topics that are True. Cultural biases caused by guilt from past
injustices in the United States has taken hysteria and fear to unreasonable
levels. I would tell Paul and anyone in a similar situation to take a good
look at themselves. If you can't comfortably have a scientific conversation
about biological IQ, weight, gender and race without fear of losing your job
or offending someone how is that different from the christian religion making
you feel uncomfortable talking about evolution and natural selection?

The cultural biases and conventional thinking exists in the people who are
incapable of talking about truth, not the other way around.

~~~
tomhoward
> What black magic allows people to be biologically different physically but
> doesn't allow them to be biologically different behaviorally or mentally?

I hear this line of argument repeated all the time, delivered as if it's a
bona fide mic-drop discussion-closer.

Apparently those making the argument don't even consider that it's not-at-all
established that behavioural/psychological/mental aptitude qualities are
exclusively or even majority biologically predetermined.

It's well known that human qualities very significantly in their degree of
heritability. There's nothing remarkable about the suggestion that qualities
of the mind will have a different level of heritability to physical traits
like height and facial shape. We've all observed that siblings can be far more
different behaviourally and cognitively than they are in appearance. And we
should expect this to be the case, if we assume that the very purpose of
consciousness is to enable us to adapt to the conditions we experience.

Here's a different hypothesis to consider: for the majority of people,
physical brain function is pretty consistent, the way eye, nose, kidney,
liver, heart and spleen function is pretty consistent, particularly at birth,
before the wear and tear of life has had an impact.

But behaviour becomes more variable as a person develops, due to different
conditions and experiences, causing certain kinds of emotion and cognitive
function to be enhanced, and others to be diminished. E.g., somebody who grows
up living with fear and anxiety due to lacking a sense of security will
develop enhanced amygdala activity and chronic sensitivity to threat, and thus
a reduced development of other brain parts and forms of cognition.

Extrapolate all the kinds of differences in conditions a developing person
will experience, and you end up with great variability in people's cognitive
"tuning", and resultant personality and aptitudes, that has little to do with
their genetics.

~~~
leafboi
The mic dropper here is that environment influences behavior but so do
genetics. BOTH are factors. The problem with society and you is that you
choose to ignore the genetic factor and only choose to examine the
environmental factor because it fits with your social construct of how the
world should be.

Science and reality exist separate to your ethical constructs, and there is
scientific evidence that proves it.

You view the world as a two sided hypothesis. Either nature or nurture with
nature being racist so nurture is better. But you are aware that this isn't
true on some level. You know that genetics influences differences in behavior
between men and women so much so that men and women across the globe can be
fit into certain behavioral stereotypes that are sexist to talk about but at
the same time exist as a permanent part of the fabric of reality. Anecdotally
it is literally impossible to ignore the masculine behavioral traits of a
trans woman because the genetics influencing behavior are so prevalent.

That's not evidence however. Let's not get into that because anecdotal
arguments can become circular: When I present an example and you rewrite
reality so that it fits your ethical world view or vice versa. Let us consider
scientific studies. Is behavior caused nature or nurture or both? Obviously
both, but let us see what happens when we control the nature part by only
looking at twins or triplets separated at birth. What are the behavioral
differences?:

[https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/genetic/5-true-
storie...](https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/genetic/5-true-stories-
twins-separated-at-birth2.htm)

I have long discovered that there's no such thing as a "mic dropper" the
extent that humans will go to bend the evidence and examine improbable
possibilities to maintain their ethical and moral world view is extensive. A
logical argument will not convert a christian to an atheist and it will not
change you. What follows from you, if you read this, is a long and involved
break down to discredit my evidence a reexamination of the context from biased
angles until you use the logic to construct a universe that fits the world how
you see it rather than the world as it truly is.

The bottom line is: genetics made your brain therefore it influences your
brain and in turn, your behavior. If such genetic differences exist between
twins and between sexes then it must exist between race.

And keep in mind... never ever did I say environment is not a major influence
for behavior. I never said otherwise i am only saying that to ignore genetics
and say that genetics do not influence race is scientific folly and
irrationality.

~~~
tomhoward
> The problem with society and you is that you choose to ignore the genetic
> factor and only choose to examine the environmental factor because it fits
> with your social construct of how the world should be

In my case this is 100% wrong.

I spent several years being a Dawkins devotee and committed
atheist/materialist and genetic determinist.

I've since had cause to learn more about environmental/non-genetic factors,
and have undertaken extensive research and self-experimentation on ways that
personality, behaviour and cognition can be influenced.

I don't discount the genetic factors, at all.

But I've learned through deep research and experience that genetics are only
part of the picture, and that non-genetic factors are extremely important,
because whether or not they are more than 50% influential, the fact that they
are significant at all opens up huge opportunities for life improvement for
people who would otherwise be written off as being genetically impaired, when
their problems may not actually be genetic at all.

I accept your observation that many people's views on this topic are
ideologically motivated.

I'm not one of those people.

I do observe, however, that the overwhelmingly dominant view in the biomedical
science community since the discovery of DNA has been that genetics are the
primary determinant of all human traits including intelligence and
personality, and that this has an overwhelming influence on the kind of
research that gets funded and the views that supposedly "intelligent" or
"rational" people are supposed to hold and promote.

I know the people who are ideologically motivated to promote alternative
positions are not offering much of value, but that doesn't mean that
alternative positions of value don't exist, just that they're being drowned
out by noisy dogmatists on both sides.

My main position is that it's time to break through the dogma from all
quarters and embrace a balanced approach that is both scientifically grounded
and that empowers people to build better lives, no matter their genetics.

------
brm
I can't think of a TRUE statement that you'll be cancelled for. I can think of
a lot of opinions presented as truths that will get you cancelled. For my
edification, can you all please present some hypothetical examples of current
TRUE statements that cannot/should not be said?

Something like "Fat people are a burden on a healthcare system" is true and
won't get you cancelled.

Something like "Trans people are currently the gender they were born" is a
philosophical opinion and might get you cancelled but whether its true or not
is a sort of Ship of Theseus problem.

Something like "Donald Trump has a low IQ" may impede your work progress but
that has its own implications about cancel culture that aren't what we're
talking about.

So please for the sake of argument, show me an actual truth that will get you
cancelled. Seriously looking for examples...

~~~
apsec112
Here's a list:

[https://mobile.twitter.com/SoOppressed/status/12824046471609...](https://mobile.twitter.com/SoOppressed/status/1282404647160942598)

~~~
brm
That is not a list that provides examples of truths being cancelled.

------
WhompingWindows
Do we even have a single American orthodoxy? I think orthodox privilege, like
everything now, is politicized and partisan. You're either a Democrat or
Republican, your whole constellation of viewpoints are very predictable given
that one label.

On the Far Left, we have cancel culture and accusing others of racism... Those
on the Far Left will not be castigated by their own orthodox community,
because the far left is collectively agreeing to see racism in more places
than it is likely to exist. Those within the moderate left are then punished
by not conforming to the extreme orthodoxy for saying not all implicitly
racist actions are done by racists.

Similarly, those on the right will be castigated by their own orthodox
community of religious or gun/freedom figures who place devotion to those
causes most highly. Any GOP figure is taking a great risk criticizing Trump
now, because there is a great amount of orthodoxy behind his policies and the
packing the courts with judges...in order to ensure the country is more
conservative for longer, at any cost (even Trump).

Here on HN, we have our own orthodoxy, too. Those who work with Rust find safe
haven for their views, and the downvote brigade on HN will descend if you even
mention the word Trump.

~~~
core-questions
> You're either a Democrat or Republican, your whole constellation of
> viewpoints are very predictable given that one label.

If you don't see that those are actually two sides of the same orthodoxy, and
that the truly unorthodox opinions are outside of either of those two, I don't
know what to tell you beyond "you should check your orthodox privilege". ;-)

When it comes to realpolitik, the Democrats and Republicans are basically only
different in terms of the speed at which they implement neoliberal policies
and fight neocon wars. The general direction of "progress" is the same.

------
mlang23
Using "blind" as a negative figure of speech is about as intelligent and
empathic as is "crippled". Talk about priviledge and not being able to see the
POV of outsiders.

\-- a blind admin/coder

------
tomlockwood
> It doesn't seem to conventional-minded people that they're conventional-
> minded. It just seems to them that they're right. Indeed, they tend to be
> particularly sure of it.

Exactly! Like for instance, the vast majority of people, who believe they can
objectively identify mindless orthodoxies, while somehow remaining immune to
them.

~~~
hawkice
I think the trick is to distinguish "that's an unorthodox idea" from "you are
violating the orthodoxy". For instance, here are (relatively anodyne?)
statements, the first being rare to hear but unpoliced (unorthodox), and the
other being one where I've had people, in person, prompt me to explain it so
that they and their friend can laugh at me (violating the orthodoxy).

a) The exception in the 13th amendment for criminals is bad, currently used to
legally shield slavery in American prisons, and should be repealed.

b) All Americans, including minors of all ages, should be allowed to vote.

Seeing the difference in reactions to them has sharpened my conception of
precisely what orthodoxy is, and what social purpose it serves.

[As a historical note, Nazis displayed art they hated at prominent museums,
specifically to encourage people to mock it for how terrible it was (of
course, almost universally art created by Jews). Ben Shapiro would be out of a
job if the people he mocks were _actually_ silenced -- not because he'd have
nothing else to talk about, but because the format would be boring. Same for
Chapo Trap House, etc etc etc.]

~~~
tomlockwood
I don't know if the distinction is necessarily clear here - I think the idea b
is so jarring to people is they can immediately visualize the edge case -
where a baby is voting. I know you've probably got more nuance to that belief,
but a naive person probably immediately thinks about it.

I'm not sure you've successfully identified an orthodoxy there because, also,
I've never heard anyone __defend __the current voting age with any vigor.

~~~
hawkice
If people defend it with vigor, it's probably something still up for grabs in
American discussion, and not really an orthodoxy. You'll see this in modern,
fresher orthodoxies, where even though most people would disagree it is
assumed the audience doesn't need to be told why it's right, or even that it's
right

