strong agree. I don't exactly want to been seen as defending parler here. I think what amazon is doing is creating a dangerous precedent, regardless of whether parler is as odious as I've been led to believe it is.
I'm not exactly disagreeing that maybe parler should be taken to task, but amazon should not be the ones to do it. although, the historical application of the insurrection act has been incredibly political and inconsistent (the pullman strikes), so citing it as the primary reason for booting parler seems a little suspect to me.
these are explicitly illegal activities with clearly argued jurisprudence. perhaps what parler hosted was illegal, but that should be up to a court to decide, not amazon.
Unions come with consistent skills trainings, legal counsel, and representatives to intercede when management is treating employees poorly. This seems like a very helpful stable of support to be able to call on in situation like this one.
I'm not writing him off, certainly. But I also don't see how this labels him as a wrong thinker? It demonstrates that he's missed the mark a lot as a result of his over-reliance on intuition. His technique for finding truth seems amiss. I don't think anyone is deplatforming him either. He's still able to write his blog and use all of his internet accounts. This article is compelling his audience to be more critical of the technique he's using to figure things out.
Your assertion was largely that an article like this didn’t have value. I explained why it does. You are free debate the points of pg here, but that’s not how our disagreement began and you are asking me to defend a different point than the one I commented initially to defend. Do you still believe the article is just a way to label pg as bad, or do you see why a discussion of issues of his credibility is important?
we as in his potential audience, the public, his readers etc. I don't feel like sharing the specific motivations, that is what the piece you're commenting on is doing.
I'm not taking someone's assessment at face value, I read it, considered the sources, considered pg, and am using it to build an understanding of his work.
I have to disagree here. The article is criticizing his work, his history of participation in a field, and his current commentary on politics. Yes, it discusses him as a subject, but not as a piece of gossip and strung-together ad hominem's. It is definitely critical of him, but mostly in his capacity as a commentor and his history of being incorrect. It's not second-rate tabloid stuff because of what dimension of him it's mostly considering.
> The actual thrust of the argument seems so broad (i.e. reliance on intuition), this could be used to label almost anybody outside pol-sci academic circles a "profoundly unserious public intellectual" for commenting on politics.
You're pretty much spot on with this line. Most people are terrible public intellectuals, and of the people who identify as such, many are profoundly unserious and completely useless. This article is asserting that Paul Graham does not belong in the vanishingly small set of people one should consider as a serious public intellectual.
Credibility and authority is incredibly important. How much time can anyone devote to dissecting the words of each living person in case they contain a potentially great idea? I'm happy to examine arguments on merit, but perhaps we should spend more time examining other arguments and not use so much time on his.
Austerity measures are passed all the time under guises of a balanced budget or trimming fat. When govts cut food stamps people die, I think govts cutting hot showers might be doable.
> Companies have every right to ask employees to focus on work at work.
I’m responding to this claim, maybe we’re talking about different things?
My point is really:
What if the “work” is running trains to death camps?
Shouldn’t employees object? If you believe climate change is as big a threat as scientists claim, I think workers building tools to help fossil fuel extraction have a duty by this historical argument to not “run the trains” or not just “focus on work at work”.
I think it’s more likely that smart people understand that speaking out or appearing to be in open dissent to the way amazon works is not a wise career move. Seems like a perfectly reasonable place to expect widespread preference falsification.