Sure, that might insulate him and put him in an echo chamber, but blocking is entirely his right, and he's the one who'll get the consequences from that.
I also tend to do a similar thing in spaces I curate, and it's honestly better for mental health. Someone comes out from nowhere with something completely 180 degrees from what I say? That's not reality TV, that's my private [social network page]. I'm not gonna be baited.
Saying someone "can't block" is an asshole move. Nobody should be forced to talk and see messages by anyone.
People judging you for your blocking is one of the prices you're socially expected to pay in return for those privileges.
Someone popular being in an echo chamber causing problems for society is a larger issue that maybe we should address separately. It's not on him to solve problems created by social media at large. Maybe limit reach of Twitter accounts.
Even if it were kind of his responsibility, that doesn't preclude him from being fully in his right to block people when he doesn't want to interact directly in a social network. That should be an inalienable right.
You can criticise anything you want, and I'm not saying you're not in the right to do so. But saying this is a problem comparable to cancellation is making a gross exaggeration.
To take an example from my own experience, if I automatically tuned out anyone who said something bad about the requirement to make things accessible for blind people, I would deny myself the opportunity to learn how they think and become more effective in my advocacy or, possibly, revise my position.
If you're interested in hearing the other side in all cases, then of course blocking is counter-intuitive. Wether he wants or not, it's his choice.
However, even if you were to block everyone, you could still curate the experience of hearing from the other side in other situations: by consuming articles, by asking someone privately, by not blocking some of the replies.
I also would disagree 100% that social networks are a proper venue for this kind of exchange.
He still has 100% the right to block and saying this is akin to cancellation is bullshit.
Does his block makes you lose your job? If not, you are missing the point.
It puts your financial wellbeing of you and your family at risk.
You and others will probably think twice before dissenting otherwise you better dust off that resume and tap into those savings.
But I guess people aren't killing people so cancel culture is okay, is that your standard?
I have disagreed with PG on Twitter, and also pointed out errors in his logic and facts a bunch of times, and haven't been blocked.
The problem with it is you can attack anybody you dislike with very little cost to you because you stand with a large crowd agreeing with you. And you don't even have to understand the issues since the opinion you put out is commonly accepted. It in fact might not be your opinion but you can still use it to attack opponents.
Political correctness is a quite naturally occurring phenomenon. People oppose other people. There's not much we can do about it except try to point it out. But that's not what Paul Graham is doing, he's talking about it in the abstract, only.
That is not a bad thing but I see an issue with it: It gets you far away from actual issues that harm us greatly.
It is not the biggest problem that political correctness occurs. The problem is some of the things it is used for.
For instance in Russia it is the ultimate heresy to say that Russia is fighting a war on Ukraine. The war is a real big problem. It is not caused by political correctness, supporters of the war are simply using political correctness to support the war. And state-sanctioned official heresies, yes that's what we need to fight and expose in general.
The real problem is not political correctness but using it for bad purposes. Like using it to support an unprovoked military attack on your neighboring country and putting the "heretics" into prison.
Obviously, those who criticize overreach of responses to injustice, will inevitably find themselves in common cause with reactionaries who do genuinely oppose progress, whether they want to or not. But that's all the more reason to be tolerant of good-faith dissent: the alternative is no one trusts anyone, and good-faith dissent itself becomes coded as a reactionary trick.
However it seems that today many want to pretend that these differences don't exist, e.g. a progressive talks to a conservative as if the latter agrees on fundamental presuppositions but only misapplies them. In other words, we treat our opponents like they are heretics from our religion instead of infidels who belong to a different one.
No one has ever been cancelled over support for, say, charter schools or wanting lower taxes. I disagree with those but they're not morally reprehensible.
Is a clip from a BBC show (Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, worth a watch if you enjoy British comedy) so copyright block not too surprising depending on where you're located.
He basically takes the piss out of a taxi driver. The stereotype goes that a taxi driver will share their "bloody immigrants" opinions with their fares whether the fares care about hearing it or not.
Cabbie says: "These days, you get arrested and thrown in jail if you say you're English, don't you."
Stewart "wears him down" in the bit by repeating the question back with increasing incredulity and after about 3 minutes the cabbie character eventually just says, "no, you don't actually get arrested."
It's fckin hilarious.
See his words: "Nowadays, in civilized countries, heretics only get fired in the metaphorical sense, by losing their jobs. But the structure of the situation is the same: the heresy outweighs everything else. You could have spent the last ten years saving children's lives, but if you express certain opinions, you're automatically fired."
Most people in the US are under at-will employment, so they can be fired at any time for almost any reason. So if we're going to argue that they are being fired due to political persecution from the hard left, you have to make a thorough case there because you're saying their employer shouldn't be free to hire and fire whomever they like.
This thesis is the real "throwing the baby out with the bathwater". I can respect that it applies truthfully to many would-be SJWs, and the labels are indeed used to end conversations. However, meaningfully calling something racist, sexist, etc. is a start of a process, not an end. This meaningful discussion (and, much more frequently, reflection) is too often precluded when one party is too defensive to look honestly, openly, and beyond themselves, at their own biases.
Which can lead to this:
Person 1: That thing is beautiful.
Person 2: No it's not beautiful.
Person 1: Yes, it is beautiful.
Person 2: No, it is not beautiful!
or slightly better, this:
Person 1: For me, that thing is beautiful.
Person 2: Well, for me, that thing is not beautiful.
Person 1: Why don't you find that thing beautiful??
Person 2: I just don't see it as beautiful.
or much better, this:
Person 1: I feel so much joy when I see that thing.
Person 2: I don't feel joy, I actually feel disgust.
Person 1: I'm confused, why do you feel disgust when you see that thing?
Person 2: It reminds me of this one thing that caused me a lot of pain before.
So while yes, I don't think labeling something as universally X necessarily ends the conversation, I think it can lead people to a binary debate about universals instead of open up the conversation for people to share their own experiences and more personal perspectives.
[flagged] Heresy