As much as I am behind radical reformation of our systems of policing and increasing social work and other alternatives, it is this example and what you've said that give me pause.

All forms of governmental power are subject to abuse and they are only as good as the dedication, competence, and fundamental character of the people that staff it.

So I fear we may be trading one form of abuse for another.

I'm sorry, I just don't believe that the mob materializes out of nothing and I think the example you're giving doesn't really exist.

The speech we're talking about is speech that dehumanizes others. That kind of speech is by definition asymmetric. It is a form of intolerance and will claim that any attempts to criticize it is also intolerant. So, I'm sorry, but it isn't acceptable to treat it as normal--that's how systemic racism becomes embedded over time.

Because we have the 1st amendment (good!), the only defense against those kinds of views are social consequences. And this is both a good and a right outcome.

And by the way, I noticed you keep avoiding trying to define what consequences are acceptable or if any consequences are acceptable. You just keep saying that cancelling is unacceptable, but won't make a distinction between the two.

Well, I was deliberately being vague. I'm really just asserting that there are mistakes that individuals (like teachers) can make that are significant and have significant impact, but probably should be handled as a deliberate growth opportunity that is taken as seriously as the weight of the mistake.

In reality it feels like there are just two options: ignore and hide, or pay the ultimate price.

"No, cancel culture is beyond criticism."

How, exactly? Just what do you consider to be acceptable consequences for abhorrent views?

I have often wondered myself how we, as a culture, can make more space for learning and growth. Because we can see many IRL consequences for this lack of space.

For example, I think we'd all really, really like our elected officials, government employees, and others to take responsibility for their mistakes or failures of policy. There are a number of factors why they don't, but I truly believe that part of it is that they know there isn't really space for them to do so and to grow and learn.

An example: a teacher says something questionable on social media about a student--like they are foolish for voting for a particular candidate. It isn't appropriate or acceptable, but it is human, and it is a correctable event. Is society better off without that person as a teacher? Maybe, but if the teacher is young/new we may not know.

Yet, the parents of the child will demand the firing and the admin will likely not have any interest in the hard work involved in supporting and growing the teacher. Easier all around to fire them.

Everyone is worse off in this scenario. So we should not be surprised if the standard reaction of individuals is to deny, deflect, blame, and avoid growth/learning b/c they are not rewarded for doing so.

I will give you the benefit of the doubt that you are arguing in good faith and assume you aren't deliberately misunderstanding the difference between "consequences" for your opinion and the ephemeral "cancel culture".

So, I would invite you to please explain the difference. Because if you are arguing in good faith, I find it hard to believe you are arguing that there should be no real-world consequences for abhorrent views and speech. And if accept there should be consequences, then we really need to understand what you think the difference between those consequences and "cancelling" are.

Yes, metaphor is implicit vs explicit. But you are placing a far larger emphasis on that distinction than is warranted. Given the lack of land involved, 99.9% of people would have no problem identifying this as a metaphorical statement. It's use out of it's normal contextual use is exactly what makes it valuable as a communicative device. But you know that.

Precise language matters to you in this context, because the metaphor confuses you. The rest of us find it a useful device to understand some of the common characteristics between copyright and property ownership and how holders of those rights behave.

I used to have a girlfriend like you who struggled with metaphor. She hated and always criticized them in any context because the metaphor was specifically not the thing it was being compared to or used to explain.

I never pressed her on it, but I'll ask you--is it really so hard for you to understand that the thing "landlord" is being used to create an apt comparison, but not a direct equivalence? I'm trying to figure out if you're being willfully ignorant or this is truly a gestalt-level gap in ability to understand.

Being a copyright maximalist clearly means being very careful to misunderstand basic things about reality.

There are more and more studies now, and I don't think they show that, not conclusively anyway. If you have a broad review of the studies done to show that, please share. My reading of a number of them shows that the intersection itself has a great deal of influence and that the greater number + severity can often wipe out any gains from the cameras.

So, studies of this have been mostly negative. Some found a lower degree of medical injury, but the rest found it was a wash or higher.

The intersection itself appears to be a major factor, along with the length of the yellow lights (4s or greater lowers injury across the board).

>Automated enforcement, in general, has great potential to make driving safer, especially for people of color.

Citation please, because automated enforcement (also as documented on this blog) nearly always comes with a torpedo to due process. Guess which group is disproportionately affected when that happens?

"What should be taught is how actions have consequences. "

But, as you likely know, this is really the challenge. The consequences that have the greatest impact are real-world ones. After not very long, parental punishment becomes more about the parent-child relationship than a meaningful consequence.

But real-world consequences generally can't be controlled by the parents, which is why we fear letting kids get that far. So, the question is how to let them fail in a manner that lets them really learn, but also make certain the consequences are not life-altering. It's a tradeoff that's impossible to get right consistently.

I genuinely can't tell if you are kidding or not.

If not, this is just the biggest blind spot in people. For some reason they cannot comprehend that establishing thoughtcrime for ostensibly good outcomes is not only likely to be applied for bad outcomes, it has been proven to be over and over.

Give an establishment subjective power over people and it will be abused and abused and abused.

"I suspect a condition of sale like this could easily be shot down in court." Nope.

I think if you do a little research you'll see that there really aren't any examples of post-merger legal actions against the government. The anti-trust laws give the government wide latitude to take these guys to the cleaners and pre-merger approvals have been well-vetted in the courts.

Any challenges would have to be of a fundamentally obvious constitutional nature (like if they FCC said ... as long as those *Jews* don't charge usage caps), they won't dare take it to court. Because if they do, the anti-trust hammer comes down hard.

There's no media other than that within the US. Once we get US media to stop talking about encryption, problem solved.

What really bothers me is that one of the logical outcomes of this is that tech companies will demand to be released from liability for any future breaches. And the government will acquiesce, because that is how they will convince them.

So, not only will consumers be left holding the bag, they'll be completely on their own.

Nothing could possibly be a bigger threat to future online commerce than that.

"It isn’t a question of whether federal prosecutors are good people; it’s whether these people, trusted with enormous power, are exercising that power in the way they ought."

I wish he had worded it differently. I think what he means is exercising that power in a manner that places emphasis on both the rights of the accused and the public good. And does not place emphasis on the good of the DoJ or him or herself.

I would be overjoyed to see ANY example of comparable industries where some big event happened and they lowered prices. You certainly couldn't use "deregulation" of [insert industry here], as to my knowledge and despite promises to the contrary, no significant price drops have ever occurred.

"YouTube will err on the side of rights holders"

No one knows if they hold any rights yet, especially not YouTube!

This should read like, "err on the side of random people with money and influence"