Cancel Culture

Today one of my friends brought up cancel culture, and we did have a conversation about it. I thought I'd share my opinions on it.

I think that cancel culture is not intrinsically bad, but given my belief system it is bad because of the imperfectibility of mankind, belief homogeneity enforcement, and polarization.*

By my beliefs on free-will(https://listed.to/@vt/33768/free-will), mankind is limited in their ability. I see the goal of cancel culture as to correct false/bad beliefs by punishing them, a very classic operant conditioning strategy. However, since we aren't perfect, cancel culture won't really be able to condition people's actions/beliefs all that as the number of false negatives for simple mistakes will shift their locus of control to be more external. Furthermore, the people doing the cancelling aren't perfect. The power of the cancel culture is behind the large amount of people that engage in it. Thus they will mob like tendencies, and will likely have a number of key agents espousing rhetoric/directives. These people are vulnerable to mistakes, increasing the number of false positive cancellations, In addition, these mistakes can also come from false misinformation, further increasing the likelihood of mistakes. There is also the possibility of Moloch entering the situation (https://listed.to/@vt/33797/competition). The key players of cancel culture will have an incentive to act early on cancelling people (pressure from haters, fans, etc. that have been influence by other key players and starting cancellation draws attention, which is what influencers what). Thus in this competition, they may sacrifice values like accuracy for temporary gains in the competition. This will then be imitated by others, resulting in no net advancement. Also, all these imperfections lead to highly grievous errors that are not going to be able to be undone (people generally don't follow up nor change opinions that much as they are more difficult than the first interaction). Thus it is highly imperative that these errors don't happen, but by my philosophy they do.

Cancel culture also encourages people to not say anything or to take simpler positions that can't be misconstrued. We know the world to be complex, so there exist topics that require complex and nuanced positions. However, cancel culture relies on the desire to do good, not thought. Therefore, it would be very simple for these complex ideas to be misunderstood as something else that isn't typical, and thus be identified as bad. This reduces the diversity of ideas. In addition, all this pressure to not be cancelled means that people will act inauthentically in order to maintain social status (or actual important status) by reserving their possibly controversial opinions. This reduces the ability to engage in honest, intellectual conversations.

Cancel culture also encourages polarization by accentuating differences between philosophies that people have. Clearly, under my philosophy cancel culture is bad as outlined above. However, so those who are ultra-optimists and believe in the perfectibility of mankind, cancel culture is a way of providing a drive to perfection. For the conservative, this is change and thus is bad. For anarchists, this is a positive as it truly gives the people the power and thus reduces establishment power. Others may see it as identity politics, especially with cancellations related to homophobia, transphobia, etc. For the postmodernist, this is simply an expression of the modern, constantly changing world and provides a force for people to adapt to. For the anti-democrat (not the political party), this is an example of mob rule. TLDR, examples are abundant of differing views on this. I know I'm repeating myself, but as humanity progresses as a species, we will need more coordination, and increasing polarization will not be helping us in the future. We need to unite, understand each other in a respectful manner, and not be divided if we're to overcome existential threats to humanity.

*I am not very active in cancel culture, so all of this is from a theoretical point of view.