Video summary
The discussion centers on the perceived ineffectiveness of cancel culture, arguing that it often fails to change minds or hearts while instead pushing ideas underground into echo chambers devoid of dissenting voices. The speaker suggests this phenomenon stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of how dialogue functions and how societies are built upon post-Enlightenment classical liberal values, such as those articulated by John Stuart Mill in *On Liberty*. A significant portion of the conversation highlights that many individuals engaging in cancellation genuinely believe they can expunge bad beliefs from society through suppression, yet this approach ultimately polarizes communities further. The speaker notes a troubling lack of education regarding free speech and the importance of debating within the realm of ideas rather than resorting to *ad hominem* attacks or personal insults based on identity markers like being cisgender, white, or male. The mechanisms enforcing cancellation have evolved significantly in the social media age, where digital footprints are excessive and adolescent blunders become permanently immortalized. The speaker recalls having an iPhone by age ten and using Instagram at eleven, illustrating how a generation now arrives at college primed for self-censorship due to constant exposure to "tripwires." This environment creates a self-perpetuating cycle where fewer people feel safe sticking their neck out, while those who witness peers being made examples of are understandably reluctant to tread similar territory. Beyond overt bans and protests, the speaker identifies softer forms of alienation that serve as ideological bias tests; these include questions about specific figures like Jordan Peterson or Ben Shapiro, which act as subtle filters for political alignment without ever appearing in official codes of conduct. As cancellation has become somewhat meme-ified and low-status to advocate openly, its methods have shifted toward increasingly subtle tactics such as the "black square" test following George Floyd's death in 2020, where failing to post a symbol resulted in social castigation for not buying into prevailing ideologies. The speaker describes witnessing this slow quarantine effect within philosophy classrooms at NYU, where heterodox individuals would find themselves physically segregated on the other side of the room as peers subtly distanced themselves from them. This segregation fosters an environment where students feel ill or wronged if they do not conform to the group's ideological bubble, a dynamic that can push young people toward reactionary opposites or deep internet rabbit holes when subjected to racial segregation during events like Martin Luther King Day and aggressive political indoctrination from day one. The conversation also addresses the gendered tone emerging in modern politics, noting a statistical fork where boys are becoming more right-leaning while girls lean left. The speaker attributes this partly to a "feminization of the left," suggesting that attitudes regarding free speech and the protection against harmful speech may hijack female proclivities toward empathy and emotional reasoning over rational argumentation. This is supported by data indicating that all-women schools consistently rank in the top five for students who believe responding to speech with violence is sometimes acceptable. Ultimately, the speaker concludes that growing up navigating these polarized digital landscapes often leads individuals down ideological rabbit holes, swinging from extreme right-wing views one year to extreme left-wing positions another, thereby deepening societal polarization rather than resolving it through robust debate.
Read the full video transcript
What do you think cancellation is trying
to achieve?
Like what you just explained there, it
doesn't seem to work. It pushes these
ideas underground in some regard. It can
throw them into echo chambers where
there are presumably no dissenting
voices.
What
What is it trying to achieve?
I mean, I think it's just predicated on
a
like a fundamental misunderstanding of
how how dialogue works and how minds are
changed and hearts and and minds are won
over. I think
I think there's been such a an
alienation from the classical liberal
values post-enlightenment that that made
society free and and made dialogue
robust and made debate healthy and um in
the realm of ideas and not ad hominem.
And you know, for for example, I I've
never learned John Stuart Mill's On
Liberty. I never learned the importance
of free speech at growing up even going
to great schools and doing a philosophy
degree at NYU. I didn't understand the
importance and
just how profound those
post-enlightenment ideals are and how
much they need to be bought into by the
entire culture and community in order to
thrive. And I think that those
some people who engage in cancel culture
are genuinely mean-spirited, but other
people I think do believe that if they
shut down and
I don't know, castigate anybody who has
a bad belief that that somehow actually
does expunge it from society, which is
probably untrue. I think it's it's
polarized us even further. Um but I I do
think that it's just because people are
are no longer taught the the importance
of, you know, he who knows only his side
of the argument knows little of that and
and the importance of being able to
exist in the realm of ideas. And then
frankly, it's just an easy cheap tactic
to win arguments without winning
arguments. Because if If attack you for
being a cishet white might have an
ideological argument that that corners
me or makes me uncomfortable in my own
predispositions.
What are some of the mechanisms for
enforcing cancellation that people might
not realize are part of the cancellation
machine?
I would say one thing that people seem
not to talk enough about is how early
it's starting. And especially in the in
the social media age, I grew up I had an
iPhone when I was 10 or maybe 11. I was
on Instagram by the time I was 11
surely. And I am now like the human
receptacle for every parent's horror
stories about what's happening to their
middle schoolers getting canceled for
like a 2-second Snapchat video where
someone screenshotted something and now
everyone's seen it. And I think that one
of the enforcement mechanisms going
forward in the age of everybody having
this
insanely excessive digital footprint and
all of their adolescent blunders being
forever immortalized in a way that I
think any older person should shudder at
the thought of.
Um that's one way that it's being
enforced is that there's an entire
generation of young people who are
coming up
just surrounded by tripwires even in
their teenage years that they're
arriving on campus in college already
primed for the fact that they have to
self-censor that they could be called
out at any point in time. And I think
that that's self-perpetuating because
that's making less and less people even
want to stick their neck out in the
first place. But then I also think that
cancel culture is
is so dangerous and so powerful not just
for the people whose lives are torn down
and completely ruined, but also for all
the people around them that see that and
see them having been made an example of
and then will refuse, and understandably
so, to tread that same territory.
What's that What's it called? Like a a a
some kind of ideological bias test that
people get asked uh and it's almost like
the
culpably deniable test of of
becoming uh working out where your
politics are. It's not part of some
uh induction. It's not even part of a
code of conduct, but people are just
sometimes throw a little question like,
"What do you think about Jordan
Peterson? Have you ever listened to Ben
Shapiro? Have you done this thing?" And
that's one of the more sort of soft
introduction ways to this that slowly
over time results in you being
denigrated or or disparaged or made to
feel other. And um yeah, it it's not
just people calling for removal of
accounts and bans and protests. It's
There seems to be sort of a softer kind
of alienation of people that have
different views, which importantly is
culpably deniable, right? There's no
point at which you've done the thing cuz
I think that people who are seduced by
the prospect of being a white knight or
who like the idea of performative
empathy because it makes them look moral
whilst having to do nothing moral or
people who just want to enact power and
enforce this over other people.
The game is beginning to evolve in the
way that memes often do where if you
it's now low status to be seen as
someone that calls for cancellation
because cancellation itself has become a
meme. So now the methods of cancellation
need to become increasingly subtle.
Mhm.
They need to develop as the defense
mechanisms develop as well.
Yeah, I mean I think it's it's
I think we've seen less coordinated sort
of Twitter mob teardowns. Although I
would say that 2020 was kind of a an
exception to that, but to your to your
example
or to your point, an example of that
would be in 2020 and after the death of
George Floyd, if you didn't post the
black square, then that was a a moral
The ideological low shock test.
Yeah, exactly. And I mean there were
people who I I have friends who were
completely castigated and and and
unfollowed and blocked for not having
done so. I I mean, I didn't do it and
that wasn't didn't go over too well at
NYU. Um, but that would be the perfect
example of like a a soft like do you buy
into the prevailing ideology at that
point in time. Um, and I would also say
to that point, there's definitely like a
a slow and subtle quarantining that I
saw of when I was in um, in classes at
NYU and in my more philosophy-oriented
courses where it would kind of become
clear that maybe one or two people are a
little more heterodox and it was just
like a slow people are going to start
kind of sitting on the other side of the
classroom when they come in if that
person's over there. Um, to the point
where it was like this kind of bubbles
that we were ill or there was something
wrong with us. Um, and I I've also
watched how growing up that way has I
think polarized young people even more
because if you grow up if you're being
racially segregated when you're 14 on
Martin Luther King Day and you're having
political ideologies shoved down your
throat from pretty much day one,
it's understandable why some people,
especially young people, become the
reactionary opposite or can go down some
rabbit hole on the internet. Um, and
like I I'm fascinated to see I'm sure
you saw that statistic that um, girls
and boys are like forking politically
right now and I think
What do you make of that?
Um, I
you know, I think it's
I think part of it is a little bit of a
reactionary thing for boys and
understandably so. I think that I I
tacked right when I saw how weird the
left was around me when I was in school,
but I also feel like politics are
like there's almost a feminization of
the left a little bit and a lot of um,
I think a lot of even cancel culture or
or attitudes about free speech and and
needing to protect other people from
harmful speech, almost hijack the the
female proclivity to be more empathetic
or or to um
you know, emotionally reason more than
rationally reason, which is obviously,
you know, you do all the whole like on
average and of course there are
exceptions to that rule, but I mean,
even if you look at students' attitude
on free speech and the percentages of
students at various schools who will say
that it's sometimes acceptable to
respond to speech with violence,
consistently
like the top five schools are all
all-women schools with the highest
percentage of people saying that they
would respond with violence to speech.
And so, I do think that
our political binary is taking on a
little bit of a gendered tone. And then
you also just have the
the reality of growing up on the
internet and ending up down rabbit
holes, which happened to me politically
and I was
like all the way on the right one year
and then all the way on the left one
year and it's it's understandable how
how that could cause a polarization, I
think, for sure.
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