Controversial and heretical are not interchangeable. I agree. But perhaps this is merely my bubble. My view of this is that kneeling was decried but that it wasn’t controversial to be against kneeling and that at some point it switched and being against kneeling is now the impermissible violation of norms.
And my view wasn’t that the lab leak thing was suppressed at all since I heard people talk about the idea frequently. It was just dismissed outright.
However, I do agree with you that simple controversy does not imply heresy. Though I do believe that anything truly heretical will result in widespread condemnation. And because of the rapidity of meme replication in humans, it will have parties that adopt it rapidly if it has some value, and will appear as controversy.
Yeah it seems to be the interpretation of the examples differ between us, not the definition itself.
For the kneeling, the norm at the time was to play the game and pledge to the country. Then kneeling came in and it was controversial among a group of people that believed it should stay about the game and viewed kneeling during the pledge as a sign of disrespect. The other side viewed it as controversial to say something against those kneeling under their reasoning of racism. You could say people weren't against kneeling before but it didn't really exist so that wasn't a norm. Similar to trying to prove a negative, it doesn't make sense.
For the lab leak, it was banned from all social media sites under and anytime it was mentioned in mainstream news it was shot down as anti-asian racism. It was taboo and banned from discussion. Recently you can talk about it now. It was few months ago that permission was received. There was a big thread here about it. I can find it later today.
Yeah, I buy that. I suppose that’s what I was trying to talk about when I meant the group.
Like I know in the outside world there was this lab leak thing but in the SF startup crowd it was so common. Everyone was suspicious.
But that seems to be a pattern. Excepting me (I thought the pandemic was going to be handled well by American bureaucracy), everyone I know adapted well before the government, cancelling trips, taking money out of the market, stuff like that. So it’s possible that in this group, what is heretical is different.
And my view wasn’t that the lab leak thing was suppressed at all since I heard people talk about the idea frequently. It was just dismissed outright.
However, I do agree with you that simple controversy does not imply heresy. Though I do believe that anything truly heretical will result in widespread condemnation. And because of the rapidity of meme replication in humans, it will have parties that adopt it rapidly if it has some value, and will appear as controversy.