Study finds Reddit’s ban of its most toxic subreddits worked (2017) • Hacker News Board

Re: Study finds Reddit’s ban of its most toxic subreddits worked (2017)

#411

Post by lordlimecat » Sat, May 04, 2019, 6:41 PM UTC

tonyarkles wrote: post #329

aetherson wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world is less racist now than it was in the past. What mechanism do you posit for this?

I can't reply to the sibling comment that suggests education, but a corollary to education is that many of the people who had deeply-engrained racist beliefs are dying/dead from old age. I agree that the world is less racist now than it was in, say, the 1950s, but my personal experiences with the elderly suggests that the people who were racist in the 50s and are still alive are just as racist now as ever.

Youre saying that free speech can't cure racism because racism defeats reason. But in the very next breath you're claiming that education is responsible for winning over racism.

Don't you see the contradiction here? It can't be both.

Re: Study finds Reddit’s ban of its most toxic subreddits worked (2017)

#412

Post by lordlimecat » Sat, May 04, 2019, 6:43 PM UTC

bobdole12345 wrote: post #322

aetherson wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world is less racist now than it was in the past. What mechanism do you posit for this?

Education. The world is radically more educated than in the past. That's not a product of free speech, it's a product of teaching people how to evaluate thoughts they come across in the wild.

To suggest education cures Racism is to say that reason defeats racism, which in turn brings us back to free speech.

Re: Study finds Reddit’s ban of its most toxic subreddits worked (2017)

#413

Post by lordlimecat » Sat, May 04, 2019, 6:46 PM UTC

Nursie wrote: post #156

lordlimecat wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullshit is saying "We stand for free speech" and then later saying "the best way to deal with toxic and hateful viewpoints is to censor and hide them." Belief in free speech as a principle assumes that good and right arguments will win out every day in an open public forum.

So belief in free speech would appear, by that definition, to have been proven wrong.

It is astonishing and terrifying to see so many on Hacker news denouncing free speech and calling for its demise.

It's not like democracies last forever but I didn't think I'd be alive to watch the point at which people began to reject it.