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Twitter to ban political advertising

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Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#951

Post by SkyBelow »

yoavm wrote: post #784
ralusek wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lowest level of truth telling is stating facts, but even stating facts can be extremely manipulative. If I were to say: "2x as many white Americans were killed by police as black Americans in 2018." This a true fact. If I take note of the fact that black Americans only constitute 13% of the population, then I can say "A black American is 2.3x as likely as a white American to be killed by police." This is also a t…

But these really aren't the type of lies that people consider fake news. Yeah, all the things you've written are facts, and their interpretations are what we call opinions. I agree with you that all of these statements, since they're true, should be allowed without a question. People still need to think and be critical. I just took a look at a long list of lies by your current President. It has nothing to do with fac…

>It has nothing to do with facts like the ones you've stated above.

I don't think I can agree with this. When dealing with one group who is using facts to push a narrative/conclusion you think is false, it can become quite easy to push back without outright lies. Once misleading facts have been introduced into a discussion, the level of civility drops. That opens the door for the further drop into outright lies. Especially if one side feels they are less versed in manipulating statistics.

I've spoken to many people who view lies of omission as being just as dishonest as outright lying, especially when done to manipulate someone (normally this involves when a child has lied to their parents and isn't related to anything political). As such, a lie of omission or selectively using facts has now introduced dishonesty into the conversation, making the other side feel like they are just using the standard that was already been set.

>It ruins the ability to have a real debate in a society, and I think it harmed America (not only of course) greatly.

I feel this occurs as soon as someone starts relying on presenting facts to push a certain narrative because it sends the message that it is now acceptable to have a dishonest conversation. At that point, any discussion changes into a matter of winning at any cost.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#952

Post by SkyBelow »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #850
jlg23 wrote: post #843

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The most basic kind of truths are facts. Except for that for a lot of "facts", according to Rousseau, we already have 4 truths: what you say, what I say, what we agree upon and what really happened. So, while the pursuit of truth is important, I'd argue that respect towards each other even when we cannot agree is the most important thing.

Maybe we need to start teaching people to habitually attach provenance and confidence information to every fact (really: belief) they report, at least as much as practically possible? "Iraq had WMDs in 2000s" != "I strongly believe Iraq had WMDs in 2000s" != "I find it plausible that Iraq might have had WMDs in 2000s" != "According to that UN report, Iraq had WMDs in 2000s" != "According to NYT, which quotes that UN…

I generally speak like this and find it causes problems with others because they view this as a weak form of speech. It makes you appear uncertain, which should be a good thing, but our society seems to value undeserved confidence far above cautious uncertainty.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#953

Post by smsm42 »

z3phyr wrote: post #691
smsm42 wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a candidate or their representatives publish false information in the election season /.../ perhaps even ban the candidate from participating in the elections. So we'd have elections with no candidates at all. Or, more realistically, we'd have ones that have opinions matching opinions of those people who sit on the commission. Nice system, though it's not clear why bother with elections then at all - we just let…

I just realized that the USA does not have civil services. Like your elected officials can appoint random people for random things. Anyway, a good election commision can be formed by pooling career civil servants, equal representatives from each political party, a bench of retired judges elected by the Senate for a unit time. The commision can not make any policy decision. All they can do is ensure that the elections…

> A democracy where all candidates are liars is no better than Russian democracy where there are no candidates

In every democracy "all candidates are liars", if you call a liar anybody whose views can be contradicted by somebody else. Most of what candidates talk about aren't scientific facts, they are opinions and projections and moral judgements. Even about scientific facts there is considerable disagreement - what was considered a healthy diet a decade ago, is seen as a nutritional disaster now, so would a candidate that advocates old diet be called a liar? What about advocating current one - would such a candidate be a liar in a couple of years? Some economists think rent control and minimal wage are a disaster, others think they are a very reasonable and beneficial measures. If a politician agrees with some of them but not others - is she a liar? There's not a lot in what politicians say that can be scientifically and robustly verified as true or false - and those things that really can are largely inconsequential - even if some politician decides to proclaim pi equals 4, it's unlikely any actual policy would be influenced by that. So it would devolve into partisan bickering and gotcha hunting. Which you can amply witness on multitude of "factchecking" sites, which devolved very quickly from objective observers into presenting opinions as facts on one side into "factchecking" internet memes and obvious marked satire on the other.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#955

Post by jeegsy »

cf498 wrote: post #734
FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't discredit anti-vaxxers with speech. Same with flat-earthers. Same with fascists. You know what works? De-platforming them. Not giving them a voice in the public discourse. Not taking anti-vaxxers seriously and placing them at the same level as doctors because ''both sides'' and ''free speech''. What has been proven again and again is that bad information drives out good, because it's so, so much easier to w…

>You don't discredit anti-vaxxers with speech. Same with flat-earthers. Same with fascists. You know what works? De-platforming them. I would like a source on that. Dont take it personal, but I dont see how this is anything but tanky signaling to feel better about yourself. Here in Germany people were rather active in making sure the new far right party AFD wasnt given a platform. By now they are very close to being…

Hear Hear!

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#957

Post by SkyBelow »

FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #711
sacrificedcapon wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize that saudi arabia, china, russia, etc all have laws in place to hold newspaper editors responsible for printing "truth" right? > This is what has kept our society well informed and critical thinking for a hundred years. What makes you think you are a well-informed and critical thinking society? Don't most danes think alike just like most saudis, chinese, russians, etc. Don't most danes think and believ…

You don't discredit anti-vaxxers with speech. Same with flat-earthers. Same with fascists. You know what works? De-platforming them. Not giving them a voice in the public discourse. Not taking anti-vaxxers seriously and placing them at the same level as doctors because ''both sides'' and ''free speech''. What has been proven again and again is that bad information drives out good, because it's so, so much easier to w…

>You know what works? De-platforming them.

Evidence seems to suggest that the current attempted solutions are not working.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#958

Post by nradov »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #850
jlg23 wrote: post #843

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The most basic kind of truths are facts. Except for that for a lot of "facts", according to Rousseau, we already have 4 truths: what you say, what I say, what we agree upon and what really happened. So, while the pursuit of truth is important, I'd argue that respect towards each other even when we cannot agree is the most important thing.

Maybe we need to start teaching people to habitually attach provenance and confidence information to every fact (really: belief) they report, at least as much as practically possible? "Iraq had WMDs in 2000s" != "I strongly believe Iraq had WMDs in 2000s" != "I find it plausible that Iraq might have had WMDs in 2000s" != "According to that UN report, Iraq had WMDs in 2000s" != "According to NYT, which quotes that UN…

That is a major part of the formal training program for professional intelligence analysts. Of course they still often get the probabilities wrong.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#959

Post by bigwavedave »

orthecreedence wrote: post #935
navigatesol wrote: post #810

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just took a look at a long list of lies by your current President. The idea that one side tells lies, and the other only truth is part of the problem here. > You can't argue that it's some interpretation, or just half of the picture or anything like that. It's simply a bunch of words phrased as a fact but they never happened. "Russian collusion" appears to fit this description, yet I still read about it every day…

> The idea that one side tells lies, and the other only truth is part of the problem here. Your divisive thinking is the problem here. Someone said that Trump lies, they didn't say "Republicans lie and dems don't," but that was somehow your interpretation of the statement that Trump lies (which is true of any president, yet you and I both know in our heart of hearts that he lies more than anybody by an overwhelming m…

I believe the parent was mistakenly interpreting "lies told by your president" (emphasis mine) to be a #NotMyPresident kind of attack from a citizen across the aisle as opposed to an observation from a non-citizen. It sounds like the parent thought gp was a democratic who was insinuating that the current president and his political party are the only president and party who've told lies so egregious compared to those told by any other president from across the aisle that they're the only ones of consequence.

That's what I assume, but you know what they say about assumptions.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#960

Post by YarickR2 »

buboard wrote: post #858
jaimeyap wrote: post #827

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. The march to authoritarianism accelerates when people accept the meme that the truth is unknowable. So they simply accept the reality put forth by the autocrat. The most basic kind of truths are facts. We at least need to agree on those as best we can first. And then apply critical thinking on the the squishier stuff on top.

The world s autocratic countries (russia china turkey etc) don’t rely on fabricated news, they rely on hiding the truth and placing a biased spin on it. They know that outright lies will actually harm their image.

Any evidence to your words ? Or this is just a lie you made up to spread your FUD ?
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