391–400 of 923 posts
This really comes down to whether or not all ideas should be _promoted_ equally. Do we think all ideas–even if they are demonstrably untrue-deserve to be boosted to the same level of provable truths. Should they all be promoted equally and considered equally and taught equally, forever? Do we allow demonstrably false claims to remain at the top to be treated equally, forever? To forever waste time? Every single prova…
I very strongly feel that we should be very careful to avoid adopting a legalistic attitude towards freedom of speech. That is, I am opposed to the argument that private corporations are not bound by the first amendment, and therefore it's okay for them to suppress content. I agree that they're not bound by the first amendment (I don't claim to understand the nuances of the "platform" laws so I won't address that), b…
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> What evidence do you have for this? I've never seen a bad or immoral or harmful idea die out when more people learn about it and scrutinize it. There is a significant amount of evidence for it. For example, one could measure the effects of showing people fact-checks, and it has been demonstrated that it does indeed work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact-checking#Effects And there are countless ideas that have die…
> flat earth (before Galileo) That people thought the Earth was flat before Galileo is a meme. Even Ancient Greeks knew it was round. > pro-slavery views In 1776, America is born with its Freedom(TM). In 1829, Mexico abolishes slavery. In 1835, Texas revolts, resulting in Republic of Texas (1836), which then merges with the US (1846), which triggers the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), which leads to, among other th…
And no number of people saying this seems to make this meme go away.
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Why is censoring one-to-many communication so much less horrifying? One-to-many communication is integral for any social or political action.
Because, as I said a couple comments ago, the degree of one-to-many communication available to people has been continuously skyrocketing for decades, and currently stands at levels far beyond any seen in history. Even the heaviest possible strawman-censorship one could imagine on Youtube would only erase a small part of this rise. That's because the internet has allowed one-to-many communication to massively scale up…
I very strongly feel that we should be very careful to avoid adopting a legalistic attitude towards freedom of speech. That is, I am opposed to the argument that private corporations are not bound by the first amendment, and therefore it's okay for them to suppress content. I agree that they're not bound by the first amendment (I don't claim to understand the nuances of the "platform" laws so I won't address that), b…
> I believe in shining a light on them I hear this a lot. Light is the best disinfectant. What evidence do you have for this? I've never seen a bad or immoral or harmful idea die out when more people learn about it and scrutinize it. However, I have repeatedly seen the opposite: Sharing bad ideas increases their audience, increases ignorance, hate, fear, and human suffering. You're looking at an article describing th…
If you de-platform people, you no longer have a way to pressure them. Declaring them "beyond the pale" means giving up further rational influence on them. Nothing is left but violence.
The people we revere as history's greatest moral leaders never took this approach.
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> What evidence do you have for this? I've never seen a bad or immoral or harmful idea die out when more people learn about it and scrutinize it. There is a significant amount of evidence for it. For example, one could measure the effects of showing people fact-checks, and it has been demonstrated that it does indeed work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact-checking#Effects And there are countless ideas that have die…
Most of those ideas didn't die out because one day people found out about them, and then we put an end to them. Most of them _everyone_ knew about for thousands, or even tens of thousands of years, why didn't this "sunlight" disinfect them?
This is false.
For most of the past several thousand years of history, "knowledge" has been imposed and speech has been restricted by religious and/or political decree.
Freedom of speech, along with the value of the individual, are enlightenment values - i.e., they have only been around for a couple of hundred years, and even then only in a few parts of the world, and even then they have continued to be suppressed and assaulted at every opportunity.
But those of us who have been lucky enough to grow up in societies that have relatively high levels of freedom of speech and freedom of the individual can easily take these freedoms for granted.
But if you look at all the positive societal changes that are espoused by people who believe in liberal values: workers' rights, women's rights (to vote, work, refuse or leave marriage, own property, drive), equality and rights for racial/religious minorities, immigrants, the disabled, gay people, etc; these changes have happened first where there has been the greatest freedom of speech.
Yes I know it's unpleasant to hear speech that feels uncomfortable or dangerous, but be assured it is immeasurably better than the alternative.
Edit:
For what it's worth, I've been paying attention to the David Icke story since he first appeared on London Real a few weeks ago, and I'm a financial supporter of an investigative reporter who has gone deep researching and revealing the possibility that this whole thing looks like a financial scam by London Real.
It looks every bit like The Streisand Effect is at work here, and that YouTube's ban of Icke is only serving to amplify his signal, increase his following and generate huge amounts of money for London Real (and possibly Icke too).
So it's the Hydra myth playing out yet again. Be careful what you wish for.
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>Yay another extremist swept under the digital carpet, problem solved - well NO. Well yes, at least partially. Studies of bans on hate communities on reddit have shown effectiveness not only in reducing the total hate, but also, and this is important, changing the behaviour of individual users who were active in the hate communities as they moved towards more moderate, diverse communities. [...] "What they found was…
is racism equivalent to fat shaming now?
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" E pur si muove...! "
Galileo didn't deliver spittle-flecked rants either. He carefully gathered evidence and wrote it up, and his ideas gained acceptance by peer review.
His contemporaries were not particularly impressed, but he probably wouldn't have been censored, if he also didn't try his damned hardest to personally piss off everyone in his social circle.
His 'efforts' probably set the adoption of heliocentrism back by decades.
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> I've never seen a bad or immoral or harmful idea die out when more people learn about it and scrutinize it. Leaded gasoline, phlogiston, cold fusion, phrenology, scientific racism, basically the entire history of the progress of science. But let's also not forget that you're asking for a list of discredited ideas, so you wouldn't have heard of them, by definition, if things are working as they should, because they'…
When did scientific racism die out? Mainstream US publications are still publishing op-eds that assume scientific racism is a legitimate topic. This has been going on since the country was founded. I'm not sure how effective a disinfectant sunlight is if it takes centuries to work.
I encourage you to review some of the early to mid 20th-century publications on the topic. "Science" backing segregation. Americans pontificating about whether Hitler was right or that blacks should be sterilized, and then actually doing it. Doctors. In hospitals. "Three generations of imbeciles are enough" from the US Supreme Court.
If you think we're in the same state now as we were then, you don't know where we were then.
> I'm not sure how effective a disinfectant sunlight is if it takes centuries to work.
You would prefer the alternative where anything contradicting the then-prevailing doctrine of racial supremacy and eugenics was censored? How long does the truth take to get out in that case? And what happens in the meantime?
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NIH? CDC? Their statements were more accurate.
The same CDC that to this day says masks don't prevent the wearer from getting infected?