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Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive

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Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive

#141

Post by lightgreen »

cousin_it wrote: post #84
cheschire wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a question I've been struggling with lately. Downvotes reinforce groupthink, that much is subjectively clear. I've considered solutions, and I believe forcing people to reply before they are allowed to downvote would help. However, in opposition to my own idea, I consider that simply requiring a more effort wouldn't necessarily change the groupthink problem, but would just stifle low effort downvotes. Let's cons…

We could remove downvotes. They had three purposes: 1) Crowdsourced moderation. Well, everyone is using manual moderation anyway. 2) Silencing others. This is a misfeature. 3) Finding the best content. Upvotes are enough for that. That said, I'm not sure this will reduce groupthink. Twitter has no downvotes and plenty of groupthink.

There could be two kinds of downvotes: * "I disagree" downvote * "This comment has no value" downvote

First downvote can be used for arguments like "let's increase taxes to the rich because, this way we can build more fair society, European countries have shown that high taxes..."

Second downvote can be used for comments like "Let's tax these rich bastards".

I want to also mention reddit voting system which I kinda like: they have downvoting, but they also have a sorting by "controvervial": top comments are the comments with high number of both upvotes and downvotes, such comments really help to see the full spectre of opinions in discussions, while the universally true and not interesting comments everyone agrees with like "we should not kill people", are below controversial comments.

Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive

#142

Post by KSteffensen »

phkahler wrote: post #90
AHappyCamper wrote: post #78

I understand that there are a lot of people who are hurting right now, and I empathize with their pain, but how can we share out most wonderful and beautiful ideas with each other or convey important information to the public if we believe there might be serious reprisals against us if we "say the wrong thing". For example, I personally helped work against slavery on the Black Market in the Middle East, and I wanted…

>> There is no "right" way to convey the issue above without offending someone. You are not responsible for those people being offended. If people actually respond that way to your efforts they look stupid. Just carry on doing what is right. Most of them are not actually offended but are claiming you may be offensive to someone else.

> You are not responsible for those people being offended.

There are different ways of communicating the same basic fact. Telling my wife she has a fat ass and telling her she probably shouldn't wear those pants contain the same basic information but will have vastly different outcomes.

The one message carries the side-band information that I am insensitive, lazy or just plain don't care about her feelings and the other shows that I am trying to state an uncomfortable fact honestly while taking her feelings into consideration.

Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive

#143

Post by danielheath »

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #121
TuringTest wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how can we share out most wonderful and beautiful ideas with each other The trick is to create channels with limited audiences, where you can set an expectation of which ideas are acceptable and which are not.* It always has been, but the the arrival of new communication methods has disrupted the traditional channels, and now every idea is propagated to a much larger and looser audience, which aren't aware or don't…

How do you manage reading every code of conduct and honoring it? The trouble I'm having with social changes, expectations, per person pronouns, and other things is that managing all of these interactions can be a crushing amount of cognitive load. Now that I think about it, it's the same challenge I have with microservices. Formerly simple interactions are now hellza complicated. I'm not fighting the trend. I'm just…

Exposure to unfamiliar ideas is exhausting. Doubly so when the social behaviour that typically becomes second nature in adolescence no longer fits (IMO that’s why video calls are exhausting too - the usual subtle social cues don’t apply).

Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive

#144

Post by unlaxedneurotic »

scarmig wrote: post #135
cheschire wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a question I've been struggling with lately. Downvotes reinforce groupthink, that much is subjectively clear. I've considered solutions, and I believe forcing people to reply before they are allowed to downvote would help. However, in opposition to my own idea, I consider that simply requiring a more effort wouldn't necessarily change the groupthink problem, but would just stifle low effort downvotes. Let's cons…

I'm a fan of easy ability to downvote and upvote. What I would be interested in is a more sophisticated ordering than by net number of votes. For example, I'm sure some people's upvotes correlate well with my own (and probably some people's downvotes correlate with my upvotes!) If comments could somehow be ordered by how likely I am to upvote them, based on historical correlations between my and others' votes, that s…

But don't you think that if you are exposed more to comments that correlate with your own preference, it would lead to creation of an echo chamber?

Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive

#145

Post by bryanrasmussen »

raxxorrax wrote: post #124
kanox wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are not responsible for those people being offended. This is objectively false, you can get fired for offending people both at your job or outside it.

You can be certain that companies who did that will be reprimanded for it by consumers.

they may get reprimanded, but not meaningfully. I mean Shell was complicit (allegedly) in rape and murder https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/feb/12/o... and they haven't been meaningfully reprimanded by consumers, I doubt someone getting fired for offending some people is going to amount to more than a slap that misses the wrist but moves the hair on the wrist via the vigorous breeze.

Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive

#146

Post by haberman »

danielheath wrote: post #140
haberman wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The trick is to create channels with limited audiences, where you can set an expectation of which ideas are acceptable and which are not. Do you mean that a community could allow argument X, but disallow counter-argument Y? That sounds like a recipe for an echo chamber. I definitely see the benefit in saying that certain topics are out of scope for a given community. But saying which ideas are acceptable and which…

Every stable community already has things you can and cannot say (try arguing the merits of pederasty, war, or heroin and see how far you get!)

I agree that there are almost always some guardrails in place, and certain viewpoints that are considered beyond the pale. And so there is a balancing act between an Overton Window that is too wide and wastes people's time with nonsense, and one that is too narrow and prevents bad orthodoxies from being challenged.

Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive

#147

Post by nmfisher »

missosoup wrote: post #51
uniqueid wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Silencing dissenting views has never worked in history There may be a grain of truth to that, but I don't think a historian, even one who agreed with its thrust, would feel comfortable with it as a blanket statement. I don't really want to have this sort of heated debate this evening. Sorry.

It's simple. Name one historical example where this strategy of systemic censorship of an ideology worked and didn't blow back. You can't. There aren't any. It always blows back. America is just failing to learn from a lesson that's been taught to various empires for millennia.

Mainland China.

I’m still convinced that it will eventually implode. But it hasn’t yet, and I may well be wrong.

Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive

#148

Post by rini17 »

scarmig wrote: post #135
cheschire wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a question I've been struggling with lately. Downvotes reinforce groupthink, that much is subjectively clear. I've considered solutions, and I believe forcing people to reply before they are allowed to downvote would help. However, in opposition to my own idea, I consider that simply requiring a more effort wouldn't necessarily change the groupthink problem, but would just stifle low effort downvotes. Let's cons…

I'm a fan of easy ability to downvote and upvote. What I would be interested in is a more sophisticated ordering than by net number of votes. For example, I'm sure some people's upvotes correlate well with my own (and probably some people's downvotes correlate with my upvotes!) If comments could somehow be ordered by how likely I am to upvote them, based on historical correlations between my and others' votes, that s…

If we must have the one-click convenience (I'm not convinced it's necessary) I'd prefer to have few labels like "I disagree" "Not true" "Off topic" "Pls read the article" "Disgusting" etc. instead of downvote button, perhaps also similar for upvote.

Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive

#149

Post by MaxBarraclough »

gadders wrote: post #96

Unpopular speech is the only speech worth defending.

You've been downvoted, but it's a fair point. You don't need freedom of speech to express ideas already accepted by the mainstream and by the state. That's permitted even in the most oppressive regimes. Freedom of speech is, by definition, concerned with unpopular speech.

Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive

#150

Post by Aengeuad »

DanBC wrote: post #79
gentleman11 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In mainstream news (ap, CBC, bbc, others), increasingly people and groups are being labelled as racist without any discretion. Eg, people out protecting Churchill statues in the UK are labelled as racists in several stories[1]. Surely, there is at least one racist in the group, but increasingly every single person who doesn’t tow the line is being called out - entire police departments, mayors, city councils, schools…

> Eg, people out protecting Churchill statues in the UK are labelled as racists in several stories You missed out the bit where some of them were doing Nazi salutes or carrying EDL / Britain First etc flags.

With all the talk of people doing Nazi salutes it seemed like you could open any news story about the counter-protests and you'd see clear evidence of Neo-Nazis but it was anything but, even when people point to videos [0] that are supposed to demonstrate the Nazi salute it's a struggle to even figure out who is supposed to be doing it. Another video [1] of that same scene is even less supportive of the claim of Nazi salutes. The discussion on such videos at the time always devolved into bickering about how strict the salute had to be before it counts on videos that were overwhelmingly of people with one or both arms in the air, closed fist salutes, people literally pointing, stills out of context, etc, on videos that were always accompanied by football chanting. I don't think I saw a single example of a strict or even semi-strict Nazi salute from a couple of days of casually looking up the news on the counter-protests despite every thread having a dozen people that were quick to point out that the protestors were racists doing the Nazi salute.

As far as the EDL / Britain First goes, this is literally the first time I'm hearing that the leader of Britain First showed up, it seems like it was drowned out of the news completely. Are there any pictures of said flags or the scale of their involvement? I don't recall seeing any at the time and I can't find any pics at all. Edit: Found one [2], it's of the leader.

[0] https://twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/1271763042745925632

[1] https://twitter.com/BBCDomC/status/1271761377317851136

[2] https://twitter.com/hopenothate/status/1271772683013931008

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