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The Problem of Free Speech in an Age of Disinformation

nytimes.com

411–420 of 421 posts

Re: The Problem of Free Speech in an Age of Disinformation

#411
post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Truth is hard, let's go Postmodern!" isn't a valid conclusion. It's an escape hatch, a refusal to make a best effort and, when it's about something that matters, a horribly dangerous practice which essentially cedes the field to the idiots who have no such scruples. Postmodernism is not the only critique of Kant. Although you're fighting a strawman, I agree with your criticism of postmodernism as used today, but t…

Your whole position assumes that the other person has some kernel of truth to what they're saying. A flat Earth assumption can be right in some circumstances, but the "VACCINES CAUSE AUTISM" assumption is just insanity. It's wrong, and if your epistemology won't let you say it's wrong, your epistemology is broken, not vaccines.

> Your whole position assumes that the other person has some kernel of truth to what they're saying.

Exactly. They might have been fed garbage propositions that explain their garbage conclusions, but calling them insane, crazy, is just a cop out of discomfort of the dialogue and co-existence, through the way of sub-humanizing them.

> It's wrong, and if your epistemology won't let you say it's wrong, your epistemology is broken, not vaccines.

I’d say on the contrary, “epistemologies” that demand purity and certainty (ideology is a better term for this) don’t tend to explain reality well and because of that they don’t survive in the long run. They are inherently maladaptive.

Re: The Problem of Free Speech in an Age of Disinformation

#412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact is, people reading only the New York Times, HuffPo, CNN, etcetera, are completely engulfed in a disinformation environment. They're basically abuse victims.

As opposed to those who feast on the likes of Breitbart and Murdoch... pull the other one please.

Breitbart/Fox News readers aren't the ones having mental breakdowns.

Re: The Problem of Free Speech in an Age of Disinformation

#413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came into the article expecting to hate it, but the author eventually kind of won me over. She doesn't think Americans should abandon free speech, but she does think we should approach it more like Germany and France. > Germany and France have laws that are designed to prevent the widespread dissemination of hate speech and election-related disinformation. “Much of the recent authoritarian experience in Europe aros…

Is a thought a crime though?

Only if it is a thoughtcrime.

Re: The Problem of Free Speech in an Age of Disinformation

#414
post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is because politicians lie. Filtering one side but no the other by the media and social media is censoring. They are interfering with election.

Maybe politicians shouldn't be allowed to lie?

A dictatorship of politifact? No, tech firms are experimenting with that already. It results in things like tables of public data being classed as "disinformation".

The whole idea of fact checking is naive. Nobody is trustworthy enough to determine truth. Everyone who tries turns it into "truth is whatever powerful people say it is" (which is itself circular logic of course, but the people deciding on the meaning of truth are rarely all that bright).

Re: The Problem of Free Speech in an Age of Disinformation

#415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany and France don't have free speech. If there's speech that you receive legal action for then it isn't free.

Weird because I'm German and I wasn't aware that I'm living in North Korea. Did the US patent the definition of free speech or something? I don't even know how people can say this stuff with a straight face. It's like saying "the US does not have healthcare" because of policy differences.

> Weird because I'm German and I wasn't aware that I'm living in North Korea. Did the US patent the definition of free speech or something?

Oh my god, I'm so stealing that one. I've heard the "USA is the only country with freedom" argument way too many times.

Re: The Problem of Free Speech in an Age of Disinformation

#416
post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that's fine, the truth is the truth, but not 10 days before an election it isn't. Why not? It's like watching a romantic movie, when a good guy crashes a wedding of a loved one in a last minute, and instead of "speak now or forever hold your peace" tell him "but not in 10 days before the wedding!"

Because it's nothing like that, and Putin is not 'a good guy' with noble intentions.

Trust me, living in Russia, I know a lot more about Putin than you do. However, the truth is the truth.

On an unrelated note: seing fisthand how Putin's propaganda is working in the internet, it is beyond laughable how much power and influence you americans ascribe to Putin. His internet 'troll' factory is not a sophisticated tool for propaganda, it's a blunt factory that simply floods every comment section with low-quality noise. Of all money that were meant to influence the elections, 99% were, without any doubt, simply stolen. Trump's victory in 2016 is not a consequence of some elections meddling, but simply a coincidence.

As one prominent member of russian opposition said (btw I know him personally, as in 'shaking hands personally'), “What is happening with ‘the investigation into Russian interference,’ is not just a disgrace but a collective eclipse of the mind.” [1] [2]

[1]: https://www.facebook.com/leonid.m.volkov/posts/1585818548107... [2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/23/world/europe/russia-vladi...

Re: The Problem of Free Speech in an Age of Disinformation

#417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe politicians shouldn't be allowed to lie?

Then the people who decide what the politicians are allowed to say would themselves be politicians.

This is a perceptive comment, and is the reason we need free speech. If we only allow "good" speech, who decides what "good" is?

Re: The Problem of Free Speech in an Age of Disinformation

#418

I come from a country where a free speech was never really a thing, and I tell you, americans, this: you don't value it enough. Restrictions on free speech inevitably lead to some form of censorship, and any form of censorship inevitably leads to the population being subjected to some 'official' version of 'truth'. This 'truth', however, is carefully curated to coerce the population to act in a certain way. So when T…

We used to have free speech in the 1960s in Canada but we removed this. We created an opening to start policing speech.

Why are Canadian's so polite? Because you can go to prison for up to 2 years though more often than not it's just compensation. AKA "including compensation for injury to dignity, feelings and self-respect"

Hurting someone's feelings will send you to a non-judicial court where you do not have innocent until proven guilty. You must prove you didn't do it. Though it seems literally the only way to not be charged is to threaten taking it to the supreme court.

Worse yet, it has also created the 'you're a racist' thing. In order to silence your political opponents out of fear of being brought up on these charges. You get called a racist.

In BC they even teach kids in school to be right-wing is to be a racist: https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/racism-a-right-wing-value-b-c-...

Then you can see why no right-wing parties are represented in their elections: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_British_Columbia_general_...

Re: The Problem of Free Speech in an Age of Disinformation

#419
post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your whole position assumes that the other person has some kernel of truth to what they're saying. A flat Earth assumption can be right in some circumstances, but the "VACCINES CAUSE AUTISM" assumption is just insanity. It's wrong, and if your epistemology won't let you say it's wrong, your epistemology is broken, not vaccines.

> Your whole position assumes that the other person has some kernel of truth to what they're saying. Exactly. They might have been fed garbage propositions that explain their garbage conclusions, but calling them insane, crazy, is just a cop out of discomfort of the dialogue and co-existence, through the way of sub-humanizing them. > It's wrong, and if your epistemology won't let you say it's wrong, your epistemology…

That's a lot of words to say you think vaccines cause autism.
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