Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#41

Post by ceejayoz » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 1:05 PM UTC

trasz wrote: post #39

garmaine wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simplest answer is that a bot at twitter initiated the ban, the the low-paid worker who managed the appeal didn't have enough of a grasp of academic English and/or catholic theology to understand that the tweet in question was actually against assisted suicide.

Of course it was against euthanasia, why would anyone get banned for being pro euthanasia?

> why would anyone get banned for being pro euthanasia?

Because it's explicitly against the rules.

"You may not promote or encourage suicide or self-harm." https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/glorifying-se...

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#42

Post by marcus_holmes » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 1:07 PM UTC

franciscop wrote: post #17

> And even if euthanasia is just that – and Twitter is very proud to toot its horn as the sensitive and sensible, woke platform that clamps down on promotion and encouragement of self-harm, including its ultimate form, suicide – the tweet, even though it opposed it, got banned. This is such an interesting topic, because while euthanasia can be considered a way of suicide, advocating against it can also be considered…

I had a long and interesting conversation with my father about this. He's retired now, but was a family lawyer (solicitor in the UK). He is vehemently opposed to euthanasia purely on the grounds of his experiences with ailing/aging parents and greedy children - he's had clients tidy up their wills, often with their children looking over their shoulders, and then kill themselves to stop "being a burden" on their families. He thinks if euthanasia is legal then this will become more common, no matter the procedural hurdles put in place ("come on Mum, we better get these forms signed before you get more senile and can't sign them. You don't want to be a burden on all of us, do you?").

I'm very much pro-euthanasia, because I don't plan on having any kids and consider the worst of all possible deaths to be gradually losing my mind in assisted housing (well, being eaten by a wild animal holds more terror for me, but the other one is close). Obviously I don't know how enthusiastic I'll be when the time actually comes, but I'm in my 50's and the thought of slipping away painlessly when I think the time is right holds no fear for me at the moment.

Religion also plays a part - I'm atheist and so not afraid of losing my place in valhalla because of suicide. Dad's an intellectual Anglican and so suicide is morally less acceptable for him. But this didn't come into the discussion much - he genuinely fears for the consequences if greedy children are allowed to persuade their parents to kill themselves.

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#43

Post by throwaway0a5e » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 1:07 PM UTC

corty wrote: post #31

keiferski wrote: post #12

Why does it matter if the flagging is automatic? Does that somehow make it more acceptable? The popularity of this view makes me wish more people read Kafka. A future tyranny might end up not being Orwell's 1984 or Huxley's Brave New World, but a kafkesque nightmare where people are lost in a world of AI giving out absurd punishments. [1] Kafka's book The Castle [2] is essentially about this, although I think his aph…

Funnily enough, Das Schloss is often interpreted to be a criticism of the church and organized religion in general. The castle and its workings are seen to be like the clerical teachings, arbitrary, incomprehensible and illogical, but nonetheless highly respected by the plebs.

How does the specific institution being ridiculed matter at all?

Whether it's the Catholic church, Youtube or the DMV the point is it's a black box of procedural spaghetti that too often produces insane results and is seemingly unaccountable.

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#44

Post by MarkPNeyer » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 1:07 PM UTC

corty wrote: post #31

keiferski wrote: post #12

Why does it matter if the flagging is automatic? Does that somehow make it more acceptable? The popularity of this view makes me wish more people read Kafka. A future tyranny might end up not being Orwell's 1984 or Huxley's Brave New World, but a kafkesque nightmare where people are lost in a world of AI giving out absurd punishments. [1] Kafka's book The Castle [2] is essentially about this, although I think his aph…

Funnily enough, Das Schloss is often interpreted to be a criticism of the church and organized religion in general. The castle and its workings are seen to be like the clerical teachings, arbitrary, incomprehensible and illogical, but nonetheless highly respected by the plebs.

The role of the church 400 years ago is now similar to that played by the technocracy today.

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#45

Post by nightcracker » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 1:10 PM UTC

tgv wrote: post #37

modo_mario wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Belgium we were one of the earlies to approve it and I think it depends on ones condition (If you're guaranteed dead due to the likes of cancer it changes i think) but I think generally it needs to be judged by a panel of doctors and the person needs to have some consults with a psychiatrist and all in all there needs to be no alternatives for a good life. You won't get approved if you're just depressed.

In The Netherlands there's the possibility for severe cases of depression, too. "Uitzichtloos lijden" (irremediable suffering ) is the magic phrase, and there is the fear that it could lead to older people deciding to euthanize when living conditions in homes for the elderly would be worsening. Not that that's bound to happen soon, but imagine not being able to tweet about it...

I think "Uitzichtloos lijden" is a term more emotionally powerful than "irremediable suffering" makes it seem. Maybe not legally, but in terms of what it conveys.

"Uitzicht" is your view on the future. "Uitzichtloos" means your future is empty, have nothing to look forward to. As an adverb for suffering ("lijden") it conveys nothing but endless suffering, without future, without hope.

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#46

Post by keiferski » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 1:10 PM UTC

corty wrote: post #31

keiferski wrote: post #12

Why does it matter if the flagging is automatic? Does that somehow make it more acceptable? The popularity of this view makes me wish more people read Kafka. A future tyranny might end up not being Orwell's 1984 or Huxley's Brave New World, but a kafkesque nightmare where people are lost in a world of AI giving out absurd punishments. [1] Kafka's book The Castle [2] is essentially about this, although I think his aph…

Funnily enough, Das Schloss is often interpreted to be a criticism of the church and organized religion in general. The castle and its workings are seen to be like the clerical teachings, arbitrary, incomprehensible and illogical, but nonetheless highly respected by the plebs.

Eh, I think Kafka was infinitely more subtle than that. Framing the story as a mundane criticism of the Church seems to be missing much of the depth of his writing.

On that note, Kafka was also quite interested in Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, which is almost inversely related to sociopolitical structures.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Kafka_and_Judaism

Here's a great aphorism of his that's related to religion:

“Leopards break into the temple and drink all the sacrificial vessels dry; it keeps happening; in the end, it can be calculated in advance and is incorporated into the ritual.”

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#47

Post by mannykannot » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 1:11 PM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #13

bennyp101 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even with English language skills, maybe just scanning the text and not fully comprehending? Slightly off-topic: I wonder how impartial a human has to be - would the outcome be different depending if the reviewer was a devoted catholic or an atheist?

when I say English language skills I don't necessarily mean they don't read English, but just that they don't read it well enough to have understood the distinction under whatever constraints they were working - if those constraints include scanning quickly then they did not have the skills to read that text quickly and understand it.

True enough, but there really are at least two alternatives here that could be distinguished, except that we do not have sufficient information to make this distinction. In either of these two cases, the reviewer presumably did not understand the meaning of the statement, but in the first case this was because they did not know the language sufficiently well, while in the second, they lacked the critical reasoning skills to correctly discern its meaning. In the first case, but not the second, the reviewer's performance on this particular task would vary depending on the language it is expressed in.

Of course, in neither case should the person be given the job of reviewing English-language tweets.

There are additional possibilties, such as Twitter having created an environment in which it is much safer or easier to agree with the initial ruling, or where the reviewer is required to pick from a list of justifications for reversing the initial decisions, and none of the options fit (I'm sure you have seen questionnaires like that.)

The one thing we can be sure of is that the Bishop should not have been banned.

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#48

Post by MarkPNeyer » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 1:11 PM UTC

DangerousPie wrote: post #6

I don't think this is "cancel culture" or being "woke" like the article implies. This is just an AI or inattentive human reviewer seeing the phrase "There is dignity in dying" in the same Tweet as the word "suicide" and misinterpreting it. This just seems like a non-story that will get resolved once the right person at Twitter sees it, that is being pushed by a biased website in their fight against what they perceive…

Here’s what I am told to believe by everyone at these big tech companies:

> bias is inescapable, you can’t stop doing it even if you don’t want to be biased, it’s impossible not to have an implicit preference for your race or identify group over others, so it’s critical that you try to mitigate these biases by making sure you’re part of a diverse group

> the fact that almost every employee of a big tech company is on one side of an intensely polarized political divide has no impact on the decisions the company makes.

Ok.

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#49

Post by guerrilla » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 1:11 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #12

Why does it matter if the flagging is automatic? Does that somehow make it more acceptable? The popularity of this view makes me wish more people read Kafka. A future tyranny might end up not being Orwell's 1984 or Huxley's Brave New World, but a kafkesque nightmare where people are lost in a world of AI giving out absurd punishments. [1] Kafka's book The Castle [2] is essentially about this, although I think his aph…

> future tyranny might end up not being Orwell's 1984 or Huxley's Brave New World, but a kafkesque nightmare where people are lost in a world of AI giving out absurd punishments.

I think the present for some people is already a synthesis of all three and if we're not careful it will be for everyone.

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#50

Post by trasz » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 1:13 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #41

trasz wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it was against euthanasia, why would anyone get banned for being pro euthanasia?

> why would anyone get banned for being pro euthanasia? Because it's explicitly against the rules. "You may not promote or encourage suicide or self-harm." https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/glorifying-se...

Euthanasia is not self-harm, quite the contrary.