181–190 of 254 posts
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Calling the vandalism that took place on 1/6 at the capital an insurrection, is a grotesque lie. Do me a favor. Call it an insurrection so I can call you a liar.
By what definition of "insurrection" was that not an insurrection?
18 U.S. Code § 2383 - Rebellion or insurrection
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To be fair, James Madison didn't live in a time where someone could easily spread their beliefs to millions of people instantaneously. Historical comparisons have their place, but this probably isn't it.
It's easier to spread information, therefore the ability to spread information should be restricted?
Email has been in that position for a long time, so much so that the quality of censorship is frequently advertised as a feature by mail services.
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>Do you think what a person reads has no predictive value on their 'moral value'? (An admittedly vague term) Yes, 100%. How can it, if we agree all human life is sacred? Are some people more sacred than others? Holier than thou? (getting downvoted for this) All men are created equal. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Ephesians 6:9 "Slave owners, you must treat your slaves with this same respect. Don't threaten them. They…
At this point you're just arguing semantics about the term "moral value". But that wasn't even the original term. The first comment in the thread was about whether people are "stupid and superstitious". So pretend the question was "Do you think what a person reads has no predictive value on how stupid and superstitious they are?"
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James Madison figured it was better to leave a few “noxious branches to their luxuriant growth” than to risk “[injuring] the vigor of those yielding the proper fruits.” What makes you think now, 250 years into the most prosperous society in human history, is the right time to revisit this position?
For one, now mistruths can be made much more quickly than truths - hello GPT-3 - and can be delivered in a far more convincing way than any other time. I have a hard time telling AI generated video apart sometimes, which will only improve as time goes on. Nor was there an existence of platforms that not only enable but encourage the creation of echo chambers that reinforce preexisting views and actively attempt to in…
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By what definition of "insurrection" was that not an insurrection?
It was an insurrection in the same way that any other large scale protest was an insurrection. It was not, however, "the worst attack on our democracy since the civil war" like Biden, other Democrats, and the media at large have claimed. [1] [1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/right-wing-erupts-af...
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I don't think most people have issues with non-mainstream positions or interest groups, or at least to the degree of their being banned. What's at stake here is Facebook's role in amplifying content that is at best misleading and at worst outright falsehoods. We've got a situation in this country where half the population believes the election was fraudulently stolen from Donald Trump and a significant portion believ…
I don't believe it's anywhere close to half who believe the election was fraudulent. It's widely reported and talked about just like other fringe ideas, but it's surely not half of Americans who think that.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/24/republicans-...
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I'm not 100% sure I understand your point, but I take it to mean that you're saying that Facebook's role is just an excuse to ban content I (or some groups) don't like? If there was a true marketplace of ideas, everyone would have an equal playing field to build their own audiences, sway people to their positions, debate and discuss. But that's not how facebook works - engagement drives eyeballs, eyeballs drive reven…
Yeah, sorry, I wasn't super clear there. I meant to emphasize the characterization of the content: "at best misleading and at worst outright falsehoods". Calling it that makes it easy to say it should be banned - but remember that the wuhan lab leak hypothesis was characterized exactly the same way. And that turned out to be acknowledged as plausible and even likely. If you're pro-censorship here, then you're in favo…
But there were also people saying, "china intentionally released covid to kill americans" and calling it "the china flu" and encouraging aggression towards china. That's obviously much more inflammatory.
I'm not even arguing THAT should necessarily qualify as an outright falsehood (though I don't think it's a helpful way to have a conversation about a complex subject). I'm talking about, "Covid vaccines are killing thousands, so you shouldn't take one". Or, "the election was stolen from donald trump".
I'm also not really arguing for censorship here - I'm just arguing that Facebook is a net negative in that they algorithmically optimize for the most inflammatory, most aggressive content, with the side effects that it amplifies the least true content.
Notice how everybody seems to have accepted that non-mainstream positions, sources, and interest-groups must be banned, and now they're simply arguing about who should be doing it and how? This is not OK.
The promotion of false things is very profitable; by contrast, true things are far less engaging. Worse, it is more expensive to dispel a mistruth than it is to create and spread misinformation. How do we address this systems design challenge without censorship?
This is an over-generalization so I don't think your premise completely stands. Some truths are very engaging, and support large communities of people working together to explore them.
I would put forth that the systems design challenge has to start with the human mind. People need to be taught proper grammar, logic, and rhetoric to reason properly and be able to express and debate what is true and what is false. Getting to the truth is often difficult, but a critical thinker can quickly sort through bad information, because it's full of contradictions and fallacies.
However, the "system" doesn't seem to actually want too many critical thinkers, because that would make it more difficult to wield power over its population. Cognitive ability only needs to be trained up to a certain point where individuals become useful corporate inputs, so there's an incentive for conformity to outweigh critical thinking and even creativity. Therefore, I don't think a top-down approach e.g. federal education reform, etc. would actually work.
What might work is organizing a more bottom-up approach of building peer education systems. If you'll permit me to use Star Wars parlance, imagine 1,000 Jedi academies forming and coordinating at higher levels where possible. These academies could take many shapes and sizes, and some current examples include Khan Academy, Ad Astra Academy, Acton Academy, or even homeschool cooperatives.
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It's easier to spread information, therefore the ability to spread information should be restricted?
By analogy, consider how frequent spam phone calls have become as a direct result of VoIP technology making it trivial to automate them. Email has been in that position for a long time, so much so that the quality of censorship is frequently advertised as a feature by mail services.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's easier to spread information, therefore the ability to spread information should be restricted?
By analogy, consider how frequent spam phone calls have become as a direct result of VoIP technology making it trivial to automate them. Email has been in that position for a long time, so much so that the quality of censorship is frequently advertised as a feature by mail services.