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Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse

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Re: Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse

#301

Post by Barrin92 »

Gareth321 wrote: post #273
Barrin92 wrote: post #257

I honestly have never seen a single shred of evidence or just even common sense that backs these platitudes about trust and free expression up. Let's take another nation and covid as a concrete example, Singapore. In Singapore, there's not a lot of free speech. Yet there's a lot of trust. Lee Kuan Yew, in his biography, addressed this trust question very directly, and commented on American media as well. Lee Kuan Yew…

>Merit and authority and trust are build up slowly and are hard won. When everyone can be defamed, when lie and insult comes at no cost, and if everyone can spread competing versions of reality for free you are in an environment in which trust is impossible. Not because there isn't enough criticism, but because there's too much. This has been the war cry of despots, kings, and dictators since before recorded history.…

Genuine question, why not? Why is paternalism bad, because it's an offensive idea to a 21st century audience? It's a funny aspect of the whole free expression thing that the only thing you cannot question, because it immediately evokes this kind of response, is the system itself. Isn't that supposed to be the point?

I didn't make a war cry at all, I think fanatic questioning of authority is just the dogma of our time, in every domain, not just speech. And that's very new. We have India and China, thousands of years old civilizations still kicking without any absolutist notion of free speech, but I must accept the idea that any person can broadcast to a football stadium full of people, an experiment of the last two decades or otherwise I'm a despot?

Re: Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse

#302

Post by colordrops »

markdown wrote: post #233
asiachick wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just search for "fake face masks" on google and they came right up https://www.google.com/search?q=fake+face+mask&tbm=isch

They sell a product that potentially puts people in real danger. Choosing not to wear a mask is fine. An immunocompromised person can choose to cross the street when they see you. This product, allowing you to pretend to wear a mask in order to get close to people that don't want to be near maskless people is evil. And a "Rittenhouse Walks" t-shirt? I'm glad they've been de-platformed. Good riddance!

Using "immunocompromised people" as the excuse for every abuse of rights and ethics is the same as the right wing using "think of the children" or "the terrorists will get us".

Re: Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse

#303

Post by wickedsickeune »

pdonis wrote: post #122
throwawaygh wrote: post #110

I say Bah to the entire censorship debate! My critique of Substack is that our lesson from the last ten years is simple: speech should happen primarily on platforms that are prohibited from profit-seeking and run in the public interest. Censorship on these platforms should be prohibited, of course, but so should any form of profit seeking. Our problem isn't censorship. Our problem is that our political/economic/relig…

> speech should happen primarily on platforms that are prohibited from profit-seeking and run in the public interest. Censorship on these platforms should be prohibited, of course, but so should any form of profit seeking. No such platform has ever existed. How would you propose building one?

Well in ancient Athens, they had the agora which was a free "platform" for public speech. Unfortunately OG democracy doesn't scale :(

Re: Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse

#304

Post by epgui »

bondarchuk wrote: post #300
epgui wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine you have free speech. Yay! Now what? Why was this so important again? Free speech is not an end goal. It's a tool that serves a purpose. In the relationship between a powerful government and a collection of individually vulnerable citizens, it pushes the power balance farther toward the individual. Is the goal to give all the power to the individual? No, that's not the goal. The goal is to have some sort of e…

Free speech is a tool that serves a purpose. The purpose is a stable society. To have a stable society requires censorship. Very clever lmao.

That's... Not at all what I'm saying.

Re: Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse

#305

Post by prox »

jimkleiber wrote: post #292
dools wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I had this conversation with my daughter the other day. She was like "But ... they just think the same thing about what you're saying". I was like "Totally, the only difference is that I'm right, and they're wrong". She was like "how do you know?". That lead to a much longer session of reviewing types of biases and fallacies, the scientific method and various other critical thinking tools I've developed over the…

Lol exactly. This is why I try to remind myself to pay attention to how I and others may be feeling underneath, and have even dedicated my professional life to it, because I have honed very strong rationalizing skills. I find often the people who disagree with me the strongest can also go toe-to-toe with me in finding stories and evidence that confirms our beliefs and if I remember (and have the courage), I try to go…

What I find rampant these days is the rather extreme way of thinking “If you are not with me, you are against me.” And I think social media amplifies this, not only by algorithms, but also because text doesn’t provide good context (intonation, stance, emotional transference) , I mean we literally read other people’s thought in our own head, also those whose thoughts we are not congruent with.

HNs rules are great in this sense, to continuously seek out curious conversations instead of the rather solipsist tendency to soapbox.

Now with politics and politicians this a much harder pill to swallow, because their literal job these days is to stand on a soapbox, and we as the public have gotten rather used to it, and voting in those who do the soapbox act the best. This is also because in general it’s hard to choose politicians beyond the local who we can relate to, and be invested in beyond retoric.

Re: Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse

#306

Post by epgui »

colordrops wrote: post #298
epgui wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine you have free speech. Yay! Now what? Why was this so important again? Free speech is not an end goal. It's a tool that serves a purpose. In the relationship between a powerful government and a collection of individually vulnerable citizens, it pushes the power balance farther toward the individual. Is the goal to give all the power to the individual? No, that's not the goal. The goal is to have some sort of e…

Free speech by our definition in the US is a sacred and mostly irreducible "holy" thing, as being the very first amendment of the constitution. There is no true democracy without free speech. Free speech is a fundamental atom of a healthy and fair democracy. There is almost never a case where restriction of speech isn't abused to give one individual or group political advantage over another.

It is not atomic and irreducible, even in the United States. How could it be atomic and irreducible if there were exceptions to it? What justifies the exceptions? [1] Please don't be afraid to dig just a little bit deeper. I promise you that your respect for free speech will not be diminished: you'll just be a little bit less wrong in your logic.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...

Re: Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse

#307

Post by thazework »

I'm partial to the Athenian version of free speech. Every citizen was invited - nay, encouraged - to speak their mind and offer political advice in the assembly. But if your policy turned out to be disastrous to the city you'd be banished, your property confiscated, or worse.

Re: Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse

#308

Post by epgui »

cjfd wrote: post #299
epgui wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine you have free speech. Yay! Now what? Why was this so important again? Free speech is not an end goal. It's a tool that serves a purpose. In the relationship between a powerful government and a collection of individually vulnerable citizens, it pushes the power balance farther toward the individual. Is the goal to give all the power to the individual? No, that's not the goal. The goal is to have some sort of e…

Actually, free speech is an end goal. It is a human right. As such only grave reasons are valid to infringe upon it.

So if I ask you "why do we have or need human rights", would you say "there is no reason, the analysis stops there"?

Re: Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse

#309

Post by Gareth321 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #301
Gareth321 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Merit and authority and trust are build up slowly and are hard won. When everyone can be defamed, when lie and insult comes at no cost, and if everyone can spread competing versions of reality for free you are in an environment in which trust is impossible. Not because there isn't enough criticism, but because there's too much. This has been the war cry of despots, kings, and dictators since before recorded history.…

Genuine question, why not? Why is paternalism bad, because it's an offensive idea to a 21st century audience? It's a funny aspect of the whole free expression thing that the only thing you cannot question, because it immediately evokes this kind of response, is the system itself. Isn't that supposed to be the point? I didn't make a war cry at all, I think fanatic questioning of authority is just the dogma of our time…

There are libraries of works dedicated to this from the Enlightenment onwards. There are two tracks you can pursue here:

1. Practical examples of authoritarianism working. Does the suppression of dissent result in better life outcomes for citizens? It's a fair hypothesis, and is easy to test. Explore hundreds of civilizations over thousands of years and try to find examples of it working out well for citizens. IMHO, there aren't many.

2. Read the political, historical, and philosophical writings of the greats on this subject: John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Jeremy Bentham, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, and Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson. They provide far better arguments against the suppression of dissent than I ever could. Their arguments are extremely well considered, extremely convincing, and backed by historical examples.

Personally, I try hard to base my position on tangible evidence. "Does this thing actually result in the outcome I desire?" Because I can't find any good examples of authoritarianism working, and many good examples of democracy working, I side firmly with the latter.

However, I must also admit that the internet is a major human evolution. It is unprecedented in its scale and reach. Social media is causing enormous harm, and we are operating under the de facto pretense that this harm is worth the benefits. It could be that social media is undermining how democracy works, and that we need to find a better way forward. I can admit that, but I am yet to see convincing arguments for a) the existential danger to democracy, and b) a better social structure than democracy.

Re: Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse

#310

Post by bambax »

The reason Substack has "content guidelines" is because they want to make their own laws. If they only followed the law, they would only need to remind users what's illegal and what's not.

And so they have to go to great lengths to explain those laws that they are making, and why they exist, and how they're enforced, etc. And of course they present them as necessary and reasonable, and "the only way".

> We will continue to take a strong stance in defense of free speech because we believe the alternatives are so much worse.

They are not defending "free speech". Free speech is exactly that: let people say anything. Hate speech. Porn. Wild conspiracies. Praise of terrorism. Anything.

They are promoting a version of "speech" that is deemed acceptable in their own social and business circle. That version includes none of the above, but currently accepts antivax.

My guess is that will change.

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