Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse • Hacker News Board

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

#311

Post by Nursie » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 9:33 AM UTC

mns wrote: post #294

Nursie wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is now somehow bad, and we're supposed throw out personal autonomy, and trust experts How do you apply your personal autonomy to a domain you know nothing about? In fact, how do you even figure out you don't know enough about something to make a good judgement? You might not need pills, but what if you do? Your personal judgement, made from a position of more or less total ignorance, is going to be wrong. In t…

> How do you apply your personal autonomy to a domain you know nothing about? In fact, how do you even figure out you don't know enough about something to make a good judgement? Mostly because the experts don't care about you and don't have the time to care about you. What trust can people have in doctors if they treat people like ATMs? My partner went to one of her doctors and he prescribed her a vaccine (not COVID…

It sounds to me like she picked one source of expert opinion over another, rather than ignoring 'experts' entirely. In that case using her judgement well. Perhaps as a society we need to get better at verifying 'experts' really are? And not letting them prescribe meds if not ...

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

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Post by bondarchuk » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 9:36 AM UTC

epgui wrote: post #304

bondarchuk wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Where did I go wrong in my analysis?

You say free speech is a tool that serves a purpose. Then you imply that the purpose of the tool is to push the balance of power toward the individual. The goal in pushing the balance of power to the individual is to have an equilibrium between the individuals' and the government's power. This equilibrium is characterized by an increase in stability. It seems fair to summarize this as "free speech is a tool that serves the purpose of increasing stability".

You conclude: "It's possible for something in a given situation to be more important than free speech." I think it's implied here that this "something" is (an increase in) stability. If stability is more important than free speech, it implies free speech should be restricted in order to achieve stability. In other words, censorship should be applied in order to achieve more stability.

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

#313

Post by 74B5 » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 9:37 AM UTC

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…

I dont think you reached the core of the problem and i agree, that missing trust is an issue but not the primary one.

IMO cognitive deficiencies and the lack of education for counteraction and awareness are to blame.

Even on a non-profit platform, some sort of ideological mindset may seek to dominate debates by any measure. Same outcome, different motive.

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

#314

Post by cf141q5325 » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 9:41 AM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #297

cf141q5325 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We know some things are wrong, we have evidence that they're wrong, and believing in some of those things can cause people to take actions which endanger and even kill others. That concerns you as well. Thats the whole issue. There is no "reasonable default" to fall back on. That you have identified some rather obnoxious idiots doesnt mean you are suddenly smart enough to tell the rest of the world what to do. Espec…

The is no single default but there are entire hosts of different defaults that will work across different communities and some norms that ought to exist across all communities. Hacker News wont let me abuse you verbally and if I make a credible threats of violence against you most places OUGHT to lock me up in order to prevent you from being murdered. Turns out there are TONS of reasonable defaults, some of which we…

All of which have implications independent of the motivation. Implications which are really intransparent. Which might very well have more downsides then the initial problem, even before you look at the reaction you create.

Regulating communication is one of the most dangerous kinds of regulation, as it regulates what people think. And once you limit on your ability to think its very likely that you are about to crash into something, seeing as stupidity boils down to being unaware of another perspective. Its akin to blindfolding drivers of cars so they dont get distracted to reduce crashs.

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

#315

Post by epgui » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 9:43 AM UTC

bondarchuk wrote: post #312

epgui wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Where did I go wrong in my analysis? You say free speech is a tool that serves a purpose. Then you imply that the purpose of the tool is to push the balance of power toward the individual. The goal in pushing the balance of power to the individual is to have an equilibrium between the individuals' and the government's power. This equilibrium is characterized by an increase in stability. It seems fair to summarize thi…

The “something” in question was not referring to the increase in stability, though it might lead to it. Also, and most crucially, I did not say, or intend to suggest, that “censorship improves stability”.

Free speech and stability are not in competition with each other. They’re different categories of things.

Please help me out a little and try really hard to not interpret what I said in the worst possible way.

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

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Post by jrimbault » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 9:47 AM UTC

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.

> very first amendment

So, it's not, it's just the first change to an already existing document. The first article of your constitution describes the legislatives institutions. I (vaguely) know that, I'm not even American.

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

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Post by yanderekko » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 9:48 AM UTC

canadaduane wrote: post #135

throwawaygh wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The status quo is a messy conflagration where initial beliefs were the brush, a combination of mental health issues and social frustration were the trees, and the perverse incentives of engagement metrics provided the high winds. So I'm in the awkward middle ground of believing it's counter-productive to try to shelter people from ideas but also believing that lots of people are very easy to manipulate, even so easy…

I would love to hear more of your thoughts on this. One thought experiment that has helped me get my mind around the problem is "why is it necessary that parents shield children from some information?" I think free speech might have a context that is invisible to us. Something like a prior, or trained neural net, in which free speech and no censorship is absolutely the right thing. And then there might be other conte…

>One thought experiment that has helped me get my mind around the problem is "why is it necessary that parents shield children from some information?"

I'd argue that paternalism is particularly justified in relationships that are literally paternalistic.

The issue is that the justification for my neighbor paternalistically dictating how I should live my life is much weaker a parent dictating to their child. We shouldn't deeply have to delve into why this is the case.

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

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Post by cjfd » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 9:52 AM UTC

epgui wrote: post #308

cjfd wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

After that one gets into philosophical ethics rather quickly. In practice people not having human rights degrades into much suffering quickly. You said something not-so-nice about the government? Now we throw you in jail! So, why is that wrong? I am sure one can talk pretty endlessly in a philosophy course but in practice there does not seem to be much point. Also, we should keep history in mind. In fact, there is reason for severe trauma surrounding this area. Horrible events in history like nazism and communism, both with a body count in the 100 millions are a reason to hold some principles sacred to the point of refusing to discuss them.

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

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Post by ComradePhil » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 9:52 AM UTC

Gareth321 wrote: post #267

anonygler wrote: post #218

I was trying to find those “fake face masks” just so someone knew what I was talking about, and apparently they were all deplatformed from Google searches. I didn’t want to buy one, just reference it. But nada. Found it on DuckDuckGo and it’s now my default search engine. It’s just so offensive they think they should control what I’m exposed to. Creepy and offensive. Google has lost its mission of making the worlds i…

I heard about "Proud Boys" a couple of years ago and went looking for more information to find out about their group so I could have an informed position on the subject. Google removed their website. I understand Google feeling compelled to remove extreme and illegal content, but this is not that. Google removed them for political and/or moral reasons. DuckDuckGo let me find the website and form my own opinions. Imag…

I don't see how you can blame the company when they are controlled by people who threaten them in various ways; threatening them with regulation with public disinformation about them using mass media being one of them. I have no doubt some of the top level people there are also involved in some Epsteinisque plot so that these people can have more control over them. They're more than big enough to warrant such a thing.

In my opinion, they are merely complying to these pressures. Google is not being threatened to be regulated by Proud Boys nor is it likely that Proud Boys members have some dirt on their executives. So, they have no reason to remove Proud Boys from their search engine from their business perspective. Therefore the only reason can be that someone who has power over them tells them what to do.

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

#320

Post by 0xDEEPFAC » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 9:53 AM UTC

Funny how in the early 2010s most people and activists feared tech storing too much data and violating privacy - now the only narrative from activists presented on the news and search results seems to be about a lack of censorship with no word on privacy (e.g. "Grrr Qanon", "Grr vaccines", "Grr person with regressive political opinion").

Strange how that happens...