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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

#501

Post by joshuahughes »

Kye wrote: post #480
givemeethekeys wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fear leads to a loss of freedom. When we're afraid, we give power to politicians that promise deal with it swiftly. Pre-pandemic, the right had a monopoly on fear-based politicking. Then the pandemic hit and the left finally got their turn to exercise it. Has the war on terror stopped? No? When do we get to hop onto a plane without undressing ourselves? Oh, but now there's a war against viruses? So you have to undres…

If the left really got power we would all get a month paid vacation so we could actually afford to stock up and stay home while the virus dies off. The left is not in any way empowered in this country.

"stock up and stay home while the virus dies off"

Given the existence of animal reservoirs, short-lived immunity, asymptomatic carriers, continued transmission after vaccination, and the genetic instability of SARS-CoV-2, this seems like an incredibly naive view.

The only virus we've been able to eradicate — smallpox — was a VERY different beast because it had none of the issues listed above.

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

#502

Post by belorn »

ttfkam wrote: post #479
belorn wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither the left or the right is arguing that climate change or COVID does not exist. The loud disagreements is about what strategy to deploy. We have nations like Germany that want to use natural gas to combat climate change, and we got France that want to use nuclear. The left leans towards natural gas, the right towards nuclear, both arguing that their strategy will lead towards an end to climate change and that t…

This is a man elected to the US Senate in 1994. First elected to Cross in 1987. Still there today. Guess which political party he belongs to. https://youtu.be/3E0a_60PMR8 Folks are literally about to be put on respirators denying they're sick from Covid. They're rarely if ever left wing. https://youtu.be/WicsWfTm1ZI So yeah, one side has the lion's share of denying climate change and Covid. I'll leave it as an exerci…

In a global context, the number of people believing in Jewish space lasers is a poor excuse to implement global surveillance and censorship. I rather that each country where those people live in take care of their citizens with the health care that they need, or legal system if those people get violent. I suspect however that fear over people that believe in Jewish space lasers is out of proportion of the actually number and threat of such people.

Do you have any numbers of how large the demographic of Jewish space lasers believers are and the number of incident globally where they caused harm to society?

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

#503

Post by mschuster91 »

sethammons wrote: post #499
mschuster91 wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how, the US is welcoming the successor of Nazi ideology. I'm not seeing it. Not even at a glance. The guys in Charlottesville shouting "Jews will not replace us"? A Presidential candidate (and later President) openly mocking a disabled person on stage? Said President who sees immigrants as a threat and has no problem being backed by literal white supremacists , antisemites and KKK members? Who made first popularity…

Still not seeing it. Nazis lined up people and shot them because of who they were. A literal economic machine was created to kill millions of people. But, hey, the president apparently mocked someone. Seriously? That is included in your comparison to nazis?

> Nazis lined up people and shot them because of who they were.

The Holocaust did not happen over night, it built upon years of dismantling the democracy of the Weimar Republic. The Nazis took power in 1933, the Holocaust began in 1941 - that's eight years.

> But, hey, the president apparently mocked someone. Seriously? That is included in your comparison to nazis?

The Nazi ideology was based upon declaring people unworthy of the right to live - and disabled people actually were murdered prior to the Jews ("Aktion T4" and others).

I'm not going to call Trump a full-blown Nazi, but the parallels between his Presidency and the years both prior and past 1933 are clearly present. Especially the part with fanatic supporters willing to commit murder and violence in the streets for their ideology. "Never again" especially means to prevent what led to the Holocaust in the first place.

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

#504

Post by hutzlibu »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #496
hutzlibu wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"E.g. who do I love, what should I wear/watch/eat, where should I spend my money, etc." Ok, my feelings of love are not guided by a scientific method (except analyzing and reflect on what I feel). But by deciding what to wear, eat, watch etc. I do apply the scientific method. Meaning I test out systematically, what works best for me. And I try to teach this to my children.

The scientific method applied to preferences is probably not the scientific method (in regards to control experiments (unless you have clones and access to the multi verse:)))

The very basic idea of the scientific method as I learned it, is: testing ideas by experiment.

If it looks cold outside, but not too cold - I have the idea that a medium warm jacket of mine is enough. And then outside I see if it was adequate or not and next time under similar conditions I change accordingly, or go back to the house that instant.

Sounds like common sense and it is. But not everyone is doing it.

I seriously got shocked by people telling me, they walk in shoes hurting them, but they did so because of style. This sounds like insanity to me, even though I know in their specific setting it makes some sense - as style is important in their circles. But that just means those circles are far from science and rationality, if it leads to people wearing clothes not adequate for the weather and being cold and uncomfortable.

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

#505

Post by Kye »

joshuahughes wrote: post #501
Kye wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the left really got power we would all get a month paid vacation so we could actually afford to stock up and stay home while the virus dies off. The left is not in any way empowered in this country.

"stock up and stay home while the virus dies off" Given the existence of animal reservoirs, short-lived immunity, asymptomatic carriers, continued transmission after vaccination, and the genetic instability of SARS-CoV-2, this seems like an incredibly naive view. The only virus we've been able to eradicate — smallpox — was a VERY different beast because it had none of the issues listed above.

We've spent trillions on all kinds of naive nonsense. What's the worst that could happen, people get a month off and the line goes up thanks to all the stimulus? Oh, the horror.

Mindless cynicism is not the virtuous alternative to optimism. We can do nothing and watch as our health care system continues to collapse or do something. Maybe this isn't it, but you haven't offered a better idea.

It's easy to tear people down for standing up to make a suggestion.

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

#506

Post by raxxorrax »

vannevar wrote: post #495
givemeethekeys wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fear leads to a loss of freedom. When we're afraid, we give power to politicians that promise deal with it swiftly. Pre-pandemic, the right had a monopoly on fear-based politicking. Then the pandemic hit and the left finally got their turn to exercise it. Has the war on terror stopped? No? When do we get to hop onto a plane without undressing ourselves? Oh, but now there's a war against viruses? So you have to undres…

The difference is that terrorism in the US is a miniscule threat in reality, killing a handful of people a year, whereas the virus is one of the top causes of death over the past two years. Not all fears are unjustified. Climate change already kills far more people annually than terrorism via floods, fires, and droughts. That being said, fear doesn't justify authoritarianism, even when the fear is reasonable.

The individual chance that you die from any of that does NOT warrant fear.

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

#507

Post by Pyramus »

bondarchuk wrote: post #433
Pyramus wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. Words do matter. Censorship usually (also) refers to restrictions of free speech typical for non-democratic societies [1], which doesn't lead to productive discussions (in my experience). It is not uncommon to see the false conclusion "censorship is used in authoritarian countries therefore free speech must not be restricted". > a restriction of speech that you agree with It doesn't matter whether I agree…

>It doesn't matter whether I agree or disagree. It matters whether we, as a society, can find a balance between the rights of the individuals and the rights of the sovereign/state. Yes. And this is called... censorship. Even when we, the good guys, do it. You can't just change the definition of words based on whether a western democracy or an authoritarian hellhole does it, when they're doing exactly the same thing.…

Not sure where I changed the definition of censorship - I was saying that using the word censorship can easily lead to false equivalences, such as

> they're doing exactly the same thing.

No, they aren't, baseline and context matters. You are falsely equating the removal of say, anti-vax conspiracy content in the US, with the removal of say, political/homosexual/religious/ethnic content in an authoritarian regime. If you don't believe me, ask somebody who was forced to flee their country due to any of the above reasons.

> point out the fault in the argument.

Let's assume 'censorship' == any restriction to free speech. We already agreed that every Western democracy has such restrictions or 'censorship'. How can "authoritarian regimes use 'censorship'" now be an argument against 'censorship'?

To paraphrase (not a perfect analogy), murderers use knives, and chefs use knives, but "murderers use knives" is not valid argument against knives?

I understand if you disagree with already existing restrictions of free speech in Western democracies, is that what you mean?

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

#508

Post by nradov »

Kye wrote: post #480
givemeethekeys wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fear leads to a loss of freedom. When we're afraid, we give power to politicians that promise deal with it swiftly. Pre-pandemic, the right had a monopoly on fear-based politicking. Then the pandemic hit and the left finally got their turn to exercise it. Has the war on terror stopped? No? When do we get to hop onto a plane without undressing ourselves? Oh, but now there's a war against viruses? So you have to undres…

If the left really got power we would all get a month paid vacation so we could actually afford to stock up and stay home while the virus dies off. The left is not in any way empowered in this country.

By "all" do you also mean healthcare workers? Law enforcement? Farmers? Military? Utility workers? Garbage collectors? Homeless people?

Even if you somehow locked all the humans in their homes for a month, someone would catch the virus again from a deer or something and the pandemic would start all over again.

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

#509

Post by kabouseng »

vannevar wrote: post #495
givemeethekeys wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fear leads to a loss of freedom. When we're afraid, we give power to politicians that promise deal with it swiftly. Pre-pandemic, the right had a monopoly on fear-based politicking. Then the pandemic hit and the left finally got their turn to exercise it. Has the war on terror stopped? No? When do we get to hop onto a plane without undressing ourselves? Oh, but now there's a war against viruses? So you have to undres…

The difference is that terrorism in the US is a miniscule threat in reality, killing a handful of people a year, whereas the virus is one of the top causes of death over the past two years. Not all fears are unjustified. Climate change already kills far more people annually than terrorism via floods, fires, and droughts. That being said, fear doesn't justify authoritarianism, even when the fear is reasonable.

Actually fewer die due to climate change due to fewer people freezing to death...

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

#510

Post by Kye »

nradov wrote: post #508
Kye wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the left really got power we would all get a month paid vacation so we could actually afford to stock up and stay home while the virus dies off. The left is not in any way empowered in this country.

By "all" do you also mean healthcare workers? Law enforcement? Farmers? Military? Utility workers? Garbage collectors? Homeless people? Even if you somehow locked all the humans in their homes for a month, someone would catch the virus again from a deer or something and the pandemic would start all over again.

The actual point seems to stand. Left, right, center. All have ill-advised proposals. Some are more willing than others to put their ideas on the table and take feedback (not blanket dismissals).

There hasn't been anyone remotely leftist in power for most of a century, so it's plainly inaccurate for /u/givemeethekeys to say:

>> "Then the pandemic hit and the left finally got their turn to exercise it."

Biden is, at best, a status quo maintainer in a deeply right-ratcheted[0] status quo.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratchet_effect

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