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Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

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Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#61

Post by josephcsible »

Nursie wrote: post #59
josephcsible wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And burning Harry Potter books? Trying to fearmonger about D&D and heavy metal? Yes. The people doing those boycotts believe those things are actively causing harm to people. I don't agree, of course, but that doesn't make them illegitimate. > Once you've proven yourself to be a shitbag, I'm not going back to your products ever if I can help it. Nothing illegitimate about that, it's called "voting with your wallet"…

> that doesn't make them illegitimate. neither is it illegitimate to continue to boycott something you think is likely still causing harm but is now just being quiet about it. > After he had his conversion and became Paul the Apostle, would you really continue to boycott him? Given I don't believe in any of his writings, nor that the church he helped bring into being is a force for good, sure, why not? I'm boycotting…

Okay, pick anyone else then. Someone who definitely did something bad enough to be boycott-worthy, but later completely turned over a new leaf. Would you really never forgive them?

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#62

Post by klyrs »

josephcsible wrote: post #58
klyrs wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it says that critical race theory cannot be offered . That's specific and distinct from required .

Ah, I see: that affects whether it's allowed to be taught in an elective class or not. Yes, to fully oppose censorship, we should allow critical race theory to be taught in optional elective social studies classes. But then we should also allow optional elective science classes to teach that evolution is wrong, because to do otherwise would be censoring the young-Earth creationists.

If you can find a way to teach that without violating the Establishment Clause, sure. The only way forward I can see here would look like a comparative history of religions course, which would teach various creation stories from a neutral viewpoint. And that doesn't seem to be what those campaigning for anti-evolution education have been looking for. Curious if you've got any fresh ideas, though.

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#63

Post by labster »

wyuenho wrote: post #22
wayoutthere wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This is one of the most illiberal statement I've ever seen on HN.

Not really. Paradox of tolerance means not tolerating intolerance. The word “inherent” makes it wrong, though. There’s nothing inherent about conservatism that is anti-democratic.

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#64

Post by otterley »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #55
otterley wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because a core value of modern conservatism in the U.S. (as expressed through the leadership of the Republican Party) is questioning the outcomes of freely- and fairly-held elections (including the last Presidential election), to place new obstacles in allowing qualified citizens to vote, and resisting changes that would make it easier for more people to vote (such as voting by mobile phone, or on a weekend).

Observations of possible irregularities in an election are not proof, however, a fairly held election is one in which the votes can be explicitly audited by any of the candidates, and each voter's valid status can be verified after the vote is completed and counted and a winner is declared. Is that true in today's elections? (and was it ever true). If so, any questions can be resolved through executing an audit, and…

> a fairly held election is one in which the votes can be explicitly audited by any of the candidates

You're confusing a verification procedure with an outcome. A fairly held election -- i.e., the outcome -- is simply one in which the pollsters and voters adhered to all the rules. And it is possible for an election to be fairly held that is not auditable. Sure, it might make people feel better post hoc about whether it was fair, but that doesn't mean that an unauditable election cannot be fairly held.

We've largely had non-auditable elections throughout our nation's history, and we've survived reasonably well thus far as a democracy. If there were past evidence of fraud that might be serious enough to change the outcome of an election, then the case for strict auditing would be much stronger. But to date, compelling evidence of fraud has never appeared.

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#65

Post by dang »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #3

"We are a digital media company providing engaged citizens with fact-based reporting and commentary on politics, policy and culture—informed by conservative principles." A ton of conservative opinion pieces are being posted to Hacker News every single day lately. Often by younger accounts that tend to post a lot of things in a similar vein. Political opinion pieces generally don't belong on HN: "Off-Topic: Most stori…

The article seems thoughtful and within the range of what we treat as on topic. "Opinion piece" can cover a lot of different genres—for example, blog posts are mostly opinion pieces. We don't want shallow articles on garden-variety political ups and downs, but thoughtful ones on deeper topics are occasionally ok. They don't cover those on TV news.

How to handle political topics on HN has been a hard problem over the years, but we've converged on a set of principles that have proven to work pretty well. I've written various explanations of this—here are two, which contain links to many others:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902490

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#66

Post by otterley »

EricE wrote: post #19
wayoutthere wrote: post #7

I believe in freedom of speech. What I do not believe in is freedom of mass speech. Your responsibility to the truth should increase in line with your reach. Have 1000 followers in twitter and want to talk about starting the next holocaust? Great, say whatever. A million followers? Yeah, that’s a problem. I don’t know how this gets enforced, but we simply cannot give every lunatic a megaphone.

>"I don’t know how this gets enforced, but we simply cannot give every lunatic a megaphone." At least in the US you can't enforce it - and yes, any lunatic can grab a megaphone if they want. The best way to handle problematic speech is more speech, NOT less. Trying to pretend lunatics don't exist is irrational and often a pretext to just block people that others disagree with. Screw that. Safest place for lunatics is…

> The best way to handle problematic speech is more speech, NOT less.

This theory is an interesting one. This concept is enshrined in our law. I used to think that this was true, but now I'm no longer sure. For the concept to work, it requires that our populace have an open mind and actually be receptive to different opinions and points of view. Sadly, in the last 30 years or so, we have become less so.

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#67

Post by zozbot234 »

labster wrote: post #63
wyuenho wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the most illiberal statement I've ever seen on HN.

Not really. Paradox of tolerance means not tolerating intolerance. The word “inherent” makes it wrong, though. There’s nothing inherent about conservatism that is anti-democratic.

The Paradox of tolerance only endorses the right of being intolerant towards intolerance; it in no way suggests that it's always a good idea to practice such intolerance. On the contrary, the actual "paradoxical" idea is that some limited tolerance should be extended even to the intolerant to the extent practical, since this helps promote the norm of tolerance in the first place even when intolerant ideas might otherwise appear to be prevalent. IOW, Popper's position is, to a limited extent, consistent with the one most clearly phrased by Thomas Jefferson: "let [the intolerant] stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#68

Post by dang »

wayoutthere wrote: post #16
CaioAlonso wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that a problem?

[flagged]

Please don't take HN threads into ideological flamewar hell. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. For one thing, it is exceedingly repetitive and therefore tedious and therefore usually nasty.

We want curious conversation here. That means people hearing each other and learning from each other across differences. This is very different from (and incompatible with) ideological battle, in which the goal is simply to defeat the other side: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23959679.

We've had to ask you about this quite a few times before. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart? We'd appreciate it.

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#69

Post by gutitout »

dang wrote: post #65
JohnTHaller wrote: post #3

"We are a digital media company providing engaged citizens with fact-based reporting and commentary on politics, policy and culture—informed by conservative principles." A ton of conservative opinion pieces are being posted to Hacker News every single day lately. Often by younger accounts that tend to post a lot of things in a similar vein. Political opinion pieces generally don't belong on HN: "Off-Topic: Most stori…

The article seems thoughtful and within the range of what we treat as on topic. "Opinion piece" can cover a lot of different genres—for example, blog posts are mostly opinion pieces. We don't want shallow articles on garden-variety political ups and downs, but thoughtful ones on deeper topics are occasionally ok. They don't cover those on TV news. How to handle political topics on HN has been a hard problem over the…

Your thoughtfulness and moderation is one of the reasons this is a safe intellectual space. Thank you for your generosity.

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#70

Post by JetAlone »

I think censorship actually could help us in a huge way back to cultural health; start censoring big data, rage cycle algorithms, sexploitation, advertising. Then on top of that giving people independent, client-based, advanced AI powered tools en masse, and making sure they know how to use them and why, for accurate elected censorship on their own devices of things they personally find detrimental to their mental health. Basically, do what you can to allow for the censorship of the influence of the people with money, onto the people without it.

Unfortunately, it's unrealistic to expect this to happen on a big enough scale to overturn the profitability of the effects we've already seen. So it's still centralized censorship by the people with power, onto the people without it, which badly damages everyone's mental health and in particular the general societal trust, especially on the part of anyone hit by it.

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