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Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

frenchpress.thedispatch.com

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

#111

Post by rayiner »

klyrs wrote: post #34
josephcsible wrote: post #2

One major distinction this glosses over is the difference between making it so you can't read something (e.g., banning it), and making it so you aren't required to read something (e.g., removing it from the curriculum). Only the former is censorship.

> Why does Professor Sachs make this assertion? On November 12, the governor signed a bill that makes it unlawful to include “instruction relating to critical race theory in any portion of the district's required curriculum ... or any other curriculum offered by the district or school .” Now do the steel man (emphasis mine)

Public education is a service provided by the government. What material the government chooses to teach or not teach using parents’ is entirely up to the government and the parents. Free speech is irrelevant to curricular choices because teachers aren’t there to engage students in a marketplace of ideas. They’re being paid to provide a service. Organizations that provide content make such curation choices about what sorts of content to offer all the time.

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

#112

Post by rayiner »

api wrote: post #8
josephcsible wrote: post #2

One major distinction this glosses over is the difference between making it so you can't read something (e.g., banning it), and making it so you aren't required to read something (e.g., removing it from the curriculum). Only the former is censorship.

Outside extreme examples like child porn or speech that is copyright violation I am not aware of many cases of actual prohibited speech in the US. Schools however are a grey area because attendance is mandatory and the state sets the curriculum.

It’s not a gray area at all. Public schools are a public service paid for by tax dollars. The government excluding certain things from the curriculum doesn’t implicate freedom of speech any more than it excluding certain bus routes implicates freedom of movement.

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

#113

Post by jmeister »

wonnage wrote: post #79

The article never once tries to define what it thinks would be good "cultural health". You can kinda infer that the current level of vitriol and animosity is bad, but what kind of society would that look like and how would we get there? I can see three versions. First is a homogenous culture where there is nothing to fight culture wars over. I don't think such a thing is possible, nor desirable, since the author's fr…

You may be interested in the work of the political philosopher Jerry Gaus:

https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/11/the-virtues...

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

#114

Post by nervlord »

Pxtl wrote: post #100

The reason 21st century young people have come around against free speech is quite simply because they've experienced it in its purest form: the 2000s internet. The upside: we all pirated a crapload of good music. The downside: new era of fascism. And it's worth noting that the piracy, which is in itself a form of speech, was shut down... But the racism wasn't. Like, if I copied and pasted the above Dispatch article…

No post body was provided.

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

#115

Post by nervlord »

wonnage wrote: post #79

The article never once tries to define what it thinks would be good "cultural health". You can kinda infer that the current level of vitriol and animosity is bad, but what kind of society would that look like and how would we get there? I can see three versions. First is a homogenous culture where there is nothing to fight culture wars over. I don't think such a thing is possible, nor desirable, since the author's fr…

No post body was provided.

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

#116

Post by sdenton4 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #80
JetAlone wrote: post #70

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 he…

It might easily happen via antitrust intervention. The big internet companies might be forced to adopt federated standards and "open up" their big walled-garden platforms to enable free interaction among users across different "social" service providers. Then the service providers would start to compete and differentiate by adopting things like user-facing AI scores for content. The feasibility of this varies by plat…

To play devil's advocate:

Won't a thousand small operators be encouraged to maximize engagement to maintain their tenuous existence, and thus keep up or even accelerate the outrage cycle? This is exactly what we've seen with a thousand small content providers; why will having a thousand aggregators fix it?

There's similar questions for privacy and security. Why would smaller operators - under less scrutiny - resist the temptation to sell or exploit detailed user data? This was the Uber model, after all: Give every employee full access to the DB until the company is big enough that anyone cares. How many small companies have terrible privacy practices that we've just never heard about?

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

#117

Post by sdenton4 »

ReactiveJelly wrote: post #97
BobbyJo wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I lay blame for a lot of…

I wonder if this is true. Is there any guide to finding these ideas that I might be sheltering myself from, that I should not be sheltering myself from?

Human content moderators pretty regularly develop PTSD from dealing with the absolute worst humanity finds to put on the internet. So, you could go get one of those jobs for a while. But I don't recommend it.

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

#118

Post by hotpotamus »

klyrs wrote: post #101
wpietri wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is very obviously conservative in language and origin; you only have to read French's bio or about where The Dispatch's come sfrom. Their tag line is, "Fact-based reporting and commentary on politics, policy and culture -- informed by conservative principles". 5 years ago this would have no question passed for a conservative piece. What has shifted here is the rapid Republican/Trumpist slide toward authoritarianis…

> So I read this as a conservative who is shocked by the monster he helped unleash. That's an interesting read on the situation. If conservatives are rethinking their devotion to a would-be dictator, would you silence their ruminations?

This is not a re-thinking. French and the founders of The Dispatch are one of a small group who were and remain "Never Trump" conservatives. I get the sense they are among the few who actually believed in the principled conservatism that Republicans liked to talk about until it became unpopular among their base.

I may not agree with French, but I 100% believe that he is being intellectually honest from his point of view and will continue to share his views that way. See also The Bulwark for a similar group who I think actually seem to be moving leftward a bit in ideology (from center-right to center perhaps; they'd bristle at being placed anywhere on the left) and David Frum. They are the conservatives I find most interesting to listen to because they chose to be honest even when it cost them money/viewers/influence. But there are not that many in this camp.

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

#119

Post by s5300 »

JetAlone wrote: post #70

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 he…

What do you mean by sexploitation?

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

#120

Post by stickfigure »

zozbot234 wrote: post #86
wonnage wrote: post #79

The article never once tries to define what it thinks would be good "cultural health". You can kinda infer that the current level of vitriol and animosity is bad, but what kind of society would that look like and how would we get there? I can see three versions. First is a homogenous culture where there is nothing to fight culture wars over. I don't think such a thing is possible, nor desirable, since the author's fr…

The disturbing minority has always been there, we just didn't used to take those fringe ideas seriously. 'Compromise' with the radical fringe is not inherently required.

The proper social immune response is mockery, not outrage or negotiation.
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