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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

#161

Post by golemiprague »

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…

I don't see what is the problem compromising on those issues, it is not all or nothing issues, there is a whole range of possible compromises on most of the issues you have mentioned. For example abortions, you can compromise on the maximum month in which abortion is legal. Climate change, many conservatives will agree to stop subsidising coal power stations because it bode well with the free market views. Covid, you can come to some middle ground on whether to force vaccinations or just encourage it, what type of limitations and many other parameters which were discussed and indeed moved along the scale during the pandemic. Whether the Chinese did it intentionally? it is just an opinion, not really changing anything. Most people are not that extreme and are willing to find some common grounds, and normal people usually have friends and family they like with a whole range of opinions about anything and everything. I don't understand why the bleak outlook, maybe you live in a very non diverse area and see everything as us vs them but that's not the reality for most people.

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

#162

Post by the_only_law »

vehemenz wrote: post #104
Nursie wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is about the US right, written by someone on the US right. The US right makes a lot of noise about it. The UK right does too. It's massively hypocritical given their history. This article points out that the fringes of the right have now started doing it, my contention is that the whole of the right has been doing it for decades.

That's fair, but it's worth acknowledging that many of the criticisms—especially the legitimate ones—come from the intellectual left. Especially given that most of us do not live in the right-wing extremist media ecosystem.

> Sometimes I wonder if I should have become an academic.

Really? HN recently has given me the opposite idea.

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

#163

Post by archhn »

We live in a post-cultural nation. There cannot be one culture for a nation this diverse. Only the most bland, overly sanitized, vapid, consumerist culture can survive on the national level. Are you a PC or a Mac guy? Do you like Coke or Pepsi? A culture revolving around things because they have nothing to polarizing to say about how we should interpret and live our lives...a post-human wasteland.

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

#164

Post by wincy »

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…

I would love to be able to censor anything about rogue AIs, simulation theory, outer space and extraterrestrials beyond our solar system in general, and anything related to consciousness and qualia. Also end of life care, cancer research, and every single post on Hacker News that says “such and such has died”. That stuff triggers me and I click the “hide” button. My wife thinks I’m a nutcase. I once had a panic attack after someone on Hacker News made some joke about Oumuamua or whatever that thing was named being a swarm of nano bots that are going to destroy the earth. Thanks, random person!

I dunno maybe I’m mentally unwell. If so I’ve been this way for years. Just hate to dwell on certain topics because there’s no “happy” scenario for them.

Then again I don’t know if I’d actually be better off if I was literally never exposed to any of that through some virtual personal assistant keeping me in my safe zone, instead of brushing by it on occasion.

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

#165

Post by TulliusCicero »

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.

Also, when it comes to publication, plenty of stuff used to be essentially banned by 'platforms', it just wasn't obvious because "user-generated content" was barely a thing (letters to the editor) in comparison to people posting on Facebook and Youtube and Twitter and Tiktok.

Random people being able to post content for thousands or even millions to immediately see, with no explicit gatekeepers prior to submission; this is largely a recent thing. And it makes sense that of course everywhere has rules, bare minimum basically nobody likes people spamming stuff, for example, even in cases where it's legal.

If you create a message board about model trains and some rando starts constantly spamming ads for their series of NFT's, I guess banning them is technically 'censorship', but you could also call it 'the bare basics of maintaining a functional community'.

I think that for platforms like Twitter and Facebook, perhaps it may make more sense to end up a situation more like newspapers, where you have more reputable papers like the NYT, WaPo, and WSJ that have stricter rules, and then you also have the National Enquirer or other random outlets that have little to no standards. If Twitter and Facebook want to have somewhat tighter rules where they censor people, that's fine, the people being censored should then just have options of other platforms with different or fewer rules. Just seems like the problem to me is that people expect these mega platforms to be all things to all people, when that's probably not realistic.

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

#166

Post by bushbaba »

issa wrote: post #139

I have a foreign wife and it really drives home one truth: America is a very nuanced place. We have this idea of almost unlimited free speech. Which sounds great, but in practice, it is not really true. Because ultimately, Americans do not have equal rights. We see this over and over in different aspects of society. The Frederick Douglas example from Boston in the article is a great example of why free speech is good…

We should remember that the term free speech was coined many hundreds of years ago. During that timeframe, talking against the current ruler could lead to one’s death.

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

#167

Post by imgabe »

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.

We still don’t take them seriously. The media just discovered that they make the most advertising money by seeking the most extreme examples of the “other” and holding them up as if it’s their average view.

If your audience is liberal, you find someone bombing abortion clinics and tell them “this is what conservatives are”.

If your audience is conservative you find the people who make accusations of racism because they heard a word in a foreign language that sounds like a racial slur and you tell your audience “this is what liberals are”.

These aren’t representative of the vast majority on either side, but they’re what drives lots of engagement so that’s what gets shown. The more it gets shoved in everyone’s face the more they believe that the “other” are just completely insane psychos who can’t be reasoned with.

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

#168

Post by arc-in-space »

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 believe in freedom of speech.

> (...) we simply cannot give every lunatic a megaphone.

It appears that you do not, in fact, believe in freedom of speech. Being heard is the point of speech.

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

#169

Post by WalterBright »

sb057 wrote: post #156
WalterBright wrote: post #143

Anyone remember the Hay's Code? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code The result was 20 years of crappy movies.

Say what you will about the Hays Code, but I would hardly consider Gone With the Wind, The Great Dictator, Casablanca, It's a Wonderful Life, Sunset Boulevard, The Ten Commandments, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Ben-Hur, Spartacus, Psycho, West Side Story, Lawrence of Arabia, To Kill a Mockingbird, Paths of Glory, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, or, you know, Citizen Kane to be espe…

Most of the movies you mentioned were made after 1953. (The Hays code started in 1934.) You substantiated my point!

Just for fun, watch several movies 1930-32. Then watch some in 34-35. It's like the life got sucked out of them. Yes, I know there were exceptions. One is "Top Hat", 1935, which skirted the Code with double-talk and innuendo.

> When the Hays Office learned that several actors, who were known within the industry to be gay, had been cast in this film, they sent a terse warning to RKO Studios. Particularly, in regards to Erik Rhodes and Edward Everett Horton, they warned that they should "avoid any idea of actors being pansy in character."

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0027125/trivia?item=tr2614567

Nevertheless, Rhodes still got in his lines.

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

#170

Post by tomlockwood »

gpm wrote: post #123
tomlockwood wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Editors censor things!

No, editors choose not to have the organization they work for say things, censoring things is stopping other people and organizations from saying things, not stopping the organization you are part of from saying things. This is just a bit strange on the internet, because so much of what we see is one organization exactly repeating what someone else said on their request, so it's the organization saying it, but it fee…

> not stopping the organization you are part of from saying things.

I think nations are organizations. That term is, very vague.

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