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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

#181

Post by AnthonyMouse »

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…

> 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.

Naming this "elected censorship" is a bad idea.

Choosing not to listen to something isn't censorship because censorship is without consent -- the recipient wants the information and someone is denying it to them. Voluntary filtering is something else entirely.

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

#182

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

klyrs wrote: post #51
josephcsible wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this still the same distinction? That's still just saying that nobody can force students to learn about critical race theory, not that they can't go read about it on their own if they want.

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

It also depends on what is offered in its place.

We don't debate this enough, because it's invisible to most people.

Free speech in the broadest is exactly about curation, implied approval (proof by authority doesn't work philosophically, but absolutely does work rhetorically and politically), and access to airtime and audiences.

All of those can be bought with money.

To make an obvious point - if you can use money to impose your choices wrt curation etc, speech is no longer free.

This is a completely different meaning to "Talk about this and the government will imprison and/or murder you."

The latter hardly happens to anyone now. The former is absolutely foundational to the media.

There is no "marketplace of ideas" because those with money and political power can always enforce their narratives on those without - and they can do it cleanly, deniably, and effectively without needing to murder or jail dissenters.

They can even do it from behind various front organisations and curated movements, pretending to be scrappy freedom fighters railing against an oppressive mainstream.

Speech isn't free in any genuine sense while that remains true.

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

#183

Post by js2 »

WalterBright wrote: post #169
sb057 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I’ll play:

The Thin Man (1934), It Happened One Night (1934), Dodworth (1936), Fury (1936), The Awful Truth (1937), Grand Illusion (1937), You Only Live Once (1937), Wizard of Oz (1939), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), The Great Dictator (1940), His Girl Friday (1940), Philadelphia Story (1940), Rebecca (1940), The Maltese Falcon (1940), Citizen Kane (1941), A Woman’s Face (1941), The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), Casablanca (1943), Double Indemnity (1944), Mildred Pierce (1945), It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Great Expectations (1946), The Big Sleep (1946), The Red Shoes (1948), A Letter to Three Wives (1949), Sunset Boulevard (1950), All About Eve (1950), A Place In The Sun (1951), High Noon (1952), Roman Holiday (1953), The Wages of Fear (1953). (I slipped two French films in.)

Almost anything by Hawks during those years. Or Hitchcock. Almost anything with Bogart. Or Grant. Or by Wilder.

Tons of noir films skirted the rules.

Look, I’m not a fan of the Hays code but some of those movies were to me better because of what they had to imply.

This is after the Hays code but as an example I recently watched the original 3:10 to Yuma and the remake. I hated the remake. What appeals to me about Elmore Leonard stories is that despite being about bad guys, they have a degree of charm to them (Out of Sight, Justified, Jackie Brown, Get Shorty,etc). The remake took all of the charm out of the original and replaced it with graphic violence and cruelty.

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

#184

Post by influx »

wincy wrote: post #164
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 attac…

If I could offer a book suggestion for you:

The Power of Now but Eckhardt Tolle.

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

#185

Post by Animats »

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is lost The best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with passionate intensity.”

― W.B. Yeats

That was written in 1919 and published in 1920.

So the US has been there before. Came back from there, but it took a depression and a world war.

We might get both of those soon.

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

#186

Post by dgellow »

WalterBright wrote: post #144
imgabe wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t remember the case, but I read somewhere that the Supreme Court drew a distinction between deciding not to add something vs taking away what was already there in regards to school libraries. Assuming this is referring to Maus , it wasn’t a part of the curriculum, it was just a book that was available in the library. The school board removed it from the library, clearly in an effort to limit access to it.

I'm not in favor of book banning, but that book shouldn't be allowed in a library.

I get the irony but in the current context that doesn’t really read as a joke.

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

#187

Post by raxxorrax »

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…

I doubt you will find any example where minorities suffered from too much free speech. The truth it that there are always some people who pretend to know better and put pressure on officials. These people are not friendly to any minority and should be disregarded.

The people in power currently try everything to restrict speech, but it is also welcomed by a certain sheltered demographic whose worst part of the day is that they have to read an offensive internet comment that doesn't agree with their world view.

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

#188

Post by AnthonyMouse »

sdenton4 wrote: post #116
zozbot234 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Maximizing engagement is a result of ad-supported businesses because profit-maximization is from showing you more ads, which means you spending more time on the platform. Splitting up the network doesn't inherently make it better or worse.

If you're paying a monthly fee or buying hardware, they don't care how much time you spend using it as long as they get your money, so that's a different incentive.

The ad-supported model is more profitable specifically because of the network effect -- you get more users when you don't charge money and the bigger network is more network effect. But then the users don't have a real choice; the biggest network with everybody on it is the one funded by ads.

In a federated network, you choose the provider who makes the algorithm and can choose one whose business model isn't selling your attention to advertisers, and you're still a part of the same network as people who choose differently. Then people aren't locked in, and when they realize that the algorithm whose purpose is to suck up all their time and spam them with ads is costing them way more than e.g. $10/month, which business model becomes more popular?

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

#190

Post by WalterBright »

js2 wrote: post #183
WalterBright wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I’ll play: The Thin Man (1934), It Happened One Night (1934), Dodworth (1936), Fury (1936), The Awful Truth (1937), Grand Illusion (1937), You Only Live Once (1937), Wizard of Oz (1939), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), The Great Dictator (1940), His Girl Friday (1940), Philadelphia Story (1940), Rebecca (1940), The Maltese Falcon (1940), Citizen Kane (1941), A Woman’s Face (1941), The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The…

I'll raise you "Gold Diggers of 1933".

If you haven't seen it, enjoy! It'll change your mind about old movies. It was a long time before sexy movies returned.

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