Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

frenchpress.thedispatch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 366 posts

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

#301

Post by wpietri »

hotpotamus wrote: post #118
klyrs wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 v…

I partly agree. But I especially agree it isn't a re-thinking, and that's one of the beefs I have with French. I have not seen him grapple with either his role in the problem or whether repeating his previous behaviors will lead to a solution. Which is why I think both-sidesing the problem, as he does here, is at best unhelpful.

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

#302

Post by JohnTHaller »

wonnage wrote: post #211
golemiprague wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Look at where we’re at today. We’ve “compromised” on every issue you listed; abortion is illegal in several states, the coal industry is slowly declining, vaccinations are encouraged but not required. Theoretically this is state #2 and everyone is happy… yeah no. You can’t “compromise” on abortion if you think it’s murder. Nor on climate change if your city will disappear under the waves in 30 years. Nor on Covid pol…

> You can’t “compromise” on abortion if you think it’s murder.

You can if you're practical and think of it as working towards a common goal of decreasing abortion. Something everyone is in favor of. And face the fact that outlawing abortion doesn't eliminate abortion. Similar to how outlawing murder doesn't eliminate murder.

If you increase comprehensive sex education, decrease stigma around discussing sex, increase access to free and low cost birth control, decrease abstinence only rhetoric, increase child care options, increase free access to health care while pregnant, and increase access to free and low cost health care for delivery, you can drastically reduce the number of abortions. While we're at it, increase funding for adoption, both in placing your child and in adopting, and for foster care.

Unfun facts: Childbirth in the US costs between $10,000 to $30,000. Over 30 million Americans have no health insurance. Many have poor health insurance (deductibles of $5,000 are common on the open market... mine last year was $7,000). My last friend who adopted wound up spending nearly $40,000 to complete the process.

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

#303

Post by mchusma »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #256
noiseman wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the constitution was written, less than 25% of the US population had the right to vote. Basically only White male property owners could vote. That was a very different political culture to how it is today. It’s also interesting to see how the reading scores of presidential speeches have changed over time.

Everyone always harps on the whole white male property owners thing but it misses the entire point. It's probably more productive to think about it in terms of "the usual people who were given a voice back then, but only the subset of them who couldn't f-off without leaving behind a ton of their wealth if things went bad." In effect they limited voting to people who had settled down and had substantial skin in the ga…

I've been listening to the revolutions podcast (very good) and was really struck by the idea that having "skin in the game" was almost universally considered superior to universal suffrage for a long time. I think there is something to the idea, although the implementation is what matters.

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

#304

Post by TameAntelope »

raxxorrax wrote: post #241
TameAntelope wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except censorship of radical ideas has been shown to be effective, over and over again. I’m on my phone, but there’s a whole bunch of studies that show the effects of banning radical speech on Twitter (think ISIS), and the outcome was, unsurprisingly, less radical speech on Twitter. It didn’t return, it didn’t evolve, it just… died. Free speech is an important concept, but it’s important at both ends; it’s also free…

These studies are pretty much worthless. Of course it "works" if you remove your political opposition. At least in the short term. Why do a study if you could have just asked any other dictator? What does "working" even mean? More support for a political party? Less resistance?

They’re worthless because you don’t like their outcome? There are others, this is a very well researched space.

You don’t have to and shouldn’t take my word for it. Study after study shows that radical ideas can successfully be removed from a platform though censorship.

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

#305

Post by [deleted] »

coffeeblack wrote: post #180
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.

And then there is the new “cancel culture” that does not target the speech itself, but the reputation of the author. By using horrific accusations and smears, the author’s reputation is destroyed, so that people don’t want to hear the speech anymore, based on the lies they heard about the author.

[deleted]

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

#306

Post by js2 »

WalterBright wrote: post #190
js2 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I haven't seen it (I'll watch it soon enough...), but does anything top Claudette Colbert in The Sign of the Cross for "sexiness"?

I mean, I get it. The Hays code obviously altered movies. But I disagree it was only for the worse. In some ways, I think it improved the films of that era.

Anyway, a nice article on the topic:

https://web.archive.org/web/20180118002259/http://www.bfi.or...

via https://letterboxd.com/flamerik/list/pre-code/

And a fun site I just found:

https://pre-code.com/

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

#307

Post by imbnwa »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #256
noiseman wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the constitution was written, less than 25% of the US population had the right to vote. Basically only White male property owners could vote. That was a very different political culture to how it is today. It’s also interesting to see how the reading scores of presidential speeches have changed over time.

Everyone always harps on the whole white male property owners thing but it misses the entire point. It's probably more productive to think about it in terms of "the usual people who were given a voice back then, but only the subset of them who couldn't f-off without leaving behind a ton of their wealth if things went bad." In effect they limited voting to people who had settled down and had substantial skin in the ga…

Nah, Madison is very explicit in The Federalist Papers that the masses are a bunch of idiots. They were merely expressing the outlook of bourgeois British culture with its strong ideas of class, which doesn’t disappear in America until the 20th century.

Packing your things and fucking off was expensive and dangerous for the common man

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

#308

Post by lariati »

suslik wrote: post #213
dusted wrote: post #178

The application of censorship itself, not what is being censored, is the main symptom of the declining cultural health. The mentality that there are so universally wrong and right things that the right ones must be forced upon any mind, no matter the context, and the wrong ones must be extinguished no matter the context.

Unfortunately, this. Censorship on moral grounds, amplified by a lack of epistemic humility, is a key characteristic of modern western culture. Not only western, and modern, of course - I suspect that the feeling that 'I am more correct than the other' is a natural property of consciousness itself; an understanding of one's own mind is always more intuitive than a theory of mind. Anyways, I feel - and would be great…

The lack of epistemic humility feels like such a regression.

We have basically gone from Feynman's idea that science is the belief in the ignorance of experts to the idea that anything that disagrees with experts in a field is misinformation and possibly should be censored.

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

#309

Post by fallingknife »

asveikau wrote: post #127
fallingknife wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point covid is endemic. This means that your probability of catching it is 1. "Mass psychosis" is a good term for continuing to impose restrictions on society which no medical experts think will halt the spread of the virus.

Despite good news lately I do not believe we're at endemicity quite, or that probably of catching is 1. It will probably take time for governments to discover and adjust to a changing situation. Aside from that, I have been close to people who suffer psychosis. I'd say you're pretty wrong on that too.

I will concede that I'm using "psychosis" very casually here. It's absolutely compulsive, irrational behavior, though.

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

#310

Post by locopati »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #256
noiseman wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the constitution was written, less than 25% of the US population had the right to vote. Basically only White male property owners could vote. That was a very different political culture to how it is today. It’s also interesting to see how the reading scores of presidential speeches have changed over time.

Everyone always harps on the whole white male property owners thing but it misses the entire point. It's probably more productive to think about it in terms of "the usual people who were given a voice back then, but only the subset of them who couldn't f-off without leaving behind a ton of their wealth if things went bad." In effect they limited voting to people who had settled down and had substantial skin in the ga…

What makes you think that people who don't own (maybe can't own) property don't have substantial skin in the game?
Post reply on HN