Backsliding on free expression around the world needs to end • Hacker News Board

Re: Backsliding on free expression around the world needs to end

#251

Post by golemotron » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 8:39 PM UTC

dleslie wrote: post #230

golemotron wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing Popper misses is that once you rationalize your own intolerance, others will rationalize theirs, missing the nuance of his limit.

He advocates to be intolerant of those who refuse engage in rational argument and those who opt for violence. The nuance is in the limit. If a person, in their intolerance, is resorting to violence towards those that are not doing likewise, then they are in the wrong. Even if they believe that they are abiding by the limit when doing so. Rational argument should always be the preferred course of action, and intoleran…

People miss the nuance and become intolerant even when violence isn't on the table.

Re: Backsliding on free expression around the world needs to end

#252

Post by hef19898 » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 8:39 PM UTC

antimatter wrote: post #187

hef19898 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more like the world waking up to the fact tgat the US, and the West in general, never had the high ground to begin with.

Hmm. I wonder why they are still risking their lives to attempt to get to the west if it's such a morally bankrupt hell hole.

Well, the West (TM) has a ton of freedoms and wealth. It does nor have the moral hogh ground when it comes to international affairs, there we follow money over democratic values more often then not.

Re: Backsliding on free expression around the world needs to end

#253

Post by mistermann » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 8:39 PM UTC

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #200

mistermann wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols How this typically works out in the real world is a lot like the pot calling the kettle black though - ideologues and c…

> teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols I would say that this is the important line to be drawn.

Super important....but I prefer my optimization to be more fine-grained. Yes, this is much more complicated, and prone to conflict, but I think it's better for humanity to develop these skills before developing the means to damage things with extreme efficiency (industrial & IT technologies, etc). So we've screwed that up big time, but if you find yourself in a hole, best stop digging.

Re: Backsliding on free expression around the world needs to end

#254

Post by AnimalMuppet » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 8:47 PM UTC

throwawayacc2 wrote: post #249

MrsPeaches wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. America in the late 20s seems like a much more intolerant place than late 20s Germany. E.g. Lynching doesn’t seem to have been anywhere near as prevalent in Germany as it was in the US. Would you consider America in that period to be an intolerant state?

I feel like we are using this word, intolerant, without an agreed upon definition. We are trying to measure something but we have no metric for it. To answer your question, we need a way to measure the level of intolerance, whatever this is. Should we measure the laws in effect? Should we measure the number of tolerable behaviours? Should we weigh these behaviours in our metric? How do we deal with behaviours that ar…

Forget measuring. We don't even agree on which direction the axis runs.

People on the left think "intolerance" is saying that gays shouldn't be able to marry, or that your biological sex is your gender. People on the right think that "intolerance" is saying that you shouldn't be able to own guns, or that you shouldn't be allowed to say the stuff that the left thinks is intolerant. That is, both sides want to define "intolerance" as being anti-parallel to their own political axis.

But that's not right. Either both of those are intolerance, or neither.

So we need a definition (worse, a definition that is agreed-upon, even if only loosely) that isn't tilted one way or the other politically. Between cognitive bias and bad faith, that's hard to get.

Re: Backsliding on free expression around the world needs to end

#255

Post by mensetmanusman » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 8:51 PM UTC

golemotron wrote: post #65

dleslie wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Popper also sets the limit fairly clearly in his description of the paradox, and it's: > But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer argu…

The thing Popper misses is that once you rationalize your own intolerance, others will rationalize theirs, missing the nuance of his limit. And, indeed, that has happened. I can't remember ever seeing anyone other than you mention the limit, and that includes quite a few people quoting Popper to justify their intolerance. I'd argue that Popper left his wheelhouse when he formulated this. It was at the moment when WW2…

Ergo, tolerance is too broad of a term to be a meaningful part of any rational discussion.

Re: Backsliding on free expression around the world needs to end

#256

Post by hotpotamus » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 8:58 PM UTC

ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #247

hotpotamus wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fail to see how my workplace behavior would be relevant to what I said?

If you yell at your employer, it is workplace behaviour.

Curious as I did not understand that limitation on speech. So the employer is free to fire you if your speech is deemed to be workplace behavior? Is all speech directed at your employer considered workplace behavior?

Re: Backsliding on free expression around the world needs to end

#257

Post by topynate » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 8:59 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #170

Well, this backfired. Please, for the love of christ, just read the fucking article before commenting. Also, the New Humanitarian has a lot of interesting articles.

You have my sympathies. I skimmed the article but I've read quite a lot of the report, which is considerably more detailed.

Viewed from the Right, these guys have a pretty standard left-liberal internationalist agenda. For example, my country Israel gets the yellow alert status more or less because HRW said the word 'apartheid'. Of all the various impositions Israel makes on Palestinians, limiting their freedom of expression is probably close to the bottom of the list. Or the USA remarks are about Trump and the 6th of January, even though FOSTA-SESTA is demonstrably doing far more every day to restrict free speech. (Between MAGA and FOSTA, which is getting Cloudflare to terminate people's accounts?) Or more generally, 'discourse control' as used to describe the strategies both of Putin and of Bukele – come on.

I could go on, but I probably shouldn't. To me, the interesting thing is that in despite of the report's slant, it is thorough, specific and quantitative. If I just ignore the blah blah, it's still quite apparent that there's a real trend across all continents towards restricted speech. It's really remarkable when you see the same thing happening on all continents. If the thread had been about which parts of the report are bullshit and which are accurate, maybe some people would have learned something, because I'm pretty sure there'd be wide agreement about maybe 70% of what's in there.

Re: Backsliding on free expression around the world needs to end

#258

Post by cycomanic » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 9:00 PM UTC

ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #228

cycomanic wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cancel culture is not the result of free speech, it's the result of a toxic social environment. > Here are some actionable solutions that don't require limiting free speech: > 1. Improve labor laws so craven employers can't just dump their employee because they said something online (unrelated to the company on their personal time) and people are complaining. Well that would mean changing the laws so that people ca…

I think stronger labour laws are generally a good idea, employment is survival. The full extent is out of scope for this discussion but I've seen many deplorable examples of employee abuse beyond being fired for expressing an opinion. Reprehensible is an interesting term, I think it's at the core of this issue. I gave a couple ideas in a comment below for algorithms so I'll you check that out. I don't understand the…

> I think stronger labour laws are generally a good idea, employment is survival. The full extent is out of scope for this discussion but I've seen many deplorable examples of employee abuse beyond being fired for expressing an opinion. Reprehensible is an interesting term, I think it's at the core of this issue.

I think some views are reprehensible. Someone who says e.g. black people are subhuman or glorifies the Nazis is exposing reprehensible views in my opinion. And I am very adamant that I don't need to be tolerant of this intolerance. That doesn't necessarily mean that those views should be forbidden, but I will certainly not interact with you if you expose those views. They clearly cross the line.

> I gave a couple ideas in a comment below for algorithms so I'll you check that out.

OK will do

> I don't understand the basis of the question with regards to the journalist, could you elaborate why you'd want a different algorithm for this female journalist?

Sorry I was not sure how to take your comment, so I was not fully engaging in good faith. I was referring to gamer gate. But I apologise it was not a good comment.

> With regards to the media I answered that in another comment too. Tax incentives and government subsidies are an idea but it's tricky, it depends on the implementation. We have a lot of government influence over the media already so we're not starting from a blank slate. Everything needs to be weighed, I don't have the skills to do so.

I agree with you, this is definitely not easy. I do observe that broadly speaking "government sponsored" media, like e..g the BBC in the UK, the ABC in Australia or the German ARD, ZDF,... are significantly less sensationalist.

Re: Backsliding on free expression around the world needs to end

#259

Post by thfuran » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 9:06 PM UTC

wizofaus wrote: post #225

thfuran wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you going to also suggest that being banned from using motor vehicles wouldn't be a restriction on travel because people did without them in the past?

It's a restriction, but not a particularly punitive or effective one, unless you live in a city that's become so beholden to a single mode of travel that car usage has become some kind of dependency . Even then I'd hardly compare it to being booted from a single platform like Twitter that despite the claims of many here only represents a fraction of "public discourse" (indeed, not even a particularly large percentage…

>unless you live in a city that's become so beholden to a single mode of travel that car usage has become some kind of dependency

Then I guess it's a good thing no one in the world lives like that...

Re: Backsliding on free expression around the world needs to end

#260

Post by cycomanic » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 9:09 PM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #178

cycomanic wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to point out that the US had people with literally Nazi flags walking through the streets attacking people who looked different, supported by a significant portion of the establishment (including a president). I would not call that minor transgressions. How do you think Hitler got into power?

This endless catastrophizing, something you're taking part in, is a big part of the problem. Trump isn't Hitler and Antifa burning down police stations is not the Warsaw Uprising.

I never said that Trump was Hitler. That's a completely irrelevant statement. Obviously no leader in a western country is going to say I will become the next Hitler, even Putin does not glorify him. That doesn't take away from the fact that he had/has extremely strong totalitarian tendencies, is continuing to undermine the democratic processes and sympathises with open white supremacists.

I as someone from a country who knows a big deal about how the dangers of fascism am certainly worried if the world's most powerful man talks like that.