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Cognitive ability is related to supporting freedom of speech (2020)

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Re: Cognitive ability is related to supporting freedom of speech (2020)

#401

Post by michaelmrose »

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #384
michaelmrose wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's literally trivial to have your own twitter/facebook/youtube analog. You can in turn spread information about its existence through exciting means like email. You aren't entitled to an audience of hundreds of millions and indeed have never in the history of free speech been entitled to such.

When taxpayer-funded officials are telling private companies what to censor, your argument falls on its face. It has nothing to do with how hard it is to build a website.

I'm not aware of anything being censored other than spam and other obvious breaches of TOS. Not being algorithmically promoted to like minded weirdos isn't the same as being censored.

You have no legal right to an exact placement in search results or in people's feeds. Censored means your content is obviated, deleted, removed.

Re: Cognitive ability is related to supporting freedom of speech (2020)

#402

Post by michaelmrose »

causality0 wrote: post #308
michaelmrose wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally every covid thread has someone how thinks its not real. They post extensively on every thread that brings up their trigger topic unless actually banned. This isn't a good way to discern public sentiment among hacker news readers. Punishing people for "free speech" is a complex topic not a binary decision. Plenty of hateful speech that threatens or harasses could already be deemed a crime if its specific eno…

Punishing people for "free speech" is a complex topic not a binary decision. Plenty of hateful speech that threatens or harasses could already be deemed a crime if its specific enough. Certainly, which is why I used the specific example of "saying racist things on the internet". It isn't a threat or harassment to tweet about how "those filthy stinking Norwegians keep sneaking into our country on reindeer-back and we…

If they aren't actually sneaking into your country on reindeer-back and you are just trying to stir up hate for blonds I have no problem with you being punished for inciting hate.

Re: Cognitive ability is related to supporting freedom of speech (2020)

#403

Post by Consultant32452 »

idlewords wrote: post #67

It's worth digging into the methodology here: the study participants were found through Mechanical Turk, and the proxy for cognitive ability is a vocabulary quiz. You can just as well use this study to show that the kind of highly educated people whose circumstances are dire enough they have to work for pennies an hour have been socialized into giving correct answers about questions pertaining to freedom of speech.

It's easier to train a smart dog than a dumb dog.

Re: Cognitive ability is related to supporting freedom of speech (2020)

#405

Post by golemiprague »

benreesman wrote: post #279

The methodological flaw here is amusingly it’s own fascinating study: using some verbal sophistication proxy as a cognitive ability proxy to correlate political attitudes is arguably the key feature of modern hyper-polarized, Internet-speed news cycle politics. It’s difficult to watch a screen without hearing some version of “most people are stupid”. This is deeply wrong: most people are very smart , but this is diff…

There is some correlation between ability to verbalise your thoughts and cognitive ability or being smart, but the thing is, when it comes to politics being smart is not that useful. Being smart works when you play in a well defined field with certain rules and regulations. Politics is about predicting the future based on so many parameters and in such a chaotic environment that the extra 10 or 20 IQ points (or any other measurements for that matter) doesn't make a dent in the grand scheme of things. At end of the day it is more about gut feeling which accumulate all the knowledge of the self, the tribe, past generations and current. As such, being slightly smarter or educated doesn't affect things much.

Re: Cognitive ability is related to supporting freedom of speech (2020)

#406

Post by phpisthebest »

Bud wrote: post #344
phpisthebest wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That that is a very limited view of the concept / principle of free speech, While it may be technically correct in the context of US Constitutional law, people that make this claim expose their opposition to the wider concept of free expression and likely would be the first ones to support an amendment to weaken the 1st amendment

It's not limited and it's not merely "technically correct". The only thing that has been exposed here is your lack of understanding of how all this works.

No, it limits the concept of free expression to be governmental only. It is closely adjacent to the idea that government grants our rights and with out government we have no rights

it is rejection of the idea of Natural Rights for which the US was founded on, this rejection of natural rights is growing in the population is is very dangerous to those very rights

Believing that only governments can censor is a rejection of the principle of free expression which is "I may disagree with you but I support your right to say it"

Society should not embrace the idea that businesses, employers, etc should choose who they transact with based on peoples opinions and views. Society that embraces these kinds of virtue tests have no liberty, and have no free expression

Re: Cognitive ability is related to supporting freedom of speech (2020)

#407

Post by sejje »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #300
sejje wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say for free, I don't think anything is or should be free. We have "the phone company" equivalent on the internet (registrars and hosts) denying access to ideologies they don't approve of. If you don't think that's denying speech, then let's just agree to disagree.

the equivalent is an IP address. having said that, in 2022 with a fiber connection and a 200$ NAS (with a very user friendly web interface) you can host a DNS, a web server, a WordPress instance, a mail server, a mastodon instance and serve a lot of content. that's what decentralized internet is all about.

I agree in theory an IP address is the equivalent, but I still think registrars denying domains to particular groups based on ideologies is a freedom of speech issue.

Way off on a tangent here, but do you happen to recommend a particular NAS? I'm in the market.

Re: Cognitive ability is related to supporting freedom of speech (2020)

#408

Post by 1270018080 »

cortesoft wrote: post #257
rmatt2000 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should spend some time on a college campus. Shouting down speakers and deplatforming non-progressives is more common than one might think.

Isn’t shouting down speakers just another person exercising their free speech?

Yes.

Re: Cognitive ability is related to supporting freedom of speech (2020)

#409

Post by aeturnum »

WalterBright wrote: post #302
benreesman wrote: post #279

The methodological flaw here is amusingly it’s own fascinating study: using some verbal sophistication proxy as a cognitive ability proxy to correlate political attitudes is arguably the key feature of modern hyper-polarized, Internet-speed news cycle politics. It’s difficult to watch a screen without hearing some version of “most people are stupid”. This is deeply wrong: most people are very smart , but this is diff…

> most people are very smart Only half are above median intelligence. There's a difference between being smart and being well-educated. Wisdom is the combination of intelligence with knowledge. > coastal lefties are always befuddled Being well-educated in STEM is not indicative of being well-educated in history and/or economics, which most Americans seem very poorly educated in.

Not every measure follows a bell curve. The reason intelligence is seen as following a bell curve is at least partially that intelligence tests are designed with the assumption that it does - so every test that is accepted suggests that it's the case.

Personally I think it's worthwhile to observe that what we call "intelligence" is also generally a self-driven and self-satisfying demonstration of socially-sourced measures of 'ability.' There are plenty of people who are in social situations who would not see any worldly gains from developing those skills because they are not in a situation where they would be allowed to gain from their application. Often, when someone figures out a clever way to get ahead, they are committing a crime and sensibly pretend they are not doing it (and couldn't do it if prompted). People in this situation might actually be 'dumb' - but they certainly have no incentive to demonstrate their 'smartness.'

For a relatively small section of the population, merit really does come into account - but it's not a random sample and so it's very hard, in my view, to feel confident that we know much about 'intelligence' at all - much less that it has a bell curve distribution.

Re: Cognitive ability is related to supporting freedom of speech (2020)

#410

Post by pstuart »

WalterBright wrote: post #355
pstuart wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but I wasn't attacking wealthy people, nor capitalism (but would be willing to poke at 'em for fun some other time). > that huge blocks of the rest of the country (and world) vote with their ballots or feet or both for very poorly-articulated policies and agendas My point is that the policies and agendas seem to be driven more on anger than on structural policies that will enrich their lives. I'm trying desper…

Politicians are well aware that people vote based on emotional appeals, and take full advantage of it.

Ok, but I'm asking about what actual policies are "those people" voting on? I'm just seeing the fear and anger bits.
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