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Banned book library in a wi-fi smart light bulb

richardosgood.com

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Re: Banned book library in a wi-fi smart light bulb

#231

Post by broken-kebab »

bilekas wrote: post #224
rootlocus wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have abundant free flow of information today and yet I see a rise of tyranny. "This is how democracy dies, with thunderous applause." feels more grounded in reality.

> We have abundant free flow of information today and yet I see a rise of tyranny. We have an abundance of allowed information today, there is more restriction than ever of the distribution of information. Social media censoring, takedown requests, shadow banning, government censoring.

>there is more restriction than ever of the distribution of information

I don't think it sounds true. Pre-internet, information distribution required access to specific technical tools, and physical transportation efforts. As one of USSR dissidents noted, risks of distribution grew almost exponentially with amount of pages (and it's about imprisonment, not account deletion). For comparison, emailing so far works even in very repressive countries. And even narrowing the issue to the West, while free speech suffered a lot recently, shadowbanned account is probably still works better than hectograph.

Re: Banned book library in a wi-fi smart light bulb

#233

Post by afavour »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #124
afavour wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As it stands it is a great example for others to learn from. If you include copyrighted books it’ll get pulled from GitHub and no one will learn from it.

> If you include copyrighted books it’ll get pulled from GitHub and no one will learn from it. And how does that differ from including banned books?

It doesn’t? I don’t understand the point you’re trying to make.

This is not a database of banned books. It is an example showing how you can make a database of banned books of your own.

Re: Banned book library in a wi-fi smart light bulb

#234

Post by adrian_b »

GreenSalem wrote: post #72

Some books deserve to be banned. I would put Kevin MacDonald's antisemitic trilogy The Culture of Critique, the Turner Diaries ( which calls for mass extermination of non-white groups in the USA ) and Mein Kampf in the realm of books that should be shunned.

"Mein Kampf" is actually a very interesting lecture for any critical mind, like also The Holy Bible is a very interesting lecture for any atheist.

"Mein Kampf" is a good example of well written propaganda.

Like any good propaganda, it starts from true facts, so the first part of the book describes real problems of the society at that time (most of which are again problems of the present society).

The real problems would capture the attention of the readers, who were heavily affected by them in their own real lives.

Also like any good propaganda, from the true premises the book transitions to conclusions that do not result from the premises, but are falsely claimed to do so, and then solutions to the false conclusions are presented as if they will solve the problem described by the true premises (i.e. life is bad => the reason why it is bad is because there exist Jews => eliminate them and life will become good).

The same propaganda scheme from "Mein Kampf" is frequently applied today, but usually the Jews are replaced by China or by legal immigrants or by illegal immigrants or by people supporting another political party, always failing to identify the real culprits for the "life is bad" premises.

I do not agree that any propaganda books must be banned based on the condescending idea that humans are stupid, but I believe that it should be mandatory that any propaganda book should be accompanied by a well-written rebuttal, which should explain where the book in lying and why its conclusions are wrong, for the benefit of those less experienced, who might not notice these facts themselves.

Re: Banned book library in a wi-fi smart light bulb

#235

Post by miki123211 »

bilekas wrote: post #224
rootlocus wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have abundant free flow of information today and yet I see a rise of tyranny. "This is how democracy dies, with thunderous applause." feels more grounded in reality.

> We have abundant free flow of information today and yet I see a rise of tyranny. We have an abundance of allowed information today, there is more restriction than ever of the distribution of information. Social media censoring, takedown requests, shadow banning, government censoring.

We went from restricting the sharing of information to making information sharing unpopular.

If you ban or censor a book, you immediately make the book seem more valuable. Because governments aren't omnipotent and all restrictions can be overcome (see the war on drugs as a particularly recent and pertinent example), you just Streisand-effect yourself.

If, on the other hand, you take away the popularity and social status of those who read that book, branding them as gullible idiots in the popular imagination, people will have an aversion to reading it. You don't need to ban access to the book, in fact you shouldn't do that, just make sure that talking about it will get people to lose all their friends.

Social media are the modern arbiters of popularity. If social media bans a subject, people get angry. If it just quietly deboosts anybody who talks about that subject, "well let's better not do that, we tried and people really didn't like those videos I guess"

Re: Banned book library in a wi-fi smart light bulb

#237

Post by akimbostrawman »

Pxtl wrote: post #89
N_Lens wrote: post #34

“As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth’s final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to informatio…

The "information wants to be free" discourse of just under 30 years ago feels so charmingly naive now that we've seen how lies are also information and can travel even better using the same flow.

Why do you assuming only true information is information. Information can be anything not to mention that the definition of truths and lies can change with time and location.

Re: Banned book library in a wi-fi smart light bulb

#238

Post by rootlocus »

bilekas wrote: post #224
rootlocus wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have abundant free flow of information today and yet I see a rise of tyranny. "This is how democracy dies, with thunderous applause." feels more grounded in reality.

> We have abundant free flow of information today and yet I see a rise of tyranny. We have an abundance of allowed information today, there is more restriction than ever of the distribution of information. Social media censoring, takedown requests, shadow banning, government censoring.

> there is more restriction than ever of the distribution of information.

There's an endless source of information if you look for it. Just because social media doesn't stuff them in your face doesn't mean they're censored.

On the other hand, you can shove proof in people's faces and they'll still find reasons to argue against it. Information availability is not the problem. It's more energy consuming to search and filter information so people largely avoid doing it.

There's a trope in movies where the antagonist is secretly recorded and broadcast so regular people finally see the truth and wake up. I've seen journalists risking their carriers to expose corruption only for people to shrug and look the other way.

Re: Banned book library in a wi-fi smart light bulb

#240

Post by cj »

srean wrote: post #203
antman wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have peak flow of propaganda and disinformation to a cartoonish level.

Unfortunately we do not have a solution for countering this kind of a 'denial of service' attack on information consumption. It is trivial to concoct believable lies as compared to the effort needed to debunk them in a way that is effective at social scale. Perhaps the only weapon is to teach how to think for oneself. Who is going to invest in that in a scale necessary? Those who have the resources to do that do not…

> we do not have a solution for countering this kind of a 'denial of service' attack

Umm, wouldn't a simple solution be going back to linear news feed that only includes updates from people you follow rather than the algorithm deciding what content to push to you?

We have the solution.

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