Alex Jones must pay $50m in punitive damages for Sandy Hook hoax claim • Hacker News Board

Re: Alex Jones must pay $50m in punitive damages for Sandy Hook hoax claim

#341

Post by johnmosermd » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 6:10 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #108

dragonwriter wrote: post #23

Actually, no, the jury verdict on punitive damages is $45.2 million, but that is certain to be reduced before Jones is ordered to pay (there seems to be some dispute over whether a portion of the compensatory damages award is economic or not, and depending on the answer on that, the cap under Texas statutory punitive damages caps would seem to be somewhere between $750k and $1m; even if the plaintiffs succeed in thei…

If Jones can afford to pay any of these figures that it says interesting things about how ineffective deplatforming is and really rather undermines the "big tech is a monopoly!" argument. Most people can't make $4 million in a lifetime, let alone these figures.

This is the "exception that disproves the rule" fallacy. It's like going back to 16th century America and finding the one black guy who isn't a slave, or the one white guy who is, and claiming that black slavery wasn't really a thing, just slavery itself as a general thing.

Re: Alex Jones must pay $50m in punitive damages for Sandy Hook hoax claim

#342

Post by johnmosermd » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 6:11 PM UTC

dukeofdoom wrote: post #260

Kaze404 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the source for the amount of employees? I couldn't find anything about that, let alone specifically 50 or 75. I also think it's unreasonable to say that in a 50 person company that sells junk and makes YouTube videos that the median salary would be 100k. And even if it was, 50 * 150k is $7.5 million, not "around 10 million". The difference is significant considering we're talking about a $2m fine.

Alex's sworn testimony during the trial. He was asked how many employees he had, and he gave these estimates. 75 * 150,000 = 11,250000. I quotes 10 million because it was a nice round number.

Accounting records are going to be subpoenaed eventually if this keeps up.

Re: Alex Jones must pay $50m in punitive damages for Sandy Hook hoax claim

#343

Post by johnmosermd » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 6:15 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #289

DoctorOW wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with addressing Alex Jones and the rest "censored" is that they don't believe ANYTHING they say. Or rather, their spoken beliefs are fluid to suit the argument. You can't convince people there's not a "Big Tech" conspiracy about all these companies being controlled by whatever minority is trendy to hate now... You can't logic someone out a position they didn't logic their way into.

> The problem with addressing Alex Jones and the rest "censored" is that they don't believe ANYTHING they say. https://www.dailywire.com/news/reminder-wapo-nyt-won-pulitze... There are 2 attacks that are just not worth bringing up because we all know they are true: 1) [Politician] is lying. 2) [Media Personality] doesn't really believe what they are reporting. What you say is true, but also not interesting. Anyone wh…

Hey I always have clear facts and reasoning backing up my policy claims. Lies are too hard to maintain, and they're fragile.

Re: Alex Jones must pay $50m in punitive damages for Sandy Hook hoax claim

#344

Post by johnmosermd » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 6:19 PM UTC

dukeofdoom wrote: post #336

dragonwriter wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Selective participation in discovery is not sufficient and if it hadn't been clear that he had failed to produce all responsive materials when required before the phone oops during the damages phase (which it very much was, for other reasons), that error kind of sealed the deal on that.

Quoted post unavailable.

Problem being he actually had them, as evidenced by that data being accidentally given to the plaintiff's lawyer by the defendant's lawyer.

Hard to argue it was "impossible" for him to do something that his legal team actually did.

Re: Alex Jones must pay $50m in punitive damages for Sandy Hook hoax claim

#345

Post by johnmosermd » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 6:20 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #331

adamredwoods wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes they can. They cannot enforce their decisions directly. They can certainly influence, and perhaps even form alliances that propagate those decisions. With those alliances, some decisions can be made into law.

If they can't enforce their decisions, they're not really making decisions. GP was implying that regulating speech meant "truth" and "lies" would depend entirely on which political party happened to be in power at the time. But we already live in a society in which speech is regulated, and that doesn't happen. Trump tried as hard as he could, but every lie he spouted was still pushed against, much to his dismay. He c…

> If they can't enforce their decisions, they're not really making decisions.

Why are you talking?

For that matter, why do we have media, or even schools?

Re: Alex Jones must pay $50m in punitive damages for Sandy Hook hoax claim

#346

Post by johnmosermd » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 6:30 PM UTC

nineplay wrote: post #150

noduerme wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> He tried to convince the world that the crime didn't actually happen and even worse tried to convince the world that the dead were actors and other nonsense. I'm a Jewish grandson of Holocaust survivors. I'm also American. I'm pretty happy our country has not adopted laws against holocaust denial in the way Germany or Canada have. I appreciate the thought behind those laws. But I appreciate freedom of speech more.…

> And I do have faith that sunlight is the best disinfectant, and that truth will prevail over lies. I wish I had that faith but I think the Holocaust stands as a pretty big counter-argument. I'm genuinely curious about your faith, do you think that something could have been done in Germany in the 30s which would have preserved free speech and prevented the Holocaust?

Same answer as for the United States: Multi-member national house election by a competent method of single transferable vote (although Meek's method is newer than that, and my Bucklin-based method isn't even fully analyzed yet, so only somewhat-competent methods existed); single-winner elections by a single transferable vote nominating primary followed by a Smith-efficient final election (although the Smith set wasn't defined until later; Condorcet paradox was known, and inventing the Smith set wasn't hard, modern methods which would allow for rapid hand-counting were only invented a couple decades ago though).

Easy problem today, harder problem at the time due to lack of knowledge.

They used a list proportional system (the same system used today in Germany, and similar to that used across Europe). Candidates were controlled by the party, rather than self-nominated. It's a huge oligarchical system that lends itself to enormous perversions of democracy. We have self-nominated candidates in the United States, but party primary elections and every type of election used here (MNTV, SNTV, first past the post, and run-offs) are broken and create extreme distortion, polarization, and disenfranchisement by their mathematical nature.

Democracy only works when it's actually democratic. When it's not, a polarized minority can become dominant over the majority, thus dominating the public discourse and shaping the public reason, retaining and expanding power. Most systems tend to reject whichever represents the view of the voters as a whole body; STV deals with the problems of fair and equal single-winner elections (which suppress minority voices) by proportionality for solid coalitions, capturing the median voter group as well as those minority views leaning away from the median voter in proportion to the size of the groups, which are of roughly-even size, thus introducing diversity into the conversation without lopsided a priori voting power, maximizing the efficiency of the public reason.

Re: Alex Jones must pay $50m in punitive damages for Sandy Hook hoax claim

#347

Post by phpisthebest » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 7:00 PM UTC

pstuart wrote: post #339

phpisthebest wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trust is built over decades, and torn down in minutes. News outlets (on both sides) have been caught in multiple partisans lies, disinformation, and spin/suppression of inconvenient facts for "their side" for many years now, this has eroded the trust in media and makes presentation of facts harder. Neither side wants to acknowledge anything that would be seen as supporting the position of the "others" So in the conte…

Sorry but not buying the "both sides are the same" bit. > Neither side wants to acknowledge anything that would be seen as supporting the position of the "others" You seem to be holding up your side of that argument but I don't roll that way. I abhor partisan politics and am happy to point out flaws of the Dem establishment. As to the last election, it was as fair as one can hope for -- you're taking the defense of t…

>>it was as fair as one can hope for -

I dont think when you have governors of various states in real time changing election rules, and regulations under "emergency" powers can be considered "fair it one can hope"

Also contrary to to democrat talking points there have been successful legal challenges to those election regulation modifications done by governors or election boards.

2020 election was unusual for a variety of reasons not just COVID, and it should not be controversial to say we need to look at all of the changes, emergency orders, and other activities that were happening to ensure everything was handled correct, something I don't think many on "the left" want to even acknowledge

>>while the NYT has made many egregious mistakes (supporting the Iraq war being a biggie), I still trust them as a news source more than Fox

Most likely because your personal bias leans in the same direction as NYT, so you are looking for confirmation of your worldview which NYT, most of the time, provides you.

>>And yet all of you on the right happily lap it up

I am not on the right, nor do I watch fox news ( or CNN or MSNBC or NYT), I get most of my news from varied sources (my RSS feed is currently following over 250 feeds) i also love the GroundNews App / Website.

Ideologically I am a homeless nomad, and reject all political parties, I would love a system where political parties are completely banned. Individualism is my preferred state

>And as far as COVID goes -- prior to the past president viruses were not political. Bush was at least pro-science in that regard.

and you believe only the right has politicized covid? Interesting

Re: Alex Jones must pay $50m in punitive damages for Sandy Hook hoax claim

#348

Post by dukeofdoom » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 7:08 PM UTC

johnmosermd wrote: post #344

dukeofdoom wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Problem being he actually had them, as evidenced by that data being accidentally given to the plaintiff's lawyer by the defendant's lawyer. Hard to argue it was "impossible" for him to do something that his legal team actually did.

No post body was provided.

Re: Alex Jones must pay $50m in punitive damages for Sandy Hook hoax claim

#349

Post by pstuart » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 7:17 PM UTC

phpisthebest wrote: post #347

pstuart wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but not buying the "both sides are the same" bit. > Neither side wants to acknowledge anything that would be seen as supporting the position of the "others" You seem to be holding up your side of that argument but I don't roll that way. I abhor partisan politics and am happy to point out flaws of the Dem establishment. As to the last election, it was as fair as one can hope for -- you're taking the defense of t…

>>it was as fair as one can hope for - I dont think when you have governors of various states in real time changing election rules, and regulations under "emergency" powers can be considered "fair it one can hope" Also contrary to to democrat talking points there have been successful legal challenges to those election regulation modifications done by governors or election boards. 2020 election was unusual for a varie…

There's been dozens of lawsuits and no smoking gun. We had a pandemic going on and so mail in/drop of ballots were promoted.

Show some evidence for this concern or just drop it. Ironically, election security is in peril because the GOP is installing officials that are ready to steal the next election.

I don't treat the NYT as gospel; it's yet another input for consideration. I'm painfully aware of confirmation bias and do my utmost to take whatever truth becomes apparent.

"Political" has varied meanings/interpretations. In the context of laws and regulations vs. partisan power mongering.

Dealing with a pandemic required unfortunate actions which are political in the first sense. The anti-vax movement has been embraced by the GOP and it is very much political in sense of identity.

I do agree with you on the corruptive nature of political parties.

Long and short of it: I "lean left" but don't make my identity about that. There are classic elements of old school conservatism that I agree with but modern conservatism has now been coopted by the Evangelicals and they are bat shit crazy. Goldwater was prescient and correct in his concern about that happening.

Re: Alex Jones must pay $50m in punitive damages for Sandy Hook hoax claim

#350

Post by roenxi » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 7:35 PM UTC

bandyaboot wrote: post #338

philliphaydon wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m gonna go out in a limb here and say you’re scared to cite anything in fear of it having a rebuttal. As I said in my reply the report concludes that Trump didn’t collude with Russia to win the election. So the major conspiracy theory is throw out the window. It holds as much weight as Biden stealing the election.

> I’m gonna go out in a limb here and say you’re scared to cite anything in fear of it having a rebuttal. Again, I’m not going to get in the weeds with someone who isn’t arguing in good faith. There’s no good that can come from it. In this case it’s extra pointless because I agree with this person. Nothing in the Mueller report is going to convince them of anything. > As I said in my reply the report concludes that T…

> Again, I’m not going to get in the weeds with someone who isn’t arguing in good faith.

The only reason you think you can anticipate my response is because I've correctly anticipated that you don't have an argument. If something comes up that is outside my predictions neither of us knows what I'd do. But I'm predicting a bluff and it has been a long thread of posts now.

> One example would be Manafort and Gates sharing internal polling data with the Russians.

The Russians could hire a polling company at any time. American's don't keep their opinions quiet. How do you want to spin that in to something interesting? Since Manafort's team won the election, it was probably a "hey, we're serious candidates, you should be ready to negotiate with us if we win" thing. Since one of the president's official duties is negotiating with Russians to try and prevent escalations.

Care to reference a page number for this one so I can make sure I'm dealing with the same topic?