351–360 of 872 posts
We've only had nuclear weapons for 70 years. We used them to blow each other up on day 1. The odds are not in our favor that nuclear warfare will be contained.
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A bit different considering the west has alternatives which are not blocked, whereas China doesn't. You can even spin up your own sources and serve whatever you want,a right not afforded the average Chinese citizen.
> You can even spin up your own sources and serve whatever you want,a right not afforded the average Chinese citizen. It's difficult when the backbone of the internet isn't available to you. For instance, AWS can be denied cutting off vital internet infrastructure we take for granted. Further payment processors like Visa can cut off access. Even banks could cut you off and even seize your funds if they got the direct…
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What's the deal with using guilt by association as a way to disparage or dismiss ideas? Seeing that a lot lately.
Ironically it’s an outgrowth of the very weakness in mindset that GP is talking about.
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Fortunately, in the US, we have the first amendment as a shield against authoritarians who would dictate the content we see.
Against government authoritarians. You have no shield against private oligopolies.
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If I learned anything about Tsars history, most of them do not get to have a natural death.
Most? Source? Nearly 9% of US presidents have been assassinated. Over a much much smaller timeframe. I would bet you would be less likely to have been assassinated as a Tsar than as a President.
That seems substantial, at least compared to Presidents, especially considering the threat of assassination was a serious consideration given all the political intrigue. Whereas AFAIU U.S. Presidents didn't take the threat of assassination seriously until the 20th century, exposing themselves to the public in ways that would be unthinkable to Tsars; or monarchs and, later, autocrats generally for that matter.
On the other hand, likelihood of death per year looks more comparable. For Tsars I get 2.1% (5 / (1917 - 1682)). For Presidents I get 2.3% (3 / (1917 - 1789)) or 1.7% (4 / (2022 - 1789)), depending on the range.
These days autocrats don't invest themselves much in establishing national political legitimacy or institutional legitimacy, focusing almost exclusively on building and grooming a power base where everyone in power has a vested interest in keeping the leader alive. So Putin probably doesn't have much to worry about, excepting perhaps some patriot military General.
EDIT: It's 27% of Tsars and 1.6% likelihood of death per year if starting from 1613, the start of the Romanov Dynasty. (Refreshing my Russian history as I go.) Numbers don't really change if we go back to 1547, Ivan the Terrible and first self-styled Tsar of Russia, as we add another intervening murder. And that's being charitable on the first metric given rapid succession and overlap during the Time of Troubles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_monarchs
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Companies with monopolistic power and revolving door political hirings need to be held to a different standard as they are beyond competing for views and shape narratives. It doesn't matter whether they are shaping it politically or profitably or via AI for clicks. It isn't neutral and drowns out or outright eliminates competing views.
Can you give an example? What's a view that's been eliminated?
Pretty extreme view sending in the national guard, right? Except according to a poll around that time, 52% of Americans answered yes to "Do you approve or disapprove of sending in the U.S. military where there are violent protests?" So obviously that op-ed wasn't a fringe belief, but it was enough to end the career of the person responsible to bring it to print, in addition to apologies and a commitment to never do anything like that again.
Being critical of sometimes violent disruptive protests is a view that has been highly suppressed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bari_Weiss#2017%E2%80%932020:_...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/opinion/tom-cotton-protes...
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/52-americans-support-deployi...
It's scary how many of the systems we were worried about in China (e.g. social credit system, censorship, etc.) are basically being created now in the west through the proxy of critical companies blocking access and/or working together.
A bit different considering the west has alternatives which are not blocked, whereas China doesn't. You can even spin up your own sources and serve whatever you want,a right not afforded the average Chinese citizen.
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I don’t get why people think youtube should be forced to host stuff they don’t want to host. Youtube should be socialized and forced to become a content-neutral storage? But why?!? We have the internet, where you can rent or run your own server and storage and post your conspiracy theory videos.
Why should broadcasters be forced to host debates? Broadcasters are forced to do all kinds of stuff. In Canada they have to carry a certain percentage of Canadian content.
It's scary how many of the systems we were worried about in China (e.g. social credit system, censorship, etc.) are basically being created now in the west through the proxy of critical companies blocking access and/or working together.
A bit different considering the west has alternatives which are not blocked, whereas China doesn't. You can even spin up your own sources and serve whatever you want,a right not afforded the average Chinese citizen.
If people banned from that is "censorship", then by that definition the whole world was censored 2 decades ago.
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What about the very subject of this thread? Not a view worth keeping around?
That's not been eliminated. Quite a few people believe the election was stolen. Also, it's not a view worth keeping around. There's no evidence to support it and it's just used to justify violence and division.
There's no evidence supporting price controls to be an effective way to fight inflation, as was shown to produce awful results in the 70s among many other eras, yet we have politicians pushing for that.
There's no evidence to support that nominal wages rising, but at a rate lower than inflation leads to people being better off, yet we have politicians pushing this.
I think Google should ban any videos promoting these effectively disproven and dangerous economic ideas.