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And that's where people will reject the notion of "wrongthink". If accepting the idea of "wrongthink" means accepting that slavery would be good, then surely yo

And that's where people will reject the notion of "wrongthink". If accepting the idea of "wrongthink" means accepting that slavery would be good, then surely you can see where many, many people will jump off the fence onto the other side can't you? Because many, many people believe the institution of slavery is inherently NOT good. People don't think it's simply "wrongthink" or a bad idea, people believe it's a patently false assertion. (Just to be clear, I believe it to be patently false as well.) That belief today is as strong as it was during the Civil War. And there are multiple subjects out there like slavery. Is holocaust style genetic cleansing "good"? If you assert such a thing, people will not consider that "wrongthink", they'll consider it to be patently false. The list of issues like that goes on and on. I only listed the obvious examples as a sort of reductio ad absurdum.

rayiner 9y ago
People reflexively believe lots of things. Some of those beliefs are more defensible than others. In the 1950s, almost everyone would've said that interracial marriage was "inherently NOT good." Would that belief have justified censorship? To use a more contemporary example: I've been pretty frustrated with the evolving liberal American consensus on colonialism. I think lots of people (especially people pulling the levers at Google and Facebook) would say that colonialism is "inherently NOT good." But that's wrongthink. As an English-speaking person of Indian descent, I think colonialism was, on the net, quite a boon for the subcontinent in the long term. Americans easily reach the opposite conclusion because they've never had to think too hard about the problem or had to consider the counterfactual. The universe of things people have strident beliefs about is a lot broader than the universe of things people are justified in having strident beliefs about. Which is why the whole idea of censoring based on content is a morass that Google and Facebook should not be stepping into.
- bilbo0s 9y ago
  But you just conceded that there are things that people are justified in having strident beliefs about. When you conflate those things with something like, "are bail bondsmen good?" Or, "is colonialism good?" All you do is make people think you're not engaging them seriously in the discussion. Because bail bondsmen can be thought good or bad for society. Everyone here can take his/her position and then debate the topic in a serious fashion. But no one is going to take seriously a desire for discussion when you begin by asserting that slavery was good. Or that the holocaust was good. As you said, there exists a universe of things that people are justified in having strident beliefs about.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    The people who have strident beliefs about slavery and colonialism can’t tell that one might be justified and the other not. Which is why it’s dangerous to censor the web based on peoples’ strident beliefs. I should also point out that it’s one thing to accept that slavery was an unmitigated evil and another to censor things based on that premise. It creates a powerful incentive to attempt to reduce peoples’ points of view to a straw man that you can then have censored. Without diving into the merits of Kanye’s recent statements, its a great example of taking a complex thought and reducing it to an easily-refuted straw man.
    - bilbo0s 9y ago
      Actually I hadn't even considered Kanye. I had to google that because I'm not really a big follower of pop culture. (I'm WAY past the age where I'm keeping up with that type of thing. So I had no idea what you were talking about. It's clear we've been coming at this discussion from different contexts. You're concerned about pop culture, and I'm concerned about compelling companies to post nonsense.) My only point has been that there are some "unmitigated evils", as you call them, in this world. There's no angle we can look at them and make them NOT evil. Genocide. Slavery. Rape. Etc etc etc. And when you try to equate them with bail bondsmen or what have you, people are going to naturally tune out your argument. I mean, no one is going to allow, for example, genocide speech on their servers simply for the purposes consistency with your thought process. You can have ads for bail bondsmen, or NOT have ads for bail bondsmen. You choose. But under no circumstances will anyone in their right mind tolerate you advertising slaves for your fields or for your domestic needs, or advertising genocidal cullings that people can take part in. Regardless of whether or not you choose to see it, there is a material difference between those classes of ads. You can't just say that every company should be compelled to post whatever speech anyone cares to put up. It doesn't work that way. That's just reality. You're going to HAVE to accept SOME "censorship" if that's what you want to call it. (It's not even censorship really. The only reason young people call it that is because the young today were never really taught the concept of private property in their civics courses. But that's a whole other issue.)

rayiner 9y ago

People reflexively believe lots of things. Some of those beliefs are more defensible than others. In the 1950s, almost everyone would've said that interracial marriage was "inherently NOT good." Would that belief have justified censorship? To use a more contemporary example: I've been pretty frustrated with the evolving liberal American consensus on colonialism. I think lots of people (especially people pulling the levers at Google and Facebook) would say that colonialism is "inherently NOT good." But that's wrongthink. As an English-speaking person of Indian descent, I think colonialism was, on the net, quite a boon for the subcontinent in the long term. Americans easily reach the opposite conclusion because they've never had to think too hard about the problem or had to consider the counterfactual. The universe of things people have strident beliefs about is a lot broader than the universe of things people are justified in having strident beliefs about. Which is why the whole idea of censoring based on content is a morass that Google and Facebook should not be stepping into.

bilbo0s 9y ago
But you just conceded that there are things that people are justified in having strident beliefs about. When you conflate those things with something like, "are bail bondsmen good?" Or, "is colonialism good?" All you do is make people think you're not engaging them seriously in the discussion. Because bail bondsmen can be thought good or bad for society. Everyone here can take his/her position and then debate the topic in a serious fashion. But no one is going to take seriously a desire for discussion when you begin by asserting that slavery was good. Or that the holocaust was good. As you said, there exists a universe of things that people are justified in having strident beliefs about.
- rayiner 9y ago
  The people who have strident beliefs about slavery and colonialism can’t tell that one might be justified and the other not. Which is why it’s dangerous to censor the web based on peoples’ strident beliefs. I should also point out that it’s one thing to accept that slavery was an unmitigated evil and another to censor things based on that premise. It creates a powerful incentive to attempt to reduce peoples’ points of view to a straw man that you can then have censored. Without diving into the merits of Kanye’s recent statements, its a great example of taking a complex thought and reducing it to an easily-refuted straw man.
  - bilbo0s 9y ago
    Actually I hadn't even considered Kanye. I had to google that because I'm not really a big follower of pop culture. (I'm WAY past the age where I'm keeping up with that type of thing. So I had no idea what you were talking about. It's clear we've been coming at this discussion from different contexts. You're concerned about pop culture, and I'm concerned about compelling companies to post nonsense.) My only point has been that there are some "unmitigated evils", as you call them, in this world. There's no angle we can look at them and make them NOT evil. Genocide. Slavery. Rape. Etc etc etc. And when you try to equate them with bail bondsmen or what have you, people are going to naturally tune out your argument. I mean, no one is going to allow, for example, genocide speech on their servers simply for the purposes consistency with your thought process. You can have ads for bail bondsmen, or NOT have ads for bail bondsmen. You choose. But under no circumstances will anyone in their right mind tolerate you advertising slaves for your fields or for your domestic needs, or advertising genocidal cullings that people can take part in. Regardless of whether or not you choose to see it, there is a material difference between those classes of ads. You can't just say that every company should be compelled to post whatever speech anyone cares to put up. It doesn't work that way. That's just reality. You're going to HAVE to accept SOME "censorship" if that's what you want to call it. (It's not even censorship really. The only reason young people call it that is because the young today were never really taught the concept of private property in their civics courses. But that's a whole other issue.)