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I've been thinking about this (and the obvious rebuttal of "What about the people who think $your_politics should be silenced in polite society"). I think my an

by geofft 8y ago

I've been thinking about this (and the obvious rebuttal of "What about the people who think $your_politics should be silenced in polite society"). I think my answer is that these particular ideas - ethnic nationalism and its friends - are deceptively simple explanations for problems in the world, and therefore platforms for publishing, especially platforms for short-attention-span publishing like Facebook or Twitter, should be particularly cautious in whether they let themselves be used by these ideologies. It is easy to say that the reason that Americans or Greeks or Germans are struggling with their lives is all the Mexicans or Muslims or Jews, and that if only society weren't spending resources on these other people, things would be better for us. I can fit that in a sentence. It is much harder to talk about the complex effects of local, national, and international politics over decades if not centuries; about specific instances of poor leadership or corruption; about the proper interpretation of data; about things that really need papers or books to discuss. I claim that - universally - these longer explanations are more likely to be right. "It's these damn Others" is too simple to fit the observed data, but even listing each complexity in the observed data and whether the explanation fits or not it is a paper's worth of discussion. Not everyone will recognize that these positions are the positions of awful people. Some will find the simplistic answer appealing. This is arguably a bug in human cognition - but if a platform is designed for humans, it makes perfect sense to take human bugs into account.

tynpeddler 8y ago
You make a good point but what you're talking about is effectively the beginning of the end of liberalism. While it sounds simple to say in this case that "people aren't rational, therefore we're going to control their speech and we're technically a private company so nah nah nah," you are in fact opening a huge can of worms with incredibly far reaching consequences. I don't blame Facebook for refusing to take a stand on this point. As much as people like to accuse Facebook and Zuckerberg of being greedy and arrogant, I think on this point they've shown a remarkable amount of humility. Sticking to the same principles that have guided humanity's most successful decisions for the past 200+ years while being constantly mocked by the mob shows an incredible amount of restraint. People who think no platforming tens of millions of people is a simple decision are the reckless and arrogant ones with no regard for how serious such a decision really is. If tens of millions of Americans lack the competence and morality to be allowed to talk freely amongst themselves, why do we let them raise kids and vote?
- bena 8y ago
  "When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world-- "No, you move."
dnissley 8y ago
So we can easily identify ethnic nationalism as one of the ways in which right wing politics can go very, very wrong. The problem with calling it out on it's own, without calling out something equally vile on the left, is that whoever does it ends up looking very partial to the left as a consequence. Left wing politics can clearly go very wrong as well, but it's harder to identify what the destructive ideas on the left because they are cloaked in compassion for the downtrodden. Jordan Peterson has put forward the idea that it is something like the trifecta of "equity diversity and inclusion" that we need to look out for from the left, but obviously these are very desirable things on first glance, and so it isn't that simple to just put these ideas in a box that's off limits.
- exelius 8y ago
  Jordan Peterson is espousing the same tired homophobic, xenophobic arguments dressed up in modern clothes. He’s a hack who appeals to people because he tells them the things they’re already feeling without actually advancing the conversation. His arguments are only appealing if you’re already in a position of privilege. Basically, he’s an advocate for the status quo.
  - dnissley 8y ago
    Perhaps you'd be willing to offer your own answer to the question he poses though, which I believe is a good one. When does the left go too far? With the right, we have at least one clear cut answer: ethnic nationalism. With the left: nothing beyond vague handwaving about "when it gets violent" or "when it gets censorious". FWIW, I'm a leftist but I see a lot of worrying things coming from the left these days. I figure we could do with a little more introspection considering the results of the last election, a little less derangement about Trump, and a little less paranoia about the supposed hidden agendas of canadian psychologists.
    - geofft 8y ago
      > Perhaps you'd be willing to offer your own answer to the question he poses though, which I believe is a good one. When does the left go too far? There's no a priori reason that one side of politics should go "too far" proportionate to the other. Importantly, if you do assume such a reason exists, it gives cover for bad actors (of any side), who can then argue just as convincingly, I can't possibly be going "too far" because the other side isn't, and you're biased. If the left is behaving reasonably and the right is not, or vice versa, have the moral courage to say what you observe.
opwieurposiu 8y ago
So if someone advocates ethnic nationalism in a complex and multifaceted way, backed by data and statistics, You would allow it?
- pixl97 8y ago
  What if science and facts support a terrible conclusion? Do we ignore the science to feel better? I'm not saying that any arguments put forth do, but what does a society that prides itself on logic and rationality do in such a case?
  - DuskStar 8y ago
    This sounds like Lysenkoism [0]. See, it was politically rather important for the Soviet Union to have heritability of acquired traits in humans, which necessarily implied the same in plants. So all that genetic inheritance and crop breeding? Useless quackery. Of course, in the Soviet Union, "quacks" were executed... And this contributed to ongoing crop yield deficiencies. Facts supporting a terrible conclusion (that blank slate theory is not correct in plants) is not a reason that the facts should be ignored. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
    - bzbarsky 8y ago
      Amusingly enough, plants have way more heritability of acquired traits than humans do. Epigenetic effects in plants are stable across multiple generations to a much greater extent than in mammals, as far as recent studies can tell. Of course "epigenetic effects are real and persist across many generations" is very different from the blank slate theory.
- pornel 8y ago
  No. Immoral objective is still immoral even if backed by data supporting it. Maybe it'd be easier to parse on a less controversial example: > We should steal things instead of earning them. Here is the objective factual and irrefutable data showing that robbery is more profitable than hard work.
smsm42 8y ago
That would be very smart if we had some super-human bug-free angels to oversee the platform and fix out human bugs for us. In reality, since angels are otherwise engaged and unavailable to serve as Facebook moderators, what we'd end up with is one set of humans forcing their bugs onto other set of humans, motivating it as "we are fixing your bugs for your own benefit, you see!". I don't see any reason to prefer the bugs of an anonymous Facebook moderator to my own, at least I know my own and had time to learn to deal with them.
- geofft 8y ago
  But the buggy / fallen humans are already the people implementing the platform itself: writing algorithms to detect spam, writing the "algorithmic timeline," prioritizing some features over others, measuring and responding to engagement metrics, planning capacity expansions for particular APIs, etc. They already have some idea of what they expect platform usage to look like and are building a system that supports that. It'd be better if the incorruptible were doing this, sure, but sinful man already is designing the platform and its intended uses. If you offer people a platform that lends itself to certain forms of abuses, those abuses are your responsibility, even if you didn't set out to cause them - just like outages are your responsibility even though you almost certainly did not set out to cause them. Sure, before the Fall, Adam could write code that never crashed. That doesn't mean we can absolve ourselves of the responsibility to attempt to fix and prevent crashes, even though we won't succeed perfectly. Nor can we absolve ourselves of the responsibility to make sure our platforms are being used for things we want them to be used for.
  - smsm42 8y ago
    The problem is not buggy code - i.e. code that is meant to do one thing but actually does the other. The problem is buggy goals - e.g. goals that is meant to foster thoughtful discussion but actually create echo chamber increasingly intolerant to dissent and incapable of considering new ideas on merits instead of panicking on any deviation for the orthodoxy. Unless conscious and constant effort is taken to avoid it, it is very easy to get into such failure mode. Not because people are evil but because people are buggy and weak.

by geofft 8y ago

tynpeddler 8y ago

You make a good point but what you're talking about is effectively the beginning of the end of liberalism. While it sounds simple to say in this case that "people aren't rational, therefore we're going to control their speech and we're technically a private company so nah nah nah," you are in fact opening a huge can of worms with incredibly far reaching consequences. I don't blame Facebook for refusing to take a stand on this point. As much as people like to accuse Facebook and Zuckerberg of being greedy and arrogant, I think on this point they've shown a remarkable amount of humility. Sticking to the same principles that have guided humanity's most successful decisions for the past 200+ years while being constantly mocked by the mob shows an incredible amount of restraint. People who think no platforming tens of millions of people is a simple decision are the reckless and arrogant ones with no regard for how serious such a decision really is. If tens of millions of Americans lack the competence and morality to be allowed to talk freely amongst themselves, why do we let them raise kids and vote?

bena 8y ago
"When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world-- "No, you move."

dnissley 8y ago

So we can easily identify ethnic nationalism as one of the ways in which right wing politics can go very, very wrong. The problem with calling it out on it's own, without calling out something equally vile on the left, is that whoever does it ends up looking very partial to the left as a consequence. Left wing politics can clearly go very wrong as well, but it's harder to identify what the destructive ideas on the left because they are cloaked in compassion for the downtrodden. Jordan Peterson has put forward the idea that it is something like the trifecta of "equity diversity and inclusion" that we need to look out for from the left, but obviously these are very desirable things on first glance, and so it isn't that simple to just put these ideas in a box that's off limits.

exelius 8y ago
Jordan Peterson is espousing the same tired homophobic, xenophobic arguments dressed up in modern clothes. He’s a hack who appeals to people because he tells them the things they’re already feeling without actually advancing the conversation. His arguments are only appealing if you’re already in a position of privilege. Basically, he’s an advocate for the status quo.
- dnissley 8y ago
  Perhaps you'd be willing to offer your own answer to the question he poses though, which I believe is a good one. When does the left go too far? With the right, we have at least one clear cut answer: ethnic nationalism. With the left: nothing beyond vague handwaving about "when it gets violent" or "when it gets censorious". FWIW, I'm a leftist but I see a lot of worrying things coming from the left these days. I figure we could do with a little more introspection considering the results of the last election, a little less derangement about Trump, and a little less paranoia about the supposed hidden agendas of canadian psychologists.
  - geofft 8y ago
    > Perhaps you'd be willing to offer your own answer to the question he poses though, which I believe is a good one. When does the left go too far? There's no a priori reason that one side of politics should go "too far" proportionate to the other. Importantly, if you do assume such a reason exists, it gives cover for bad actors (of any side), who can then argue just as convincingly, I can't possibly be going "too far" because the other side isn't, and you're biased. If the left is behaving reasonably and the right is not, or vice versa, have the moral courage to say what you observe.

opwieurposiu 8y ago

So if someone advocates ethnic nationalism in a complex and multifaceted way, backed by data and statistics, You would allow it?

pixl97 8y ago
What if science and facts support a terrible conclusion? Do we ignore the science to feel better? I'm not saying that any arguments put forth do, but what does a society that prides itself on logic and rationality do in such a case?
- DuskStar 8y ago
  This sounds like Lysenkoism [0]. See, it was politically rather important for the Soviet Union to have heritability of acquired traits in humans, which necessarily implied the same in plants. So all that genetic inheritance and crop breeding? Useless quackery. Of course, in the Soviet Union, "quacks" were executed... And this contributed to ongoing crop yield deficiencies. Facts supporting a terrible conclusion (that blank slate theory is not correct in plants) is not a reason that the facts should be ignored. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
  - bzbarsky 8y ago
    Amusingly enough, plants have way more heritability of acquired traits than humans do. Epigenetic effects in plants are stable across multiple generations to a much greater extent than in mammals, as far as recent studies can tell. Of course "epigenetic effects are real and persist across many generations" is very different from the blank slate theory.
pornel 8y ago
No. Immoral objective is still immoral even if backed by data supporting it. Maybe it'd be easier to parse on a less controversial example: > We should steal things instead of earning them. Here is the objective factual and irrefutable data showing that robbery is more profitable than hard work.

smsm42 8y ago

That would be very smart if we had some super-human bug-free angels to oversee the platform and fix out human bugs for us. In reality, since angels are otherwise engaged and unavailable to serve as Facebook moderators, what we'd end up with is one set of humans forcing their bugs onto other set of humans, motivating it as "we are fixing your bugs for your own benefit, you see!". I don't see any reason to prefer the bugs of an anonymous Facebook moderator to my own, at least I know my own and had time to learn to deal with them.

geofft 8y ago
But the buggy / fallen humans are already the people implementing the platform itself: writing algorithms to detect spam, writing the "algorithmic timeline," prioritizing some features over others, measuring and responding to engagement metrics, planning capacity expansions for particular APIs, etc. They already have some idea of what they expect platform usage to look like and are building a system that supports that. It'd be better if the incorruptible were doing this, sure, but sinful man already is designing the platform and its intended uses. If you offer people a platform that lends itself to certain forms of abuses, those abuses are your responsibility, even if you didn't set out to cause them - just like outages are your responsibility even though you almost certainly did not set out to cause them. Sure, before the Fall, Adam could write code that never crashed. That doesn't mean we can absolve ourselves of the responsibility to attempt to fix and prevent crashes, even though we won't succeed perfectly. Nor can we absolve ourselves of the responsibility to make sure our platforms are being used for things we want them to be used for.
- smsm42 8y ago
  The problem is not buggy code - i.e. code that is meant to do one thing but actually does the other. The problem is buggy goals - e.g. goals that is meant to foster thoughtful discussion but actually create echo chamber increasingly intolerant to dissent and incapable of considering new ideas on merits instead of panicking on any deviation for the orthodoxy. Unless conscious and constant effort is taken to avoid it, it is very easy to get into such failure mode. Not because people are evil but because people are buggy and weak.