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There are thousands of conspiracies floating around. Should we consider them all harmful and ban them? Who decides when a conspiracy becomes harmful? Should

There are thousands of conspiracies floating around. Should we consider them all harmful and ban them? Who decides when a conspiracy becomes harmful? Should we ban flat-earthers from posting their views? After all, if everyone believed it, we would set science back countless centuries. The way to combat false ideas is with truth; a culture that is always searching for the truth. That can only be facilitated by unhindered speech.

fzeroracer 8y ago
Do you consider American culture to be one of the more free ones? If so, then why do these conspiracies exist? Why have flat-earth conspiracies and anti-scientific dogma thrived? Why do we have a president that outright denies scientific fact? If combating false ideas with truth worked, then surely these problems shouldn't exist in America, the land of the free. In the arena of free speech, only the values with the most truth should thrive. Yet that's clearly not the case. This is the paradox of tolerance. We can say that unhindered speech is the way of countering harmful speech, but then I ask you: What led to the rise of such harmful speech today?
- Karunamon 8y ago
  This is the paradox of tolerance. We can say that unhindered speech is the way of countering harmful speech, but then I ask you: What led to the rise of such harmful speech today? You point at anti-science conspiracy theories as a failing of free speech, and you're probably right, but what would you have us do otherwise? A world in which some central authority dictates that certain opinions are never allowed to be expressed, to me, seems like an absolutely horrible place to live, even if it meant that antivaxxers couldn't spread their crap anymore. Furthermore, there is no such thing as a perfect political system. It's not enough to point at what free speech fails at, you also need to suggest what we should be doing instead, and how the failings of that system wouldn't be worse. It's a pretty good comparison to democracy, in my mind. It's the worst system ever invented, except for all of the other ones we've tried.
  - fzeroracer 8y ago
    You live in that world right now. We have a central authority that says 'you're not allowed to call black people certain words'. I always ask this but do you believe that was a mistake? Do you think people have that specific right to exercise their freedom of speech? Obviously there are degrees of harm to speech. We've already collectively determined this as a society. And to me, anti-vaxxers are a great example. We arrest anti-vaxxers if their children suffer due to child abuse. Do you believe that to be a mistake, that they don't have the right to exercise their own beliefs?
    - Karunamon 8y ago
      What central authority would that be? Because I'm pretty sure I can find speech along those line on the top five sites on the internet with little effort. I always ask this but do you believe that was a mistake? Do you think people have that specific right to exercise their freedom of speech? I think I'm unclear on what you're asking, but as an American who sees a great deal of value in that approach, and seeing the fruits of the opposite approach (my go-to example being the UK, where libel laws are significantly more open for abuse), then, yes, I do think people have that specific right - on the level of human rights, even. Do you believe that to be a mistake, that they don't have the right to exercise their own beliefs? That is a different question - speech and action are two different things.
    - tomp 8y ago
      > you're not allowed to call black people certain words' It’s actually much worse, the restriction itself is highly racist; only blacks are allowed to use the “n-word”, while whites (and other races I presume) aren’t.
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  > If so, then why do these conspiracies exist? Because that's how the process works. Liars lie and evidence proves them wrong. It doesn't make them disappear from existence, it just makes it so you can discover the truth. Without free speech there are no fewer lies, all you do is suppress the truth. The Party's version is the only version even when it's fiction.
  - joshuamorton 8y ago
    Depends, these conspiracies can and do actively cause harm in the interim though (climate change, anti-vaxxing, pizzagate, and arguably others). Is liars being about to lie worth a body count?
    - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
      > Is liars being about to lie worth a body count? The body count of truth tellers not being able to tell the truth is dramatically higher. Imagine the result if Richard Nixon had put climate scientists in the same box as you would put anti-vaxxers.
      - joshuamorton 8y ago
        I don't really buy "unrestricted free speech is worth letting people die over". Sure, censorship can be harmful, but if the best argument your can put forward is a slippery slope, thats not particularly compelling. Hypothetical harms are generally less harmful than real ones.
        AnthonyMouse 8y ago
        > I don't really buy "unrestricted free speech is worth letting people die over". I don't really buy "restricted speech is worth letting people die over". > Sure, censorship can be harmful, but if the best argument your can put forward is a slippery slope, thats not particularly compelling. What slippery slope? Censoring climate scientists is the first thing politicians in the pocket of oil companies would do with censorship powers. > Hypothetical harms are generally less harmful than real ones. The actual harms of censorship are widespread and well-documented. If you want to go straight for the serious examples, look at The Great Leap Forward, Stalin's purges or the holocaust. In each case there were not only direct large scale executions of political dissenters, the censorship allowed other atrocities to be kept quiet. Much of the scale and inhumanity of the holocaust wasn't discovered until the end of the war as a result of Nazi censorship, and keeping it quiet allowed it to continue for longer with less opposition both domestically and internationally. For example, the US could have entered the war earlier. But it also goes all the way down to pedestrian squabbles where people disagree over matters of life and death at smaller scale (e.g. the safety of a building or a bridge). Censoring true facts has literally been fatal countless times.
- chrisco255 8y ago
  The true reality is that the most persuasive ideas survive, not the most truthful ones. The challenge for the scientific community is to make sure to remember that persuasion matters as much as logic and facts do, if not more.
- evilturnip 8y ago
  If by 'harmful' speech you mean conspiracies, I would argue they've always been around. It's not a new problem. People have always filled the gaps in their knowledge with unjustified beliefs. However, your answer would be to deplatform those who would post such ideas. Do you honestly think that would make it better? Did deplatforming Alex Jones help people? It just galvanized those who believed there was a conspiracy and made him all the more popular. How about we take on the hard task of trying to actually reach those who we believe have false ideas. For example, how do people respond to flat-earthers? Constant ridicule and laughter. The reason they believe in these theories is a lot more complex and nuanced than merely that they are 'stupid'.
  - fzeroracer 8y ago
    Deplatforming Alex Jones gave him a slight bump in popularity after it occurred, followed by it falling off a cliff shortly after. Also in your example of responding to flat-earthers what other alternative is there when they refuse to listen to reason? When you can't engage with them on any level? Why is it my responsibility for example to be the one to engage with people who might view me as being a lesser human being due to my skin color or sexual preferences?
    - acct1771 8y ago
      Could that have been because the platform people would use to see his new content was no longer able to be used for this purpose, and people have been cordoned into walled gardens so long the general public is no longer aware of alternatives?
  - nl 8y ago
    Deplatforming Alex Jones has helped enormously. One of the Sandy Hook parents wrote how she is able to check her mail now without getting multiple threats in the mail every single day.
- acct1771 8y ago
  > Yet that's clearly not the case. Ugh...yes, it is. Our people are just too stupid to find the dissenting opinions.
- pishpash 8y ago
  This is actually an old problem. The value of free speech as a utilitarian goal, as opposed to being an absolute right which even the American system doesn't quite believe, is in having an unfettered marketplace of ideas. But if all ideas are equally valuable then there is no apparent value to truth and no consensus. You certainly wouldn't design a network protocol like that where nothing is allowed to converge. This sort of thing is glossed over in the regime of approximate consensus which holds most of the time in most communities, but when things get really divisive and intractable, or when there are deliberate adversarial attacks, I don't think there is a consistent philosophical resolution.
- tomp 8y ago
  Politicians always play with the truth. E.g. Obama repeated the “pay gap” lie because it served his political agenda.
enraged_camel 8y ago
>>The way to combat false ideas is with truth This is extremely naive. As the saying goes, a lie can go around the world before the truth can finish putting on its shoes. edit: maybe rather than downvoting (which is a type of censorship) y’all should provide a response.
- tomp 8y ago
  I don’t think bad feelings count for “actively harmful”. Also, you can always just not read the internet to avoid bad feelings. NSA surveillance was a conspiracy theory before Snowden, so I don’t think the “conspiracy theory” accusation warrants censorship.
- repolfx 8y ago
  I don't think citing a random saying is a great way to rebut an argument, let alone support a claim of naivety. Here's another saying for you: you can fool some people all the time, and all the people some of the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time. In other words, eventually the truth wins out. I guess our sayings cancel out.

fzeroracer 8y ago

Do you consider American culture to be one of the more free ones? If so, then why do these conspiracies exist? Why have flat-earth conspiracies and anti-scientific dogma thrived? Why do we have a president that outright denies scientific fact? If combating false ideas with truth worked, then surely these problems shouldn't exist in America, the land of the free. In the arena of free speech, only the values with the most truth should thrive. Yet that's clearly not the case. This is the paradox of tolerance. We can say that unhindered speech is the way of countering harmful speech, but then I ask you: What led to the rise of such harmful speech today?

Karunamon 8y ago
This is the paradox of tolerance. We can say that unhindered speech is the way of countering harmful speech, but then I ask you: What led to the rise of such harmful speech today? You point at anti-science conspiracy theories as a failing of free speech, and you're probably right, but what would you have us do otherwise? A world in which some central authority dictates that certain opinions are never allowed to be expressed, to me, seems like an absolutely horrible place to live, even if it meant that antivaxxers couldn't spread their crap anymore. Furthermore, there is no such thing as a perfect political system. It's not enough to point at what free speech fails at, you also need to suggest what we should be doing instead, and how the failings of that system wouldn't be worse. It's a pretty good comparison to democracy, in my mind. It's the worst system ever invented, except for all of the other ones we've tried.
- fzeroracer 8y ago
  You live in that world right now. We have a central authority that says 'you're not allowed to call black people certain words'. I always ask this but do you believe that was a mistake? Do you think people have that specific right to exercise their freedom of speech? Obviously there are degrees of harm to speech. We've already collectively determined this as a society. And to me, anti-vaxxers are a great example. We arrest anti-vaxxers if their children suffer due to child abuse. Do you believe that to be a mistake, that they don't have the right to exercise their own beliefs?
  - Karunamon 8y ago
    What central authority would that be? Because I'm pretty sure I can find speech along those line on the top five sites on the internet with little effort. I always ask this but do you believe that was a mistake? Do you think people have that specific right to exercise their freedom of speech? I think I'm unclear on what you're asking, but as an American who sees a great deal of value in that approach, and seeing the fruits of the opposite approach (my go-to example being the UK, where libel laws are significantly more open for abuse), then, yes, I do think people have that specific right - on the level of human rights, even. Do you believe that to be a mistake, that they don't have the right to exercise their own beliefs? That is a different question - speech and action are two different things.
  - tomp 8y ago
    > you're not allowed to call black people certain words' It’s actually much worse, the restriction itself is highly racist; only blacks are allowed to use the “n-word”, while whites (and other races I presume) aren’t.
AnthonyMouse 8y ago
> If so, then why do these conspiracies exist? Because that's how the process works. Liars lie and evidence proves them wrong. It doesn't make them disappear from existence, it just makes it so you can discover the truth. Without free speech there are no fewer lies, all you do is suppress the truth. The Party's version is the only version even when it's fiction.
- joshuamorton 8y ago
  Depends, these conspiracies can and do actively cause harm in the interim though (climate change, anti-vaxxing, pizzagate, and arguably others). Is liars being about to lie worth a body count?
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    > Is liars being about to lie worth a body count? The body count of truth tellers not being able to tell the truth is dramatically higher. Imagine the result if Richard Nixon had put climate scientists in the same box as you would put anti-vaxxers.
    - joshuamorton 8y ago
      I don't really buy "unrestricted free speech is worth letting people die over". Sure, censorship can be harmful, but if the best argument your can put forward is a slippery slope, thats not particularly compelling. Hypothetical harms are generally less harmful than real ones.
      - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
        > I don't really buy "unrestricted free speech is worth letting people die over". I don't really buy "restricted speech is worth letting people die over". > Sure, censorship can be harmful, but if the best argument your can put forward is a slippery slope, thats not particularly compelling. What slippery slope? Censoring climate scientists is the first thing politicians in the pocket of oil companies would do with censorship powers. > Hypothetical harms are generally less harmful than real ones. The actual harms of censorship are widespread and well-documented. If you want to go straight for the serious examples, look at The Great Leap Forward, Stalin's purges or the holocaust. In each case there were not only direct large scale executions of political dissenters, the censorship allowed other atrocities to be kept quiet. Much of the scale and inhumanity of the holocaust wasn't discovered until the end of the war as a result of Nazi censorship, and keeping it quiet allowed it to continue for longer with less opposition both domestically and internationally. For example, the US could have entered the war earlier. But it also goes all the way down to pedestrian squabbles where people disagree over matters of life and death at smaller scale (e.g. the safety of a building or a bridge). Censoring true facts has literally been fatal countless times.
chrisco255 8y ago
The true reality is that the most persuasive ideas survive, not the most truthful ones. The challenge for the scientific community is to make sure to remember that persuasion matters as much as logic and facts do, if not more.
evilturnip 8y ago
If by 'harmful' speech you mean conspiracies, I would argue they've always been around. It's not a new problem. People have always filled the gaps in their knowledge with unjustified beliefs. However, your answer would be to deplatform those who would post such ideas. Do you honestly think that would make it better? Did deplatforming Alex Jones help people? It just galvanized those who believed there was a conspiracy and made him all the more popular. How about we take on the hard task of trying to actually reach those who we believe have false ideas. For example, how do people respond to flat-earthers? Constant ridicule and laughter. The reason they believe in these theories is a lot more complex and nuanced than merely that they are 'stupid'.
- fzeroracer 8y ago
  Deplatforming Alex Jones gave him a slight bump in popularity after it occurred, followed by it falling off a cliff shortly after. Also in your example of responding to flat-earthers what other alternative is there when they refuse to listen to reason? When you can't engage with them on any level? Why is it my responsibility for example to be the one to engage with people who might view me as being a lesser human being due to my skin color or sexual preferences?
  - acct1771 8y ago
    Could that have been because the platform people would use to see his new content was no longer able to be used for this purpose, and people have been cordoned into walled gardens so long the general public is no longer aware of alternatives?
- nl 8y ago
  Deplatforming Alex Jones has helped enormously. One of the Sandy Hook parents wrote how she is able to check her mail now without getting multiple threats in the mail every single day.
acct1771 8y ago
> Yet that's clearly not the case. Ugh...yes, it is. Our people are just too stupid to find the dissenting opinions.
pishpash 8y ago
This is actually an old problem. The value of free speech as a utilitarian goal, as opposed to being an absolute right which even the American system doesn't quite believe, is in having an unfettered marketplace of ideas. But if all ideas are equally valuable then there is no apparent value to truth and no consensus. You certainly wouldn't design a network protocol like that where nothing is allowed to converge. This sort of thing is glossed over in the regime of approximate consensus which holds most of the time in most communities, but when things get really divisive and intractable, or when there are deliberate adversarial attacks, I don't think there is a consistent philosophical resolution.
tomp 8y ago
Politicians always play with the truth. E.g. Obama repeated the “pay gap” lie because it served his political agenda.

enraged_camel 8y ago

>>The way to combat false ideas is with truth This is extremely naive. As the saying goes, a lie can go around the world before the truth can finish putting on its shoes. edit: maybe rather than downvoting (which is a type of censorship) y’all should provide a response.

tomp 8y ago
I don’t think bad feelings count for “actively harmful”. Also, you can always just not read the internet to avoid bad feelings. NSA surveillance was a conspiracy theory before Snowden, so I don’t think the “conspiracy theory” accusation warrants censorship.
repolfx 8y ago
I don't think citing a random saying is a great way to rebut an argument, let alone support a claim of naivety. Here's another saying for you: you can fool some people all the time, and all the people some of the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time. In other words, eventually the truth wins out. I guess our sayings cancel out.