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What makes it not an open marketplace? The very bias introduced by platform like YouTube which you seem to be defending? Is the average person so dumb that they

by noego 8y ago

What makes it not an open marketplace? The very bias introduced by platform like YouTube which you seem to be defending? Is the average person so dumb that they cannot distinguish between "sound argument" vs "intimidate and disconcert"? If that's how you feel about the average person, why do you still favor democracy?

minikites 8y ago
People aren't dumb, but I think people have poor information literacy skills, which is linked to the decline in liberal arts education in favor of the emphasis on STEM education. The lack of these skills leads to people being unable to distinguish between "sound argument" vs "intimidate and disconcert" (again, not related to their intelligence, this is a developed skill). https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10858.html https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10858.html >We increasingly treat education as though its primary goal were to teach students to be economically productive rather than to think critically and become knowledgeable, productive, and empathetic individuals. This shortsighted focus on profitable skills has eroded our ability to criticize authority, reduced our sympathy with the marginalized and different, and damaged our competence to deal with complex global problems. And the loss of these basic capacities jeopardizes the health of democracies and the hope of a decent world.
- luckylion 8y ago
  > People aren't dumb, but I think people have poor information literacy skills, which is linked to the decline in liberal arts education in favor of the emphasis on STEM education. Citation needed. Obviously, people from the humanities believe that they are very important and should be paid a lot to shepherd society, but that's not enough to convince me. Edit: Sorry, due to serial flagging thanks to this I can't reply. I don't care enough about this to retry later and get flagged again. Emotions apparently run too high if it concerns worldviews.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - minikites 8y ago
    Given your hostile opening, I'll start by asking what you think that evidence would look like and what you would find convincing.
  - pas 8y ago
    I don't consider myself from "the humanities", but the lack of applied rationality skills in the general population is dangerously severe. (Look at how populism spread by convincing people via the cheapest of rhetorical appeals to ego and arrogance.)
- themacguffinman 8y ago
  So not dumb-dumb, but dumb for all intents and purposes of making decisions in a democracy? What's the difference? At the core of your argument is the idea that people in a democracy aren't able to do their singular duty: make a reasonable choice based on available information, so they need to be coddled and only fed information that is "fair", "fair" as determined by liberal arts majors I guess. And if anti semitic arguments are so unfairly effective, why hasn't it won? All the major platforms have a lot of anti semitic speech that they haven't been able to filter out, and it's remarkably easy to find on the internet, so why hasn't it entranced the majority of non-liberal-arts majors? Why are the masses of average people calling for the removal of anti semitic content - an act built on a rejection of anti semitic ideas - instead of being enthralled by it?
  - claudiawerner 8y ago
    >so why hasn't it entranced the majority of non-liberal-arts majors? Perhaps a possible explanation is that such speech is already disallowed on many popular networks - Reddit, Twitter or Facebook, for instance. This leads to a secondary effect in which people who have never actually seen antisemitic arguments believe (rightly) that it's something they wouldn't have wanted to see anyway, so they are fine getting rid of it. That's not a great reason on their part, but we can't say that the way antisemitism proliferates has not itself met counter-balancing forces since Sartre wrote the the section GP quoted. In a similar way, antisemitism is very healthy on forums that do not block it; if you open any thread on 4chan's /pol/ board you'll find many instances of "unironic" antisemitic content, and even if you go to other boards like /g/ or /int/ you'll find plenty of "ironic" antisemitism. I'd be cautious of saying that antisemitism does not have the ability to grip people anywhere, though; a recent issue was the proliferation of antisemitic ideas on a popular meme subreddit[0] and the circulation of extremely popular antisemitic myths and propaganda[1] - the support shown for this conspiracy theory shown through posts and upvotes on those posts serves to show this is not as marginal of an opinion. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/virginvschad/comments/bb1es2/the_virgin_holocaust_vs_the_chad_kalergi_plan/ https://www.reddit.com/r/virginvschad/comments/bb1es2/the_vi... [1] This is a debunking of the conspiracy theory rather than the conspiracy theory itself since I don't want to drive people to the original video, though to view it you can check the description of the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o3pkoZyYRA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o3pkoZyYRA
- noego 8y ago
  > People aren't dumb, but I think people have poor information literacy skills. The lack of these skills leads to people being unable to distinguish between "sound argument" vs "intimidate and disconcert" I actually agree with you. I think that the best way to deal with the problem isn't to censor the marketplace of ideas, but to fix the political system https://outlookzen.com/2014/01/21/democracy-by-jury/ https://outlookzen.com/2014/01/21/democracy-by-jury/

by noego 8y ago

minikites 8y ago

People aren't dumb, but I think people have poor information literacy skills, which is linked to the decline in liberal arts education in favor of the emphasis on STEM education. The lack of these skills leads to people being unable to distinguish between "sound argument" vs "intimidate and disconcert" (again, not related to their intelligence, this is a developed skill). https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10858.html https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10858.html >We increasingly treat education as though its primary goal were to teach students to be economically productive rather than to think critically and become knowledgeable, productive, and empathetic individuals. This shortsighted focus on profitable skills has eroded our ability to criticize authority, reduced our sympathy with the marginalized and different, and damaged our competence to deal with complex global problems. And the loss of these basic capacities jeopardizes the health of democracies and the hope of a decent world.

luckylion 8y ago
> People aren't dumb, but I think people have poor information literacy skills, which is linked to the decline in liberal arts education in favor of the emphasis on STEM education. Citation needed. Obviously, people from the humanities believe that they are very important and should be paid a lot to shepherd society, but that's not enough to convince me. Edit: Sorry, due to serial flagging thanks to this I can't reply. I don't care enough about this to retry later and get flagged again. Emotions apparently run too high if it concerns worldviews.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- minikites 8y ago
  Given your hostile opening, I'll start by asking what you think that evidence would look like and what you would find convincing.
- pas 8y ago
  I don't consider myself from "the humanities", but the lack of applied rationality skills in the general population is dangerously severe. (Look at how populism spread by convincing people via the cheapest of rhetorical appeals to ego and arrogance.)
themacguffinman 8y ago
So not dumb-dumb, but dumb for all intents and purposes of making decisions in a democracy? What's the difference? At the core of your argument is the idea that people in a democracy aren't able to do their singular duty: make a reasonable choice based on available information, so they need to be coddled and only fed information that is "fair", "fair" as determined by liberal arts majors I guess. And if anti semitic arguments are so unfairly effective, why hasn't it won? All the major platforms have a lot of anti semitic speech that they haven't been able to filter out, and it's remarkably easy to find on the internet, so why hasn't it entranced the majority of non-liberal-arts majors? Why are the masses of average people calling for the removal of anti semitic content - an act built on a rejection of anti semitic ideas - instead of being enthralled by it?
- claudiawerner 8y ago
  >so why hasn't it entranced the majority of non-liberal-arts majors? Perhaps a possible explanation is that such speech is already disallowed on many popular networks - Reddit, Twitter or Facebook, for instance. This leads to a secondary effect in which people who have never actually seen antisemitic arguments believe (rightly) that it's something they wouldn't have wanted to see anyway, so they are fine getting rid of it. That's not a great reason on their part, but we can't say that the way antisemitism proliferates has not itself met counter-balancing forces since Sartre wrote the the section GP quoted. In a similar way, antisemitism is very healthy on forums that do not block it; if you open any thread on 4chan's /pol/ board you'll find many instances of "unironic" antisemitic content, and even if you go to other boards like /g/ or /int/ you'll find plenty of "ironic" antisemitism. I'd be cautious of saying that antisemitism does not have the ability to grip people anywhere, though; a recent issue was the proliferation of antisemitic ideas on a popular meme subreddit[0] and the circulation of extremely popular antisemitic myths and propaganda[1] - the support shown for this conspiracy theory shown through posts and upvotes on those posts serves to show this is not as marginal of an opinion. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/virginvschad/comments/bb1es2/the_virgin_holocaust_vs_the_chad_kalergi_plan/ https://www.reddit.com/r/virginvschad/comments/bb1es2/the_vi... [1] This is a debunking of the conspiracy theory rather than the conspiracy theory itself since I don't want to drive people to the original video, though to view it you can check the description of the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o3pkoZyYRA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o3pkoZyYRA
noego 8y ago
> People aren't dumb, but I think people have poor information literacy skills. The lack of these skills leads to people being unable to distinguish between "sound argument" vs "intimidate and disconcert" I actually agree with you. I think that the best way to deal with the problem isn't to censor the marketplace of ideas, but to fix the political system https://outlookzen.com/2014/01/21/democracy-by-jury/ https://outlookzen.com/2014/01/21/democracy-by-jury/