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While it's obvious that some information is numerically greater than no information, it's not obvious that a censored flow of information makes anyone's life be
by ff317 7y ago
While it's obvious that some information is numerically greater than no information, it's not obvious that a censored flow of information makes anyone's life better than the alternatives.
When the information flow is all-or-nothing (either you get the full uncensored fire-hose, or you get nothing and whole sites/services are blocked due to censorship), the citizen at least knows they're being censored, and then the ball is in the citizens' court as to whether they want to advocate for a reform of that censorship.
When censorship is selective (e.g. "You can read all of Wikipedia, except for whichever articles the government doesn't currently like this week/year"), citizens are mostly going to be unaware of what they're missing and how selective their worldview might actually be. This is very insidious, stealthy, and difficult for a citizenry to be aware of and politically revolt against, especially given there will commonly be no transparency or oversight as to the banned-topic list at any given moment.
Personally, one of my stronger meta-values is that any state which stands on the side of forcibly hiding information from its citizens is on the wrong side of history and ethics. If you can only defend your government to its citizens by lying to them, there's clearly something wrong with what you're doing.
- virtuous_signal 7y agoThis is a superb argument. Thank you.
- billfruit 7y agoBut such actions may end up punishing/restricting the individual citizens than the particular states. Also I don't think that posturing that may lead up to another Cold War is good for the world. Perhaps there can be greater understanding between peoples through a process of engagement, rather than standing-off. There is a famous commencement speech by Solzentzyn at Harvard, that laments why the West, esp Americans haven't shown understanding of other cultures, and seem to think and act from a position of moral superiority, whose basis is not so sound as they think.
- PureParadigm 7y agoThere is an important distinction between Chinese culture and the policies of its unelected government. Since they are unelected, the policies of the CCP don't always represent the will of the people or Chinese culture. When a government is unelected, it needs to show its legitimacy through strength. This means censoring anything that would make it look weak. Censorship is simply a political tool by the CCP, not a cultural practice that deserves respect. In fact, you could argue that political censorship is the actual enemy of Chinese culture. Historically, China has had a rich history of political theory and thought, but now any views that go against the party line are repressed.
- frenchyatwork 7y agoStates are generally set up in such a way that it's very difficult/impossible to harm the authorities without also also harming a lot of other people. Personally, I think Google is in an awkward position here. The Wikipedia can take a solid and principled stance because it has clear and transparent policy on what it censors (basically anything original, not NPOV, and not of general interest). The Wikipedia can do this, because it's edited by humans, and while humans are pretty bad at agreeing at these things, they're way better at it than computers. Basically, Google wants to filter its results, but if it doesn't let the Chinese government control the filter in China, it runs the risk of appearing to be western propaganda.
- Aperocky 7y ago> the citizen at least knows they're being censored Since your argument revolve around this, do you know if this is correct? As in, people in China does not know they're being censored?
- rhoyerboat 7y agoif a citizen speaks about censorship in a society that censors speech, can anyone confirm that they make a sound?