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The world is a better world when reasonable opinions are well-considered on all sides. Prager U's videos are not hate speech. They are reasonable opinions voic

The world is a better world when reasonable opinions are well-considered on all sides. Prager U's videos are not hate speech. They are reasonable opinions voiced in a calm manner. It is sad that YouTube chooses to de-promote Prager's content. But it is not illegal.

FireBeyond 7y ago
Do you consider it "sad" that Fox doesn't have 50% left leaning contributors, too? If not, why not?
- mech1234 7y ago
  Yes, it is sad that Fox doesn't have enough left-leaning commentators. Media producers have realized that consumers self-select into viewing distribution channels that appeal to their existing beliefs. It creates a feedback loop where media market segmentation by political affiliation drives people further apart. PragerU is a conservative entity that tried to penetrate a liberal bastion; I like it for that. I also like it when liberal entities try to penetrate conservative bastions. From my subjective survey of the media landscape, it seems that the left-leaning bastions currently dominate. To the extent that they push reasonable conservatives off of their channels, they encourage conservatives to bifurcate: either join them, or retreat to far-right positions.
  - FireBeyond 7y ago
    > PragerU is a conservative entity that tried to penetrate a liberal bastion > To the extent that they push reasonable conservatives off of their channels PragerU is classified as "extreme right" by media bias groups. And it scores "Low" (on a scale of Very Low to Very High) on Factual Reporting. I know reasonable conservatives exist. I'm not entirely sure that PragerU is a representation thereof.
- downerending 7y ago
  It would be extremely sad, if they dominated their market to the degree that YouTube does.
  - mrguyorama 7y ago
    Fox holds something like 60% market share for "news"
UncleMeat 7y ago
> They are reasonable opinions voiced in a calm manner. Many of their videos are wildly against academic consensus and also inflammatory. A classic is the claim that colonialism was actually great for colonized nations. You can absolutely voice inflammatory and bogus intellectual material in a "calm manner". That doesn't change that it is both wrong and inflammatory.
- mech1234 7y ago
  If you are referring to to the video "If you Live in Freedom, Thank the British Empire", it is factual regarding its objective claims but heavily spun in its subjective claims and in which material it chooses to cover and omit. It would be wrong to call it wrong- no history professor would claim that the historical events it discussed did not happen. Disagreement would only occur regarding how beneficial they were and whether important details were omitted. In the context of that particular video, the degree to which the value judgements disagree with academic consensus is mostly reflective of the ideological leanings of current history departments in comparison to PragerU. And to address the main thesis of the video- Western democratic freedom is almost certainly more widespread nowadays than it would have been without the presence of the British Empire (also assuming that France or similar colonial competitors didn't swoop in to fill the power vacuum). The way that the video seems tone-deaf is that it isn't sufficiently critical of Britain's moral failings. However, its central thesis is not incorrect.
  - UncleMeat 7y ago
    > It would be wrong to call it wrong- no history professor would claim that the historical events it discussed did not happen. My time to shine! I'm married to a history professor. All of the history faculty I know would call that video wrong. History is not the collection of facts but instead putting those facts into a narrative. If you make a narrative that is ill supported by evidence then you've done wrong history.
    - mech1234 7y ago
      What is the main thesis of the particular video? It is that the spread of the British Empire spread Western democratic norms. This particular facet is well-supported by the facts. I agree that it fails to be sufficiently critical of the British. However, it falls well within the Overton Window and any claim that this particular video is incendiary, or that it is sufficiently wrong that it should be discouraged for people to watch it, is absurd. To the degree that History departments want to tell a moral narrative, they need to be a lot more careful than a youtube channel, I agree. I remember my British History professor in college implied that any Republicans taking courses at a state-supported university are hypocrites, so I'm well-aware of the ideological leanings of the ivory tower. If it came down to it, I'd prefer a left-leaning history department to a right-leaning one, just for the fact that you can (typically) squeeze more nuanced narratives out of the (typically) increased moral relativism of the left. It's a pretty slight preference though, subject to the tradeoff that a bleeding-heart professor still has enough assertiveness to admit to moral failings across all sorts of different cultures. Regarding objective facts of a video- they remain true on the ground. Regarding the moral narrative- I see no reason to hold the rest of the world's commentariat to the same standard of preference as a history department. I would also remark that PragerU has the merit of making it's moral leanings obvious enough that you don't have to guess at their direction of bias, in contrast to other presenters who may be willfully disguising their revisionism. Perhaps it's easier to discern the truth when you give competitors on all sides of the moral landscape a fair fight.
Traster 7y ago
>The world is a better world when reasonable opinions are well-considered on all sides. Absolutely, that's categorically not what PragerU does. But if it did, that would be relevant. > They are reasonable opinions voiced in a calm manner. Actually no, quite a lot of them are entirely unreasonable opinions voiced in a calm manner. Go and search for PragerU's presentation of evolution for example - their criticism amounts to "Scientists are unsure whether the speed of light is 3x108 or 3.015x108 so clearly there's no speed of light". And "Well maybe micro-evolution but 'many' scientists doubt macro evolution". It's not reasonable, it's deliberate mis-representation of the scientific material to serve a religious agenda.
- mech1234 7y ago
  I agree that the video "Evolution: Bacteria to Beethoven" is misleading and serves a religious agenda. The video accepts natural selection, and references real research data, which is nice, but it asks too much of science. The implicit claim is "until all biological mechanisms underlying evolution are fully explained, you should remain skeptical of the theory of evolution." An obvious likely audience interpretation of the video could be, "this calm, smart, and reasonable-sounding man is telling me that it is fine to be skeptical of evolution. I'll keep on believing in creationism." However, this amount of misdirection is reasonable, is fairly typical among political organizations, and does not reflect an incendiary or particularly damaging viewpoint. If the corpus of PragerU videos can pass this bar, then there is no reason to de-rank them in YouTube.

FireBeyond 7y ago

Do you consider it "sad" that Fox doesn't have 50% left leaning contributors, too? If not, why not?

mech1234 7y ago
Yes, it is sad that Fox doesn't have enough left-leaning commentators. Media producers have realized that consumers self-select into viewing distribution channels that appeal to their existing beliefs. It creates a feedback loop where media market segmentation by political affiliation drives people further apart. PragerU is a conservative entity that tried to penetrate a liberal bastion; I like it for that. I also like it when liberal entities try to penetrate conservative bastions. From my subjective survey of the media landscape, it seems that the left-leaning bastions currently dominate. To the extent that they push reasonable conservatives off of their channels, they encourage conservatives to bifurcate: either join them, or retreat to far-right positions.
- FireBeyond 7y ago
  > PragerU is a conservative entity that tried to penetrate a liberal bastion > To the extent that they push reasonable conservatives off of their channels PragerU is classified as "extreme right" by media bias groups. And it scores "Low" (on a scale of Very Low to Very High) on Factual Reporting. I know reasonable conservatives exist. I'm not entirely sure that PragerU is a representation thereof.
downerending 7y ago
It would be extremely sad, if they dominated their market to the degree that YouTube does.
- mrguyorama 7y ago
  Fox holds something like 60% market share for "news"

UncleMeat 7y ago

> They are reasonable opinions voiced in a calm manner. Many of their videos are wildly against academic consensus and also inflammatory. A classic is the claim that colonialism was actually great for colonized nations. You can absolutely voice inflammatory and bogus intellectual material in a "calm manner". That doesn't change that it is both wrong and inflammatory.

mech1234 7y ago
If you are referring to to the video "If you Live in Freedom, Thank the British Empire", it is factual regarding its objective claims but heavily spun in its subjective claims and in which material it chooses to cover and omit. It would be wrong to call it wrong- no history professor would claim that the historical events it discussed did not happen. Disagreement would only occur regarding how beneficial they were and whether important details were omitted. In the context of that particular video, the degree to which the value judgements disagree with academic consensus is mostly reflective of the ideological leanings of current history departments in comparison to PragerU. And to address the main thesis of the video- Western democratic freedom is almost certainly more widespread nowadays than it would have been without the presence of the British Empire (also assuming that France or similar colonial competitors didn't swoop in to fill the power vacuum). The way that the video seems tone-deaf is that it isn't sufficiently critical of Britain's moral failings. However, its central thesis is not incorrect.
- UncleMeat 7y ago
  > It would be wrong to call it wrong- no history professor would claim that the historical events it discussed did not happen. My time to shine! I'm married to a history professor. All of the history faculty I know would call that video wrong. History is not the collection of facts but instead putting those facts into a narrative. If you make a narrative that is ill supported by evidence then you've done wrong history.
  - mech1234 7y ago
    What is the main thesis of the particular video? It is that the spread of the British Empire spread Western democratic norms. This particular facet is well-supported by the facts. I agree that it fails to be sufficiently critical of the British. However, it falls well within the Overton Window and any claim that this particular video is incendiary, or that it is sufficiently wrong that it should be discouraged for people to watch it, is absurd. To the degree that History departments want to tell a moral narrative, they need to be a lot more careful than a youtube channel, I agree. I remember my British History professor in college implied that any Republicans taking courses at a state-supported university are hypocrites, so I'm well-aware of the ideological leanings of the ivory tower. If it came down to it, I'd prefer a left-leaning history department to a right-leaning one, just for the fact that you can (typically) squeeze more nuanced narratives out of the (typically) increased moral relativism of the left. It's a pretty slight preference though, subject to the tradeoff that a bleeding-heart professor still has enough assertiveness to admit to moral failings across all sorts of different cultures. Regarding objective facts of a video- they remain true on the ground. Regarding the moral narrative- I see no reason to hold the rest of the world's commentariat to the same standard of preference as a history department. I would also remark that PragerU has the merit of making it's moral leanings obvious enough that you don't have to guess at their direction of bias, in contrast to other presenters who may be willfully disguising their revisionism. Perhaps it's easier to discern the truth when you give competitors on all sides of the moral landscape a fair fight.

Traster 7y ago

>The world is a better world when reasonable opinions are well-considered on all sides. Absolutely, that's categorically not what PragerU does. But if it did, that would be relevant. > They are reasonable opinions voiced in a calm manner. Actually no, quite a lot of them are entirely unreasonable opinions voiced in a calm manner. Go and search for PragerU's presentation of evolution for example - their criticism amounts to "Scientists are unsure whether the speed of light is 3x108 or 3.015x108 so clearly there's no speed of light". And "Well maybe micro-evolution but 'many' scientists doubt macro evolution". It's not reasonable, it's deliberate mis-representation of the scientific material to serve a religious agenda.

mech1234 7y ago
I agree that the video "Evolution: Bacteria to Beethoven" is misleading and serves a religious agenda. The video accepts natural selection, and references real research data, which is nice, but it asks too much of science. The implicit claim is "until all biological mechanisms underlying evolution are fully explained, you should remain skeptical of the theory of evolution." An obvious likely audience interpretation of the video could be, "this calm, smart, and reasonable-sounding man is telling me that it is fine to be skeptical of evolution. I'll keep on believing in creationism." However, this amount of misdirection is reasonable, is fairly typical among political organizations, and does not reflect an incendiary or particularly damaging viewpoint. If the corpus of PragerU videos can pass this bar, then there is no reason to de-rank them in YouTube.