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This is the exact type of escalation that is not helpful. This caricatures the argument that institutions are not perfect. In the beginning, the WHO said the vi

This is the exact type of escalation that is not helpful. This caricatures the argument that institutions are not perfect. In the beginning, the WHO said the virus could not be spread between people. And YouTube & friends are actively censoring to imperfect sources (since all sources are ultimately imperfect).

joshuamorton 6y ago
No, because the argument that "institutions are not perfect" is a strawman that distracts from the actual question which is "is anything David Icke says anything remotely approaching the truth?" and the answer is undeniably no. Arguing about a slippery slope that the institutions might not be perfect either doesn't matter. Icke isn't trying to be correct. He's either literally mentally unwell (I've read that he has schizophrenia) or he's intentionally being provocative, or both. This isn't even a case of YT removing someone who is acting in good faith. I've said it elsewhere and I'll repeat it here: the idea that institutions can be mistaken does not mean that we should remove things that are just clearly completely and totally false (and damaging). It's the difference between the idea that a large portion (say, 10-20%) of the population is infected with covid with no symptoms, which is also almost certainly wrong, but there's at least some level of evidence for. Almost all of that evidence is flawed, but like, you can cite real academic papers from people. And the idea that 5g causes covid, which doesn't even make enough sense to create a well founded argument to the contrary. It relies on the audience not understanding what a virus is (or wanting to suspend disbelief).
- Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
  > distracts from the actual question which is "is anything David Icke says anything remotely approaching the truth?" That's not the actual question we are discussing here. Whether he is correct or not does not change any premises of this post or discussion. We are discussing censorship and deplatforming.
  - joshuamorton 6y ago
    Not at all. The parent that I originally responded to stated > We have a myriad of evidence that societies that suppress the truth for "the public good" [end badly] To believe that that statement is relevant you must believe that "covid-19 is caused by 5G towers" is, or could be, the truth. Otherwise you have to defend the much stranger position, that societies which knowingly suppress information that everyone knows is false don't end well, which is silly, I know of no society that has ended badly due to its attempts to suppress things that everyone agreed were false. (and by this I mean factually false, not ethical concerns etc.) If you don't believe that, then you agree that by suppressing Icke, we aren't suppressing the truth, so there is no danger. If you do believe that, you are misinformed, and it's a good thing we're keeping disinformation away from you. Now, you might argue that I've constructed a catch-22, and you'd be correct if I thought that this was a generally applicable solution, but I don't. While not every piece of information is obviously untrue, some are. "Covid-19 is caused by 5g towers" is one such piece of information. It is also, apparently, dangerous when people believe it. There's lots of other opinions that I find distasteful or whatnot that I don't believe should be deplatformed because they are clearly false, that is reserved for things which are clearly false. There's no issue of censorship here, because on the off chance that Icke is right (which again there isn't), he could do a study and submit a paper to the relevant academic circles, and resolve the issue. In other words, society again, isn't suppressing truth, they're suppressing cranks. Which is reasonable. Cranks are bad and distract us from getting actual work done. Most of the time we can just ignore them, but every once in a while a crank gets ahold of an idea that is both wrong and, when believed by a small but fervent group, can be dangerous to everyone. In those cases, keeping the idea from catching on further is good. Again this applies only to things that are provable in nature, not things of the form "we should overthrow the bourgeoisie". So yes, the central point is that nothing Icke says is anything remotely approaching the truth. In other words, libeling a concept should be reasonable to deplatform, since libeling an individual certainly is.
erk__ 6y ago
Note that WHO never said that, it is correct that they in the middle of January said that the evidence they had at the current time then did not show transfer between people. But they never spoke about it as it was a fact.
cycomanic 6y ago
But this is the exact example of misinformation spreading easily. I assume you a a reasonable, rational and well informed individual like most on HN, but you still believe this bit of misinformation. The WHO never said that the virus could not spread from human to human, they said "there is no evidence for human to human spreading". That nuance makes a big difference in meaning, the absence of evidence for something is not evidence for the absence of something. But this nuance was lost in all of the misinformation spreading.

joshuamorton 6y ago

No, because the argument that "institutions are not perfect" is a strawman that distracts from the actual question which is "is anything David Icke says anything remotely approaching the truth?" and the answer is undeniably no. Arguing about a slippery slope that the institutions might not be perfect either doesn't matter. Icke isn't trying to be correct. He's either literally mentally unwell (I've read that he has schizophrenia) or he's intentionally being provocative, or both. This isn't even a case of YT removing someone who is acting in good faith. I've said it elsewhere and I'll repeat it here: the idea that institutions can be mistaken does not mean that we should remove things that are just clearly completely and totally false (and damaging). It's the difference between the idea that a large portion (say, 10-20%) of the population is infected with covid with no symptoms, which is also almost certainly wrong, but there's at least some level of evidence for. Almost all of that evidence is flawed, but like, you can cite real academic papers from people. And the idea that 5g causes covid, which doesn't even make enough sense to create a well founded argument to the contrary. It relies on the audience not understanding what a virus is (or wanting to suspend disbelief).

Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
> distracts from the actual question which is "is anything David Icke says anything remotely approaching the truth?" That's not the actual question we are discussing here. Whether he is correct or not does not change any premises of this post or discussion. We are discussing censorship and deplatforming.
- joshuamorton 6y ago
  Not at all. The parent that I originally responded to stated > We have a myriad of evidence that societies that suppress the truth for "the public good" [end badly] To believe that that statement is relevant you must believe that "covid-19 is caused by 5G towers" is, or could be, the truth. Otherwise you have to defend the much stranger position, that societies which knowingly suppress information that everyone knows is false don't end well, which is silly, I know of no society that has ended badly due to its attempts to suppress things that everyone agreed were false. (and by this I mean factually false, not ethical concerns etc.) If you don't believe that, then you agree that by suppressing Icke, we aren't suppressing the truth, so there is no danger. If you do believe that, you are misinformed, and it's a good thing we're keeping disinformation away from you. Now, you might argue that I've constructed a catch-22, and you'd be correct if I thought that this was a generally applicable solution, but I don't. While not every piece of information is obviously untrue, some are. "Covid-19 is caused by 5g towers" is one such piece of information. It is also, apparently, dangerous when people believe it. There's lots of other opinions that I find distasteful or whatnot that I don't believe should be deplatformed because they are clearly false, that is reserved for things which are clearly false. There's no issue of censorship here, because on the off chance that Icke is right (which again there isn't), he could do a study and submit a paper to the relevant academic circles, and resolve the issue. In other words, society again, isn't suppressing truth, they're suppressing cranks. Which is reasonable. Cranks are bad and distract us from getting actual work done. Most of the time we can just ignore them, but every once in a while a crank gets ahold of an idea that is both wrong and, when believed by a small but fervent group, can be dangerous to everyone. In those cases, keeping the idea from catching on further is good. Again this applies only to things that are provable in nature, not things of the form "we should overthrow the bourgeoisie". So yes, the central point is that nothing Icke says is anything remotely approaching the truth. In other words, libeling a concept should be reasonable to deplatform, since libeling an individual certainly is.

erk__ 6y ago

Note that WHO never said that, it is correct that they in the middle of January said that the evidence they had at the current time then did not show transfer between people. But they never spoke about it as it was a fact.

cycomanic 6y ago

But this is the exact example of misinformation spreading easily. I assume you a a reasonable, rational and well informed individual like most on HN, but you still believe this bit of misinformation. The WHO never said that the virus could not spread from human to human, they said "there is no evidence for human to human spreading". That nuance makes a big difference in meaning, the absence of evidence for something is not evidence for the absence of something. But this nuance was lost in all of the misinformation spreading.