3 ms·

Censorship still isn't the answer. If you don't like the way other people are thinking, you have to have a conversation with them and try to change their views

Censorship still isn't the answer. If you don't like the way other people are thinking, you have to have a conversation with them and try to change their views the hard way. Censorship may even protect people with views you find objectionable -- because that person is shielded from having disagreements with others.

DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
> If you don't like the way other people are thinking, you have to have a conversation with them and try to change their views the hard way. Again, that’s not how people work. “The marketplace of ideas” is an idealism, a mini-utopia. It does not account for known and unpatched vulnerabilities in human psychology - and a fix from the vendor is not expected any time soon.
- nostromo 6y ago
  It is how people work, as evidenced over and over again by a widening view of compassion for others. Just look at the past 20 years and the success of the gay rights movement. Views changed because of millions of one-on-one conversations between people who disagreed on gay marriage. No censorship was required for progress. In fact, censorship would have been counterproductive, as I believe it is here. It's no coincidence that the countries with the least free speech also tend to be the most regressive on civil rights and some of the worst places to be an ethnic minority.
  - grasshopperpurp 6y ago
    >It's no coincidence that the countries with the least free speech also tend to be the most regressive on civil rights and some of the worst places to be an ethnic minority. Feels like this is an attempt to simplify something complex. Most Western European countries have more restrictions on speech than the US, but many of them do a better job of upholding civil rights. Just today someone posted a thread about the broken bail system in the US - for example.
    - nostromo 6y ago
      It's not a perfect correlation, but even if you just look in Europe, the countries with more freedom of speech have more civil liberties. It's also worth noting that only half of the EU member states have legal gay marriage -- something that all Americans have access to.
  - heylook 6y ago
    Political change of this magnitude happens because different people are voting, not because the same person changed their mind. Literally it’s because the old people died before they could pass 100% of their bigotry to the next generation.
    - nostromo 6y ago
      This isn't true. Approval for gay marriage has gone up for all generations. It's now at 45% approval among people born before 1945, up from just 17% in 2003. https://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/changing-attitudes-on-gay-marriage/ https://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/changing-attitudes-on-ga...
      - whoisburbansky 6y ago
        Thanks for linking to the poll, I had no idea that that was what the distribution of support for same sex marriage across ages looked like. Fascinating that almost two thirds of Catholics and Protestants support same sex marriage, would never have guessed that. Even more surprising to me was that the trend line basically goes up over time no matter which way you slice and dice by demographic or religious affiliation or church attendance.
  - watwut 6y ago
    > Views changed because of millions of one-on-one conversations between people who disagreed on gay marriage. That is not actually how it happened.
    - whoisburbansky 6y ago
      What is your alternative hypothesis for how it happened?
      - watwut 6y ago
        There was actual activism and political organizing that took place. Conscious and thought out attempts to change laws and society generally. It was not "one-on-one conversations" and much less millions of them. To large extend, issue was legal and it took Supreme Court decision. Those are not won by personal conversations, those require legal strategy, selection of the right case, right Supreme Court composition (e.g. picking right time) and so on. The individual gay were not about to go out of closet unless it was safe to do or unless they had strong motivation to risk.
- filoleg 6y ago
  > Again, that’s not how people work. I agree with you that this is not exactly how people work, but I believe the parent comment was going in the right direction, they just went just a bit off the mark. To quote what they said. >> If you don't like the way other people are thinking, you have to have a conversation with them and try to change their views the hard way. So yes, while having a conversation with someone who is strongly holding onto some insane beliefs is unlikely to help that specific person, however, it definitely helps with steering other people (who observed that exchange and who are a bit more on the fence) in the right direction and away from those insane views. You don't even need to go far to find examples of that working, just look at HN. While the views here won't normally be as insane as an average "hot take" on FB, there were definitely some heated arguments (about higher-level fundamental ideas, not technical matters) that swayed my opinion one way or the other, despite those arguments clearly not really changing the minds of people actually involved in those arguments. Yes, this is just anecdata and not a peer-reviewed study, but I have a belief that this experience is not that uncommon at all.
glasss 6y ago
> If you don't like the way other people are thinking, you have to have a conversation with them and try to change their views the hard way. You and I have a right to not do anything with those people. But for the sake of discussion, I'm willing to do that with people where we disagree on reasonable things. I'm not willing to have a civil discourse with people that adamantly refuse to believe facts and think I'm a part of a larger conspiracy. Does that mean censorship of all of these people / ideas is the answer? I don't think so. But I know that if I ran a platform where people were discussing holocaust denial I would ban them. I'm willing to admit I might be a hypocrite on that front, but alas I am a human.
whoisburbansky 6y ago
How does this work with people who are dead set from the beginning to refuse to listen to what you have to say, and refuse to reason in good faith?

DaiPlusPlus 6y ago

> If you don't like the way other people are thinking, you have to have a conversation with them and try to change their views the hard way. Again, that’s not how people work. “The marketplace of ideas” is an idealism, a mini-utopia. It does not account for known and unpatched vulnerabilities in human psychology - and a fix from the vendor is not expected any time soon.

nostromo 6y ago
It is how people work, as evidenced over and over again by a widening view of compassion for others. Just look at the past 20 years and the success of the gay rights movement. Views changed because of millions of one-on-one conversations between people who disagreed on gay marriage. No censorship was required for progress. In fact, censorship would have been counterproductive, as I believe it is here. It's no coincidence that the countries with the least free speech also tend to be the most regressive on civil rights and some of the worst places to be an ethnic minority.
- grasshopperpurp 6y ago
  >It's no coincidence that the countries with the least free speech also tend to be the most regressive on civil rights and some of the worst places to be an ethnic minority. Feels like this is an attempt to simplify something complex. Most Western European countries have more restrictions on speech than the US, but many of them do a better job of upholding civil rights. Just today someone posted a thread about the broken bail system in the US - for example.
  - nostromo 6y ago
    It's not a perfect correlation, but even if you just look in Europe, the countries with more freedom of speech have more civil liberties. It's also worth noting that only half of the EU member states have legal gay marriage -- something that all Americans have access to.
- heylook 6y ago
  Political change of this magnitude happens because different people are voting, not because the same person changed their mind. Literally it’s because the old people died before they could pass 100% of their bigotry to the next generation.
  - nostromo 6y ago
    This isn't true. Approval for gay marriage has gone up for all generations. It's now at 45% approval among people born before 1945, up from just 17% in 2003. https://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/changing-attitudes-on-gay-marriage/ https://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/changing-attitudes-on-ga...
    - whoisburbansky 6y ago
      Thanks for linking to the poll, I had no idea that that was what the distribution of support for same sex marriage across ages looked like. Fascinating that almost two thirds of Catholics and Protestants support same sex marriage, would never have guessed that. Even more surprising to me was that the trend line basically goes up over time no matter which way you slice and dice by demographic or religious affiliation or church attendance.
- watwut 6y ago
  > Views changed because of millions of one-on-one conversations between people who disagreed on gay marriage. That is not actually how it happened.
  - whoisburbansky 6y ago
    What is your alternative hypothesis for how it happened?
    - watwut 6y ago
      There was actual activism and political organizing that took place. Conscious and thought out attempts to change laws and society generally. It was not "one-on-one conversations" and much less millions of them. To large extend, issue was legal and it took Supreme Court decision. Those are not won by personal conversations, those require legal strategy, selection of the right case, right Supreme Court composition (e.g. picking right time) and so on. The individual gay were not about to go out of closet unless it was safe to do or unless they had strong motivation to risk.
filoleg 6y ago
> Again, that’s not how people work. I agree with you that this is not exactly how people work, but I believe the parent comment was going in the right direction, they just went just a bit off the mark. To quote what they said. >> If you don't like the way other people are thinking, you have to have a conversation with them and try to change their views the hard way. So yes, while having a conversation with someone who is strongly holding onto some insane beliefs is unlikely to help that specific person, however, it definitely helps with steering other people (who observed that exchange and who are a bit more on the fence) in the right direction and away from those insane views. You don't even need to go far to find examples of that working, just look at HN. While the views here won't normally be as insane as an average "hot take" on FB, there were definitely some heated arguments (about higher-level fundamental ideas, not technical matters) that swayed my opinion one way or the other, despite those arguments clearly not really changing the minds of people actually involved in those arguments. Yes, this is just anecdata and not a peer-reviewed study, but I have a belief that this experience is not that uncommon at all.

glasss 6y ago

> If you don't like the way other people are thinking, you have to have a conversation with them and try to change their views the hard way. You and I have a right to not do anything with those people. But for the sake of discussion, I'm willing to do that with people where we disagree on reasonable things. I'm not willing to have a civil discourse with people that adamantly refuse to believe facts and think I'm a part of a larger conspiracy. Does that mean censorship of all of these people / ideas is the answer? I don't think so. But I know that if I ran a platform where people were discussing holocaust denial I would ban them. I'm willing to admit I might be a hypocrite on that front, but alas I am a human.

whoisburbansky 6y ago

How does this work with people who are dead set from the beginning to refuse to listen to what you have to say, and refuse to reason in good faith?