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Who arbitrates? Is it whoever owns big corporations? Is it the mainstream media? Are they trustworthy? Is it the government? Scientists? Which one of us h

Who arbitrates? Is it whoever owns big corporations? Is it the mainstream media? Are they trustworthy? Is it the government? Scientists? Which one of us holds the truth? One man's facts are another man's lies. And this is fine. We should be able to tolerate multiple opinions. Labelling things as 'hate speech' and denying people the right to speech doesn't help! I think C S Lewis said it best: "those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"

vdnkh 6y ago
> One man's facts are another man's lies This is pretty absurd. We should be fighting disinformation instead of legitimizing it. Not all “facts” are based in a healthy reality. See: 2020 election “fraud”
- throwaway201103 6y ago
  See also: 2016 Russian collusion.
  - pavlov 6y ago
    The Mueller investigation indicted 34 people.
    - nextaccountic 6y ago
      So, it's prosecutors that decide what is true? What if they are wrong? (I'm not talking about this particular case)
      - wwweston 6y ago
        I have an idea, we can convene special committees where both prosecutors and defendants are given a structured format in which they can present all the evidence for guilt/innocence and counterevidence and arguments. We'll have separate professionals in charge of making sure the structure/rules of the committee are followed so that it's fair, and of course we'll have advocates well-versed in these rules on both sides, but maybe we'll also have a panel of everyday people representing, well, everyone, so that decisions like this remain a public matter as well as professional opinion. Think of it as something like the royal courts for important decisions of old. In fact, that might be a good name for it: court.
        smsm42 6y ago
        Except courts do not determine truth. They determine legal guilt or innocence. They are actually designed this way - everybody can know somebody murdered somebody else, but if the court procedure is not followed and proof is not presented in a certain manner to achieve certain legal outcome - no prosecution. Moreover, there are special rules when known true evidence can be dismissed for not following the rules. OTOH, there are plenty of factually untrue court decisions - people have been incarcerated and even executed for crimes they factually did not commit. Check out Project Innocence, for example. If you want to find truth, courts are not the best place to look for it.
        wwweston 6y ago
        > Except courts do not determine truth Courts definitely rule on matters of fact. Or truth. The fact that they also have a responsibility to apply the law once matters of fact are established doesn't exclude the fact-related portion of their focus and responsibility. Where known true evidence is dismissed, it's usually to protect defendants against violations of due process or other important rights. If your point is that courts have limits in their ability to bring truth to light and apply it... sure. Every human being and every institution has such limits. If your point is that courts have failed catastrophically in some cases and improvement in how they're conducted or how prosecutiorial incentives are placed or examining other aspects of the system would be worthwhile, I heartily agree. But if your point is that courts are useless when it comes to arbitration of the truth, then you're not on any particular road to truth. Social arbitration of truth is necessary for society. There have to be some institutions trying to do that work, whatever shortcomings they have. Courts are one particular model for such institutions. There may be others but most institutions are going to converge on similar functions (though potentially distributed across different roles with different incentives).
        smsm42 6y ago
        They do rule on factual matters. But it has nothing to do with the truth (well, we hope it has something to do, but there's no guarantee whatsoever), it's just legal action. They can rule sun rises on the west, but it won't change the movement of the sun. They can rule somebody is a murderer, but whether it's the truth or not is not determined by that ruling. It could be either. The legal consequences are determined by the court ruling, but the actual murder doesn't change. We hope that in most cases the ruling coincides or at least resembles the truth, but we know for a fact (and this is the truth) that is it not always so. > Every human being and every institution has such limits That's exactly the point. So we shouldn't act like these limited institutions suddenly gained magic capacities because we conducted some complicated procedures involving some highly paid people. > But if your point is that courts are useless when it comes to arbitration of the truth No, they are not useless. They just aren't the truth, they are implementation of a flawed process that hopefully leads us closer to the truth than any of the other the alternatives we could find. It's not binary - it's either whole truth or useless. > There may be others but most institutions are going to converge on similar functions There are other models. I wouldn't claim they are better or worse, but they exist. I would recommend checking out: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30066446-legal-systems-very-different-from-ours https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30066446-legal-systems-v... Are any of those better than what we have? Who knows. Maybe we had the luck of finding the best one. Maybe in 200 years history enthusiasts would be laughing at us idiots subjecting themselves to such obviously flawed and useless system.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - jessedhillon 6y ago
      And yet no indictments for anything resembling collusion, i.e. coordination between the Trump campaign and foreign actors. The fact is that liberals and the media subjected us all to 2+ years of peepants reporting, telling us that all of the shoes would be dropping any day now, chasing a fever dream of a grand conspiracy with Russia. And it was all total horseshit, despite the fact that the NYT, Wapo, MSNBC, CNN et al filled volumes with reporting on the subject. These are the loudest voices in the country, they're supposed to use facts to buoy the public and keep us moored to reality, and instead showed themselves to be the most detached. If you can't even acknowledge this basic state of affairs, then we're not even talking about the same universes and there's no conversation to be had about the factual accuracy of the media.
      - bleepblorp 6y ago
        This is inaccurate. Go read the report, or at the very least read the Wikipedia summary. The conclusion was that a conspiracy between Trumpworld and the Russian government could not be proved because the potential suspects on the US side hid, or destroyed, evidence and lied to investigators. What were these people covering up -- at considerable risk to themselves for prosecution -- if there was nothing to hide? Disinformation is dangerous because too many overly credulous people are all to willing to believe in alternative facts even if contradictory primary source materials are available.
        generalizations 6y ago
        The talk page for that wikipedia summary is also entertaining.
        jessedhillon 6y ago
        If and whether anyone impeded the investigation is beyond the point -- there is nothing in the Mueller report about, - money laundering through Deutsche Bank - quid pro quo for a Moscow tower development - secret mail servers - Trump as a "Russian agent" - incriminating piss tapes And many other topics which don't immediately come to mind but can be easily googled. For two years, these are the stories we were all told were just about to drop. If for those years, the claim had been "Trump and Russians may have worked together to take out Facebook ads, push bogus articles through troll accounts on Twitter, and phish Clinton aides" nobody would have given a shit. Yet even this set of underwhelming claims probably exceeds all that the Mueller investigation suggests could allege to have taken place at maximum.
    - smsm42 6y ago
      Excellent example of the dangers of "fact checking", where highly partisan talking point about "collusion", supported by a highly partisan, highly groupthink-selected source is presented as "fact". And supported by another statement which is a fact, but doesn't equal to the original one. Now it's your choice either to say "here you see fact-checkers confirmed/debunked it!" or spend infinite amount of time on fact-checking the fact-checkers, thus making the whole enterprise net negative.
- umvi 6y ago
  This comment has been hidden because it was fact checked and determined to be partially false. Reason: facts don't have to be based in a "healthy reality" to be true since perception of reality is subjective. Click [here] to see original comment.
- mythrwy 6y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH9ihoLi1NA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH9ihoLi1NA This looks pretty factual to me. It's fraud of some kind.
electrondood 6y ago
Facts aren't lies, and facts are definitely not opinions. Hate speech absolutely exists. Rights end when they infringe on the rights of others.
- perched_robin 6y ago
  Islam is right about women.
- smsm42 6y ago
  Hate speech definitely exists. A lot of people, regrettably, hate other people for a variety of reasons, and speak about it. But there's no "right" to be loved, so neither speaking nor hating violates any rights.
- PeterisP 6y ago
  You can easily do hate speech without telling any lies, just presenting [a specific subset of] verifiably true facts.
pavlov 6y ago
Why not jump off a bridge? After all, Newton's theory of gravitation is just a theory, and besides Einstein proved it's incomplete. The elite still pretends their disproven theory is truth because they want to control your life. Show the power of positive thinking and faith, make the leap! But seriously, equating fact-checking with torment is probably not what C. S. Lewis had in mind. It has historically been the case that when opinions and ideology replace facts, it opens the door to tormentors who won't hesitate to hurt you to impose their version of reality.
- feralimal 6y ago
  Here is the full quote. I think its even better: "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals."
  - pavlov 6y ago
    Is fact-checking tyranny? No.
    - sneak 6y ago
      People who wish it to be difficult for millions or billions to read anything they deem "false" is accurately described as "a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims".
    - smsm42 6y ago
      If the only information allowed is the one approved by designated "fact checkers" (the ideal most major social networks strive for, and most fact-checking enthusiasts would wholeheartedly approve) - it is the most complete example of tyranny (at least in the information space) possible. Of course, if fact checking merely exists as a set of opinions - it doesn't become tyrannical by itself. It's just an opinion of somebody on the question of what the facts are. But we all know it's not how it works. At least not how it works on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.
geofft 6y ago
And this is why we are tormented with free-speech absolutists - their conscience says they're doing a good thing for the world.
- smsm42 6y ago
  If others' freedoms are a torment to you, it is a really sorry existence.
  - geofft 6y ago
    Defining things as "other's freedoms" is begging the question. We generally recognize, for instance, that no one has the "freedom" to drive cars as fast as they like or fire bullets in public. Not many people think they have the "freedom" to knowingly tell lies about me or to reprint my copyrighted works. My existence is quite sorry, sure, but it would be improved if my ideological opponents could make arguments with substance.
    - smsm42 6y ago
      > fire bullets in public You can fire bullets, provided you can guarantee you wouldn't hit anyone or destroy any property. Usually this is achieved by either doing it on a range or in an open space far from other people and their property. Same for driving - if you're driving in a desert where you can't hit anyone, you can drive as fast as you'd like. If you're on a road surrounded by other people who you could maim or kill, and/or destroy their property - that's another business. It's not because I feel "offended" by you driving too fast - it's because you literally could kill me if you drive too fast. I haven't heard of anybody killed by a facebook post that expressed opinion they didn't agree with. That's why this is not your right to not see such opinions. > but it would be improved if my ideological opponents could make arguments with substance. Maybe it would, but nobody owes you to improve your existence. The system where certain people were forced to improve other people's existence, whether they liked it or not, existed once in the US. It was called "slavery". After a while, people wised up and realized this system sucks. At least most of the people did. Since then, you owe everybody not to make their existence worse by violating their rights, but they do not owe you to make your existence better - not until you convince them to do it by offering them something in exchange, like money or hugs or whatever you agree upon. It sucks, I know, but better than the alternative.

vdnkh 6y ago

> One man's facts are another man's lies This is pretty absurd. We should be fighting disinformation instead of legitimizing it. Not all “facts” are based in a healthy reality. See: 2020 election “fraud”

throwaway201103 6y ago
See also: 2016 Russian collusion.
- pavlov 6y ago
  The Mueller investigation indicted 34 people.
  - nextaccountic 6y ago
    So, it's prosecutors that decide what is true? What if they are wrong? (I'm not talking about this particular case)
    - wwweston 6y ago
      I have an idea, we can convene special committees where both prosecutors and defendants are given a structured format in which they can present all the evidence for guilt/innocence and counterevidence and arguments. We'll have separate professionals in charge of making sure the structure/rules of the committee are followed so that it's fair, and of course we'll have advocates well-versed in these rules on both sides, but maybe we'll also have a panel of everyday people representing, well, everyone, so that decisions like this remain a public matter as well as professional opinion. Think of it as something like the royal courts for important decisions of old. In fact, that might be a good name for it: court.
      - smsm42 6y ago
        Except courts do not determine truth. They determine legal guilt or innocence. They are actually designed this way - everybody can know somebody murdered somebody else, but if the court procedure is not followed and proof is not presented in a certain manner to achieve certain legal outcome - no prosecution. Moreover, there are special rules when known true evidence can be dismissed for not following the rules. OTOH, there are plenty of factually untrue court decisions - people have been incarcerated and even executed for crimes they factually did not commit. Check out Project Innocence, for example. If you want to find truth, courts are not the best place to look for it.
        wwweston 6y ago
        > Except courts do not determine truth Courts definitely rule on matters of fact. Or truth. The fact that they also have a responsibility to apply the law once matters of fact are established doesn't exclude the fact-related portion of their focus and responsibility. Where known true evidence is dismissed, it's usually to protect defendants against violations of due process or other important rights. If your point is that courts have limits in their ability to bring truth to light and apply it... sure. Every human being and every institution has such limits. If your point is that courts have failed catastrophically in some cases and improvement in how they're conducted or how prosecutiorial incentives are placed or examining other aspects of the system would be worthwhile, I heartily agree. But if your point is that courts are useless when it comes to arbitration of the truth, then you're not on any particular road to truth. Social arbitration of truth is necessary for society. There have to be some institutions trying to do that work, whatever shortcomings they have. Courts are one particular model for such institutions. There may be others but most institutions are going to converge on similar functions (though potentially distributed across different roles with different incentives).
        smsm42 6y ago
        They do rule on factual matters. But it has nothing to do with the truth (well, we hope it has something to do, but there's no guarantee whatsoever), it's just legal action. They can rule sun rises on the west, but it won't change the movement of the sun. They can rule somebody is a murderer, but whether it's the truth or not is not determined by that ruling. It could be either. The legal consequences are determined by the court ruling, but the actual murder doesn't change. We hope that in most cases the ruling coincides or at least resembles the truth, but we know for a fact (and this is the truth) that is it not always so. > Every human being and every institution has such limits That's exactly the point. So we shouldn't act like these limited institutions suddenly gained magic capacities because we conducted some complicated procedures involving some highly paid people. > But if your point is that courts are useless when it comes to arbitration of the truth No, they are not useless. They just aren't the truth, they are implementation of a flawed process that hopefully leads us closer to the truth than any of the other the alternatives we could find. It's not binary - it's either whole truth or useless. > There may be others but most institutions are going to converge on similar functions There are other models. I wouldn't claim they are better or worse, but they exist. I would recommend checking out: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30066446-legal-systems-very-different-from-ours https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30066446-legal-systems-v... Are any of those better than what we have? Who knows. Maybe we had the luck of finding the best one. Maybe in 200 years history enthusiasts would be laughing at us idiots subjecting themselves to such obviously flawed and useless system.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - jessedhillon 6y ago
    And yet no indictments for anything resembling collusion, i.e. coordination between the Trump campaign and foreign actors. The fact is that liberals and the media subjected us all to 2+ years of peepants reporting, telling us that all of the shoes would be dropping any day now, chasing a fever dream of a grand conspiracy with Russia. And it was all total horseshit, despite the fact that the NYT, Wapo, MSNBC, CNN et al filled volumes with reporting on the subject. These are the loudest voices in the country, they're supposed to use facts to buoy the public and keep us moored to reality, and instead showed themselves to be the most detached. If you can't even acknowledge this basic state of affairs, then we're not even talking about the same universes and there's no conversation to be had about the factual accuracy of the media.
    - bleepblorp 6y ago
      This is inaccurate. Go read the report, or at the very least read the Wikipedia summary. The conclusion was that a conspiracy between Trumpworld and the Russian government could not be proved because the potential suspects on the US side hid, or destroyed, evidence and lied to investigators. What were these people covering up -- at considerable risk to themselves for prosecution -- if there was nothing to hide? Disinformation is dangerous because too many overly credulous people are all to willing to believe in alternative facts even if contradictory primary source materials are available.
      - generalizations 6y ago
        The talk page for that wikipedia summary is also entertaining.
      - jessedhillon 6y ago
        If and whether anyone impeded the investigation is beyond the point -- there is nothing in the Mueller report about, - money laundering through Deutsche Bank - quid pro quo for a Moscow tower development - secret mail servers - Trump as a "Russian agent" - incriminating piss tapes And many other topics which don't immediately come to mind but can be easily googled. For two years, these are the stories we were all told were just about to drop. If for those years, the claim had been "Trump and Russians may have worked together to take out Facebook ads, push bogus articles through troll accounts on Twitter, and phish Clinton aides" nobody would have given a shit. Yet even this set of underwhelming claims probably exceeds all that the Mueller investigation suggests could allege to have taken place at maximum.
  - smsm42 6y ago
    Excellent example of the dangers of "fact checking", where highly partisan talking point about "collusion", supported by a highly partisan, highly groupthink-selected source is presented as "fact". And supported by another statement which is a fact, but doesn't equal to the original one. Now it's your choice either to say "here you see fact-checkers confirmed/debunked it!" or spend infinite amount of time on fact-checking the fact-checkers, thus making the whole enterprise net negative.
umvi 6y ago
This comment has been hidden because it was fact checked and determined to be partially false. Reason: facts don't have to be based in a "healthy reality" to be true since perception of reality is subjective. Click [here] to see original comment.
mythrwy 6y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH9ihoLi1NA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH9ihoLi1NA This looks pretty factual to me. It's fraud of some kind.

electrondood 6y ago

Facts aren't lies, and facts are definitely not opinions. Hate speech absolutely exists. Rights end when they infringe on the rights of others.

perched_robin 6y ago
Islam is right about women.
smsm42 6y ago
Hate speech definitely exists. A lot of people, regrettably, hate other people for a variety of reasons, and speak about it. But there's no "right" to be loved, so neither speaking nor hating violates any rights.
PeterisP 6y ago
You can easily do hate speech without telling any lies, just presenting [a specific subset of] verifiably true facts.

pavlov 6y ago

Why not jump off a bridge? After all, Newton's theory of gravitation is just a theory, and besides Einstein proved it's incomplete. The elite still pretends their disproven theory is truth because they want to control your life. Show the power of positive thinking and faith, make the leap! But seriously, equating fact-checking with torment is probably not what C. S. Lewis had in mind. It has historically been the case that when opinions and ideology replace facts, it opens the door to tormentors who won't hesitate to hurt you to impose their version of reality.

feralimal 6y ago
Here is the full quote. I think its even better: "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals."
- pavlov 6y ago
  Is fact-checking tyranny? No.
  - sneak 6y ago
    People who wish it to be difficult for millions or billions to read anything they deem "false" is accurately described as "a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims".
  - smsm42 6y ago
    If the only information allowed is the one approved by designated "fact checkers" (the ideal most major social networks strive for, and most fact-checking enthusiasts would wholeheartedly approve) - it is the most complete example of tyranny (at least in the information space) possible. Of course, if fact checking merely exists as a set of opinions - it doesn't become tyrannical by itself. It's just an opinion of somebody on the question of what the facts are. But we all know it's not how it works. At least not how it works on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.

geofft 6y ago

And this is why we are tormented with free-speech absolutists - their conscience says they're doing a good thing for the world.

smsm42 6y ago
If others' freedoms are a torment to you, it is a really sorry existence.
- geofft 6y ago
  Defining things as "other's freedoms" is begging the question. We generally recognize, for instance, that no one has the "freedom" to drive cars as fast as they like or fire bullets in public. Not many people think they have the "freedom" to knowingly tell lies about me or to reprint my copyrighted works. My existence is quite sorry, sure, but it would be improved if my ideological opponents could make arguments with substance.
  - smsm42 6y ago
    > fire bullets in public You can fire bullets, provided you can guarantee you wouldn't hit anyone or destroy any property. Usually this is achieved by either doing it on a range or in an open space far from other people and their property. Same for driving - if you're driving in a desert where you can't hit anyone, you can drive as fast as you'd like. If you're on a road surrounded by other people who you could maim or kill, and/or destroy their property - that's another business. It's not because I feel "offended" by you driving too fast - it's because you literally could kill me if you drive too fast. I haven't heard of anybody killed by a facebook post that expressed opinion they didn't agree with. That's why this is not your right to not see such opinions. > but it would be improved if my ideological opponents could make arguments with substance. Maybe it would, but nobody owes you to improve your existence. The system where certain people were forced to improve other people's existence, whether they liked it or not, existed once in the US. It was called "slavery". After a while, people wised up and realized this system sucks. At least most of the people did. Since then, you owe everybody not to make their existence worse by violating their rights, but they do not owe you to make your existence better - not until you convince them to do it by offering them something in exchange, like money or hugs or whatever you agree upon. It sucks, I know, but better than the alternative.