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You’re going to have to walk me through that line of reasoning. The chain of causation between yelling “fire!” in a crowded theater and someone getting trampled

You’re going to have to walk me through that line of reasoning. The chain of causation between yelling “fire!” in a crowded theater and someone getting trampled to death while attempting to flee doesn’t require any stretch of the imagination. You claim that YouTube videos with false information about the 2020 election have a “chilling” effect on democracy. What does that even mean? And how would you even begin to establish some concrete chain of causation between the videos and whatever it is you define as “chilling”? Do you see how hand-wavy your argument is?

Amezarak 6y ago
The argument is that we can’t talk about how we have an untrustable, unverifiable election system, because that would lead people to not trust the results. As long they don’t think about it, they can trust it. I press a button on a screen when I vote. I don’t know what the hell it is actually doing and it’s shocking to me the mainstream consensus is we can’t even talk about now horrifically broken American voting is compared to sane countries like France.
- Raphael_Amiard 6y ago
  > sane countries like France You might want to look at what's going on in France right now before calling our democratic institutions sane :)
- pfisch 6y ago
  In Georgia the machine prints out a paper ballot that you hand in. Yet somehow that is one of the states being accused of widespread fraud...? Only the swing states that Trump lost are being accused of fraud, but only in the presidential election. This is extremely disingenuous and lacks all credibility. Now the GOP seems to be arguing in court that there wasn't even fraud, but they just don't like the outcome and want to reverse the will of the voters in swing states based on weird technicalities. This entire thing is nonsense, and youtube should censor it because it is entirely just a scheme to subvert our democracy. That is extremely dangerous, more dangerous than yelling fire in a crowded theater.
  - samtheprogram 6y ago
    > Now the GOP seems to be arguing in court that there wasn't even fraud, but they just don't like the outcome and want to reverse the will of the voters in swing states based on weird technicalities. Interesting, do you have a source for this?
    - pfisch 6y ago
      The entire case that the supreme court just rejected for PA was about that. This isn't claiming fraud. This is trying to find a technicality to use to invalidate millions of legitimate votes. https://www.npr.org/2020/12/08/944230517/supreme-court-rejects-gop-bid-to-reverse-pennsylvania-election-results https://www.npr.org/2020/12/08/944230517/supreme-court-rejec...
  - Amezarak 6y ago
    > it is entirely just a scheme to subvert our democracy. If our democratic systems were transparent, verifiable, and understandable, it wouldn't be possible to 'subvert' our democracy in this way. The fact is that our democracy has already been 'subverted' whether or not any fraud occurred (and surely some did, just as it does in every election in American history; the only question is the scale - was it late 1800s scale or late 1900s scale - most people on HN would agree it was probably late 1900s scale, that is, minimal.) But the system is set up in such a way that we cannot actually prove anything. We just have to accept what we're told, because democracy. The election systems in each state have their own problems. In Georgia the problems are with the tabulation, with absentee ballots, with chain of custody. I am not saying fraud did occur. I am saying that because of the problems I just mentioned, it is impossible to prove if fraud occurred or not. And things should not be that way. At any rate, all you mean by 'subverting democracy' is 'decreasing faith in our institutions.' And I honestly don't know how anyone can look at the past few years and trust any of our institutions.
    - jkhdigital 6y ago
      > I honestly don't know how anyone can look at the past few years and trust any of our institutions. Right. The faith is already gone, which is why allegations of election fraud immediately gained a large following. The cat is out of the bag, and nothing will be accomplished by censoring these videos except setting a bad precedent.
pstuart 6y ago
The causation has deniability built into it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_wolf_(terrorism)#Stochastic_terrorism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_wolf_(terrorism)#Stochast...

Amezarak 6y ago

The argument is that we can’t talk about how we have an untrustable, unverifiable election system, because that would lead people to not trust the results. As long they don’t think about it, they can trust it. I press a button on a screen when I vote. I don’t know what the hell it is actually doing and it’s shocking to me the mainstream consensus is we can’t even talk about now horrifically broken American voting is compared to sane countries like France.

Raphael_Amiard 6y ago
> sane countries like France You might want to look at what's going on in France right now before calling our democratic institutions sane :)
pfisch 6y ago
In Georgia the machine prints out a paper ballot that you hand in. Yet somehow that is one of the states being accused of widespread fraud...? Only the swing states that Trump lost are being accused of fraud, but only in the presidential election. This is extremely disingenuous and lacks all credibility. Now the GOP seems to be arguing in court that there wasn't even fraud, but they just don't like the outcome and want to reverse the will of the voters in swing states based on weird technicalities. This entire thing is nonsense, and youtube should censor it because it is entirely just a scheme to subvert our democracy. That is extremely dangerous, more dangerous than yelling fire in a crowded theater.
- samtheprogram 6y ago
  > Now the GOP seems to be arguing in court that there wasn't even fraud, but they just don't like the outcome and want to reverse the will of the voters in swing states based on weird technicalities. Interesting, do you have a source for this?
  - pfisch 6y ago
    The entire case that the supreme court just rejected for PA was about that. This isn't claiming fraud. This is trying to find a technicality to use to invalidate millions of legitimate votes. https://www.npr.org/2020/12/08/944230517/supreme-court-rejects-gop-bid-to-reverse-pennsylvania-election-results https://www.npr.org/2020/12/08/944230517/supreme-court-rejec...
- Amezarak 6y ago
  > it is entirely just a scheme to subvert our democracy. If our democratic systems were transparent, verifiable, and understandable, it wouldn't be possible to 'subvert' our democracy in this way. The fact is that our democracy has already been 'subverted' whether or not any fraud occurred (and surely some did, just as it does in every election in American history; the only question is the scale - was it late 1800s scale or late 1900s scale - most people on HN would agree it was probably late 1900s scale, that is, minimal.) But the system is set up in such a way that we cannot actually prove anything. We just have to accept what we're told, because democracy. The election systems in each state have their own problems. In Georgia the problems are with the tabulation, with absentee ballots, with chain of custody. I am not saying fraud did occur. I am saying that because of the problems I just mentioned, it is impossible to prove if fraud occurred or not. And things should not be that way. At any rate, all you mean by 'subverting democracy' is 'decreasing faith in our institutions.' And I honestly don't know how anyone can look at the past few years and trust any of our institutions.
  - jkhdigital 6y ago
    > I honestly don't know how anyone can look at the past few years and trust any of our institutions. Right. The faith is already gone, which is why allegations of election fraud immediately gained a large following. The cat is out of the bag, and nothing will be accomplished by censoring these videos except setting a bad precedent.

pstuart 6y ago

The causation has deniability built into it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_wolf_(terrorism)#Stochastic_terrorism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_wolf_(terrorism)#Stochast...