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This is truly the worst aspect of censorship - You don't know what you don't know. And this is being greatly amplified by social media. I am not afraid that I w

by isv 6y ago

This is truly the worst aspect of censorship - You don't know what you don't know. And this is being greatly amplified by social media. I am not afraid that I will be fed false information; if it appears too outlandish, I will do sufficient fact-checking before accepting it as truth. In most cases on open platforms someone would have already done fact-checking to debunk. I am afraid however that I become too enwrapped in my social bubble that relevant information never gets brought up in the first place. This is nothing new and relates to "Lies, damned lies, and statistics". Most facts can be manipulated by omission, taking things out of context, and choosing favorable metrics, so that you can lie without saying anything falsifiable. Only way to correct this is to allow the other side to present their argument in an open discussion.

csnover 6y ago
What is too outlandish to you is not too outlandish to others. Some believe the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated by the CIA. Some believe the earth is flat. Some believe a Nigerian prince got their email address from their dead friend’s cousin’s mother’s embassy and is about to send them a billion dollars. How can you be so totally confident that your own bullshit meter is accurate? Why do you think your confidence in your own ability to decipher fact from fiction is any different than people who believe complete bullshit? If your main objection to censorship is that it is used to hide the truth, why don’t you object equally to people with megaphones intentionally flooding the zone with shit and distributors that enable that behaviour? Just as the left–right political spectrum is actually more of a circle than a straight line, it seems to me that the spectrum of censorship vs free speech is also a circle. A bad actor may obfuscate truth through censorship; a bad actor may also obfuscate truth through massive volumes of misinformation. The latter is what is happening here. It’s a denial of service attack on human brains, and like a DoS attack, the only way to weather it is to filter the malicious traffic—you can’t just add capacity in the form of “good counterpoints” since human brains can’t scale like that.
- timeeater 6y ago
  " why don’t you object equally to people with megaphones intentionally flooding the zone with shit" That analogy is simply incorrect. You can spend your life on YouTube watching cat videos, no conspiracy theory in sight. Nobody can force you to watch their video on YouTube. So nobody has a megaphone in YouTube. Only YouTube itself has the megaphone, they can choose what to push to people. It is NOT TV where you have a single stream that everybody watched, and if you insert shit, everybody watches it.
  - bonestormii_ 6y ago
    It's crazy. I started writing why I disagreed based on my visceral reaction to the topic. But as I constructed my arguments, they were not sound. So I suppose I agree? Hm. The above paragraph is sincere--that did happen. And interestingly, it shows the power of consuming the opposing view point. We all know that the government is currently spewing lies, and it is indeed a disgusting and corrosive thing. I want to silence it, but it's easy enough to contempt it from a distance. Let the truth and the lies be heard so that we as a people will grow wise to it all.
    - timeeater 6y ago
      Personally I am not from the US, and I don't know that the government is spewing lies. What makes you so sure? And if you are so sure, why are you worried people could be swayed by the lies - why not make them equally sure with the information you have? However, I am happy with letting the courts decide. Where is the problem? I have seen lies from all big political parties in the US.
      - bra-ket 6y ago
        it's funny the lies this time are coming not from the government but from the opposition and their propaganda machinery. I'd never consider myself government supporter, but with Trump it's like the last bastion before the country is overrun with far-left SJW hordes swayed by misinformation. It's ironic the ultimate win for democracy manifests itself in stolen elections.
- georgeplusplus 6y ago
  >> What is too outlandish to you is not too outlandish to others Sounds like we have an education problem then. Censorship of a viewpoint and media that displays a giant FACT/FALSE in its headline amplifies exactly the problem you wish to solve.
- mlang23 6y ago
  We are talking about an adult audience, right? They are allowed to vote. So you have to assume they are independent enough to make their own decisions. Period. Your argument for censorship sounds a lot like patronisation.
  - ako 6y ago
    I think you can argue that that assumption is wrong, and that that is also the biggest problem with democracy and voting. You are asking people to vote on a topic they are often not well informed on, or are unwilling/unable to spend time to educate themselves thoroughly. Also anybody of a certain age is allowed to vote, regardless their level of education, and their ability to make sound decisions. If you want to drive a car, you have to proof you are able to do so. Why not demand the same if you want to vote?
    - bloodorange 6y ago
      Driving on public roads is a privilege. Voting is a right.
    - galangalalgol 6y ago
      In the US you vote on people, not policy. Most people can't understand all the ramifications of a policy, but a lot of people can spot a crooked liar if the know them a little, we do it every day. That is why I like the older idea of picking state legislators and letting them pick the president and maybe the senators. And up the number of people in the house. The idea is that you should know or know a lot of people who know the person you are voting for. Media won't come into it, civics education won't come into it. It will be like picking a plumber in your neighborhood.
      - cicero 6y ago
        If both of the candidates are crooked liars, how do you choose? I picked the party that I think is closer to being right.
    - mlang23 6y ago
- raxxorrax 6y ago
  These are extreme cases where you think there is consent on any single example, but it is still not a good argument for a general case.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  > How can you be so totally confident that your own bullshit meter is accurate? Why do you think your confidence in your own ability to decipher fact from fiction is any different than people who believe complete bullshit? I don't. I also don't believe the people at companies like YouTube are any likely to be better than myself or the average person.
  - csnover 6y ago
    It’s nice to think that everyone is on equal footing, but even ignoring differences in education and genetics, the universal existence of motivated reasoning, emotional reasoning, confirmation bias, and other cognitive distortions tends to refute your assertion that everyone is equally good at determining whether or not any given idea is bullshit. All humans—myself included—will go to great lengths to reject reality when it feels like it is a threat to a core value. This is especially the case when people have tied their identity too tightly to a given subject (i.e. hyper-partisans.) The average person, sufficiently prejudiced toward believing a given falsehood, is not going to be able to determine that it is false because their brain will start to play tricks on them. I have written about this elsewhere[0], and The Story of Us[1][2] goes into this process in much more detail. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25359003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25359003 [1] https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/12/political-disney-world.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/12/political-disney-world.html [2] https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/08/story-of-us.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/08/story-of-us.html (table of contents)
    - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
      > It’s nice to think that everyone is on equal footing, but even ignoring differences in education and genetics, the universal existence of motivated reasoning, emotional reasoning, confirmation bias, and other cognitive distortions tends to refute your assertion that everyone is equally good at determining whether or not any given idea is bullshit. The universal existence of motivated reasoning, emotional reasoning, confirmation bias, and other cognitive distortions is precisely why no person or group can be expected to perform better at evaluating evidence and determining which ideas are too dangerous to allow other people to be exposed to. > All humans—myself included—will go to great lengths to reject reality when it feels like it is a threat to a core value. This is especially the case when people have tied their identity too tightly to a given subject (i.e. hyper-partisans.) The average person, sufficiently prejudiced toward believing a given falsehood, is not going to be able to determine that it is false because their brain will start to play tricks on them. This is precisely why no person can be expected to perform this role as a gatekeeper of truth. Thanks for your links, I'm a big fan of waitbutwhy.com. With regard to [1], there's no reliable test to see where a person is on the psych spectrum, even heavy doses of introspection can lead to limited and imperfect insight, and its likely the case that the same person will move up and down on the psych spectrum depending on a variety of factors. Because cognition is costly, if someone reaches a conclusion while they are in tribal mode, its going to be difficult to reevaluate their position later when they are in scientist mode. This is why its so important to have access to a variety of opinions, thinkers, and perspectives. Even the best of us are vulnerable to motivated reasoning and other cognitive biases.
adamsea 6y ago
tl;dr You assume both side argue in good faith. When one side doesn’t argue in good faith they can hack our classic understanding of freedom of speech. We need a word for flooding a space of discourse with so much noise that the truth is obscured and hidden. It’s not censorship in that it’s removing speech, but it’s as effective in undermining free speech. It’s obviously what is happening now. I think the error in what you say is you assume both side are arguing in good faith. But when one party doesn’t argue in good faith, it means they are saying things they don’t truly believe, or that they don’t respect or care about having a fair discourse. Like how during the debates Donald Trump continuously attempted to talk over Biden, and essentially control the discourse via bullying. Just making shit up in order to shut someone else down isn’t okay, and we need to figure out how to protect our traditional values of free speech while also combating when people attempt to destroy our freedom of speech by using this technique at a mass scale in our modern media environment.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  I think its more accurate to say there are bad faith actors on both sides. Thats why its so dangerous to let someone shut down one side of a debate because of bad faith actors. You're also shutting down the good faith actors on that side, while leaving the bad faith actors on the other side still able to participate in bad faith.
  - adamsea 6y ago
    > I think its more accurate to say there are bad faith actors on both sides. Bullshit, because at this moment that comparison is a mountain vs a molehill. 0. Trumps lies about Covid and the pandemic crisis which have contributed to the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans 1. The racist birther conspiracy. 2. The vast number of well-documented lies Trump told over the last few years. 3. The baseless lies about election fraud or whatever. But you know all this. I don’t believe you’re arguing in good faith and I think you’re full of shit. Because, after these last four years saying “bad actors on both sides” means that you’ve chosen to either obscure or deny reality. What you’re doing is dangerous to democracy and you should be ashamed of yourself. I’m not saying YouTube removing this content is the right move, but your logic only holds up in a fantasyland devoid of fact or context.

by isv 6y ago

csnover 6y ago

What is too outlandish to you is not too outlandish to others. Some believe the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated by the CIA. Some believe the earth is flat. Some believe a Nigerian prince got their email address from their dead friend’s cousin’s mother’s embassy and is about to send them a billion dollars. How can you be so totally confident that your own bullshit meter is accurate? Why do you think your confidence in your own ability to decipher fact from fiction is any different than people who believe complete bullshit? If your main objection to censorship is that it is used to hide the truth, why don’t you object equally to people with megaphones intentionally flooding the zone with shit and distributors that enable that behaviour? Just as the left–right political spectrum is actually more of a circle than a straight line, it seems to me that the spectrum of censorship vs free speech is also a circle. A bad actor may obfuscate truth through censorship; a bad actor may also obfuscate truth through massive volumes of misinformation. The latter is what is happening here. It’s a denial of service attack on human brains, and like a DoS attack, the only way to weather it is to filter the malicious traffic—you can’t just add capacity in the form of “good counterpoints” since human brains can’t scale like that.

timeeater 6y ago
" why don’t you object equally to people with megaphones intentionally flooding the zone with shit" That analogy is simply incorrect. You can spend your life on YouTube watching cat videos, no conspiracy theory in sight. Nobody can force you to watch their video on YouTube. So nobody has a megaphone in YouTube. Only YouTube itself has the megaphone, they can choose what to push to people. It is NOT TV where you have a single stream that everybody watched, and if you insert shit, everybody watches it.
- bonestormii_ 6y ago
  It's crazy. I started writing why I disagreed based on my visceral reaction to the topic. But as I constructed my arguments, they were not sound. So I suppose I agree? Hm. The above paragraph is sincere--that did happen. And interestingly, it shows the power of consuming the opposing view point. We all know that the government is currently spewing lies, and it is indeed a disgusting and corrosive thing. I want to silence it, but it's easy enough to contempt it from a distance. Let the truth and the lies be heard so that we as a people will grow wise to it all.
  - timeeater 6y ago
    Personally I am not from the US, and I don't know that the government is spewing lies. What makes you so sure? And if you are so sure, why are you worried people could be swayed by the lies - why not make them equally sure with the information you have? However, I am happy with letting the courts decide. Where is the problem? I have seen lies from all big political parties in the US.
    - bra-ket 6y ago
      it's funny the lies this time are coming not from the government but from the opposition and their propaganda machinery. I'd never consider myself government supporter, but with Trump it's like the last bastion before the country is overrun with far-left SJW hordes swayed by misinformation. It's ironic the ultimate win for democracy manifests itself in stolen elections.
georgeplusplus 6y ago
>> What is too outlandish to you is not too outlandish to others Sounds like we have an education problem then. Censorship of a viewpoint and media that displays a giant FACT/FALSE in its headline amplifies exactly the problem you wish to solve.
mlang23 6y ago
We are talking about an adult audience, right? They are allowed to vote. So you have to assume they are independent enough to make their own decisions. Period. Your argument for censorship sounds a lot like patronisation.
- ako 6y ago
  I think you can argue that that assumption is wrong, and that that is also the biggest problem with democracy and voting. You are asking people to vote on a topic they are often not well informed on, or are unwilling/unable to spend time to educate themselves thoroughly. Also anybody of a certain age is allowed to vote, regardless their level of education, and their ability to make sound decisions. If you want to drive a car, you have to proof you are able to do so. Why not demand the same if you want to vote?
  - bloodorange 6y ago
    Driving on public roads is a privilege. Voting is a right.
  - galangalalgol 6y ago
    In the US you vote on people, not policy. Most people can't understand all the ramifications of a policy, but a lot of people can spot a crooked liar if the know them a little, we do it every day. That is why I like the older idea of picking state legislators and letting them pick the president and maybe the senators. And up the number of people in the house. The idea is that you should know or know a lot of people who know the person you are voting for. Media won't come into it, civics education won't come into it. It will be like picking a plumber in your neighborhood.
    - cicero 6y ago
      If both of the candidates are crooked liars, how do you choose? I picked the party that I think is closer to being right.
  - mlang23 6y ago
raxxorrax 6y ago
These are extreme cases where you think there is consent on any single example, but it is still not a good argument for a general case.
chordalkeyboard 6y ago
> How can you be so totally confident that your own bullshit meter is accurate? Why do you think your confidence in your own ability to decipher fact from fiction is any different than people who believe complete bullshit? I don't. I also don't believe the people at companies like YouTube are any likely to be better than myself or the average person.
- csnover 6y ago
  It’s nice to think that everyone is on equal footing, but even ignoring differences in education and genetics, the universal existence of motivated reasoning, emotional reasoning, confirmation bias, and other cognitive distortions tends to refute your assertion that everyone is equally good at determining whether or not any given idea is bullshit. All humans—myself included—will go to great lengths to reject reality when it feels like it is a threat to a core value. This is especially the case when people have tied their identity too tightly to a given subject (i.e. hyper-partisans.) The average person, sufficiently prejudiced toward believing a given falsehood, is not going to be able to determine that it is false because their brain will start to play tricks on them. I have written about this elsewhere[0], and The Story of Us[1][2] goes into this process in much more detail. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25359003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25359003 [1] https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/12/political-disney-world.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/12/political-disney-world.html [2] https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/08/story-of-us.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/08/story-of-us.html (table of contents)
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
    > It’s nice to think that everyone is on equal footing, but even ignoring differences in education and genetics, the universal existence of motivated reasoning, emotional reasoning, confirmation bias, and other cognitive distortions tends to refute your assertion that everyone is equally good at determining whether or not any given idea is bullshit. The universal existence of motivated reasoning, emotional reasoning, confirmation bias, and other cognitive distortions is precisely why no person or group can be expected to perform better at evaluating evidence and determining which ideas are too dangerous to allow other people to be exposed to. > All humans—myself included—will go to great lengths to reject reality when it feels like it is a threat to a core value. This is especially the case when people have tied their identity too tightly to a given subject (i.e. hyper-partisans.) The average person, sufficiently prejudiced toward believing a given falsehood, is not going to be able to determine that it is false because their brain will start to play tricks on them. This is precisely why no person can be expected to perform this role as a gatekeeper of truth. Thanks for your links, I'm a big fan of waitbutwhy.com. With regard to [1], there's no reliable test to see where a person is on the psych spectrum, even heavy doses of introspection can lead to limited and imperfect insight, and its likely the case that the same person will move up and down on the psych spectrum depending on a variety of factors. Because cognition is costly, if someone reaches a conclusion while they are in tribal mode, its going to be difficult to reevaluate their position later when they are in scientist mode. This is why its so important to have access to a variety of opinions, thinkers, and perspectives. Even the best of us are vulnerable to motivated reasoning and other cognitive biases.

adamsea 6y ago

tl;dr You assume both side argue in good faith. When one side doesn’t argue in good faith they can hack our classic understanding of freedom of speech. We need a word for flooding a space of discourse with so much noise that the truth is obscured and hidden. It’s not censorship in that it’s removing speech, but it’s as effective in undermining free speech. It’s obviously what is happening now. I think the error in what you say is you assume both side are arguing in good faith. But when one party doesn’t argue in good faith, it means they are saying things they don’t truly believe, or that they don’t respect or care about having a fair discourse. Like how during the debates Donald Trump continuously attempted to talk over Biden, and essentially control the discourse via bullying. Just making shit up in order to shut someone else down isn’t okay, and we need to figure out how to protect our traditional values of free speech while also combating when people attempt to destroy our freedom of speech by using this technique at a mass scale in our modern media environment.

chordalkeyboard 6y ago
I think its more accurate to say there are bad faith actors on both sides. Thats why its so dangerous to let someone shut down one side of a debate because of bad faith actors. You're also shutting down the good faith actors on that side, while leaving the bad faith actors on the other side still able to participate in bad faith.
- adamsea 6y ago
  > I think its more accurate to say there are bad faith actors on both sides. Bullshit, because at this moment that comparison is a mountain vs a molehill. 0. Trumps lies about Covid and the pandemic crisis which have contributed to the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans 1. The racist birther conspiracy. 2. The vast number of well-documented lies Trump told over the last few years. 3. The baseless lies about election fraud or whatever. But you know all this. I don’t believe you’re arguing in good faith and I think you’re full of shit. Because, after these last four years saying “bad actors on both sides” means that you’ve chosen to either obscure or deny reality. What you’re doing is dangerous to democracy and you should be ashamed of yourself. I’m not saying YouTube removing this content is the right move, but your logic only holds up in a fantasyland devoid of fact or context.