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Authoritarians always justify silencing speech for the greater good. You can reject lies with counters to those lies, or do it your way, and end democracy.

by JPKab 6y ago

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
Eloquent, but... YouTube isn't an authoritarian (over anything except their own platform), and their policy, whatever it is, isn't going to "end democracy".
- JPKab 6y ago
  Obviously, YouTube has the right to do whatever they want with their servers. My point wasn't that YouTube's policy was the end of democracy, but that the ethos espoused by the parent commenter, if shared by a majority of the electorate and leaders, results in the end of democracy. Democracy requires trusting people to not be complete morons. Unfortunately, the polarized nature of political discourse in the US has caused people to think that the 50% of the country that doesn't think like them is too stupid to be trusted with speech and videos. Despite the fact that my brother has been sucked into the world of Alex Jones, I don't think most Americans are too stupid to resist dumb conspiracy theories. In decades past, this brother was a radical leftist, regularly arrested for trespassing in the late 80's at nuclear power plant protests, and later a radical in Greenpeace in the early 90's. This was long before the internet. He didn't believe the moon landing was real, and always believed in dumb ass conspiracy theories. (He's 11 years older than me, and by the time I was 11, I knew he was a moron.) My other 4 siblings aren't like him. His new shift was, honestly, not that weird. He happened to shift to the right, but it's a horseshoe as you know, and crazy is crazy. There have been, and always will be, highly illogical people looking to indulge their desperate desire to have symmetrical, orderly views of the universe that aren't real. The big, disastrous outcomes must always have been carefully plotted, large, grand plans (like 9/11 being a false flag operation, which my brother also believed then). My brother is one of these people, but most people aren't like that. This huge drive for censorship didn't occur when a large portion of the American left thought that 9/11 was an inside job, because the normal people on the left knew that it was a large, but still fringe, group within their own sphere. The problem is that the same normal people on the left don't know normal people on the right. Why? Because they don't know ANY people on the right. They are in bubbles now. So they are unable to draw the same conclusion that people like my brother are a fringe on the right. To them, voting for Donald Trump is evidence of a massively delusional person, rather than the grim reality that the vast majority of Trump's voters don't like him, and simply chose a lesser of two evils in their worldview, due to a corrupt, oligarchical class at the top of both major political parties resulting in highly polarized policy positions that force them to do this.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    I agree with you here. I would just add: > This huge drive for censorship didn't occur when a large portion of the American left thought that 9/11 was an inside job, because the normal people on the left knew that it was a large, but still fringe, group within their own sphere. The problem is that the same normal people on the left don't know normal people on the right. Why? Because they don't know ANY people on the right. I think to at least some degree, this is a difference between 2001 and 2020. Normal people on the left knew people on the right, and now they don't.
Daishiman 6y ago
So when a lawyer or doctor is stripped of their professional license because they become professional bullshit peddlers, does that constitute silencing people or saving lives and the integrity of the justice system? I don't have time to listen to million bullshit peddlers with an agenda.
- JPKab 6y ago
  Then don't listen to them, the same way the rest do. Doesn't mean you should get to silence them. A bullshit peddler named Dr. Atkins was the only guy in the 90's saying that eggs were good for you. The rest of the establishment physicians said eggs were bad for you, guacamole was bad for you, all fat was bad, eat more pasta. They were all wrong, Atkins was right (when it comes to eggs.) But if Youtube had existed, people like you would have said he was dangerous and demanded he be removed. That's the problem: How do you know the people you think are quacks are actually quacks? What about when the establishment is wrong. The Australian doctor who claimed ulcers were caused by bacteria was silenced, mocked, and ridiculed for decades. He was right, as we know now. Yann LeCunn was mocked and ridiculed for his neural networks. He was outright rejected from conferences, and papers ignored, despite having groundbreaking results that set new benchmarks, because the established CS folks had decided that neural nets were garbage in the 80's. They were wrong, he was right. But it's cool, I trust you to make decisions for me on what I can hear.
  - inglor_cz 6y ago
    This is a good example, with eggs and Atkins. There is a lot of things we do not know, even on seemingly simple topics such as nutrition. Just watch the "calorie is a calorie" crowd crashing with "sugar is chronic toxin" crowd. Not surprisingly, Coca-Cola pushes the former view. And in a curated YouTube world, who is going to get removed for spreading misinformation? Not Coca-Cola, they are too rich for that.

Authoritarians always justify silencing speech for the greater good. You can reject lies with counters to those lies, or do it your way, and end democracy.

by JPKab 6y ago

Authoritarians always justify silencing speech for the greater good. You can reject lies with counters to those lies, or do it your way, and end democracy.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

Eloquent, but... YouTube isn't an authoritarian (over anything except their own platform), and their policy, whatever it is, isn't going to "end democracy".

JPKab 6y ago
Obviously, YouTube has the right to do whatever they want with their servers. My point wasn't that YouTube's policy was the end of democracy, but that the ethos espoused by the parent commenter, if shared by a majority of the electorate and leaders, results in the end of democracy. Democracy requires trusting people to not be complete morons. Unfortunately, the polarized nature of political discourse in the US has caused people to think that the 50% of the country that doesn't think like them is too stupid to be trusted with speech and videos. Despite the fact that my brother has been sucked into the world of Alex Jones, I don't think most Americans are too stupid to resist dumb conspiracy theories. In decades past, this brother was a radical leftist, regularly arrested for trespassing in the late 80's at nuclear power plant protests, and later a radical in Greenpeace in the early 90's. This was long before the internet. He didn't believe the moon landing was real, and always believed in dumb ass conspiracy theories. (He's 11 years older than me, and by the time I was 11, I knew he was a moron.) My other 4 siblings aren't like him. His new shift was, honestly, not that weird. He happened to shift to the right, but it's a horseshoe as you know, and crazy is crazy. There have been, and always will be, highly illogical people looking to indulge their desperate desire to have symmetrical, orderly views of the universe that aren't real. The big, disastrous outcomes must always have been carefully plotted, large, grand plans (like 9/11 being a false flag operation, which my brother also believed then). My brother is one of these people, but most people aren't like that. This huge drive for censorship didn't occur when a large portion of the American left thought that 9/11 was an inside job, because the normal people on the left knew that it was a large, but still fringe, group within their own sphere. The problem is that the same normal people on the left don't know normal people on the right. Why? Because they don't know ANY people on the right. They are in bubbles now. So they are unable to draw the same conclusion that people like my brother are a fringe on the right. To them, voting for Donald Trump is evidence of a massively delusional person, rather than the grim reality that the vast majority of Trump's voters don't like him, and simply chose a lesser of two evils in their worldview, due to a corrupt, oligarchical class at the top of both major political parties resulting in highly polarized policy positions that force them to do this.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  I agree with you here. I would just add: > This huge drive for censorship didn't occur when a large portion of the American left thought that 9/11 was an inside job, because the normal people on the left knew that it was a large, but still fringe, group within their own sphere. The problem is that the same normal people on the left don't know normal people on the right. Why? Because they don't know ANY people on the right. I think to at least some degree, this is a difference between 2001 and 2020. Normal people on the left knew people on the right, and now they don't.

Daishiman 6y ago

So when a lawyer or doctor is stripped of their professional license because they become professional bullshit peddlers, does that constitute silencing people or saving lives and the integrity of the justice system? I don't have time to listen to million bullshit peddlers with an agenda.

JPKab 6y ago
Then don't listen to them, the same way the rest do. Doesn't mean you should get to silence them. A bullshit peddler named Dr. Atkins was the only guy in the 90's saying that eggs were good for you. The rest of the establishment physicians said eggs were bad for you, guacamole was bad for you, all fat was bad, eat more pasta. They were all wrong, Atkins was right (when it comes to eggs.) But if Youtube had existed, people like you would have said he was dangerous and demanded he be removed. That's the problem: How do you know the people you think are quacks are actually quacks? What about when the establishment is wrong. The Australian doctor who claimed ulcers were caused by bacteria was silenced, mocked, and ridiculed for decades. He was right, as we know now. Yann LeCunn was mocked and ridiculed for his neural networks. He was outright rejected from conferences, and papers ignored, despite having groundbreaking results that set new benchmarks, because the established CS folks had decided that neural nets were garbage in the 80's. They were wrong, he was right. But it's cool, I trust you to make decisions for me on what I can hear.
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  This is a good example, with eggs and Atkins. There is a lot of things we do not know, even on seemingly simple topics such as nutrition. Just watch the "calorie is a calorie" crowd crashing with "sugar is chronic toxin" crowd. Not surprisingly, Coca-Cola pushes the former view. And in a curated YouTube world, who is going to get removed for spreading misinformation? Not Coca-Cola, they are too rich for that.