5 ms·

The alternative, which is to prevent the spread of "bad arguments" is dystopian

by totony 6y ago

klank 6y ago
That's hyperbole. If taken too far, sure. But, if we took our attempt to eliminate murder too far, it'd be equally dystopian. Your statement is not unique to speech.
- totony 6y ago
  Murder is quite easy to define, whereas bad speech/bad argument seems so much more nuanced. I don't think it's an hyperbole moreso than the logical consequence of such a thought.
  - jackson1442 6y ago
    > Murder is quite easy to define Is it? Would someone refusing to wear a mask, provably resulting in them asymptomatically infecting someone with COVID-19 be charged with negligent manslaughter? This is something that people have been debating. Many actions humans can take could kill another. Only a subset of these are regarded as murder/manslaughter.
    - klank 6y ago
      Not to mention the fact that our modern definition of murder is based on hundreds of years of trial and error. Is dueling murder? Is killing your slave murder? Is it murder if you get drunk and kill somebody with your car? etc. etc.
    - totony 6y ago
      >Is it? Would someone refusing to wear a mask, provably resulting in them asymptomatically infecting someone with COVID-19 be charged with negligent manslaughter? It is not murder. There's a concept called "Negligent homicide," but even that is relatively well defined and requires intent to cause harm. Don't want to get into the rabbit hole, and I am not in agreement with all the laws the US has, but the point is that "bad speech" is way harder to define than murder/homicide. Not only is it harder, it is arguably impossible to attain a good consensus on what it is. PS: I don't agree with the premise that we should regulate speech, but if you were to want to do it it would most likely backfire or be counterproductive because of these reasons
      - patagurbon 6y ago
        >Requires intent to cause harm Does encouraging people not to wear a mask (or just not wearing a mask) in the face of clear evidence and recommendations to the contrary count as intent to cause harm? That is, if I know doing something will cause harm but do it anyway am I engaging in negligent homicide?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- NhanH 6y ago
  That's not hyberbole. The difference is that death is well defined, "bad argument" is not.
  - klank 6y ago
    The definition of murder is not simply death. In fact, what counts as murder and what type of murder is quite complex and varies by jurisdiction. It was not as simple as saying "no murder". We arrived at this definition of murder over a long period of time.
skulk 6y ago
It's clear to me that our current unprecedented interconnectedness is sending us into a dystopia anyways. 50 more years of this, I simply cannot imagine.
- sneak 6y ago
  Despite what they show on the news, the situation on Earth is actually improving each year. Each and every day things are getting better. Do not fear.
  - slumpt_ 6y ago
    Progress is not a straight line, and many things can get better or worse for different subsets of people. This is a generalization that does more harm than good as it minimizes the real trouble people may be facing today or in the near future that they weren’t yesterday.
- anigbrowl 6y ago
  "The Belcerebon people used to cause great resentment and insecurity among neighboring races by being one of the most enlightened, accomplished, and above all, quiet civilizations in the Galaxy. As a punishment for this behavior, which was held to be offensively self-righteous and provocative, a Galactic Tribunal inflicted on them that most cruel of all social diseases, telepathy. Consequently, in order to prevent themselves broadcasting every slightest thought that crosses their minds to anyone within a five mile radius, they now have to talk very loudly and continuously about the weather, their little aches and pains, the match this afternoon and what a noisy place Kakrafoon has suddenly become." Douglas Adams, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe
louwrentius 6y ago
It's how the world worked before Facebook and Twitter (fine).
regularfry 6y ago
To pretend that there are arguments that it is not socially acceptable to promote is to pretend that the Overton window doesn't exist. Who does that help? People outside it.
- jessedhillon 6y ago
  You can't think of any ideas which began well outside of the Overton window, but today are commonly accepted as true?
  - regularfry 6y ago
    On the contrary. But it's not reasonable to expect to bring them up without consequences, and specifically in the case of Popper's paradox, those consequences are healthy and those specific ideas should remain unacceptable.
shadowgovt 6y ago
It wasn't when the FCC established standards and it isn't now.
AgentME 6y ago
Is it dystopian? There are plenty of bad arguments one could make on this very site which would get your post hidden or removed or even your account banned, and it doesn't feel very dystopian. I wouldn't come here if this site didn't have that kind of filtering and moderation.
- jdsalaro 6y ago
  > There are plenty of bad arguments one could make on this very site which would get your post hidden or removed or even your account banned Popularity doesn't imply correctness or legitimacy.
  - philosopher1234 6y ago
    He didn’t say it was popular, he said it was not dystopian
arp242 6y ago
The idea that every possible opinion should be allowed (and that anything else is "dystopian") is quite recent. Have we forgotten about all the alleged communists being persecuted during the cold war? Or people like Bertrand Russel for "sexual deviancy"? Blasphemy laws? Flag burning laws that were common up to ~20 years ago? etc. etc. etc. There were definitely problems with all of that, but it was hardly dystopian.
- AgentME 6y ago
  Er well I think those are all bad examples -- they all seem pretty dystopian to me, a non-straight atheist with some criticisms of capitalism. But I think it's a slippery slope to go from seeing that dystopia where some opinions are off-limits to imagining that having any opinions at all be off-limits in polite company makes a dystopia. There's long been norms against stuff like libel, holocaust denial, disregard for human life, etc. Those as norms hardly seem dystopian.
anigbrowl 6y ago
I find constantly being lied to pretty dystopian. There's a significant cost to parsing, filtering, and refuting lies at both the individual and social levels. Perhaps we should consider trying to quantify that.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
staticman2 6y ago
I find it funny that many people are constantly posting " Twitter censorship bad" on Hackernews, a moderated web site. It's like the people who describe how utopian things would be without government, but for some reason don't want to move to Somalia. I'm sure there's some unmoderated site filled with Nazi's high fiving each other you could be posting these thoughts on censorship. I don't belive there's any other kind of unmoderated site.
- jdsalaro 6y ago
  > I don't belive there's any other kind of unmoderated site. Moderation of a public space after consensus has been reached long it's members is fine, moderation before dissenting opinions have had their opportunity to be voiced, discussed and their merits disproved through consensus is not. The former is democratic, the latter dystopian.
  - philosopher1234 6y ago
    I don’t think hacker news’ guidelines were assembled via consensus... I believe they were mostly a priori and the community formed around them

The alternative, which is to prevent the spread of "bad arguments" is dystopian

by totony 6y ago

The alternative, which is to prevent the spread of "bad arguments" is dystopian

That's hyperbole. If taken too far, sure. But, if we took our attempt to eliminate murder too far, it'd be equally dystopian. Your statement is not unique to speech.

totony 6y ago
Murder is quite easy to define, whereas bad speech/bad argument seems so much more nuanced. I don't think it's an hyperbole moreso than the logical consequence of such a thought.
- jackson1442 6y ago
  > Murder is quite easy to define Is it? Would someone refusing to wear a mask, provably resulting in them asymptomatically infecting someone with COVID-19 be charged with negligent manslaughter? This is something that people have been debating. Many actions humans can take could kill another. Only a subset of these are regarded as murder/manslaughter.
  - klank 6y ago
    Not to mention the fact that our modern definition of murder is based on hundreds of years of trial and error. Is dueling murder? Is killing your slave murder? Is it murder if you get drunk and kill somebody with your car? etc. etc.
  - totony 6y ago
    >Is it? Would someone refusing to wear a mask, provably resulting in them asymptomatically infecting someone with COVID-19 be charged with negligent manslaughter? It is not murder. There's a concept called "Negligent homicide," but even that is relatively well defined and requires intent to cause harm. Don't want to get into the rabbit hole, and I am not in agreement with all the laws the US has, but the point is that "bad speech" is way harder to define than murder/homicide. Not only is it harder, it is arguably impossible to attain a good consensus on what it is. PS: I don't agree with the premise that we should regulate speech, but if you were to want to do it it would most likely backfire or be counterproductive because of these reasons
    - patagurbon 6y ago
      >Requires intent to cause harm Does encouraging people not to wear a mask (or just not wearing a mask) in the face of clear evidence and recommendations to the contrary count as intent to cause harm? That is, if I know doing something will cause harm but do it anyway am I engaging in negligent homicide?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
NhanH 6y ago
That's not hyberbole. The difference is that death is well defined, "bad argument" is not.
- klank 6y ago
  The definition of murder is not simply death. In fact, what counts as murder and what type of murder is quite complex and varies by jurisdiction. It was not as simple as saying "no murder". We arrived at this definition of murder over a long period of time.

skulk 6y ago

It's clear to me that our current unprecedented interconnectedness is sending us into a dystopia anyways. 50 more years of this, I simply cannot imagine.

sneak 6y ago
Despite what they show on the news, the situation on Earth is actually improving each year. Each and every day things are getting better. Do not fear.
- slumpt_ 6y ago
  Progress is not a straight line, and many things can get better or worse for different subsets of people. This is a generalization that does more harm than good as it minimizes the real trouble people may be facing today or in the near future that they weren’t yesterday.
anigbrowl 6y ago
"The Belcerebon people used to cause great resentment and insecurity among neighboring races by being one of the most enlightened, accomplished, and above all, quiet civilizations in the Galaxy. As a punishment for this behavior, which was held to be offensively self-righteous and provocative, a Galactic Tribunal inflicted on them that most cruel of all social diseases, telepathy. Consequently, in order to prevent themselves broadcasting every slightest thought that crosses their minds to anyone within a five mile radius, they now have to talk very loudly and continuously about the weather, their little aches and pains, the match this afternoon and what a noisy place Kakrafoon has suddenly become." Douglas Adams, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe

louwrentius 6y ago

It's how the world worked before Facebook and Twitter (fine).

regularfry 6y ago

To pretend that there are arguments that it is not socially acceptable to promote is to pretend that the Overton window doesn't exist. Who does that help? People outside it.

jessedhillon 6y ago
You can't think of any ideas which began well outside of the Overton window, but today are commonly accepted as true?
- regularfry 6y ago
  On the contrary. But it's not reasonable to expect to bring them up without consequences, and specifically in the case of Popper's paradox, those consequences are healthy and those specific ideas should remain unacceptable.

shadowgovt 6y ago

It wasn't when the FCC established standards and it isn't now.

AgentME 6y ago

Is it dystopian? There are plenty of bad arguments one could make on this very site which would get your post hidden or removed or even your account banned, and it doesn't feel very dystopian. I wouldn't come here if this site didn't have that kind of filtering and moderation.

jdsalaro 6y ago
> There are plenty of bad arguments one could make on this very site which would get your post hidden or removed or even your account banned Popularity doesn't imply correctness or legitimacy.
- philosopher1234 6y ago
  He didn’t say it was popular, he said it was not dystopian

arp242 6y ago

The idea that every possible opinion should be allowed (and that anything else is "dystopian") is quite recent. Have we forgotten about all the alleged communists being persecuted during the cold war? Or people like Bertrand Russel for "sexual deviancy"? Blasphemy laws? Flag burning laws that were common up to ~20 years ago? etc. etc. etc. There were definitely problems with all of that, but it was hardly dystopian.

AgentME 6y ago
Er well I think those are all bad examples -- they all seem pretty dystopian to me, a non-straight atheist with some criticisms of capitalism. But I think it's a slippery slope to go from seeing that dystopia where some opinions are off-limits to imagining that having any opinions at all be off-limits in polite company makes a dystopia. There's long been norms against stuff like libel, holocaust denial, disregard for human life, etc. Those as norms hardly seem dystopian.

anigbrowl 6y ago

I find constantly being lied to pretty dystopian. There's a significant cost to parsing, filtering, and refuting lies at both the individual and social levels. Perhaps we should consider trying to quantify that.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

staticman2 6y ago

I find it funny that many people are constantly posting " Twitter censorship bad" on Hackernews, a moderated web site. It's like the people who describe how utopian things would be without government, but for some reason don't want to move to Somalia. I'm sure there's some unmoderated site filled with Nazi's high fiving each other you could be posting these thoughts on censorship. I don't belive there's any other kind of unmoderated site.

jdsalaro 6y ago
> I don't belive there's any other kind of unmoderated site. Moderation of a public space after consensus has been reached long it's members is fine, moderation before dissenting opinions have had their opportunity to be voiced, discussed and their merits disproved through consensus is not. The former is democratic, the latter dystopian.
- philosopher1234 6y ago
  I don’t think hacker news’ guidelines were assembled via consensus... I believe they were mostly a priori and the community formed around them