18 ms·

The discussion reminds of this SlateStarCodex classic, in particular this quote: The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to f

• lacker 6y ago
  It’s a weird quote to me, because there are no witches. Modern society does ban literal witch hunts, and it doesn’t cause witches to exist.
  • asdf333 6y ago
    i think the point is that sometimes bad people need to be called out and not just tolerated. it’s also called the paradox of tolerance, where if a society is tolerant of intolerance, eventually the intolerance will win by taking advantage of tolerance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
    • kodah 6y ago
      Any time I hear "small groups with loud voices" to describe what's going on in society these days, I think of this.
    • optimalsolver 6y ago
      The documentary "The Power Of Nightmares" by Adam Curtis highlights an excellent example of this. During a 90s election in Algeria, a radical (and popular) Islamist party made it clear that if they won, their first action would be to cancel all future elections. This basically put all the secular parties (both left and right) in a bind. Do you just proceed with the election as if everything's normal, even though it might be the end of democracy if the radical group wins? On the other hand, if you decide to boot out the radicals from the democratic process, haven't you now ended free and fair elections?
      • AnthonyMouse 6y ago
        > This basically put all the secular parties (both left and right) in a bind. Which is the solution. Bind themselves and everybody else. Have a constitution that enshrines the right to things like fair elections and free speech. Have an amendment process that requires two thirds of the Senate, in a Senate that only has one third of the seats up for election in any given year. And three quarters of the states, which rarely agree on anything. Things like that. Then even if the populists get in once, they don't have the power to end elections or free speech. And once the people see their true nature, they lose the next one. Obviously you do have to be very careful not to allow any end runs around that process.
    • Anon1096 6y ago
      That's absolutely not the point. Scott Alexander from the Slate Star Codex is definitely not in favor of shutting down discussion from undesirables.
    • monoideism 6y ago
      Have you read that Wikipedia article you cite? Because extra-judicial persecution of "bad people" [0] is something Popper never discussed or advocated for in _Open Societies and Its Enemies_. He very specifically advocates for this only when all else has failed, and only by the state itself -- being as such action doesn't bode well for any liberal democracy that undertakes such action. I know you've not read the book, but perhaps read the Wikipedia article you're citing. 0. I've seen a whole range of people called "bad people" by antifa types these days, from centrists all the way to white supremacists.
  • anothernewdude 6y ago
    You're going to need to come to grips with figurative language if you ever want to communicate effectively. It's a large part of discourse.
  • MattGaiser 6y ago
    Replace the word "witches" with "violent racists"
    • fortran77 6y ago
      We've had modern witch hunts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMartin_preschool_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMartin_preschool_trial
      • MattGaiser 6y ago
        I don't deny that. I was just explaining the connection.
    • alacombe 6y ago
      Replace the work "violent racists" with "kulaks".
      • eggie5 6y ago
        reading gulag archipelago so i go that reference
    • concordDance 6y ago
      So you'd be happy not to persecute non-violent racists?
  • meekrohprocess 6y ago
    It is an interesting bit of etymology, isn't it? The quote doesn't really make sense if you use a traditional definition of "witch hunt", because the phrase comes from actual historic trials where the charge was something like "consorting with demons". The penalty was often death, even though people don't actually consort with demons in the real world. There were no witches, of course, and the underlying causes of real witch hunts are a matter of speculation. Some people say it was a way to get rid of the elderly, some people say that ergot poisoning could have played a role, some people say that mobs are violent and irrational by nature. But everybody who was tried in a historical "witch hunt" was innocent. Still, with the advent of the internet, it's taken on a new meaning. Today, "witch hunt" means something like "piling on". The target may or may not be guilty, but the phrase implies that their alleged guilt doesn't necessarily merit the amount of attention that they are getting. It might be interesting to investigate when that change in meaning happened, and why.
    • markdown 6y ago
      > "piling on" I don't think it's used in that context at all. There doesn't need to be more than one "witch hunter" for something to be called a witch hunt. > The target may or may not be guilty, but the phrase implies that their alleged guilt doesn't necessarily merit the amount of attention that they are getting. This is correct.
    • ttyprintk 6y ago
      > Today, "witch hunt" means something like "piling on". And historically, it often meant moral panic and mass hysteria. Compared to another comment, that's _all_ it means to me when applied nowadays. The mainstream reception of the threat of witchcraft is what's changed. You might see parallels with (theoretical) homosexual conversion in parts of the US, I suppose. Speculating on historical drivers: coercive confession existed then as it does now. Some law-enforcement officers' careers depended on confessions. After 35,000 to 100,000 executions I bet the technique was pretty smooth.
  • aaron695 6y ago
    > Modern society does ban literal witch hunts There are literal, and I mean literal witch hunts going on in Western nations by the authorities, like Britain or the USA. Generally they use the word satanic. They are far rarer than 40 or 100 years ago. Obviously amongst the general population you also have things like Qanon and the Satanism within Pizzagate and in most developing countries they still exist at troubling numbers. But I don't get your point, so no idea if that's OT
• Proven 6y ago
  You have no right force own morality on private enterprises and other people. If something is illegal the government is supposed to deal with it. Speaking of witch hunts: when Amazon uses their ethical standards to terminate a paying customer with minimal warnings, that's fine. When a hosting company accepts this deplatformed customer, you want to go after the provider although neither the customer nor provider haven't been convicted of any wrongdoing.
• xupybd 6y ago
  Yes but this witch-hunt is extreme. You are a witch by association. The host of a social media platform should be no more lumped in with the users of that platform than a phone company that provides cell access to the KKK. At some point it's just going too far.
  • vajrabum 6y ago
    In this particular case there's pretty good evidence that Parler's moderation is/was anything but even handed. Parler may be a lot of things but a neutral platform provider doesn't seem to be one of them.
    • blisterpeanuts 6y ago
      Does a neutral platform even exist? It seems like all the major ones have some bias in their filtering and moderation.
      • causalmodels 6y ago
        Can a neutral platform with algorithmic feeds exist? Self selection + optimization will result in feeds reflective of the community rather than some neutral standard.
        • meheleventyone 6y ago
          The point of algorithmic feeds is to be the “everyplatform” and serve all biases. So in theory it’s neutral as a platform. But as we’ve seen has extremely negative results.
          • xupybd 6y ago
            Well the problem at present is you have to moderate such that all content is within the Overton window. Only the left and right have different views on what does and does not fit inside this window. For example right wingers want to argue about the role of trans rights in womens sports. Much of the left and Twitter consider this to be outside of the Overton window.
• hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  Lol, I love that quote ("your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches"). It's very true, and not the least bit surprising. The only reason for free-speech focused social media to be a thing is because it is a pushback against bans and restrictions from Facebook and Twitter. But look who these platforms ban: for all the (in my opinion, laughable) talk of how these platforms are "biased against conservatives", last time I checked Twitter wasn't banning anyone for saying the minimum wage reduces overall employment, or that we should return to the gold standard, or that marriage should be reserved for unions of 1 man and 1 woman. They ban people for inciting violence, for repeating provable falsehoods over and over which can lead to violence, for targeted harassment. So your "free speech social media" is primarily for people who want incite violence, or lie over and over to convince people of provable falsehoods, or to harass others.
  • chrissnell 6y ago
    These platforms absolutely do ban or demonetize people for these reasons. Dennis Prager's video on the Ten Commandments was demonetized and the reason given? "It contains the word 'kill'. Dangerous for children." They have extremely rigid standards for conservatives and very loose standards for everybody else. That's a real thing and it's something you don't see until you are one of those whose views are being targeted. Ultimately, I predict that conservative discourse will take a similar path to MP3s: first, it will be targeted by the big powers-that-be. Next, technologies will appear that make it impossible to police or shut down. Finally, corporate America will realize that it's better to work with people than fight them and the discourse will be brought back into the fold and corporations will once again make money off of it.
    • pavlov 6y ago
      >”They have extremely rigid standards for people of one viewpoint and very loose standards for people of another.” It only seems that way to you because you’re seeing only one side getting arbitrarily suspended. My left-leaning Twitter feed has for years been regularly full of people complaining about how Twitter censors black women, activists, feminists and sex workers, while not doing enough against white supremacists, etc. Probably the truth is that the standards are just unevenly rigid one day, loose the other, depending on who catches their attention. Policing hundreds of millions of active users is nearly impossible, and adding automated systems increases the risk of false positives.
• HashThis 6y ago
  Allow Parler to exist. If what you say is true, then people won't go to Paler (for quality reasons). But watch at why the left must deny moderate Republicans from escaping Facebook & Twitter. This is about trapping people in Facebook & Twitter.
  • bavent 6y ago
    Moderate republicans? Have you been on Parler? Moderate is "I think universal healthcare is dumb, minimum wage is bad for business, we need more oil pipelines, etc." Positions that are reasonable and can be discussed using more reason. What's on Parler is not moderate, it's pretty much nothing but calls for a violent overthrow of democracy, to be replaced by a society where anyone they deem as a "liberal" can be put to death.
    • ex3ndr 6y ago
      It is not illegal to be stupid.
      • thenanyu 6y ago
        Depends on how stupid. If you follow the flow of traffic and find yourself breaking into the capitol, you’re out of luck
      • edoceo 6y ago
        Malicious, violent stupidity is illegal. Regular stupidity is still allowed.
      • watwut 6y ago
        None of those is "stupid". They are anti democratic and violent assholes. But, there is no reason to think they are dumb or that they cant affect thing toward worst.
        • ex3ndr 6y ago
          Oh in my home country (Russia) tanks once get "democracy" into the country. I couldn't see much difference between anti democratic and anti socialistic (both are anti-"you") and both a violent. While no one will claim that was a bad thing. In the case of capitol siege they followed the orders their leader. This is not always that bad: unlocking people to do violent things are half of the issue too. You can dream about killing someone, thinking about suicide or whatever - difference is if it will lead to action. Unlocking people to attack capitol or commit suicide are also a crime and in both cases target is not capable to think clearly. Why we treat two cases differently?
• jancsika 6y ago
  > The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. Perhaps that's because the kind of digital utopian who would seek to build that community tends to apply UX ideas so out of date they have a fungus growing on them.
• andrewclunn 6y ago
  Except we're all witches now.
• Number157 6y ago
  It's a great example of how the situation is portrayed, except witches don't exist. In reality, they're used to demonize anyone who isn't against witch hunts.
  • Jochim 6y ago
    Nazis do exist however and they seem to really like Trump's rallies. Obviously most Trump supporters aren't Nazis, but they also don't really seem to mind having them around.
    • Number157 6y ago
      And similarly there will be communists who think Stalin was a great guy at left wing rallies. We could just get rid of the labels and conclude that lots of people have authoritarian tendencies. But the existence of some such people are being used at an excuse to dismantle democracy.
    • simonh 6y ago
      I would also argue that while not a Nazi, Trump is a Facist. He pulled the same 'stop the steal' crap in 2016, but since then has done precisely nothing to prevent vote fraud. If he actually believed it was happening, don't you think he would try to do something to stop it? If it was me I'd make it the primary plank of my administration's policy, but no, nothing. Firstly he knows it's a lie, but anyway if he did reform the electoral system he would no longer have an excuse when he lost because he would be responsible for ensuring the election was fair. The guy and his stop the steal supporters clearly have demonstrated that they have nothing but contempt for democracy or the institutions that protect it. They don't even care enough to reform or improve the system. Where are their attempts to do so? Their only policy is to usurp power and suppress the democratic process, and that's a very familiar strategy to anyone who has lived under facism. Check out Arnold Schwarzenegger's articles and videos on this, the guy grew up in post-war Austria and knows what he's talking about.
• AYBABTME 6y ago
  Damn, that article resonates a little bit too well with today. And your quote is spot on with regard to a yet unformed set of ideas that I'm struggling to reconcile.