6 ms·

> Does censorship, even if justified, fuel anger and distrust Anger and distrust are sparked, stoked and fueled far more by personalities in media and politic

by danans 6y ago

> Does censorship, even if justified, fuel anger and distrust Anger and distrust are sparked, stoked and fueled far more by personalities in media and politics who actively promote them than by de-platforming. > Is it possible to bring fringe groups back into the fold of peaceful civil discourse People organizing and advocating violence are not fringe groups. The paradox of tolerance applies here: You can't extend tolerance to those who advocate for intolerance without destroying tolerance in the process.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> The paradox of tolerance applies here: You can't extend tolerance to those who advocate for intolerance without destroying tolerance in the process. I don't understand how this is a paradox. You can't extend tolerance to people who commit arson and murder, or e.g. refuse to hire black people because they're black. You can let people say whatever they want, because then you can refute their arguments and refuse to implement their proposals.
- AshWolfy 6y ago
  Yeah well just refute the arguments for the people who think democrats, hollywood, and the (((globalists))) and kidnapping and killing children to drink their blood, thatll convince them
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    Here's a pretty good start: https://www.thestreet.com/phildavis/news/a-game-designers-analysis-of-qanon https://www.thestreet.com/phildavis/news/a-game-designers-an... Show them the method of operation of the theory building so they can recognize it and stop participating in it.
    - AshWolfy 6y ago
      People dont like to think they are being tricked, and will actively reject truth if it contradicts what they already believe. Doing something like this can be great, but it takes time and effort, meanwhile acts of terrorism are being committed now. Most qanoners dont really believe it, and if separated from their echo chambers, will deradicalize themselves
      - danans 6y ago
        > Most qanoners dont really believe it Not only that, for many of them it's just fun - in exactly the same way that some people find supermarket tabloids entertaining. The audience for these conspiracies is quite similar (probably overlaps) with the audience of the National Enquirer.
        AshWolfy 6y ago
        You should reach eichmann in jerusulem, most people who follow movements like these are just conformists like eichmann, they usually cant be convinced otherwise because they dont really believe anything at all I know a qanoner in real life, and when i talked to him about it he denied easily provable facts, shifted goalposts, assumed i made arguments i didnt make, and now has taken to literally yelling over me so he cant hear the words im saying
      - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
        > People dont like to think they are being tricked, and will actively reject truth if it contradicts what they already believe. I never liked that study because people always read it like that. When people receive new information, they try to make it consistent with what they already believe by making the smallest possible change to the existing belief system to make them consistent. That could be as simple as just not believing you. This can strengthen their belief in the existing thing because they just evaluated it against some potentially conflicting new information without rejecting it. Just not believing you doesn't work for an article like that because it's reasoning rather than facts. They have to find a hole in the logic if they want to keep their existing beliefs. So they'll come up with something like, maybe that's how it works for other conspiracy theories, but this one is real so it doesn't apply. But now the logic is in their head, so the next time the conspiracy theory has to be reframed to match a changing reality, they notice that what's happening is consistent with the logic. It makes them doubt. And the more information and reasoning they're exposed to which is inconsistent with the conspiracy theory, the more they doubt. It just like how the Big Lie works, but in reverse. You expose them to truth and logic over and over until they can no longer make the conspiracy theory consistent with it. > Doing something like this can be great, but it takes time and effort, meanwhile acts of terrorism are being committed now. "Acts of terrorism" aren't speech so as soon as they go there they go to jail. I mean they were planning it openly on Facebook, it was kind of a discredit to law enforcement that they weren't arrested for the conspiracy to begin with. > Most qanoners dont really believe it, and if separated from their echo chambers, will deradicalize themselves But that's why we need free speech, right? To avoid echo chambers. Even if private censorship is allowed, that doesn't make it a good idea if it causes people to leave for some Voat-like cesspool where they won't encounter ordinary people anymore.
- danans 6y ago
  > You can let people say whatever they want Indeed, you can let them say whatever they want. But that doesn't mean that anyone else should or should not. It's not like there aren't companies and service providers willing to host the content. > refuse to implement their proposals There are real practical limits to free speech. A "proposal" that is an incitement to organized violence is of the same kind as yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. That is fundamentally different than a proposal to eliminate the estate tax, provide a universal basic income, or organizing to peacefully protest using civil disobedience.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    > But that doesn't mean that anyone else should or should not. It's not like there aren't companies and service providers willing to host the content. Isn't the service currently down? > yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim... > A "proposal" that is an incitement to organized violence But then you need not worry about what some website or service is doing because that is illegal and the police can arrest them for it. Basically, a call to violence isn't information, it's action, like ordering a hit. The prohibited act is really the order, i.e. participation in a conspiracy to commit an act of violence, and the communication is only the evidence of it. Compare mob boss who says "whack that guy" and goes to jail for it vs. news reporter who reports that mob boss ordered a hit, unintentionally informing a hit man who wasn't aware of the order. News reporter doesn't go to jail for that because their intent was only to communicate information, not enable the act of violence, even though they conveyed the same information and it had the same result.
    - danans 6y ago
      > Isn't the service currently down? They are working on getting it up and running under a Russian ISP, DDos-Guard. https://www.cnet.com/news/parler-website-is-back-online-in-limited-form-after-amazon-cut-hosting-ties/ https://www.cnet.com/news/parler-website-is-back-online-in-l... If sites like Gab and its ilk can figure it out, so cab Parler. > > yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. > https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim... From that article: "[In Brandenburg v. Ohio] the Court held that inflammatory speech--and even speech advocating violence by members of the Ku Klux Klan--is protected under the First Amendment, unless the speech "is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action"." > But then you need not worry about what some website or service is doing because that is illegal and the police can arrest them for it. You don't need to worry, but the website is well within their rights to worry about what people are posting to their site and take action to limit that if they see fit.
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
  Paradox of Tolerance is a hypocrisy. If you are shutting down someone's ability to communicate because you don't like what they are saying, you are not tolerant.
  - BrianOnHN 6y ago
    > you don't like what they are saying This is incorrect. Not tolerating intolerance is objective. Sad so many people can't wrap their head around this incredibly simple paradox.
    - Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
      Tolerance is a willingness to accept behaviour and beliefs that are different from your own, although you might not agree with or approve of them. [1] If you don't tolerate "intolerance", you are intolerant, it's as simple as that. And if you make yourself a clause to exclude some beliefs from acceptance and still deem yourself tolerant, you are a hypocrite. [1]: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/tolerance https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/toleranc...
      - krageon 6y ago
        Tolerance isn't a binary state, but a sliding scale.
        account42 6y ago
        Which is exactly what makes the "Paradox of Tolerance" hypocritical - you are more or less arbitrarily deciding who you can be intolerant towards.
        krageon 6y ago
        It's not arbitrary, and to imply otherwise is not arguing in good faith.
  - 6y ago
russellendicott 6y ago
These fringe groups are always going to be looking for things to get upset about. What we have to be careful with is lumping 40% of the country in with these groups and pushing the divide further. We can't make generalizations and say that anyone who downloaded Parler to see what a right wing platform was like is a white supremacist any more than we can say anyone who downloads Reddit to hear a left wing perspective is only there for /r/fatpeoplehate. There are very few ideas that can be invented and spread by a media personality without that idea already having a foothold. Unless you truly believe that 40% of the voting population are dumb mindless automatons. It's pretty condescending to anyone who considers themselves center right to be generalized like that. Due to the realities of the two party system most people are going to "fall in line" with the party that is closest to their fundamental principles. For center right this means small government, lower taxes, merit based incentives, law enforcement, etc. You're asking a lot to ask a conservative to switch sides when the other side is so far from these fundamentals. The same goes for republicans trying to convert democrats. Hard line ssues such as anti-abortion and "taxation is theft" are too much for center left people to handle. They're going to fall in line with whatever the Democrats are into at the time in order to make sure their fundamentals are upheld. Trump was a symptom. The seeds were already planted. Once that weed began to grow it was inconceivable to the left and center left that anyone who called themselves human could look past the rhetoric and the character defects in order to support their deeper fundamental principles. The left began to see these people as less than human and showed their opinion with every newsreel, tweet, and post. It was, understandably, their moral duty. The only choice for someone on the right is to abandon their principles or dig deeper. He can't be THAT bad right? The conservatives are locked in and the other side isn't offering any olive branches to non-humans. Both sides are then locked in a moral dilemma and the media is just fanning the flames. And then to top it all off during the reelection cycle we're forced to isolate and have our window to the world altered by bias confirming algorithms. There's no hope for unification under those conditions. So many differences can be overcome by two people sitting face to face and seeing each other as two humans with different ideas experiencing the exact same stimuli. I just hope we can get back there some day.

by danans 6y ago

AnthonyMouse 6y ago

> The paradox of tolerance applies here: You can't extend tolerance to those who advocate for intolerance without destroying tolerance in the process. I don't understand how this is a paradox. You can't extend tolerance to people who commit arson and murder, or e.g. refuse to hire black people because they're black. You can let people say whatever they want, because then you can refute their arguments and refuse to implement their proposals.

AshWolfy 6y ago
Yeah well just refute the arguments for the people who think democrats, hollywood, and the (((globalists))) and kidnapping and killing children to drink their blood, thatll convince them
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  Here's a pretty good start: https://www.thestreet.com/phildavis/news/a-game-designers-analysis-of-qanon https://www.thestreet.com/phildavis/news/a-game-designers-an... Show them the method of operation of the theory building so they can recognize it and stop participating in it.
  - AshWolfy 6y ago
    People dont like to think they are being tricked, and will actively reject truth if it contradicts what they already believe. Doing something like this can be great, but it takes time and effort, meanwhile acts of terrorism are being committed now. Most qanoners dont really believe it, and if separated from their echo chambers, will deradicalize themselves
    - danans 6y ago
      > Most qanoners dont really believe it Not only that, for many of them it's just fun - in exactly the same way that some people find supermarket tabloids entertaining. The audience for these conspiracies is quite similar (probably overlaps) with the audience of the National Enquirer.
      - AshWolfy 6y ago
        You should reach eichmann in jerusulem, most people who follow movements like these are just conformists like eichmann, they usually cant be convinced otherwise because they dont really believe anything at all I know a qanoner in real life, and when i talked to him about it he denied easily provable facts, shifted goalposts, assumed i made arguments i didnt make, and now has taken to literally yelling over me so he cant hear the words im saying
    - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      > People dont like to think they are being tricked, and will actively reject truth if it contradicts what they already believe. I never liked that study because people always read it like that. When people receive new information, they try to make it consistent with what they already believe by making the smallest possible change to the existing belief system to make them consistent. That could be as simple as just not believing you. This can strengthen their belief in the existing thing because they just evaluated it against some potentially conflicting new information without rejecting it. Just not believing you doesn't work for an article like that because it's reasoning rather than facts. They have to find a hole in the logic if they want to keep their existing beliefs. So they'll come up with something like, maybe that's how it works for other conspiracy theories, but this one is real so it doesn't apply. But now the logic is in their head, so the next time the conspiracy theory has to be reframed to match a changing reality, they notice that what's happening is consistent with the logic. It makes them doubt. And the more information and reasoning they're exposed to which is inconsistent with the conspiracy theory, the more they doubt. It just like how the Big Lie works, but in reverse. You expose them to truth and logic over and over until they can no longer make the conspiracy theory consistent with it. > Doing something like this can be great, but it takes time and effort, meanwhile acts of terrorism are being committed now. "Acts of terrorism" aren't speech so as soon as they go there they go to jail. I mean they were planning it openly on Facebook, it was kind of a discredit to law enforcement that they weren't arrested for the conspiracy to begin with. > Most qanoners dont really believe it, and if separated from their echo chambers, will deradicalize themselves But that's why we need free speech, right? To avoid echo chambers. Even if private censorship is allowed, that doesn't make it a good idea if it causes people to leave for some Voat-like cesspool where they won't encounter ordinary people anymore.
danans 6y ago
> You can let people say whatever they want Indeed, you can let them say whatever they want. But that doesn't mean that anyone else should or should not. It's not like there aren't companies and service providers willing to host the content. > refuse to implement their proposals There are real practical limits to free speech. A "proposal" that is an incitement to organized violence is of the same kind as yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. That is fundamentally different than a proposal to eliminate the estate tax, provide a universal basic income, or organizing to peacefully protest using civil disobedience.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  > But that doesn't mean that anyone else should or should not. It's not like there aren't companies and service providers willing to host the content. Isn't the service currently down? > yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim... > A "proposal" that is an incitement to organized violence But then you need not worry about what some website or service is doing because that is illegal and the police can arrest them for it. Basically, a call to violence isn't information, it's action, like ordering a hit. The prohibited act is really the order, i.e. participation in a conspiracy to commit an act of violence, and the communication is only the evidence of it. Compare mob boss who says "whack that guy" and goes to jail for it vs. news reporter who reports that mob boss ordered a hit, unintentionally informing a hit man who wasn't aware of the order. News reporter doesn't go to jail for that because their intent was only to communicate information, not enable the act of violence, even though they conveyed the same information and it had the same result.
  - danans 6y ago
    > Isn't the service currently down? They are working on getting it up and running under a Russian ISP, DDos-Guard. https://www.cnet.com/news/parler-website-is-back-online-in-limited-form-after-amazon-cut-hosting-ties/ https://www.cnet.com/news/parler-website-is-back-online-in-l... If sites like Gab and its ilk can figure it out, so cab Parler. > > yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. > https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim... From that article: "[In Brandenburg v. Ohio] the Court held that inflammatory speech--and even speech advocating violence by members of the Ku Klux Klan--is protected under the First Amendment, unless the speech "is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action"." > But then you need not worry about what some website or service is doing because that is illegal and the police can arrest them for it. You don't need to worry, but the website is well within their rights to worry about what people are posting to their site and take action to limit that if they see fit.
Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
Paradox of Tolerance is a hypocrisy. If you are shutting down someone's ability to communicate because you don't like what they are saying, you are not tolerant.
- BrianOnHN 6y ago
  > you don't like what they are saying This is incorrect. Not tolerating intolerance is objective. Sad so many people can't wrap their head around this incredibly simple paradox.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
    Tolerance is a willingness to accept behaviour and beliefs that are different from your own, although you might not agree with or approve of them. [1] If you don't tolerate "intolerance", you are intolerant, it's as simple as that. And if you make yourself a clause to exclude some beliefs from acceptance and still deem yourself tolerant, you are a hypocrite. [1]: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/tolerance https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/toleranc...
    - krageon 6y ago
      Tolerance isn't a binary state, but a sliding scale.
      - account42 6y ago
        Which is exactly what makes the "Paradox of Tolerance" hypocritical - you are more or less arbitrarily deciding who you can be intolerant towards.
        krageon 6y ago
        It's not arbitrary, and to imply otherwise is not arguing in good faith.
- 6y ago

russellendicott 6y ago

These fringe groups are always going to be looking for things to get upset about. What we have to be careful with is lumping 40% of the country in with these groups and pushing the divide further. We can't make generalizations and say that anyone who downloaded Parler to see what a right wing platform was like is a white supremacist any more than we can say anyone who downloads Reddit to hear a left wing perspective is only there for /r/fatpeoplehate. There are very few ideas that can be invented and spread by a media personality without that idea already having a foothold. Unless you truly believe that 40% of the voting population are dumb mindless automatons. It's pretty condescending to anyone who considers themselves center right to be generalized like that. Due to the realities of the two party system most people are going to "fall in line" with the party that is closest to their fundamental principles. For center right this means small government, lower taxes, merit based incentives, law enforcement, etc. You're asking a lot to ask a conservative to switch sides when the other side is so far from these fundamentals. The same goes for republicans trying to convert democrats. Hard line ssues such as anti-abortion and "taxation is theft" are too much for center left people to handle. They're going to fall in line with whatever the Democrats are into at the time in order to make sure their fundamentals are upheld. Trump was a symptom. The seeds were already planted. Once that weed began to grow it was inconceivable to the left and center left that anyone who called themselves human could look past the rhetoric and the character defects in order to support their deeper fundamental principles. The left began to see these people as less than human and showed their opinion with every newsreel, tweet, and post. It was, understandably, their moral duty. The only choice for someone on the right is to abandon their principles or dig deeper. He can't be THAT bad right? The conservatives are locked in and the other side isn't offering any olive branches to non-humans. Both sides are then locked in a moral dilemma and the media is just fanning the flames. And then to top it all off during the reelection cycle we're forced to isolate and have our window to the world altered by bias confirming algorithms. There's no hope for unification under those conditions. So many differences can be overcome by two people sitting face to face and seeing each other as two humans with different ideas experiencing the exact same stimuli. I just hope we can get back there some day.