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> It's not disinformation if it's just outgroup culture. Just because wrong information can become outgroup culture does not suddenly make the wrong informatio

> It's not disinformation if it's just outgroup culture. Just because wrong information can become outgroup culture does not suddenly make the wrong information true. Particularly when it stipulates world views that vilify whole other groups as allegedly being responsible for everything wrong. The end result is not just a culture that might endorse violence against others, but something that could probably be described as a cargo cult where wrong information becomes dogmatic tradition. Antisemitism has already taken such a shape, most if not all of the theories voiced by some modern outgroups are just reboots of allegations that are centuries old and have justified violence for just as long. Case in point: The whole "elites abducting children to sacrifice them" theory, which regained popularity trough QAnon, is just a more modern take on the William of Norwich blood libel [0]. That has been around for close to a millennium because it's an idea that survives in certain religious outgroup cultures. Do we really have to tolerate the intolerance to be considered tolerant? Is there really no rough line that can be drawn? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_of_Norwich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_of_Norwich

motohagiography 6y ago
I'd say that Popper's Paraphrase isn't a useful argument when it reduces to just a first-accusers advantage. It's a small mercy that he died before seeing what his work would be reduced to. Tolerance is meaningful when it is mostly unbearable, otherwise it's just preference. That idea is elaborated well in SSC's "I can tolerate anything but the outgroup." The relative truth of wrong information is a glass house I don't think advocates of censorship are intellectually equipped to defend. Their only tool is deception, and inevitably force, and the points we can score on them have no value. The deeper controversy is whether on the internet we will accept a rules based order, or discretion. It's the old "rule of law vs. rule of men" issue. What has changed in the last 140 years or so is of course, total, instant globalization, with the internet, but more subtly, that the language used to reason about these things has itself become unmoored. What I think we should all reflect on is how as individuals we can become a bit less enthusiasitically murderable to one another, before worrying about how we can change what others think. It's the one problem we can all make progress on.
- freeflight 6y ago
  > What I think we should all reflect on is how as individuals we can become a bit less enthusiasitically murderable to one another, before worrying about how we can change what others think. One big step towards that is agreeing on a common conceptualization for the world and universe we live in. If we can't even agree on such very measurable basics, like the Earth being a globe, what hope can we have on agreeing on anything that's meaningful to our everyday life or anything deeper philosophical? I originally hoped the web would be the solution to this, a global medium for a global species to arrive at a global worldview, yet here we are, with increasingly more outgroups believing increasingly delusional/unrealistic worldviews.

motohagiography 6y ago

I'd say that Popper's Paraphrase isn't a useful argument when it reduces to just a first-accusers advantage. It's a small mercy that he died before seeing what his work would be reduced to. Tolerance is meaningful when it is mostly unbearable, otherwise it's just preference. That idea is elaborated well in SSC's "I can tolerate anything but the outgroup." The relative truth of wrong information is a glass house I don't think advocates of censorship are intellectually equipped to defend. Their only tool is deception, and inevitably force, and the points we can score on them have no value. The deeper controversy is whether on the internet we will accept a rules based order, or discretion. It's the old "rule of law vs. rule of men" issue. What has changed in the last 140 years or so is of course, total, instant globalization, with the internet, but more subtly, that the language used to reason about these things has itself become unmoored. What I think we should all reflect on is how as individuals we can become a bit less enthusiasitically murderable to one another, before worrying about how we can change what others think. It's the one problem we can all make progress on.

freeflight 6y ago
> What I think we should all reflect on is how as individuals we can become a bit less enthusiasitically murderable to one another, before worrying about how we can change what others think. One big step towards that is agreeing on a common conceptualization for the world and universe we live in. If we can't even agree on such very measurable basics, like the Earth being a globe, what hope can we have on agreeing on anything that's meaningful to our everyday life or anything deeper philosophical? I originally hoped the web would be the solution to this, a global medium for a global species to arrive at a global worldview, yet here we are, with increasingly more outgroups believing increasingly delusional/unrealistic worldviews.