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People knew that it would come to this, where corporations are the final arbiters of the truth value of information, driven by people who loudly demand to shut

People knew that it would come to this, where corporations are the final arbiters of the truth value of information, driven by people who loudly demand to shut down anything that doesn't conform to their world view. People demanded we steer into the iceberg while staring at it.

Grakel 5y ago
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." -C.S. Lewis
- mardifoufs 5y ago
  That quote (and that chapter from C. S Lewis in general) has been stuck in my mind for essentially the past 14 months. It's crazy how insanely powerful "conscious/virtuous" authoritarianism is. It really makes any discussion or compromise impossible. Of course the concept can seem very obvious but going through it and seeing how the whole process unfolds is still just hard to believe . We've set the stage for justifying pretty much every excess of authority/control. We somehow managed to make having more freedom something that you should be not only be very afraid of but also something you shouldn't even expect to begin with (which is quite a feat). I can't wait to see what it where that will lead us to!
dnautics 5y ago
I'm pretty sure newspapers have been simultaneously Records of truth and corporations since at least the turn of the 19th century, to the include yellow journalism and red scare eras.
- GenerocUsername 5y ago
  Indeed. But the world's changed. They gave every person a microphone but then started censoring what you could say into that mic. Now all you hear is what you are allowed to hear, but instead of it coming from 1 source, it falsely looks like thousands of sources.

Grakel 5y ago

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." -C.S. Lewis

mardifoufs 5y ago
That quote (and that chapter from C. S Lewis in general) has been stuck in my mind for essentially the past 14 months. It's crazy how insanely powerful "conscious/virtuous" authoritarianism is. It really makes any discussion or compromise impossible. Of course the concept can seem very obvious but going through it and seeing how the whole process unfolds is still just hard to believe . We've set the stage for justifying pretty much every excess of authority/control. We somehow managed to make having more freedom something that you should be not only be very afraid of but also something you shouldn't even expect to begin with (which is quite a feat). I can't wait to see what it where that will lead us to!

dnautics 5y ago

I'm pretty sure newspapers have been simultaneously Records of truth and corporations since at least the turn of the 19th century, to the include yellow journalism and red scare eras.

GenerocUsername 5y ago
Indeed. But the world's changed. They gave every person a microphone but then started censoring what you could say into that mic. Now all you hear is what you are allowed to hear, but instead of it coming from 1 source, it falsely looks like thousands of sources.