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"We must remove that stuff because those ideas are dangerous/offensive, and if you disagree with removing it then you must agree with that filth!" is extremely

"We must remove that stuff because those ideas are dangerous/offensive, and if you disagree with removing it then you must agree with that filth!" is extremely helpful to the sorts of people who do edgy stuff to attract attention and then try to memoryhole it once they get a big audience. I think the truth is the opposite: there are no dangerous ideas. "Sandy Hook was fake!" is stupid and wrong, but the way to defeat it is exposure, not erasure. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

snet0 5y ago
I think this is naïve. Taking Sandy Hook as the example, do you think Alex Jones' discussion on Rogan increased or decreased its spread? It's very easy to pick up new conspiracies for a conspiracy-minded person. It's very hard to drop them.
- Dove 5y ago
  Looking at things through a consequentialist soda straw like that is a terrible way to make decisions -- it is like trying to decide if I will drive or walk solely based on the number of birds I might kill. Decisions are much larger than this single aspect. Some people hearing a crazy idea might adopt it. Some might criticize it. Some might learn how crazy ideas work. Some might adopt it for a little while, then reject it, and be wiser through the experience. Someone who goes on a crusade to fix this one falsehood might be exposed to it. You cannot know what all effects the sum of a discussion has. But I can certainly tell you this: censorship doesn't work. It didn't work in ancient Rome. It didn't work in the Holy Roman Empire. It didn't work in Soviet Russia. It doesn't work in Communist China. It's not working right now for vaccine disinformation. Driving crazy ideas underground does not make them disappear, and it does not make them unpopular -- it makes them spread without criticism. And in fact, telling people they can't do something generally makes them want to do it. It appears to work for a little while, but I cannot think of a single historical case in which this actually worked out. Somehow the banned ideas always seem to survive beyond the death of the regime that banned them. We will always have crazy ideas. We will always have crazy people that buy them. Depriving them of respectability is perhaps a little helpful, but opens up a different danger: just who gets to decide what and who is crazy? I didn't vote for you, and I didn't vote for Spotify either.
- cbozeman 5y ago
  What's "naïve" is you or anyone else thinking they have the power to "nudge people into better patterns", which is exactly what the kind of behavior you're promoting attempts to accomplish. You can't, and you never will. Culture evolves slowly, and humans even slower.
  - hobs 5y ago
    So we just be happy with the every growing cult that the children who were murdered were crisis actors? Nah, think we can do better than that.
  - DoingIsLearning 5y ago
    > What's "naïve" is you or anyone else thinking they have the power to "nudge people into better patterns" > You can't, and you never will. Culture evolves slowly, and humans even slower. There is ample evidence since at least World War I, that both 'positive' PSA type information and 'negative' propaganda/counter information/psy ops absolutely have an effect. Reminder that the Wakefield fraud in 1998, on M.M.R. vaccines and autism, started a negative sentiment towards vaccination and is directly attributed to the measles outbreaks (and deaths) across the developed world (Amplified by Oprah's platform). [1] Reminder that still today many people will claim carrots give you better vision (they are indeed healthy). This was a counter-info operation from the British, claiming they were providing Air Control with carrots, in order to hide the existing of newly invented RADAR technology against German Bombers. [2] [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3136032/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3136032/ [2] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/a-wwii-propaganda-campaign-popularized-the-myth-that-carrots-help-you-see-in-the-dark-28812484/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/a-wwii-propagand...
    - cutemonster 5y ago
      I know about psyops, but what is "PSA type information"? (What is "PSA" for?) (Agreed btw that most humans are easy to manipulate. How interesting about the carrots, I like to eat, for the eyes partly)
- ineptech 5y ago
  And keeping Jones off of Rogan would've accomplished what? Someone who thinks the gummint is out to git 'em would believe a different 'gummint is out to gitcha' conspiracy theory instead? I don't think you can win that battle. The 'Proctor & Gamble are satan worshipers' meme spread across the country before the internet existed. You can't stop people from spreading nonsense, but engaging with and ridiculing nonsense at least makes sure the counter-memes exist, when someone is ready to hear them.
  - krapp 5y ago
    >You can't stop people from spreading nonsense, but engaging with and ridiculing nonsense at least makes sure the counter-memes exist, when someone is ready to hear them. You can do both. There is evidence that deplatforming works. It isn't perfectly effective, but not giving cranks access to the biggest megaphones and most virulent information-spreading engines in human history does in fact seem to inhibit their ability to spread. Doing so doesn't stop anyone from engaging with or ridiculing them. But, point of order, we've been "engaging and ridiculing" for years now, it hasn't worked yet. Everyone says sunlight is the best disinfectant, but as far as I can see, this particular strain of infection feeds on sunlight.
    - ineptech 5y ago
      > There is evidence that deplatforming works. 'Works' in what sense? Does it make the sort of people who believe this stuff less credulous? Or does it just make them less likely to listen to the specific blowhard being deplatformed, and less likely to believe the specific conspiracy theory being peddled? It's not like there's a shortage; both conspiracy theories and con-men are fungible. (And it goes without saying, that any deplatforming/censorship argument sounds strongest against something patently ridiculous like Sandy Hook not having happened, weaker against something controversial, and positively diabolical against something you personally believe to be true. If you assume the person in charge of the deplatforming is someone you politically disagree with, are you still as big a fan?)
      - krapp 5y ago
madeofpalk 5y ago
> but the way to defeat it is exposure, not erasure Hasn't everything about the past ~5 years proven this to be completely fake?
raisedbyninjas 5y ago
>Sunlight is the best disinfectant. This quip implies two things. 1. Is that all publicity is equivalent. Rogan is no James Randi. He's much more likely to nod along with anything a guest says than debunk it. His podcast is entertainment, not a crucible for the truth. 2. Is that every time we broadcast nonsense that fewer people believe it and society as a whole becomes wiser. If this were true, then when the ex-President talked about drinking bleach you'd expect bleach ingestion calls to 911 to decrease. In reality they increased at least on a short timescale. On a long enough timescale, maybe the anti vaccination population will fall below the level it was when Dr. Wakefield published his infamous anti vaccination paper. Given the last few decades of suffering, I'd guess there are better ways to educate the public.
- ineptech 5y ago
  I think you've misunderstood which direction I imagine the sunlight going here. 1. You seem to think that Joe Rogan is not very reliable or trustworthy. How do you know that? Because of past interviews where he nodded along with a crackpot, right? Isn't that valuable information? Doesn't that help you evaluate new information you get from him? 2. The choice we are faced with is not, "Should we allow nonsense to be broadcasted"; it is "What should we do in response to it." In each of these cases, I think it's pretty important to be aware of what happened. If you could time travel back to, say, 2000, and you had a choice of either trying to "bury" Wakefield's work to keep people from hearing about it or to promote the idea that his work was bunk, which would you choose? I think the latter would be more effective, wouldn't it?

snet0 5y ago

I think this is naïve. Taking Sandy Hook as the example, do you think Alex Jones' discussion on Rogan increased or decreased its spread? It's very easy to pick up new conspiracies for a conspiracy-minded person. It's very hard to drop them.

Dove 5y ago
Looking at things through a consequentialist soda straw like that is a terrible way to make decisions -- it is like trying to decide if I will drive or walk solely based on the number of birds I might kill. Decisions are much larger than this single aspect. Some people hearing a crazy idea might adopt it. Some might criticize it. Some might learn how crazy ideas work. Some might adopt it for a little while, then reject it, and be wiser through the experience. Someone who goes on a crusade to fix this one falsehood might be exposed to it. You cannot know what all effects the sum of a discussion has. But I can certainly tell you this: censorship doesn't work. It didn't work in ancient Rome. It didn't work in the Holy Roman Empire. It didn't work in Soviet Russia. It doesn't work in Communist China. It's not working right now for vaccine disinformation. Driving crazy ideas underground does not make them disappear, and it does not make them unpopular -- it makes them spread without criticism. And in fact, telling people they can't do something generally makes them want to do it. It appears to work for a little while, but I cannot think of a single historical case in which this actually worked out. Somehow the banned ideas always seem to survive beyond the death of the regime that banned them. We will always have crazy ideas. We will always have crazy people that buy them. Depriving them of respectability is perhaps a little helpful, but opens up a different danger: just who gets to decide what and who is crazy? I didn't vote for you, and I didn't vote for Spotify either.
cbozeman 5y ago
What's "naïve" is you or anyone else thinking they have the power to "nudge people into better patterns", which is exactly what the kind of behavior you're promoting attempts to accomplish. You can't, and you never will. Culture evolves slowly, and humans even slower.
- hobs 5y ago
  So we just be happy with the every growing cult that the children who were murdered were crisis actors? Nah, think we can do better than that.
- DoingIsLearning 5y ago
  > What's "naïve" is you or anyone else thinking they have the power to "nudge people into better patterns" > You can't, and you never will. Culture evolves slowly, and humans even slower. There is ample evidence since at least World War I, that both 'positive' PSA type information and 'negative' propaganda/counter information/psy ops absolutely have an effect. Reminder that the Wakefield fraud in 1998, on M.M.R. vaccines and autism, started a negative sentiment towards vaccination and is directly attributed to the measles outbreaks (and deaths) across the developed world (Amplified by Oprah's platform). [1] Reminder that still today many people will claim carrots give you better vision (they are indeed healthy). This was a counter-info operation from the British, claiming they were providing Air Control with carrots, in order to hide the existing of newly invented RADAR technology against German Bombers. [2] [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3136032/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3136032/ [2] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/a-wwii-propaganda-campaign-popularized-the-myth-that-carrots-help-you-see-in-the-dark-28812484/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/a-wwii-propagand...
  - cutemonster 5y ago
    I know about psyops, but what is "PSA type information"? (What is "PSA" for?) (Agreed btw that most humans are easy to manipulate. How interesting about the carrots, I like to eat, for the eyes partly)
ineptech 5y ago
And keeping Jones off of Rogan would've accomplished what? Someone who thinks the gummint is out to git 'em would believe a different 'gummint is out to gitcha' conspiracy theory instead? I don't think you can win that battle. The 'Proctor & Gamble are satan worshipers' meme spread across the country before the internet existed. You can't stop people from spreading nonsense, but engaging with and ridiculing nonsense at least makes sure the counter-memes exist, when someone is ready to hear them.
- krapp 5y ago
  >You can't stop people from spreading nonsense, but engaging with and ridiculing nonsense at least makes sure the counter-memes exist, when someone is ready to hear them. You can do both. There is evidence that deplatforming works. It isn't perfectly effective, but not giving cranks access to the biggest megaphones and most virulent information-spreading engines in human history does in fact seem to inhibit their ability to spread. Doing so doesn't stop anyone from engaging with or ridiculing them. But, point of order, we've been "engaging and ridiculing" for years now, it hasn't worked yet. Everyone says sunlight is the best disinfectant, but as far as I can see, this particular strain of infection feeds on sunlight.
  - ineptech 5y ago
    > There is evidence that deplatforming works. 'Works' in what sense? Does it make the sort of people who believe this stuff less credulous? Or does it just make them less likely to listen to the specific blowhard being deplatformed, and less likely to believe the specific conspiracy theory being peddled? It's not like there's a shortage; both conspiracy theories and con-men are fungible. (And it goes without saying, that any deplatforming/censorship argument sounds strongest against something patently ridiculous like Sandy Hook not having happened, weaker against something controversial, and positively diabolical against something you personally believe to be true. If you assume the person in charge of the deplatforming is someone you politically disagree with, are you still as big a fan?)
    - krapp 5y ago

madeofpalk 5y ago

> but the way to defeat it is exposure, not erasure Hasn't everything about the past ~5 years proven this to be completely fake?

raisedbyninjas 5y ago

>Sunlight is the best disinfectant. This quip implies two things. 1. Is that all publicity is equivalent. Rogan is no James Randi. He's much more likely to nod along with anything a guest says than debunk it. His podcast is entertainment, not a crucible for the truth. 2. Is that every time we broadcast nonsense that fewer people believe it and society as a whole becomes wiser. If this were true, then when the ex-President talked about drinking bleach you'd expect bleach ingestion calls to 911 to decrease. In reality they increased at least on a short timescale. On a long enough timescale, maybe the anti vaccination population will fall below the level it was when Dr. Wakefield published his infamous anti vaccination paper. Given the last few decades of suffering, I'd guess there are better ways to educate the public.

ineptech 5y ago
I think you've misunderstood which direction I imagine the sunlight going here. 1. You seem to think that Joe Rogan is not very reliable or trustworthy. How do you know that? Because of past interviews where he nodded along with a crackpot, right? Isn't that valuable information? Doesn't that help you evaluate new information you get from him? 2. The choice we are faced with is not, "Should we allow nonsense to be broadcasted"; it is "What should we do in response to it." In each of these cases, I think it's pretty important to be aware of what happened. If you could time travel back to, say, 2000, and you had a choice of either trying to "bury" Wakefield's work to keep people from hearing about it or to promote the idea that his work was bunk, which would you choose? I think the latter would be more effective, wouldn't it?