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Voltaire was a passionate defender of free speech. Communist China and Weimar Republic Germany both had laws to suppress speech prior to their overthrow. Maoist

Voltaire was a passionate defender of free speech. Communist China and Weimar Republic Germany both had laws to suppress speech prior to their overthrow. Maoist China, Nazi Germany, and Islamist countries in the Middle East all suppressed opposition. Our current situation highly correlates with companies attempting to control speech, though one could argue that the causation runs the other way. The best way to counter wildly incorrect beliefs is to expose them to the light of open discourse- few are convinced by an authority saying a position is wrong. And there is no such authority that is free of corruption; there is no ultimate source of truth. Setting effectiveness aside, it is a cruelty to deny the right of expression to anyone. Humans deserve to share their beliefs with others. One of us is wrong right now. Would you prefer a world where that one is made to remain silent?

boxed 5y ago
> The best way to counter wildly incorrect beliefs is to expose them to the light of open discourse- Well.. sort of. This is true if you're dealing with an honest debate partner. It's not true if you're dealing with an opponent that is a psy-ops operator of some kind or a 4chan troll army. False beliefs are literally infinite. They are fractal. Debunking also takes more effort than to invent a new idiotic position. This is an asymmetrical war. We want to limit the asymmetry so it becomes closer to symmetrical between wrong things and right things. This is a hard problem, but letting bots run rampant surely isn't helping. "The solution to bad speech is more speech" is a nice slogan, but it doesn't really make logical sense. The solution to confusion isn't more confusion. The solution to lying isn't more lying.
- Stupulous 5y ago
  You don't need to convince someone who already doesn't believe what they're saying. The overwhelming majority of people are not psy-ops operators or 4chan trolls. If someone invents new idiotic positions when they are proven wrong, they look like an idiot, and even dumber-than-average people can tell. If those people believe, rightly, that their side is not being given a fair fight, they may not be inclined to update. And they will be inclined to move to a community where the truth is not given a fair fight. >"The solution to bad speech is more speech" is a nice slogan, but it doesn't really make logical sense. The solution to confusion isn't more confusion. The solution to lying isn't more lying. The solution to confusion is clarity. The solution to lying is telling the truth. The solution to bad speech is good speech. There's not a fundamental logic error there. If I'm wrong, it's on the object level. There is logical error in using speech to say that more speech won't advance your objectives. If you don't think that speech can do good, why would you waste your time participating in it?
  - boxed 5y ago
    > The overwhelming majority of people are not psy-ops operators or 4chan trolls. People yes. People that will interact with a given issue on social media? Now that's a totally different thing! > The solution to bad speech is good speech. 100% agreed. But note how very different that statement is than the more common "the solution to bad speech is MORE speech". If good speech is drowned out by the megaphone of bad speech it is as if it doesn't exist. This is what we need to protect against.
    - Stupulous 5y ago
      The overwhelming majority of people who interact with a given issue on social media are not psy-ops operators or 4chan trolls. Speaking from a deeply shameful amount of experience interacting with given issues on social media, at most we're talking 3%. This is beside the point, though. If misinformation meant robots and Russian conspirators, sure, ban it- it won't matter because arguments are not won by counting advocates, and there is very little of this anyway. But it doesn't, and you've said as much above. Wildly incorrect and/or dangerous beliefs are not 'bad' speech. They are precisely the speech that 'free speech' is intended to protect; speech that disagrees with or threatens the establishment is the only speech that has ever been under attack. More of it is better. If good speech is somehow drowned out by bad, people will start learning to seek out trustworthy sources again. People are not stupid. The ones that are don't spend their days reading and writing. And even the morons have every right to choose what they believe from the infinite set of possibilities.

boxed 5y ago

> The best way to counter wildly incorrect beliefs is to expose them to the light of open discourse- Well.. sort of. This is true if you're dealing with an honest debate partner. It's not true if you're dealing with an opponent that is a psy-ops operator of some kind or a 4chan troll army. False beliefs are literally infinite. They are fractal. Debunking also takes more effort than to invent a new idiotic position. This is an asymmetrical war. We want to limit the asymmetry so it becomes closer to symmetrical between wrong things and right things. This is a hard problem, but letting bots run rampant surely isn't helping. "The solution to bad speech is more speech" is a nice slogan, but it doesn't really make logical sense. The solution to confusion isn't more confusion. The solution to lying isn't more lying.

Stupulous 5y ago
You don't need to convince someone who already doesn't believe what they're saying. The overwhelming majority of people are not psy-ops operators or 4chan trolls. If someone invents new idiotic positions when they are proven wrong, they look like an idiot, and even dumber-than-average people can tell. If those people believe, rightly, that their side is not being given a fair fight, they may not be inclined to update. And they will be inclined to move to a community where the truth is not given a fair fight. >"The solution to bad speech is more speech" is a nice slogan, but it doesn't really make logical sense. The solution to confusion isn't more confusion. The solution to lying isn't more lying. The solution to confusion is clarity. The solution to lying is telling the truth. The solution to bad speech is good speech. There's not a fundamental logic error there. If I'm wrong, it's on the object level. There is logical error in using speech to say that more speech won't advance your objectives. If you don't think that speech can do good, why would you waste your time participating in it?
- boxed 5y ago
  > The overwhelming majority of people are not psy-ops operators or 4chan trolls. People yes. People that will interact with a given issue on social media? Now that's a totally different thing! > The solution to bad speech is good speech. 100% agreed. But note how very different that statement is than the more common "the solution to bad speech is MORE speech". If good speech is drowned out by the megaphone of bad speech it is as if it doesn't exist. This is what we need to protect against.
  - Stupulous 5y ago
    The overwhelming majority of people who interact with a given issue on social media are not psy-ops operators or 4chan trolls. Speaking from a deeply shameful amount of experience interacting with given issues on social media, at most we're talking 3%. This is beside the point, though. If misinformation meant robots and Russian conspirators, sure, ban it- it won't matter because arguments are not won by counting advocates, and there is very little of this anyway. But it doesn't, and you've said as much above. Wildly incorrect and/or dangerous beliefs are not 'bad' speech. They are precisely the speech that 'free speech' is intended to protect; speech that disagrees with or threatens the establishment is the only speech that has ever been under attack. More of it is better. If good speech is somehow drowned out by bad, people will start learning to seek out trustworthy sources again. People are not stupid. The ones that are don't spend their days reading and writing. And even the morons have every right to choose what they believe from the infinite set of possibilities.