36 ms·

We are closer to Bradbury’s dystopia than Orwell’s or Huxley’s

136 points by TrispusAttucks 5y ago

vanusa 5y ago
Such twaddle. As if Rogan's programs "pierce the veil of our own simplified reality".
mherdeg 5y ago
Hmm. There are some dystopias we're already in! Pynchon in "V" (1963) spells out the kind of everyone-sees-the-bad-news-daily future that I live every time I read a newspaper or, you know, get a NYT push notification: "" Twenty days before the Dog Star moved into conjunction with the sun, the dog days began. The world started to run more and more afoul of the inanimate. Fifteen were killed in a train wreck near Oaxaca, Mexico, on 1 July. The next day fifteen people died when an apartment house collapsed in Madrid. July 4 a bus fell into a river near Karachi and thirty-one passengers drowned. Thirty-nine more were drowned two days later in a tropical storm in the central Philippines. 9 July the Aegean Islands were hit by an earthquake and tidal waves, which killed forty-three. 14 July a MATS plane crashed after takeoff from McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, killing forty-five. An earthquake at Anjar, India, 21 July, killed 117. From 22 to 24 July floods rampaged in central and southern Iran, killing three hundred. 28 July a bus ran off a ferryboat at Kuopio, Finland, and fifteen were killed. Four petroleum tanks blew up near Dumas, Texas, 29 July, killing nineteen. 1 August, seventeen died in a train wreck near Rio de Janeiro. Fifteen more died the 4th and 5th, in floods in southwest Pennsylvania. 2161 people died the same week in a typhoon which hit Chekiang, Honan and Hopeh Provinces. 7 August six dynamite trucks blew up in Cali, Colombia, killing about 1100. The same day there was a train wreck at Prerov, Czechoslovakia, killing nine. The next day 262 miners, trapped by fire, died in a coal mine under Marcinelle, in Belgium. Ice avalanches on Mont Blanc swept fifteen mountain climbers into the kingdom of death in the week 12 to 18 August. The same week a gas explosion in Monticello, Utah, killed fifteen and a typhoon through Japan and Okinawa killed thirty. Twenty-nine more coal miners died of gas poisoning in a mine in Upper Silesia on 27 August. Also on the 27th a Navy bomber crashed among houses in Sanford, Florida, and killed four. Next day a gas explosion in Montreal killed seven and flash floods in Turkey killed 138. These were the mass deaths. There were also the attendant maimed, malfunctioning, homeless, lorn. It happens every month in a succession of encounters between groups of living and a congruent world - which simply doesn't care. Look in any yearly Almanac, under "Disasters" - which is where the figures above come from. The business is transacted month after month after month. "" The other dystopias I've been wondering about are * Heinlein, "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" (a lot to unpack - with political structures echoed in "The Expanse")? * Heinlein, "The Man Who Sold the Moon"? (we kind of have this; but certainly not "Requiem" because no one would actually try to stop today's space entrepreneurs from going up themselves, certainly not their kids) * Heinlein, "Starship Troopers"? Is anyone anywhere in the US political spectrum still interested in service guaranteeing citizenship, or even service, citizenship, or any kind of principled governance? * Heinlein, the weird multiverse ones? :/ Or the juveniles? * Rand: look I haven't read "Atlas Shrugged" but I don't think the current Great Resignation is quite what she had in mind ;) * Shea & Wilson: Do we in fact already live in an "Illuminatus!" style world where secret sneaky stuff is happening just under the hood, fantasy and reality are wildly intermingled with it being impossible to distinguish them, the elites inhabit the same physical plane as us but somehow have a totally different existence? * Babot, Lee, and Inkol: Does the 1996 Sci-Fi Channel Michael Paré classic "Carver's Gate" in fact perfectly predict our 2060 future where the world has become unbearable due to climate catastrophes and everyone retreats as much as possible to the metaverse, where they live out the only fulfilling parts of their lives in a system controlled by a megacorporation? * Bacigalupi's "The Calorie Man": could almost all agribusiness one day rely on DRM'd food sources controlled by a few megacorporations? We've seen hints of this in a few other novelists' work. * One I can't quite remember, I think a blog post and not a SF story per se, envisioning a rapidly warming world where wealthy nation-states patrol their borders with armed drones who ruthlessly enforce migration rules as hopeless climate refugees flee desperately to inhabitable places? It's hard to see the future. Hope we'll land in a good one.
- TMWNN 5y ago
  >* Heinlein, "The Man Who Sold the Moon"? (we kind of have this; but certainly not "Requiem" because no one would actually try to stop today's space entrepreneurs from going up themselves, certainly not their kids) D. D. Harriman didn't have biological children. His company's board of directors stopped him from traveling to space in "The Man Who Sold the Moon", and by "Requiem" Harriman can't pass the physical test required for spaceflight, even though rockets are everywhere. I don't think such an outcome is unrealistic at all. If Bezos were still Amazon CEO, and didn't have so much voting power, the Amazon board might very well have decided that he is too important to the company to fly on an experimental rocket. One I've cited before: Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky depicts a human interstellar civilization thousands of years in the future, in which superluminal travel is impossible (for the humans), so travelers use hibernation to pass the decades while their ships travel between star systems. Merchants often revisit systems after a century or two, so see great changes in each visit. The merchants repeatedly find that once smart dust (tiny swarms of nanomachines) are developed, governments inevitably use them for ubiquitous surveillance, which inevitably causes societal collapse. <https://blog.regehr.org/archives/255 https://blog.regehr.org/archives/255>
- rvense 5y ago
  Gibson's Sprawl trilogy: No matter how much technology progresses, poor people are still poor, and/because everything is owned by corporations (including governments).
pinephoneguy 5y ago
The similarity between AirPods and the in-ear Radio device in the book is striking. That was something I never thought would exist or become popular.
- cinntaile 5y ago
  They were called seashells in the book I believe. One of the better books I have read.
- throwanem 5y ago
  Huxley did this in the 30s, or as close as tech then allowed, with pillow speakers and "hypnopaedia" - for which he can't fairly be blamed, as back then they didn't yet know sleep teaching doesn't work - and even Doctor Who used the same idea back in 2006 or so for a Cybermen story. Don't let the coincidental similarity of form factor distract you from the point of their use in these stories, which is that it's not the earbuds per se that are frightening, but rather the idea that everyone with them is always hearing exactly the same thing. This could scarcely be less true of modern earbuds, be they made by Apple or otherwise.
  - pinephoneguy 5y ago
    >This could scarecely be less true of modern earbuds. No software at all runs on those phones without Apple allowing it. They’ve censored Xscrensaver because they were worried about the political thoughts users might have while watching it. The AirPods aren’t controlled yet but most of the apps are forced to put disclaimers on the screen if you pull up anything controversial and if we’re being honest, most people are probably listening to the same pop music that is being pushed as “culture.”
    - throwanem 5y ago
      This is an impressively efficient comment. It is as if the goalposts have been motorized.
jameskilton 5y ago
I would recommend also reading "Parable of the Sower" by Octavia Butler.
sidlls 5y ago
I've often thought a blend of Huxley and Bradbury is where we're at now, at least in the West. People just want to live, with as little worry about their basic needs as possible. They don't much care how they get it, either. And that's why the ideas in all these three books are so easily carried out in reality.
- z3c0 5y ago
  I think peoples' willingness to be subjugated makes it easier to see the parallels between Huxley and Bradbury's worlds and our own, but I don't think they nailed the "Post-Truth" ethos quite as well as 1984 did. It appears that Orwell tragically overestimated people and assumed that it would require methodical violence to make his world a reality.
  - tharne 5y ago
    >...but I don't think they nailed the "Post-Truth" ethos quite as well as 1984 did. 100%. What 1984 really nails is the use of the control of language and history to create a new reality that they have near 100% dominance over.
    - Ekaros 5y ago
      Also the parallels between Trump, deplorables, right, far-right, etc. and two minutes of hate is quite scary... Just that it extends over much longer period...
- trasz 5y ago
  "Now"? How is it different from the West in the past, from McCarthy to Index Librorum Prohibitorum?
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  > People just want to live, with as little worry about their basic needs as possible. You can describe most of recorded history this way
walterbell 5y ago
Does dystopian literature comment on the probability of articles about censorship being themselves censored?
beaconstudios 5y ago
This is all of human history. People always want the ideas they believe to be harmful to remain unaired - and this is a reasonable stance from a utilitarian perspective, assuming the censorship works. I don't like it, but that's the nature of prisoners' dilemmas: free speech requires a degree of cooperation among all participants to adhere to rules of engagement, and this trust is both easily broken and profitable to break. Progressives cancel Rogan for spreading anti-vax sentiment, Conservatives try to cancel schools for studying CRT. Socrates was cancelled to death; it seems to be an eternal factor in political engagement.
pizza234 5y ago
> Bradbury predicted that people, disturbed by confusing or challenging ideas, might one day demand censorship for themselves and protection from any information that pierced the veil of their own simplified reality. > In a society now dominated by reassuringly reductive tweets and memes, where supposedly learned people choose to boycott long-form podcasts, encourage publishers to ditch books by controversial authors, or lean on streaming providers to severe ties with comedians and other artists, this prediction from 1953 sounds eerily familiar. Assuming this is the underlying thesis of the article, this is a simplistic view of information. In real world, it's not always obvious how to distinguish "controversial" with "crackpot". With today's ease of publishing, there's plenty of information on every crackpot theory, which requires a practically impossible amount of research from the individual to systematically falsify. Some of them are harmless (flat earth), some of them are potentially dangerous (e.g. ivermectin). Spread of potentially dangerous information is a lose-lose situation. If let spread, it will cause (on large enough scale) harm, if not, the popoluation will scream at censhorship. The related link to a Don’t Look Up screenshot in the article page is actually very telling - in that movie, the audience knows for certain that the asteroid/comet will destroy earth. In reality, it's not so black and white, and doomsday theories are a dime a dozen. Articles like this don't help at all to shape a cognitive approach to modern excess of information.
- AlexDragusin 5y ago
  re flat earth, not as harmless I'd say https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrAdayUh6-4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrAdayUh6-4
  - mannykannot 5y ago
    To be fair, this guy was almost certainly only adopting the flat-earth premise for publicity (and possibly funding.)
    - happytoexplain 5y ago
      This assertion is made about many "fringe" social/political sentiments (or alternatively, some version of "they're trolling you"), but I think people frequently misunderstand how many practical similarities there are between one promoting these things "ironically" vs sincerely, outside of one's own mind.
WaitWaitWha 5y ago
> While Rogan’s views on vaccination are regrettable and profoundly unhelpful to America’s attempts to battle the pandemic, his podcast is also a near-perfect simulacrum of the books burned by the firemen in Fahrenheit 451. Writing about dystopian societies, I find it pert how gingerly the author tiptoes around the Joe Rogan's podcast topic. He makes his point well, yet makes sure he sprinkles in the required disclaimers lest he gets attacked, demonstrating exactly what he is writing about.
- happytoexplain 5y ago
  You don't think the author makes that point simply because it is their opinion?
  - JasonFruit 5y ago
    How could they tell? — and that's the point. When you see the standard disclaimers, you don't know if they were placed there as an honest expression of the writer's opinion, or if they were put there by order of their mind's "legal department".
woopwoop 5y ago
Did Huxley or Bradbury write essays about contemporary politics? Orwell wrote some fascinating ones that I think are more worth reading than 1984, and cover much of the same ground. In particular I'd recommend the essays "Second Thoughts on James Burnham" and "You and the Atom Bomb".
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  Thanks for the recommendations. I've started reading "Second Thoughts on James Burnham" and am enjoying it immensely. HN readers would do themselves a favor by just reading it and skipping the predictable arguments in this thread. Here are links to the essays: Second Thoughts on James Burnham - https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/second-thoughts-on-james-burnham/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel... You and the Atom Bomb - https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/you-and-the-atom-bomb/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
zozbot234 5y ago
Ironically, the idea that books lead to social disharmony by perpetuating unequal "bourgeois privilege" was taken quite literally by some in China, and it became the basic tenet behind their 'Great Cultural Revolution'. As is well known, the same mindset was taken to outright murderous and even genocidal extremes in Khmer Rouge Cambodia. But it's far from dead even today, as many people even in the U.S. like to conflate education, book learning and bourgeois values more generally with a supposedly pervasive "Whiteness" or even "White supremacy", thereby implying a sort of privilege that can only be described as so extreme as to constitute ipso facto violent, racist oppression. The apple does not fall far from the tree.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  This is not true. The whole discourse around critical theory started in academia, not exactly a bastion of anti-intellectual sentiment.
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    Let's face it, the parts of academia where that discourse is most popular are not exactly focused on refined scholarship. The whole thing is essentially a legacy from the 1960s and 1970s when universities throughout the West were hotbeds of radical pro-Maoist (or more generally leftist, but Mao was very popular) sentiment. (This is why people who blame the Frankfurt School don't get it; some ideas from the Frankfurt theorists might have become popular, but the broad mindset came from elsewhere.)
    - beaconstudios 5y ago
      Critical theory comes from the Frankfurt School, I think Horkheimer defined it. Mao has nothing to do with it. This sound much more conspiratorial than what it actually is, which is a bunch of sociologists doing research and coming up with ideas that describe reality how they interpret it.
      - zozbot234 5y ago
lordnacho 5y ago
I thought this quote summed it up nicely: > Bradbury was right that people would choose self-censorship, led into ignorance by technological innovations that make open discourse and thought unpalatable. Were it a government that imposed such a rule, there would be an uproar, at least in Western societies. But gently coaxed by algorithms, people have voluntarily gravitated towards simple, comfortable ideas and begun to reject complexity, nuance, and the possibility that contrary opinions are not necessarily immoral or even incorrect. Pretty much captures what I see on just about everywhere that isn't HN. You can't have a sensible discussion on FB anymore, for instance, the place is made just for shouting.
- pinephoneguy 5y ago
  HN people are very much for censoring ideas they don’t like too. You could get banned last year for grumping too much about the COVID vaccines.
  - walterbell 5y ago
    Do you have an example? Contested topics can be flagged by users, but it's possible to appeal to HN moderators. Has anyone been banned from HN for a topic? Over the last couple of years, HN has been one of the few places where debate was even possible.
    - swamp40 5y ago
      The site doesn't ban, the users gang downvote you into oblivion for political views unpopular with west coast liberal values. Oh well - 95% of posts aren't political anyway. And other than that, the discussions are fantastic.
  - happytoexplain 5y ago
    Mostly only for certain definitions of "grumping" that are poisonous to substantive conversation. I find on HN that [user] moderation is largely irrelevant to the subject, which is a small miracle even despite its imperfect application.
  - 5y ago
scythe 5y ago
I feel like the structural parable of Nineteen Eighty-Four is often missed in comparative analysis of the book. The social order of IngSoc did not place everyone under strict supervision. Only the "Outer Party" members were so pursued. This does bear an unsettling resemblance to the state of party discipline in this country. Whether it's Adam Kinzinger, Tulsi Gabbard, Mitt Romney or Bernie Sanders, intraparty dissidents are increasingly strung up in public as an example to the rest.
- mbg721 5y ago
  It's been a while since I read 1984, but I had thought "Outer Party" was a description of social class that encompassed far more than partisan candidates for office like the ones you mentioned--you had to be in at least the Outer Party to have any job important enough to influence public opinion.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  Real world single-party systems are just the opposite, in way - at least when they're not at their most dysfunctional. One perk of joining the party is apparently that you are trusted to explore mildly "dissident" ideas for your own benefit, and even discuss them among party members in a quasi-democratic way, without this being considered "rocking the boat".
  - TMWNN 5y ago
    >One perk of joining the party is apparently that you are trusted to explore mildly "dissident" ideas for your own benefit, and even discuss them among party members in a quasi-democratic way, without this being considered "rocking the boat". Consistent with the perks the nomenklatura had in the Soviet Union, including being able to obtain Western and rationed goods at special stores. The intellectual permissiveness extended to the highest ranks. Stalin was probably the most powerful man on Earth during his lifetime, but even he didn't always get his way in the Politburo. Sometimes Stalin was on the losing side of a debate. But win or lose, the Soviet leadership emphasized speaking with a unified voice regardless of whether one had supported or opposed the outcome.
walterbell 5y ago
"Yesterday I Was Levi’s Brand President. I Quit So I Could Be Free", https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/yesterday-i-was-levis-brand-president https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/yesterday-i-was-levis-brand... > But the calls kept coming. From legal. From HR. From a board member. And finally, from my boss, the CEO of the company. I explained why I felt so strongly about the issue, citing data on the safety of schools and the harms caused by virtual learning. While they didn’t try to muzzle me outright, I was told repeatedly to “think about what I was saying.” ... In the last month, the CEO told me that it was “untenable” for me to stay. I was offered a $1 million severance package, but I knew I’d have to sign a nondisclosure agreement about why I’d been pushed out. The money would be very nice. But I just can’t do it. Sorry, Levi’s. > I loved wearing Levi’s; I’d worn them as long as I could remember. But if you had told me back then that I’d one day become the president of the brand, I would’ve never believed you. If you told me that after achieving all that, after spending almost my entire career at one company, that I would resign from it, I’d think you were really crazy. Today, I’m doing just that. Why? Because, after all these years, the company I love has lost sight of the values that made people everywhere—including those gymnasts in the former Soviet Union—want to wear Levi’s.
- 9oliYQjP 5y ago
  Brands like Levis never weigh in on controversial issues until they've hit a certain inflection point of public discourse and it is clear where the majority of society will land on it. Then in hindsight, they will try to present themselves as pioneers of progressive ideals when they really only hopped onto the bandwagon when it was clear which bandwagon was going to win the race. Today, some of these issues are being litigated faster than they were in the past. But don't be mistaken. Nike almost dropped Colin Kaepernick in the heat of the moment of his controversy. They only embraced him a few years later when it was safe to do so. I suspect Jennifer Sey drank her own koolaid in thinking that she'd be able to come out one way or the other on this still hotly contested issue. Marketers choose their words carefully and more importantly than that, refrain from taking a stand until they know precisely how it can be dutifully exploited for their brand's needs. You might dislike this. But that's the game that's played in that industry. There's a reason that corporations, and the brands which encapsulate their identities, have been called psychopaths.
thinkingemote 5y ago
I think it's important to note that in Bradburys book, that book burning was initially approved by all of society, by both politicial sides, factions and peoples as these first books were universally condemned. The subject matter of these horrid books were basically things that are today illegal in England today to own. Truely evil stuff. The initial book burning in that fictional history did not have critique, warning, criticisms or opponents. Everyone did it and wanted it. I'd be happy to burn most of that kind of material, most of us here would also be eager book burners of that first wave also. That's partly why Bradbury's book is True and powerful. Edits, answering the article a bit: The truth (obviously not the main message through) in the novel is not that people were led into ignorance or gently coaxed by technology, just the opposite: people will exclude and censor naturally, especially when they all agree.
- awb 5y ago
  > I'd be happy to burn most of that kind of material, most of us here would also be eager book burners of that first wave also. That's partly why Bradbury's book is True and powerful. It's a great cautionary tale, but also a slippery slope fallacy: https://www.thoughtco.com/slippery-slope-logical-fallacy-1692105 https://www.thoughtco.com/slippery-slope-logical-fallacy-169... > Indeed, given the endless parade of imagined horribles one could conjure up for any policy decision, the slippery slope can easily become an argument for doing nothing at all. Yet act we do; as George Will once noted, 'All politics takes place on a slippery slope.' > The slippery slope fallacy is committed only when we accept without further justification or argument that once the first step is taken, the others are going to follow, or that whatever would justify the first step would, in fact, justify the rest. Because with each new book or set of books to be burned a decision has to be made that is similar to, but ultimately independent of the prior decisions. There is nothing stopping us from burning more books, just as there is nothing stopping us from not burning more books. The momentum is a factor, but it is not insurmountable, just like it's possible to moderate almost any behavior without resorting to either abstinence or addiction. Point taken though that every addiction starts with breaking abstinence.
newaccount2021 5y ago
[dead]
boringg 5y ago
I think there is some interesting thoughts in this post but gets heavily muddied by the example and by the time difference of the when the original books were written vs how society operates. Yes history mimics itself but our systems are quite different than back then. I do think that use Joe Rogan as the canonical example is difficult given how fraught his situation is. He almost serves as a de-facto source of information for large swatch of the population and does it for his own benefit intentionally exploiting information while washing his hands clean of any responsibility.
- notahacker 5y ago
  The biggest irony is that Fahrenheit 451 is almost as big a sneer at modern media as it's a paen to books. As he's discovering books, Montag concludes that it's the rubbish that's broadcast on the giant TVs that's depressing his wife, and ends up torching the TV instead... I'm not sure Joe Rogan's podcast would escape Bradbury's flamethrower.
pessimizer 5y ago
No, we're not. Censorship of public comments are not new or particularly notable, and you could say far less (or more accurately, a different restricted set of things) in a public forum 50 years ago than you can say now. Also, characterizing Orwell's dystopia as consisting of "censorship, mind control, and violence" is not meaningful or specific. We have and have always had censorship, we have and always have enforced norms through violence, and "mind control" doesn't mean anything. Orwell's dystopia was based on total surveillance with multiple layers of redundancy. That's the important thing that is happening now. And there's not a writer at Quillette than has anything against it. They're busy complaining that the normal allies of intolerance are blowing them off when it affects their marketing. Take comfort, Quillette, in the fact that plenty of the people who will fire you in a second from their companies to alleviate the pressure of a bad media cycle initiated on twitter because you called a black person a monkey, those same people are financing your magazine and salaries, and found your tweet funny. Typical low-quality extended whine from a propaganda outlet.
motohagiography 5y ago
While I appreciate the warnings and allusions to important books that predicted a lot of the cultural phenomena today, those books and authors were reacting to a very specfic strain of totalitarian movement that was expanding out of the mere nation states it used as hosts (artifacts of the 18th and 19th centuries) and to expand around the world. In the case of Orwell writing in 1948, he was writing about the war propaganda machine he had just spent the last decade experiencing both fighting Franco and surviving the Nazis - but also living in post-war England, and Bradbury wrote Farenheit 451 in years later in 1953, just as the Cold War (that would persist for at least 40+ years) against the global spread of soviet totalitarianism was well into its initial stages. It's great that writers are still recognizing there is a viral ideology that moralizes destruction, and both social and cognitive disorder for its own purposes, but talking about it in terms of these older books may be too polite a euphemism that only lands with others who would have been old enough to read them and already see the issue. The reason the meme takes hold is that it appeals to people who didn't grow up reading those authors and being innoculated against totalitarian meta-ideologies, and in truth, those works of fiction were powerful, but they did not address the roots of what allows them to compromise and bind the human spirit. I don't think the article is persuasive to someone who would benefit from having their mind changed, and it's too easy to wrap these old authors in a thought terminating talking point. It's going to take new and deep writing, art, and tech that irrevocably moves perspective. The author is as brave as he can be while maintaining access to his platform, but art without risk and sacrifice is just entertainment, and I don't think we entertain ourselves out of something we have entertained ourself into. However, his closer is where I would start: > There are elements of Orwell’s, Huxley’s, and Bradbury’s dystopian visions in our present reality, but perhaps we prefer to describe them all as “Orwellian” because it implies that our circumstances have been imposed upon us against our will. It is painful to accept that we are complicit, and that we are currently living out perhaps the darkest of those visions by demanding to live in ignorance. Yet it is precisely because we have chosen this fate that we have the ability to alter it. Interesting times.
softwarebeware 5y ago
Great thought, but I think the author has made a careless mistake. Most people "deplatformed" are being ejected from massive propaganda machine like Fox News or Spotify for being sex offenders and criminals, not for issues of "freedom of speech." I wouldn't equate the two.
diego_moita 5y ago
> The prophetic accuracy of Bradbury’s work is evident in the recent controversy over Joe Rogan’s podcast. There's a lot of smoke and mirrors in this. Suppose I choose to personaly "censor" and stop paying attention to Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter, reddit and that crappy podcast on Spotify, after I understand they're just cesspools of ignorance, childish memes and tribalism. Now I can use that time to read books from authors I don't necessarily agree with but that can engage me in a deeper discussion. Am I really practising "censorship"? My point is: selecting quality is not "censorship" it is mental hygiene. Bad discussions and bad ideas should really be discarded. When you tune out from a creationist, anti-vaxer, flat-earth prophet or global warming denier you are selecting for quality. A debate where all opinions are equally valid is not healthy. Logically sound opinions are better than stupid ones. It is the most fundamental idea from Information Theory: filter out the noise, keep the signal. Information overload forces you to do selection. And that's not "censorship".
- slibhb 5y ago
  > Information overload forces you to do selection. And that's not "censorship". If you, a consumer, are making the decision then it's not censorship. If some company, government, organization, school, etc is making the decision then it is censorship. Sometimes, perhaps, censorship is called for. And censorship is only illegal if the government is involved. But in general, legal or not, censorship is bad. People should be allowed to say what they think and whether they have a platform should be decided by whether other people want to listen. What disturbs me about the Joe Rogan situation is that Rogan is not an alt-right deplorable. He's not scary or mean, he exudes youthful exuberance and curiosity. He's thoughtful, un-ideological and he's a good conversationalist. The attempt to brand him as a deplorable is genuinely creepy. As far as the article goes, I don't think we're close to any dystopia. These are growing pains as the media opens up. I'm optimistic.
  - LightG 5y ago
    So, you're saying that if I, as the CEO of a private company choose, for example, to host certainn people or certain products on my platform, it's censorship? Strongly disagree. At the government level, I might agree - but not with private companies.
SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
Why is Joe Rogan an example of book burning when there is literal book burning happening? I’m very confused. This strikes me of a position that is advocating in bad faith by cherry picking examples and ignoring more obvious examples of claimed phenomenon. (Similarly, why is social media being pointed to when we have literal banned book lists in schools, and literal banned teaching materials?) https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/right-wing-pastor-greg-locke-organizes-massive-book-burning/ar-AATmY5e?ocid=uxbndlbing https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/right-wing-pastor-greg-loc...
- user-the-name 5y ago
  Because this is an article for Quillette, which is an outlet for far-right propaganda. That is all. It is not in any way an intellectually honest or rigid argument, it is pushing a rightwing agenda.
  - tharne 5y ago
    > It is not in any way an intellectually honest or rigid argument, it is pushing a rightwing agenda. Free speech is not a rightwing agenda, and if it is, that's a very troubling thing for the left.
    - user-the-name 5y ago
      Yelling about "free speech" most definitely is a rightwing agenda. Having any real insight into it is not, however.
- tharne 5y ago
  > Why is Joe Rogan an example of book burning when there is literal book burning happening? Because right wing groups have very little cultural power at this point. They may have some political power, but that doesn't count for much when the culture is not on your side. So yes, their book burning is bad, but it's ultimately not that consequential simply because these groups don't have the near-total cultural dominance of the left. It's like being punched by a six year-old, not good, but ultimately nothing more than a minor nuisance. On the other hand the types of folks calling for Joe Rogan's head dominate practically every cultural power center in American life: the educational system, the media, Hollywood, Big Tech, Corporate America, etc. So we they start trying to censor things, it's a big deal because they actually have the power to do some real damage, in a way that some hillbilly preacher could only dream of. Perhaps one of the most irritating traits of the American left is that they've never come to terms with the fact that they are the establishment. When you erroneously view yourself as a scrappy underdog instead of the vanguard of the establishment, you tend to get a little reckless in how you use your power.
cindarin 5y ago
I'll be honest, I didn't expect the article about the anti-intellectualization of our culture to be veiled apologetics for Joe Rogan. It's not censorship to choose not to spend every moment discussing the basest topics that have already been belabored far beyond what they deserve. If you want to argue that the potential harm of a large group of people other than yourself is fine, I won't censor you. Stand in your truth and hear what everyone else has to say about the matter. Considering only your own unpopular opinion while ignoring all others does not a philosopher make.
nathan_compton 5y ago
A whole lot of ink to be spilled complaining about the movement of the overton window. Substantive discussions of sensitive topics are, if anything, more common, widespread, and participated in than ever. You only hear bellyaching from people who feel that the consensus on those issues has shifted away from their point of view. Note that this article spends more time bemoaning the mere deplatforming of the (at best, bimbo level) podcast the Joe Rogan Experience (which hasn't even happened!) than the outright banning of books in Texas schools. This guy needs to pull his head out of his ass, in short. Controversial, complicated conversations are happening _everywhere and all the time_ in the modern world. I would bet solid money that the open discussion of taboo ideas is _more_ common now than at any point in history.
- deburo 5y ago
  I think hearing about the pushback against cancel culture is important just to know it's not as one-sided as it appears in parts of the Twitter sphere. I find it reassuring quite frankly.
- littlestymaar 5y ago
  > Note that this article spends more time bemoaning the mere deplatforming of the (at best, bimbo level) podcast the Joe Rogan Experience (which hasn't even happened!) Not only he hasn't been censored, but the controversy actually comes from the fact Joe Rogan was promoted by Spotify who've signed a huge deal (we're talking about dozens of million dollar here) with Rogan!
- fatbird 5y ago
  As you say, plus the fact that this is Quillette, a publication founded in part to give a platform to writers on the topic of race and IQ. Their arguments against any sort of deplatforming are pernicious and self-serving.
- seandoe 5y ago
  > deplatforming of the (at best, bimbo level) podcast the Joe Rogan Experience (which hasn't even happened!) Spotify Removes 70 Episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience - https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2022/02/04/spotify-removed-joe-rogan-podcasts-2022/ https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2022/02/04/spotify-removed-...
abeppu 5y ago
I'm surprised this is gaining traction here, because I think the key thing that Bradbury _didn't_ see, and which Wills brushes past, is that in Fahrenheit 451 they're burning books because the mental model of how ideas flow was still centered around print media with publishers/printers, one-writer-many-readers, etc. And no one in Fahrenheit talks about writing a book, producing ideas, really do they? (It's been a long time since I read it.) The kind of interactive conversation we take for granted today, where anyone can post, and where the reactions of others are immediately visible and part of the experience of not just seeing but finding content, was understandably not foreseen by Bradbury in 1953. But now that we've arrived here, don't we need better and more up to date models for how to think about censorship? In particular, issues/mechanisms which aren't really central in my memory of Bradbury were: - facticity: is deliberate misinformation a more legitimate target for suppression? - equity among different types of actors: e.g. the FDA doesn't allow a manufacturer or distributor of Ivermectin to say that it is an effective Covid treatment. Should non-affiliated parties be able to say it, and be paid to say it? - financial incentives for "inflammatory" (pun intended) content Flattening it all to just the presence or absence of any mechanism of suppressing content, irrespective of who is doing it, how, or why I think actually hinders our ability to have the nuanced conversation which Wills would claim to be defending. And if you _do_ want to talk about Bradbury's prescience, I think Joe Rogan is the wrong example to pick right now. There are plenty of contemporary examples of states or local school boards trying to ban concepts from the curriculum, or books, in a way which is a lot more directly aligned, and aren't weighed down by the same baggage.
- notahacker 5y ago
  > in Fahrenheit 451 they're burning books because the mental model of how ideas flow was still centered around print media with publishers/printers, one-writer-many-readers, etc. Bradbury's model in Fahrenheit 451 is even more specific than that: the books are full of diverse intellectual ideas and the TVs are so full of trash we're supposed to be pleased when Montag turns his flamethrower on them...
_ea1k 5y ago
> If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Weird, I thought the issue was giving him two sides to a question when there are often many. Give someone only two options and you can shape their choices.
dukeofdoom 5y ago
This hits close. My government in Canada is arresting protestors and about to announce the equivalent of Marshall Law, as early as today. How should I prepare? Any tips from those who lived through such events or read the book?
- awb 5y ago
  Sure, maybe check out Martin Luther King and his leadership of peaceful protests in the face of violent oppression.
jabthedang 5y ago
royaltheartist 5y ago
Yeah, sure, it's definitely some type of dystopia where we're all forced to treat criticism against a $100 million podcaster as some fundamental human rights issue
littlestymaar 5y ago
I love how the conservatives love to posture as “free speech defenders against cancel culture”. but curiously you haven't heard about these people (Quillette, Fox et Al.) when a metal concert was deplatformed by Christians activists in Paris[1] last year. Or when the Wisconsin GOP representatives tried to ban the words “multiculturalism” or “critical race theory” from schools[2] … Or this time when AP fired a journalist for being pro-Palestine[3] after conservatives pressured … [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/dec/08/anna-von-hausswolff-paris-show-cancelled-amid-catholic-protests https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/dec/08/anna-von-hauss... [2]: https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/574567-woke-multiculturalism-equity-wisconsin-gop-proposes-banning-words-from https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/574567-woke-multicu... [3]: https://api.arretsurimages.net/api/public/media/salon-2/action/show?format=article_header&t=2021-05-25T17:39:06+02:00 https://api.arretsurimages.net/api/public/media/salon-2/acti...
kmeisthax 5y ago
I'm not particularly comfortable with calling the act of individuals refusing to engage with an idea "bottom-up censorship". Censorship requires a willing speaker, willing listener, and some kind of power dynamic - i.e. who is censoring - that prevents the former from communicating with the latter. I'm willing to accept the label being applied to governments, monopolies[0], platforms[1], and violent terrorism[2]; because in every instance there's a very clear power dynamic that I can point to and say "this is the thing that's censoring people". If someone with social capital decides to attack something and other people believe it, there is a power dynamic. But other people have to actually read the critique and decide if they agree with it or not. If the critique is untrue, then you can argue it's defamation. But in many cases the critique is either true, or at least not untrue enough to reach the level of defamation (in at least the US). If someone says "don't listen to this guy, he's a COVID denier[3]", and he is a COVID denier, then... is that any different from every potential listener discovering that for themselves and deciding to tune out? Ok, but... can't the mob itself be the power dynamic? Ordinarily yes, but they're also the ones deciding whether or not to listen. And if we're going to argue that a bulk refusal to listen is censorship, then we're starting to tread down a road in which we argue absurdities, like spam filters being censorship. Again, this is distinct from issues of defamation (covered above). We are talking about people deciding not to listen to someone because of their views on a particular issue. As much as that can be close-minded, putting the label of "censorship" on it implies a moral obligation to force people to listen to things they don't want to. I don't think we should go this far. [0] Comcast, Cox, Cablevision et. all [1] Facebook, Twitter, the iOS App Store, Reddit, Amazon, etc For those wondering I'm not calling for the reinstatement of a certain former President's Twitter account. As far as I'm concerned any reasonably neutral application of Twitter's rules would have banned him sooner than 2021. [2] neo-Nazis, right-wing extremist Islamic or Christian terrorists, etc [3] For the sake of "balance" you may mentally replace the phrase "COVID denier" with any other common thing that right-wingers used to or are using to cancel left-wingers.
nekcihc 5y ago
This looks even more on topic of where humanity is going(humans seems to be in transition to that alien world): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eden_(Lem_novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eden_(Lem_novel)
vmoore 5y ago
When I go to buy a book, I buy a book with the hope it will make me grow as a person. That said, there are many books that implant mind viruses into the reader and the reader uses the book as an ideological weapon against reality. They take the author too seriously and don't doubt or become skeptical about different parts of the book, instead they taking everything to heart. This is why some books are basically a comment on other books, or a retort.
daniel-cussen 5y ago
I actually got a great insight into marketing from Fahrenheit 451. So what you should know is I spent a long time dedicated to creating algorithms, and in doing so created enough different material to make a portfolio: https://github.com/daniel-cussen/portfolio/blob/master/portfolio.pdf https://github.com/daniel-cussen/portfolio/blob/master/portf... And I got that idea from Bradbury, at one point--in my recollection of the book, I can't find the part I'm looking for--what I remember is the antagonist (Captain Beatty) saying there's ten million soldiers, but reporting it as one million is more impressive, so that's what's claimed. But a million was the magic number of the twentieth century. Now it's a billion. So in my portfolio I describe an algorithm that beats the state of the art by a factor of a billion. It's a rough way of communicating it, it's not actually a fixed factor except in specific situations. And really it was about 1.07 billion. So, that's pure marketing--it's the truth, it will be faster by that much--but there's a reason it was about a billion and not more. I could have kept improving it, but it would have been counterproductive to its real purpose, which was talking about it to people and getting exposure as an algorithm writer. For those purposes, a factor of a trillion would have been much less impressive. I'd have to explain what a trillion is, it's such a big number you can't write it down because it's got twelve zeroes behind it, which confuses people. And it leads people to believe it wasn't a meaningful achievement, like I optimized something that didn't really matter. So there you go, sometimes the oppressors in dystopias can have good insights.
lamontcg 5y ago
Yeah, leaving Spotify for Tidal is exactly like burning books. Spotify clearly had an economic right to my subscription perpetually and I'm a Nazi for going elsewhere.
chmod600 5y ago
"we not only lose outdated and misguided opinions" Those are some of the most valuable opinions to share. It's not great that people have such opinions, but to the extent that people do, it's much better to discuss them than suppress them. And they need to be discussed in long form with subtlety and nuance, and free from judgement of the people that hold them. If we suppress racist ideas, it doesn't mean everyone magically learned the real lessons. Even if racism becomes such a taboo that nobody ever engages in it again, if the real lessons aren't learned, it will manifest again. The definitions of race and racism will change, or it will take an unfamiliar form that we don't recognize because we don't truly understand it. The solution is to keep an open dialogue with people who are sincerely trying to be good. And even with personalities that are insincere, but have sincere (misguided) followers. Or even people who are insincere at times but open up to discussion later. Sure, at some point we have to say "this person is crazy and we don't have the time", but we shouldn't actively try to prevent others from hearing them. I reject the notion that free speech is some kind of compromise where we allow bad ideas to be discussed only so we don't miss good ideas. No, we let bad ideas be discussed because it's good to discuss bad ideas.

Such twaddle. As if Rogan's programs "pierce the veil of our own simplified reality".

Hmm. There are some dystopias we're already in! Pynchon in "V" (1963) spells out the kind of everyone-sees-the-bad-news-daily future that I live every time I read a newspaper or, you know, get a NYT push notification: "" Twenty days before the Dog Star moved into conjunction with the sun, the dog days began. The world started to run more and more afoul of the inanimate. Fifteen were killed in a train wreck near Oaxaca, Mexico, on 1 July. The next day fifteen people died when an apartment house collapsed in Madrid. July 4 a bus fell into a river near Karachi and thirty-one passengers drowned. Thirty-nine more were drowned two days later in a tropical storm in the central Philippines. 9 July the Aegean Islands were hit by an earthquake and tidal waves, which killed forty-three. 14 July a MATS plane crashed after takeoff from McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, killing forty-five. An earthquake at Anjar, India, 21 July, killed 117. From 22 to 24 July floods rampaged in central and southern Iran, killing three hundred. 28 July a bus ran off a ferryboat at Kuopio, Finland, and fifteen were killed. Four petroleum tanks blew up near Dumas, Texas, 29 July, killing nineteen. 1 August, seventeen died in a train wreck near Rio de Janeiro. Fifteen more died the 4th and 5th, in floods in southwest Pennsylvania. 2161 people died the same week in a typhoon which hit Chekiang, Honan and Hopeh Provinces. 7 August six dynamite trucks blew up in Cali, Colombia, killing about 1100. The same day there was a train wreck at Prerov, Czechoslovakia, killing nine. The next day 262 miners, trapped by fire, died in a coal mine under Marcinelle, in Belgium. Ice avalanches on Mont Blanc swept fifteen mountain climbers into the kingdom of death in the week 12 to 18 August. The same week a gas explosion in Monticello, Utah, killed fifteen and a typhoon through Japan and Okinawa killed thirty. Twenty-nine more coal miners died of gas poisoning in a mine in Upper Silesia on 27 August. Also on the 27th a Navy bomber crashed among houses in Sanford, Florida, and killed four. Next day a gas explosion in Montreal killed seven and flash floods in Turkey killed 138. These were the mass deaths. There were also the attendant maimed, malfunctioning, homeless, lorn. It happens every month in a succession of encounters between groups of living and a congruent world - which simply doesn't care. Look in any yearly Almanac, under "Disasters" - which is where the figures above come from. The business is transacted month after month after month. "" The other dystopias I've been wondering about are * Heinlein, "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" (a lot to unpack - with political structures echoed in "The Expanse")? * Heinlein, "The Man Who Sold the Moon"? (we kind of have this; but certainly not "Requiem" because no one would actually try to stop today's space entrepreneurs from going up themselves, certainly not their kids) * Heinlein, "Starship Troopers"? Is anyone anywhere in the US political spectrum still interested in service guaranteeing citizenship, or even service, citizenship, or any kind of principled governance? * Heinlein, the weird multiverse ones? :/ Or the juveniles? * Rand: look I haven't read "Atlas Shrugged" but I don't think the current Great Resignation is quite what she had in mind ;) * Shea & Wilson: Do we in fact already live in an "Illuminatus!" style world where secret sneaky stuff is happening just under the hood, fantasy and reality are wildly intermingled with it being impossible to distinguish them, the elites inhabit the same physical plane as us but somehow have a totally different existence? * Babot, Lee, and Inkol: Does the 1996 Sci-Fi Channel Michael Paré classic "Carver's Gate" in fact perfectly predict our 2060 future where the world has become unbearable due to climate catastrophes and everyone retreats as much as possible to the metaverse, where they live out the only fulfilling parts of their lives in a system controlled by a megacorporation? * Bacigalupi's "The Calorie Man": could almost all agribusiness one day rely on DRM'd food sources controlled by a few megacorporations? We've seen hints of this in a few other novelists' work. * One I can't quite remember, I think a blog post and not a SF story per se, envisioning a rapidly warming world where wealthy nation-states patrol their borders with armed drones who ruthlessly enforce migration rules as hopeless climate refugees flee desperately to inhabitable places? It's hard to see the future. Hope we'll land in a good one.

TMWNN 5y ago
>* Heinlein, "The Man Who Sold the Moon"? (we kind of have this; but certainly not "Requiem" because no one would actually try to stop today's space entrepreneurs from going up themselves, certainly not their kids) D. D. Harriman didn't have biological children. His company's board of directors stopped him from traveling to space in "The Man Who Sold the Moon", and by "Requiem" Harriman can't pass the physical test required for spaceflight, even though rockets are everywhere. I don't think such an outcome is unrealistic at all. If Bezos were still Amazon CEO, and didn't have so much voting power, the Amazon board might very well have decided that he is too important to the company to fly on an experimental rocket. One I've cited before: Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky depicts a human interstellar civilization thousands of years in the future, in which superluminal travel is impossible (for the humans), so travelers use hibernation to pass the decades while their ships travel between star systems. Merchants often revisit systems after a century or two, so see great changes in each visit. The merchants repeatedly find that once smart dust (tiny swarms of nanomachines) are developed, governments inevitably use them for ubiquitous surveillance, which inevitably causes societal collapse. <https://blog.regehr.org/archives/255 https://blog.regehr.org/archives/255>
rvense 5y ago
Gibson's Sprawl trilogy: No matter how much technology progresses, poor people are still poor, and/because everything is owned by corporations (including governments).

pinephoneguy 5y ago

The similarity between AirPods and the in-ear Radio device in the book is striking. That was something I never thought would exist or become popular.

cinntaile 5y ago
They were called seashells in the book I believe. One of the better books I have read.
throwanem 5y ago
Huxley did this in the 30s, or as close as tech then allowed, with pillow speakers and "hypnopaedia" - for which he can't fairly be blamed, as back then they didn't yet know sleep teaching doesn't work - and even Doctor Who used the same idea back in 2006 or so for a Cybermen story. Don't let the coincidental similarity of form factor distract you from the point of their use in these stories, which is that it's not the earbuds per se that are frightening, but rather the idea that everyone with them is always hearing exactly the same thing. This could scarcely be less true of modern earbuds, be they made by Apple or otherwise.
- pinephoneguy 5y ago
  >This could scarecely be less true of modern earbuds. No software at all runs on those phones without Apple allowing it. They’ve censored Xscrensaver because they were worried about the political thoughts users might have while watching it. The AirPods aren’t controlled yet but most of the apps are forced to put disclaimers on the screen if you pull up anything controversial and if we’re being honest, most people are probably listening to the same pop music that is being pushed as “culture.”
  - throwanem 5y ago
    This is an impressively efficient comment. It is as if the goalposts have been motorized.

jameskilton 5y ago

I would recommend also reading "Parable of the Sower" by Octavia Butler.

sidlls 5y ago

I've often thought a blend of Huxley and Bradbury is where we're at now, at least in the West. People just want to live, with as little worry about their basic needs as possible. They don't much care how they get it, either. And that's why the ideas in all these three books are so easily carried out in reality.

z3c0 5y ago
I think peoples' willingness to be subjugated makes it easier to see the parallels between Huxley and Bradbury's worlds and our own, but I don't think they nailed the "Post-Truth" ethos quite as well as 1984 did. It appears that Orwell tragically overestimated people and assumed that it would require methodical violence to make his world a reality.
- tharne 5y ago
  >...but I don't think they nailed the "Post-Truth" ethos quite as well as 1984 did. 100%. What 1984 really nails is the use of the control of language and history to create a new reality that they have near 100% dominance over.
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    Also the parallels between Trump, deplorables, right, far-right, etc. and two minutes of hate is quite scary... Just that it extends over much longer period...
trasz 5y ago
"Now"? How is it different from the West in the past, from McCarthy to Index Librorum Prohibitorum?
micromacrofoot 5y ago
> People just want to live, with as little worry about their basic needs as possible. You can describe most of recorded history this way

walterbell 5y ago

Does dystopian literature comment on the probability of articles about censorship being themselves censored?

beaconstudios 5y ago

This is all of human history. People always want the ideas they believe to be harmful to remain unaired - and this is a reasonable stance from a utilitarian perspective, assuming the censorship works. I don't like it, but that's the nature of prisoners' dilemmas: free speech requires a degree of cooperation among all participants to adhere to rules of engagement, and this trust is both easily broken and profitable to break. Progressives cancel Rogan for spreading anti-vax sentiment, Conservatives try to cancel schools for studying CRT. Socrates was cancelled to death; it seems to be an eternal factor in political engagement.

pizza234 5y ago

> Bradbury predicted that people, disturbed by confusing or challenging ideas, might one day demand censorship for themselves and protection from any information that pierced the veil of their own simplified reality. > In a society now dominated by reassuringly reductive tweets and memes, where supposedly learned people choose to boycott long-form podcasts, encourage publishers to ditch books by controversial authors, or lean on streaming providers to severe ties with comedians and other artists, this prediction from 1953 sounds eerily familiar. Assuming this is the underlying thesis of the article, this is a simplistic view of information. In real world, it's not always obvious how to distinguish "controversial" with "crackpot". With today's ease of publishing, there's plenty of information on every crackpot theory, which requires a practically impossible amount of research from the individual to systematically falsify. Some of them are harmless (flat earth), some of them are potentially dangerous (e.g. ivermectin). Spread of potentially dangerous information is a lose-lose situation. If let spread, it will cause (on large enough scale) harm, if not, the popoluation will scream at censhorship. The related link to a Don’t Look Up screenshot in the article page is actually very telling - in that movie, the audience knows for certain that the asteroid/comet will destroy earth. In reality, it's not so black and white, and doomsday theories are a dime a dozen. Articles like this don't help at all to shape a cognitive approach to modern excess of information.

AlexDragusin 5y ago
re flat earth, not as harmless I'd say https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrAdayUh6-4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrAdayUh6-4
- mannykannot 5y ago
  To be fair, this guy was almost certainly only adopting the flat-earth premise for publicity (and possibly funding.)
  - happytoexplain 5y ago
    This assertion is made about many "fringe" social/political sentiments (or alternatively, some version of "they're trolling you"), but I think people frequently misunderstand how many practical similarities there are between one promoting these things "ironically" vs sincerely, outside of one's own mind.

WaitWaitWha 5y ago

> While Rogan’s views on vaccination are regrettable and profoundly unhelpful to America’s attempts to battle the pandemic, his podcast is also a near-perfect simulacrum of the books burned by the firemen in Fahrenheit 451. Writing about dystopian societies, I find it pert how gingerly the author tiptoes around the Joe Rogan's podcast topic. He makes his point well, yet makes sure he sprinkles in the required disclaimers lest he gets attacked, demonstrating exactly what he is writing about.

happytoexplain 5y ago
You don't think the author makes that point simply because it is their opinion?
- JasonFruit 5y ago
  How could they tell? — and that's the point. When you see the standard disclaimers, you don't know if they were placed there as an honest expression of the writer's opinion, or if they were put there by order of their mind's "legal department".

woopwoop 5y ago

Did Huxley or Bradbury write essays about contemporary politics? Orwell wrote some fascinating ones that I think are more worth reading than 1984, and cover much of the same ground. In particular I'd recommend the essays "Second Thoughts on James Burnham" and "You and the Atom Bomb".

pmoriarty 5y ago
Thanks for the recommendations. I've started reading "Second Thoughts on James Burnham" and am enjoying it immensely. HN readers would do themselves a favor by just reading it and skipping the predictable arguments in this thread. Here are links to the essays: Second Thoughts on James Burnham - https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/second-thoughts-on-james-burnham/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel... You and the Atom Bomb - https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/you-and-the-atom-bomb/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

zozbot234 5y ago

Ironically, the idea that books lead to social disharmony by perpetuating unequal "bourgeois privilege" was taken quite literally by some in China, and it became the basic tenet behind their 'Great Cultural Revolution'. As is well known, the same mindset was taken to outright murderous and even genocidal extremes in Khmer Rouge Cambodia. But it's far from dead even today, as many people even in the U.S. like to conflate education, book learning and bourgeois values more generally with a supposedly pervasive "Whiteness" or even "White supremacy", thereby implying a sort of privilege that can only be described as so extreme as to constitute ipso facto violent, racist oppression. The apple does not fall far from the tree.

beaconstudios 5y ago
This is not true. The whole discourse around critical theory started in academia, not exactly a bastion of anti-intellectual sentiment.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  Let's face it, the parts of academia where that discourse is most popular are not exactly focused on refined scholarship. The whole thing is essentially a legacy from the 1960s and 1970s when universities throughout the West were hotbeds of radical pro-Maoist (or more generally leftist, but Mao was very popular) sentiment. (This is why people who blame the Frankfurt School don't get it; some ideas from the Frankfurt theorists might have become popular, but the broad mindset came from elsewhere.)
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    Critical theory comes from the Frankfurt School, I think Horkheimer defined it. Mao has nothing to do with it. This sound much more conspiratorial than what it actually is, which is a bunch of sociologists doing research and coming up with ideas that describe reality how they interpret it.
    - zozbot234 5y ago

lordnacho 5y ago

I thought this quote summed it up nicely: > Bradbury was right that people would choose self-censorship, led into ignorance by technological innovations that make open discourse and thought unpalatable. Were it a government that imposed such a rule, there would be an uproar, at least in Western societies. But gently coaxed by algorithms, people have voluntarily gravitated towards simple, comfortable ideas and begun to reject complexity, nuance, and the possibility that contrary opinions are not necessarily immoral or even incorrect. Pretty much captures what I see on just about everywhere that isn't HN. You can't have a sensible discussion on FB anymore, for instance, the place is made just for shouting.

pinephoneguy 5y ago
HN people are very much for censoring ideas they don’t like too. You could get banned last year for grumping too much about the COVID vaccines.
- walterbell 5y ago
  Do you have an example? Contested topics can be flagged by users, but it's possible to appeal to HN moderators. Has anyone been banned from HN for a topic? Over the last couple of years, HN has been one of the few places where debate was even possible.
  - swamp40 5y ago
    The site doesn't ban, the users gang downvote you into oblivion for political views unpopular with west coast liberal values. Oh well - 95% of posts aren't political anyway. And other than that, the discussions are fantastic.
- happytoexplain 5y ago
  Mostly only for certain definitions of "grumping" that are poisonous to substantive conversation. I find on HN that [user] moderation is largely irrelevant to the subject, which is a small miracle even despite its imperfect application.
- 5y ago

scythe 5y ago

I feel like the structural parable of Nineteen Eighty-Four is often missed in comparative analysis of the book. The social order of IngSoc did not place everyone under strict supervision. Only the "Outer Party" members were so pursued. This does bear an unsettling resemblance to the state of party discipline in this country. Whether it's Adam Kinzinger, Tulsi Gabbard, Mitt Romney or Bernie Sanders, intraparty dissidents are increasingly strung up in public as an example to the rest.

mbg721 5y ago
It's been a while since I read 1984, but I had thought "Outer Party" was a description of social class that encompassed far more than partisan candidates for office like the ones you mentioned--you had to be in at least the Outer Party to have any job important enough to influence public opinion.
zozbot234 5y ago
Real world single-party systems are just the opposite, in way - at least when they're not at their most dysfunctional. One perk of joining the party is apparently that you are trusted to explore mildly "dissident" ideas for your own benefit, and even discuss them among party members in a quasi-democratic way, without this being considered "rocking the boat".
- TMWNN 5y ago
  >One perk of joining the party is apparently that you are trusted to explore mildly "dissident" ideas for your own benefit, and even discuss them among party members in a quasi-democratic way, without this being considered "rocking the boat". Consistent with the perks the nomenklatura had in the Soviet Union, including being able to obtain Western and rationed goods at special stores. The intellectual permissiveness extended to the highest ranks. Stalin was probably the most powerful man on Earth during his lifetime, but even he didn't always get his way in the Politburo. Sometimes Stalin was on the losing side of a debate. But win or lose, the Soviet leadership emphasized speaking with a unified voice regardless of whether one had supported or opposed the outcome.

walterbell 5y ago

"Yesterday I Was Levi’s Brand President. I Quit So I Could Be Free", https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/yesterday-i-was-levis-brand-president https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/yesterday-i-was-levis-brand... > But the calls kept coming. From legal. From HR. From a board member. And finally, from my boss, the CEO of the company. I explained why I felt so strongly about the issue, citing data on the safety of schools and the harms caused by virtual learning. While they didn’t try to muzzle me outright, I was told repeatedly to “think about what I was saying.” ... In the last month, the CEO told me that it was “untenable” for me to stay. I was offered a $1 million severance package, but I knew I’d have to sign a nondisclosure agreement about why I’d been pushed out. The money would be very nice. But I just can’t do it. Sorry, Levi’s. > I loved wearing Levi’s; I’d worn them as long as I could remember. But if you had told me back then that I’d one day become the president of the brand, I would’ve never believed you. If you told me that after achieving all that, after spending almost my entire career at one company, that I would resign from it, I’d think you were really crazy. Today, I’m doing just that. Why? Because, after all these years, the company I love has lost sight of the values that made people everywhere—including those gymnasts in the former Soviet Union—want to wear Levi’s.

9oliYQjP 5y ago
Brands like Levis never weigh in on controversial issues until they've hit a certain inflection point of public discourse and it is clear where the majority of society will land on it. Then in hindsight, they will try to present themselves as pioneers of progressive ideals when they really only hopped onto the bandwagon when it was clear which bandwagon was going to win the race. Today, some of these issues are being litigated faster than they were in the past. But don't be mistaken. Nike almost dropped Colin Kaepernick in the heat of the moment of his controversy. They only embraced him a few years later when it was safe to do so. I suspect Jennifer Sey drank her own koolaid in thinking that she'd be able to come out one way or the other on this still hotly contested issue. Marketers choose their words carefully and more importantly than that, refrain from taking a stand until they know precisely how it can be dutifully exploited for their brand's needs. You might dislike this. But that's the game that's played in that industry. There's a reason that corporations, and the brands which encapsulate their identities, have been called psychopaths.

thinkingemote 5y ago

I think it's important to note that in Bradburys book, that book burning was initially approved by all of society, by both politicial sides, factions and peoples as these first books were universally condemned. The subject matter of these horrid books were basically things that are today illegal in England today to own. Truely evil stuff. The initial book burning in that fictional history did not have critique, warning, criticisms or opponents. Everyone did it and wanted it. I'd be happy to burn most of that kind of material, most of us here would also be eager book burners of that first wave also. That's partly why Bradbury's book is True and powerful. Edits, answering the article a bit: The truth (obviously not the main message through) in the novel is not that people were led into ignorance or gently coaxed by technology, just the opposite: people will exclude and censor naturally, especially when they all agree.

awb 5y ago
> I'd be happy to burn most of that kind of material, most of us here would also be eager book burners of that first wave also. That's partly why Bradbury's book is True and powerful. It's a great cautionary tale, but also a slippery slope fallacy: https://www.thoughtco.com/slippery-slope-logical-fallacy-1692105 https://www.thoughtco.com/slippery-slope-logical-fallacy-169... > Indeed, given the endless parade of imagined horribles one could conjure up for any policy decision, the slippery slope can easily become an argument for doing nothing at all. Yet act we do; as George Will once noted, 'All politics takes place on a slippery slope.' > The slippery slope fallacy is committed only when we accept without further justification or argument that once the first step is taken, the others are going to follow, or that whatever would justify the first step would, in fact, justify the rest. Because with each new book or set of books to be burned a decision has to be made that is similar to, but ultimately independent of the prior decisions. There is nothing stopping us from burning more books, just as there is nothing stopping us from not burning more books. The momentum is a factor, but it is not insurmountable, just like it's possible to moderate almost any behavior without resorting to either abstinence or addiction. Point taken though that every addiction starts with breaking abstinence.

newaccount2021 5y ago

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boringg 5y ago

I think there is some interesting thoughts in this post but gets heavily muddied by the example and by the time difference of the when the original books were written vs how society operates. Yes history mimics itself but our systems are quite different than back then. I do think that use Joe Rogan as the canonical example is difficult given how fraught his situation is. He almost serves as a de-facto source of information for large swatch of the population and does it for his own benefit intentionally exploiting information while washing his hands clean of any responsibility.

notahacker 5y ago
The biggest irony is that Fahrenheit 451 is almost as big a sneer at modern media as it's a paen to books. As he's discovering books, Montag concludes that it's the rubbish that's broadcast on the giant TVs that's depressing his wife, and ends up torching the TV instead... I'm not sure Joe Rogan's podcast would escape Bradbury's flamethrower.

pessimizer 5y ago

No, we're not. Censorship of public comments are not new or particularly notable, and you could say far less (or more accurately, a different restricted set of things) in a public forum 50 years ago than you can say now. Also, characterizing Orwell's dystopia as consisting of "censorship, mind control, and violence" is not meaningful or specific. We have and have always had censorship, we have and always have enforced norms through violence, and "mind control" doesn't mean anything. Orwell's dystopia was based on total surveillance with multiple layers of redundancy. That's the important thing that is happening now. And there's not a writer at Quillette than has anything against it. They're busy complaining that the normal allies of intolerance are blowing them off when it affects their marketing. Take comfort, Quillette, in the fact that plenty of the people who will fire you in a second from their companies to alleviate the pressure of a bad media cycle initiated on twitter because you called a black person a monkey, those same people are financing your magazine and salaries, and found your tweet funny. Typical low-quality extended whine from a propaganda outlet.

motohagiography 5y ago

While I appreciate the warnings and allusions to important books that predicted a lot of the cultural phenomena today, those books and authors were reacting to a very specfic strain of totalitarian movement that was expanding out of the mere nation states it used as hosts (artifacts of the 18th and 19th centuries) and to expand around the world. In the case of Orwell writing in 1948, he was writing about the war propaganda machine he had just spent the last decade experiencing both fighting Franco and surviving the Nazis - but also living in post-war England, and Bradbury wrote Farenheit 451 in years later in 1953, just as the Cold War (that would persist for at least 40+ years) against the global spread of soviet totalitarianism was well into its initial stages. It's great that writers are still recognizing there is a viral ideology that moralizes destruction, and both social and cognitive disorder for its own purposes, but talking about it in terms of these older books may be too polite a euphemism that only lands with others who would have been old enough to read them and already see the issue. The reason the meme takes hold is that it appeals to people who didn't grow up reading those authors and being innoculated against totalitarian meta-ideologies, and in truth, those works of fiction were powerful, but they did not address the roots of what allows them to compromise and bind the human spirit. I don't think the article is persuasive to someone who would benefit from having their mind changed, and it's too easy to wrap these old authors in a thought terminating talking point. It's going to take new and deep writing, art, and tech that irrevocably moves perspective. The author is as brave as he can be while maintaining access to his platform, but art without risk and sacrifice is just entertainment, and I don't think we entertain ourselves out of something we have entertained ourself into. However, his closer is where I would start: > There are elements of Orwell’s, Huxley’s, and Bradbury’s dystopian visions in our present reality, but perhaps we prefer to describe them all as “Orwellian” because it implies that our circumstances have been imposed upon us against our will. It is painful to accept that we are complicit, and that we are currently living out perhaps the darkest of those visions by demanding to live in ignorance. Yet it is precisely because we have chosen this fate that we have the ability to alter it. Interesting times.

softwarebeware 5y ago

Great thought, but I think the author has made a careless mistake. Most people "deplatformed" are being ejected from massive propaganda machine like Fox News or Spotify for being sex offenders and criminals, not for issues of "freedom of speech." I wouldn't equate the two.

diego_moita 5y ago

> The prophetic accuracy of Bradbury’s work is evident in the recent controversy over Joe Rogan’s podcast. There's a lot of smoke and mirrors in this. Suppose I choose to personaly "censor" and stop paying attention to Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter, reddit and that crappy podcast on Spotify, after I understand they're just cesspools of ignorance, childish memes and tribalism. Now I can use that time to read books from authors I don't necessarily agree with but that can engage me in a deeper discussion. Am I really practising "censorship"? My point is: selecting quality is not "censorship" it is mental hygiene. Bad discussions and bad ideas should really be discarded. When you tune out from a creationist, anti-vaxer, flat-earth prophet or global warming denier you are selecting for quality. A debate where all opinions are equally valid is not healthy. Logically sound opinions are better than stupid ones. It is the most fundamental idea from Information Theory: filter out the noise, keep the signal. Information overload forces you to do selection. And that's not "censorship".

slibhb 5y ago
> Information overload forces you to do selection. And that's not "censorship". If you, a consumer, are making the decision then it's not censorship. If some company, government, organization, school, etc is making the decision then it is censorship. Sometimes, perhaps, censorship is called for. And censorship is only illegal if the government is involved. But in general, legal or not, censorship is bad. People should be allowed to say what they think and whether they have a platform should be decided by whether other people want to listen. What disturbs me about the Joe Rogan situation is that Rogan is not an alt-right deplorable. He's not scary or mean, he exudes youthful exuberance and curiosity. He's thoughtful, un-ideological and he's a good conversationalist. The attempt to brand him as a deplorable is genuinely creepy. As far as the article goes, I don't think we're close to any dystopia. These are growing pains as the media opens up. I'm optimistic.
- LightG 5y ago
  So, you're saying that if I, as the CEO of a private company choose, for example, to host certainn people or certain products on my platform, it's censorship? Strongly disagree. At the government level, I might agree - but not with private companies.

SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago

Why is Joe Rogan an example of book burning when there is literal book burning happening? I’m very confused. This strikes me of a position that is advocating in bad faith by cherry picking examples and ignoring more obvious examples of claimed phenomenon. (Similarly, why is social media being pointed to when we have literal banned book lists in schools, and literal banned teaching materials?) https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/right-wing-pastor-greg-locke-organizes-massive-book-burning/ar-AATmY5e?ocid=uxbndlbing https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/right-wing-pastor-greg-loc...

user-the-name 5y ago
Because this is an article for Quillette, which is an outlet for far-right propaganda. That is all. It is not in any way an intellectually honest or rigid argument, it is pushing a rightwing agenda.
- tharne 5y ago
  > It is not in any way an intellectually honest or rigid argument, it is pushing a rightwing agenda. Free speech is not a rightwing agenda, and if it is, that's a very troubling thing for the left.
  - user-the-name 5y ago
    Yelling about "free speech" most definitely is a rightwing agenda. Having any real insight into it is not, however.
tharne 5y ago
> Why is Joe Rogan an example of book burning when there is literal book burning happening? Because right wing groups have very little cultural power at this point. They may have some political power, but that doesn't count for much when the culture is not on your side. So yes, their book burning is bad, but it's ultimately not that consequential simply because these groups don't have the near-total cultural dominance of the left. It's like being punched by a six year-old, not good, but ultimately nothing more than a minor nuisance. On the other hand the types of folks calling for Joe Rogan's head dominate practically every cultural power center in American life: the educational system, the media, Hollywood, Big Tech, Corporate America, etc. So we they start trying to censor things, it's a big deal because they actually have the power to do some real damage, in a way that some hillbilly preacher could only dream of. Perhaps one of the most irritating traits of the American left is that they've never come to terms with the fact that they are the establishment. When you erroneously view yourself as a scrappy underdog instead of the vanguard of the establishment, you tend to get a little reckless in how you use your power.

cindarin 5y ago

I'll be honest, I didn't expect the article about the anti-intellectualization of our culture to be veiled apologetics for Joe Rogan. It's not censorship to choose not to spend every moment discussing the basest topics that have already been belabored far beyond what they deserve. If you want to argue that the potential harm of a large group of people other than yourself is fine, I won't censor you. Stand in your truth and hear what everyone else has to say about the matter. Considering only your own unpopular opinion while ignoring all others does not a philosopher make.

nathan_compton 5y ago

A whole lot of ink to be spilled complaining about the movement of the overton window. Substantive discussions of sensitive topics are, if anything, more common, widespread, and participated in than ever. You only hear bellyaching from people who feel that the consensus on those issues has shifted away from their point of view. Note that this article spends more time bemoaning the mere deplatforming of the (at best, bimbo level) podcast the Joe Rogan Experience (which hasn't even happened!) than the outright banning of books in Texas schools. This guy needs to pull his head out of his ass, in short. Controversial, complicated conversations are happening _everywhere and all the time_ in the modern world. I would bet solid money that the open discussion of taboo ideas is _more_ common now than at any point in history.

deburo 5y ago
I think hearing about the pushback against cancel culture is important just to know it's not as one-sided as it appears in parts of the Twitter sphere. I find it reassuring quite frankly.
littlestymaar 5y ago
> Note that this article spends more time bemoaning the mere deplatforming of the (at best, bimbo level) podcast the Joe Rogan Experience (which hasn't even happened!) Not only he hasn't been censored, but the controversy actually comes from the fact Joe Rogan was promoted by Spotify who've signed a huge deal (we're talking about dozens of million dollar here) with Rogan!
fatbird 5y ago
As you say, plus the fact that this is Quillette, a publication founded in part to give a platform to writers on the topic of race and IQ. Their arguments against any sort of deplatforming are pernicious and self-serving.
seandoe 5y ago
> deplatforming of the (at best, bimbo level) podcast the Joe Rogan Experience (which hasn't even happened!) Spotify Removes 70 Episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience - https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2022/02/04/spotify-removed-joe-rogan-podcasts-2022/ https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2022/02/04/spotify-removed-...

abeppu 5y ago

I'm surprised this is gaining traction here, because I think the key thing that Bradbury _didn't_ see, and which Wills brushes past, is that in Fahrenheit 451 they're burning books because the mental model of how ideas flow was still centered around print media with publishers/printers, one-writer-many-readers, etc. And no one in Fahrenheit talks about writing a book, producing ideas, really do they? (It's been a long time since I read it.) The kind of interactive conversation we take for granted today, where anyone can post, and where the reactions of others are immediately visible and part of the experience of not just seeing but finding content, was understandably not foreseen by Bradbury in 1953. But now that we've arrived here, don't we need better and more up to date models for how to think about censorship? In particular, issues/mechanisms which aren't really central in my memory of Bradbury were: - facticity: is deliberate misinformation a more legitimate target for suppression? - equity among different types of actors: e.g. the FDA doesn't allow a manufacturer or distributor of Ivermectin to say that it is an effective Covid treatment. Should non-affiliated parties be able to say it, and be paid to say it? - financial incentives for "inflammatory" (pun intended) content Flattening it all to just the presence or absence of any mechanism of suppressing content, irrespective of who is doing it, how, or why I think actually hinders our ability to have the nuanced conversation which Wills would claim to be defending. And if you _do_ want to talk about Bradbury's prescience, I think Joe Rogan is the wrong example to pick right now. There are plenty of contemporary examples of states or local school boards trying to ban concepts from the curriculum, or books, in a way which is a lot more directly aligned, and aren't weighed down by the same baggage.

notahacker 5y ago
> in Fahrenheit 451 they're burning books because the mental model of how ideas flow was still centered around print media with publishers/printers, one-writer-many-readers, etc. Bradbury's model in Fahrenheit 451 is even more specific than that: the books are full of diverse intellectual ideas and the TVs are so full of trash we're supposed to be pleased when Montag turns his flamethrower on them...

_ea1k 5y ago

> If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Weird, I thought the issue was giving him two sides to a question when there are often many. Give someone only two options and you can shape their choices.

dukeofdoom 5y ago

This hits close. My government in Canada is arresting protestors and about to announce the equivalent of Marshall Law, as early as today. How should I prepare? Any tips from those who lived through such events or read the book?

awb 5y ago
Sure, maybe check out Martin Luther King and his leadership of peaceful protests in the face of violent oppression.

jabthedang 5y ago

royaltheartist 5y ago

Yeah, sure, it's definitely some type of dystopia where we're all forced to treat criticism against a $100 million podcaster as some fundamental human rights issue

littlestymaar 5y ago

I love how the conservatives love to posture as “free speech defenders against cancel culture”. but curiously you haven't heard about these people (Quillette, Fox et Al.) when a metal concert was deplatformed by Christians activists in Paris[1] last year. Or when the Wisconsin GOP representatives tried to ban the words “multiculturalism” or “critical race theory” from schools[2] … Or this time when AP fired a journalist for being pro-Palestine[3] after conservatives pressured … [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/dec/08/anna-von-hausswolff-paris-show-cancelled-amid-catholic-protests https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/dec/08/anna-von-hauss... [2]: https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/574567-woke-multiculturalism-equity-wisconsin-gop-proposes-banning-words-from https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/574567-woke-multicu... [3]: https://api.arretsurimages.net/api/public/media/salon-2/action/show?format=article_header&t=2021-05-25T17:39:06+02:00 https://api.arretsurimages.net/api/public/media/salon-2/acti...

kmeisthax 5y ago

I'm not particularly comfortable with calling the act of individuals refusing to engage with an idea "bottom-up censorship". Censorship requires a willing speaker, willing listener, and some kind of power dynamic - i.e. who is censoring - that prevents the former from communicating with the latter. I'm willing to accept the label being applied to governments, monopolies[0], platforms[1], and violent terrorism[2]; because in every instance there's a very clear power dynamic that I can point to and say "this is the thing that's censoring people". If someone with social capital decides to attack something and other people believe it, there is a power dynamic. But other people have to actually read the critique and decide if they agree with it or not. If the critique is untrue, then you can argue it's defamation. But in many cases the critique is either true, or at least not untrue enough to reach the level of defamation (in at least the US). If someone says "don't listen to this guy, he's a COVID denier[3]", and he is a COVID denier, then... is that any different from every potential listener discovering that for themselves and deciding to tune out? Ok, but... can't the mob itself be the power dynamic? Ordinarily yes, but they're also the ones deciding whether or not to listen. And if we're going to argue that a bulk refusal to listen is censorship, then we're starting to tread down a road in which we argue absurdities, like spam filters being censorship. Again, this is distinct from issues of defamation (covered above). We are talking about people deciding not to listen to someone because of their views on a particular issue. As much as that can be close-minded, putting the label of "censorship" on it implies a moral obligation to force people to listen to things they don't want to. I don't think we should go this far. [0] Comcast, Cox, Cablevision et. all [1] Facebook, Twitter, the iOS App Store, Reddit, Amazon, etc For those wondering I'm not calling for the reinstatement of a certain former President's Twitter account. As far as I'm concerned any reasonably neutral application of Twitter's rules would have banned him sooner than 2021. [2] neo-Nazis, right-wing extremist Islamic or Christian terrorists, etc [3] For the sake of "balance" you may mentally replace the phrase "COVID denier" with any other common thing that right-wingers used to or are using to cancel left-wingers.

nekcihc 5y ago

This looks even more on topic of where humanity is going(humans seems to be in transition to that alien world): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eden_(Lem_novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eden_(Lem_novel)

vmoore 5y ago

When I go to buy a book, I buy a book with the hope it will make me grow as a person. That said, there are many books that implant mind viruses into the reader and the reader uses the book as an ideological weapon against reality. They take the author too seriously and don't doubt or become skeptical about different parts of the book, instead they taking everything to heart. This is why some books are basically a comment on other books, or a retort.

daniel-cussen 5y ago

I actually got a great insight into marketing from Fahrenheit 451. So what you should know is I spent a long time dedicated to creating algorithms, and in doing so created enough different material to make a portfolio: https://github.com/daniel-cussen/portfolio/blob/master/portfolio.pdf https://github.com/daniel-cussen/portfolio/blob/master/portf... And I got that idea from Bradbury, at one point--in my recollection of the book, I can't find the part I'm looking for--what I remember is the antagonist (Captain Beatty) saying there's ten million soldiers, but reporting it as one million is more impressive, so that's what's claimed. But a million was the magic number of the twentieth century. Now it's a billion. So in my portfolio I describe an algorithm that beats the state of the art by a factor of a billion. It's a rough way of communicating it, it's not actually a fixed factor except in specific situations. And really it was about 1.07 billion. So, that's pure marketing--it's the truth, it will be faster by that much--but there's a reason it was about a billion and not more. I could have kept improving it, but it would have been counterproductive to its real purpose, which was talking about it to people and getting exposure as an algorithm writer. For those purposes, a factor of a trillion would have been much less impressive. I'd have to explain what a trillion is, it's such a big number you can't write it down because it's got twelve zeroes behind it, which confuses people. And it leads people to believe it wasn't a meaningful achievement, like I optimized something that didn't really matter. So there you go, sometimes the oppressors in dystopias can have good insights.

lamontcg 5y ago

Yeah, leaving Spotify for Tidal is exactly like burning books. Spotify clearly had an economic right to my subscription perpetually and I'm a Nazi for going elsewhere.

chmod600 5y ago

"we not only lose outdated and misguided opinions" Those are some of the most valuable opinions to share. It's not great that people have such opinions, but to the extent that people do, it's much better to discuss them than suppress them. And they need to be discussed in long form with subtlety and nuance, and free from judgement of the people that hold them. If we suppress racist ideas, it doesn't mean everyone magically learned the real lessons. Even if racism becomes such a taboo that nobody ever engages in it again, if the real lessons aren't learned, it will manifest again. The definitions of race and racism will change, or it will take an unfamiliar form that we don't recognize because we don't truly understand it. The solution is to keep an open dialogue with people who are sincerely trying to be good. And even with personalities that are insincere, but have sincere (misguided) followers. Or even people who are insincere at times but open up to discussion later. Sure, at some point we have to say "this person is crazy and we don't have the time", but we shouldn't actively try to prevent others from hearing them. I reject the notion that free speech is some kind of compromise where we allow bad ideas to be discussed only so we don't miss good ideas. No, we let bad ideas be discussed because it's good to discuss bad ideas.