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You don't need to convince someone who already doesn't believe what they're saying. The overwhelming majority of people are not psy-ops operators or 4chan troll

You don't need to convince someone who already doesn't believe what they're saying. The overwhelming majority of people are not psy-ops operators or 4chan trolls. If someone invents new idiotic positions when they are proven wrong, they look like an idiot, and even dumber-than-average people can tell. If those people believe, rightly, that their side is not being given a fair fight, they may not be inclined to update. And they will be inclined to move to a community where the truth is not given a fair fight. >"The solution to bad speech is more speech" is a nice slogan, but it doesn't really make logical sense. The solution to confusion isn't more confusion. The solution to lying isn't more lying. The solution to confusion is clarity. The solution to lying is telling the truth. The solution to bad speech is good speech. There's not a fundamental logic error there. If I'm wrong, it's on the object level. There is logical error in using speech to say that more speech won't advance your objectives. If you don't think that speech can do good, why would you waste your time participating in it?

boxed 5y ago
> The overwhelming majority of people are not psy-ops operators or 4chan trolls. People yes. People that will interact with a given issue on social media? Now that's a totally different thing! > The solution to bad speech is good speech. 100% agreed. But note how very different that statement is than the more common "the solution to bad speech is MORE speech". If good speech is drowned out by the megaphone of bad speech it is as if it doesn't exist. This is what we need to protect against.
- Stupulous 5y ago
  The overwhelming majority of people who interact with a given issue on social media are not psy-ops operators or 4chan trolls. Speaking from a deeply shameful amount of experience interacting with given issues on social media, at most we're talking 3%. This is beside the point, though. If misinformation meant robots and Russian conspirators, sure, ban it- it won't matter because arguments are not won by counting advocates, and there is very little of this anyway. But it doesn't, and you've said as much above. Wildly incorrect and/or dangerous beliefs are not 'bad' speech. They are precisely the speech that 'free speech' is intended to protect; speech that disagrees with or threatens the establishment is the only speech that has ever been under attack. More of it is better. If good speech is somehow drowned out by bad, people will start learning to seek out trustworthy sources again. People are not stupid. The ones that are don't spend their days reading and writing. And even the morons have every right to choose what they believe from the infinite set of possibilities.

boxed 5y ago

> The overwhelming majority of people are not psy-ops operators or 4chan trolls. People yes. People that will interact with a given issue on social media? Now that's a totally different thing! > The solution to bad speech is good speech. 100% agreed. But note how very different that statement is than the more common "the solution to bad speech is MORE speech". If good speech is drowned out by the megaphone of bad speech it is as if it doesn't exist. This is what we need to protect against.

Stupulous 5y ago
The overwhelming majority of people who interact with a given issue on social media are not psy-ops operators or 4chan trolls. Speaking from a deeply shameful amount of experience interacting with given issues on social media, at most we're talking 3%. This is beside the point, though. If misinformation meant robots and Russian conspirators, sure, ban it- it won't matter because arguments are not won by counting advocates, and there is very little of this anyway. But it doesn't, and you've said as much above. Wildly incorrect and/or dangerous beliefs are not 'bad' speech. They are precisely the speech that 'free speech' is intended to protect; speech that disagrees with or threatens the establishment is the only speech that has ever been under attack. More of it is better. If good speech is somehow drowned out by bad, people will start learning to seek out trustworthy sources again. People are not stupid. The ones that are don't spend their days reading and writing. And even the morons have every right to choose what they believe from the infinite set of possibilities.