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> What debate is being stifled? Everything you deem to be wrong? " Allowing for there to be these separate "sides"... " > It's settled science. Everything is

by qiskit 5y ago

> What debate is being stifled? Everything you deem to be wrong? " Allowing for there to be these separate "sides"... " > It's settled science. Everything is "settled science" until it isn't. Like the earth being the center of the universe. Like newtonian physics. Like einsteinian physics. Etc. It was settle science that Lamarckianism was scientific charlatanism until epigenetics. > You have a right to an opinion. I have a right to dismiss that opinion off-hand We are agreed. Except you don't want to even allow others their opinions. > If I went to a Python conference Someone once compared python to a tricycle. > or that it's the basis of philosophy and learning? I don't think so. Then you don't know philosophy, science and most importantly the history of science/philosophy. Why is it that the people with the least knowledge/wisdom/etc are the most sure about things they know nothing about? As I said, if you run into a flat earther, just show them a video of the earth. Or don't waste your time with them. Who do you think you are to say whether they should be "allowed or not" to have their opinion or say?

ericmay 5y ago
I don't care if someone is just wrong about some belief. I care when they have a megaphone and they're convincing other people of their reality and that leads those people to their own early death. If you sat at home and did this, nobody would really care.
- qiskit 5y ago
  > I don't care if someone is just wrong about some belief. You sound like you care very much. I've known many zealots who want everyone to adopt their orthodoxy. > I care when they have a megaphone and they're convincing other people of their reality and that leads those people to their own early death. Every preacher, pope, cult leader and zealot of all kinds says the same thing. They want "heresy" silenced in order to save souls. How noble and virtuous. Ever consider that people have their own agency? Ever consider whether you are in the wrong? What happens if someone says the earth is flat on a megaphone? They get laughed at. As long as you have the facts and data, what are you so afraid of?
  - positus 5y ago
    Every preacher? You sure about that?
- Banana699 5y ago
  That's unrealistic though, nearly everyone would be okay with their ideological enemies "sitting at home and doing their thing", including your ideological enemies themselves. I live in the Middle East and this attitude, translated nearly verbatim to Arabic, is a common stance on an issue like atheism or gay rights, "Oh, we are actually entirely ok with atheists|gays if they just shut up completely". It never works because it's not symmetric, you want your enemies to shut up but not you, this is because you see yourself as the correct side, which might be either true or false, but the sure thing is that your enemies beg to disagree. The only thing that will make it work is brute force, but other than that it's just another way to say to your enemies "Just admit you're wrong and go to your room".
  - ericmay 5y ago
    The difference with atheism or gay rights here is that it doesn't actually harm anyone. Nobody dies from being an atheist. Let me put it another way. What if you had a family member who had cancer and I wrote a bunch of stuff and ran Facebook ads that they read that convinced them to not get very likely life-saving treatment with no downsides to them. All good then yea? You won't be mad or suggest maybe I stop doing that?
    - Banana699 5y ago
      >The difference with atheism or gay rights here is that it doesn't actually harm anyone This assertion encodes a worldview within it, one that is not shared among a lot (most ?) of religious people, especially in the Middle East. Religious people often assign very high weights to the fact that their religion isn't respected/believed in, and the resulting moral value can be compared with, and often exceeds, material damage to lives and property in their eyes. So the very act of saying "What one does in one's bedroom is none of your business" is itself a topic of intense disagreements. I say this as a closeted atheist in said society who have tried a number of times to play "Devil's Advocate" to atheism and gay rights in my social circles : if only it was as easy as saying "but they don't harm anyone!" and getting people to agree on that. There are actually analogs to this in western societies (and in every other society I have heard of). Ironically, it's usually the dual to what happens in my soceity : very high sensitivity to anti-lgbt opinions, although the same applies, being anti-lgbt in the abstract doesn't actually harm anyone. Another example is holocaust denial, how does it actually harm anyone ? I don't see an obvious way, a popular stance goes something like "If we allowed people to deny the holocaust, people would percieve it as less serious and it might happen again", but this is overly simplistic and selective, people deny and underplay countless historical atrocities (e.g. the 20th anti- and pro- communism conflicts in Asia,Africa,and South America) and that doesn't automatically make them more likely to happen. So every society has certain taboos and red lines that you are not allowed to speak against in public (although doing so wouldn't concretely harm anyone), and problems happen when 2 social groups who have different ideas of what should be taboo interact together. >that convinced them to not get very likely life-saving treatment with no downsides to them I have several comments on this: - Cancer and Covid are not comparable in damage, Cancer is uniformly deadly, Covid only so for very specific subsets of the population. - Cancer is not viral, so whatever happens in the end it will only affect that specific family member and my family, but with Covid you have to balance people's freedom with the threat they pose to the rest of the populations. Overall, I agree in the abstract that free speech should be restricted in critical expertise-related subject matters, like medical and engineering matters, but the particular case of Covid discourse is such a disaster. Governments and public institutions consistently lied or made up things out of thin air, authoritarians hid behind "The Science^TM" to advance authoritarian solutions to what could be equally solved with voluntary incentive-setting, and overall "The Science^TM" camp just consistently shout louder and assume bad faith more than the reverse. The actual factual subject matter itself is far from settled and much much blurrier than - say - the question of "Does vaccines cause autism", the virus constantly mutates and wipes the floor with the efficiency of the vaccines, lockdown measures are often disastrous and impact far more people negatively than the virus. But there is a certain type of people who will treat the virus as an ultimate demon, to be exorcised at all costs, and they ridicule anyone disagreeing with them as "Science Deniers^TM", and this just becomes exhausting after a while.

by qiskit 5y ago

ericmay 5y ago

I don't care if someone is just wrong about some belief. I care when they have a megaphone and they're convincing other people of their reality and that leads those people to their own early death. If you sat at home and did this, nobody would really care.

qiskit 5y ago
> I don't care if someone is just wrong about some belief. You sound like you care very much. I've known many zealots who want everyone to adopt their orthodoxy. > I care when they have a megaphone and they're convincing other people of their reality and that leads those people to their own early death. Every preacher, pope, cult leader and zealot of all kinds says the same thing. They want "heresy" silenced in order to save souls. How noble and virtuous. Ever consider that people have their own agency? Ever consider whether you are in the wrong? What happens if someone says the earth is flat on a megaphone? They get laughed at. As long as you have the facts and data, what are you so afraid of?
- positus 5y ago
  Every preacher? You sure about that?
Banana699 5y ago
That's unrealistic though, nearly everyone would be okay with their ideological enemies "sitting at home and doing their thing", including your ideological enemies themselves. I live in the Middle East and this attitude, translated nearly verbatim to Arabic, is a common stance on an issue like atheism or gay rights, "Oh, we are actually entirely ok with atheists|gays if they just shut up completely". It never works because it's not symmetric, you want your enemies to shut up but not you, this is because you see yourself as the correct side, which might be either true or false, but the sure thing is that your enemies beg to disagree. The only thing that will make it work is brute force, but other than that it's just another way to say to your enemies "Just admit you're wrong and go to your room".
- ericmay 5y ago
  The difference with atheism or gay rights here is that it doesn't actually harm anyone. Nobody dies from being an atheist. Let me put it another way. What if you had a family member who had cancer and I wrote a bunch of stuff and ran Facebook ads that they read that convinced them to not get very likely life-saving treatment with no downsides to them. All good then yea? You won't be mad or suggest maybe I stop doing that?
  - Banana699 5y ago
    >The difference with atheism or gay rights here is that it doesn't actually harm anyone This assertion encodes a worldview within it, one that is not shared among a lot (most ?) of religious people, especially in the Middle East. Religious people often assign very high weights to the fact that their religion isn't respected/believed in, and the resulting moral value can be compared with, and often exceeds, material damage to lives and property in their eyes. So the very act of saying "What one does in one's bedroom is none of your business" is itself a topic of intense disagreements. I say this as a closeted atheist in said society who have tried a number of times to play "Devil's Advocate" to atheism and gay rights in my social circles : if only it was as easy as saying "but they don't harm anyone!" and getting people to agree on that. There are actually analogs to this in western societies (and in every other society I have heard of). Ironically, it's usually the dual to what happens in my soceity : very high sensitivity to anti-lgbt opinions, although the same applies, being anti-lgbt in the abstract doesn't actually harm anyone. Another example is holocaust denial, how does it actually harm anyone ? I don't see an obvious way, a popular stance goes something like "If we allowed people to deny the holocaust, people would percieve it as less serious and it might happen again", but this is overly simplistic and selective, people deny and underplay countless historical atrocities (e.g. the 20th anti- and pro- communism conflicts in Asia,Africa,and South America) and that doesn't automatically make them more likely to happen. So every society has certain taboos and red lines that you are not allowed to speak against in public (although doing so wouldn't concretely harm anyone), and problems happen when 2 social groups who have different ideas of what should be taboo interact together. >that convinced them to not get very likely life-saving treatment with no downsides to them I have several comments on this: - Cancer and Covid are not comparable in damage, Cancer is uniformly deadly, Covid only so for very specific subsets of the population. - Cancer is not viral, so whatever happens in the end it will only affect that specific family member and my family, but with Covid you have to balance people's freedom with the threat they pose to the rest of the populations. Overall, I agree in the abstract that free speech should be restricted in critical expertise-related subject matters, like medical and engineering matters, but the particular case of Covid discourse is such a disaster. Governments and public institutions consistently lied or made up things out of thin air, authoritarians hid behind "The Science^TM" to advance authoritarian solutions to what could be equally solved with voluntary incentive-setting, and overall "The Science^TM" camp just consistently shout louder and assume bad faith more than the reverse. The actual factual subject matter itself is far from settled and much much blurrier than - say - the question of "Does vaccines cause autism", the virus constantly mutates and wipes the floor with the efficiency of the vaccines, lockdown measures are often disastrous and impact far more people negatively than the virus. But there is a certain type of people who will treat the virus as an ultimate demon, to be exorcised at all costs, and they ridicule anyone disagreeing with them as "Science Deniers^TM", and this just becomes exhausting after a while.