4 ms·

If bob and steve are going around saying Nature is very political, they're wrong, but who cares? If bob and steve are going around telling people masks are harm

by epgui 4y ago

If bob and steve are going around saying Nature is very political, they're wrong, but who cares? If bob and steve are going around telling people masks are harmful (and that's causing the mistaken belief to spread), then bob and steve are causing direct harm, and their voice amplifier should be taken away. Nobody is going to put duct tape on their mouth.

junofan 4y ago
I see you’re coming from a good place. I just think taking away voice amplifiers (smashing the printing press, so to speak) hasn’t turned out well in the past, and I don’t see a strong enough reason to start doing that now.
- epgui 4y ago
  I think there's a very clear line we can draw between different categories of smashing the printing press: - "banning books because they criticize the government" - "banning books because they have immoral content" And on the other hand: - "shutting down a viral video with advice dangerous to individuals, where protecting the public from direct physical harm is the goal" I don't know of any instances in History where we looked back at the latter in disapproval.
  - junofan 4y ago
    What we look back in disapproval upon is empowering a group to do the silencing. I think because those who do the silencing usually end up silencing their own critics.
    - epgui 4y ago
      I don't think this is always the case, and that's exactly my point. > "those who do the silencing usually end up silencing their own critics" I'm not even sure that this usually happens. It is certainly the case that when that happens, it is very memorable. But that's probably just a "selective attention bias" applied to History, that is, because the other cases are unremarkable.
      - junofan 4y ago
        I see your point, and still I don’t think it’s a good idea. We don’t give power like that to expertise for the same reason the commander-in-chief of the armed forces is a civilian.
        epgui 4y ago
        We do give this power very narrowly and very successfully to many individuals in their official capacity, in different contexts. Judges, professors, administrative committees, employers in certain situations, heck, at the moment, any company with a platform can apply this power essentially arbitrarily and at will (which I'd argue is not great).
  - astrobe_ 4y ago
    To protect is always the initial goal, and directly dangerous videos are the low hanging fruits. I'd say "viral videos" are too recent to be part of History yet, but shutting down a dangerous viral video is not very far from "banning immoral content", which is not very far itself from "banning hate speech". It's not that easy to draw a line because it is a continuum. Consensus and censorship is what many countries do: People vote for MPs, MPs vote laws against hate speech, pornography, etc. Or at least how it's supposed to work on the paper. The same way, we could decide for laws against media that propagates misinformation - and a judge would decide. We could do that. The tools are on the workbench, why we can't use them is another problem.
  - raxxorraxor 4y ago
    If you take the ability to see the content away from me I trust you to evaluate the content exactly as much as you trust me to do so. How do you solve that conundrum?
- kastagg 4y ago
  In this metaphor, are the printing presses private property?
- yongjik 4y ago
  On the other hand, judging from the past 5-6 years, freely giving out voice amplifiers (Facebook and targeted ads, anyone?) clearly didn't turn out well either, so the optimum is probably somewhere in the middle.
  - junofan 4y ago
    I think a workable solution can be found. I don’t know if that’s necessarily a middle ground between amplification and censorship; feels like that could be the “middle ground” fallacy. We’ve solved problems like this in the past.
    - epgui 4y ago
      The middle ground fallacy does not apply here. It only applies when one of the two things being considered is incorrect.
      - junofan 4y ago
        You already said amplification was incorrect. I think you’re not willing to budge on censoring things you know to be incorrect and dangerous, so ironically we won’t be able to find middle ground. That’s okay.
        epgui 4y ago
        No, "amplification" is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon. What I said is that there should be limits to amplification. Ruling out an extreme does not rule out the middle ground. The way this works is that there are some questions that have clear answers. For example, anthropogenic climate change (or to be more precise, the idea that "Most of the warming of Earth’s average global temperature over the second half of the 20th century has been caused by human activities."). The middle ground fallacy is what you call it when you put up two people on TV, one who is an expert on climate change, and another who is just a contrarian, and where you don't frame it exactly as it is: one is wrong and the other is right. That's not the same thing as this conversation we're having.
marcosdumay 4y ago
It's interesting that you go for masks, because the advice around them completely changed during the pandemic. (Of course, any media that gave the details wasn't wrong at any time. But the simplified advice still was.)

by epgui 4y ago

junofan 4y ago

I see you’re coming from a good place. I just think taking away voice amplifiers (smashing the printing press, so to speak) hasn’t turned out well in the past, and I don’t see a strong enough reason to start doing that now.

epgui 4y ago
I think there's a very clear line we can draw between different categories of smashing the printing press: - "banning books because they criticize the government" - "banning books because they have immoral content" And on the other hand: - "shutting down a viral video with advice dangerous to individuals, where protecting the public from direct physical harm is the goal" I don't know of any instances in History where we looked back at the latter in disapproval.
- junofan 4y ago
  What we look back in disapproval upon is empowering a group to do the silencing. I think because those who do the silencing usually end up silencing their own critics.
  - epgui 4y ago
    I don't think this is always the case, and that's exactly my point. > "those who do the silencing usually end up silencing their own critics" I'm not even sure that this usually happens. It is certainly the case that when that happens, it is very memorable. But that's probably just a "selective attention bias" applied to History, that is, because the other cases are unremarkable.
    - junofan 4y ago
      I see your point, and still I don’t think it’s a good idea. We don’t give power like that to expertise for the same reason the commander-in-chief of the armed forces is a civilian.
      - epgui 4y ago
        We do give this power very narrowly and very successfully to many individuals in their official capacity, in different contexts. Judges, professors, administrative committees, employers in certain situations, heck, at the moment, any company with a platform can apply this power essentially arbitrarily and at will (which I'd argue is not great).
- astrobe_ 4y ago
  To protect is always the initial goal, and directly dangerous videos are the low hanging fruits. I'd say "viral videos" are too recent to be part of History yet, but shutting down a dangerous viral video is not very far from "banning immoral content", which is not very far itself from "banning hate speech". It's not that easy to draw a line because it is a continuum. Consensus and censorship is what many countries do: People vote for MPs, MPs vote laws against hate speech, pornography, etc. Or at least how it's supposed to work on the paper. The same way, we could decide for laws against media that propagates misinformation - and a judge would decide. We could do that. The tools are on the workbench, why we can't use them is another problem.
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  If you take the ability to see the content away from me I trust you to evaluate the content exactly as much as you trust me to do so. How do you solve that conundrum?
kastagg 4y ago
In this metaphor, are the printing presses private property?
yongjik 4y ago
On the other hand, judging from the past 5-6 years, freely giving out voice amplifiers (Facebook and targeted ads, anyone?) clearly didn't turn out well either, so the optimum is probably somewhere in the middle.
- junofan 4y ago
  I think a workable solution can be found. I don’t know if that’s necessarily a middle ground between amplification and censorship; feels like that could be the “middle ground” fallacy. We’ve solved problems like this in the past.
  - epgui 4y ago
    The middle ground fallacy does not apply here. It only applies when one of the two things being considered is incorrect.
    - junofan 4y ago
      You already said amplification was incorrect. I think you’re not willing to budge on censoring things you know to be incorrect and dangerous, so ironically we won’t be able to find middle ground. That’s okay.
      - epgui 4y ago
        No, "amplification" is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon. What I said is that there should be limits to amplification. Ruling out an extreme does not rule out the middle ground. The way this works is that there are some questions that have clear answers. For example, anthropogenic climate change (or to be more precise, the idea that "Most of the warming of Earth’s average global temperature over the second half of the 20th century has been caused by human activities."). The middle ground fallacy is what you call it when you put up two people on TV, one who is an expert on climate change, and another who is just a contrarian, and where you don't frame it exactly as it is: one is wrong and the other is right. That's not the same thing as this conversation we're having.

marcosdumay 4y ago

It's interesting that you go for masks, because the advice around them completely changed during the pandemic. (Of course, any media that gave the details wasn't wrong at any time. But the simplified advice still was.)