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"When all you have is a hammer..." The problem doesn't seem to me like one that can be or should be solved (primarily) by turning the amount-of-moderation knob

by 4bpp 4y ago

"When all you have is a hammer..." The problem doesn't seem to me like one that can be or should be solved (primarily) by turning the amount-of-moderation knob in one direction or the other. I think that the philosophical basis of free speech, in the version I personally prefer and believe to have enabled the formation of Western liberalism, is the idea that society will be better off if more people are exposed to more different viewpoints. Translated into prescriptions for action, this means that you ought to minimise censorship of speech that will expose more people to viewpoints they have not encountered yet, but actually ought to censor speech that aims to prevent people from being exposed to certain viewpoints (or at least work to limit its impact; the viewpoint that you should prevent people from being exposed to certain viewpoint is also a valid viewpoint that more people ought to be exposed to ceteris paribus, but if you have to trade off between censoring the one idea saying that you should censor dangerous ideas and 100 ideas that proliferation of the one idea would result in being censored as dangerous, then the latter win by numbers). "No censorship!" is a gloss of free speech that is catchy, but only really functions as a shorthand for the above version of it when addressed to people who already have the right mindset. An increasing number of people nowadays don't, as they are more driven by fear (of others, of uncomfortable ideas, and perhaps of themselves if they were to be exposed to those ideas) than intellectual curiosity, and this is the actual problem that we ought to be solving rather than just contemplating where to bring down the hammer of moderation.

fallingfrog 4y ago
What kind of speech aims to prevent people from being exposed to certain viewpoints? If you say something and then 100 angry people respond back, are they silencing you, or is it just that you said something that made a lot of people very angry? To a degree I think you're doing what I talked about in my other comment- you might be assuming that most people secretly have opinions that they're just too intimidated to express. I don't think that's the case at all. I think many people underestimate how deeply unpopular their opinions are. So when they get shouted down, they can't explain it in any other way then some kind of conspiracy to silence people like them. Do you want people to stop yelling at each other online? Let me know how that goes.
- 4bpp 4y ago
  > What kind of speech aims to prevent people from being exposed to certain viewpoints? Any speech that argues for certain viewpoints to be banned, or tries to incite people to action that would reduce the spread of those viewpoints (e.g. by threatening or punishing anyone who would spread them). The most obvious examples are articles that outright call for bans, such as https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/nov/23/ancient-apocalypse-is-the-most-dangerous-show-on-netflix https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/nov/23/ancient... (about some Netflix show peddling what appears to be silly pseudohistory, tagline: "Why has this been allowed?"), or recent examples calling for removal of Twitter from app stores because of Musk's decision to unban Trump or otherwise trying to prevent that from happening (e.g. https://slate.com/technology/2022/05/twitter-employees-elon-musk-unbanning-donald-trump.html https://slate.com/technology/2022/05/twitter-employees-elon-...). People organising to contact the employers and other relations of those who voiced viewpoints they disagree with in an attempt to persuade them to terminate their relation with the individual in question. Campus activists campaigning to prevent talks by speakers they disagree with (e.g. https://www.businessinsider.com/list-of-disinvited-speakers-at-colleges-2016-7?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/list-of-disinvited-speakers-...), or trying to disrupt those talks if they do happen, for example by pulling fire alarms (https://bc.ctvnews.ca/fire-alarm-pulled-during-demonstration-against-trans-speaker-at-ubc-1.4480460?cache=yes%3FclipId%3D68597 https://bc.ctvnews.ca/fire-alarm-pulled-during-demonstration...), which I assume are not lone-wolf actions but planned and organised in public channels. Even in the case of "100 angry people responding back" that you cite, I think at some point a threshold is crossed where additional angry people responding clearly are not adding new perspectives but are rather, inadvertently or deliberately, intimidating the person they respond to by sheer mass of negative sentiment, resulting in a diminished likelihood that that person or anyone with a similar viewpoint will risk sharing that view in the future. > you might be assuming that most people secretly have opinions that they're just too intimidated to express I don't think that this is necessarily true or important, as most people have one of a very small collection of common opinions. My concern is more of the form that most interesting opinions are only held by a small number of people each, of whom sufficiently many are too intimidated to express them that I - or other people who would stand to benefit from the perspective - will never learn of them.

by 4bpp 4y ago

fallingfrog 4y ago

What kind of speech aims to prevent people from being exposed to certain viewpoints? If you say something and then 100 angry people respond back, are they silencing you, or is it just that you said something that made a lot of people very angry? To a degree I think you're doing what I talked about in my other comment- you might be assuming that most people secretly have opinions that they're just too intimidated to express. I don't think that's the case at all. I think many people underestimate how deeply unpopular their opinions are. So when they get shouted down, they can't explain it in any other way then some kind of conspiracy to silence people like them. Do you want people to stop yelling at each other online? Let me know how that goes.

4bpp 4y ago
> What kind of speech aims to prevent people from being exposed to certain viewpoints? Any speech that argues for certain viewpoints to be banned, or tries to incite people to action that would reduce the spread of those viewpoints (e.g. by threatening or punishing anyone who would spread them). The most obvious examples are articles that outright call for bans, such as https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/nov/23/ancient-apocalypse-is-the-most-dangerous-show-on-netflix https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/nov/23/ancient... (about some Netflix show peddling what appears to be silly pseudohistory, tagline: "Why has this been allowed?"), or recent examples calling for removal of Twitter from app stores because of Musk's decision to unban Trump or otherwise trying to prevent that from happening (e.g. https://slate.com/technology/2022/05/twitter-employees-elon-musk-unbanning-donald-trump.html https://slate.com/technology/2022/05/twitter-employees-elon-...). People organising to contact the employers and other relations of those who voiced viewpoints they disagree with in an attempt to persuade them to terminate their relation with the individual in question. Campus activists campaigning to prevent talks by speakers they disagree with (e.g. https://www.businessinsider.com/list-of-disinvited-speakers-at-colleges-2016-7?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/list-of-disinvited-speakers-...), or trying to disrupt those talks if they do happen, for example by pulling fire alarms (https://bc.ctvnews.ca/fire-alarm-pulled-during-demonstration-against-trans-speaker-at-ubc-1.4480460?cache=yes%3FclipId%3D68597 https://bc.ctvnews.ca/fire-alarm-pulled-during-demonstration...), which I assume are not lone-wolf actions but planned and organised in public channels. Even in the case of "100 angry people responding back" that you cite, I think at some point a threshold is crossed where additional angry people responding clearly are not adding new perspectives but are rather, inadvertently or deliberately, intimidating the person they respond to by sheer mass of negative sentiment, resulting in a diminished likelihood that that person or anyone with a similar viewpoint will risk sharing that view in the future. > you might be assuming that most people secretly have opinions that they're just too intimidated to express I don't think that this is necessarily true or important, as most people have one of a very small collection of common opinions. My concern is more of the form that most interesting opinions are only held by a small number of people each, of whom sufficiently many are too intimidated to express them that I - or other people who would stand to benefit from the perspective - will never learn of them.