7 ms·

A bit meta, but I call this cognitive de-platforming. Not engaging with a thesis because the person in question is an outcast.

giraffe_lady 3y ago
It's not "because they're an outcast." It's because of an assessment of their stated motivation and previous actions. That's not prejudice it's just judgement.
- rainytuesday 3y ago
  Non-engagement with the thesis was the point, not the particulars of how he fell from polite society.
  - kennywinker 3y ago
    When people speak in bad faith, you don’t have to listen to them. The boy who cried wolf was in the wrong, not the townspeople who ignored him. Perhaps this is the one time when a normally un-reliable source is presenting a thesis that is intellectually sound - but unless a more reliable source picks it up, it’s not worth taking seriously.
    - Bran_son 3y ago
      Conveniently, everyone across the political aisle from you speaks in bad faith.
      - kennywinker 3y ago
        That’s definitely an easy position to fall into, but not an absolute truth. I’m quite sure most people against hate speech laws are coming from a reasonable fear of restrictions on speech. How slippery is the slope is a very fair thing to discuss and debate
    - j_french 3y ago
      This. I actually don't have a strong position on the topic of the thread (the Irish law in question), other than personal experience of living in the country and not remotely finding it to be the oppressive thought-policing regime the thread describes, and generally agreeing that hate speech is a bad thing for society. My point is that the thread is poor content written by a clearly unreliable source. I'm happy to engage with ideas I disagree with when they're presented intelligently with insight, but as soon as someone starts talking about world governments taking their orders from some hidden superior powers I'm out thank you very much.
eyelidlessness 3y ago
“Cognitive deplatforming” is a brilliant way of framing the motivation of certain “free speech” advocacy. It’s not good enough for someone to be able to express the idea, nor to be able to amplify it by whatever platform provided to them. You also have to think about what they want you to think. Anything less than that is denying their right to speak. Recognize the pattern of their motivations and the resulting ideas? Know they’re harmful from prior experience? Better go think on it some more, or you’ve unduly cancelled them from your own brain, and that’s bad because everyone who wants to be in your brain deserves to be, rent free of course.
- Bran_son 3y ago
  > You also have to think about what they want you to think. That's a wildly exaggerated interpretation of rainytuesday's post. I interpreted it as calling out the one-sided purity test applied to which media one may engage with. I.e. you can ignore it and not think about it, but you can't expect others to concede that, just because the source doesn't parrot your side's orthodoxy, it can and should be ignored. Especially for something as mild as the statement about supporting news without a liberal filter. Especially since, if motivated, biased, harmful (but truthful) reporting is enough to discredit a news source, then that would disqualify ABC, CBS, NBC, the Associated Press [1], the New York Times, and I'm sure many others. If we ignore what anyone we dislike has to say, even when we think what they're saying is true, then dialogue is impossible. [1] https://israelpalestinenews.org/associated-press-double-standard-israel-palestine-reporting/ https://israelpalestinenews.org/associated-press-double-stan... [2] https://ifamericansknew.org/media/nyt-report.html https://ifamericansknew.org/media/nyt-report.html
  - eyelidlessness 3y ago
    > That's a wildly exaggerated interpretation of rainytuesday's post. I interpreted it as calling out the one-sided purity test applied to which media one may engage with. You didn’t need to interpret. They said[0] what they meant pretty clearly. > Non-engagement with the thesis was the point And I don’t agree given actual political alignment that “news without a liberal filter” is mild. It’s a dog whistle for increasingly active hate. The news without such a “liberal filter” is openly hostile to my existence, and far moreso towards other people I care about. And to that point, > If we ignore what anyone we dislike has to say, even when we think what they're saying is true, then dialogue is impossible. I don’t want dialogue with anyone who wants me to cease to exist, nor anyone who wants to keep people I care about from existing. That’s not intellectual curiosity and it’s not the bedrock of a functioning society. It’s the exact principle of demanding people entertain harmful ideas even when recognized. You can engage whatever you want, but I’m not obligated to spend a second thought on people who want me dead. 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35867929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35867929

giraffe_lady 3y ago

It's not "because they're an outcast." It's because of an assessment of their stated motivation and previous actions. That's not prejudice it's just judgement.

rainytuesday 3y ago
Non-engagement with the thesis was the point, not the particulars of how he fell from polite society.
- kennywinker 3y ago
  When people speak in bad faith, you don’t have to listen to them. The boy who cried wolf was in the wrong, not the townspeople who ignored him. Perhaps this is the one time when a normally un-reliable source is presenting a thesis that is intellectually sound - but unless a more reliable source picks it up, it’s not worth taking seriously.
  - Bran_son 3y ago
    Conveniently, everyone across the political aisle from you speaks in bad faith.
    - kennywinker 3y ago
      That’s definitely an easy position to fall into, but not an absolute truth. I’m quite sure most people against hate speech laws are coming from a reasonable fear of restrictions on speech. How slippery is the slope is a very fair thing to discuss and debate
  - j_french 3y ago
    This. I actually don't have a strong position on the topic of the thread (the Irish law in question), other than personal experience of living in the country and not remotely finding it to be the oppressive thought-policing regime the thread describes, and generally agreeing that hate speech is a bad thing for society. My point is that the thread is poor content written by a clearly unreliable source. I'm happy to engage with ideas I disagree with when they're presented intelligently with insight, but as soon as someone starts talking about world governments taking their orders from some hidden superior powers I'm out thank you very much.

eyelidlessness 3y ago

“Cognitive deplatforming” is a brilliant way of framing the motivation of certain “free speech” advocacy. It’s not good enough for someone to be able to express the idea, nor to be able to amplify it by whatever platform provided to them. You also have to think about what they want you to think. Anything less than that is denying their right to speak. Recognize the pattern of their motivations and the resulting ideas? Know they’re harmful from prior experience? Better go think on it some more, or you’ve unduly cancelled them from your own brain, and that’s bad because everyone who wants to be in your brain deserves to be, rent free of course.

Bran_son 3y ago
> You also have to think about what they want you to think. That's a wildly exaggerated interpretation of rainytuesday's post. I interpreted it as calling out the one-sided purity test applied to which media one may engage with. I.e. you can ignore it and not think about it, but you can't expect others to concede that, just because the source doesn't parrot your side's orthodoxy, it can and should be ignored. Especially for something as mild as the statement about supporting news without a liberal filter. Especially since, if motivated, biased, harmful (but truthful) reporting is enough to discredit a news source, then that would disqualify ABC, CBS, NBC, the Associated Press [1], the New York Times, and I'm sure many others. If we ignore what anyone we dislike has to say, even when we think what they're saying is true, then dialogue is impossible. [1] https://israelpalestinenews.org/associated-press-double-standard-israel-palestine-reporting/ https://israelpalestinenews.org/associated-press-double-stan... [2] https://ifamericansknew.org/media/nyt-report.html https://ifamericansknew.org/media/nyt-report.html
- eyelidlessness 3y ago
  > That's a wildly exaggerated interpretation of rainytuesday's post. I interpreted it as calling out the one-sided purity test applied to which media one may engage with. You didn’t need to interpret. They said[0] what they meant pretty clearly. > Non-engagement with the thesis was the point And I don’t agree given actual political alignment that “news without a liberal filter” is mild. It’s a dog whistle for increasingly active hate. The news without such a “liberal filter” is openly hostile to my existence, and far moreso towards other people I care about. And to that point, > If we ignore what anyone we dislike has to say, even when we think what they're saying is true, then dialogue is impossible. I don’t want dialogue with anyone who wants me to cease to exist, nor anyone who wants to keep people I care about from existing. That’s not intellectual curiosity and it’s not the bedrock of a functioning society. It’s the exact principle of demanding people entertain harmful ideas even when recognized. You can engage whatever you want, but I’m not obligated to spend a second thought on people who want me dead. 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35867929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35867929