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Deciding not to engage with $BAD yourself is great; but then you've shirked your responsibility to decide what $BAD is for the rest of the world! Just because

Deciding not to engage with $BAD yourself is great; but then you've shirked your responsibility to decide what $BAD is for the rest of the world! Just because you have the intelligence and judgement to perceive and avoid $BAD doesn't mean that you can trust your fellow citizens to do the same. They must be shielded from everything that you disagree with so as to protect you! Seriously; the admission that you can't make decisions about what others should be reading is an embrace of humility that more people should attempt. I'm not sure when "we can agree to disagree" became a Sin but its has.

shadowgovt 3y ago
> I'm not sure when "we can agree to disagree" became a Sin but its has. If you're talking America, around the time Trump was elected after what can plausibly be deduced was a Russian-funded propaganda campaign. A lot of trust of fellow citizens was lost when that happened, and a lot of people began to wonder whether they do bear some responsibility for what others see and hear... Because if they don't grasp that responsibility, propaganda manufacturers were more than willing to grasp it instead. This has led to people looking into why their fellow citizens believe what they do and discovering it's because a lot of their fellow citizens listen to some absolute crap and form strong opinions as a result. As is their right. But "the cure to bad speech is more speech" doesn't exactly work when bad speech is coming from the pulpit and/or funded by billionaires. I don't think we have good answers to the questions raised yet, but make no mistake: that question is now on the table for a generation that thought the issue pretty settled. > Deciding not to engage with $BAD yourself is great; but then you've shirked your responsibility to decide what $BAD is for the rest of the world! There's a reason "The only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is that good men do nothing" exists as an aphorism. There are clearly variable bindings we can swizzle in that make that statement non-controversial (child pornography is the obvious one). So the operative question becomes whether, and how much, speech binds to $BAD and the notion is still true.
- tqi 3y ago
  That aphorism presumes a world where good/evil and doing something/nothing are both binary.
  - OkayPhysicist 3y ago
    It may not be a binary, but there sure is a spectrum. And plenty of things fall on the wrong end of it.
    - tqi 3y ago
      Definitely agree, but I don't think most of what we see scrolling Twitter is clearly on one side or the other. I also think "doing something" is a spectrum as well, and making a conscious choosing to ignore something is a valid response. I'm sympathetic to the idea that this is a form of privilege, but I'm not the alternative is actually any better.
- nradov 3y ago
  There is zero evidence that Russian propaganda actually changed any Electoral College votes in the 2016 election.
  - shadowgovt 3y ago
    That full end-to-end story would be very hard to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. The existence of the propaganda campaign and the active attempts to exfiltrate voter data are public record and plausible enough for the FBI to have issued arrest warrants regarding the infiltrations. I'm not saying it's necessary for Russians to have stolen the election for Americans to be questioning the nature of free flow of information online. I'm saying there is more than enough of a preponderance of evidence that an attack along that vector was attempted for people to be asking reasonable questions about the harms of unfiltered information access and how it can be exploited by clever propagandists.
    - nradov 3y ago
      Questions about the "harms" of unfiltered information access aren't reasonable. The people asking those questions are being disingenuous. They are fundamentally unprincipled and are simply looking for plausible sounding reasons to restrict speech that they don't like.
      - shadowgovt 3y ago
        > Questions about the "harms" of unfiltered information access aren't reasonable Can you clarify why they are not reasonable? Peer threads to this one provide examples of how speech can sometimes cause harm, and how some categories of speech are already regulated for that reason. > The people asking those questions are being disingenuous I don't doubt some have a hidden agenda. But I believe from my own experience many are trying to find new common ground now that previous assumptions have been thrown into question. Twitter and Facebook, for example, aren't at all interested in regulating speech; they'd much prefer to be out of the business and continue the much easier task of "collecting attention rent by selling eyeballs to advertisers." But the messages that flowed over their networks during the January 6th attack were enough to make their leadership concerned that they could be hauled in front of Congress to testify about aiding and abetting treason. They want bright lines on this stuff because they don't want to be in prison.
slg 3y ago
This line of thinking ignores the power of speech. Speech has real impact and it can be used to infringe on the rights of others. That is why no country fully embraces absolute free speech. We outlaw things like fraud, defamation, distribution of child porn, and all sorts of other speech because that bad speech infringes on the rights of others. When you simply ignore that bad speech, you are allowing that infringement of rights to continue. Apathy to that isn't humility. If anything, it is arrogant to suggest there is a clear line on what speech should and should not be allowed. It is an incredibly complicated issue that requires nuance.
- merpnderp 3y ago
  It’s also arrogant to believe you are an honest arbiter of what crosses the line. There is a good reason the U.S. errs on the side of free speech. People forget we used to throw people in the stocks for gossiping about their neighbors or spreading rumors about priests (even if all true)
  - slg 3y ago
    >It’s also arrogant to believe you are an honest arbiter of what crosses the line. Once again, this is removing the nuance of the issue. I don't think anyone would say it is arrogant to suggest that child porn crosses the line into bad speech. And to be clear, I'm not trying to draw the line myself. I am asking that we have an open debate about that line. It is the free speech absolutists that are taking the arrogant position by refusing the debate and establishing that line themselves.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

shadowgovt 3y ago

> I'm not sure when "we can agree to disagree" became a Sin but its has. If you're talking America, around the time Trump was elected after what can plausibly be deduced was a Russian-funded propaganda campaign. A lot of trust of fellow citizens was lost when that happened, and a lot of people began to wonder whether they do bear some responsibility for what others see and hear... Because if they don't grasp that responsibility, propaganda manufacturers were more than willing to grasp it instead. This has led to people looking into why their fellow citizens believe what they do and discovering it's because a lot of their fellow citizens listen to some absolute crap and form strong opinions as a result. As is their right. But "the cure to bad speech is more speech" doesn't exactly work when bad speech is coming from the pulpit and/or funded by billionaires. I don't think we have good answers to the questions raised yet, but make no mistake: that question is now on the table for a generation that thought the issue pretty settled. > Deciding not to engage with $BAD yourself is great; but then you've shirked your responsibility to decide what $BAD is for the rest of the world! There's a reason "The only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is that good men do nothing" exists as an aphorism. There are clearly variable bindings we can swizzle in that make that statement non-controversial (child pornography is the obvious one). So the operative question becomes whether, and how much, speech binds to $BAD and the notion is still true.

tqi 3y ago
That aphorism presumes a world where good/evil and doing something/nothing are both binary.
- OkayPhysicist 3y ago
  It may not be a binary, but there sure is a spectrum. And plenty of things fall on the wrong end of it.
  - tqi 3y ago
    Definitely agree, but I don't think most of what we see scrolling Twitter is clearly on one side or the other. I also think "doing something" is a spectrum as well, and making a conscious choosing to ignore something is a valid response. I'm sympathetic to the idea that this is a form of privilege, but I'm not the alternative is actually any better.
nradov 3y ago
There is zero evidence that Russian propaganda actually changed any Electoral College votes in the 2016 election.
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  That full end-to-end story would be very hard to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. The existence of the propaganda campaign and the active attempts to exfiltrate voter data are public record and plausible enough for the FBI to have issued arrest warrants regarding the infiltrations. I'm not saying it's necessary for Russians to have stolen the election for Americans to be questioning the nature of free flow of information online. I'm saying there is more than enough of a preponderance of evidence that an attack along that vector was attempted for people to be asking reasonable questions about the harms of unfiltered information access and how it can be exploited by clever propagandists.
  - nradov 3y ago
    Questions about the "harms" of unfiltered information access aren't reasonable. The people asking those questions are being disingenuous. They are fundamentally unprincipled and are simply looking for plausible sounding reasons to restrict speech that they don't like.
    - shadowgovt 3y ago
      > Questions about the "harms" of unfiltered information access aren't reasonable Can you clarify why they are not reasonable? Peer threads to this one provide examples of how speech can sometimes cause harm, and how some categories of speech are already regulated for that reason. > The people asking those questions are being disingenuous I don't doubt some have a hidden agenda. But I believe from my own experience many are trying to find new common ground now that previous assumptions have been thrown into question. Twitter and Facebook, for example, aren't at all interested in regulating speech; they'd much prefer to be out of the business and continue the much easier task of "collecting attention rent by selling eyeballs to advertisers." But the messages that flowed over their networks during the January 6th attack were enough to make their leadership concerned that they could be hauled in front of Congress to testify about aiding and abetting treason. They want bright lines on this stuff because they don't want to be in prison.

slg 3y ago

This line of thinking ignores the power of speech. Speech has real impact and it can be used to infringe on the rights of others. That is why no country fully embraces absolute free speech. We outlaw things like fraud, defamation, distribution of child porn, and all sorts of other speech because that bad speech infringes on the rights of others. When you simply ignore that bad speech, you are allowing that infringement of rights to continue. Apathy to that isn't humility. If anything, it is arrogant to suggest there is a clear line on what speech should and should not be allowed. It is an incredibly complicated issue that requires nuance.

merpnderp 3y ago
It’s also arrogant to believe you are an honest arbiter of what crosses the line. There is a good reason the U.S. errs on the side of free speech. People forget we used to throw people in the stocks for gossiping about their neighbors or spreading rumors about priests (even if all true)
- slg 3y ago
  >It’s also arrogant to believe you are an honest arbiter of what crosses the line. Once again, this is removing the nuance of the issue. I don't think anyone would say it is arrogant to suggest that child porn crosses the line into bad speech. And to be clear, I'm not trying to draw the line myself. I am asking that we have an open debate about that line. It is the free speech absolutists that are taking the arrogant position by refusing the debate and establishing that line themselves.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]