7 ms·

Only if everything you don't agree with is "political"

jimbokun 2y ago
Censorship, moderation, what kind of speech is acceptable, what does or doesn’t constitute a “fact”, are all political topics.
- jjav 2y ago
  > what does or doesn’t constitute a “fact”, are all political topics. It clearly is not. A fact is a fact by definition, regardless of what anyone happens to feel about it. There are facts that are known to be true beyond all possible doubt. If it is uncertain or in doubt, then it's not a fact and shouldn't be corrected by fact checkers.
  - Aeolun 2y ago
    I disagree with gravity though. It makes life a lot easier when you can fly.
    - ikiris 2y ago
      It’s just intelligent falling. They want to keep you in the dark.
  - sampo 2y ago
    > There are facts that are known to be true beyond all possible doubt. The problem is that some people believe a fact is one way beyond doubt, and other way believe it is the other way. Epidemiology: Respirator masks help prevent infectious diseases Economics: Rent control is always a bad idea
    - somenameforme 2y ago
      The way Community Notes usually end up working in practice is comments that provide sourced context that may be [arguably intentionally] omitted in a topic. For instance if it happens to be that there have been 27 different studies showing no statistically significant reduction in spread of infectious diseases with healthy individuals wearing masks, then that would likely be a community note on the first one. And vice versa if rent has been demonstrated to keep rents below the surrounding means in the cities of Blah, Bleh, and Bluh, then that would often end up a community note on the second. It basically helps reduce the hyperbole/echo chamber effect of such comments/topics. Vice/versa if those topics were "Respirator masks are useless." and "Rent control is always good." then the community notes would tend to go in the opposite direction. It's just a really good idea. For that matter I think a similar algorithm would also work well on general upvote systems at large. I'd also add that one of the biggest issues with "fact checkers" was not only sometimes questionable checking, but also a selection bias - where the ideological bias becomes rather overt in both directions. Whether that be in deciding to "fact check" the Babylon Bee (in an overt effort to get it deranked), or in choosing not to not fact check statements from the lying politicians that one happens to like.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    - bee_rider 2y ago
      Those aren’t good candidates for fact checking really. They are beliefs really, just very widespread ones with lots of support. A good candidate for fact checking is something that is well documented objectively verifiable. Politician X said Y on TV the other day.
    - computably 2y ago
      Your example is a false equivalence. Economics does not define "good ideas" and "bad ideas," it only attempts to model resource dynamics. Whereas the spread of infectious disease is clearly quantifiable regardless of value assignment.
      - shakes_mcjunkie 2y ago
        Economics is inherently a political venture. Organizing markets is political and obviously impacts politics.
        computably 2y ago
        Partly true, but besides the point. Making a blanket statement like "economics says rent control is bad," is only marginally better than saying "physics says nuclear weapons are bad." There is a critical assumption of values which is totally outside the objective of study.
      - Aunche 2y ago
        The presumed goal of rent control is to prevent rents from rising. If they actually cause rents to rise even more quickly then they are indeed "bad" (at achieving this goal).
        computably 2y ago
        The goal of rent control, as I infer from the mechanism, is to prevent existing tenants from being priced out of their current homes (eventually leading to eviction) - at least as I have seen in the US. If the goal were to prevent rents from rising, the mechanism would do so directly, ie. regulate all rent, rather than limiting to continued rentals on certain types of property. Which would by definition prevent rents from rising, presumably along with other undesirable effects. Anyways, the whole issue with conflating "bad" with objective consequences is the "presumed goal," which is of course totally subjective.
    - starspangled 2y ago
      Here's another one - "Trump colluded with Putin to hack the election in 2016". I have never seen an accepted fact checking site answer this, which is very strange since it is such an enormous and grave conspiracy theory if it were true. The Mueller report is extensive and quite conclusive in stating that no such evidence of collusion (conspiracy) was not found. Yet fact checkers are happy to check peripheral and far less consequential claims around the case for some reason (e.g., https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mueller-report-no-obstruction/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mueller-report-no-obstruct...), but are strangely hesitant to address the elephant in the room. Or for another example, there were many false or poorly substantiated claims made about covid and vaccines during the pandemic. I saw "reputable" fact checkers address a certain set of those claims about the virus and drugs, but were strangely silent when it came to a different set of claims. So fact checkers don't even need to provide false content at all, they can be very political and biased simply by carefully choosing exactly what "facts" or claims that they address.
      - EricDeb 2y ago
        I think someone said it but there's a difference between facts and making an inference about those facts. The evidence in Trumps case was maybe he had a conversation with a person of Russian descent on Day X. That in itself is a fact. Does this fact or other facts like it mean he "colluded", whatever the definition of colluded means, is a matter of opinion. Even in a legal framework, where "collusion" has a definition, its still up to a jury which can get it wrong. Fact-checking is extremely complex as you are alluding to and cannot be simplified the way it has been thus far
        starspangled 2y ago
        Sure, but the fact is that there was never any solid evidence showing that Trump did collude with Putin to hack the election. That's contrary to what many high level politicians were claiming, the fact is that they falsely claimed there was "ample evidence" proving Trump colluded, and they never produced it. That's what was never fact checked, because it is inconvenient, and it would show that many high level people who insisted on there being "ample evidence" to prove collusion were actually being dishonest about it.
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      > Economics: Rent control is always a bad idea Well this is definitely false. If you're a politician who can afford a nice place then rent control is a great idea: it gets you elected (look, I made things cheap for you) and keeps you elected (look, I will solve all the problems underpriced rent brings).
  - tptacek 2y ago
    You're reading them as saying that moderation is suspect because it's political, and all I read them to be saying is that political considerations are unavoidable when you moderate, in a manner distinctive to moderation.
  - emmelaich 2y ago
    .. from lawdictionary.org : > 2 : any of the circumstances of a case that exist or are alleged to exist in reality : a thing whose actual occurrence or existence is to be determined by the evidence presented at trial see also finding of fact at finding, judicial notice question of fact at question, trier of fact compare law, opinion
  - jimbokun 2y ago
    Well yes. But how do we distinguish facts from non facts? That is a dilemma humanity has struggled with for millennia. Humans are very bad at recognizing their own biases and admitting to themselves they were wrong about something.
    - teamonkey 2y ago
      This is not uncovered ground though. Philosophy and logic cover the notion of truth and reality in some depth. The entire field of law is based on proof beyond reasonable doubt. The aim of fact-checking isn't to be a perfect system that covers every single possibility and edge case. The aim is to reduce the effectiveness of lies and propaganda, so that people are less misinformed when they go about their daily actions and democratic duty.
    - jjav 2y ago
      > But how do we distinguish facts from non facts? What do you mean how? Science. The process of science. There might be people who want to believe gravity on Earth accelerates objects at 1m/s^2, but we can trivially establish through countless experiments repeatable by anyone who wants to try that this is not true. If you can't measure it or repeatably demonstrate it then it's probably not a fact. If it can, then it is a fact and no amount of emotionally wanting to believe something else can make it not a fact.
      - tgma 2y ago
        The irony is that the example you cite, i.e. F = G * m1 * m2 / r^2 is demonstrably not the correct formula for gravity. Science, the process of science, does not prove something as fact. It can only eliminate non-facts, and even then, the experiments may be flawed in their recognition. > If you can't measure it or repeatably demonstrate it then it's probably not a fact. If it can, then it is a fact and no amount of emotionally wanting to believe something else can make it not a fact. This is demonstrably false. If you witness an event once, you cannot necessarily repeat it, but you know for a fact that it happened. Unless you redefine the term "fact" narrowly, what you suggested is an ideology. See how even the definition of "fact" is up for debate.
  - claytongulick 2y ago
    For most of my life, I would have agreed with you. As I've gotten older, I've become increasingly skeptical of the idea of a "fact". There's no way to separate information from human context. Even seemingly obvious things like "that shirt is blue". To who? My wife sees it as green, frequently. Or things are reduced to tautological nonsense like "gravity keeps us on the ground". Hard fact, right? But define gravity. A physicist will give you an answer, that may or may not mean much. A layman's definition might be something like "it's the thing that keeps us stuck to the ground", and now we're back to tautological nonsense. The entire "water is wet" class of "facts". Anything less trite instantly becomes less fact-like the more humans are involved. "Trump is a criminal" many people would argue passionately that this is a hard, incontrovertible fact. Nearly as many, (or maybe more?) would argue the opposite. I like the approach of the Fair Witness in Stranger In A Strange Land: "What color is that house?" "It's yellow on this side." I'm increasingly convinced that the belief in "facts" is more about the desire to be right and know things than anything to do with objective reality.
    - Tainnor 2y ago
      Tautologies are not necessarily uninteresting, all of mathematics is essentially about finding tautologies (on some level), but they're far typically from obvious.
    - DaftDank 2y ago
      Subjective interpretation is very fundamental to being human and the way our minds work, but the underlying physical reality -- the wavelengths of light reflecting off the shirt -- can be measured objectively. A physicist might say that gravity is the curvature of spacetime caused by mass, which can be measured and tested. Trump being a criminal is based on a shared legal and societal context. As a society, we accept that if you are convicted before a jury of your peers, you are guilty and have been convicted of a crime. Jury's get it wrong and the justice system is flawed and has made mistakes. A black man in the 1920s (or even the 1960s for that matter) being tried for murder with absolutely no evidence and sentenced to death is a clear miscarriage and corruption of justice. The testimony of Trump's employees during the trial, who all said they loved working there (most of them still worked there), but weren't willing to lie on the stand about checks and phone calls they participated in, was pretty clear cut. This wasn't random people off the street of [insert preferred liberal enclave here] testifying against him: it was his own people who still work for him. Some people prioritize political allegiance over legal judgments when it suits them. If we dismissed facts entirely, science, medicine, and countless other fields reliant on objective reality would collapse. This exchange is a great example of the subjective nature of our experiences: as I've gotten older -- 38 now -- I've come to accept more and more that some things are objective reality, whereas in my teens and 20s, I questioned reality and society on the structural level, torn down to the studs. From Plato's cave, to brain in the vat, Kant, the Hindu Brahman and Maya, Buddhism, etc.
  - astrange 2y ago
    Answering this question has to be a political topic, because there's an infinite stream of people asking you the question (by posting things that may need to be fact checked), and you have to decide which ones to prioritize.
- intended 2y ago
  Yes and no. This is the line in the sand that makes sense in the pre internet era. Online, EVERYTHING is political speech, because moderation is the only effective action we can take, and moderation is currently conflated with censorship. Even though it’s on a private platform. I was working towards researching this and building the case out fully - but online speech efficacy is not served by the blunt measures of physical spaces, where the ability to speak is not as mediated. Online, diversity of voices, capability of users to interact safely, resolution of conflicts, these are better measures of how healthy the market of ideas is. The point of free speech is to have an effective exchange of ideas, even difficult ones. The idea of free speech is not in service of itself, its in service of a greater good.
- boxed 2y ago
  1+1=2 is not a political statement
  - lazide 2y ago
    Apparently, it is now.
portaouflop 2y ago
There are few things that aren’t political regardless how you feel about them
- adamredwoods 2y ago
  The earth is "round" can be made political, but there is a factual consensus. Therefore, we rely on experts that decipher information to transcend political opinions. It saddens me when scientists become political, only to add confusion to the consensus, in an attempt to weaken it. Long live Wikipedia.
kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
The US is going to endure four more years of post-truth governance. It isn't in Zuckerberg's interest to have his organization pointing out that the emperor is unclothed when there is real risk of blowback in round 2.

Censorship, moderation, what kind of speech is acceptable, what does or doesn’t constitute a “fact”, are all political topics.

jjav 2y ago
> what does or doesn’t constitute a “fact”, are all political topics. It clearly is not. A fact is a fact by definition, regardless of what anyone happens to feel about it. There are facts that are known to be true beyond all possible doubt. If it is uncertain or in doubt, then it's not a fact and shouldn't be corrected by fact checkers.
- Aeolun 2y ago
  I disagree with gravity though. It makes life a lot easier when you can fly.
  - ikiris 2y ago
    It’s just intelligent falling. They want to keep you in the dark.
- sampo 2y ago
  > There are facts that are known to be true beyond all possible doubt. The problem is that some people believe a fact is one way beyond doubt, and other way believe it is the other way. Epidemiology: Respirator masks help prevent infectious diseases Economics: Rent control is always a bad idea
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    The way Community Notes usually end up working in practice is comments that provide sourced context that may be [arguably intentionally] omitted in a topic. For instance if it happens to be that there have been 27 different studies showing no statistically significant reduction in spread of infectious diseases with healthy individuals wearing masks, then that would likely be a community note on the first one. And vice versa if rent has been demonstrated to keep rents below the surrounding means in the cities of Blah, Bleh, and Bluh, then that would often end up a community note on the second. It basically helps reduce the hyperbole/echo chamber effect of such comments/topics. Vice/versa if those topics were "Respirator masks are useless." and "Rent control is always good." then the community notes would tend to go in the opposite direction. It's just a really good idea. For that matter I think a similar algorithm would also work well on general upvote systems at large. I'd also add that one of the biggest issues with "fact checkers" was not only sometimes questionable checking, but also a selection bias - where the ideological bias becomes rather overt in both directions. Whether that be in deciding to "fact check" the Babylon Bee (in an overt effort to get it deranked), or in choosing not to not fact check statements from the lying politicians that one happens to like.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    Those aren’t good candidates for fact checking really. They are beliefs really, just very widespread ones with lots of support. A good candidate for fact checking is something that is well documented objectively verifiable. Politician X said Y on TV the other day.
  - computably 2y ago
    Your example is a false equivalence. Economics does not define "good ideas" and "bad ideas," it only attempts to model resource dynamics. Whereas the spread of infectious disease is clearly quantifiable regardless of value assignment.
    - shakes_mcjunkie 2y ago
      Economics is inherently a political venture. Organizing markets is political and obviously impacts politics.
      - computably 2y ago
        Partly true, but besides the point. Making a blanket statement like "economics says rent control is bad," is only marginally better than saying "physics says nuclear weapons are bad." There is a critical assumption of values which is totally outside the objective of study.
    - Aunche 2y ago
      The presumed goal of rent control is to prevent rents from rising. If they actually cause rents to rise even more quickly then they are indeed "bad" (at achieving this goal).
      - computably 2y ago
        The goal of rent control, as I infer from the mechanism, is to prevent existing tenants from being priced out of their current homes (eventually leading to eviction) - at least as I have seen in the US. If the goal were to prevent rents from rising, the mechanism would do so directly, ie. regulate all rent, rather than limiting to continued rentals on certain types of property. Which would by definition prevent rents from rising, presumably along with other undesirable effects. Anyways, the whole issue with conflating "bad" with objective consequences is the "presumed goal," which is of course totally subjective.
  - starspangled 2y ago
    Here's another one - "Trump colluded with Putin to hack the election in 2016". I have never seen an accepted fact checking site answer this, which is very strange since it is such an enormous and grave conspiracy theory if it were true. The Mueller report is extensive and quite conclusive in stating that no such evidence of collusion (conspiracy) was not found. Yet fact checkers are happy to check peripheral and far less consequential claims around the case for some reason (e.g., https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mueller-report-no-obstruction/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mueller-report-no-obstruct...), but are strangely hesitant to address the elephant in the room. Or for another example, there were many false or poorly substantiated claims made about covid and vaccines during the pandemic. I saw "reputable" fact checkers address a certain set of those claims about the virus and drugs, but were strangely silent when it came to a different set of claims. So fact checkers don't even need to provide false content at all, they can be very political and biased simply by carefully choosing exactly what "facts" or claims that they address.
    - EricDeb 2y ago
      I think someone said it but there's a difference between facts and making an inference about those facts. The evidence in Trumps case was maybe he had a conversation with a person of Russian descent on Day X. That in itself is a fact. Does this fact or other facts like it mean he "colluded", whatever the definition of colluded means, is a matter of opinion. Even in a legal framework, where "collusion" has a definition, its still up to a jury which can get it wrong. Fact-checking is extremely complex as you are alluding to and cannot be simplified the way it has been thus far
      - starspangled 2y ago
        Sure, but the fact is that there was never any solid evidence showing that Trump did collude with Putin to hack the election. That's contrary to what many high level politicians were claiming, the fact is that they falsely claimed there was "ample evidence" proving Trump colluded, and they never produced it. That's what was never fact checked, because it is inconvenient, and it would show that many high level people who insisted on there being "ample evidence" to prove collusion were actually being dishonest about it.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    > Economics: Rent control is always a bad idea Well this is definitely false. If you're a politician who can afford a nice place then rent control is a great idea: it gets you elected (look, I made things cheap for you) and keeps you elected (look, I will solve all the problems underpriced rent brings).
- tptacek 2y ago
  You're reading them as saying that moderation is suspect because it's political, and all I read them to be saying is that political considerations are unavoidable when you moderate, in a manner distinctive to moderation.
- emmelaich 2y ago
  .. from lawdictionary.org : > 2 : any of the circumstances of a case that exist or are alleged to exist in reality : a thing whose actual occurrence or existence is to be determined by the evidence presented at trial see also finding of fact at finding, judicial notice question of fact at question, trier of fact compare law, opinion
- jimbokun 2y ago
  Well yes. But how do we distinguish facts from non facts? That is a dilemma humanity has struggled with for millennia. Humans are very bad at recognizing their own biases and admitting to themselves they were wrong about something.
  - teamonkey 2y ago
    This is not uncovered ground though. Philosophy and logic cover the notion of truth and reality in some depth. The entire field of law is based on proof beyond reasonable doubt. The aim of fact-checking isn't to be a perfect system that covers every single possibility and edge case. The aim is to reduce the effectiveness of lies and propaganda, so that people are less misinformed when they go about their daily actions and democratic duty.
  - jjav 2y ago
    > But how do we distinguish facts from non facts? What do you mean how? Science. The process of science. There might be people who want to believe gravity on Earth accelerates objects at 1m/s^2, but we can trivially establish through countless experiments repeatable by anyone who wants to try that this is not true. If you can't measure it or repeatably demonstrate it then it's probably not a fact. If it can, then it is a fact and no amount of emotionally wanting to believe something else can make it not a fact.
    - tgma 2y ago
      The irony is that the example you cite, i.e. F = G * m1 * m2 / r^2 is demonstrably not the correct formula for gravity. Science, the process of science, does not prove something as fact. It can only eliminate non-facts, and even then, the experiments may be flawed in their recognition. > If you can't measure it or repeatably demonstrate it then it's probably not a fact. If it can, then it is a fact and no amount of emotionally wanting to believe something else can make it not a fact. This is demonstrably false. If you witness an event once, you cannot necessarily repeat it, but you know for a fact that it happened. Unless you redefine the term "fact" narrowly, what you suggested is an ideology. See how even the definition of "fact" is up for debate.
- claytongulick 2y ago
  For most of my life, I would have agreed with you. As I've gotten older, I've become increasingly skeptical of the idea of a "fact". There's no way to separate information from human context. Even seemingly obvious things like "that shirt is blue". To who? My wife sees it as green, frequently. Or things are reduced to tautological nonsense like "gravity keeps us on the ground". Hard fact, right? But define gravity. A physicist will give you an answer, that may or may not mean much. A layman's definition might be something like "it's the thing that keeps us stuck to the ground", and now we're back to tautological nonsense. The entire "water is wet" class of "facts". Anything less trite instantly becomes less fact-like the more humans are involved. "Trump is a criminal" many people would argue passionately that this is a hard, incontrovertible fact. Nearly as many, (or maybe more?) would argue the opposite. I like the approach of the Fair Witness in Stranger In A Strange Land: "What color is that house?" "It's yellow on this side." I'm increasingly convinced that the belief in "facts" is more about the desire to be right and know things than anything to do with objective reality.
  - Tainnor 2y ago
    Tautologies are not necessarily uninteresting, all of mathematics is essentially about finding tautologies (on some level), but they're far typically from obvious.
  - DaftDank 2y ago
    Subjective interpretation is very fundamental to being human and the way our minds work, but the underlying physical reality -- the wavelengths of light reflecting off the shirt -- can be measured objectively. A physicist might say that gravity is the curvature of spacetime caused by mass, which can be measured and tested. Trump being a criminal is based on a shared legal and societal context. As a society, we accept that if you are convicted before a jury of your peers, you are guilty and have been convicted of a crime. Jury's get it wrong and the justice system is flawed and has made mistakes. A black man in the 1920s (or even the 1960s for that matter) being tried for murder with absolutely no evidence and sentenced to death is a clear miscarriage and corruption of justice. The testimony of Trump's employees during the trial, who all said they loved working there (most of them still worked there), but weren't willing to lie on the stand about checks and phone calls they participated in, was pretty clear cut. This wasn't random people off the street of [insert preferred liberal enclave here] testifying against him: it was his own people who still work for him. Some people prioritize political allegiance over legal judgments when it suits them. If we dismissed facts entirely, science, medicine, and countless other fields reliant on objective reality would collapse. This exchange is a great example of the subjective nature of our experiences: as I've gotten older -- 38 now -- I've come to accept more and more that some things are objective reality, whereas in my teens and 20s, I questioned reality and society on the structural level, torn down to the studs. From Plato's cave, to brain in the vat, Kant, the Hindu Brahman and Maya, Buddhism, etc.
- astrange 2y ago
  Answering this question has to be a political topic, because there's an infinite stream of people asking you the question (by posting things that may need to be fact checked), and you have to decide which ones to prioritize.
intended 2y ago
Yes and no. This is the line in the sand that makes sense in the pre internet era. Online, EVERYTHING is political speech, because moderation is the only effective action we can take, and moderation is currently conflated with censorship. Even though it’s on a private platform. I was working towards researching this and building the case out fully - but online speech efficacy is not served by the blunt measures of physical spaces, where the ability to speak is not as mediated. Online, diversity of voices, capability of users to interact safely, resolution of conflicts, these are better measures of how healthy the market of ideas is. The point of free speech is to have an effective exchange of ideas, even difficult ones. The idea of free speech is not in service of itself, its in service of a greater good.
boxed 2y ago
1+1=2 is not a political statement
- lazide 2y ago
  Apparently, it is now.

portaouflop 2y ago

There are few things that aren’t political regardless how you feel about them

adamredwoods 2y ago
The earth is "round" can be made political, but there is a factual consensus. Therefore, we rely on experts that decipher information to transcend political opinions. It saddens me when scientists become political, only to add confusion to the consensus, in an attempt to weaken it. Long live Wikipedia.

kevin_thibedeau 2y ago

The US is going to endure four more years of post-truth governance. It isn't in Zuckerberg's interest to have his organization pointing out that the emperor is unclothed when there is real risk of blowback in round 2.