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"Beware of he who would deny you access to information for in his heart he dreams himself your master." - Commissioner Pravin Lal, U.N. Declaration of Rights
by themaninthedark 1y ago
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information for in his heart he dreams himself your master." - Commissioner Pravin Lal, U.N. Declaration of Rights
- ethbr1 1y agoFull quote: "As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master." (Alpha Centauri, 1999, https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/The_Planetary_Datalinks_(SMAC) https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/The_Planetary_Datalinks... )
- HocusLocus 1y agoI sit here in my cubicle, here on the motherworld. When I die, they will put my body in a box and dispose of it in the cold ground. And in the million ages to come, I will never breathe, or laugh, or twitch again. So won't you run and play with me here among the teeming mass of humanity? The universe has spared us this moment." ~Anonymous, Datalinks.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago[flagged]
- totetsu 1y agoRaising the noise floor of disinformation to drown out information is a way of denying access to information too..
- Cheer2171 1y agoBeware he who would tell you that any effort at trying to clean up the post apocalyptic wasteland that is social media is automatically tyranny, for in his heart he is a pedophile murderer fraudster, and you can call him that without proof, and when the moderators say your unfounded claim shouldn't be on the platform you just say CENSORSHIP.
- soganess 1y agoNot in the original statement, but as it referenced here, the word 'information' is doing absolutely ludicrous amounts of lifting. Hopefully it bent at the knees, because it my book it broke. You can't call the phrase "the sky is mint chocolate chip pink with pulsate alien clouds" information.
- arevno 1y agoWhile this is true, It's also important to realize that during the great disinformation hysteria, perfectly reasonable statements like "This may have originated from a lab", "These vaccines are non-sterilizing", or "There were some anomalies of Benford's Law in this specific precinct and here's the data" were lumped into the exact same bucket as "The CCP built this virus to kill us all", "The vaccine will give you blood clots and myocarditis", or "The DNC rigged the election". The "disinformation" bucket was overly large. There was no nuance. No critical analysis of actual statements made. If it smelled even slightly off-script, it was branded and filed.
- BrenBarn 1y agoBut it is because of the deluge that that happens. We can only process so much information. If the amount of "content" coming through is orders of magnitude larger, it makes sense to just reject everything that looks even slightly like nonsense, because there will still be more than enough left over.
- Slava_Propanei 1y ago[dead]
- themaninthedark 1y agoSo does that justify the situation with Jimmy Kimmel? After all there was a deluge of information and a lot of unknowns about the shooter but the word choice he used was very similar to the already debunked theory that it was celebratory gunfire from a supporter. Of course not.
- tensor 1y agoThere is a difference between free flow of information and propaganda. Much like how monopolies can destroy free markets, unchecked propaganda can bury information by swamping it with a data monoculture. I think you could make a reasonable argument that the algorithms that distort social media feeds actually impede the free flow of information.
- nradov 1y agoThere is no generally accepted definition of propaganda. One person's propaganda is another person's accurate information. I don't trust politicians or social media employees to make that distinction.
- tensor 1y agoWhat you think is propaganda is irrelevant. When you let people unnaturally amplify information by paying to have it forced into someone’s feed that is distorting the free flow of information. Employees choose what you see every day you use most social media.
- msandford 1y agoCongrats! You are 99% of the way to understanding it. Now you just have to realize that "whoever is in charge" might or might not have your best interests at heart, government or private. Anyone who has the power to deny you information absolutely has more power than those who can swamp out good information with bad. It's a subtle difference yes, but it's real.
- tensor 1y agoBanning algorithms and paid amplification is not denying you information. You can still decide for yourself who to follow, or actively look for information, actively listen to people. The difference is that it becomes your choice.
- 1y ago
- N_Lens 1y agoWe must dissent.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- idiotsecant 1y agoSure, great. Now suppose that a very effective campaign of social destabilisation propaganda exists that poses an existential risk to your society. What do you do? It's easy to rely on absolutes and pithy quotes that don't solve any actual problems. What would you, specifically, with all your wisdom do?
- nradov 1y agoLet's not waste time on idle hypotheticals and fear mongering. No propaganda campaign has ever posed an existential threat to the USA. Let us know when one arrives.
- CJefferson 1y agoHave you seen the US recently? Just in the last couple of days, the president is standing up and broadcasting clear medical lies about autism, while a large chunk of the media goes along with him.
- nradov 1y agoI have seen the US recently. I'm not going to attempt to defend the President but regardless of whether he is right or wrong about autism this is hardly an existential threat to the Republic. Presidents have been wrong about many things before and that is not a valid justification for censorship. In a few years we'll have another president and he or she will be wrong about a whole different set of issues.
- CJefferson 1y agoI hope I’m wrong, but I think America is fundamentally done, because it turns out the whole “checks and balances” system turned out to be trivial to steamroll as president, and future presidents will know that now. By done I don’t mean it won’t continue to be the worlds biggest and most important country, but I don’t expect any other country to trust America more than they have to for a 100 years or so.
- jancsika 1y agoThat seems to be exactly her point, no? Imagine an interface that reveals the engagement mechanism by, say, having an additional iframe. In this iframe an LLM clicks through its own set of recommendations picked to minimize negative emotions at the expense of engagement. After a few days you're clearly going to notice the LLM spending less time than you clicking on and consuming content. At the same time, you'll also notice its choices are part of what seems to you a more pleasurable experience than you're having in your own iframe. Social media companies deny you the ability to inspect, understand, and remix how their recommendation algos work. They deny you the ability to remix an interface that does what I describe. In short, your quote surely applies to social media companies, but I don't know if this is what you originally meant.
- BrenBarn 1y agoThe thing is that burying information in a firehose of nonsense is just another way of denying access to it. A great way to hide a sharp needle is to dump a bunch of blunt ones on top of it.
- yongjik 1y agoThat sounds great in the context of a game, but in the years since its release, we have also learned that those who style themselves as champions of free speech also dream themselves our master. They are usually even more brazen in their ambitions than the censors, but somehow get a free pass because, hey, he's just fighting for the oppressed.
- potato3732842 1y agoAnything that people uncritically good attracts the evil and the illegitimate because they cannot build power on their own so they must co-opt things people see as good.
- ethbr1 1y agoI'd say free speech absolutism (read: early-pandemic Zuckerberg, not thumb-on-the-scales Musk) has always aged better than the alternatives. The trick is there's a fine line between honest free speech absolutism and 'pro free speech I believe in and silence about the freedom of that I don't.' Usually when ego and power get involved (see: Trump, Musk). To which, props to folks like Ted Cruz on vocally addressing the dissonance of and opposing FCC speech policing.
- rixed 1y agoIs your point that any message is information? Without truth there is no information.
- probably_wrong 1y agoBeware of those who quote videogames and yet attribute them to "U.N. Declaration of Rights".
- Starman_Jones 1y agoThey're not wrong; the attribution is part of the quote. In-game, the source of the quote is usually important, and is always read aloud (unlike in Civ).
- probably_wrong 1y agoI would argue that they are, if not wrong, at least misleading. If you've never played Alpha Centauri (like me) you are guaranteed to believe this to be a real quote by a UN diplomat. It also doesn't help that searching for "U.N. Declaration of Rights" takes me (wrongly) to the (real) Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I only noticed after reading ethbr1's comment [1], and I bet I'm not the only one. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45355441 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45355441
- ethbr1 1y agoHence my reply. Also, you missed a great game.
- intended 1y agoThis is a fear of an earlier time. We are not controlling people by reducing information. We are controlling people by overwhelming them in it. And when we think of a solution, our natural inclination to “do the opposite” smacks straight into our instinct against controlling or reducing access to information. The closest I have come to any form of light at the end of the tunnel is Taiwan’s efforts to create digital consultations for policy, and the idea that facts may not compete on short time horizon, but they surely win on longer time horizons.
- ethbr1 1y agoThe problem is that in our collective hurry to build and support social networks, we never stopped to think about what other functions might be needed with them to promote good, factual society. People should be able to say whatever the hell they want, wherever the hell they want, whenever the hell they want. (Subject only to the imminent danger test) But! We should also be funding robust journalism to exist in parallel with that. Can you imagine how different today would look if the US had leveraged a 5% tax on social media platforms above a certain size, with the proceeds used to fund journalism? That was a thing we could have done. We didn't. And now we're here.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y agoFacebook speaks through what it chooses to promote or suppress and they are not liable for that speech because of Section 230.
- Manuel_D 1y agoNot quite: prior to the communications Decency Act of 1996 (which contained section 230), companies were also not liable for the speech of their users, but lost that protection if they engaged in any moderation. The two important cases at hand are Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co. And Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc. The former moderated content and was thus held liable for posted content. The latter did not moderate content and was determined not to be liable for user generated content they hosted. Part of the motivation of section 230 was to encourage sites to engage in more moderation. If section 230 were to be removed, web platforms would probably choose to go the route of not moderating content in order to avoid liability. Removing section 230 is a great move if one wants misinformation and hateful speech to run unchecked.
- ben_w 1y agoYou say "Not quite" but it looks to me like you're agreeing?