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Censorship Doesn’t Just Stifle Speech – It Can Spread Disease

149 points by Blahah 13y ago

JonSkeptic 13y ago
Some would argue the desire to censor is a disease of the mind. Or perhaps, a symptom of a mind plagued by fear of the unknown and shaken by the threat of new information.
- djf1 13y ago
  I would argue that the desire to censor is the result of its effectiveness in maintaining existing power structures.
- seiji 13y ago
  I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
bausson 13y ago
I never thought of censorship from that perspective. It is refreshing, since 90% of the links I come by here about censorship are either about privacy, privacy expectation and influence on economy. That way, nobody can say "I've done nothing wrong, so I'm not concerned".
koshatnik 13y ago
This is very like what happens in the book World War Z, which was probably inspired by government responses to SARS and other epidemics. A mysterious disease arises in China, and the government strongly censors reporting of outbreaks. This and other factors (people smuggling, illegal organ trade) contribute to its spread worldwide, and it is only when it cannot be contained that the world is aware and can start to understand and fight it.
- sukuriant 13y ago
  As downvote-prone as that comment seems like it could be, I would like to add it it by saying that this can't be the right way to handle diseases. There has to be a sweet spot between telling everyone immediately, insighting a panic, and holding back all of the information. I'm not too incredibly concerned with managing the information from the general public; but, the WHO and other people should always be immediately informed. In fact, if they were rapidly informed and we can get a cure out quickly, then the loss of life from these new diseases wouldn't be as bad, I would like to hope. The problem is in hiding the information.
  - mark-r 13y ago
    There's a problem with "getting a cure out quickly". For most diseases that's simply impossible - is there a cure for SARS yet? The best you can do is slow down the spread. If you detect it quickly enough hopefully you'll stop it.
  - coldtea 13y ago
    >There has to be a sweet spot between telling everyone immediately, insighting a panic, and holding back all of the information. What if there's panic? It's not with a, say, earthquake prediction, where people would evacuate cities etc. Rather, they'd stay at home more, avoid crowded places, avoid people looking sick, and wear those white mouth/nose masks more when out -- in all, that should help reduce the spreading of the dicease.
    - sukuriant 13y ago
      I was imagining my mental panic response for THIS instance: - companies refusing to fly people back from Saudi Arabia to the United States - us putting all people of the interested groups, for example, all Muslims and family members of anyone Arabic looking, into special hospitals to make sure they don't spread the disease, even if we don't have it. - violent outrage if our family members end up sick, and there is a mosque down the road. This particular article seemed to make it pretty clear that the yearly pilgrimage often results in illness from all the populations coming together with their own unique resistances. This particular pilgrimage, with these numbers, tends to be with a single population. That population could be seen as the source of the disease, and bad things happen. That's the sort of 'panic' I'm thinking of and it's not good. Oh, and the reason I'm saying this level of panic is due to the currently estimated 56% death rate after extreme signs are shown.
ginko 13y ago
What isn't really apparent to me from this article is WHY Saudi Arabia, or China for that matter, would even want to censor this.
- cnorgate 13y ago
  It's a prisoner's dilemma. All countries are better off if everyone shares information, but there is a huge incentive to 'cheat' in this agreement. News of an outbreak in a given country will have a substantial, negative economic impact. At the very least, tourism and trade will suffer. It's not unreasonable that other countries will quarantine and outright block off ties with the affected country. Back in 2003 with SARS, Toronto Canada took a substantial hit in tourism dollars, so much so that the Rolling Stones stepped in to host a charity concert to help the city out... Chinese tourism was likely affected worse. As a politician or public health official, crying wolf early or raising the alarm of a potential outbreak will certainly have a negative financial impact... what's not known is how serious a given outbreak might be. So in short, they are weighing a known, substantial cost (lost tourism) against an unknown and unquantifiable benefit (avoiding an outbreak)... being the political worms they are that got them into office in the first place, they will most likely take the route that provides the least direct blow-back to them, which is sadly the route of hiding the outbreak.
- jpatokal 13y ago
  Because if it leaks out that they have a new, lethal, incurable and contagious disease, they'll be treated like they have the plague. (See where the metaphor comes from?) I moved to Singapore in 2003, when the SARS epidemic was raging. (IIRC, the last death in Singapore was the day I arrived.) People back home thought I was crazy, the usually crowded city-state's streets were rattlingly empty, restaurants had desperately promotions ($1/plate sushi etc) and the five-star hotel I'd been booked into at an already low rate bumped me to an apartment suite. Of course, I was far more at risk of dying in a traffic accident, but "plague!" is one of those risk factors like "terrorism!" that makes people's hindbrains gibber in fear and discount all rational risk analysis.
  - icambron 13y ago
noonespecial 13y ago
If you construct the machinery of censorship, it will be misused for bad things that never even crossed your mind.

149 points by Blahah 13y ago

Some would argue the desire to censor is a disease of the mind. Or perhaps, a symptom of a mind plagued by fear of the unknown and shaken by the threat of new information.

djf1 13y ago
I would argue that the desire to censor is the result of its effectiveness in maintaining existing power structures.
seiji 13y ago
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

bausson 13y ago

I never thought of censorship from that perspective. It is refreshing, since 90% of the links I come by here about censorship are either about privacy, privacy expectation and influence on economy. That way, nobody can say "I've done nothing wrong, so I'm not concerned".

koshatnik 13y ago

This is very like what happens in the book World War Z, which was probably inspired by government responses to SARS and other epidemics. A mysterious disease arises in China, and the government strongly censors reporting of outbreaks. This and other factors (people smuggling, illegal organ trade) contribute to its spread worldwide, and it is only when it cannot be contained that the world is aware and can start to understand and fight it.

sukuriant 13y ago
As downvote-prone as that comment seems like it could be, I would like to add it it by saying that this can't be the right way to handle diseases. There has to be a sweet spot between telling everyone immediately, insighting a panic, and holding back all of the information. I'm not too incredibly concerned with managing the information from the general public; but, the WHO and other people should always be immediately informed. In fact, if they were rapidly informed and we can get a cure out quickly, then the loss of life from these new diseases wouldn't be as bad, I would like to hope. The problem is in hiding the information.
- mark-r 13y ago
  There's a problem with "getting a cure out quickly". For most diseases that's simply impossible - is there a cure for SARS yet? The best you can do is slow down the spread. If you detect it quickly enough hopefully you'll stop it.
- coldtea 13y ago
  >There has to be a sweet spot between telling everyone immediately, insighting a panic, and holding back all of the information. What if there's panic? It's not with a, say, earthquake prediction, where people would evacuate cities etc. Rather, they'd stay at home more, avoid crowded places, avoid people looking sick, and wear those white mouth/nose masks more when out -- in all, that should help reduce the spreading of the dicease.
  - sukuriant 13y ago
    I was imagining my mental panic response for THIS instance: - companies refusing to fly people back from Saudi Arabia to the United States - us putting all people of the interested groups, for example, all Muslims and family members of anyone Arabic looking, into special hospitals to make sure they don't spread the disease, even if we don't have it. - violent outrage if our family members end up sick, and there is a mosque down the road. This particular article seemed to make it pretty clear that the yearly pilgrimage often results in illness from all the populations coming together with their own unique resistances. This particular pilgrimage, with these numbers, tends to be with a single population. That population could be seen as the source of the disease, and bad things happen. That's the sort of 'panic' I'm thinking of and it's not good. Oh, and the reason I'm saying this level of panic is due to the currently estimated 56% death rate after extreme signs are shown.

ginko 13y ago

What isn't really apparent to me from this article is WHY Saudi Arabia, or China for that matter, would even want to censor this.

cnorgate 13y ago
It's a prisoner's dilemma. All countries are better off if everyone shares information, but there is a huge incentive to 'cheat' in this agreement. News of an outbreak in a given country will have a substantial, negative economic impact. At the very least, tourism and trade will suffer. It's not unreasonable that other countries will quarantine and outright block off ties with the affected country. Back in 2003 with SARS, Toronto Canada took a substantial hit in tourism dollars, so much so that the Rolling Stones stepped in to host a charity concert to help the city out... Chinese tourism was likely affected worse. As a politician or public health official, crying wolf early or raising the alarm of a potential outbreak will certainly have a negative financial impact... what's not known is how serious a given outbreak might be. So in short, they are weighing a known, substantial cost (lost tourism) against an unknown and unquantifiable benefit (avoiding an outbreak)... being the political worms they are that got them into office in the first place, they will most likely take the route that provides the least direct blow-back to them, which is sadly the route of hiding the outbreak.
jpatokal 13y ago
Because if it leaks out that they have a new, lethal, incurable and contagious disease, they'll be treated like they have the plague. (See where the metaphor comes from?) I moved to Singapore in 2003, when the SARS epidemic was raging. (IIRC, the last death in Singapore was the day I arrived.) People back home thought I was crazy, the usually crowded city-state's streets were rattlingly empty, restaurants had desperately promotions ($1/plate sushi etc) and the five-star hotel I'd been booked into at an already low rate bumped me to an apartment suite. Of course, I was far more at risk of dying in a traffic accident, but "plague!" is one of those risk factors like "terrorism!" that makes people's hindbrains gibber in fear and discount all rational risk analysis.
- icambron 13y ago

noonespecial 13y ago

If you construct the machinery of censorship, it will be misused for bad things that never even crossed your mind.