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On April 30 2021 20:37 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On April 30 2021 20:29 BlackJack wrote:On April 30 2021 20:20 JimmiC wrote:On April 30 2021 20:06 BlackJack wrote:
btw, Jockmcplop nails it when he asks who are going to be the arbiters of truth. In the USA, our arbiter of what is true/false or safe/unsafe for drugs/vaccines is the FDA. Anyone that wanted to legislate this idea would probably surely have the FDA as the main arbiter if not the sole aribter.
The FDA for decades said artificial trans fats were safe to put in foods. The WHO estimates trans fats kill 500,000 people annually and have called for them to be eliminated in all foods. Even after the FDA banned trans fats they gave the corporations several years to phase them out. A few more years of letting corporations put shit on our food that is proven to kill us because it might cost the corporations too much money to change too abruptly. They literally let corporations poison for a few more years after they decided something was unsafe just to protect the corporation's profits. Now we are going to start silencing people for not agreeing with the FDA? Bonkers. So if we get rid of the FDA then what would happen with the artificial trans fat? By this post it appears that you think they are bad, it is clear that the corporations would have kept using them without them regulating people. People suggesting regulating are not suggesting that it is perfect they are suggesting it is better than not. Perfection is the enemy of progress. You improve and then you try to improve more, you don't do nothing until you find the magic bullet that fixes everything. No, I am not suggesting the FDA is bad. I am suggesting they are not infallible and they aren't only looking after the health of the public. Drugs get taken off the market all the time when they are later discovered to be dangerous. The reason they are sometimes later discovered to be dangerous is because we don't silence everyone that's bothering to ask whether they are dangerous. No one is asking for people to not to be able ask whether things are dangerous, or better yet use science and math to prove it. People are asking for people to stop spreading things that we know are false but packaged as the truth. Also, your analogy was terrible because it proved the opposite of what you intended, it showed that well flawed the US is better off with them then without. You can't just throw out corps making extra dollars to get most left people worked up the way you can with immigrants taking jobs and our guy lost it was a steal. You need to make compelling logical arguments that logically show what you are trying to say. I'll help you, what you need to find is examples where regulation made things worse overall than leaving it completely unregulated, not things where regulation was better than not but still flawed.
Man... lol. Why are you telling me I need to find examples where regulation makes things worse than leaving it completely unregulated? This is how a conversation with you goes
JimmiC: are you suggesting the fda is bad and we are better off without them?
Blackjack: no, I am not suggesting the FDA is bad, I am suggesting they are not infallible.
JimmiC: then you need to find some examples where regulation makes things worse than leaving things completely unregulated
Again, whatever fictitious arguments you want to have in your head is your business, stop trying to rope me into them lol
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Norway28561 Posts
On April 30 2021 20:06 BlackJack wrote:
btw, Jockmcplop nails it when he asks who are going to be the arbiters of truth. In the USA, our arbiter of what is true/false or safe/unsafe for drugs/vaccines is the FDA. Anyone that wanted to legislate this idea would probably surely have the FDA as the main arbiter if not the sole aribter.
The FDA for decades said artificial trans fats were safe to put in foods. The WHO estimates trans fats kill 500,000 people annually and have called for them to be eliminated in all foods. Even after the FDA banned trans fats they gave the corporations several years to phase them out. A few more years of letting corporations put shit on our food that is proven to kill us because it might cost the corporations too much money to change too abruptly. They literally let corporations poison for a few more years after they decided something was unsafe just to protect the corporation's profits. Now we are going to start silencing people for not agreeing with the FDA? Bonkers.
Yeah, that really is the crux of the problem. Having some independent fact checker that accurately determines whether information that is being spread is accurate and then tasking that fact checker with checking all information spread on the internet and then flagging or cencoring stuff that is false/dangerous - that sounds highly useful.
But say the previous administration decided to implement such an independent fact checker.. Would I trust that fact checker when it stated that the election was stolen or whatever other hundreds of blatantly false statements made by said admin, and would I be happy about it when it censored contrary statements? Obviously, no - I would perceive this as one of the final stages of achieving a lasting dictatorship. Being Norwegian, I don't really suffer from the truth being politicized in this way - my current right-wing government bases their decision making on sets of facts that I myself accept as true. But if I were american, I'd be much more skeptical, because voting patterns are such a strong determiner of reality-perception.
Now, this doesn't mean that facts don't matter or that we should just let all opinions slide. Rather, it means that policing speech, be it in real life or the internet, is something we should be incredibly careful doing. I get that some European countries outlaw holocaust denial and I'm not necessarily disagreeing with their decision to do so (although it's also not something I'm really invested in defending, either). I'm happy Alex Jones is deplatformed. But I don't want the 50 year old woman who posts that vaccines cause autism and covid is 5g on her facebook feed to be censored.
Further, our understanding of truth and facts actually does change over time. I'm quite confident it'd be possible to make quite the comprehensive list over things accepted as true 30 years ago that no longer are true today without the actual facts changing, rather that this change in perception of truth and fact has happened as a consequence of an evolution of our ability to comprehend data.
In Norway, we have a national broadcasting company which for many Norwegians is their main source of news. I don't mind, at all. I find them highly reliable and trustworthy (more so than almost any private media actor I can think of). The same thing in North Korea is obviously unreliable. The same thing implemented by some american administrations could be good - but by other administrations, I'd be deeply distrusting. (That said, I have the impression NPR and PBS have generally been way more reliable and less partisan than many other american media outlets, but again, if their leadership is or can be politically appointed, then that's a dire balance to strike.)
As a Norwegian high school teacher, teaching my pupils to navigate through an increasingly complex media landscape is part of my job. I don't know to what degree this is part of the american educational system. I think I'm fairly adept at discerning trustworthy information from untrustworthy information, but I'm also certain that I've been fooled at times. I'm also skeptical towards determining that 'anti-vaxx' is deserving of special treatment in the truth-department. Imo, climate change still represents a threat to humanity several magnitudes greater than what Covid does. Recently, it was discovered that a group responsible for calculating Norwegian emissions had made some wrong calculations about emissions related to transportation of goods and wares, which made them inaccurately state that Norway's emissions had been cut (more significantly than what they actually had been). That's immensely harmful - but I actually believe it was a honest mistake on their behalf (even if it isn't a honest mistake on the behalf of Norwegian politicians that still repeat said wrongful calculation).
Again, I'm not opposed to arbitrariness - I think that's inherent to being a human and living in a society with other people. If I talk with people who argue for 'free speech is completely sacrosanct and all speech should always be permitted', I'm inclined to point towards examples of incitement towards violence and how difficult it can be to distinguish incitement of violence from just being a hateful asshole. My main point of contention is with anyone trying to turn this into a simple topic with an easy answer.
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On April 30 2021 20:49 maybenexttime wrote:Show nested quote +On April 30 2021 16:33 Jockmcplop wrote:On April 30 2021 16:26 Artisreal wrote:On April 30 2021 15:34 Jockmcplop wrote:On April 30 2021 15:31 Artisreal wrote:
If I tell you the bridge is safe to cross even though I know it isn't, would you want me to be prosecuted or at least ensured that I stop telling people to cross the bridge?
What if I think the bridge looks fine and there's just incompetence at work as I mightn't be a qualified structural engineer -and a bit of ideology because these bridges they want to rebuild, they are expensive and these are my taxes after all? Would that warrant the police stopping me from telling people to cross the bridge? I don't know how much of this is a genuine question and how much is just analogy making but the sensible solution is to put a barrier across the bridge that stops people from crossing it with a giant sign saying 'unsafe bridge'. That way the guy can keep telling people to cross it anyway and probably no-one would. At that point, even if they did, with terrible consequences, it would be their fault for believing the guy. Another point is that there's a fundamental difference between encouraging people to do something dangerous and encouraging people not to do something that will grant safety. you can't put a fence around covid deniers to go with your apt response. Putting up a sign and barring the bridge would be a sensible thing do, I agree  Though the point I was trying to make is, that in some situations there has to be a line of public endagerment where the state has to protect its citicens from another. That is done through regulation of what they are allowed to impose on others. It's called the law. Not censure. It becomes censure when you're 6 feet apart, protesting against lockdown restrictions and go to prison for that. Like in Russia. But connected to Covid, we're as far away from that as the sun is from melting ice on Pluto. On a related note: We had a landmark ruling here in Germany yesterday. Our supreme court ruled, that the goverment has to be more precise in how they want to engage in climate action after 2030, because failure to do so will result in endangerment of the liveliehoods of the younger generation. When the law involves regulating what private citizens can and can't say, that is censorship. They are not mutually exclusive. I get your point, but i disagree that the government should be making law to protect its citizens from each others words (unless harassment/stalking is the issue). This applies doubly to political speech, and i suppose anti-vax does fall into that category. Does that mean you are also against any anti-hate speech laws? Should people be allowed to spread lies about Jews or LGBT people, as long as they're not directly inciting violence, but merely causing other people to believe those groups are evil and as a result encourage them to act violently towards those groups?
I think we are at a point now where social media companies will voluntarily remove alot of that stuff, so you don't need to the government to interfere. I mentioned Count Dankula before, that is the prime example of what anti-hate laws can do. The guy makes an admittedly very offensive joke and ends up in court, while others spew disgusting racist bile and get no punishment. It ends up being very arbitrary due to the nature of the internet.
Personally I don't see how charging every person that has ever said anything racist/anti LGBT on the internet would do anything other than clog up the court system forever.
If there was evidence that it is effective as a deterrent then I would be open to changing my mind. Otherwise its pretty pointless.
as long as they're not directly inciting violence, but merely causing other people to believe those groups are evil and as a result encourage them to act violently towards those groups?
Indirectly inciting violence isn't a crime as far as i know. If there is that much separation between the original opinion and someone acting violently then the violent individual is fully responsible.
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On April 30 2021 20:58 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On April 30 2021 20:55 BlackJack wrote:On April 30 2021 20:37 JimmiC wrote:On April 30 2021 20:29 BlackJack wrote:On April 30 2021 20:20 JimmiC wrote:On April 30 2021 20:06 BlackJack wrote:
btw, Jockmcplop nails it when he asks who are going to be the arbiters of truth. In the USA, our arbiter of what is true/false or safe/unsafe for drugs/vaccines is the FDA. Anyone that wanted to legislate this idea would probably surely have the FDA as the main arbiter if not the sole aribter.
The FDA for decades said artificial trans fats were safe to put in foods. The WHO estimates trans fats kill 500,000 people annually and have called for them to be eliminated in all foods. Even after the FDA banned trans fats they gave the corporations several years to phase them out. A few more years of letting corporations put shit on our food that is proven to kill us because it might cost the corporations too much money to change too abruptly. They literally let corporations poison for a few more years after they decided something was unsafe just to protect the corporation's profits. Now we are going to start silencing people for not agreeing with the FDA? Bonkers. So if we get rid of the FDA then what would happen with the artificial trans fat? By this post it appears that you think they are bad, it is clear that the corporations would have kept using them without them regulating people. People suggesting regulating are not suggesting that it is perfect they are suggesting it is better than not. Perfection is the enemy of progress. You improve and then you try to improve more, you don't do nothing until you find the magic bullet that fixes everything. No, I am not suggesting the FDA is bad. I am suggesting they are not infallible and they aren't only looking after the health of the public. Drugs get taken off the market all the time when they are later discovered to be dangerous. The reason they are sometimes later discovered to be dangerous is because we don't silence everyone that's bothering to ask whether they are dangerous. No one is asking for people to not to be able ask whether things are dangerous, or better yet use science and math to prove it. People are asking for people to stop spreading things that we know are false but packaged as the truth. Also, your analogy was terrible because it proved the opposite of what you intended, it showed that well flawed the US is better off with them then without. You can't just throw out corps making extra dollars to get most left people worked up the way you can with immigrants taking jobs and our guy lost it was a steal. You need to make compelling logical arguments that logically show what you are trying to say. I'll help you, what you need to find is examples where regulation made things worse overall than leaving it completely unregulated, not things where regulation was better than not but still flawed. Man... lol. Why are you telling me I need to find examples where regulation makes things worse than leaving it completely unregulated? This is how a conversation with you goes JimmiC: are you suggesting the fda is bad and we are better off without them? Blackjack: no, I am not suggesting the FDA is bad, I am suggesting they are not infallible. JimmiC: then you need to find some examples where regulation makes things worse than leaving things completely unregulated Again, whatever fictitious arguments you want to have in your head is your business, stop trying to rope me into them lol Ok so then you think it would be better if the internet was regulated by a group like the FDA? I'm awfully confused. He is saying that because the FDA is not infallible people should be allowed to publicly disagree with the FDA's position (by for example saying that Covid vaccines are bad) because the people might be right and the FDA might be wrong.
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Since the "fire in a theatre" thing keeps coming up, and was even repeated by Biden himself yesterday, I think it's worth reminding everyone that this was never actually a law, and that the phrase was originally coined to justify an appalling SC judgement that enabled a socialist activist to be convicted under espionage laws for, wait for it, opposing the draft.
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/
Ninety-three years ago, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote what is perhaps the most well-known -- yet misquoted and misused -- phrase in Supreme Court history. [...] Those who quote Holmes might want to actually read the case where the phrase originated before using it as their main defense. If they did, they'd realize it was never binding law, and the underlying case, U.S. v. Schenck, is not only one of the most odious free speech decisions in the Court's history, but was overturned over 40 years ago.
First, it's important to note U.S. v. Schenck had nothing to do with fires or theaters or false statements. Instead, the Court was deciding whether Charles Schenck, the Secretary of the Socialist Party of America, could be convicted under the Espionage Act for writing and distributing a pamphlet that expressed his opposition to the draft during World War I. As the ACLU's Gabe Rottman explains, "It did not call for violence. It did not even call for civil disobedience."
It's actually a very good example of why it's so dangerous to play with this kind of thing. Any tool that seems justified now in Biden's hands will be in Trump's successor's hands at least once in the next decade, and that should give even the most determined anti-anti-vaxxer pause.
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On April 30 2021 21:09 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On April 30 2021 21:07 Gorsameth wrote:On April 30 2021 20:58 JimmiC wrote:On April 30 2021 20:55 BlackJack wrote:On April 30 2021 20:37 JimmiC wrote:On April 30 2021 20:29 BlackJack wrote:On April 30 2021 20:20 JimmiC wrote:On April 30 2021 20:06 BlackJack wrote:
btw, Jockmcplop nails it when he asks who are going to be the arbiters of truth. In the USA, our arbiter of what is true/false or safe/unsafe for drugs/vaccines is the FDA. Anyone that wanted to legislate this idea would probably surely have the FDA as the main arbiter if not the sole aribter.
The FDA for decades said artificial trans fats were safe to put in foods. The WHO estimates trans fats kill 500,000 people annually and have called for them to be eliminated in all foods. Even after the FDA banned trans fats they gave the corporations several years to phase them out. A few more years of letting corporations put shit on our food that is proven to kill us because it might cost the corporations too much money to change too abruptly. They literally let corporations poison for a few more years after they decided something was unsafe just to protect the corporation's profits. Now we are going to start silencing people for not agreeing with the FDA? Bonkers. So if we get rid of the FDA then what would happen with the artificial trans fat? By this post it appears that you think they are bad, it is clear that the corporations would have kept using them without them regulating people. People suggesting regulating are not suggesting that it is perfect they are suggesting it is better than not. Perfection is the enemy of progress. You improve and then you try to improve more, you don't do nothing until you find the magic bullet that fixes everything. No, I am not suggesting the FDA is bad. I am suggesting they are not infallible and they aren't only looking after the health of the public. Drugs get taken off the market all the time when they are later discovered to be dangerous. The reason they are sometimes later discovered to be dangerous is because we don't silence everyone that's bothering to ask whether they are dangerous. No one is asking for people to not to be able ask whether things are dangerous, or better yet use science and math to prove it. People are asking for people to stop spreading things that we know are false but packaged as the truth. Also, your analogy was terrible because it proved the opposite of what you intended, it showed that well flawed the US is better off with them then without. You can't just throw out corps making extra dollars to get most left people worked up the way you can with immigrants taking jobs and our guy lost it was a steal. You need to make compelling logical arguments that logically show what you are trying to say. I'll help you, what you need to find is examples where regulation made things worse overall than leaving it completely unregulated, not things where regulation was better than not but still flawed. Man... lol. Why are you telling me I need to find examples where regulation makes things worse than leaving it completely unregulated? This is how a conversation with you goes JimmiC: are you suggesting the fda is bad and we are better off without them? Blackjack: no, I am not suggesting the FDA is bad, I am suggesting they are not infallible. JimmiC: then you need to find some examples where regulation makes things worse than leaving things completely unregulated Again, whatever fictitious arguments you want to have in your head is your business, stop trying to rope me into them lol Ok so then you think it would be better if the internet was regulated by a group like the FDA? I'm awfully confused. He is saying that because the FDA is not infallible people should be allowed to publicly disagree with the FDA's position (by for example saying that Covid vaccines are bad) because the people might be right and the FDA might be wrong. None of that is against FDA regulating it though, that is how it works now. Yes its the situation as it is now, but this discussion is about changing that by censoring anti-vaxxers.
He is equating not being allowed to talk about "vaccines are bad" (without solid scientific facts) because the FDA has said they are safe with potentially not having been allowed to talk about how bad trans fats were, because the FDA said they were fine. While they later turned out to be bad.
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On April 30 2021 21:07 Belisarius wrote:Since the "fire in a theatre" thing keeps coming up, and was even repeated by Biden himself yesterday, I think it's worth reminding everyone that this was never actually a law, and that the phrase was originally coined to justify an appalling SC judgement that enabled a socialist activist to be convicted under espionage laws for, wait for it, opposing the draft. https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/Show nested quote +Ninety-three years ago, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote what is perhaps the most well-known -- yet misquoted and misused -- phrase in Supreme Court history. [...] Those who quote Holmes might want to actually read the case where the phrase originated before using it as their main defense. If they did, they'd realize it was never binding law, and the underlying case, U.S. v. Schenck, is not only one of the most odious free speech decisions in the Court's history, but was overturned over 40 years ago.
First, it's important to note U.S. v. Schenck had nothing to do with fires or theaters or false statements. Instead, the Court was deciding whether Charles Schenck, the Secretary of the Socialist Party of America, could be convicted under the Espionage Act for writing and distributing a pamphlet that expressed his opposition to the draft during World War I. As the ACLU's Gabe Rottman explains, "It did not call for violence. It did not even call for civil disobedience."
It's actually a very good example of why it's so dangerous to play with this kind of thing. Any tool that seems justified now in Biden's hands will be in Trump's successor's hands at least once in the next decade, and that should give even the most determined anti-anti-vaxxer pause.
There's a lot of that in US common law, judges and lawyers will toss out what appear to be good bases for making a rule, but then the analogy that follows is totally off the mark and no time is spent explaining how and why. Schenk is a good example, the concept of yelling fire in a crowded theater is a fine enough starting point, but actually drawing parallels between that and the speech acts in question is usually straight up impossible, so much so that the analogy is dead in the water.
Precedent as a strict concept follows from the application of a published court opinion to the matter at hand, so the previous rulings on Cohen's files and privileges are not binding so much as potentially persuasive in support of the government's position. The fact that they got warrants issued in the first place means they have strong factual ground for the search and import of the findings, but actually using that stuff in a prosecution is a different matter.
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On April 30 2021 20:57 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On April 30 2021 20:06 BlackJack wrote:
btw, Jockmcplop nails it when he asks who are going to be the arbiters of truth. In the USA, our arbiter of what is true/false or safe/unsafe for drugs/vaccines is the FDA. Anyone that wanted to legislate this idea would probably surely have the FDA as the main arbiter if not the sole aribter.
The FDA for decades said artificial trans fats were safe to put in foods. The WHO estimates trans fats kill 500,000 people annually and have called for them to be eliminated in all foods. Even after the FDA banned trans fats they gave the corporations several years to phase them out. A few more years of letting corporations put shit on our food that is proven to kill us because it might cost the corporations too much money to change too abruptly. They literally let corporations poison for a few more years after they decided something was unsafe just to protect the corporation's profits. Now we are going to start silencing people for not agreeing with the FDA? Bonkers. Yeah, that really is the crux of the problem. Having some independent fact checker that accurately determines whether information that is being spread is accurate and then tasking that fact checker with checking all information spread on the internet and then flagging or cencoring stuff that is false/dangerous - that sounds highly useful. But say the previous administration decided to implement such an independent fact checker.. Would I trust that fact checker when it stated that the election was stolen or whatever other hundreds of blatantly false statements made by said admin, and would I be happy about it when it censored contrary statements? Obviously, no - I would perceive this as one of the final stages of achieving a lasting dictatorship. Being Norwegian, I don't really suffer from the truth being politicized in this way - my current right-wing government bases their decision making on sets of facts that I myself accept as true. But if I were american, I'd be much more skeptical, because voting patterns are such a strong determiner of reality-perception. Now, this doesn't mean that facts don't matter or that we should just let all opinions slide. Rather, it means that policing speech, be it in real life or the internet, is something we should be incredibly careful doing. I get that some European countries outlaw holocaust denial and I'm not necessarily disagreeing with their decision to do so (although it's also not something I'm really invested in defending, either). I'm happy Alex Jones is deplatformed. But I don't want the 50 year old woman who posts that vaccines cause autism and covid is 5g on her facebook feed to be censored. Further, our understanding of truth and facts actually does change over time. I'm quite confident it'd be possible to make quite the comprehensive list over things accepted as true 30 years ago that no longer are true today without the actual facts changing, rather that this change in perception of truth and fact has happened as a consequence of an evolution of our ability to comprehend data. In Norway, we have a national broadcasting company which for many Norwegians is their main source of news. I don't mind, at all. I find them highly reliable and trustworthy (more so than almost any private media actor I can think of). The same thing in North Korea is obviously unreliable. The same thing implemented by some american administrations could be good - but by other administrations, I'd be deeply distrusting. (That said, I have the impression NPR and PBS have generally been way more reliable and less partisan than many other american media outlets, but again, if their leadership is or can be politically appointed, then that's a dire balance to strike.) As a Norwegian high school teacher, teaching my pupils to navigate through an increasingly complex media landscape is part of my job. I don't know to what degree this is part of the american educational system. I think I'm fairly adept at discerning trustworthy information from untrustworthy information, but I'm also certain that I've been fooled at times. I'm also skeptical towards determining that 'anti-vaxx' is deserving of special treatment in the truth-department. Imo, climate change still represents a threat to humanity several magnitudes greater than what Covid does. Recently, it was discovered that a group responsible for calculating Norwegian emissions had made some wrong calculations about emissions related to transportation of goods and wares, which made them inaccurately state that Norway's emissions had been cut (more significantly than what they actually had been). That's immensely harmful - but I actually believe it was a honest mistake on their behalf (even if it isn't a honest mistake on the behalf of Norwegian politicians that still repeat said wrongful calculation). Again, I'm not opposed to arbitrariness - I think that's inherent to being a human and living in a society with other people. If I talk with people who argue for 'free speech is completely sacrosanct and all speech should always be permitted', I'm inclined to point towards examples of incitement towards violence and how difficult it can be to distinguish incitement of violence from just being a hateful asshole. My main point of contention is with anyone trying to turn this into a simple topic with an easy answer.
Quality post
I mentioned earlier that a lot of my liberal friends think Zuckerberg or Jack Dorsey should do more regarding censorship or deplatforming on their platforms. I think a big part of that has to do with the fact that they probably see these guys as left-wing or center-left. There aren't many MAGA guys working in tech in the san Francisco bay area. I bet these rich white guys have more loyalty to the status quo than to the causes my friends support. I think it's a mistake to assume that censorship gun won't be turned on them if the time comes.
Also a good point about how our understanding of truth and facts change over time. Personally, I think that's why it's important to have robust debate and everyone should be entitled to voice their opinion, no matter how stupid. Let's be honest, most of us would be burned as heretics for our opinions of what we know to be true today if we took a time machine back to the past when our truths were "untrue."
Your last paragraph has a resonance with what you said in the discussion a couple weeks ago regarding police shootings. It rings true again as it did there. There's a joke by George Carlin - "Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?" I think about that probably once a week, especially when I'm speaking with someone whose opinion varies from mine. It's true most of the things we believe simply falls on a spectrum and we all think we know just the right spot to stop before something "crosses the line." I'm probably pretty far on the spectrum in favor of free speech and I can acknowledge there are good arguments for why my side is too extreme.
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On April 30 2021 21:46 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On April 30 2021 20:57 Liquid`Drone wrote:On April 30 2021 20:06 BlackJack wrote:
btw, Jockmcplop nails it when he asks who are going to be the arbiters of truth. In the USA, our arbiter of what is true/false or safe/unsafe for drugs/vaccines is the FDA. Anyone that wanted to legislate this idea would probably surely have the FDA as the main arbiter if not the sole aribter.
The FDA for decades said artificial trans fats were safe to put in foods. The WHO estimates trans fats kill 500,000 people annually and have called for them to be eliminated in all foods. Even after the FDA banned trans fats they gave the corporations several years to phase them out. A few more years of letting corporations put shit on our food that is proven to kill us because it might cost the corporations too much money to change too abruptly. They literally let corporations poison for a few more years after they decided something was unsafe just to protect the corporation's profits. Now we are going to start silencing people for not agreeing with the FDA? Bonkers. Yeah, that really is the crux of the problem. Having some independent fact checker that accurately determines whether information that is being spread is accurate and then tasking that fact checker with checking all information spread on the internet and then flagging or cencoring stuff that is false/dangerous - that sounds highly useful. But say the previous administration decided to implement such an independent fact checker.. Would I trust that fact checker when it stated that the election was stolen or whatever other hundreds of blatantly false statements made by said admin, and would I be happy about it when it censored contrary statements? Obviously, no - I would perceive this as one of the final stages of achieving a lasting dictatorship. Being Norwegian, I don't really suffer from the truth being politicized in this way - my current right-wing government bases their decision making on sets of facts that I myself accept as true. But if I were american, I'd be much more skeptical, because voting patterns are such a strong determiner of reality-perception. Now, this doesn't mean that facts don't matter or that we should just let all opinions slide. Rather, it means that policing speech, be it in real life or the internet, is something we should be incredibly careful doing. I get that some European countries outlaw holocaust denial and I'm not necessarily disagreeing with their decision to do so (although it's also not something I'm really invested in defending, either). I'm happy Alex Jones is deplatformed. But I don't want the 50 year old woman who posts that vaccines cause autism and covid is 5g on her facebook feed to be censored. Further, our understanding of truth and facts actually does change over time. I'm quite confident it'd be possible to make quite the comprehensive list over things accepted as true 30 years ago that no longer are true today without the actual facts changing, rather that this change in perception of truth and fact has happened as a consequence of an evolution of our ability to comprehend data. In Norway, we have a national broadcasting company which for many Norwegians is their main source of news. I don't mind, at all. I find them highly reliable and trustworthy (more so than almost any private media actor I can think of). The same thing in North Korea is obviously unreliable. The same thing implemented by some american administrations could be good - but by other administrations, I'd be deeply distrusting. (That said, I have the impression NPR and PBS have generally been way more reliable and less partisan than many other american media outlets, but again, if their leadership is or can be politically appointed, then that's a dire balance to strike.) As a Norwegian high school teacher, teaching my pupils to navigate through an increasingly complex media landscape is part of my job. I don't know to what degree this is part of the american educational system. I think I'm fairly adept at discerning trustworthy information from untrustworthy information, but I'm also certain that I've been fooled at times. I'm also skeptical towards determining that 'anti-vaxx' is deserving of special treatment in the truth-department. Imo, climate change still represents a threat to humanity several magnitudes greater than what Covid does. Recently, it was discovered that a group responsible for calculating Norwegian emissions had made some wrong calculations about emissions related to transportation of goods and wares, which made them inaccurately state that Norway's emissions had been cut (more significantly than what they actually had been). That's immensely harmful - but I actually believe it was a honest mistake on their behalf (even if it isn't a honest mistake on the behalf of Norwegian politicians that still repeat said wrongful calculation). Again, I'm not opposed to arbitrariness - I think that's inherent to being a human and living in a society with other people. If I talk with people who argue for 'free speech is completely sacrosanct and all speech should always be permitted', I'm inclined to point towards examples of incitement towards violence and how difficult it can be to distinguish incitement of violence from just being a hateful asshole. My main point of contention is with anyone trying to turn this into a simple topic with an easy answer. Quality post I mentioned earlier that a lot of my liberal friends think Zuckerberg or Jack Dorsey should do more regarding censorship or deplatforming on their platforms. I think a big part of that has to do with the fact that they probably see these guys as left-wing or center-left. There aren't many MAGA guys working in tech in the san Francisco bay area. I bet these rich white guys have more loyalty to the status quo than to the causes my friends support. I think it's a mistake to assume that censorship gun won't be turned on them if the time comes. Also a good point about how our understanding of truth and facts change over time. Personally, I think that's why it's important to have robust debate and everyone should be entitled to voice their opinion, no matter how stupid. Let's be honest, most of us would be burned as heretics for our opinions of what we know to be true today if we took a time machine back to the past when our truths were "untrue." Your last paragraph has a resonance with what you said in the discussion a couple weeks ago regarding police shootings. It rings true again as it did there. There's a joke by George Carlin - "Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?" I think about that probably once a week, especially when I'm speaking with someone whose opinion varies from mine. It's true most of the things we believe simply falls on a spectrum and we all think we know just the right spot to stop before something "crosses the line." I'm probably pretty far on the spectrum in favor of free speech and I can acknowledge there are good arguments for why my side is too extreme.
Why don't you ask "your liberal friends" for specifics regarding their endorsement of moderation on sites like Twitter and Facebook, instead of backing in their beliefs based on your partisan suspicions? You don't have to guess and fill in the dots, you could engage in something like the robust debate you claim to endorse.
Further, is it your understanding that owner-responsibility for moderating public avenues of information dissemination is left, right, or what? If it's not inherently partisan to suggest that someone who owns and maintains a massive platform for spreading information has some responsibility for the content of that information, how does filling in the blanks on which way folks like Zucc and Dorsey lean make any sense?
Edit: the anti-vax debate is actually a great basis for asserting that this isn't truly partisan at all, there are more than enough left-leaning woo-woo magic health folks to balance against the right-leaning individualism folks such that moderating anti-vax sentiments can easily take on a neutral color.
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On April 30 2021 18:40 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On April 30 2021 18:28 maybenexttime wrote:On April 30 2021 14:27 BlackJack wrote:On April 30 2021 14:13 NewSunshine wrote:On April 30 2021 14:10 BlackJack wrote:
Let me spell out my position for you as simply as I can: It's wrong to think one should not get vaccinated, but people should be entitled to their wrong opinion without having the truth police crack down on them. People are entitled to be wrong, but to convince other people of your wrong opinion and put their lives at risk is something entirely different. This isn't just a discussion about whether the sky is blue, it's a bloody pandemic. It's like if there were a section on the internet of people who like to make arguments about why you should drive drunk. There's consequences to having certain opinions, as well as to letting people proliferate beliefs that are objectively dangerous. You haven't addressed that. You're right, it's not a discussion about whether the sky is blue. We don't have a 1st amendment so that we can talk about the sky being blue. Free speech is freaking useless if it only gives us the right to talk about things that aren't controversial. The fact that you're willing to to go full blown authoritarian at the first sign of danger shows exactly why we need a 1st amendment and people to stand up for it. It's not a matter of saying controversial things. It's literally the pandemic equivalent of crying "FIRE" in a packed theater, causing people to trample one another. I just took 2 pages of shit for arguing that "temporarily stop administering a vaccine" is the same as "temporarily stop taking a vaccine." People are honestly going to come here and say that saying something anti-vax is literally the same as inciting violence or yelling fire in a packed theater? If people let this shit slide I'm gonna be upset lol
I really fail to see how my analogy is not good. How is crying "vaccines cause autism" leading to a a polio or smallpox outbreak different from someone crying "fire" causing people to trample one another? Both are cases of misinformation causing people to protect themselves against a non-existent threat, killing others in the process.
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I think that fundamentally, this problem is almost certainly not solved through censorship, and having facebook (or google, or any other massive data company) in charge of censorship seems both strange and scary.
What we need, as a society, is to figure out a way to inoculate people against bullshit. And this seems to be a global problem. The modern media landscape built out of social media companies has a tendency to build self-reinforcing bubbles of bullshit which are hard to penetrate.
Modern citizens need to be more aware of this, and need to become better at being sceptical about news they receive, and at judging the quality of sources. And i think this is something which will eventually happen, this kind of recognition just takes a while to seep through society. But the education system is definitively important here, too.
And maybe the almighty algorithms should be tweaked a bit to reduce this phenomenon of bubble building.
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On April 30 2021 22:00 maybenexttime wrote:Show nested quote +On April 30 2021 18:40 BlackJack wrote:On April 30 2021 18:28 maybenexttime wrote:On April 30 2021 14:27 BlackJack wrote:On April 30 2021 14:13 NewSunshine wrote:On April 30 2021 14:10 BlackJack wrote:
Let me spell out my position for you as simply as I can: It's wrong to think one should not get vaccinated, but people should be entitled to their wrong opinion without having the truth police crack down on them. People are entitled to be wrong, but to convince other people of your wrong opinion and put their lives at risk is something entirely different. This isn't just a discussion about whether the sky is blue, it's a bloody pandemic. It's like if there were a section on the internet of people who like to make arguments about why you should drive drunk. There's consequences to having certain opinions, as well as to letting people proliferate beliefs that are objectively dangerous. You haven't addressed that. You're right, it's not a discussion about whether the sky is blue. We don't have a 1st amendment so that we can talk about the sky being blue. Free speech is freaking useless if it only gives us the right to talk about things that aren't controversial. The fact that you're willing to to go full blown authoritarian at the first sign of danger shows exactly why we need a 1st amendment and people to stand up for it. It's not a matter of saying controversial things. It's literally the pandemic equivalent of crying "FIRE" in a packed theater, causing people to trample one another. I just took 2 pages of shit for arguing that "temporarily stop administering a vaccine" is the same as "temporarily stop taking a vaccine." People are honestly going to come here and say that saying something anti-vax is literally the same as inciting violence or yelling fire in a packed theater? If people let this shit slide I'm gonna be upset lol I really fail to see how my analogy is not good. How is crying "vaccines cause autism" leading to a a polio or smallpox outbreak different from someone crying "fire" causing people to trample one another? Both are cases of misinformation causing people to protect themselves against a non-existent threat, killing others in the process.
While I think there some issues with the analogy as drawn (such as the timing element, a stampede on hearing of a fire is a spontaneous, fast event that solidifies the connection between speech act and harm), I do think you're onto something here. The missing element I'd add in is the role of medical advice and its regulation; it is not especially controversial to suggest that people pretending to be doctors giving out medical advice should not be doing that such that punishing said behavior is appropriate. Applying that to novel medical issues like the COVID vaccine is not especially easy, but it still makes sense that folks who offer hard facts on the medical consequences of vaccine taking should not be doing so unless they have some kind of publicly accessible qualification alongside their name. That's why its especially important for folks to take the opinions of individual doctors speaking without endorsement of a professional organization with a grain of salt, there's much to be said about letting the public know that outliers are outliers for a reason.
Related to that last point, the doctor who testified on Chauvin's behalf, David Fowler, is in a ton of shit now because of how far afield his opinions in the Chauvin's case were, especially the ridiculous carbon monoxide bit. Because of his testimony, Baltimore prosecutors are canvassing every case he signed off on while the Medical Examiner there; if he thinks it medically reasonable to suggest Floyd might have died from carbon monoxide poisoning such that his death should have been signed off as "indeterminate," how many other times did he do something similar?
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On April 30 2021 22:08 Simberto wrote:
I think that fundamentally, this problem is almost certainly not solved through censorship, and having facebook (or google, or any other massive data company) in charge of censorship seems both strange and scary.
What we need, as a society, is to figure out a way to inoculate people against bullshit. And this seems to be a global problem. The modern media landscape built out of social media companies has a tendency to build self-reinforcing bubbles of bullshit which are hard to penetrate.
Modern citizens need to be more aware of this, and need to become better at being sceptical about news they receive, and at judging the quality of sources. And i think this is something which will eventually happen, this kind of recognition just takes a while to seep through society. But the education system is definitively important here, too.
And maybe the almighty algorithms should be tweaked a bit to reduce this phenomenon of bubble building.
This raises a good point, that no amount of regulation or censorship will fix the trust problems endemic to our digital society. However, I think this is where some connecting the dots is in order; the notion that education and its relative, the ability to accurately assess and judge expertise, are public goods that require massive ongoing investment has become partisan, at least here in the US. So much so that it's basically impossible to avoid the conclusion that folks championing the individual's ability to ignore experts are doing so as a part of a larger program aimed at fighting egalitarianism.
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On April 30 2021 22:08 Simberto wrote:
I think that fundamentally, this problem is almost certainly not solved through censorship, and having facebook (or google, or any other massive data company) in charge of censorship seems both strange and scary.
What we need, as a society, is to figure out a way to inoculate people against bullshit. And this seems to be a global problem. The modern media landscape built out of social media companies has a tendency to build self-reinforcing bubbles of bullshit which are hard to penetrate.
Modern citizens need to be more aware of this, and need to become better at being sceptical about news they receive, and at judging the quality of sources. And i think this is something which will eventually happen, this kind of recognition just takes a while to seep through society. But the education system is definitively important here, too.
And maybe the almighty algorithms should be tweaked a bit to reduce this phenomenon of bubble building.
This is the obvious solution. We're told it's impossibly logistically hard and we're doing the best we can, I'd argue instead that there's an enormous contradiction society just isn't grappling with at the core.
Basically boils down to: The type of critical capacities we know we need to develop would also undermine the system that enriches wealthy people that exploit the lack of those critical capacities in order to further enrich themselves and they have overwhelming control/influence on the formal channels (elections for example) to address this.
EDIT: Consider for example the tax preparation industry in the US. Any society that has a chance at deciphering bad information on the internet is going to recognize how needlessly exploitative the whole industry is and how absurd it is that even continues to exist.
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On April 30 2021 22:11 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On April 30 2021 22:00 maybenexttime wrote:On April 30 2021 18:40 BlackJack wrote:On April 30 2021 18:28 maybenexttime wrote:On April 30 2021 14:27 BlackJack wrote:On April 30 2021 14:13 NewSunshine wrote:On April 30 2021 14:10 BlackJack wrote:
Let me spell out my position for you as simply as I can: It's wrong to think one should not get vaccinated, but people should be entitled to their wrong opinion without having the truth police crack down on them. People are entitled to be wrong, but to convince other people of your wrong opinion and put their lives at risk is something entirely different. This isn't just a discussion about whether the sky is blue, it's a bloody pandemic. It's like if there were a section on the internet of people who like to make arguments about why you should drive drunk. There's consequences to having certain opinions, as well as to letting people proliferate beliefs that are objectively dangerous. You haven't addressed that. You're right, it's not a discussion about whether the sky is blue. We don't have a 1st amendment so that we can talk about the sky being blue. Free speech is freaking useless if it only gives us the right to talk about things that aren't controversial. The fact that you're willing to to go full blown authoritarian at the first sign of danger shows exactly why we need a 1st amendment and people to stand up for it. It's not a matter of saying controversial things. It's literally the pandemic equivalent of crying "FIRE" in a packed theater, causing people to trample one another. I just took 2 pages of shit for arguing that "temporarily stop administering a vaccine" is the same as "temporarily stop taking a vaccine." People are honestly going to come here and say that saying something anti-vax is literally the same as inciting violence or yelling fire in a packed theater? If people let this shit slide I'm gonna be upset lol I really fail to see how my analogy is not good. How is crying "vaccines cause autism" leading to a a polio or smallpox outbreak different from someone crying "fire" causing people to trample one another? Both are cases of misinformation causing people to protect themselves against a non-existent threat, killing others in the process. + Show Spoiler +While I think there some issues with the analogy as drawn (such as the timing element, a stampede on hearing of a fire is a spontaneous, fast event that solidifies the connection between speech act and harm), I do think you're onto something here. The missing element I'd add in is the role of medical advice and its regulation; it is not especially controversial to suggest that people pretending to be doctors giving out medical advice should not be doing that such that punishing said behavior is appropriate. Applying that to novel medical issues like the COVID vaccine is not especially easy, but it still makes sense that folks who offer hard facts on the medical consequences of vaccine taking should not be doing so unless they have some kind of publicly accessible qualification alongside their name. That's why its especially important for folks to take the opinions of individual doctors speaking without endorsement of a professional organization with a grain of salt, there's much to be said about letting the public know that outliers are outliers for a reason. Related to that last point, the doctor who testified on Chauvin's behalf, David Fowler, is in a ton of shit now because of how far afield his opinions in the Chauvin's case were, especially the ridiculous carbon monoxide bit. Because of his testimony, Baltimore prosecutors are canvassing every case he signed off on while the Medical Examiner there; if he thinks it medically reasonable to suggest Floyd might have died from carbon monoxide poisoning such that his death should have been signed off as "indeterminate," how many other times did he do something similar?
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess a lot, especially where there isn't so much conflicting evidence. Going even further on that limb and assuming he isn't the only one doing it.
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