Thought for the Day

[trish]

Not sure in this life if every choice isn’t one between two or more evils. Acting too slow or too little on climate change can have dire consequences, but the actions required to slow or halt the change can neither be inspired nor compelled by one leader, one party or even one group of nations. If we want to act effectively and democratically we need an educated populace, something I’m doubting these days the world will ever have.


I just always wanted to be a sparkling Disney princess dressed in pink, sitting in my tower spinning thoughts into theorems. But no, DeSantis’s is cracking down on math books as well as fantasy kingdoms and dark skinned people. There’s just no place down South for a princess to go and vote these days. That’s why I’m stayin’ North of the Mason-Dixon.

[broncofan]

People are driven to become educated about subjects they feel are of great immediacy. And yet, in the world of the pandemic people sought out information and it was often unreliable. In the case of climate change, there is only a sense of urgency among people who are already informed or take the word of the vast majority of the informed who tell them the window for acting is closing. If more people were motivated to learn about environmental science, there would still be a deluge of misinformation to overcome.

Related to this, Elon Musk wants to buy twitter because he believes that social media should operate under a principle of free speech absolutism. Twitter, in his view, is like the public square. It is a modern-day acropolis where he dreams people can exchange information in sound-bytes, through memes, and where skinny white kids are able to say the n word behind a veil of anonymity and use the kind of invective people used to call harassment. Of course social media is not like a public square because it's easier to falsify information, easier to embolden people who don't feel social pressure to be honest and decent, and misinformation can be concentrated.

In a world where even private forums don't engage in content moderation simple incorrect answers are likely to win out. I'm not saying that Elon Musk taking over twitter harkens the coming of the apocalypse but it does show how confused people are about why speech protections should mostly be used to protect people from official sanction. We are not at risk of having a ministry of information because well known falsehoods about elections or vaccines are not given space in private forums. If we can't even exclude crackpots from the conversation, we can't overcome the noise they make for long enough to have a conversation.

[MrFanti]

IMHO....Both Liberals and Conservatives have forgot that "Freedom Of Speech" also includes "freedom to disagree".

[trish]

also that it doesn’t include the freedom in incite insurrection or violence.

[Stavros]

IMHO....Both Liberals and Conservatives have forgot that "Freedom Of Speech" also includes "freedom to disagree".

You may enjoy the discussion by the brilliant, if now deceased Rick Roderick, on 'freedom to' ...timed at c27'48" (but the whole lecture is worth attention)

[broncofan]

IMHO....Both Liberals and Conservatives have forgot that "Freedom Of Speech" also includes "freedom to disagree".

If Trish were to say that the Earth is round and you were to say the Earth is flat would that be a simple difference of opinion or would one of you be wrong? I don't actually think free speech absolutism is a coherent philosophy when enforced in private settings because it forces people not to use their critical reasoning ability to discriminate between differences of opinion and factually incorrect statements. Requiring online forums to publish harmful, false information brings on an epistemological crisis because it compels people to treat bad faith statements as though they are as worthy of a place in the discourse as good faith opinions.

If someone were to assert that it's their honest opinion that the election will be held the day after it's really held, is that something someone should allow to be published? In my opinion they would have a moral obligation to censor it because it's false and will lead to people not voting. If someone says that arsenic is a treatment for covid and it's their valid opinion should that be published? What about someone saying there are 50,000 destroyed ballots in a dumpster with a Chinese shipping receipt when there's just been an attempted coup?

The idea that governments should not proscribe speech protects society enough from the slippery slope. Forcing people to publish false, hateful nonsense or even deciding to publish such nonsense because you think it provides a forum for disagreement really enables the dissemination of propaganda and pollutes the discourse. Online forums are not like a sidewalk or a public space in my view.

[broncofan]

even deciding to publish such nonsense because you think it provides a forum for disagreement really enables the dissemination of propaganda and pollutes the discourse.

To be clear, I'm not saying someone should be legally prevented from allowing toxic things to be published in a forum they own but let's stop pretending it's a public good or should be an obligation.

[Stavros]

The harm principle is a sound one, as Roderick's lecture shows. I think the difficult area is where the word 'harm' is replaced by 'hurt'. It may be morally and legally wrong for a person A to harm person B, for example by striking them with a stick and stealing their wallet. It may be morally wrong, but should it also be illegal for Person A to publicly ridicule Person B as a 'dumbass N****r'?

Political correctness is the term used used to censor public discourse where the language used is considered offensive, so the right to offend has in fact been if not abolished, then made subject to 'hate speech' in law, and may be cognizant of the prevailing public mood which I think in Europe and North America finds such language redundant, as well as hurtful.

That said, it has been quite a shock to realise that people defending a worthless jerk like Chris Rock consider his public ridicule of Jada Pinkett-Smith close to a joke or some 'light hearted' remark, in spite of the fact that the man had ridiculed the woman in public before and the Oscar night gig seemed to show some disturbance in Chris Rock's mind worthy of a long talk with a therapist. There could even be a deeper issue here if there were some evidence, for example, that Pinkett-Smith rejected any sexual advances Rock made when they were making the film 'Madagascar' suggesting Rock had spiteful reasons for insulting her in public.

The point being that instead of Chris Rock being held responsible for his offensive language and attitude, he is defended as the victim of assault, yet the right to be offensive to me was an example of where this right to offend became a right to hurt, and I don't think I can accept that. In this case, two men were compromised, and both actions require an equally robust and negative judgment.

[Stavros]

I don't know much about Elon Musk, other than that he owns a car company, has been on The Big Bang Theory and has funded some sort of space travel. If he has or can raise over $40 billion to buy Twitter, the real question is why can't he raise say $5 billion to end homelessness in San Francisco or for that matter California, as $5 billion should be enough. I think if Americans had the balls to do so, they would take away all the Billions owned by these people, say leave them $1 billion and take the rest and spend it ending homelessness, poverty and unemployment. Musk doesn't need $40 billion, he can even survive on $4 million or 1, so take it away from him and do something useful with it. Just as every millionaire 'Christian Pastor' should give away every cent they have earned. Boom!

[broncofan]

Anything that is privately owned is usually incentivized to maintain decent ethics because people can find alternatives if they permit harassment, racism, or dangerous misinformation. Elon Musk has put almost no thought into what his construction of free speech means because he is now saying that he thinks speech should be permitted as long as it's legal. Yet what is legal varies a great deal depending on where you are.

Let me put this bluntly: if he wants to turn a forum that is already too permissive of bigotry into a place where people send Jews pictures of ovens with a trail of dollar bills leading to it, why would people post there? Why would anyone allow themselves to be subjected to harassment, much of which is legal. By the way, I'm not saying Jews are a special case. And still I received an email from twitter once telling me that user "diejewdie" did not violate their terms of service. I'm sure many people have stories like this. What if this was no longer something that slipped through their algorithm but was actually permitted?

Gab is already a twitter alternative that all of the Nazis moved to as a protest to twitter. Public personalities are probably not going to flee right away but if Musk actually allows the kind of harassment that goes on at Gab, people will leave.

But more than that, if you allow it to become a cesspool of conspiracy theories and misinformation about important civic matters, it will cause harm. Elon Musk is an idiot. At the beginning of covid he said he thinks coronavirus worry is overrated. Here we are 7 million deaths later. He said it would be over by that summer. He called a hero who saved children in Thailand "pedo guy" because the person didn't think Musk's contraption to enter the caves would work (the device looked like a coffin and probably would have served as one). He's a piece of shit.