What other options do you have if you can't educate or have intellectual discourse with people who are fabricating reality or deeply believe in conspiracy theories? It's like trying to pull someone out of a cult like Scientology.
Of course, attempt to engage to improve the situation and help someone obtain ground truth on their own from legitimate information sources, but when it's obviously hopeless insulate yourself against those who could harm and move forward. You don't have to support the establishment, but you also don't have the right to violence because you feel slighted.
That's not up to you. Real intellectual discourse isn't your way or the highway. You, like anyone else, has the potential to be wrong, and you're probably wrong a lot more than you think you are. If your arguments don't sway people, that's neither your failing nor the failing of those you are trying to convince. When you censor people, that only emboldens them, and proves to everyone that yes, there are people who want to censor discourse.
Yes, you are inherently fighting in support of the establishment if you are censoring ideas that the establishment doesn't support. You can't have it both ways.
Violence is one thing, but you're also lumping in violence with conspiracy theories, which in turn constructs its own form of orthodoxy. This is why I don't support censorship to such a degree that it invades the public space; all it does is promote a religion of some kind, whether it be Christianity or "the science is settled". By the way, violence only ever seems bad when it goes against your sensibilities. If violence supported your world view, statistically speaking, you are likely to justify it. America was founded on violence, and lots of people throughout the political spectrum believe that the violence was justified. If you build a system that is so technologically perfect that it extinguishes violence from the public space, then you have created a system of slavery.
Let's stop pretending that we're against violence and admit that we're against violence of certain agendas.
> If you build a system that is so technologically perfect that it extinguishes violence from the public space, then you have created a system of slavery.
I intuitively get the point you are trying to make (sovereignty, "government has a monopoly on violence," yadda yadda), but I don't think it reflects the real, both contemporary and historical, systems of slavery.
Chattel slavery in the antebellum South's relied on extrajudicial violence. International sex trafficking is inherently violent. Modern slavery most often occurs in areas with widespread, violent conflict. Why should we be worried about "benevolent AI overlords" going rogue when historically civilizations with high percentages of unfree people were extremely violent?
> Why should we be worried about "benevolent AI overlords" going rogue when historically civilizations with high percentages of unfree people were extremely violent?
I think you're making a false comparison. There's at least 2 different kinds of unfree regimes, the first being monarchies and dictatorships that use force in a top-down manner to control their subjects, and the second being the system of mind control which enslaves people by feeding them simulations that convince them that they are sufficiently free and safe. The latter version of an unfree regime still benefits from creating a form of slavery, but it's slavery of the mind. Imagine a civilization comprised of figurative Uncle Toms of the system. Sex trafficking is concerning, but it's a form of slavery that can only work in the 21st century by staying underground
> the second being the system of mind control which enslaves people by feeding them simulations that convince them that they are sufficiently free and safe. The latter version of an unfree regime still benefits from creating a form of slavery, but it's slavery of the mind. Imagine a civilization comprised of figurative Uncle Toms of the system.
I'm a bit confused by the figurative language used here. Did you have a specific example of this, or is this a hypothetical? I think this type of thinking has its, but I think it's important to contextualize it. For example, you can say that a gambling addict gambles against their will, but I wouldn't say that they are enslaved to gambling institutions (unless I was purposely being hyperbolic). But I agree that many systems of slavery had a degree of self-regulation among the enslaved.
> Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding your point.
My framework is this: violence is a necessary part of slavery, because to a certain extent enslavement requires the enslaved to choose between continued slavery or extreme violence/death. If you remove state violence from the equation, slavery still usually exists, and often flourishes due to the lack of a countervailing force. In "top-down" situations, where a system of slavery has implicit or explicit state support, the state doesn't have to explicitly enact the violence itself, it can simply declare a certain segment of the population "extra-judicial.
I think authoritarian, low violence states like Singapore have numerous human rights issues, but I wouldn't go so far as saying that the entire body politic is enslaved.
But those two states account for roughly half of the total world population. According to your link, the US has 400,000 enslaved peoples, which is still less per capita, but the US is a lot more developed than India and China.
From the linked source:
North Korea has the world's highest rate of slavery, with about one in 10 people enslaved, followed by Eritrea (9.3%) Burundi (4%), Central African Republic (2.2%), Afghanistan (2.2%), Mauritania (2.1%), South Sudan (2%), Pakistan (1.7%), Cambodia (1.7%) and Iran (1.6%).
In retrospect, I should've said "violent conflict OR extreme poverty"
There is no proof of material voting fraud or irregularities, for example. If you believe otherwise, you are fabricating a reality. If you communicate these lies to others, you are contributing to a disinformation campaign.
Um you can't prove something didn't happen .... when in fact it didn't happen. How is this not common sense. It's not suddenly fraud when the worse president in American history loses an election.
> Um you can't prove something didn't happen .... when in fact it didn't happen.
I think you can, to a certain degree. For example: by making the mail-in system more trustworthy, or by eliminating it.
My country (Chile) only uses on-site voting and no one alleges fraud because we know that it would be incredibly hard to steal an election with this system. The system is transparent, votes are counted publicly the same day of the voting.
The electoral service is one of the few public institutions that I deem competent and actually trust in my country, and I think I'm not alone.
To be honest, now politicians are trying to impose mail-in ballot system, but that not the electoral service's fault. That's idiot politicians trying to ruin something that works.
This idea of massive voter fraud isn't something that had entered the conversation until it was used as an imaginary defense for someone who has been unable to accept any loss or defeat or even apologize for any mistake he has made. (He also used it when he won, of course. But it is a unique construction that has been manifested into being by him.)
This is a man who, in what any normal person, could admit was a mistake when tweeting about a hurricane having effects in Alabama. Instead he doubled down, tripled down, forced federal employees to make statements that he was right. He even drew sharpie on a map to extend the prediction cone because it didn't show what he said.
There is a clear pattern of behavior here.
Additionally, those who are alleging massive voter fraud in public did not make those statements in court, because it would have actual consequences. Every state certified their results, including those with republican leadership.
So you either have to buy in to extraordinary claims of all kinds of (in many cases provably false) of voter fraud and a massive apparatus (Deep State) working against Donald Trump or accept the much more obvious and plain result.
If you listen to the call with Georgia, when the Secretary of State pointed out that they had investigated several of the claims, Trump's response was that the investigators were either incompetent or actively working against him.
To me it seems that the real core problem is that people believe in their own imaginary realities that are in disagreement with what's considered to be objective facts (let's keep solipsism aside please), and not the speech (ability to communicate ideas) itself.
I mean... why is it that if someone tells me that Sun rises in the west virtually everyone just ignores this as an obvious nonsense, but when someone says... a more nuanced but nonetheless proven-false controversy (I'd intentionally refrain from any examples - even the ones that were already provided - to avoid even a possibility debating any of those), some don't outright dismiss it.
Maybe I'm a weirdo, and maybe it's simply not possible with humans - but I still hope for a society where (argh, okay, let's invoke Godwin's Law) the next Hitler won't happen not because of some speech laws but because simply no one would listen to the lunacies seriously.
How is it strawman? Those are actual real world actions people commited, because of their opinions.
Not even month ago. Ignoring yesterday, there was plan and attempt to execute Mitchigan governor last few months. There was Nashville boombing, likely due to whatever conspiracy theory that man believed.
Even Elliot Rodger had opinions largely from incels chans.
Let me use another scenario. 1969, Brazil. Members of a revolutionary group kidnapped the US Ambassador. After that, and a few other incidents, the government used the same argument you presented to review and approve contents of newspapers, magazines, radio shows, movies and correspondence.
Do you believe it is OK to do this, in order to disrupt their planning? Do you believe it becomes not-OK if the target of domestic terror is a tyrannical government?
The very same situation has happened across all of South America throughout the 20th Century.
They may be referring to the first statement, which in my experience doesn't seem true. I've never heard conservatives, Republicans, or Trump supporters argue for a one party state. That may be my failing, however.
> “He’s now president for life, president for life. And he’s great,” Trump said, according to audio of excerpts of Trump’s remarks at a closed-door fundraiser in Florida aired by CNN. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday,” Trump said to cheers and applause from supporters.
What do you think it means when you lose an election, and then try to disrupt the democratic process with the goal of having the loser of the election retain power?
> "Or because their opinions leads them to construct bombs or shoot people."
Who exactly is "they"? Anyone who disagrees with you? Anyone who votes for a Republican candidate? Trump supporters? Some subset of Trump supporters who say the election was fraudulent? What about Trump supporters who say the election MAY have been fraudulent -- do they also get silenced?
This is a slippery slope. You either have freedom of speech, or you don't. Muzzling people who have ideas you consider dangerous has a way of blowing back in your face; in fact it almost guarantees violence, when people feel they are not allowed to vent.
The people who literally stormed the capital earlier this week, some of whom brought equipment like zipties with the intention of kidnapping/hostage taking. Those specific people who we all literally just saw doing the thing on basically every TV Channel while some of them literally livestreamed themselves doing it. This is in no way ambiguous at all.
This isn't about perspective. You are the one actually saying lies. Don't try to turn this around into some thing where it just two equal opinions. It is truth vs lies, and you are choosing lies.
(Sorry for the delay but I've been swamped since this conflagration.)
Posts like this and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25691491 and many others you posted in these recent threads are not acceptable on HN, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. We ban this sort of account, regardless of which politics they're battling for. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here.
Please make sure you're not using HN primarily for political battle—it's against the guidelines and it's the line across which we start banning accounts (https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...), again regardless of which politics they're battling for. The reason is that it basically destroys what HN is supposed to exist for, which is curious conversation on a wide range of topics.
They are people who put bomb in RNC and brought one to capitol a day before yeasterday. They includes nashville bomber and whoever organized Mitchigan terrorist plot.
They are also proud boys starting fights. It is not like US would have shortage of organized political violence lately. It is pretty easy to find "they".
The Nashville bomber was one guy committing suicide and he even warned in advance.
The Michigan kidnapping plot was about 5-6 idiots who did not represent some kind of farflung organization.
The Proud Boys have not started fights, to my knowledge. They have marched peacefully down the street holding U.S. flags and the like, and been violently attacked by antifa elements. They show up at left wing/antifa demonstrations but don't attack; they fight back when provoked. They've been demonized by left wing news as "white supremacists" ironically even though their leader is a black guy.
So when you say "it is pretty easy to find 'they'", you need to support that statement. It's pretty easy to make stuff up, too, and I believe a lot of people are being censored on the basis of hearsay and madeup nonsense.
Look at history, it’s just one damn tragedy after another and all without the supposedly super powerful influence of internet filter bubbles and radicalization. The internet isn’t the problem, this is just what humans do. Every age has blamed their problems on the latest technology while being willfully blind to the problems within their own minds. You can’t fight this with censorship or gatekeeping or trusted news sources, trying to force your beliefs on other people just adds to the misery because you’re flawed and ignorant too, everyone is.
But those tragedies happened after series of radicalisations, pretty often after groups intentionally spread lies and hate, when people closed themselvea into bubbles and so on.
Pretty often the new technology was the vector by which those came, simply because bad actors seem to be quicker to take advantage of new technology.
Also historically, censorship and gatekewping were overall succesfull strategies. I am not saying that it is good thing to do all that much, there is danger in overdoing it, but historically it was effective in suppressing viewpoints.
They’re successful only because they are accompanied by physical violence. If we go down this path again prepare for a repeat of history at the hands of those you give this power to, it’ll probably take a few hundred mega deaths before we learn our lesson again.
The problem is not just that the people deciding what gets edited/blocked could, at some point in the future, be Nazis or Stalinists or whatever - bad people censoring the good to make their propaganda be the only thing that's heard. That's bad, but the real problem is this: You can be wrong. You can be wrong when you're absolutely sure that you're right, and you can be wrong on things that really matter. Be very careful about blocking "wrong" viewpoints, because you can be wrong about what's "wrong".
Note well: I am not at all saying that Trump supporters are right. I am saying that you are not omniscient enough to be qualified to decide what should be blocked. Nobody is.
What I would prefer is removing moderators, aggressively fighting bots, and putting reasonably neutral parties in the moderation position.
The second part of that is hard/expensive, but it is a path forwards to some level of discourse between the people using these subreddits and everyone else. Driving these communities to different sites means that people get in much stronger filter bubbles, that's probably not a good thing.
To take the example of /r/conservative on reddit right now, the subreddit currently bans anyone who says anything at all critical of Trump, and mostly only let's people who have a history of saying supportive things talk. That's not good for reddit, or the country as a whole. But if reddit just removed the current batch of moderators and those rules, and had someone enforce some reasonable standards of discourse but not enforce politics, I think it could turn into a force for good.
To put it in your own terms, my preferred solution is to try and make it possible to "have intellectual discourse with people who are fabricating reality or deeply believe in conspiracy theories", instead of just making it so those people go fabricate their reality elsewhere.
A problem that has demonstrability arisen with even neutral moderation is that, no matter the moderation criteria, a vocal subset of those who are affected by that moderation will still complain loudly about being censored. This applies even to moderators removing death threats and calls to violence. There are many examples of complaints that doing so is censorship even though it is hard to make a good faith argument against the justifications for removing such posts.
I'm not claiming this is a perfect solution, I'm sure you're right there would be complaints, and I'm also sure that no perfect solution exist. It's just not that easy to deradicalize people, and it's just not that easy to deal with people actively attempting to deceive and radicalize the public. I do think it would probably be a superior solution to what is being done right now, where there are even more complaints, and you get increasingly "strong" filter bubbles.
Of course, attempt to engage to improve the situation and help someone obtain ground truth on their own from legitimate information sources, but when it's obviously hopeless insulate yourself against those who could harm and move forward. You don't have to support the establishment, but you also don't have the right to violence because you feel slighted.