1. The crazy ideas jacquesm decries have a limited influence on one's life. Those are (predominantly) singular topics rather than all-encompassing ideologies. They are more of conversation starters than life guides. Aside of some rare dangerous ones (COVID-19 theories perhaps?), their impact places somewhere between stamp collecting and junk food consumption. All the flat earthers, the 5G's, the moon landing hoaxes etc., - let people have weird hobbies. We can handle them as a society.
2. Given how prevalent conspiracy theories are - across times, cultures, geographical locations, social niches - I posit our propensity towards them is not a random fluke of human psyche. No, I posit the conspiracy theories play a role in some other societal processes. I posit that trying to eradicate or suppress the underlying mechanism, without understanding the mechanism in the wider context of all societal processes would cause unforeseen negative consequences.
Having been around quite a lot of conspiracy based stuffs, I have to disagree with the statement you make about the impact.
Conspiracy theories are a slippery slope. You might not believe something at first, but they are peppered with enough truth that you begin to accept them all because one part was right. "Question everything," as they often tell you. The problem is, facts and science usually comes from people in authority - the people you're told to question. So you begin blanket distrust all "authority". Which ends up being anyone telling your something with authority. Government, science, medicine, police, Greta...
I'll happily question - but the problem comes when your bias won't let you trust anyone or anything. In fact you deliberately take the opposite stance because "they lie" and they're probably "out to get" you. Then it really is dangerous - and you feel clever, because it's like knowing some secret knowledge the rest of the world doesn't - because the "sheeple" believe the spoon fed lies.
I sort of agree except I'd say you need to talk about all claims having nothing to do with a person's own life.
Basically, throughout human existence, we have been guided by a lot of language that coded useful information about the world but on an abstract level was somewhere between false and meaningless. But abstract falseness didn't matter because it didn't directly impact our lives. I believe ancient hunter-gathers described a lot of their hunting method religiously. Animal spirits don't actual exist but I suspect one person can teach another concrete ways of hunting using these.
So, really, it's only a somewhat limited group that has good tools for sorting true abstractions from false abstractions from meaningless abstractions.
The 18th to 20th centuries saw a fortuitous coming together of interests where those with power found it in their interests to promote a greater rational understanding of the world, to promote tools that allow more people to determine the truth of these abstract ideas with little impact on their lives. And part of this was having somewhat truthful authorities, which allowed this rational understanding to be much easier since people didn't have to figure things out from the get-go.
Things don't look good going into the 21st century. The expanding area covered by science seems to be leading to less ability of even experts to verify basic science (PCR technician claiming viruses don't exist stands out in the OP). And rationality seems to be of less interest to the powerful.
> I posit our propensity towards them is not a random fluke of human psyche
I remember when Game of Thrones was in its early seasons. I had read the books so knew what was going go happen. I would sit and watch my friends discuss the show (who hadn't read the books) and I would be positively gleeful knowing that I knew more than them. It was like I possessed secret insider knowledge they all craved.
I suspect people who believe in conspiracy theories feel the same way. They know something others don't. Everyone else is waiting for the script writers; they've already seen the source.
It appeals to our ego and inherent narcissism. And frankly, when you have a people who have been told for decades that they are special and unique, narcissism can be an overrepresented quality
I also enjoy reading conspiracy theories (as opposed to subscribing to them) and in general agree with your first point, but I think you overlook the degree to which they can be weaponized.
COVID-19 disinformation is absolutely weaponized and that's literally killing people on a daily basis. Likewise, while the objections to 5g in my local community are merely an annoying inconvenience from naive technophobes, in some places it's manifested as attacks on physical infrastructure which are quasi-organized; there are forums where techniques are seeded, shared and refined with an underlying purpose of spreading those attacks to other forms of infrastructure.
The basic problem is that while bad ideas may spread on their own because they satisfy some emotional or pseudo-rational need of the recipients who then go on to reproduce the idea, the 'marketplace of ideas' metaphor doesn't really take account of wilful subversion.
While the topic is religion, its more an examination of beliefs, superstition and cultural norms through the lens of anthropology, evolutionary pscy, and other cognitivie theories.
Relevant to our discussion is it highlights how often brains encode information in odd ways, to increase recall, or just as a quirk of our mental wet ware.
A common example in cultures around the world are objects of a category, say Mountains/ancestors, that have an aberration or trait of another category (Eat people/are incorporeal)
Our brains fill in the necessary blanks - no one worries about the structure of the mountains digestive tract, or why ancestor spirits seem to be so human or don't dissipate in the wind/randomly follow movement rules for corporeal people.
The same applies for conspiracies. Somehow when people discuss conspiracies, the agencies involved have super human coordination, error checking, wealth and power.
Regards 2. , maybe the more "everyone conforms" the larger the sporadic rewards for the outliers?!?
Like winning the lottery, most outlier crazies lose but occasionally one weird conspiracy plot wins amazingly well.
Imagine you told everyone in the US in 2000 that the NSA would spy on everyone in their own country...(not sure how you'd benefit from that though)
Yes. My work takes me to the research on conspiracy theories (I am creating a database) and I actually read through these because these responses are part of how conspiracy theories function in a culture. eg https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691618774270
“ As many as one in five Americans would refuse to take a coronavirus vaccine, according to a new poll that follows a surge of anti-vaccine content online“
That’s a real life effect. Also from this article: “ Researchers at Johns Hopkins estimate that at least 70% of the population will have to be immune to provide herd protection against the novel coronavirus.“
>The fig leaf of Free Speech will no doubt be brandished as the greatest good and too sacred to be messed with but the facts are that every form of free speech has limitations. And that actively trying to harm others by abusing that right should come with some kind of limit or at a minimum a way to reduce its reach. Most of the reasoning around free speech rights and such are from a time when getting a letter across the country took three weeks.
This is what the seed of authoritarianism looks like: moral justifications for forcing people to believe, communicate, and behave the way you think is correct.
The specific limit of free speech is where it causes legal damages to others.
The particular form of authoritarian scaremongering on display tries to undefine that court-testable line to include any useful moral panic, but never really addresses the notion that loosening that line means their own speech could also easily be suppressed, as the "other side" could use the new suppression tools as freely and subjectively as themselves.
Unless you want the law of the jungle, any freedom you have will come from restrictions on the freedom of others. That's the basis for civilization. Speech has consequences, there are no reasons for it to fall outside the realm of law.
There is a world of difference between criticizing your government and advocating genocide.
And by the way, governments are the first spreaders of fake news on social medias IMO.
> But there are a lot of them and they all have the vote, waiting to be pushed as useful idiots to some higher goal. Politicians have started to realize that they don’t actually need to get a real mandate, and that they won’t be held accountable for lying. At that level, every time someone lies more people become susceptible to being pulled in to this web of deception.
One viable thing to do is redistribute political power instead of wealth.
The act of trying to centralize everything into a legacy, monolithic, waterfall, big iron system results in a Tower of Babel.
Its proponents swear it's Progress.
Return to the enumerated powers on the Constitution, and refactor all this Progressive cruft to the State level, where voters can either be wise or spendthrift at their leisure.
Doubtless we'll prefer a more catastrophic collapse, but dreaming is still occasionally legal.
One viable thing to do is redistribute political power instead of wealth
No, that's clearly not viable. The US is still "really" a democracy in the sense those who get the most legal votes really do win - real, fair elections right now, are a big factor in the distribution of power in the US, for democratic-ness on a world-scale, that's pretty good. Yet the extremely unequal distribution of wealth makes a mockery of the realness of voting's impact. Most people are effectively powerless to make an impact on much outside their immediate lives.
Return to the enumerated powers on the Constitution, and refactor all this Progressive cruft to the State level
This is an extreme reactionary viewpoint, taken from the 3-percenters or similar outfit.
Localities -- and borders in general -- are less and less relevant as the internet (and technology generally) makes the world smaller.
Strict federalist separation made sense in a world where it took days to travel across state lines, but the modern world requires that nations have a strong central government. Some things can only be done at the federal level (issuing currency, foreign relations, military/defense actions, etc.) and some laws (such as civil rights) should be universal and not subject to local interference.
It's true that we as a nation focus far too much on national politics, to the detriment of local issues which impact us personally much more. I'd argue that's not a problem with which governments hold the power, it's a problem with how the populace participates in politics.
Not only that, but quite frankly the manner in which we currently elect state governments is a mess. I live in North Carolina, the most gerrymandered state in the Union. In 2018 we literally voted using a map that was declared unconstitutional because there wasn't enough time to redraw it before the election. [0] Until this issue is overcome, it's tough for me to get excited about giving the states more power, and it took a panel of federal judges to declare the state's map illegal.
Some level of coordinated collective action is required. It is clear that our local choices have global impact.
The trick is finding mutually beneficial and agreed-upon strategies for getting along with one another.
Much of the trouble in the United States can be traced to Congress abdicating its responsibilities (under presidents of both parties). As voters, we are responsible for that failure. November is coming soon; it is an opportunity to choose those representatives who will choose the right thing over the expedient thing when the choice is required.
The problem is really about a group within all populations that is never satisfied with what power they have. You decentralize they centralize. Goes round and round.
They are useful in certain situations and useless in others. With time society understands those differences and gets better at deploying its different resources.
While I agree that there is a people ware problem,
1) We can do both - more equitable and productive distribution of wealth and self determination
2) Technology has created a new set of problems, at the intersection of human cognitive/mental limits, which the term "peopleware" tends to shrug off; the impression is that its more a people/social issue not a tech one.
An example, mentioned in the article was when people see 1000s of conspiracists on a forum and the hardcoding in our brains translates it as sign of trust worthiness. Even though a majority of people would call it crazy.
What 'progressive cruft' would you like to refactor to the state level?
Healthcare? Defense? Medical and scientific research? SNAP and (albeit small/not enough) education funding? What about banking regulation, regulating privacy and tech?
What happens when those, by your insinuation, 'unwise' states like California and New York are the only states that can afford anything? I would add it's my opinion these liberal local govs are the only ones willing to vote in their own best interest - e.g. education - but i'm sure we won't agree there on the fundamental premise.
Most of the conservative states rely on money from more populous states to even feed their people. The Republican Speaker is insanely hypocritical here in current stimulus negotiations as Kentucky is the second most dependent on Federal funding. e.g. they are 2nd to last in taking more money in from other states than they give back.
Plus State and local governance already has an outsized influence on people's lives (even many conservatives would agree more than Fed Gov)
and local government seems even more affected by unequal political power and wealth. Just look at all the Q anon and other crazy city council and school board zealots elected all over the place (which sadly has now made it's way into Congress)
Since people are discussing conspiracies, I present to you the Batman argument to inoculate your near and dear ones.
1) All conspiracy theories require the evil organization to achieve several super human/ super organizational feats such as:
* Perfect coordination - across timezones, personalities, objectives
* Great wealth
* excellent control of public figures
* Advanced technology
* Great secrecy
Etc.
These are all impossible asks, which any normal person knows if they have worked in any team of people.
Many conspiracies die because of how hard it is to keep everyone aligned, and if people were that efficient in secrecy, imagine how efficient they would be without that burden.
Therefore,
Implication 1) If you believe in the conspiracy, we must also live in a world where such levels of efficiency are possible.
which means that
2) It is also possible for an organization or individuals to exist, who take advantage of these efficiencies and advantages to do "good".
Now if it was possible to stay in the dark, while having advanced tech and great wealth - well you've just described Batman.
So the question you can train all your loved ones to ask, anytime they encounter a great claim, is whether this claim means that we live in a world where batman can exist.
------------------------
While this is a childish way to encode a defense, its meant to be easy to consume, and to protect people who regularly wont have time to spend the effort to verify information or toxic content when they encounter it.
So while it is outlandish, that is partly the point - to diminish the earnestness and terror that conspiracy theories exude, without your active intervention being required.
edit: This can apply to any superhero/or superfriends. I just chose Batman.
This thesis is crap and is blind to much bigger conspiracy theories that have been going on for thousands of years and that still have much stronger holds on societies than anti mask conspiracy theories. Modern social media did not cause them to grow to what they were since it did not exist when they were created and grew.
Christianity: Jesus died and came back to life. He died for your sins. You are going to hell if you don’t repent your sins. Please give the church 10%.
Buddhism: You are going to endlessly suffer. Please contribute to the temple to support the monks. Please pay monks to bless funerals.
Hinduism: You are born into a caste and stuck in it. You are shit and untouchable. If you touch me or try to marry my daughter, I will kill you.
The reality is that you have systems and people that prey on human weaknesses for time immemorial. It is much more interesting to examine how those technologies/systems operate.
Who gets to decide who doesn’t get to speak? If an individual, we suppress popular opinion unpopular with leadership. If the collective, we suppress unpopular data and ideas that may be accurate or innovative.
> Filtering out the bad from the good is going to be very important if we don’t want to accidentally lose such minor marbles as our democracies, our health and our safety.
I really think that a better solution to this problem is to fix the shortcomings of our democratic systems. The majority of people don't believe that 5G towers cause COVID-19, or that 9/11 was an inside job. A stable democracy should be resilient enough to withstand a small number of wrong people.
But that's not the case for the US. The election result for the entire country (of 330 million people!) can be flipped by a few tens of thousands of voters in the right electorates.
I recognize that this is going to be a hard problem to fix. But I do believe it would be easier than trying to reverse the laws of economics that drive social media companies to do the things they do.
> quick way to report a Tweet or FB post that spreads disinformation would already help a lot.
That point is what always goes through my head when a Dorsey or a Zuckerberg or a Wojkiki gives another "more work to be done" apology.
If they've been doing so much work, and it's just the "moderation is hard" problem that has slowed them, why do all of their sites make it so convoluted to report content?
> If they've been doing so much work, and it's just the "moderation is hard" problem that has slowed them, why do all of their sites make it so convoluted to report content?
I think they are trying to narrow what can be flagged. I think they want to avoid people just flagging posts they do not agree with. There is a quote "History is a set of lies agreed upon." To me you could replace history with social media and the quote would be true. Or at least thats the lie I agree with.
These conversations become hard, because its not well discussed, and the finesse to divide these into "new" and "old" problems is being developed.
For example an "old" problem is that this is how humans interact with information and sensationalism. The news cycle effect, the sale of content along with the packaging of professionalism - was a problem before the net.
But there are also a novel situations where this new rate, scale, and quality of information creation/dissemination result in new structures issues.
An example of this is the perception that a belief is more widely held than it is in the general public, due to social media. IF you got into a conspiracy group, and it were populated by 1000s of real conspiracists, it would still be a small fraction of the population of %(people online)(speak your language)(other filters).
BUT - the human brain sees "enough" activity in the forum/web page to trigger an internal "critical mass" threshold, this creates "social proof" and the belief gets solidified.
A clear field where tech creates new problems is where tech outstrips old societal and human thresholds of functioning.
Social media feeds which reinforce information, constant and from your pocket? New problem
Automated creation of content to populate feeds? New New problem.
Creation of propaganda ? Old problem, new medium, new tools - question on whether scope and scale make it a new problem.
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Perhaps the "new" problems can, to some extent, be solved by tech. "Old" problems will almost certainly need tech+political will and manpower to solve.
> BUT - the human brain sees "enough" activity in the forum/web page to trigger an internal "critical mass" threshold, this creates "social proof" and the belief gets solidified.
I think you're pointing out some important but extremely easy to overlook things here. How many newspaper articles, blog posts, and twitter/forum discussions have we had in the last two years about fake news and conspiracy theories, typically written in confident but grave tones? But of the people writing these things, how many of them really know what they're talking about? What is the source of their knowledge? What is the underlying source of the claims Jacques is making in the article we're discussing? How many of the people opining on such subjects actually spend any serious time within the communities they're reporting on?
If the topic/culture was something other than the behaviour of conspiracy theorists (say, African Americans), do you think it would have any effect on how the information would be received by readers? In that case, I suspect a lot of people might fairly quickly wonder if the author actually happens to know as much as they claim, and I think it would be fairly easy to find plenty of anecdotal conversations on the internet to substantiate that prediction.
The human brain "sees" all sorts of things. It can produce an instantaneous answer to most any question you ask it, whether or not it actually has much actual concrete data to work with. There are a variety of ways to control this default functionality, the major progress we've made with decreasing racial stereotyping in the last several decades is a good example. But that took a lot of coordinated messaging, education, and peer pressure, for a very long time. Despite that, we're still rather far from declaring mission accomplished. And that is just one topic - how many others do we have in this same category?
I doubt we'll make much progress on these issues, especially now with the brutal efficiency of mass communication we've released into society (with hardly a second thought), until we can finally realize what the root of the problem is: the human mind. And it's not just "those other people" whose minds are flawed, the problem is with the base hardware and software itself - it's just easier to notice in some people than others, especially when it's constantly in the news.
Maybe the only ethical thing to do at this point is for the founder/owners of these platforms to commit acts of sabotage so that people might become free of them. Investors are all hedged, founders have cashed out, some of them aren't profitable anyway, employees can find other work if its done over time. Nothing of value would be lost.
The real social media problem is we've put a slot machine in every pocket, and now nobody can turn them off until the hysteria has run its course and we evolve a resistance to them - or if the founders do this one unthinkable thing.
So we have great tools to facilitate communication between people, and yeah there is downside to having people communicate, does it mean communication is bad? I don't think so.
> It would really help if both Facebook and Twitter would be far more pro-active in shutting down these fountains of nonsense.
When I see this, especially from someone who bills themselves as
> "Professionally I get paid to separate fact from fiction"
it horrifies me. What they're saying is that the existing draconian control of speech that is implemented on the social media networks is not enough, that we need to hire even more people to do moderation, that free speech needs to die even harder, because we can't trust poor stupid people to make their own decisions, read what they want to read, and say what they want to say.
What a bunch of elitist bullshit. Small wonder that people are increasingly finding people like Jacques Mattheij to be unpalatable, nanny-state toadies that are to be routed around at best and attacked argumentatively when needed.
Yes, there's bullshit about COVID and chemtrails and aliens all over the internet. Why do you care so much? You're so worried that people are going to make their own choices, live their own lives, make mistakes that impact others?
This shows me that people have not learned what free speech is, what it is for, and why it was a hard-fought right that continues to need fervent defense. Mattheij can't conceive of a world where his draconian moderation system could possibly backfire. Mattheij hasn't looked at what's happening in Belarus, in India/Pakistan, and what happened during the Arab Spring when governments decided to use the power at their disposal to shut down on the people's ability to freely converse with one another, even about Unapproved Topics, even with Officially Illegal Opinions. Mattheij either didn't read any of the excellent 20th century dystopian science fiction, or thought it was a user's manual for how to create an idealized totalitarian state.
Because of course, gigantic corporations and the government are going to choose what's in everyone's best interests. Of course, it is inconceivable that they would have any agenda of their own, or would want to make cultural changes at scale without the full consent of society. It's never been tried, anywhere, right? Never ends badly?
Man, it's sad that HN is going down the reddit rabbit hole, spam downvoting these kinds of well-though-out posts that (admittedly) go against the zeitgeist of SV "know-better-than-thou" elitist mentality -- with absolutely zero discussion or counter-arguments. The arguments here are sound:
- Free speech is a virtue worth striving for
- Disinformation -- to the detriment of the public -- is a price we're willing to pay (barring some narrow cases)
- The alternative is draconian authoritarianism
As Juvenal asked almost two millenia ago: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? I'm sick of programmers that never picked up a philosophy or political science book in their lives think they just solved the world's problems by giving Google or Facebook carte blanche to censor as they see fit (because you happen to agree with the outcome today).
There's nothing inevitable about freedom of speech. China is 4000 years old, and they still don't have it. It WAS hard fought for. Speaking and thinking are the same thing. A society that cannot speak without fear of censorship is one that cannot think. It cannot ask difficult questions. It cannot speak truth to power. It is as much a cultural value as a legal one. It should be promoted and celebrated.
> Mattheij hasn't looked at what's happening in Belarus, in India/Pakistan, and what happened during the Arab Spring when governments decided to use the power at their disposal to shut down on the people's ability to freely converse with one another, even about Unapproved Topics, even with Officially Illegal Opinions.
Journalists are also regularly getting sued and fined on the count of "hurting someone's honor and reputation", mostly by politicians and (seriously) court judges.
I think he's right, but there's a subtlety here that's often missed. Zuckerberg talks about it directly [0] and I think his approach is probably the most reasonable.
Social Media platforms do have some responsibility to moderate (and they have the legal Good Samaritan protection to do so in the US thanks to section 230). They have a particular responsibility since their 'engagement' algorithms have often historically led to making things worse by elevating controversial content. When they're using algorithms to elevate certain types of content they are employing some level of editorial control and have some responsibility as publishers in how they rank that content (what they choose to show more widely, what they choose to allow to fall into obscurity).
FB for their part has put a lot of effort into determining this kind of moderation standard and what they allow from users [1]. The recent political stuff is interesting in part because Zuckerberg is arguing that democratically elected politicians should be an exception to these rules, basically that citizens have a right to see the speech of their elected leaders (and lies should be corrected by a free press). While FB is legally able to moderate the speech of an elected politician on their platform, Zuckerberg argues it's wrong for FB to decide what political speech is okay to block because they shouldn't be in the position to make that call. I think he's right to be concerned about that precedent. This doesn't apply to the speech of regular users or even to the political speech of non-democratically 'elected' politicians.
> "One thing that interests me and that I have so far not been able to find out is how it starts. How does a ‘normal’ person step into this cult world where up is down and not think to themselves: “Hm, this does not seem like it is believable”."
I think people do think this at first, but I think we are all more vulnerable to being infected by bullshit then we like to believe. People are wildly inconsistent, even in their own views most of the time (yes even you, and me). We think poorly, many people believe crazy things, we argue via motivated reasoning, don't extend views globally, don't consider things the same when they're out of sight etc.
When exposed to lots of wrong information repeatedly I think most people get corrupted, even those that are pretty analytical. I think it takes continuous vigilance to not believe crazy things (and I think people get worse as they get older at being able to do this well).
I don't think these are outliers, I think this is the norm. Most people just don't wonder about things at all so avoid being radicalized into harmful action based on their own crazy beliefs. I also suspect in-person interaction has a lot of built in de-escalation mechanisms that bias towards unity and friendliness most of the time, so things get worse when you lose that natural control.
Ok I’ll bite. I’m sure this person means well. But I have to ask - why are they the authority on what is OK for people to believe, talk about, and propagate? Who owns the truth? Why is this persons views the correct ones? Or even more, what about things that are talked about on the internet, have their groups, that they don’t find problematic but others do. And why are those ok? Because they believe this?
The foundation of Liberalism (I’m not saying left wing here) is that no one owns knowledge. No one has the last day and all opinions can be heard. And mocked relentlessly. And through this we will discover as close to the truth as we can.
Nobody - no group, movement, person, or authority owns the truth. All ideas are fallible. If people use the internet to say the most outrageous things then do be it. The minute someone gets to say “that’s ok to be said and this other thing is not. End of story” we are in trouble. It doesn’t mean someone can’t be raked across the coals for their awful ideas - you need to own it. But anyone or group that gets to determine what is ok and what is not is, in essence, a fundamentalist regime.
We don’t need inquisitors. We don’t need thought police. We do need people willing to say “that’s bullshit and here is why”. If you can prove that generally speaking 2+2=5 then the foundation of arithmetic is broken. But meanwhile I can poke holes in your argument. Until you can prove it better than 2+2=4 then I can judge you for a sophist at best, a dipshit less generously.
"Your pretended fear lest Error should step in, is like the man who would keep all the wine out the country lest men should be drunk. It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy, to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon a supposition he may abuse it. When he doth abuse it, judge. If a man speak foolishly, ye suffer him gladly because ye are wise; if erroneously, the truth more appears by your conviction 'of him.' Stop such a man's mouth by sound words which cannot be gainsayed. If he speak blasphemously, or to the disturbance of the public peace, let the Civil Magistrate punish him: if truly, rejoice in the truth." -- Oliver Cromwell, 1650.
Within four years of this letter, Cromwell would essentially have to put these Presbyterian inquisitors down by force and assume guardianship of the country because these people never stop.
Coincidentally, Cromwell also held that the right to the liberty of conscience, a largely heretical view for another century, was a fundamental requirement of his Protectorate, which he had to personally safeguard against everyone.
"Is not liberty of conscience in religion a fundamental? … Liberty of conscience is a natural right; and he that would have it, ought to give it; having himself liberty to settle what he likes for the public. Every sect saith: “Oh, give me liberty!” But give him it, and to his power he will not yield it to anybody else. Where is our ingenuousness? Liberty of conscience – truly that’s a thing ought to be very reciprocal."
> Nobody - no group, movement, person, or authority owns the truth.
Putting truth itself on a pedestal doesn't really address the problem.
The problem is people are motivated by things other than a good standard of truth most of the time. Social media provides a medium where it is easy for emotion can rule over reason and advertisers profit off of it.
> If people use the internet to say the most outrageous things then do be it.
Let's say everyone online starts calling you a pedophile because a soon-to-be-ex-wife of yours decided to try to cause you harm. What then? Is posting your address next also free speech?
The issue is not the truth, or access to it, but the fact we have large numbers of people that act on things less than the truth and a culture/economy that seems to perpetuate that for those who aren't interested. Putting these people in the same network as people who really want to talk about and debate ideas isn't working.
There are standards of truth but people that aren't ruled by reason won't obey them. They'll go with their gut, or what their friends say, or what they think they should say to impress their peers, or what everyone else is doing. For people who over their lives have been concerned more with survival or overcoming trauma than a real exchange of knowledge or ideas, often these strategies work well.
> The foundation of Liberalism (I’m not saying left wing here) is that no one owns knowledge
This is complete BS to begin with. "No one owns knowledge" is a typical ideological statement without any merits or proof. It is an idea that you want to believe, that is based on nothing factual.
Yes, you can have opinions. Tastes. Ideologies. Beliefs. And they could be true, or false, or changing, depending on where you are and how you look at it. They are all subjective.
However, there are things in this world that are neutral to opinions and stands the test of time. Facts that happened in the physical world and mathematical knowledge, are two examples of such objects. They are the truth. They are absolutely correct. There is no room for "disagreement" because they are not subjective opinions. They are facts that can't and won't be changed.
Math is always correct. 100% correct. From day 1 they are discovered / invented till forever. Explicit assumptions and theorems that followed by rigorous proof are absolutely correct. You can expand it later, you can discover more, you can enrich math. But as long as it is correct, it stands forever. Every single second you are using technologies based on mathematical knowledge that was proved thousands of years ago. They never failed, and will never fail.
Facts, in the physical world, are objective as well. You can argue whether a killer is a good person or not, or how good/bad he is, but you can't alter the fact if he did pull the trigger and killed someone. That is a fact.
Physics, based on a wider set of physical assumptions, can be viewed as close to truth, because they have stood the test of time by physical experiments and phenomena. There is a chance that they are not completely true and will be subsumed by more advanced theories, just like Newton's Laws, however, they are close approximations to reality. That's how we get the rockets into the space. By science.
Now comes to my point. You have the right to express your opinions, even if they are harsh criticisms. But you don't have the right to spread false information that can be proved false by facts. You don't have the right to spread lies. You don't have the right to say whatever you want, however you want it.
Why? Because statements against facts are false, are lies, and spreading lies can hurt and cost others' lives, sometimes millions or more. This is why there is law against spreading hate speech, against spreading extremist ideology against human race, against fraud and scams.
Free speech is about being free expressing your opinions within the framework. Outside these boundaries, your speech becomes a weapon that can hurt others and that is not allowed by law and society.
The fundamental rule in the society is simple. You have every right about yourself, but you don't have the right to hurt others.
Anecdotes abound, when this is really not the sort of debate that should be conducted using anecdotes (cf. https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/09/16/cardiologists-and-chin...). Sure, some societies have uncensored social media and wind up with a lot of people believing that vaccines are a Bill Gates conspiracy, occasionally leading to real harm. Other societies, as a downstream effect of uncensored social media, wind up with racial pogroms, as a commenter elsewhere in here pointed out. On the other hand, some societies with censorship wind up totalitarian hellholes, and some societies didn't even have social media at all and still had racial pogroms (whether initiated by local word of mouth, or the local counterpart of the same elites that presumably would be in charge of censoring social media if there were social media). The existence of these anecdotes tells us nothing about whether we would be better off with or without uncensored social media, or whether some other more subtle solution than censoring or not censoring would lead to better outcomes. So, which one is more likely? Which one has worse consequences in expectation? This argument can only be done quantitatively, and as far as I know nobody has produced the numbers that we would need to do that.
We might as well try to determine whether private possession of bladed objects should be permitted based on a comparing whether an emotional account of a marital stabbing, defense of the cultural value of home cooking or appeal to the value of adults feeling like society trusts them to hurt themselves feels more moving.
(If we stop trying to pretend that there is a meaningful utilitarian argument to be had here, though, on an idealistic level, where emotional appeals are properly at home, I'm with the more critical commenters here. Quoting from low culture like video games may be a little tacky, but: "Beware he[sic] who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.")
> But a person who does PCR analysis and knows the ins and outs of PCR tests that maintains that there is no such thing as COVID-19 is on another level for me. That’s the kind of purposeful refusal of the world as it exists all around us that I can not get my head wrapped around.
A person who specializes in analyzing viruses tells the author something counterintuitive and instead of re-assessing his own assumptions, he labels the specialist delusional. That last sentence, "That’s the kind of purposeful refusal of the world as it exists all around us that I can not get my head wrapped around", could easily apply to the author.
This article sounds to me like a lot of hand-wringing and complaining that people are thinking for themselves and talking amongst themselves rather than worshipping at the ivory tower.
[+] [-] dexen|5 years ago|reply
1. The crazy ideas jacquesm decries have a limited influence on one's life. Those are (predominantly) singular topics rather than all-encompassing ideologies. They are more of conversation starters than life guides. Aside of some rare dangerous ones (COVID-19 theories perhaps?), their impact places somewhere between stamp collecting and junk food consumption. All the flat earthers, the 5G's, the moon landing hoaxes etc., - let people have weird hobbies. We can handle them as a society.
2. Given how prevalent conspiracy theories are - across times, cultures, geographical locations, social niches - I posit our propensity towards them is not a random fluke of human psyche. No, I posit the conspiracy theories play a role in some other societal processes. I posit that trying to eradicate or suppress the underlying mechanism, without understanding the mechanism in the wider context of all societal processes would cause unforeseen negative consequences.
[+] [-] iamben|5 years ago|reply
Conspiracy theories are a slippery slope. You might not believe something at first, but they are peppered with enough truth that you begin to accept them all because one part was right. "Question everything," as they often tell you. The problem is, facts and science usually comes from people in authority - the people you're told to question. So you begin blanket distrust all "authority". Which ends up being anyone telling your something with authority. Government, science, medicine, police, Greta...
I'll happily question - but the problem comes when your bias won't let you trust anyone or anything. In fact you deliberately take the opposite stance because "they lie" and they're probably "out to get" you. Then it really is dangerous - and you feel clever, because it's like knowing some secret knowledge the rest of the world doesn't - because the "sheeple" believe the spoon fed lies.
[+] [-] joe_the_user|5 years ago|reply
Basically, throughout human existence, we have been guided by a lot of language that coded useful information about the world but on an abstract level was somewhere between false and meaningless. But abstract falseness didn't matter because it didn't directly impact our lives. I believe ancient hunter-gathers described a lot of their hunting method religiously. Animal spirits don't actual exist but I suspect one person can teach another concrete ways of hunting using these.
So, really, it's only a somewhat limited group that has good tools for sorting true abstractions from false abstractions from meaningless abstractions.
The 18th to 20th centuries saw a fortuitous coming together of interests where those with power found it in their interests to promote a greater rational understanding of the world, to promote tools that allow more people to determine the truth of these abstract ideas with little impact on their lives. And part of this was having somewhat truthful authorities, which allowed this rational understanding to be much easier since people didn't have to figure things out from the get-go.
Things don't look good going into the 21st century. The expanding area covered by science seems to be leading to less ability of even experts to verify basic science (PCR technician claiming viruses don't exist stands out in the OP). And rationality seems to be of less interest to the powerful.
[+] [-] puranjay|5 years ago|reply
I remember when Game of Thrones was in its early seasons. I had read the books so knew what was going go happen. I would sit and watch my friends discuss the show (who hadn't read the books) and I would be positively gleeful knowing that I knew more than them. It was like I possessed secret insider knowledge they all craved.
I suspect people who believe in conspiracy theories feel the same way. They know something others don't. Everyone else is waiting for the script writers; they've already seen the source.
It appeals to our ego and inherent narcissism. And frankly, when you have a people who have been told for decades that they are special and unique, narcissism can be an overrepresented quality
[+] [-] anigbrowl|5 years ago|reply
COVID-19 disinformation is absolutely weaponized and that's literally killing people on a daily basis. Likewise, while the objections to 5g in my local community are merely an annoying inconvenience from naive technophobes, in some places it's manifested as attacks on physical infrastructure which are quasi-organized; there are forums where techniques are seeded, shared and refined with an underlying purpose of spreading those attacks to other forms of infrastructure.
The basic problem is that while bad ideas may spread on their own because they satisfy some emotional or pseudo-rational need of the recipients who then go on to reproduce the idea, the 'marketplace of ideas' metaphor doesn't really take account of wilful subversion.
[+] [-] intended|5 years ago|reply
We do know what happens with conspiracies, and it is our neurological processes and societal processes getting stuck in just the right way.
Take 2 forces -
1) Human brains are pattern recognition machines
2) A particular person always goes against the grain
With these two forces alone, this person will always orient their pattern interpretations against what is held by the "majority".
None of these things are bad, they are quite useful to the majority when someone tells them that tulip mania (for example) is irrational.
A book that I keep thinking about years after I read it, is Religion Explained, by Pascal Boyer ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_Explained).
While the topic is religion, its more an examination of beliefs, superstition and cultural norms through the lens of anthropology, evolutionary pscy, and other cognitivie theories.
Relevant to our discussion is it highlights how often brains encode information in odd ways, to increase recall, or just as a quirk of our mental wet ware.
A common example in cultures around the world are objects of a category, say Mountains/ancestors, that have an aberration or trait of another category (Eat people/are incorporeal)
Our brains fill in the necessary blanks - no one worries about the structure of the mountains digestive tract, or why ancestor spirits seem to be so human or don't dissipate in the wind/randomly follow movement rules for corporeal people.
The same applies for conspiracies. Somehow when people discuss conspiracies, the agencies involved have super human coordination, error checking, wealth and power.
[+] [-] CarbyAu|5 years ago|reply
Imagine you told everyone in the US in 2000 that the NSA would spy on everyone in their own country...(not sure how you'd benefit from that though)
[+] [-] curation|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smitty1e|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dgellow|5 years ago|reply
https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2020/05/08/many-...
That’s a real life effect. Also from this article: “ Researchers at Johns Hopkins estimate that at least 70% of the population will have to be immune to provide herd protection against the novel coronavirus.“
[+] [-] daenz|5 years ago|reply
This is what the seed of authoritarianism looks like: moral justifications for forcing people to believe, communicate, and behave the way you think is correct.
[+] [-] white-flame|5 years ago|reply
The particular form of authoritarian scaremongering on display tries to undefine that court-testable line to include any useful moral panic, but never really addresses the notion that loosening that line means their own speech could also easily be suppressed, as the "other side" could use the new suppression tools as freely and subjectively as themselves.
[+] [-] arnoooooo|5 years ago|reply
There is a world of difference between criticizing your government and advocating genocide.
And by the way, governments are the first spreaders of fake news on social medias IMO.
[+] [-] anigbrowl|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smitty1e|5 years ago|reply
> But there are a lot of them and they all have the vote, waiting to be pushed as useful idiots to some higher goal. Politicians have started to realize that they don’t actually need to get a real mandate, and that they won’t be held accountable for lying. At that level, every time someone lies more people become susceptible to being pulled in to this web of deception.
One viable thing to do is redistribute political power instead of wealth.
The act of trying to centralize everything into a legacy, monolithic, waterfall, big iron system results in a Tower of Babel.
Its proponents swear it's Progress.
Return to the enumerated powers on the Constitution, and refactor all this Progressive cruft to the State level, where voters can either be wise or spendthrift at their leisure.
Doubtless we'll prefer a more catastrophic collapse, but dreaming is still occasionally legal.
[+] [-] joe_the_user|5 years ago|reply
What does that mean?
One viable thing to do is redistribute political power instead of wealth
No, that's clearly not viable. The US is still "really" a democracy in the sense those who get the most legal votes really do win - real, fair elections right now, are a big factor in the distribution of power in the US, for democratic-ness on a world-scale, that's pretty good. Yet the extremely unequal distribution of wealth makes a mockery of the realness of voting's impact. Most people are effectively powerless to make an impact on much outside their immediate lives.
Return to the enumerated powers on the Constitution, and refactor all this Progressive cruft to the State level
This is an extreme reactionary viewpoint, taken from the 3-percenters or similar outfit.
[+] [-] nkohari|5 years ago|reply
Strict federalist separation made sense in a world where it took days to travel across state lines, but the modern world requires that nations have a strong central government. Some things can only be done at the federal level (issuing currency, foreign relations, military/defense actions, etc.) and some laws (such as civil rights) should be universal and not subject to local interference.
It's true that we as a nation focus far too much on national politics, to the detriment of local issues which impact us personally much more. I'd argue that's not a problem with which governments hold the power, it's a problem with how the populace participates in politics.
Not only that, but quite frankly the manner in which we currently elect state governments is a mess. I live in North Carolina, the most gerrymandered state in the Union. In 2018 we literally voted using a map that was declared unconstitutional because there wasn't enough time to redraw it before the election. [0] Until this issue is overcome, it's tough for me to get excited about giving the states more power, and it took a panel of federal judges to declare the state's map illegal.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/04/us/court-north-carolina-g...
[+] [-] ISL|5 years ago|reply
The trick is finding mutually beneficial and agreed-upon strategies for getting along with one another.
Much of the trouble in the United States can be traced to Congress abdicating its responsibilities (under presidents of both parties). As voters, we are responsible for that failure. November is coming soon; it is an opportunity to choose those representatives who will choose the right thing over the expedient thing when the choice is required.
[+] [-] op03|5 years ago|reply
They are useful in certain situations and useless in others. With time society understands those differences and gets better at deploying its different resources.
[+] [-] intended|5 years ago|reply
1) We can do both - more equitable and productive distribution of wealth and self determination
2) Technology has created a new set of problems, at the intersection of human cognitive/mental limits, which the term "peopleware" tends to shrug off; the impression is that its more a people/social issue not a tech one.
An example, mentioned in the article was when people see 1000s of conspiracists on a forum and the hardcoding in our brains translates it as sign of trust worthiness. Even though a majority of people would call it crazy.
[+] [-] elliekelly|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dillondoyle|5 years ago|reply
Healthcare? Defense? Medical and scientific research? SNAP and (albeit small/not enough) education funding? What about banking regulation, regulating privacy and tech?
What happens when those, by your insinuation, 'unwise' states like California and New York are the only states that can afford anything? I would add it's my opinion these liberal local govs are the only ones willing to vote in their own best interest - e.g. education - but i'm sure we won't agree there on the fundamental premise.
Most of the conservative states rely on money from more populous states to even feed their people. The Republican Speaker is insanely hypocritical here in current stimulus negotiations as Kentucky is the second most dependent on Federal funding. e.g. they are 2nd to last in taking more money in from other states than they give back.
Plus State and local governance already has an outsized influence on people's lives (even many conservatives would agree more than Fed Gov)
and local government seems even more affected by unequal political power and wealth. Just look at all the Q anon and other crazy city council and school board zealots elected all over the place (which sadly has now made it's way into Congress)
[+] [-] intended|5 years ago|reply
1) All conspiracy theories require the evil organization to achieve several super human/ super organizational feats such as: * Perfect coordination - across timezones, personalities, objectives * Great wealth * excellent control of public figures * Advanced technology * Great secrecy Etc.
These are all impossible asks, which any normal person knows if they have worked in any team of people.
Many conspiracies die because of how hard it is to keep everyone aligned, and if people were that efficient in secrecy, imagine how efficient they would be without that burden.
Therefore,
Implication 1) If you believe in the conspiracy, we must also live in a world where such levels of efficiency are possible.
which means that
2) It is also possible for an organization or individuals to exist, who take advantage of these efficiencies and advantages to do "good".
Now if it was possible to stay in the dark, while having advanced tech and great wealth - well you've just described Batman.
So the question you can train all your loved ones to ask, anytime they encounter a great claim, is whether this claim means that we live in a world where batman can exist.
------------------------
While this is a childish way to encode a defense, its meant to be easy to consume, and to protect people who regularly wont have time to spend the effort to verify information or toxic content when they encounter it.
So while it is outlandish, that is partly the point - to diminish the earnestness and terror that conspiracy theories exude, without your active intervention being required.
edit: This can apply to any superhero/or superfriends. I just chose Batman.
[+] [-] babesh|5 years ago|reply
Christianity: Jesus died and came back to life. He died for your sins. You are going to hell if you don’t repent your sins. Please give the church 10%.
Buddhism: You are going to endlessly suffer. Please contribute to the temple to support the monks. Please pay monks to bless funerals.
Hinduism: You are born into a caste and stuck in it. You are shit and untouchable. If you touch me or try to marry my daughter, I will kill you.
The reality is that you have systems and people that prey on human weaknesses for time immemorial. It is much more interesting to examine how those technologies/systems operate.
[+] [-] mmaunder|5 years ago|reply
You can’t have selective freedom of speech.
[+] [-] quicklime|5 years ago|reply
I really think that a better solution to this problem is to fix the shortcomings of our democratic systems. The majority of people don't believe that 5G towers cause COVID-19, or that 9/11 was an inside job. A stable democracy should be resilient enough to withstand a small number of wrong people.
But that's not the case for the US. The election result for the entire country (of 330 million people!) can be flipped by a few tens of thousands of voters in the right electorates.
I recognize that this is going to be a hard problem to fix. But I do believe it would be easier than trying to reverse the laws of economics that drive social media companies to do the things they do.
[+] [-] uniqueid|5 years ago|reply
If they've been doing so much work, and it's just the "moderation is hard" problem that has slowed them, why do all of their sites make it so convoluted to report content?
[+] [-] stx|5 years ago|reply
I think they are trying to narrow what can be flagged. I think they want to avoid people just flagging posts they do not agree with. There is a quote "History is a set of lies agreed upon." To me you could replace history with social media and the quote would be true. Or at least thats the lie I agree with.
[+] [-] themacguffinman|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] intended|5 years ago|reply
For example an "old" problem is that this is how humans interact with information and sensationalism. The news cycle effect, the sale of content along with the packaging of professionalism - was a problem before the net.
But there are also a novel situations where this new rate, scale, and quality of information creation/dissemination result in new structures issues.
An example of this is the perception that a belief is more widely held than it is in the general public, due to social media. IF you got into a conspiracy group, and it were populated by 1000s of real conspiracists, it would still be a small fraction of the population of %(people online)(speak your language)(other filters).
BUT - the human brain sees "enough" activity in the forum/web page to trigger an internal "critical mass" threshold, this creates "social proof" and the belief gets solidified.
A clear field where tech creates new problems is where tech outstrips old societal and human thresholds of functioning.
Social media feeds which reinforce information, constant and from your pocket? New problem
Automated creation of content to populate feeds? New New problem.
Creation of propaganda ? Old problem, new medium, new tools - question on whether scope and scale make it a new problem.
-----
Perhaps the "new" problems can, to some extent, be solved by tech. "Old" problems will almost certainly need tech+political will and manpower to solve.
[+] [-] mistermann|5 years ago|reply
I think you're pointing out some important but extremely easy to overlook things here. How many newspaper articles, blog posts, and twitter/forum discussions have we had in the last two years about fake news and conspiracy theories, typically written in confident but grave tones? But of the people writing these things, how many of them really know what they're talking about? What is the source of their knowledge? What is the underlying source of the claims Jacques is making in the article we're discussing? How many of the people opining on such subjects actually spend any serious time within the communities they're reporting on?
If the topic/culture was something other than the behaviour of conspiracy theorists (say, African Americans), do you think it would have any effect on how the information would be received by readers? In that case, I suspect a lot of people might fairly quickly wonder if the author actually happens to know as much as they claim, and I think it would be fairly easy to find plenty of anecdotal conversations on the internet to substantiate that prediction.
The human brain "sees" all sorts of things. It can produce an instantaneous answer to most any question you ask it, whether or not it actually has much actual concrete data to work with. There are a variety of ways to control this default functionality, the major progress we've made with decreasing racial stereotyping in the last several decades is a good example. But that took a lot of coordinated messaging, education, and peer pressure, for a very long time. Despite that, we're still rather far from declaring mission accomplished. And that is just one topic - how many others do we have in this same category?
I doubt we'll make much progress on these issues, especially now with the brutal efficiency of mass communication we've released into society (with hardly a second thought), until we can finally realize what the root of the problem is: the human mind. And it's not just "those other people" whose minds are flawed, the problem is with the base hardware and software itself - it's just easier to notice in some people than others, especially when it's constantly in the news.
[+] [-] motohagiography|5 years ago|reply
The point about connecting gullible people is interesting and useful. It's likely social media has just automated the underlying phenomenon behind mass hysteria. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_hysteria_cases)
The real social media problem is we've put a slot machine in every pocket, and now nobody can turn them off until the hysteria has run its course and we evolve a resistance to them - or if the founders do this one unthinkable thing.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] baby|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] core-questions|5 years ago|reply
When I see this, especially from someone who bills themselves as
> "Professionally I get paid to separate fact from fiction"
it horrifies me. What they're saying is that the existing draconian control of speech that is implemented on the social media networks is not enough, that we need to hire even more people to do moderation, that free speech needs to die even harder, because we can't trust poor stupid people to make their own decisions, read what they want to read, and say what they want to say.
What a bunch of elitist bullshit. Small wonder that people are increasingly finding people like Jacques Mattheij to be unpalatable, nanny-state toadies that are to be routed around at best and attacked argumentatively when needed.
Yes, there's bullshit about COVID and chemtrails and aliens all over the internet. Why do you care so much? You're so worried that people are going to make their own choices, live their own lives, make mistakes that impact others?
This shows me that people have not learned what free speech is, what it is for, and why it was a hard-fought right that continues to need fervent defense. Mattheij can't conceive of a world where his draconian moderation system could possibly backfire. Mattheij hasn't looked at what's happening in Belarus, in India/Pakistan, and what happened during the Arab Spring when governments decided to use the power at their disposal to shut down on the people's ability to freely converse with one another, even about Unapproved Topics, even with Officially Illegal Opinions. Mattheij either didn't read any of the excellent 20th century dystopian science fiction, or thought it was a user's manual for how to create an idealized totalitarian state.
Because of course, gigantic corporations and the government are going to choose what's in everyone's best interests. Of course, it is inconceivable that they would have any agenda of their own, or would want to make cultural changes at scale without the full consent of society. It's never been tried, anywhere, right? Never ends badly?
Ahh, but it's to save us from ourselves, right?
[+] [-] dvt|5 years ago|reply
- Free speech is a virtue worth striving for
- Disinformation -- to the detriment of the public -- is a price we're willing to pay (barring some narrow cases)
- The alternative is draconian authoritarianism
As Juvenal asked almost two millenia ago: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? I'm sick of programmers that never picked up a philosophy or political science book in their lives think they just solved the world's problems by giving Google or Facebook carte blanche to censor as they see fit (because you happen to agree with the outcome today).
[+] [-] chrisco255|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] balfirevic|5 years ago|reply
For an example that's less dramatic but closer to the western world, take a look at the Croatian (an EU country) authorities arresting a journalist over some tweets: https://www.total-croatia-news.com/politics/38478-duhacek-jo...
Journalists are also regularly getting sued and fined on the count of "hurting someone's honor and reputation", mostly by politicians and (seriously) court judges.
[+] [-] gonehome|5 years ago|reply
Social Media platforms do have some responsibility to moderate (and they have the legal Good Samaritan protection to do so in the US thanks to section 230). They have a particular responsibility since their 'engagement' algorithms have often historically led to making things worse by elevating controversial content. When they're using algorithms to elevate certain types of content they are employing some level of editorial control and have some responsibility as publishers in how they rank that content (what they choose to show more widely, what they choose to allow to fall into obscurity).
FB for their part has put a lot of effort into determining this kind of moderation standard and what they allow from users [1]. The recent political stuff is interesting in part because Zuckerberg is arguing that democratically elected politicians should be an exception to these rules, basically that citizens have a right to see the speech of their elected leaders (and lies should be corrected by a free press). While FB is legally able to moderate the speech of an elected politician on their platform, Zuckerberg argues it's wrong for FB to decide what political speech is okay to block because they shouldn't be in the position to make that call. I think he's right to be concerned about that precedent. This doesn't apply to the speech of regular users or even to the political speech of non-democratically 'elected' politicians.
[0]: https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/16/mark-zuckerberg-and-f...
[1]: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/02/men-are-scum-inside-...
[Edit]: Also this:
> "One thing that interests me and that I have so far not been able to find out is how it starts. How does a ‘normal’ person step into this cult world where up is down and not think to themselves: “Hm, this does not seem like it is believable”."
I think people do think this at first, but I think we are all more vulnerable to being infected by bullshit then we like to believe. People are wildly inconsistent, even in their own views most of the time (yes even you, and me). We think poorly, many people believe crazy things, we argue via motivated reasoning, don't extend views globally, don't consider things the same when they're out of sight etc.
When exposed to lots of wrong information repeatedly I think most people get corrupted, even those that are pretty analytical. I think it takes continuous vigilance to not believe crazy things (and I think people get worse as they get older at being able to do this well).
I don't think these are outliers, I think this is the norm. Most people just don't wonder about things at all so avoid being radicalized into harmful action based on their own crazy beliefs. I also suspect in-person interaction has a lot of built in de-escalation mechanisms that bias towards unity and friendliness most of the time, so things get worse when you lose that natural control.
[+] [-] nemo44x|5 years ago|reply
The foundation of Liberalism (I’m not saying left wing here) is that no one owns knowledge. No one has the last day and all opinions can be heard. And mocked relentlessly. And through this we will discover as close to the truth as we can.
Nobody - no group, movement, person, or authority owns the truth. All ideas are fallible. If people use the internet to say the most outrageous things then do be it. The minute someone gets to say “that’s ok to be said and this other thing is not. End of story” we are in trouble. It doesn’t mean someone can’t be raked across the coals for their awful ideas - you need to own it. But anyone or group that gets to determine what is ok and what is not is, in essence, a fundamentalist regime.
We don’t need inquisitors. We don’t need thought police. We do need people willing to say “that’s bullshit and here is why”. If you can prove that generally speaking 2+2=5 then the foundation of arithmetic is broken. But meanwhile I can poke holes in your argument. Until you can prove it better than 2+2=4 then I can judge you for a sophist at best, a dipshit less generously.
[+] [-] froasty|5 years ago|reply
Within four years of this letter, Cromwell would essentially have to put these Presbyterian inquisitors down by force and assume guardianship of the country because these people never stop.
Coincidentally, Cromwell also held that the right to the liberty of conscience, a largely heretical view for another century, was a fundamental requirement of his Protectorate, which he had to personally safeguard against everyone.
"Is not liberty of conscience in religion a fundamental? … Liberty of conscience is a natural right; and he that would have it, ought to give it; having himself liberty to settle what he likes for the public. Every sect saith: “Oh, give me liberty!” But give him it, and to his power he will not yield it to anybody else. Where is our ingenuousness? Liberty of conscience – truly that’s a thing ought to be very reciprocal."
[+] [-] tenebrisalietum|5 years ago|reply
Putting truth itself on a pedestal doesn't really address the problem.
The problem is people are motivated by things other than a good standard of truth most of the time. Social media provides a medium where it is easy for emotion can rule over reason and advertisers profit off of it.
> If people use the internet to say the most outrageous things then do be it.
Let's say everyone online starts calling you a pedophile because a soon-to-be-ex-wife of yours decided to try to cause you harm. What then? Is posting your address next also free speech?
The issue is not the truth, or access to it, but the fact we have large numbers of people that act on things less than the truth and a culture/economy that seems to perpetuate that for those who aren't interested. Putting these people in the same network as people who really want to talk about and debate ideas isn't working.
There are standards of truth but people that aren't ruled by reason won't obey them. They'll go with their gut, or what their friends say, or what they think they should say to impress their peers, or what everyone else is doing. For people who over their lives have been concerned more with survival or overcoming trauma than a real exchange of knowledge or ideas, often these strategies work well.
[+] [-] mountainboy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elisbce|5 years ago|reply
This is complete BS to begin with. "No one owns knowledge" is a typical ideological statement without any merits or proof. It is an idea that you want to believe, that is based on nothing factual.
Yes, you can have opinions. Tastes. Ideologies. Beliefs. And they could be true, or false, or changing, depending on where you are and how you look at it. They are all subjective.
However, there are things in this world that are neutral to opinions and stands the test of time. Facts that happened in the physical world and mathematical knowledge, are two examples of such objects. They are the truth. They are absolutely correct. There is no room for "disagreement" because they are not subjective opinions. They are facts that can't and won't be changed.
Math is always correct. 100% correct. From day 1 they are discovered / invented till forever. Explicit assumptions and theorems that followed by rigorous proof are absolutely correct. You can expand it later, you can discover more, you can enrich math. But as long as it is correct, it stands forever. Every single second you are using technologies based on mathematical knowledge that was proved thousands of years ago. They never failed, and will never fail.
Facts, in the physical world, are objective as well. You can argue whether a killer is a good person or not, or how good/bad he is, but you can't alter the fact if he did pull the trigger and killed someone. That is a fact.
Physics, based on a wider set of physical assumptions, can be viewed as close to truth, because they have stood the test of time by physical experiments and phenomena. There is a chance that they are not completely true and will be subsumed by more advanced theories, just like Newton's Laws, however, they are close approximations to reality. That's how we get the rockets into the space. By science.
Now comes to my point. You have the right to express your opinions, even if they are harsh criticisms. But you don't have the right to spread false information that can be proved false by facts. You don't have the right to spread lies. You don't have the right to say whatever you want, however you want it.
Why? Because statements against facts are false, are lies, and spreading lies can hurt and cost others' lives, sometimes millions or more. This is why there is law against spreading hate speech, against spreading extremist ideology against human race, against fraud and scams.
Free speech is about being free expressing your opinions within the framework. Outside these boundaries, your speech becomes a weapon that can hurt others and that is not allowed by law and society.
The fundamental rule in the society is simple. You have every right about yourself, but you don't have the right to hurt others.
[+] [-] username3|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] 4bpp|5 years ago|reply
We might as well try to determine whether private possession of bladed objects should be permitted based on a comparing whether an emotional account of a marital stabbing, defense of the cultural value of home cooking or appeal to the value of adults feeling like society trusts them to hurt themselves feels more moving.
(If we stop trying to pretend that there is a meaningful utilitarian argument to be had here, though, on an idealistic level, where emotional appeals are properly at home, I'm with the more critical commenters here. Quoting from low culture like video games may be a little tacky, but: "Beware he[sic] who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.")
[+] [-] throwaway234101|5 years ago|reply
A person who specializes in analyzing viruses tells the author something counterintuitive and instead of re-assessing his own assumptions, he labels the specialist delusional. That last sentence, "That’s the kind of purposeful refusal of the world as it exists all around us that I can not get my head wrapped around", could easily apply to the author.
[+] [-] mountainboy|5 years ago|reply
In other words, music to my ears.
[+] [-] mountainboy|5 years ago|reply