In our ordinary informal lives of leisure, friendship, romance, and entertainment, we mainly regulate and mitigate the harms of speech with the option to use more speech. If we don’t like what someone says, we say something critical of what they said, or of them. We label, index, dissect, and evaluate, but we don’t ban or require any particular speech, other than via the incentives that our speech can produce.
They can not be trusted either for they also consist of humans who have their own interests.
The public is so poor at fact-checking that they are easily swayed by lies. Any subgroup of the public is not going to have interests aligned with that of the public and hence can not be trusted to watch out for the public.
Yep. However most humans are attracted to sensational nonsense and that any agent (e.g. government, expert, etc) who are supposed to "help the mass understand X" almost always distort X for their own interests. Ratings and evaluations can be manufactured especially since AI-manufactured fake news already exist..
Usually those who claim to support freedom tend to be powerful groups that are currently out of office. When they take power they can be as nasty as those they overthrew.
So let's say....the neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin claims to support free speech now. That's of course not because he is a principled Libertarian. Instead he is just out of office. If given power he will be anything but pro-free speech.
Same for the social left. They used to claim to support freedom when trads are violating their freedom. Yet after taking power they also began to take away others' freedoms.
Don't trust anyone's words when they claim that they are principled Libertarians. Humans are way too collectivistic and wicked to be trusted when they hypocritically label themselves freedom lovers. That's of course a side effect of humans being a social species. If cats or tigers had a civilization then Libertarianism may have been the norm. Not humans.
Which is necessary for idealists such as Robin and I to survive in this cruel universe that deserves to be destroyed but is of course not destroyed..
P.S. I don't want to bring a child into this universe where they will harm others and get harmed by others. So I guess the very characteristics of being universe-aware and not being a complete asshole are selected against by evolution.
P.S.S. Theism is either factually accurate or not.
In a theistic universe all organisms live under absolute monarchy and are condemned to torture in afterlife as long as they don't believe in the existing deity/deities or do not obey them in the right manner both of which are almost impossible to avoid because who knows how many religions and sects of them exist in the universe...good luck pick the right one which is like playing lottery.. So kiss goodbye to human ethics (for divine command overrides all human ethics), liberty and welcome eternal torture.
In a non-theistic universe we have this mess we are in. Evolution ironically selects for both belief in theism which in a non-theistic universe is factually inaccurate as well as cruelty. All norms that restrict internal harm only exist for a tribe to more effectively harm others. Yes, that even includes humanism and green politics. They just have larger tribes.
"We let regulators forbid alcohol firms from making ads that say truthfully that teetotalers are less healthy than others--"
The truthfulness of such claims has been severely questioned by mainstream experts in the medical fields. One key aspect in the issue is that some very sick people are teetotalers because of their illnesses, which skews the charts towards better health with moderate alcohol consumption. The evidence supporting the claim that teetotaling is less healthy than moderate alcohol consumption is by no means beyond doubt.
> I can maybe see limiting the abilities of enemy combatants during wartime to make their case to our citizens that we should quit the war or that we are the morally guilty party. Though even here I’m not very convinced.
I don't see regulation of wartime speech by enemy combatants as more potentially justified than other regulation of foreign speech. It seems to me that avoiding unjustified wars can be pretty valuable, and that enemy combatant speech is especially likely to carry information that is useful for determining if the war is justified, so this could be among the most valuable foreign speech to not restrict.
I also suspect public opinion wouldn't be much more against enemy combatant speech than against other forms of foreign speech. I remember when Vladimir Putin published an appeal to the American people not to intervene in Syria against Assad (https://www.nytimes.com/201..., it was well-received by many (despite the arguments being pretty weak, imo), and I don't remember anyone suggesting that it was inappropriate for American media to be publishing, or American citizens to be reading, an appeal from an enemy leader. (it's possibly a bit different since the US and Russia were not actually at war, but they were backing different sides of a war, and it is common to see Russia as an enemy). Of course, it's possible that this is because I'm in a pacifistic-leaning bubble that's especially likely to be accepting of such speech, and for all I know, it's possible that there was outrage over it in other political bubbles, but I hadn't heard of any.
> I can see the point of arguing that when a politician tries to negotiate to encourage particular speech, some kinds of pressures or incentives they might offer are legitimate, while others are not. But my understanding is that most backroom politics is largely about offering pressures and incentives to get people to go along with your plans, many of which are driven by selfish career agendas. It is not yet clear to me that Trump’s pressures and incentives in these foreign talk cases were greatly out of line with most politics.
I agree with your broader point about foreign speech, but disagree here. It seems to me that it would be considered a major scandal if it was discovered that the President of the United States called the CEO of a major US corporation and said "Congress is about to put a bill on my desk that will have a big effect on your business, and I haven't decided whether to sign or veto it yet. I have to say, America has done a lot for your business, and your business hasn't done a lot for America. It sure would be nice if you found a way to make my political opponent look bad." This seems more like an issue of compelled speech than of free speech; the President is trying to use government power to pressure people into speaking in ways beneficial to the President.
Sometime I think that the result of all your thinking about the status games you profess to dislike is that you have become particularly good at playing them.
Must be something in the air today. I was just reading an article about a Korean actress that was found dead, presumably suicide. I started looking for a list of such deaths as I am pretty sure I've seen several. One link I came across from 2010 noted how damaging the social medial was for many, leading a number of these over stressed stars to acute depression and suicide (though I suspect some behind the scenes events are a bigger driver).
That article mentions some approach that seem a bit in line with your approach -- increasing the discussion, showing a critical eye towards the hurtful speech/posts and the like. It also did mention some national regulatory actions as well.
Clearly something that extends well beyond the topical political story here in the USA.
Still, I have to wonder how well the open, unregulated speech approach will work, particularly in the context of overcoming any of the underlying biases, or in the prevention of the creation or expansion of such biases.
It would be good to see more thought/discussion/mention of the underlying social institutional structures that would lead to the better outcome rather than the poor one.
The problem with current media is that the important information is drowned out by the sensational. In our original environment the sensational was important to us - but now in a world of connected 8 billion people a sensational one in a million years thing happens more than 8 times a day.
When I link to the gwern Littlewoods Law article and HN my post is marked spam here - so I leave it up to you to google it, but I'll add one quote from the HN discussion: "the media used to lie by omission: it would choose not to cover certain stories, even though they were important. Today, the media "lies by transmission" -- they cover unimportant but sensational stories, and that drowns out the coverage of important but less eye-catching events"
The problem is that: "the media used to lie by omission: it would choose not to cover certain stories, even though they were important. Today, the media "lies by transmission" -- they cover unimportant but sensational stories, and that drowns out the coverage of important but less eye-catching events." https://news.ycombinator.co...The drowning out is efficient because we unconsciously seek the most sensational stories even if we don't gain any information from them - https://www.gwern.net/Notes...
They can not be trusted either for they also consist of humans who have their own interests.
The public is so poor at fact-checking that they are easily swayed by lies. Any subgroup of the public is not going to have interests aligned with that of the public and hence can not be trusted to watch out for the public.
Yep. However most humans are attracted to sensational nonsense and that any agent (e.g. government, expert, etc) who are supposed to "help the mass understand X" almost always distort X for their own interests. Ratings and evaluations can be manufactured especially since AI-manufactured fake news already exist..
Lies are not equivalent to truth, hence lying is effective and humans are wicked liars.
Outside STEM, philosophy, sports stats etc human speech inherently should not be taken literally and inherently should not be trusted.
There are only very few principled Libertarians.
Usually those who claim to support freedom tend to be powerful groups that are currently out of office. When they take power they can be as nasty as those they overthrew.
So let's say....the neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin claims to support free speech now. That's of course not because he is a principled Libertarian. Instead he is just out of office. If given power he will be anything but pro-free speech.
Same for the social left. They used to claim to support freedom when trads are violating their freedom. Yet after taking power they also began to take away others' freedoms.
Don't trust anyone's words when they claim that they are principled Libertarians. Humans are way too collectivistic and wicked to be trusted when they hypocritically label themselves freedom lovers. That's of course a side effect of humans being a social species. If cats or tigers had a civilization then Libertarianism may have been the norm. Not humans.
Which is necessary for idealists such as Robin and I to survive in this cruel universe that deserves to be destroyed but is of course not destroyed..
P.S. I don't want to bring a child into this universe where they will harm others and get harmed by others. So I guess the very characteristics of being universe-aware and not being a complete asshole are selected against by evolution.
P.S.S. Theism is either factually accurate or not.
In a theistic universe all organisms live under absolute monarchy and are condemned to torture in afterlife as long as they don't believe in the existing deity/deities or do not obey them in the right manner both of which are almost impossible to avoid because who knows how many religions and sects of them exist in the universe...good luck pick the right one which is like playing lottery.. So kiss goodbye to human ethics (for divine command overrides all human ethics), liberty and welcome eternal torture.
In a non-theistic universe we have this mess we are in. Evolution ironically selects for both belief in theism which in a non-theistic universe is factually inaccurate as well as cruelty. All norms that restrict internal harm only exist for a tribe to more effectively harm others. Yes, that even includes humanism and green politics. They just have larger tribes.
"Alas, my Twitter followers don’t agree with me:"
I wonder what those poll numbers would be like without the Russiagate hysteria.
Yes of course, but usually we allow free speech even when others question a claim.
"We let regulators forbid alcohol firms from making ads that say truthfully that teetotalers are less healthy than others--"
The truthfulness of such claims has been severely questioned by mainstream experts in the medical fields. One key aspect in the issue is that some very sick people are teetotalers because of their illnesses, which skews the charts towards better health with moderate alcohol consumption. The evidence supporting the claim that teetotaling is less healthy than moderate alcohol consumption is by no means beyond doubt.
For example, see https://academic.oup.com/ps... and https://www.eurekalert.org/... and https://www.thelancet.com/j...
> I can maybe see limiting the abilities of enemy combatants during wartime to make their case to our citizens that we should quit the war or that we are the morally guilty party. Though even here I’m not very convinced.
I don't see regulation of wartime speech by enemy combatants as more potentially justified than other regulation of foreign speech. It seems to me that avoiding unjustified wars can be pretty valuable, and that enemy combatant speech is especially likely to carry information that is useful for determining if the war is justified, so this could be among the most valuable foreign speech to not restrict.
I also suspect public opinion wouldn't be much more against enemy combatant speech than against other forms of foreign speech. I remember when Vladimir Putin published an appeal to the American people not to intervene in Syria against Assad (https://www.nytimes.com/201..., it was well-received by many (despite the arguments being pretty weak, imo), and I don't remember anyone suggesting that it was inappropriate for American media to be publishing, or American citizens to be reading, an appeal from an enemy leader. (it's possibly a bit different since the US and Russia were not actually at war, but they were backing different sides of a war, and it is common to see Russia as an enemy). Of course, it's possible that this is because I'm in a pacifistic-leaning bubble that's especially likely to be accepting of such speech, and for all I know, it's possible that there was outrage over it in other political bubbles, but I hadn't heard of any.
> I can see the point of arguing that when a politician tries to negotiate to encourage particular speech, some kinds of pressures or incentives they might offer are legitimate, while others are not. But my understanding is that most backroom politics is largely about offering pressures and incentives to get people to go along with your plans, many of which are driven by selfish career agendas. It is not yet clear to me that Trump’s pressures and incentives in these foreign talk cases were greatly out of line with most politics.
I agree with your broader point about foreign speech, but disagree here. It seems to me that it would be considered a major scandal if it was discovered that the President of the United States called the CEO of a major US corporation and said "Congress is about to put a bill on my desk that will have a big effect on your business, and I haven't decided whether to sign or veto it yet. I have to say, America has done a lot for your business, and your business hasn't done a lot for America. It sure would be nice if you found a way to make my political opponent look bad." This seems more like an issue of compelled speech than of free speech; the President is trying to use government power to pressure people into speaking in ways beneficial to the President.
Sometime I think that the result of all your thinking about the status games you profess to dislike is that you have become particularly good at playing them.
Ratings and evaluations are speech, which viewers can use to filter what they see.
Are you suggesting such a view, that such a war is occurring, is misplaced or being a bit sarcastic?
Must be something in the air today. I was just reading an article about a Korean actress that was found dead, presumably suicide. I started looking for a list of such deaths as I am pretty sure I've seen several. One link I came across from 2010 noted how damaging the social medial was for many, leading a number of these over stressed stars to acute depression and suicide (though I suspect some behind the scenes events are a bigger driver).
That article mentions some approach that seem a bit in line with your approach -- increasing the discussion, showing a critical eye towards the hurtful speech/posts and the like. It also did mention some national regulatory actions as well.
Clearly something that extends well beyond the topical political story here in the USA.
Still, I have to wonder how well the open, unregulated speech approach will work, particularly in the context of overcoming any of the underlying biases, or in the prevention of the creation or expansion of such biases.
It would be good to see more thought/discussion/mention of the underlying social institutional structures that would lead to the better outcome rather than the poor one.
The problem with current media is that the important information is drowned out by the sensational. In our original environment the sensational was important to us - but now in a world of connected 8 billion people a sensational one in a million years thing happens more than 8 times a day.
When I link to the gwern Littlewoods Law article and HN my post is marked spam here - so I leave it up to you to google it, but I'll add one quote from the HN discussion: "the media used to lie by omission: it would choose not to cover certain stories, even though they were important. Today, the media "lies by transmission" -- they cover unimportant but sensational stories, and that drowns out the coverage of important but less eye-catching events"
How this could be fixed by more speech?
The problem is that: "the media used to lie by omission: it would choose not to cover certain stories, even though they were important. Today, the media "lies by transmission" -- they cover unimportant but sensational stories, and that drowns out the coverage of important but less eye-catching events." https://news.ycombinator.co...The drowning out is efficient because we unconsciously seek the most sensational stories even if we don't gain any information from them - https://www.gwern.net/Notes...
How could this be fixed by more speech?