Is it okay to engage with the alt-right?

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orathaic
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Re: Is it okay to engage with the alt-right?

#21 Post by orathaic » Wed Aug 14, 2019 1:01 pm

Carl Tuckerson wrote:
Tue Aug 13, 2019 11:18 pm
Things I have said:

+ A subset of leftists, including those who are the subject of the OP, do want to eliminate free speech for people with whom they disagree.
<snip>
Can I just take issue with this part.

Saying I radio hosts should not offer a platform to certain people, is not an infringement of their free speech.

At least in law, there is no obligation on the likes of Facebook, twitter, youtube, or any radio station to offer a platform to anyone. The counter position could be to argue for those media (or some media outlet) to be made a public body (state controlled, or owned) where freedom of speech is guaranteed to everyone.

Private entities can withdraw your speech rights, like a banning on this forum for what ever reason this entities want (for example breach of the forum rules). This would not qualify as a freedom of speech issue.

Entities like the BBC (or publicly owned TV and radio station) also do not have to put me on if I happen to want to talk about something. They decide if whatever the topic is of public importance... And this is arguably bias, they choose the opinions which are worth amplifying. Not tue same as government censorship (what independence the BBC has from the government of the day is an open exercise for the viewer...)

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Re: Is it okay to engage with the alt-right?

#22 Post by flash2015 » Wed Aug 14, 2019 3:41 pm

Carl Tuckerson wrote:
Tue Aug 13, 2019 11:18 pm
flash2015 wrote:
Tue Aug 13, 2019 10:25 pm
You say you rail against tribalism and heated rhetoric...but then in the same message you effectively say "those that I disagree with are going to lead us to totalitarianism!!!". You don't see the cognitive dissonance there? It is hard for me to not be desensitized to this style of rhetoric when pretty much any policy that conservatives disagree with (including such policies such as universal health care and gun control, attempts to reduce the opportunity gap with women and minorities, even network neutrality) will apparently lead to totalitarianism. What am I or anyone else "allowed" to differ in opinion with conservatives on without secretly wanting to lead you all to the Gulag??
Things I have said:

+ A subset of leftists, including those who are the subject of the OP, do want to eliminate free speech for people with whom they disagree.
+ I don't consider you (or really anyone in this conversation, I think?) to be such people, hence I'm happy to discuss things with you.
+ There is potential for totalitarian application of well-intentioned policies that restrict some kinds of freedom, like the freedom of speech, so while I have no problem discussing them in the abstract, my natural inclination toward a real-world implementation of such policies is one of suspicion unless I think I can trust the enforcers of the policies.

Things I have not said:

+ All people who disagree with me are going to lead us to totalitarianism.
+ Universal healthcare will lead to totalitarianism.
+ Gun control will lead to totalitarianism.
+ Attempts to reduce the opportunity gap with women and minorities will lead to totalitarianism.
+ Network neutrality will lead to totalitarianism.
+ You want to secretly or otherwise lead me to the Gulag.

If all you've got for me is this unwritten set of rules for the conversation where you don't actually have to engage with what I'm saying because it vaguely looks like something you find silly that someone else has said, I'm not participating. I thought better of you.
My apologies then if I am misrepresenting you. It wasn't obvious to me what exactly what you are talking about is going to lead us to totalitarianism so I am going off the broad range of things other conservatives say...either in the media or on other threads here (e.g. ND on another thread said that universal healthcare is effectively going to lead us to totalitarianism - I think he has also said the same for any form of gun control). Again, since I have heard the work totalitarianism or marxism being thrown around so ...uh..."liberally" to almost any issue, by default I am going to treat that claim with intense suspicion.

So just to clarify - when you refer to some people wanting totalitarianism, are you ONLY talking about free speech issues? That some people don't like certain other people from having a platform is going to lead us to totalitarianism?

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Re: Is it okay to engage with the alt-right?

#23 Post by flash2015 » Sat Aug 17, 2019 3:47 pm

There is a lot of territory to cover here so I am going to have to break up my response into multiple parts.
Carl Tuckerson wrote:
Sun Aug 11, 2019 3:55 am
[I seem to have posted prematurely. This was meant to be included in the original response.]

At the very least it feels very disingenuous for you to criticize me for discussing the very people who are the subject of Fluminator's OP. Fluminator asked if they were right, not if they had power. I maintain that my characterization of them as people bent on destroying traditional America is completely right, however effective they might be at accomplishing that, and that their apparent hysteria regarding the "alt-right" makes sense in the context of them seeing someone influential giving a platform to a sworn enemy.

Again, I think you mean well and I'm happy to discuss the idea of free speech and engagement in the abstract, but please refrain from criticizing me for engaging the OP as asked and engage with what I am actually saying.
But power is everything! If they don't have power and unlikely to get power then they really aren't important. If they aren't important, why should I care? You know who the radicals hate more than anything else? Moderates. Susan Sarandon says as much when she hoped the election of Trump would "bring the revolution". Again this is nothing new. I remember from my uni days how much the more radical elements did not like the moderate Australian Labour government of the time. Radicals actually prefer when the conservatives are in power...as they can blend in with more mainstream protests in the hope of trying to convert people. I saw this when I joined marches against the Iraq War more than a decade ago. I had to dodge being caught in photographs (people with cameras were everywhere) with people which promoted ideas which I did not agree with...even though the majority of people as part of the march I would argue were not radicals.

If I am criticizing, I am only criticizing the belief that we are in any way shape or form facing some existential threat of becoming a totalitarian regime, especially from some student protestors. This is just a fantasy created by convervative media to scare their audience silly for the clicks...and I see it as an attempted distraction to what the current administration or its more extreme supporters are doing.
In the spirit of that...
There are limits though, aren't there? Would you say it is OK for a company to make fake medical claims about a product (e.g. these crystals cure cancer, guaranteed!!!)? Or perhaps a youtuber which tells his/her followers to go kill someone because they say something they don't like? Would you expect youtube to keep such a video on its platform irrespective of its potential consequences?
I agree with restrictions on false advertising and on inciting violence in principle. These forms of speech create considerable risk of real physical harm to other people. If you're strictly interested in discussing the idea, you can skip the next bit and go to my next quoting of you.
I am worried about enforcement of such restrictions, particularly on inciting violence, because we have already seen bad-faith actors attempt to represent reasonable policy proposals, like deporting illegal immigrants, as inciting violence, and if such actors were in charge of enforcement I would be very worried about the infringement of speech that should be protected. Hence why it is so difficult for me to separate abstract ideas from their practical implementation--someone HAS to enforce it, and there currently exist actors very hostile to the idea of free speech for those with whom they disagree. I worry that our country is becoming polarized at an accelerated rate, and that this position will be commonstance within a couple of decades, and reality within another.
But this hasn't just been a debate about immigration enforcement, what numbers we should allow and what should be the makeup of those immigrants. Most people on both side of politics for a long time had no problem with this debate. As conservative media has pointed out you can find old speeches from Obama and Clinton and others talking about the importance of getting immigration under control.

But it went far further than that. The debate became about demonizing immigrants and understandably this upset a lot of people. And we have already seen the violence happen many times now, the latest being El Paso. The US system is designed that pretty much any significant change really requires some level of bipartisanship...but the nasty rhetoric will probably mean, instead of actually achieving anything, we will kick the immigration can down the road for another decade at least. Despite his rhetoric, Trump is likely going to achieve the opposite you are hoping for.

I don't understand the fear in the US of hate speech laws. Again this is another "phantom menace" that conservative commenters have created to keep the clicks flowing. The US Supreme Court again and again and again, irrespective whether it supposedly had a conservative or liberal leaning has thrown out any attempts to regulate "hate speech". This is not going to change even if the democrats get back into power and get a couple of Supreme Count vacancies:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_spee ... ted_States

Apparently you can't even criminalize cross burning on the lawn of an African American family...which I would say is as a direct threat of violence you can get without saying it explicitly.

I agree that "hate speech" is a hard thing to define and if it was actually possible to create laws in the US around it (which it isn't) we should not create such laws lightly. However, there is a false dichotomy here that if you define "hate speech" at all in law it is somehow going to send us down a totalitarian path. Many Western countries have had hate speech laws in some form for decades. A big part, especially in Europe, was to prevent a recurrence of the genocide that occurred in the second world war so there is a lot of sensitivity to Nazism and Holocaust denial (the US doesn't get it because they believe it couldn't happen here). There is a lot of variation in these laws, from Australia where "hate speech" is purely a civil matter to Germany where it could potentially end in gaol. As with most things, there is a balance to be made between protecting society from civil unrest and individual freedoms...and I acknowledge wholeheartedly that some countries laws are in obvious need of reform (e.g. the "Nazi pug" case in the UK was silly and wrong). But again, I don't agree with the "hate speech" laws are wrong by definition argument. It is all about tradeoffs.

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Re: Is it okay to engage with the alt-right?

#24 Post by flash2015 » Sat Aug 17, 2019 5:35 pm

OK, another part.
And there is an assumption with the pure "free speech" argument that better arguments will always win over poor/bad/dangerous arguments.
[...]
There are many reasons why better arguments often don't win over poor arguments. People often more easily agree with arguments which are in alignment with their pre-conceived notions and biases. People often tend to start to believe arguments or ideas purely through repetition irrespective of their basis in reality, this is why the idea of political "talking points" are so effective.
I don't think free speech depends upon the idea that presumptively better arguments always prevail, though I agree that many people argue this point in defense of free speech. (I don't know your stance on this and won't presume anything about it.) In fact, that's a very narrow understanding of free speech to me, the implementation of which would lead to errors, for two reasons.
One, presumptively better ideas are not always truly better ideas. People don't get things right the first time at all. Prevailing understandings of ideas are often incorrect or at least incomplete, and some degree of contradiction--and thus the freedom to contradict--is necessary to improve our understanding.
To point to your flat Earth example, while the extent to which ancient peoples believed the Earth to be flat is vastly overstated, at one point that belief was commonplace and presumptively right, and the eventually demonstrated correct idea that the Earth was round was presumptively wrong. If, as the argument goes, free speech is good because presumptively good arguments beat presumptively bad ones, then that suggests to me that free speech is not good if presumptively bad arguments beat presumptively good ones. In such an environment, if you aren't free to make presumptively bad arguments, and by chance a presumptively bad argument is actually correct, you aren't free to reach the truth.
Two, any given freedom is little more than a truism if it is only being exercised in a way which no one would seek to restrict. No one would seek to restrict speech that is accurate, uncontroversial, and supportive of the status quo. I don't need freedom of speech to tell people that the Earth is round: it's accurate, it's not controversial, and the powers that be are not threatened by me telling people the Earth is round. It's great that I can't be arbitrarily silenced for saying that the Earth is round, but ultimately that's a very fringe benefit of freedom of speech, because even if it weren't codified in law, no one would actually try to prevent me from saying it.
The reason freedom of speech exists is to protect speech that is inaccurate, controversial, or not supportive of the status quo. It's to protect people like flat Earthers or anti-vaxxers, because, as mentioned above, at some point one of those "kooky" groups is going to be actually right about something meaningful and important, and if they don't have the right to participate in conversations about their subject of choice, we will fail to improve our understanding and may even make a critical mistake. The only way I could possibly justify restricting this type of speech is if I were completely confident that I had figured out essentially everything there was to figure out about the world, and I certainly do not, so I could not justify such restrictions.
As in most things that are currently considered "right" or "moral" free speech exists because it creates more successful societies. If it doesn't it will either be limited or disappear. The Soviet Union didn't collapse just because it was deemed to be morally wrong, but because the communist system fundamentally was unsustainable. It collapsed on itself.

Sex outside marriage was deemed morally wrong because it could create children which would not be supported...and thus would become a burden on the community to support but since women can now support themselves and since contraception can prevent unwanted pregnancy, ideas about premarital sex have changed.

Homosexuality was deemed wrong at least partially because societies believed more people = more power and that having children were needed to provide for the parents when they get older. However, neither of these reasons for having children are true anymore...so again societies views of homosexuality have changed too.

You are right. Free speech is not always going to find the right solution, especially in the short term and we don't have "free speech" if we can't go down the wrong paths...but it definitely is the assumption that over time we will get to a better solutions or at least "more often than not" come to better solutions than ones which comes from a top down model.

Hand it hand with free speech you must have facts, logic and reason. Ideas of whether the earth is flat or whether the earth is the center of the universe died eventually because the build up of facts and knowledge eventually overwhelmed those earlier theories. There is always going to be inertia in societies to new ideas, which is a good thing! Without some level of inertia societies cannot have continuity. The question is what that appropriate level of inertia would be. I think inertia is one of the important things which does stop the US from falling into totalitarianism/fascism...it just takes too long to change/breakup the institutions/laws which have been created since Independence. Societies like the USSR (after deposing the Tzar) and Germany (in the 30s) or the French (after the fall of the monarchy) went into destructive phases at least partially because of the lack/breakdown of these institutions to protect against rapid political change.

My concern now is there is a real danger that, at least on some issues, we are leading down the path of ignoring facts/reason/logic. Things like the rise in the anti-vaccination movement which are causing real harm causing people to become sick and die due to preventable disease. It is not clear that problems like this will just solve themselves (in the vaccine case, without some major epidemic) without some level of intervention more than reiterating the facts, at the very least stopping these opinions from being promoted. It is not an easy topic and I can understand that this could cause fears of censorship. Again, it is all about tradeoffs.

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Re: Is it okay to engage with the alt-right?

#25 Post by flash2015 » Sat Aug 17, 2019 7:18 pm

Carl Tuckerson wrote:
Sun Aug 11, 2019 3:55 am
When talking about Google/Facebook/Twitter etc. there may be some issue of bias...but in many cases it may be just a case of Hanlon's razor.
If various upper and middle level management hadn't repeatedly been caught on video talking about how they saw it as their mission to ensure that another populist right-wing candidate like Trump never gets elected, I could believe this. I'm inclined to apply Hanlon's razor to life as a general principle. Certainly I think the implementation of any censorship policy they undertake will be fraught with errors and unintended consequences--another reason not to implement a censorship policy in the first place, or at least to limit it sharply. But they openly talk about how they seek to curate the information in their services, and their upper management makes both their ideology and their zealotry very clear. It beggars belief, to me at least, to attribute their pervasive censorship of right-wing ideas to anything other than their stated aim to ensure that the next Clinton doesn't lose to the next Trump.
There are places where I believe some internet companies have gone too far. For example, it is horribly wrong that Cloudflare has started arbitrarily deciding what it thinks is acceptable or not. It should not be doing **anything** without a lawful warrant. And I really don't like Google or Apple kicking apps like Gab off their play/app stores which effectively bans Gab from phones (you can theoretically still install it on Android, but Google has been preaching for years that it is a scary security risk to install anything except from the official app store). By all means add foul language warnings...or something but actually banning it is wrong.

However all the big companies have a requirement to do some level of moderation. As the mods here will attest, doing moderation in a fair way is **hard** and usually almost no-one is happy all the time with the moderators decision. For example, Google is facing a campaign in Germany over its moderation:

https://observer.com/2019/07/google-you ... -campaign/

There have been endless back and forth arguments in many countries over whether companies are not moderating enough or they are moderating too much. In a recent congressional hearing Google was being charged with moderating too much (allegedly against conservatives) and too little (not getting copies of a person getting murdered off of youtube fast enough).

Having said that, there is a problem with fake stories and conspiracy theories being promoted on Google/Facebook etc (pizzagate anyone?), often coming from unknown sources...which is a problem we largely didn't have until recently for political speech (political advertising and funding have been traditionally heavily regulated in many countries). I have watched many of the videos too...and this is what I had understood they were trying to prevent (some people do of course believe that Trump won because of the fake stories and conspiracy theories). I know there is a question of "who decides what is real/fake" and we should definitely hold them to the fire on this but I don't see anything specifically wrong with the goal as the fake stuff is so damaging. Whilst everyone is entitled to their opinion, it is hard to have a functional democracy if we can't even agree on the facts.

I do believe the big internet companies need more transparency on how they do moderation and how they prioritize content. I believe all sides of politics can agree on this and I believe if there is more regulation that is the direction it should take rather than trying to browbeat companies to try to gain political advantage. Perhaps even some antitrust is in order too to enhance competition. Note that many of the commenters complaining about free speech would not even exist without the platforms like Google/Facebook/Twitter etc. provide. We likely have more free speech now than at ANY TIME in our history.
Many conservatives don't see the cognitive dissonance in fighting for "free speech" then cheering on the government instituting bias in employment and contracts for people who disagree with Israel's policies...which IS a direct attack on the first amendment. We are either for free speech, irrespective of whether we agree with the speech or not, or we are against it. We can't have it both ways.
100% agree. I probably loathe these types of people more than you do lol. The day these Israel-First clowns get their comeuppance and the right wing is run by people who actually care about America will be a great day for this country.
But yes, completely agree, there's a ton of hypocrisy among mainstream conservatives on free speech and Israel.
In short what I am trying to say is I believe few, if any, people truly believe in completely uncontrolled free speech.
I think so too, but at risk of losing the idea-driven spirit of this discussion, do you understand why I would be so concerned about the practical implementation of controlled speech?
I understand it as I have watched many conservative videos too. But I think those conservative commenters are vastly overstating these issues for political purposes. I would likely suggest the thing that may kill Trump for 2020 will either be the China trade dispute (especially all the damage being done to farmers - there is no reason for China to backdown before the next election)...or a general downturn in the economy (as Bill said "It is the economy, stupid"). I don't believe the big internet companies don't have as much power as you think to influence the election.

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Re: Is it okay to engage with the alt-right?

#26 Post by orathaic » Sun Aug 18, 2019 11:20 am

flash2015 wrote:
Sat Aug 17, 2019 5:35 pm
<snip>
Sex outside marriage was deemed morally wrong because it could create children which would not be supported...and thus would become a burden on the community to support but since women can now support themselves and since contraception can prevent unwanted pregnancy, ideas about premarital sex have changed.

Homosexuality was deemed wrong at least partially because societies believed more people = more power and that having children were needed to provide for the parents when they get older. However, neither of these reasons for having children are true anymore...so again societies views of homosexuality have changed too.
Can I quickly criticise these two positions. They are internally inconsistent. If more people = more power, then why the prohibition on extra-marital sex? (or pre-marital sex?)

Your analysis leaves a lot to be desired, but the general point to be made is power protects itself, the institutions of power act to build up their own survival. If that means being useful to the largest number of people so those people will revolt if someone threatens to remove said institution then their actions may help 'the people'. But it is hard to think about property rights/ownership as an institution.

There are institutions built up to defend property rights, but individual property owners (those who benefit from their rights being protected) will act to protect their power.

Passing property on to one's family was the reason illegitimacy was a problem, lots of landless people might become violent and damage the idea of property rights (or the institutions...)

I can't make the same analysis of homosexuality, but it hasn't been treated as taboo for the same amount of time. Men historically have not been punished for extra marital affairs, it has just been accepted as a thing men would do. And whether that affair was with another man or not wasn't such a big deal - until religious zealotry became more powerfully focused on sexuality (which I think is roughly 150 years ago... But I can't argue why either, probably a reaction to other social changes related to the enlightenment).
My concern now is there is a real danger that, at least on some issues, we are leading down the path of ignoring facts/reason/logic. Things like the rise in the anti-vaccination movement which are causing real harm causing people to become sick and die due to preventable disease. It is not clear that problems like this will just solve themselves (in the vaccine case, without some major epidemic) without some level of intervention more than reiterating the facts, at the very least stopping these opinions from being promoted. It is not an easy topic and I can understand that this could cause fears of censorship. Again, it is all about tradeoffs.
There are at least two responces to the fear of anti-vaccers. You can take an old-fashioned authoritarian responce and revert to censorship - which we know has limitations. Or you can look at why ideas spread. Why are the methods used to spread anti-vaccers ideas more effective than the methods used by scientists and doctors to spread pro-vaccine messages/education.

The motivations of anti-vaccers are very similar to those of pro-vaccine individuals. Both want to protect their children.

Similarly, I heard a US governor explain how pro-gun Americans and pro-gun law Americans have very similar beliefs. One group doesn't believe the state can protect people, and the other doesn't believe the state can protect people while all these guns exist... But they both want the same thing ultimately. It is simply a question of how to achieve these ends (which in this example, is not something which we can know, except by comparison to other cultures, which isn't always useful because of massive cultural differences, look at the Swiss and their gun culture).

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Re: Is it okay to engage with the alt-right?

#27 Post by flash2015 » Sun Aug 18, 2019 2:21 pm

orathaic wrote:
Sun Aug 18, 2019 11:20 am
flash2015 wrote:
Sat Aug 17, 2019 5:35 pm
<snip>
Sex outside marriage was deemed morally wrong because it could create children which would not be supported...and thus would become a burden on the community to support but since women can now support themselves and since contraception can prevent unwanted pregnancy, ideas about premarital sex have changed.

Homosexuality was deemed wrong at least partially because societies believed more people = more power and that having children were needed to provide for the parents when they get older. However, neither of these reasons for having children are true anymore...so again societies views of homosexuality have changed too.
Can I quickly criticise these two positions. They are internally inconsistent. If more people = more power, then why the prohibition on extra-marital sex? (or pre-marital sex?)

Your analysis leaves a lot to be desired, but the general point to be made is power protects itself, the institutions of power act to build up their own survival. If that means being useful to the largest number of people so those people will revolt if someone threatens to remove said institution then their actions may help 'the people'. But it is hard to think about property rights/ownership as an institution.

There are institutions built up to defend property rights, but individual property owners (those who benefit from their rights being protected) will act to protect their power.

Passing property on to one's family was the reason illegitimacy was a problem, lots of landless people might become violent and damage the idea of property rights (or the institutions...)

I can't make the same analysis of homosexuality, but it hasn't been treated as taboo for the same amount of time. Men historically have not been punished for extra marital affairs, it has just been accepted as a thing men would do. And whether that affair was with another man or not wasn't such a big deal - until religious zealotry became more powerfully focused on sexuality (which I think is roughly 150 years ago... But I can't argue why either, probably a reaction to other social changes related to the enlightenment).
You are right. My analysis is a little lazy. It is a lot more complex than this. Yes, issues of inheritance is another big reason why sex outside marriage was deemed to be wrong (and why Catholic prients are not allowed to marry).

The argument that "more people = more power" is a common one. For example, some male black leaders in the 30s were concerned that black people could lose political power if black women were allowed to use contraception (I looked this up after hearing the claim that Margaret Sanger's main purpose was to kill off black people). The current scare about "the great replacement" is at least partially due to fears of being outbred by "other people". Especially with a "closed" religion like Judaism which can't grow via conversion obviously having lots of children could be seen as a moral imperative...even if that reasoning is not explicitly stated (religious leaders didn't need to provide their rationale).

I don't see an inherent contradiction between the two arguments I made though. One argument is externally facing (the more people = more power argument) and one is internal (children from unwed mothers put an undue burden on the local community).

I guess the question is though - do you agree with my premise or not? That what is deemed "moral" is what creates successful societies...and what creates the most successful societies has changed over time so what we see as "moral" changes with it? I would argue we can go down the same path with questions about slavery, democracy and the status of women too.
My concern now is there is a real danger that, at least on some issues, we are leading down the path of ignoring facts/reason/logic. Things like the rise in the anti-vaccination movement which are causing real harm causing people to become sick and die due to preventable disease. It is not clear that problems like this will just solve themselves (in the vaccine case, without some major epidemic) without some level of intervention more than reiterating the facts, at the very least stopping these opinions from being promoted. It is not an easy topic and I can understand that this could cause fears of censorship. Again, it is all about tradeoffs.
There are at least two responces to the fear of anti-vaccers. You can take an old-fashioned authoritarian response and revert to censorship - which we know has limitations. Or you can look at why ideas spread. Why are the methods used to spread anti-vaccers ideas more effective than the methods used by scientists and doctors to spread pro-vaccine messages/education.

The motivations of anti-vaccers are very similar to those of pro-vaccine individuals. Both want to protect their children.

Similarly, I heard a US governor explain how pro-gun Americans and pro-gun law Americans have very similar beliefs. One group doesn't believe the state can protect people, and the other doesn't believe the state can protect people while all these guns exist... But they both want the same thing ultimately. It is simply a question of how to achieve these ends (which in this example, is not something which we can know, except by comparison to other cultures, which isn't always useful because of massive cultural differences, look at the Swiss and their gun culture).
I agree that motivations of many anti-vax people ARE similar to pro-vax people. A big part of the problem with explaining vaccines is that few people personally now see the damage that these diseases can cause (because vaccines have been so effective)...yet they constantly hear via the internet "filter funnel" about legitimate or illegitimate (mostly illegitimate) claims of vaccine side effects. Throw in some conspiracy about "big pharma" (which at least has a kernel of truth, just not on this) and you do see why many people can get suckered into the "anti-vax" world.

But we are not talking just about a few well-intentioned but misinformed people. Going along with the anti-vax movement are a a whole industry of dishonest people, including some medical professionals that definitely know better, making large amounts of money selling "anti-vax" snake oil to people and preying on people's fears.

We have tried the pure "free speech" argument for years only on this...and it is losing. A definition of insanity is trying the same thing again and again and again but expecting different results. We are really in danger of some of these diseases coming back (like measles). I don't believe this can be won without taking extra measures, whether by stripping government benefits from those who do not vaccinate, by limiting their freedom in some other ways (e.g. they can't enroll in public or private school AT ALL without showing proof of vaccination) and/or by shutting down/limiting the misinformation pipelines. Obviously we shouldn't go overboard with any of these tactics, but I don't think we can get by "free speech" either.

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Re: Is it okay to engage with the alt-right?

#28 Post by Randomizer » Sun Aug 18, 2019 4:42 pm

"specially with a "closed" religion like Judaism which can't grow via conversion obviously having lots of children could be seen as a moral imperative...even if that reasoning is not explicitly stated (religious leaders didn't need to provide their rationale)."

Judaism allows for conversion, however it is at a much lower rate than Christian religions. Also European Jews have traditionally a much lower birth rate than those from Arab lands which is more in line with their country of origin and having similar views on family size. There are very few "closed" religions.

Israel was considered going Muslim based upon birth rates of the Jewish population compared to the other ethnic groups in the country until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Then Russia and other former members allowed for Jewish emigration which both increased the Jewish population in Israel and brought in a people with higher birth rate families. After that you got the Palestinians revolting after years of quiet. The trend line had reversed for "replacement groups" and they no longer thought that they would become the majority group.

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Re: Is it okay to engage with the alt-right?

#29 Post by damian » Sun Aug 18, 2019 4:55 pm

The criticism of Rogan’s podcast that I’ve seen have been about his failure to actively challenge the viewpoints of his alt-right guests. Which is a very different problem than simply giving them a platform/engaging.

Though with deplatforming being in vogue these days I’m sure there are many people calling for not engaging with them if it means increasing their exposure.

Frankly much of the discussion up thread just highlights how free speech is a dated concept. Albeit still an important one. The conception was that the government couldn’t harm your for speaking out. However as the internet has become one of the primary means of communication, private companies have gained a lot more power over what you can or cannot say. Hypothetically if you can’t be charged for saying something but you’ve got no way to say it to your friends, do you really have the ability to speak freely. Should deplatforming (on the internet) be considered a free speech violation. (It isn’t one legally now)

Efforts by the center left to deplatform or ever criminalize certain forms of speech tend to worry me, as with time I suspect the radical left is also likely to be targeted
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Re: Is it okay to engage with the alt-right?

#30 Post by flash2015 » Sun Aug 18, 2019 9:51 pm

damian wrote:
Sun Aug 18, 2019 4:55 pm
The criticism of Rogan’s podcast that I’ve seen have been about his failure to actively challenge the viewpoints of his alt-right guests. Which is a very different problem than simply giving them a platform/engaging.

Though with deplatforming being in vogue these days I’m sure there are many people calling for not engaging with them if it means increasing their exposure.

Frankly much of the discussion up thread just highlights how free speech is a dated concept. Albeit still an important one. The conception was that the government couldn’t harm your for speaking out. However as the internet has become one of the primary means of communication, private companies have gained a lot more power over what you can or cannot say. Hypothetically if you can’t be charged for saying something but you’ve got no way to say it to your friends, do you really have the ability to speak freely. Should deplatforming (on the internet) be considered a free speech violation. (It isn’t one legally now)

Efforts by the center left to deplatform or ever criminalize certain forms of speech tend to worry me, as with time I suspect the radical left is also likely to be targeted
So you believe it is the more moderate left...rather than the radical left which is doing all the deplatforming? If I understand correctly, this is different from Carl's opinion. Why do you say that? And again the chance of "hate speech" laws coming into effect in the USA are pretty much between "buckleys and none"...so I don't see this is a valid concern.

Any putting that aside and assuming we don't make this partisan, I think we can agree that some of these companies have too much power. How would you say any regulation should work? I see internet based companies fall into many different categories:

Pure Infrastructure
i.e. ISPs, you can't access the internet without them. I would argue that they shouldn't be allowed to block or intentionally slowdown traffic without a very good network management reason and whatever network traffic they absolutely need to do they need to be transparent about it. This is network neutrality. Verizon argued in court that network neutrality violated their free speech because it stopped them from curating (i.e. censoring) the internet the way they like. Republicans and conservative commenters pretty much argued that network neutrality was either akin to the "fairness doctrine" (that apparently odius idea that media needed to provide time to both sides controversial issues - network neutrality is of course completely unrelated) or flat out akin to communism. Republicans voted as a block to rescind the FCC network neutrality regulations in 2017 (court cases will continue on this for many years). Would you agree or disagree with network neutrality legislation?

Hosting companies/Internet Infrastructure (e.g. Cloudflare, GoDaddy) - I believe we should treat them almost the same as ISPs. They don't have any relationship to the content. They should not be able to arbitrarily pull content off the internet they don't like without a court order (of course they can pull stuff off pre-emptively if it is actually causing harm like sites hosting malware) I disagree strongly with what Cloudflare did with 8chan/daily stormer. What do you think?

Mobile OS Vendors (Google, Apple) - Given they both effectively have complete control on what apps can be installed on their systems through their app stores. They do have a responsibility to keep bad apps off their system and they do have to make sure people can use their systems without having to see what some people would deem offensive material. However, given their effective monopoly over their own platforms, I argue that they should be forced to make it easy for other app stores to be installed on their systems if users object to their curation. Thoughts?

Hosted Content Behind Paywalls or just funding for content on other sites (Patreon) - Even though I disagree with Sargon most of the time, I don't believe it was right what was done to him here. However the market responded and new Patreon like platforms have emerged (like SubscribeStar). Given that there are other options creators can use here, is a regulatory response required? What do you suggest should be done here?

Search and Social Media (Google, Facebook, Twitter etc.) - They curate the content for you to maximise the ad views and thus make advertisers happy. They have a lot of responsibility to advertisers, to copyright holders, to government regulation across the world and in general to the public which may require them to change rankings of content (e.g. content which is trying to game the rankings), demonetize content (e.g. if they think advertisers may not be happy to place ads on the content), hide content from some viewers who need to be protected from some content (e.g. restricted mode) or in rare cases completely take content completely inaccessible on their plaforms (e.g. copyright violations, very objectionable content). All of these companies have truly massive amounts of data going through their systems...and the only way to deal with this is through automation of the moderation, referral and ranking engines. These engines are likely not explicitly rule based but based on machine learning. There are complaints from all sides from countries all over the world arguing that either they don't moderate enough or they moderate too much.

What would your solution be here? Force certain moderation procedures on them (i.e. there must be an appeals process of this form)? Force them not to moderate? Make a government agency for appeals to moderation (be prepared to hire huge number of people for this with costs in the many billions - how do you ensure this government agency will be "fair"?)? Or just more transparency on their internal processes (though they can't be too open otherwise they leave themselves opened to be gamed)? Break them up? Or do we just let the market solve it just like with Patreon (e.g. with services like bitchute and gab)? Or something else?
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Re: Is it okay to engage with the alt-right?

#31 Post by flash2015 » Sun Aug 18, 2019 9:52 pm

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Re: Is it okay to engage with the alt-right?

#32 Post by damian » Sun Aug 18, 2019 10:39 pm

flash2015 wrote:
Sun Aug 18, 2019 9:51 pm
damian wrote:
Sun Aug 18, 2019 4:55 pm
The criticism of Rogan’s podcast that I’ve seen have been about his failure to actively challenge the viewpoints of his alt-right guests. Which is a very different problem than simply giving them a platform/engaging.

Though with deplatforming being in vogue these days I’m sure there are many people calling for not engaging with them if it means increasing their exposure.

Frankly much of the discussion up thread just highlights how free speech is a dated concept. Albeit still an important one. The conception was that the government couldn’t harm your for speaking out. However as the internet has become one of the primary means of communication, private companies have gained a lot more power over what you can or cannot say. Hypothetically if you can’t be charged for saying something but you’ve got no way to say it to your friends, do you really have the ability to speak freely. Should deplatforming (on the internet) be considered a free speech violation. (It isn’t one legally now)

Efforts by the center left to deplatform or ever criminalize certain forms of speech tend to worry me, as with time I suspect the radical left is also likely to be targeted
So you believe it is the more moderate left...rather than the radical left which is doing all the deplatforming? If I understand correctly, this is different from Carl's opinion. Why do you say that? And again the chance of "hate speech" laws coming into effect in the USA are pretty much between "buckleys and none"...so I don't see this is a valid concern.

Any putting that aside and assuming we don't make this partisan, I think we can agree that some of these companies have too much power. How would you say any regulation should work? I see internet based companies fall into many different categories:

Pure Infrastructure
i.e. ISPs, you can't access the internet without them. I would argue that they shouldn't be allowed to block or intentionally slowdown traffic without a very good network management reason and whatever network traffic they absolutely need to do they need to be transparent about it. This is network neutrality. Verizon argued in court that network neutrality violated their free speech because it stopped them from curating (i.e. censoring) the internet the way they like. Republicans and conservative commenters pretty much argued that network neutrality was either akin to the "fairness doctrine" (that apparently odius idea that media needed to provide time to both sides controversial issues - network neutrality is of course completely unrelated) or flat out akin to communism. Republicans voted as a block to rescind the FCC network neutrality regulations in 2017 (court cases will continue on this for many years). Would you agree or disagree with network neutrality legislation?

Hosting companies/Internet Infrastructure (e.g. Cloudflare, GoDaddy) - I believe we should treat them almost the same as ISPs. They don't have any relationship to the content. They should not be able to arbitrarily pull content off the internet they don't like without a court order (of course they can pull stuff off pre-emptively if it is actually causing harm like sites hosting malware) I disagree strongly with what Cloudflare did with 8chan/daily stormer. What do you think?

Mobile OS Vendors (Google, Apple) - Given they both effectively have complete control on what apps can be installed on their systems through their app stores. They do have a responsibility to keep bad apps off their system and they do have to make sure people can use their systems without having to see what some people would deem offensive material. However, given their effective monopoly over their own platforms, I argue that they should be forced to make it easy for other app stores to be installed on their systems if users object to their curation. Thoughts?

Hosted Content Behind Paywalls or just funding for content on other sites (Patreon) - Even though I disagree with Sargon most of the time, I don't believe it was right what was done to him here. However the market responded and new Patreon like platforms have emerged (like SubscribeStar). Given that there are other options creators can use here, is a regulatory response required? What do you suggest should be done here?

Search and Social Media (Google, Facebook, Twitter etc.) - They curate the content for you to maximise the ad views and thus make advertisers happy. They have a lot of responsibility to advertisers, to copyright holders, to government regulation across the world and in general to the public which may require them to change rankings of content (e.g. content which is trying to game the rankings), demonetize content (e.g. if they think advertisers may not be happy to place ads on the content), hide content from some viewers who need to be protected from some content (e.g. restricted mode) or in rare cases completely take content completely inaccessible on their plaforms (e.g. copyright violations, very objectionable content). All of these companies have truly massive amounts of data going through their systems...and the only way to deal with this is through automation of the moderation, referral and ranking engines. These engines are likely not explicitly rule based but based on machine learning. There are complaints from all sides from countries all over the world arguing that either they don't moderate enough or they moderate too much.

What would your solution be here? Force certain moderation procedures on them (i.e. there must be an appeals process of this form)? Force them not to moderate? Make a government agency for appeals to moderation (be prepared to hire huge number of people for this with costs in the many billions - how do you ensure this government agency will be "fair"?)? Or just more transparency on their internal processes (though they can't be too open otherwise they leave themselves opened to be gamed)? Break them up? Or do we just let the market solve it just like with Patreon (e.g. with services like bitchute and gab)? Or something else?

To answer your first question it’s probably a difference in definitions. I’m not from the states so my center left might just be your far left. Many of the people involved in deplatforming are not really critical of the greater system we live in. Most of them just want a world like what we have now, but with maybe a stronger social safety net, and more protections for minorities. I consider that to be center left.

Where I live hate speech laws are already a thing. Not that I particularly mind, but there have certainly been examples of questionable enforcement.

Leaving that aside a community I chat in has asked users to stop making guillotine and eat the rich jokes. Because the platform holders contacted them and informed them if they didn’t get it under control they’d shut the community down.

ISPs, hosting, and financial processing companies like PayPal I’d be in favour of including in groups that shouldn’t be making choices about what sort of content gets hosted.

I’d argue that sites like Facebook and Twitter are also a similar deal, since they’ve essentially become the central square of the internet so to speak. Silencing opinions on them and relegating them to smaller sites is essentially saying you’re allowed an opinion, just not in public.

In the patron example, I’m tempted to say it’s fine, since other sites can fill in the gaps, so long as the services that actually process the transactions aren’t getting involved.

I figure you’d roll into into new net neutrality regulations and people could file a suit if their content was blocked by one of the applicable services.

I’d also probably not include hate speech in the protected forms of speech, but I’m not American and that feels much more usual to me than the rest of you.

That was a long post if I missed something you think was important let me know I’ll try and elaborate.

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Re: Is it okay to engage with the alt-right?

#33 Post by orathaic » Mon Aug 19, 2019 2:46 pm

flash2015 wrote:
Sun Aug 18, 2019 2:21 pm
I guess the question is though - do you agree with my premise or not? That what is deemed "moral" is what creates successful societies...and what creates the most successful societies has changed over time so what we see as "moral" changes with it? I would argue we can go down the same path with questions about slavery, democracy and the status of women too.
I can agree with the basic premise, though your supporting argument was weak. Though it is about power more than 'society' as a whole... I can talk ad nauseum about how Irish women were treated in the early 20th century, when the 'got into trouble'. But individual women in families with strong matriarchal figures were not sent away and effectively left institutionalised doing unpaid labour for the state.

There were powerful individuals who rejected this 'moral' (ie social) good and acted to protect their family.

Likewise I'm sure there were some minority of slave owners who gave up their property rights and freed slaves because they cared for the individuals and supported them.

My prefered example is "Táin Bó Cúailnge", an ancient Irish myth of the Cattle Raid of Cooley. The essential element being that stealing a Cow made you a hero in the story rather than a thief. Whoever managed to take the largest Cow/Bull was clearly the best and most powerful warrior/hero. Perhaps initially wild herds had been the norm and nobody kept cattle long term, so the only way to get one was capturing them from the wild... But then it became the norm to steal them away from whoever currently had them in their province.

How many centuries it took before social norms evolved to see these kinds of actions as villainous, I don't know. But today you would face a court date, and 2000 years ago they told stories of heros who we still know today...

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Re: Is it okay to engage with the alt-right?

#34 Post by orathaic » Mon Aug 19, 2019 3:19 pm

flash2015 wrote:
Sun Aug 18, 2019 2:21 pm
I agree that motivations of many anti-vax people ARE similar to pro-vax people. A big part of the problem with explaining vaccines is that few people personally now see the damage that these diseases can cause (because vaccines have been so effective)...yet they constantly hear via the internet "filter funnel" about legitimate or illegitimate (mostly illegitimate) claims of vaccine side effects. Throw in some conspiracy about "big pharma" (which at least has a kernel of truth, just not on this) and you do see why many people can get suckered into the "anti-vax" world.

There are many legitimate cases of side effects from vaccines (because when you have near 100% of people vaccinated, you get lots of side effects). But most doctors will just say 1 in 10 million deaths from a vaccinated population is worth the risk when compared to 1 in 10 thousand deaths from unvaccinated. Even though the side effects being discussed were not death (fyi: i am pulling these numbers out of the air, but it is their quality I'm trying to get across not the precise quantity).

But we are not talking just about a few well-intentioned but misinformed people. Going along with the anti-vax movement are a a whole industry of dishonest people, including some medical professionals that definitely know better, making large amounts of money selling "anti-vax" snake oil to people and preying on people's fears.


If I can be glib. Taking advantage of people like this to make a profit is what I believe free market capitalists define as 'good'.

I guess big pharma is also doing good by exploiting people's need for healthcare.

We have tried the pure "free speech" argument for years only on this...and it is losing. A definition of insanity is trying the same thing again and again and again but expecting different results. We are really in danger of some of these diseases coming back (like measles). I don't believe this can be won without taking extra measures, whether by stripping government benefits from those who do not vaccinate, by limiting their freedom in some other ways (e.g. they can't enroll in public or private school AT ALL without showing proof of vaccination) and/or by shutting down/limiting the misinformation pipelines. Obviously we shouldn't go overboard with any of these tactics, but I don't think we can get by "free speech" either.
But we haven't. There are specific rules regulating speech when it comes to medical practice. Not everyone can say they are a doctor, the profession is protected.

Other countries go further than the US, you are not allowed to advertise drugs on TV in Ireland or the UK. You don't see 'ask your doctor about' types of ads here, and as a result, the phrama companies go directly to the doctors to convince them to prescribe their product (rather than having the patient going to the doctor and asking to get such and such drug...) which presumably saves a lot of money on advertising, instead spending less on 'educating' doctors, and throwing them lavish parties/conferences... But that is an aside.

When it comes to the anti-vaccer movement in particular, there has been a spate of research into effective communication, using emotional appeal rather than present cold raw data. Statistics and data are great for doing science, but not so great for selling an idea. Anecdotes prove far more effective. So with better understand under our belts we can try a new thing in educating the public about vaccines.

Scientist have for decades spent their time hiding away from the public and doing their work without any plan to share it beyond their own elite circles. Science communicators have been shunned, because 'those who can do, those who caj' t trach' is an adage heard by many science students.

There is a lot which is new that we can do beyond policy. Though I would happily restrict un-vaccinated people from public spaces, I do not subscribe to punishing children for the sins of their parents. Those children of anti-vaccers should not be excluded from their right to education. Which would mean setting up schools entirely made of unvaccinated children... Also a great way to get those children to spread disease... Probably want to send them all to an island so those immuno-compromised can't be infected by those who make bad choices...

But I'm not certain free speech is to blame. Lack of confidence in authority is wider than just the anti-vaccers. There may be really good reasons to question Authority, whether that is doctors or politicians... Especially when the powers that be have allowed very bad things to happen; I would mostly be thinking about income inequality here... But there are many issues which the powers that be actually have an interest in promoting which are harmful to many.

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Re: Is it okay to engage with the alt-right?

#35 Post by Jamiet99uk » Tue Aug 20, 2019 1:19 am

orathaic wrote:
Mon Aug 19, 2019 3:19 pm

Scientist have for decades spent their time hiding away from the public and doing their work without any plan to share it beyond their own elite circles. Science communicators have been shunned, because 'those who can do, those who caj' t trach' is an adage heard by many science students.
I have never heard that phrase before.

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Re: Is it okay to engage with the alt-right?

#36 Post by Randomizer » Tue Aug 20, 2019 1:34 am

The long version is:

Those that can do, those that can't teach, and those that can't teach administrate.
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Re: Is it okay to engage with the alt-right?

#37 Post by orathaic » Tue Aug 20, 2019 7:45 am

Randomizer wrote:
Tue Aug 20, 2019 1:34 am
The long version is:

Those that can do, those that can't teach, and those that can't teach administrate.
Nice, also apologies for the typo.

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Re: Is it okay to engage with the alt-right?

#38 Post by orathaic » Tue Aug 20, 2019 5:34 pm

https://youtu.be/XJgX20S0Zdg

In relation to the discussion of free speech - though this may be a Russian plot...

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