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Comment by naasking | Hacker News Reader

> I had conversations with Jason [Citron] a year ago about the problem of white supremacy on his site, and he said, “I don’t want to invade their privacy by going into their channels and reading what they’re doing.” And I said, “They’re gonna cause deaths because you’re not doing that.” And he said, “You really think so?” And I said, “Yeah.” And sure enough they didn’t do anything, and sure enough deaths were caused because of the shit going on in their channels.

I'm not sure I can agree with this kind of moralizing. It's the same argument that blames gun manufacturers for school shootings. Clearly the latter argument is absurd, and yet very intelligent people subscribe to the former argument. So either some step is missing here that differentiates these two arguments, or we should be focusing on the real problem.

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More than agreeing or not with this line of thinking, I find the bigger problem is how selectively it is applied. People will point out that if we ban guns, we wouldn't have to worry about school shootings. Even if we ignored the logistics of such a challenge and agreed on the conclusion, why is the same logic not applied to things like alcohol and all the harms that results (drunk driving, alcoholics ruining their lives, etc). And some people do that (I think MADD would be one case, especially for the subset of their members wanting to ban all alcohol); yet even in that case those people selectively apply the same reasoning about something else.

Look at those who ignore the harm of buying drugs from unverified sources, where you may be paying money to a supply chain ran by the cartel. People are tortured and killed to get the drugs delivered, and if one doesn't verify (or if one insufficiently verifies) then they are funding such activities, but many are willing to ignore that. But change from drugs to escorting and you'll find some of the same people now saying that it should be banned because without sufficient verification it is possible to paying people who are coerced or forced into doing it. The overall argument has valid points and problem points, but the discrepancy of when it is applies makes discussing the validity harder when it seems people aren't being transparent about their motivations to begin with.

> Even if we ignored the logistics of such a challenge and agreed on the conclusion, why is the same logic not applied to things like alcohol and all the harms that results (drunk driving, alcoholics ruining their lives, etc).

Indeed, and we already tried that, and it led to the rise of organized crime. But I think it's important not to get sucked into "slippery slope" style reasoning. There can be good reasons why banning alcohol would be problematic, but banning guns would not. It depends on the surrounding culture. For instance, if enjoying a drink a few times a week was universal, but almost no one owned a gun.

> The overall argument has valid points and problem points, but the discrepancy of when it is applies makes discussing the validity harder when it seems people aren't being transparent about their motivations to begin with.

I think it's largely because people see symptoms, and look backwards in the causal chain to something they think they understand and can blame as "the" problem. People are pretty weak with nuance on tough and emotionally charged issues.

The thing is, you don’t really need to theorise about how to stop school shootings. It’s been done. It just required people to prioritise children’s lives over a minority hobby.

(I’m from a country where owning a gun is legal, but controlled, and has no school shootings. We used to have less control, and school shootings happened.)

>The thing is, you don’t really need to theorise about how to stop school shootings. It’s been done.

It's still theorizing because there are no comparable countries to the US that have done it when it comes to the number of guns already out there (300+ million) and the importance of the 2nd amendment to many of the citizens.

>It just required people to prioritise children’s lives over a minority hobby.

If you see it as a "minority hobby" rather than a right, this makes complete sense. Would you also suggest banning protests in response to violence and death at protests because it's even more of a "minority hobby" than gun ownership?

> Would you also suggest banning protests in response to violence and death at protests because it's even more of a "minority hobby" than gun ownership?

He didn't suggested banning, he suggested controlling them which is extremely different.

I don't know for your country (but I'm pretty sure it's the same), but in mine protest are controlled too. You need to give your plan well in advance and it need to be approved first. You never seen a protest becoming illegal and people getting arrested for it?

>He didn't suggested banning, he suggested controlling them which is extremely different.

And which is the next step for someone who does want to ban it. At least in the US the discussion has reached the point where one side no longer trusts the intentions of the other side, so anything that could eventually help a ban (such as a registry) is seem as being for the purpose of eventually helping a ban. This isn't without reason either, given that many past compromises are now seen as not enough and begun being presented as errors in previous laws that need to be fixed.

1st point:

It’s been done for hundreds of millions of people and hundreds of millions of guns, and it’s regulation not removing all guns, which is already done in the US, you can’t get a rocket launcher, so why am assault rifle?

No banned guns, just licenses, gun safes, regulation on types, reasonable ownership limits (all farmers I know in Aus have 5+ guns) - that’s all it takes to stop mass shootings.

If it’s a hobby that’s fine, that’s a valid application reason for example, you just have to prove you like guns and go to a range or subscribe to a gun magazine and you can buy them. That 30 minute hurdle provides a barrier to enough people.

Civilians can't buy assault rifles in the US. What civilians buy is a hunting rifle that looks like an assault rifle.

I love guns and have no wish to see them further restricted but this is a terrible argument. The features that are used to define a civilian 'assault rifle' unquestionably make them more dangerous than a hunting rifle.

The military didn't decide to start having pistol grips on their rifles because it looks cool, vertical foregrips originated in the military and it wasn't because they look cool. I own a .308 rifle with a pistol grip, folding stock, foregrip, bayonet lug, threaded barrel and a 20 round magazine and none of these features are needed for hunting but they are damned convenient for killing people.

You can try to tell me that it's no more deadly than a hunting rifle but there are reasons that the seal team 6 don't go in with hunting rifles and full auto fire isn't the only reason.

I think it's important to recognize that these rifles are more than just hunting rifles and also that we should still be allowed to have them because the second amendment is NOT about hunting.

I agree that the 2nd amendment is not about hunting, but I also think it's important to point out that "assault weapons" are a political target because they look like military assault rifles, not because of their features. People who know nothing about guns are judging them by their superficial appearance.

The features you mentioned:

A 20 round magazine is unrelated to "assault weapons". Those are available for handguns and for hunting rifles without pistol grips as well.

The deadliest war in history, WW2, was fought with rifles without pistol grips (only a few thousand were produced near the end). Not having pistol grips didn't stop soldiers from killing unprecedented numbers of people.

And how many mass killers actually used bayonets or a folding stock?

The backwards thing about the second amendment is that the USA is easily the closest western country I’ve been to to a police state. Contrast the militarisation of the police in the USA with a far more “free” country like New Zealand (with significant gun regulation).

Just like the 2nd amendment militia arming would have been useless against the German government (like the BEF which had many tanks and planes and heavy weapons) it’s useless today against heavily armed state and modern military equipment (drones, tanks).

> it’s useless today against heavily armed state and modern military equipment (drones, tanks).

Tell that to the Afghans.

Seems like you can, in fact, buy a rocket launcher. A quick google search showed that there are a number of sites on which to obtain one.

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-get-rocket-launcher-gu...

The argument generalises to Abrams tanks, Minuteman missiles and nuclear bombs.

It's not a hobby to everyone, some people survive by subsistence hunting.

I think they should have clarified in urban environments, people outside of cities use guns is basically every country, even japan.

We've already tried to ban guns in (many) cities while allowing them outside those cities. Criminals just leave the city to buy guns.

Now people in cities want to solve that by forbidding people outside the cities from owning guns.

Nobody in any sane country has or city has banned guns. It’s just regulation like cars or planes or doing electrical work or cutting up fugu

At least for cars there is no regulation. Using them on public property (public roads) has certain regulations, but not for use on private property.

How shall we define banned? Obviously no government anywhere has completely banned guns - they all arm at least some portion of their police and most allow bodyguards to carry guns to protect the wealthy and powerful.

I used the word banned meaning "made impossible for a large number of people to own legally". Governments that theoretically allow permits but rarely grant those permits in practice have effectively banned guns.

Which is why he said controlled not banned.

>For instance, if enjoying a drink a few times a week was universal, but almost no one owned a gun.

1 in 3 own a gun in the US. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/one-three-americans-own...

1 in 2 had a drink in the last month: https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-co...

From that same source, 88,000 people die annually from alcohol-related diseases, making it the 3rd leading cause of death in the US.

Culturally, guns and drinking are the same order of magnitude in the US. From a death count though, alcohol dominates.

The concentration of gun ownership varies markedly across regions though. Not sure that's true of drinking, which I expect would be pretty universal.

In any case, at worst your data suggests that banning guns in the US would be just as impossible as banning alcohol turned out to be, which very well could be true.

I have another take (I have an alcoholic relative and know quite a few people who don't drink at all) on this.

An alcoholic has many chances to turn his or her life around. It's a long, slow story. It's not inevitable. With the right support, it's possible to stop drinking and lead a healthy and fulfilling life.

Contrast this to the kind of events that result in deaths from guns in the US. The recent school shooting of course springs to mind. A bunch of kids were shot and killed. They had no chance. None.

It's not just the end statistics but the method at which we arrive at them.

> A bunch of kids were shot and killed. They had no chance. None.

Why did you compare an alcoholic that harms none but themselves with people who were shot? Wouldn't a drunk driver killing people be a more apt comparison?

A gun if fundamentally designed to kill. That's the only reason it exists. Yes you can use it to eat cereal, I guess, or you can dip the nozzle in paint and create wonderful art, or maybe you can load an AR-15 with 30 rounds and shoot at a giant wall of cheese to make hipster Swiss cheese, but most people realize why guns exist - to end life. Human life, or animal life, but some form of life.

I hear various arguments how somehow a bunch of rednecks armed to the teeth are the reason why the Government hasn't yet come and locked me away in a FEMA Death Camp, but I don't buy it.

Alcohol does not exist to end life. It can be used to end life, yes, either through abuse, or by someone driving intoxicated - but that's not why it exists. It can, and is, used safely, by millions of adults world-wide.

I can go into a room and see someone "brandishing" a shot of whiskey and not be concerned for my safety. If I walk into a room and see a bunch of nutters brandishing guns, I'm getting the fuck out. At best, they're a bunch of insecure-in-their-masculinity macho-wanna-be's - at best. No normal person looks at someone obsessed with firearms and thinks "that's just a normal person with a normal hobby like my aunt Tilly who collects stamps" - nobody.

This is why this whole argument how guns are awesome and we shouldn't be afraid of them but should encourage them and, hell, let's arm teachers and doctors and soccer moms and even the kids' lacrosse teams, why not, it's just like giving them a glass of wine - is starting to sound more and more hollow.

It was, after all, a lunatic with a gun who killed a bunch of people at that Vegas concert, not a guy with a beer keg and some Jaeger bombs. Unless I'm not quite remembering the facts.....nah, pretty sure it wasn't Jaeger bombs.

> A gun if fundamentally designed to kill. That's the only reason it exists.

That's the reason it was invented, that's not the only reason it still exists. According to stats cited above, 1 in 3 Americans have a gun. Why aren't two thirds of you dead if guns only exist to kill?

The truth is, people have fun shooting guns. Just like they have fun in archery contests, despite the fact that bows and arrows were also invented only to kill.

> A gun if fundamentally designed to kill. That's the only reason it exists.

Yes, and people need to kill other people sometimes to defend their lives and the lives of their loved ones. You may not like this reason, but that's the truth.

Guns are a bad analogy because manufacturers have no control over their use post purchase. If gun manufacturers could take back their guns (ban users) when somebody threatened illegal violence the analogy would be closer, and it would be quite reasonable to expect them to do so.

Who you're selling to can make a big difference. An extreme Example is Heckler and Koch that supposedly exported G36 illegally to the conflict zones of Mexico. But there are also legal examples, for instance weapon manufacturers lobby for laxer laws, including how weapons need to be handled after they are bought.

> If gun manufacturers could take back their guns (ban users) when somebody threatened illegal violence the analogy would be closer, and it would be quite reasonable to expect them to do so.

Except creating a new profile on reddit is trivial, so "banning" is a weak threat at best.

In doing so you lose your social connections and any moderator privileges you have; so it's not without threat.

Just make XYZ_2, XYZ_3 etc. Communicate on different platform whose username is which. Have new usernames assigned original privileges of their owner.

It’s a more effective deterrent than doing nothing at all.

> It’s a more effective deterrent than doing nothing at all.

Is it? You seem pretty certain of this, so how can you be sure banning just wouldn't galvanize them further? Your line of reasoning is exactly why Fox news was created, and now look where the US is.

The idea that these "hate speech" venues have caused deaths is thrown around quite often, but I wonder if a connection has been found in even a single case. Gaping chasm between rhetoric and reality.

I wonder how many lives have been saved because hateful people on public forums had their views challenged and were able to change themselves.

My idealistic younger self would like to believe many people have done so on different issues, but what I've been noticing on the sidelines is that it seems to be working the opposite way: people are reinforcing beliefs and acquiring beliefs they didn't previously have by way of conforming to ideological purity ("you're part of the problem", "if you do X stay away from me") or cynical pragmatism (centrism/compromising as a thing for "cucks").

Here are a few off the top of my head: the death of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville last summer, the nine people killed by Dylann Roof in Charleston, and the two killed by Jeremy Christian in Portland Oregon after they interrupted his anti-Muslim rants. Note that the perpetrators in all these cases are on record as citing racial, ethnic, or religious hatred as motives for their acts.

You are being incredibly disengenious.

For all these cases, there it is not shown that they going to online forums radicalized these characters and caused them to kill people.

Just as you would not say there is blood on Black activist forums hands because that one radical guy killed all those cops last year.

Unless there is a clear link that people in these forums are encouraging terrorism, the forums are not responsible

Just as you would not say there is blood on Black activist forums hands because that one radical guy killed all those cops last year.

Funnily enough, extreme right-wingers do say this.

>I wonder if a connection has been found in even a single case.

I'd argue that the psychopaths who're attracted to such forums have their hateful beliefs reinforced and amplified by them. Whether or not they would've ended up killing people even if they'd never started hanging out on those forums is hard to say, but it seems pretty naïve to me to assume that those "hate speech" venues didn't have an effect on them.

See the many murderers who've been active on Stormfront for example.

White Homicide Worldwide, SPLC (2014) [pdf]: https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/d6_legacy_file...

> I'd argue that the psychopaths who're attracted to such forums have their hateful beliefs reinforced and amplified by them

I agree. I think the echo chamber effect is well documented at this point, and it's something that's happening even in mainstream media.

I would still hesitate to say that we should lay the blame on these forums though, or undeniably conclude that that's where we should be making changes to prevent such problems. If we hold free speech as a principle in high regard, we shouldn't so easily sacrifice it.

>I would still hesitate to say that we should lay the blame on these forums though, or undeniably conclude that that's where we should be making changes to prevent such problems.

I wouldn't say lay the blame on the forums for the actions for their members, however I do think it would be somewhat justified to lay the blame on forums for knowingly allowing these hateful ideologies to spread to more and more people due to their lack of action/moderation. It's been shown that banning hateful subreddits reduces the amount of hate speech on the site by users who used to post on those banned subreddits.[1] It's hard to say if those users simply took their hate speech to some other website, but even if they did their sphere of influence would then most likely be much smaller than it was on reddit.

>If we hold free speech as a principle in high regard, we shouldn't so easily sacrifice it.

This is a difficult topic but I think that there definitely should be some limits. After all we're talking about what rules private companies should have for what kind of content is allowed on their websites (i.e. what content they are okay with hosting on their servers) and not what kind of content the government should allow/disallow.

A viewpoint I found interesting (and reasonable) in regards to limiting speech is Karl Popper's paradox of tolerance.

"Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant."

[1] http://comp.social.gatech.edu/papers/cscw18-chand-hate.pdf

> It's been shown that banning hateful subreddits reduces the amount of hate speech on the site by users who used to post on those banned subreddits.

But as you say, it doesn't necessarily reduce hate or hate speech overall. In fact, it may even galvanize it further. How do you think the US got all of those conservative news networks like Fox? Because rich conservatives got tired of their opinions being ignored or silenced (from their perspective).

Great quote by Popper, but the problem is that there is great intolerance on both sides of the spectrum, left and right. The extreme left on reddit is not being silenced the way the extreme right is. Both sides are intolerant of facts and rational argument that doesn't adhere to their dogma, so why is only one being pushed out?

I read some studies awhile back that suggested that centrism appears to be no more or less persuasive to most people than extremist positions. People will latch on to specific things that resonate, and just adopt the rest thinking that said resonance means they belong in this group, which ultimately leads to polarization around a small number of extreme positions that are irreconcilable. Takeaway facts: a) that seems to explain the US's politics over the past few decades, b) bipartisan-type compromise may not be a stable condition, and c) centrism is itself a position that needs its own advocates.

> The extreme left on reddit is not being silenced the way the extreme right is.

I think this is a false equivalence. The extreme right is deeply racist/homophobic/sexist, denies science, advocates for a theocracy and for the shutting down of government services to the extent that millions of people will die. Say what you want about the "extreme" left's social policies but they're really not on that level.

> The extreme right is deeply racist/homophobic/sexist, denies science, advocates for a theocracy and for the shutting down of government services to the extent that millions of people will die.

Would you like me to point you to the videos of extreme left protests assaulting professors on campuses for wanting to host an open debate on topics they find offensive? Or videos on extreme left protestors trying to shut down any scientific discussion that raises the fact of differences between men and women.

I can also show you the recent amendments to the Ontario law in which it is now illegal to not use non-gendered pronouns. I'm sure you've heard of Peterson and his crusade, and while he's got some kooky views on some matters, he's not entirely wrong about the dangers of our human rights tribunals and how they will apply this law (see the Lindsay Shepherd incident where they already tried to censor an academic discussion on this issue).

I can also show you plenty of instances of organized campaigns to harass, disrupt and ruin people's lives for off-hand comments made online.

Sorry, but it's no longer a false equivalence. The extreme left has become just as extreme, just as anti-science, and just as dangerous as the extreme right. Note that we're not talking about ordinary leftist/liberal policies of social programs, and such, we're talking extreme left that, for instance, denies even the existence of gender and for whom denying this fact simply makes you an evil tyrant that they seek to literally ruin.

> I can also show you the recent amendments to the Ontario law in which it is now illegal to not use non-gendered pronouns.

No need, I'm familiar with it. Here's what they themselves say about it:

--- Is it a violation of the Code to not address people by their choice of pronoun? The law recognizes that everyone has the right to self-identify their gender and that “misgendering” is a form of discrimination.

As one human rights tribunal said: “Gender …may be the most significant factor in a person’s identity. It is intensely personal. In many respects how we look at ourselves and define who we are starts with our gender.”[1] The Tribunal found misgendering to be discriminatory in a case involving police, in part because the police used male pronouns despite the complainant’s self-identification as a trans woman.

Refusing to refer to a trans person by their chosen name and a personal pronoun that matches their gender identity, or purposely misgendering, will likely be discrimination when it takes place in a social area covered by the Code, including employment, housing and services like education. The law is otherwise unsettled as to whether someone can insist on any one gender-neutral pronoun in particular.

Gender-neutral pronouns may not be well known. Some people may not know how to determine what pronoun to use. Others may feel uncomfortable using gender-neutral pronouns. Generally, when in doubt, ask a person how they wish to be addressed. Use “they” if you don’t know which pronoun is preferred.[2] Simply referring to the person by their chosen name is always a respectful approach. ---

This is completely reasonable. I identify as male, and if someone kept using she/her/hers pronouns or it/its pronouns to refer to me I'd be offended and rightly so. There's a lot of misinformation about this specific issue, all of it pushed by right-wing "news" outlets. Don't fall for it.

> Peterson and his crusade...

Please don't give this rage merchant any more air time. He purposefully distorts and reduces complex issues for self-aggrandizement. If you're really curious about the issues he raises, just dig into to gender and race studies.

> Assaults, organized campaigns to harass...

I'm not going to minimize the assaults. I am gonna say that they don't compare to the KKK or any of a number of radical right groups. The left simply has nothing with the scale or history of those groups.

But re: organized campaigns to harass, ruin people's lives online, etc., again a twitter campaign is nothing like bills to deny you control of your body (reproductive rights). It's nothing like a racist criminal justice system. It's nothing like a society where LGBT people experience mind numbing levels of sexual assault (https://www.hrc.org/resources/sexual-assault-and-the-lgbt-co...).

Again I'm not saying there aren't excesses on the left. I'm sure there have been cases where someone didn't deserve to be fired, and the assaults are inexcusable. But there is simply no equivalence between the left and the right in modern western societies.

> I identify as male, and if someone kept using she/her/hers pronouns or it/its pronouns to refer to me I'd be offended and rightly so.

I agree, you'd be right to be offended. But "offence" is not the real problem, the problem is that you can then have someone charged and fined just because you were offended. How do you justify that additional step? Why am I not free to identify you as a Datsun, if I so choose? Is it really a human right, a moral imperative, that I must address you in a way that you prefer, rather than simply a matter of etiquette?

I'm familiar with the gender and race issues at play, and about the issues surrounding C16 and various people's takes on it, and Peterson was actually right about this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o01ebidd1IU

And he's hardly the only one that raised concerns about it. And I don't mean sources from right wing news outlets. There are already a few cases of comedians being fined for jokes which, while probably a little cruel, still seems like a troubling implication of these kinds of laws.

> The left simply has nothing with the scale or history of those groups.

Indeed they don't have the history. The scale has been increasing though, and the ultimate trajectory should be obvious, and you should find this trend troubling.

> But re: organized campaigns to harass, ruin people's lives online, etc., again a twitter campaign is nothing like bills to deny you control of your body (reproductive rights). It's nothing like a racist criminal justice system. It's nothing like a society where LGBT people experience mind numbing levels of sexual assault

Except you're being disingenuous in ascribing all of these to the right, and also to some form of organized or malicious intent.

While I think abortion restrictions are stupid, from the right's moral framework it's literally murder. So this is not a malicious campaign to restrict women's reproductive rights the way you've framed it. You're simply not dealing with their philosophy on its own terms.

And while the racial disparities in the criminal justice system are absolutely alarming, are you suggesting it's overtly, maliciously and intentionally racist? As in, right wing policy makers specifically crafted laws to keep minorities down because they believe them to be inherently inferior? Or is it possible that there are certain puritanical beliefs emblematic of the right, like disapproval of mind altering substances, that just so happen to correlate more strongly with minority demographics?

Which isn't to say that that overt, explicit racism isn't also present and influencing such policies, but you're grouping a lot of people into this malicious category and calling them all "right wing", and I'm not convinced that that's warranted.

> I'm sure there have been cases where someone didn't deserve to be fired

Also, I just wanted to note that I don't really buy into this argument. I don't see why someone "deserves to be fired" for their political views, no matter how racist, as long as they don't let their views impact the performance of their duties. So the Kim Davis' of the world absolutely deserve to be fired, but the plethora of other examples I can dig up for you, not so much.

The justification is often that such shaming campaigns are natural corrective measures, but I think more often the complete opposite happens: people are driven from moderate positions to the opposite extremist positions, because the people harassing them are just so unreasonable, and moderate leftists like yourself have zero sympathy for them. This is one way radicalization can happen.

> I don't see why someone "deserves to be fired" for their political views, no matter how racist, as long as they don't let their views impact the performance of their duties.

I agree if by "political views" you mean things like monetary policy or foreign policy. But I personally couldn't ask women to work with people who think they shouldn't be in the workplace, or LGBT people to work with people who think they're irredeemable abominations, or people of color to work with people who think they're inferior because of their race. To me, these views disqualify you from being a productive member of society and I don't really classify them as political views. For example, I don't think anti-semitism is a political view, I think it's just hatred and bigotry. Further, I'm mildly offended when I see people equating "bigotry against conservatives" with "bigotry against historically oppressed groups", because those oppressed groups have suffered intense physical harm. Conservatives really have not. Another reason this whole thing is a false equivalence.

> people are driven from moderate positions to the opposite extremist positions, because the people harassing them are just so unreasonable, and moderate leftists like yourself have zero sympathy for them. This is one way radicalization can happen.

Mostly I agree, but I don't think that in general "the people who are harassing them" are being unreasonable. I think culture in the US is largely sexist, racist, and homophobic and we've gotten used to it as we've grown up in it. It's not hard to find someone saying something offensive. I do think it's a shame that otherwise good people are caught up in stuff like this. But I think it's worse that women, LGBT people, and people of color have had to live in this culture.

> But I personally couldn't ask women to work with people who think they shouldn't be in the workplace, or LGBT people to work with people who think they're irredeemable abominations, or people of color to work with people who think they're inferior because of their race.

I understand the distaste, but as long as they don't actually harass, abuse or otherwise mistreat them, what's the real problem here? That you don't like their thoughts? Are we policing people's thoughts now?

> I don't really classify them as political views.

Fine, cultural views, philosophical views, the game doesn't matter because you change the words. If you were working with someone from another culture, say, Saudi Arabia, you'd make allowances for cultural differences. Right and left really are different cultural perspectives, and your position is that we should make no allowances here simply because we were all raised geographically close to each other, despite our cultural differences. Or you're saying we can make some allowances, but not others, but then I would ask, why those allowances specifically?

> It's not hard to find someone saying something offensive. I do think it's a shame that otherwise good people are caught up in stuff like this.

But why the focus only on good people? My point is that harassing even the bad people just drives them further into a badder circle that will take them in and shelter them, because they see themselves as victimized. Whether they're right or wrong is immaterial, because it ultimately leads to more polarization, not understanding and reconciliation.

I think you're focusing too much on "bigotry against conservatives" as some kind of wrong in and of itself, the way you view bigotry against the historically oppressed, but that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that bigotry of any kind probably yields just more bigotry, and eliminating bigotry can only be achieved by exposure and intermingling among people with differences. If you're continually driving away people who initially hate you, they will simply continue to hate you, instead of coming to see you as a person.

You could argue that, but there's no real evidence for it and it's been studied with music, television and video games. All have been blamed, using the argument that you'd have to be naive to assume that killing people in a video game doesn't have an effect on someone's likelihood of killing people in real life, or listening to angry music makes you more likely to hurt people.

The list of murderers who've listened to 2Pac is quite long, for example.

I don't know about the other media, but the effects of TV are both disastrous and thoroughly demonstrated. IQ, SAT scores, obesity, teen pregnancy, violence, tobacco… Depending on what you watch and how often, all can be increased. All won't show on each individual, but the statistical effect is far from negligible.

As for video games… that's a tricky one. I recall an anecdote about two teens holding up a bakery at gun point. The baker at some point made a move that was a bit too sudden, and the teen shot him in the forehead. One possible facilitator is very similar to a soldier's training: simple conditioning about shooting the bad guys as soon as they threaten your avatar in your favourite FPS. For all I know the teen didn't even intend to shoot.

Of course, it takes more than a lifetime of violent video games to actually point a gun at someone. But a tiny nudge can sometimes push you over the edge. By the way, I expect the nudge will get bigger with VR. (So will the benefits, I expect.)

While awful, one of the problems with that facilitator is that you don't shoot the enemy when they threaten you in an FPS. You shoot them when you see them.

Correct, I'm not sure how well that would translate. Probably not very well.

Correlation does not prove causation. Maybe people with those lifestyles happen to enjoy TV more than others.

> Correlation does not prove causation

The host of scientists who conducted their studies know this. Which is why they did many such studies (some of them very large scale), controlled for confounding variables, modified the parameters across time in both direction (watching more and watching less this and that kind of show), and of course reproduced most of the results.

Go tell them "correlation does not prove causation", and they will laugh in your face. We're long past correlation by now. Causation itself has been thoroughly demonstrated.

Thanks for the explanation, I will look into it. I could see how media may be a reinforcing cycle for some, similar to how people may be susceptible to alcoholism differently.

Another causation / anti-causation question is what effect porn (possibly specifically rape-fantasy porn) has on rape rates. There are two obvious arguments that point in opposite directions. The first is that rape-fantasy porn acclimates the user to the idea of sexual violence and makes the user more likely to commit it; the second is that rape-fantasy porn gives the user a safe outlet for their baser desires and makes them _less_ likely to commit actual rape. AFAIK we can say that access to porn, and all kinds of porn, has increased a great deal, while rape rates have gone pretty steadily down, during the last few decades; a graph on Wikipedia shows annual U.S. rape rates going from 2.5 per 1000 down to 0.5 per 1000. This doesn't prove the second theory—I think violent crime in general also went down—but it at least shows that, if the first theory is correct, the effect it describes is much smaller than everything else that affects rape rates.

I can think of arguments for why white-nationalist forums would decrease the likelihood that the white nationalists who find them would go and kill non-whites. (a) Such a person might feel relieved to find that there are others who feel similarly, and therefore not feel like their cause has no one working for it and they need to do something spectacular and terrifying to attract attention. (b) They might have few friends in real life, and they can't fully show themselves to the ones they do have, so they have no truly close friends. But on the forum, they meet fellows who share their beliefs and feel they can trust, and then they make what feel like close friends. And now they'll know that, if they kill someone, that carries a high risk of getting thrown in jail and cut off from their friends; that extra disincentive might be enough to stop them. (c) On that note, the most visible and admired participants in the forum are not going to be those who go out and kill people, because (I assume) people can't continue posting when they're in jail. The general incentives of the forum probably point towards being a blowhard who doesn't do anything.

This is why I will only accept the conclusion "Letting white nationalists gather on a particular forum will cause more white-nationalist-perpetrated killings" if I see a decent study showing it.

(I think one of the official basic arguments for freedom of association and of the press is that, if you prevent people with grievances from associating and publishing their views, they will go underground and then get violent.)

(Incidentally, I do like it when one of my possible conclusions is that, in order to reduce the likelihood of people doing terrible things, the solution is to work to raise everyone's standard of living, so they'll be too comfortable to want to risk losing what they have.)

That question is being hotly debated in the Canadian press at the moment, due to the actions of a terrorist.[0]

0: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-city-mosque-al...

If words do not lead to actions or changes in behavior then why are people bothering to post here?

And if words never contribute to actions then there are allot of correlations to explain from the American revolutionary pamphleteers to the Zimmerman telegram to Jihadist Imams to Coca Cola commercials.

Now maybe this is a price we're wiling to pay for unlimited free speech, I dunno. But we mustn't convince ourselves there is absolutely zero causation between words and deeds.

> If words do not lead to actions or changes in behavior then why are people bothering to post here?

Because people like the self-satisfaction of thinking they are right on the internet.

Feeble minds desire leadership. In the absence of leadership they will devolve into chaos and the least feeble among them will discover that they can lead the mob. In the absence of leadership.

Lead your community or it will destroy you. Put another way, make the future you want. This applies first and foremost to humanity. The clever devices of metal and silicon are secondary. Always.

The argument is not the same. You're comparing the banning of a tool, a gun, to the moderation of a group who's existence is based on the belief that one race of people should 'dominate' all others. "very intelligent people subscribe to the former argument" because the arguments are different.

>...blames gun manufacturers for school shootings...

If a new item today entered the market and was misused to the tune of 30,000 deaths per year. Misused far more often than legitimately like stopping an intruder. And the manufacturer knew in advance this would be the outcome, I think we would be right to blame them.

There are many extremely dangerous substances with legitimate uses that would instantly be widely abused that we wisely restrict. I can see no metric that puts most personal weapons outside that category.

> Misused far more often than legitimately like stopping an intruder. And the manufacturer knew in advance this would be the outcome,

Yeah, I'm not convinced. If enough people enjoyed using the item in question recreationally, there'd be enough pushback to an outright ban.

> I think we would be right to blame them.

This doesn't follow from the premises. I'd wager that every item has an ethical use.

> There are many extremely dangerous substances with legitimate uses that would instantly be widely abused that we wisely restrict.

"Restrict" does not entail "forbid". There are already "gun restrictions", just as there are "chemical restrictions" and so on with all the other items you're no doubt thinking of.

>Yeah, I'm not convinced. If enough people enjoyed using the item in question recreationally, there'd be enough pushback to an outright ban.

No doubt. Especially if a large industry emerged to service that recreation.

>This doesn't follow from the premises. I'd wager that every item has an ethical use.

Normally a manufacturer does not get away with a product that he knows will cause 30k deaths per year just by saying that behavior, which is the most common behavior, constitutes misuse. But the ethics of that behavior apparently varies from person to person.

> "Restrict" does not entail "forbid". There are already "gun restrictions", just as there are "chemical restrictions" and so on with all the other items you're no doubt thinking of.

Bulk caffeine is massively more restricted then AK47s

> Normally a manufacturer does not get away with a product that he knows will cause 30k deaths per year just by saying that behavior, which is the most common behavior, constitutes misuse.

Is it the most common behaviour for guns though? Because something like 1 in 3 households in America has a gun, but 1 in 3 households does not house a murderer.

> Bulk caffeine is massively more restricted then AK47s

Just for the record, I never said existing gun restrictions were sufficient, just that they do exist!

> Is it the most common behaviour for guns though? Because something like 1 in 3 households in America has a gun, but 1 in 3 households does not house a murderer.

But do they do anything other than sit on a shelf? Generally after having provided a flash of false psychological comfort at the moment of purchase, that's where they go and stay. At most they might be used to shoot beer cans in an empty field once a year. So while mothballs and clocks might be doing something by sitting, it's hard to see that of high capacity weapons. Particular since they themselves are much more often stolen from those shelves than used to prevent theft.

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