Comment by belorn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by belorn | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Flat earth conspiracies has not poisoned any well. When Mythbusters tested some of the theories we also gained as society a bit by showing the scientific process in the face of conspiracy theories.

A corner stone in science, which goes far back in history, is trust. In order to understand anything we have to put trust in established facts, in experts and common understanding. Part of building science is building trust, and censorship has a strong negative impact on trust. If we go back to the analogy of poisoning the well of knowledge, censorship destroys people trust in the water itself.

To take an example of why this new Youtube policy might be problematic, could we still have a video about the risk in Postal voting? In the UK election in 1990, it was estimated that 50% of postal voting arriving from Ireland was fraudulent. Trust in the voting system was at an all time low. As a response the voting system was changed and identification became a requirement in order to vote. Trust in the election system went massively up, and suspicion of fraud went down. A decade later the UK government removed some parts of the requirements, but for Ireland the requirement still remain today. Should an opinion that the US could learn from the UK past experience with postal votes and voter trust be censored, or would it poison the ability to discern fact from fiction?

What if the President of the United States suddenly started supporting flat earthers?

I think suddenly then they would be able to poison the well.

Science is a bad example because the process of science can be quantified. We can argue about it but basically can quantify what is or isn’t a valid scientific experiment.

This creates a “good faith” environment because everyone has to play by the same rules.

Outside of science this is harder to achieve. If one side argues in bad faith, they can just keep making shit up or doing things to undermine the discourse itself, like talk over someone else or bully them.

Freedom of speech kind of both depends on and is in conflict with culturally enforced norms and restrictions around who is able to say what when, and how loud.

Bear in mind that when our classic idea of free speech was developed, it was simply assumed by most that it would be white, propertied men doing the talking. Point being there are assumptions behind these conceptions with are important to consider.

Most of us don’t want white, properties dudes to be the only ones talking, but no one who cared about any form of democracy or equality would want to hang out in a town square where everyone is just yelling all the time and beating up other people so they can be the only one talking.

Restriction per se isn’t bad. It’s all about how it’s done, and why.

What we are seeing now is a shifting both of cultural norms and the infrastructure of our media environment which means that “free speech” no longer has some of the constraints and restrictions which enabled it to perform the truth-seeking function we desire it to.

> Science is a bad example because the process of science can be quantified. We can argue about it but basically can quantify what is or isn’t a valid scientific experiment.

The demarcation problem is essentially scientists disagreeing that we can sharply divide science from non-science.

The replication crisis is evidence that not all "science" is actually science.

> If one side argues in bad faith, they can just keep making shit up or doing things to undermine the discourse itself, like talk over someone else or bully them.

Silencing one side of a debate is also undermining the discourse.

> What we are seeing now is a shifting both of cultural norms and the infrastructure of our media environment which means that “free speech” no longer has some of the constraints and restrictions which enabled it to perform the truth-seeking function we desire it to.

Actually what we are seeing now is the democratization of free speech so that an oligarchic elite is no longer the only group who is able to make their voice heard. In this light it is unsurprising that the oligarchic elite wants restrictions on speech.

> Actually what we are seeing now is the democratization of free speech so that an oligarchic elite is no longer the only group who is able to make their voice heard.

Exactly who do you think the major donors to the Trump campaign and the Republican Party are?

Do you actually believe these election-fraud lies were spontaneous, as opposed to something people were whipped into believing by a propaganda campaign funded by the wealthy?

Money in politics is a problem for both parties, not just Republicans, but, your argument is bullshit.

Thanks for the reply. Do you honestly think this is the best way to reach mutual understanding? I'm not even sure what you're disagreeing with.

I am disagreeing with bullshit and my goal here isn’t mutual understanding but to call out bullshit for what it is.

Case in point:

Do you yourself believe Joe Biden won the election, and that there was not any meaningful “election fraud” or whatever? Yes or no.

Anything other than a yes-or-no answer to my question is bullshit.

> Do you yourself believe Joe Biden won the election

I refuse to answer on the principle that I don't submit to religious tests. You can call this bullshit if you like, you've said you're not here for mutual understanding and so I understand that you're not interested in my point of view.

> there was not any meaningful “election fraud” or whatever?

Of course there was meaningful election fraud. Any fraud is meaningful because it challenges the idea that free and fair elections are possible.

> Anything other than a yes-or-no answer to my question is bullshit.

Those were two questions, a yes-or-no answer wouldn't have even explained which one I was answering.

Good faith and bad faith environment is about trust. When that trust break down you either find methods to regain trust or discourse becomes impossible.

So what strategies works most effective in restoring trust? We can learn by looking at the effective ways people have done in the past to create the opposite, increase distrust and conflict. Assuming bad faith based on race and class is very effective in creating environments of distrust, both on internet forums and elsewhere. Preemptively exercise power in unpredictable way, and enforce unclear rules in an inconsistent and nontransparent way also works wonder to further conflicts. Displaying symbols of ideological values and focus on tribal differences can effectively increase conflict over multiple generations.

You can not censor people into trust, and thus censorship is not a tool to create a good faith environment. You can remove people from the discourse until only people who belong to the same tribe is left, where every single participant trust the others because of psudo-kinship. Free speech, along with concepts like human rights and liberty, is however centered around common rules being enforced consistently in order to create trust among people who would otherwise be mistrusting of each other. You let the other side talk in order to create a common trust that they will let you talk.

> You let the other side talk in order to create a common trust that they will let you talk.

Oh they’ve been talking. We’ve all heard.

> Good faith and bad faith environment is about trust.

Not so. Someone acting in bad faith is by definition untrustworthy.

You seem to want to equivocate. I don’t know if YouTube choosing to censor this content is wise, but since the content is false, spreads disinformation on purpose, nutty, and dangerous to democracy and the lives of civil servants, I can understand why.

Firehosing also destroys trust. That’s its purpose.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood

Reply on news.ycombinator.com