> That more or less already worked and everyone tries to reduce dependence on fossil fuel, so this isn't even a problem.
Given that there is still large scale climate change denial and opposition to renewable power, I don't think you can be confident in that statement. Until recently, one of the largest polluters & economic powers in the world had a government that actively promoted fossil fuels over renewables and denied the fundamentals of anthropomorphic climate change. Environmental awareness & harm reduction is far from a given.
You will never reach 100% consensus on any topic and acknowledging it does also not mean that you have to support certain policies.
Don't point your finger at those that are in denial of your perspective, it won't help you solve anything.
If you try to ban them, they will get secondary support at least from people that support human rights like freedom of expression, which is also valid for wrong or stupid opinions.
So you have to go the difficult route of making a good argument for your position and convince others. There is no shortcut here.
The mere fact that our collective behavior is what is causing this means that at some point there will be a fight for the steering wheel.
Humanity appears incapable of collective action. Any future historians, perhaps some kind of advanced insectoid races archeologists, will say that humanities Achilles heel was being incapable of collective action.
Piquing that uniquely human pride and arrogance is a deliberate strategy by some, but the consequences are dismissed by the same, as they are unable to grasp that this will lead to their own downfall too. Even the most dystopian arms dealer must eventually eat.
There is a parallel here with the paradox of tolerance, in that allowing equal free speech is definitely not an effective & consistent way of reaching the proper & correct consensus. Free speech is too often an academic argument used to justify our inhumanity.
For many people free speech seems to mean equal airtime & consideration for opposition minority & fringe ideas. But when the majority consensus of experts in a scientific field say one thing, providing equal public airtime to the fringe opposition is not accurate nor is it good education. Opposing ideas circulate within expert circles and it is there that they should be reviewed, not presented to the public as equal worth to the majority of other evidence.
I think the articles main position is that if facebook says that it is committed to climate action, then it needs to enforce its own policies around that, which means stopping misinformation & disinformation that does not align with the majority consensus of experts. To me that's an uncontroversial position.
However I have no expectation that facebook has the capabilities needed to ever fully & correctly enforce its policies and to expect it to do so is unrealistic wishful thinking. Unfortunately.
I disagree profoundly with this assessment. I believe that a well researched and articulated position doesn't need to fear objection at all, it will grow with it in any case.
There are interests at play here that will deny established knowledge for self-serving purposes. These conflicts of interest need transparency. That is as true for companies as it is for any committee.
Even within a single mind we see people regularly holding two contradictory beliefs and accepting both of them, so if the marketplace of ideas fails in a single mind then I think is has little luck when it encounters large populations.
But I have to compare it to the alternatives and those do not convince at all.
There is no purely rational and selfless comittee. How would such a group be less self-interested and less vulnerable to group-think? Or less ideological or prejudiced? Because they have some self-imposed mission to a higher cause? Who doesn't?
You can have your benevolent dictator that handles logistical problems of exposure to ideas, but the less error prone way to get the best ideas implemented is a mechanism to boot him out, or in other words, his ideas need justification on the marketplace of ideas. So I must always allow objections.
In the pro-choise vs pro-life case, should the wrong side be blocked from publishing adds?
What about drinking alcohol at 18? It's legal in most of the world.
Who is going to decide in each case? Are you sure they will have the same opinion than you?
If it wasn't facebook, they'd find it elsewhere. Majority of the people is already opinionated and irreversibly ignorant.
There are actually rules against false advertising, but they are ineffective. So people should have no illusion on content in ads. So much can be transported in education.
Are you sure? The spread of batshit crazy and easily debunkable conspiracy theories such as Q, flat earth, Pizzagate, Covid is fake, etc. and empty populist political movements and people ( UKIP, Brexit, AfD, Trump, FN, etc.) would imply otherwise.
Too many people are thoroughly incapable of forming their own opinion based on reality and actual provable facts.
There is no rational reason to believe this. True. But there is no rational reason to believe "CDC/Scientists can be trusted" as well.
So do you consider the statement "CDC can be trusted" to be a batshit conspiracy theory?
So many things that underlie society’s ability to function, and one damages them at our collective peril.
The boy who cried wolf is a story that teaches which moral lesson ?
You stop and ask for directions, what if the person deliberately lied to you and sent you to a dangerous place?
There is an implicit web of trust and kindness that comes from our ancient past and underlies all of society. Capitalism and political posturing are poisoning the well of all our drinking water.
Ukip, Brexit, AfD, Trump, FN are different phenomena in my opinion.
Some of Brexits arguments were objectively correct and there are no certainly correct or wrong opinions here. Especially on hot button terms like sovereignty and self-determination. It depends on what level you look. Self-determination against the EU or Russia/China/US? There are different answers here and none of them is entirely true. But the opposition just shut them down, so people responded in kind. That it was basically 50:50 is surely accidental, but I like to see it as a hint.
The AfD is radicalized now, but it was firstly headed by someone that has been vindicated by projections other economists failed at. He isn't in the party anymore, but what do you think happened with those that shared his beliefs? Those were correct too, what do you think they believe about their opposition today?
These beliefs aren't mine, but I understand their distrust. In many cases it is distrust that was earned, not by their failure to form an opinion, quite the contrary their opposition was in many cases completely incapable to understand the nature of their opposition, which paints a shadow on their own judgements.
The indignation against people not being able to think is misplaced in many cases, that is also true for the other way around of course.