We're Not Censoring You, Just Your Computer
cato-at-liberty.org
cato-at-liberty.org
This whole dialogue is ridiculous.
Newspeak, citizen.
Computers aren't A.I. yet, but they sure aren't staplers either.
Property doesn't have free speech rights, the people who own it do.
The problem is though, is that the internet is two way communication oppose to one way like most radio and television, and that attempting to "limit" it, means limiting one path of that communication, us.
I feel like regulating the internet will cause more harm than allowing a few miscreants to organize through it. The miscreants will always find a way. Like DRM, this will only hurt the innocent and ignorant, not the savvy and mischievous.
Right now, WolframAlpha is one of the nearest things we have to the "advanced Artificial Intelligence" from the article; in a certain sense, it actually does create new content. Should this have speech protections? From an ideological point of view, I think it should, but I am sure about its legal status. A question I'm not even sure about ideologically is copyright--how much copyright protection do you give to things like WolframAlpha's result pages?
Either way, the most important point is that the future where computers produce novel and useful content is not the future at all--it's now.
The conclusions one draws from the article is that it creates new content in the same manner as a web scraper, calculator, or printing press creates new content. Wolfram Alpha cannot be said to possess independent agency because it does not possess its own set of intrinsic preferences which it seeks to maximize. Rather the preferences are extrinsic and determined by humans, classifying it as a tool rather than agent.
It's important to realize that the choice isn't between "Computers have free speech" vs "The government can censor anything a computer does". The choice is between "existing free-speech precedent applies to computers" vs "computer program output falls into some other legal framework which we might not have figured out yet".
The only legal case which seems to be mentioned in either article is a nine-year-old suit against Google by someone unhappy with Google's ranking of search results. In that case, the court bought Google's argument that "Hey, our ranking can say whatever we like, free speech". But as to how far that argument goes, it hasn't yet been tested.
US free speech law means that it's very hard to be held legally liable for any consequences of your speech. On the other hand, if you build a machine, you can in many circumstances be held liable for what that machine does. Now, is a computer program more like speech, or is it more like a machine?
Second, Cato is not controlled by the Koch brothers. They were involved with the founding of the organization and recently attempted a takeover; that's now being worked out in mediation. So the premise of your ad hominem is false. Cato has a history of taking libertarian positions and criticizing both the left and the right in a principled way.
And beyond that, Julian Sanchez, the guest author here, is well known for criticizing the right (for example, he coined the phrase "epistemic closure" to refer to the lack of openness of the right to outside information, as he perceived it).
So, in brief, what you said was not actually worth mentioning. It would have been a poor argument even if true, and is actually totally false.
A part I noted in the article that is subtly trying to conflate two things, is that privacy guards are injected as a first amendment violation, in an article over the absurdity of computers being an independent actor in free speech. They may be related topics, but suggesting privacy protections are silly because they are obviously first amendment issues akin to computer speech is a bit questionable. Further the article presents some strawman arguments with regard to that particular issue - for instance the issue of hand compilation suddenly being ok for everyone worried about computer speech wrt privacy: well no, that particular issue has been hashed out many times in pre-computer eras, with things like city directories and telephone books.
Second, just because someone criticizes the left and the right both, does not matter when characterizing the things a particular organization cares to publish, particularly when that statement doesn't support the characterization of the group as a right leaning group. Plenty of "liberal" groups criticize the left, even though no one would disagree they are liberal (e.g. socialist groups regularly attack the democrats for not doing enough, bowing to centrism, whatever).
Finally, it was worth mentioning in that without such a warning about strong political leanings, one may not be inclined to be on the lookout for the above mentioned types of issue conflation. A warning about this is fair, whether you agree or disagree with the conclusion, it doesn't mean you shouldn't pay attention for it and understand implicit biases in a piece.
Shorter sophacles "I try to appear objective so don't notice that I'm applying a double standard". Namely, he'll make up stuff about Koch and their ilk but folks he agrees with get a pass. And he expects to be praised for this.
> A part I noted in the article that is subtly trying to conflate two things, is that privacy guards are injected as a first amendment violation, in an article over the absurdity of computers being an independent actor in free speech.
That part was so important that it didn't rate a mention until he got called on the Koch fallacy.
That might have been an interesting discussion, but he was more interested in poisoning the well.
Really. Mentioning that a group has typically right-wing views is considered poisoning the well. How the heck does THAT work?
You've done a hell of a lot of assuming both about me and my position based on nothing more than saying a group has right wing views. Is that somehow incorrect?
For example, you've never bothered to point out that other groups have left-wing views.
And, as I pointed out, you could have discussed the content. Instead, you went with an unfounded smear. (Edit: He intended it as a smear and believes that all right-thinking people take Koch-association as damning.)
I apologise for pointing this out.
And where do you know all this stuff about me, is the other thing I'd like to know. How the hell do you know what I do or not do in a given situation?
I made a claim about your past behavior. Maybe your future behavior will be different.
Second, this conflation was on my list of "to discuss" about the article (obviously I can't prove this, and the tone of your comment suggests you won't believe it anyway, but I hope you give me the benefit of the doubt), it just also helped me in my fallacy fallacy busting.
Third as to your fallacies:
1. I never made stuff up about Koch et al., hell I didn't even make any comments about them either way. Thanks for actually making stuff up about me (while cleverly disguising it in an accusation of the same. Further, I have never previously said anything about koch, if you google ' sophacles koch ' your comment is the first hit, followed a bunch of academic stuff and some old comment in a thread where someone else mentions Koch.
2. I tend to point out biases and conflations whether or not I agree with them. Or I try to anyway. In this case, yes I generally don't like the Cato institute, but if you look at my writing above, I think it's pretty obvious I agree with the premise that a computer is not independent of the people programming it for free speech purposes. If you would like to make a comprehensive list of my comments showing otherwise (not cherry picking the ones that don't support your statement, but say a random sampling or something), I will gladly rescind this point.
3. All your concern over poisoning the well and fake "objectiveness" certainly seems a bit wasted in the same comment where you make actually nasty statements against me, and throw a bone about how something "might have been an interesting discussion". It just makes your statement meaner, and look super defensive.
I hope you will agree with me that saying false things about the source of a piece is a fallacy, whether or not context would be relevant. The claims that Cato is a "Cato is a Koch Bros. group" or that it has a "very very far right bent" are pretty clearly false, and only a person who doesn't know much about Cato could make such claims. Context from someone who is either not very knowledgable or willfully misrepresenting the situation is not actually something anyone should pay attention to. If such statements have value, it is only by accident.
I do agree with the statement that Cato is a very, very right leaning organization. I have never seen anything from them that does not promote laissez faire style economics, and libertarian or conservative social policy (albeit more libertarian). This is to me a far right position, and generally falls in to the far-right on most political scales I have seen. Further, many of the pieces from Cato tend to support liberties for corporations and big business rather than individuals when there are questions of balancing rights - this to me also supports the classification of far right.
I'm sure there are pieces that don't fit the above pattern (I've seen them), but IMO, they are much like the "balance" parts of Fox News or MSNBC, where they are almost comical, and only seem to further highlight the main bias, by over simplifying or strawmanning the other point of view.
I think you may not have a clear picture of what libertarianism (Cato's motivating political philosophy) is. One starting point for learning more is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism
I do not always agree--in fact I rarely agree--with the Cato Institute but I think they deserve a little more credit than your comment. If you think your ideology is superior to the Cato Institute you should be eating this stuff up. Instead of ad hominems you should respond with intellectual vigor and lay down the gauntlet...
That's an increasingly muddy line nowadays. For instance, the US Tea Party platform is very very close, except the tea party trends socially conservative. (The pejorative is that the TP types are fine with small government, until it comes to gays or medicare)
The "smaller government, lower taxes" bit is something we've all heard.
But, fair enough, I was perhaps hasty in calling them far right - I'd edit or kill my OP if I still could.
There's still nothing fallacious about pointing out who backs a group, however. Group X which has ties to Y, given Z, even if Z is proven by every bit of valid and reviewed data out there, it's still valid and worth knowing that X has ties to Y. Not all bias is malicious or even willful.
So yes, it is completely 100% fallacious to try to associate his piece with them and imply that this has any bearing on its worthiness.