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from the I-Disapprove-of-What-You-Say,-But-I-Will-Defend-to-the-Death-Your-Right-to-Say-It dept.
From an editorial in the Otago Daily Times out of New Zealand, Censorship a Trojan Horse:
It's an oft-cited maxim that the news media is the "fourth estate" upon which a healthy democracy stands.
It ensures the three traditional powers of state — the legislature, executive and judiciary — can be critiqued, challenged and curbed from quietly drifting into the arms of corruption and authoritarianism.
A free, fair, open and uncensored media is an antidote to state power and, for all its failings (and there are many), should be treasured as such. There are many countries around the world whose people would give anything for such a freedom.
Yet calls for the banning of certain opinion pieces, cartoons and commentary have risen in recent months, especially from those using social media, a world where such talk is becoming a trend. It is a trend we must confront.
Censorship is to suppress the harmful, the unacceptable, the obscene and the threatening from the media and other forms of public communication. Like a virus attacking democracy from the inside out, it was traditionally the tool of the dictator, though it is one used by many in power.
[...] It pays to query what those demanding censorship — be they celebrities, social-media activists or anybody else — see their ultimate goal as being.
To reduce hurt? To make the world a better place? Possibly, and those motivations are laudable. But the method employed to achieve them is not.
While censorship may be meant as a figurative horse upon which a better future rides, inside the belly of that horse lurks an army of conformity, quite capable of unwitting oppression.
History shows what happens when the fourth estate is no longer free to table all opinions.
It is a bleak picture. Without the disinfectant of exposure, power and ideals tend to corrupt even the most seemingly incorruptible.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Tuesday October 02 2018, @12:41PM (10 children)
And the use of those other words to hide what you are doing is a variety of propaganda.
Or we can just not get worked up that other people have different opinions and thus, not have the problem in the first place. It's stupid to silence people because we don't want to accidentally brush against their opinions and feel this OCD urge to correct them.
Another problem that is completely missed here is what happens when the people that "refuse to acknowledge" reality are the ones in charge of the censorship apparatus? Suddenly those double-edged swords don't look so good when they're used against you by the very people you're trying to silence.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:41PM (4 children)
The present day problem is the left sees itself as a religion and everyone and everything is and must be in its universalist church. It seems normal that a Catholic church would never tolerate a parishioner standing up during the priests sermon claiming this triune god stuff seems a bit ridiculous, thats naturally resulting in the ushers kicking the alternative viewpoint out of the church, possibly permanently. That's how the left sees censorship. Its not a matter of logic or reasoning or tolerance its merely religious purity. You'd have better luck trying to rationally and scientifically talk a muslim into eating bacon than in trying to make a leftist not make every argument based on some variant of "I believe".
The measure of a mental model, such as "leftism as a religion", is in the scientific method if it makes predictions better than other models and has a reasonable explanation. Thus the idea can be hated by at least half the country, while still being obviously correct and highly useful IRL to explain and predict behavior. "This seems scientifically reliable" is a totally different mindset than a similar declaration of "I believe ..." or sophistry and logical fallacy threats like "Anyone who agrees is a nazi".
I'm just saying you can't have a logical debate in a scientific progress sense when one side is a religious fanatic hell bent on re-enacting the inquisition. That means the whole censorship debate at a rational intellectual level is pointless. Might is right and the winner will write the history is the only logic actually involved in the discussion.
The truly dangerous problem with leftism is historical religions encode values and ethics that at least worked well enough to survive for thousands of years, even if those values might be a little creaky today, whereas leftism is not necessarily non-suicidal at a civilization scale. A morality and ethics based mostly on hedonism and logical fallacy MIGHT be successful on a civilizational scale, but almost certainly will not be. "Lets do what doesn't work but makes deviants feel good" is not really a winning strategy historically for civilizations.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Tuesday October 02 2018, @10:34PM (3 children)
I don't think the left sees itself as a religion. They certainly act like one on most issues, but they don't see themselves that way.
It's part of the same self-deception that sees itself as democratic and freedom-loving while accepting authoritarian rule and conformity to their own tribal rules.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by jmorris on Wednesday October 03 2018, @03:32AM
That is mostly because they all know the scam they are running depends upon, at all cost and sacrificing all other goals if required, the masses never getting wise to the reality that Progressivism is a religion. Their great hack of the Constitution is perverting the prohibition against a State Church into a total exclusion of all religion from the public square, while at the same time establishing their own "not a religion" as the official Faith, where all knees must bend toward its idols, all schools must teach its creed and all laws conform to its moral code.
Sorry, lack of a god or gods does not make an otherwise totalizing theory of the universe, Man's place in it and a comprehensive moral code a non-religion. Otherwise there are a lot of other fine candidates for being deemed non-religions and permitted into the public square. But of course they aren't and won't be permitted because we have the One True Faith already established as the State Religion. It just doesn't call itself that. And that is ok because it is a Lie. Every smaller lie in its service is an act of worship offered up unto it.
Thee and me may nor may not believe in the Devil, but it is a virtual certainty that they do, at least in the higher ranks. They would find it both amusing and useful to keep the minions in the dark, so to speak. They wouldn't have the moral code they do any other way because it is a perfect negation of Enlightenment Christianity's code. That can't be random chance, it was a choice. It also provides a good clue as to when this particular Devil cult got spun up.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday October 03 2018, @11:19AM
Of course that can descend in to "if a tree falls in the forest..." arguments, in the sense that if the model very accurately predicts future behavior, the exact internal state may not matter as long as its a realistic situation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @03:13PM
Authoritarianism of either color is always a sign of panic, of feelings of being endangered or overwhelmed. "The end is neigh!", "The history is going in wrong direction!", "Our principles be damned, we need desperate measures NOW!".
I wouldn't be so triumphant and smug if I was on the right. This happened before and will happen again, to all worldviews which achieve establishment status. The present time may be the 1960's of the 1960's, but next 1960's will probably come on time.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Immerman on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:55PM (4 children)
One problem that ignores is that the vast bulk of humanity is extremely bad at critical analysis of data - a trend worsened by the fact that there are no longer any reliable sources of information - not since the war over lead pollution showed the way to thoroughly corrupting the scientific process.
What actually happens, for pretty much everybody, is that you end up believing whatever a critical mass of people you interact with express. Which means if you've got trolls frequently expressing hateful B.S., and normal people just ignore them, then the belief in that hateful B.S. spreads into the previously normal population.
Of course censorship, like gun control, is a deeply dangerous solution requiring complete trust in the integrity of the government. It never fails to astound me that so many people call out for both, even as we watch the democratic underpinnings of our government crumble into authoritarianism.
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:33PM (2 children)
Even if we grant that as true, you're stuck with the problem that there are no reliable sources of information and hence, no basis for which to do viable censorship.
Well, obviously we'll just all believe whatever I want us to believe. Thoughtcrime will be punished, of course, for our own good.
You can completely trust me. I have an honest face.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday October 04 2018, @07:16PM (1 child)
I did not intend to promote censorship - I figured that last line would give that away. Just point out that ignoring the trolls is not a viable path to dealing with the problem. To ignore them is to surrender the social awareness to their diseased perspective.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 05 2018, @10:56AM
So yet another problem that we supposedly have because there are dumb people in the world.
Except when you're not surrendering the social awareness by doing so. It remains a valid strategy. I don't buy that ignored trolls somehow manage to make more trolls than non-ignored trolls. That certainly hasn't been a problem today.
(Score: 2) by Oakenshield on Wednesday October 03 2018, @08:42PM
Not to worry. Blockchain will solve this. :-)