Isn't fighting intolerance exactly what someone who shoots up a mosque thinks they're doing?
Finding paradoxes in absolutely-defined frameworks is expected - a concept like "tolerance" can only ever serve as an imperfect heuristic. To proceed beyond its limits, you must judge by other metrics.
You mean that you don't care about discouraging the next one? That's the motivation to understand.
The point is that this "Paradox of tolerance" meme is invokable to escalate the aggression of any viewpoint - a paradox in the common (not not A -> A) logic system means anything can be proved.
We don't have a problem with the murderer and his enablers because they were intolerant, but because they committed and encouraged murder.
>You mean that you don't care about discouraging the next one?...
Can't really discourage the next one at this point unfortunately. People are going to do things like this, they have been for a while and will continue to do so in the future. These ideological extremists will be arguing back and forth forever.
All that said, there is the completely separate question of what our counter-terrorism infrastructure should be doing to identify and neutralize these threats. But that's not so much "discouraging" the next attack as it is attempting to keep the number of attacks to a minimum. Because I can pretty much guarantee, the counter-terrorism guys in NZ, or most other western nations, are not gonna be visiting suspected terrorists for the purposes of having a conversation in the hopes of "discouraging" them.
The motivation behind understanding what drives these kinds of extremists is to understand what about their view of the world drove them to start shooting people up, and then identify what led them to that point in their life and start addressing those problems such that other people don't end up in a similar position. A bit of a cat and mouse game in an abstract sense, but understanding and preventing future attacks by like-minded individuals requires understanding what leads someone to such a bad state in the first place.
This is, of course, in _addition_ to other counter-terrorism infrastructure like intelligence gathering, monitoring, security, response, etc. Many of those more well-known systems are intended to identify bad actors and prevent them from doing bad things; understanding bad actors can lead to more methods to prevent regular people from becoming bad actors in the first place.
>* identify what led them to that point in their life and start addressing those problems...*
Here's the thing, people been doing this for literally MILLENNIA now, there is no way to identify everything that will drive extremists to kill. That's the essential problem with that philosophy. Even where you are able to identify the core issue, say for instance the religious divisions in the MidEast region, there is really no way to address the core problem. It's just far easier to engage the extremists, than it is to convince Christians, or Jews, or Muslims, to NOT be Christians, or Jews, or Muslims.
Extremists will just never be placated, and we shouldn't put too much effort into trying, because that gets people killed as well.
Well the whole point of the question was to be careful unless you become the kind of person who murders people so it's a little ironic that you completely dismissed it.
I kind of dislike that view. It's very narrow minded. It also depends on your definition of tolerance. Tolerance in my opinion is inherently something on a sliding scale. In other words, to be tolerant you must by definition find certain things tolerable [to some degree].
I would posit that being tolerant and intolerant to intolerance is not a mutually exclusive stste. You can be both to varying degrees.
In fact, being somewhat intolerant of intolerance is probably a prerequisite to being truly tollerant.
That middle ground is what we need to protect and preserve.
Acting like you must be one of the other is something a clever 5 year old would do.
My understanding: the line Popper draws is "allow any opinion if it's willing to engage in rational argument and kept in check by public opinion".
Popper's definition is quoted in the Wikipedia article:
"""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."""
(It's fine to disagree with Popper about where a good line to draw is; I think Popper's going for "maximum tolerance", and is noting that tolerating 'intolerant = unwilling to engage in rational argument' would reduce tolerance).
Strictly speaking I think it is a paradox. Where I got stuck is whether tolerance and intolerance are concepts in absolute. I dont think think they are absolute terms and in fact can be used to describe partial states, in other words, they can be used in this form but not [always] result in a logical contradiction which is where the paradox is coming from in this situation.
The paradox of tolerance is twaddle because it works for literally any viewpoint in the world. Your side righteously doesn't tolerate the intolerance your opponents and then your opponents righteously doesn't tolerate your side's intolerance. Both sides are perfectly and equally "justified" in their refusal to tolerate the other and 'round and 'round it goes.
Citing the "paradox of tolerance" is nothing but a faux intellectual fig leaf for those who want to establish controls on what is allowed to be said.
Okay, here I go: "Modern progressives aren't liberals because freedom of speech is a core tenet of liberalism and therefore they should be treated as a hazard to the liberal movement."
There, I said it; I feel better now. Thank you for your kind invitation.
And your point is ...? That conservatives attempting to silence speech makes the lesser attempts of progressives to silence speech okay by comparison? That both conservatives and progressives are birds of a feather in their attempts to limit freedom of speech?
Conservatives are keen on using the power of the state to limit speech. And you are apparently keen on using state power to limit my ability to react to the speech of others.
> confusing social consequences of speech with legality
If people went to a certain country and they said "We have freedom from self incrimination, just as the US does; the government is not allowed to force a confession from an alleged criminal. However, the victim and their family or friends may force a confession from the alleged criminal in any way they please.", then those people would undoubtedly say "Your country does not have freedom from self incrimination at all!"
If people went to a certain country and they said "We have freedom of speech, just as the US does; the government is not allowed to suppress or tamper with what an individual says. However, those who disagree with what they said may inflict 'social consequences' on that individual until their lives are ruined.", then people would undoubtedly say ...?
In short, it should be blindingly obvious that freedom of speech includes both protection from government intervention as well as protection from members of the public who seek to inflict harm^H^H^H^H"social consequences" because they disagree with what was said.
It is dismaying that a man of Randall Munroe's intelligence should make such a blatant logical error in his comic. Sadly, it's not even the only error in that comic.
"However, the victim and their family or friends may force a confession from the alleged criminal in any way they please."
Who is doing the forcing? Is it the state? If so, then I agree with you. If it isn't the state, with all of the force it entails, your argument is irrelevant and invalid.
You seem to be conflating social norms with state power.
We can't lock up an asshole just because they are an asshole, but we sure as shit can refuse to socialize with them. What would you want to be different?
It's only real if you believe that tolerance is some sort of moral absolute, demanding that you be tolerant even of the intolerant.
It's not.
Tolerance is more like a peace treaty. When someone breaks it, they are no longer protected by it. I've found this post[0] from a few years ago to be a good explanation. Once you look at tolerance this way, the paradox disappears.
These groups all exist on ‘general platforms’ - ie Facebook and reddit.
But it doesn’t help the situation- in fact, it may worsen it.
People end up only connected to people that share their viewpoints; and specific discussions in groups or subreddits are not occurring on a ‘soap box’ environment where the broader community is exposed or engaging with it; so it flourishes, with sometimes toxic results
They're randomly aggressive. There's little rhyme or reason to it. They shut down watchpeopledie after some content was posted there and got outside news attention, they have no problem with other subs posting hate and talking about race based wars, violence against minorities and immigrants and etc.
Alternate alternate narrative: Not being on general platforms reduces the available recruitment surface area.
We've seen movements co-opted from one thing into entirely different things fairly regularly. Vulnerable people brought into far more extreme views. The pattern seems clear with things like Gamergate that turned into a reactionary identity type thing pretty quickly. "Incels" where frustrated men feed of each other's anger and it just builds and builds.
I was talking about discussion being on general platforms, so that abhorrent ideas would have to suffer opposition. But maybe eg subreddits were already too fragmenting for this to effectively happen.
Do you really think it is possible to censor reddit/faceboot/etc so hard that few traces of these "countercultures" show up, actually making them less discoverable? That's a much taller order.
Even here voat has been mentioned several times. IMHO that's really all it takes, because the recruitment hook is when someone clicks that sibling link to /v/programming and sees a bunch of stuff they consider "refreshing", it having been pushed out of the mainstream discourse. Then reading those critiques of blue-flavored polarization dovetails right into reading support of red-flavored polarization.
Has the Overton window shifted so far that now terrorist recruitment, grooming and organization is just a "counterculture" that's outside of "mainstream discourse"?
And the solution to this is to expose them to "opposition" on "general platforms"?
Derailing the argument this way sure is an easy answer, but it's not a productive answer. Terms like "recruitment" and "grooming" cast the issue as being driven by some external actors, rather than an intrinsic result of polarization.
There is a sizable quantity of legitimate people feeling marginalized by the "mainstream" discourse, whatever the hell that means. That these various masses of people are being pushed ever-closer towards unreasonable views is the entire problem.
Twitter and Facebook do not ban "legitimate people" because they express "non-mainstream" views.
People get banned when they post graphic violence, promotion of violence, threats, intimidation and child exploitation. They also get banned for targeting harassment towards a person or group [0].
If I run a café where strangers can sit down and talk to each other, I would eject any customer who did any of these things -- to protect my "legitimate" customers and to ensure the bad actors don't wreck my café.
Bad actors don't behave badly because they've been banned. They're banned because they first behaved badly and were warned multiple times.
Talking about "banning" is a strawman, and pointing to impartial rules is an easy way to write off that they end up applied preferentially.
What I'm referring to is that the blue team has taken over the discourse of many popular forums [0]. HN has gotten better, but a few years ago it was quite hard to raise legitimate non-blue-flavored criticism without being downvoted into oblivion. Predictably, the only red-flavored comments being left were then lower effort, which would then get flagged to death.
So then people with moderate red-flavored views are left to go find different discussion forums if they want to express those views. And the places they end up have been similarly "claimed" by the red team, and are thus analogously tolerant of red team extremism.
Now rather than experiencing events like Christchurch primarily as a shared tragedy in which humans were killed (eg holy fuck what are we all doing to each other), the tragedies are mediated by political groupthink. To avoid having to distance themselves from their extremists, the home team caricaturizes the reaction of the other team. This creates cognitive dissonance which normalizes the extremist behavior rather than condemning it.
[0] At least from our perspective here. I'm certainly willing to posit someone could have a mirrored view where their popular forums are ever-more red-team flavored. This fits into my point.
> discussion being on general platforms, so that abhorrent ideas would have to suffer opposition
Well your argument falls apart pretty early, since people subscribing to abhorrent ideas just squelch opposition themselves anyway so they don’t have to face it. They simply want the reach, they aren’t looking to have their minds changed.
/r/the_donald is one easy example. There’s no faster place to get banned on the internet than voicing opposition there.
>But maybe eg subreddits were already too fragmenting for this to effectively happen.
I think that's very much the case, if you look at some of the subreddits that are sympathetic to the NZ situation, there's no opposition within those subreddits, any hint of an opposing view results in a ban in those subs.
Yeah. I recently checked out Voat, as it was proposed as an alternative for reddit. Not saying that it’s representative of the whole community, but the top of /v/programming was quite, erm, different to what I excepted:
https://voat.co/v/programming/top?span=all
my basic idea here is the success of a pro-freedom site (like voat) is going to depend on the character of the first movers. 4chan succeeds where voat does not because the site has a more robust base of freedom loving people, not all of whom are right wing. I can't even stand voat but I happen to basically agree with em on a lot.
he recently put out a draft paper about decentralized imageboards, which we were discussing on 8chan. We want to make a fully p2p board without censorship, and optional curation lists (for spam and the like). We are tired of being beholden to the parties which would like us gone, so we will build something complemtely open and non-jurisdictional. There will be no censorship of the board (by governments, ISPs, DNS servers, CA authorities) and no censorship by board administrators. If the owners leave & turn off their computers, the site will continue to exist. Juan Benet used the term "open service," to describe something like this.
Everyone else just over here dying because white guys think it’s about their freedom to do X. And please don’t get confused. I am one too. I want to suggest if you are spending your time writing DRAFT proposals of a p2p image sharing amazing protocol that can’t be taken down by any jurisdiction man .... well that’s theoretically useful for every freedom-loving man everywhere but most likely something useful to child pornographers and there are lots of people actually suffering under boots and heels of tyrants now and what they don’t need is you writing RFPs while sipping Mountain Dew.
If you can’t see all the trolling about race and gender and just people in general isn’t helpful and is actually causing people harm in meatspace, that’s something you should work on.
8chan is not the problem. People are the problem. If he never made 8chan they would have congregated somewhere else. I think this idea that unsavory websites breed their unsavory bits is pretty close to blaming school shootings on video games.
Platforms that explicitly enable harmful things (child pornography, racism, and much, much more in the case of 8chan) make the world a worse place. And sure, if this person hadn't created 8chan those horrible people may have just congregated somewhere else, but that next person could also decide not to create/support a hateful platform, and the next person, etc. Are they always going to exist? Of course. But we are all responsible for ensuring that they don't come into existence or continue to exist once they do.
> horrible people may have just congregated somewhere else, but that next person could also decide not to create/support a hateful platform, and the next person, etc.
But realistically how likely is this? For every sub Reddit bans a new one appears on Voat.
Not many, but one of the arguments going around is that self reinforcing bubbles have helped create this problem, so forcing people into a smaller more self reinforcing community seems counter-productive.
Considering that a bunch of Christians were massacred by Muslims in Nigeria around the same time as the New Zealand shooting and those killers weren’t known to be active Internet forum users, your theory seems correct.
I don't think a given atrocity that doesn't involve the internet... says anything about what might or might not happen with the internet... your conclusion makes no sense.
Also that talking point about Christians in Nigeria has been a common talking point among folks who seem very interested indirectly playing down the NZ event, and I belive ignores that Muslims were massacred before the Christians in Nigeria just before the Christian event...
Not to get too far down the digression, but... you don't find it odd that the only coverage you can find on that "massacre" is from right wing sources? I mean... terrorist attacks by muslims normally get front page press in the US. Why are they ignoring this one so totally?
It's because it's fake. Or at best unverifiable. Someone took a press release from the Nigerian government about a death toll (not one event), spun, laundered and seasoned until it sounded like a terrorist attack, then launched it as counter press to (pause while I take a breath to calm down) effectively defend the very real, very hateful attack in NZ.
What you just posted is straight up propaganda being used to "both sides" a way out for right wing, white christians to believe that this was somehow justified.
You and OP are missing the point - 8chan was a very social echo chamber. Playing video games, even multiplayer ones, don't have social reinforcement of violet and hateful opinions the way that contributing to an image board with hundreds if not thousands of others sharing and echoing your opinion does. It's dishonest to even suggest they're comparable.
That's a sort of mixed up analogy. Video games don't advocate for action in the real world. Shooting a bunch of demons on mars isn't a proxy for an agenda of anti-demon martian immigration. Even if you're shooting a bunch of nazis in Wolfenstein, there's no logical path to an real world aryan genocide.
But if you put a bunch of racists in a forum together, and there's no grownup there to tell them that this isn't OK, they'll fester and feed back and eventually someone will take things farther than the lulz-seekers originally intended.
Like an aircraft accident, there's no one "fault" here. There are lots of contributing factors. But the ease of access to a welcoming shithole of hate is absolutely a contributing factor.
> Video games don't advocate for action in the real world.
The argument at the time was that the kids aren't violent, video games make them violent. The analogue here is that the shooter wasn't a radical, 8chan made him one. Shitty people radicalize each other with or without the internet, much less with or without a very specific site.
It’s much easier to be radicalized if the only community around you is radical versus real life, where hardly anyone you know expresses the same feelings.
I'd be curious to hear the argument there. I'm not sure that's "clear" at all. In fact virtually every mass murder or terrorism case I can think of has been perpetrated by men either almost entirely isolated or thoroughly immersed some kind of group think monoculture (either online or physical). Virtually no one comes out of a "local community" and starts killing people to further its interests, unless you define terrorist training camps as a local community.
I mean, Harris and Klebold weren't exactly doing what they thought suburban Colorado wanted.
As an aside, I wish the WSJ didn’t name the terrorist in their article and instead followed the NZ PM on leaving him nameless. If people really want to know it they can go to Wikipedia.
I found it incredibly childish that she did that. Like she's trying to stick her fingers in her ears and sing "LA LA THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN". He's not Voldemort.
According to his manifesto he expected this wouldn't make him famous, and used the example that very few people can remember the names of the 9/11 hijackers.
What he wanted - again according to the manifesto - is exactly what he's getting: further division and a clamping down on gun laws.
She also legally has to do it I believe, as Tarrant is still the "suspect" and has not been formally found guilty. She's opportunistically trying to turn this restriction into some epic "I un-name thee!" cringe fest.
Ok I misread that comment entirely. I thought the comment meant she legally has to say it. The comment seemed opposed to the policy so much I read the comment a bit differently.
No, she refused to say his name in order to make it harder for him to be recognized or idolized for what he did; she has refused to give him any sort of platform for his ideology. That's not the same as saying it didn't happen. She has very explicitly said that NZ's gun laws will change and that policy will be passed in order to help prevent this from happening again. We should know the names of the victims, not the perpetrator.
It's a very well known phenomenon that when there is media frenzy over the identity and "secret life" of the attacker, violence rates go up. Many attackers do this for infamy.
Fair point, but she certainly could have done it without making it a big deal. But again, political opportunism. I bet it was a great day for her, huge for her career. Bush probably felt the same jolt of joy when he found out about 9/11. Re-election for sure.
If you don't point out that you're intentionally avoiding the name, then people are going to tend towards publishing and publicizing it anyways and fueling the attackers. She is a leader, and that's how you set an example.
You can look at it cynically, but you have to admit it is an exceptional response. This is a good precedent to set and follow in the future.
We don't avoid saying the name of ISIS, or Al-Qaeda, or the provisional IRA or any number of other terrorist groups. We don't avoid naming Stalin or Hitler just in case another one comes along.
It's not cynical to realise will find a way to profit from this, it's realistic. The crocodile tears, the head scarf, the voldemorting, the raison d'etre for making laws the government wanted to make anyway.
Don't you americans remember all of this from the 9/11 aftermath?
Again, we know that media obsession over a single attacker has actual, measurable effects on violence rates. If we have the option of not naming these attackers, we should take it. They are not leaders of nations, they are not part of groups, they are literally trying to be celebrities.
We can talk about what they did and what they believed, but we don't have to name them and turn them into celebrities. We don't have to become publishers of their propaganda.
> It's not cynical to realise will find a way to profit from this, it's realistic.
It's not "realistic" if there's literally no universe in which a leader can prove to you that they actually care. Nobody can prove that they feel a certain way to somebody else. At least if they do the right thing, we can be happy. Invading Iraq wasn't the right thing, even at the time.
This is actually really good advice. I don't remember the name of the video I saw but one of the mentalities of people who do things like this is to become the "anti-hero" and that includes the infamy as well.
If you are a talent-less hack and want to get on the news this is a very simple method. I say that in the hopes that journalists will start excluding information and keeping these people nameless and bland.
NPR did a great interview about what might work to prevent or discourage copycats. It was based on research into what people who commit these crimes are interested in. They had a couple tips that might make these events less appetizing for those who might commit them.
- Not naming the killer frequently was one.
- Focusing on the victim's lives (basically humanizing them) was another.
- Not playing videos of the chaos and violence was another.
NPR actually seems to be following those patterns too. Not 100% because news is news, but I think news ogrs can follow them, and the information is still free.
Why should Wikipedia mention the name? In fact, why is Wikipedia still uncensored?? We should only read carefully vetted news, such as CNN, Huff Post and Pravda.
I think the reason he mentioned Wikipedia was just an example about how it should be available if you want, but others could possibly help discourage other attackers by not mentioning their names as they might hope for.
In other news Putin signed into law more internet censorship bills this week. For all of the people claiming they desire more censorship, who gets to decide? You? The democratically elected Congress/Legislature/President (ruhroh)? If you want to fix this problem, the focus should be on helping those in society who have fallen through the cracks and would desire to harm others in the first place. Which requires real work and effort put into job placement programs and social safety net legislation. Instead what we'll probably do is start banning websites because most people are stupid and reactionary while real work takes effort. Sigh.
Title: Towards a peer-to-peer imageboard: essential elements thereof and approaches compared
Author: Fredrick R. Brennan
Date: March 16, 2019
If someone who wants "more censorship" as the WSJ article espouses, along with “I have no desire to ever be involved in the image-board world again,” he said. “A lot of these sites cause more misery than anything else.”
.... Why would you work on a P2P censorship resistant, completely anonymous imageboard? Page 5 of that document puts it best:
"The Christchurch massacare adds new urgency, with publications like The
Verge floating the idea of shuttering 8chan, Forbes flat out asking whether or
not 8chan should be “wiped from the web”, and the ever poorly researched Daily
Dot offering its attempting to instigate action against 8chan and imageboards
more widely."
I don't believe the WSJ in their reporting. They either got duped, or wrote an intentionally false article.
His manifesto isn't even worth thinking about. Why I mentioned it? I give the benefit of the doubt because Ted Kaczynski one was even mentioned on hacker news and influenced the tech scene. But its not even 1% of that level.
94 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 208 ms ] threadSeems like humans have to rediscover this fact every couple of generations, the hard way.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
Finding paradoxes in absolutely-defined frameworks is expected - a concept like "tolerance" can only ever serve as an imperfect heuristic. To proceed beyond its limits, you must judge by other metrics.
The point is that this "Paradox of tolerance" meme is invokable to escalate the aggression of any viewpoint - a paradox in the common (not not A -> A) logic system means anything can be proved.
We don't have a problem with the murderer and his enablers because they were intolerant, but because they committed and encouraged murder.
Can't really discourage the next one at this point unfortunately. People are going to do things like this, they have been for a while and will continue to do so in the future. These ideological extremists will be arguing back and forth forever.
All that said, there is the completely separate question of what our counter-terrorism infrastructure should be doing to identify and neutralize these threats. But that's not so much "discouraging" the next attack as it is attempting to keep the number of attacks to a minimum. Because I can pretty much guarantee, the counter-terrorism guys in NZ, or most other western nations, are not gonna be visiting suspected terrorists for the purposes of having a conversation in the hopes of "discouraging" them.
This is, of course, in _addition_ to other counter-terrorism infrastructure like intelligence gathering, monitoring, security, response, etc. Many of those more well-known systems are intended to identify bad actors and prevent them from doing bad things; understanding bad actors can lead to more methods to prevent regular people from becoming bad actors in the first place.
Here's the thing, people been doing this for literally MILLENNIA now, there is no way to identify everything that will drive extremists to kill. That's the essential problem with that philosophy. Even where you are able to identify the core issue, say for instance the religious divisions in the MidEast region, there is really no way to address the core problem. It's just far easier to engage the extremists, than it is to convince Christians, or Jews, or Muslims, to NOT be Christians, or Jews, or Muslims.
Extremists will just never be placated, and we shouldn't put too much effort into trying, because that gets people killed as well.
I would posit that being tolerant and intolerant to intolerance is not a mutually exclusive stste. You can be both to varying degrees.
In fact, being somewhat intolerant of intolerance is probably a prerequisite to being truly tollerant.
That middle ground is what we need to protect and preserve.
Acting like you must be one of the other is something a clever 5 year old would do.
Popper's definition is quoted in the Wikipedia article:
"""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."""
(It's fine to disagree with Popper about where a good line to draw is; I think Popper's going for "maximum tolerance", and is noting that tolerating 'intolerant = unwilling to engage in rational argument' would reduce tolerance).
I'm still not sure I get it but I think my understanding of a paradox was incorrect.
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-a-parad...
Strictly speaking I think it is a paradox. Where I got stuck is whether tolerance and intolerance are concepts in absolute. I dont think think they are absolute terms and in fact can be used to describe partial states, in other words, they can be used in this form but not [always] result in a logical contradiction which is where the paradox is coming from in this situation.
Citing the "paradox of tolerance" is nothing but a faux intellectual fig leaf for those who want to establish controls on what is allowed to be said.
https://www.xkcd.com/1357/
Okay, here I go: "Modern progressives aren't liberals because freedom of speech is a core tenet of liberalism and therefore they should be treated as a hazard to the liberal movement."
There, I said it; I feel better now. Thank you for your kind invitation.
Where are modern progressives arguing to use state power to make some speech illegal?
The other simply uses speech in response.
You seem to think that critical speech should be less protected that bigoted speech. I’m baffled by that position.
If people went to a certain country and they said "We have freedom from self incrimination, just as the US does; the government is not allowed to force a confession from an alleged criminal. However, the victim and their family or friends may force a confession from the alleged criminal in any way they please.", then those people would undoubtedly say "Your country does not have freedom from self incrimination at all!"
If people went to a certain country and they said "We have freedom of speech, just as the US does; the government is not allowed to suppress or tamper with what an individual says. However, those who disagree with what they said may inflict 'social consequences' on that individual until their lives are ruined.", then people would undoubtedly say ...?
In short, it should be blindingly obvious that freedom of speech includes both protection from government intervention as well as protection from members of the public who seek to inflict harm^H^H^H^H"social consequences" because they disagree with what was said.
It is dismaying that a man of Randall Munroe's intelligence should make such a blatant logical error in his comic. Sadly, it's not even the only error in that comic.
Who is doing the forcing? Is it the state? If so, then I agree with you. If it isn't the state, with all of the force it entails, your argument is irrelevant and invalid.
You seem to be conflating social norms with state power.
We can't lock up an asshole just because they are an asshole, but we sure as shit can refuse to socialize with them. What would you want to be different?
You seek to limit my ability to react to what someone has said?
You want to force me to host nazi comments on my blog?
You want to force me, personally, to provide a platform for hate and bigotry and not chastise bigots?
I can’t call someone an asshole? I can't fire someone because they are an asshole?
It's not.
Tolerance is more like a peace treaty. When someone breaks it, they are no longer protected by it. I've found this post[0] from a few years ago to be a good explanation. Once you look at tolerance this way, the paradox disappears.
[0] https://extranewsfeed.com/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-precept-1...
People end up only connected to people that share their viewpoints; and specific discussions in groups or subreddits are not occurring on a ‘soap box’ environment where the broader community is exposed or engaging with it; so it flourishes, with sometimes toxic results
Advertisers are the ones you need to keep happy not users.
Not many advertisers on sites with 0 users. You need both.
We've seen movements co-opted from one thing into entirely different things fairly regularly. Vulnerable people brought into far more extreme views. The pattern seems clear with things like Gamergate that turned into a reactionary identity type thing pretty quickly. "Incels" where frustrated men feed of each other's anger and it just builds and builds.
Do you really think it is possible to censor reddit/faceboot/etc so hard that few traces of these "countercultures" show up, actually making them less discoverable? That's a much taller order.
Even here voat has been mentioned several times. IMHO that's really all it takes, because the recruitment hook is when someone clicks that sibling link to /v/programming and sees a bunch of stuff they consider "refreshing", it having been pushed out of the mainstream discourse. Then reading those critiques of blue-flavored polarization dovetails right into reading support of red-flavored polarization.
And the solution to this is to expose them to "opposition" on "general platforms"?
There is a sizable quantity of legitimate people feeling marginalized by the "mainstream" discourse, whatever the hell that means. That these various masses of people are being pushed ever-closer towards unreasonable views is the entire problem.
Twitter and Facebook do not ban "legitimate people" because they express "non-mainstream" views.
People get banned when they post graphic violence, promotion of violence, threats, intimidation and child exploitation. They also get banned for targeting harassment towards a person or group [0].
If I run a café where strangers can sit down and talk to each other, I would eject any customer who did any of these things -- to protect my "legitimate" customers and to ensure the bad actors don't wreck my café.
Bad actors don't behave badly because they've been banned. They're banned because they first behaved badly and were warned multiple times.
[0] https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules
What I'm referring to is that the blue team has taken over the discourse of many popular forums [0]. HN has gotten better, but a few years ago it was quite hard to raise legitimate non-blue-flavored criticism without being downvoted into oblivion. Predictably, the only red-flavored comments being left were then lower effort, which would then get flagged to death.
So then people with moderate red-flavored views are left to go find different discussion forums if they want to express those views. And the places they end up have been similarly "claimed" by the red team, and are thus analogously tolerant of red team extremism.
Now rather than experiencing events like Christchurch primarily as a shared tragedy in which humans were killed (eg holy fuck what are we all doing to each other), the tragedies are mediated by political groupthink. To avoid having to distance themselves from their extremists, the home team caricaturizes the reaction of the other team. This creates cognitive dissonance which normalizes the extremist behavior rather than condemning it.
[0] At least from our perspective here. I'm certainly willing to posit someone could have a mirrored view where their popular forums are ever-more red-team flavored. This fits into my point.
Well your argument falls apart pretty early, since people subscribing to abhorrent ideas just squelch opposition themselves anyway so they don’t have to face it. They simply want the reach, they aren’t looking to have their minds changed.
/r/the_donald is one easy example. There’s no faster place to get banned on the internet than voicing opposition there.
I think that's very much the case, if you look at some of the subreddits that are sympathetic to the NZ situation, there's no opposition within those subreddits, any hint of an opposing view results in a ban in those subs.
https://t.co/xJt2dR3B7B
Everyone else just over here dying because white guys think it’s about their freedom to do X. And please don’t get confused. I am one too. I want to suggest if you are spending your time writing DRAFT proposals of a p2p image sharing amazing protocol that can’t be taken down by any jurisdiction man .... well that’s theoretically useful for every freedom-loving man everywhere but most likely something useful to child pornographers and there are lots of people actually suffering under boots and heels of tyrants now and what they don’t need is you writing RFPs while sipping Mountain Dew.
If you can’t see all the trolling about race and gender and just people in general isn’t helpful and is actually causing people harm in meatspace, that’s something you should work on.
But realistically how likely is this? For every sub Reddit bans a new one appears on Voat.
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/culture/matt-philbin/2019/...
Also that talking point about Christians in Nigeria has been a common talking point among folks who seem very interested indirectly playing down the NZ event, and I belive ignores that Muslims were massacred before the Christians in Nigeria just before the Christian event...
It's because it's fake. Or at best unverifiable. Someone took a press release from the Nigerian government about a death toll (not one event), spun, laundered and seasoned until it sounded like a terrorist attack, then launched it as counter press to (pause while I take a breath to calm down) effectively defend the very real, very hateful attack in NZ.
What you just posted is straight up propaganda being used to "both sides" a way out for right wing, white christians to believe that this was somehow justified.
But if you put a bunch of racists in a forum together, and there's no grownup there to tell them that this isn't OK, they'll fester and feed back and eventually someone will take things farther than the lulz-seekers originally intended.
Like an aircraft accident, there's no one "fault" here. There are lots of contributing factors. But the ease of access to a welcoming shithole of hate is absolutely a contributing factor.
The argument at the time was that the kids aren't violent, video games make them violent. The analogue here is that the shooter wasn't a radical, 8chan made him one. Shitty people radicalize each other with or without the internet, much less with or without a very specific site.
I mean, Harris and Klebold weren't exactly doing what they thought suburban Colorado wanted.
What he wanted - again according to the manifesto - is exactly what he's getting: further division and a clamping down on gun laws.
She also legally has to do it I believe, as Tarrant is still the "suspect" and has not been formally found guilty. She's opportunistically trying to turn this restriction into some epic "I un-name thee!" cringe fest.
What makes you think that?
It's a very well known phenomenon that when there is media frenzy over the identity and "secret life" of the attacker, violence rates go up. Many attackers do this for infamy.
You can look at it cynically, but you have to admit it is an exceptional response. This is a good precedent to set and follow in the future.
It's not cynical to realise will find a way to profit from this, it's realistic. The crocodile tears, the head scarf, the voldemorting, the raison d'etre for making laws the government wanted to make anyway.
Don't you americans remember all of this from the 9/11 aftermath?
We can talk about what they did and what they believed, but we don't have to name them and turn them into celebrities. We don't have to become publishers of their propaganda.
> It's not cynical to realise will find a way to profit from this, it's realistic.
It's not "realistic" if there's literally no universe in which a leader can prove to you that they actually care. Nobody can prove that they feel a certain way to somebody else. At least if they do the right thing, we can be happy. Invading Iraq wasn't the right thing, even at the time.
If you are a talent-less hack and want to get on the news this is a very simple method. I say that in the hopes that journalists will start excluding information and keeping these people nameless and bland.
- Not naming the killer frequently was one.
- Focusing on the victim's lives (basically humanizing them) was another.
- Not playing videos of the chaos and violence was another.
NPR actually seems to be following those patterns too. Not 100% because news is news, but I think news ogrs can follow them, and the information is still free.
What research is this based on? Sounds suspiciously like “computer games cause violence” which AFAIK has been debunked.
According to this google doc https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vNye_et1JZQquT9Oiz1wVnikEGU...
Title: Towards a peer-to-peer imageboard: essential elements thereof and approaches compared
Author: Fredrick R. Brennan
Date: March 16, 2019
If someone who wants "more censorship" as the WSJ article espouses, along with “I have no desire to ever be involved in the image-board world again,” he said. “A lot of these sites cause more misery than anything else.”
.... Why would you work on a P2P censorship resistant, completely anonymous imageboard? Page 5 of that document puts it best:
"The Christchurch massacare adds new urgency, with publications like The Verge floating the idea of shuttering 8chan, Forbes flat out asking whether or not 8chan should be “wiped from the web”, and the ever poorly researched Daily Dot offering its attempting to instigate action against 8chan and imageboards more widely."
I don't believe the WSJ in their reporting. They either got duped, or wrote an intentionally false article.