I beleive you're saying this sarcastically, but I personally think this is quite true. Most modern memes grew in the morass that are the 'chans, as have a lot of beneficial movements.
Now, with the good has come the questionable and outright bad. Q-anon being only the latest example.
The chans are the modern equivalent of city parks with their soapboxes. There is both good and bad, because speech on the 'chans is almost completely free. And, IMO, that's a good thing.
I firmly believe that civilization in general would benefit from more truly free spaces online. Free and anonymous speech is one of the cornerstones that the US was founded upon, after all.
The surviving 'chans aren't really that free speech though, they just happen to take a laissez-faire stance on slurs; if you go post spam, illegal media, or plans to commit a public atrocity you're still going to get banned without a second thought. Hell, even stupid shit like using certain meme words or posting cartoon horses will still get you kicked out of a lot of the boards.
Not to say any of that's a bad thing; in fact I'll say it's why the site is more of a culture factory than both the mainstreams Twitter/Reddit types and the alternatve Gab/Parler/whatevers
"
Some leftists may seem to oppose technology, but they will oppose it only so long as they are outsiders and the technological system is controlled by non-leftists. If leftism ever becomes dominant in society, so that the technological system becomes a tool in the hands of leftists, they will enthusiastically use it and promote its growth. In doing this they will be repeating a pattern that leftism has shown again and again in the past. When the Bolsheviks in Russia were outsiders, they vigorously opposed censorship and the secret police, they advocated self-determination for ethnic minorities, and so forth; but as soon as they came into power themselves, they imposed a tighter censorship and created a more ruthless secret police than any that had existed under the tsars, and they oppressed ethnic minorities at least as much as the tsars had done. In the United States, a couple of decades ago when leftists were a minority in our universities, leftist professors were vigorous proponents of academic freedom, but today, in those of our universities where leftists have become dominant, they have shown themselves ready to take away from everyone else's academic freedom. (This is "political correctness.") The same will happen with leftists and technology: They will use it to oppress everyone else if they ever get it under their own control.
"
This is a passage from the Unabomber's manifesto he wrote back in the 1990s. Turned out to be disturbingly prophetic.
Right, there's nothing prophetic about this. Extremists on both the right and the left take extreme positions and are prepared to take extreme measures. It goes with the territory.
I also don't think the right and left axis is misleading. It's up to the majority on right and left to realise they generally have more in common with the majority on the 'other' side than they have with the extremists on 'their' side.
Most of his essay is spot on. It’s not that he’s prophetic per-se, but that a lot of people are myopic (including most of HN) and cannot use their minds eye to see and weigh risks and benefits of what might happen. Whether it’s due to (willful) ignorance or just inability is an exercise left up to the reader.
For anyone who can connect the dots and has not read the full essay, I strongly recommend it. It’s not too long and every section is to the point.
Reading the essay it felt very ressentiment-driven, that is, while some phenomena were described with wit, they lacked a somewhat sympathetic grounding - it all screamed: I just do not like it.
For one, a strong society is one that allows both the subject and its critique to live without fear.
Beside: There exist far deeper dissections of society, even darker, containing more uncomfortable truth, and not grounded in ressentiments at all.
He clearly had issues and an axe to grind. Today we would feign pity, and magazines would put his face up on the cover and turn him into a martyr trying to sidestep the fact that he murdered people.
But this isn’t the pretty boy from Boston, this is a well educated erudite who saw things others did not wish to confront.
"He clearly had issues". You don't say. He tried to down a commercial airliner.
My friend Thomas sees things others don't wish to confront, too. He was just removed from his university physics professorship for, among other things, seeing the 5G waves that are killing us all, the obvious falsity of the moon landings, the hollow core of the Earth, and the ways in which Jewish people are controlling society. He sleeps in his basement, away from his wife, with a wire connecting him to a power outlet. I forget the logic behind that.
Kaczynski slept in a tiny shack. He had a hole cut in the floor to use as a toilet. He is probably the only person in ADX Florence to have been given a drastic lifestyle upgrade upon incarceration. It's funny how people are so driven to mascotize him.
When something horrible happens to Thomas (I worry about this a lot), I wonder what the message board people will say about the forbidden truths he managed to confront in his writings.
Figure 4 shows a grounded sleep system similar to your friend's.
> Abstract: Multi-disciplinary research has revealed that electrically conductive contact of the human body with the surface of the Earth (grounding or earthing) produces intriguing effects on physiology and health. Such effects relate to inflammation, immune responses, wound healing, and prevention and treatment of chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. The purpose of this report is two-fold: to 1) inform researchers about what appears to be a new perspective to the study of inflammation, and 2) alert researchers that the length of time and degree (resistance to ground) of grounding of experimental animals is an important but usually overlooked factor that can influence outcomes of studies of inflammation, wound healing, and tumorigenesis. Specifically, grounding an organism produces measurable differences in the concentrations of white blood cells, cytokines, and other molecules involved in the inflammatory response. We present several hypotheses to explain observed effects, based on current research results and our understanding of the electronic aspects of cell and tissue physiology, cell biology, biophysics, and biochemistry.
It’s not flamebait and I would really appreciate it if you would stop shadowbanning me because you don’t like my subject matter. This is nonsense behavior from HN mods.
I’ll quote you on this next time someone on HN quotes him stating how “prophetic” he is. It’s not the first time and not the last time, so if the problem with me agreeing with it is flamebait (but the prophetic comment isn’t), then I’m not going to bother defending it. You’re being ridiculous.
If you don't want to use HN as intended, or learn to, it's hardly a surprise if we've been banning your accounts. That's what banning is for. Other HN users have no problem staying within the site guidelines, so I assume this is mostly a choice.
Why not use the site as intended, not get banned, and contribute to making it better? That's in your interest, our interest, and the community interest. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
Except the point is that some parties are more oppressive in power than others, and as it happens the party that is ostensibly against oppressiveness becomes far more oppressive - which we're already seeing online with people using justification like "the paradox of tolerance" to silence others, which is a decidedly leftist/progressive refrain. Ted was prescient. One of the most interesting aspects of the manifesto, IMO, is how little the progressive mindset has changed so many decades after it was written.
Moreover, if one accepts that human ability has some distribution with variance, then it follows that the only way to enforce total equity, which is in fundamental contradiction with human nature in a scarce universe, is by extreme authoritarianism and oppression. But idealists don't see that part of the picture until it's far too late - which is the pattern of color revolutions across time and space.
There were other people equally prophetic without the appalling character defects that demanded murder and mayhem be used to argue their case rather than ideas.
It's unfortunate that the glamour of violence adds nostalgic credibility that isn't particularly deserved.
It's funny, because the Manifesto is usually weaponized the other way: people appeal to pre-industrial (and often reactionary) ways of life, to conservatism, against political correctness, against policing, or statism, or capital, or popular culture, or indoor plumbing, or whatever, and the dunk on them is that they're supposedly espousing Kaczynskism; it's ordinarily a way of discrediting an argument.
(It's a bad way of discrediting an argument; there's little in the Manifesto that isn't a regurgitation of some other previous thinker, and unless you're in the cabin pooping in the hole with him, there's really no such thing as Kaczynskism).
I came across this found it interesting and decided to share. If I post something but later find a more appropriate place to make that comment would it be better to delete the old comment?
I'm curious about any reading material that illuminates the relationship between these two things:
1. healthy amount of diversity and competition among a large number of publishers
2. robustness of free speech protections
My speculation is that the more competition there is among a large number of publishers, and the more diverse their reasons are for publishing, the harder it becomes for attackers to chip away at free speech protections.
But it's just speculation so I'd like some background reading on the topic.
My speculation is that the more competition there is among a large number of publishers, and the more diverse their reasons are for publishing, the harder it becomes for attackers to chip away at free speech protections.
It's certainly worse if a small number of providers have a monopoly. The European Union uses, as a rule of thumb, that there have to be four independent alternatives in a market for price competition to work. That may also be a useful guide for free expression.
Book publishers now have a choke point - Amazon. That's a monopsony problem, where there's one dominant buyer. When there were many publishers and many bookstores, there was no central choke point. That's over.
One of the most chilling effects of Tech x Group Thinking is mob justice and unguarded, unchecked, supression and oppression of those who present contrary views. Twitter is a cesspool of this since it provides a warm incubation chamber with ability to block those who challenge. It resonates uncontrollably as the ripples spread within hours. Not enough time for the press or institutional assessment.
Take an example of Timrit Gibru[1]. Whether you agree or not, she seems to be completely and utterly glued to Twitter. She posts so frequent, at the time of writing this post, her last tweet was 5 minutes old. She tweets every few minutes in her waking hours. Vile, contemptful tweets of her agenda and rallying up support for her unchallenged arguments. Over 100k followers. These people are out there to aggressively spread their influence bypassing press, bypassing their counter parts and ramming through without challenge.
I am afraid, this is going to get worse unless we institutionalize professional journalism again, with deep analysis of the issues and present both sides of the view, and allow public comments. The society is like putty, it can be shaped and formed by those in power, we've just provided them with a massive Tech steamroller that flattens any bumps.
I understand Parler and other fringe social media platforms and how they can be damaging to the society. I am equally concerned of this slow motion political-correctness-mob-justice culture that will be impossible to evade. I want to go back to old days to be honest. Handing over press amplification to individuals is a shit idea. I want proper institutions and journals to present content in long form with citations of their sources. Imagine if we get rid of Science journals and just let researchers tweet their experimental results. No one challenging their claims, no peer review, nothing. That's what press has become now-a-days.
We should use the term "censorship", not "moderation", where one party prevents another from saying something. Calling it "moderation" is an attempt to sugar-coat censorship.
Arguably, if a private company is pressured to censor by a government, their censorship actions becomes state action. First Amendment protections may apply in the US. This is an unresolved area in US law. It's come up where cities have outsourced management of some public spaces such as parks and plazas, and the outsourcing company prohibited protests.[1]
Worth seeing: "Censored", an official U.S. Government training cartoon from WWII. Written by "Dr. Seuss", by the way.[2] In that era, censorship was made very explicit. Letters didn't just disappear. They had sections cut out and were stamped "Opened by Censor".
Maybe if you put your name on it, you should be able to say it without prior restraint. Most of the serious problems come from anonymous speech.
Question for you: do you have an example of something that most people on this message board might class as moderation, but which you wouldn’t call censorship?
I guess I’m just ok with censorship in a lot of situations. Perhaps if online discussion and therefore (by your standard) censorship were more decentralised then it would be more fair but it seems people don’t want something decentralised.
40 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 114 ms ] threadterse: anonymity + ephemerality.
Now, with the good has come the questionable and outright bad. Q-anon being only the latest example.
The chans are the modern equivalent of city parks with their soapboxes. There is both good and bad, because speech on the 'chans is almost completely free. And, IMO, that's a good thing.
I firmly believe that civilization in general would benefit from more truly free spaces online. Free and anonymous speech is one of the cornerstones that the US was founded upon, after all.
Not to say any of that's a bad thing; in fact I'll say it's why the site is more of a culture factory than both the mainstreams Twitter/Reddit types and the alternatve Gab/Parler/whatevers
This is a passage from the Unabomber's manifesto he wrote back in the 1990s. Turned out to be disturbingly prophetic.
I also don't think the right and left axis is misleading. It's up to the majority on right and left to realise they generally have more in common with the majority on the 'other' side than they have with the extremists on 'their' side.
Perhaps someone who pays for the WSJ can weigh in.
https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome
For anyone who can connect the dots and has not read the full essay, I strongly recommend it. It’s not too long and every section is to the point.
For one, a strong society is one that allows both the subject and its critique to live without fear.
Beside: There exist far deeper dissections of society, even darker, containing more uncomfortable truth, and not grounded in ressentiments at all.
But this isn’t the pretty boy from Boston, this is a well educated erudite who saw things others did not wish to confront.
My friend Thomas sees things others don't wish to confront, too. He was just removed from his university physics professorship for, among other things, seeing the 5G waves that are killing us all, the obvious falsity of the moon landings, the hollow core of the Earth, and the ways in which Jewish people are controlling society. He sleeps in his basement, away from his wife, with a wire connecting him to a power outlet. I forget the logic behind that.
Kaczynski slept in a tiny shack. He had a hole cut in the floor to use as a toilet. He is probably the only person in ADX Florence to have been given a drastic lifestyle upgrade upon incarceration. It's funny how people are so driven to mascotize him.
When something horrible happens to Thomas (I worry about this a lot), I wonder what the message board people will say about the forbidden truths he managed to confront in his writings.
Likely this is an attempt at what is known as "grounding" or "earthing", with the goal of reducing inflammation.
There is some intriguing research in this area, here is an informative article from Journal of Inflammation Research:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4378297/pdf/jir... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4378297/
Figure 4 shows a grounded sleep system similar to your friend's.
> Abstract: Multi-disciplinary research has revealed that electrically conductive contact of the human body with the surface of the Earth (grounding or earthing) produces intriguing effects on physiology and health. Such effects relate to inflammation, immune responses, wound healing, and prevention and treatment of chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. The purpose of this report is two-fold: to 1) inform researchers about what appears to be a new perspective to the study of inflammation, and 2) alert researchers that the length of time and degree (resistance to ground) of grounding of experimental animals is an important but usually overlooked factor that can influence outcomes of studies of inflammation, wound healing, and tumorigenesis. Specifically, grounding an organism produces measurable differences in the concentrations of white blood cells, cytokines, and other molecules involved in the inflammatory response. We present several hypotheses to explain observed effects, based on current research results and our understanding of the electronic aspects of cell and tissue physiology, cell biology, biophysics, and biochemistry.
I have friends like this as well and I can all too well relate to your worries.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
If you don't want to use HN as intended, or learn to, it's hardly a surprise if we've been banning your accounts. That's what banning is for. Other HN users have no problem staying within the site guidelines, so I assume this is mostly a choice.
Why not use the site as intended, not get banned, and contribute to making it better? That's in your interest, our interest, and the community interest. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It's very long. I even remember commenting on how long it is:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15149611
every section is to the point
Is it? It wasn't my impression
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15147431
This is not an interesting or prophetic statement, it's simply how human beings have worked and have always worked.
This is honestly restating the obvious and IMHO not contributing much to intelligent discussion here.
Moreover, if one accepts that human ability has some distribution with variance, then it follows that the only way to enforce total equity, which is in fundamental contradiction with human nature in a scarce universe, is by extreme authoritarianism and oppression. But idealists don't see that part of the picture until it's far too late - which is the pattern of color revolutions across time and space.
It's unfortunate that the glamour of violence adds nostalgic credibility that isn't particularly deserved.
(It's a bad way of discrediting an argument; there's little in the Manifesto that isn't a regurgitation of some other previous thinker, and unless you're in the cabin pooping in the hole with him, there's really no such thing as Kaczynskism).
Maybe in some narrow context it would make specific sense to add, but randomly sprinkling it across various threads is negligence if not vandalism.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I came across this found it interesting and decided to share. If I post something but later find a more appropriate place to make that comment would it be better to delete the old comment?
1. healthy amount of diversity and competition among a large number of publishers
2. robustness of free speech protections
My speculation is that the more competition there is among a large number of publishers, and the more diverse their reasons are for publishing, the harder it becomes for attackers to chip away at free speech protections.
But it's just speculation so I'd like some background reading on the topic.
It's certainly worse if a small number of providers have a monopoly. The European Union uses, as a rule of thumb, that there have to be four independent alternatives in a market for price competition to work. That may also be a useful guide for free expression.
Book publishers now have a choke point - Amazon. That's a monopsony problem, where there's one dominant buyer. When there were many publishers and many bookstores, there was no central choke point. That's over.
Big Establishment, Big Government, Big Business, Big Media, Big Tech. Big Fascists.
It doesn’t matter if it’s left wing or right wing. Both are now controlled by Big establishment elites and oligarchs.
Take an example of Timrit Gibru[1]. Whether you agree or not, she seems to be completely and utterly glued to Twitter. She posts so frequent, at the time of writing this post, her last tweet was 5 minutes old. She tweets every few minutes in her waking hours. Vile, contemptful tweets of her agenda and rallying up support for her unchallenged arguments. Over 100k followers. These people are out there to aggressively spread their influence bypassing press, bypassing their counter parts and ramming through without challenge.
I am afraid, this is going to get worse unless we institutionalize professional journalism again, with deep analysis of the issues and present both sides of the view, and allow public comments. The society is like putty, it can be shaped and formed by those in power, we've just provided them with a massive Tech steamroller that flattens any bumps.
I understand Parler and other fringe social media platforms and how they can be damaging to the society. I am equally concerned of this slow motion political-correctness-mob-justice culture that will be impossible to evade. I want to go back to old days to be honest. Handing over press amplification to individuals is a shit idea. I want proper institutions and journals to present content in long form with citations of their sources. Imagine if we get rid of Science journals and just let researchers tweet their experimental results. No one challenging their claims, no peer review, nothing. That's what press has become now-a-days.
[1] https://twitter.com/timnitgebru
Arguably, if a private company is pressured to censor by a government, their censorship actions becomes state action. First Amendment protections may apply in the US. This is an unresolved area in US law. It's come up where cities have outsourced management of some public spaces such as parks and plazas, and the outsourcing company prohibited protests.[1]
Worth seeing: "Censored", an official U.S. Government training cartoon from WWII. Written by "Dr. Seuss", by the way.[2] In that era, censorship was made very explicit. Letters didn't just disappear. They had sections cut out and were stamped "Opened by Censor".
Maybe if you put your name on it, you should be able to say it without prior restraint. Most of the serious problems come from anonymous speech.
[1] https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-detroit-agree-inter...
[2] https://catalog.archives.gov/id/35864