Does this same denial of "well documented fact and to discredit reality itself" extend to religious doctrine, also or do the corporations get to pick and choose what realities they choose to censor?

Ah, you strike at the contradiction embedded into the US First Amendment.

It's almost like the Amendment was built as a practical tool to constrain government from actions which history showed led to people rising up and overthrowing a government, not as a holy shrine of virtues that were self-evidently virtuous.

Good point but I don’t think so because those ideas, religion, are not falsifiable.

I don't think that refugees flew through space on 747's, a la Scientology (I may have gotten the specifics wrong). But, if you can show me how a 747 can fly through space, I am more than happy to be shown the error of my ways.

Many religions have falsifiable ideas in them. Some of their "core tenets" may not be falsifiable but, again, you can't pick and choose through these books to get the pieces parts to fit your conclusion after the fact.

That isn't how proofs work.

Yeah, I see the point you’re making, and I don’t necessarily disagree with it. I didn’t mean to say that no religion has obviously falsifiable claims in them, and the example you gave is a perfectly fine demonstration. I’d even say obviously Jesus didn’t literally rise from the dead, because that’s clearly not possible (and probably besides the point if you are simultaneously a serious, critical believe - I should point add that I’m not Christian by the way).

So what did I mean? As part of a broader concept I’d say that there is a lot we don’t know about the world, that there are problems to solve that are beyond our current abilities to do so, and at a certain point there will always be a need to simply believe, because we don’t have the luxury of not making choices. My concept of religion in this sense then is by definition a system of thought pertaining to the things that we don’t get to know the answers to, but we still have to make choices on because that’s life.

I’ll add that I don’t think the big name brand religions get to dictate what counts as a religion, any more than people in the past have had the right to have a monopoly on what counts as legitimate science. Everyone has a brain and therefore has a right to pursue truth, both for things that are falsifiable and not.

I’ll add that this isn’t static either and hopefully, with time, progress will be made and things will transition from unknowable to knowable. When those things happen I hope that people will continue to update their beliefs (ie religions), and I don’t think that’s too controversial.

With regards to the name brand religions, yeah they definitely have obviously false aspects to them, and I don’t know if people believe them as fact, even though they may say that or even think it. I do however think that they all have aspects to them that are applicable in the religious sense I defined above. For example the concept of a god, etc...

My last thought is I think all of the concepts that are being discussed in this thread are very hard problems. The definitions themselves are hard, what we consider good and bad outcomes are hard, and in a way it’s hard to be compassionate when it feels like people are saying things that are dangerous. That’s basically it, I think it’s important to just remind ourselves that these problems are hard, because I know I have a tendency, or a mental limitation if you will, to get mad or impatient when I forget that. I don’t mean to imply you are btw, but as I was writing I could literally feel a sense of empathy and understanding in the more general sense by reminding myself that this stuff is hard.

Sorry, wrote this on my phone, so sentences, spelling, grammar, structure, etc might suck lol.

And I don't mean to throw the baby out with the bath water. There are many wonderful things to learn from the scaffolding of religion and parable. To apply it to our legal system, tax system and to cherry pick bits from it for our military conflicts seem less than fruitful and more than a little hypocritical in a modern age (no accusation on you). As an American, I would much rather we go towards a scientific, historical, philosophic and arts educational model and leave religion at home, with tax loop holes removed. Charity tax breaks should be more than enough for those churches that stick to their mission statement.

But I digress. It doesn't matter until the likes of Facebook are turned into public spaces and regarded as havens for free speech or they are not. That's really the question that has to be answered.

> with tax loop holes removed

Yeah, I agree completely. The fact that there is a material difference between one kind of institution and another gives legitimacy to complaining about religion, IMO.

> To apply it to our legal system, tax system and to cherry pick bits from it for our military conflicts seem less than fruitful and more than a little hypocritical in a modern age

I totally agree and it saddens me to see this happen. I think one crucial detail though is that instead of religion, I would call this dirty politics (or maybe even just rhetoric?). Dirty politics itself isn't new, but what has changed has become the scale at which it is now employed.

> It doesn't matter until the likes of Facebook are turned into public spaces and regarded as havens for free speech or they are not. That's really the question that has to be answered.

I don't really know myself, but I lean towards yes, if the likes of Facebook had a policy of safe harbor, then they should be regards as havens for free speech. I don't know enough about FB to say if they are no longer protected by safe harbor, but they're probably not in that category.

When we consider though the systematic exploitation of human psychology deployed at scale, it's honestly terrifying, but to me instead of treating it as a free speech question (which is hard), it should be treated as a privacy question and the kinds of businesses you should be able to make. All of these terrifying capabilities and their free speech implications are predicated on companies harvesting our data at scale. The answer should be that there are limitations on what you can do, and business should probably just make money by charging people for stuff.

I get that, early on, it may have felt necessary because we didn't know better, and there wasn't a cultural infrastructure for consumers paying for digital goods. However, a lot has changed since then, and the internet has now become basically the equivalent of a welfare state, where our digital existences within it have been sponsored by all powerful benefactors, e.g. Facebook, Google. To me the solution is simply, pay for stuff, and make it hard to have businesses where your users don't pay for stuff. That could be have liabilities around data that you collect, or outright making it illegal.

Can't promise I have answers to all of the details, but this I feel good about the overall premise of my hypothesis.

Of course you don't have all the answers. No one can. It's an impossible task and that's where civil conversations like these come in. I quit Facebook quite a while ago because civil conversations were becoming rare and spiteful rhetoric was becoming the norm. I obviously don't have the answers.

I think a very good first step, especially since schools have been forced online, is to see internet access become a public utility before we ever worry about the likes of Facebook. A public space to voice one's concerns can be made at a .gov space or hosted at one's own website once internet access is a utility. The only barrier to entry then is learning to set up your own server (I always thought it was fun when I was younger). Though security certificates are a harder hurdle to clear, these days.

As for data collection, well, I trust neither corporations nor government. They've both proven to be dishonest when it comes to that particular topic, laws be damned =[

Do you have proof for that?

>"...and tries to discredit reality itself..."

So you are saying they will remove the Earth is Flat, The God had created world in 7 days and other similar things?

You can't prove God didn't create the world in 7 days any more than you can't prove the Flying Spaghetti Monster did that 15 minutes ago.

That the Earth is not flat is easily and conclusively provable.

Of course I can't. I thought that the onus of proving is in the court of the ones making a statement.

What is the standard of proof here? I'd that the standard seven day creation story is about as outlandish as the narrative that the holocaust is a big hoax.

Is it technically possible to explain away all the evidence with sufficient effort? I suppose. But occams razor tells us that yes, the holocaust happened, and no, three days did not pass before the sun was created.

My point is that we generally don't expect mathematics-like incontrovertible proof to establish historical fact, and it's unfair to demand it to disprove religion. More broadly, Facebook now has to figure out what the standard of proof is for their platform.

In their shoes I'd draw the line at "advocates for killing people". Seems reasonable enough.

> it kind of crosses the line when something denies well documented fact and tries to discredit reality itself

Are you suggesting that news organizations should no longer broadcast false statements made by word leaders, such as Trump, who continuously and repeatedly denies well documented facts? Or are you suggesting that these restrictions on free speech should only apply on regular people, whose lowly opinions should be censored while blatant lies by the rich and famous should be broadcast?

> Are you suggesting that news organizations should no longer broadcast false statements made by word leaders, such as Trump

That would be helpful or, if they need to, to point where exactly the so-called leader is incorrect.

In fact, abusing elected office to provide materially false and misleading information should be an impeachable offense and a crime similar to perjury.

But then they just look stupid, no? Like flat earthers, anti-vaxxers etc.

Don't they already?