It assumes that people are rational actors, and have good critical thinking skills, and care to apply those skills. None of those is true of Americans en masse.
>It assumes that people are rational actors, and have good critical thinking skills, and care to apply those skills
This could always be true in reverse, and pretty un-recognizable no? Does not your statement itself reflect some assumption in the ability of people to be rational actors to determine which debate is and isn't true, artificial, astro turfed, propagandized etc.
Think of for example the Iraq war push, and evidence provided for it. There are always unknown unknowns, and so your "first principles" cannot be assumed to be true
https://commoncog.com/blog/how-first-principles-thinking-fai...
None of those is true for people en masse.
Propaganda wasn't born yesterday, neither were people in the past more rational than today.
Agree in general, but where does it stop? What about articles? Web searches? Websites hosted on Google Cloud?
What about documented (albeit very limited) cases of voter fraud in favor of Biden?
What about documented (albeit very limited) cases of voter fraud in favor of Trump?
So ultimately you prioritize what might be described as "collective health" over generalized notions of freedom. Is that "pretty anti censorship", as this question of negative externalities is always the point of contention for censoring anything is it not?
I'd agree with this framing, though if one goes down this route, all sorts of instances of "freedom" and individual choice would be called into question on grounds of it's effect on overall societal health. I think it means simple frameworks of censorship, free speech, and facts cannot be generalized or universalized, as ultimately many of these will run into value judgments that aren't easily answered by questions of objective truth.
>I'm not remotely convinced that there's any kind of evidence
And this calls into question the efficacy of "truth" and objective facts. At some point people simply have different value judgments about what is true, or for which other things to carve out exceptions which take precedence. Or which debates or opinions are healthy or which are off limits. We see this with COVID where it's hard enough to assess the specific health risks while balancing the trade-offs of other health risks and economic impacts of lock-downs etc. "true" is too broad to encompass all the variables.
I'm not falling hard on this. I'm presently living in the tension between free speech ideals and collective political health, and I don't purport to have any great answers.
> I'd agree with this framing, though if one goes down this route, all sorts of instances of "freedom" and individual choice would be called into question on grounds of it's effect on overall societal health.
Agree, I think this is completely valid and I think we see a lot of this already in the cancel culture movement--lots of perfectly reasonable, healthy debate is suppressed as "possibly harmful". It's a real concern.
> And this calls into question the efficacy of "truth" and objective facts. At some point people simply have different value judgments about what is true, or for which other things to carve out exceptions which take precedence.
I don't buy this. I think even conspiratorialists are perfectly capable of reasoning (reasonably) well when it doesn't conflict with their political allegiance. In my opinion, the issue is that some people know full well that they're being dishonest, but they simply don't care--they value the truth less than they value their political tribe. And please note that I think there are plenty of people on both sides of the aisle who put party above truth--this isn't me punching at Republicans or conservatives or whomever while pretending that my ideological compatriots are perfectly behaved (that would make me quite the hypocrite!)--although it wouldn't be appropriate to litigate that here.
Every semi reputable editor (even Fox!) has put the brakes on this disinformation campaign, but it seems that doing so just makes the people believing it move on to even less credible feeds. Ultimately I think the hallucination can only die down on its own, but on the timescale of several years. Meanwhile the damage is being done right now. I just hope it's all just so Trump can continue grifting and developing political capital to try avoiding jail, rather than some larger plan like deliberately inciting a civil war.
Previously if one ventured into Internet conspiracy theory land, their new belief would be tempered by their social circle. Now whatever wild thing manages to get enough attention also creates its own social proof. We're essentially dealing with a violent mixture of the old and the new where digital non-natives are tuning into raw memetic noise while giving it the trust of the 1990's evening news.
I would be curious to see how this played out in a parallel universe where section 230 had never existed, the MITM business never gained popularity, new media ("tech") companies had to editorialize more like old media, and the anti-establishment action stayed on p2p nets with a higher barrier to entry.
The issue, is that the concerns are not being evaluated, both sides are not being interviewed, etc. We really need a trial. Unfortunately, that has not happened yet, in almost any of these "hearings". The lawsuits are dismissed due to "standing" or procedural issues, not on the merits.
Maybe they should hire lawyers who actually have a single clue what they hell they're doing and not Rudy Giuliani, who hasn't been in a court room since 1992 and doesn't know literally the first week of constitutional law.
They have literally been going to court and not won a single time. These are not partisan judges. These are not Democrat secretary of states. These are Republicans.
They are throwing out every lawsuit so far. None have been substantiated, zero.
Stop repeating lies.
However, that doesn't excuse conspiratorialism. We still have a responsibility to find reliable trust channels and to sift through evidence, and when it becomes apparent that we're incorrect (e.g., when evidence is presented that weakens or invalidates our claims), we ought to admit our error and critically evaluate our sources who led us astray.
To put a fine point on it, the media should have to answer for its sins, but those sins don't license the rest of us to behave badly.
You seem to have misread my comment. I'm not arguing that there is zero fraud. I didn't even say in my post that there was no conspiracy (though I'll say here that there wasn't). I only said the conspiratorialists aren't arguing constructively. I'm probably pretty aligned with you--I wouldn't be surprised if there were a handful of fraudulent ballots on either side, but there's certainly no evidence for a conspiracy.
“election fraud conspiratorialists” seem to have a case in court. It’s up to Supreme Court to decide whether something is true or not, not youtube.
About them being loud, how can they be “loud” when none of the media is representing their case?
This act of censorship is showcasing very grim future where absolute minority gets to decide what tune whole generations are playing to.
I like ideas that I don't agree with when debate is healthy. I don't like when people who hold those ideas just keep shouting the same thing over and over without actually engaging with the rebuttals presented--frankly I find that behavior reprehensible. I have sympathy for people who want to suppress that sort of behavior, which is what you're picking up on from my previous comment, but I'm far from convinced that it's a viable solution.
Mostly though, this conspiratorial content is so obviously damaging and in bad-faith, etc that I don't care so much about imperfections with respect to free speech ideals, just like I'm not very worked up that Germany bans holocaust denialism.
> About them being loud, how can they be “loud” when none of the media is representing their case?
Because social media exists, and because the POTUS is using his enormous platform to the same end?
> This act of censorship is showcasing very grim future where absolute minority gets to decide what tune whole generations are playing to
This has always been the case. Traditional media is exactly this model.