Showing posts with label free speech. Show all posts
Showing posts with label free speech. Show all posts
4/14/22
Quote of the day
4/14/22
"Having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization."
Free speech is violence
And war is peace.
I'll just leave this here:
Elon Musk is Making My Job at Twitter Unsafe!!! pic.twitter.com/YZQqgRc2K7
— Danny Polishchuk (@Dannyjokes) April 14, 2022
11/29/21
Speech and silence are never violence
11/29/21
If you accept that speech or a lack of it, is in fact violence, it follows that you may be justly punished for merely existing at the wrong time.
Obviously, that's absurd. There are trillions of injustices in the world, most of which I am unaware of. Nobody has the time, energy, nor expertise to opine on, condemn, or affirm even 0.5% of those injustices, even assuming we all agree they are actual injustices.
Confounding this woke bullshit further is language. You may have noticed many arguments turn into a debate over semantics, rather than the usually more important issue of which idea is superior and why. Language is fickle, but also incredibly important, as it is our primary means of communicating complex ideas. While language is unavoidably fickle, it should not be too fickle lest all definitions become subject to change on the fly. Not all communicators are benevolent and take advantage of (or some might say hijack) our evolving and fickle language.
I think it's obvious that would be a bad road to go down. Yet here we are:
The entire House Democratic caucus, plus Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger of course, voted for a resolution which claimed the Gosar video functioned to “further violence against elected officials.” In doing so, the caucus endorsed and codified the emotionally manipulative logic of AOC, who proclaimed: “When we incite violence with depictions against our colleagues, that trickles down into violence in this country.” I would love for someone to explicate the exact causal chain by which they’re contending that this cartoon video will produce real-life violence. Because otherwise they’re just spouting cliches and, worse, popularizing a specious line of argument that does nothing to prevent actual violence — but does stifle political speech. [emphasis mine]
Can you imagine what this country would be like if we did not have the 1st amendment? We're lucky they have to change definitions, bend and twist language, stretch logic, and get very creative in their ways to control speech.
10/30/21
Halloween blend: almost spooky edition
10/30/21
Happy Thursday Halloween!
It feels like a scarier, more foreboding Halloween than last year. Enjoy!
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One of the best Dilbert's in a while:
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| click for whole cartoon |
Harvard Now Offering Advanced Degrees In Unconstitutional Law:
Some experts were quick to point out that Harvard has technically taught Unconstitutional Law for decades, but this latest move makes it official.
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White House Orders Daring Mission Into Afghanistan To Mark Stranded Americans' Passports As 'Non-Binary' --
Picard Suspended From Twitter For Saying He Sees Only Four Lights
You may have read about some "Youngkin supporters" with tiki torches (presumably an effort to resemble the tiki torch-carrying extremists at the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally in 2017).
Anyways, they were plants (shocking!): Lincoln Project takes credit for tiki torch stunt McAuliffe campaign passed off as genuine Youngkin supporters:
“Today’s demonstration was our way of reminding Virginians what happened in Charlottesville four years ago, the Republican Party’s embrace of those values, and Glenn Youngkin’s failure to condemn it," the Lincoln Project, a political action committee made up of ex-Republicans, said in a statement.
Before the source of the stunt was known, former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s campaign portrayed the group as genuine supporters of his Republican opponent.
The five people pictured outside Youngkin’s campaign bus holding tiki torches in the rain wore khaki pants, white button-up shirts, sunglasses, and baseball caps.
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The Bee is quick to follow up: Youngkin Keeps Lincoln Project Away By Holding Rally Within 500 Feet Of A School
Ouch.
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‘Frustration is at an all-time high’: Behind Biden’s falling poll numbers. The headline is right but the article is a Democrat sympathy crying circle along the lines of "Biden is not polling well because he's just too moderate! He needs to move further left!" Riiight. Now you know why Democrats are always shocked when Republicans win.
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Biden preparing to hand out treats this year:
The Wall Street Journal first reported on Thursday that the Biden administration is in talks to offer separated migrant parents and children around $450,000 per person. That would mean that if a parent and a child were separated at the border, together they would be eligible for a combined payment of $900,000.
The talks are part of negotiations between the Justice Department and lawyers representing the separated families in a number of tort cases that have claimed the families experienced harm when they were forcibly separated.
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In defense of dumb TVs (old but good):Decreasing prices and decreasing margins on TVs combined with long replacement cycles have driven companies to take advantage of built-in smarts to enable a new revenue source: user data and advertising. As of Q2 2020, Vizio and HiSense are the only major brands making TVs that ship without advertising enabled in their UIs. Sony, Samsung, LG, and others have ads enabled by default, most of which can’t be disabled. All of the above brands have built capability to aggregate data on what content is being viewed, and again, not all of them have the option to disable that. TVs smart enough to help you are also smart enough to harm you.
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A senior NJ Transit worker, who was absolutely adamant that he/she must not be identified because they could get in serious trouble for talking to the media, later told me that employees who ordinarily work in that maintenance facility were instructed by their higher-ups to stay home that day. No chance that they’d be allowed to attend this event, it was decreed, even though the event was taking place in their literal workplace — a public facility to boot. The justification? Who knows. Probably some half-baked combination of COVID, terrorism, and whatever other hyped-up existential danger is said to be lurking in the background on any given week. They won’t explain their reasoning if you ask; just as with all manner of completely arbitrary policies deriving from COVID which still remain in effect, people in positions of authority typically can’t be bothered to even offer a rationale for this or that leftover measure — content instead to blithely acclimate to the “new normal” rather than buck the bureaucratic inertia.Just this afternoon I spoke to my local city council member here in Jersey City, who’s up for re-election next week, and she claimed to me that the primary reason for requiring children as young as two to wear facemasks when playing outside at recess — something I continue to see around town disturbingly often — is “psychological.” Or in other words, children that age need to be taught that wearing a mask for hours on end, each and every school day, is the “right” thing to do. It was a candid admission in a sense, to acknowledge that children’s health is not really the thing guiding this policy calculation
We need to increase the cost of this strategy. Read the whole thing.
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One of the few newish and good things still on Netflix is the Witcher. Here's the trailer for the 2nd season:
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Last but not least,
The list of major Biden administration failures
- The Del Rio Haitian border crisis.
- Don't forget Afghanistan.
- Unity. Biden may be the Great Divider. Every president fails on this, but we should start holding them responsible.
- TBA
9/7/21
Australia is lost
9/7/21
I think this is the point of no return. It's now considered legal for the Australian government to delete, or even change their subjects' data. They could, theoretically, turn that rebellious tweet or facebook post into one making you look like a pedophile. The moment a citizen becomes problematic for the government, is the moment "serious" crimes are alleged, invented, or interpreted in creative ways:
A new law gives Australian police unprecedented powers for online surveillance, data interception and altering data. These powers, outlined in the Surveillance Legislation Amendment (Identify and Disrupt) Bill, raise concerns over potential misuse, privacy and security.
The bill updates the Surveillance Devices Act 2004 and Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979. In essence, it allows law-enforcement agencies or authorities (such as the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission) to modify, add, copy or delete data when investigating serious online crimes.
Via Instapundit.
All the more reason to further develop and promote blockchain tech and DeFi cryptocurrency, further develop a highly trusted real-life network. And stockpile certain commodities.
Stick your finger in the air. You know more of this is on the way.
8/12/21
Thursday blend: everything's fine edition
8/12/21
Happy Thursday. According to all the smart people in the U.S., everything is fine (other than systemic 'isms, and anyone to the right of AOC)!
Kevin Drum on the three point five TRILLION dollar reconciliation bill:
Deficit spending stimulates an economy in recession, but the reconciliation bill is supposed to be fully paid for. If that's really the case, then it will have no significant effect on the economy one way or the other. It's just a collection of new programs...
A trillion in taxes here, a trillion there, easy peasy, no problemo, totally paid for. That's definitely not a giant pill to swallow.
Maybe because it's not really fully paid for. Not if you count debt. And who counts debt?
As flagged by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the reconciliation instructions for the spending bill allow for up to $1.75 trillion in borrowing.
“It is not possible to draft and score all of the expected policies prior to consideration of the budget resolution,” a Democratic memo explains. “Given that we will not have budgetary certainty for all of the expected policies prior to locking in the reconciliation instruction to the Finance Committee, the Budget Resolution will not require a specific level of revenue, outlay, or deficit amount in its reconciliation instruction.”
I guess when the Democrats say something, we have to update our textbooks, notify all the fact-checkers, and re-educate all the stubborn people, because it's as true as gravity.
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What misinformation today will be true tomorrow? Something plaguing social media is their deplatforming and censorship of people and information, which turn out to be true a short time later (meaning the approved media outlets finally said the same thing). Remember the Hunter Biden laptop story? Remember the mask reversals? Remember the other mask reversals?
YouTube suspends Rand Paul's account for COVID-19 mask misinformation
Delta variant is highly transmissible among vaccinated, but the vaccinated tend to fare better. I hope that news about faring better is true and remains true.
There is no border crisis. There is no border crisis.
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The battle for cryptocurrency control began with the failed cryptocurrency amendment. Both sides have an uphill climb:
The whole promise of DeFi is that it's not inside the system and not centralized. It’s designed to work without brokers or banks and to work without government setting the rules of the road. In other words, it’s designed to be difficult to monitor and regulate. So the fight we saw over the past week feels like little more than a trial run of a much bigger argument over what DeFi regulation should look like. It’s still not obvious that DeFi offers enough advantages to ordinary users to ever really take off. But if it does, the struggle to track, tax and regulate it will make the battle over Bitcoin miners filing 1099s look trivial.
7/14/21
Let's make America a one party state
7/14/21
It will be two parties, but when it matters, we'll really just be the one party state of elitists controlling the flyover cavemen and blue city drones.
That's the strong impression I get from the Democrats and their "Republican" NeverTrumper friends.
The clown show on January 6th apparently was on par with the Civil War, and we're gonna have to start screening/censoring people's text messages:
Biden allied groups, including the Democratic National Committee, are also planning to engage fact-checkers more aggressively and work with SMS carriers to dispel misinformation about vaccines that is sent over social media and text messages. The goal is to ensure that people who may have difficulty getting a vaccination because of issues like transportation see those barriers lessened or removed entirely.
What the hell is going on? Our elitists and the people writing for old man Biden are so rabidly partisan or so completely out of touch (probably both), that speeches like this happen:
I'm done distinguishing between antifa, green terrorists, any lunatic to the left of Reagan and the Democrats, because they never extend the same courtesy to the right and actively and consistently use bad apples to get things to go their awful way.Biden says Trump supporters are worse than slave-owning Confederates: "We are facing the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War. That's not hyperbole...The Confederates back then never breached the Capitol as insurrectionists did"
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 13, 2021
You CAN oppose HR1 & 1/6... pic.twitter.com/Jz8z95owPR
7/1/21
Thursday blend
7/1/21
Haven't had and won't have much time this week, so here are some quick links:
Desperate For Ratings Boost, Brian Stelter Dons Orange Wig
This:
Inventor of mRNA vaccine gets deplatformed for sharing the wrong science.
Desperate For Ratings Boost, Brian Stelter Dons Orange Wig
JAMA. RCT. Gold standard. Masking children causes hypercapnia.
— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) June 30, 2021
Conclusion: "children should not be forced to wear face masks."
Science.https://t.co/FGVgzx418o
This:
You should own your data. If it gets sold, you should get at least a tiny cut or the chance to opt out.
— Grummz (@Grummz) June 30, 2021
Companies are worth billions because they ride off your free (and often private) information.
Inventor of mRNA vaccine gets deplatformed for sharing the wrong science.
6/22/21
Deplatforming works, but not the way you want
6/22/21
I saw a post on Minds.com (yes, an alternative social media site similar to twitter) by its COO, Jack. He argues deplatforming does not work:
...there is an immense amount of evidence that suggests deplatforming is causing far more division, radicalization and violence than ever before.
I think he's both right and wrong. Deplatforming works, especially as big-tech colludes, cooperates, and coincidentally sing the same tune on all things to the right of Mao. It works remarkably well in removing people from the platform, reducing their influence on said platform, and generally erasing them from said platform. Especially when you remove the person, many similar personalities, and many of their followers--basically, just remove the weed and everything else within a 20-yard radius. Do that a few times and you won't have any more weeds!
The former Reddit CEO knows what she's talking about:
Her tweet was a reply to another tweet containing a link to a study that found out that “deplatforming is effective in minimizing the reach of far-right channels like Alex Jones & cannot be compensated on alternative platforms.”
Pao was Reddit’s CEO for a few months, between November 2014 and July 2015. During her brief tenure, she earned the nickname “Chairman Pao” for her strict pro-censorship policies that changed the culture of the platform.
Segregation, excommunication, & ostracism work well in removing people from groups. But it does not remove them from society. They are still out there. Only now they are far less moderated, far less policed, and far less observed than they used to be. It's a recipe for radicalization and fringe factionalism.
It's like prohibition. Lets ban alcohol because it causes bad things. Well now there are a lot worse bad things because all things alcohol are run by criminals. Prohibition drove the alcohol trade underground, and well, there's a lot to be said for sunlight.
Deplatforming just removes the sunlight. Not only is it wrong, it's dangerous.
6/18/21
Big-tech anti-trust legislation
6/18/21
There are some new anti-trust laws being proposed in Congress aimed at big-tech. I am not optimistic. I suspect it is a lot of theater for the sake of voter appeal, while they continue to rake in donations from big-tech. Both parties get these huge donations, especially the Democrats of late.
American Innovation and Choice Online Act, which prohibits the use of a dominant platform to discriminate against rivals by giving preference to its own products.
Platform Competition and Opportunity Act, which bars the use of acquisitions to smother competitive threats.
Ending Platform Monopolies Act, which restrains dominant platforms from using their power across multiple types of business to give themselves unfair advantages.
Augmenting Compatibility and Competition by Enabling Service Switching Act, or Access Act, which promotes competition by making it easier for businesses and consumers to move data when they want to switch to a new provider.
Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act, which amends filing fees for the first time in two decades and provides the government funds to pursue antitrust actions.
What matters is the end-result, if anything, to-what extent it was re-worded by big-tech lobbyists, and how nobody will talk about it once made law (funny how that happens). How many Republicans are on the take you think?
.@Google censored videos where Republicans discussed whether children should be forced to wear masks.
— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) June 18, 2021
And now @Google is lobbying Republicans to oppose antitrust reform legislation. pic.twitter.com/GnjDZBEuH1
Relatedly, Facebook has been big on pushing new internet regulations lately (which sound nice, but mostly suck):
Internet companies should be accountable for enforcing standards on harmful content. It’s impossible to remove all harmful content from the internet, but when people use dozens of different sharing services — all with their own policies and processes — we need a more standardized approach.
Forcing internet companies to police speech, how nice. Not only is this a dystopian nightmare, it would cripple any small competitor's ability to merely exist (conveniently for Facebook). Free speech isn't (and shouldn't be) always nice speech.
Online political advertising laws primarily focus on candidates and elections, rather than divisive political issues where we’ve seen more attempted interference. Some laws only apply during elections, although information campaigns are nonstop. And there are also important questions about how political campaigns use data and targeting. We believe legislation should be updated to reflect the reality of the threats and set standards for the whole industry.
If I can trust any of my American history and constitutional studies, then political speech was one of the big reasons for the first amendment. What is a political ad if not political speech? The laws we have are bad enough. Either you believe in free speech or you don't. The answer to bad speech (i.e., stuff you don't like, misinformation, fake news, etc.), is more speech (rebuttals, facts, logic), not censorship. And that is exactly what more political ad/speech regulation would be.
This all disturbingly corresponds to what Ace has been saying since about 2016, and today:
Now CNN assigns its Chief Deplatforming Officer Oliver Darcy to begin writing stories pressuring corporations to stop running advertising on the channel, pressuring their tech monopolist partners to limit and censor the channel, and asking hyperpartisan, pro-censorship Democrats if it's time to pass laws outlawing these channels.
6. The tech monopolies, now feeling pressure from corporations and threats of interference from state actors, do what they probably wanted to do anyway, and begin banning/limiting the channels the leftwing doesn't like.
And step 7:
7. Despite the fact that threats from the state contributed to the censorship by alleged "private corporations," NeverTrump and Conservative, Inc. say that the sovereignty of the tech monopolies must never be challenged and we must respect their completely-voluntary choice to censor alternative media. Which just happens to be a competitor of NeverTrump and Conservative, Inc. media as well.
In other words, they benefit personally, politically, and pecuniarily from these censorship campaigns just as the leftwing does, and support these censorship drives for the same craven, mercenary, disgusting reasons.
Remember, we have to "protect the public" from "disinformation," and force them to watch "real news."
"Real news," like CNN.
CNN, which suggested that the Indonesian airline was destroyed by a black hole.
Real news like that.
Tater has reason to push this agenda. I mean, apart from Jeff Zucker ordering him to.
He needs the competition to be outlawed more than almost anyone.
Facebook looks at step 6 like an opportunity: why not streamline it, get favorable state interference while making it harder for smaller competitors. Remember when the Wuhan lab-leak theory was a bannable fake-news conspiracy theory? Now it is at least a legitimate newsworthy question. Remember when buying masks were bad, then they were mandatory? Remember when coronavirus was not viewed as serious and banning travel was racist and excessive? Boy did that pendulum swing.
The experts, the consensus, the big-tech monopolists are and have been frequently wrong. Imagine them with more power over speech, with the help, support, and blessing of the government.
8/30/20
I think we've had enough
8/30/20
I've never been 100% libertarian (whatever that is), but I have always been for free speech, free association, freedom of thought--basically the almost completely unrestricted right of a person to do and think as they see fit, so long as it doesn't physically harm or physically threaten another.
But I am sick of the rioting, the violence, the ugliness, the lies, the misinformation, the nastiness, and the persistence of those things. And I suspect, a vast number of Americans are as well.
At what point does the right to protest--which now seems to invariably include rioting, violence and destruction of property--stop outweighing property rights, order, and a basic sense of I'm-pretty-sure-I-won't-get-shot-or-beaten-because-I-may-be-perceived-as-belonging-to-the-outgroup today?
I don't know, but I think at some point it does, and we're close to it, if not way past it.
I support protests, but I am against rioting. To state the obvious, which is feels less obvious today: Protesting is a Right; Rioting is a Crime.
When those two things become impossible to differentiate, we will lose the right to protest. Or we may gain a right to crime. Neither is appealing, and something needs to be done, soon.
8/13/18
Free-speech absolutism
8/13/18
I consider myself a free-speech absolutist. Even when the inevitable cliche counter-arguments arise, insisting that yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, or worse, hate speech is surely not protected speech. I find myself questioning the details of these hypothetical exceptions to free speech.
If I really, actually yelled "fire" in a movie theater here, sans any threatening flames, I think I would get little more than dirty looks, and perhaps be escorted out. Considering the fact I was on private property, disrupting a service others were paying for, my silencing in that situation would hardly amount to an infringement of my freedom of speech.
Maybe if there was a recent epidemic of fires spontaneously consuming theaters and their patrons--I guess, in that situation, me crying wolf would likely endanger others. In which case, I would also be on private property, disrupting a service, and endangering the lives of others. In both cases, my silencing (or punishment for fake news), wouldn't be such a terrible thing, let alone an infringement of my rights.
You get the idea. I need the details. And even then, I may or may not agree with you for reasons wholly different than why you hold said position.
I'll be the first to admit that people are stupid and on occasion react badly to certain ideas, or at least the vocalization of such (it's amazing how a lot of people can read terrible arguments in text and shrug, but should they hear it aloud from its advocate, especially in the company of others, it's a powder keg in a dry forest on the 4th of July). The potential for certain speech in certain situations can be rightfully considered incitement to riot, thus endangering others and their property.
So yeah, there are exceptions, and those exceptions are not general rules of thumb for which large swaths of people and their ideas can be outlawed. The exceptions are exceptions because they necessitate a closer look, details.
But not for long. People are now apparently allowed to punch or shoot Nazis--at least people who they believe are Nazis. What's Nazism besides a set of ideas? I mean, it's very possible for a pacifist to be a Nazi. A person who couldn't hurt a fly is absolutely free to believe that others can carry out his or her cherished Nazi beliefs.
It's also quite legal and apparently acceptable for large platforms to collude and deny their platforms to those with certain viewpoints. Sometimes very mainstream viewpoints.
It's also quite acceptable and legal to punish some criminals far more severely than others who committed the same crime, because it was argued their motivation was more wrong than the typical criminal.
And it's increasingly in vogue to publicly argue for more exceptions to free speech. To argue in favor of broadening the definition of existing exceptions, to broaden the definition of violence, to empower more and more legal and social entities to silence and punish.
At this rate, free speech absolutists will soon be considered extremists (we already are in certain circles, and I'm not even all that absolutist as you now know).
So as the anti-freedom trends grow, I'll endeavor to censor myself less, to question why and if I should self-censor, to support others' right to spout nonsense, or wrongthink, whatever the case may be.
Even though I am literally disgusted by Alex Jones, and technically he does not have a right to social media platforms, I am more disgusted by the anti-freedom trend and its efforts. The same goes for a lot of scoundrels.
If I really, actually yelled "fire" in a movie theater here, sans any threatening flames, I think I would get little more than dirty looks, and perhaps be escorted out. Considering the fact I was on private property, disrupting a service others were paying for, my silencing in that situation would hardly amount to an infringement of my freedom of speech.
Maybe if there was a recent epidemic of fires spontaneously consuming theaters and their patrons--I guess, in that situation, me crying wolf would likely endanger others. In which case, I would also be on private property, disrupting a service, and endangering the lives of others. In both cases, my silencing (or punishment for fake news), wouldn't be such a terrible thing, let alone an infringement of my rights.
You get the idea. I need the details. And even then, I may or may not agree with you for reasons wholly different than why you hold said position.
I'll be the first to admit that people are stupid and on occasion react badly to certain ideas, or at least the vocalization of such (it's amazing how a lot of people can read terrible arguments in text and shrug, but should they hear it aloud from its advocate, especially in the company of others, it's a powder keg in a dry forest on the 4th of July). The potential for certain speech in certain situations can be rightfully considered incitement to riot, thus endangering others and their property.
So yeah, there are exceptions, and those exceptions are not general rules of thumb for which large swaths of people and their ideas can be outlawed. The exceptions are exceptions because they necessitate a closer look, details.
But not for long. People are now apparently allowed to punch or shoot Nazis--at least people who they believe are Nazis. What's Nazism besides a set of ideas? I mean, it's very possible for a pacifist to be a Nazi. A person who couldn't hurt a fly is absolutely free to believe that others can carry out his or her cherished Nazi beliefs.
It's also quite legal and apparently acceptable for large platforms to collude and deny their platforms to those with certain viewpoints. Sometimes very mainstream viewpoints.
It's also quite acceptable and legal to punish some criminals far more severely than others who committed the same crime, because it was argued their motivation was more wrong than the typical criminal.
And it's increasingly in vogue to publicly argue for more exceptions to free speech. To argue in favor of broadening the definition of existing exceptions, to broaden the definition of violence, to empower more and more legal and social entities to silence and punish.
At this rate, free speech absolutists will soon be considered extremists (we already are in certain circles, and I'm not even all that absolutist as you now know).
So as the anti-freedom trends grow, I'll endeavor to censor myself less, to question why and if I should self-censor, to support others' right to spout nonsense, or wrongthink, whatever the case may be.
Even though I am literally disgusted by Alex Jones, and technically he does not have a right to social media platforms, I am more disgusted by the anti-freedom trend and its efforts. The same goes for a lot of scoundrels.
4/30/15
The power of gardens
4/30/15
Note: This is a long post and it is not about gardening.
I could probably start anywhere: The Baltimore riots, #Gamergate, the Sad Puppies and the Hugo-versy, human nature, ingroups and outgroups, social media activists, etcetera, and on and on, and so forth.
I suppose I'll start with Through the Worhmhole, season 6, episode 1: Are We All Bigots? This episode is suspiciously and fantastically salient right now.
It was particularly cringe-inducing for me at first, because I remembered a conversation cut short that I initiated with an African-American.
Having been a poli-sci major I tend to have politics and topics of national debate not far from the front of my mind. It's all too easy to reach into that well of poison in an attempt to be topical and raconteur. Years ago, during this conversation I said, "you know, on some level, I think we are all a little bit racist or prejudiced." I was thinking about human history and its tribalist nature, but I see how it could be interpreted very differently. My undiplomatic mouth and the resulting angry stare I got ended what was an otherwise interesting and cordial dialogue. Every time I think about that moment I cringe.
Then this show, hosted by Morgan Freeman no less, comes on and asks (and answers) the same damn thing. Short answer: yes, we are all racist scumbags.
Longer answer: A lot of it is subconscious, and is both learned through cultural exposure and a part of human, even mammalian, nature. This seems obvious to me. But we're not talking about the KKK or making a minority sit in the back of the bus, we're talking about non-overt stuff in modern civilization from millions of people adding up over time where we end up with huge disparities. And it's not just race, it's religion, nationality, sports teams; it's all tribalism. Ingroup vs. outgroup stuff. It's how humans behave. It's how monkeys behave. It's how rats behave!
We have a lot of groups in Western civilization. Western civilization itself is a group. I am a member of that group. I am also a member of the U.S. group, the white group, the male group, the dogs-lover group, the right-handed group, the sci-fi geeky fan group, etc. I am a member of a lot of different groups mostly with parallel, complimentary, and/or non-conflicting interests. Rarely do those interests conflict; more often, obviously, groups with demographically distinct memberships and different interests conflict. I guess you could try to stay out of it, but typically people get at least emotionally invested in a conflict their group is engaged in. Becausehuman mammalian nature.
A relatively harmless example can be the airing of eSports on ESPN. Traditionally, ESPN has aired mostly athletic sports competitions. Although they have on occasion aired poker championships. There's nothing athletic about poker, but it is a sport that a lot of people are interested in. It's a good bet that many fans of athletic competitions (ACF for short) are also poker game enthusiasts (PGE). For ESPN to air a poker game is like Michael Jordan going golfing. No big thing.
But times, they are a changin'. The other day ESPN aired teams competing against each other in the video game, Heroes of the Storm, on one of its channels and I'd venture to guess that the older ACFs and PGEs are generally not fans of this new video game, nor any competitions in it. Which prompted such people to say, "It’s not a sport — it’s a competition. Chess is a competition. Checkers is a competition…. Mostly, I’m interested in doing real sports." That was ESPN president John Skipper. And one of ESPN's hosts, Colin Cowherd had more colorful things to say about covering eSports. Ingroup vs. outgroup.
While I don't care much about Heroes of the Storm or MOBA competitions personally, I do like games and the idea of watching intense video game competitions by pro-gamers. So, not only am I in agreement with TotalBiscuit's sentiment in his video below, but with his specific point--that it doesn't matter whether or not it's called a sport. What matters is that eSports/gamers already has a lot of people in its group, and that group pays the bills by watching.
So yeah, I'm a member of the eSports/gamers group. I was a member of the more traditional ACF group in my youth, paying close attention to my favorite NBA teams, as well as playing Mario and Zelda as often as I could. While I still can identify with the ACF group, I felt the urge to take a side in this little conflict. Go eSports coverage! Yay more-relevant-to-me ingroup!
We tend to think of tribalism as inherently bad, but I don't think it is. I think tribalism is more like gravity. It's amoral. It just is. What we do with tribalism can be either good or bad. Lately it seems, as some of us intend to promote a kind of civility with the tools and weapons of tribalism, we're becoming demonstrably uncivil.
Enter the Prussian, speaking on the recent Hugo awards controversy, who is simultaneously upset and dismissive of SJWs:
The Hugo thing was about leftists vs. the at-least-not-overtly-left-enough. Or from the perspective of the SJWs: Decent human beings who happen to be good authors vs. racist/sexist/bigoted people who may or may not be good authors. In the world of tribalism and ingroups vs. outgroups, the sci-fi/fantasy fan group was beset and torn by other warring groups who happened to have members in the sci-fi/fantasy fan group (much like #gamergate). The Worldcon and Hugo award group, for good or ill, deliberately or not, was commandeered for other sociopolitical interests. Rightist and non-leftist members of the group took notice and responded in kind with the Puppies. Whether or not the Sad and Rabid Puppies were justified (I tend to think they were), the Hugo awards will never be the same and will always have that stink of corruption.
Suffice it to say that the leftists occupying other groups use the tools of tribalism to prod those other groups in a direction they want it to go. Don't get me wrong, everybody engages in tribalism. The problem is that the relatively recent prodding isn't so gentle, or civil; it might be even be quiet and secret. It's not always a rightist group that reacts and fights the prodding, it can be any group content with the way their group is/was. Sometimes rightist groups will take notice and join forces with the prodded group. Other times the prodded will surrender.
And the prodding is Oh-my-God-freaking everywhere. It's the outrage of the day, it's the national shame campaign. But why is it a bad thing? It's taking peoples reputations and ruining them, it's destroying careers. You can't have an old-fashioned opinion and say it out loud anymore. You can't think outside the sociopolitical box without the shame campaign threatening your job. And these are over little more than social faux pas! The ingroups and outgroups will clash, the rhetoric and tactics get sharper with every use. What's next?
Whatever it is, it can't be good. Indeed, the logical leap to the next level has already been mentally considered and accepted by at least one of the prodding leftists.
I'm going to quote Scott Alexander at length, and I hope that's okay with him (you should read his entire post anyway). Here he is at SSC quoting (and responding) to a somewhat-famous leftist:
(At risk of mixing metaphors I'll continue using "gardens.")
There are many overlapping gardens, but some gardeners don't seem to mind the boll weevils, and even assist them at times.
So far, I've mostly discussed shaming and what basically amounts to ad hominem attacks as the methods of which the uncivil prodding tribalists employ. Mostly to punish mildly sexist, racist, or anti-gay marriage opinions. But there are boll weevils and there are BOLL WEEVILS.
This comes sharply into focus when you look at the two biggest feuding tribes in America, the Republicans and the Democrats, or more broadly the liberal/progressive left and the conservative right.
When a conflict takes on a political characteristic, whether real or imagined, things get out of control and your garden becomes untenable:
It's getting harder and harder to maintain a civil garden because Everything is Political. Video games are now politicized. Glorified book clubs. Wedding cakes. Commencement speeches. Bad jokes. innocuous-looking T-shirts are politicized.
And where does that leave real, dyed-in-the-wool, actual politics? Are the loyal opposition members safe? You might think so, given our robust constitutional political protections. But I wouldn't be so sure:
So it doesn't surprise me that people want to avoid all this nastiness they see in the not-so-distant future and request a divorce. The blogger Ace, tweeted the rationale behind his idea:
Even if there were a smooth way to secede, conflicts will still arise, the differences are still there. It's just that now there's a bunch of innocent bystanders who are no longer considered innocent nor bystanders. While that may be good for political participation, it would be bad for civility. The boll weevils, or the prodding tribalists would be in charge, unencumbered by considerations for outgroup feelings, emboldened by their newfound situation and ripe for group polarization.
But we already live in our own ideological garden sanctuaries. We may wish the walls held up better with fewer shame campaigns and less name-calling, we don't want to suffer the externalities nor direct attacks from discordant groups.
And so we often just sort of excommunicate the people who're mucking it all up:
What the video doesn't show is what happens after everyone catches on to the repeat takers. The sharers move to another table eventually becoming a big table full of sharers, and the takers are left to themselves. This is the ideal walled garden where everyone reaps the rewards from cooperation. It's the divine grace Scott references.
Yes, we must be kind and civil, especially in disagreement. And when the boll weevils or the prodding tribalists don't cooperate, well, just ignore them.
But if we can't ignore them, everybody loses and it's time to start creating new countries and breaking up families and watch out for thought police and our gardens go to crap.
May 3rd update: So that's how it's going to be, then:
I could probably start anywhere: The Baltimore riots, #Gamergate, the Sad Puppies and the Hugo-versy, human nature, ingroups and outgroups, social media activists, etcetera, and on and on, and so forth.
I suppose I'll start with Through the Worhmhole, season 6, episode 1: Are We All Bigots? This episode is suspiciously and fantastically salient right now.
It was particularly cringe-inducing for me at first, because I remembered a conversation cut short that I initiated with an African-American.
Having been a poli-sci major I tend to have politics and topics of national debate not far from the front of my mind. It's all too easy to reach into that well of poison in an attempt to be topical and raconteur. Years ago, during this conversation I said, "you know, on some level, I think we are all a little bit racist or prejudiced." I was thinking about human history and its tribalist nature, but I see how it could be interpreted very differently. My undiplomatic mouth and the resulting angry stare I got ended what was an otherwise interesting and cordial dialogue. Every time I think about that moment I cringe.
Then this show, hosted by Morgan Freeman no less, comes on and asks (and answers) the same damn thing. Short answer: yes, we are all racist scumbags.
Longer answer: A lot of it is subconscious, and is both learned through cultural exposure and a part of human, even mammalian, nature. This seems obvious to me. But we're not talking about the KKK or making a minority sit in the back of the bus, we're talking about non-overt stuff in modern civilization from millions of people adding up over time where we end up with huge disparities. And it's not just race, it's religion, nationality, sports teams; it's all tribalism. Ingroup vs. outgroup stuff. It's how humans behave. It's how monkeys behave. It's how rats behave!
We have a lot of groups in Western civilization. Western civilization itself is a group. I am a member of that group. I am also a member of the U.S. group, the white group, the male group, the dogs-lover group, the right-handed group, the sci-fi geeky fan group, etc. I am a member of a lot of different groups mostly with parallel, complimentary, and/or non-conflicting interests. Rarely do those interests conflict; more often, obviously, groups with demographically distinct memberships and different interests conflict. I guess you could try to stay out of it, but typically people get at least emotionally invested in a conflict their group is engaged in. Because
A relatively harmless example can be the airing of eSports on ESPN. Traditionally, ESPN has aired mostly athletic sports competitions. Although they have on occasion aired poker championships. There's nothing athletic about poker, but it is a sport that a lot of people are interested in. It's a good bet that many fans of athletic competitions (ACF for short) are also poker game enthusiasts (PGE). For ESPN to air a poker game is like Michael Jordan going golfing. No big thing.
But times, they are a changin'. The other day ESPN aired teams competing against each other in the video game, Heroes of the Storm, on one of its channels and I'd venture to guess that the older ACFs and PGEs are generally not fans of this new video game, nor any competitions in it. Which prompted such people to say, "It’s not a sport — it’s a competition. Chess is a competition. Checkers is a competition…. Mostly, I’m interested in doing real sports." That was ESPN president John Skipper. And one of ESPN's hosts, Colin Cowherd had more colorful things to say about covering eSports. Ingroup vs. outgroup.
While I don't care much about Heroes of the Storm or MOBA competitions personally, I do like games and the idea of watching intense video game competitions by pro-gamers. So, not only am I in agreement with TotalBiscuit's sentiment in his video below, but with his specific point--that it doesn't matter whether or not it's called a sport. What matters is that eSports/gamers already has a lot of people in its group, and that group pays the bills by watching.
So yeah, I'm a member of the eSports/gamers group. I was a member of the more traditional ACF group in my youth, paying close attention to my favorite NBA teams, as well as playing Mario and Zelda as often as I could. While I still can identify with the ACF group, I felt the urge to take a side in this little conflict. Go eSports coverage! Yay more-relevant-to-me ingroup!
We tend to think of tribalism as inherently bad, but I don't think it is. I think tribalism is more like gravity. It's amoral. It just is. What we do with tribalism can be either good or bad. Lately it seems, as some of us intend to promote a kind of civility with the tools and weapons of tribalism, we're becoming demonstrably uncivil.
Enter the Prussian, speaking on the recent Hugo awards controversy, who is simultaneously upset and dismissive of SJWs:
Author Larry Correia (not read him, yet) attended one of their cons when he was starting out, and what he found was what he described as a whispering campaign against one of his books. Not because of the book, mind you, but because of his politics. Hence he was smeared as racist, misogynist, homophobe and all the rest of I – to the point that his wife started getting concerned phone calls from people worried that she was living with a wife beater.
All of this is drearily familiar to anyone who has experienced the tolerance and fairness of the western left, above all the American left. The bad faith, the vicious insults, the attitude of throw anything at all and hope some of it sticks – it’s boring and routine at this point. Forget those of us who are loud and proud rightists, we’ve seen this guff dished out against such bona fide lefties as Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens…
In effect, anyone who didn’t toe the extremely thin and boring line of the US center-left was being ostracized and kept out of the awards – there were apparently organized cliques getting together to work out what books to nominate and put forward, and that decision was strongly driven by politics . . .
. . . Despite all their viciousness, SJWs are paper tigers. . . . if you are relying on SJWs to defend issues that actually matter – anti-racialism, women’s emancipation, free speech, the defense of civilization – you are relying on people who cannot even rig an award competently.I sort of both agree and disagree with him. They're not very good people for using the blunt tools of tribalism like shaming, name-calling, harassment, and general thuggish outgrouping just because they disagree with their victims' ideas. And to some extent, they are paper tigers. But in the internet age, even a small group of paper tigers can make a loud voice and cause a lot of problems.
The Hugo thing was about leftists vs. the at-least-not-overtly-left-enough. Or from the perspective of the SJWs: Decent human beings who happen to be good authors vs. racist/sexist/bigoted people who may or may not be good authors. In the world of tribalism and ingroups vs. outgroups, the sci-fi/fantasy fan group was beset and torn by other warring groups who happened to have members in the sci-fi/fantasy fan group (much like #gamergate). The Worldcon and Hugo award group, for good or ill, deliberately or not, was commandeered for other sociopolitical interests. Rightist and non-leftist members of the group took notice and responded in kind with the Puppies. Whether or not the Sad and Rabid Puppies were justified (I tend to think they were), the Hugo awards will never be the same and will always have that stink of corruption.
Suffice it to say that the leftists occupying other groups use the tools of tribalism to prod those other groups in a direction they want it to go. Don't get me wrong, everybody engages in tribalism. The problem is that the relatively recent prodding isn't so gentle, or civil; it might be even be quiet and secret. It's not always a rightist group that reacts and fights the prodding, it can be any group content with the way their group is/was. Sometimes rightist groups will take notice and join forces with the prodded group. Other times the prodded will surrender.
And the prodding is Oh-my-God-freaking everywhere. It's the outrage of the day, it's the national shame campaign. But why is it a bad thing? It's taking peoples reputations and ruining them, it's destroying careers. You can't have an old-fashioned opinion and say it out loud anymore. You can't think outside the sociopolitical box without the shame campaign threatening your job. And these are over little more than social faux pas! The ingroups and outgroups will clash, the rhetoric and tactics get sharper with every use. What's next?
Whatever it is, it can't be good. Indeed, the logical leap to the next level has already been mentally considered and accepted by at least one of the prodding leftists.
I'm going to quote Scott Alexander at length, and I hope that's okay with him (you should read his entire post anyway). Here he is at SSC quoting (and responding) to a somewhat-famous leftist:
That post [the one debunking false rape statistics] is exactly my problem with Scott. He seems to honestly think that it’s a worthwhile use of his time, energy and mental effort to download evil people’s evil worldviews into his mind and try to analytically debate them with statistics and cost-benefit analyses.In other words, if a fight is important to you, fight nasty. If that means lying, lie. If that means insults, insult. If that means silencing people, silence. . . .
He gets *mad* at people whom he detachedly intellectually agrees with but who are willing to back up their beliefs with war and fire rather than pussyfooting around with debate-team nonsense.
It honestly makes me kind of sick. It is exactly the kind of thing that “social justice” activists like me *intend* to attack and “trigger” when we use “triggery” catchphrases about the mewling pusillanimity of privileged white allies.
Compare to the following two critiques: “The Catholic Church wastes so much energy getting upset about heretics who believe mostly the same things as they do, when there are literally millions of Hindus over in India who don’t believe in Catholicism at all! What dumb priorities!”
Or “How could Joseph McCarthy get angry about a couple of people who might have been Communists in the US movie industry, when over in Moscow there were thousands of people who were openly super Communist all the time?”
There might be foot-long giant centipedes in the Amazon, but I am a lot more worried about boll weevils in my walled garden.
Creationists lie. Homeopaths lie. Anti-vaxxers lie. This is part of the Great Circle of Life. It is not necessary to call out every lie by a creationist, because the sort of person who is still listening to creationists is not the sort of person who is likely to be moved by call-outs. There is a role for organized action against creationists, like preventing them from getting their opinions taught in schools, but the marginal blog post “debunking” a creationist something something is a waste of time. Everybody who wants to discuss things rationally has already formed a walled garden and locked the creationists outside of it.
Anti-Semites fight nasty. The Ku Klux Klan fights nasty. Neo-Nazis fight nasty. We dismiss them with equanamity, in accordance with the ancient proverb: “Haters gonna hate”. There is a role for organized opposition to these groups, like making sure they can’t actually terrorize anyone, but the marginal blog post condemning Nazism is a waste of time. Everybody who wants to discuss things charitably and compassionately has already formed a walled garden and locked the Nazis outside of it.
People who want to discuss things rationally and charitably have not yet locked Charles Clymer out of their walled garden.
He is not a heathen, he is a heretic. He is not a foreigner, he is a traitor. He comes in talking all liberalism and statistics, and then he betrays the signals he has just sent. He is not just some guy who defects in the Prisoner’s Dilemma. He is the guy who defects while wearing the “I COOPERATE IN PRISONERS DILEMMAS” t-shirt.
What really, really bothered me wasn’t Clymer at all: it was that rationalists were taking him seriously. Smart people, kind people! I even said so in my article. Boll weevils in our beautiful walled garden!
Why am I always harping on feminism? I feel like we’ve got a good thing going, we’ve ratified our Platonic contract to be intellectually honest and charitable to each other, we are going about perma-cooperating in the Prisoner’s Dilemma and reaping gains from trade.
And then someone says “Except that of course regardless of all that I reserve the right to still use lies and insults and harassment and dark epistemology to spread feminism”. Sometimes they do this explicitly, like Andrew did. Other times they use a more nuanced argument like “Surely you didn’t think the same rules against lies and insults and harassment should apply to oppressed and privileged people, did you?” And other times they don’t say anything, but just show their true colors by reblogging an awful article with false statistics.
. . .Scott uses the apt metaphor of the walled garden (a group/tribe/community), and the uncivil tribalists as boll weevils. As both supporters of a classically liberal society, Scott and I might disagree on the finer points in its execution and the occasional issue here and there, but I feel we're a part of a polite and healthy garden where disagreement on many things are acceptable provided both parties remain civil, which includes intellectual honesty.
But then someone else says “Well, if they get their exception, I deserve my exception,” and then someone else says “Well, if those two get exceptions, I’m out”, and you have no idea how difficult it is to successfully renegotiate the terms of a timeless Platonic contract that doesn’t literally exist.
No! I am Exception Nazi! NO EXCEPTION FOR YOU! Civilization didn’t conquer the world by forbidding you to murder your enemies unless they are actually unrighteous in which case go ahead and kill them all. Liberals didn’t give their lives in the battle against tyranny to end discrimination against all religions except Jansenism because seriously fuck Jansenists. Here we have built our Schelling fence and here we are defending it to the bitter end. [Emphasis mine]
(At risk of mixing metaphors I'll continue using "gardens.")
There are many overlapping gardens, but some gardeners don't seem to mind the boll weevils, and even assist them at times.
So far, I've mostly discussed shaming and what basically amounts to ad hominem attacks as the methods of which the uncivil prodding tribalists employ. Mostly to punish mildly sexist, racist, or anti-gay marriage opinions. But there are boll weevils and there are BOLL WEEVILS.
This comes sharply into focus when you look at the two biggest feuding tribes in America, the Republicans and the Democrats, or more broadly the liberal/progressive left and the conservative right.
When a conflict takes on a political characteristic, whether real or imagined, things get out of control and your garden becomes untenable:
- -Scott doesn't allow race or gender to be discussed in his open threads--two relatively recently politicized topics.
- -People get uninvited from speaking on college campuses for safety concerns because of their ideas.
- -Scheduled movies get unscheduled on campuses for appearing to have the wrong message.
- -Authors withdraw themselves from award nominations out of fear of being associated with someone beyond their control.
- -CEOs get pushed out because they held the wrong political view.
- -Not to mention the poor gay guy who let Ted Cruz into his living room, and the bakery who GoFundMe cut off.
- Pizzerias and sundry being legislated into the outgroup.
It's getting harder and harder to maintain a civil garden because Everything is Political. Video games are now politicized. Glorified book clubs. Wedding cakes. Commencement speeches. Bad jokes. innocuous-looking T-shirts are politicized.
And where does that leave real, dyed-in-the-wool, actual politics? Are the loyal opposition members safe? You might think so, given our robust constitutional political protections. But I wouldn't be so sure:
Don’t call your lawyer.
Don’t tell anyone about this raid. Not even your mother, your father, or your closest friends.
The entire neighborhood could see the police around their house, but they had to remain silent. This was not the “right to remain silent” as uttered by every cop on every legal drama on television — the right against self-incrimination. They couldn’t mount a public defense if they wanted — or even offer an explanation to family and friends. . . .
Most Americans have never heard of these raids, or of the lengthy criminal investigations of Wisconsin conservatives. For good reason. Bound by comprehensive secrecy orders, conservatives were left to suffer in silence as leaks ruined their reputations, as neighbors, looking through windows and dismayed at the massive police presence, the lights shining down on targets’ homes, wondered, no doubt, What on earth did that family do?That, along with the IRS scandal, are extreme examples of what happens when powerful people with different opinions use the weapons of tribalism to punish the outgroup. The prosecutor behind the Wisconsin raids, John Chisholm is just ahead of his time. Maybe. But that's escalation, that is the next logical step.
This was the on-the-ground reality of the so-called John Doe investigations, expansive and secret criminal proceedings that directly targeted Wisconsin residents because of their relationship to Scott Walker, their support for Act 10, and their advocacy of conservative reform.
Largely hidden from the public eye, this traumatic process, however, is now heading toward a legal climax, with two key rulings expected in the late spring or early summer. The first ruling, from the Wisconsin supreme court, could halt the investigations for good, in part by declaring that the “misconduct” being investigated isn’t misconduct at all but the simple exercise of First Amendment rights.
So it doesn't surprise me that people want to avoid all this nastiness they see in the not-so-distant future and request a divorce. The blogger Ace, tweeted the rationale behind his idea:
there is a pragmatic value to liberalism-- liberalism permits strongly-disagreeing peoples to live among each other peacefully.I don't see this working, geographically or otherwise.
if we no longer have this sort of liberalism--if the left is determined to simply "win"--then we shall no longer live together peacefully
that's not a threat, that's just an obvious observation.
I think it's pretty clear the left no longer wishes to live peacefully among us, and, for my part: The sentiment is shared.
i think we're beyond electoral matters.
...
notice the lack of "that's crazy-talk" responses
Even if there were a smooth way to secede, conflicts will still arise, the differences are still there. It's just that now there's a bunch of innocent bystanders who are no longer considered innocent nor bystanders. While that may be good for political participation, it would be bad for civility. The boll weevils, or the prodding tribalists would be in charge, unencumbered by considerations for outgroup feelings, emboldened by their newfound situation and ripe for group polarization.
But we already live in our own ideological garden sanctuaries. We may wish the walls held up better with fewer shame campaigns and less name-calling, we don't want to suffer the externalities nor direct attacks from discordant groups.
And so we often just sort of excommunicate the people who're mucking it all up:
What the video doesn't show is what happens after everyone catches on to the repeat takers. The sharers move to another table eventually becoming a big table full of sharers, and the takers are left to themselves. This is the ideal walled garden where everyone reaps the rewards from cooperation. It's the divine grace Scott references.
Yes, we must be kind and civil, especially in disagreement. And when the boll weevils or the prodding tribalists don't cooperate, well, just ignore them.
But if we can't ignore them, everybody loses and it's time to start creating new countries and breaking up families and watch out for thought police and our gardens go to crap.
May 3rd update: So that's how it's going to be, then:
A 250-strong meetup of GamerGate supporters, which included game developers, journalists and think-tank scholars were evacuated from a bar in Washington D.C on Friday after an anonymous bomb threat was made against the gathering.Is it possible the uncivil activists fail to realize that the double-edged sword they insist upon using does, in fact, cut both ways? Do they expect by starting a war, the other side just quietly goes away?
4/17/15
Stupid with Authority
4/17/15
Is a terrible combination. I honestly don't think it could ever be emphasized enough.
Stupidity alone is just awful, but give it some authority: a badge, a title, a position of influence, and that isolated case of awful just became a rabid werewolf with smallpox.
I just thought I'd lob a pebble against the roaring tsunami of stupid, at the very least, as a symbol of protest.
I'll start out with my somewhat mundane example: A whole lot of people on the internet well and truly believe that violating a company's terms of service is illegal. Often criminal. As in you're risking prison time if you don't do exactly as the fine print on some website tells you.
I think a lot of otherwise semi-intelligent people conflate the law and TOS because not only do they not think about it, the TOS often reiterates the law.
Such TOS are, of course, all in legalese, making it sound all law-ish.
Theft is illegal and against many TOS, but viewing a website in your custom-built browser, is NOT illegal. Also, once you initially view online content in whatever browser, you are in fact downloading it, regardless of whatever the legal definition of "download" is. If your device couldn't download content, you would never be able to see or hear that content. I'm no IT expert, but I believe most online content you experience is stored in some temp file, browser cache, or both.
With the right knowledge, you could store and access this temporary memory, permanently. Businesses don't own your personal device, nor the memory on it. But I'm getting off track.
Say someone views some private, exclusive content, without signing an NDA, and they want to tell their friends about it. But they did read a very scary TOS. According to an alarming number of forum mods and commenters, you'll get 20 years in rape-prison for blabbing your mouth. You might even get scary Cease and Desist letters from soulless lawyers, even though the act of free speech is, for the moment, theoretically perfectly legal.
Hell, I'm sure ad-blocking software is against a plethora of TOS, but that doesn't stop millions of web surfers and Stupids with Authority from ad-free surfing.
What it boils down to is that TOS are not the law of the land (nor cyberspace). If you don't break the law, you're legally safe to break the shit out of any TOS you want. Businesses might try to sue you, especially if you caused them harm, but they can't tell the Sheriff to arrest you.
Despite what Captain Badass McForum Mod tells you. Do a google search and shut that stupid down. Or show him this link. But I fear stating the simple common sense that private companies do not make laws probably won't shake the stupid, because they don't think, and any repudiation diminishes their "authority."
So please, throw your pebbles at this kind, or any kind, of Stupid with Authority. It has far-reaching, hard-to-see chilling effects, and just sucks for everyone. Fight the good fight, friend.
Does this sound like legal advice? It kinda does, so take it to the bank despite the fact that I may or may not be a lawyer, despite every fucking lawyer and non-lawyer on the planet putting up an idiot warning disclaimer saying it's not legal advice. In other words, use your brain and fight the stupid.
Stupidity alone is just awful, but give it some authority: a badge, a title, a position of influence, and that isolated case of awful just became a rabid werewolf with smallpox.
I just thought I'd lob a pebble against the roaring tsunami of stupid, at the very least, as a symbol of protest.
I'll start out with my somewhat mundane example: A whole lot of people on the internet well and truly believe that violating a company's terms of service is illegal. Often criminal. As in you're risking prison time if you don't do exactly as the fine print on some website tells you.
I think a lot of otherwise semi-intelligent people conflate the law and TOS because not only do they not think about it, the TOS often reiterates the law.
- So a website tells you not to steal their stuff or you will be prosecuted. That's a no-brainer. Stealing is illegal and nobody likes to be stolen from.
- After a few of these reiterations of the law, they slip in some of their own rules: You may not download any content on this website unless otherwise noted. Or you may not view this content without the provided functionality, or something similar.
Such TOS are, of course, all in legalese, making it sound all law-ish.
Theft is illegal and against many TOS, but viewing a website in your custom-built browser, is NOT illegal. Also, once you initially view online content in whatever browser, you are in fact downloading it, regardless of whatever the legal definition of "download" is. If your device couldn't download content, you would never be able to see or hear that content. I'm no IT expert, but I believe most online content you experience is stored in some temp file, browser cache, or both.
With the right knowledge, you could store and access this temporary memory, permanently. Businesses don't own your personal device, nor the memory on it. But I'm getting off track.
Say someone views some private, exclusive content, without signing an NDA, and they want to tell their friends about it. But they did read a very scary TOS. According to an alarming number of forum mods and commenters, you'll get 20 years in rape-prison for blabbing your mouth. You might even get scary Cease and Desist letters from soulless lawyers, even though the act of free speech is, for the moment, theoretically perfectly legal.
What it boils down to is that TOS are not the law of the land (nor cyberspace). If you don't break the law, you're legally safe to break the shit out of any TOS you want. Businesses might try to sue you, especially if you caused them harm, but they can't tell the Sheriff to arrest you.
Despite what Captain Badass McForum Mod tells you. Do a google search and shut that stupid down. Or show him this link. But I fear stating the simple common sense that private companies do not make laws probably won't shake the stupid, because they don't think, and any repudiation diminishes their "authority."
So please, throw your pebbles at this kind, or any kind, of Stupid with Authority. It has far-reaching, hard-to-see chilling effects, and just sucks for everyone. Fight the good fight, friend.
Does this sound like legal advice? It kinda does, so take it to the bank despite the fact that I may or may not be a lawyer, despite every fucking lawyer and non-lawyer on the planet putting up an idiot warning disclaimer saying it's not legal advice. In other words, use your brain and fight the stupid.
1/8/15
Free Speech vs Extremism
1/8/15
Juan Cole has a thought-provoking post on his blog about the recent terrorist attack in France. His post surprised me, really.
Ever since I first heard about the attack, I just assumed it was carried out by crazy Muslims who are among the type that get super pissed off about cartoons. I just kinda assumed they were an invisible subset of young males among the Muslim population, teetering on the edge of sanity for various reasons. They exist, they are out there, and we almost never know who they are until someone draws a cartoon and they snap.
But I'm wrong about that.
No, they don't exist in a vacuum. Of course Islamic culture plays a role in the disproportionately huge representation of Muslims in terrorism (it's stupid that this factoid is almost considered hate-speech).
Yet they aren't remotely representative of (at least) Western Muslims. Else we wouldn't be talking about attacks here and there, we would be discussing the latest news from the front lines in World War III.
So we've got a small group of people that keep popping up from within a large Muslim population that not infrequently kill innocent people. This has not changed since 2001. Actually before then.
I see two solutions to this kind of problem:
I think we tried option 2a at first without much of 2b--well, mostly the U.S., Britain, and a few other allies in the months and years after 2001. I don't think 2a works without a lot of 2b. It seems, I hope, the world caught on sometime between then and now. It's still expensive, long, and drawn out though.
But I don't know if this new and improved war on terror has been remotely successful. I don't even know how to define success here. No more terrorism? That's like trying to achieve light-speed: The closer you get to the cosmic limit, the more energy you will need, increasing to infinity. It would require an infinite amount of resources to utterly stop all future acts of terrorism. I admit my analogy is terrible--insurgencies have been put down, revolutions squashed, seiges overcome, wars both cold and hot were won, so it seems entirely likely Islamist terrorism can be reduced to a satisfactory extent. But, and answer honestly, do you see light at the end of this tunnel?
I'm not sure what the answer is.
It's just that it finally dawned on me why national leaders' early reactions to Islamist terrorist attacks are to defend Muslims and Islam. It's it's ham-fisted, condescending, insulting and borderline offensive--as if we were all on the verge of forming a lynch mob--but I understand it now.
So these aren't random Muslims who just snap at an offensive cartoon; these are guys who are trained, have a support network, plan in advance, and may have just been waiting for an excuse (or opportunity).
If they truly hate us, or "hate our freedom," or "hate infidels," or whatever you want to define their motivation as, why are they targeting cartoonists and journalists? Why shoot innocent civilians, or blow up public spaces? I mean, if you want to deliver a blow to your enemy, wouldn't you rather hit some important industrial or government building?
They did that on 9/11 and since then I assume it's probably a bit more difficult to pull that kind of an attack off. I'm sure they try, but for a 'professional' attack, Charlie Hebdo seemed a relatively mundane and sort of Pyrrhic target. Maybe they are so sensitive they feel murder is the only way to deal with blasphemers.
Maybe it's a morbid marketing strategy:
It's just so tiresome:
The 2b rhetoric is, I think, getting better. Other than Howard Dean's inept comment and a few others, the race to defend ordinary Muslims and oikophobically preempt any 'Muricans from committing hate-thoughts is well, not as ham-fisted as it was, seems to me. An Islamophobic backlash would be bad, and undermine the 2b strategy. Just try not to be so condescending about it--not all non-Muslim Westerners are cavemen.
This attack was about religion. It was about free speech. And it was also about murderers being murderers. Despite what the politicians and liberal blogs tell me, I know those three are not mutually exclusive. I'm not going to speculate as to what goes on in a murderer's mind. And I don't want to get into the religious aspect, other than to say it's so obviously there that it must feel smart to ignore it, and even smarter to say that it's not really there at all--which is just stupid. I'm not ignoring it, I just don't have the expertise nor energy to go there.
Which brings me to free speech. Apparently some news organizations decided to censor out the cartoons Charlie Hebdo was famous for, cartoons which brought the explicit ire of the terrorists. Will Wilkinson says it better than I can:
These were silly cartoons! And people are censoring them! I don't know if it's more offensive to act like most Muslims are precious little snowflakes that we may or may not be afraid of, or to show the most blasphemous cartoon fullscreen! It's lose-lose, might as well err on the side of free speech and showing highly relevant news material. When the federation of united aliens sends a delegation to review our application for entry into the galactic community, they will ask, "Why were some of your people murdered in Paris?"
"Because they drew some cartoons that ..."
"They were murdered over cartoons?!?"
"Well, yes, but the cartoons blasphemed a prophet, which ..."
"Application denied. Please try again in 3000 years. Have a nice day."
Yes, a short sci-fi allegory about humanity. That's how ridiculous this is, that's how ridiculous most terrorism, especially the Muhammad cartoon-controversy is to the civilized world, and Charlie Hebdo kept pointing that out.
So I debated with myself on whether or not to post the cartoons in question here. I don't wish to offend anybody, but these are just cartoons. I think the world is grown up enough to handle blasphemous cartoons, and if not, a little push in that direction wouldn't hurt. The more these cartoons are spread, the more commonplace and expected they become. Repeated exposure desensitizes. Hopefully, in time, this tiny fig leaf of justification the terrorists are claiming will get even tinier.
From left: I think the bubble text says "Must not mock!"
The center cartoon says, "The Koran is crap. It does not stop bullets."
Cartoon on the right says "Love is stronger than hate."
There's a bunch more (translated) here.
Ever since I first heard about the attack, I just assumed it was carried out by crazy Muslims who are among the type that get super pissed off about cartoons. I just kinda assumed they were an invisible subset of young males among the Muslim population, teetering on the edge of sanity for various reasons. They exist, they are out there, and we almost never know who they are until someone draws a cartoon and they snap.
But I'm wrong about that.
No, they don't exist in a vacuum. Of course Islamic culture plays a role in the disproportionately huge representation of Muslims in terrorism (it's stupid that this factoid is almost considered hate-speech).
Yet they aren't remotely representative of (at least) Western Muslims. Else we wouldn't be talking about attacks here and there, we would be discussing the latest news from the front lines in World War III.
So we've got a small group of people that keep popping up from within a large Muslim population that not infrequently kill innocent people. This has not changed since 2001. Actually before then.
I see two solutions to this kind of problem:
- (1) Get rid of all the Muslims (preferably by deportation); or
- (2a) Vigorously engage in an expensive, long, drawn-out campaign against the cancer that keeps popping up while
- (2b) winning the hearts and minds of the rest.
I think we tried option 2a at first without much of 2b--well, mostly the U.S., Britain, and a few other allies in the months and years after 2001. I don't think 2a works without a lot of 2b. It seems, I hope, the world caught on sometime between then and now. It's still expensive, long, and drawn out though.
But I don't know if this new and improved war on terror has been remotely successful. I don't even know how to define success here. No more terrorism? That's like trying to achieve light-speed: The closer you get to the cosmic limit, the more energy you will need, increasing to infinity. It would require an infinite amount of resources to utterly stop all future acts of terrorism. I admit my analogy is terrible--insurgencies have been put down, revolutions squashed, seiges overcome, wars both cold and hot were won, so it seems entirely likely Islamist terrorism can be reduced to a satisfactory extent. But, and answer honestly, do you see light at the end of this tunnel?
I'm not sure what the answer is.
It's just that it finally dawned on me why national leaders' early reactions to Islamist terrorist attacks are to defend Muslims and Islam. It's it's ham-fisted, condescending, insulting and borderline offensive--as if we were all on the verge of forming a lynch mob--but I understand it now.
The operatives who carried out this attack exhibit signs of professional training. They spoke unaccented French, and so certainly know that they are playing into the hands of Marine LePen and the Islamophobic French Right wing. They may have been French, but they appear to have been battle hardened. This horrific murder was not a pious protest against the defamation of a religious icon. It was an attempt to provoke European society into pogroms against French Muslims, at which point al-Qaeda recruitment would suddenly exhibit some successes instead of faltering...My first reaction was wondering how the hell Juan Cole knew these murderers were 'professional' terrorists. Is he sleeping with François Hollande too? But he's probably right: the cartoon-hating murderers had MACHINE GUNS, methodically wiped out their targets, then shot everyone else they could, and successfully (so far) fled.
So these aren't random Muslims who just snap at an offensive cartoon; these are guys who are trained, have a support network, plan in advance, and may have just been waiting for an excuse (or opportunity).
If they truly hate us, or "hate our freedom," or "hate infidels," or whatever you want to define their motivation as, why are they targeting cartoonists and journalists? Why shoot innocent civilians, or blow up public spaces? I mean, if you want to deliver a blow to your enemy, wouldn't you rather hit some important industrial or government building?
They did that on 9/11 and since then I assume it's probably a bit more difficult to pull that kind of an attack off. I'm sure they try, but for a 'professional' attack, Charlie Hebdo seemed a relatively mundane and sort of Pyrrhic target. Maybe they are so sensitive they feel murder is the only way to deal with blasphemers.
Maybe it's a morbid marketing strategy:
Al-Qaeda wants to mentally colonize French Muslims, but faces a wall of disinterest. But if it can get non-Muslim French to be beastly to ethnic Muslims on the grounds that they are Muslims, it can start creating a common political identity around grievance against discrimination.And that is how terrorists fight option 2b. So I get it. Howard Dean says of the terrorists, "they're about as Muslim as I am" despite them actually being Muslim. The media hypes #illridewithyou during the jihadist-wannabe hostage situation in Australia, without much fact-checking. Obama says "ISIL is not Islamic." Not once do you see the words "Muslim" or "Islam" in national leaders' responses to the attack unless they are used to demarcate the religion from the violence. We love the Muslims, but we hate the terrorists.
It's just so tiresome:
The “tiny minority of extremists” read on jihadism to the same end was a staple of Bush’s administration, but that concept implies that they do indeed function within Islam in some sense. That’s what it means to be a minority within a larger population rather than a population in your own right. Lately, though, that concept seems to have slid towards insisting that jihadis simply aren’t Muslim in any sense of the word. Sure, they may swear by the Koran, and sure, most of them come from the Middle East, and sure, they act with plenty of moral support from Salafist clerics based in the same country where Mecca and Medina are located, but hey — that doesn’t make them Islamic. ...
If you feel obliged to remind Americans for the thousandth time that it’s unfair to punish one individual Muslim for the actions of another — and if you do still feel that need after the first 999 iterations, you should probably reflect on your own prejudices — then just say that. Shifting into Imam Dean mode and issuing a fatwa rendering the Charlie Hebdo terrorists haram looks ridiculous...
The 2b rhetoric is, I think, getting better. Other than Howard Dean's inept comment and a few others, the race to defend ordinary Muslims and oikophobically preempt any 'Muricans from committing hate-thoughts is well, not as ham-fisted as it was, seems to me. An Islamophobic backlash would be bad, and undermine the 2b strategy. Just try not to be so condescending about it--not all non-Muslim Westerners are cavemen.
This attack was about religion. It was about free speech. And it was also about murderers being murderers. Despite what the politicians and liberal blogs tell me, I know those three are not mutually exclusive. I'm not going to speculate as to what goes on in a murderer's mind. And I don't want to get into the religious aspect, other than to say it's so obviously there that it must feel smart to ignore it, and even smarter to say that it's not really there at all--which is just stupid. I'm not ignoring it, I just don't have the expertise nor energy to go there.
Which brings me to free speech. Apparently some news organizations decided to censor out the cartoons Charlie Hebdo was famous for, cartoons which brought the explicit ire of the terrorists. Will Wilkinson says it better than I can:
It seems that satire especially riles those most ripe for it. Those who murder in the name of God, or other high ideals, are monstrous, but also, somehow, ridiculous. In the gap between the true-believer's moralising self-righteousness and the vicious reality of what he defends there is a fog of delusion. The satirist minds that gap, despises the fog and shines a merciless hot light on the nonsense. The wider the gap, the greater the sustaining delusion, and the more damaging, and dangerous, the satire will be felt to be.Which is why it is so important for satire, the simple but powerful tool to shine on the ridiculousness, and reveal it for what it is. Ross Douthat makes a similar and equally salient point:
[W]e are not in a vacuum. We are in a situation where my third point applies, because the kind of blasphemy that Charlie Hebdo engaged in had deadly consequences, as everyone knew it could … and that kind of blasphemy is precisely the kind that needs to be defended, because it’s the kind that clearly serves a free society’s greater good. If a large enough group of someones is willing to kill you for saying something, then it’s something that almost certainly needs to be said, because otherwise the violent have veto power over liberal civilization, and when that scenario obtains it isn’t really a liberal civilization any more [emphasis mine].
These were silly cartoons! And people are censoring them! I don't know if it's more offensive to act like most Muslims are precious little snowflakes that we may or may not be afraid of, or to show the most blasphemous cartoon fullscreen! It's lose-lose, might as well err on the side of free speech and showing highly relevant news material. When the federation of united aliens sends a delegation to review our application for entry into the galactic community, they will ask, "Why were some of your people murdered in Paris?"
"Because they drew some cartoons that ..."
"They were murdered over cartoons?!?"
"Well, yes, but the cartoons blasphemed a prophet, which ..."
"Application denied. Please try again in 3000 years. Have a nice day."
Yes, a short sci-fi allegory about humanity. That's how ridiculous this is, that's how ridiculous most terrorism, especially the Muhammad cartoon-controversy is to the civilized world, and Charlie Hebdo kept pointing that out.
So I debated with myself on whether or not to post the cartoons in question here. I don't wish to offend anybody, but these are just cartoons. I think the world is grown up enough to handle blasphemous cartoons, and if not, a little push in that direction wouldn't hurt. The more these cartoons are spread, the more commonplace and expected they become. Repeated exposure desensitizes. Hopefully, in time, this tiny fig leaf of justification the terrorists are claiming will get even tinier.
From left: I think the bubble text says "Must not mock!"
The center cartoon says, "The Koran is crap. It does not stop bullets."
Cartoon on the right says "Love is stronger than hate."
There's a bunch more (translated) here.
12/17/14
Now I just want to see The Interview
12/17/14
Since Sony canceled it.
I never read nor cared much about the hacking and various leaks. From what I understand, it paints Sony leadership in a very bad light. I still don't care.
But I do like the idea of having movie companies able to operate without fear of some douchebag dictator, much less without fear of getting people blown up. Even if it's making awful turd sandwiches like what The Interview appears to be.
A month or so ago I watched the trailer and I was mildly intrigued. There aren't many movies about North Korea you know. But after watching the red band trailer it became painfully obvious that the movie relies far too heavily on idiotic teenage ribaldry. No thanks.
Then the #GOP (Guardians of Peace)--not to be confused with the GOP (Republican party), or the GOP (Gross Old People), or the oft underrated GOP (Grizzly Owl People)--threatened violence on the scale of 9/11 over a stupid movie.
This whole thing is either an elaborate and cruel prank, or the workings of a highly sensitive, self-absorbed, narcissistic douchebag. It is difficult to tell which.
Maybe Sony really went there and portrayed a petty dictator as a petty dictator. Or maybe it's just a red herring or convenient excuse for the hackers to hurt Sony. Or maybe Sony's got the most convoluted marketing campaign ever! Whatever it is, it kind of makes me want to see the movie now.
Content Warning: Strong Language
I never read nor cared much about the hacking and various leaks. From what I understand, it paints Sony leadership in a very bad light. I still don't care.
But I do like the idea of having movie companies able to operate without fear of some douchebag dictator, much less without fear of getting people blown up. Even if it's making awful turd sandwiches like what The Interview appears to be.
A month or so ago I watched the trailer and I was mildly intrigued. There aren't many movies about North Korea you know. But after watching the red band trailer it became painfully obvious that the movie relies far too heavily on idiotic teenage ribaldry. No thanks.
Then the #GOP (Guardians of Peace)--not to be confused with the GOP (Republican party), or the GOP (Gross Old People), or the oft underrated GOP (Grizzly Owl People)--threatened violence on the scale of 9/11 over a stupid movie.
This whole thing is either an elaborate and cruel prank, or the workings of a highly sensitive, self-absorbed, narcissistic douchebag. It is difficult to tell which.
Maybe Sony really went there and portrayed a petty dictator as a petty dictator. Or maybe it's just a red herring or convenient excuse for the hackers to hurt Sony. Or maybe Sony's got the most convoluted marketing campaign ever! Whatever it is, it kind of makes me want to see the movie now.
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