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   Steve Randy Waldman (interfluidity@zirk.us)'s status on Sunday, 24-Nov-2024 06:50:32 JST Steve Randy Waldman

   • Rajiv Sethi

   A good parsing of the great censorship vs misinformation debate by #DanWilliams https://www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/there-is-no-censorship-industrial ht @rajivsethi

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     Steve Randy Waldman (interfluidity@zirk.us)'s status on Sunday, 24-Nov-2024 06:50:25 JST Steve Randy Waldman

     in reply to

     • curtosis
     • Rajiv Sethi

     @curtosis @rajivsethi If we're going to take on misinformation, stories too good to fact check that serve to cement political tribes, we need a pretty bold plan. Taking the status quo as of 2012 as "decent" and eliminating the sorts of disinformation that have emerged since seems less like referreeing a genuinely informative marketplace of ideas and more like taking sides. /fin

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     Steve Randy Waldman (interfluidity@zirk.us)'s status on Sunday, 24-Nov-2024 06:50:26 JST Steve Randy Waldman

     in reply to

     • curtosis
     • Rajiv Sethi

     @curtosis @rajivsethi But absent that, it strikes me as special pleading. Both of our major political formations rely on lies, exaggeration, and misinformation to help form their coalitions. My fave Bernie frequently parrots a line about the fraction of Americans living paycheck to paycheck that's probably false. 5/

     Hyolobrika repeated this.
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     Steve Randy Waldman (interfluidity@zirk.us)'s status on Sunday, 24-Nov-2024 06:50:27 JST Steve Randy Waldman

     in reply to

     • curtosis
     • Rajiv Sethi

     @curtosis @rajivsethi One might respond by saying all of that was bad too, someone should have adjudicated lies and misstatements by prestigious economists and Obama Administration officials as much as they should today's conspiracy nuts, we need a bold new regime of information hygiene far beyond what has prevailed historically. 4/

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     Steve Randy Waldman (interfluidity@zirk.us)'s status on Sunday, 24-Nov-2024 06:50:28 JST Steve Randy Waldman

     in reply to

     • curtosis
     • Rajiv Sethi

     @curtosis @rajivsethi (Famously, the "liberal" press for years took the claim "cutting the deficit is virtuous and desirable" as a fact demanding no justification by "objective" commentators, even though it is in fact a circumstance specific and high contextual question. To say that has been consequential in our politics is to understate the case.) 3/

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     Steve Randy Waldman (interfluidity@zirk.us)'s status on Sunday, 24-Nov-2024 06:50:29 JST Steve Randy Waldman

     in reply to

     • curtosis
     • Rajiv Sethi

     @curtosis @rajivsethi On the one hand, that's surely the result of misinformation. People are badly misinformed. But it's not a new, social media kind of misinformation. It's politics we take as ordinary. As Williams points out, often the most destructive misinformation comes not from fringes, but from "mainstream", often liberal sources. 2/

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     Steve Randy Waldman (interfluidity@zirk.us)'s status on Sunday, 24-Nov-2024 06:50:30 JST Steve Randy Waldman

     in reply to

     • curtosis
     • Rajiv Sethi

     @curtosis @rajivsethi That's certainly true. But it doesn't strike me as remotely new. It's not new that people on the right (and the supposed center left) think that the Federal government is some kind of bloated jobs program, for example, when Federal employment has been capped for decades. 1/

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     curtosis (curtosis@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 24-Nov-2024 06:50:31 JST curtosis

     in reply to

     @interfluidity @rajivsethi I think—at least right now—it underplays the current harms of
     misinformation. To the extent we have data, it’s not just a paranoid fringe anymore that holds fundamentally wrong understandings; it appears that a large cohort of Trumpist electoral support really is based on objectively false beliefs.

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     Hyolobrika (hyolobrika@social.fbxl.net)'s status on Sunday, 24-Nov-2024 06:54:01 JST Hyolobrika

     in reply to

     • curtosis
     I think I don't mind limits in the economy but arbitrating truth is a role the government should never take, regardless of whether one can make a metaphor that compares those two areas ("marketplace of ideas").
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     Steve Randy Waldman (interfluidity@zirk.us)'s status on Sunday, 24-Nov-2024 06:54:02 JST Steve Randy Waldman

     in reply to

     • curtosis
     • Rajiv Sethi

     @curtosis @rajivsethi are we capable of crafting a regime for managing the reach ("speech" alone doesn't matter, talk to yourself all you want) of political expression that necessary cannot be content neutral, at least *ex post*, that serves society without leading to the blindspots and dogmatism and injustices that historically have persuaded us to err on the side of laissez-faire with speech (and reach)? /fin

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     Steve Randy Waldman (interfluidity@zirk.us)'s status on Sunday, 24-Nov-2024 06:54:03 JST Steve Randy Waldman

     in reply to

     • curtosis
     • Rajiv Sethi

     @curtosis @rajivsethi from someone's perspective that will always be "censorship" (my view would have prevailed but for how we've structured this system), just as regulation is perceived, not incorrectly, by some parties as a limitation of freedoms they might otherwise enjoy. 2/

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     curtosis (curtosis@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 24-Nov-2024 06:54:04 JST curtosis

     in reply to

     • Rajiv Sethi

     @interfluidity @rajivsethi And to the extent that’s *new* it’s the combination of a whole new magnitude of inequality and the absurdly low marginal costs of dumping and distributing idea “product” on the digital market. 2/2

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     Steve Randy Waldman (interfluidity@zirk.us)'s status on Sunday, 24-Nov-2024 06:54:04 JST Steve Randy Waldman

     in reply to

     • curtosis
     • Rajiv Sethi

     @curtosis @rajivsethi yes. we need a Polyanian revolution of the "marketplace of ideas" metaphor. like the regular marketplace, it is embedded withing and exists to serve society, not to stand apart from it. at the very least, it needs "antitrust" (limiting disproportionate influence due to wealth). but like product markets, it needs positive structuring as well as after-the-fact policing of monopoly. 1/

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     curtosis (curtosis@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 24-Nov-2024 06:54:05 JST curtosis

     in reply to

     • Rajiv Sethi

     @interfluidity @rajivsethi All good points, and I’d largely agree. And to be clear I’m mostly reacting to the information environment where people can firmly believe (for example) that TFG did not say something that he explicitly did, repeatedly, on tape.

     I think ultimately it has to come with a recognition that the “marketplace” is like a real one: easily overwhelmed and manipulated by monopolistic actors with wildly disproportionate access to resources. 1/

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     Hyolobrika (hyolobrika@social.fbxl.net)'s status on Sunday, 24-Nov-2024 08:44:42 JST Hyolobrika

     in reply to

     • Hyolobrika
     @interfluidity People are still allowed to say that court decisions are wrong, for instance.
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     Hyolobrika (hyolobrika@social.fbxl.net)'s status on Sunday, 24-Nov-2024 08:44:43 JST Hyolobrika

     in reply to
     @interfluidity No, because that's necessary for keeping the peace. And it's not the same thing as judging truth and falsehood in order to censor people.
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     Steve Randy Waldman (interfluidity@zirk.us)'s status on Sunday, 24-Nov-2024 08:44:44 JST Steve Randy Waldman

     in reply to

     • Hyolobrika

     @Hyolobrika the government arbitrates truth in jury trials. it does not prejudge it. it sets up procedures that are ex ante viewpoint neutral. ex post, a losing party might call foul (and rights to appeal are part of the procedure). but ultimately this procedure does adjudication truth and falsehood, as a matter of social outcome if not in the eyes of God, over matters of important controversy. of course it sometimes errs.

     do you object?

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     Steve Randy Waldman (interfluidity@zirk.us)'s status on Sunday, 24-Nov-2024 22:55:19 JST Steve Randy Waldman

     in reply to

     • Hyolobrika

     @Hyolobrika No one is arguing people shouldn’t be allowed to say anything. People should be allowed to say overt falsehoods. It’s institutions of authority and potentially of reach that might be regulated.

     Hyolobrika likes this.