chris_acree

vor 2 Jahrendiscuss

Concordant Discord by Robert Zaehner is a book compiling a lecture series he gave at St. Andrews in the 1960's. I found it quite deep and a good view into some of the theological implications of different variants of mysticism, though it can be a bit dry, definitely not an airport-level treatment.

chris_acree

vor 4 Jahrendiscuss

Checking in!

chris_acree

vor 4 Jahrendiscuss

I don't think it's confusion; the two are inherently connected. How can a law (and it's consequent enforcement) dictating some types of speech not play into freedom of speech more generally?

Freedom of speech is rightly often characterized as a core American principle; it's emphasized in civic education, and most of the country will, if anything, overstate what is actually allowed by it. Generally though, I think it does follow the common interpretation; people can say what they want is the default, and courts have carved out specific exceptions over the centuries (libel, public endangerment, etc). Looking at the history of these laws, all the examples I know of started off to be assumed legal, and in specific cases those scenarios were deemed sufficiently bad to now be illegal.

In recent years, we've seen increasing amounts of misinformation that are hard to track down thanks to social media, and so there is now increasing debate about how to combat this. I think there are two parts to this question:

- Does (or how much of) this misinformation constitute a necessary legal response? Put another way, in the context of social media, which depending on platform and settings might not even be fully public, what defines whether something is serious enough of libel or a danger to the public to require legal action against its perpetrators? Explicitly calling for a lynch mob against someone probably breaches current laws, but claiming that Trump should have won the 2020 election probably doesn't (even if the person saying it knows its false; lying isn't normally a crime!).

- In an online world, how do we enforce these laws? Social media is often anonymous. Should public profiles be required to have verified contact information? How can we track and police international actors? Does liking a criminal post count as a crime? What about a retweet to millions of followers? Given these challenges, there is a push to have platforms take a role in this enforcement, whether through account verification, removal of potentially criminal speech, or other methods.

Both these questions are unsettled. The common person probably isn't thinking too much about the first question, and the courts will mostly hash it out over time. The second one is what gets more public debate.

Personally, I'd say the American enthusiasm for free speech, and wariness of business regulation more generally, make it unlikely to take significant action there, particularly since the big platforms themselves are clearly putting a lot of time into trying to address these things. If Europe creates a legal framework around platform responsibility, the US might follow, but otherwise will probably let the platforms keep working at it. That's just my guess though!

chris_acree

vor 5 Jahrendiscuss

You're right that we should keep searching for better solutions, but I don't think it helps to trivialize the problem or the steps people have taken to date.

While we're all painfully aware of the shortcomings in various responses, it's disingenuous to say that the pandemic would "not have been an issue if we would talk to each other". Similarly, "just" taking our cumulative knowledge and resources and having WFH, vaccination, and all the other adjustments work instantly and without issue is a high bar; I've personally worked on projects over the past two years trying to help smooth the transition on a small subset or those adjustments, and it's not an easy undertaking.

To have a reasonable discussion of the tradeoffs of various measures, it requires acknowledgement of the challenges and drawbacks of the alternatives. I agree we've got far better capabilities than 100 years ago and we should have these discussions, but thought it might help to shift your framing a bit.

chris_acree

vor 5 Jahrendiscuss

I think we do have more time off. This page (https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours) indicates working hours are nearly half of what they were 150 years ago in wealthy countries. Even assuming some faults in the source, I can't believe working hours haven't dropped significantly in that time, and many household chores are also taking less time due to technology.

While I also would enjoy more leisure time, I agree with the parent that most of it would go to consuming media. What specific interesting things do you think would happen if the typical working week dropped to say 30 hours a week instead of ~40?

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