The AskHistorians subreddit banned Holocaust deniers (2018)(slate.com)
slate.com
The AskHistorians subreddit banned Holocaust deniers (2018)
https://slate.com/technology/2018/07/the-askhistorians-subreddit-banned-holocaust-deniers-and-facebook-should-too.html
70 comments
It makes all the difference whether you ban speech by content from a particular forum, or try to ban it everywhere. The latter is poisonous and counterproductive even when the content in question really is wrong and vile. By my skim of this article it explained the former kind of ban and then slid straight to advocating the latter.
That's a good start! I'd like to see banning of antisemitic JAQing of other topics such as:
- The USS Liberty Incident
- Holodomor
- Aliyah Bet
for starters.
They don't just ban Holocaust denial; check out the rules.
Prohibiting those who hold outlandish views from expressing them usually backfires in the end. If those who hold them argue rationally -- that is, without resorting to aggression or flashmob tactics I think they should be allowed to argue their views.
Arguing against outlandish views on merits is likely to be much more effective. Silencing opponents is using "might is right" approach -- just the type of logic that allowed many atrocities in the first place. My 2c.
Arguing against outlandish views on merits is likely to be much more effective. Silencing opponents is using "might is right" approach -- just the type of logic that allowed many atrocities in the first place. My 2c.
So a lot of this is wrong but irrelevant to this so I won't touch it.
The main thing you seem to be missing though is that the subreddit is not meant to be a neutral ground for people to compare and discuss ideas.
It's a place to get concrete, consensus- and literature-based answers from people with real experience and practice at history. Having people in the comments presenting ahistorical information entirely outside of scholarly consensus only detracts from that goal.
So even if you consider this _only_ a power-vs-speech thing, there's still a strong argument that moderation is the correct step. When conversations detract from the stated purpose of the community they are restricted. Same as right here actually.
The main thing you seem to be missing though is that the subreddit is not meant to be a neutral ground for people to compare and discuss ideas.
It's a place to get concrete, consensus- and literature-based answers from people with real experience and practice at history. Having people in the comments presenting ahistorical information entirely outside of scholarly consensus only detracts from that goal.
So even if you consider this _only_ a power-vs-speech thing, there's still a strong argument that moderation is the correct step. When conversations detract from the stated purpose of the community they are restricted. Same as right here actually.
How do you propose handling the asymmetry between asking questions and answering them?
It's much, much cheaper for someone with outlandish views to shotgun you with questions than it is to answer them all in detail.
Combine this with the fact that there are fewer experts than there are trolls/people with outlandish views.
Further combine this with the fact that the trolls/outlandish views folks are not coming to get themselves educated, they are coming to try and convince others to hold their outlandish views.
How do you propose we keep a community resilient against that?
It's much, much cheaper for someone with outlandish views to shotgun you with questions than it is to answer them all in detail.
Combine this with the fact that there are fewer experts than there are trolls/people with outlandish views.
Further combine this with the fact that the trolls/outlandish views folks are not coming to get themselves educated, they are coming to try and convince others to hold their outlandish views.
How do you propose we keep a community resilient against that?
I remember back in the day when people cared about creationists, there was the Talk.origins FAQ, which you could just point people to. AskHistorians even has an FAQ that could be used similarly.
That said, it'd still lead to a degradation and constant mod cleanup work to post links to the FAQ and close the thread (if not closed, fellow travelers would upvote it and use it as a JAQ platform).
That said, it'd still lead to a degradation and constant mod cleanup work to post links to the FAQ and close the thread (if not closed, fellow travelers would upvote it and use it as a JAQ platform).
An insane number of people still hold the same creationist beliefs as back then, but I am happy it's not in the public discourse as much.
Expect to see it more:
https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2021/apr/08/house-advanc...
This is brought on by a change in the composition of the Supreme Court, and there's a significant chance it will permit creationism in schools. Expect to see more attempts to reach the Supreme Court to overturn its previous decisions, and if it does, expect a great many states to pass similar laws.
And then expand them.
https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2021/apr/08/house-advanc...
This is brought on by a change in the composition of the Supreme Court, and there's a significant chance it will permit creationism in schools. Expect to see more attempts to reach the Supreme Court to overturn its previous decisions, and if it does, expect a great many states to pass similar laws.
And then expand them.
This is exactly why the "Gish gallop" turns out to be an effective debating technique.
It's probably one of the most successful message boards on the Internet, and the rule we're talking about has been in place for many years.
There are always a limited number of possible discussions that can happen at a time.
Those with "outlandish" views, namely those who believe some people's lives are fundamentally worth less than others often turn this into a strategy. As long as Holocaust deniers are tolerated and especially counter-argued by everyone, Holocaust denial will be all that is being talked about because they take the stage.
Even if they lose the discussion, they win the topic of the day. And that topic gets gradually normalized into an acceptable position, pushing away others silently.
Those with "outlandish" views, namely those who believe some people's lives are fundamentally worth less than others often turn this into a strategy. As long as Holocaust deniers are tolerated and especially counter-argued by everyone, Holocaust denial will be all that is being talked about because they take the stage.
Even if they lose the discussion, they win the topic of the day. And that topic gets gradually normalized into an acceptable position, pushing away others silently.
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The framing of "just asking questions" as something insidious is insidious.
People should be allowed to ask questions. It's only when they do that we get good answers. In the absence of dispute, everything, even a fact, is reduced to dogma.
These days J.S. Mill is often framed (by those arguing against free speech) as saying that "free speech leads to truth". But Mill was no fool and that was not his argument. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Liberty:
> First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility. Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied. Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds. And not only this, but, fourthly, the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct: the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering the ground, and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal experience.
Mill says that, without disputation, we cannot get to truth. This is not the same as saying that disputation will always lead to truth. Mill also makes an important distinction (that we no longer recognize) between correct opinion and correct opinion that is rationally grounded.
People should be allowed to ask questions. It's only when they do that we get good answers. In the absence of dispute, everything, even a fact, is reduced to dogma.
These days J.S. Mill is often framed (by those arguing against free speech) as saying that "free speech leads to truth". But Mill was no fool and that was not his argument. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Liberty:
> First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility. Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied. Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds. And not only this, but, fourthly, the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct: the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering the ground, and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal experience.
Mill says that, without disputation, we cannot get to truth. This is not the same as saying that disputation will always lead to truth. Mill also makes an important distinction (that we no longer recognize) between correct opinion and correct opinion that is rationally grounded.
"Just asking questions" can be a form of DoS:
> Sealioning (also spelled sea-lioning and sea lioning) is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with persistent requests for evidence or repeated questions, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity.[1][2][3][4] It may take the form of "incessant, bad-faith invitations to engage in debate".[5]
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
> Sealioning (also spelled sea-lioning and sea lioning) is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with persistent requests for evidence or repeated questions, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity.[1][2][3][4] It may take the form of "incessant, bad-faith invitations to engage in debate".[5]
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
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The issue is when the "just asking questions" is asking the same question over and over again in discussions that the question isn't really relevant to.
How many times do you have to answer the same question before you get to say "stop asking this question"?
How many times do you have to answer the same question before you get to say "stop asking this question"?
This is a bit like saying DDoS attacks are good because they harden security.
Maybe that's true on a high level but if you are an administrator you should be allowed to try to reduce the number of DDoS attacks you get.
Maybe that's true on a high level but if you are an administrator you should be allowed to try to reduce the number of DDoS attacks you get.
A good piece of information to have when considering discussing this rule is that AskHistorians doesn't just ban Holocaust denial, but all ahistorical denialism. Your comments questioning the Armenian genocide will also be deleted.
What if someone goes down one of these BS rabbitholes and gets hoodwinked by the nonsense and actually needs help straightening themselves out?
Maybe there's some process here. I honestly don't know.
I do know that in the interwar period, these noise machines were referred to as plagues and epidemics, contagious sicknesses people needed to be pulled out of .
I feel like we're just isolating and quarantining the people that have gone down this route. It's not a good strategy.
Maybe there's some process here. I honestly don't know.
I do know that in the interwar period, these noise machines were referred to as plagues and epidemics, contagious sicknesses people needed to be pulled out of .
I feel like we're just isolating and quarantining the people that have gone down this route. It's not a good strategy.
I feel like we're discussing one of the most successful message boards on the English-speaking Internet as if they're proposing something new, and could somehow benefit from our sage advice, rather than documenting a policy they've had for many years.
Sure. I'm ignorant about this. Do you know the policy?
I'd love to know more about it.
I have a number of friends that have basically become full blown nazis from bullshit online and I'd like to know if there's anything I can do. (maybe you have too)
I'd love to know more about it.
I have a number of friends that have basically become full blown nazis from bullshit online and I'd like to know if there's anything I can do. (maybe you have too)
It's really very difficult to miss; it's plastered over almost every page, and linked at the top of every thread. A good starting point to understanding AskHistorians is to visit it.
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules this?
I don't see it.
Let me try again. Pretend an uneducated person reads some fabricated anti-semitic screed with conspiracy theories and nonsense and believes it to be true.
How does one pull them out? It's not this forum's job, ok, fine. But the question stands.
And what more the grifting propagandists writing those lies say "this is secret hidden history! you get banned for talking about it because it's all controlled by the secret order!" or whatever bogeyman they have to blame
There's a significant number of people that are falling for this crap and next time there's a January 6th we may not be so lucky. There's usually a failed clown show coup a few years before the real one because society fails to address the causes.
How do you think atrocities like the armenian genocide and other mass slaughterings gain support? These wacko-doodle conspiracy things like bitchute, parler, and gab are what produce it. It was pamphlets and parties back then and now it's posts and sites.
I don't see it.
Let me try again. Pretend an uneducated person reads some fabricated anti-semitic screed with conspiracy theories and nonsense and believes it to be true.
How does one pull them out? It's not this forum's job, ok, fine. But the question stands.
And what more the grifting propagandists writing those lies say "this is secret hidden history! you get banned for talking about it because it's all controlled by the secret order!" or whatever bogeyman they have to blame
There's a significant number of people that are falling for this crap and next time there's a January 6th we may not be so lucky. There's usually a failed clown show coup a few years before the real one because society fails to address the causes.
How do you think atrocities like the armenian genocide and other mass slaughterings gain support? These wacko-doodle conspiracy things like bitchute, parler, and gab are what produce it. It was pamphlets and parties back then and now it's posts and sites.
You don't see it? It's the entire second half of the first paragraph of the first rule of the subreddit. If it was Fight Club, the rule we're talking about would be in the words "about Fight Club".
I think you should actually visit the site before generating for yourself strong opinions about how it can be effectively moderated.
I think you should actually visit the site before generating for yourself strong opinions about how it can be effectively moderated.
An excellent article and one that lays out convincing points why, when choosing between absolute free speech and silencing the crazies, the latter is the lesser of two evils.
This paragraph is probably the most relevant quote:
> But more insidious, more frequent on both our forum and the internet at large, is the technique known as “just asking questions”—in internet parlance, “JAQing off.” Designed to further Holocaust deniers’ aim of spreading their talking points, this involves (a) framing a denialist talking point in the form of a good-faith question and (b) calling for “open debate.” This lends itself well to the question format of our subreddit. Inquiries about what materials were used for gas-chamber doors, why early editions of Elie Wiesel’s Night don’t mention gas chambers, why the death toll of Auschwitz allegedly changed over time, or simply what proof there is for the Holocaust (discounting all testimony and postwar material) might seem innocent at first glance. They are not. They are designed to call often minor details into question and to create doubt among readers less familiar with the history of the Holocaust. Deniers want to provoke an audience into making the mental leap of “If this detail is suspicious, what else might be wrong?” This is a Trojan horse for a slide from denial into hatred. When we remove such contributions, what deniers will inevitably do is to call for “open debate” and sling accusations of censorship and violations of free speech.
This paragraph is probably the most relevant quote:
> But more insidious, more frequent on both our forum and the internet at large, is the technique known as “just asking questions”—in internet parlance, “JAQing off.” Designed to further Holocaust deniers’ aim of spreading their talking points, this involves (a) framing a denialist talking point in the form of a good-faith question and (b) calling for “open debate.” This lends itself well to the question format of our subreddit. Inquiries about what materials were used for gas-chamber doors, why early editions of Elie Wiesel’s Night don’t mention gas chambers, why the death toll of Auschwitz allegedly changed over time, or simply what proof there is for the Holocaust (discounting all testimony and postwar material) might seem innocent at first glance. They are not. They are designed to call often minor details into question and to create doubt among readers less familiar with the history of the Holocaust. Deniers want to provoke an audience into making the mental leap of “If this detail is suspicious, what else might be wrong?” This is a Trojan horse for a slide from denial into hatred. When we remove such contributions, what deniers will inevitably do is to call for “open debate” and sling accusations of censorship and violations of free speech.
So the point is not necessarily to convince people there was no Holocaust, Holodomor or Armenian genocide. It's to make some people doubt. In effect, they become neutral to the idea, and that's enough to enable fascists.
There's a concept called the Overton Window, which refers to a range of opinions that are mainstream-enough to be held without being considered a kook of some sort.
These are just methods of injecting fringe ideas into mainstream discourse to make it seem like 'normal' people think these things. A lot of this just functions via repetition, see also the 'Big Lie' technique, which has a history going back quite a bit further than last November.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie
These are just methods of injecting fringe ideas into mainstream discourse to make it seem like 'normal' people think these things. A lot of this just functions via repetition, see also the 'Big Lie' technique, which has a history going back quite a bit further than last November.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie
Funny you should mention the Big Lie...[0]
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/desk/desk-y8ggkc94j3106/
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/desk/desk-y8ggkc94j3106/
It seems like a pretty big leap from "There are aspects of this that don't add up to me" (neutral) to "enabling facists".
I tend to view everthing with a degree of skepticism, and I tend to reject the idea that there are subjects that are "off limits" for critical evaluation.
I'm not sure how that's enabling fascism. It seems like it would do the opposite, no?
I tend to view everthing with a degree of skepticism, and I tend to reject the idea that there are subjects that are "off limits" for critical evaluation.
I'm not sure how that's enabling fascism. It seems like it would do the opposite, no?
I tend to view everthing with a degree of skepticism
The problem is that that can't actually be true. If it were, you wouldn't be able to actually do anything. You'd be too busy being skeptical about whether the sun will actually rise tomorrow or whether all of the people around you are actually simulacra. It's an old and well-discussed problem called Radical Skepticism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_skepticism
You can expand "degree" to re-enable your ability to act, but that's exactly what's going on here. They're saying, "No, we're not going to waste more time re-re-re-reevaluating often-refuted observations".
I'll set aside tendentious arguments about what constitutes "fascism", but it's definitely the case that people use insincere arguments for "skepticism" in order to shut down all genuine inquiry. That's not productive, and it's useful to find ways to circumvent that.
The problem is that that can't actually be true. If it were, you wouldn't be able to actually do anything. You'd be too busy being skeptical about whether the sun will actually rise tomorrow or whether all of the people around you are actually simulacra. It's an old and well-discussed problem called Radical Skepticism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_skepticism
You can expand "degree" to re-enable your ability to act, but that's exactly what's going on here. They're saying, "No, we're not going to waste more time re-re-re-reevaluating often-refuted observations".
I'll set aside tendentious arguments about what constitutes "fascism", but it's definitely the case that people use insincere arguments for "skepticism" in order to shut down all genuine inquiry. That's not productive, and it's useful to find ways to circumvent that.
Viewing everything skeptically causes one to doubt things that are true, and also to doubt that things that are false are really false. That results in undermining the truth and reinforcing the lie. Everything becomes an undifferentiated "shrug?" and important beliefs stop feeling as if they're worth defending.
But it turns out that most of us want to have strong beliefs after all. So, after our commitment to democratic principles (along with everything else) has been weakened due to the skeptical paradigm, we are ripe to have other strong beliefs take the place of those which have been dethroned. Enter fascism, evangelism, and other belief systems with highly dedicated cadres. They're like opportunistic infections which take root when our natural bullshit-detecting immune systems have been destroyed by a diet of excess skepticism.
But it turns out that most of us want to have strong beliefs after all. So, after our commitment to democratic principles (along with everything else) has been weakened due to the skeptical paradigm, we are ripe to have other strong beliefs take the place of those which have been dethroned. Enter fascism, evangelism, and other belief systems with highly dedicated cadres. They're like opportunistic infections which take root when our natural bullshit-detecting immune systems have been destroyed by a diet of excess skepticism.
If you say "I don't know about that", or "I'm not sure if that really happened", it's a short walk from tolerating fascists. My country is having a conservative/authoritarian turn, and only about 30% votes for the regime. The rest has no opinion or thinks everyone used to be just as bad.
> If you say "I don't know about that", or "I'm not sure if that really happened", it's a short walk from tolerating fascists.
I strongly disagree. There is an enormous shift from "I question whether Jews were killed" to "Let's go kill Jews".
(To avoid misunderstandings and red herrings: Yes, the Holocaust happened, and was very much as horrific as claimed. The evidence is clear, consistent, overwhelming, and almost impossible to deny. And there are almost certainly recruiters who use "just asking questions" to try to recruit people. Nevertheless, "shut up and stop asking" isn't the answer. Instead, the answer is to show evidence, in overwhelming amounts. This may not silence the recruiter, but the recruiter isn't the target of your evidence. The recruitee is.)
I strongly disagree. There is an enormous shift from "I question whether Jews were killed" to "Let's go kill Jews".
(To avoid misunderstandings and red herrings: Yes, the Holocaust happened, and was very much as horrific as claimed. The evidence is clear, consistent, overwhelming, and almost impossible to deny. And there are almost certainly recruiters who use "just asking questions" to try to recruit people. Nevertheless, "shut up and stop asking" isn't the answer. Instead, the answer is to show evidence, in overwhelming amounts. This may not silence the recruiter, but the recruiter isn't the target of your evidence. The recruitee is.)
Replying to myself, because I'm too late to edit:
You said "tolerating fascists" rather than "being a fascist". But it's still an enormous shift from "I question whether Jews were killed" to "It's OK that you want to kill Jews".
You said "tolerating fascists" rather than "being a fascist". But it's still an enormous shift from "I question whether Jews were killed" to "It's OK that you want to kill Jews".
For some reason this reminds me of the website kuro5hin and how trolling was perfected into a sort of discussion-malware there. With Holocaust denial, it's discussion-malware with a highly targeted purpose: recreating the societal situation where another Holocaust can occur.
> discussion-malware
I've never heard this term and I like it. Relating software-of-mind to actual software can be a powerful intuition pump.
Another useful metaphor (which we already deploy in software) is epidemiology and evolution. We already relate "memes" to "genes" (actually the distinction is very fuzzy, as genes are just information). We call parasitic replicants "viruses". We call things that have been co-opted by parasitic replicants "zombies". We already broadly recognize that some ideas are cognitohazardous, and that people can change for the worse on exposure, or even "die" in the sense that the person you knew can vanish forever. It's firmly in pop-culture - there's a whole Futurama episode where Bender finds religion and becomes deeply annoying.
And yet, we are deeply reluctant to carry those lessons over, so strong is our aversion to free speech infringements. But our unwillingness to commit to some sort of principle of shutting down speech, means that sheer pragmatism is forcing us to silence people in an unprincipled way. I think we are long overdue for a new philosophy on this topic.
I've never heard this term and I like it. Relating software-of-mind to actual software can be a powerful intuition pump.
Another useful metaphor (which we already deploy in software) is epidemiology and evolution. We already relate "memes" to "genes" (actually the distinction is very fuzzy, as genes are just information). We call parasitic replicants "viruses". We call things that have been co-opted by parasitic replicants "zombies". We already broadly recognize that some ideas are cognitohazardous, and that people can change for the worse on exposure, or even "die" in the sense that the person you knew can vanish forever. It's firmly in pop-culture - there's a whole Futurama episode where Bender finds religion and becomes deeply annoying.
And yet, we are deeply reluctant to carry those lessons over, so strong is our aversion to free speech infringements. But our unwillingness to commit to some sort of principle of shutting down speech, means that sheer pragmatism is forcing us to silence people in an unprincipled way. I think we are long overdue for a new philosophy on this topic.
Imagine growing up in Germany and having your history be whitewashed so you barely know the atrocities your society committed... oh wait! I’m from California! We had our own genocide of the Natives that was sanctioned by the gold rush government. Anyone remember panning for gold in elementary school? Yeah... those were bad times if you weren’t white. Also, the California Genocide was closer in time to the Holocaust than the Holocaust is to today.
Do have to hand it to Eichmann though. Totally different level of scale of atrocity...
Still should probably get a new name for the 49ers football team...
Do have to hand it to Eichmann though. Totally different level of scale of atrocity...
Still should probably get a new name for the 49ers football team...
Debating the genocide of indigenous Americans is explicitly against the rules of AskHistorians.
Moreover, the contributors regularly discussing topics that touch on native experiences, myself included, generally take every opportunity to highlight the historical realities of those experiences. I can't think of any that deny indigenous genocides and I'd let the mods know if I saw another contributor doing so.
So is that bullet point list their definition of holocaust denier?
Well, it makes sense.
You, and everyone else that is able to read this, is literally sitting in front of a globally connected information box, and with a few key taps you can easily bring up archival records and video footage of the holocaust.
So when managing a community that revolves around experts, you have a fundamental duty to their time, the experts won't have all day to answer questions and it makes sense that they would want to answer the interesting or detailed questions. It's not the position of them to have to refute a stance that is taken against what is basic and widely accepted knowledge in our society, and in opposition to what is really high quality evidence.
Now, I think this is different with theoretical fields, like with economics. Because while economic theories rely on practical data, it is a human-made system and therefore can be contested -- did we build it right? That is a melting pot where rich debate can take place, because there has been so much academic and theoretical debate over the last 100 years and much of it is not widely-known.
For example, I doubt many people here will be aware of Meiksins-Wood's book The Origins of Capitalism -- in which she contests that capitalism was not a naturally occurring system -- that is a rich book with a lot of good and firm arguments, and it is worth a discussion.
Whereas with holocaust denial, what exactly can you retort? The argument against the denial boils down to "We have facts, here they are", and the argument in favour of the denial boils down to a rejection of those facts -- it's not very interesting or unique (After you've seen 2 or 3 holocaust denial arguments, they all tend to boil down to one of those three), and it's certainly not something that is worth experts wasting their time over. Much like "the earth is flat", these are situations where people are willingly taking a decision to disbelieve 50+ years of knowledge, and where there is no other interpretation if you actually understand and observe the evidence.
With things like holocaust denial, flat-earthism, you really have to nip them in the bud. They are essentially toxic ideas and people do not go to them out of nowhere.
I have a friend who started disbelieving in germ theory, but she arrived to that viewpoint from the position of having a medical condition that was untreated, for whatever reason it got better when she started drinking fruit-smoothies and using a water filter, that then led her to reading Natural News, and her prior was: "Well, since the medical establishment couldn't cure my illness, what else are they wrong about?". Now, that would have been perfectly fine if she had discovered someone like Ben Goldacre, who works for the Royal Academy of London, and has a medical degree, and works to point out the faults in modern medical practice. Instead, she found a source of misinformation that is known for misquoting official sources and deriving information out of thin air (I used to argue against people who were invested in NaturalNews when I was a teenager -- one of the sources I was presented with boiled down to self-hosted edited papers scraped from pubmed).
Likewise, I didn't believe in climate change when I was younger, because I was brought up by someone who was otherwise cogent, but in this instance she bought into climate change denial, and that influenced a young, impressionable me.
The thing about it is my friend's (and the much younger me's) arguments are like an McEscher drawing, there is no structure, there is no reasoning present -- while it presents itself as reasonable, if you dig into them you will find no architecture, it is just random facts cobbled together that confirm her prior (That doctors and the common body of knowledge are wrong) and ostensibly (to her) prove you wrong. What debating these ideas with her does is prove her contention that she is right, and that everyone else is wrong -- and worse -- it spreads the idea. It exposes new people to the brain worms and allows it to take hold in them.
The only thing left at this stage is damage control -- I was lucky, I was still young and impressionable when I found rational wiki, and the arguments there convinced me to the opposite, but I had to find that by looking -- debating just convinced me in the opposite direction, and likewise with my friend.
So as someone who previous believed in shit like this, we have to stifle and shut down these debates, because they are beyond debate -- no matter what evidence you throw at these people, it will only confirm their believe that you are the delusional one, and drive them further into the hole, while at the same time exposing other people to their McEscher-esque arguments.
You, and everyone else that is able to read this, is literally sitting in front of a globally connected information box, and with a few key taps you can easily bring up archival records and video footage of the holocaust.
So when managing a community that revolves around experts, you have a fundamental duty to their time, the experts won't have all day to answer questions and it makes sense that they would want to answer the interesting or detailed questions. It's not the position of them to have to refute a stance that is taken against what is basic and widely accepted knowledge in our society, and in opposition to what is really high quality evidence.
Now, I think this is different with theoretical fields, like with economics. Because while economic theories rely on practical data, it is a human-made system and therefore can be contested -- did we build it right? That is a melting pot where rich debate can take place, because there has been so much academic and theoretical debate over the last 100 years and much of it is not widely-known.
For example, I doubt many people here will be aware of Meiksins-Wood's book The Origins of Capitalism -- in which she contests that capitalism was not a naturally occurring system -- that is a rich book with a lot of good and firm arguments, and it is worth a discussion.
Whereas with holocaust denial, what exactly can you retort? The argument against the denial boils down to "We have facts, here they are", and the argument in favour of the denial boils down to a rejection of those facts -- it's not very interesting or unique (After you've seen 2 or 3 holocaust denial arguments, they all tend to boil down to one of those three), and it's certainly not something that is worth experts wasting their time over. Much like "the earth is flat", these are situations where people are willingly taking a decision to disbelieve 50+ years of knowledge, and where there is no other interpretation if you actually understand and observe the evidence.
With things like holocaust denial, flat-earthism, you really have to nip them in the bud. They are essentially toxic ideas and people do not go to them out of nowhere.
I have a friend who started disbelieving in germ theory, but she arrived to that viewpoint from the position of having a medical condition that was untreated, for whatever reason it got better when she started drinking fruit-smoothies and using a water filter, that then led her to reading Natural News, and her prior was: "Well, since the medical establishment couldn't cure my illness, what else are they wrong about?". Now, that would have been perfectly fine if she had discovered someone like Ben Goldacre, who works for the Royal Academy of London, and has a medical degree, and works to point out the faults in modern medical practice. Instead, she found a source of misinformation that is known for misquoting official sources and deriving information out of thin air (I used to argue against people who were invested in NaturalNews when I was a teenager -- one of the sources I was presented with boiled down to self-hosted edited papers scraped from pubmed).
Likewise, I didn't believe in climate change when I was younger, because I was brought up by someone who was otherwise cogent, but in this instance she bought into climate change denial, and that influenced a young, impressionable me.
The thing about it is my friend's (and the much younger me's) arguments are like an McEscher drawing, there is no structure, there is no reasoning present -- while it presents itself as reasonable, if you dig into them you will find no architecture, it is just random facts cobbled together that confirm her prior (That doctors and the common body of knowledge are wrong) and ostensibly (to her) prove you wrong. What debating these ideas with her does is prove her contention that she is right, and that everyone else is wrong -- and worse -- it spreads the idea. It exposes new people to the brain worms and allows it to take hold in them.
The only thing left at this stage is damage control -- I was lucky, I was still young and impressionable when I found rational wiki, and the arguments there convinced me to the opposite, but I had to find that by looking -- debating just convinced me in the opposite direction, and likewise with my friend.
So as someone who previous believed in shit like this, we have to stifle and shut down these debates, because they are beyond debate -- no matter what evidence you throw at these people, it will only confirm their believe that you are the delusional one, and drive them further into the hole, while at the same time exposing other people to their McEscher-esque arguments.
I think capitalism is simply the an economic system based on the psychological behavior of self-preservation-- which is exhibited in most if not all forms of life. It is a reliable behavior (in terms of staying alive) and an expected instinct (in terms of psychological evolution).
I mean that's provably not the case as many creatures including humans are more collaborative than strictly selfish in nature, and there's a wealth of knowledge you can find about that by going to google scholar
"self-preservation" includes social animals.
Some animals are social by nature, correct. Whether or not they have evolved to become social, being social increases their odds of survival, due to economic factors such as pooling of resources [1].
Without survival, there is no animal. Hence it is the basal need.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pooling_(resource_management)
Some animals are social by nature, correct. Whether or not they have evolved to become social, being social increases their odds of survival, due to economic factors such as pooling of resources [1].
Without survival, there is no animal. Hence it is the basal need.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pooling_(resource_management)
I don't think the OP was talking about anything other than survival of the fittest, which is the usual go-to defense of "capitalism is present in nature", and it does not tend to hold up. However they didn't actually go into much depth, so I guess you can read it however you want, though
The solution to bad ideas is more ideas, not less.
At issue here is a fundamental problem that humans have been struggling with since recorded history, who decides what's true?
When we have demonstrated bad actors at every level of discussion, from authoritative sources down to internet trolls - how do we identify truth, especially with all of it's nuance, without degeneration into a Ministry of Truth, and punishing dissent?
While I understand that the constant battle against misinformation and disinformation is exhausting, isn't that what you're signing up for by engaging in a medium that encourages discussion?
If you don't want discussion and contrasting viewpoints, perhaps you're better served by publishing a blog, or a book, or academic paper where discussion is much slower and involves published responses?
Edit: the irony of a comment like this being downvoted isn't lost on me. That's ok, I knew when I wrote it that it would be.
At issue here is a fundamental problem that humans have been struggling with since recorded history, who decides what's true?
When we have demonstrated bad actors at every level of discussion, from authoritative sources down to internet trolls - how do we identify truth, especially with all of it's nuance, without degeneration into a Ministry of Truth, and punishing dissent?
While I understand that the constant battle against misinformation and disinformation is exhausting, isn't that what you're signing up for by engaging in a medium that encourages discussion?
If you don't want discussion and contrasting viewpoints, perhaps you're better served by publishing a blog, or a book, or academic paper where discussion is much slower and involves published responses?
Edit: the irony of a comment like this being downvoted isn't lost on me. That's ok, I knew when I wrote it that it would be.
Many, many more people read posts than answer them. Leaving those posts up will give some proportion of readers the idea that such questions are reasonable, open holes in our knowledge. Even if there's an answer provided (potentially hours later), the damage would have already been done.
The forum is a place for education. Leaving bad faith questions up hurts that goal and there aren't many practical alternatives, especially given the massive asymmetry in effort by contributors. Did you know that posts often take multiple hours to write? It would only take a couple dozen malicious posters to completely overwhelm the relatively small contributor base without mod intervention.
The forum is a place for education. Leaving bad faith questions up hurts that goal and there aren't many practical alternatives, especially given the massive asymmetry in effort by contributors. Did you know that posts often take multiple hours to write? It would only take a couple dozen malicious posters to completely overwhelm the relatively small contributor base without mod intervention.
> The solution to bad ideas is more ideas, not less.
This is true if and only if there is sufficient bandwidth to process all those ideas AND the actors are all people who are trying to learn/seek truth.
Expertise and conversation time is limited, and it's considerably cheaper to ask questions and sow doubt than it is to fully address those questions. Given that asymmetry, it feels more than reasonable to accept certain things as ground truth and eliminate time wasted on dealing with trolls.
This is true if and only if there is sufficient bandwidth to process all those ideas AND the actors are all people who are trying to learn/seek truth.
Expertise and conversation time is limited, and it's considerably cheaper to ask questions and sow doubt than it is to fully address those questions. Given that asymmetry, it feels more than reasonable to accept certain things as ground truth and eliminate time wasted on dealing with trolls.
> The solution to bad ideas is more ideas, not less.
I can easily imagine situations where that's not true; besides that, you'd have to admit that people being convinced of bad (and potentially deadly ideas, e.g. anti-vaccination) will happen for some period of time. This concept of "more ideas" is time-based, it relies on the hypothesis that things work out to "the truth" in the end. I don't think that's the case much of the time, and I can see why people don't like the idea of holding that hope for some statements.
There is reason to believe that some authorities - such as scientific ones and even judicial ones, do a better job of finding truth than other venues of discussion. I think AskHistorians desires to be a microcosm of that.
There is an excellent paper by Fred Schauer about the "search for truth" defence of free speech, and how it relates to time[0].
[0] "Free Speech, the Search for Truth, and the Problem of Collective Knowledge" (2017): https://scholar.smu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4682&con...
I can easily imagine situations where that's not true; besides that, you'd have to admit that people being convinced of bad (and potentially deadly ideas, e.g. anti-vaccination) will happen for some period of time. This concept of "more ideas" is time-based, it relies on the hypothesis that things work out to "the truth" in the end. I don't think that's the case much of the time, and I can see why people don't like the idea of holding that hope for some statements.
There is reason to believe that some authorities - such as scientific ones and even judicial ones, do a better job of finding truth than other venues of discussion. I think AskHistorians desires to be a microcosm of that.
There is an excellent paper by Fred Schauer about the "search for truth" defence of free speech, and how it relates to time[0].
[0] "Free Speech, the Search for Truth, and the Problem of Collective Knowledge" (2017): https://scholar.smu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4682&con...
I mostly agree with you, the problem is that the alternative is worse.
Every time in history that we've institutionalized suppressing speech in support of official truth, it has gone horribly wrong.
The problem with nuanced issues like this is that there isn't really a "right" or "wrong" answer, there's just bad and less bad.
Every time in history that we've institutionalized suppressing speech in support of official truth, it has gone horribly wrong.
The problem with nuanced issues like this is that there isn't really a "right" or "wrong" answer, there's just bad and less bad.
How many more ideas? There's been 80 years of continuous demonstration that holocaust denial is ahistorical garbage. Yet people continue to believe it because it allows them to justify their hatred. When can we stop? Surely at some point people are allowed to say "no, go home" to the person who had nearly unlimited opportunity to educate themselves and refused.
> There's been 80 years of continuous demonstration that holocaust denial is ahistorical garbage. Yet people continue to believe it because it allows them to justify their hatred.
You are suggesting that our liberal approach to free speech has failed so we might as well go full authoritarian and shut down the crazy… all to prevent another tide of nazi authoritarianism?
That is hilariously contradictory.
You are suggesting that our liberal approach to free speech has failed so we might as well go full authoritarian and shut down the crazy… all to prevent another tide of nazi authoritarianism?
That is hilariously contradictory.
Full authoritarian? No. It is a subreddit.
At what point would you stop allowing somebody clearly engaging in bad faith from wasting your time? Never?
At what point would you stop allowing somebody clearly engaging in bad faith from wasting your time? Never?
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Or just post a set of links refuting the most common claims. As you’ve said by now the topic has come up frequently enough.