"Marketplace of Ideas"?

[Darat]

Hey, beats me. Maybe they think the core of Nazism doesn't include that.

Other laws don't allow stupidity to be an excuse....

 

[sadhatter]

"We are not right because the enemy is wrong, you are wrong because I am right is a schoolyard squabble. Prove you are right by attacking the enemy with unassailable facts and destroy their ideas on the battlefield, that is the lasting victory of logic not the brief vindication on stepping on a single throat. "

 

[Darat]

"We are not right because the enemy is wrong, you are wrong because I am right is a schoolyard squabble. Prove you are right by attacking the enemy with unassailable facts and destroy their ideas on the battlefield, that is the lasting victory of logic not the brief vindication on stepping on a single throat. "

You think we still need to discuss whether it is a good idea to mass kill millions of our fellow citizens based on pseudoscience and hatred of the other or not? I had thought we had settled that question.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

No one could magically convince me to kill Jews, .

And yet all of the evidence points to this simply being wrong. Had you been raised in an environment where Jews were othered, dehumanised, villified and blamed for everything wrong in society then yes, you very much could be.

I notice this a lot with people, they severely overestimate their own abilities to not be influenced by their environment and the messages they receive on a daily basis and then wrongly assume that others should be able to do it too.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

Actually he would just have to sue for libel (assuming the accusations were not true) , providing a very high penalty for your stunt.

Said penalty is also geared toward the impact your statement made so the more effort the worse it will be. Laws exist, realize this.

Libel is a limitation on freedom of speech and as such would be opposed by those who believe in complete freedom of speech

He would also need to have the resources to sue me.

And in the US I believe the onus would be on him to prove it isn't true.

In other words, exactly as I said, those with the money and power could silence others and those without would just have to suffer.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

"We are not right because the enemy is wrong, you are wrong because I am right is a schoolyard squabble. Prove you are right by attacking the enemy with unassailable facts and destroy their ideas on the battlefield, that is the lasting victory of logic not the brief vindication on stepping on a single throat. "

Which would be a great statement if facts actually worked to destroy false ideas. Again evidence of history and present day suggests not so much.

 

[Giz]

Which would be a great statement if facts actually worked to destroy false ideas. Again evidence of history and present day suggests not so much.

Why are you even on a skeptic board?

How defeatist. How lacking in hope. How dismissive of the power of good ideas.

 

[Roboramma]

Which would be a great statement if facts actually worked to destroy false ideas. Again evidence of history and present day suggests not so much.

I think history shows the exact opposite. Both in science and moral philosophy.

 

[Giz]

I think history shows the exact opposite. Both in science and moral philosophy.

Exactly

This board was set up for that

 

[uke2se]

I think history shows the exact opposite. Both in science and moral philosophy.

Not in politics.

It's taken a world war to stop a political philosophy in the past. No amount of words sufficed.

 

[Roboramma]

Not in politics.

It's taken a world war to stop a political philosophy in the past. No amount of words sufficed.

I will grant you that words are not always sufficient. But the trend worldwide has been toward more enlightened views that square with reality. Women really aren't inferior to men, and slowly over the course of the 20th century political philosophies had to come to grips with that fact. There is no hierarchy of races, and again slowly political philosophies have been faced with that fact and had to change because of the reality of it.

On the scale of a human life these changes can seem both painfully slow and also sometimes the trend can disappear into the noise. But on the scale of history we really are living in a golden age brought on by the exchanging of and competition between ideas.

We haven't reached some perfect utopia, but the general trend has been a positive one, because when ideas are tested against each other true ideas have an inherent advantage. That doesn't mean no other factors matter: Lysenkoism survived for a while because of some contingent realities of the political situation in which it arose, for instance.

 

[Giz]

Not in politics.

It's taken a world war to stop a political philosophy in the past. No amount of words sufficed.

You are conflating the struggle against two linked but distinct things:
- german tanks rolling over Europe
- nazism as a philosophy
It definitely took a war to stop the enemy tanks.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

I think history shows the exact opposite.

Really?

That's why there are no Mormons anymore then?

 

[Roboramma]

Really?

That's why there are no Mormons anymore then?

It's why in 1978 black people were allowed to be priests within Mormonism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_people_and_Mormon_priesthood

Mormonism is a large collection of mostly bad ideas. But like most of our culture, those ideas are slowly changing over time, and for the better. And that's because people are engaging with each other within the confines of reality.

 

[Giz]

Really?

That's why there are no Mormons anymore then?

Mormon is only a letter away from moron. But is a small minority believing something kooky (but not harmful) something to curtail free speech and debate over?

If the cost of free civic discussion is that a few people are Mormons, I’ll take that deal.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

It's why in 1978 black people were allowed to be priests within Mormonism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_people_and_Mormon_priesthood

Mormonism is a large collection of mostly bad ideas. But like most of our culture, those ideas are slowly changing over time, and for the better. And that's because people are engaging with each other within the confines of reality.

Mormonism is demonstrably false and the facts are out there that show this. And yet as a philosophy it continues to grow.

And that's just one example.

In an era of fake news it is simply hopelessly naive to believe that 'truth will trump fiction'.

The ideas which are victorious are those which have the greatest resources behind them to propagate them. Regardless of their veracity.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

Mormon is only a letter away from moron. But is a small minority believing something kooky (but not harmful) something to curtail free speech and debate over?

It's simply an example of one amongst many wrong ideas that flourish in the face of factual evidence to the contrary.

If the cost of free civic discussion is that a few people are Mormons, I’ll take that deal.

Well that isn't the deal at all.

 

[Belz...]

Mormonism is demonstrably false and the facts are out there that show this. And yet as a philosophy it continues to grow.

And that's just one example.

Obviously, objective reality is overrated!

 

[Roboramma]

Mormonism is demonstrably false and the facts are out there that show this. And yet as a philosophy it continues to grow.

And that's just one example.

In an era of fake news it is simply hopelessly naive to believe that 'truth will trump fiction'.

The ideas which are victorious are those which have the greatest resources behind them to propagate them. Regardless of their veracity.

Are you arguing that the trend (say over the last century) has not been toward a more accurate view of the world?

 

[Cavemonster]

I will grant you that words are not always sufficient. But the trend worldwide has been toward more enlightened views that square with reality.

I don't want to say there are no such trends, but there is significant bias that lends to their appearance.

I remember as a kid growing up in the 80s looking back to the ridiculous fashions of the 60s and 70s and thinking "People eventually see dumb fads for what they are, thank god we wear reasonable clothes now". Most adults grow out of that and come to the realization that all fashion is arbitrary, but we preserve a similar sort of blinders for issues around morality.

If you live in the present, as we all do, then statistically, you're likely to agree with popular ideas of the time and disagree with ideas of the past which are different. Since ideas change in increments, this will always look like progress.

And even if the arc of time does bend towards truth and goodness, there are certainly sidesteps and backslides. How dire do that have to be that we can't shrug our shoulders and say "we're basically headed in the right direction" 50 years ago, Iran was a lot closer to the western world in terms of gender equality and freedom of expression. Now young women can get pulled into a van and beaten for wearing lipstick. And it doesn't look like that's changing soon. So that's a backslide that's lasted a lifetime and doesn't seem to be going away. I'm not saying that censorship specifically would have avoided the supremacy of those bad ideas, but it's at least an example of bad ideas bending against the supposed forward march towards truth and justice in a way that has lasted half a century and will continue.