most extreme parody can be readily mistaken for a serious position
I may be doing just that by replying seriously. If this was intended as a “modest proposal”, good on you, but you probably should have included some penalty for being caught, like surgery to remove the truth-register.
Humans have been practicing lying for about a million years. We’re _VERY_ good at difficult-to-legislate communication and misleading speech that’s not unambiguously a lie.
Until you can get to a simple (simple enough for cheap enforcement) detection of lies, an outside enforcement is probably not feasible. And if you CAN detect it, the enforcement isn’t necessary. If people really wanted to punish lying, this regime would be unnecessary—just directly punish lying based on context/medium, not caring about tone of voice.
Until you can get to a simple (simple enough for cheap enforcement) detection of lies, an outside enforcement is probably not feasible.
There’s plenty of blatant lying out there in the real world, which would be easily detectable by a person with access to reliable sources and their head screwed on straight- I think one important facet of my model of this proposal, that isn’t explicitly mentioned in this shortform, is that validating statements is relatively cheap, but expensive enough that for every single person to validate every single sentence they hear is infeasible. By having a central arbiter of truth that enforces honesty, it allows one person doing the heavy lifting to save a million people from having to each individually do the same task.
If people wanted to punish lying this regime would be unnecessary—just directly punish lying based on context/medium, not caring about tone of voice.
The point of having a protected register (in the general, not platform-specific case), is that it would be enforceable even when the audience and platform are happy to accept lies- since the identifiable features of the register would be protected as intellectual property, the organization that owned the IP could enforce a violation of the intellectual property, even when there would be no legal basis for violating norms of honesty
The point of having a protected register (in the general, not platform-specific case), is that it would be enforceable even when the audience and platform are happy to accept lies
Oh, I’d taken that as a fanciful example, which didn’t need to be taken literally for the main point, which I thought was detecting and prosecuting lies. I don’t think that part of your proposal works—“intellectual property” isn’t an actual law or single concept, it’s an umbrella for trademark, copyright, patent, and a few other regimes. None of which apply to such a broad category of communication as register or accent.
You probably _CAN_ trademark a phrase or word, perhaps “This statement is endorsed by TruthDetector(TM)”. It has the advantage that it applies in written or spoken media, has no accessibility issues, works for tonal languages, etc. And then prosecute uses that you don’t actually endorse.
Endorsing only true statements is left as an excercise, which I suspect is non-trivial on it’s own.
I suspect there’s a difference between what I see in my head when I say “protected register”, compared to the image you receive when you hear it. Hopefully I’ll be able to write down a more specific proposal in the future, and provide a legal analysis of whether what I envision would actually be enforceable. I’m not a lawyer, but it seems that what I’m thinking of (i.e., the model in my head) shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand (although I think you are correct to dismiss what you envision that I intended)
I may be doing just that by replying seriously. If this was intended as a “modest proposal”, good on you, but you probably should have included some penalty for being caught, like surgery to remove the truth-register.
Humans have been practicing lying for about a million years. We’re _VERY_ good at difficult-to-legislate communication and misleading speech that’s not unambiguously a lie.
Until you can get to a simple (simple enough for cheap enforcement) detection of lies, an outside enforcement is probably not feasible. And if you CAN detect it, the enforcement isn’t necessary. If people really wanted to punish lying, this regime would be unnecessary—just directly punish lying based on context/medium, not caring about tone of voice.
I assure you this is meant seriously.
There’s plenty of blatant lying out there in the real world, which would be easily detectable by a person with access to reliable sources and their head screwed on straight- I think one important facet of my model of this proposal, that isn’t explicitly mentioned in this shortform, is that validating statements is relatively cheap, but expensive enough that for every single person to validate every single sentence they hear is infeasible. By having a central arbiter of truth that enforces honesty, it allows one person doing the heavy lifting to save a million people from having to each individually do the same task.
The point of having a protected register (in the general, not platform-specific case), is that it would be enforceable even when the audience and platform are happy to accept lies- since the identifiable features of the register would be protected as intellectual property, the organization that owned the IP could enforce a violation of the intellectual property, even when there would be no legal basis for violating norms of honesty
Oh, I’d taken that as a fanciful example, which didn’t need to be taken literally for the main point, which I thought was detecting and prosecuting lies. I don’t think that part of your proposal works—“intellectual property” isn’t an actual law or single concept, it’s an umbrella for trademark, copyright, patent, and a few other regimes. None of which apply to such a broad category of communication as register or accent.
You probably _CAN_ trademark a phrase or word, perhaps “This statement is endorsed by TruthDetector(TM)”. It has the advantage that it applies in written or spoken media, has no accessibility issues, works for tonal languages, etc. And then prosecute uses that you don’t actually endorse.
Endorsing only true statements is left as an excercise, which I suspect is non-trivial on it’s own.
I suspect there’s a difference between what I see in my head when I say “protected register”, compared to the image you receive when you hear it. Hopefully I’ll be able to write down a more specific proposal in the future, and provide a legal analysis of whether what I envision would actually be enforceable. I’m not a lawyer, but it seems that what I’m thinking of (i.e., the model in my head) shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand (although I think you are correct to dismiss what you envision that I intended)