--I don’t think deepfakes are as big a deal as lying and censorship, and I think those aren’t as big a deal as bias+filterbubbles.
--I think lying and censorship should be compared more to the threat of violence than to violence itself. Since both are general-purpose tools for shaping people’s behavior (violence shapes people’s behavior too, but it isn’t really a tool for doing so, because you can’t fine-tune the way you do the violence to get the target to behave in specific ways. And insofar as you can, it’s because you are threatening them with more violence unless they behave the way you want). On this view, the situation is more grim. War may have ended between great powers, but the threat of violence hasn’t. And all the people in the world live under constant threat of violence from whatever government controls where they live; this is what laws are. So, this predicts that as ideological conflict becomes more polarized and congealed around a small number of mega-ideologies, most people in the world will live in the “territory” of one such mega-ideology, and within each territory there will be pervasive lying and censorship.
That said, I like the idea of comparing lying and censorship to acts of violence with collateral damage. They do have collateral damage, after all. (Unlike, perhaps, the mere threat of violence?) I also like the idea of using large institutions to self-police, e.g. two mega-ideologies could agree to not censor each other or something. For some reason this seems unlikely to work to me, but I’m not sure why. Maybe because it feels analogous to two great powers agreeing to have open borders with each other. You are giving up your main defensive advantage!
I also like the idea of using large institutions to self-police, e.g. two mega-ideologies could agree to not censor each other or something.
This seems to me confused. What to you mean with mega-ideologies that are large institutions? As I understand the term ideology, ideologies aren’t instiutions.
When it comes to real world large institutions a majority of censorship is internal and not external.
Yeah, most ideologies are not institutions, good point. (For our purposes, what matters is whether they have enough agency to make deals with other ideologies. A Supreme Leader or other central power structure would do the trick, but it’s not the only way.) So then I should rephrase: I’m intrigued by the idea of getting ideologies to have more agency so they can make win-win deals with each other. Just as warring tribes of humans benefit from having national governments that can coordinate when to fight and when to negotiate, so too might culture-warring ideological tribes of humans benefit from… etc.
Having to speak according to the party line that was decided in some deal seems to me like being censored to speak. The act of making a deal that involves not saying certain things like “People who say X are awful people who should be shunned” inherently involves censorship.
A tribe of humans who have an ideology is not the same as the ideology itself. In a tribe of humans there are always divergent opinions. The more all of the people are pressured to say the same thing, the more censorship is there for most definitions of censorship.
I share your overall concern, but have a few disagreements with this post:
--I don’t think deepfakes are as big a deal as lying and censorship, and I think those aren’t as big a deal as bias+filterbubbles.
--I think lying and censorship should be compared more to the threat of violence than to violence itself. Since both are general-purpose tools for shaping people’s behavior (violence shapes people’s behavior too, but it isn’t really a tool for doing so, because you can’t fine-tune the way you do the violence to get the target to behave in specific ways. And insofar as you can, it’s because you are threatening them with more violence unless they behave the way you want). On this view, the situation is more grim. War may have ended between great powers, but the threat of violence hasn’t. And all the people in the world live under constant threat of violence from whatever government controls where they live; this is what laws are. So, this predicts that as ideological conflict becomes more polarized and congealed around a small number of mega-ideologies, most people in the world will live in the “territory” of one such mega-ideology, and within each territory there will be pervasive lying and censorship.
That said, I like the idea of comparing lying and censorship to acts of violence with collateral damage. They do have collateral damage, after all. (Unlike, perhaps, the mere threat of violence?) I also like the idea of using large institutions to self-police, e.g. two mega-ideologies could agree to not censor each other or something. For some reason this seems unlikely to work to me, but I’m not sure why. Maybe because it feels analogous to two great powers agreeing to have open borders with each other. You are giving up your main defensive advantage!
This seems to me confused. What to you mean with mega-ideologies that are large institutions? As I understand the term ideology, ideologies aren’t instiutions.
When it comes to real world large institutions a majority of censorship is internal and not external.
Yeah, most ideologies are not institutions, good point. (For our purposes, what matters is whether they have enough agency to make deals with other ideologies. A Supreme Leader or other central power structure would do the trick, but it’s not the only way.) So then I should rephrase: I’m intrigued by the idea of getting ideologies to have more agency so they can make win-win deals with each other. Just as warring tribes of humans benefit from having national governments that can coordinate when to fight and when to negotiate, so too might culture-warring ideological tribes of humans benefit from… etc.
Having to speak according to the party line that was decided in some deal seems to me like being censored to speak. The act of making a deal that involves not saying certain things like “People who say X are awful people who should be shunned” inherently involves censorship.
A tribe of humans who have an ideology is not the same as the ideology itself. In a tribe of humans there are always divergent opinions. The more all of the people are pressured to say the same thing, the more censorship is there for most definitions of censorship.