Uhm, no. I mean, this is exaggerating; we are not having any physical violence here. Worst case: poisoning of minds.
Yes of course it’s an exaggeration, but it’s the same meta-type of error: Seeing X used for evil and therefore declaring that all X is evil and anyone who says X isn’t always evil is either evil or stupid themselves. It’s the same mistake as the one Neoreactionaries always complain about: “Perceived differences based on race or sex have been used to excuse evil, therefore anyone who says there are differences between races or sexes is evil!”
And poisoning of minds is very, very bad. People always seem to assume that physical violence is somehow worse than mental violence, but it’s just not true. Ideas can can be a lot more dangerous than guns.
(of course all of this is a bit moot since I’m not actually proposing banning democrats/republicans/race research/feminism or anything like that)
What if there are two competing religions; each one of them evil in a different way. And one missionary approaches you with an offer that if you help him establish the holy inquisition, he will rid you of those evil heretics from the other side. Is it a good idea to give him the power?
Of course not, why would I? Why are you asking this? Are you implying that in the real world, both sides to any conflict are always equally evil? Because that definitely isn’t the case in my experience.
Are you implying that in the real world, both sides to any conflict are always equally evil?
Didn’t say “equally”.
Seems to me that so far we had two significant attempts at suppressing opinions on LW.
1) Eugine’s one-person guerilla war of mass downvoting. Had some success for a few months, resulted in a ban.
2) Repeated suggestions that we should remove politically incorrect speech, because allegedly women don’t like it. Multiple proponents, no success yet.
I’m not sure which one of these is more dangerous; I could find arguments for either side. Eugine actually did censor the site for a while. However, he was finally banned, and if someone tries to do the same thing, they will probably get banned, too (hopefully much sooner). Also, his actions didn’t have popular support. On the other hand, censhorship of politically incorrect ideas is proposed repeatedly, by multiple people, openly in public. They demand that their norms become the official norms of the website, enforced by moderators.
Then I believe most people here want to have a debate without any political group dominating the website. About half of them don’t want to see here any politics at all, and I guess the other half would be okay with occassional, as rational as possible, polite debate about political topics.
Yes of course it’s an exaggeration, but it’s the same meta-type of error: Seeing X used for evil and therefore declaring that all X is evil and anyone who says X isn’t always evil is either evil or stupid themselves. It’s the same mistake as the one Neoreactionaries always complain about: “Perceived differences based on race or sex have been used to excuse evil, therefore anyone who says there are differences between races or sexes is evil!”
And poisoning of minds is very, very bad. People always seem to assume that physical violence is somehow worse than mental violence, but it’s just not true. Ideas can can be a lot more dangerous than guns.
(of course all of this is a bit moot since I’m not actually proposing banning democrats/republicans/race research/feminism or anything like that)
Of course not, why would I? Why are you asking this? Are you implying that in the real world, both sides to any conflict are always equally evil? Because that definitely isn’t the case in my experience.
Didn’t say “equally”.
Seems to me that so far we had two significant attempts at suppressing opinions on LW.
1) Eugine’s one-person guerilla war of mass downvoting. Had some success for a few months, resulted in a ban.
2) Repeated suggestions that we should remove politically incorrect speech, because allegedly women don’t like it. Multiple proponents, no success yet.
I’m not sure which one of these is more dangerous; I could find arguments for either side. Eugine actually did censor the site for a while. However, he was finally banned, and if someone tries to do the same thing, they will probably get banned, too (hopefully much sooner). Also, his actions didn’t have popular support. On the other hand, censhorship of politically incorrect ideas is proposed repeatedly, by multiple people, openly in public. They demand that their norms become the official norms of the website, enforced by moderators.
Then I believe most people here want to have a debate without any political group dominating the website. About half of them don’t want to see here any politics at all, and I guess the other half would be okay with occassional, as rational as possible, polite debate about political topics.