your whole argument is based on the flaw that you trust people to vote correctly (however correct is defined).
I trust groups to vote with relative consistency, and believe that if you have enough consistent-ish groups, it’s possible to find a group whose consistency adequately approximates your own idea of correctness.
You can not say that “votes create censorship” is wrong because people would not like a system without voting.
If you’re defining censorship as the phenomenon created by all voting done by humans, then sure, “votes create censorship” is a useful axiom.
Our difference of opinion seems to be that you’re starting with the abstract notions like “truth”, “good”, or “right”, and building toward the concrete from there. I’m starting with the concrete notions of “beneficial” and “useful”, and trying to build toward abstract notions from there. No argument about what’s useful or beneficial will influence someone who prioritizes other values over those, so I’ll stop wasting your time by making them.
Another option of course would be for me to try to start in “truth”/”good”/”right” concept-space and move toward the concrete from there, but every other time I’ve tried to have that sort of conversation online, it’s eventually turned out that each participant in the conversation had differences of opinion about the way that the truth/good/right concept area works which only come to light once the conversation makes it to the specifics. Arguing from truth/good/right down to concrete examples only to have to repeat the whole process when the definitions turn out to have been inadequately specified wouldn’t be true/good/right by my own standards, so I won’t :)
Thanks, now I see exactly where we diverge.
I trust groups to vote with relative consistency, and believe that if you have enough consistent-ish groups, it’s possible to find a group whose consistency adequately approximates your own idea of correctness.
If you’re defining censorship as the phenomenon created by all voting done by humans, then sure, “votes create censorship” is a useful axiom.
Our difference of opinion seems to be that you’re starting with the abstract notions like “truth”, “good”, or “right”, and building toward the concrete from there. I’m starting with the concrete notions of “beneficial” and “useful”, and trying to build toward abstract notions from there. No argument about what’s useful or beneficial will influence someone who prioritizes other values over those, so I’ll stop wasting your time by making them.
Another option of course would be for me to try to start in “truth”/”good”/”right” concept-space and move toward the concrete from there, but every other time I’ve tried to have that sort of conversation online, it’s eventually turned out that each participant in the conversation had differences of opinion about the way that the truth/good/right concept area works which only come to light once the conversation makes it to the specifics. Arguing from truth/good/right down to concrete examples only to have to repeat the whole process when the definitions turn out to have been inadequately specified wouldn’t be true/good/right by my own standards, so I won’t :)