I didn’t mean it as a criticism, just that my brain pattern-matched his choice of words and read it in Alec Guiness’s voice.
kodos96
Karma: 818
Of course. But a “good enough” solution to the stated problem doesn’t need to be able to do that. There are a number of different approaches I can think of off the top of my head, in increasing order of complexity:
Just keep it from getting indexed by google, and expire it after a certain period. Sure, a sufficiently determined attacker could just spider LW every day, but do we actually think there’s an organized conspiracy out there against us?
Limit access to people who can be trusted not to copy it—either based on karma as suggested, or individual vetting. I’m not a fan of this option, but it could certainly be made to work, for certain values of “work”.
Implement a full on OTR style system providing full deniability through crypto. Rather than stopping content from being copied, just make sure you can claim any copy is a forgery, and nobody can prove you wrong. A MAJOR engineering effort of course, but totally possible, and 100% effective.
This would be a poor investment of time without first getting a commitment from Eliezer that he will accept said patch.
I had read the entire context, and re-read it just now to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. You’re correct that RomeoStevens’ reply doesn’t really undermine MixedNuts’ point, and is therefore “trivia”. But it’s nonetheless correct trivia (modulo the above-mentioned caveat) and your refutation of it is therefore quite confusing.
But it’s pointless to continue arguing this trivial point, as it’s irrelevant to the thread topic, except in the meta sense that these kinds of pointless semantic debates will be the inevitible result of implementation of this extremely ill-advised and poorly thought-through censorship policy.
I’m not sure what RomeoStevens meant about discussion of violence against oneself being illegal, but aside from that aspect, his point is entirely valid. You seem to be suggesting that we’re generalising from “suicide is illegal” to “any form of violence against oneself is illegal”. We’re not. We’re simply noting that suicide is one type of violence against onself, and it’s illegal.
Your statement expands to “In most times and places throughout history, including all countries whose legal systems I am familiar with, violence against oneself is fully legal.” Unless you’re familiar only with very odd legal systems, that seems to be a rather blatant confusion.
You may think it’s silly, others do not. Even if Eliezar has no intention of interpeting “violence” that way, how do we know that? Ambiguity about what is and is not allowed results in chilling far more speech than may have been originally intended by the policy author.
Also, the policy is not limited to only violence, but to anything illegal (and commonly enforced on middle class people). What the hell does that even mean? Illegal according to whom? Under what jurisdiction? What about conflicts between state/federal/constitutional law? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I think I have a pretty good idea what Eliezar meant by that, but I could well be wrong, and other people will likely have different ideas of what he meant. Again, ambiguity is what ends up chilling speech, far more broadly than the original policy author may have actually intended.
And I will again reiterate what I consider to be the most slam-dunk argument against this policy: in the incident that provoked this policy change, the author of the offending post voluntarily removed it, after discussion convinced him it was a bad idea. Self-policing worked! So what exactly is the necessity for any new policy at all?
I don’t think it’s silly, and based on the LW survey results, neither do approximately 30.3% of LW users.
But aside from that, OP said “More generally: Posts or comments advocating or ‘asking about’ violation of laws that are actually enforced against middle-class people”. Gun control (though not taxation) clearly falls under this illegality clause, without resort to classifying it as “violence”.
OK, I’ll update on that.
Aside from the fact that “it might make us look bad” is a horrible argument in general, have you not considered the consequence that censorship makes us look bad? And consider the following comment below:
Got it. Posts discussing our plans for crimes will herewith be kept to the secret boards only.
It was obviously intended as a joke, but is that clear to outsiders? Does forcing certain kinds of discussions into side-channels, which will inevitibly leak, make us look good?
Consideration of these kinds of meta-consequences is what separates naive decision theories from sophisticated decision theores. Have you considered that it might hurt your credibility as a decision theorist to demonstrate such a lack of application of sophisticated decision theory in setting policies on your own website?
And now, what I consider to be the single most damning argument against this policy: in the very incident that provoked this rule change, the author of the post in question, after discussion, voluntarily withdrew the post, without this policy being in effect! So self-policing has demonstrated itself, so far, to be 100% effective at dealing with this situation. So where exactly is the necessity for such a policy change?
I was unaware of that connotation. But I don’t think it changes the equation. There’s a million different ways to interpret “by all means necessary”, the vast majority of which would not be construed to include violence. If this were a forum in which Satre/Malcolm X references were the norm, then that would be different. But it isn’t.
..............whooosh................
I hope this kind of satirical summary is considered acceptable
This kind of uncertainty about what is and is not acceptible, is perhaps the primary reason why such censorship policies are evil.
If this were your real rejection, you would be asking for volunteer software-engineer-hours.
I can think of a few different ways, requiring no more than a few dozen software-engineer-hours, that this could be solved effectively enough to make it a non-issue.
I don’t see how this comment even fits the proposed policy, except under a motivatedly-broad reading of “by all means necessary”
Does advocating gun control, or increased taxes, count? They would count as violence is private actors did them
In the event of gun control, it would in fact be illegal even if done by a state actor.
Edit: assuming USA of course.
You must do what you feel is right, of course
Passive-aggression level: Obi-Wan Kenobi
For all the whining I do about how LWers lack a sense of humor.… I absolutely love it when I’m proven wrong.
It has a net negative effect because people then go around saying (this post will be deleted after policy implementation), “Oh, look, LW is encouraging people to commit suicide and donate the money to them.” That is what actually happens. It is the only real significant consequence.
This is where the rubber meets the road as far as whether we really mean it when we say “that which can be destroyed by the truth, should be.” If we accept this argument, then by “mere addition” of censorship rules, you eventually end up renaming SIAI “The Institute for Puppies and Unicorn Farts”, and completly lying to the public about what it is you’re actually about, in order to benefit PR.
Yeah, I’d say that’s a fair assesment.