I am asking you about your standards
look, I think you don't get my truths/axioms and how it currently maps to reality. In this specific discussion, my personal preferences seem to largely align with the current laws and how its currently enforced. It just so happens that the common legal stuff largely agrees with me, that's why I am using the same words the law uses to also say what I want to say.
Of course if there were only two restaurants in town and they both refused to serve blacks, my response would be: this is unacceptable. As I already explained, I would go and find legislators that support my view of how race/color-based discrimination isn't correct. Thankfully I don't have to because of efforts by others in the past.
I think it's fine to discriminate based on political belief, that's why I won't go and find legislators that support that view. In fact, if there is a groundswell of people who try to get legislation that enforce: "You have to respect every political belief", I would go and find legislators that support my opposite view that: "I don't have to entertain every political belief". This would mean stuff like if you try to get "political belief" somehow be a protected class, I would oppose that. If you try to get a constitutional amendment on political belief discrimination, I for sure would do that.
In addition, I notice you haven't tackled my dog owner forum example. Nor have you detailed out any "specific examples of right wing beliefs that get you banned from a large portion of the internet...so that our discussion can be more focused instead of me guessing at what you're meaning" like I asked before.
I am trying to understand and engage and be persuaded by you. Maybe there is a particular corner case, or as you said, evidence, that I haven't considered. But I don't see it.
It's something they can change in the same way that kissing a member of the same sex is something you can change. You can avoid the action, but ultimately the action is based on something you can't change.
"kissing" is genderless action, "kissing a member of the same sex" is now not genderless because there is a gender modifier. Since I've been looking at a lot of math I'm gonna try to model what I think:
- There is a set
P(persons). - There is a function
find_gender(x)such that for apthat is a member ofP,find_gender(p)is of the set{m, f}wheremmeans male andfmeans female in the biological gender/sex kind of way. (find_gender(lollol) = m) - there is a function
kissing(p1, p2), withp1andp2being member ofP, where this means the kisserp1perform the behavior of kissing on person-being-kissedp2 - Let's say there is a restaurant
r1of the setR(private places of "public accommodation") - Let's say there is a function
ban(r, behavior)which means restaurantrbansbehavior
Now let's examine the following scenarios:
r1has a ban on kissing. To me that meansbehavior = kissing(p1,p2)inban(r1, behavior)r1has a ban on kissing men. To me that meansbehavior = (kissing(p1,p2) AND find_gender(p2) == m)inban(r1, behavior)r1has a ban on same-sex kissing. To me that meansbehavior = (kissing(p1,p2) AND find_gender(p1) == find_gender(p2))inban(r1, behavior)
You notice how the difference between kissing(p1,p2) vs kissing(p1,p2) AND find_gender(p1) == find_gender(p2) is just the AND find_gender(p1) == find_gender(p2)) part?
Well, in my mind, discrimination by gender is being tripped up when the behavior being banned uses find_gender().
And in contrast to you, I don't care about find_political_belief() when private places create bans.
lollol
5hr ago
People change their political beliefs based on evidence, not based on them being threatened. The threat may change which belief they express, but it can't change their belief.
Ok, so people's political belief can change based on evidence, so at least we agree that political belief can change.
That's banning based on behavior. You could decide not to do it. Just the fact that only some people are able to do the behavior doesn't make it innate.
I'll explain my view of the example as follows:
- A restaurant have a "ban on all kissing". This is constitutional, legal, and for me personally ok because it is banning a behavior. Maybe the restaurant has a theme of a monastery or something.
- A restaurant have a "ban on kissing men". This is maybe constitutional, but not legal, and for me personally not ok because although it is still banning the behavior, it is now bringing in gender into the scenario. From my perspective, the only difference is the gender of the person being kissed, and that's clearly gender-based discrimination.
- A restaurant have a "ban on men kissing men". This is maybe constitutional, but doubly not legal, and for me personally not ok because although it is banning a behavior, it is now bringing in gender twice into this scenario.
- And so on and so on
Do you get what I'm saying? That from my perspective, "kissing" is a genderless behavior on its own. Hell, on some days my male neutered cat kisses me more than my wife kisses me. And yeah, you can totally ban the behavior "kissing". But once you bring in "can't kiss men", "men can't kiss men", then to me, it's clearly bringing gender into the equation and attempting to discriminate based on gender.
I basically said it: if the "private decision" is such that you're banned from a large portion of the available venues, we should cease treating it as a private decision. (For nitpickers, it also has to be significant in scale; being banned from the only store that sells orange-flavored boba doesn't count.)
Normally this happens because of a combination of oligopolies and of widespread prejudice. If there's one person running every restaurant in the town, banning you means banning you from all restaurants. If there are twenty restaurants in the town and they all independently think the same thing about you because of widespread prejudice and want to ban you, that's still banning you from all restaurants.
First of all, sounds to me like the greater problem is oligarchy/monopoly/cartel power and the people and its government can just solve that first.
Second of all, since it's political speech and not something the person can't change about themselves, well maybe they should think about why they garnered the ban of all the restaurants. It's not binary, there is always a spectrum; there will be owners who truly dislike that political belief, there will be some that would have not banned that person if it wasn't for persuasion, there will be some that would have not banned that person if it wasn't for coercion.
Third, from my right to free expression and assembly, it's implied that I have freedom of expressive association, which means I can associate with who I want, and not associate with people I don't want, and most importantly, political speech is not a protected class so I can discriminate based on political speech if I want to.
Fourth, is your argument that the government should uses its state monopoly of violence to force private places of "public accommodation" to cater and give service to people that they disagree with politically? Are you sure? Let's say there is a privately run dog owners forum, let's even assume somehow there is only one dog owner forum in the US (truly impossible situation in a place like the US btw), and there is this group of people who advocates for the eating of dog meat and proliferation of dog meat consumption in the US, are you saying the forum must accommodate them and can't ban them? Isn't, in a way, it's the government forcing a political belief upon the owners of the dog owners forum? I really don't think you've thought all this through and at least so far I'm not convinced.
Fifth, I saw this article on how the owner of Madison Square Garden and the Sphere and so on bans thousands of lawyers and I just want to link it here even though it doesn't really jives with what we are talking about which is "banning people based on their political belief".
lollol
1d ago
And I'd say the same is true for politics. I can't by force of will come to believe some political belief different than I actually believe.
Yeah maybe you can't, but the common understanding is that people do change their political beliefs. What you would need to do is convince enough people that political belief is like religious belief, that it's more like something someone is and not something someone can change, and then get a constitutional amendment on that. And yeah, I will fight you along the way because I don't have the same "truth" of the world as you do.
This is gerrymandering the definition of "thing they can't change". They are being banned for kissing in the restaurant. They can change whether they kiss in the restaurant. It's true that their desire to do the banned thing is something they can't change, but they can change the behavior itself.
Well yeah, that's why i said a restaurant can ban kissing behavior, when you say "can't kiss a man if you're a man", that's not banning based on behavior, that's banning based on who they are.
But in the context of real life, we don't accept that people can be banned for any reason.
In meat-space, we decided that if you express political beliefs people don't like, they can ban you from their private stuff. Sounds to me like it's logical that in the online world, we can also decide that if you express political beliefs people don't like, they can ban you from their private stuff. In meat space, we decided that you cannot ban people from your private stuff because of their race. Sounds to me like it's logical that in the online world, we can also decide that you cannot ban people from your private stuff because of their race.
I would be much more amenable to smarter arguments of what is a private place of "public accommodations". It's easy in meat-space to know that a restaurant in the middle of town is a private place of "public accommodations". And it's easy then to make the parallel that social media platforms are also private place of "public accommodation". Anyone can "walk" into these sites and sign up for an account and presumably agree to terms of use and agreements. Anyone can "make use" of the features provided by such a space. And because social media platforms are also private place of "public accommodation", therefore social media platforms also get the rights of a restaurant. Now if you can somehow argue that social media platforms are government-funded or government-backed or government-actors, or so on, then you can legitimately say that social media platforms cannot ban people for their political beliefs.
Let's take an example that you run a restaurant and the government send you a letter pointing out that the government is concerned about certain people, that these people are "dangerous". You think the government is being bullshit and suppressing these people from enjoying the succulent meals you would make for them based on political belief. You fear that the government will retaliate you and you can lay out the details of how the government already or would do that. Guess what you can do? You can do exactly what various different social platforms do: most lay down and take it, some find workarounds/delay tactics, a few fight.
Furthermore, in real life, I'd say that one of the issues with banning black people from restaurants is that not wanting black people in restaurants was common enough that even though the decision to ban them was made by individual restaurant owners, they were in effect being banned by a large portion of an industry, which is much worse than just not being able to get a meal in a particular restaurant. This is also true for banning people from the Internet; if you express right-wing beliefs, the biggest places are all closed off to you even if you can still use some niche forum like themotte.
First of all, I don't believe that race/color is similar to political beliefs so I don't even agree or share your understanding of the parallel. Second of all, what right wing beliefs get you banned from a large portion of the internet? Let's pin down on some particular examples so that our discussion can be more focused instead of me guessing at what you're meaning.
lollol
1d ago
That's dodging the question. I'm not asking about laws here, I'm asking about why you think one is wrong and the other isn't.
I'm sure you were writing your reply as you read along the way because as you've noticed, I've tackled your question head on.
Religion can be changed and I doubt you think it's okay for restaurant owners to kick people out based on religion. (And if you say "people can't just choose what to believe", that of course applies to politics too.)
Well that's a different thing though no? You've only asked me about race (and I suppose color) so far so I've only thought about race (and i suppose color) so far. Now that you ask about religion, I will think about it. The same thing applies, it's illegal, but maybe it's constitutional, to ban people based on their religion. I'm not religious, so it's hard for me to understand them, but from what I can sympathize with this large contingent of people, holding a religious belief is who they are, they just can't change that about themselves. You might have already seen the joke about "Northern Conservative†Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879 or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" and maybe even laughed at the fatal end. But that's because enjoy-ers of the joke are not religious and are laughing at the absurdity of perceived overreaction on small differences. I think I'll have the same answer like race/color with a caveat: On a personal level, do I think private places of public accommodation should be able to ban people because of their religion? No, and I would go into the streets to protest and advocate, and so on, if I think that such laws will be overturned. And if the laws are overturned, I'll damn sure to start finding legislators that makes a case for a constitutional amendment that would change that. However, if there is a sufficient common understanding that god is not real and there is no higher power but just ourselves stumbling through an uncaring universe, then yeah, we should shun and ban the religious people privately however we like. But since the human condition seems to have us always believe in some higher power then uhhhh religion is gonna stay and I'll fight for people's right to practice religion.
For that matter, openly expressing a lot of things can be changed. I doubt you would accept that someone can ban Jews from their restaurant as long as they behave in a way that lets the owner distinguish them from gentiles. Behavior can be changed, after all! Or banning gay people from their restaurant for kissing their partner (you can certainly change whether you kiss someone of the same sex in the restaurant).
Again, IANAL, but looks like we're getting into the weeds here.
Can one really change openly expressing their religious-based behavior? Based on their beliefs, something bad is going to happen to them spiritually when change their behavior! I don't have enough evidence if there is a kingdom in heaven or not really, and well I don't want to invoke more sectarian wars as well. I actually don't know enough about Jews physical tells but there's something about beard right? I actually think it's ok that restaurants can ban people with beards, something about cleanliness perhaps? but they certainly can't ban people because they're Jewish practicing.
As for your other example, I'm gonna take the example of a person who want to kiss the man they're on a date with, but they're a biological man. They're are happy being a man and can't really change themselves into a biological woman even if they want to (though I don't know maybe that would change in the future! and if that happens I'll revisit my thoughts on this). Banning that person because they want to kiss their man-date is banning them because of their biological gender/sex, something they can't change. Now banning all kisses at the restaurant, sure, everyone can comply with changing that behavior together.
What are you talking about? That parallelism compares the wrong things. The comparison to online people (the targets of discrimination) going to the dark web and making their own forums would be black customers (the targets of discrimination) opening their own restaurants on the open sea, not the restaurant owners who want to discriminate doing so.
The original question I wanted to answer is: "Why is [the closure of the internet] both not news and unknown?" I was talking about how the same laws and regulations in real life is just being moved online, it's expected as online is not like a different dimension or something, it's just....part of "life". That's why it's not really news and why it's only affecting online people. We got into an argument about banning different defined sections of society because I think you think that I advocate different things online than what I advocate for offline. But that's not my point. My point has always been that online stuff will just increasingly become like the meat-space/offline stuff too. And that parallels of what you want to see offline can be find online, and vice versa.
personal principles aren't the same thing as constitutionality and aren't the same thing as legality. and again, IANAL.
As I described, you can't ban people because of their race at a private establishment of "public accommodation" because it's made illegal. Is it constitutional to ban people because of their race? I actually think maybe, though I don't think anyone would want to work through the entire court system to just say that. I think the justices would pull some logic somewhere else to make that unconstitutional (maybe the Preamble? something about "domestic tranquility" perhaps). If somebody is running a racist restaurant, they can make it plenty uncomfortable to be the wrong color, but as long as they fulfill the terms of the commercial contract (I suppose this would be something like "you pay, i serve food".), it's not illegal nor unconstitutional. On a personal level, do I think private places should be able to ban people because of their race? No, and I would go into the streets to protest and advocate, and so on, if I think that such laws will be overturned. And if the laws are overturned, I'll damn sure to start finding legislators that makes a case for a constitutional amendment that would change that.
banning people for their political speech from your private establishment is legal because nothing made it illegal, and it's constitutional because your act of banning them is political speech and is therefore protected. Now on a personal level do I endorse banning people for their political speech in private places, no, I do think there should be more "integration"/"desegregation" so that a diverse polity as the US can continue to function and thrive. That's why I'm here after all, in a space that many of my friends would sneer and close the tab after scrolling for maybe 30 seconds. But do I think it's allowed for people to ban others for their political speech. Yes. if the mods decide to ban me based on my political speech, I wouldn't consider it illegal nor unconstitutional. If the mods decide to ban me based on race, then I would certainly think it's illegal.
Now let's get to your question of what's the difference between race and political speech. I think it's simple enough to answer: race, as of the current common modern understanding, can't really be changed, while political speech can. I can't change that I am Asian, but I can certainly change my political view. No one can influence or persuade or talk me into being not-Asian by biological or cultural heritage (I suppose one can self-delude to think of oneself as not-Asian), other people can certainly influence or persuade or talk me into a different political view. Politics is about trying to live near each other and not simultaneously trying to punch each other, then I think a simple enough grounding principle is to avoid conflicts on things people can't change about themselves.
Now to go back to the original theme of the thread, my argument is that there are plenty of equivalents in real life that maps to online. I'm not saying that the real life stuff is superior to the online stuff, I'm saying that the online stuff will just increasingly map to real life things as regulations and case laws catch up and that's why this is an online people problem and not a problem generally. Online people can go down to the dark web and make truly free discussion boards if they want to preserve that, and real life people can also just go out to the open sea and make racist restaurants that ban people by their skin color if they want to, just both groups of such people shouldn't be surprised that there won't be a lot of traffic.
lollol
1d ago
depends on the context. Banning people for political speech on website is fine, because you can also ban people from your restaurant for political speech.
lollol
1d ago
I suppose the nuance of what I'm saying isn't that I'm against free speech online. I just recognize that because online is an extension of real life, the same things that make real life hard for truly free crazy speech (lack of anonymity, lack of reach if others don't help you spread it) will be imposed on the online environment at some point, that's why it's an online people problem. I was primarily answering "Why is it both not news and unknown?"
Ok, so are you in favor of internet censorship? What kinds of opinions should be censored? Do you think TheMotte should censor more?
I am in favor of applying laws fairly, digital space is different from meat space, but there are overlaps and equivalents. If there should be differences, it should be made clear. TheMotte has the mods and people can pre-filter that opinions by voting on comments/report them. I personally think it's fine, I haven't seen any mod action that I disagree with or thinks that it makes the discussion worse.
Punching a guy in the face because you don't like his truth claim is assault and it's bad for your argument that you compare your own position to assault.
Ok, fine, I'll extend the analogy. You can be a moon landing denier but don't be surprised if you get punched in the face by an astronaut. And yes, the astronaut should expect that the punchee will seek assault charges. If we look at the detail of the incident btw, charges were never filed.
This was after years of censorship on the subject that Jon Stewart's remarks were literally couched against. People were censored for having a normal opinion, so he felt it important to speak that opinion in a public forum.
Jun 15, 2021, that was still in the midst of Covid, not even 2 years.
It doesn't sound like you believe in free speech. It doesn't sound like you have any higher ideals or higher standards. You should want better for yourself.
Yeah, I already said "I don't think I'm a freedom of speech absolutist in daily life". Like many things, I do think there is a gradation of how much free speech do we expect for certain things. Maybe the higher standard here is what is good and what is necessary. In the US, it's norms and culture first, law next, then constitution last. I suppose since I live here, I like to believe the higher idea is the constitution, and it only protects my speech from the government, not protection of speech from private actions.
This went all the way to SCOTUS actually and the Roberts Court said it was perfectly constitutional for government officials to tell twitter to ban stuff because that's the government's first amendment right. If you think it's unconstitutional then you actually agree with me.
I believe this should be Murthy v. Missouri (June 2024) and I suppose your summary is correct but uhh no it was struck down because of standing. as at least one person points out: "A reminder that kicking the case on standing should not be regarded as an opinion on the merits of the case. Should only be regarded as an opinion that they do not have standing to sue."
And yes, there is a reason why I am sympathetic to the tech-right, I think that there is some level of subterfuge here so that the Biden government can hide behind and have plausible deniability on first amendment rights. I don't think you're wrong to point that out. It's just that what I say is: "Though I do think Trump and his admin is more likely to just demand the results directly instead of doing things opaquely like Biden. I think if someone comes from the position of defending free speech, they'll find problems with every administration." It's just very natural for people in position of power to want to shut down the speech of others that criticize them.
Look, I think it's good if you support free speech policies, but these websites were all created in the first place because of censorship of which it seems you approve. Elon would not have had to buy twitter and make it a free speech website if it had just stayed the free speech website it was originally. And, as much as I'm glad Elon bought twitter, anybody can see that his regime is not as free as twitter was c. 2016 in the first place.
Ok, and I never use twitter (certainly because of the lack of nuanced discussion), and I go to this site. People go to places that serve them and their needs. And the owners of the site can do whatever they wish, that's just how businesses work. Forcing a business to serve any political view is itself forcing a political view on them.
What I'm saying, in general, to try and consolidate several different points, is that you personally benefit from free speech norms that are only possible because of opposition to anti-free speech norms you seem to support. We're posting on a website that only exists because of a wave of censorship that swept the internet c. 2017. It exists because Reddit did not want to tolerate these kinds of political debates. When it had always openly and explicitly tolerated these political debates. That change was a specific cultural moment that many people, including those here, opposed. That change made the world worse. That change largely failed. And to the extent that it did fail it's because of a lot of work from a lot of people who tried to stop it.
I already wrote elsewhere so I'll put it here again:
To make a more nuanced take, if the government is stepping in to suppress speech, I think there is a bar, a very complicated bar I hope, where they can do that. But if society/majority is making a call on you, there isn't much you can do than play the game (hide it), convert (if you can't beat them join them), take it (suffer the consequences), leave/get around it (find ways to make your own platform). And the beautiful thing about America I find is that I do think if one keeps speaking truth, yes there will be persecution, but reality will unfold in such a way that your truth can't be denied. And Americans are willful and passionate and brilliant and they have the constitution (assuming that is still respected) to protect them to find a way around suppression while waiting for the long archhammer of history to smite the censors.
Of course, there can be many pendulum swings along the way, much has been said about how the tech-right came to be because of how tech moguls were feeling the squeeze of the left and came running into the open arms of conservatives.
I can benefit from the work of others, that's just natural of daily life. Of course I thank you all for it, and yeah, I'm here after all. Yet it's just as much that I think the censor work is futile. I'll do things to get around the censor just as much as you, especially when I think my speech might somehow lead to me back in real life and lead to some kind of unwanted attention/retaliation. But I suppose what I want to really get is that online can be thought of as different, but just an extension of real life. In real life, also feel free to write political screeds and nail them anonymously to electrical poles (though Flock cameras is probably gonna get around that). If the truth one speak is important, it will come out in the long term. Of course in the short term, you might be persecuted.
Private internet censorship is like banning people from a restaurant? Ok, I want a world where most people are not banned from most restaurants most of the time. That's actually basically the norm, but there were a lot of people who tried very hard to make sure it wasn't the norm. If the censors had had their way, ~50%+ of the American public would not be allowed into any restaurant, anywhere, and if you tried to open your own restaurant to serve most Americans, the censors would want you banned too.
Yeah, and the censors sometime succeed. People couldn't drink alcohol for a while. People couldn't make movies where the bad guy wins or show some nudity. But thankfully there are always reactions against tyrannic actions, and the American people has a way to express their dissatisfaction. The tech people turns right because Biden made it hard (I would argue more because of money but the speech thing must be infuriating). Hispanics will turn on Trump because Trump made it hard (I would argue more because of money but the immigration thing must be infuriating). And so the pendulum swings. And I disagree that the internet will be closed, as long as there is anonymity and shared discussion space, the internet will always be open.
lollol
2d ago
a quick search (and also IANAL) shows me that the reason why it is illegal for restaurants to ban people based on skin color because of the following:
- banning people from your business establishment is commercial conduct and not protected speech (there is an artistic/creative intent carve out based on the recent ruling but that's not the case here)
- commercial conduct has often been broadly regulated based on the commerce clause (which has its own can of worms but I'm not well versed in this)
- it's been made illegal with the civil rights act of 1964 for discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national origin.
And like many before, it's pointed out that you can discriminate based on political speech, YMMV lol.
Personally, I think it is immoral to ban people based on their skin color. I think for the good of a multi-racial society (because that's what the US is whether one likes it or not), that should not be a thing because it just leads to segregation/disintegration and would in the long term lead to a fractured and balkanized US. Now I have reservations about upgrading from legal to constitutional, maybe race won't be a concern in the far future and "race" might mean something different and the law needs an upgrade (or maybe not, supreme court justices have been reasonably intelligent so far). So yeah, I think it's good that restaurants cannot ban people for their skin color.
lollol
2d ago
how many persecution campaigns did this community have to endure, how many posters did it lose
I discovered TheMotte on reddit because I chanced upon one of the Quality Contribution thread and thought these ideas weren't my cup of tea at face value but they're sound and reasonable and I want to keep reading in case I change my mind. I think the problem TheMotte faces is lost opportunity for new mottizens, but not all sites need more audience (especially if it's the wrong audience), https://lobste.rs is just a smaller version of hackernews for example. I am not sure of what persecution campaign this community endured, I'm sure the mods and long term members of the site can speak more, and I am thankful for the work of those who made this site continually available. Personally, I make sure to not bring this site to too much attention and only share things from this site that is within the window of acceptability of the target audience I'm sharing to.
To make a more nuanced take, if the government is stepping in to suppress speech, I think there is a bar, a very complicated bar I hope, where they can do that. But if society/majority is making a call on you, there isn't much you can do than play the game (hide it), convert (if you can't beat them join them), take it (suffer the consequences), leave/get around it (find ways to make your own platform). And the beautiful thing about America I find is that I do think if one keeps speaking truth, yes there will be persecution, but reality will unfold in such a way that your truth can't be denied. And Americans are willful and passionate and brilliant and they have the constitution (assuming that is still respect) to protect them to find a way around suppression while waiting for the long archhammer of history to smite the censors.
Of course, there can be many pendulum swings along the way, much has been said about how the tech-right came to be because of how tech moguls were feeling the squeeze of the left and came running into the open arms of conservatives.
Opposition to gay marriage, disgust with fat people, support for Donald Trump, even opposition to immigration could get posters deplatformed. The pandemic was censored! If you believed the pandemic came from the Wuhan coronovirus research laboratory and not Chinese people eating bats, you could be banned. If you didn't want to take a novel mRNA vaccine, you could be banned.
Yeah, from a private website, it's like being banned from a restaurant. And look, a rich man bought out a big square (Twitter/X), and Trump got his own (Truth Social). To me, this feels more like complaining about the consequences. You can be a moon landing denier but don't be surprised if you get punched in the face by an astronaut. Also, specifically about the wuhan coronavirus lab leak theory, I always get annoyed because Jon Stewart went on Colbert and literally just talk about it. I'm here to say that I don't think the stuff with the internet is markedly different if the example is not-internet. Even the case with payment processing, look, if you're a business owner that has only one supplier with monopoly power, and you piss them off because of your political views, well, yeah, good luck with that.
There were government agencies on tax dollars paying employees to scour social media and report "misinformation" to twitter HQ. The website you are posting on right now exists because of threats that the conversations that we have here were too "dangerous" for reddit to continue to host them.
Yeah, i agree that if the government is doing the pressure then it's not good (because it's unconstitutional), but if pressed, I don't think I'm a freedom of speech absolutist in daily life. I personally think that just like how all the Biden pressure campaign stuff came out once Trump is in office, then all the Trump pressure campaign stuff will come out once Trump isn't in office. Though I do think Trump and his admin is more likely to just demand the results directly instead of doing things opaquely like Biden. I think if someone comes from the position of defending free speech, they'll find problems with every administration. And thankfully, America has a vibrant market and populace that is always vigilant on these things (Musk buying Twitter/X, Trump launching Truth Social, this site splitting off from Reddit, I'm hearing about Gab/Parler, watchpeopledie has their own site).
This is a problem if you want to pursue truth and not status.
To me, this is equivalent to if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?.
lollol
2d ago
Why is it both not news and unknown?
Cause this is a problem for online people, not for the "touch grass" offline crowd.
internet being a free-speech zone to its current state as a censored environment
In the real world, there also aren't many free-speech zones for people to truly unleash their most radical, dark, unsavory thoughts. The real reason free speech flourished in the internet is because of anonymity. If people can speak their mind anonymously in real life, you'll hear them much more often too. In the real world, unless you're crazy and just speaking to no one, you're speaking to an audience, and therefore, they know you. They can judge you, they can laugh at you, they can raise their eyebrows or makes visible that they think you're disgusting, they can think twice about doing business with you, and on and on and on.
I would like to add a second point about the internet is that people who champion it being a "free speech zone" is because not only of the anonymity, which protects them from retaliation, but also reach. If you're the guy shunned by the local community, it's unlikely that they would repeat or share your words with others. Yeah you still got free speech, alright, your speech just isn't landing. On the internet, be dark and edgy and you can go viral, and of course "a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes".
lollol
2d ago
And to be fair, norms isn't the constitution. The same arguments can be pointing the other way, if Obama/Biden was a better president, their judicial picks wouldn't be blocked by a Republican senate. As much as Trump is a stressor of political norms, I think with matters like this there is a silver lining as it really brings into public consciousness of what people are willing to do away with, and what people want to have instead.
lollol
6d ago
So based on just surface level observations on the differences between how I use AI and my colleagues use AI, the differences between non-programmers, ok programmers, and great programmers remain the same before and after AI:
- ability to navigate uncertainty
- experience and taste
- ability to context switch
- ability to manage priorities and communicate up and down and sideways the corporate structure
- high demand for rigor, precision, attention to detail
- be responsible
Unlike many people, I am definitely on the AI-train: this is a revolutionary technology that will transform the way we live. I do think that people and companies that learn to make use of this technology most effectively will gain compounding benefits over time, just like how it seems households that has a computer 30-40 years ago (either through wealthy parents and/or educated parents) really helped prepare their children for big and better things (although obviously having wealthy and/or educated parents already help a lot too).
If one looks at the AI Index of Ramp (corporate spend management platform), one will find that in monthly AI spend, the top 1% of companies are now hovering close to $10k/month/employee, with a big drop off that follows where top 10% of companies are only spending $800/month/employee, and the median company is only spending $15.70/month/employee. In short, being AI-pilled shows up on the balance sheets. In an interview with Derek Thompson (btw, the other author of Abundance) on his podcast Plain English, Ramp's lead economist Ara Kharazian says: "All of the companies in that top 1% are extremely technically advanced. They are concentrated in the information sector, so software and media or finance or technical services." I do believe these companies are on to something, these are evidentially smart collective of people with clear objectives (increase productivity, reduce cost, maximize profit, etc.)
On a personal level, after 1 year ish of using Claude/Codex as a software engineer, I've noticed many benefits of AI usage (though . I've shared before that it has freed up time, for example, to engage with this forum. I've also been on and know of multiple projects with which would have never even been greenlit if not for AI-use, such as integrating with an external partner on a legacy platform in a computer language no one in my company knows (tbf, it is a C-family language). There has been many complaints about software reliability in the AI-era, with one poster child being GitHub that got bad enough where prominent projects left for supposedly greener pastures. My company did the opposite in that we are migrating from Atlassian's bitbucket to github, I think in part because of what I summed up in an internal message at the time when asked of should we or not: "a migration to GitHub is essentially a bet on AI, because Microsoft/GitHub for sure will be at the frontier of AI features compared to Atlassian/Bitbucket." Regarding the perception of reduced software reliability in the AI-era, I fondly remember early Q2 this year, when the VP of Support and Operations came to my team and the CEO to complain about the increasing amount of outages; I sat down for about a day, counting up number of changes-features-fixes per release and number of incidents caused by each release before presenting to everyone in a meeting my findings: the rate of errors (number of incident / number of changes-features-fixes) actually reduced per release, but because we were releasing so often due to increased cadence and productivity, the raw number of errors increased. The aforementioned VP btw has come to learn to appreciate AI a lot, even if he doesn't quite understand the terminal still.
This brings me to the thread down low between @RandomRanger and @MaiqTheTrue which provoked this chain of thought, bolded mine:
The suicide rate of 15–19 year olds tripled between 1950 and 1990. It wasn't that mental health professionals were really good back in 1950, there just doesn't seem to have been such severe stress and suffering among young people back in the day.
I found a source for the stat btw.
Why is there more stress and suffering now that would lead to the tripling of teenage suicides? Ask the random person on the street, they'll just point everywhere and tell you to look around and say: "everything is so hard now". I think what is so hard about life in the US, and I guess the modern age, is complexity. Life these days are too complext. It's simple enough (heh) to look at computers as a technology that drives societal complexity. Computers makes certain problems extremely simple ("find the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentile using this column of data in Excel"), but then it leads to new problems that are more complex ("now that we know the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentile, what does that mean to us?"). Fifty years ago, it was simple enough to understand your own finances, at most you had a bank account, paper checks for the monthly payments on car and your house, and pay in cash for everything else. Now consumers look at managing multiple credit cards, point rewards and loyalty programs for various companies, managing their own IRA/401K/brokerage, etc. Fifty years ago, you marry the person you met in school or the person you met at work, now gotta navigate dating apps, hookup culture, shifting and varied interpersonal relationship expectations, etc. The following statement from @FCfromSSC points to it well:
a homogenous group can build high-complexity society built on cooperation, and then values-drift into incompatible values that make it impossible to maintain that high-complexity society as more and more value drains into zero-sum or negative-sum competition with the outgroup.
And of course btw, complexity is a subsidy for the rich, because only the rich can afford to navigate all the complexities.
So what will AI do to/for us? Personally again, I think AI has greatly simplified my life. There are many questions that I wouldn't even know where to begin to ask, now I just ask. But a colleague has recently confided in me that he thinks of quitting before the year ends, "the rate at which we're going, it's just too fast". I was perplexed at that because I thought AI would have made his life easier like AI did mine. But maybe it wont? what do you think?
lollol
16d ago
Hollywood hates the idea that two imperfect people could be in a loving relationship with each other despite their flaws.
I'm going to disagree on this, there are plenty of movies that shows "two imperfect people could be in a loving relationship with each other despite their flaws". We've got Bonnie and Clyde, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Silver Lining Playbooks. On TV, oh my the examples abound. I think the difference is that Hollywood, and I think normal people, doesn't want to encourage unhealthy co-dependence behaviors, especially when it might affect others. The story that Hollywood likes to tell, because people like to listen to, are two imperfect people who are with each other despite their flaws and are better people for it.
Amanda Seyfried flat-out admits that she wants to break Liz and Billy up. Why?
lollol
16d ago
Completely agreed, this movie should be nominated for Best Picture (and at least Best Editing).
I think one way to model Holmes is the classic "liar vs bullshitter" paradigm.
There are so many questions that come out of this doc:
On the filmmaking side of thing. I noticed today that I am actively trying not to spoil a doccumentary to my coworkers. That's deeply intriguing. I do echo what others already say that this documentary changes the genre of documentary. Documentaries are often just dramatic retelling of facts, this feels like a true exploration, we are being manipulated, we know we are being manipulated, Nathan Fielder knows he is manipulating us, Nathan Fielder knows you the audience knows they're being manipulated, Holmes and Billy knows, etc.. But I suppose you need such a strange and bizarre confluence of factors that could lead to the creation of this piece of captured reality.
lollol
23d ago
Feels like every major tech news should have the accompanying HackerNews thread just for more industry context or related info.
HN threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50055304 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50058569
This is an interesting connection for essentially the same hack in the past: https://signalandsilence.substack.com/p/i-think-someone-hacked-the-commissary
Near-simultaneous refrigeration failures or significant issues impacting at least six [US] military installations have now been confirmed through official sources during the last few days, with additional independent confirmation of multiple other incidents.
Self-aware enough to know this sounds insane, but I need you to stick with me.
lollol
1mo ago
I mentioned it in the following passage:
Though the common understanding might be that these rules are to prevent unfair economic advantage on the field, especially since "wages remain the best financial barometer of sporting performance", but actually the rules are meant to prevent clubs from taking on "excessive" debt based on yearly revenue and therefore risk going into bankruptcy. As an aside, for achieving competitive parity, the best example are the US sport leagues, where any team can theoretically win the championship. The charitable take on these rules are to prevent rich owners going on drunken spending sprees then leave the club with debt that cripples or kill the club long term. The uncharitable take is that the rules were created to protect the status quo where big clubs maintain their huge advantages
So you're exactly right, most people thought the rules are about "maintaining competitive balance", this might be true but it's only secondary importance to "maintaining the club's long term financial solvency". If the club is a money pit, that is the club's problem is true, but usually this means the livelihood and finances of local communities that these soccer clubs are from. In a way, we can have the other example and think about how the Chinese are just smarter and work harder so even though they're communist they're better at capitalism and therefore those industrial heartlands deserve to die, and I think many people would reconsider that calculation now.
lollol
1mo ago
Uhmm, actually that's exactly the right comparison but instead of one player, imagine every player, and even the coaches too, over nearly a decade.
The rule in a nutshell is pretty simple: a club can only spend what it legitimately earns through ticket sales, TV rights, and legitimate commercial sponsorship, and the owner is not allowed to simply inject hundreds of millions of their own money to buy players if the club hasn't earned it.
Abu Dhabi (Clippers) pretty much had their airline Etihad Airways (their third party) sponsor MCFC with endorsements and sponsorship deals. And the emails showed that the best part is they recorded it down. They were explicit about how much money would Etihad Airways send over (about 10-12% year to year) and how much Abu Dhabi United Group (owner of MCFC) has to give Etihad Airways so that the money can then be sent to MCFC.
lollol
1mo ago
There were plenty of similar things happening. The rules were created and strengthened throughout the years partly because of the drunken spending of Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich while he co-owned Chelsea. There were other teams that were found guilty as well after the rules are in place, most recently Everton and Nottingham Forest. The difference is that it was in the open and they weren't denying it but simply different interpretation of the rules. They also didn't fight the EPL every step of the way.
Manchester City in contrast had "sham contracts" and was found to deliberately mislead auditors:
An example given of the disguised funding scheme in action: plugging an unexpected shortfall in May 2013.
Less than a week before the end of that 2012-13 financial year the club knew they were £9.9m short of complying with Uefa's financial rules.
In a matter of days, without sponsors even being approached, a number of modified sponsor agreements were generated which increased recorded sponsorship fees to pay bonuses for events that had already taken place and to pay for a US tour.
The feared Uefa FFP shortfall was thus "plugged".
SourceL https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/articles/c65y51l3gzq4o#:~:text=An%20example,plugged%22%2E
lollol
1mo ago
As ever, Roy Keane has an opinion on this
To provide some color for others, there is a bit of a grudge between Roy Keane and the father of Erling Haaland (foremost current star player of MCFC) which culminated in an infamous career-ending tackle to Haaland senior.
lollol
1mo ago
Yes, this is a foundational question whether you're a neutral observer or the most hardcore of soccer fans when approaching this case. The actual sporting on the field is still pure and and there's no sporting cheating there. But there is no doubt these "bureaucratic violations" has effects on the field. Other clubs, in compliance with the rules, had to sell players, even important ones. MCFC driving up wages of players, forcing clubs to also up their own player wages, but since they're in compliance with the rules, MCFC obviously has an advantage. MCFC players and coaches can talk all they want about no actual sporting cheating occurred and current consensus is it's true their victories and losses on the field were earned. But in the universe where MCFC complied with the rules, no such team of players and coaches would have even existed to earn those victories and losses. The rules may not be right, but when everyone complied with it, at least the rules would be fair. By shirking the rules, MCFC definitively got an "unfair advantage", and that's why "financial doping" as a term was introduced.
Two different threads of thoughts not quite coalescing so stay with me for a bit.
Soccer and Cheating
Seismic news in the world of soccer (or football if you're an old-worlder) last Friday where news broke that Manchester City (MCFC) found guilty on almost all Premier League charges relating to financial breaches. On Tuesday, the Premier League released their official statement on Manchester FC, confirming the charges in very strong language (especially if you assume a team of extremely well paid British lawyers reviewed it).
For background, the Premier League (EPL) is highest level of the English professional soccer system, is the most watched in the world and by extension the most revenue, beating the second-in-line La Liga (the soccer league in Spain) by miles. Machester City FC would have been just another random soccer club sharing the same city as Manchester United, rotating in and out of the Premier League, until they were bought out by Sheikh Mansour in 2008. The fifth son of the Emir of Abu Dhabi (the largest, richest, most important emirate of the UAE), Sheikh Mansour is both rich and reasonably politically adept, he would be appointed the deputy prime minister of the UAE the following year in 2009, and then appointed second vice president in 2023.
Since the Sheikh bought MCFC, he pumped a boatload lot of money into it. The club signed top managers. Bought 1.243 billion pounds worth of players between 2009-2018. The club made multiple renovations to the stadium. And with all that money came a lot of success on the pitch itself. They've won the Premier League 8 times, they've won 4 FA Cup and 7 EFL Cup (domestic knockout tournaments parallel to the EPL). And to top it off in 2023, they won the European Champions League, being the second English club to ever completed a "continental treble". The first, btw, is Manchester United.
Now I must explain to you UEFA Financial Fair Play (FFP) and EPL Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR)(though this has gotten many names and variations over the years). Though the common understanding might be that these rules are to prevent unfair economic advantage on the field, especially since "wages remain the best financial barometer of sporting performance", but actually the rules are meant to prevent clubs from taking on "excessive" debt based on yearly revenue and therefore risk going into bankruptcy. As an aside, for achieving competitive parity, the best example are the US sport leagues, where any team can theoretically win the championship. The charitable take on these rules are to prevent rich owners going on drunken spending sprees then leave the club with debt that cripples or kill the club long term. The uncharitable take is that the rules were created to protect the status quo where big clubs maintain their huge advantages (you will hear the term "red cartel" a lot to refer to the historically important and internationally known clubs Manchester United, Liverpool, and Arsenal). What's especially important to know is that many other clubs have been forced to extreme lengths to avoid these rules such as selling their players, selling their women's team. And if you're in breach, there are fines, embargo on registering full rosters, transfer bans, points deduction.
Between 2016 and 2018, a series of email leaks/hacks and followup news investigations pretty much shows MCFC has never complied with the rules, proactively and systematically engaged in what many consider "financial doping", and with an attitude perfectly summed up in a quote in one of the emails by an MCFC board member: "We can do what we want" (MCFC maintains that this quote is taken out of context). Europe soccer association (UEFA) had their own investigation and initially rule MCFC guilty in 2020, but was quickly overturned on appeal in by the Court of Arbitration for Sports due to essentially statute of limitations. The EPL has no such statute, but was considerably slower as unlike all previous case, MCFC fought every step of the way. The charges span 2009-2018, the investigation didn't conclude until 2023 when it referred its findings to an independent commission, the hearing spanned 3 months in 2024, and it took nearly another 2 years for us now to have a verdict for 114 guilty out of 115 charges. ‘sham contracts’, spending breaches and ‘disguised funding’. Sanctions have not been announced.
The UK Prime Minister had to chime in his concern (btw, his previous office was being the mayor of Greater Manchester)(UK and UAE has close relations). Fans of other clubs are outraged, especially ones that can point to direct monetary harm like losing players to MCFC or losing in the final, losing a spot to the Champions League. Since the EPL is actually the collection of the clubs, many observers note how the tenor of the EPL announcement indicates the emotions of the other owners aren't far off from their club fans. The coaches and players of other clubs are half-jokingly asking about getting their rightful cups and medals and therefore bonuses as well. MCFC released their own statement maintaining their innocence and will appeal "on the basis that the opinion [of the EPL] contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact, and is unsafe." Etihad Airways (Abu Dhabi-based flagship airliner of the UAE and major sponsor of MCFC) warns of legal action against the EPL. Most MCFC coaches and players are communicating "wait and see until the process fully plays out, we trust the club". MCFC fans range in emotions, but most can at least argue on the immense benefit MCFC has had on Manchester.
Trade and Cheating
The emblematic example of this I can think of is China and its inclusion to the WTO in 2001. I am also not able to muster up the effort to write and collect links about this, but thankfully Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) has a part 1 and part 2 on the "false promises" of China: "Nearly 20 years after joining the World Trade Organization, China remains woefully short of meeting a broad range of commitments and responsibilities, to the detriment of both its trading partners and the international economic system.".
Open Questions
What is the best way in which liberal-ish democracy-ish Western-aligned-ish polities should deal with its illiberal-ish totalitarian-ish non-Western-aligned-ish polities? What is the balance?
Is this just the gears of history turning oh so very slowly and that comeuppance will come due?
Personal conclusions
I'm glad I got away from those culture and societies and systems. I'm glad that even though the rich and the ruthless can fuck the small and the naive but at least in Western society there is a realistic way of fucking them back (even if it's hard, complex, slow, etc.). I feel a little guilty that I didn't stay and tried to make an impact or change something. I am reminded of the importance of the rule of law and norms and how this helps in interaction and not harming each other and redress grievances.
Edit 1
I think it was my fault for putting too much energy into the soccer section and making the other sections lopsided. But I really want to draw attention the open questions I have. The rules of the Western order is always breaking down but it seems there is thick molasses with which Western society and the leaders of society are reacting to the present situation of the day. Was the West naive about how a monarch from a monarchical society would not bend or break the rules on his own whims, or at least let his underlings do so? Was the West arrogant and greedy for the labor to think the Communist leadership would be convinced by the power of capitalism and liberal order and therefore would also acquiesce to the same rules and norms?
There is a quote that went around that is really funny and was certainly how I thought about Russia communists:
Lenin’s core of Bolsheviks, and the socialists like Trotsky who joined them, were many of them highly educated people, literate in multiple European languages, learned in the scholastic traditions of Marxism; and they preserved these attributes even as they murdered and lied and tortured and terrorized. They were social scientists who thought principle required them to behave like gangsters.
...
Stalin had been a gangster who really believed he was a social scientist. Khruschev was a gangster who hoped he was a social scientist. But the moment was drawing irresistibly closer when the idealism would rot away by one more degree, and the Soviet Union would be governed by gangsters who were only pretending to be social scientists.
But after listening to enough Stephen Kotkin, I think I was wrong. Lenin, Stalin, Kruschev, and so on, they really thought they were social scientists, they really believed in it, no hope about it, no pretending about it, they just all thought the previous guy was wrong. They were all delusional, maybe not collectively (heh), but certainly the system led them all to be deluded in the same way. And someone who grew up in and benefit from an absolute monarchy with tribal-autocratic rule would also care not for democratic rules and norms. He certainly never suffered enough consequences. Even now, the EPL makes it very clear that redacted redacted is not guilty and never authorized any of these dealings.
There has been much harm and mistakes with regards to America's policy of the Cold War. Vietnam is probably the canonical example where there were multiple opportunities for Ho Chi Minh to be funded by the US and not Russia. But one can say the containment policy is at least a theoretically sound solution to the tolerance of the intolerance paradox. Say what you will by the EU but they got it right that there are strong rules and requirements about levels of corruption and elections for even looking at admission of a new member.
I'm sure data nerds are out there but I wonder if it was the map before the gerrymander would the Dems have kept or gained any seats in Florida.
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