Hi everyone, I’m writing this under my byline alone, but you can consider it an official company statement about how we are striving to make Substack Notes a good place for civil discourse. I’m writing this in the first person because I want you to understand that these are my genuine beliefs and that they come from a human and not some empty corporate machine. This subject—how do we maintain good speech norms on internet media platforms in the 21st century—is a tricky one, and I don’t think an…
Hamish, I still think this response (and Substack’s) is deeply rooted in the perspective of someone whose experience of the internet is not defined by harassment. Yes, people push back at you, and Chris, and might even base that response in your identity, but is of a substantively different character than what has become the status quo for so many people navigating these spaces — for Black people, for trans people, for Jewish people, for women, for people who are a target not because of what th…
I am half-Jewish and had relatives at Auschwitz. I get cannonaded by Holocaust deniers in the comments (only a few at Substack but more virulent ones at other sites where my work is republished) every time I reference that period of history, some pretty vicious.
You know what I do? I ignore them and move on. I used to try to talk sense to…
a) Saying this is about “censoring the nazis” is a straw man argument that is demonstrably false. Show me the literal Nazis on Substack. Only one even comes close and appears to have been banned for spamming.
b) Censorship is the hallmark of every totalitarian regime (Nazis included) and is their primary tool for controlling the range of thought.
c) Even if there were literal Nazis here, allowing them to speak exposes them for who they are and gives others an opportunity to dismantle their argume…
you skipped right past the argument i made about nazis congregating to state that a) the nazis must not exist, b) censoring the nazis would make us just as bad, and c) that even if they did exist, it wouldn’t be a big deal. that’s really going to be your end point? that censorship of any kind is equivalent across the political spectrum?
that isn’t just a childish point, it’s outright and provably false. there’s demonstrable evidence to the contrary that states that when you allow nazis access t…
I realize propagandists have gradually acclimated people to the idea that censorship can be a good thing under the right circumstances. That’s precisely what the Ministry of Truth and every totalitarian regime wants you to believe because then they define what is good/evil and truth/lies. They can call a lie the truth and the truth a lie…
I don’t want the government censorship. But, it’s not true that the best ideas win in the free marketplace of ideas. Most people are not capable of doing their own research and coming to the correct conclusion. We need voluntary societies to protect people from dangerous ideas.
The only reason people don’t make better decisions is because noble liars, propagandists, corporations, and various authorities are intentionally curating narratives to obscure the truth and psychologically manipulate them.
No, I don’t mean fact-checkers. And I know about how messed up our current media is. But that doesn’t mean that a free marketplace of ideas would get us to the truth either. The history of science and medicine is full of bad ideas like lobotomies.
I agree with your point about the history of science and medicine being full of bad ideas like lobotomies, but as you can see, that practice was discredited because of Dr. Peter Breggin, who was the first to expose its dangers and who is now known as “the conscience of psychiatry” for helping to abolish that barbaric practice (truthcomestolight.com/d…
some people made reputations by doing research, presenting data, and seeking open engagement to arrive at demonstrable facts.
they are trusted now.
others used appeals to authority to make claims about issues they did not understand and hid behind straw men and ad hominem like “anti-vaxxer” because they thought it was a …
Ideally, lobotomies never would have happened beyond the experimental phase. Part of the problem is our overly openness to new ideas. We should trust tradition and be skeptical of the new until proven otherwise. I’m not advocating for government regulation or arbitration of truth. And an open and honest scientific community would be much better than what we have now. But most people don’t have the time, inclination or ability to keep with the intellectual community. So they need trusted sources of information and ideas.
I think we’re in general agreement, except I would simply say those trusted sources establish themselves organically by consistently demonstrating quality work (again, see el gato’s Note) rather than some entity appointing them, which is what occurs when information is freely available. We saw that with the tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of data warriors who rose to the challenge over the past three years and spent countless unpaid hours participating in this collaborative labor…
A system can demonstrate competence in appointing good people by the results they get. When someone buys into a belief system, religious or secular, and put their trust in an institution like a church or mutual aid society, they take into account the lives of those who have done the same. We want to join the group that’s doing well and the longer the track record the better. That’s why we need a diverse set of voluntary communities, so we can let the natural experiment play out and see social e…
All institutions are corruptible, and the past three years has proven they are perhaps the gravest threat to humanity (the WHO, WEF, UN, CIA, FBI, etc.). Yuval Noah Harari has an extremely naïve faith that institutions will save us, all while simultaneously predicting the total biosurveillance totalitarianism the very institutions he is advising are busy implementing.
When I say institution I mean any organization. The institution of the church or an insurance company, etc. I don’t mean the government controlled or funded institutions or the ones given government like control. Yes, they are all corruptible, and people should be able to withdraw support and membership and join another if they want. That’s the only way to put a check on corruption. We need organizations, preferably they would be good ones.