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FBnil said:
And what I find annoying is that same pages in different languages sometimes say different things. So which one to believe?
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Thanks for the links. I will be reading up shortly.

In my own journey, I have also started to think about this problem. Over the last two years I have watched, almost on a daily basis, the following:

a) I will watch a live speech, rally or presentation by whomever in the Republican party (obviously, I have only been paying attention to the US).

b) 100% of the the time, the majour media outlets will either lie by omission / exageration / misdirection so as to seem legit OR just outright lie.

There are a lot of ways to analyze why this happens, and frankly the answers aren't really that interesting. Most of it I would ascribe to the media dying and having to pivot to the 'if it bleeds it leads' kind of thing and the normal political partisanship, even though there are other possible answers.

However, it has shaken my understanding of what is true and what is not that I now even question history. If I am being lied to on a daily basis LIVE ON TV NEWS BROADCASTS, using techniques that we all know and understand because we are a political animal, then, how much of our documented and oral history is fake?

As time goes on, old books will become unbelievably important.

Woops, adding a note: Keep in mind that during the George Bush Jr. era I was one of the people that loved the George Bush Hitler posters and thought of the right wing as a kind of evil group of people. I don't really support any one party anywhere any longer. This whole american political situation has been a great fishbowl experiment that finally lets us see what goes on behind the scenes in all of the systems that surround us.
 
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levi said:
How many words does your encyclopedia put towards the topic of Kamala Harris? I only have access to British encyclopedias so they don't mention her, but in my experience even quite famous people get only a short paragraph or two. In comparison, the wikipedia page for her is extensive and readable. Of course, you have to bear in mind the perspective of the authors when reading anything, and wikipedia's claim to be unbiased feels to me less honest than that of older institutions that you are on the internet these days, who tend to be more open about their leanings, although we're perhaps just had more time to learn how each of them lean.
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The problem he is describing is the impernanence of digital data. Printed stuff has bias, but it is fixed in time. We know who wrote, when, the historical and polical contexts, etc. As time goes on we can test the chemical composition of the materials. We have even found what was written on old parchment that was erased by old scribes that were re-using old parchment through xray imaging and other similar techniques.

Digital data strips all context out by its very nature. When people in the 50s and 60s were imagining what a networked world would look like, they imagined it from the perspective of physical media and assumed that things like date stamping, versioning, authoring would be permanently and irrevocably preserved. Lisp Machines actually built an entire operating system that had a versioned code base, documentation system, authoring, dating AND A VERSIONED FILE SYSTEM all in one system in the 70's. Hell, Multics was released in 1969 and had far more features than most operating systems even today. Tim Berners Lee envisioned document publishing something akin to the Lotus Notes / Lotus Domino system where all data has a kind of permanence because of the intrinsic, distributed, fully decentralized and encrypted nature of the solution (note: Lotus Notes / Domino were designed FOR the NSA in the 80 where they need what we have on the web now, except with a full set of security tools (everything is encrypted if you want it to be), everything is versioned and all documents can be replicated in an N to N pattern over a dial-up modem (which in 1988 was something like 1200 baud)).

But, all of those systems still have the impernanence problem: there is always a system admin that can flip bits.

Printed data, on the other hand, shifts the impermanence problem away from the publisher on to the forger. The forgers data is always going to be visible, but the embedded information in the ink, the paper, the type, etc, etc will always give us access to something resembling data permanence.

Just look at what the internet archive is going through now. They are being threatened by SJWs and Communists to censor and delete pages.
 
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Yes, impernanence is a feature of many web resources, which is why I'm thankful that places like this place and wikipedia exist. So far, they've maintained full history, and wikipedia even allows you to see who wrote what, and when.

Neither this place or wikipedia will last forever, but there are a number of wikipedia syndicates I come across whenever I search for an unusual term. I can't find one at the moment, so I can't actually tell you how much history they contain.

Robert Taylor said:
Just look at what the internet archive is going through now. They are being threatened by SJWs and Communists to censor and delete pages.
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I'm not aware of that. I heard they got into trouble for streaming movies and books during lockdown that they might not have strictly had the rights to redistribute. But that's a legal issue, whereas what you refer to sounds more political.
 
Holocaust denial is illegal in many places. I'm not sure if that falls under laws against free speech or laws against free thought; but in practice those are largely the same. Restricting speech is going to restrict thought as well.
 
Illegal doesn't also mean going to jail. In Canada they passed a law a couple years that makes it ILLEGAL to misgender a person. People in Canada can control what other people say. Seriously.

In Canada we also have EXTRAJUDICIAL organization called the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. If you say ANYTHING that insults someone of another race, you get taken to the tribunal. The tribunal is NOT a court, you are NOT allowed a lawyer during the hearings and often you don't know who your accuser is. These courts cannot put you in jail but they can issue HUGE FINES.

In the UK, post anything that someone finds something insulting gets you a visit from the UK police.

And on and on.
 
I agree with Phlyra about the problematic tone of some messages. There are some broad accusations towards large populations that are dangerously close to hate speech. Not only does it create an atmosphere where some people wouldn't feel welcome here, but it also perpetuates concepts and thoughts that can lead to suffering, mass-killings and pave the road to genocide.

I will not challenge these "opinions" because it would mean giving them even more visibility, and it's a well-known tactics of far-right activists to dump fake outrageous information only to give them visibility and perpetuate prejudices while forcing opponents to spend their time and energy debunking or debating them rather than expressing their own opinions.

Perfect, unbiased information doesn't exist. But cherry-picking items that fit your view or accepting "fringe" content as truth just because it would somehow be out of reach of the nearly all-powerful though control police doesn't seem like a clever move to me. There are many groups, from everywhere on the political spectrum, who battle for "thought control" and something being "hidden from mainstream media" doesn't make it any more true or relevant.

What you write, what you share can lead to other humans suffering. Be thoughtful of others.
 
ElPoco said:
I agree with Phlyra ... blah blah blah ... thoughtful of others.
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I have an honest question for you: How is it possible that you believe all of this nonsense? Can you tell us a little bit about how you have come to all of your beliefs?

We have all poked at you with questions and you have avoided all of them. Want to take the stage a bit and shine a light on how anyone can believe anything that you have posted in the last few pages?

Edit: Just adding that you can be as rude as you want to be to me and say whatever you want about anything that I posted. I think this post is a little harsher than I should have posted, so you have the right to reciprocate.

Second edit: Also, I want to put my intent with the post on the table first. My intent with this question is not purely genuine and up front. I already know (at least I am pretty sure I know, my guess could be wrong) all of your beleifs and I know where you get them from. I also know the consequences of your beleifs and what role they play of the status of things in the West. My question is meant to try and draw you out and actually tell us WHY you think you beleive what you believe, because you are avoiding that at all costs so far. I am curious if YOU fully understand your beleifs.
 
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λ the β-Redex Reducer Jr. said:
Holocaust denial is illegal in many places.
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"The Holocaust did not happen." != "I am not convinced, the Holocaust happened."
Robert Taylor said:
In Canada we also have EXTRAJUDICIAL organization called the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. If you say ANYTHING that insults someone of another race, you get taken to the tribunal.
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Wrong. It's about discriminatory practices. If you think, Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act is still in effect, that's been repealed 7 years ago.
 
Was this on the Topic that Donald Trump ditnt know that "Denial is no River in Egypt" ??
Red a Tweed from Stephen King this morning..

My Neck Scarfs works also pretty good to protect my Neck from Skin Cancer, (hopefully), ..

Its only a bit unpleasent when i have to wear it too long and there where some hairs on it..,
 
Robert Taylor said:
I agree with Phlyra ... blah blah blah ... thoughtful of others.
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Edit: Just adding that you can be as rude as you want to be to me and say whatever you want about anything that I posted. I think this post is a little harsher than I should have posted, so you have the right to reciprocate.
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i didn't consider ElPoco's post rude, but your quotation didn't seem very nice...

anyone can believe anything on the internet, and seem reasonable. but words are stronger than swords, and can lead to even more deadly consequences.
 
Djoga'Ro said:
"The Holocaust did not happen." != "I am not convinced, the Holocaust happened."
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The second one does not express the belief that the Holocaust did not happen. Besides, "The Holocaust did not happen" is in practice just a synonym for "I believe that the Holocaust did not happen". Almost everything that is said is already implicitly according to the one saying it. So an anti-Holocaust-denier law should also forbid expressing beliefs that the Holocaust did not happen as explicit beliefs.


Personally I dislike restrictions on free speech. Even granting that the Holocaust happened, if it's important to convince people of that then we should do so by intellectual means through debate and evidence and not through physical violence by locking up opponents or taking their property.
 
The problem with freedom of speech is once again that someone's freedom of speech shouldn't get in the way of someone else's freedom to live.
In France, we've got some shitty people who spread a shitty "theory" (something totally unfounded and that can be unquestionably proven to be wrong). That shitty theory got debunked plenty, but was still popular in certain circles (because no matter the fact that it was debunked with facts, data and logic, some people still consider that the debunking is just fake news from the mainstream medias) and the Christchurch shooter cited it as one of the reasons why he killed 51 people.
So the freedom of speech of these assholes infringed on the freedom of living of 51 people despite there being plenty of debate and evidence to convince people that this theory was wrong.

So I can get why you'd want to restrict freedom of speech to prevent hate speech.
On the other hand, a huge problem with censoring speech is that it means that you have an entity that's tasked with deciding what should be allowed and what shouldn't be. And it's hard to guarantee that this power will not be abused.

But then again, that shitty theory appeared and was spread in France, where we have such laws to censor hate speech. Those spreading that shitty theory either weren't censored or were condemned but kept on repeating these lies over and over anyway. So... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
ElPoco said:
The problem with freedom of speech is once again that someone's freedom of speech shouldn't get in the way of someone else's freedom to live.
In France, we've got some shitty people who spread a shitty "theory" (something totally unfounded and that can be unquestionably proven to be wrong). That shitty theory got debunked plenty, but was still popular in certain circles (because no matter the fact that it was debunked with facts, data and logic, some people still consider that the debunking is just fake news from the mainstream medias) and the Christchurch shooter cited it as one of the reasons why he killed 51 people.
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How about Nazi Germany, where there was no free speech but an asshole got to the be the authority of censorship?
People who are against free speech always seem to assume that without free speech they or someone who agrees with them would be the one that decides what we're allowed to say. But that does not have to be the case. It could just as well be some Neo-Nazi who decides what gets censored.

ElPoco said:
So the freedom of speech of these assholes infringed on the freedom of living of 51 people despite there being plenty of debate and evidence to convince people that this theory was wrong.
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It was murder that cost them their right to live, not free speech. The two crimes are orthogonal, you can have murder without free speech and free speech without murder.

ElPoco said:
On the other hand, a huge problem with censoring speech is that it means that you have an entity that's tasked with deciding what should be allowed and what shouldn't be. And it's hard to guarantee that this power will not be abused.
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It's not just hard, it's impossible. And as soon as it happens no resistance can form because resistance against tyranny requires free speech.

ElPoco said:
But then again, that shitty theory appeared and was spread in France, where we have such laws to censor hate speech. Those spreading that shitty theory either weren't censored or were condemned but kept on repeating these lies over and over anyway. So... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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They also had heavy censorship in Nazi Germany. It worked pretty good there.
 
ible said:
i didn't consider ElPoco's post rude, but your quotation didn't seem very nice...

anyone can believe anything on the internet, and seem reasonable. but words are stronger than swords, and can lead to even more deadly consequences.
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Yeah, I was referring to my post. It was sharper than it needed to be.
 
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