Re: META: Banning Iraq discussion

From: Brett Paatsch (paatschb@ocean.com.au)
Date: Tue Feb 18 2003 - 22:15:14 MST

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    Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
    > Brett Paatsch wrote:
    <snip>
    > > So stopping entropy in the universe we can affect
    > > "here" but current events in the political world we should
    > > just take on faith as beyond our capacity to affect despite
    > > the much lauded leveraging power of Google and that the
    > > ExI list brings together a variety of people with skills,
    > > contacts and experience and almost certainly some shared
    > > values from all around the world?
    >
    > Realistically speaking? Yes.

    PSYCH / PHILOSOPHY ERROR 101. Special insight into
    reality not demonstrated but assumed.

    HAZARD WARNING 102: Dictators and tyrants start out
    with this technique and often go on to censorship.

    > >>I call for a three-month ban on the Iraq topic. I've seen
    > >>the Extropians list do so much better than this.
    > >
    > > I don't think it is either wise or even particularly clear to
    > > ban discussion on anything that people think you *might*
    > > think to be about the "Iraq topic".
    > >
    > > It seems to me that you are proposing banning the topic
    > > likely to be of *greatest* interest and *most* extropic
    > > consequence over exactly that period when it will be of
    > > *most* relevance and of most natural concern to many
    > > on the list..
    > >
    > > Let us be very very clear here. You are not proposing
    > > engaging further yourself to lift the level of debate, you
    > > are not proposing to just read around a topic that you
    > > have posted on yourself in the past, you are not making
    > > some point about more efficient ways to communicate
    > > you are *actually* proposing closing down for three
    > > months what other people want to say *before*
    > > the particular circumstances and ramifications they wish
    > > to discuss have even arisen.
    >
    > That is correct. Why? Because I see this discussion
    > destroying friendships, which might otherwise have proved
    > effective in the pursuit of effective causes, and for nothing.

    If the friendships are not yet destroyed you are assuming
    they will be. Perhaps they may emerge stronger.

    You are assuming not just a net loss but a total loss - "for
    nothing".

    There are a lot of reasons why people might be motivated
    to support a ban on discussion on a particular topic and almost
    all of these concerns might be accomodated by innovation
    rather than censorship.

    For instance if the topic of Iraq was sufficiently clearly
    qualified (I don't know how many of the current threads you
    actually want to ban) I would be more than happy to
    accommodate other peoples desires not to hear about it by
    prefixing the subject header as has been discussed by other
    posters. But for this to be operationalizable the topic scope
    needs to be pretty clear. Having such a process in place
    would not just give us a single solution for now but would
    offer a generically applicable solution for future use - and
    without censorship.

    I have posted on the merits of over-engineering for
    courtesy and efficiency before - it is not impossible to
    discuss a topic courteously and it is a choice that each
    of us can make. We can acknowledge systemic biases in
    the structure of the list and it is certainly not impossible to
    set up processes that encourage more judicial choice
    in how people choose to pursue discussions on the list.
    This has been discussed before.
     
    Nonetheless it does seem to remain true that if you want
    to get involved in the protection of people friendships from
    those people themselves then you really may have to go for
    censorship. *If* you want to. I can't see such an action as
    extropic but I can see it quite easily as the opposite.

    >
    > > To yield to the temptation to practice this sort of
    > > censorship looks to me like kicking an extropic own-goal.
    > > I vote against.
    > >
    > > But if you really want to go down the route of censorship
    > > and I *do* note the support for it (and thankfully *some*
    > > opposition) then at least do it properly. Set a time for
    > > tallying the votes and I will abide by the will of the majority.
    >
    > If I recall correctly the list is a benevolent dictatorship of
    > ExI, though member-influenced, of course.

    For my part I'd comply with *either* a request from ExI *or*
    a majority of posted preferences up to a set time you choose
    because you called for the ban.

    I think it would be good to clarify this and more towards
    solutions rather than have to re-visit these procedural issues
    over and over. Imo censorship is quite rightly *never* going
    to sit well with extropians but innovative solutions and steps
    taken to improve the quality of the discourse that don't require
    censorship - surely we can do these. There is an opportunity
    here if we choose to see it that way. Censorship can always
    be the fallback position

    - Brett Paatsch



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