Citizens
August 06, 2020
The technology of citizenship was one of the most revolutionary transformations in human history. It offered, for the first time, the chance for people to participate in a political body as equals - a concept invented in ancient Greece, expanded in the Roman Republic, and then lost for millennia as the relationship of sovereign to subject became the dominant political regime once more.
We inherited the revival of this citizenship technology, bequeathed to us by the great thinkers of the Enlightenment such as Immanuel Kant and Mary Wollstonecraft. This shiny new model was founded upon the dignity of our free will as rational beings. Kant ‘hacked’ citizenship into monarchies without losing the role of the monarch (a necessary compromise for this change to have been permitted!), while Wollstonecraft thought through its consequences leading inexorably to a citizenship that was available for the first time to women as well as men. Eventually, without any further hacking required, the concept of citizenship extended to all humans belonging to a nation, regardless of their personal circumstances.
Yet now we have hit a crisis in our concept of citizenship, a technological breakdown caused in large but unnoticed part by our wilfully forgetting where we came from. Thus while the fundamental laws concerning citizenship haven’t significantly shifted (except to expressly include those who, philosophically speaking, should always have been included) most of us seem to have rejected the option to be a citizen at all.
We reject leaders whom others elected, and will not follow them.
We reject other people whose political views offend us, and try to rob them of their right to free speech.
And we reject the sovereignty of other countries, and use force of arms to alter their political course even though we are not (and do not desire to be) citizens of those nations.
In short, we reject our opportunity to be citizens at all, and offer in its place nothing but excuses for why our values, our judgements, and our chosen leaders are the only ones that matter.
A person who truly practices citizenship, rather than abusing their entitlements and excluding voices from political consideration, forms a cyborg network with all other citizens within the same nation. I would love to say something trenchant about the moral and behavioural effects of citizenship, but first I would have to find some citizens to observe, and apparently there are none left. We continue to try to reap the benefits of this social technology even while we fatally undermine the radical equality it depends upon. Liberals are just as guilty of this corruption of the technology of citizenship as conservatives, since few liberals care about their nation as such, seeking instead to assert their power everywhere while undermining both free speech and the concepts of nationality that citizenship depends upon.
For the first time in my life, I find myself interested in learning how to be a citizen... but alas, there is nobody left for me to be a citizen with.
A Hundred Cyborgs, #98
What does it mean to be a citizen? Without your voluminous background in philosophy, I can only try to synthesize what you wrote: a citizen opposes militant imperialism, supports free speech -- including topics most would find offensive or objectively false -- accepts leaders they themselves did not support, and regards fellow citizens as equals in some holistic moral sense.
Fortunately I suspect that a number of my friends meet your criteria for citizenship, and yet I must concur: my impression is that these qualities in society at large have diminished in the last decade, at least. To the degree that citizenship is receding, I'm inclined to mostly blame modern disinformation-bubbles -- those cesspools of free speech -- to injecting nonsense into the set of facts (eg relatively objective truths) the electorate uses to reason about how to vote, and consumers use to reason about how to spend. (Economic instability stressors and the consequential corrosion of our social institutions also probably don't help people overcome their less-rational and more emotional impulses with considered action).
Can you point to any time or place in history where citizenship as you've defined it was widely practiced? Compared to other periods in history, how bad are we *really*? ;) And what might be done to improve our state of affairs?
Posted by: Nathan Frost | December 06, 2020 at 02:56 AM
Hi Nathan,
This is a huge challenge you lay down here! But I can start with the easy part - when was citizenship as I am discussing it widely practiced? And the answer would have to be: only under highly ironic circumstances! For of course, when there were a good number of citizens about (lets say, the late 18th and parts of the 19th century as a first approximation), they were all white men (!)
The expansion of suffrage has been a wonderful thing (not to mention hard-earned!) - but perhaps the problems that this piece is gesturing towards lie at heart in the dilemma that good citizens are easier to create when all citizens have a similar background. As nations have become more culturally diverse, as gender equality has become more valued, we have faced a fracturing of the common basis for citizenship because we do not know how to form a political community (a demos) with everyone else unless they happen to be just like us! (And of course, nobody is!)
You suggest "modern disinformation-bubbles" are part of the problem... I partially agree, but I also tread very carefully in this area, since in most of the places that people like to point and say "disinformation!" I see a split, cognitive dissonance widening that split, and vast mistakes on both sides separated by that dissonance (although not in a way that means there is no truth about the matter in question, per se). We perhaps might concur that making echo chambers out of social media where all your opinions are echoed back at you are part of the problem - but you might hold out some ideal view of what the true position is in any given case, and here I am likely to break with you because whichever position it is that you want to hold up, it's quite likely I see at least a partially valid counterpoint on the other side of the divide. (Only, I stress, because since Chaos Ethics I have been devilishly focused upon bringing these political and epistemic divides into my awareness... which is more of a curse than a blessing, if I'm honest!)
And yes, even on that topic (whichever it might be).
The only 'slam dunk' issues in terms of the truth of the situation are those that nobody wants to even think about, such as (say) limiting by manufacture the speed of cars to 30 mph. (A pet concern of mine, but relevant here so please bear with me.) It is unthinkable (apparently)! Even though it would save 1.5 million lives globally every year, and a great many of them young people. But it turns out people aren't half as interested in saving lives as they claim to be... they prefer to choose which causes of death to elevate to importance rather than accepting the grim truth that every cause of death matters, and then dealing with the complexities of that situation honestly. The point being: the politicised issues have destroyed the path to truth out of the passion to implement while the unpoliticised issues can get to the truth but cannot get implemented. What a mess!
We certainly will not restore citizenship by deciding upon the truth and then working to enforce it. Indeed, precisely the message of this piece is that trying to do this is exactly what has undermined citizenship... The problem is in being able to listen to people you disagree with, because if you cannot do this you cannot form a demos. And right now, I worry that no nation can.
Many thanks for choosing this piece to respond to! I wasn't happy with its pessimistic tone and I hope to do better with this issue now I see that the root problem is with the sciences (or rather, with epistemology which poor philosophy of science has obfuscated). Anyway, I'll wade in on this in January, so please stay tuned! :)
With unlimited love,
Chris.
Posted by: Chris | December 07, 2020 at 03:48 PM
Thanks for the fascinating response, Chris! (And no worries if you haven't the time to respond to this comment; it sounds like you're juggling a tremendous number of things as always!)
With regard to disinformation on the internet: I agree that echo chambers are bad, and while I'm inclined to err on your side of (some might say extreme) tolerance for others' viewpoints, I stop short of personally approving of discourse that's factually false (like Flat Earth), or that -- like the many supposed global Jewish conspiracies -- are utterly lacking substantive evidence, but abundantly supplied with racial and religious animus.
As an American, I've grown up with and continue to support my nation's Constitutional stance against government censorship -- but as an individual, for what little it's worth, I consider these sorts of discourse destructive.
You correctly point out that our society is more interested in faster travel than saving 1.5 million lives a year. This is /at best/ questionable. :/
Social heterogeneity certainly seems to make it harder to maintain a reasonably well-functioning political community -- which bums me out, since I like a diversity of perspectives. At least learning how to disagree less dysfunctionally seems to be somewhat in the public conversation(1).
I'm very interested to hear about your latest thoughts on the philosophy of science come January!
Cheers,
Nathan
(1)
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/the-highest-form-of-disagreement/531597/
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/erisology-the-science-of-arguing-about-everything/586534/
Posted by: Nathan Frost | January 02, 2021 at 03:01 AM
Hi Nathan,
The trouble with wanting to censor 'factually false' discussions is that this seemingly logical position leads very rapidly to disturbing nonsense, and policing falsehood requires an authority on the truth that is more problematic than anyone tends to consider.
Many thanks for continuing our conversation... whether or not I 'have time' to reply to comments, I reply to comments - because comments are the lifeblood of the blogger's experience. Time spent replying is never time wasted. It is the point of the exercise! So it's always only a question of how long it takes me to get to the comments, and never a question of whether or not I'll reply... I'll reply. Just not always promptly! :)
Some would call my position 'extreme', aye, but I would suggest that my position is the only tenable position on free speech i.e. that it should be free, since otherwise we do not have it at all. The laws of all nations draw a line solely at defamation (false statements made to hurt individuals) and incitement (statements made to provoke harm). I am open to discussion on those two boundaries; I am not enormously open to arguments against free speech, and much less to attempts at undermining free speech for the sake of 'good causes', which are legion at the moment, although I'll always listen to any argument someone wishes to marshal.
Flat Earth is an interesting discourse to single out here... what harm is this perspective alleged to cause? You want to say it should be silenced because its 'factually false'. That makes me want to ask 'who is to arbitrate what is or is not factually false...?' It is no good pointing to scientists as if they had a magic ability to determine truth - they do not, and most would freely admit it. Indeed, establishing truth or falsehood requires considerable application, and seldom results in definitive answers except in relatively trivial cases. No matter how absurd claims of a Flat Earth may appear, I find it hard to believe that Flat Earthers are a significant source of harm, although I would listen to any case someone wanted to make in this regard. Still, a boundary here turns swiftly ugly.
If Flat Earthers are to be silenced, do we also silence Australian Aborigines regarding the sacred nature of Uluru? After all, this is not something we are likely to endorse as "factually true". What about those on either side of the abortion non-debate? Who is to decide what is "factually true" in such a context, where conclusions flow from prior assumptions about life, death, humanity, personhood, freedom, and murder? A great many issues are not matters of fact, as such, but questions of metaphysics - and learning how to distinguish metaphysics from testable questions is a skill that is not often taught, is in dangerously short supply, and yet might indeed be absolutely essential to any kind of democratic citizenship in a world of immense and ever-growing cultural diversity.
The problem with 'factually false' as a criteria is beautifully indicated by a recent hot button topic, namely face masks. Of course, even evoking this shibboleth risks a breakdown in our ability to talk to one another! The two rival camps are so locked into cognitive dissonance that discussion has become impossible. Nonetheless, I'll trust you to open your mind at least wide enough to look at this problem from my rather odd vantage point, whatever your own perspective might be.
At this time, it is either factually false or else factually indeterminate that masks "save lives", despite millions of people repeating this mantra for most of the last year... there is existing evidence that this claim is implausible (i.e. factually false), and there is counter-evidence that sketches the possibility of a rival understanding (i.e. factually indeterminate, at least until further research is conducted).
Yet, who is to rule on the truth or falsehood of claims such as these? Indeed, this specific issue - which is far more complex than most people seem willing to acknowledge - is an excellent example of why 'factually false' is a concept that cannot help us much as citizens.
For context, a few points of reference from the medical discourse. On the matter of the facts with respect to non-cloth masks, see this paper from November 2020:
https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006207.pub5/full
This is, from at least one perspective, the best evidence we have at this time on the question of the efficacy of (non-cloth) masks against respiratory infections.
On the matter of the facts with respect to cloth masks, we may have to await the Guinea-Bissau trial results in the Summer of 2021, but the current paper trail already suggests cloth masks perform worse than control, the implication being that deployment of cloth masks do not "save lives" but might in fact "cost lives" e.g.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4420971/
That was, in fact, the state of this research topic in 2019, a point repeatedly overlooked in discussions since.
(A deeper truth here, however, is that assessing which actions "save lives" and which "cost lives" is a terrible way of analysing medical interventions, since it misunderstands the very nature of the multifarious risks entailed in enacting medicine...)
The truth of the matter here is that discussion on the topic of masks has confused different kinds of evidence; has mistaken an untested hypothesis for a proven theory; has failed to integrate objections; has ignored the state of the existing research; has attempted tacit censorship of contrary claims; has deployed rhetoric to block the pursuit of the required research - in short, it has ceased to operate as a scientific subject altogether for most of the people being vocal on the topic. The whole issue has become an epistemic quagmire, a kind of distributed disaster of misplaced certainties - and this is sadly the case on both sides of the non-debate.
Who is to police the facticity of such matters...? You want to say that the "factually false" should be suppressed and (by implication) censored but such a position requires an authority to determine the facts. And we do not have that. Indeed, as 2020 has amply demonstrated, we are nowhere near as capable of determining the "factually false" as we tend to pretend. The moment we wade in on a topic having decided what is or isn't true, we seemingly remove from ourselves the capacity to investigate honestly the truth or falsehood of the topic at hand!
So what should happen? By implication of your position, we should censor the factually false position. But at this time, based on the balance of evidence so far, the factually false claim would appear to be "masks save lives" (although that could conceivably change with new evidence, but this camp has commissioned very little research to defend its claims...). I don't know your position on this issue, but I'll play the percentages and guess that you have been advocating this very claim yourself, or at least siding with it. As such, hearing it suggested that your position should be silenced is unwelcome - all the more so, the more convinced you are that your position is factually correct.
What do I say should happen? That we should be permitted to disagree on this issue. That counter-arguments should be heard, that ambiguities should be explored - and thus, that the sciences should be allowed to operate without the intolerable burden of having to police politics, something they are miserably ill-equipped to achieve. The reason the question of the efficacy of masks has become such a minefield (and the differences in efficacy between different kinds of masks and different contexts for their use has become so hopelessly blurred!) is that everyone has decided for themselves what is "factually false" - and having done so, we are now almost entirely prevented from discovering and communicating the truth of this subject. What a mess!
Note that I'm not saying "don't wear masks", nor am I saying "wear masks" - all I am saying in this regard is: please can we do the research, and please can we acknowledge the research already done...? How astonishing that this could ever become a controversial claim! And yet, so it has.
Alas, what this sorry debacle has driven home to me is that we are much worse at disagreement than we thought, and this situation is not looking likely to improve any time soon - a new field name doesn't strike me as an answer, but I'm open to all attempts, more or less, to get us back to a place where being citizens is even possible.
I hope these discussions help make clear why my position of "extreme tolerance" might be required for any viable notion of citizenship to emerge. The moment we cede political discourse for preset answers we collapse the possibility of democracy, just as we did over the issue of masks where discussion became almost instantaneously impossible and the truth became sadly irrelevant all too quickly.
I realise by even mentioning the face mask issue I run the risk of destroying our conversation and replacing it with an argument over face masks. That would be a shame. But it is too good an example of the problem with "factually false" for me not to draw against it. Yet please accept my apologies for even going here, since I know that having done so we may no longer be able to talk about what actually matters on the topic of citizens... such is the immense power of intolerance of disagreement to end democratic citizenship completely. On this subject, I am very much afraid of what I have witnessed in 2020.
To be citizens together we do not need to establish a 'book of facts' to follow - indeed, such a form of government would only be a kind of theocracy in disguise. What we need is the very possibility of respectful disagreement. And at a time when neither respect nor disagreement seem to be permitted, I fear for the very notion of citizenship.
Many thanks for continuing our discussion,
Chris.
Posted by: Chris | January 03, 2021 at 11:28 AM
I will have you know I staunchly resisted the urge to write a satirical (trollish, really) WUT N0 MASKS???!!11! response before segueing back into our actual conversation. I'm sure you can agree that everyone is much better off thanks to my (frankly heroic) self-control. :P
Most certainly, further researching the efficacy of masking should not be controversial.
I'll continue to wear masks because that has become the "dominant discourse" (if you will) and I haven't the time to gain sufficient knowledge to disagree with any confidence. But it's certainly plausible that in the heat of the issue of the day many of us collectively succumb to emotional -- rather than thoughtful or what we might call "scientific" -- reasoning, and that a more dispassionate examination of the facts (along with uncovering more information) may yield very different conclusions about the efficacy of mask-wearing as it is usually practiced.
As I suspect you're aware, empirical psychology has shown again and again that emotional maturity is not well-correlated with intellectual sophistication, and indeed the lack of the former short-circuits one's more rational faculties under sufficient stress.
I agree that learning to disagree is much more important than bludgeoning one another with facts, whether those "facts" are as practically indisputable as the laws of optics or the shape of the Earth, or as debatable as the numerous issues that surround abortion. Even when the bludgeoner is indeed factually correct, the bludgeoned is, if anything, less likely to accept the truth -- and sometimes the bludgeoner is wrong, or, at least, cannot conclusively be shown to be right. ;)
I singled out Flat Earth because if the shape of our planet can't be considered factual then what can? You've discussed pseudoscientific viewpoints in a much broader and more nuanced way than I had previously conceived, and perhaps you'll agree that both Flat Earthers and Australian Aborigines (at least, those subset who literally believe in a flat Earth), practice discourses that destroy the power to investigate.
With apologies for my lack of clarity in my previous comment, please note that nowhere do I suggest silencing voices I deem factually incorrect. At the same time, I would not personally choose to amplify viewpoints like Flat Earth, which I am confident are as factually false as they come.
This does present a problem with modern social media, given that it is run by corporations and consequently creates a tension between extending free speech to every internet user, versus a small group of individuals' desires to not be complicit in views they abhor (among other tensions...)
Perhaps a more reasonable approach than allowing probable pseudoscientific views unfettered access to modern social media is not censorship, but the insistence of providing easy -- and even purposefully intrusive, in the "pop-up ad" sense -- access to information that is overwhelmingly likely to be correct; this was belatedly added to social media in the last US election.
Showing arguments in support of the proposition that "the 2020 US Presidential election was illegally stolen" without pairing it with the arguments of the opposite position should also not be controversial. In a (admittedly crude) way, I see this as a method of providing (or perhaps even enforcing) disagreement, albeit one where some positions are given precedence over others.
And surely we can usually use our existing empirical knowledge to help prioritize which positions are probably most worth our time? Are we really to give equal mindshare to debates about the fundamentalist Christian concept of Creationism compared to the theory of evolution? Even if you happen to be a Creationist who dislikes the demotion of Creationism to "probably objectively false" status, is the insistent insertion of the more generally accepted theory of evolution into the largest social media forums any worse than the sort of discourse that takes place most everywhere else?
In other words, at most points in time, in most places, on many topics, there is a "dominant discourse" that is difficult to escape; given the rise of truly consequential conspiracy theories turbocharged by social media (consider that the 2020 Presidential "election steal" is almost certainly false, but the idea gained significant currency in the US and probably caused six deaths during a riot that briefly disrupted the peaceful transfer of power), is it so unreasonable to simply interject the dominant viewpoint (in this case, that there is no empirical evidence to suggest voter fraud occurred to any meaningful degree) in social media discussions on the subject?
But even then, I agree that all such disagreement would ideally be done respectfully; lack of respect benefits almost no one in the long run.
As far as the harm organizations like the Flat Earth society cause, I readily admit that members of these sorts of organizations typically benefit from their membership; a community of belief provides many a sense of belonging and meaning, for starters. Still, I think one would do better to restrict one's faith to things that aren't factually false, and reap those benefits without also propagating pseudoscientific discourse.
Besides, it appears that the easiest way to predict one's belief in any given conspiracy theory (that is, an explanation very likely to be factually false) is believing another conspiracy theory(1), and I think most of us have had quite enough of that in my country. While I also consider censorship too high a price to pay for tamping down pseudoscientific discourse in the largest social media forums, I am completely comfortable elevating "dominant discourses" in these environments to blunt the impact of discourses deemed very likely to be factually false -- like the supposed stolen US election and Flat Earth.
(1)
https://www.amazon.com/Conspiracy-Theories-People-Believe-Them/dp/0190844086
Posted by: Nathan Frost | March 25, 2021 at 06:45 PM
Hi Nathan,
While I certainly appreciate continuing our discussion, the suggestion that we ought to silence Australian Aboriginals because their claims are "not factual" is, I contend, an extremely disturbing idea, one that is based upon the concept of a singular view of fact that is either not credible or tacitly oppressive. The concept of 'first find the facts, then enforce them' is the imperialist's credo par excellence, and has always suffered from the problem that in such an arrangement the imperialist's metaphysics are unchallengeable, and therefore colours everything claimed as 'fact' such that great harm can then be caused in the name of truth. I speak as a British citizen who has never forgiven his nation for its abuses of power.
I am very glad to hear you say that "censorship too high a price to pay for tamping down pseudoscientific discourse in the largest social media forums" It is even more problematic when legitimate scientific work is censored by social media giants because they have decided they don't want to listen to disagreements. How are we to get to scientific truth at all when discourse is being suppressed...? To my mind, this is an epistemic crisis the likes of which has never been encountered before.
But then, this is precisely the problem in a nutshell: the desire for a singular account of truth, and then (inevitably) for its enforcement. This was a disaster when the Catholic church administered a magisterium for knowledge, amazingly it is even worse the way we wish to enforce it today. To place Google in the equivalent role of arbiter of truth is much more dangerous, and in part because Google can exercise this power behind the scenes, which the Catholic popes have never had the option of doing. In this regard, please see the piece I will be running on the 13th April for further discussion.
On masks, I have literally no problem with you or anyone else choosing to wear a mask. Yet this is not an option in my country, where fervour in your nation for community masking has led to my being required by law to undertake an intervention against my will here in mine. This would be bad enough from a civil rights perspective if it was not also the epicentre of a scientific disaster of epic proportions. Full story here:
https://onlyagame.typepad.com/only_a_game/2021/02/a-case-study-in-pseudoscience.html
"But even then, I agree that all such disagreement would ideally be done respectfully; lack of respect benefits almost no one in the long run."
This is by far the most important point in this piece, and perhaps in my political philosophy in general. Thank you for assenting to this point - it means a lot to me!
I welcome your intermittent interlocutions, and hope that you are well, and will continue to engage in respectful discourse wherever you may visit.
With unlimited love,
Chris.
Posted by: Chris | March 30, 2021 at 03:40 PM
You've written a great deal of interesting material I agree with, and I thank you for it. I'd like to focus on one element where our views seem disjoint: whether the forced appending of footnotes to mainstream views on social media posts constitutes silencing.
I fail to see how forcibly injecting an offer to consume a mainstream viewpoint constitutes silencing the original (otherwise unchanged) viewpoint.
Far from making the mainstream viewpoint unchallegeable, I contend such a practice lessens the possibility of competing viewpoints from becoming practically unchallengeable within their sizeable echo chambers.
When you say "We certainly will not restore citizenship by deciding upon the truth and then working to enforce it", I agree. I'm not after a singular account of truth, much less working to enforce it. I'm after minimizing the "tribal groupthink effect" of modern echo chambers -- even at the cost of giving a (rather slight, I contend) advantage to mainstream viewpoints.
I suspect enforcing easy access to mainstream views on topics deemed sufficiently important (say, Presidential elections) will in fact increase the state of citizenship without annihilating opposing views -- or even perturbing them much, to those unswayed by the mainstream viewpoint.
I also agree with you when you say "The moment we cede political discourse for preset answers we collapse the possibility of democracy". But this is precisely what we do when we allow large echo chambers to form around homogeneous narratives! Annoying (and, in some cases, irrelevant or even factually false) footnotes seems a small price to pay to expose the vast majority of folks in such echo chambers to the existence of (generally) more factually solid narratives, particularly when we also enforce showing who has been designated the "footnote authorities", with full disclosure, sourcing, and a sincere attempt to rely solely on civil, respectful prose.
It sounds like we further agree there is a "ground truth" to reality that we can often approach -- you've pointed this out with optics, and I would also include the shape of the Earth, and -- yes, nearly as confidently -- the results of the last American Presidential election.
However, I suspect you overestimate the chilling effect on free speech of such potentially irritating footnotes, and underestimate the effect a virtual city of conspiracy believers can have on a person -- and by extension democracy, people's lives and livelihoods.
Many echo chambers (Flat Earth, faked moon landings, stolen Presidential elections and so forth) stray so far from mainstream thinking -- and, in the case of supposedly stolen Presidential elections, with such great real-world consequences -- I claim we lose very little by puncturing the largest of these echo chambers (subsets of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and so forth) with links to mainstream thought. How does such enforced footnoting constitute silencing?
Protecting a "right to echo chambers", as it were, effectively abandons a meaningful percentage of the population to entire worldviews that are probably mostly or almost entirely factually false -- worldviews made historically compelling by echo chambers of historically unprecedented size.
Of course I'll be the first to admit this is not a flawless proposal.
Indeed, sometimes an echo chamber will be somewhat -- or entirely! -- correct, and mainstream thinking somewhat or entirely incorrect (not that these determinations are always zero-sum or even possible, as I suspect you've explored in a much more nuanced fashion in Chaos Ethics and elsewhere).
The mask non-debate is another interesting datapoint, wherein the footnotes would get slapped onto a discussion that -- per your reading -- should be very much debatable. I still don't view that as silencing so much as -- at worst -- a possibly-irritating call to that very debate!
And in practice, I expect probably-harmless discourses like Flat Earth would be overlooked from such a footnoting policy, but even if they aren't -- so what? It's easy enough to persistently ignore the "annoying enforced footnotes".
I think we agree that governments are the best tool we have at the moment to discourage echo chambers in the largest social forums, and the private sector should be regulated accordingly (and I say this as someone who generally prefers less government intervention).
I don't presently view this as imperialist, but am open to considering that possibility (not least of which because, of course, the US is in no position to lecture the UK on the evils of imperialism).
I do agree that we should be permitted to disagree on any issue. I do not agree that we should permit large echo chambers unfettered global reach, and do nothing to discourage one root cause leading to travesties like folks storming the American Capitol over an almost-certainly-fictitious stolen election, or an armed man invading a pizzeria searching for Hillary Clinton's pedophile cabal -- or, more broadly, regular voters reasoning about the issues of the day within echo chambers of unprecedented size and influence.
Thank you again for the opportunity to refine my thinking! Even if you don't find it convincing, I appreciate the opportunity nonetheless -- and am glad to see you returning to the blogging realm.
Cheers,
Nathan
Posted by: Nathan Frost | September 12, 2021 at 06:49 AM
Dear Nathan,
I find nothing to disagree with in your account here except your apparent faith in media censorship. I completely agree that echo chambers are the essential problem with social media, although I do not think it matters if these echo chambers are fringe or mainstream, or anything else besides - the cultivation of narrower understandings of the ways of being in the world is the root of all bigotry, and I oppose it. But I oppose it through my own discourse. I do not ask for censorship to address it, nor do I believe that such censorship can do anything other than further cultivate such bias and hatred by driving it underground where it can fester all the more.
I think your core challenge is "whether the forced appending of footnotes to mainstream views on social media posts constitutes silencing." What you appear to mean is: does the media platform flagging something as misleading constitute censorship? And you may be surprised to hear me reply: not in and of itself. It may be unwise, and counter productive - since in asserting such authority over the truth, those who are so labelled lose trust in the intervening party and are not convinced by it - but this practice in and of itself is not so far from "the views on this account are not those of my employer" declarations to my eyes.
But the problem is, that's not what happens in practice. A person who repeatedly voices such views is eventually removed from the platform. That's de facto censorship. In the last year, people have in fact been removed from Twitter for tweets that, when I compare them to the current state of the research literature, are almost entirely factual (or, to allow for the inherent ambiguities in live research topics: supported by significant evidence and not yet opposed by any significant evidence). That's censorship. I don't see how it can be anything else!
You make a lot of reference to the events that are labelled by one side an insurrection and by another an escalation of a protest that ended in tragedy (I think those are the characterisations; it's hard to get a good read on this sometimes). I'll be honest: it doesn't look much like an insurrection to me, since we usually reserve this term for attempts to overthrow a government, and if that was the intent of the protesters then it was the stupidest, least practically considered insurrection in the history of the world. The storming of the Bastille in 1789 was an insurrection (and a successful one) - not that it lead to anything but even greater tragedy in the long run. But the events of January 6th just look like a tragic confusion to me. I'm not going to say you can't call it an insurrection - I'm sure the definition can fit those events perfectly well. My objection in this regard is only that as insurrections go, this was the dampest of squibs.
I see no convincing evidence of electoral fraud in that election, although I see the usual jockeying for power behind the scenes that has typified US elections since at least Reagan, and Trump seems to have been singled out by what used to be the left in the US as an especially bad president... his generally slender grasp on reality certainly has not been a welcome element in an already disastrous recent political history. But it feels to me, watching from the outside, that this incident stands out for political opponents to Trump in ways that do not travel very far, and given that Trump got himself elected in part by (bizarrely!) appealing to alienated voters as if he was some kind of everyman, and not the living embodiment of wealth and privilege, that entire presidency feels rather like a kind of existential refugee from Bizarro World.
I do however agree (by supposition, I suppose) that the bare-faced lying (or self-deception? I'm unsure) of President Trump set in motion the current escalation in censorship. But the main difference I see between that presidency and most of the others in my lifetime is that the deceit (or self-deceit - again, it's not always clear!) happened in the public square rather than behind closed doors. And it could be argued that this is much less problematic than the kinds of deceptions conducted, say, in the Reagan administration. I leave this as a sideline, but I also note that it could be extended to Democratic presidents and presidential candidates very easily by someone who had the will to do so.
So no, I would not describe what you call "appended footnotes" as censorship per se, but they are part of a system of censorship since they lead ultimately to bans, and bans that can in fact be invoked against someone who has not obviously got the facts wrong. That greatly troubles me. But even if it were not for the way these are aggregated into censorship, it strikes me that some humility in these messages might be justified on live research topics.
And on that subject, I hope you will read and respond to the forthcoming serial Five Choices, which begins next week, as what may have started with an honest attempt to deflate the cataract of nonsense spewing from President Trump's fingers has ended in catastrophe that makes the January 6th incident that so troubles you seem positively trivial from the context of the world at large.
My sincere thanks to you for continuing our discussion - it is greatly appreciated!
With unlimited love,
Chris.
Posted by: Chris | September 14, 2021 at 06:55 AM