I ‘upvote’ more or less all posts I interact with (sometimes I forget to vote). I feel like we should bring back open dialogues and heavily dissuade people from simply disregarding someone’s entire belief system or ideals based on 200 characters of text (an example).
Think about one person in your life who you first thought was a complete asshole and once you got to know them they were pretty cool, maybe you became best friends with them. The point is, judging a person based on a minute snippet in time is a fool’s errand, and your own state of mind contributes a lot to your own judgement of people. Your next thought might be, well they have a history of x, y AND z, so they deserve every bit of judgement coming their way! I would ask you, why? Are you not simply fueling further hatred, vitriol and division? So instead of stopping for a moment and thinking about the world from someone else’s perspective, you’d rather just spit out some more hatred and move on like that person doesn’t exist?
I would love to see some solution to the shitty state of the Internet. I only say Internet because for the most part this doesn’t happen in real life in my experience. I think it has to do with consequences and social sigma and so on. I reckon it would be pretty awesome if there was something like the following:
- all upvotes are free range, people can give out upvotes like they were candy
- downvotes come at a “cost”, whereby if you want to downvote someone you have to reply directly to them with some justification, say minimum number of characters, words, etc.
In an ideal world, and setup, this would help raise positivity in the world and have people at the very least have a second thought before being negative.
Yes I understand there would be flaws, I’ve worked with and used computers for a long time, I know. I chose not to delve deep into those as I feel that would defeat the purpose of the message I’m trying to convey. And, you know, lead by example.
What do ya’ll think? Any suggestions to boost positivity in the world, I’m all ears, smash them and any other thoughts in the comments.
Every single time someone makes a post with this opinion, they’re either a Nazi or a Nazi apologist. They don’t want discourse, they just don’t like it when people tell them to shut up. It makes it hard to take their arguments seriously because I know they’re just excuses.
Lo and behold, you have a downvoted comment in your recent history where you argue Nazis should be allowed a safe space to talk in. The pattern continues.
Criticism is a part of public discourse as much as approval is. People who allow positive responses freely but put walls in the way of criticism tend to be the ones trying to silence all forms of criticism. They want a positive feedback loop so they can pretend people agree with them. Some people need to be told to shut up quickly and decisively.
To be fair, i too would argue that even horrible people with sick midset should have a safe accessible digital space to talk in and i align with antifa anarchist radical far left progressives.
The wrong and sick opinions in their thought remain opinions and therefor are a protected human right.
By providing at least a safe space were biggots can be biggots we keep them away from other communities.
It allows us to create a window so we can look ourselves and try to understand why they think the way they think. So we can eventually learn how to help them with their mental illnesses. Only when an individual rights are broken or planned to be broken (doxxing, sharing someones pics without consent) are we right to intervene. For generic hate speech? If no visitor consider it offensive is it still offensive? (yes if it leaks, otherwise its no different from a racist family over dinner)
In the end Fascism isnt a problem we can solve by just not allowing it, its not even the problem We need to solve but a symptom of a toxic psychology, these people will always find a way. Its the same for drug use and other criminal acts. There will always be back channels or alt communities to provide for them, the more oppressive we try to ban them the more secretive and the more fuel wel give to there extremes.
Sounds more like an enlightened centrist to me, but same difference really.
If a maniac wanted to shoot someone ten times, and the victim wated not to be shot, the enlightened centrist would smugly proclaim that the maniac shooting the victim five times would be a just middle ground that’d be fair to both parties, and that the victim would be unreasonable, intolerant, and antidemocratic for not agreeing to it.
Same result, orders of magnitude more hypocrisy and idiocy, and of course you can’t criticise them, since by enabling the maniacs they’re just debating and trying to find a compromise, and disagreeing with them is being hostile and going against the very principles of democracy itself.
Malignant asshats, the whole lot of them, wouldn’t recognize the paradox of tolerance if you violently hit them in the head with it.
And comments like yours are exactly why I want open discourse. You’ve risen in the comment ranks with misleading information. And even if what you said were true verbatim, how does your argument solve anything? Do you think that suppressing someone’s right to think or express themselves will make them “see the light” like in some movie? Think about it from another person’s angle. If someone you disagree with tries to silence you, I’m sure you would not be okay with that, right? If they said you’re not allowed to have a safe space because your ideas are somehow dangerous from their point of view. They could use the same argument your using, demean your viewpoints by name-calling. In their mind, their opinion is the correct one, much the same as you’re feeling. Where does it end? These are all fairly common arguments to silence people and where has it gotten us? Think of the children, this group of people are dangerous they’re not allowed a voice. So you’re free to speak, just please don’t cross the line into defamation or anything illegal. I find it troubling that the first thing you did was go searching in my comment history, instead of simply addressing my post on its merit, which is something we all should try and do. I don’t care what you believe politically or whatever, I’m here for discussion and advocate free speech, and to do that there are times when you will defend peoples’ right to speak you don’t necessarily agree with, but there’s more to it than this petty arguing, and that’s what I’m trying to get at. To sum up, you’re essentially telling me to shut up through the side of your mouth, as is your right to do so in a free world, but I implore you to critically evaluate your comment. Honestly I’m not 100% sure what your point was, you’re stating criticism is part of public discourse, I agree, I don’t advocate otherwise. This implies that people should be free to speak, but also to be criticised, yes, again, I agree. Then you speak about walls to criticism, not sure where you got that from. A downvote is not criticism, it’s a mechanism by which to control visibility of someone’s post or comment. My argument is that people should be held to account for those downvotes, which would mean they would be criticised, so again we circle back to the criticism, which I’ve already agreed with you on. I hope you allow yourself to let go of whatever hatred you have in your heart, and I wish you a good day or night wherever you are.
That’s not what you’re going to get.
The ideas of the market of place of ideas and free speech were about deliberation, joint decision making about what to do about issues as they arose. They weren’t valuable in and of themselves, but as a means to the least worst (ideally, the most agreed upon) end.
Of course, abstracting them from their teleology made them valuable in and of themselves. But that abstraction leads to petty arguments. Speech for the sake of speech is empty rhetoric, of which there is so. fucking. much. Political polarization that employs Manichean Us vs Them rhetoric is basically all empty bullshit. And a focus on free speech as* free speech only*, and not an integral part of process of deliberation, reinforces is as the rhetoric of bullshit. Petty arguments abound because arguments can be had about absolutely nothing at all.
It ends when we realize that we have shit to do and it needs to get done.
The effectiveness of arguments like “They’re coming for your gas stoves!” is rooted in absolute, totalizing bullshit. The “threat” of “limiting” your “freedom” of house appliances is presented as dire and urgent and personal, conflating regulation designed to limit the adverse of house appliances on climate change with an apocalypse of democracy. That last bit is what I mean by it being totalizing, it’s existential. Meanwhile, while gas stove lovers the country over engage in bullshit politics, climate change has made 2023 the hottest year since global records began.
That’s my solution anyway: focus on institutionalizing a method of getting shit done. Maybe get rid of downvotes and upvotes altogether and make people post emojis to show they’re dis/approval. Make people work to engage in discourse.
There was no misleading information. There was no name-calling. It’s weird you think there was.
If you’re allowed to say “Nazis are allowed a space to hang out”, I’m allowed to say “shut the fuck up”. If you’re allowed to say “yeah, I agree with this” by upvoting, I’m allowed to say “this is a terrible idea” by downvoting. If you don’t have to give an explanation for why you support something, you shouldn’t have to give an explanation for why you oppose something.
I’m telling you to shut up from the front of my mouth. You are not the first person to put forward this argument, and you’re not the first person to do it shortly after being downvoted for defending Nazis. You deliberately want a double standard that limits criticism and it was a pretty easy guess, proven right, that you had recently been justifiably criticised.
I said people you disagree with. I also stated I don’t understand what is meant by “Nazis”, I feel you’re projecting an awful lot. The word Nazi doesn’t even mean anything anymore. Maybe it means something to you personally, but what is in your mind has nothing to do with me. It’s funny going into what I guess is quite an “echo chamber” and get accused and name-called and told to shut up. For what, exactly? So you consider yourself a tolerant person? If you are unable to tolerate anyone who doesn’t subscribe to the exact same thoughts as yourself then I suspect the answer is no. Why don’t you try basing arguments off actual merit, rather than leaping to your hail Mary Nazi shut down line. If you open your mind a little bit, I mean really, actually open it up to everything, I’m sure you’ll find your anger start to subside. I’m sorry you feel the way you do, and again, I wish you all the best.