Current Events > Self-Censorship is Rising

(+) Yeah! (+)

The person in the video doesn't believe in free will btw LOL

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/b/b568481c.jpg

Regardless of what you think of this particular person, it certainly is a potential problem. A lot of self-censorship stems from reactions to opinions. You may be thinking "if people react poorly to your opinions then GOOD, you should shut up" but think about how in the past media was hesitant to portray interracial relationships. It wasn't that long ago when portrayals of same-sex relationships were also a rarity or completely absent.

It's easy to agree with censorship when ideas that you personally disagree with are censored, but then you're in for a shock when your advocating of censorship gets turned around on you. Just think of what musk buying twitter does to public opinion. He doesn't even have to explicitly delete your posts, he can simply instruct the engineers to tweak the algorithm so that your opinions get less visibility. When you notice that happening, what do you end up doing? You self-censor in the hopes that your opinion doesn't get buried. We see this all the time on youtube with content creators censoring things to fit within the "advertiser-friendly" image of youtube (e.g., blurring bottles of alcoholic drinks). Being able to shape discourse in this way is too powerful for a single entity to control.

No, this doesn't mean I advocate for nazis to spread their ideology. We should try to limit speech that can cause harm (e.g. calls for violence, hate speech, etc), but the problem comes in when the definition of harmful gets spread out to include things that aren't actually harmful (e.g. trans visibility being accused by conservatives as harmful to children). People can claim it's easy to make this distinction, but in practice, once the tool to censor is there, it's ultimately up to whoever holds that tool to make that distinction and you may not agree with it.

Isn't self-censorship just thinking about what you should say before saying it? I don't see how that is a bad thing.

Yeah, I've heard John Fugelsang talk about this quite a bit. Trump doesn't need to go after all the media companies, he just needs to make a harsh example of one and the rest will fall in line.

But they, this is what they so desperately worked for. I hope those fucks enjoy it.

I expect a lot of self-censorship now that the government is going to be weaponized against verbal dissent.

1337toothbrush posted...

It's easy to agree with censorship when ideas that you personally disagree with are censored, but then you're in for a shock when your advocating of censorship gets turned around on you. Just think of what musk buying twitter does to public opinion. He doesn't even have to explicitly delete your posts, he can simply instruct the engineers to tweak the algorithm so that your opinions get less visibility. When you notice that happening, what do you end up doing? You self-censor in the hopes that your opinion doesn't get buried. No, this doesn't mean I advocate for nazis to spread their ideology. We should try to limit speech that can cause harm (e.g. calls for violence, hate speech, etc), but the problem comes in when the definition of harmful gets spread out to include things that aren't actually harmful (e.g. trans visibility being accused by conservatives as harmful to children). People can claim it's easy to make this distinction, but in practice, once the tool to censor is there, it's ultimately up to whoever holds that tool to make that distinction and you may not agree with it.

Though to be fair, the message gets muddled when a person or going outside political ideology, adult cartoons seem to go out of the way to give the pro-censorship side ammunition. Or just shooting themselves in the foot.

1337toothbrush posted...

Regardless of what you think of this particular person, it certainly is a potential problem. A lot of self-censorship stems from reactions to opinions. You may be thinking "if people react poorly to your opinions then GOOD, you should shut up" but think about how in the past media was hesitant to portray interracial relationships. It wasn't that long ago when portrayals of same-sex relationships were also a rarity or completely absent.

It's easy to agree with censorship when ideas that you personally disagree with are censored, but then you're in for a shock when your advocating of censorship gets turned around on you. Just think of what musk buying twitter does to public opinion. He doesn't even have to explicitly delete your posts, he can simply instruct the engineers to tweak the algorithm so that your opinions get less visibility. When you notice that happening, what do you end up doing? You self-censor in the hopes that your opinion doesn't get buried. We see this all the time on youtube with content creators censoring things to fit within the "advertiser-friendly" image of youtube (e.g., blurring bottles of alcoholic drinks). Being able to shape discourse in this way is too powerful for a single entity to control.

No, this doesn't mean I advocate for nazis to spread their ideology. We should try to limit speech that can cause harm (e.g. calls for violence, hate speech, etc), but the problem comes in when the definition of harmful gets spread out to include things that aren't actually harmful (e.g. trans visibility being accused by conservatives as harmful to children). People can claim it's easy to make this distinction, but in practice, once the tool to censor is there, it's ultimately up to whoever holds that tool to make that distinction and you may not agree with it.

Is dis a copy and pasta?

Prestoff posted...

Is dis a copy and pasta?

No, this is me writing a post.

Doe posted...

The person in the video doesn't believe in free will btw LOL

And she's perfectly logical in believing so.

1337toothbrush posted...

No, this doesn't mean I advocate for nazis to spread their ideology. We should try to limit speech that can cause harm (e.g. calls for violence, hate speech, etc), but the problem comes in when the definition of harmful gets spread out to include things that aren't actually harmful (e.g. trans visibility being accused by conservatives as harmful to children). People can claim it's easy to make this distinction, but in practice, once the tool to censor is there, it's ultimately up to whoever holds that tool to make that distinction and you may not agree with it.

This is something that more people need to think very hard about. Everyone just assumes it's fine because "those powers will only be used to censor hate speech" and "they can't possibly fall into the hands of someone who'll abuse the power" (despite already seeing exactly that with Musk's Twitter).

Even a restriction that very explicitly defined what it does and doesn't prohibit, with a clear statement that enforcement must err on the side of caution and that if something is a grey area, it gets a pass, every time - it's still a wedge in the door for when someone who desires more censorship power, and has the ability to alter those laws, comes along.

This is why I struggle to support the idea of legal restrictions on speech, even despite seeing the harm that unrestricted free speech can cause and really wishing certain categories of speech would just fuck off and die already. Because it's very plausible that restrictions, if implemented poorly and/or allowed to fall into the wrong hands (the latter of which is almost impossible to prevent), could do far far more harm.

So why is DEI in the thumbnail?

I used to follow her when she stuck to her field as a theoretical physicist. Then like all smart people, she became a victim to Dunning-Kreuger and started talking about shit she had no background in. When people who were experts in their fields constantly debunked her, that's when I cut her off.

Guide posted...

And she's perfectly logical in believing so.

When someone says something so compatibilphobic you gotta hit them with that Hume stare
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/7/7b177047.jpg

Doe posted...

The person in the video doesn't believe in free will btw LOL

She's right though. She'd only be wrong if she ascribed that reason to a divine fate or something along those lines.

Professor Dave has kind of been shitting on her lately.

HeeathLivesOn posted...

She's right though. She'd only be wrong if she ascribed that reason to a divine fate or something along those lines.

how is she right that free will does not exist?

AceMos posted...

how is she right that free will does not exist?

I don't particularly like her writing, but she does talk about it a bit here:
https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2020/10/you-dont-have-free-will-but-dont-worry.html

So, the trouble with free will is that according to the laws of nature that we know describe humans on the fundamental level, the future is determined by the present. That the system in this case, your brain might be partly chaotic does not make a difference for this conclusion, because chaos is still deterministic. Chaos makes predictions difficult, but the future still follows from the initial condition.

She talks about it more but basically the 'decisions' we make are simply based on the current state of our brains + the stream of consciousness (the inputs being processed by the brain). With all aspects of the brain being driven by the same fundamental physics as all else in the universe, for every event there was only ever one way said atoms and molecules would act/interact.

It's impossible for us to comprehend this vast amount of data in real time with our limited senses / processing capabilities so these appear far more chaotic/random with more possible futures than the only one possible.

Is that that Sabine Haussinsomething? I don't think she's ever right about anything

HeeathLivesOn posted...

for every event there was only ever one way said atoms and molecules would act/interact.

Free will is compatible with determinism, and determinism is arguably even a precondition for free will

Doe posted...

When someone says something so compatibilphobic you gotta hit them with that Hume stare

To be fair, theoretical physicists have argued that one solution to Bell's inequality is that it is an illusion and that history was predetermined at the Big Bang. MIT has a 2014 article on testing Bell' Theorum on their site:

https://news.mit.edu/2014/closing-the-free-will-loophole-0220

which goes on to state:

However, scientists have also identified several major loopholes in Bells theorem. These suggest that while the outcomes of such experiments may appear to support the predictions of quantum mechanics, they may actually reflect unknown hidden variables that give the illusion of a quantum outcome, but can still be explained in classical terms.

This ties into what Sabine Hossenfeld is referring to, as the MIT article continues:

Though two major loopholes have since been closed, a third remains; physicists refer to it as setting independence, or more provocatively, free will. This loophole proposes that a particle detectors settings may conspire with events in the shared causal past of the detectors themselves to determine which properties of the particle to measure a scenario that, however far-fetched, implies that a physicist running the experiment does not have complete free will in choosing each detectors setting. Such a scenario would result in biased measurements, suggesting that two particles are correlated more than they actually are, and giving more weight to quantum mechanics than classical physics.

Bell himself brings this up in a radio interview from the early 80s. He talks about the ramifications of his theorem upon the concept of free will. It always fascinated me how there could be a possible empirical answer to one of the great questions of philosophy.

Doe posted...

When someone says something so compatibilphobic you gotta hit them with that Hume stare
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/7/7b177047.jpg

Compatibilism is just for people who are too afraid to admit that we are all philozombies.

BB_mofo posted...

To be fair, theoretical physicists have argued that one solution to Bell's inequality is that it is an illusion and that history was predetermined at the Big Bang.

Compatibilism is the idea that this is irrelevant, or necessary, for free will to exist. Free will is when an agent is able to act according to their internal motivations/desires/choices without being coerced or controlled.

That you might be able to predict what a physical person is about to do next if you have perfect information about their life experience, brain waves, the different historical locations of atoms in their body, etc, would not prove that the person does not have free will. Actually, if an omniscient entity was unable to predict what a person will do next, that would be way more troubling. It would suggest that our experience of life and our wishes & desires are irrelevant to our actions, which certainly must not be free will.

[Article]

I don't honestly understand the perspective that free will hinges on quantum randomness (or what have you) being true. If the problem is lamenting that all causes can be traced to a first cause, I imagine free-will-deniers just shifting from "fate / the big bang" to "chance / quantum flux". I just do not see the difference between tracing the stubbing of your toe to the big bang VS to accumulated undetectable quantum interactions.

Trumble posted...

This is why I struggle to support the idea of legal restrictions on speech, even despite seeing the harm that unrestricted free speech can cause and really wishing certain categories of speech would just fuck off and die already. Because it's very plausible that restrictions, if implemented poorly and/or allowed to fall into the wrong hands (the latter of which is almost impossible to prevent), could do far far more harm.

Though to be fair, Freedom of Speech even with conditions have that exact same problem of being abused and is.

I don't know, just anyone reading, is there a reason why the whole "Your freedom ends where another begins"? Pretty clear cut.

Sabine Hossenfeller is a trash human.

So trash I didn't even bother to see if I got her last name right.

DodogamaRayBrst posted...

Sabine Hossenfeller is a trash human.

So trash I didn't even bother to see if I got her last name right.

What did she do?

Guide posted...

What did she do?

She knows what she did.

rick_alverado posted...

Isn't self-censorship just thinking about what you should say before saying it? I don't see how that is a bad thing.

If you're thinking about what you're going to say because actual censorship exists, that's a pretty significant problem. As the video points out, self-censorship is largely driven by actual censorship or a perception of forms of censorship. And if you're arguing censorship is a good thing, I'd suggest picking up a history book.

But even if you're pro-censorship and want people to self-censor more, keep in mind the downstream effects -- which includes lying during polling. Surveys, studies, and other research are often skewed by some participants who self-censor. That's one proposed reason for Trump generally doing better than polling would suggest; ie, the overtly negative reactions to people supporting Trump supposedly stop some people from mentioning they planned on voting for him. However, those votes still happened, so the only impact was the polling was misleading.

Antiyonder posted...

I don't know, just anyone reading, is there a reason why the whole "Your freedom ends where another begins"? Pretty clear cut.

As a policy, that might make sense in other arenas, but not necessarily speech.

Count_Drachma posted...

As a policy, that might make sense in other arenas, but not necessarily speech.

Hmm. I mean there is the whole claim of thought policing, but isn't hating someone cause of their skin color (i.e. something beyond one's own control) identity policing therefore more of a concern.

And I guess one thing I could add is that there is nothing good or innocent about bigotry which is something you can control.

Heck in contrast, couples of the same gender holding hands or even kiss can be done without ill intent.

AceMos posted...

how is she right that free will does not exist?

Cause and effect.

Your actions are ultimately determined by a chain of events happening since the Big Bang.

Guide posted...

What did she do?

She did a 'both sides' thing on healthcare for trans kids.

ai123 posted...

She did a 'both sides' thing on healthcare for trans kids.

Which by itself wouldn't be a bad thing, but she used faulty data from anti-trans mouthpieces

Self-censorship is alive and well

https://youtu.be/7i_pnNSf6mo

Guide posted...

And she's perfectly logical in believing so.

Lol nah

She's a grifter. Professor Dave Explains made a couple videos about her recently.

The Problem With Sabine Hossenfelder
https://youtu.be/70vYj1KPyT4

No, Sabine, Science is Not Failing
https://youtu.be/6P_tceoHUH4

Count_Drachma posted...

If you're thinking about what you're going to say because actual censorship exists, that's a pretty significant problem. As the video points out, self-censorship is largely driven by actual censorship or a perception of forms of censorship. And if you're arguing censorship is a good thing, I'd suggest picking up a history book.

But even if you're pro-censorship and want people to self-censor more, keep in mind the downstream effects -- which includes lying during polling. Surveys, studies, and other research are often skewed by some participants who self-censor. That's one proposed reason for Trump generally doing better than polling would suggest; ie, the overtly negative reactions to people supporting Trump supposedly stop some people from mentioning they planned on voting for him. However, those votes still happened, so the only impact was the polling was misleading.

No, Im not arguing for actual censorship. Im mostly just coming from the perspective where the only time I see the term self-censorship its by assholes complaining that video game companies arent making women sexy enough, or stuff like that.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

Science Karen is a perfect descriptor for her. Girlie thinks her PhD makes her infallible.

BewmHedshot posted...

Science Karen is a perfect descriptor for her. Girlie thinks her PhD makes her infallible.

I know a girl with a PhD who is... a charming nutbar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBEJiRLjxms

Doe posted...

The person in the video doesn't believe in free will btw LOL

I'm a neuroscientist and most of us don't believe in it either. If you believe in a deterministic or probabilistic universe, as many scientists do, then free will has no basis and there is no data to support its existence (decisions can be observed in EEG or fMRI data before subjects report conscious awareness of having made a decision).

ssjevot posted...

I'm a neuroscientist and most of us don't believe in it either. If you believe in a deterministic or probabilistic universe, as many scientists do, then free will has no basis and there is no data to support its existence (decisions can be observed in EEG or fMRI data before subjects report conscious awareness of having made a decision).

See post 15, 24

Antiyonder posted...

Though to be fair, Freedom of Speech even with conditions have that exact same problem of being abused and is.

Yes; it's a question of which side of the coin will have less harm and abuse, because neither side is free of it. In this case, I feel that the pro-free speech side is the safer one, even with the problems it causes. To be clear, that isn't me saying that offensive speech shouldn't be criticized, shunned, or even lead to firings and other social consequences. I just don't think it should be criminalized or otherwise legally prohibited (though restricted-to-adults is not unreasonable).

Toonstrack posted...

Lol nah

Lol yes

ai123 posted...

Cause and effect.

Your actions are ultimately determined by a chain of events happening since the Big Bang.

I still don't agree with her.

Doe posted...

See post 15, 24

Yes people try to redefine free will to simply mean "no one forced them to do it, so it was chosen". Which is not the normal definition and is almost always used as part of a motte and bailey fallacy by people who actually do believe in free will under the normal definition.

ssjevot posted...

Yes people try to redefine free will to simply mean "no one forced them to do it, so it was chosen". Which is not the normal definition and is almost always used as part of a motte and bailey fallacy by people who actually do believe in free will under the normal definition.

Please provide the "normal definition" of free will then and how it is contradicted by being able to read someone's brain scan

Doe posted...

Please provide the "normal definition" of free will then and how it is contradicted by being able to read someone's brain scan

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will

Gives an entire breakdown of the arguments. Free will is normally used to mean that choices are made by a rational third party agent, not caused by internal states and external factors. The argument you used about coercion is just giving an example of an external factors (coercion) and ignores that whatever decision they made is still just the result of internal states and external factors. The decision is determined by variables, some of which we can measure (such as by using brain scans) that the agent is unaware of. Consciousness occurs downstream of decision making, you aren't aware you made a decision until it was already made.

ssjevot posted...

Free will is normally used to mean that choices are made by a rational third party agent, not caused by internal states and external factors.

The opening of the article questions the language neuroscientists use in regards to "free will", citing philosophers. The start of the Overview section breaks it down into "volition" and then says that "the study of volition is difficult to define". So off the bat I'm not seeing a "normal definition of free will" solidifying here the way you presented it, particularly not that

choices are made by a rational third party agent, not caused by internal states and external factors"

Which does not appear in the article. The definition you're proposing seems to suggest that humans must have a "soul" or similar thing that pilots the human body independently of the physical condition of the human body. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not sure how else to read "third party agent" that is explicitly not a person's brain and/or the rest of their body.

If the case for free will hinged on whether soul-like things exist operating independently of the human brain and drive human-decision-making, or else that our brain's functioning is unaffected by the state of our body, well frankly, I wouldn't need to consult a neuroscientist to have an opinion on that. I don't think most other people would either, one way or the other.

EG, I know trivially that the human body requires water, the body creates thirsty signals when it lacks water, and that the internal state of thirstiness influences our actions to eventually drink some water. If we considered the opposite necessary for free will to exist, that being thirsty does not motivate us to drink water, there's just no way we'd be having conversations about this for thousands of years.

ssjevot posted...

Consciousness occurs downstream of decision making, you aren't aware you made a decision until it was already made.

This just is not proved out. Your article admits so in various ways, for example

There is no agreed-upon measure of brain activity corresponding to conscious generation of intentions, choices, or decisions, making studying processes related to consciousness difficult.

A study that the article quotes within the text is that scientists could predict with 60% accuracy, among 12 subjects, if someone would choose "left" or "right", up to ten seconds before the subjects claimed they were aware of the decision. Specifically, from the Nature article:

"The subjects were asked to relax while fixating on the center of the screen where a stream of letters was presented. At some point, when they felt the urge to do so, they were to freely decide between one of two buttons, operated by the left and right index fingers, and press it immediately.")

Maybe you see this differently through the lens of a neuroscientist, but this is not interesting to me. They could do slightly better than a coin flip's odds in a sample size of 12 for a completely arbitrary decision? Even excusing the sample, I wouldn't consider it a surprising result that subconscious factors play a role when someone is asked to make an abstract & arbitrary choice.

The test could perform with 100% accuracy and it would not persuade me to believe that humans cannot consciously make decisions, because the test does not provide anything for a person to utilize conscious thinking for. They were even prompted to respond "when they felt the urge", according to the Nature publication, which I hope it is self-evident why that wording is really problematic for what the study is trying to accomplish. It's like watching a person unconsciously scratch at a scab and concluding conscious decision-making does not exist. I'm sorry for kind of crucifying this one study as a stand-in for 'neuroscience of free will', but this is the study the article provides.