The necessity of censorship and the pernicious qualities of Elon Musk

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Topic: https://americanmilitarynews.com/2022/03/report-putins-yacht-hacked-call-sign-changed-to-fckptn-destination-to-hell/
baby set the topic at: Mar 2, 2022 at 9:18 PM
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Created at: Dec 6, 2009 at 1:12 AM
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jezzu
the trucker convoy in the usa is carrying an anti-ukraine message too
jezzu
no suprise there
jezzu
some wack qanon conspiracy theory that trump orchestrated the invasion to stop fauci's secret bioweapons labs
jezzu
isnt that hilarious?
jezzu
they arent the brightest bunch
jezzu
truth social has been a colossal failure
jezzu
pretty much the norm for anything trump touches
jezzu
Paul_ is spreading state controlled propaganda from russia
jezzu
he doesnt really know any better
jezzu
it works well on the qanon types because they are driven by idiocy
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jezzu
poor trump
jezzu
guy never learns from his mistakes
jezzu
and he has made so many
two_flowers
nah, he's just grifting from the Republican party
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two_flowers
grifters gonna grift
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two_flowers
Trump avoids paying for anything
tomatobodhi
two_flowers: like all of the super rich
tomatobodhi
two_flowers: can't even get them to pay taxes like working people
jezzu
biden doesnt buy oil
jezzu
american companies do
two_flowers
“I donated to the GOP with the impression that money would go toward disenfranchising Black people.”
jezzu
no, american companies do
jezzu
but they have divested from russian oil now
jezzu
double check your propaganda sources with putin first
Claude
jezzu: Trump enjoys making 'mistakes' and committing crimes and it being public, and it's an expression of power.
Claude
He doesn't like being held accountable for those mistakes and crimes, however.
Claude
Which our system almost never does, and it's heart is rotten.
Claude
as and its
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tomatobodhi claps for Claude.
tomatobodhi
Kudos for the it's > its correction.
Claude
Surprising typos on my part.
tomatobodhi
I have lost count this week of how many PROFESSIONAL news sites have had "their" where they should have had "there."
Claude
That's pretty surprising.
tomatobodhi
I block news sites that have that kind of glaring error.
tomatobodhi
I think, "If it wasn't important enough for YOU to read twice, it isn't important enough for ME to read ONCE."
Claude
I generally do, too.
Claude
I'm extremely aggressive in what content I allow myself to consume.
tomatobodhi
lol
Claude
I'm at the point in my internet adventure where I generally lifelong block agents/sources for their first significant error.
Claude
As there's already an 'infinite' amount of content, and so each of us are already aggressively filtering implicitly.
Claude
https://youtu.be/bMgKumbRNAQ?t=6475

Claude
Here is something you most definitely should not filter.
tomatobodhi
gotta love the onion
Claude
Psybient is one of the best musical genres, no doubt.
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tomatobodhi
Claude: I aggressively block all sites that don't tell me either: 1) What I already believe, or 2) What I want to hear.
tomatobodhi
</sarcasm>
Claude
I mean, you could argue that's sort of true in a way, but only for my meta-preferences.
Claude
(And, by extension, perhaps for you too.)
tomatobodhi
I don't think I have a lot of preferences. I just don't doom-scroll, so I'm pretty out of the interweb-loop.
Claude
For example, I'm fine with a large diversity of views, as I am a philosopher, but the more 'exotic' your views get, the better qualities the speaker must have.
jezzu
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/convoy-picks-cars-anti-ukraine-talking-points-ahead-washington-arrival-rcna18716
Claude
If you go full philosopher mode, I'll probably accept every imaginable view, as that is part of the heart of philosophy (accept meaning non-block).
tomatobodhi
I'm very opposed to censorship, though.
tomatobodhi
You want to visit a racist website? Go ahead. If you read what they have to say and think it is pretty good, you were ALREADY a racist! lol I don't think a lot of people are just surfing around and following facebook links and suddenly get radicalized.
Claude
How do you personally manage and/or argue for public management of disinformation given your concerns about censorship?
Claude
I think a lot of people are surprisingly malleable by mass media.
tomatobodhi
algorithms
tomatobodhi
those are the real problem
tomatobodhi
imho
Claude
It's appear to be an unfortunate truth of our species which renders a lot of humanist notions of governance wrong.
Claude
tomatobodhi: I've been watching a lot of Star Trek lately, right. In Star Trek, there are things like the holodeck where there are simulations that can't be distinguished from reality.
Claude
In a recent episode of Discovery, there was a holodeck environment that was reacting to the participants psychology, so it was becoming a reflection of their own mind.
tomatobodhi
Never seen Discovery.
Claude
This is very compatible with Buddhist notions that the 'world out there' is actually your own mind.
Claude
Which is literally true from a cognitive science perspective.
tomatobodhi
Or Kant.
Claude
Anyways, this is all to say that the holodeck in that scenario is just showing us our own mental world that already exists, but of course feedback loops can alter its evolution over time.
tomatobodhi
It only took the Western philosophical world about 2350 years to catch up to Shakyamuni Buddha's observations about the mind.
Claude
Social media algorithms are substantively like this.
Claude
I'm not familiar with what Kant said in that regard.
tomatobodhi
Kant basically argued for a "constructed reality" in our minds.
tomatobodhi
But he also said that there would be no way to know whether there are real things that simply exist outside of our perception and so are not part of "our world."
Claude
So, I would argue the problem of algorithms, which is pretty huge, is really due to deep notions of human nature that is not compatible with the deepest humanist/secular/rationa/materialist notions of ourselves that are the foundation for our legal, economic, and political structures.
Claude
Basically, at least 30% of humans can be semi-programmed by other human beings.
tomatobodhi
Bandura
Claude
Which means notions of self-determination, self-ownership, freedom, and democracy are reasonably false.
tomatobodhi
Albert Bandura researched social learning.
Claude
And more just societies (than we live in) probably have to actively control some individuals for freedom.
Claude
Either the people who are so easily programmable, or the people whose nature it is to program others.
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Claude
Both groups of which will reasonably consider themselves to living in an 'unfree' society.
Claude
And I think censorship will play an integral part of that management.
tomatobodhi
I think that the Buddha and the United States have historically shared a common component in their culture/teachings: great doubt and suspicion.
tomatobodhi
EVERYTHING must be questioned.
Claude
tomatobodhi: It seems Western philosophy has generally moved closer to Buddhist thought in the last few centuries @ Kant.
Claude
So, yes, I support 'censorship'.
Claude
Which, as a previous 'free speech absolutist' I would be surprised to hear myself say.
Claude
If you don't censor certain people, other people will use that to censor on their behalf by programming their minds.
tomatobodhi
I'm still that absolutist, as long as people have a choice whether or not to be exposed to X.
Claude
Personally, I find free-speech absolutism to be a refuted position at this point.
Claude
But I think there remains and interesting debate in what and how to censor.
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Claude
Notably, the ACLU has evolved over these last twenty years in a similar manner.
jezzu
hopefully the russian people revolt against putin
Claude
I think that's fairly unlikely.
jezzu
putin has cut-off all social media
Claude
Apparently, their mass media manipulation of their minds is about as advanced as the rest of the world and so his support has gone up lately, is my understanding.
Claude
Dictatorship is a powerful strategy, and a lot of humans like a powerful ape they perceive on their side, and it's easy to manipulate them into telling them what's on their side.
16:49 jezzu
his popularity is goin up in the usa too
jezzu
within extreme right wing groups
Claude
To the extent we can resist that as a species, we have to fundamentally pursue it in all aspects of our self and social organization, e.g. we would need to fundamentally insert anarchic principles in our society at ever level.
jezzu
i dont support any of putins moves
Claude
Of course, we don't do this, and so we're mostly just another rival imperial faction to Russia, repeating many of their same crimes (and often exceeding their scope), and so we don't really have the tools nor the understanding to seriously challenge his dictatorship.
jezzu
sickening to make it about money too
Claude
jezzu: A lot of humans are just hairless apes from 200k years ago who happen to have been born in the 20th/21st century.
jezzu
but thats what the leaders do, use us as pawns for their money gains
Claude
Like, a huge portion of our society gushes of the absolute imbecile and mad man Elon Musk.
Claude
A society which does that cannot fundamentally critique the domination strategies of Russian 'oligarchs'.
jezzu
musk is more intelligent than most humans
Claude
jezzu: He stated in mid-March that COVID-19 would be over by April 1st.
Claude
This was in 2020.
jezzu
so what
Claude
He's subsequently expressed himself on COVID-19 a few dozen times and has been astoundingly wrong every time he opened his mouth.
jezzu
those were near valid projections then
Claude
1. Is COVID-19 a really import topic?
jezzu
so has everyone
Claude
I put jezzu on block.
Claude
I don't find value in your reflexive, broad equivocation without nuance.
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Claude
You're not for me.
Claude
I'll present my argument I was about to make:
Claude
1. COVID-19 is a very important topic.
Claude
2. Elon Musk has essentially been perniciously wrong on COVID-19 near 100% of the time.
Claude
3. There should be consequences for being wrong.
Claude
4. The consequences we experience in our wrongness should scale based on how much we missed the mark, and the importance of the topic.
Claude
5. Of all topics in the world since 2020, there has been more open access to COVID-19 data than just about any other topic.
Claude
6. Your qualities on the COVID-19 topic, then, will be an excellent bellwether of your qualities on most of all topics.
Claude
7. Therefore, Elon Musk is very likely to be perniciously wrong on almost all topics.
Claude
8. The punishments Elon Musk should experience for being so perniciously wrong on such an important topic should be in the range of 'exile from public society for a period of at least twenty years'.
Claude
Also, we should take 99% of his money, by force if he resists.
Claude
As an accumulation of that much money is roughly identical in power to a nuclear weapon, and no individual should be allowed to own a nuclear weapon, regardless of the circumstances.
Claude
No human should be privately allowed access to more than ~100x the average wealth of humanity.
Claude
All control of wealth above that level must be publicly managed/granted.