[jl2718]

Do you seek the truth unconditionally, or only truth that fits within your pre-conceived notions of acceptability? Can you imagine a society where an objective truth was unacceptable, and denial of that truth was harmful to themselves or others?

[dspillett]

> Do you seek the truth unconditionally

To truly be open to everything you have to make a lot of analysis and filtering effort. If you go to a lot of the sort of information sources the GP mentioned, the signal-to-noise ratio is so low that unless you have literally nothing to do with your day the chance of finding some useful truth is neg liable (sometimes even zero, because sometimes the signal is not just downed out by noise it is actively beaten away by it).

I seek truth as unconditionally as it is practical for me to do so.

[tptacek]

Why bother making an argument that pretends people can't see the difference between 4chan /pol/ and MetaFilter? You don't even have to like MetaFilter to see that they're not the same species of site, and that the differences have nothing to do with a search for the truth.

[jl2718]

I’m unaware of the similarities actually.

[hwers]

On a society level there should certainly be room for every type of voice. Governments shouldn't moderate forums. But there's definitely value in small communal focused bubbles like this as well, that isn't manipulated into derailment by some mob hive mind. (Speaking as someone very pro free speech.)

[cogman10]

To be frank, often when I see this glossy pamphlet cover for free speech, you open up the pamphlet and see a bunch of child porn, antisemitism and/or racism.

The issue with free speech platforms is they attract a crowd of people whose only narrative is one that can't be said in other places. It isn't a narrative of truth, it is one of hate and bigotry.

I've seen few examples where objective truth is banned. I have, however, seen a lot of Nazis get banned.

[zionic]

That’s just a flaw in your brain’s logical processing.

I’ve seen this again and again, people will see an ocean of normal content anywhere free speech is allowed and laser-focus on the single floating turd.

They’ll then mischaracterize the entire ocean as the turd, it’s like they have no sense of proportionality.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

I think the proportions are more like an olympic swimming pool of "normal" content and a single turd.

And you know what? I don't know many people who want to swim in even a 100m pool with a turd floating in it.

[robertakarobin]

> people will see an ocean of normal content anywhere free speech is allowed

Not sure I agree on this one. Forums like /r/conservative, patriots.win, and Gab claim to be in favor of "free speech," but dissenters quickly get banned. 4chan comes to mind — people do indeed post things of all political slants there, and the only moderation seems to be removing obviously unlawful content. And yet 4chan is almost decidedly covered in turds.

[cogman10]

Name a free speech platform where I'm not going to find the turd on the front page at this very moment.

I'm happy to be shown to be wrong, but from my experience what you are saying doesn't exist.

[jl2718]

I think of the sea of knowledge as a bunch of floating turds at first sight, which are intentionally provocative and noxious but easy to spot, mostly water below, which is the context of common knowledge and beliefs, which may be the unstated assumption of the material, and then nuggets of gold below, which are hard to find because they are repressed for some reason, legal, social, safety, or otherwise, and therefore potentially valuable to a certain set of objectives. But both turds and gold nuggets face the same types of moderation pressure by their disruptive nature.

[cogman10]

> But both turds and gold nuggets face the same types of moderation pressure by their disruptive nature.

Again, I fundamentally disagree. You are being vague and overly general on the sort of moderation pressure. The actual banned content on most social media platforms, if we bring it out of context, ends up things like CP and Nazis. If those are the "disruptive ideas" we need to explore truth, then I'm pretty ok never finding it.

On almost every social media site (except, ironically, "free speech" platforms) there is a space to discuss everything from communism to anarchy. Crystal healing to quantum physics. Ghosts to exoplanets. Nihilism to Scientology.

The actual set of banned discussion is pretty much all centered around speech that directly leads to harm.

The reason I keep bringing it back to "what is actually banned" is because when you get right down the actual banned conversations, they are both few and not really worth discussing for "truth".

Name a banned "golden nugget" conversation. You say there is censorship, so list it. Tell me what sort of deep conversation or truth we can't know because we stop Nazis from using the N word.

[jl2718]

“Tell me something that will get you banned” Ummm… no.

I can tell you ‘about’ something that would. For instance, I would get banned for doxing you. The reason why I would get banned is that the information would be very valuable to someone that the forum is not interested in helping. Some banned conversation includes realities that explain what is going on in the world in a way that can greatly benefit a potential investor, or equivalently, greatly misguide them. Given that there is no way to discern between the two, both are banned.

I have one personal example that I am willing to share. I learned a tremendous amount of helpful information about birth practices and infant care from one of these ‘extreme free speech’ platforms. An example is cord clamping. The debate of this topic was extremely irreverent and ad-hominem, but it was easy to see that logic and objective results clearly favored one side, regardless of the civility with which this information was presented. Sadly, I don’t believe the information would have been effectively communicated in its most polite form, because it was clearly out there for all to see for a very long time without any improvement to common practice. The problem is that a reasonable person must ask why experts would ignore such information before accepting alternative possibilities, and this necessarily leads to a very dark rabbit-hole showing politically-incorrect evidence of extreme dysfunction within their profession. This became broadly applicable to me personally. My OB/GYN was objectively harmful to my baby, my pediatrician and nurses were wonderful, and this was all much less confusing given that understanding.

[m_fayer]

Of course. Because like you, I am literally Plato himself.