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Cass Sunstein is the Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Chicago Law School and Department of Political Science. A former law clerk for Justice Thurgood Marshall, he has worked for the Office of Legal Counsel in the US Department of Justice.
His former works include: "Democracy and the Problem of Free Speech" (1993), which won the Goldsmith Prize from Harvard for the best book on free speech in that year. "After the Rights Revolution" (1990), "The Partial Constitution" (1993), "Free Markets and Social Justice" (1997), and "One Case at a Time: Judicial Minimalism on the Supreme Court" (1999). His writings have appeared in the New York Times, and the New Republic. He has also appeared on ABC's Nightline, the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, NBC and CBS evening news and other programming.
In "Republic.Com" Cass Sunstein makes the point that in cyberspace individuals now have the ability to filter out everything they don't want to read or see and filter in only those whose opinions they agree with. He calls this the "Daily Me", the ability to filter only the issues that concern you, read only the op-eds that only share your point of view. In short he fears that the Internet will bring about a lack of diversity and will amplify extremism and hate groups (Whatever that means). He writes of "cybercascades" that brings groups of people together who share similar viewpoints, a process that in turn causes group polarization and radicalization.
For example, he says, "a group whose members lean against gun control will, in discussion, provide a wide range of arguments against gun control, and the arguments made for gun control will be both fewer and weaker. The group's members, to the extent that they shift, will shift toward a more extreme position against gun control. And the group as a whole, if a group decision is required, will move not to the median position, but to a more extreme point." (Chapter 3, pages 67 68)
He does his argument great damage by using as an example of a hate and extremist group the usual left-wing target, The National Rifle Association (NRA) He trots out the usual suspects such as Skinheads and the KKK and fails to mention any of the other hate groups such as American supporters of Peru's shining path, environmental terrorists who spike logging areas, World Trade Organization protestors/rioters or other left wing extremists. In Chapter three Sunstein speaks of the gun rights movement alongside the KKK, God Hates Fags, and other hate groups in what can only be considered an attempt at guilt by association.
In Chapter seven, Sunstein writes: "FREE SPEECH IS NOT AN ABSOLUTE," -- his caps. In fact, he repeats this line several times throughout the book. He continues: "We can identify some flaws in the emerging view of the First Amendment by investigating the idea that the free speech guarantee is "an absolute", in the specific sense that government may not regulate speech at all. This view plays a large role in public debate, and in some ways it is a salutary myth." He mentions the usual examples of child pornography, copyright and threats to assassinate the President as examples of the government restricting speech. He creates what I consider a straw-man argument by prefacing these remarks for his "Policies and Proposals" in Chapter eight.
He laments the fact that in a four-station universe the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) had a significant voice. But with the advent of programming with hundreds of choices, the justification for PBS is diluted.
As a partial solution he endorses Andrew Shapiro's suggestion from the book The Control Revolution that the government should support a public website, Public.Net. Sunstein writes: "Public.Net would provide an icon, visible on your home computer. You would be under no obligation to click on it; indeed in a free society perhaps you should be permitted to remove the icon if you really do not like it." He envisions Public.Net to include sections on the "environment, civil rights, gun control, foreign affairs, and so forth." (Chapter 8, page 181)
But what I find most troubling is his idea to require websites to maintain hyperlinks to those with differing viewpoints. His example on page 188:
Sunstein continues: "To the extent that sites do not do this, voluntary self regulation through cooperative agreements might do the job. If these routes do not work, it would be worthwhile considering content-neutral regulation, designed to ensure more in the way of both links and hyperlinks.""We might easily imagine a situation in which textual references to organizations or institutions are hyperlinks, so that if, for example, a conservative magazine such as the National Review refers to the World Wildlife Fund or Environmental Defence, it also allows readers instant access to their sites."
Princeton sent me a free review copy of Republic.Com; I'm glad they did as I would have been highly upset to have paid money for it. I can understand why Professor Sunstein makes the suggestions he does. In my opinion it has less to do with wanting to expand free and open discourse and more to do with control. Who gets to decide which links get to be included as "opposing viewpoints"? I did note that many of Sunstein's examples involved a right wing organization being forced to carry left wing links.
The celebrated civil libertarian, John Stuart Mill, contended that enlightened judgment is possible only if one considers all facts and ideas, from whatever source, and tests one's own conclusions against opposing views. Therefore, all points of view -- even those that are "bad" or socially harmful -- should be represented in the "marketplace of ideas." And the Internet is an incredibly free and eclectic smorgasbord of ideas. And just as we have freedom to choose which sites we visit or what print magazines or books we read, it would be the end of freedom as we know it if the government forced us to read or watch what they want, even if it were only a link. Thanks, but no thanks to Republic.Com.
You can read the first chapter online for free. You can also purchase this book at ThinkGeek. You may also be interested in Cass Sunstein's Homepage.
Re:I learned everything I know from slashdot! (Score:2)
"Apple is the real innovator in the computer industry."
"NASA is a waste of money."
"NASA does cool stuff."
"Everyone is dumber than me."
I think Slashdot has experienced the polarization effect, but not the homogeneity effect. We thrash about wildly to espouse our opinions, and there is no shortage of diversity.
Re:not only Public.Net (Score:2)
KDE or Gnome? :0) Seriously, the government has no business interfering in this way. You want a law passed saying that you have to use different software every day of the week to prevent bias? Ridiculous.
Re:So how biased is discussion on /.? (Score:2)
We shipped it back, tho'. In packing crates.
Re:Dissappointed to hear it is biased. (Score:2)
Umm, not a fact. Even Salon [salon.com] says so.
it is the right that is ideological and the left that has become the natural party of government in most of the democratic world
Assuming you can tell them apart any more. In the UK, for example, Blair is far more a child of Thatcher than Hague. And I'm thankful for it. Can you imagine the Winter of Discontent if socialist dinosaurs like Prescott ran the country?
Back on topic, remember that neither the Daily Mail nor the Guardian are in the business of news, they're in the business of supporting the existing opinions of the right and left respectively.
Oh yeah? (Score:4)
Re:Slippery Slopes (Score:2)
Hee hee. Of course, what would be really funny is to have religious websites required to link to pr0n sites for the "opposing viewpoint".
And the MPAA would have to put links to DeCSS sites... I'm sure that would go over real well.
I just love it when some professor (who's supposed to be smarter than average) doesn't stop to ask someone else if his ideas are completely stupid and unworkable.
Classic, totally classic.
Free speech is a precious thing. People have made a good case for limiting it in certain situations, like yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. Generally though, any suggestions to further limit speech should be view with great suspicion.
Re:Dissappointed to hear it is biased. (Score:3)
People frequently forget that the word Nazi is short for National Socialist. The way the Nazis ran Germany--dictating from the government what is acceptable and what should be liquidated--is sadly what a lot of left-liberals want to do, especially on college campuses.
I learned everything I know from slashdot! (Score:2)
"Hackers are the best people in the world."
"Jon Katz is the smartest journalist & philosopher."
Could slashdot be an example of Internet-blinders too?
InterNet not unique in this regard (Score:2)
slect other media to reinforce their world-views.
This includes the magazines they read, TV shows they watch, music they listen to, and so on.
Do this, it's for your own good! (Score:2)
The really important thing is to maintain freedom of speech-- because then opposing viewpoints can always be heard by those that want to hear them.
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Re:Beyond Majority Rule (Score:2)
Knowing social dynamics, I think the Quaker Process would have a hard time scaling. Also it think it would need people who are genuinly interested in control of their own lives, yet also respect others wishes. Another problem is it doesn't deal well with is people moving around. The Quaker process only really works in long term stable communities. I'd have to say most communities are either to large or dynamic for it to work.
As a country, the US needs to work on getting it's citizens truly involved in government. To the extent that they know the issues facing the communities they are living in. Know the relavant details, etc. Unfortunately most people only just want to slip by on the path of least resistance. If this means giving over control to someone else and following that other person's decisions, so be it.
The one thing a cult can't survive is a bunch of free thinkers. A democracy needs them.
Set up the Dominoes (Score:2)
Sunstein assumes that the world is like a set of dominoes - knock one down and the whole kit and kaboodle falls down. He's no different than those who figured bad data in Burma would destroy the Dow Jones.
The world is not a bunch of dominoes - it's a complex, ever-changing interconnected organism. A change here produces a change there. If people filter their data, the results of their ignorance will affect them and change (of many kinds) will occur.
However Sunstein goes by the domino theory, and thus assumes some "top level engineering" will stop that first domino from falling. Of course, he fails to ask what the costs and repercussions of his solutions are - which is ironic as he seems to be VERY convinced of the costs of the current situation.
The sad part is that I addressed this in a column [seventhsanctum.com] I do on writing [seventhsanctum.com]. Even in fiction the myth of the "domino world" is obvious.
But I suppose saying "things aren't the greatest, oh well" doesn't sell books. Panic and messianism does.
Oops, wrong column (Score:2)
Re:Gee, I guess you don't agree with his views (Score:2)
We must not read the same
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Not a new problem (Score:3)
Of course, even if an opposing point of view is stated, we humans tend to remember evidence that corroborates our own previously-held point of view, and forget evidence that casts doubt on it. This is a powerful argument against both religious belief and religious unbelief, for example.
Re:Not a new problem (Score:3)
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Gee, I guess you don't agree with his views (Score:4)
Most people who visit
Sunstein thinks that people need to have good knowledge of all sides of an issue before they decide what they believe, and that people who can filter out what information they receive won't have that knowledge.
Perhaps Sunstein's main idea is much more important than his idea of Public.Net. Peer pressure is a very strong force. If people are stuck in an environment where all of their peers believe one thing, they will be extreme discouraged from developing their own ideas. We need to promote more diversity in our discussions, and not flame people who have differing ideas. People should actually try to help their opponents devlop better arguments so that better debates can be held.
Yes I do know I was rambling a lot, but you shouldn't dismiss Sunstein so quickly. He is not a dumb man.
Re:Responsible Gun Ownership (Score:2)
BTW, the sentence `Having a gun in the car tells me I'm the one in trouble if hostilities occur' pefrectly describes the appropriate attitude towards weapons. It heartens me to read that there are such responsible folks out there.
OT: Chinese Crash (Score:2)
But this is horribly OT...
So how biased is discussion on /.? (Score:3)
I think there is probably some degree of the polarization that Sunstein describes. But I think more of the problems with discussion stem from two areas. For one, extreme opinions tend to get better airplay than moderate ones. This is not
Second, I think online discussion suffers from a lack of in-depth thought. I'd love to see a graph of posts over time look like for a
I only wish I had improvements to suggest... it's like the Churchill quote, democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.
Re:Oh yeah? (Score:3)
The oposite would probably be "News for cyber-apathetics." (cheesy, but maybe I should trademark the term) "Stuff for people who aren't interested in anything harder than freecell." or "News for people who continue through life without any tech interests." Granted, there used to be a large Linux leaning on
Moderation isn't perfect, but it seems to be better than nothing (there is quite a bit less noise at +1 than below, though that amount is growing, too).
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Re:Not a new problem (Score:2)
I do not know if the constitutionality of this rule was ever challenged in court. However, when applying it to the internet, one should remember that the primary argument for it was that there was limited bandwidth for radio broadcasts, and therefore it was important to keep content roughly balanced. There is no significant shortage of wither bandwidth or opinion on the web, especially since most political speech on the web is textual, and that takes the least bandwidth of all to transmit.
And I do think that most fringe types are being polarized, I would say that A: this is nothing new, and 2: The center is still doing a fair amount of cross-polination of ideas. Hell, even on
So certainly I would oppose taking that step down the slope to government mandated hyperlinking, since it would be open to manipulation by a biased administration (left or right). And it would be hard to put that kind of legislation back in the box if we decided it was constitutional.
Caution is in order when it comes to taking away civil rights.
FWIW, here's a link to a page that came up after a search for 'fairness doctrine' [appstate.edu]
Re:Gee, I guess you don't agree with his views (Score:2)
How quickly or slowly one dismisses Sunstein depends on how rapidly you dissect his arguments, but dismissal is the inevitable end result of thinking the matter through.
To note but one obvious flaw in Sunstein's notions, a left-wing government given the power to mandate "opposing view" links would approve a left-wing site directing people to neo-Nazi pages as examples of conservative thought, but would hardly permit right-wing sites to smear the left with similar links to revolutionary communist sites. (Of course, a right-wing government would do just the reverse.)
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Re:"Wings" in politics (Score:3)
Liberals seem to look to the future and change things, trying to improve them, whereas conservatives look into the past, and try to roll things back to a point that they felt was comfortable for them.
Not even close. To take just one example, conservatives are trying to reform Social Security to make it self-sufficient and not in danger of bankruptcy in 30 years, and liberals are howling in protest. The defining issue between liberals and conservatives is not the future or the past, it is how much power government should have.
In the US, the democratic party has tried to fight for the people, the little guy, the worker.
"Little guys" like trial lawyers, Hollywood actors, and union bosses? How exactly were Clinton and Gore fighting for the people when they approved the Clipper Chip, the CDA, and the DMCA? How are Democratic politicians helping inner-city families by denying them a choice in education, while they send their own children to expensive private schools?
The republicans support the business executives, big money, and therefore corporations as well as conservative religious organizations.
Take a look at campaign contributions. Democrats get just as much from businesses as Republicans. Corporations will happily buy legislation from either or both parties. I'm not going to defend the Republican party too strongly because they do a number of stupid things (generally due to the religious right contingent), but to say that the Democrats are for the people and Republicans are for the corporations is pure demagoguery.
With the return of the Bush regime to power in the United States, the prime goal that we've seen so far is to reduce environmental standards, by increasing the limits of acceptible arsenic pollution in our water
It is absolutely false that Bush wants to raise arsenic limits. He ordered a _review_ of Clinton's last-minute regulations lowering acceptable levels by 80% to see if there is a scientific basis for them. Compliance will cost a significant amount, and there is little evidence that current arsenic levels are a problem. In fact, if current arsenic levels are so dangerous, why did Clinton wait eight years to do anything? It couldn't possibly have been a political maneuver so that leftist partisans could subsequently accuse Bush of wanting to poison children....
"Wings" in politics (Score:2)
I never liked the term "left" or "right" wing. Where did those come from anyways? Were the terms created by how a certain arrangement of people used to sit in a certain assmebly? It's a convenient stereotype that people who want to use a label can tack onto a certain thought or action in order to better classify it.
This is a rather narrow-minded perception of political agendas, even when paired together with the notions of conservative and liberal, these polarized views of an assembly of people's opinions for the most part fails to line up with reality.
Can you walk into a music store, and categorize everything in there to go from technologically inspired to non? Perhaps at one side you'd have techno, and industrial, move a little bit down the line to hip-hop and rock, a little further to country and folk, and finally end up with classical and acapella. Most people wouldn't dig this one-dimensional classification, it certainly wouldn't allow you to go to one part in the line and say that all music here is good, and all music over there is bad. Yet it happens every day in the major media organizations.
These names and parties *do* exist. We can examine what are the general tendencies of these philosophies - Liberals seem to look to the future and change things, trying to improve them, whereas conservatives look into the past, and try to roll things back to a point that they felt was comfortable for them.
In the US, the democratic party has tried to fight for the people, the little guy, the worker. The republicans support the business executives, big money, and therefore corporations as well as conservative religious organizations.
In law student's tirade, he mentions: The left wing has a kind of right-on fashion appeal, which attracts unthinking students and such, (look at the sixties). The sixties were a long decade filled with many activities, some of the most notable were man landing on the moon and the civil rights movement. The imagery that he may be trying to conjure up could be of the group of people who burned out from using too many drugs. That was an unfortunate circumstance to a major societal change. Many things happened in that wave, including the people's hunger to protest their government's stupid ideas being re-ignited (remember, the US was created by a bunch of people who protested their government). Many more personal freedoms were gained, including more gender equity in the workplace, auto safety standards, and the peace corps.
Most people I discussed politics with last fall had an opinion about who they should vote for president. Most of the Gore and Nader supporters had some well thought out opinions that were grounded in facts. I have yet to meet one Bush (or Buchanan) supporter who has anything intelligent to say about them. What I usually heard was "we're tired of Clinton's penis". Fine - but don't deliver hypocrisy as a side-dish.
With the return of the Bush regime to power in the United States, the prime goal that we've seen so far is to reduce environmental standards, by increasing the limits of acceptible arsenic pollution in our water, and C02 emissions so the coal and oil companies can get just a little more profit this quarter, while those same executive's children grow up inhaling our legacy's soot and drinking water with chemicals, and eating dead cows with numerous diseases - leading to the development of all sorts of weird illnesses.
Political debates have raged back and forth for ages, and nothing will settle people's conflict better than facts. Though facts can always be manipulated to tell different truths. That's why an open, free democratic union should always consider all the options available, and never "shun this book, as it is unamerican and left wing" for the american people are left wing, and right wing, and diagonal wing, and some are all 3.
Fred Phelps (Score:2)
Speech isn't an absolute (Score:2)
http://home.uchicago.edu/~csunstei/beef.html
Beyond Majority Rule (Score:3)
Too bad (Score:2)
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Freedom to NOT listen (Score:3)
Regardless of the various moral positions we wish to promote, this is a quandry we all run into.
To a certain degree, it is a measure of our social skills, to be able to be in communication with someone who does not want to listen. Some poeple who are not very skilled try to insist on it as a right, when in fact it is a matter of social agreement (yah, I'll watch your commercial)
And let's face it the freedom to not listen is often taken as an act of integrity. Republicans not listening to Democrats, dogs not listening to cats, Microsoft not listening to anyone (except when it hurts), etc.
I am sure each of us can think of dozens of things you don't want to listen to. It is an interesting quandry.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip
Re:Oh yeah? (Score:2)
Personally, I've never felt I couldn't express my mind on a subject, even if it does deviate from what's considered the "typical" Slashdot line. I've found it also helps to provide a bit more rationale than just "foo sucks" or "foo rules". For example, I wouldn't have any qualms against posting the following (to use your animated paperclip example):
Now I'll admit that there are times when the Slashdot moderation system fails. However, I think for the most part, I don't think it overly reenforces just a single opinion. For example, even though I disagree with your post, both I and some moderator have both found it interesting. I also find that people seem to be too quick to label their own posts as "I know I'll get modded down for this..." People underrate the diversity of thought and opinion on Slashdot. I'd consider its opposite to be something like "News for Jocks" rather than "News for people who think Microsoft products are good and Linux is too confusing" -- and even that isn't a given; I'm sure there are a number of athletically active Slashdot readers.
who needs links? (Score:2)
Why not just force everyone to use NBCi? That would be so much easier than policing everyone's website.
Equal time redux (Score:2)
These laws were eventually struck down as unconstitutional. Part of the reason, IIRC, was that it required stations to subsidize speech that they didn't agree with.
But more importantly (to my mind), the other reason they were struck down was that they were based on the false notion that there are only two viewpoints on any issue, and that presentation of two viewpoints covered the entire spectrum of the issue.
Sunstein's idea to require linking to opposing viewpoints is just Equal Time redux, and it would be just as unconstitutional. Viewpoints that do not fit into the traditional (and overly simplistic) left-right dichotomy would be even more marginalized than they are currently.
Writer Camille Paglia espouses an unusual brand of feminism which tends to upset conservatives and traditional "liberal" feminists equally. Where would her voice fit in this system?
Pro-life and pro-choice extremists both claim there can be no compromise on the issue of abortion, despite the fact that the vast, but largely silent majority of Americans seem to want a compromise, allowing abortions early in a pregnancy, but not partial-birth abortions. But how likely is it that anyone would be exposed to the moderate view under Sunstein's system?
And when there are more than two opposing viewpoints, who decides which ones qualify to be linked to? If it were up to the website owner himself, what keeps him from linking to the worst, weakest presentation of an opposing viewpoint, and how does that help anyone? Or, to take a worst-case scenario, what prevents him from deliberately putting up a bad presentation of an opposing viewpoint, presenting it as a site independent from his own, and linking to that? Literal biblical creationists are notorious for presenting strawman versions of evolutionary theory to shoot down, either failing to understand or deliberately misrepresenting what evoluationary theory actually predicts.
At least when a web site or other information source presents only one side of the story, most people are smart enough to realize it's biased. But I worry that when two viewpoints are represented (because they're required by law to be represented) people will then conclude that all viewpoints are represented.
Re:Slippery Slopes (Score:2)
Does he present citations to opposing views?
The opposite (Score:2)
And it would die a quick death due to no users!
Opposing viewpoints? (Score:3)
Part of being a responsible citizen is informing yourself by doing some research on ideas, beliefs, policies, organizations etc.
Sure, the web makes it easier to do all this, but are we going to let ourselves be force-fed, in any way, information that is supposedly balanced. I will never believe it, and will not give up looking it up for myself. It's the only way to gurantee that if I'm wrong, I'm at the very least, responsible for it.
yoink
Re:"Wings" in politics (Score:2)
I never liked the term "left" or "right" wing. Where did those come from anyways? Were the terms created by how a certain arrangement of people used to sit in a certain assmebly?
Very perceptive. They come from the National Assembly in France. We've been using the terms ever since there was a hard split among the Girondists (sp) and the other guys, whose name I won't even try and spell. Interestingly, the next phase in the french revolution was the Terror, where the Committee for Public Safety took over. From there it was all downhill....
This is a rather narrow-minded perception of political agendas, even when paired together with the notions of conservative and liberal, these polarized views of an assembly of people's opinions for the most part fails to line up with reality.
Absolutely. I'll attach the word "liberal" to myself quite willingly even though I oppose affirmative action and gun control, since the word is a more accurate description of my overall political views than "conservative" or even "moderate".
Political debates have raged back and forth for ages, and nothing will settle people's conflict better than facts. Though facts can always be manipulated to tell different truths. That's why an open, free democratic union should always consider all the options available, and never "shun this book, as it is unamerican and left wing" for the american people are left wing, and right wing, and diagonal wing, and some are all 3.
You've just hit the point that the book itself misses. As a personal suggestion, the book has an excellent suggestion - listen to opposing viewpoints and actively seek them out. Read opinions written by the "other side" of any question, and try and read them with an open mind, which can be harder than it seems.
As a suggestion to websites, it's excellent - you should at least link to an opposing viewpoint if you really want to serve readers. I think everyone's problem comes from the idea of having a government mandate about political speech on the internet.
The need for closed discussions (Score:2)
It doesn't seem to me that this is a new problem. People have always had the ability to choose what to read or listen to. Should governments force them to read both left- and right-wing newspapers, for example?
It might not always even be a bad thing. I think we need places where people of like views can gather and discuss. I used to read alt.atheism but the trolls(who were "witnessing") and the people flaming back at them were just too much. Here I wanted to discuss my religous beliefs with like-minded people - what do you tell kids?" and so forth - and I have to wade through 100 messages about
RE: RE: RE: UNBELIEVRS GO TO HELL!!!!!! REPENT AND BE SAVED!!!!
in order to get to the discussion I wanted - using a 4800 modem. There was supposed to be a subgroup of alt.atheism for this argument, but nobody read it so the trolls kept posting to the main group (and people kept arguing with them).
I like the occassional flamewar as well as anyone else, but the best discussions occur when people have a common ground. Look at Slashdot posts debating the relative merits of various distros compared to "Windoze sux" posts and "Die GPL Bastard" posts. The Linux discussions tend to be much more factual and involve a hell of a lot less hot air, because everyone involved agrees Linux is a good OS, and all distributions are fairly similar. No one will call you an idiot for explaining why you like Debian.
There's a place for opposite opinions to clash, but Republic.com would turn every single website into a never-ending flamewar.
Re:This guy has obviously never run a website... (Score:2)
This guy has obviously never run a website... (Score:5)
http://www.furinkan.net/rant/ [furinkan.net]
Subject matter ranges from griping about bad Anime dubs or things that piss me off in the news. I regularly slam organized religion, conservatism, and moralism.
What really amazed me when I started this site was the large number of emails it generated, both in favor and against the ideas I put forth. Some are flames, but a good number are intelligent, crafted rebuttals of my arguments. It has improved my world view, and made me more prone to carefully consider my arguments before I post them.
While I do think that hate groups and kiddie porn groups exist that feed off of their own homogenity, I think this trend is not the norm and still a sign of stupidity or introverted and psychotic behavrior. From my experiences, I beleive that the majority of intelligent people out there do seek out differing views on the subjects they're interested in.
Re:Dissappointed to hear it is biased. (Score:2)
Fact Every major European country has had a left wing government for a majority of the time since 1989.
Fact 'Social Democrats' currently form the government in all but two major European states.
Fact The notoriously right wing Murdoch press has even written off the Conservatives as a credible opposition force let alone a government.
Fact No party that believes it will win an election calls for a delay as the British conservatives have been doing.
Fact A majority of the US electorate voted for Gore, hardly a sign that the election can be taken as demonstrating Republican hegenemony. With a drawn presidential election, hung senate and narrowed lead in the house few expect the GOP trifecta to last long.
Delusion is not confined to sad Trotskyites. Nor for that matter is the evil of mindless ideology. Karl Popper had it right when he identified ideological extremism as the 'enemy of the open society'. The idea that the end justifies the means comes from a belief in absolute ideological truth.
Twenty years ago it was the ideological left that was trying to change society and the pragmatic right that spent most of the time in government. Today those positions are reversed and it is the right that is ideological and the left that has become the natural party of government in most of the democratic world.
Re:Dissappointed to hear it is biased. (Score:2)
Meaning nothing, the socialist block was the only group to vote against the enabling act that gave Hitler supreme power. The communists would have done had Hitler not had all their deputies elected.
The claim that Hitler's "philosophy" bore any coherent resemblance to any mainstream political movement. However the principal planks of Mein Kampf were a Eugenic program based on genocide of Gypsies, Jews and Homosexuals and the invasion of Eastern Europe to create a 'Liebensraum'. Neither of those objectives has ever been associated with mainstream European Socialism.
The Nationalization of industry did not actually take place, that is in part because the industrialists were the main backers of Hitler. With the exception of Winston Churchil most of the European right at the time was enthusiastically supporting Hitler's command economy program for restoring Germany's economy.
The fact is that the right was far more tolerant of Hitler than the left, just as the left were far more tolerant of Stalin than the right. Both sets of appeasers were utterly wrong and it was the standouts on both sides who were right - most notably Winston Churchil on the 'right' (although his changes of party means that he is not easily characterized) and George Orwell (Eric Blair) on the left.
Re:So how biased is discussion on /.? (Score:3)
I don't think this is restricted to online discussion. One of my frustrations with what Brill's content calls 'Shout TV' is the lack of in depth thought.
To take one topical example, on chat show after chat show the Administration claim that it is 'unthinkable' that the US airplane could have been responsible in any part for the collision near China. I have only heard one 'news' show mention the submarine sinking of a Japanesse trawler in connection with this claim - and that was The Daily Shown on the Comedy Channel.
Other relevant incidents that the research departments of the news media have overlooked are 1) the fact that the US also claims 200 mile territorial limits with respect to certain activities 2) the fact that a Russian MIG landed in Hong Kong a few decades ago and was dismantled by the Brits and the US 3) the fact that the U2 flown by Gary Powers is still in Russia
Not that these pieces of information necessarily change the situation. But listening to so called experts pontificate while they fail to address the issue the rest of the worlds press is discussing suggests that the real problem is not with the new media but with the established media who have become incompetent and lazy.
It is ironic that Mathew Gaylor should take issue with filtering however since he is the principal individual I try to filter out - in many cases by unsubscribing from the mailing lists he infests. His principal waking activity appears to be bombarding mailing lists with off topic rants/trolls on his pet obsessions. These include guns, libertarianism, gun rights, constitutionality of gun ownership, lack of civil liberties in the UK (guns again), some screed by a right wing nut that is probably about guns etc. To say he is a boring one issue monomaniac is an understatement.
I prefer to filter out all discussion of guns, abortion and the works of Ayn Rand. this is not because I don't care about the issues, I just don't care to listen to ideologues rehashing second or third hand arguments I have heard hundreds of times.
The guy has the wrong model (Score:3)
Longstanding UseNetters will remember the activities of Achmed Cosar, a member of the Turkish Secret police who posted hundreds of messages a day to the soc.culture groups of Usenet under the aliases Serdar Argic and Hasan B-) Mutlu.
The clear intention was to drown out any discussion of the 1918 massacre of Armenians by the Turks. The massacre is a touchy subject for the Turkish government and Turkey recently withdrew its ambassador to France after France recognised the massacre as genocide and made vehement complaints to the British after the Armenian masscre was amongst those recognized on 'Holocaust day'.
What Cosar did was to run an AWK script that scanned several USEnet groups for any occurrences of certain keywords. The script would then return the first paragraph of the post, append a randomly chosen insult and add a piece of Turkish government propaganda to the end. Cosar's activities stopped when the US cancelled his H1B visa. [Don't ask how I know this stuff, I am not going to discuss my sources on /.]
Cosar's activities were an extreeme but there are plenty of similar examples. Shouting down the opposition was a popular tactic of Facist and Trotskyite groups. In the 1930s the NAZI party and the Communists would disrupt each other's meetings. Trotsky called the strategy of taking over another party by joining en-masse and being deliberately unpleasant to force others to leave 'entryism'.
These tactics are rare but not unheard of and it is this against this type of behavior that the majority of negative moderation is directed. On slashdot the 'first post' and 'goat**x' messages are a kind of mindless apolitical version of the same thing.
Strictly speaking I don't think that 'trolls' should necessarily be marked down since there is a very fine line between a deliberately provocative post and a troll. In each of the cases I have made a post that scored 5 I have thought that some people would think of as a troll. A well written intelligent troll can be fun - if the intention is to provoke thought rather than to trigger mindless reactions from the unthinking.
For these reasons I see moderation as a tool to protect the middle ground against the people whose purpose is to prevent debate.
Re:What's wrong with this (Score:2)
Re:"Wings" in politics (Score:2)
The other axis is harder to define, but it corresponds better to the "left" and "right". Jerry Pournelle once used a very strange word for it, but what he seems to have meant is belief in "social engineering", and this does correspond fairly well to the right/left division all the way back to the French Revolution. That is, right-wingers think a thief steals because he is bad, and he's going to jail and then to hell. Left-wingers think social conditions made him steal (like hunger, poverty, bad parents, or a lack of high-paying jobs for stupid and lazy people), and therefore sending the thief to jail is unfair, but if they can just change the social conditions, people will become good.
There's also a strong association between right-wing and "conservative" (reluctant to change). Partly that's because the conservatives were on the defensive for 200 years... But mainly, the left wingers are always going to want to change something to make people better by making the world better, and the right wing is going to worry that it will actually make the world worse.
Re:"Wings" in politics (Score:2)
Re:Oh yeah? (Score:3)
On Slashdot, I have never noticed a post getting modded down due to different ideas if there was a reasonable argument behind it. Of course, posts that display a lamentable lack of basic knowledge or are just plain illogical are either modded down, or else modded up as "funny".
Note that liberals and academics in the softer disciplines seem to think there is no such thing as facts. Christian conservatives are just as bad, in a different way -- they know there is such a thing as the truth, but have trouble assimilating any facts discovered in the last 1500 years. But I'm an engineer. There's a real world out there, with one set of real truths. We don't and probably never will know them all, but ignore just one thing that we do know and that machine you are designing isn't going to work!
Here's what's wrong with this: (Score:2)
- Compelled speech is un-Constitutional.
- People would just filter it anyway, either the way you already ignore banner ads or via anti-compulsion filters akin to WebWasher.
On the other hand, if libel law were modified to limit or remove the safe-harbor provisions when inaccurate or selective quotes did not include a link to the context (if said context was available on-line and at a linkable address - none of this "have to go through the main page and then search" crap), that might address many of Sunstein's objections.--
Give a man a fish and he eats for a day.
Slippery Slopes (Score:5)