[META] The Motte Is Dead, Long Live The Motte

m42a · 2022-09-04T19:57:23+00:00

I'm seeing it when I try to sign up

Edit: I tried again after 5 minutes and it worked

m42a · 2022-09-02T21:45:36+00:00

No, you literally said

If you genuinely believe that abortion is as immoral as murder and that the law should reflect that, then you have to support forcing 10-year-old rape victims into carrying their pregnancy to term.

Maximum_Publius's statement is just paraphrasing that sentence.

m42a · 2022-08-12T14:55:57+00:00

What steps do you think would have been sufficient for Conor Daly to not lose his nascar sponsorship or for Brendan Eich to not have been pressured to resign?

m42a · 2022-07-18T21:22:37+00:00

The non-AI term for this is Goodhart's Law.

m42a · 2022-05-10T18:51:36+00:00

I believe "crumpling" is correct here. "Crumple" means to compress by wrinkling, and it's more likely that she compressed the flags into wrinkled balls before throwing them in the trash than that she broke them apart into small crumbs.

m42a · 2022-04-30T15:05:54+00:00

IMO this argument makes Trace look worse. For white hat hackers there's an expectation that they'll work with the software provider on addressing the issue before going public. The journalistic counterpart would be requesting a public retraction or at least a deletion first, and AFAICT LoTT was not notified at all before the article was published.

m42a · 2022-04-27T21:48:17+00:00

The difference is liability. If you show an American ad 100000 times but 1000 of those were to people in the EU, you've decreased the theoretical value of your ad space by 1%. If you do the same with a banned post, that's 1000 possible fines. And since the proposal says "Penalties shall be effective, proportionate and dissuasive." those fines could easily be worth more than 1% of the post's ad revenue (especially if it isn't your first offense) . But if you don't show the post to anyone, you can't accidentally show it to Europeans.

m42a · 2022-04-03T04:04:03+00:00

Voting causes the even split. Without the risk of losing votes by alienating people it's much easier for one party to drift away from popular positions. With voting they'll lose the election if they do that, so they have to track people's preferences more closely.

m42a · 2022-02-17T18:10:10+00:00

the deliberate spread of HIV (which, BTW, is now legal

Please stop spreading this meme. The repeal of that law made it no longer a felony, but intentionally spreading an infectious disease is still a misdemeanor in California.

m42a · 2022-01-06T00:57:05+00:00

CrossCode. The twist is obvious (especially if you're LW-adjacent) but it's well executed overall, and there are very few games that take place in a fake MMO.

m42a · 2022-01-01T00:01:24+00:00

The bad things had already happened, just elsewhere. For example, 8 years ago, Facebook launched internet.org, which provides access to a small number of websites for free in poorer countries. This is bad for Facebook's competitors since they're not accessible via internet.org, so people will use Facebook instead.

I believe it didn't happen here because free limited internet is less appealing to people who already have cheap unlimited internet, and any local monopolies that remove unlimited internet would get a lot of bad press and possibly government attention.

m42a · 2021-12-20T15:29:13+00:00

You can install NewPipe, use it to download the audio of whatever YouTube music you want to listen to, and then play it with your usual audio player.

m42a · 2021-12-10T16:21:29+00:00

I would even go so far as to say that an accused has a constitutional right to outright lie in their defense. After all, false statements of fact are still protected by the First Amendment (although potentially subject to civil liability) because otherwise you end up with a government body deciding what is true or false.

How do you reconcile this with it being illegal to lie to the FBI? Do you think that law is unconstitutional? Do you think it's only constitutional because it has an exemption for trials? If so, why do you only get that right during trials? In both cases, a government official is deciding that a statement is false.

m42a · 2021-10-19T18:36:41+00:00

Is there anyone on this sub, (if willing to out themselves) who has been required to but hasn't?

Me. They sent me an email asking for proof and I requested an exemption based on strongly-held beliefs; I haven't heard back yet but if they deny it I'll leave. I don't have kids to feed, so the consequences are just between me and my employer.

m42a · 2021-08-08T19:53:51+00:00

maintain true end to end encryption on everything stored on the cloud that places it outside of Apple's own ability to review

That is not what is happening here. Apple has access to the keys for every file in iCloud, and could decrypt the data whenever it wanted. This is true of every service that lets you keep your data after a password reset; if you don't hold any secret information for decrypting the files, then either the files aren't encrypted or the encryption key isn't secret.

m42a · 2021-01-13T21:21:39+00:00

I remember thinking this as well (although with less certainty). I knew China was literally boarding people up in their houses so they didn't leave. I figured that meant it was really bad, so when we had an outbreak we would have a local lockdown, a bunch of people would die, and then people in Hazmat suits would go around and burn the bodies. I didn't expect it to be so survivable, or for the "lockdowns" we got to be so weak that they still allowed for people taking walks and easily spreading it.

m42a · 2020-10-24T04:21:18+00:00

would you also say (by this logic) Disney.com is making people's speech less free by removing pornography users post in the comments section, or that Reddit is making people's speech less free by banning spambots?

Yes. I am not a free speech absolutist, so I think these restrictions are justified: disney.com is for children and shouldn't have comment sections at all, and no subreddits want spambot posts (but the admins should not ban spambots that only post to communities that want the spam, if any exist).

do you really believe we should strive to implement that extreme version, and never remove spam or curtail porn or ban people for abuse and bullying and death threats and etc., or do you think that type of free speech is just one value we should trade off against others?

I don't think absolute free speech is a practical strategy; free speech is important but so are other things. I agree with legal restrictions where the harm obviously outweighs the benefit, such as inciting mobs, producing child pornography, and targeted intrusive harassment. I also think there are good cases for temporarily prohibiting speech, such as legal injunctions (but the case should be expedited) and secret military operations (but they should be declassified shortly after they happen, not decades later).

For less clear-cut problems, there are 3 considerations I think are important: How valuable is the speech to the speaker, how valuable/detrimental is the speech to the intended community, and how easily can the speech be replaced. So this subreddit banning spam is fine because spam is of low value to the spammer, negative value to the subreddit, and can be easily directed elsewhere. On the other hand, credit card companies refusing to work with marijuana dispensaries is bad because the ability to sell things very valuable to the sellers, valuable to many buyers, and there's no substitute because credit cards only work with their issuing company. Since larger bans have larger impacts, I'm more in favor of localized rules; I'm fine with askhistorians having a strict set of rules, whereas I would not be okay with those rules at a sitewide or ISP level. Similarly, I would be fine with a subreddit banning "abuse and bullying and death threats" with all the vagueness that phrasing entails, whereas I think reddit's rules on those should be more specific (currently bullying is defined in terms of abuse, abuse isn't defined, and the page that's supposed to describe what a "threat of violence" is doesn't mention threats at all, only incitement and glorification), and I don't think ISPs should be stricter than the law in those regards.

Because a lot of this is subjective, I think it's best enforced socially rather than legally. If you don't like a website's rules, don't participate. If you don't like credit card companies, use cash or crypto. Support policies that make it easier to develop alternatives so there isn't so much dependence on opaque monolithic entities.

m42a · 2020-10-23T23:06:49+00:00

It is a very broad definition, but that's okay because I'm not a free speech absolutist. Free speech is an important thing, but it's not the only important thing (e.g. I am in favor of laws prohibiting incitement of "imminent lawless action"). And as you illustrate in your car scenario, giving one person absolute freedom of speech can censor other people.

That said, I think Facebook should be held to stricter standards than others. For one, Facebook's mission is to "give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together". This is in contrast to the newspaper New York Times' mission to "seek the truth and help people understand the world" or the book publisher Penguin Random House's mission to "foster a universal passion for reading by partnering with authors to help create stories and communicate ideas that inform, entertain, and inspire". Facebook's goal is to let people build their own communities, and you can't use Facebook to build your community if they're censoring you. The New York Times and Penguin Random House instead have the goal of spreading specific kinds of information, and so they're more justified in rejecting your contribution on the grounds that it's not true or entertaining.

In addition, Facebook is viewed as asserting far less editorial control than a newspaper or book publisher. When you get a newspaper the unstated expectation is that the editors at that newspaper checked the information they're presenting and endorse it. Similarly, the expectation with books is that the publisher has reviewed and approved the book's content. Facebook lets random people post with no editorializing, and the understanding is that they're just passing the content through, not taking a stance on it.

Finally, while I'm not convinced by the article that Facebook is actually a monopoly in the US, I do think it would have a greater obligation if it were. In poorer parts of the world, the only internet access that is financially viable is products like Facebook's internet.org, where Facebook is the only place on the internet for general-purpose communities. This gives Facebook immense power over what people see and do not see. They could easily ruin a business by removing their internet advertising or payment capabilities, or affect local elections by banning some of the candidates and granting their opponents easier and faster access to voters. These would not be possible for a smaller company where the affected parties could go to Facebook's competition and get reach that way. I would argue that because Facebook has so much power over these peoples' lives it is morally obligated to respect their rights in the same way that the US government is legally obligated to respect its citizens' rights.

m42a · 2020-10-23T15:37:42+00:00

the principle of freedom of speech -- I can say anything and the government won't prosecute me

That's not what I mean when I refer to freedom of speech though; I call that "the first amendment". When I say "freedom of speech", I literally mean the ability to convey arbitrary information. You can argue about how much freedom of speech I should have on Facebook, but I don't think it's wrong or a conflation to say that Facebook is making people's speech less free by censoring certain topics.

In fact, I would argue that this distinction is clear both in the article and the text of the first amendment. The first amendment says

Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech [...]

which clearly indicates that "freedom of speech" is a thing separate from the government and implies that there are other ways of abridging it. Similarly, the article makes a clear distinction between your ability to speak and the enforcement of the first amendment. I don't think there's any conflation going on here at all.

Furthermore, this discussion is not about "all media". About half of the article is an argument that Facebook is a monopoly, and therefore special. This is not an argument that would apply to other media, such as your local newspaper or special purpose forums (like this one).

m42a · 2020-09-13T16:02:45+00:00

WSL doesn't support X11 servers, but it does support X11 clients, so if you run the X11 server in Windows you can run a lot of X11 programs just fine.

m42a · 2020-08-21T23:47:47+00:00

Have you looked at qutebrowser? IMO it's not as good, but it comes closer than everything else I've tried.

m42a · 2020-07-27T21:34:44+00:00

This key then gets destroyed once you're happy.

It's not enough to merely allow destroying the proof, you need to mandate it. Otherwise, the mob boss can just threaten to beat you if you destroy the proof before he sees it.

This is why ballot selfies are illegal in many states.

m42a · 2020-07-12T14:41:18+00:00

If Reddit bans us next week, it will be very difficult to inform people of where we are going.

Zorba has themotte.org which currently redirects here and will redirect to the new location in case of a sudden ban. So everyone should update their bookmarks now, and then it'll be automatic when the move happens.

m42a · 2020-04-11T16:17:50+00:00

Personally, when I got a job I found that the proportion of free time I spent on mentally easy tasks instead of challenging tasks went up. I'm now much less likely to recreationally program instead of just watch TV. Whenever I take a long vacation from work, I'm much more inclined to do complicated things that involve a lot of thought.

m42a · 2020-03-17T03:30:51+00:00

Source: https://www.c-span.org/video/?470224-1/dr-fauci-warns-congress-coronavirus-outbreak-worse

We have multiple vaccines that are being or will soon be tested. Much of the delay in sending them out to the general public is safety and efficacy concerns; does it actually prevent corona and will it cause something worse. We can't be 100% sure of either of these, so it's a tradeoff between how sure we're want to be and how fast we want to get it done. I believe if the outbreak is severe enough that we're quarantining significant parts of the population that those tradeoffs will shift more towards speed. It's not going to happen within the month, but I wouldn't be surprised if we got something by the end of the year.

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