All that deep learning stuff on your posting habits is to map you onto a consumer identity (commodified personhood), this is why social media synergises so well with advertising. You first have that advertising allows the commodification of potential; your potential attention increases the expected revenue through exposure to goods you may purchase, making the codification of your personality valuable intellectual property (yes, you don't own your cyberspace image, that is terrifying).

You then have the site explicitly tailoring the goods it shows you to maximise the purchase chance. This has the effect of associating a revenue stream, literally, with your eye movements and left mouse button clicks.

Maybe he wanted to go out with a bang or was in the wrong place at the wrong time or was unaware that his comments would come under greater scrutiny instead of being in a comfortable position of being on tenure yet being completely unqualified for the government job he had.

Who knows such things?

*Quickly retreats to the shoutbox*

Social media = social life and discourse = politics make sense in a political system where individuals cannot influence all, or at least the most important, institutional influences on their lives. Twitter is far less the downfall of civilisation than a concentrated expression of the alienation of people from politics and their governments from power. It reflects the state of the world more than it creates it. — fdrake

I agree that it's the way we use the tool of social media that is the problem (because of what we are), and not the existence of social media itself, but I think it has made the symptom of political marginalization (of the middle and lower class to be specific) much more severe. Maybe I'm being naive, but it feels like the public was more in the loop before we exchanged specifics for pomp and optics. What meaningful discourse we did have has devolved into simplistic diatribe.

All that deep learning stuff on your posting habits is to map you onto a consumer identity, this is why social media synergises so well with advertising. You first have that advertising allows the commodification of potential; your potential attention increases the expected revenue through exposure to goods you may purchase, making the codification of your personality valuable intellectual property (yes, you don't own your cyberspace image, that is terrifying).

You then have the site explicitly tailoring the goods it shows you to maximise the purchase chance. This has the effect of associating a revenue stream, literally, with your eye movements and left mouse clicks. — fdrake

I think one half-solution to this will be anti-trust legislation that break up data monopolies, and also additional legislation to enforce stronger privacy rights, but the overall perverse incentives that have commoditized our identities are likely here to stay (so long as the digital spice road stays what it is).

This is a 1979 episode of William F. Buckley Junior's "Firing Line" titled: "The Problem of Illegal Aliens" (a title which would itself be controversial in some contemporary circles). Despite Buckley's status as a right wing darling, and despite his use of offensive language (less so when it was filmed), he manages to conduct a civil and somewhat nuanced discussion of Mexico-U.S immigration, and actually winds up looking far more progressive than many of his contemporary conservative counter-parts. Throughout this episode they discuss the exact same issues that have been such hot topics of late, and though we have 40 years of hindsight to benefit from, somehow they do a better job of it (much credit to his guest who did an excellent job of challenging Buckley et al.'s conservative assumptions).

This contrasts with contemporary discourse like an opera contrasts with a pair of mewling asses.



Here are some interesting timestamps:

Border wall: 15:00
Caravans and refugee boats: 29:31
Immigration in general: 40:00

Am I wrong to think that this is the kind of discourse that improves our democratic health?

Or whatever martyred heretic we'd like to talk about. — fdrake

I wasn't expecting to be the Spanish Inquisition. I know you academics are sensitive little souls and all that, but out here in the rough tough world, customers make complaints and nobody has a job for life.

Under capitalism, education is a commodity, and is democratised by consumerism - the customer is always right. So professors have to win popularity contests just like the rest of us. And in particular, academics that deliberately put themselves in the public eye by publishing controversial political pieces in the mainstream media need to toughen up and stop whining about witch hunts when they meet some opposition and become somewhat unpopular. Folks that want unquestioned tenure should stay in their ivory towers and and only talk to other tenured academics. i never complain about the ones I never hear about. Government advisers deserve the blame for everything, don't they?

So, are unsightly ivory towers a bug or a feature of a healthy discoursal landscape? I say, on the whole, a feature, as are the marauding hordes of liberal activists trying to pull them down. Neither an endless flatland of liberal pasture nor a spiked vista of impregnable minarets is as fertile a ground for ideological exchange and development.

So, are unsightly ivory towers a bug or a feature of a healthy discoursal landscape? — Baden

I think ivory towers are great adjuncts to any monastery. But if you use them as grandiose soapboxes, you deserve all the rotten tomatoes you get. Scruton and Paglia are not academics, they're wannabe celebrities. Nobody dragged them into the limelight, and if they weren't there, we wouldn't be discussing them.

Under capitalism, education is a commodity, and is democratised by consumerism - the customer is always right. So professors have to win popularity contests just like the rest of us. And in particular, academics that deliberately put themselves in the public eye by publishing controversial political pieces in the mainstream media need to toughen up and stop whining about witch hunts when they meet some opposition and become somewhat unpopular. Folks that want unquestioned tenure should stay in their ivory towers and and only talk to other tenured academics. i never complain about the ones I never hear about. Government advisers deserve the blame for everything, don't they? — unenlightened

:up:

Twitter didn't create Scruton's views, or their social context. The method here is more like discovering a septic spot then squeezing it than giving yourself a midge bite. Scruton was already conservative wallpaper.

Scruton and Paglia are not academics, they're wannabe celebrities. — unenlightened

Both are professors, one graduate of Yale, another graduate and PhD from Cambridge and both have long extensive academic careers.

But if they have been active in social media, unenlightened here thinks somehow they are not academics.

Personally, I want a diverse landscape; the tallest peaks, the flattest fields, and free-to-travel foot paths linking them all together.

But it feels like we've just discovered a new kind of siege technology, and it's changing the landscape:

We can form such large groups that we're able to put immense pressure on institutional facades, and they often have no choice but to cave, whether or not they should be allowed to stand or fall on its own merit (as opposed to our ire).

Once we can no longer safely exhibit our ideas above ground, what happens to democratic dialogue and debate? Instead of Ivory towers that are visible to all, architecture will move underground, like bunkers, and we'll have nothing left but our conflicts.

I want to de-platform people who say the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax perpetrated by gun control proponents.

You disagree?

This is William F. Buckley in 2007 on Muslims:

Western Europe has a Muslim problem, and it is particularly acute in Great Britain, which is more intimately linked to constitutional traditions and procedures. The French are quietly aghast at the presence of five million Muslims in their midst and are endeavoring to cope.

But the threat to it is not, this time around, in the shape of a continental army threatening invasion, or Nazi bombers darkening the sky. The threat now is the Muslim immigration. There are fewer Muslims in Britain than in France — two million — but that’s still a lot.

There are many interpreters of the true meaning of the commandments of the Koran. But among them are men and women who are prepared to end their own lives for the satisfaction of defying the British way of life.

What's interesting about Buckley is that he's illustrative of how normal conservatism and the alt-right cannot be so neatly separated. Mainstream conservatism has routinely platformed and turned a blind eye towards white supremacy until it is no longer because tenable to do so (e.g. when the language because too explicit). Buckley spent his life attempting to demarcate his mainstream conservatism with what we would call the alt-right today, including, but not limited to, antisemitism, white ethno-nationalism, Islamophobia, etc. (can't include anti-Black racism since it was a major talking point within the National Review) Yet he frequently hired and platformed radical right-wingers only to fire them when they said the quiet parts out-loud. Of course, this continues to this day.

Latest privileged white academic in the firing line for having incorrect views is Camille Paglia. It was only a matter of time I guess.

Art students are trying to get the social critic fired from a job she has held for three decades — jamalrob

This reason this is garbage is being discussed at all reveals itself clearly at the bottom of the article, namely: This article is part of “The Speech Wars,” a project supported by the Charles Koch Foundation, the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press, and the Fetzer Institute.

"The girls have been coached now to imagine that the world is a dangerous place, but not one that they can control on their own … They expect the omnipresence of authority figures … They’re college students and they expect that a mistake that they might make at a fraternity party and that they may regret six months later or a year later, that somehow this isn’t ridiculous? To me, it is ridiculous that any university ever tolerated a complaint of a girl coming in six months or a year after an event. If a real rape was committed go frigging report it …"

lol "incorrect" view. That's certainly a way to put it. Can't talk about victim blaming women after they've been raped and are hesitant to come forward? A true disaster for the marketplace of ideas.

I don't usually watch videos posted online, but that is inspiring. The guest, Leon Castillo, was absolutely brilliant - so gentle, thoughtful and respectful. I wish he were the US president. The conservatives: Buckley and Meyer, were also civilised, polite and deferential. The mood was one of trying to jointly work towards a solution, rather than trying to score points off one another, which is what modern political discourse in the media so commonly is.

Paglia says what she says because she believes women are strong and able to deal with the situation.

If reported to the police quickly something can be done. 6+ months later there is hardly going to be evidence to prove anything. I doubt she would contest hard evidence coming to light that proved rape (video evidence or such).

Also, universities shouldn’t have to worry about these issues. If criminal activity takes place then students should report them to the police.

I think you get Paglia's attitude right. I understand both where Paglia is coming from and why some find her tactless presentation offensive (she's crankier these days in videos.) Is this not to goal, to understand the complexity of the issue and what each perspective gets right? What's disturbing to me is the attitude that those who hurt our feelings with their perspective forfeit their right to share that perspective. Some gang of college kids decides to become the thought police and purge their institution of anyone who questions their recently acquired final vocabulary.

My concern, to the degree that I've not just accepted it as the way of the world, is not that would-be censors will succeed in their attempted censorship but that the culture war will continue to clog our minds and keep working people from voting in unison on issues that they actually agree on. I like Andrew Yang's persona. My current perspective is that there tends to be insight on both sides of a division, along with a monstrousness that both sides accurately diagnose only in the other.

If we look through history we can find a long string of individuals commenting about the rise of anti-intellectualism. I think the problem has always existed in societies and that today the issue is more or less about how social media has magnified a perpetually existent vein of human discourse.

No doubt some will become persecuted for speaking plainly and without fear where others will be too frightened to speak out. It is on the edges of popular discourse where the so-called ‘controversial’ types wander that the most potential lies.

The lazy and inhibiting weight of personal subjectivity overriding basic reasoning has always been a hobbling factor for human societal progression. Allow the children their victimhood, let the naive tricksters cry wolf, time is a mighty leveler and we’ve all been foolish in our regard to the world with our self-proclaimed scrying abilities about the ‘proper’ and ‘just’ course for human life.

When I see so-called ‘controversy’ and ‘upset’ it pleases me. The more the better! When there is none humanity is dead and buried, anti-intellectualism having won out leaving us to gnaw on our own rotting flesh and cracked bone.

I want to de-platform people who say the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax perpetrated by gun control proponents.

You disagree? — frank

This is a great question. My answer is yes and no.

Is the platform government funded? If so, then it has no business wasting time on outlandish conspiracy theories, and we're democratically duty bound to demand satisfaction from our representatives.

Is the platform privately owned? If so, then it's something I would usually rather be solved through debate. De-platforming doesn't defeat ideas, it just sweeps them under the rug where they fester in the dark. By policing ideas on the platforms we do follow, we're just increasing demand for niche platforms that will cater directly to whatever it is we're censoring (and also inflating it (especially to rebellious youth) by making it seem forbidden).

"Platform" can mean many things in this context. If someone like Alex Jones publishes this kind of material on his own website, should we lobby his ISP or domain provider to cut him off? Should we lobby google to remove his material from search engine results or disallow his use of google ads? Should we criminalise spreading unreasonable conspiracy theories about atrocities? How far we are willing to go do "de-platform" someone, and what that actually means, can only really be answered by looking at specific cases.

Alex Jones might be the perfect case study. Not quite David Ike level crazy, but pretty close, Alex Jones was pushed out of the mainstream ("de-platformed") over a decade ago, so he turned to the newest and as yet unregulated forms of media to reach and build his audience. Now that new media is becoming the mainstream, his shitty views have caught up with him and once again he is de-platformed from places like faceboook, twitter, and youtube (which combined represent a very impressive market share of online dialogue). As before, he is just going to move into newer formats, and he will likely bring much of his existing audience with him. The main difference is that there will be few to challenge him in these new platforms. I'm definitely not saying that mainstream news outlets should have wasted any time trying to hear Alex out, but I am definitely saying that de-platforming alone might not make a lick of difference (it might even be counter-productive to our goals).

Online conspiracy theories are actually a billion dollar industry based on click value alone (ad-revenue), and since the 00's and early 10's there has been this endless rabbit hole of interlinked podunk websites (hundreds of thousands of them; think flashing gifs and a 5 mile long front-page) that profit from it. The sheer volume and density of bullshit they contain is enough to delude the best of us, and it's all so cloistered that there's no room for criticism (which is essential for them to grow in popularity). This is how and why the flat-earth community has been revived in the 21st century; cloistered and divided communities bereft of intellectual diversity, and marked by the inability to tolerate the presence of opposing views.

I don't think we should be platforming obviously ridiculous views, but if we make it a point to push them off their extant rocks and into the sea, they're out of sight and out mind, but not for very long (there's always more rocks). It's better to let Alex live or die on his Youtube or Facebook hill.

When it comes to making libellous or harassing accusations against grieving parents, I think that should be a matter for the courts (I don't think he should have the right to publish baseless claims in a way that directly harasses and invades the privacy of innocent individuals).

I don't usually watch videos posted online, but that is inspiring. The guest, Leon Castillo, was absolutely brilliant - so gentle, thoughtful and respectful. I wish he were the US president. The conservatives: Buckley and Meyer, were also civilised, polite and deferential. The mood was one of trying to jointly work towards a solution, rather than trying to score points off one another, which is what modern political discourse in the media so commonly is. — andrewk

I was pretty much blown away by the overall quality of it all, especially Castillo. While I am not a fan of Buckley's political views, I'm a big fan of his style and effort. What I found most surprising was that we have basically made zero progress since the filming of that episode in terms of the specific political debate, and that we seem to have actually regressed in terms of our general civility and willingness to engage openly and in earnest.

How far we are willing to go do "de-platform" someone, and what that actually means, can only really be answered by looking at specific cases. — VagabondSpectre

I have a lot of sympathy for your position, but I think this point you make perhaps covers much of what has happened to Jones, Scruton and Paglia etc. We "de-platform" people all the time for all sorts of reasons. I'm currently de-platformed from speaking on political matters at universities across the country. This is because I have no qualifications in politics, nor am I famous and universities only give platforms to speakers who are either qualified or famous. As far as politics is concerned, neither qualification nor fame are more likely to make what I have to say more interesting or right, but qualification or fame just happen to be the university's criteria for offering a platform. If they extend that criteria to include, for want of a better word, 'political correctness', how is that any different?

The same goes for YouTube, Facebook etc. We don't all have an equal platform in these places either. Those with more money, fame, charm or even just dumb luck have a platform that others don't. Again, how is adding 'political correctness' to that list any more arbitrary?

I'm with you on the principle that ideas should be freely discussed, I strongly believe this is the best way for society to progress. But ideas are definitely not freely discussed. Ideas are shut down and de-platformed for all sorts of more or less arbitrary reasons. If we don't allow 'political correctness' to be one of those reasons, we are affording non-politically correct ideas a special status other ideas do not benefit from.

We don't all have an equal platform in these places either. Those with more money, fame, charm or even just dumb luck have a platform that others don't. Again, how is adding 'political correctness' to that list any more arbitrary? — Isaac

One of the things that gives one a platform is being controversial, aka political incorrectness. My feeling is that academic platforms should be reserved for academic type talk. By which I mean measured, careful, dispassionate, balanced, tight, and that means not talking loosely about a Soros Empire, or bandying 'vile' and 'disgusting' about without a very careful supporting argument. Journalism in newspapers, political rhetoric on soapboxes, complete bollocks on facebook, and in universities -smart people talking carefully and clearly.

Journalism in newspapers, political rhetoric on soapboxes, complete bollocks on facebook, and in universities -smart people talking carefully and clearly. — unenlightened

Yes, I think, in theory, having the right talk in the right place is the key to not incidentally lending legitimacy to some ideas that don't deserve it (the avoidance of which is the point I was trying to make). The risk here though, is that we continue to lend ideas undeserved legitimacy by presuming these circumscribed places are anything but arbitrary. It's about expectation, not objective criteria. I expect someone speaking as a university professor to be educated and factually accurate, so if they are allowed not to be, there is the risk of deception. I expect Facebook to be full of utter bollocks, so when it is, I'm not deceived.

What I dislike about what's happened to someone like Paglia, is that there is no body of fact to justify her position in the first place. Most 'smart' people think that steel is better than jelly for making bridges, and most 'smart' people see that people should not be segregated because of the colour of their skin, but the two are obviously very different kinds of 'right'. Paglia is not an expert in anything other than in what other people in her field thought (people who, themselves are not experts in anything other than the same). There is no body of fact for her to be factually accurate about. So 'smart' (by which I'm assuming you mean factually accurate), carefulness and clarity, whilst noble aims, can all too readily become completely subjective synonyms for "stuff I agree with".

What's interesting about Buckley is that he's illustrative of how normal conservatism and the alt-right cannot be so neatly separated. Mainstream conservatism has routinely platformed and turned a blind eye towards white supremacy until it is no longer because tenable to do so (e.g. when the language because too explicit). — Maw

And again, what in the quote is about white supremacy?

Xenophobia doesn't imply white supremacist thought. You might argue it the other way around, but again, not everybody is a white nationalist on the right. It would be similar to calling every social democrat a marxist and arguing that the two ideologies are inherently the same ideology.

I've come to the simple conclusion that people tolerate foreigners and ethnic minorities when these people provide money and hence are beneficial to the society as a whole. Contribution gives the acceptance. Period. It's universal and has a long historical background.

You see, nobody hates tourists. Yet if the tourists wouldn't spend their money, wouldn't contribute to the society by creating jobs etc, but would be begging in the streets and sleeping in the parks, they would be hated everywhere and wouldn't be welcome at all. Hence if it seems that a minority isn't giving it's share to the society, but seems to be free riding the system, immediately the xenophobic views emerge. How real this is actually, is often a good topic for debate, but once it's truly obvious for everybody, the notion is totally different: if the foreigners are literally taking wealth away from the society, then you have the younger generations up in arms against the foreigners are then simply called a foreign occupiers. You call it an occupation and the foreigners the enemy. And when a country is really occupied by another one and this creates a conflict, nobody in their right mind is calling the insurgents xenophobes.

Do ethnic minorities and foreigners make easy scapegoats? Of course. But this unfortunate thing is not at all confined to one single race. The above has absolutely nothing to do with white supremacy as the fact is totally applicable to other societies than white European or North American. The feeling and behavior is quite universal even for those who are non-whites. And the above is very important to understand because otherwise one can make the error of thinking that one set of people are 'open to foreigners and multicultural' while then another society is a bunch of bigoted xenophobes.

But it feels like we've just discovered a new kind of siege technology, and it's changing the landscape: — VagabondSpectre

But is there suddenly a dearth of whacky, objectionable, and generally fucked-up ideas out there? Has the volume on reactionary voices been turned so far down that we can no longer hear the anti-immigrant, homophobic, Islamophobic, sexist trumpets blowing? Or is the fear for a dystopic future where public figures are not allowed to be assholes and therefore we all forget how to think?

I don't see it. From the evidence of the thread I see:

1) The curmudgeonly unfortunately-not-yet-mummified Scruton losing one of his sidelines as a government advisor for some ill-judged use of language with the accusations against him appearing to be at least partly trumped up.
2) Camille Paglia being unsuccessfully assailed by some students exercising their free speech rights to try to punish her use of her ivory tower to fire thoughtless missives against sexual assault victims.
3) Major talking turd Alex Jones falling foul of social media company guidelines that, like our guidelines, result in the banning of minor talking turds on a regular basis.

The ideological warfare seems to be getting along fine and fears of peace seem greatly exaggerated.

('Scuse me if I kinda strawmanned you there btw. I wanted to get that out. :razz: )

From the evidence of the thread I see:

1) The curmudgeonly unfortunately-not-yet-mummified Scruton losing one of his sidelines as a government advisor for some ill-judged use of language with the accusations against him appearing to be at least partly trumped up.
2) Camille Paglia being unsuccessfully assailed by some students exercising their free speech rights to punish her use of her ivory tower to fire thoughtless missives against sexual assault victims.
3) Talking turd Alex Jones falling foul of social media company guidelines that, like our guidelines, result in the banning of minor talking turds on a regular basis.

The ideological warfare seems to be getting along fine and fears of peace seem greatly exaggerated. — Baden

:up:

I would add the 'ideological war' isn't truly detrimental or dangerous either as neither side is really thinking of implementing a Final Solution to get rid of the other side. We're still talking.

Paglia says what she says because she believes women are strong and able to deal with the situation. — I like sushi

Did you watch the youtube interview?

By policing ideas on the platforms we do follow, we're just increasing demand for niche platforms that will cater directly to whatever it is we're censoring (and also inflating it (especially to rebellious youth) by making it seem forbidden). — VagabondSpectre

Likewise, I'd never heard of Scruton before seeing this thread. The British government didn't eliminate his audience, it only removed itself from his company, making its sentiments clear. How is that a bad thing?

I'm not on facebook or twitter. I'm really only interested in the principles involved. I think we tried the completely uncensored internet. That resulted in the landscape being flooded with misinformation. If the goal is to protect democracy, we should at least make an effort to reduce misinformation, even if there is always more on the horizon.

I don't propose being ruthless about it. We don't have to turn into China over it. BTW, have you heard about China's Muslim concentration camps?

Depends what specific vid you’re talking about. I have watched various talks she’s given and read some of her articles here and there enough to understand her general position - which hold weight.

Imagine Person X. Person X states that if a man or woman brings allegations of rape six months or a year after the alleged event, that person should be ignored.

This is not an idea worthy of taking a place in the 'marketplace of ideas.' It's just stupidity. Do you agree or disagree?