Free Speech: Thank You Jacob

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Mister Imperceptible
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Re: Free Speech: Thank You Jacob

Post by Mister Imperceptible »

“It will be illegal not to take the vaccine that was rushed to market and was mysteriously available the moment that US media outlets announced Biden as president-elect. Furthermore, it will be illegal to talk about it.”

https://mobile.twitter.com/dylangrice/s ... 1693040640

UK-with-kids
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Re: Free Speech: Thank You Jacob

Post by UK-with-kids »

The way I see it:

We have just had a very close election with the loser claiming foul play and refusing to accept the result. The loser is bringing legal cases and trying to overturn the result.

In 2016 we had the Brexit vote. In this case the Remain side claimed that Vote Leave had cheated in various ways, they refused to accept the result and spent the next 4 years trying to overturn the result through various means, including going to the UK Supreme Court.

However, the major difference this time is that the left-leaning cause has won, whereas last time they lost. As a result we now have the situation where any suggestion that there might have been voting fraud is treated as a conspiracy theory that has to be shut down, even before the result is officially confirmed! According to BBC News today, Biden's aide Bill Russo has just been attacking Facebook for streaming the Trump team's press conference which even Fox News cut away from. Yet anti-Brexit news was all over both mainstream and social media for years after the Brexit result, with nobody told to shut anything down as a conspiracy.

This led me to an idle thought - we think the internet has too many echo chambers now, but what if platforms like Twitter and Facebook can't survive such divisiveness and ultimately fail to satisfy the authorities and users of every persuasion. Maybe we will end up with separate social media giants for right and left wing views. That would surely make things even worse :(

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Jean
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Re: Free Speech: Thank You Jacob

Post by Jean »

It has already been so for a few years and that's why we are in this situation.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Free Speech: Thank You Jacob

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Eh, I heard both my Democratic governor and a representative for Biden straight-up state no mandate for vaccine. I also did see another rumor that Biden is going to share the vaccine with the world before any American who wants it can get it. So, apparently both unsubstantiated angles are being given play.

I am going to ask my doctor how I can get on the early candidate list for the vaccine, and I might fire him if he’s not super helpful.

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Re: Free Speech: Thank You Jacob

Post by jacob »

Mister Imperceptible wrote:
Wed Nov 11, 2020 12:05 am
“It will be illegal not to take the vaccine that was rushed to market and was mysteriously available the moment that US media outlets announced Biden as president-elect. Furthermore, it will be illegal to talk about it.”

https://mobile.twitter.com/dylangrice/s ... 1693040640
I don't know if this was to make a point for the defense of "free speech of stupid" but I'd just like to remind that free speech on this forum is not absolute. In particular, while the Overton in wider than usual, my tolerance for idiocracy is rather low. The ability to make unsubstantiated claims and then ask people to "make up their own minds" is not supported on this forum. Indeed, that strategy is part of the misinformation playbook claiming it's part of free speech is, excuse me, just a special case of "flooding the end-zone with shit" so uninformed people will google a turd when they "do their research". It has nothing to do with informed complaints about the government w/o repercussions.
jacob wrote:
Tue Aug 25, 2015 4:58 pm
8) NO MEMES, NO MISINFORMATION, NO SHITPOSTING! This forum mainly exists as a high quality source of information and discussion. While some think that memes are artistic or that misinformation is just an opinion or that shitposting is "fun lulz", one would be hard-pressed to make the argument that any of these contribute quality insights or that posting them adds to any discussion in an intelligent manner.
In my opinion, free speech as a concept was a solution to an entirely different problem than the current misinformation strategies. The former makes it possible to have a democracy because one can discuss the government negatively and not just positively. The latter makes discussion impossible because the people are no longer able to discuss anything.

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Mister Imperceptible
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Re: Free Speech: Thank You Jacob

Post by Mister Imperceptible »

Alright, I will try to bring it back to “Just the Facts, ma’am” with less color.

Pfizer's CEO cashed out 62% of his stock on the same day the company unveiled the results of its COVID-19 vaccine trial:

https://markets.businessinsider.com/new ... 1029790705

7Wannabe5
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Re: Free Speech: Thank You Jacob

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

So what? I cashed out half my BNTX on the news too. It’s entirely possible for an individual or a corporation to be simultaneously motivated by profit and improved health.

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Mister Imperceptible
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Re: Free Speech: Thank You Jacob

Post by Mister Imperceptible »

@7

I could only answer you with a speculative unsubstantiated claim.
Last edited by Mister Imperceptible on Wed Nov 11, 2020 9:28 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Alphaville
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Re: Free Speech: Thank You Jacob

Post by Alphaville »

crowd behavior bound to overinflate expectations on first news only to be disappointed and bring back to reasonable levels later

“sell the highs” story as old as time

(this is just one possible story)

i can make up other stories to fit...

-ceo having achieved a lifetime goal plans to rest on their laurels
-wants cash to pursue their own startup
-or pursue skiing
-is being blackmailed or must pay ransom
-personal guru wants cut of the profits
-spouse is divorcing them
-lost a huge sports bet and must retain kneecaps
-feels the need to diversify assets
-etc
Last edited by Alphaville on Wed Nov 11, 2020 9:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

jacob
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Re: Free Speech: Thank You Jacob

Post by jacob »

Mister Imperceptible wrote:
Wed Nov 11, 2020 9:27 am
I could only answer you with a speculative unsubstantiated claim.
Good choice. Speculative claims should be substantiated way beyond "some people are saying" or vague innuendo. Otherwise it's just bullshitting (generally defined as speech w/o regard for veracity). To give an example, this is why chapter 7 in the ERE book contains those savings rate derivations at a granular level. It would make little sense to include such today other than if you're an app developer who needs the equations to make their own firecalc. However, when it was published, nobody had ever shown the entire parameter space before, so w/o explicitly showing the math, it would just have been some crazy 30-something upstart making wild claims about being financially independent on "not a million dollars".

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Mister Imperceptible
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Re: Free Speech: Thank You Jacob

Post by Mister Imperceptible »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Wed Nov 11, 2020 9:22 am
So what? I cashed out half my BNTX on the news too. It’s entirely possible for an individual or a corporation to be simultaneously motivated by profit and improved health.
Alphaville wrote:
Wed Nov 11, 2020 9:28 am
crowd behavior bound to overinflate expectations on first news only to be disappointed and bring back to reasonable levels later

“sell the highs” story as old as time

(this is just one possible story)

i can make up other stories to fit...

-ceo having achieved a lifetime goal plans to rest on their laurels
-wants cash to pursue their own startup
-or pursue skiing
-is being blackmailed or must pay ransom
-personal guru wants cut of the profits
-spouse is divorcing them
-lost a huge sports bet and must retain kneecaps
-feels the need to diversify assets
-etc
@Dr. Fisker

Can I use one of these?

jacob
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Re: Free Speech: Thank You Jacob

Post by jacob »

@MI - No. Until you actually know which one it is, you have to assume all of them could be true. Picking one favorite and going with that is the foundation of crackpottery.

What I'm arguing for and promoting on this forum is informed speech and not free speech per se.

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Alphaville
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Re: Free Speech: Thank You Jacob

Post by Alphaville »

yah my examples were just illustrations of narrative fallacy not actual propositions of truth value

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Jean
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Re: Free Speech: Thank You Jacob

Post by Jean »

What is the local standard for claim substantiation?
As you said, there is so much disinformation coming from anywhere, that no source can be trusted anymore, and you have to check everything. This lead that anyone you try to discuss with, either need to trust you, or be able and willing to do the research himself during the discussion. It effectively makes discussion impossible with anyone that doesn't already agree with you.
I think the consequence is that at some point, fighting will become (already is) cheaper than talking, which might lead to an unconforable solution to global warming.

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Re: Free Speech: Thank You Jacob

Post by jacob »

Jean wrote:
Wed Nov 11, 2020 10:14 am
What is the local standard for claim substantiation?
It either needs to point back to at least one (but more is much better) reputable news sources or scientific journals(*). Insofar that is not the case, the argument has to be constructed from the ground up using assumptions everybody agrees on.

The other thing to keep in mind is that the wilder the claim, the more substantiation is required. Most issues tend to have pretty mundane explanations when it comes down to it.

(*) Why those? Because they're in the business of investigating claims from the ground up on the penalty of either getting fired or losing reputation.

Case in point, the chapter 7 derivations. Since I couldn't cite a financial journal and my claim went against CFP/CPA (experts) advice, I had to make my argument by showing ALL the math. Otherwise asserting the possibility of FIRE'ing in 5 years when the standard is 20+ years would have been outrageous. Yet in showing the math, it was very easy to convince those experts that my claim was correct. This is how the process should work and how it hope it will work on this forum.

There are plenty of places on the interwebs where bullshitting is an acceptable form of communication or even a lifestyle: twitter, facebook, youtube, and talk show radio/TV. So if that is the desire, it's pretty easy to find. It's much harder to find places on the internet which haven't been infected by the bullshitting disease yet. I'm trying to keep this place relatively free and possibly immune to bullshit. This, even if it means sacrificing some freedoms if it comes to that.

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Re: Free Speech: Thank You Jacob

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@MI:

You’re a good kid, but this search for deep conspiracy is going to sicken your soul. Most humans most of the time just want more pie, weed, or a threesome.

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Re: Free Speech: Thank You Jacob

Post by Hristo Botev »

As a slight anecdotal deviation here, from my time working with (and within) very large corporations (including pharmas) as counsel, I'll just say my takeaway has been that to the extent there's any "conspiracy" one way or another, it's a systemic one--it's not really smoke-filled backrooms. The truth of the matter is that the larger these corporations get, the more you can safely assume they are just trying to keep up with what the smaller and more nimble are doing (until they can buy-up the smaller and more nimble, and/or create additional barriers to entry in the form of regulations, etc.). I certainly think there are all sorts of ways "the system" is out to get us and make us poorer, fatter, stupider, more dependent, and less happy (assuming "happy" means something more than hedonistically satisfied), but we are as much to blame for that system as any one C-suite executive who just perhaps happens to better at manipulating the system than we are.

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Re: Free Speech: Thank You Jacob

Post by Jean »

Reputable today is very subjective.
There are now unfortunatly many example of reputable news source and scientific journal carying misinformations. OTOH, people doing the research from the ground aren't reputable as long as enough people have repeated it. This is endless, any source to back up my claim of reputable source to be wrong without aknowledging it afterward can be deemed unreputable. It always was self defining, but somehow, the chain of reputation has been broken.
If i take the example of global warming, the only way to convince anyone, is to make him read your long post on the old thread (or a similar demonstration) and test everything he doesn't believe. It takes a lot of effort. And unless the same effort as been put into dismissing a claim, it isn't possible anymore to assess the veracity of anything anymore.

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Re: Free Speech: Thank You Jacob

Post by jacob »

Overall, this forum is a place where posters should put in that effort.

In theory, "reputable" in this sense means a history of not failing fact checks and/or correcting the record when failing. Here "facts" refers to information that can be verified from the ground up. "Disreputable" means a history of failed fact checks, not correcting the record when failing, and using "alternative facts" which can not be verified. It's not a black/white issue as much as it is a matter of percentages. One can attach such a "percentage" in terms of authority/trustworthiness to individual humans as well as organizations.

In practice, I decide.

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Re: Free Speech: Thank You Jacob

Post by Hristo Botev »

As another anecdotal deviation, as someone who spent the past few weeks putting in the effort of reading Jacob's various posts on the topic of CC, as well as several (though admittedly not all; that textbook is just too expensive) resources that have been suggested along the way, I've learned that with the exception of something like trademark and advertising law, which I've actually put in the time and effort to become expert in, my conversations concerning other areas of speciality--on this forum or IRL--really should just be limited to asking lots and lots of questions.

ETA: This is perhaps the single biggest incentive for me personally to work towards FIRE; I don't mind "working," but I want to be able to let my "work" go wherever my particular interests lead me. And, frankly, I want to become an "expert" in something other than what I do for a living currently.

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