
FAQ Off: An Open Source Project to Defeat Harassment Mobs and Disinformation - some_furry
https://dev.to/soatokdhole/faq-off-an-open-source-project-to-defeat-harassment-mobs-and-anti-intellectualism-27jk
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traverseda
Eww, automated arguments. I toyed with a similar idea, it can be pretty easy
to write a chat bot that automatically responds to common arguments. Anyone
who's ever debated the religiously-indoctrinated will see a similar thing, a
"script" of common talking points that you pretty quickly see or what they
are, thought-terminating cliches. At least with real people you can sometimes
find a path through those thought-terminating cliches, or they can find a path
through yours, and you can actually _think_ about things.

I'm not looking forward to the future where every time I try to discuss
something I'm linked to an (out of date and poorly maintained) playbook that
has obvious flaws in it's arguments but is considered an irrefutable source of
truth by it's proponents. At least when you're dealing with people on an
individual level you can point out when there are issues with an argument.

I know it's hard to have productive discussion about a lot of these things but
I can't help but think it would be _much_ better to try and teach people basic
epistemology, how to assess what you should count as evidence, how much weight
you should give different standards of evidence, rules of debating in good
faith, etc.

All these tools for "taking control of the narrative" will be used by your
enemies. If you're going to make a tool like that realize that _everyone_ can
use tools like that, even your ideological opponents. Try to think about the
consequences of your actions, what happens if everyone adopts this technology
for "controlling the narrative"? What happens if the "alt right" this post
mentions starts using it?

I guess it's nice to make the script you're following explicit though.

~~~
some_furry
> All these tools for "taking control of the narrative" will be used by your
> enemies.

The alt-right already takes control of the narrative.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmVkJvieaOA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmVkJvieaOA)

Even if this platform ever "took off" enough to be used by bad people, the
only thing that would happen is we'd have a level playing field.

~~~
traverseda
They'll use it better than you. That's a very common trend, the far-left
develops some new tool to control the narrative or otherwise excerpt social
control and they discover that the alt-right is better equipped to use it then
they are.

We've seen this time and time again. If you're going to try to use that tactic
at least don't be so _obvious_ about it. Do what the geek-feminism-wiki or
derailing-for-dummies does and put all your thought-terminating cliche's into
a wiki that you can claim is authoritative or otherwise supported be science,
and link people to that (for bonus points tie identity politics into it so
that the arguments can only be used against people in your outgroup).

You're trying to use technology to make a fully-general-counterargument which
is just bad epistemology. What's worse is that if you normalize that style of
discourse it will be used against you to much greater effect then you can hope
to wield it. The thing about tools like this is that they're _force
multipliers_ , if you're not already winning bringing in a force multiplier
like this won't help. Force-multipliers inherently favour entrenched power
structures unless there's some reason why your group would be better at using
them, some asymmetry.

[https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/24/guided-by-the-
beauty-o...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/24/guided-by-the-beauty-of-
our-weapons/) for more on asymmetric memetic warfare.

Seriously, if you're going to mess around with persuasion technology be very
careful.

~~~
some_furry
I appreciate the reading material and words of caution. I will take those to
heart. <3

~~~
traverseda
Awesome, if you want to talk about that kind of thing in more depth, or if you
want some more reading material recommendations from that particular
community, feel free to shoot me an email. $thisusername@gmail.com

Also I just realized I linked you to the wrong article:
[https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/06/asymmetric-weapons-
gon...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/06/asymmetric-weapons-gone-bad/)

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downerending
> And then, all current and future iterations of the same tired line of
> questioning can be answered by a simple hyperlink instead of wasting your
> time again.

That will totally work.

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Ajedi32
So I looked at one example (the VPN misconceptions one) and coming at it from
the perspective of someone looking for an argument (the "Sea Lions" referred
to in the OP) the whole thing really just feels like a giant straw man. Few if
any of the "questions" in the FAQ are stances I'd actually take in a debate
about VPNs, and the flaws I see in the arguments the FAQ presents aren't
addressed at all by the follow-up questions that _are_ present.

~~~
some_furry
To address this deficit, the latest release (v0.4.0, released over the
weekend) includes a "Question Box" feature that lets people submit follow-up
questions, in the same spirit as curiouscat.me.

To prevent spam and abuse, it's limited to authenticated users. I noodled over
ways to make it work with anonymous users, but that's ultimately a losing
battle. (See also: TrollForge.)

The admins can decide their access policy (invite-only or open registration,
Twitter auth or username+password, etc.).

The platform is open source software, and I'm trying to make it as easy and
accessible for folks to set it up as I can.

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rlili
Cool project. Society desperately needs tools to combat disinformation.

But couldn't this tool also be used to spread it? Also, does it prevent
circular reasoning?

~~~
some_furry
> Cool project. Society desperately needs tools to combat disinformation.

Thanks! I'm a huge fan of Snopes <3

> But couldn't this tool also be used to spread it?

It's a tool; a platform. Anything that can be used for good can be used for
bad.

I'm mostly circulating this in queer/pro-science circles, in the hopes that
the critical mass of early adopters will dictate the culture surrounding the
platform.

> Also, does it prevent circular reasoning?

No. You can create cycles in the Follow-Ups that loop infinitely. It might
even be convenient to do so in many cases! But that definitely does not
prevent circular reasoning.

