It’s not that people’s opinions are harmful to themselves, per se. Its that they are harmful to society as a whole. Right now, a hundred thousand Americans have died because of the meme factories. Millions more will die from the “climate change is fake” meme.
Anyone can come up with a story about how a policy they don’t like is harmful. That cannot be the bar for censoring its advocacy. What of the families and immortal souls destroyed by libertine sexual mores? What of the crimes committed because the system was swayed by memes about rehabilitation? What of the livelihoods destroyed by immigration? These harms are just as real to your opponents as COVID and climate change are to you.
See, you just assumed I don’t worry about those things, but I worry about all of them. There are thousands, if not millions of people worldwide held in slavery because of loose sexual morals. Some criminals can clearly never be rehabilitated, and separating those who can is a wicked problem. And in the Late Bronze Age Collapse, hordes of immigrants very nearly destroyed Western Civilization. So yes I am freaked out about these things.
The idea that I don’t worry about morals and livelihoods because I’m a liberal is another dangerous meme. Not once in my post did I suggest censorship as the solution; you’re applying the liberals wanna censor meme.
So you’re shutting down thinking because you had preconceived notions from media you saw: thanks for proving my original point.
I'd to posit that the "Yes, and.." through-line in this discussion is that there are no narratives/memes which cannot be weaponized into infectious parasitism by Moloch; including the very model of ideas as viruses, the tacit implication that Something Should Be Done About That, stories of censorship, anti-censorship, anti-anti-censorship, on and on.
I certainly don't think it's wise to ignore the problem, and pretend the internet is merely Printing Press 2.0; but neither is realistic to cut it off at the source (even the printing press was not without side effects). The call is coming from inside the house (the human nervous system and its emergent inter-networked social incentives).
One of the things I wonder about transhumanism and AI is whether we even want to optimize for human values. Or, in religious terms, original sin is real. But what value set we choose to optimize for, that's the problem. And the central question of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, where it never really gets resolved either.
> even the printing press was not without side effects)
I'm sure there's some position you hold that others worry about. If worrying about a thing is enough to treat speech in favor of it as a virus to be quarantined, that's going to come back on you somewhere.
I did briefly consider the possibility of being both left and right authoritarian at the same time, but since this ideology is rarely seen outside the state of Gilead in the The Haidmaid's Tale, took a calculated risk. You're right, my apologies. (And if you haven't seen the Hulu series, it's kind of fascinating: extreme religious conservative sexual repression but with solar panels and EVs and post-money command economy. The show fills this out a little more than the book did).
