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Censorship is the sloppiest possible solution to the epistemological crisis. I thought we figured this out during the Enlightenment.



Censorship, meet Filter Bubble. Filter Bubble, Censorship. And this little tike you've got with you, what's his name? Engagement Metric? Oh, how cute. Nice to meet you. You look innocent. I'm guessing you couldn't do any major societal damage at all. You're certainly not a little problem child.


Filter bubble is not a real problem:

https://twitter.com/degenrolf/status/1261164727486615559?lan...

https://twitter.com/degenrolf/status/1067780924014772224

Whereas censorship is lindy among things that have bad effects on society.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect

So give the most caution against the proven bad thing and not the one you're in a trendy moral panic about.


So Rolf Degen argues that filter bubbles aren't a problem, and if you think they are, then it's because you're a "political junkie" trapped in one. That's some pretty twisted logic mixed with a nice helping of poisoning the well. I guess political junkies would never do anything crazy like assault the capital building to prevent certification of an election result. Yep, nothing to see here.

I'm going to adopt this style of argument from now on.

"Oh, you think that X is a big problem? Well, it isn't, because you have problem X, and only think that way because of it! It's your cognitive distortions talking! Zing!"


A couple of boomers went on an unguided tour, unarmed. I didn't know insurrectionists tended to leave their guns at home


Almost every photo I've seen of the event has not been "a couple of" anyone nor largely "boomers".

On a similar note, I somehow doubt if people broke through the doors to enter your home, assaulted people trying to protect it, yelled about how they want you dead, and then took some of your stuff you'd be calling it an "unguided tour".


The question is: do we want to learn the lessons of history the easy way, or the hard way?


New people are being born every day who weren't around for the steps forward made in the past. If only there was an institution that could step up to the task of teaching them. Instead there are institutions for getting them to buy toys and making them do algebra drills.


It's a really hard problem to solve. History has shown time and again how easy it is to coopt institutions as well.




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