You are correct that critical thinkers may want to censor uncritical thinkers. However, independent-minded thinkers do not want to censor conventional-minded thinkers.
I still don’t see it. Don’t see a causal mechanism that would cause it. Even if we replace “independent-minded” with “independent-minded and valuing independent-mindedness for everyone”. I have the same problems with it as Ninety-Three and Raphael Harth.
To give my own example. Algorithms in social media could be a little too good at radicalizing and connecting people with crazy opinions, such as flat earth. A person censoring such algorithms/their output could be motivated by the desire to make people more independent-minded.
I deliberately avoided examples for the same reason Paul Graham’s What You Can’t Say deliberately avoids giving any specific examples: because either my examples would be mild and weak (and therefore poor illustrations) or they’d be so shocking (to most people) they’d derail the whole conversation. (comment)
I think the value of a general point can only stem from re-evaluating specific opinions. Therefore, sooner or later the conversation has to tackle specific opinions.
If “derailment” is impossible to avoid, then “derailment” is a part of the general point. Or there are more important points to be discussed. For example, if you can’t explain to cave people General Relativity, maybe you should explain “science” and “language” first — and maybe those tangents are actually more valuable than General Relativity.
I dislike Graham’s essay for the same reason: when Graham does introduce some general opinions (“morality is like fashion”, “censuring is motivated by the fear of free-thinking”, “there’s no prize for figuring out quickly”, “a statement can’t be worse than false”), they’re not discussed critically, with examples. Re:say looks weird to me. Invisible opponents are allowed to say only one sentence and each sentence gets a lengthy “answer” with more opinions.
I still don’t see it. Don’t see a causal mechanism that would cause it. Even if we replace “independent-minded” with “independent-minded and valuing independent-mindedness for everyone”. I have the same problems with it as Ninety-Three and Raphael Harth.
To give my own example. Algorithms in social media could be a little too good at radicalizing and connecting people with crazy opinions, such as flat earth. A person censoring such algorithms/their output could be motivated by the desire to make people more independent-minded.
I think the value of a general point can only stem from re-evaluating specific opinions. Therefore, sooner or later the conversation has to tackle specific opinions.
If “derailment” is impossible to avoid, then “derailment” is a part of the general point. Or there are more important points to be discussed. For example, if you can’t explain to cave people General Relativity, maybe you should explain “science” and “language” first — and maybe those tangents are actually more valuable than General Relativity.
I dislike Graham’s essay for the same reason: when Graham does introduce some general opinions (“morality is like fashion”, “censuring is motivated by the fear of free-thinking”, “there’s no prize for figuring out quickly”, “a statement can’t be worse than false”), they’re not discussed critically, with examples. Re:say looks weird to me. Invisible opponents are allowed to say only one sentence and each sentence gets a lengthy “answer” with more opinions.