Q: What about Australian culture? Will I like it over there?
A: Australia is a highly educated, robustly secular, extremely developed country. If you have any questions about the desirability of Australia, just ask Less Wrong! A disproportionate number of Less Wrongers are Australian.
The current internet censorship is unproblematic. The proposed internet filter would have been problematic, but the legislation is dead in the water.
We have some fairly arbitrary socially conservative “nanny state” policies. None of them get in the way a great deal, but they do stick in the craw a little.
The political climate in Australia is intensely pragmatic. Voters are stone cold to principle—they think almost exclusively about the effects legislation will have on their lives. This means that people will support a policy that they think means their children won’t be able to view porn on the internet, as they perceive this as a problem. On the other hand, it makes it very difficult for astro-turf organisations to convince people to vote against their interests. That’s why we have a decent minimum wage, single payer health care, etc.
However, Australia also has the most restrictive Internet censorship policies in the Western world.
I never found the supposedly restrictive internet censorship in Australia to be an issue. Guess I wasn’t accessing enough child pr0n...
Has any Less Wronger in Australia actually experienced a negative consequence due to this?
The current internet censorship is unproblematic. The proposed internet filter would have been problematic, but the legislation is dead in the water.
We have some fairly arbitrary socially conservative “nanny state” policies. None of them get in the way a great deal, but they do stick in the craw a little.
The political climate in Australia is intensely pragmatic. Voters are stone cold to principle—they think almost exclusively about the effects legislation will have on their lives. This means that people will support a policy that they think means their children won’t be able to view porn on the internet, as they perceive this as a problem. On the other hand, it makes it very difficult for astro-turf organisations to convince people to vote against their interests. That’s why we have a decent minimum wage, single payer health care, etc.
I wish U.S. voters were so pragmatic!
Nope—me either.
Besides, as they say “the internet interprets censorship as damage and routes round it”...
Nope.