Our rules and intuitions about free speech and censorship are based on the types of censorship we usually see in practice. Ordinarily, if someone is trying to censor a piece of information, then that information falls into one of two categories: either it’s information that would weaken them politically, by making others less likely to support them and more likely to support their opponents, or it’s information that would enable people to do something that they don’t want done.
People often try to censor information that makes people less likely to support them, and more likely to support their opponents. For example, many governments try to censor embarrassing facts (“the Purple Party takes bribes and kicks puppies!”), the fact that opposition exists (“the Pink Party will stop the puppy-kicking!”) and its strength (“you can join the Pink Party, there are 10^4 of us already!”), and organization of opposition (“the Pink Party rally is tomorrow!”). This is most obvious with political parties, but it happens anywhere people feel like there are “sides”—with religions (censorship of “blasphemy”) and with public policies (censoring climate change studies, reports from the Iraq and Afghan wars). Allowing censorship in this category is bad because it enables corruption, and leaves less-worthy groups in charge.
The second common instance of censorship is encouragement and instructions for doing things that certain people don’t want done. Examples include cryptography, how to break DRM, pornography, and bomb-making recipes. Banning these is bad if the capability is suppressed for a bad reason (cryptography enables dissent), if it’s entangled with other things (general-purpose chemistry applies to explosives), or if it requires infrastructure that can also be used for the first type of censorship (porn filters have been caught blocking politicians’ campaign sites).
These two cases cover 99.99% of the things we call “censorship”, and within these two categories, censorship is definitely bad, and usually worth opposing. It is normally safe to assume that if something is being censored, it is for one of these two reasons. There are gray areas—slander (when the speaker knows he’s lying and has malicious intent), and bomb-making recipes (when they’re advertised as such and not general-purpose chemistry), for example—but the law has the exceptions mapped out pretty accurately. (Slander gets you sued, bomb-making recipes get you surveilled.) This makes a solid foundation for the principle that censorship should be opposed.
However, that principle and the analysis supporting it apply only to censorship that falls within these two domains. When things fall outside these categories, we usually don’t call them censorship; for example, there is a widespread conspiracy among email and web site administrators to suppress ads for Viagra, but we don’t call that censorship, even though it meets every aspect of the definition except motive. If you happen to find a weird instance of censorship which doesn’t fall into either category, then you have to start over and derive an answer to whether censorship in that particular case is good or bad, from scratch, without resorting to generalities about censorship-in-general. Some of the arguments may still apply—for example, building a censorship-technology infrastructure is bad even if it’s only meant to be used on spam—but not all of them, and not with the same force.
If the usual arguments against censorship don’t apply, and we’re trying to figure out whether to censor it, the next two things to test are whether it’s true, and whether an informed reader would want to see it. If both of these conditions hold, then it should not be censored. However, if either condition fails to hold, then it’s okay to censor.
Either the forbidden post is false, in which case it does not deserve protection because it’s false, or it’s true, in which case it should be censored because no informed person should want to see it. In either case, people spreading it are doing a bad thing.
Either the forbidden post is false, in which case it does not deserve protection because it’s false,
Even if this is right the censorship extends to perhaps true conversations about why the post is false. Moreover, I don’t see what truth has to do with it. There are plenty of false claims made on this site that nonetheless should be public because understanding why they’re false and how someone might come to think that they are true are worthwhile endeavors.
The question here is rather straight forward: does the harm of the censorship outweigh the harm of letting people talk about the post. I can understand how you might initially think those who disagree with you are just responding to knee-jerk anti-censorship instincts that aren’t necessarily valid here. But from where I stand the arguments made by those who disagree with you do not fit this pattern. I think XiXi has been clear in the past about why the transparency concern does apply to SIAI. We’ve also seen arguments for why censorship in this particular case is a bad idea.
Either the forbidden post is false, in which case it does not deserve protection because it’s false, or it’s true, in which case it should be censored because no informed person should want to see it. In either case, people spreading it are doing a bad thing.
There are clearly more than two options here. There seem to be two points under contention:
It is/is not (1/2) reasonable to agree with the forbidden post.
It is/is not (3/4) desirable to know the contents of the forbidden post.
You seem to be restricting us to either 2+3 or 1+4. It seems that 1+3 is plausible (should we keep children from ever knowing about death because it’ll upset them?), and 2+4 seems like a good argument for restriction of knowledge (the idea is costly until you work through it, and the benefits gained from reaching the other side are lower than the costs).
But I personally suspect 2+3 is the best description, and that doesn’t explain why people trying to spread it are doing a bad thing. Should we delete posts on Pascal’s Wager because someone might believe it?
Either the forbidden post is false, in which case it does not deserve protection because it’s false, or it’s true, in which case it should be censored because no informed person should want to see it.
Excluded middle, of course: incorrect criterion. (Was this intended as a test?) It would not deserve protection if it were useless (like spam), not “if it were false.”
The reason I consider sufficient to keep it off LessWrong is that it actually hurt actual people. That’s pretty convincing to me. I wouldn’t expunge it from the Internet (though I might put a warning label on it), but from LW? Appropriate. Reposting it here? Rude.
Unfortunately, that’s also an argument as to why it needs serious thought applied to it, because if the results of decompartmentalised thinking can lead there, humans need to be able to handle them. As Vaniver pointed out, there are previous historical texts that have had similar effects. Rationalists need to be able to cope with such things, as they have learnt to cope with previous conceptual basilisks. So it’s legitimate LessWrong material at the same time as being inappropriate for here. Tricky one.
(To the ends of that “compartmentalisation” link, by the way, I’m interested in past examples of basilisks and other motifs of harmful sensation in idea form. Yes, I have the deleted Wikipedia article.)
Note that I personally found the idea itself silly at best.
The assertion that if a statement is not true, fails to alter political support, fails to provide instruction, and an informed reader wants to see that statement, it is therefore a bad thing to spread that statement and a OK thing to censor, is, um, far from uncontroversial.
To begin with, most fiction falls into this category. For that matter, so does most nonfiction, though at least in that case the authors generally don’t intend for it to be non-true.
The assertion that if a statement is not true, fails to alter political support, fails to provide instruction, and an informed reader wants to see that statement, it is therefore a bad thing to spread that statement and a OK thing to censor, is, um, far from uncontroversial.
No, you reversed a sign bit: it is okay to censor if an informed reader wouldn’t want to see it (and the rest of those conditions).
No, I don’t think so. You said “if either condition fails to hold, then it’s okay to censor.” If it isn’t true, and an informed reader wants to see it, then one of the two conditions failed to hold, and therefore it’s OK to censor.
Oops, you’re right—one more condition is required. The condition I gave is only sufficient to show that it fails to fall into a protected class, not that it falls in the class of things that should be censored; there are things which fall in neither class (which aren’t normally censored because that requires someone with a motive to censor it, which usually puts it into one of the protected classes). To make it worthy of censorship, there must additionally be a reason outside the list of excluded reasons to censor it.
Our rules and intuitions about free speech and censorship are based on the types of censorship we usually see in practice. Ordinarily, if someone is trying to censor a piece of information, then that information falls into one of two categories: either it’s information that would weaken them politically, by making others less likely to support them and more likely to support their opponents, or it’s information that would enable people to do something that they don’t want done.
People often try to censor information that makes people less likely to support them, and more likely to support their opponents. For example, many governments try to censor embarrassing facts (“the Purple Party takes bribes and kicks puppies!”), the fact that opposition exists (“the Pink Party will stop the puppy-kicking!”) and its strength (“you can join the Pink Party, there are 10^4 of us already!”), and organization of opposition (“the Pink Party rally is tomorrow!”). This is most obvious with political parties, but it happens anywhere people feel like there are “sides”—with religions (censorship of “blasphemy”) and with public policies (censoring climate change studies, reports from the Iraq and Afghan wars). Allowing censorship in this category is bad because it enables corruption, and leaves less-worthy groups in charge.
The second common instance of censorship is encouragement and instructions for doing things that certain people don’t want done. Examples include cryptography, how to break DRM, pornography, and bomb-making recipes. Banning these is bad if the capability is suppressed for a bad reason (cryptography enables dissent), if it’s entangled with other things (general-purpose chemistry applies to explosives), or if it requires infrastructure that can also be used for the first type of censorship (porn filters have been caught blocking politicians’ campaign sites).
These two cases cover 99.99% of the things we call “censorship”, and within these two categories, censorship is definitely bad, and usually worth opposing. It is normally safe to assume that if something is being censored, it is for one of these two reasons. There are gray areas—slander (when the speaker knows he’s lying and has malicious intent), and bomb-making recipes (when they’re advertised as such and not general-purpose chemistry), for example—but the law has the exceptions mapped out pretty accurately. (Slander gets you sued, bomb-making recipes get you surveilled.) This makes a solid foundation for the principle that censorship should be opposed.
However, that principle and the analysis supporting it apply only to censorship that falls within these two domains. When things fall outside these categories, we usually don’t call them censorship; for example, there is a widespread conspiracy among email and web site administrators to suppress ads for Viagra, but we don’t call that censorship, even though it meets every aspect of the definition except motive. If you happen to find a weird instance of censorship which doesn’t fall into either category, then you have to start over and derive an answer to whether censorship in that particular case is good or bad, from scratch, without resorting to generalities about censorship-in-general. Some of the arguments may still apply—for example, building a censorship-technology infrastructure is bad even if it’s only meant to be used on spam—but not all of them, and not with the same force.
If the usual arguments against censorship don’t apply, and we’re trying to figure out whether to censor it, the next two things to test are whether it’s true, and whether an informed reader would want to see it. If both of these conditions hold, then it should not be censored. However, if either condition fails to hold, then it’s okay to censor.
Either the forbidden post is false, in which case it does not deserve protection because it’s false, or it’s true, in which case it should be censored because no informed person should want to see it. In either case, people spreading it are doing a bad thing.
Even if this is right the censorship extends to perhaps true conversations about why the post is false. Moreover, I don’t see what truth has to do with it. There are plenty of false claims made on this site that nonetheless should be public because understanding why they’re false and how someone might come to think that they are true are worthwhile endeavors.
The question here is rather straight forward: does the harm of the censorship outweigh the harm of letting people talk about the post. I can understand how you might initially think those who disagree with you are just responding to knee-jerk anti-censorship instincts that aren’t necessarily valid here. But from where I stand the arguments made by those who disagree with you do not fit this pattern. I think XiXi has been clear in the past about why the transparency concern does apply to SIAI. We’ve also seen arguments for why censorship in this particular case is a bad idea.
There are clearly more than two options here. There seem to be two points under contention:
It is/is not (1/2) reasonable to agree with the forbidden post.
It is/is not (3/4) desirable to know the contents of the forbidden post.
You seem to be restricting us to either 2+3 or 1+4. It seems that 1+3 is plausible (should we keep children from ever knowing about death because it’ll upset them?), and 2+4 seems like a good argument for restriction of knowledge (the idea is costly until you work through it, and the benefits gained from reaching the other side are lower than the costs).
But I personally suspect 2+3 is the best description, and that doesn’t explain why people trying to spread it are doing a bad thing. Should we delete posts on Pascal’s Wager because someone might believe it?
Excluded middle, of course: incorrect criterion. (Was this intended as a test?) It would not deserve protection if it were useless (like spam), not “if it were false.”
The reason I consider sufficient to keep it off LessWrong is that it actually hurt actual people. That’s pretty convincing to me. I wouldn’t expunge it from the Internet (though I might put a warning label on it), but from LW? Appropriate. Reposting it here? Rude.
Unfortunately, that’s also an argument as to why it needs serious thought applied to it, because if the results of decompartmentalised thinking can lead there, humans need to be able to handle them. As Vaniver pointed out, there are previous historical texts that have had similar effects. Rationalists need to be able to cope with such things, as they have learnt to cope with previous conceptual basilisks. So it’s legitimate LessWrong material at the same time as being inappropriate for here. Tricky one.
(To the ends of that “compartmentalisation” link, by the way, I’m interested in past examples of basilisks and other motifs of harmful sensation in idea form. Yes, I have the deleted Wikipedia article.)
Note that I personally found the idea itself silly at best.
The assertion that if a statement is not true, fails to alter political support, fails to provide instruction, and an informed reader wants to see that statement, it is therefore a bad thing to spread that statement and a OK thing to censor, is, um, far from uncontroversial.
To begin with, most fiction falls into this category. For that matter, so does most nonfiction, though at least in that case the authors generally don’t intend for it to be non-true.
No, you reversed a sign bit: it is okay to censor if an informed reader wouldn’t want to see it (and the rest of those conditions).
No, I don’t think so. You said “if either condition fails to hold, then it’s okay to censor.” If it isn’t true, and an informed reader wants to see it, then one of the two conditions failed to hold, and therefore it’s OK to censor.
No?
Oops, you’re right—one more condition is required. The condition I gave is only sufficient to show that it fails to fall into a protected class, not that it falls in the class of things that should be censored; there are things which fall in neither class (which aren’t normally censored because that requires someone with a motive to censor it, which usually puts it into one of the protected classes). To make it worthy of censorship, there must additionally be a reason outside the list of excluded reasons to censor it.