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.
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.