BeechBaby wrote:
a recognition of varied and disparate views is accepted before opening up the ’’debate’’.
Some views are, frankly, worth more than others, because of the amount of concrete evidence available.
Airborne_Again wrote:
Some views are, frankly, worth more than others, because of the amount of concrete evidence available.
Yes agree entirely, but in that context free debate and analysis should be considered without cancellation.
Also where the evidence emanates from??
BeechBaby wrote:
Yes agree entirely, but in that context free debate and analysis should be considered without cancellation.
The problem is when proponents of views with little or no concrete evidence take an unproportionate amount of space in the discussion.
Also where the evidence emanates from??
Exactly. Quite often from the university of Google or Youtube which, frankly, is not worth much.
One example is people who claimed that the Covid-19 vaccine contained nanoparticles that would allow people to be controlled using the 5G network. Such ideas are obviously planted simply to disrupt the debate and sow distrust as there is zero concrete evidence for it. Then people who are not used to critical thinking watch youtube videos where these ideas are put forward in a superficially convincing way and go on arguing for it. We do better without that.
free debate and analysis should be considered without cancellation
On that basis, why not allow p0rnography here? In fact, without a mod policy, that is precisely what will happen. Yeah – I’ve seen it. It happened to a splinter group from the US Socata group.
Now, try to argue in favour of p0rnography, using this free speech argument!
You see, no such thing as “free speech” 
Peter wrote:
Now, try to argue in favour of p0rnography, using this free speech argument!You see, no such thing as “free speech”
Getting a bit silly now. That is why people leave, you state in protest, but it is a bit deeper than that.
Anyways, not here to argue, just comments and friendly discussion about opening a thread that can be viewed as controversial.
Guess the last page or so has answered the question
Getting a bit silly now
Only because I have successfully shown that you can’t have free speech.
Otherwise, why not allow
On #2, this is actually quite common. Somebody with a grudge against a forum (generally, one of a class of persons who had a post deleted, or who are big on another forum) will post something really nasty, in the hope it gets this forum into trouble. We had one of these within an hour of starting up, posting personal details of a well known UK GA personality, with a suggestion to go there and beat up him and his family. The poster was a well known activist in a well known UK GA organisation… He used a nickname but once made the mistake of posting same text here, and elsewhere under his real name.
So, no, you can’t have free speech. There has to be a mod policy. Ours is under Guidelines but there need to be other rules, and those are obvious to all reasonable people. Right now, supporting Russia or Hamas cannot possibly be allowed, just to give two examples.
Peter wrote:
I still find it amazing how many apparently intelligent people buy into the 5G/nanoparticle/conspiracy stuff.
I now know an honest-to-god flat earther. I couldn’t believe the nonsensical drivel he believed was the real truth, I could feel IQ points draining away just listening to the train wreck of logical fallacies.
The problem is that it seems like anyone with too much time on their hands (for a variety of reasons, I seem to know half of the island’s small number of unemployed) can easily get sucked into this stuff and if they don’t have sufficient critical thinking, they start believing all sorts of things they see on Twitter (sorry, X) and YouTube and Facebook. Former Dr. Andrew Wakefield has a lot to answer for.
alioth wrote:
The problem is that it seems like anyone with too much time on their hands (for a variety of reasons, I seem to know half of the island’s small number of unemployed) can easily get sucked into this stuff and if they don’t have sufficient critical thinking, they start believing all sorts of things they see on Twitter (sorry, X) and YouTube and Facebook.
It goes further than that. The main purpose in all of those theories is to undermine trust in society and government. Consequently you end up with protest voters which will vote for anyone who claims to have countermeasures to the alleged crimes and misdemeanors, some of which are quite outspoken in their aim to bring down order and governments. Flat Earth may well be the most bizarre of all those theories but by far not the most dangerous. There is much more dangerous ideological bile around which is not absurd enough to be rejected by “almost” all normal human beings but sucked up by way too many in today’s information war.
alioth wrote:
Former Dr. Andrew Wakefield has a lot to answer for.
Indeed. It might be quite interesting to find out how many people died as a consequence of refusing vaccines due to his theories and then put the book on him for good. Trouble is, he is far from alone. And apparently he still is active promoting his theories.
I am relieved to say today though that none of the anti-vaxxer morons who signed up for parliamentary elections as prospective MP’s in this country has made it into parliament this weekend here in Switzerland. If that’s an indication of hope, i don’t know.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
The main purpose in all of those theories is to undermine trust in society and government.
I disagree. I think it highly unlikely that there’s some over-arching purpose to it and I simply wouldn’t credit the proponents with sufficient guile and intelligence to operate that way.
It’s just wacko, simple as that. Some people have a conspiratorial urge to ‘discover the truth’ that runs way beyond their critical reasoning skills.
I agree.
Back to the last topic though, what are we to do when we get a bunch of people posting this stuff here?
Like I said, there has to be some sort of editorial policy. If there isn’t, a forum will fill up with crazy stuff, and one can see that all over the internet. And the editorial policy must cover political issues, otherwise – now transport yourself to say 1939 – supporting Hitler and his actions must be allowed under the banner of “free speech”.
