[ExI] Censorship

Sat May 28 08:30:13 UTC 2016

I actually think this kind of quibbling is hamstringing the conversation 
about censorship. Legally, we may want clear definitions (but in 
countries where censorship is a big problem the law is often part of the 
problem). But when trying to come up with solutions and improvements 
things often descend into a morass of semantics.

The essence of censorship is that group A prevents group B from 
communicating something to society, based on it originating in group B 
(suppressing their power) or containing something A doesn't like. One 
can construct legitimate cases, both in the sense that group A is 
legitimately appointed and that the suppression is for a legitimate 
reason. The problem is that a lot of cases are not legitimate, either 
formally - nobody appointed A as the moral guardians - or from a moral 
standpoint - the reasons for suppression are not valid.

There are lots of intermediate levels. Nobody appointed parents, yet 
they might have a legitimate say in how conversations are held in their 
family. The publisher that refuses to print a book is legitimate in 
their decision, yet they might have a morally bad reason (maybe they 
didn't like the race of the author). Most of these cases can be dealt 
with by the various local rules we have about families, companies and 
the like.

The key ones, the ones I think we *need* to get right, are the ones that 
have society-wide reach. If the censorship affects everybody, then it is 
everybody's problem. In particular, it interferes with the key 
functioning of an open society: that anything is open for criticism, and 
if the members think the criticism is valid, the thing can be changed 
through collective decisions. If certain things cannot be critiqued or 
if it is not possible to have a debate about whether they should be 
changed, then society is not open. Hence censorship by powers that can 
affect all of society is deeply problematic, and legitimate censorship 
needs to be kept on a very tight leash.

One interesting issue is how to handle the emergence of new, globalised 
platforms of power. In the past this rarely happened and most thinking 
about how to handle censorship was based on states. However, Facebook, 
Apple and Google certainly perform censorship within their domains, yet 
their domains are often so wide that they can be said to exert 
society-wide effects. Does that mean we need to have a global oversight 
over their activity? Things get even trickier since the global realm 
includes non-open societies.

On 2016-05-27 21:19, William Flynn Wallace wrote:
>> Well Dan I hate to tell you this, but we have censorship now in TV, 
>> movies, books and maybe more.  I read recently that about 40k books 
>> are published every month and some one has the say-so about its going 
>> on sale somewhere (where might be determined by its rating).
>
> No, that is not censorship. If you as a publisher tell me that you 
> will not publish my book because it is crap/politically incorrect/will 
> not sell/it is Friday that is your prerogative. There is no right to 
> have stuff published. Censorship occurs is when a centralized power 
> can decide to prevent publication because of content. (Some iffy 
> definitions for post-publication action, but the core is 
> prepublication approval).
>  anders
>
> Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication or other 
> information which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, 
> politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by governments, 
> media outlets, authorities or other groups or institutions.  dictionary
>
> I don't want to quibble about words, but what I wrote is well within 
> the definition above. Certainly the type Anders mentioned is far more 
> dangerous and threatening. This has nothing to do with free speech.  
> Of course Anders
> is right that no one has the right to have his stuff published 
> anywhere. College newspaper editors found that out for sure a few 
> years ago in a court case. Not letting a college writer put his stuff 
> in a campus newspaper is not a violation of free speech, but it is 
> censorship.
>
> bill w
> 
>
>
>
> On Fri, May 27, 2016 at 3:10 AM, Anders <anders at aleph.se 
> <mailto:anders at aleph.se>> wrote:
>
>     On 2016-05-26 21:49, William Flynn Wallace wrote:
>>     Why would it be ethical to have censorship in the first place?
>>     It's like saying "Put an AI in charge of slavery..."
>>
>>     Dan
>>
>>     Well Dan I hate to tell you this, but we have censorship now in
>>     TV, movies, books and maybe more.  I read recently that about 40k
>>     books are published every month and some one has the say-so about
>>     its going on sale somewhere (where might be determined by its
>>     rating).
>
>     No, that is not censorship. If you as a publisher tell me that you
>     will not publish my book because it is crap/politically
>     incorrect/will not sell/it is Friday that is your prerogative.
>     There is no right to have stuff published. Censorship occurs is
>     when a centralized power can decide to prevent publication because
>     of content. (Some iffy definitions for post-publication action,
>     but the core is prepublication approval).
>
>>     I can easily see an AI being used for some of the labor of
>>     digesting all this material.  I also think an AI would never be
>>     in charge of actual censorship, but the AI could kick out books,
>>     movies, that fudge certain guidelines so that a human, or a
>>     committee, or the Supreme Court could decide what to do with it.
>
>     In a sense this is happening with YouTube, where copyright
>     infringing material is blocked - officially after a human has
>     looked at what the algorithm found, but obviously often without
>     any human oversight. For various sad, hilarious or rage-inducing
>     examples, just search Boing Boing or Slashdot's archives.
>
>>
>>     Now whether there should BE any kind of censorship is an entirely
>>     different question, one that could be debated in this group if it
>>     hasn't before (not likely).
>
>     As I have mentioned, I am starting to study information hazards (
>     http://www.nickbostrom.com/information-hazards.pdf ) Some of these
>     may actually be serious enough that we rationally should want some
>     form of censorship or control.
>
>     Others are not serious enough, but we may want to have systems
>     that discourage them (libel law, boycotts, whatever).
>
>     But we have to be careful with that (e.g.
>     http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2014/04/the-automated-boycott/ ).
>     I recently enjoyed reading a series of case studies showing how
>     information concealment played an important role in many big
>     disasters (
>     http://aleph.se/andart2/risk/the-hazard-of-concealing-risk/ ).
>     Generally, limiting information cuts out the good with the bad,
>     and we are not very skilled at distinguishing them a priori. Plus,
>     management requires information: if the problem is an underlying
>     structure or something concrete rather than bad information per
>     se, then the agencies that manage - whether institutional or the
>     open society - need to get that information to do something. Far
>     too often censorship just looks for surface detail.
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Dr Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University

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