[ExI] All speech is sacred or why Warcraftification of real life is a solution to various ills

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Sat, Dec 10, 2022 at 3:08 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Fri, Dec 9, 2022 at 11:22 PM Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> Appending an easily accessible record of prior judgments by trusted
>> authorities to a person's identifying profile
>>
>
> ...appears to be generally not possible, at least not in a context where
> most people will see it.
>
> Sex offender lists are a current attempt to do just this.  They are
> generally publicly accessible - and yet, most people remain unaware of
> them.  Only those specifically interested will look them up.  Most people,
> even close associates and business partners, will never think to check to
> see if someone is on such a list, unless and until informed that a certain
> person is - and even then, most people will accept being told that someone
> is as they lack knowledge that they can independently verify this, let
> alone knowledge of how to do so.  Thus, claims of whether someone is or is
> not on the sex offender list default to trusting other people who say that
> person is or is not, rather than the authorities who should theoretically
> be the sole source of this information.
>
> Appending an easily accessible record of prior judgments by trusted
> authorities to a person's identifying profile seems likely to suffer the
> same fate.
>

>
>> It would be great to have an augmented reality app to create labels
>> floating above all the people you see, just like in Warcraft.
>>
>
> Similar efforts - with online labels, no augmented reality involved - have
> resulted in organized efforts to strike down the platforms enabling it.
> See the EU's "right to be forgotten" and American "right to privacy" laws,
> enacted by popular demand.  Granted, these came about in part because of
> the persistence of false information in too many cases, but generally the
> public seems unwilling to accept anyone having this ability over them, and
> quite willing to pay the price of not having this ability over others.
>

> It is usually a very bad idea to let a single entity take over control of
>> an aspect of social organisation. It is bad to have Vijaya Gadde decide
>> that nobody in the country may hear about the infamous laptop. It would be
>> bad to have a central labeling authority in charge of giving people a bad
>> name, like "slanderer" or "racist". There *must* be freely competing
>> authorities that collate information and make judgments.
>>
>
> The free market is impeded from ensuring fair competition in this case.
> One authority is encouraged to post information leading to the shutdown of
> its competitors, winding up with a single entity taking control.
>
> By default this will be the government, which already tries to maintain a
> monopoly on violence precisely so it can be the single entity for things
> like this.  As we already have a government, and likely will in any path
> leading from where we are to implementation of this idea, there would need
> to be a way to keep the government from simply assuming control regardless
> of the intentions - and even attempted use of force - of whoever implements
> this idea.
>

### You seem to say that my modest proposal would be impossible to
implement, useless if implemented, nobody would pay attention to it, and
they would want to forbid it anyway.

Oddly enough, this makes me more confident it could work :)

-------------------------------

>
>
>> In the example above, I might be called a slanderer - and you might wind
>>> up dead.
>>>
>>
>> ### I don't follow your logic here. Please explain a *plausible* chain of
>> events and mechanism of things happening.
>>
>
> A simple extrapolation similar to events that have happened to others.
> 1) I call you a predatory child rapist, and post made up evidence.
> 2) Some armed vigilante believes it, hunts you down (I may have posted
> your address too), and kills you without considering whether I might be
> lying.
> 3) It comes out that I was lying.  The vigilante regrets killing you.
> You're still dead.
>

### The prosecutor interviews the vigilante. The vigilante tells him he
killed me after being influenced by the slanderous statements the bad guy
made. The prosecutor opens a case against him for incitement to violence,
accessory to murder, etc. The jury decides that the vigilante, who had good
intentions but was just too dumb to check his sources, gets off with a slap
on the wrist but the bad guy, as the malicious and ultimate cause of my
death, has to be punished with exemplary severity. He is put to death.
Other potential malicious slanderers think twice before posting hateful
shit online.

To summarize, the bad guy is not prohibited from saying hateful shit but
the bad guy will be punished if this shit harms someone.

Justice is done but all speech is still sacred.

-----------------------------

>
> I am reminded of the Mars hive mind from A Miracle Of Science.  You might
> want to skim that Webcomic - the hive mind appears in the middle and near
> the end, as I recall - for inspiration.  You have the beginnings of a good
> idea here; I'm just poking holes in the details, in particular as it
> applies to our current real world environment.
>

### Thank you!

Rafal
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