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On 2016-05-26 21:49, William Flynn Wallace wrote:<br>
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<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:'comic sans
ms',sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span
style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px">Why
would it be ethical to have censorship in the first place?
It's like saying "Put an AI in charge of slavery..."</span><br
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<div><span
style="font-size:12.8px;line-height:20px;background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)">Dan</span></div>
<div><span
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<div><span
style="font-size:12.8px;line-height:20px;background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)">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).</span></div>
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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). <br>
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<div><span
style="font-size:12.8px;line-height:20px;background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)">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. <br>
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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. <br>
<br>
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<div><span
style="font-size:12.8px;line-height:20px;background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)">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). </span></div>
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<br>
As I have mentioned, I am starting to study information hazards (
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.nickbostrom.com/information-hazards.pdf">http://www.nickbostrom.com/information-hazards.pdf</a> ) Some of these
may actually be serious enough that we rationally should want some
form of censorship or control. <br>
<br>
Others are not serious enough, but we may want to have systems that
discourage them (libel law, boycotts, whatever). <br>
<br>
But we have to be careful with that (e.g.
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2014/04/the-automated-boycott/">http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2014/04/the-automated-boycott/</a>
). I recently enjoyed reading a series of case studies showing how
information concealment played an important role in many big
disasters (
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://aleph.se/andart2/risk/the-hazard-of-concealing-risk/">http://aleph.se/andart2/risk/the-hazard-of-concealing-risk/</a> ).
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. <br>
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