Free speech and open discussion issues

It’s been said that the halls of academia echo with the chorus of freedom of speech, but the most vociferous members of this chorus often do everything within their power to suppress it! I know of no better example than this of the uselessness of explicitly endorsing support for free speech; behavior, not what one superficially endorses, matters.

Assuming one’s inclined toward respecting freedom of speech, how does one accommodate those hostile to free speech? Suppressing the hostiles is a form of suppression of free speech, but one must suppress the hostiles in order to freely discuss the things the hostiles want suppressed. An open discussion can’t be productive if the hostiles barge in with obfuscation, lies, distortions, noise, nonsense, straw men, trolling, guilt-by-association arguments, discrediting the opponent by making assumptions and then critiquing the assumptions, exposing false information by fellow-hostiles, false dichotomies, deflecting attention from the perpetrators, directing animosity toward the victims and other foul techniques.

Getting rid of the hostiles is an easy matter if the discussion is taking place among a non-proselytising group. The hostiles can complain all they want about suppression of free speech, but the group can keep them out without explanation and without apology.

But the solution to having a productive discussion with hostiles lurking about isn’t easy when the discussion group seeks to bring naive individuals and fence sitters into the fold. Let’s look at a specific issue, the discussion of who did 9/11.

I’ve argued that Jews did 9/11. I used the following items.

According to my argument, Jews are the most probable culprits behind 9/11. I don’t need to comment on how hostile Jews are to “Jews did 9/11.” If I say instant deletion for any comment that argues against “Jews did 9/11,” then I lose credibility as far as naive individuals and fence sitters go. How do I maintain credibility while hoping for a reasonable discussion on who did 9/11 because Jews will do everything in their power to prevent a reasonable discussion?

This is easy to answer by playing the devil’s advocate. I’ll assign anti-Jewish maliciousness to myself. Let there be 40 broad items I’ve omitted from the table, a number of other probable culprits I’ve omitted from the table (C1, C2, C3,...), and false instances of my implicating the J factor. All one has to do is to come up with a revised argument and produce a new table with 27 + 40 items, presently considered and omitted probable culprits, and show that the evidence is either equivocal regarding Jews doing 9/11 or that Jews mostly likely didn’t do 9/11.

So all I need to do is to specify that if anyone argues against Jews doing 9/11 without

a) addressing my 27 items and showing how this conclusion doesn’t follow from these 27 items or
b) adding other items and showing that the most probable culprits based on the 27+other items either can’t be determined or aren’t Jews or are whatever non-Jewish entity this person claims to be, then

this person’s comments mentioning 9/11 will be deleted.

This allows me to improve my credibility. But this is only an improvement, and doesn’t guarantee credibility.

The problem of credibility is a little harder. If I’m malicious, I could come up with an argument comprising of 50 nonsense items and then challenge the opponents to discuss and refute them or face deletion of their comments/banning, and the better informed will see through the ruse. If my opponent’s malicious, he could avoid having to discuss the 50 items by claiming they’re nonsense, without justification. Now I’m not interested in being credible to a malicious opponent, but the naive and those sitting on the fence matter, and the problem of coming up with an easy to understand, fact-rich, clear and verifiable argument is mine.

Assuming I’m right on Jews doing 9/11, it wouldn’t be easy for hostiles to undermine my argument if they’re forced to address the 27 items and any other relevant items they care to bring in. The more reasonable hostiles could force the discussion into engineering aspects (item 1), knowing that most people won’t be able to follow them, but however well I’m able to respond to item 1, there are 26 other items that altogether point to Jews as the most probable culprit. In other words, the hostiles will have to stay away from addressing 9/11 or be forced out of the discussion.

Now, there are other things I’ve argued that greatly infuriate Jews, such as the Holocaust hoax, how international bankers (mostly Jews) took control of the money supply in America and how Jews orchestrated the Norwegian massacre. Imagine the opponents forced in each instance to address and refute the evidence-based analysis/conclusions behind these arguments and others like them, or refrain from claiming the validity of the Holocaust, refrain from arguing against the reality of banker control of the money supply, refrain from saying that a person named Anders Breivik was responsible for the Norwegian massacre, and refrain from opposing other specified arguments. The result would be a drastic reduction in the Jewish activity evident on page after page of this website. For instance, there’s an individual here who repeatedly responds to evidence-based arguments portraying Jews in a negative light by bringing in aluminum foils, Icke, conspiracism, monocausality,... anything but the evidence. How could he continue if forced to deal with the evidence or leave? And if forced to leave, how could genuine individuals see this as an instance of suppression of [relevant] speech as this individual has always been free to address and critique the evidence?

Summary

In general, a quality discussion, especially understanding- or solution-oriented, on difficult or controversial topics requires that the hostiles be kept out, and a good way to keep the hostiles out without becoming far less credible to the naive and fence sitters is to force opponents to address the evidence-based analysis/conclusions or leave.

The problem of noise

This post has been prompted by issues arising from my trashing an individual that has engaged, for a long time, in multiple foul behaviors intended to undermine reasonable discussion. One of these was relentless promotion of the Austrian School, which suggested an opportunity to get rid of this individual without losing much credibility. At first I had some requests that went unheeded, then I followed with multiple warnings, which turned into a final warning, which was violated multiple times. So I waited to post on a book that destroys a fundamental premise of the Austrian School, and finally challenged this individual to defend the Austrian School by reading, summarizing and critiquing this book, and coming up with justification for the other fundamental premise of the Austrian School, or admit to what he’s been doing, failing which he can no longer comment here as before. Predictably, this individual has attempted to move Heaven and Earth to get back to commenting here regularly, continued to post comments, but not made an admission or indicated that he’s working on providing me the essays I need.

In my estimation, I’ve acted justly. It’s unlikely that people other than Jews will accuse me of suppressing [valid or relevant] speech in this case because my argument isn’t that the Austrian School may not be promoted; it’s that the Austrian School may not be promoted unless two of its most fundamental premises are justified. As I’ve already noted, it’s not the Austrian School issue that’s important, but of all foul behaviors that this person has engaged in, his spamming us with Austrian School propaganda provided an easy excuse or opportunity to get rid of this individual without appearing far less credible to naive individuals. Some will disagree that I’ve dealt justly, and I don’t care about their objections.

What I do care about is the problem of the reliable transmission of information through a noisy channel. The channel is MR and the noise is the Jewish filth, lies, distortions and deception that fill its pages. Conversely, I’m the noise and disruption, and my opponents the voice of reason.

The interesting thing about the noise problem is that it can be analyzed without reference to content. In other words, it’s obvious that there’s noise [undesirable content] at MR without the need to specifically identify it.

It’s assumed that the noise can’t completely be gotten rid of, but steps can be taken to increase the signal-to-noise ratio, which improves the transmission capacity of the channel. It’s been rigorously shown that reliable transmission of information through a noisy channel is possible with the right encoding and decoding scheme, provided that the channel capacity’s not exceeded:

C. E. Shannon. A Mathematical Theory of Communication, Bell System Technical Journal, vol. 27, pp. 379–423, 623-656, July, October, 1948.

Now the decoding scheme can simply be a section on deception indulged in by the noisy group. An encoding scheme can be clearly written, well-organized articles. The signal-to-noise ratio can be improved by adopting noise filters (a comments policy).

Things have come to a boiling point. The website owner can no longer pretend that there isn’t a major noise problem at MR. The noise problem is seriously affecting the transmission of information. Decades ago, Claude Shannon showed that it’s possible to reliably transmit information through a noisy channel (see link above). The electronics world has put this in practice for a long time. It’s time to implement many of the principles here.

It’s clear that there are two major, opposed factions at MR. One of these represents noise. The website owner needs to identify the noisy faction and take or allow steps to reduce its activity, for the sake of better transmission of information and to facilitate reasonable discussion. The non-noisy faction needs an outlet where it can be productive, and being ill-equipped to fight noise when the means are readily available isn’t a productive occupation of one’s time. The website owner must therefore act or risk losing the non-noisy faction. Hint: the faction more likely to leave on its own and work elsewhere is more probably the non-noisy faction.

The website owner is advised that an exponential increase in the signal-to-noise ratio increases channel capacity in a linear manner only. The important issue therefore isn’t an all-out attempt to suppress noise, but to use noise filters to reduce it so as to improve channel capacity, while employing suitable encoding and decoding techniques to facilitate the readers filtering out the noise from their minds, which will carry over to what the readers encounter outside MR.

Posted by J Richards on Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 12:49 AM in 9/11,  Activism,  Blogs & Blogging,  Education,  That Question Again,  Thread Wars
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