Is Joe Rogan Irresponsible?

[DocWatts]

3 hours ago, Tanz said:

This video plays into dark territory and he is attempting to instigate what people can say or try publicly and what they can not.  
Taking away free speech is even more dangerous,  

Does spreading misinformation that may directly lead to deaths count as Free Speech? If tons of people are misinformed about basic safety procedures during a pandemic due to the toxic disinformation from some of the people Joe gives a platform to on his podcast, and you end up catching Covid from one of them, does another person's 'freedom' to spread toxic misinformation end up impinging on your rights? 

'Free Speech' isn't always a black and white issue, it has to be weighed against other social goods such as Public Safety.

Edited March 8, 2021 by DocWatts

[Danioover9000]

@DocWatts

2 hours ago, DocWatts said:

Does spreading misinformation that may directly lead to deaths count as Free Speech? If tons of people are misinformed about basic safety procedures during a pandemic due to the toxic disinformation from some of the people Joe gives a platform to on his podcast, and you end up catching Covid from one of them, does another person's 'freedom' to spread toxic misinformation end up impinging on your rights? 

'Free Speech' isn't always a black and white issue, it has to be weighed against other social goods such as Public Safety.

   Yes, that still counts as free speech. Expressing and enforcing laws to support it are different.

[DocWatts]

32 minutes ago, Danioover9000 said:

@DocWatts

   Yes, that still counts as free speech. Expressing and enforcing laws to support it are different.

Maybe another way of phrasing it then might be: is unlimited Free Speech regardless of the Harm it causes to other people always a Good Thing?

If your answer to that is an unqualified yes, should cigarette companies be allowed to advertise to young children because doing so is Free Speech? How about when Corporations spend millions of dollars to influence elections through advertising? Should Libel and Slander laws remain on the books, or are there some situations where your Free Speech is unambiguously Harmful and thus infringes on someone else's Rights?

Edited March 8, 2021 by DocWatts

[Leo Gura]

Freedom is one thing, responsibility is another.

The more freedom you wish you have, the more responsible you must be, otherwise everything turns to shit.

[Danioover9000]

@DocWatts

1 hour ago, DocWatts said:

Maybe another way of phrasing it then might be: is unlimited Free Speech regardless of the Harm it causes to other people always a Good Thing?

If your answer to that is an unqualified yes, should cigarette companies be allowed to advertise to young children because doing so is Free Speech? How about when Corporations spend millions of dollars to influence elections through advertising? Should Libel and Slander laws remain on the books, or are there some situations where your Free Speech is unambiguously Harmful and thus infringes on someone else's Rights?

   I'll answer with multiple examples. If we had unlimited free speech, and it's unconditional, meaning all words and phrasing are not censored, no matter the content of spoken opinion, then I do think it's not feasible. However, it's heavily context based, such that a person who does not understand English, hears an opinion, regardless if said opinion counts as socially acceptable/unacceptable, would find little value in opinion, because of the level of comprehension. Also, how do I know what counts as free speech, or not free speech, or some form of speech? And what reasoning should I use to justify my choice of supporting which type, or part, of free speech? This includes what counts as causes to harm, because sometimes the chain of causation is so long and so indirect it's very hard to find a correlation that some random swarm of giant hornets in Japan, while murdering a bee hive, has also caused drone strikes in Iraq. Or a birth in Scandinavia, caused an earth quake in Asia. However, coming back to realism, yes we should find ways to regulate free speech better. However, I'm still not free from this problem, because which justification should I use to support my new decision now? Almost no matter which decision I make, I have to find further justifications for each position I take.

   My answer is of course a no, but let's assume I said yes, the question for me would be which justification is valid for me to use to justify the cigarette company's decision to advertise to young children? because I've said yes in this scenario. Assuming this escalates, I then must find further reasoning to justify that decision.

   Last question is interesting. If I said to keep slander laws, how do I know my decision is good? Let's say I was slandered in the past, so a law that protects me is good, and if such a law existed earlier, I wouldn't be victimized that severely, which is why I know this is a good choice. Yet, how do I know this will still be good? Maybe my decision to keep this law, is making it harder for a good, just activist group in the future to attack some billionaire corrupt guy, or elite group, in a peaceful social manner, which increases the probability that they resort to more aggressive tactics. Assuming comprehension of language is good enough to be average, I agree that if the view is unambiguously harmful, in an explicit way, that such a view should be regulated.

However, How do I know if an opinion is harmful, if the view is ambiguously expressed? And how do I determine it's harm, when it's ambiguous in delivery, and the causes are abstractions loosely from different statements? A good example of this is when some small business online person gets cancelled, but later on the person cancelled is innocent of whatever accusation is addressed in the public/digital domain, and how this started was so ambiguous, between the victim and the offender in question, that a mob mentality forms, not because of explicit, factual harm, but from implicit, perceived threat to their favorite youtuber.

[Tanz]

8 hours ago, Opo said:

What's this thing you call "free speech"? 

Its important to share ideas because there so many things that we know little about.  Someone like Alex Jones is dangerous because he makes claims in which he doesn't have experience in.  

But if someone has an experience that changed their lives or worked for them, they have the right to share because that bit of information can help them out.  Doctors said supplements were a scam when they first came out and it took decades for them to admit that nutrition is important.  

The medical doctor that makes these videos is an ignoramous and he doesn't see the big picture.  He doesn't acknowledge immune system increases in function when you do something productive for yourself and helps your mood.  He will just throw it off and say, its a placebo.  His views, and his methods are the only source of truth and if its not then people are just being fooled.  

His video is making a point that celebrities should not make recommendations because they don't think like him is arrogant.  He doesn't acknowledge that their success has something to do with their unorthodox training and treatment they do.  

The dude did the Wim Hoff technique without actually physically going in-person to a Wim Hoff seminar.  He watched some demo's tried it for a month or something like that and said it doesn't really work as Wim Hoff claims.  If he actually practiced real science he would follow Wim Hoff for 2-4 weeks, participate, observe, then come up with his video.   Its clear he is stuck in the delusions of his profession so he would not even try. If he did do such a thing, he would make it an effort unconsciously not to make it work.  

Edited March 9, 2021 by Tanz

[DocWatts]

13 hours ago, Danioover9000 said:

Last question is interesting. If I said to keep slander laws, how do I know my decision is good? Let's say I was slandered in the past, so a law that protects me is good, and if such a law existed earlier, I wouldn't be victimized that severely, which is why I know this is a good choice. Yet, how do I know this will still be good? Maybe my decision to keep this law, is making it harder for a good, just activist group in the future to attack some billionaire corrupt guy, or elite group, in a peaceful social manner, which increases the probability that they resort to more aggressive tactics. Assuming comprehension of language is good enough to be average, I agree that if the view is unambiguously harmful, in an explicit way, that such a view should be regulated.

However, How do I know if an opinion is harmful, if the view is ambiguously expressed? And how do I determine it's harm, when it's ambiguous in delivery, and the causes are abstractions loosely from different statements? A good example of this is when some small business online person gets cancelled, but later on the person cancelled is innocent of whatever accusation is addressed in the public/digital domain, and how this started was so ambiguous, between the victim and the offender in question, that a mob mentality forms, not because of explicit, factual harm, but from implicit, perceived threat to their favorite youtuber.

These are all questions that Courts have to deal with when deciding Libel and Slander cases, where something can be considered slander/libel if : (1) The claim(s) made about someone are untrue. (2) The person making such claim(s) had reasonable grounds to know that they were untrue. (3) The claim(s) caused Material harm to the person(s) or organization in question.

So obviously there's going to be some ambiguity to any one of those claims, but the Law (or namely Juries) are asked to deal with ambiguous situations all the time. Also just because a Harm caused by some forms of Speech my be indirect, doesn't mean that there can't be a solid chain of evidence backing it up.

Trump didn't directly tell his followers to break into the Capitol building, but still incited violence due through dog whistle rhetoric after months of fermenting rage over his false accusations that the election was stolen. Cigarette companies didn't directly tell ten year olds that they should smoke, they just advertised their products in a way that was highly accessible to children, and promoted their products using colorful cartoon characters that would appeal in a targeted way towards children.

The majority of people who use Speech for Harmful or Malicious Purposes, are usually smart enough to give themselves at least a veneer of plausible deniability, so that they can avoid being held accountable for any Harm that comes as a result of their Speech.

Edited March 9, 2021 by DocWatts

[DocWatts]

Getting back to the original topic of this post, as someone who's listened to JRE Podcast for years, the sense that I get isn't that Rogan's changed to a great degree over the past few years.

Rather, what I see is that much of the aforementioned Irresponsibility in how Rogan would sometimes use his media platform was obfuscated, when he was operating in an earlier social environment where the consequences of platforming toxic media personalities and spreading misinformation was not nearly as apparent as it is now.

Things are rather different in our current social environment where a deadly pandemic is killing hundreds of thousands of people, and where tens of millions have fallen under the sway of an Authoritarian Cult of Personality that's threatening American Democracy.

 

Edited March 10, 2021 by DocWatts

[vladorion]

And who decides what is misinformation?

[DnoReally]

@vladorion The people, who supply you with true information. Obviously

[DocWatts]

@vladorion "Who decides what is misinformation?"  This sort of rhetoric is a common tactic employed by Bad Faith actors to avoid being called out for spreading misinformation, by attempting to cast doubt on the credibility of any information that contradicts their narrative. It's a fallback that's used when someone doesn't have any credible evidence to back up their arguments, and is employed by people who make Bad Faith arguments that 4chan is as reliable a source as Reuters or the CDC. 

If you want to figure out which sources of Information are reliable, I would recommend that you educate yourself on rhe basics of Media Literacy.

Edited March 10, 2021 by DocWatts

[vladorion]

20 minutes ago, DocWatts said:

@vladorion "Who decides what is misinformation?"  This sort of rhetoric is a common tactic employed by Bad Faith actors to avoid being called out for spreading misinformation, by attempting to cast doubt on the credibility of any information that contradicts their narrative. It's a fallback that's used when someone doesn't have any credible evidence to back up their arguments, and is employed by people who make Bad Faith arguments that 4chan is as reliable a source as Reuters or the CDC. 

If you want to figure out which sources of Information are reliable, I would recommend that you educate yourself on rhe basics of Media Literacy.

No, this is a legitimate question that you're simply dismissing as illegitimate using no real arguments.

Being called out is not a problem, suppressing alternative information is a problem.

Not all those who are called 'conspiracy theorists' believe that 4chan is as reliable as Reuters or CDC because much everyone who has an alternative opinion is now a conspiracy theorist. Among them, doctors, scientists etc. whose voices are suppressed.

Casting doubt on the credibility of information is good. Truth can withstand any criticism. Lies cannot.

 

 

[AtheisticNonduality]

I'm boycotting Joe Rogan until he returns to Youtube.

[DocWatts]

20 hours ago, vladorion said:

No, this is a legitimate question that you're simply dismissing as illegitimate using no real arguments.

Being called out is not a problem, suppressing alternative information is a problem.

Not all those who are called 'conspiracy theorists' believe that 4chan is as reliable as Reuters or CDC because much everyone who has an alternative opinion is now a conspiracy theorist. Among them, doctors, scientists etc. whose voices are suppressed.

Casting doubt on the credibility of information is good. Truth can withstand any criticism. Lies cannot.

Casting doubt on the credibility of Information can be Good, but that will entirely depend on the motivations of the person making such a claim, and how that claim propagates throughout the Culture, including how that refutation is Framed by those who broadcast it, and also how Media Literate and Epistemologically sophisticated the person hearing that information is.

Not all misinformation comes from Bad Faith actors, sometimes a dissenting expert makes a qualified and limited dissenting claim on a particular subject, which then becomes flattened and broadened as it's broadcasted by non-experts and reaches the eyes and ears of ordinary people, with important context and qualifications stripped away, to disastrous consequences (such as one or two scientists questioning the effectiveness of certain types of facemasks gets warped into a broad statement that face masks "don't work"). This can also happen when a study that is later discredited is generalized and makes waves as it works its way through the culture, with the Stanford Prison Experiment being a prime example here, or the discredited (and later retracted) 1998 study which popularized the notion that there's a link between vaccines and autism.

But very often incredulity is an intentional tactic used by Bad Faith actors who are not being honest about their motivations and intentions; such as the Fossil Fuel Industry and its well documented disinformation campaign to discredit climate change science being a prime example. The intention was to confuse the public by creating the false impression that there was ambiguity among climate scientists about whether humans were causing the climate to change, and that arguments for against human caused climate change were equally credible.

 That 4chan reference wasn't a hypothetical, as it's become a mainstream political movement with tens of millions of adherents who look to an anonymous 4chan poster as a credible information source for factual claims about important political issues.

Edited March 11, 2021 by DocWatts

[Leo Gura]

9 hours ago, vladorion said:

And who decides what is misinformation?

Obviously it is relative.

But there are lower and higher persepectives.

Whining about masks and lockdowns and vaccines is lower.

[Forestluv]

10 hours ago, vladorion said:

And who decides what is misinformation?

This is a great question. . . at Tier2. This question is loaded with relativity, which Tier 1 minds don’t understand. 

A yellow level thinker will waste his time trying to communicate relativity to Blue and Orange libertarians that use free speech disingenuously as a shield toward their own selfish desires. They don’t genuinely want to explore the nuances of this question. They use this question rhetorically as “no one could decide, so we should have unrestrained speech and my tribe and I can speak whatever I want” 

For those that come in good faith, this is a worthy question of exploration. I would start off by saying there is no one decider that 100% of people agree to be the decider. Look at how religious gods as the one decider have failed. I would say a better solution would have speech court systems - similar to courts that enforce other societal infractions. The online speech courts could be composed from a mixture of sociologists, social media experts, cyber security, academics, traditional judges etc. 

[Haumea2018]

9 hours ago, vladorion said:

No, this is a legitimate question that you're simply dismissing as illegitimate using no real arguments.

That's because there are no real arguments.  There are only ad hoc arguments to shut down speech one doesn't like, which always boil down to some version of "do as I say, because I say so."  I mean even the word "responsible" is a code word which roughly translates as "shut the fuck up about stuff I think you shouldn't talk about."

It's basically "I should be in charge of what can be said and here's some ad hoc justification or some bullshit theory backing that up."

But even shorter it's "I'm better than you, so stfu."

The reason why conspiracy theories are so popular these days is because the ruling elite and the media has exposed themselves as such dishonest, disingenuous shitbags.  They've sown the seeds of all this.  The fix is not in shutting down speech, it's in flushing the shitbags.

Edited March 11, 2021 by Haumea2018

[Arcangelo]

On 3/5/2021 at 3:36 AM, Preety_India said:

Wish I had the common sense to never listen to my conventional doctors. Because I got fucked big time. 

I went to the otorhinolaryngologist and he told me that I have to take some pills for the rest of my life. Instead of asking how is my diet and how are my stress levels. What ringed the alarm was that he gave me the name of the brand not the name of the medicine. Then I remembered that these guys get paid by big pharma to make people become addicts. I bought like 3 jars of pills and never bought any pills again. I rather cleaning my diet, and take lots and LOTS of water.

[Arcangelo]

On 3/7/2021 at 8:22 PM, Leo Gura said:

• Platforming people like Alex Jones and other right-wing ideologues and devils
• Trafficking in conspiracy theories
• Misinforming people about Covid and lockdowns

Freedom of speech IMO

On 3/8/2021 at 10:00 AM, Tanz said:

This video plays into dark territory and he is attempting to instigate what people can say or try publicly and what they can not.  
Taking away free speech is even more dangerous,  

Exactly. I very much rather people:

• Platforming people like Alex Jones and other right-wing ideologues and devils
• Trafficking in conspiracy theories
• Misinforming people about Covid and lockdown

 

Than the alternative, which is silencing them. Let everyone speak nonsense. Let everyone make up their own minds.

 

On 3/8/2021 at 1:25 PM, DocWatts said:

Does spreading misinformation that may directly lead to deaths count as Free Speech?

Yes absolutely IMO OFC.

 

On 3/8/2021 at 4:11 PM, DocWatts said:

is unlimited Free Speech regardless of the Harm it causes to other people always a Good Thing?

Difficult question. If someone pointed a gun at me and said: -''Answer the fucking question!'' I will say: -''YES.''

 

 

Back on topic, I think this thread is gossip and that people should focus on their responsibility instead of other's responsibility.

 

Arc

[Leo Gura]

39 minutes ago, Arcangelo said:

Freedom of speech IMO

That is irrelevant to a discussion of responsibility.

I have the freedom to spit in your face. That does not make it responsible to do so.