The fact that @jk_rowling is absolutely correct here has no bearing on her ethical right to express it.

We protect free expression ESPECIALLY when we despise it.

https://x.com/markchangizi/status/1682427150333345792?s=46

Although we might imagine that it’s the most radical that experience the greatest censorship from a censorial regime, that’s not the optimal solution for the regime.

Instead, regimes tend to AMPLIFY their opposition’s radicals, as it helps make the opposition unpalatable to those on the fence.

I don’t have data on this, but it seems as if censorship throughout Covid followed this expectation:

Many of the most radical (and ridiculous) managed to survive uncensored, whereas much of the “mainstream anti-lockdowners” were deboosted, suspended or cancelled.

OF COURSE people are conspiring to push their agendas. The issue is, can anyone or any group reliably make (or cause) their agenda happen?

https://www.loofwired.com/p/when-one-of-your-tweets-goes-viral

Much of the world doesn’t understand free expression. It’s complicated, complex, confusing, and counterintuitive. But it’s our greatest gem, and works only when it’s especially valued for the expression you despise.

Here’s a series of videos on the complex angles.

https://x.com/markchangizi/status/1682427150333345792?s=46

Public policy makers are on the Left and tend to believe we’re

(1) blank slates; can be shaped to conform to their ingenious scheme

(2) not biological ingenious, but kluges working well enough; their ingenious scheme won’t upset the design, only improve

https://youtu.be/bKSdneWVNBY

Even without what anyone would call censorship, sociopolitical communities engage in selective amplification of certain viewpoints, and these dynamics lead to each side believing their own community is less radical than their opposition.

First, among the range of viewpoints within my own community, I am more likely to amplify viewpoints that are less, not more, radical than my own. I agree with milder viewpoints — I just happen to have an even stronger position — but more radical positions hold stronger views that I reject.

Second, among the range of viewpoints within my opposition, I am more likely to amplify more radical viewpoints. They are more absurd from my community’s standpoint, amount to easier targets of substantive criticism, and are more ripe for ridicule.

Because sociopolitical communities mostly listen to the statements their own side makes, an immediate consequence is that my community will have the impression that it’s less radical than we in fact are, and that our opposition is more radical than it is.

And the folks in the opposition will believe the opposite.

That is, sociopolitical communities end up with an organic, emergent “censorship” of sorts, or biased broadcasting dynamic, such that each side genuinely believes, given the distribution of viewpoints it actually observes, that its own side is reasonable, but the other side nutty.

Almost 15 years since I left academia so as to preserve my intellectual freedom.

Sabine Hossenfelder (who blocked me on Twitter because I shamed her for demanding vaccine coercion) did a new video pointing out what I pointed out almost 15 years ago, when I left academia to start my own research institute.

https://youtu.be/LKiBlGDfRU8?si=Yeiy6dcoFirBvxfC

Here is my take from 2010 when I left my tenure-track job to secure my intellectual freedom — ahem, to be aloof — and have published four books since then:

https://changizi.wordpress.com/2010/11/29/what-is-wrong-with-academia/

New at \_ooFWIRED !

Fighting the Covid Narrative:
Humble pies all around

One of the anti-medical-authoritarianism tasks still ahead of us is ensuring that the Covid narrative we leave for the next generation is not that a heroic bunch of experts and a selfless population worked tirelessly for the good of all to minimize the damage from the Great Covid Pandemic, and that they successfully defeated evil selfish interests who denied there was a problem, rejected the interventions, and put the world at risk.

We are kidding ourselves if we believe that that’s not the dominant narrative today.

https://www.loofwired.com/p/fighting-the-covid-narrative

“Even vaxxed people may carry the virus in great amounts, perhaps even similar to those in unvaxxed people."

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/27/health/covid-cdc-masks-vaccines-delta-variant.html

“But do you have any citations showing that my ingenious well-intentioned emergency authoritarian schemes which coerced millions didn’t work or harmed anyone” is why we have the Precautionary Principle and, its cousin, the Culpability Principle.

https://www.loofwired.com/p/the-culpability-principle

Much of the debate in the public square is between the far extremes of an issue.

The center is often not some mealy mouth average of them. Rather, the center is the stance that does not fall for one or another cognitive bias or irrationality.

For example, I’m stuck in the middle in all of these debates below. How about you?

Mask & vax! me Depopulation!

Genocide! me Gazans = Hamas!

I’m a girl! me Trans cuz gays!

Climate change! me Chemtrails!

Open borders! me Illegals rape!

Abortion! me Conception!

For the extreme pro-life folks who believe the abortion debate is “simple,” and that a human life / person doesn’t take time to be constructed, but instead instantaneously comes into existence once the zygote forms, here is a thought experiment:

In a completely unexpected and never before occurrence due to a super rare condition of the mother, the zygote splits into twins, and this iteratively happens 33 times, exponentially leading to around 8.6 billion identical zygotes in a lady’s uterus (totaling 150 grams).

Although the clump of zygotes is only 150 grams, there are more zygotes in her uterus than the total number of people on Earth.

When nearly all eventually die, and hopefully several are born, you are committed to believing this was the worst human disaster the Earth has ever witnessed.

It’s easier to create a “one peoples against another peoples” narrative, which many on both sides have done.

Thus, Israelis and Palestinians become unclean outgroups on the respective opposing side.

But it’s not a “one peoples against another peoples” conflict.

Instead, on one side is Hamas and Islamic Republic of Iran.

And on the other side are the Palestinians they oppress and use as pawns in their attempts to destroy Israel.

https://x.com/MarkChangizi/status/1714440272380092825

“The State Department was “recommended” by the Department of Homeland Security to contact a group it later partnered with on pressuring social media platforms to suppress speech from conservatives before the 2020 election, emails show.”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/2960567/dhs-state-department-2020-election-censorship-group-emails/

No matter your stance on 10/7 — or any issue! — you WANT your opposition’s speech uncensored.

~ Censorship hides the crazies. Moment 164
https://youtu.be/OJZ9mSgSYPI

~ Speech is a liability, not a privilege. Moment 326
https://youtu.be/ArfbZnjgHgI

~ Why dictators should be uncensored on social media. Moment 333
https://youtu.be/mWIbi2DWVjY

~ Who would even WANT to be in an echo chamber? Moment 335
https://youtu.be/2OekmXPjQvo

THOUGHT EXPERIMENT

You own a cake-making machine: Press the button and its robotic arm pours in flour, sugar etc., mixes it, places it in the oven, and takes it out.

You press the button but immediately decide to make it later instead, and so unplug it.

Did you destroy a cake?

“I love America.
I love the constitution.
I love the First Amendment.
I love private property.
Let me tell you something, if you care about your fucking God, then read Ludwig von Mises and the six lessons of the Austrian economic school, motherfuckers."

- Renato Moicano, @moicanoufc, UFC fighter and advocate for freedom, free expression and free markets

They censor the reasonable, showing they’re not interested in censoring misinformation.

Moment 467

https://youtu.be/JCuJ_xiXBB8

If Hamas are freedom fighters for Gazans,

~ why did they shoot their way to power?

~ why have they not held elections?

~ why are most Gazans afraid to criticize Hamas?

~ why are they supported by Iran’s mullahs, who have subjugated Iranians for almost 50 years?