2025-01-01 at 6:19 PM UTC
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin called out Elon Musk for the "tone of discourse" on X, and cautioned against censoring users with the “banhammer.”
https://cointelegraph.com/news/vitalik-buterin-calls-out-elon-musk-free-speech-banhammerI admire your willingness to stand up and fight for freer movement of people, it's an important freedom that all too easily gets thrown under the bus.
That said I think it's valuable to turn down the temperature here, on both tone of discourse and the social media banhammer.
Respecting free speech is easy when we agree with the speech, and hard when we think it's awful. But the arguments for respecting free speech anyway are the same as ever: the banhammer is controlled by one group today, it will be controlled by another group tomorrow, and every use of it legitimizes further use, and by the end public discourse collapses into either balkanization, monoculture (where the winner will be the guy with the biggest hammer, not the guy with the best arguments) or constant war of all against all.
And it's worth reflecting on just how much tone of discourse has fallen here over the past couple of years. I feel like a lot of people have been okay with rising aggressiveness because the target of the aggressiveness was one faction that they disliked, but once that beast is summoned, its nature is to look for new targets, and even if you approve of the first target you may not approve of the second or the third or the fourth - as many people have been finding out this week. Literally "first they came for the communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a communist". This isn't the kind of memetic beast we want running the show when we're entering an era of dangerous global political competition and rapidly improving AI.
The role of leaders in setting the tone is really important, and can be used to great good or great evil. It's not "wartime mode" that will get humanity to Mars in one piece, it's something brighter - and we should get into that mode today.
The following users say it would be alright if the author of this
post didn't die in a fire!
2025-01-01 at 8:01 PM UTC
Cuz Twitter never censored half the country before Musk bought it.
2025-01-01 at 8:41 PM UTC
Never trust anyone who's mother called them Vitalik.
2025-01-02 at 8:47 PM UTC
"I admire your willingness to stand up and fight for freer movement of people, it's an important freedom that all too easily gets thrown under the bus.
That said I think it's valuable to turn down the temperature here, on both tone of discourse and the social media banhammer.
Respecting free speech is easy when we agree with the speech, and hard when we think it's awful. But the arguments for respecting free speech anyway are the same as ever: the banhammer is controlled by one group today, it will be controlled by another group tomorrow, and every use of it legitimizes further use, and by the end public discourse collapses into either balkanization, monoculture (where the winner will be the guy with the biggest hammer, not the guy with the best arguments) or constant war of all against all.
And it's worth reflecting on just how much tone of discourse has fallen here over the past couple of years. I feel like a lot of people have been okay with rising aggressiveness because the target of the aggressiveness was one faction that they disliked, but once that beast is summoned, its nature is to look for new targets, and even if you approve of the first target you may not approve of the second or the third or the fourth - as many people have been finding out this week. Literally "first they came for the communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a communist". This isn't the kind of memetic beast we want running the show when we're entering an era of dangerous global political competition and rapidly improving AI.
The role of leaders in setting the tone is really important, and can be used to great good or great evil. It's not "wartime mode" that will get humanity to Mars in one piece, it's something brighter - and we should get into that mode today."
That's a whole lot of text without actually saying anything useful.
2025-01-02 at 9:44 PM UTC
yeah and nobody watched Sam Hydes video either *rolls eyes*
