The science of how (and when) we decide to speak out—or self-censor

The study's main takeaway: "Be bold. It is the thing that slows down authoritarian creep."

See full article...

 

[avlepharos]

Regarding the intro paragraph: doesn't one "quash" dissent, rather than "squash" it?

 

[Treefingers]

If it stays within the narrow definition of authoritarianism, something like centralized executive authority maintained through political repression, then I don't think there's any point to this, regardless of method.

There's never a single source of repression. Political power doesn't have to be concentrated in a government. Repression doesn't have to be intentional. And it doesn't have to come as a clear violation of rights granted in some other time or place (or in theory). People might not notice it at all. A force that someone does dissent against often isn't accurately identified and might not even exist.

All of this is always relevant when talking about social responses to negative social forces. Because then you can account for, say, someone who dissents against non-existent oppression, gets no reaction because they don't threaten real power, invents a conspiracy theory to explain that contradiction, and becomes an active and unwitting support for some real oppressive force.

Maybe this is all addressed in the paper. But I wouldn't know. Some repressive force is preventing me from reading it.

 

[monkeygonewrong]

With time and age , i have 0 filters left. I say things like they are , call em as i see them. Someone's pissed at me for speaking my mind ? Good let em be pissed off and in rage. The only rage they can have and express is knowing that they have 0 control over my discourse.

I think the same - but I also know that I am not 100% correct, even though I think I am, so tend to keep the cake hole shut.

 

[waqar]

oh dear.

 

[Treefingers]

The best way to counter bad speech is more speech.

"I dunno, Odysseus, these sirens make some pretty compelling arguments."

 

[bebu]

I think there's a long term benefit to regime change and a short term cost.

The short-term cost is borne by the generation that overthrows the existing government and the long-term benefit inures to their descendants. I am extremely grateful for the French Revolution and American Independence, but the people who lived during that time paid a hefty price.

The reality is most people will live a worse life in any kind of war or upheaval.

I wouldn't be convinced that if either or both of those two upheavals had fizzled out, that the consequent alteration in history would have been any worse than the rather dismal actual history—on my reading I suspect quite the opposite or at least very different.

Both upheavals have cast very long shadows that still subtly afflict today's world.

Real and lasting change is both slow and continuous. The lasting changes effected by upheaval and revolution aren't wrought by the disruption and destruction but rather through the slow and laborious reconstruction and repair of the damage afterwards.

 

[bebu]

Funny reading about being brave and speaking out on Ars Technica, which itself hasn't spoken out about Gaza, Israel, Sudan, Congo etc. There are plenty of technological angles in all conflicts but Ars has stayed completely silent.

I can sympathize with Ars' predicament. All those conflicts are massively polarized with each side well and truly entrenched in their metaphorical Maginot and Siegfreid lines.

Pretty much a case if you cannot say (publish) anything constructive, it is better to say nothing. Chosen silence itself can be the strongest condemnation.

 

[countbalo]

But then, maybe the Catholic Church had the right idea with Galileo after all...

I really wish people would actually look into this instead of using this as bullet point to show how the Western Church had an issue with Science. The issue was a political one, not scientific one. Galileo made a rather rude political comment about the pope after the pope became friendly with him. This was seen as "biting the hand that had fed him" not "oh no, his ideas go against some biblically ordained fact". This is like the shouting fire in a movie theater thing.

 

[cryptonym]

I can sympathize with Ars' predicament. All those conflicts are massively polarized with each side well and truly entrenched in their metaphorical Maginot and Siegfreid lines.

Pretty much a case if you cannot say (publish) anything constructive, it is better to say nothing. Chosen silence itself can be the strongest condemnation.

I don't think that is the reason Ars is staying silent. There's been an incredible amount of tech related things happening - anything from widespread social media censorship of people's accounts and posts/stories, artificial biases in AI models, AI used in the targeting of people in strikes, slave-like labour including deaths in digging up materials for batteries, phones etc., to targeting for journalists, the beeper attack, development of drone tech for warfare and surveillance, limitations on freedom of speech and violations of user privacy etc. Literally hundreds of stories that would be relevant for a tech news site like Ars to dive into and cover. And nothing. Nothing at all. It's extremely strange. Ars used to have balls. Maybe that ended with Condé Nast. It's such a shame.

 

[Totally Radical Liberal]

By this logic, you shouldn't have replied in the first place. Debate is apparently a bad idea and doesn't work, so the debate over debate needs to be buried.

Of course, if debate is a fruitless endeavor and doesn't change peoples' minds, then our whole system of science doesn't work seeing as it is based on presenting evidence of new findings or analysis of old findings in an attempt to overturn old theories and replace them with less wrong ones.

But then, maybe the Catholic Church had the right idea with Galileo after all...

Luckily, science isn't debate because the goal of science is to arrive at a better representation of reality and the goal of debate is to sway people to your side--which means it's a competition where both parties don't want to be swayed.

And it's true, it was a pointless response which is why I didn't craft it with care. I made my point perfectly, though, didn't I? I didn't change your mind at all despite presenting counter evidence. And I did what actually works and downvoted you.

 

[MiqWalsh]

This whole thing astounds me. Why is it that academics are always convinced that everything can be boiled down to a "potted" handful of dry facts, figures, mathematics & assumptions? And then filed away into a neat little pigeon-hole?

Our modern society loves to pigeon-hole everything, it seems....

 

[bob_page_cousin]

There was a Wizard of Id cartoon that had Sir Rodney in the middle of writing a sign "the King is a fink". He got to "The King is a fi..." Then the King walks past and Sir Rodney writes "The King is a fine fellow".

 

[Kethinov]

Factually incorrect. There are plenty of studies that show that the best way to combat bad speech is to bury it in the first place. There's endless studies showing that positive, rational debate never quells the swaying of bad opinions and beliefs. In a more visceral example (because I suspect you're more motivated by anecdote than data), the entire flat earther movement started two centuries ago with a single huckster who debated actual scientists who showed experimentally to crowds that he was wrong and he still swayed people to his way of thinking such that it exists decades later. If he had never been given a platform in the first place, it wouldn't exist.

"The best way to combat bad speech is to bury it" is quite an extraordinary claim for which we would need to see some extraordinary evidence.

Such evidence would need to demonstrate either:

1. Such incidents (like the flat earth example you gave) are the rule, not the exception, or,

2. Regardless of the statistical significance, the benefits of suppressing bad speech empirically outweigh the collateral damage of suppressing free speech in various contexts.

I have doubts either claim can be proven.

Also, it's important not to conflate skepticism of echo chambers with the necessity of moderation. Online communities need moderation to police decorum (and remove illegal content), but unhealthy communities police much more than that.

Healthy communities allow members to disagree with each other on matters of opinion concerning any topic, but insist disagreemens be conducted in good faith and with good decorum.

Unhealthy communities police the opinions expressed by their members too. That's an echo chamber.

Extremely unhealthy communities enforce standards of decorum unevenly, loosening them for people expressing popular opinions and tightening them for people expressing unpopular opinions. That's the worst kind of echo chamber.

When I say we should be opposed to echo chambers, that's what I'm talking about. I don't think any reasonable person would support that stifling culture.

 

[Oldnoobguy]

When you give your all to pull people from a hell hole (2016-2020), and then they jump back into that same hell hole (2024- ), you think twice about risking yourself again to save a bunch of brainless asses.

Many years ago my then future wife and I were enjoying an evening walk in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood when we heard a woman screaming. I looked in the direction of the screaming and saw in front of the apartment we were passing a man hitting a woman. I intervened by stepping between the two. The guy pulled a switchblade on me, while the woman darted away. I backed away as quickly as I could terrified I was about to get a knife in my belly. Meanwhile the woman had stopped next to my wife. Fortunately the guy didn't chase after me. Just as I got next to my future wife, the woman strode back towards the man screaming abuse at him. That's when I said to hell with her and continued walking with my wife. I wasn't going to risk getting seriously injured or killed helping someone who was stupid enough to go back to the situation I had risked my well being to extract her from.

My anger and disgust towards that woman is nothing compared to what I feel towards the idiots who voted for Trump a second time. Unlike with that woman's stupidity which I could walk away from, I'm not able to escape from the stupidity of the Trump voting morons.

 

[The Lurker Beneath]

God, science by simulation is getting very out of hand.

They created a software "simulation", openly state that they embedded their assumptions about what people would do, and even seemingly brag about how this has nothing to do with "empirical statistics"...and then they reported this as scientific results that are relevant to actual sociology and political science.

I'm horrified by stuff like this.

It's a bit problematic, but at the same time the patterns of unrealistic simulations can represent a kind of science - or more accurately I suppose a kind of mathematics. Recall the experiments with 'iterated prisoners dilemma' decades ago that seem to point to some visible patterns in evolutionary psychology.

 

[The Lurker Beneath]

Factually incorrect. There are plenty of studies that show that the best way to combat bad speech is to bury it in the first place. There's endless studies showing that positive, rational debate never quells the swaying of bad opinions and beliefs. In a more visceral example (because I suspect you're more motivated by anecdote than data), the entire flat earther movement started two centuries ago with a single huckster who debated actual scientists who showed experimentally to crowds that he was wrong and he still swayed people to his way of thinking such that it exists decades later. If he had never been given a platform in the first place, it wouldn't exist.

Xi and others concur with your view.

 

[Causification]

Over the past two decades I've witnessed almost everyone slide into a type of compartmentalized thinking where their principles only apply to the right kind of people. Incident after incident I see nothing but hypocrisy. "I may hate what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it" is a dead concept and that makes me incredibly sad. I see people perform heroic acts in defense of the freedoms of one person and then advocate for another to be punished for the tiniest wrongthink. From individual people to huge demographic groups, we are sliding head-first into a post-enlightenment future where there are no rules, just teams, and god help you if someone who's not on your team has power over you.

I feel left behind. Twenty or so years ago things seemed so clear: the people trying to tell you what you're allowed to see, say, sing, or think were the old guys, the bad guys, the guys whose time was ending and us good guys were advocating for the right of everyone to be who they wanted to be, say what they wanted to say. I'm beginning to realize that was never true; that what I thought was a battle between restriction and freedom was just a fight between two different lists of unacceptable communication and most of my childhood was spent in the eye of the storm where the old rules were dying and the new weren't yet solidified.

 

[DarthSlack]

Over the past two decades I've witnessed almost everyone slide into a type of compartmentalized thinking where their principles only apply to the right kind of people. Incident after incident I see nothing but hypocrisy. "I may hate what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it" is a dead concept and that makes me incredibly sad. I see people perform heroic acts in defense of the freedoms of one person and then advocate for another to be punished for the tiniest wrongthink. From individual people to huge demographic groups, we are sliding head-first into a post-enlightenment future where there are no rules, just teams, and god help you if someone who's not on your team has power over you.

I feel left behind. Twenty or so years ago things seemed so clear: the people trying to tell you what you're allowed to see, say, sing, or think were the old guys, the bad guys, the guys whose time was ending and us good guys were advocating for the right of everyone to be who they wanted to be, say what they wanted to say. I'm beginning to realize that was never true; that what I thought was a battle between restriction and freedom was just a fight between two different lists of unacceptable communication and most of my childhood was spent in the eye of the storm where the old rules were dying and the new weren't yet solidified.

What you are leaving out is that over the last 20 years, it's become fashionable in "conservative" circles to advocate for the elimination of people based on what they are. Skin color, sexual orientation, gender. Advocating for discrimination or outright elimination of someone based on immutable characteristics is something that never, ever, ever should be tolerated. People shouldn't have to continuously defend their right to simply exist or to have the exact same rights granted automatically to others.

 

[Causification]

What you are leaving out is that over the last 20 years, it's become fashionable in "conservative" circles to advocate for the elimination of people based on what they are. Skin color, sexual orientation, gender. Advocating for discrimination or outright elimination of someone based on immutable characteristics is something that never, ever, ever should be tolerated. People shouldn't have to continuously defend their right to simply exist or to have the exact same rights granted automatically to others.

I'm not referring to only one particular political orientation. The behavior has become extreme and symmetrical. During covid you had conservatives saying BLM protests should be banned because they were super-spreader events, and at the same time you had leftists saying anti-lockdown protests should be banned because they were super-spreader events. You had vultures come out and talk an incredible amount of shit about David Hogg after his friends were murdered, and then those same people act like mocking Charlie and Erika Kirk is an unforgivable sin. Someone has to work very hard these days to convince me their principles are sincere and not just a tool they're using as a cudgel against the other side.

 

[DougF]

I really wish people would actually look into this instead of using this as bullet point to show how the Western Church had an issue with Science. The issue was a political one, not scientific one. Galileo made a rather rude political comment about the pope after the pope became friendly with him. This was seen as "biting the hand that had fed him" not "oh no, his ideas go against some biblically ordained fact". This is like the shouting fire in a movie theater thing.

The other point about Galileo is that he was an ass. The Church was quite willing to hear how he proved his theory, but he couldn’t as calculus hadn’t been invented yet (see: Newton/Leibniz). Yet, he continued to teach and the Church ended up assigning house arrest. Yeah, in the long run Galileo’s instincts/observations were correct, but…

 

[Bernardo Verda]

It's a bit problematic, but at the same time the patterns of unrealistic simulations can represent a kind of science - or more accurately I suppose a kind of mathematics. Recall the experiments with 'iterated prisoners dilemma' decades ago that seem to point to some visible patterns in evolutionary psychology.

See: The Evolution Of Cooperation, by Robert Axelrod
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation

 

[Thisisthebeginning]

Funny reading about being brave and speaking out on Ars Technica, which itself hasn't spoken out about Gaza, Israel, Sudan, Congo etc. There are plenty of technological angles in all conflicts but Ars has stayed completely silent.

Ars knows its owners and its readers.

 

[anorlunda]

Who needs a government to censor? My wife opposes me airing my political views in public or in private. Her theory is that someone will dislike any opinion, so keeping silent maximizes the chances of maintaining friendships. I haven't revealed my thoughts to anyone but her for 50 years. That is supposedly anti-mental-health, but I haven't gone berserk or committed crimes, at least not yet.

It also seems contrary to common advice that you should have close friends with whom you share your secrets.

Isn't it common in the mental health context to presume that bottling up emotions causes them to grow more intense?

 

[marsiglio]

I hope the authors read Michel Foucault's "Truth and Power" essay. Has bearing upon this.

 

[RZetopan]

By this logic, you shouldn't have replied in the first place. Debate is apparently a bad idea and doesn't work, so the debate over debate needs to be buried.

Of course, if debate is a fruitless endeavor and doesn't change peoples' minds, then our whole system of science doesn't work seeing as it is based on presenting evidence of new findings or analysis of old findings in an attempt to overturn old theories and replace them with less wrong ones.

But then, maybe the Catholic Church had the right idea with Galileo after all...

There are still Catholics who defend the church and insist that Galileo was in the wrong.
https://www.catholic.com/tract/the-galileo-controversy
https://www.amazon.com/Galileo-Was-Wrong-Evidence-History-ebook/dp/B0BD4LNZ7S

And today the Catholic Church insists that it is pro-science and supports evolution. But it supports the church's distorted view of evolution which is not supported by science, including that the Adam and Eve really existed, while molecular biology shows that is totally impossible.

Without Adam and Eve, and the church's fantasy of "Original Sin" (eating "Smart Fruit"), there is no requirement for "redemption". Great scam going on there: invent an imaginary disease that everyone is born with, and then claim that only you have the cure (which will cost you).

 

[BBennett]

Exactly, the situation needs to get extremely bad and effectively hopeless for most people to revolt. Even then, with modern tools the state can use surveillance to decapitate the ability to organize. The cards are effectively stacked against the people once a barely competent authoritarian government takes control. If you can feed your population, you can rule.

Panem et Circenses

(emphasis mine)

Whew...dodged a bullet there. Hope we've learned our lesson!
/s

 

[Medicicidem]

Exactly, the situation needs to get extremely bad and effectively hopeless for most people to revolt. Even then, with modern tools the state can use surveillance to decapitate the ability to organize. The cards are effectively stacked against the people once a barely competent authoritarian government takes control. If you can feed your population, you can rule.

Panem et Circenses

With that, logic says revolt before the situation gets that bad. Surveillance, FISA court warrants, etc were, are, and will continue to be used against the population. We all are well aware of what's coming. History shows it's futile to duck the oncoming punch after it connects with your head.
So, trying not to sound like a crazy revolutionary, and realizing we are a VERY divided people, how long will the people wait to make a correction? Is it after separation of powers are ignored? After a federal police force is dispatched to keep us in line? When the justice system is used for the dictator's personal vengeance? What if elections are "cancelled" because they are too corrupt? When do we put down the bread and walk out of the circus?

 

[Carewolf]

This whole thing astounds me. Why is it that academics are always convinced that everything can be boiled down to a "potted" handful of dry facts, figures, mathematics & assumptions? And then filed away into a neat little pigeon-hole?

Our modern society loves to pigeon-hole everything, it seems....

You mean: How dare they try make sense of the world? That is only the responsibility of old hags and the supreme leader

 

[irnoob]

Thinking of self censoring? Have a pint!

 

[Voldenuit]

Over the past two decades I've witnessed almost everyone slide into a type of compartmentalized thinking where their principles only apply to the right kind of people. Incident after incident I see nothing but hypocrisy. "I may hate what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it" is a dead concept and that makes me incredibly sad. I see people perform heroic acts in defense of the freedoms of one person and then advocate for another to be punished for the tiniest wrongthink. From individual people to huge demographic groups, we are sliding head-first into a post-enlightenment future where there are no rules, just teams, and god help you if someone who's not on your team has power over you.

I feel left behind. Twenty or so years ago things seemed so clear: the people trying to tell you what you're allowed to see, say, sing, or think were the old guys, the bad guys, the guys whose time was ending and us good guys were advocating for the right of everyone to be who they wanted to be, say what they wanted to say. I'm beginning to realize that was never true; that what I thought was a battle between restriction and freedom was just a fight between two different lists of unacceptable communication and most of my childhood was spent in the eye of the storm where the old rules were dying and the new weren't yet solidified.

Not all speech is good speech.

Some speech, is, objectively, pretty bad.

Posting instructions on how to mix poisons, or advocating genocide, or hate speech and inciting violence, should not be tolerated.

It's a nuance the First Amendment doesn't cover. But it doesn't mean that it is unethical for society to enforce these standards in lieu of government. It may, indeed, be preferable not to give the government(s) too much power to do so.

Of course, hypothetical platitudes are easy to spout from our ivory towers. When speech is easily coupled to violence (Jan 6, Gaza, Sudan), picking which shade of gray to draw a line at isn't just philosophical, it is a matter of life or death for some people. And at the risk of angering both sides, there is a lot of gray on either side of the line.

 

[Mattolejack]

Or be extremely authoritarian, but only for small minorities and outgroups, initially. If their model cannot allow for that very common strategy, it may be a little bit too simplified.

Very very astuta critique here. This is the current model in the USA.

 

[Marvin__]

Rubbish.
Utter bollocks, in fact.

Try googling Julian Assange. David Miranda. Greta Thunberg. Or "Terrorism Act uk impact".

 

[Tayradmax]

I know an increasing number of transgender individuals who are doing their best to stay under the radar and out of trouble, just in case we reach a point where bounties on them become a thing. I also know some that know that the hammer is falling, but want to poke the bear as many times as possible before they go down, so they have become extremely political. It all depends on the personality.

I hate trump as much as the next person, but you are batshit utterly insane if you think this is a reality. Get out of the condé nast bubble please. It is exactly this catastrophizing that emboldens the Right.

 

[Tayradmax]

Factually incorrect. There are plenty of studies that show that the best way to combat bad speech is to bury it in the first place. There's endless studies showing that positive, rational debate never quells the swaying of bad opinions and beliefs. In a more visceral example (because I suspect you're more motivated by anecdote than data), the entire flat earther movement started two centuries ago with a single huckster who debated actual scientists who showed experimentally to crowds that he was wrong and he still swayed people to his way of thinking such that it exists decades later. If he had never been given a platform in the first place, it wouldn't exist.

Factually correct. You cannot ban ideas. Trump was banned from social media. Did it stop his reelection? Me thinks not. Sunlight is the best disinfectant and trying to censor is counterproductive. The more you tell people NOT to listen to something the more they will ignore you. At least SOMEONE here gets it. Thanks R0ckyRacc00n and Kethninov! Ars has become one giant circle jerk in the comments where if you even attempt to explain why Trump was elected using anything outside of kindergarten logic you're labeled a fascist bigot. One must understand that people voted for him for non hateful/racist reasons. Or sure keep yelling about the trans people being literally hunted by right wingers. Your choice. The evidence is clear. One approach has failed. One has still to be attempted.

 

[Tayradmax]

So you’re pro echo chamber?

Yes. They are pro echo chamber. That's why they created GEC (global engagement center) and other censorship organs of the state like the center for counter digital hate, and the Sanford Internet observatory. The problem with these NGOs, other than they can't stop the ideas they view as so abhorrent, is that the NEXT guy can use those overreaching powers against YOU! I still don't understand why the bulk of those who oppose trump and populism don't see this. The powers you so wrecklessly desire to fight and wield against Trump will be turned back on you. And that is what Trump has been doing since his reelection: using the same idiotic tools the Left attempted to use, but in the other direction. Be careful fighting monsters lest ye yourself become a monster.

 

[DarthSlack]

I'm not referring to only one particular political orientation. The behavior has become extreme and symmetrical. During covid you had conservatives saying BLM protests should be banned because they were super-spreader events,

Protip: They were being disingenuous, as usual. Conservatives never cared about super-spreader events, they would have tried to ban BLM protests on fashion grounds if they thought it would work.

and at the same time you had leftists saying anti-lockdown protests should be banned because they were super-spreader events.

Citation needed. Especially since "anti-lockdown protests" were largely cranks on social media.

You had vultures come out and talk an incredible amount of shit about David Hogg after his friends were murdered, and then those same people act like mocking Charlie and Erika Kirk is an unforgivable sin.

Wow. Just wow. David Hogg was victimized by a world he didn't want. Charlie Kirk was victimized by a world he advocated for. That's a distinction that matters.

Someone has to work very hard these days to convince me their principles are sincere and not just a tool they're using as a cudgel against the other side.

You may want to apply that thinking to your own posting.

 

[rbryanh]

No doubt there's a fine university study somewhere demonstrating how, when, and why we decide to lick the boot our necks rather than put the person wearing it in a cell. It'll be complex and subtle, but there will be nothing in it that Martin Niemöller didn't say more concisely and movingly.

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

The first thing we do when we see someone being mistreated is compare out. "Oh look, Trump has weaponized the Federal government against journalists. Good thing I'm not a journalist." Subtle or blatant, the core principle of conservatism is behind all of it: if it's not hurting me, it doesn't hurt.

P.S. This is, quite literally, why we can't have nice things. "The rest is advertising."

 

[YetAnotherPoster]

I can sympathize with Ars' predicament. All those conflicts are massively polarized with each side well and truly entrenched in their metaphorical Maginot and Siegfreid lines.

Pretty much a case if you cannot say (publish) anything constructive, it is better to say nothing. Chosen silence itself can be the strongest condemnation.

They are free to choose not to run the story about Israel using Azure to surveil Palestine, but it's not doing a service to their readers. It's been mentioned elsewhere in the IT and general press.