Challenge: Censorship

I challenge any combination of Moderators and/or the Administrator on this website concerning what constitutes and/or motivates the general conception of Censorship throughout the entirety of Human History. Judging will be carried out by a poll-selection of long-term and active ILP participants. Or a collective judgment by the whole of the ILP community will be carried out.

If I win then I will call out the entire ILP staff for abusing their moderating powers.

If I lose then the moderators and the administrator of this website will keep their status quo.

This is about Free Speech if you have the balls for it…

there is no free speech on a private site…

-Imp

I found this formulation strange. The debate will involve each person/team describing what constituted Censorship throughout the entirety of Human History. That doesn’t sound like a debate. It sounds like…I am not sure what. Parallel articles, and enormous ones at that. Sort of like two encylopedia entries on the same topic. Am I missing something?
How do we evaluate the winner? Most comprehensive? Most accurate? Best writer?
Do you need to relate the History of Censorship to specific actions taken here by moderators?

Why do I severely-doubt that you, Impenitent, have the philosophical capacity to explain what constitutes a public or private property…?

Do not answer that. Instead, ignore this topic since nobody is willing to accept my challenge. Have another rap battle instead.

Or warn the Liberals in Social Sciences history does not repeat a hundred more times.

Rhetorically-speaking, you are missing the point of this thread as an open challenge. It is about censorship.

The weight of my argument will be enough to determine who wins and who loses.

How do we evaluate the winner of any contest except artificially?

I doubt the moderators on this board will get past explaining what Censorship even is or what it is used for.

I do not think they are that intelligent a group of people. I imagine they will fall flat to prove themselves right or me wrong.

Me versus all moderators & the administrator. Come on. Let us do this…

Oh wait, do we need more (c)rap battles around here? I can see how rap-contests are the defining marker of civilization these days.

read descartes’ first and second meditation and tell me about philosophical capacity…

-Imp

Now just a minute. Rap battles are a form of artistic expression, and being adversarial, the debate forum format works well for them. Defining marker of civilization, maybe not, but we can’t define civilization all the time. I think you’re just disparaging the rap battle because you don’t like (‘c’)rap.

Anyway, I like the idea of the censorship debate. Debates about site policy are great, because they act both as a platform from which to explain why things work the way they do, and as a barometer of public sentiment.

And the moderators act rationally and effectively, making their actions easy to defend. It doesn’t even have to be a mod or administrator defending them, I’m sure there are members here who appreciate the way the mods operate.

Personally, I’m in the middle of a rap battle and finals, so I can’t do it myself for some time. But if no one else is interested, I’ll be free in a few weeks.

That much I got, obviously. I wondered why you wanted each side to bring in the entire history of censorship, rather than have the debate focus on the specific issues around censorship here. A discussion of ethics. I would think at least a short book could be written on censorship in Uraguay in the 20th century. Do we really need to deal with the entire history of the issue?

You’re missing the point. You were calling for two unbelievable long historical papers.

By focusing on who argues best on what you are calling censorship and not on someone’s ability to recount the entire history of censorship.

That wasn’t an answer to the question.

Unfortunately, the challenge is for Mods and the Admin, Carleas, otherwise I’d be willing to metaphorically kick your ass for you.

Well Form-and-Void, when one person upheaves (annoys) the majority of a forum, then something’s not right that needs putting right, right? Isn’t that how society has always worked…

There is a method to the madness that is moderating, or perhaps you just don’t see it. One can choose to vote with one’s feet (as many have done before this point in time) you know :-"

Censorship is… Necessary. It is,at least in its most benign form, as is (mainly) the case here at ILP, a kind of conceptual immune-system. Except it guards against the more distressing viral memes rather than their more physical counterparts.

Most speech/communication acts are attempts, implicitly or explicitly, to manipulate or otherwise effect another’s behaviour and belief system. Some of us are wily enough to resist, some of us not so.

A completely uncurbed freedom of speech is something nobody, except for those whom its lack would un-muzzle, wants. Which basically means the guys who are right out there on the edges, and beyond, of the social constraints to behaviour at any given time.

Which these days pretty much only leaves the child-molesters, the snuff-porn pushers, the hardcore racists, misogynists and I suppose, terrorists.

Does anyone really want to immerse themselves in the kind of experiences it would take to argue out a case against paedophillia (again)…?

That’s what comes of complete freedom of speech, taken out of context. We’ve been there, done that and worn the tee-shirts a couple of time Form and Void.

Believe us.

censorship is a preemptory defense against ‘radical’ unwanted dialogue and imagery. now, in the case of ILP the staff or owners of ILP itself have every right to restrict content or ideas/words/imagery to whatever they wish, and for any reason they want. the reason of maintaining an environment free of pedophelia, racism, terrorism, etc. is as good as any other. im sure that most members here are glad not to have to see tons of posts about these things.

and in a ‘marketplace’ of internet forums websites all seeking members and more hits, policies that the majority of people like are preferrable. censorship is one such policy that most people seem to like.

personally i would prefer no censorship at all, in any case, generally speaking. say what you want, about anything you wish. nothing you say, no matter WHAT IT IS, will be restricted or banned. if you dont like what someone else said, you can argue against it or just ignore it. that is my preferred format for dialogue, in any medium.

however, i acknowledge that over time this may lead to the loss of most interested members as the site becomes ‘taken over’ by white supremacists or neo-nazis or terrorists or any other group that, upon gaining significant foothold in the dialogue here, would tend to drive most people away from the site. so i accept there are pragmatic reasons of necessity that, in the case of ILP itself, censorship is a good thing. then it becomes a question of WHAT TYPE of censorship, of what it censored and what isnt, but thats a different topic.

more generally speaking, however, i really find censorship distasteful. mainly because those who employ censorship do so to actively repress a certain group ONLY BECAUSE THEY PERSONALLY DISAGREE WITH IT. its a defense mechanism of the weak, who cannot win in the realm of ideas or dialogue and therefore must resort to using FORCE against those who he disagrees with. but, as i said, whether or not that is the case at all on ILP, nonetheless ILP is free to allow or restrict any content they please, just as any owner of property is free to set the terms of use and disposal of that property itself.

I prefer to post/moderate on a forum where pedos and rapists aren’t free to tell us about their ‘activities’, but hey, that’s just me…

…I would say that anything else goes, as far as I am concerned, as others are entitled to their opinions on racism religion politics etc. - I guess those that openly admit to taking advantage of/harming others is not ok/moral.

TXG, our policy, so far as it’s been established, is not to censor ideas as ideas. There is a distinction to be made, however, between censoring what is expressed and censoring how it is expressed. To argue, for instance, that men are only interested in procreation, and to present e.g. evolutionary arguments to that end, is one thing. But to dismiss the arguments of all men on those grounds, or to disparage them in response to their arguments, is a conflict between one poster’s right to “free speech”, and another’s right to freedom from abuse. I think we should come down on the side of freedom from abuse, because as a community we have more of a vested interest in protecting that right, as the sort of “free speech” being banned adds nothing to goal of a site. Furthermore, freedom from abuse protects free speech, as it creates an environment where people feel comfortable speaking.

Another issue, which Mags indicates, is that people have a certain right not to be regaled with depictions, verbal or otherwise, of behavior they find objectionable. After all, the free speech we protect is free speech to endorse an idea or point of view, not freedom to post whatever one wants others to see. We protect free speech, but as a topical forum, some content is simply off-topic, and I hope you’ll agree we have no duty to allow it.