Pretty much anyone defending the postal worker here on the basis of what she did being “right” is missing the generalisation that must be made. If it’s okay for postal workers to refuse to deliver mail containing viewpoints they disagree with, that means it’s okay for bigoted postal workers to refuse to deliver mail from or to LGBT organisations. It means it would be okay for pro-life postal workers to refuse to deliver parcels containing birth control pills or flyers containing information about abortion services.
You cannot have it both ways. If you make a rule that there are cases when it is acceptable for postal workers to destroy or refuse to deliver mail, it will be used by the other side against you.
I’ll bite. Treating fascist flyers and LGBTQ+ flyers as the same thing is bullshit. Acting like the only fair thing to do is treat someone refusing the LGBTQ+ flyers the same as this person refusing to spread fascist flyers is bullshit. Reasons matter and it’s bullshit that society has normalized stripping the context and nuance out of situations in the name of “fairness”. She shouldn’t have been punished. We don’t have to generalize, we’ve been conditioned to generalize because it reinforces the status quo. It’s ridiculous that people refuse to acknowledge the threat of fascism in actionable ways because it’s “”“”““unfair””“”“”
Also, it’s not ok for people to refuse to deliver medication on ideological grounds for an entirely different reason than it is to refuse to disseminate fascist propaganda. Postal workers wouldn’t know they’re delivering abortion medication in the first place as it’s sealed in (at the very least) an envelope that does not provide a description of the contents in a way that would reveal abortion medications over any other medication.
It is not a matter of fairness. I don’t give a shit about fairness. You are fundamentally making the same argument that the other person has tried to make in vain. I will explain the problem again using a rhetorical game for your benefit, but I will not engage in an argument with you, as you lot tend to make the same arguments ad nauseum. You will receive at most one response from me.
We’ll play a simple mind game here. Let us pretend that you are on the side of good, and I am on the side of evil. Remember, this is just a rhetorical game here. We will take turns in an office which you have granted the power to censor the post. While you are in power, you can write a rule that determines what is and is not acceptable material for delivery. You can write any rule you want, constrained only by the fact that the rule must be interpretable without relying on some external oracle (i.e. “articles deemed inappropriate by @[email protected] are prohibited” is not allowed as a rule) After that, you leave office and it’s my turn in office. While in office, I will have the power to interpret the rule in any way I like, constrained only by the English language. After you have left office, all powers of interpretation are given to me (until I leave office).
Your goal is to write a rule that filters out all of the content that you deem “fascist”. My goal will then be to apply, interpret, and bend your rule to filter out benign or left-wing content.
Remember, the goal of this exercise is to prove to you that it is impossible to design such a rule that can adequately restrain the use of the power you have given this office without also giving me the power to censor articles you think are acceptable. If you do not wish to play this game or reply with anything other than a proposed rule, I will link to the explanation I gave the other person and there will be no more responses from me after that.
If you want to play, reply with your proposed rule. I will reply with a way to interpret it in such a way that can be used to censor unintended articles.
The sword. A literal sword of Damocles, above “tHe MaLiCiOuS eNtITy”. Is that what you need to hear to feel you’ve won? The divine rights of kings and the paradox of tolerance to meet the same end, there’s a solution to your Gordian Knot.
Now hit me with the defeatist game theory take against the groups that already would take everything.
Not who you replied to, but let me give it a try if you don’t mind.
• All promotional mail must clearly state the organization it was created by and its intent.
• Claims made to support that intent must be followed by evidence from an independent and peer reviewed journal, study, or survey from within the past 20 years and clearly cite those sources.
• And must provide at least one source that disagrees with the claim if one exists.
If I can’t stop fascists sending mail, I’ll make sure the recipient has some tools and knowledge to debunk their bullshit. Also it will filter out low effort bullshit, and make factually wrong discrimination more difficult.
I’ll pretend not to notice material that violates these rules coming from fascist organisations while applying them with strict scrutiny to non-fascist organisations. When someone objects, I’ll tell them to fill out a long form, wait 6-8 weeks for processing, and then after that I’ll send a warning letter to the fascist organisations telling them that they had better stop breaking the rules or else I’ll send them another letter! !I’ll challenge every source cited by the non-fascists as not independent while accepting low-quality garbage sources cited by the facists.
Ah, well if enforcement is part of the thought experiment then that’s only a couple extra amendments. The clear enemy of fascism is democracy;
• Enforcement is led by an oversight committee that is democratically elected by the general population every four years
• The oversight committee is overseen by an AI trained in intellectual honesty, ethics, and democracy
• The AI is periodically trained and updated by Doug, a Minnesota resident who answers Survey Monkey questions on his opinion of ethics and democracy and is unaware of the consequences of his responses. Only the AI knows. No one else must know. Human bias has been conquered and postage peace has been achieved.
The rules of this game specify by that no external oracle is allowed.
But I understand what you’re saying. Leaving law enforcement decisions to AI is problematic in its own right, however I don’t really have the time to go into depth about that. Mostly it has to do with the fact that AI will have the same biases as the data it was trained on, and in many cases, also the subconscious biases of the people who designed or trained it.
Yeah Doug was just a tenuous reference to Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’s secret Ruler of the Universe.
I agree, AI is problematic. In theory, that could work in my favor if I train it to be secretly biased towards my beliefs, and put in safeguards to prevent it from being retrained or removed. But I imagine in the real world that would fail spectacularly.
No system can be perfect with imperfect humans and bad actors at its core, and I don’t really think AI should have any power over humans. Sorry, I kinda brought this down a rabbit hole away from the original point of the post lol
I’m an anarchist, rules aren’t really my thing. There is no rule to perfectly encapsulate the problem, I’m aware of that. As a matter of fact, I’m so aware that my ideological framework for understanding the world around me is opposed to the very concept of writing such a rule. Human information analysis and synthesis, as well as their resulting actions are infinitely complex and unpredictable. You’re setting me up for an impossible task in an attempt to pull one over on me and make your point. I agree with your point. I disagree with how it should be handled.
That woman exercised her autonomy to act in the best interest of her community. Her community should be the only ones judging her actions. Not some duckweed manager, and certainly not laws. If her community found her actions unacceptable, then they should be the ones to determine how her wrongs are righted. I very much doubt most people in town would take issue with what she did. We can argue back and forth about what her community would think all night but neither of us truly know. She did.a good thing and she shouldn’t be punished for it
If it’s okay for postal workers to refuse to deliver mail containing viewpoints they disagree with, that means it’s okay for bigoted postal workers to refuse to deliver mail from or to LGBT organizations.
Wrong. You are describing two separate things and arbitrarily deciding that they are equal actions. Preventing hate speech from being circulated is a moral act, while hatefully censoring benign communications is not.
Pretty much anyone defending the postal worker here on the basis of what she did being “right” is missing the generalisation that must be made. If it’s okay for postal workers to refuse to deliver mail containing viewpoints they disagree with, that means it’s okay for bigoted postal workers to refuse to deliver mail from or to LGBT organisations. It means it would be okay for pro-life postal workers to refuse to deliver parcels containing birth control pills or flyers containing information about abortion services.
You cannot have it both ways. If you make a rule that there are cases when it is acceptable for postal workers to destroy or refuse to deliver mail, it will be used by the other side against you.
I think she is a legend for what she did and I think USPS was absolutely right to fire her for it.
I hope the mail goes back to being apolitical and that she experiences a soft landing and strong launch career-wise
This happened in Canada
Then he’s extra right that the USPS did nothing wrong here.
Well, maybe I’d know that if I’d read the article. Did you ever consider that I was being lazy and vocal while uninformed?!
I don’t know why I’m making it seem like this is your fault, but I hope you’ve learned your lesson
I’ll bite. Treating fascist flyers and LGBTQ+ flyers as the same thing is bullshit. Acting like the only fair thing to do is treat someone refusing the LGBTQ+ flyers the same as this person refusing to spread fascist flyers is bullshit. Reasons matter and it’s bullshit that society has normalized stripping the context and nuance out of situations in the name of “fairness”. She shouldn’t have been punished. We don’t have to generalize, we’ve been conditioned to generalize because it reinforces the status quo. It’s ridiculous that people refuse to acknowledge the threat of fascism in actionable ways because it’s “”“”““unfair””“”“”
Also, it’s not ok for people to refuse to deliver medication on ideological grounds for an entirely different reason than it is to refuse to disseminate fascist propaganda. Postal workers wouldn’t know they’re delivering abortion medication in the first place as it’s sealed in (at the very least) an envelope that does not provide a description of the contents in a way that would reveal abortion medications over any other medication.
It is not a matter of fairness. I don’t give a shit about fairness. You are fundamentally making the same argument that the other person has tried to make in vain. I will explain the problem again using a rhetorical game for your benefit, but I will not engage in an argument with you, as you lot tend to make the same arguments ad nauseum. You will receive at most one response from me.
We’ll play a simple mind game here. Let us pretend that you are on the side of good, and I am on the side of evil. Remember, this is just a rhetorical game here. We will take turns in an office which you have granted the power to censor the post. While you are in power, you can write a rule that determines what is and is not acceptable material for delivery. You can write any rule you want, constrained only by the fact that the rule must be interpretable without relying on some external oracle (i.e. “articles deemed inappropriate by @[email protected] are prohibited” is not allowed as a rule) After that, you leave office and it’s my turn in office. While in office, I will have the power to interpret the rule in any way I like, constrained only by the English language. After you have left office, all powers of interpretation are given to me (until I leave office).
Your goal is to write a rule that filters out all of the content that you deem “fascist”. My goal will then be to apply, interpret, and bend your rule to filter out benign or left-wing content.
Remember, the goal of this exercise is to prove to you that it is impossible to design such a rule that can adequately restrain the use of the power you have given this office without also giving me the power to censor articles you think are acceptable. If you do not wish to play this game or reply with anything other than a proposed rule, I will link to the explanation I gave the other person and there will be no more responses from me after that.
If you want to play, reply with your proposed rule. I will reply with a way to interpret it in such a way that can be used to censor unintended articles.
The sword. A literal sword of Damocles, above “tHe MaLiCiOuS eNtITy”. Is that what you need to hear to feel you’ve won? The divine rights of kings and the paradox of tolerance to meet the same end, there’s a solution to your Gordian Knot.
Now hit me with the defeatist game theory take against the groups that already would take everything.
Not who you replied to, but let me give it a try if you don’t mind.
• All promotional mail must clearly state the organization it was created by and its intent. • Claims made to support that intent must be followed by evidence from an independent and peer reviewed journal, study, or survey from within the past 20 years and clearly cite those sources. • And must provide at least one source that disagrees with the claim if one exists.
If I can’t stop fascists sending mail, I’ll make sure the recipient has some tools and knowledge to debunk their bullshit. Also it will filter out low effort bullshit, and make factually wrong discrimination more difficult.
This one’s easy.
I’ll pretend not to notice material that violates these rules coming from fascist organisations while applying them with strict scrutiny to non-fascist organisations. When someone objects, I’ll tell them to fill out a long form, wait 6-8 weeks for processing, and then after that I’ll send a warning letter to the fascist organisations telling them that they had better stop breaking the rules or else I’ll send them another letter! !I’ll challenge every source cited by the non-fascists as not independent while accepting low-quality garbage sources cited by the facists.
Ah, well if enforcement is part of the thought experiment then that’s only a couple extra amendments. The clear enemy of fascism is democracy;
• Enforcement is led by an oversight committee that is democratically elected by the general population every four years
• The oversight committee is overseen by an AI trained in intellectual honesty, ethics, and democracy
• The AI is periodically trained and updated by Doug, a Minnesota resident who answers Survey Monkey questions on his opinion of ethics and democracy and is unaware of the consequences of his responses. Only the AI knows. No one else must know. Human bias has been conquered and postage peace has been achieved.
The rules of this game specify by that no external oracle is allowed.
But I understand what you’re saying. Leaving law enforcement decisions to AI is problematic in its own right, however I don’t really have the time to go into depth about that. Mostly it has to do with the fact that AI will have the same biases as the data it was trained on, and in many cases, also the subconscious biases of the people who designed or trained it.
Yeah Doug was just a tenuous reference to Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’s secret Ruler of the Universe.
I agree, AI is problematic. In theory, that could work in my favor if I train it to be secretly biased towards my beliefs, and put in safeguards to prevent it from being retrained or removed. But I imagine in the real world that would fail spectacularly.
No system can be perfect with imperfect humans and bad actors at its core, and I don’t really think AI should have any power over humans. Sorry, I kinda brought this down a rabbit hole away from the original point of the post lol
Are we allowed to kink shame whatever this is?
I’m an anarchist, rules aren’t really my thing. There is no rule to perfectly encapsulate the problem, I’m aware of that. As a matter of fact, I’m so aware that my ideological framework for understanding the world around me is opposed to the very concept of writing such a rule. Human information analysis and synthesis, as well as their resulting actions are infinitely complex and unpredictable. You’re setting me up for an impossible task in an attempt to pull one over on me and make your point. I agree with your point. I disagree with how it should be handled.
That woman exercised her autonomy to act in the best interest of her community. Her community should be the only ones judging her actions. Not some duckweed manager, and certainly not laws. If her community found her actions unacceptable, then they should be the ones to determine how her wrongs are righted. I very much doubt most people in town would take issue with what she did. We can argue back and forth about what her community would think all night but neither of us truly know. She did.a good thing and she shouldn’t be punished for it
Wrong. You are describing two separate things and arbitrarily deciding that they are equal actions. Preventing hate speech from being circulated is a moral act, while hatefully censoring benign communications is not.
No such generalization has to be made, what?
Why does saying someone did the right thing require you to make a rule?
This way of thinking is problematic. Freedom of speech is a social contract and hate speech is a violation of that contract.