Philosophic Phail

  Is YouTube a viable outlet for philosophy, and philosophical discussion?

  To answer that question, I think we must first examine the motives and methods of community content providers, then we must address common complaints concerning the medium, and last we must ask ourselves what the philosophers of old would think of the entire mess.

  It has been my observance that the more prominent philosophers of YouTube tend to make hundreds of videos in a repetitive stream of rhetoric designed to reinforce the follower’s adherence to like philosophy, or to sway the unbelievers to adopt the provider’s philosophy. While the practice may be effective for attracting the attentions of new recruits with like-minded interests, it should send a red flag to established followers and serious philosophers

  Simply put, if it takes a thousand videos to restate and reinforce an argument that can be made with one, than the philosophy is broken.

  And if the content provider has to resort to making thousands of videos to achieve a failed outcome, than the motives of the provider come into question.

  The YouTube philosopher may have a pathological need to see themselves on the internet. They may choose the gratification of virtual confrontation, rather than establish complex social interactions outside of the conscriptions of the internet.

  The YouTube provider may prefer the internet, as they can willfully abuse and express antisocial behavior, without the threat of physicality.

  And while there are plenty of YouTube channels dedicated to Philosophy, Politics, Science, Mathematics, and Arts, many providers feel threatened by YouTube and it’s advertisements. They believe that they will be censored by YouTube’s management…or by other YouTube providers. Current suggested solutions include the creation of aggregate sites and YouTube styled co-operatives. These site creators propose to curtail censorship by limiting what content can be applied to their sites.

  “Huh?”

  True, some debaters don’t really want to debate; they just want to win popularity or monetary gain. Some YouTube philosophers are more concerned with winning people over, than addressing the issues they claim to be concerned with.

  To say that YouTube is cluttered with tens of thousands of inane and utterly useless entries, is an understatement. To posit that there are too many dumb animal videos and low quality prank articles may be a valid point.

  But who decides how many are too many?

  Who is the arbiter of such decisions?

  At what point are too many philosophical videos just as bad as too many cat trick videos?

  Personally, I do not think that the likes of Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, Descartes, or Aurelius would wish to censor the conversation. Further, I don’t think they would be flattered by a generation of philosophers who waste time mulling over the same arguments made in their time.

What does this mean for me?

It means that YOU could be jailed for pirating a song, or doing something as simple as posting a rumor about apple on your blog.

Tempted to involve his secretary, aren’t you?

Anyway, the thing is that google, facebook, microsoft and the likes are SUPPORTING this.

Why?

The answer is simple. Because those comanies under SOPA would have been forced to patrol their own websites. Under CISPA they can anonymously send the government data on cyberattacks.

Why isn’t this good?

Because CISPA considers “any action taken to… Defame a website” as a cyberattack. Launch a netflix competitor? Cyberattack. Post saying you hate facebook? Cyberattack. This is literally 1984 happening in front of our very eyes. this would take down sites like Avaaz, The pirate bay, 4chan, encyclopædia dramatica, and many more.

But I don’t live in the US!

This can still destroy the internet, taking down the main facets of free speech. New memes? Gone. except for the cheezburger network. Goddamn i hate the cheezburger network. News from real people? Nope.

What can I do?

Sign a petition here.

Educate yourself more.

Share this with your freinds/family/strangers/your pet goat/whomever.

And dear congress, if you are reading this, please stop ruining the internet for us, you sillies.

The media, specifically visual and audio media, has desensitized children to appropriate ways to act and speak. When they are bombarded with images of people acting irresponsibly and violently, even if the message is to NOT act this way, they understand that other people…famous people…rich people…are.  I’m not going to lie and say I’ve never been drunk in public, or worn trashy clothes, but the choice the magazines, newspapers, and television shows and programmers make in the content they allow in their media is appalling in some instances. I remember when the naughty shows were on late at night, and the boring political shows were on around dinner time.  The news didn’t always contain negative images of people and events, and violence and sexual nudity were censored.  Music videos contained music and instruments and sometimes dancing.  Some censorship of content and advertisement needs to be allowed in order to help children gain an idea of what’s acceptable behavior.  The first ammendment is there to protect people, not harm them in the long run.  Children learn best though positive reinforcement and modeling of correct behavior. Not by demanding, “Do what I say, not as I do.”  

The Internet media has also added to the distanced attitude of kids, teens, and adults today because there is a lack of accountability for what they say and do in the world of the web.  Although many personal and public websites contain censors, and if you want to create your own websites, there are crawlers that check to make sure your content is correct, there is still not another person with you reacting to the things you’re saying or doing on the Internet.  There is no immediate negative reaction for wrongdoing. The internet has also spread the ability to view violence, sex, drugs, and a variety of other questionable content.  When I was in my teens, I had friends that would try to find pornography on the internet and be unable to bypass the content and age limits.  Today, however, you can Google the term pornography and just by clicking a button, “promise” you’re of age.  Not only can anyone any age witness sex being run as a business, they can do it seemingly without anyone knowing they’re doing it! Although there are many advantages to the Internet, such as convenience, information, and communication, the instant gratification and lack of accountability people today feel when they use it only snowballs with the rest of the media influencing our culture.  

What do you think?

A Government does has the right to restrict information when it is a physical threat to the community, as well as when it is intellectual or cultural threats. The reason being, the authorities have been entrusted with the duties of protecting the community. The argument for curing citizens’ right is almost always opposed, and has connotations of “censorship” which consequently leads to an emotionally charged, and thus perhaps an irrational counter-argument to curbing their citizens’ rights to information.  If one allows their mind to be opened to new and unfamiliar philosophical ideas, a compelling case can be made for a government’s rights to implement some form of curbing of the citizens’ right to information, or as many call it censorship.

Authorities, such as the government, have the duty to protect the community. A simplified surmise of this argument may demonstrate the case that may be made for censorship: ideas lead to actions, and bad ideas often lead to bad acts, bringing harm to individuals and possibly societies as a whole, to ruin. However, this thesis may have a single, yet particularly important, flaw. This being that what if we cannot identify what is bad; therefore clearly we cannot know either bad ideas or bad acts. The perception of what is good and evil (bad), of what is right and wrong, is a key constituent of the fabric of censorship. A common perception of the advocates of censorship is that they claim to know good and evil exhaustively, and that they deliver moral proclamations on everything in existence. However, this is not so, as good and evil has much to do with perspective. Conversely, if we are able to identify certain evils unanimously, and the advocacy of those evils seems likely to encourage people to commit them, the next logical step would be to prohibit such advocacy, should it not? If to commit certain evils is harmful to society and thus a crime, then a logical counter-measure would be to prevent the advocacy and encouragement of such evils to be perfectly lawful. Governments, and communities, should be able to protect themselves, and should act autonomously to restrain the source of evil.

Complete freedom of information is simply a means by which those with money and influence remake society at the expense of those without these things. This is so, due to the anti-censorship argument which glorifies individualism, albeit at the expense of the common good. This is naturally to the benefit of the rich, and at the expense of the poor. The reason being that the rich and influential promote and endorse ideas that challenge traditional ways of life, and it is primarily the poor who suffer on their account. The society we live in should exist to protect and promote the welfare of all, and more importantly the poor and the working-class person. Essentially it is only those with sufficient money and ennui that have the luxury of time and resources to produce ideas that corrupt or demeaning to the society we live in, and thus the adverse effects of freedom of information are far more significant upon closer examination.

Censorship (Photo credit: IsaacMao)

Thus, the primary point of counter-argument is the largely based on primal fear and the emotional connotations that are derived from curbing of a citizens’ rights to information, which is so, due the heavily stigmatisation of the word ‘censorship’. The case for censorship has many merits; however this steep stigmatism needs to be first overcome. Theoretically, censorship and curbing of a citizen right can be done effectively, if a consensus is reached. Therein lies the problem however, as a no consensus of what is worthy of public knowledge can be agreed upon unanimously. The abstract idea of curbing a citizen’s right to information for the benefit of the public can be recognized as a legitimate practice. The overwhelming reason for its lack of practicality is sadly the truth that man has critical weakness of not being able to control power in many instances throughout history. Many failed attempts at controlling the flow of public information have been throughout the times, from the Nazi’s in Germany to the Communists in the Soviet Union. These examples made in history make it clear that humankind‘s nature to abuse power does not make censorship a viable option in modern society. However, it does not hurt to order our thoughts logically, even if we cannot put it into practice immediately.

ACTA is of course, not a bill like SOPA, but an international trade agreement that sets standards for the enforcement of intellectual property rights.  Unlike SOPA, the focus of ACTA is enforcement of larger-scale copyright infringements.  So while it is not a law that says who can and who can’t be defined as theives of intellectual property, it encourages those that sign it to create such laws, and crack down harder on those who break them.

Surely if the United States had signed such an agreement we would have heard about it, right?  Nope.  The United States signed ACTA on it’s day of birth, on October 1, 2011.  Citizens were not informed of this not because of some distraction such as SOPA or the Occupy Protests, but because the various governments that signed it decided it was better to keep it a secret.  It was only during the turbulence of SOPA when ACTA was exposed to the majority of the citizens of the countries who signed the agreement.  Some other governments who have also signed include Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, and 22 members of the European Union.

Protests have already sprung up across the globe, with the most fierce gatherings in Europe.  This also comes to show why internet activists are still so up in arms about the copyright issues with protests such as Black March.

Below is a promotional poster spread across the internet by supporters of Black March.

They plan to achieve such a lofty goal by boycotting all copyrighted consumer goods, such as music, movies and books.  As described in the promotional image above, this will give “all governments an economic hit that can be visible”.

So is this actually possible?  Will it actually do something?  There are a couple very good arguments that say no.

First, how many people will actually give up buying copyrighted material for an entire month?  I’d like to think we all have the self-discipline to take on such a task, but unfortunately many of us don’t.

Second, won’t these companies experience a boom when this is over?  Everyone who participates will no doubt have a few things in mind to blow all that saved up money on when April comes.  This could overwrite any damage that is done.

Whatever the case, it is good to see people willing to give up some of their entertainment and consumerism to make a difference in the name of freedom.  Whether or not it does make a difference in the end, I will be participating in Black March, and I would urge the readers of this article to do the same.

Though, as stated before, if the trend of how we the citizens of the United States exercise our role in the government continues, there will be a SOPA passed. The problem with people today is they don’t care. Wikipedia, Craigslist etc. did a great job of spreading the word about SOPA; which was great. Though if people don’t put more than 2 minutes of care in, then nothing will change. It’s easy to read a small paragraph followed by clicking a link to sign a petition, anyone can do it. What we really need to do is take it to the next step. The citizens of the United States have a louder voice than it appears, and it’s called voting. These people supporting SOPA and PIPA are elected officials and big business crying over 1.6 billion in revenue apposed to 1.67 billion. We have the control over who runs our country.

If you really want to make a difference, and see SOPA and PIPA put to rest indeffinitly, you need to go out and VOTE. Otherwise these bills will continue to pop up, and one will eventually pass through congress.

I didn’t do well in the last market crash, so I look over job listings for contract work.  Yesterday I saw a posting for a project coordinator/proofreader.  The first line of the job description read: One of the countries fastest growing multi-channel marketing agencies … instead of One of the country’s …. 

The hiring company’s website showed a contact email address, so I sent them an email identifying the error.  A corporate VP in a distant city kindly replied (to my astonishment) and explained that the company’s proofreaders confine their work to customers’ documents.  In other words, if a document doesn’t affect the bottom line, no one proofreads it.

Photo by Adrian Pingstone from Wikipedia (Public Domain)

Should Internet content writers follow the model of this company?  Perhaps they should.  Each and every piece of writing you publish should have a goal.  If you can accomplish this goal without proofreading, maybe you shouldn’t proofread.  For example, if you are writing for search engines (bot fodder), errors may not make any difference in how high the search engine puts your article on the results list.  If you want human beings to forward a link to their friends or to link to your article from their blogs, you may want to correct errors.

Fact Checking

This morning telegraph.co.uk published an article about Leonid Ksanfomaliti’s claim that he’d found evidence of life on Venus in photographs taken by the space probe Venera-13.   The author of the article identified Venus as “the red planet” and stated the planet’s gravity was 9 times that of Earth.  Commenters pounced on these errors, and the paper quickly corrected them.  

The view from Venera-13. Photo from Wikipedia (Public Domain)

If you make statements whose errors could be corrected by an extra minute reading Wikipedia, human readers may bounce to a better article.  They may also fail to link to your article.  You may have to resort to black hat SEO techniques to acquire backlinks.  A few minutes of fact checking can help you avoid the need to generate deceptive backlinks and the risk of getting caught cheating.  On the other hand, you may be writing for true believers who won’t let facts stand in their way.  Once again, it may be a question of the goal of your writing.

Writing Badly is a Right

…everything is given to us by the party and the government and only one thing is taken away: the freedom to write badly. –Isaac Babel

If you publish online, you will slip up and publish errors.  Sure as Brin and Page misspelled googol as google, you will encounter readers who think all your content should come down or that you should never write for publication again because of the errors.  No possible pardon is possible, they think, for those who confuse Mars and Venus.  Only authorities with credentials should write, etc.  I argue against this position by reminding everyone that appeal to authority is a logical fallacy and that even someone as inaccurate and syntax-challenged as George W. Bush deserves the right to speak his mind.

George W. Bush from Wikipedia (Public Domain)

Moreover, even bad articles may do good.  Recently I’ve read some Chinese blogs.  I don’t know Chinese at all, so I either have to wait for translations or read with the aid of translation software.  After struggling with a particularly scrambled machine translation, I asked myself some questions. What if this were as good as it gets?  What if I lived in a country with aggressive Internet censorship?  What if only articles with mangled text and misspelled keywords could slip through to tell me about life outside my country?  In that case I would feel privileged to read even bad articles.

Many websites have been created in the past couple weeks going against PIPA and SOPA, these being SOPACountDown.com, SOPAStrike.com, and AmericanCensorship.org. All of these sites have information on the issue and give you a chance to take action. 

Even people out of America are taking action by protesting the state department. Hundreds of thousands of people are taking action, but it’s not enough. 

Hollywood is willing to stand up to opponents of the controversial anti-piracy bill in the U.S., known as SOPA, a position shared by employees and industry moguls even threatening to withdraw its financial support for the election of Barack Obama.

The Mecca of cinema, traditionally allied with the Democratic Party, expressed his anger this week after the White House opts against any legislation that would encourage Internet censorship and trying to extrapolate its application beyond U.S. territory.

Indeed, one of the objectives of SOPA is to transcend national and force the search engine providers and advertisers domains U.S. to block the services of any website is the place to be, when it is being investigated for posting copyrighted material without permission.

The film industry, through the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), is one of the major promoters of a tightening of legislation to protect copyright in the network, where each year are estimated more 6,000 million dollars (about 4.657 million euros) due to the illegal use of its products.

CONFLICT

The intervention of the White House was taken by surprise to many Hollywood executives, according to reports to the press on Wednesday, upset with Obama came to the point that several directors have decided to end their donations to the American president.

This loss of support could lead to a serious decline for the financing of Obama’s reelection campaign in 2012, who frequently visit Los Angeles, especially at election time, to attend fundraising events.

The final step in the California town Obama was in October when he attended an event with prominent Latino figures of the show, the house of Antonio Banderas, and took part in a dinner hosted by Will Smith, whose cost was us $ 35,800 (about € 27,800 ) per person.

NO SOPA

The anti-piracy bill has found many critics and has become a very unpopular that even led to take place on Wednesday a “blackout” of a group of websites, including Wikipedia, to protest its passage.

While Hollywood is pushing for the initiative, their northern California, in Silicon Valley, such as Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Amazon and eBay have partnered Netcoalition.com the platform to stop its passage in Congress next month.

Thus, it appears that, for now, companies in Silicon Valley, led by Google, are winning the public relations battle in this polemic, arguing that “soup” is synonymous with “censorship” on the web.

MEDIATOR

With the idea of ​​lowering tensions and finding points of agreement, the U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden, is these days in California to meet with representatives of technology and entertainment industry, the two most powerful state.

To become law, however, the initiative must be approved by both houses of Congress.