Criteria For Interviewees

My position is adamantly and unwaveringly anti-censorship - and yes, in this anti-censorship stance I unashamedly, even proudly, quite dogamtic - for the reasons both ethical and pragmatic.

The ethical reason for my decisive rejection of any censorship is that I value freedom most of all - much more than I value wellbeing; I also value dignity and integrity, and I value them more than wellbeing as well, even if not as much more as I value freedom. 

Does that mean you think there should be no limits at all to what people can say - either on this site or in the world at large?

Do you think, for example, people should be able to libel and slander others freely? Do you think people here should be allowed to abuse one another without any restriction? Do you think people should be able to post racist, homophobic and antisemitic propaganda? Paedophile propaganda? Material designed to entice children into paedophile relationships? Holocaust denial? Holocaust justification? Even incitement to carry out another Holocaust?

Does that mean you think there should be no limits at all to what people can say - either on this site or in the world at large?

Do you think, for example, people should be able to libel and slander others freely? Do you think people here should be allowed to abuse one another without any restriction? Do you think people should be able to post racist, homophobic and antisemitic propaganda? Paedophile propaganda? Material designed to entice children into paedophile relationships? Holocaust denial? Holocaust justification? Even incitement to carry out another Holocaust?

Taking one of your examples here, closely related to a few others. Anti-Semitic 'propaganda'.

This past week the UK press was full of this nonsense, the Labour Party being at the centre of all of it. Miko Peled was accused of being anti-Semitic, after giving some pro-Palestnian talks in Brighton. Peled is accused of this purely to detract from his real message, it's ludicrous to accuse someone simply because they strongly disagree with the views and actions of the Zionist establishment. Especially when you consider Peled's own background.


. 

Born in Jerusalem into a family at the very heart of Zionism, his father a General in the IDF. Read his book 'The General's Son' to see for yourself what changed his mind.

So are we to blindly believe accusations such as these? Who is the arbiter free of bias?

Why do I want to interview him here? Because I sincerely consider him to be one of the best thinkers on the nature and status of science, I'm certain that this part of his views deserve a hearing and discussion. The discussion that you will probably demonstratively ignore, rejecting the chance to engage Bauer and argue against his views, if you will find them incorrect.

And, BTW, did you ever learned anything about him and his ideas, except his support of HIV skepticism, which apparently utterly intellectually discredit and socially destroy him in your eyes?

Just FYI: a man may hold a wide range of different views, some of them true and some of them false. Holding false views in one area does not prevent holding true in other ones. Whether Bauer's views concerning HIV-AIDS causation is true or false, his views on science in general is simply another matter.

Now, to the claim that you are constantly repeating: one that Bauer's ideas, along with the ideas of other HIV skeptics, caused many deaths and great damage. The irony of that repeated claim - irony that, apparently, remain invisible to you - is that it is based on an strongly-beleived assumption, if not a total and unwavering certitude, that Bauer and HIV skeptics are objectively false. But what if they are objectively true? Did you at least once, for the fracture of a second, considered such possiblity? Since, if they are true, it is you, Chris and other innumerable HIV proponents who are mass-murderers-by-implication and global-destroyers-by-mistake.

What about that, Roberta? Your social status, and social status of countless human beings, are now held in balance, depending on the factual correctness of your (and their) positions. Since, if you all will turn out to be mistaken, after all, you are guilty of death and suffering of many people who trusted the mainsteam HIV proponence stance, and have chosen to undergo mainstream therapies (which, according to the position of the HIV skeptics, are devastative to their health - sometimes to the point of being lethal).

So, one way or another, it seems we already have a lot of mass murderers here on Psience Quest. Depending what side of HIV controversy is true, these unwitting devastators of multiple human lives are either David Bailey, Michael Larkin and all other HIV skeptics - or you, Chris, and other HIV proponents.

Maybe at least I - the HIV agnostic who was persuaded enough by HIV skepticism to lose certitude in the mainstream position, yet not enough to accept the alternative position wholeheartedly - am not guilty in unintentional mass murder? I suspect the most dedicated people from either side of the controversy may accuse me still, simply because I have not accepted their side's notions without hesitation.

Yet, I do not think anyone here - as well as anyone who will be here soon, like Henry Bauer - is a mass murderer. We all are good people who are genuinely concerned about the wellbeing of our fellow human beings, and want the best for them. That's why we decide either to put our trust in someone whom we perceive as genuine and respectable authority (and follow these authorities' prescriptions), or to search and analyse the available evidence and its interpretations by ourselves (and make our own choices according to the conclusions we have reached with this search and analysis). And that is why we try to persuade others that we are correct and the ones who disagree with us are not.

This is how it should be - the open discussion, based on the principles of free speech, free expression and free inquiry. How is should not be? It should not be censorship - or "no-platforming", to use the currently fashionable SJW-styled language.

An important note: I accept the position of Ninshub, Laird and some others that the interview with Bauer must be posted on the "Alternative Views on Science" section, rather than in the main interview section, since the topics that are going to be discussed are not directly related to psi and consciousness. What I do not accept is your pro-censorship position, Roberta, according to which Henry Bauer should not be allowed here at all.

My position is adamantly and unwaveringly anti-censorship - and yes, in this anti-censorship stance I unashamedly, even proudly, quite dogamtic - for the reasons both ethical and pragmatic.

The ethical reason for my decisive rejection of any censorship is that I value freedom most of all - much more than I value wellbeing; I also value dignity and integrity, and I value them more than wellbeing as well, even if not as much more as I value freedom. So, I maintain that people freedom to have access to the whole range of positions concerning any controversy, and to express their own postions, is more important than their safety. The intellectual integrity of people, which demands that they should learn to think by themselves and advance their critical thought, is also more important than safety. Their dignity, their right not to be treated like mindless idiots or hyper-sensitive "snowflakes", is, again, more important than their safety.

The pragmatic reason is the fact that every dominant scientific, technical and medical postion is always provisional and debatable - and may always turn out to be wrong, and dangerously so. That's why it is important to allow a wide and unrestrained public debate of any such issue, and let anyone - laypersons included - to make their own choices concerning their own safety, with all opinions and options being avalilable to them.

So, this is what I think about this issue. Now, I will turn to two interviews with that I must work - one is upcoming one with Loyd Auerbach (does anyone remember about him at all, with our Bauer-related debates?), and another one, in a more distant future, with the dreaded Henry Bauer himself.

Be good, Roberta. I consider you to be my distant friend - to call it so - as much as I consider the same about Henry Bauer. It is sad that you two will not meet in a vigourous yet polite debate.

Or maybe you will. Who knows? I still do not lose my hope that "snowflakiness" from which so many good and sympathetic people suffer nowadays is a passing condition...

TLDR man - this is far too long of a comment. I wouldn't have the views I have, if I hadn't seen people personally benefit from the medication that people like Bauer claim is dangerous.

'SJW' and 'Snowflakiness' is boring alt-right language that is basically meaningless - you disappoint me using such terms.

Taking one of your examples here, closely related to a few others. Anti-Semitic 'propaganda'.

This past week the UK press was full of this nonsense, the Labour Party being at the centre of all of it. Miko Peled was accused of being anti-Semitic, after giving some pro-Palestnian talks in Brighton. Peled is accused of this purely to detract from his real message, it's ludicrous to accuse someone simply because they strongly disagree with the views and actions of the Zionist establishment. Especially when you consider Peled's own background.


. 

Born in Jerusalem into a family at the very heart of Zionism, his father a General in the IDF. Read his book 'The General's Son' to see for yourself what changed his mind.

So are we to blindly believe accusations such as these? Who is the arbiter free of bias?

Sections of the UK press and the right using the issue of anti-semitism for proxy attacks on the Labour Party and leftist politics in general doesn't mean anti-semitic propaganda doesn't exist.

Sections of the UK press and the right using the issue of anti-semitism for proxy attacks on the Labour Party and leftist politics in general doesn't mean anti-semitic propaganda doesn't exist.

No, but how are we to know what is true? That's the point.

Taking one of your examples here, closely related to a few others. Anti-Semitic 'propaganda'.

This past week the UK press was full of this nonsense, the Labour Party being at the centre of all of it. Miko Peled was accused of being anti-Semitic, after giving some pro-Palestnian talks in Brighton. Peled is accused of this purely to detract from his real message, it's ludicrous to accuse someone simply because they strongly disagree with the views and actions of the Zionist establishment. Especially when you consider Peled's own background.


. 

Born in Jerusalem into a family at the very heart of Zionism, his father a General in the IDF. Read his book 'The General's Son' to see for yourself what changed his mind.

So are we to blindly believe accusations such as these? Who is the arbiter free of bias?

I hadn't seen anything about this particular case, but I know that sometimes critics of the actions of the Israeli government are unfairly accused of antisemitism. (Assuming that's what you mean; I think phrases like "Zionist establishment" would be best avoided.)

But as Roberta says, just because some people are sometimes unfairly accused of antisemitism, it doesn't mean that antisemitism doesn't exist. My question to Vortex was whether he would find antisemitic material acceptable. I may be wrong, but I suspect he wouldn't find at least some of the items on my list acceptable. In that case, my point is that it isn't a question of valiant free speech crusaders versus evil free speech curtailers - it's a question of where we draw the line.

Now, to the claim that you are constantly repeating: one that Bauer's ideas, along with the ideas of other HIV skeptics, caused many deaths and great damage. The irony of that repeated claim - irony that, apparently, remain invisible to you - is that it is based on an strongly-beleived assumption, if not a total and unwavering certitude, that Bauer and HIV skeptics are objectively false. But what if they are objectively true? Did you at least once, for the fracture of a second, considered such possiblity? Since, if they are true, it is you, Chris and other innumerable HIV proponents who are mass-murderers-by-implication and global-destroyers-by-mistake.

There is a way to figure out whether Bauer's ideas are true or false. Have thousands/millions of people with expertise in the subject argue about whether they are valid, and use their conclusions (i.e. the overwhelming consensus among actual experts). However, that course of action has been rejected by you, and is obviously regarded as unpalatable (at the least) by many people here.

Very few people here have the expertise to weigh the validity of many of the matters we discuss. Yes, we all enjoy the conceit of pretending we are able to do so, but we are also wrong about that. 

What changed for me 25 years ago was when one of these alt-science ideas landed squarely in my area of expertise. I had just finished a large research project about coming up with a vaccine policy representing the best practices/evidence, for a specific issue, when I ran in to the anti-vaccine work of Viera Scheibner. I heard her speak on the radio and it all sounded very reasonable. I was aghast - how could I and the supposed experts I worked with have missed this? I thought I had just read every study out there on vaccine efficacy and effectiveness, as well as public policy effectiveness. Yet she referred to and cited all kinds of evidence which directly contradicted what I had found. I was ashamed of myself. So I read her book and specifically looked up all the research she cited, and then discovered that it was basically all false. About a quarter of the citations did not exist, even if I assumed there were errors in the citation and broadened my search. Half of the citations did not support the conclusions she had drawn - the results were different than she claimed or nonexistent. About a quarter of the citations were correct, but their relevance or import was grossly misrepresented (for example - a claim that rubella vaccine causes chronic, debilitating arthritis was supported by a study in which a few people had mild, short-lived arthritis as a temporary side-effect of the vaccine). 

I was appalled to discover that people just went ahead and made sh*t up (yes, I was that naive). And what I also discovered, when I looked at other anti-vaccine writings, was that nobody looked up and read the citations - they just kept quoting them as though they supported their false claims. Since then, I have continued to look in to the alt-science ideas which fall in to my areas of expertise, and I have yet to find an exception - the primary research does not support the claims, research is grossly misrepresented or made up, and once an 'expert' says something, it is repeated as though it were true regardless.

These ideas don't spread amongst people with the knowledge and experience to evaluate the claims. They only spread amongst those who do not, but like the appeal to their intelligence. So we get a situation where there is an increasing disconnect between what people with expertise regard as valid and what lay-people believe. And then we end up building this huge conspiracy which makes scientists sheep or people with knowledge and experience untrustworthy by having been brain-washed by the system, in order to cling to the idea that we are cleverer than they.

Why would someone who has shown himself to be grossly incompetent with respect to evaluating the science behind HIV/AIDS be considered "one of the best thinkers on the nature and status of science"? Maybe he's just as incompetent at that stuff, as well?

If any of the ideas that Bauer brings up are valid, then there have to be reasonable, competent experts out there who also can convey those views. Why give BS* the platform?

Linda

(As per "On BS" by Frankfurt, https://www.stoa.org.uk/topics/bullshit/...llshit.pdf)

Does that mean you think there should be no limits at all to what people can say - either on this site or in the world at large?

Do you think, for example, people should be able to libel and slander others freely? Do you think people here should be allowed to abuse one another without any restriction? Do you think people should be able to post racist, homophobic and antisemitic propaganda? Paedophile propaganda? Material designed to entice children into paedophile relationships? Holocaust denial? Holocaust justification? Even incitement to carry out another Holocaust?

Won't say anything specific about this site - it is for the community to decide what (and who) is welcome and what (and who) is not. I may disagree with such a comunal decision, yet I will follow it on this forum. Beyond it, I will express some of my views on the sites are accepting, or at least tolerating some of them - and will look for another sites for other views of mine. It is for the owners and/or communities of these sites to decide whether they want to accept me publishing some specific of part my views there or not. I accept that the owners and/or communities of specific websites have the right to decide what they accept and what they do not. I may try to persuade them to value free speech, experession and inquiry and accept much more than they are accepting in the moment of persuation, but they are free to diagree with me and maintain their restrictions.

Whether is it censorship or not depends on the specific situation. It is not than the topic of debate itself is beyond the scope of the site - for example, a site dedicated to industrial techologies may demand its members to refrain from discussing fine art, since such discussions are irrelevant for the stated purpose of the site; so, the demand to put the Henry Bauer's interview outside the main interview section is not censorship. The demand to be polite to each other, and refrain from openly insulting other members, is also not censorship, as long it does not require them to change the content of their position and only require them to present it in a more communally acceptable form. Yet, if specific topic of debate is as itself allowed yet specific positions concerning it are forbidden - for example, the site that allows critics of HIV skeptics and HIV skepticism yet does not allow HIV skeptics or their supporters to say anything in their defense and in defense of their positions - then it is censorship, now matter how it is called. If a specific topic is relevant to the website and thus allowed, the whole range of views concerning the topic should also be allowed, without the restriction of any of them.

As for the world at large - yes, there should be no limits at all. Absolutely no limits. Free speech, expression and inquiry, no "ifs", "ands" or "buts". Period.

It is worth remebering that anyone's views are perceived as being "beyond limit" for someone else, and, with censorship being allowed, anyone is at constant risk of being gagged if his most dedicated opponents are in the leading, or at least influential, positions in the society.

For example, in modern Russia "homosexual propaganda" is considered to be a crime and is offically forbidden. The vast majority of modern Russian population, along with virtually all modern Russian elites, feels the same fear, disgust and hostility to homosexuals that the vast majority of modern Western population, along with virtually all modern Western elites, feels to paedophiles.

And, just to remind you, pre-1960s vast majority of Western population, along with virtually all pre-1960s Western elites, were as unaccepting - oftentimes violently and even murderously unaccepting - of homosexuals. The consensus of the public and the elites - including academic community and academic establishment - also were that homosexuals' message is dangerous, since it is corrosive to the public health and morality and may entice young people into homosexual relationships, or may even turn them into homosexuals.

Nowadays the situation changed. Now people are allowed, even encouraged, to speak in defence of homosexuals, and many of them do. This is wonderful - I myself fully in support of homosexuals' social, cultural and sexual freedom.

And one of the reasons the situation changed was the freedom of speech that is deservedly valued in the West. Despite the rejection of their mesage as "dangerous" and "outrageous", homosexuals and their non-homosexual themselves yet publicly pro-homosexual supporters manged to gain enough support to resist their discrimination, and to revolt against it openly. And, happily, they won.

Yet I'm not in support in gagging and censoring of modern people who still dislike homosexuals, and still disagree with the current mainstream position of acceptablity and equality of homosexual relations, and express their antipathy and their disagreement in public - the kind of people whom we now call "homophobic". I strongly disagree with their position, and I do not share their feelings, yet I will still stand for their free speech.

The censorship for one is censorship for everyone, since the dominant or influential positions on what is "dangerous" and thus "unacceptable" may change. That's why it is imporant to stand for everyone's free speech, even for the free speech for the ones whom you sincerely believe to be "dangerous".

On this, I end my debates with you concerning free speech, Chris. My freedom of speech also include the freedom of not speaking in response to the positions that I, personally, perceive as both intellectually weak and morally reprehensible - and this is my position on your ideas concerning free speech, Chris.

I will still engage you on other topics - if you are willing to engage me as well, as you are free to ignore me if you want.

Now, I have two interviews to work on. Goodbye for now.

I hadn't seen anything about this particular case, but I know that sometimes critics of the actions of the Israeli government are unfairly accused of antisemitism. (Assuming that's what you mean; I think phrases like "Zionist establishment" would be best avoided.)

But as Roberta says, just because some people are sometimes unfairly accused of antisemitism, it doesn't mean that antisemitism doesn't exist. My question to Vortex was whether he would find antisemitic material acceptable. I may be wrong, but I suspect he wouldn't find at least some of the items on my list acceptable. In that case, my point is that it isn't a question of valiant free speech crusaders versus evil free speech curtailers - it's a question of where we draw the line.

There you go again. What the hell can we say without 'offending' someone? 

Of course there are ignorant people who automatically hate Jews, seems to me that there are very many ignorant people in Israel, who automatically hate Palestinians.

But my original point still stands. Who decides where the line should be drawn?

Can anyone else tell whether that was a "Yes" or a "No" from Vortex?