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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 2, 2024

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I... think I agree with this. Though I'm not certain. It might be possible to come up with a plan that would convince me otherwise. No, I don't think we should simply set aside election results. Ideally whatever method we use is entirely prior to voting, (as a great firewall would be) without being... the great firewall. I can't think of a solution I fully endorse.

It's a bit of a paradox under my value system in the first place. Reconciling the need for shared values and the need for individual liberties I mean. Coordination of wills and individuation of wills trade off closely with one another.

Even this would be fairly dangerous, because you essentially have to curb free speech during an election, as it’s unlikely that you’re going to be dealing with a manipulation scheme that is stupid enough to not VPN at minimum and probably at least be able to spoof IPs in the country if not create a network of servers in the country to post from. It’s unlikely that you can thus tell the difference between native crime-thinkers and a network of agents from Kazakhstan trying to influence the election. And even if you could, again the temptation to simply label messages that go against the doctrine of the cathedral as “interference”, “misinformation”, or “disinformation”, not because they’re false, but because it’s an easy win. You get to hobble your opponent by blocking messages in his favor while you can get your message out easily.

Again, these types of decisions are effectively attacks on democratic principles because it allows for the ruling party to simply declare the other side to be cheating, and thus put a strong thumb on the scale in favor of the ruling party.