> You can't logically defeat bigots in a way that actually matters to them.
The goal of public debate is never to persuade the person you're debating, it's to persuade those watching the debate. Sometimes you can persuade the person you're talking to, but that take a lot more sophisticated understanding of the other person than you're going to achieve if you simply dismiss them as illogical.
> If this were the case, then there wouldn't be bigots.
That simply doesn't follow. Bigots do change their minds sometimes, slowly over time.
> The existence of systemic racism is not controversial among experts and hasn't been for a long time. Yet people insist on arguing about it forever. They don't care that logical arguments dismantle their beliefs.
It's not that they don't care, it's that they don't agree that they are logical.
Keep in mind, also, that logic is only as good as the evidence you feed into it. Logic in a vacuum of evidence is completely useless. People don't always change, but they do sometimes change.
Also, keep in mind that censorship isn't the only poor strategy the left is employing here. Sure, getting rid of censorship and just arguing with people won't fix things, but that's in part because the argumentation of the left is crap too. The cry of many people on the left these days is, "Come to the left, we'll call you a racist!" and they're surprised when this actually pushes people to the right. People think minds can't be changed because they've never actually learned how to change minds.
The truth has power. If you want people to stop supporting cops, for example: show them this video[1] and then point out that the murderer in that video now receives $2500/month in medical pension because he claims PTSD from the murder he committed. Try it out! It's not hard to science this for yourself.
> The goal of public debate is never to persuade the person you're debating, it's to persuade those watching the debate. Sometimes you can persuade the person you're talking to, but that take a lot more sophisticated understanding of the other person than you're going to achieve if you simply dismiss them as illogical.
Debate is not the only mechanism to do this. Why invite a bigot on stage? Wouldn't a better option be to have academics give lectures on the topic? What use is there to have somebody sitting next to them interjecting?
A staged debate is a curated event. There might be strategic reasons to invite a bigot on stage, but you're certainly not obligated to--in general I think putting reasonable voices next to ignorant ones gives an air of legitimacy to ignorance and drags down the reputation of both the reasonable voices and the curators. So yeah, don't invite a bigot on stage.
Curation is not the same as censorship. Curation is a whitelist where by default you don't let anyone speak, and choose specific people to give voice to--the choice of who to give voice to is in itself an act of free speech which I think should be protected. Newspapers, TV news, staged debates, etc. are all curated venues. I absolutely support boycotting Fox News and its sponsors, for example, because they're a curated venue which has decided that bigotry is the message they want to put out into the world. If the Mother Jones or ProPublica started hiring bigots to write their articles, I'd support boycotting them too--these are curated news sources and I donate to them because I expect them to limit their content to quality content.
A curated venue is different from a communications platform where the default position is to let everyone speak. Letting someone speak on a communications platform doesn't lend legitimacy to their opinions: everyone knows that any idiot can post on Facebook. Censorship is adding a blacklist: the default position is anyone can speak, but you've decided to make an exception to that rule.
The topic of this subthread isn't curated debate in curated venues, it's censorship of debate on social media.
If you want to argue that Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/Instagram/YouTube/HN should be curated venues where only academics are allowed to post on topics they are experts in, then start by showing me which credentials you feel qualify you to debate about human rights. If you actually believe what you're saying, then follow it to its logical conclusion and self-censor.
To be clear, I'm not actually saying you should self-censor--I don't believe that social media should be limited to academics. I'm merely pointing out that you aren't following your own principles.
The goal of public debate is never to persuade the person you're debating, it's to persuade those watching the debate. Sometimes you can persuade the person you're talking to, but that take a lot more sophisticated understanding of the other person than you're going to achieve if you simply dismiss them as illogical.
> If this were the case, then there wouldn't be bigots.
That simply doesn't follow. Bigots do change their minds sometimes, slowly over time.
> The existence of systemic racism is not controversial among experts and hasn't been for a long time. Yet people insist on arguing about it forever. They don't care that logical arguments dismantle their beliefs.
It's not that they don't care, it's that they don't agree that they are logical.
Keep in mind, also, that logic is only as good as the evidence you feed into it. Logic in a vacuum of evidence is completely useless. People don't always change, but they do sometimes change.
Also, keep in mind that censorship isn't the only poor strategy the left is employing here. Sure, getting rid of censorship and just arguing with people won't fix things, but that's in part because the argumentation of the left is crap too. The cry of many people on the left these days is, "Come to the left, we'll call you a racist!" and they're surprised when this actually pushes people to the right. People think minds can't be changed because they've never actually learned how to change minds.
The truth has power. If you want people to stop supporting cops, for example: show them this video[1] and then point out that the murderer in that video now receives $2500/month in medical pension because he claims PTSD from the murder he committed. Try it out! It's not hard to science this for yourself.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBUUx0jUKxc