Thanks, everybody, for trying out the new World Table comment system. I can relate to the frustrations some of you are registering. Thanks also to Jack Donaldson of World Table for commenting on the various threads. We should rate him as “helpful,” “strongly agree.” He wrote me an e-mail with the subject “Wow! Loving your community!” That shows a great attitude, given how many of you were “rating” his system rather poorly, but he is right to be impressed with your thoughtfulness and your high level of discourse. He said this: “Great feedback coming in so far. I’ve been in the thread answering people’s questions this morning. So far, most everything mentioned is in the works, but we are feeling the pressure, having heard a ton of feedback from your folks.” We’ll see what happens with all of this.
Anyway, one larger point was raised that deserves discussion in itself. Is this attempt to create a climate of civility by means of an algorithm part of the same syndrome that has given us politically correct speech codes, trigger warnings, and the hypersensitivity to being offended that shuts down the freedom of speech? The syndrome that we have mocked and criticized on this very blog? Do we have such thin skins that we need to be protected from other commenters, lest our feelings be hurt?
I’d like to hear what you think about this, but I think there is a difference in what this new comment system is trying to do, which I will explain after the jump.Say I put up a post that provokes this comment: “I disagree.” I don’t think anyone here would give that a bad rating, much less want to ban any disagreement. Say the post also provokes this comment: “I disagree because you are confusing cause and effect.” That post may earn a “helpful” mark for teaching us about an important logical fallacy. The post also provokes this comment: “I disagree you Christian filth.” That was an epithet I came across lately while moderating comments that were flagged.
To call someone “filth” does not articulate an idea. It just says, “I despise you and your kind. ” Then why are you here?,” we might wonder. The answer is that the commenter just wants to tell us how much he despises us. The comment is not part of any free flow of ideas. It interrupts and even stops the free flow of ideas. “You Christian filth” provokes responses in kind: “you atheist filth.” Readers stung by the insult will try to think of clever put downs, which, in turn, provokes put downs from the other side, and the thread goes nowhere.
To ban those who call those they disagree with “filth” is not to interfere with anyone’s intellectual freedom. It is to protect a forum where intellectual freedom can be exercised.
Freedom involves self-government. Not just in the political sense but in the moral and psychological senses as well. Governing the self involves voluntary restraints. A person who is restrained against his will by the government is not free. Nor is the person carried away by his passions, who cannot or will not control himself at all. This particular comment system, I think, encourages voluntary restraint.
Freedom also has a social context. A person locked up in solitary, or marooned on a desert island, or separated from the world in a hermit’s cell, is, I suppose, free of social obligations, but there is much that he or she can’t do, not being free to spend time with one’s family, go to a restaurant with friends, or being party of a community.
In actual communities, there are things that we would be ashamed to do in public. There is a good “peer pressure” that prevents our sinful nature from fully manifesting itself. One of the bad things about the internet is that its anonymity makes us lose our inhibitions. This comment system lets the “community” set standards, something even real communities have seemed to stop doing. I would think that in our case, if someone got all offended in that politically-correct, shut-down-the-conversation kind of way, it would provoke from us low ratings in “respect,” “helpfulness,” “likability,” and even “honesty” (since those who are “personally offended” by innocent statements tend to be trying to score points against someone, rather than being actually injured).
Or am I wrong about this? You are free to disagree.
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