A remarkably poor idea that would only end in tragedy, especially as the tactic is normalized and used by people and politicians you don’t like against people you do. Note in particular that the letter seems to be calling for a civil litigation RICO suit, following Sen. Whitehouse, which is different from a criminal RICO prosecution.
Feel free to keep attacking civil liberties in an attempt to go after bad guys. You’d fit in well with the NSA. This is the kind of silly advocacy I’d expect from the more intemperate GamerGate supporters, calling for RICO investigations into video game reviews.
[quote=“wysinwyg, post:59, topic:66453”]
Why did you lie about people “attacking” and trying to “censor” you?[/quote]
WTF? You are kidding, aren’t you? From here, it is obvious I was attacked. One person said they would flag all my comments as “off topic” to get them removed.
It is true that what the signatories were talking about was their definition of “lies” that they want punished. What is undefined is what qualifies as “lies” and who is the arbiter of “lies”. Where do they draw the line? Which statements are “totally false”, “somewhat false”, “misleading”, “mostly true” and so on. It’s a slippery slope that is better determined with science, not some kind of RICO prosecution.
Science best fights misinformation with science not questionable RICO prosecution.
This call for RICO prosecution will be seen by many as an attempt at censorship. It’s not well thought out.
“Slippery slope” is more likely to be a logical fallacy than some sort of power phrase that convinces others that a particular action will lead to the downfall of society.
You don’t seem to understand that “scientists and the scientific community” perform scientific research, they do not legislate. Take a basic civics class, perhaps?
Great. Just great. More ammunition poured into the War of Ideologies.
What about stopping bickering about who did how much of what, and try something that could actually help?
Plus there are ways for weather engineering to normalize the weather patterns and keep them predictable. It is a chaotic system, but by repeated nudging a chaotic system can be kept in a quasi-stable state.
Ah yes, the dread censorship tactic of letting moderators know when posts on their own board are off-topic. So far you have 17 here, and nearly all have been actively trying to substitute the topic of well-documented deliberate misinformation with disagreement from consensus, and evading questions put to you about it.
I will cop to attacking you, without apology. I think anyone who derails threads with this kind of sophistry deserves to be called out for it. We have a moderated board with a flag button for exactly that reason.
A civil/human rights bending expedient drug war/prohibition era law for busting Mafia leadership who were sneaky enough to order the breaking of law at arms length and with a corporate code of honor and silence among criminals is being suggested as a remedy for climate change denial, is that not mission creep and unintended consequences which defines slippery slope?
You have a very strange notion of “science.” If you mean the process of gathering evidence using the scientific method, that’s been done.
The problem isn’t that there isn’t scientific work being done. The problem is that certain for-profit limited-liability corporations are publishing material THEY KNOW FULL WELL to be false, and lying about this particular issue, because they want the issue to be ignored and not spur any policy actions detrimental to their profit margins.
That’s no different from companies that lied about smoking and cancer in order to keep cigarette sales going, and companies that lied about the safety of their pesticides to keep farmers spraying their fields with them, and companies that lie about the safety of their product.
Your continuing insistence on misdirecting the discussion away from the important matter that THE PEOPLE INVOLVED HAVE BEEN LYING AND THERE IS PROOF OF IT AVAILABLE makes me wonder if you are one of the people who would be targeted by this action.
…except that 29/33 of your bbs comments are in Climate Change threads (with a brief tangent into “it’s ok if Chrissie Hynde wants to blame herself for her rape! don’t censor her!”) so you’ll have to understand if that statement rings a liiiiittle off-key…
If a tool to flag comments as “off-topic” exists and your comments seem to someone as “off-topic”, then it seems completely legitimate to use the flag. Why else would it be there?
What’s your evidence for this? As I already pointed out, it doesn’t really jive with experience. Science is difficult to understand and often tells people things they don’t want to hear, whereas misinformation is usually very easy to understand and comforting.
A “lie” is a deliberate falsehood. If you can demonstrate that party A knew that X, and yet party A says “not X” then A has lied. That’s a bright, clear line.
Matters of fact are often deliberated and decided upon in court, including whether particular statements are “totally false,” “somewhat false”, etc. In a perjury case, it is unlikely that the defendant would be sentenced on the basis of “science”.
You’ve done nothing to establish that a court is an especially bad place to make this sort of determination, nor that science is particularly good at fighting misinformation.
Oh boy! They sure do like Just Asking Questions about climate change. Not that they believe in it. But by golly, you know, some of “those people” sure do have some newsletters they’d like subscribe to…
