Welcome to Thunderdome

So let's say that a time traveler comes back with advance tech and zaps us all into a conference room in Las Vegas. He demonstrates convincingly to all of us, even Malcolm, that he is from a time 1000 years hence.... when human civilization finally crawled back up out of the ashes.

He tells us that the creation of facebook directly caused the downfall of human civilization in 2035 due to so many morons suddenly being given the power of perfect communication. He has a presentation all prepared, and shows us how it. He says they developed tech to allow the perfect flagging of trolls and morons to effectively remove their voice from the common conversation with the simple addition of the "MoronBlocker" ad-on.

What is your reaction to this news?*



*This is just a thought exercise, and for the purpose of it, all things should be considered equal.

I'm about 52% positive, though, that it will just turn into a "your question is invalid" conversation. Hopefully I just jinxed it and now it wont.

I selected an answer. Though for the records I do think the premise is completely absurd.

As to how to silence morons, the simplest method is to just stop reading what they say. No one forces you to read their blatherings. Even if they are the President.

GORDON wrote: I'm about 52% positive, though, that it will just turn into a "your question is invalid" conversation. Hopefully I just jinxed it and now it wont.

[video][/video]

youre the one who is absurd

GODDAMNIT IT. Fucking deleted my first post's text.

Firstly, his coming back in time and informing us of his present and past just fucked with our timeline and now who knows what our future may hold, so I'm not convinced of the validity the hypothetical Dr. Sam Beckett's argument. I find has grasp of four-dimensional physics to be lackluster.

Secondly, I'd immediately ask for the details of this "perfect" system because one man's troll is another man's lawyer and this seems like another variation on


Thirdly, even if he presented a flawless system that objectively picked out "the morons" I'd still be quite horrified by anyone who'd take up the offer.

This sounds like the argument that the common folk can't be literate because then they have the dangerous ability to decipher and write down their own words. You can't trust them to disseminate the proper facts or truths.

If it really does become a problem, a more likely result is that facebook and twitter will be replaced by multiple services. Each one will cater to a particular subset of our culture and none of them will have to listen to the others. Eventually as families and social groups divide themselves into separate tribes there will be a division in the species. Millions of years from now the liberals will evolve into pretty morons that spend their time lazing about eating the fruits of the trees, while the conservatives have turned into an intelligent but brutish subterranean race that feeds upon them nightly.

Malcolm wrote: This sounds like the argument that the common folk can't be literate because then they have the dangerous ability to decipher and write down their own words. You can't trust them to disseminate the proper facts or truths.

I think this is exactly the problem. You can argue "yeah but who decides who is not worth listening to?" and that's fine, but that';s what I meant by "all things are equal." I'm sure that didn't come across well, it barely makes sense even to me. But that's what I meant.

People are the problem. Not everyone should have a voice, and it has nothing to do with race, creed, or country of origin. There, I said it.

GORDON wrote: Not everyone should have a voice, and it has nothing to do with race, creed, or country of origin.

Nah. Even morons need a voice. It's only when they speak up that they get a chance to be corrected and perhaps not be morons in the future, even if only a bit.

Malcolm wrote:

GORDON wrote: Not everyone should have a voice, and it has nothing to do with race, creed, or country of origin.

Nah. Even morons need a voice. It's only when they speak up that they get a chance to be corrected and perhaps not be morons in the future, even if only a bit.

So there needs to be a "Moron" flag on people that follows them around flawlessly on anything they do online, so it can be flagged with MoronBlock.

I would oppose any government initiative to silence people selectively as that would be unconstitutional. I would dislike any private initiative to do so on a massive scale and would not partake in any platform that would cooperate. Silence everyone or no one.

But really it doesn't matter what you do. Throw the trolls off of your platform and they just go to another platform. As silly as your premise is, the proposed "perfect flagging of trolls and morons" is not just silly but completely impossible.

TPRJones wrote: As silly as your premise is, the proposed "perfect flagging of trolls and morons" is not just silly but completely impossible.

I should have put money on my "52%" gamble.

GORDON wrote:

Malcolm wrote:

GORDON wrote: Not everyone should have a voice, and it has nothing to do with race, creed, or country of origin.

Nah. Even morons need a voice. It's only when they speak up that they get a chance to be corrected and perhaps not be morons in the future, even if only a bit.

So there needs to be a "Moron" flag on people that follows them around flawlessly on anything they do online, so it can be flagged with MoronBlock.

It has a built-in trolling weak spot. If the system can't determine my definition of a moron, then it's not perfect. Since it is perfect, my definition of "moron" will be picked up and registered as "anyone who uses MoronBlock" and would result in every user of the system, including myself, being flagged as that from which they seek to distance themselves.

I agree it would be a challenge. It has to be bipartisan somehow, these days every R would flag ever D, and vice versa.

Maybe... 95% majority votes to flag someone?

GORDON wrote: I agree it would be a challenge. It has to be bipartisan somehow, these days every R would flag ever D, and vice versa.

Maybe... 95% majority votes to flag someone?

So we're now down to a popularity contest? "Unpopular" is hardly a good substitution for "moronic." If you want to go that route, cool. But then Arianna Grande and Selena Gomez are always more right than you.

How do you stop botnets running fake accounts from skewing the results one way or the other?

TPRJones wrote: How do you stop botnets running fake accounts from skewing the results one way or the other?

Thought Police.

TPRJones wrote: How do you stop botnets running fake accounts from skewing the results one way or the other?

In the awesome version 5 of the internet, Botnets are impossible.

Somehow.

I bet it has something to do with your IP being your DNA because the wires go directly into your brain. In the future.

At that point there is no more social media because everyone is too busy cybersexing with their perfect ideal sex bot.

Porn certainly was the driving force behind direct brain implementation. Congress even tried to legislate it so you couldn't wire directly into the sensory areas of the brain, but SCOTUS, with Chief Justice Chelsea Clinton as the deciding vote, ruled the federal government had no authority over women's and men's bodies. They left it up to the states. So now you can't get wired up in Mississippi.

Catt looks around and sees Hitlers, I look around and see people who can't wait to be dead.