Buddhist Right Speech: Ethical and Effective, or just Thought Policing?

Also, the point that “IEET is not a public square” is one that IEET needs to look past, because you want the public to come here and participate (at least I think you do).

Although, technically, IEET is not a public square, if you want best results, treat it like one.

That means accepting the unsavory, but with the idea of guiding them toward a better condition.

Instead of shutting the door on them (moderating, deleting, censoring, editing, etc.) invite them in and show them a better way.

IEET is after all, about ethics. If you cannot provide a little instruction on ethics to the masses (you expect them to possess this already), then how do you expect to instruct people on the ethics of emerging technology.

Of course, the argument could be made that there ought to be a minimum level already attained before someone participates in a forum - this is the “go back to kindergarten” argument, and to some extent, has some merit.

However, I don’t think it’s practical. IEET wants attention. You want traffic. You want exposure. IEET’s ideological goal needs public support.

Therefore, IEET needs the public (and some of the public are rude).

Therefore, I propose a REGULAR ethics discussion (or rehash the discussion from time to time) on exactly these (and other) issues.

In other words, this article (and the one originally announcing Right Speech) should be on the front page at all times - and authors and moderators can refer anyone with a link to it within any particular article to remind them how to be diplomatic.

I advocate for an open door policy with conscious effort to bring EVERYONE to that same ethical principles we live by - in contrast to a closed (or clos-ing) door policy that eventually excludes someone.

Perhaps once a month we might do a Carthasis Day—say, the last day of each month. On that day we would insult each other playfully. Or maybe half-seriously.
I visited a Reverend Moon (religious cultist) collective in N. California in the ‘70s. At least once a week they’d have a fierce soccer game, shouting “kill for love!”; “bash that guy, bash that guy”, etc. It was comical. One afternoon a Moonie hobbled over to me on a crutch while I watched the soccer match: “why aren’t you in the game?”, he demanded. I replied they were too rough.
“That’s the whole point”, he countered, “it toughens you up.”

iPan - IMO, you have disqualified yourself as a valuable or credible commenter on Buddhist Right Speech after the intentionally hurtful comments you made at KurzweilAI.

For me to consider your comments as backed by sufficient integrity, I think you should remove the mean-spirited comments there.

iPan, let me put this in as simple a set of concepts as possible.

Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose. The moment your actions cross a line to inflict harm, they are no longer allowable. Your right to do as you will stops the second it comes into conflict with my right to not be harmed by your actions.

THIS EXTENDS TO FREE SPEECH AS WELL. Your right to say anything you wish is your right to say anything you wish, SO LONG AS WHAT YOU SAY IS NOT DELIBERATELY INTENDED TO CAUSE HARM TO ANOTHER.

You can’t yell “Fire” in crowded theater. Why should you be allowed to insult and bully someone verbally with impunity and call it “free speech”? You can claim that people need to “grow a thicker skin” all you want, but that is simply an attempt to justify deliberate harm.

All this is requiring is CIVIL DISCOURSE between ADULTS, instead of a verbal shit fling between children.  Sounds like a smart policy, and not at all discriminatory. If you can’t control yourself enough to conduct a civil conversation, why SHOULD you expect anyone to take you seriously?

The point of Right Speech is not just to contain or constrain what we would normally say. It is to change it.

We don’t need the public enough to allow the unsavory. There is no need for catharsis here. If someone requires a session of swearing and mean-spirited comments. That’s fine as long as they don’t get posted here.

I don’t want to keep going over the same ground. Reminding people about what we are aiming for is one thing. Re-opening an old debate is quite a different thing. Right Speech is the way things are going to go. People who don’t like it will leave, people who do like it will join. In time we will be able to move forward with the stated goals of the site which is to be responsible, constructive and ethical in our approach.

Must politely yet firmly disagree; everyone needs to ‘let go’ once in awhile to relieve the tension; even Jesus lost it and overturned the money changers tables in the temple.
Perhaps even Joan of Arc made a little whoopie on a Saturday night or two.

IMO a bit of carthartic hostility is necessary, otherwise it builds up and results in teeth clenching.

@Intomorrow

Cathartic hostility can be expressed in civil language without the need for invective or violent flame wars.

You want to scream and yell and throw things, do it off line. Then use your rapier wit to skewer your enemy with clever phrases and clear insightful logic.

I do it all the time, because I have to deal with trolls all the time who don’t like me to talk about what I talk about. It is extremely rare that I do not answer someone with a carefully thought out response, but instead simply tell them to “fuck off”. But even in those situations, I do not allow myself to descend into a lengthy rant which amounts to nothing more than name calling and vicious attacks on a person as opposed to their ideas.  And even with THAT level of self control, there are times that R.U. deletes sections or even entire posts as being too “attack oriented” and conveying little to no information, merely visceral emotional reactions.

In essence, your defense comes across as this: “But I need to punch people in the face once in awhile to make myself feel better!”  To which, see my previous post.

Intomorrow, I didn’t suggest you couldn’t ‘let go’, just that you shouldn’t do it here. There is a time and a place. This isn’t it. 

Yes, that is going to be difficult at times, but it is a discipline. It takes practice and hard work and sometimes painful work. Still, it is worth it to create a community in which there is more to the discussion than the latest round of shots fired in the hope of scoring points

Even at IEET we can’t entirely stifle our aggressive urges, or we really would be the robot cultists Dale Carrico thinks we are—in fact we would be robots.
So, IMO one day a month ought to be set aside wherein one can, if one wants to, be visceral in a joking or half-joking manner. It could and almost certainly would relieve tension.
It could be tried in two weeks, the end of June, to see if it might succeed.

No.

It isn’t about stifling urges, it is about exercising self-discipline.  There will be no day when we will pretend that the standards of conduct are other than what they are.

Please find another topic. There are plenty of interesting ones waiting for input.

Ten Four.
I’ll ask Hank or someone if we could do a non-Right Speech Day once a year.

Over and out.

Hi Intomorrow—

The good news for you is: there are many many websites where posting intentional insults is easy and even highly-appreciated! You can do that at reddit.com and get points for it! 

you can do it at KurzweilAI, like iPan, and call people names like “hag”, “retard” etc.

The bad news for you is… we’re not going to do that at IEET.  I think Buddhist Right Speech is here to stay, 24/7/365.

for me, the only wonder is that we didn’t install it earlier.

Yes, Right Speech is here to stay, however let’s not become like this dear old boid o’ mine:

http://img1.coolspacetricks.com/images/commentgraphics/religious/89972.jpg

... Hank, what this means is if we repress our contempt to an excessive degree we risk being as the Christians you and I know are repressing their contempt—and then they travel to some overseas country to kill for Jesus.
Repression causes them to talk Jesus but practice Mussolini.

@Hank & Valkyrie

Prove and/or define “intent”.

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/pellissier20120612

1. to abstain from false speech, especially not to tell deliberate lies and not to speak deceitfully
2. to abstain from slanderous speech and not to use words maliciously against others
3. to abstain from harsh words that offend or hurt others
4. to abstain from idle chatter that lacks purpose or depth.

@Hank

Your comments here don’t seem 100% in line with Buddhist Right Speech to me.

1) KurzweilAI is not IEET. The rules there are different, the posting guidelines are different, the process is different, and it is literally a different location.
  1a) I wear many different hats, on different websites. I also post to the Starcraft 2 forums, the Guild Wars 2 forums, the Path of Exile forums. On each of these, I play a different role.

2) Your comments appear to be those of a person who holds a grudge. Grudge holding offends me, and therefore violates Buddhist Right Speech principles 2 and 3.

3) Your comments, referring to any other actions or posts outside of this thread, and this thread alone, show a lesser moral character than Buddhist Right Speech wants us to have.
What makes you think you are qualified to tell others whether they are qualified (referring to your comment that I have disqualified myself as “valuable or credible” - what makes you qualified to make that judgement?)
  3a) Judge a person by their comments within the thread they are made, and only the thread they are made. Or at least try to contain your comments to responses within that thread. “Cross thread” chatter is one of the biggest causes of flame wars.

Hold yourself to your own moral standard before you hold others to it.

My points are as follows (compressed for brevity):

Who watches the watchmen? (who applies these principles to the mods here?)

Buddhist Right Speech is a good ideal. The real question is whether you use it as an enforcement tool (bad in my mind) or as a suggestion/guideline/principle. It’s one thing to lead the horses to water, and quite another to drown them in it.

@Hank/Valkyrie

This discussion exists because of my actions.

You are better off because this issue is a topic of discussion.

Your welcome.

When either of you can see into deep time as well as I can, then I might take your judgments seriously.

Intomorrow - I sympathize, I really do - -

expressing contempt is, unfortunately, often much more fun than repressing contempt

but as we know, there’s a domino effect - if one person expresses contempt, then others are riled to do the same—the result is awful.

Please give it a try - I know it is hard, we have all developed our sarcastic muscles and it is pleasurable to use them…

also… contempt… should we really be feeling contempt for those that disagree?  if we didn’t feel the contempt we wouldn’t have to repress it—

 

We should not feel contempt, anger, irritation- yet we do and will continue to do so; rather than clenching one’s teeth, one attempts to channel such, venting it carefully; an overflow vent was what I had in mind for merely one day a year.. Halloween would be appropriate On that day all the pent-up contempt could be vented, and there is bound to be that pent-up contempt, as we are dealing here with strangers.
Enough fury (yes, fury) exists with family—plus friends and associates—so it is IMO best to do all in one’s power to minimize the anger by keeping an even strain.
Admittedly, I’m getting old and now lack the patience of younger days; however then it is a case of knowing what the younger may not know: there are times to be patient, and there are times to quicken.
I do try very hard not to be impatient with, i.e., Rightist Christians and rubes who are not Christian, but they are too headstrong and frankly, the thought of putting up with that which is counter to technoprogressivism is the height of discouragement. Sure, it is all counterpoint; give and take, back and forth, to-ing and fro-ing. Everyone here knows it, Christian C. is 21 by now, he must know it as well.
However a technoprogressive is not a ‘bot, he or she cannot operate as one… he or she must learn to take what they give w/out being a bootlicker; one has to sometimes, even at the risk of low- moderate contempt, give back what opponents give forth. And sometimes we must go to what they fro at us with an equal measure of force —otherwise they have no respect, they truly do not. Dylan once sang:

“... because the cops don’t need you and man they expect the same.”

That’s general. They all have a certain way of doing things (conventions) which they want validated and if they appear to brook opposition it is due to the hiding of contempt mentioned at the beginning. Have I left anything out? if so, do not hesitate to ask for further elucidation.

iPan, we are new at this and it will take a while for it to settle in. I plan to hold the moderators as accountable for their speech, including myself, as anyone else.

That’s my job. Yours is to consider your words carefully and model Right Speech yourself. If you don’t think we are doing a good job, do a better one. The reality is that no one is being forced to anything. Every person who posts on this site gets to choose how they wish to write. The only difference is that the people who own this site are choosing what kind of discussion they wish to be representative of the goals and mission of IEET.

@ iPan - I didn’t mean any thing malicious in my comment, I did mention off-handedly that you use words like “retard” and “hag” to describe people you are annoyed with at KurzweilAI, but I don’t see how I am malicious to do that, unless it embarrasses you somehow, and I don’t think it does, because you could remove those comments if you chose, or apologize, and you have done nothing of the kind.

I was hoping that you would apologize for your attack on IEET, and me, and Peg Tittle, but you have done nothing of the kind, and I am disappointed. I am reluctant to have you at IEET at all, since you seem to be here as merely a subversive element.

I encourage you to comment on the IEET articles, and contribute the knowledge that you have in a positive way.

I hope you do not seek to intentionally antagonize anyone at IEET, because it further cements in my mind that you are a voice that should not be presented here.

@ inTomorrow. Keep trying this Buddhist Right Speech, please. I don’t think you have checked out the sites that I have mentioned. Check out the sites where insults can run rampant, and then come back and let me know if that is a worthwhile goal.

“Cathartic hostility can be expressed in civil language without the need for invective or violent flame wars. You want to scream and yell and throw things, do it off line. I do it all the time, because I have to deal with trolls all the time who don’t like me to talk about what I talk about. It is extremely rare that I do not answer someone with a carefully thought out response, but instead simply tell them to ‘fuck off’. In essence, your defense comes across as this: ‘But I need to punch people in the face once in awhile to make myself feel better’ !” 

“@ inTomorrow. Keep trying this Buddhist Right Speech, please. I don’t think you have checked out the sites that I have mentioned. Check out the sites where insults can run rampant, and then come back and let me know if that is a worthwhile goal.”

———————————————————————————-
No, guys, want nothing to do with sites where insults can run rampant; again, want a site where a safety valve exists so when the pressure builds up—as it does—the pressure can be let-off. One day a year would do; good Christian people take a day off from piety to celebrate Halloween by being ghoulish..so why can’t IEET do the same?: it might just work.

@Intomorrow

You seem to be VERY insistent about this Day of Catharsis idea

My own view on this is as follows. I don’t buy the “hydraulic model” of psychology whereby the urge to insult (or whatever other “vice” one is talking about) just builds up and up until it is eventually released, like steam in a kettle. Urges can build up, but they can also subside.

By contrast I do buy the idea that everything we do, at some level, we do because it makes us feel good. And one of the things that makes us feel good is to scratch an itch. And what happens when you scratch an itch? It gets itchier.

It’s not that I think your Day of Catharsis is a particularly bad idea, but I wouldn’t want you to think that it was _necessary_. It isn’t. We can do without it, and as Hank and Alex have pointed out there are plenty of other places one can do to indulge one’s vice.

Bottom line: IEET doesn’t need a safety valve, it needs to replace some bad commenting habits with some better ones. To me, this is the whole point of the new policy. We’re still working on it in my view, but I’m still hopeful.

It is funny that KurzweilAI.net forums were brought up.

I still have a membership to those forums, but I left them a long time ago due to the rather low level of discourse I found.

That forum was largely responsible for the views I expressed in the article I wrote about the Technological Singularity as a religion, as most of the posters on the KurzweilAI forum had the behaviors found in many cults (as described by Marc Galanter’s work on Cults - among others).

I tend to think the idea of “Right Speech” is an excellent one.

But I wonder if the membership here has the intellectual rigor and discipline to make it work.

That said, I would prefer Stefan Pernar’s solution as well (providing citation for positions). There is a lot to say for EVIDENCE.

And, by providing evidence, in the form of either journal citations, or other forms of acceptable evidence, one will rapidly find that they needn’t worry about whether they are polite or not. As the evidence will tend to speak louder than anything else.

Hi Matthew, I have no argument with evidence or with logic. People are encouraged to give links to other sources backing up their opinions.

Politeness is only one aspect of Right Speech. Timeliness and critical thought before speaking are of much more importance. What civility does is make it more possible for all sides to be heard. The more voices are allowed to speak, the greater chance that something might be learned.

It is important when you talk of evidence to be clear that there are different forms of evidence. Not all evidence is equally valid in all arguments. Still it is a good place to begin.

This is just occurred to me, but there may be an interesting analogy here with law courts. There, the evidence is of course supposed to be paramount, and at the same time something rather like Right Speech is generally imposed by the judge, at least on the witnesses. Of course the lawyers then use all sorts of rhetorical tricks and theatrical displays to manipulate the proceedings, especially when a jury is present, so this is no guarantee that the truth will indeed prevail, but this is currently the best that human society has come up with for ensuring fair and evidence-based judgements.

Fortunately, we are not sending anyone to jail here, we are just trying to elucidate some issues around ethics and emerging technologies, and I am still hopeful that Right Speech will prove to be a sufficient basis on which to do this. One could of course also require commenters to back up any statement they make with peer-reviewed evidence, but this would be going much further than we want to at this stage.

@Peter

Thanks for the analysis. I also think that your analogy with courts is particularly enlightening. I would go a bit further and say that a certain linguistic discipline is an essential part of scientific research - especially because scientific developments require an efficient coordination of many researchers. Probably, most of these linguistic codes have not been analyzed in depth by epistemologists. They have not even been written anywhere. Perhaps this speech discipline remains implicit, as a necessary, subterranean precondition. Yet, it is there. The whole Buddhist Right Speech discipline is already part of the scientific discourse. And I am sure it will help to improve our debates here.

Is it some kind of “thought police”? Yes, of course. Why to deny it? We need to discipline our thoughts, so that they can better interact productively with with other men’s thoughts. Otherwise, we are just making a poetry contest. Or a primal screaming session.
The important part, I think, is that polite and logical expressions should NEVER be censored because of their content. That would transform an elevating methodology, into an oppressive tool for mental conformity.

Thanks André, wonderfully put - especially “primal screaming session”

(If we ever do go ahead with Intomorrow’s Day of Catharsis idea, maybe that’s what we should call it!)

Stefan: I wasn’t directing my scepticism towards scientific evidence generally, but peer-reviewed academic articles as the sole source of such evidence. One of the points I made at the time was that anecdotal, eye-witness accounts (or even hearsay, taken with the requisite quantities of salt) can also provide legitimate evidence…just like in a court of law (although sometimes evidence is considered to be too unreliable to be admissible).

Perhaps this is an opportune time to remind ourselves why we instituted this Right Speech policy in the first place. One of bones of contention at the time was the question as to whether religion should be considered “harmful”. “Heated” is in fact a euphemism for the quality of the debate we were having, which had indeed become hopelessly polarised. Offence was being given, and taken, at increasingly high volume. Everyone felt they needed to get their point across, with an urgency that made genuine consensus and learning just about impossible. Anecdotal evidence, much of it in the form of personal testimony, was brought to bear, only to be summarily dismissed (or at least politely ignored) by one side while the other side exaggerated its importance, or at least was less than forthcoming in pointing out its limitations. Tempers flared, and it was increasingly felt (not least by the IEET Board) that the whole debate was putting off readers and undermining IEET’s reputation, as well as consuming disproportionate amounts od editorial attention.

My purpose here is not to reignite or take a (new or old) position on the religion debate, but rather to remind readers of the circumstances in which we decided to institute this new policy. It’s not that anyone at IEET (as far as I know) thinks that all statements made on the comment threads need to be backed up by peer-reviewed evidence. It’s rather that we wanted to turn a problem into an opportunity, and Buddhist Right Speech seemed to provide a simple and suitable basis for doing so, as well as providing a fittingly (under the circumstances) religious context for this predominantly secular site.

Whatever position one does take on the overall merits of religion, our adoption of Buddhist Right Speech here at least provides explicit recognition that our religious traditions do indeed contain some pearls of wisdom.

Pardon me if I make multiple posts as responses. I lost my net access, save via my 3G iPad until Thursday due to university construction at the UCLA apartments.

To begin with:

WHAT?!!?

“Scientific” or “Academic” evidence is “not considered the most reliable form of evidence?”

What then would one THEN ACCEPT as a “valid” or “reliable” form of evidence if one rejects the currently most rigorous standard of evidence?

And… I will admit that there are other “valid” forms of evidence.

But I am MUCH MORE interested in SOUND forms of evidence.

Something can be completely valid, and completely false at the same time if the soundness of the evidence/assumptions/premises are not themselves true.

I would hope that a forum dedicated to furthering technological progress would have members who both knew, and understood about this distinction.

I should also point out, as has been mentioned above, that simply citing a fact should not be considered an objectively “harmful,” “abusive,” or “offensive” act.

For instance, simply stating “John Doe said ‘X’ at time ‘n’ and place ‘Z’.” would be very hard to consider harmful, abusive, or offensive if that statement about John Doe was correct.

If John Doe then takes offense that someone knows about his actions, then perhaps John Doe should be more mindful of his actions and speech while in a public forum.

This is a major problem currently in speech online and in the US political sphere. Too many people get offended by the facts.

If one is offended by a fact, this s not a public problem, but a personal one for the person who seems to hold a divergent view of reality (the roots of this being pretty much Post-Modernist thought that is so freaking prevalent).

@Matthew
I agree with your point on offence. As I think I’ve said elsewhere to violate Right Speech a statement would need to be deliberately offensive, or at least obviously and unnecessarily liable to offend. A relevant fact that may offend because someone prefers the truth to remain hidden is not unnecessary, and therefore does not violate Right Speech if it is delivered with a constructive intention (the latter being an important caveat, however: sometimes the truth can be wielded merely as a weapon, and this IMO DOES offend Right Speech).

Now moving on to the nature of evidence, I’m not sure that I understand your distinction between “valid” and “sound”. Either evidence is sound, or it is not valid. By contrast I do think we need to make a distinction between “scientific” and “academic”. It is my impression that respect for the scientific method is quite uneven within academia, which is in fact rife with motivational biases, and that “peer review” is no guarantee of soundness. Conversely, evidence such as eye-witness accounts and personal testimonies can be both valid and sound, and provide an essential complement to peer-reviewed evidence.

This is not to downplay the importance of academia or the peer review process, nor to suggest that we should go back to the dark ages and uncritically accept hearsay and gossip as truth (not that you have to go back to the dark ages to see that happening), but we need to recognise (i) that the peer review process is an important but entirely fallible means of ensuring respect for the scientific method, and (ii) that in some contexts (such as, “What did you have for lunch yesterday?”) it is entirely irrelevant.