Twitter, Isegoria, Parrheisia, Democracy

One of the advantages of democracy is debate, which brings a higher intelligence to the collective. What Musk can do at Twitter is to elevate the debate, while making Twitter a trusted source, a necessary condition. 

Here is an example of outrageous error which sets up an erroneous mindest. Stephen King wrote a sexist tweet alleging that Ukraine would not have been invaded, had Putin been a woman. That’s in complete contradiction with history; it’s Czarina Catherine II who invaded the five regions of Ukraine which Putin annexed, and then in her 1785 Charter of Nobility, imposed abject servitude to all peasants. This is an extremely important point of Russian history, and also even deeper, a crucial example of how perverse systems of thought can become. Catherine had tout pour plaire: but she was a horrendous human being… Early on, she had to… But later on she was fully basking in the Dark Side. 

Correcting these sorts of errors can set up the correct mindsets: elimiste errors to get at the truth, and eliminate especially facile, seductive errors. Truth in emotions is also important: top US politicians made often, quite deliberately, and for quasi-racist reasons, life very difficult in cities, but them we are supposed to cry in the loudest manner when they get hurt by the crime they fostered.

A way to do this is to correct immediately false or erroneous tweets with “community notes” statements which are false or out of context, and which Twitter is rolling out.  

This is not censorship. Correcting an error requires to exhibit it. Censorship is what the New York Times, when it blocks comments that its editorialists use later to write their own stuff.

The Greek term for citizenship is πολιτεία [politeia]: one could be called a citizen – πολίτης [polites]from πόλις[polis], the city-state. The Greek term for constitution is also politeia. In contemporary fake democracy, one equates politics with having an elected representative, but savage Germanic tribes had that already when they invaded and destroyed Greek democracies. One US “representative” “represents” 770,000 people, which seems several times klarger than the largest German tribes when they invaded the Greco-Roman empire.. 

Civilization Means Debate, Not Censorship

The next step for Twitter could be to rate with a star system various shades of truth, potential truths, inspirational truths, and truths which would be highly significant if there was something to them. It’s not just that statements could be more or less false, but also of more or less significance, potential or otherwise. Most of history is the fruit of conspiracies, too, and those need to exposed, past, present and future. That refined reputation system would allow in particular to extract out of extinguishing obscurity propositions which would otherwise never be seen and thus considered, by the public at large. 

The Greeks correctly thought that Isegoria (everybody has the right to address assemblies) and Parrheisia (everybody should be able to talk without self censoring) were pillars of democracy. That has been forgotten.

Isegoria and Parrheisia can be achieved with some sort of Twitter like system… which would then become a treasured public utility. So, Musk could succeed, should he succeed to install a system as sketched above, making truth and significance foremost. Truth is not made just of true propositions, but also of significant errors on the way to that truth, and how to detect them. 

Patrice Ayme

Greek temples divinized the city-state… They also were painted in vivid colors and came sometimes with up to nine disability ramps per temple. What is there not like?

Tags: Democracy For Real, isegoria, Musk, Parrheisia, Twitter