Not stupid at all if you don't know
It stands for Politics, Religion, Social Issues.
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It stands for Politics, Religion, Social Issues.
A forum here, Politics, Religion, and Social Issues.
From a strategic view, PRSI has *NO* purpose in this website. From MacRumors' mission statement:
"MacRumors attracts a broad audience of both consumers and professionals interested in the latest technologies and products. We also boast an active community focused on purchasing decisions and technical aspects of the iPhone, iPod, iPad, and Mac platforms."
I don't see what politics or religion have to do with Apple products.
This sort of thing has been discussed quite a bit in a variety of threads in this section, like https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...cess-to-the-prsi-section-permanently.2203046/, for example.
Can you clarify something?
As someone with < 100 posts, PRSI quite literally does not exist for you. You can't see it, you can't post to it. Or are you talking about Political News forum? That's trickier, since we prefer to have some limits on politics discussion for news stories, and can't realistically not cover all stories that have a political theme.
arn
It probably just serves as a gutter for the forum!
Like a navel that gathers up all the lint. If PRSI didn't exist, you'd probably have the same discussions on the news/technology threads.Using who's definition of strategic?
You may not see the value of it, however none of us plebiens are privy to the inner knowledge of the business (nor should we).
Your claim is therefore invalid as you made it in-absentia of all the pertinent information.
I believe that's what the wasteland forum is for but I get your sentiment lol. I feel like I should defend some aspects of PRSI, however, while there is a fair amount of dissension in there, there is also good debate amongst some of us who have been here for years, you just don't hear about those conversations much because they're not reported.It probably just serves as a gutter for the forum!
Suggested rule: anyone who is stupid, is a troll or who does not think like I do, cannot post to MR, problem solved.
FB and Twitter got mentioned. Those sites act as conduits for active disinformation campaigns which are a whole different ball game than individuals speaking their opinions. The big players seem to make an effort to identify and block sources of disinformation. They’re not terribly successful, I understand.
Does MR take any steps to stay a community discussion and avoid becoming a vector for organized disinformation? I imagine a smaller site with permissive rules and less sophisticated policing could become an easy target.
I don’t know the answer. I wouldn’t miss PRSI if it went away, but it seems that PRSI seeps into my view less these days. I think they’ve done a more consistent job of blocking it. I still feel like having it in the room next door impacts the tenor of the overall conversation, but I can also see the argument that having a place to sequester those topics makes it easier to keep the main threads clean.
Does MR take any steps to stay a community discussion and avoid becoming a vector for organized disinformation? I imagine a smaller site with permissive rules and less sophisticated policing could become an easy target.
I toggle hard between “the best answer to bad speech is more speech” and “a lie makes it around the world before the truth can tie its shoes”. I would think the answer would be much stronger enforcement of the citation rule, except there’s a whole cottage industry of quotable sources for garbage and specifying what is a legitimate source is just this whole conversation all over again on another level.
I don’t know the answer. I wouldn’t miss PRSI if it went away, but it seems that PRSI seeps into my view less these days. I think they’ve done a more consistent job of blocking it. I still feel like having it in the room next door impacts the tenor of the overall conversation, but I can also see the argument that having a place to sequester those topics makes it easier to keep the main threads clean.
Sadly, every news story is now somehow controversial and people feel comfortable stoking that controversy. Just watch how quickly a thread on China sales figures unravels...
My question to you would be, what is a "harmful falsehood". Are you genuinely putting yourself on a superior pedestal where you are the one to decide what people will believe or not believe? Why would stating a falsehood be dangerous? Who is going to believe in said falsehood that otherwise wouldn't?
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Political, Religious, Social and Issues.
Seems like the falsely yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded theater example that was provided touches on that.
the various rules attached to PSRI penalize the intimation that posters have lost their rational faculties. Given that Schenck v United States (the source of the "fire" quote) is based on the assumption that crowds behave in scary ways that mere groupings of humans do not, it would be ironic to apply it to the forum's members, all of whom are capable of expressing sane and cogent opinions-- and thus do.
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That is a pathetically weak example to give. "Yelling fire in a crowded theatre" directly says its reasoning for being illegal explicitly in the quote and you're unable to see it. "Yelling fire in a crowded theatre".
1. Yelling is nothing to do with speech. Yelling often incites a general reaction of confusion, fear, alertness etc. regardless of the words used.
2. A crowded theatre means three things: lot of people, a lot of chairs to stumble over and four big walls to keep everyone inside.
3. Combining these two, you're inciting fear of harm or potential death in people. It is not about the speech, it is about the manner in which it is delivered. If you're in a crowded theatre and you use a conversational tone to say to someone "There is a fire in the theatre", you're not going to get the same response.
4. I cannot believe I just had to explain that.
It seems like that was an example to demonstrate the concept, not a direct comparison. The overall underlying idea seems to be that there are enough people who fairly easily simply accept what they might come across first, more often, and/or simply because on the mere surface it sounds good to them. While that is a generalization, it nevertheless appears to be one that inevitably mostly holds up too often. If that information is false and someone then acts on it, depending on the information and the act, there's certainly the possibility of something undesirable, if not worse, happening, which is bad enough on its own, but certainly that much worse and that much more impactful if it affects others.
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If for example we take the Islamic terrorists or someone like the Christchurch shooter terrorist who all acted on their perceived ideas of truth because of what is written in the Qur'an or what some fringe mentally unstable people have said. The problem with those acts of terrorism are not the texts or the words that were used to portray a false idea. The problem lies within the individuals who committed those acts. While it is foolish to believe that not all humans are capable of awful acts of violence, because we all are. We need to recognise that those individuals were and are not stable and that they are the problem, not the speech.
You don't prevent car crashes by banning cars.
Re the bolded part: you haven't lived through an iPhone launch here then. All will be made clear in due time, including the undisputed fact that the death knell for Apple will sound once again, because of or despite one's religion and/or political persuasion... or one's fondness for some other brand of gear. I'm a lapsed Episcopalian so of course I have my certain views of everything including Apple gear, and I defy anyone to say my attachment to a small form factor of iPhone is not wedded to my religion, or lack of it. And I don't care if some ambivalence about iPhone size is evinced by my also owning an XR. It's an Episcopalian thing, or possibly a lapsed Episcopalian thing. Go figure.
As for the formally designated politics and religion area: it's OPTIONAL to check in there and post something, once one has enough posts to participate in that way. Sure I don't like the idea that misinformation can be posted in PRSI. It's annoying that on a given day, it's possible no member is inclined or has time enough to set about disabusing the planet of a faulty notion, regarding some questionable assertion by another member.
But there's no way for me to know if right at this moment someone down the bar in the next township over is ranting about how covid-19 is a hoax and so face masks are a fascist tool for suppression of the right to rant, yada yada.
Why should it upset me more to realize that, than to realize similar rants might be occurring at this moment over in PRSI?
I ask myself how many re-opened bars there are on the planet right now, versus how many political forums spewing bar rants in digital format. I don't know. So I go back to my coffee, the one real thing on my horizon at the moment that I find most compelling to address.
But, using that sort of analogy, you can likely prevent at least some by making sure that dangerous false claims along the lines of "red light means go" aren't being supported and spread around.
That's why you allow the debate. Tell them why they're wrong. Don't try to censor the speech.
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It really doesn't matter. Those people are the root of the problem. Not anybody else's speech.
Moderator Note:
Several posts were removed that were debating the merits of wearing a mask. If you would like to discuss that topic, please start a thread in the PRSI forum. The merits of wearing masks is off-topic to this thread.
Several posts were removed that were debating the merits of wearing a mask. If you would like to discuss that topic, please start a thread in the PRSI forum. The merits of wearing masks is off-topic to this thread.
Human history has a lot to say about countries/organizations that have tried to stifle speech. It usually doesn’t work. While I’m very seriously on the side of wearing masks, I think that actively policing discussions has a very fine line. It seems very common today for people to use “isms” to throw at those who disagree with them in order to silence them.
While I disagree 100% with people that think we shouldn’t wear masks, I don’t think I support the action of silencing them. I would hope that the vast majority of people are smart enough to make the right decision.
Policing what people can say takes a lot of energy and can often times be abused. It is my opinion that the reason why the USA is so great, and we have so many freedoms, is because we haven’t tried to stifle said freedom in the name of anything.
There are some downsides to this, but in my opinion they are outweighed by the positives.
While I disagree 100% with people that think we shouldn’t wear masks, I don’t think I support the action of silencing them. I would hope that the vast majority of people are smart enough to make the right decision.
Policing what people can say takes a lot of energy and can often times be abused. It is my opinion that the reason why the USA is so great, and we have so many freedoms, is because we haven’t tried to stifle said freedom in the name of anything.
There are some downsides to this, but in my opinion they are outweighed by the positives.
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Any topic that there are different opinions on should be "up for debate."
"Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman." Justice Brandeis. I think people should follow the science on this issue. Others, for whatever reason, need to be persuaded. Open debate is a positive thing because most rational people will come to the correct conclusion through open and honest debate.
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