#writersCoffeeClub 3/22: Are there any books which should be banned, or is book banning always wrong?
I draw a line between fiction and non-fiction (or fic presented as non-fic) intended to persuade or make an ideological argument. Clearly-identified fiction shouldn't be banned. Presenting-as-non-fic like "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" is flat-out toxic to a society, as is non-fic crank science and "scientific racism", eg. "The Bell Curve".
#writersCoffeeClub I mean, fiction, clearly presented as such, is entertainment, and I believe humans have the ability to distinguish clearly presented entertainment from reality. You may not enjoy it, it may explore deeply disturbing ideas and outlooks, but it doesn't damage you simply by existing. While "non-fiction" that argues that people like you should not exist is actually dangerous.
@cstross Stepping back to the purely writing question of this: I sometimes teach a course called "Psychology in Science Fiction." One thing the students and I discovered one semester is that you can set up a solid dystopian world in a few tried-and-true ways, including: A reasonable-sounding rule or law is administered in technically consistent but problematic way (often by a bad actor or someone/something with no consideration for kindness, harm, etc.).
It actually feels (to me) difficult to find any generalized rule that couldn't be used to create a dystopia this way.
@guyjantic Yup. (Random fic example: Gilead in "The Handmaid's Tail" is a pretty sweet deal if you're a wealthy, powerful, misogynistic patriarch. O'Brien, the inner party member in "1984", seemed totally happy with his status. And so on.)
@cstross I'm now thinking of Mel Brooks crowing, "It's good to be the king!"
I think this is my core disagreement with a batch of tastemakers and politicians in the USA (and elsewhere): I want systems that radically encourage broad sharing of power and happiness, not systems that trend toward only a few people getting their utopias at everyone else's expense.
@guyjantic Yep, same. It's the authoritarian personalities who screw everything up, every time. (This is my very anti-authoritarian personal cognitive bias speaking, mind you.)
@cstross As a uni professor I can't get behind that distinction. The huge issue is: Who decides what's true or valid in nonfiction?
That's folded into the battle right now, actually. The people wanting book bans in K-12 schools object most strenuously to the availability of books with (IMO) factual information about sex and gender. They've decided this is not factual; I disagree.
This will come back to basic values, no matter what. I mean by that, it will come back to critical thinking and epistemology.
@guyjantic Edge cases are hard cases, but some stuff is CLEARLY dangerous—notably AI-generated mushroom picking guides and diabetic cookbooks of the kind now showing up on Amazon.
@guyjantic@cstross My point would be that it's not the same "banning" as "disallowing free access", and hence I would keep hate propaganda in a special section you'd need a "maturity" test to get in, just as we don't allow just anyone to drive two+ ton automobile machines or handle weapons just like that*.
@Illuminatus@cstross I think I have the same concerns, but then I still get tied up with Who Decides? Right now there are people who would use this to reduce minor access to sex ed info, or stories featuring marginalized characters, using your rationale. I strongly disagree with these people.
@guyjantic@Illuminatus The "who decides?" problem is a meta-problem: it's not a question of whether some material is actively dangerous, the issue is that your political system is broken (and there's no obvious way to fix it, so people are inclined to leave it alone).
@cstross Sorry, "as a uni professor" was intended to mean "as someone whose profession has been deeply tied in with this question" - This is the question of academic freedom.
@cstross for me, I don't think there's anything wrong with society slapping a big cigarette style "this shit is toxic, fake, and not what it claims to be, knock yourself out dumb ass" but I'm generally against bans that aren't a demonstrable immediate threat to the life and lomb of others.
@thehomespundays Okay, so where do you stand on a ban on AI-generated "books" on Amazon such as wild mushroom pickers guides, or cookbooks for diabetics? (Full of deadly advice on which fungi are safe to eat, and unsafe LLM-hallucinated recipes that would endanger a diabetic's health. Written with a soothing gloss of authoritative truth and zero human oversight.)
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