The "casual evil" of self righteousness

Richard Fernandez writes in PJ Media,

…The video of Google employees vowing never to allow something like Hillary’s defeat to occur again illustrates shows the suddenness with which the civilization’s tools can be turned against it. The ease with which instruments of surveillance and censorship can be directed at the Deplorables instead of al-Qaeda was recently brought home by a video showing a senior Google official vowing to “use the great strength and resources and reach we have to continue to advance really important values”. The unspoken agreement on values at the Google all-hands meeting is a reminder of how easily groupthink can become what Scott Adams called the “casual evil” of self-righteousness.

In our new world of deconstructed countries and thought bots the biggest problem may turn out to be which culture, what set of “really important values” the algorithms should enforce, especially when there are supposedly none to be preferred. NBC News notes that censorship algorithms, once unleashed, can boomerang. “ThinkProgress, a liberal site, on Tuesday leveled an accusation at Facebook and one of its third-party fact checkers: A ThinkProgress article had been inappropriately labeled as misinformation, limiting the article’s audience.” That should have reminded them of what all horror moviegoers know: that anyone who creates a monster will eventually be eaten by it.

Read more here.