Neil and Joni .v. Joe Rogan.

[Snake Plissken]

I can't remember exactly which channel it was, but I'm pretty sure that the BBC were platforming Flat Earth believers pretty recently.

[Patrick Thistle]

Debate in the terms I outlined and prefer couldn't be described as being in bad faith. It's a reasonable demand and fairly absent as far as I can see. There might be a space for making a successful big show if there was Rogan-esque celebrity attached to it.

Except there is no "debate" as far as people who know their stuff goes. Where the debate happens is when the discussion moves on from facts to opinions. So covid is a killer respiratory disease is a fact attested to by pretty much every qualified doctor. Where doctors would disagree is about how to respond to that. I know some who seem to support the current UK government line and think a few hundred deaths a day is acceptable. I know other who want to go into lockdown. There could be a debate there.

But what Rogan and other bad faith types want is a debate where the facts are disputed and that's where it's dangerous. Because then people say "covid is a made up threat to control us" and then they catch covid at the protest against lockdowns and they die. It's more of a problem in America than here, but even here it's a problem.

[ad hoc]

Something like global warming, which 99% of the relevant scientific community think is real, man made and a fucking crisis, and 1% (at most) do not, can't be bothsidesed in any reasonable way. At best you'd have 99 scientists lined up against 1. But even then the 1 would get a disproportionate amount of airtime

[WOM]

Right, and as with most counter-factual arguing, he wouldn't present any evidence that might cause you to think. He'd cast aspersions on the credibility, gullibility or 'who's paying you?'-ness of the other 99.

[BallochSonsFan]

There are reasons to hate Spotify. Joe Rogan isnt really one of them. Its incredibly easy to not listen to his content.

I'd be far more concerned about Spotify's payment model not rewarding artists.

[Toby Gymshorts]

...in addition to them paying an anti-vaxx crank $100m.

[Come along, Min]

Something like global warming, which 99% of the relevant scientific community think is real, man made and a fucking crisis, and 1% (at most) do not, can't be bothsidesed in any reasonable way. At best you'd have 99 scientists lined up against 1. But even then the 1 would get a disproportionate amount of airtime

Would an oppositional debate about that figure be reasonable?

[San Bernardhinault]

Would an oppositional debate about that figure be reasonable?

Not really. You could find a statistical question about whether it’s 97 or 98 or 99.7, but it would be useless as an oppositional debate. It’s an absolutely overwhelming majority whatever the exact number is. You’d have the debate to try and suggest that because the number might not be 99% then we can’t really tell and perhaps it’s not an overwhelming majority. Having that as a debate would be designed to create the impression of dispute when there is none.

It’s the same when people point out that different models have different predicted levels of warming (is it 2.1 or 2.6 degrees?) as a way of suggesting that “scientists disagree” about climate change. Yes, models come up with different answers. This does not mean there needs to be a massive confrontational public debate about what weight are given to which inputs for the models.

[ad hoc]

What SB said

[ursus arctos]

Good to know that the ignore poster function doesn't give a monkey's about moniker changes

[Sits]

Must be a new name for an existing poster.

That’s the one.

[Patrick Thistle]

On climate change, anyone can go and collect their own data and present it. They then get to defend their interpretations of the data. Almost everyone who does that concludes climate change is real or gets asked questions they can't really answer. That's why the "debates" that come up skew towards people quoting the Bible, promoting conspiracy theories, or attacking science because "there are other ways of knowing!!!" (Which basically comes down to how they feel about things rather than having objective comparators.)

Thing is with something like covid, the Sars Cov2 virus doesn't care how passionately you don't believe in it. What it sees is some nice unvaccinated lungs to make a home in. And frequently it makes itself so much at home it destroys the furniture and wrecks the place. We haven't yet got to the point where we can debate with a virus and persuade it that it's part of Bill Gates's plot to depopulate the world.

I bet Joe Rogan is vaccinated.

[WOM]

There are reasons to hate Spotify. Joe Rogan isnt really one of them. Its incredibly easy to not listen to his content.

Why can't he be one of them? I can easily juggle two or even three reasons to hate something. And it's not about us listening or not listening to him. It's about the larger societal damage of his being a platform to spread known misinformation to a believing audience. It affects us all in the end, and further undermines objective expertise - see the demonization of Fauci and the faith in free and fair elections.

[3 Colours Red]

And as already stated... ONE. FUCKING. HUNDRED. MILLION. FUCKING. DOLLARS while actually talented people who are not sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic cunts end up with chicken feed.

[Snake Plissken]

As soon as I figure out Apple Music's sharing options properly (for the Mrs) then I'll be cancelling and putting Rogan as the reason.

It's probably a placebo effect or something, but Apple Music sounds much better through my Bluetooth speaker too.

[ad hoc]

Apparently, Rogan has apologised for using the n word on his podcast

Spotify have now removed 70 (seventy) episodes that feature racial slurs. I think we can safely say he's a racist

[G-Man]

Spotify quality control was clearly on the ball. They had no money left to check that bigot's content for offensive material?

And what value is an apology for using the N word? "What'\s he supposed to do," white apologists will say, as the always do. "Is he supposed to wear sackcloth and ashes, and flagellate himself?" Well, yes, that would be a start.

[Come along, Min]

Well I'm a bit shocked tbh.

How did Rogan go from "just asking questions" about covid culture to being outed as a the racist's racist in such a short period of time?

Never mind Spotify's quality qontrol what the eff about mine and ours?

[G-Man]

Well I'm a bit shocked tbh.

How did Rogan go from "just asking questions" about covid culture to being outed as a the racist's racist in such a short period of time?

Never mind Spotify's quality qontrol what the eff about mine and ours?

Not quite sure how we were supposed to know about Rogan's racist content (other than suspecting it, and the latest revelation is possibly surprising only in its scale). Presumably nobody here listens to his podcast.

[Patrick Thistle]

I'm not shocked.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Apparently, Rogan has apologised for using the n word on his podcast

Spotify have now removed 70 (seventy) episodes that feature racial slurs. I think we can safely say he's a racist

That's after they removed about that many before hand because they had milo yiannopolis and the like on them.

[Bruno]

We've had a discussion somewhere about Rogan saying the n-word. In every instance I heard him say it, which was maybe half a dozen to a dozen times, it was in lieu of saying "the n-word," not using it as a slur. (He obviously knows it's a slur.) For example, rather than saying something like "Chapelle's Show was controversial for using the n-word," Rogan would just say the actual word. In one case it was a discussion of the word itself, taking account of its wrongful use as a slur. In other cases I thought he was being cavalier and distasteful in saying it, but I didn't conclude from any of it that he was "a racist" full stop, or bigot, as opposed to racially insensitive, if that's a meaningful distinction anymore. If there are examples that contradict mine, I guess I'd find them to be weird contradictions.

Rogan's podcast was huge well before Spotify, which is of course why they paid him so much. My impression of the podcast as a business venture was that it wasn't, that it grew unexpectedly and more or less without planning or foresight. That could be wrong.

He kind of fascinates me as an average intelligence everyman but who's a standup comedian, and I think if you want to understand him it'd be a mistake to discount his comedian identity. I don't think he's a particularly good comedian. But he's the type that takes a craftsman's approach, i.e. he writes his material in a self-imposed disciplined way, approaching it self-consciously as a writer, trying to do the Carlin thing of not reusing material. I think this approach inspired an intellectual ambition in him that someone of his intelligence ordinarily wouldn't have if they weren't forcing themselves to write. If memory serves he never finished college, so he's more self-educated, he seems a curious type, but he's on a slow journey and appears easily waylaid. I've seen a few decent conversations on his podcast, I think the 3-hour format can bring out a lot that doesn't depend on Rogan's skill as an interviewer, but I haven't watched him since he went to Spotify and am disgusted with the anti-vaxx nonsense, so fuck him and his $100 million, and go Neil Young.

[Amor de Cosmos]

To divert the discussion back to its origins a bit. I think it's important context to know that Neil and Joni didn't pull their music from Spotify for purely political reasons. They each have personal experience of why vaccinations are a "good thing." There was a particularly bad polio outbreak in Canada in 1953, and both were victims. In Young's case he was left with painful spinal problems most of life. These were only rectified through surgery in the past few decades. JM, was an excellent athlete as a child but lost that ability. She also lost full dexterity in her left hand, which is why she developed an unusual open tuning method in order to play the guitar.

[Etienne]

Young and Mitchell have now both returned their music to spotify.