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army1987 comments on Rationality Quotes September 2013 - Less Wrong
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Bizarro Blog
Sorry, this is nonsense. It's not hard to Google up a copy of the FCC rules. http://www.fcc.gov/guides/obscenity-indecency-and-profanity :
I am fairly sure that "I’m going to rape your 8-year-old daughter with a trained monkey" would count as describing sexual activities in patently offensive terms, and would not be allowed when direct use of swear words would not be allowed. Just because you don't use a list of words doesn't mean that what you say will be automatically allowed.
Furthermore, the Wikipedia page on the seven words ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_dirty_words ) points out that " The FCC has never maintained a specific list of words prohibited from the airwaves during the time period from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., but it has alleged that its own internal guidelines are sufficient to determine what it considers obscene." It points out cases where the words were used in context and permitted.
In other words, this quote is based on a sound-bite distortion of actual FCC behavior and as inaccurate research, is automatically ineligible to be a good rationality quote.
What is the basis for you being sure?
Howard Stern, a well-known "shock jock" spent many years on airwaves regulated by the FCC. He more or less specialized in "describing sexual activities in patently offensive terms" and while he had periodic run-ins with the FCC, he, again, spent many years doing this.
The FCC rule is deliberately written in a vague manner to give the FCC discretionary power. As a practical matter, the seven dirty words are effectively prohibited by FCC and other offensive expressions may or may not be prohibited. Broadcasters occasionally test the boundaries and either get away with it or get slapped down.
Yes, and this illustrates another problem: if we agreed on what to ban, it would make more sense to use discretionary human judgment than rules which might be manipulated or Munchkin-ed. We don't agree.
I do think it would make sense in the abstract to ban speech if we had scientific reason to think it harmed people, the way we had reason to think leaded gasoline harmed people in the 1920s. But I only know one class of speech where that might apply, and it'll never get on TV anyway. ^_^
The reason is that banning certain words works much better as a Schelling point.
I don't buy it. Even if we accept for the sake of argument that limiting sexual references on broadcast TV is a good plan (a point that I don't consider settled, by the way), using dirty words as a proxy runs straight into Goodhart's law: the broadcast rules are known in advance, and innuendo's bread and butter to TV writers. A good Schelling point has to be hard to work around, even if you can't draw a strict line; this doesn't qualify.
Better for what, and better than what alternatives?
You wind up in endless arguments about whether this particular show is beyond the pail.
That doesn't seem like it answers my question.
What's the goal in this case? This sounds like it's only attempting to address effectiveness at avoiding disputes over standards, but that could more easily be achieved by not having any restrictions at all.