71–80 of 124 posts
Random thoughts: - Freedom and democracy are different things, if some people think democracy isn't that important, it does not mean they do not value freedom. - Maybe the millenials are "not open to diverse opinions", but maybe they're just sick of bullshit. "Free Speech" can be interpreted in different ways (and each country in the world does that).
Being sick of bullshit is fine. Having the government regulate bull-shitting is a huge step towards tyranny.
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> Having the government regulate bull-shitting is a huge step towards tyranny. And yet, we've had libel and slander laws forever. The government has never not regulated bullshitting, all serious debate is over the precise boundaries, not whether it should be done. Maybe Millenials are just more honest about it, and decline to label regulation that does only what they are happy with as “Free Speech”.
I don’t disagree that saying we have “Free Speech” in America is a bit of an overstatement, but the article wasn’t taking about millennials simple wanting to do away with the phrase “Free Speech”. It states many would be in favor of regulating speech simply for its capacity to offend.
No, it doesn't. It says that many are in favor of colleges regulating some on-campus speech that is deliberately offensive. Even to the extent that the colleges are public and thus even relevant to “free speech” considerations, that's a combination of context and intent to offend, not mere capacity to offend, that is at issue.
(It separately says that many would support the government regulating “certain types of offensive speech”, which does not provide enough information to support that the basis is mere capacity to offend; the types of things that constitute per se defamation are arguably a “certain type of offensive speech”, for instance; vague categories are good for getting big scary numbers, but weak for supporting concrete conclusions.)
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You are extremely ignorant of the cost of living in the US if you think 30K is enough to live on.
I've lived on that, so try again. Why do you believe that's crazy? $500 apt $150 car insurance $100 utilities $ 50 media (Netflix, Spotify, etc) You're taking home about $1800 a month, so that still leaves another $1000 to fill out the rest (food, gasoline, etc). That's plenty of money. You aren't going to be making regular trips to Hawaii, but that's more than enough to do whatever you'd like.
I once cut my power bill during the winter by sleeping in a closet with a space heater. Other times, I hung out in coffee shops to avoid having to be home and having to turn on the heater. May be that's the kind of living you imagine that isn't crazy, but I don't imagine everyone is willing to live like that.
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I disagree with your first thought. I'll say this as someone who is unabashedly a fan of democracy. I love democracy (I would call myself a "democrat" except for the connotation with the American party). I think devaluing democracy exhibits a profound devaluation of freedom. Democracy is more than just casting a vote. Many non-democracies have elections. Democracies are an elegant and fragile relationship between civ…
> I think devaluing democracy exhibits a profound devaluation of freedom. Doesn't that depend on what you would have instead? You could have either a more concentrated power and a less concentrated power.
But in other ways, it is not. Too concentrated and you easily become technocratic or authoritarian, to unconcentrated and you lose the expression of civic will that emerges from elections that "build", so to speak, to national levels and allow amazing things to be done in democracies.
Personally, I'm a bigger fan of parliamentary democracies than presidential. I also believe a sore point for many towards democracy (particularly the idea that democracy is mob rule, or that votes are meaningless) is actually over "first past the post" voting rules. Luckily, we can make democracies better. It's purposely hard to change them, for good reason, but unlike other systems, they are flexible.
But, I think if you would rather have a system that is less democratic then that loss of democracy is a loss of freedom at the disproportionate expense of someone else. We call that undemocratic.
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I've lived on that, so try again. Why do you believe that's crazy? $500 apt $150 car insurance $100 utilities $ 50 media (Netflix, Spotify, etc) You're taking home about $1800 a month, so that still leaves another $1000 to fill out the rest (food, gasoline, etc). That's plenty of money. You aren't going to be making regular trips to Hawaii, but that's more than enough to do whatever you'd like.
The apartment complex i lived in while in Rapid City, South Dakota was $650 (2011-2012)...How many places in the US do you think have $500 rent where you need no roommates, completely functional (A/C, heat, working kitchen), in a low-crime area?
In the town nearest where I grew up, $500 will get you a 2 bed, 1.5 bath apartment on a golf course.
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I disagree with your first thought. I'll say this as someone who is unabashedly a fan of democracy. I love democracy (I would call myself a "democrat" except for the connotation with the American party). I think devaluing democracy exhibits a profound devaluation of freedom. Democracy is more than just casting a vote. Many non-democracies have elections. Democracies are an elegant and fragile relationship between civ…
I disagree with most of this. Democracy is merely a form of government. People can be free and not democratically governed. Yes a functional society must have laws but say you have two societies with the same set of laws, one generated by dictatorial benevolent AI overlords and one generated by democracy. Are the people in the AI-governed society less free, even when subject to the same rules and restrictions? I thin…
Yes. Because that's baked into your premise:
> the same set of laws, one generated by dictatorial benevolent AI overlords and one generated by democracy.
These are not the same sets of laws. These are not the same societies. They are not the same systems. Those under the AI have no say in those laws or recourse to alter them. They are entirely at the whim of your AI. A benevolent dictator is still a dictator. By definition that is not democratic, and I would say, less free.
> The right dictator can come up with the same rules as a democratic government.
They could, but that would not mean their dictatorship is a democracy or free. It is a profound hypocrisy for a dictator to say they value freedom. If they did, they would not be a dictator.
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You are extremely ignorant of the cost of living in the US if you think 30K is enough to live on.
I've lived on that, so try again. Why do you believe that's crazy? $500 apt $150 car insurance $100 utilities $ 50 media (Netflix, Spotify, etc) You're taking home about $1800 a month, so that still leaves another $1000 to fill out the rest (food, gasoline, etc). That's plenty of money. You aren't going to be making regular trips to Hawaii, but that's more than enough to do whatever you'd like.
I agree it's a much better position to be in than say, indentured servitude, but it's naive to just expect or declare that people be happy living like this and stay happy living like this for the foreseeable future.
No one born in the mid-80s onward ever faced an outside existential threat like Hitler or the Soviets. It's not hard to imagine that people who only know relative freedom have a harder time appreciating that freedom. The grass is always greener elsewhere. Fear is a good answer here, though phrases like "helicopter parenting" and "victimhood culture" might bely some existing biases by the author. Perhaps the fear of t…
Very fascinating. You argue that millennials favor restrictions on hate speech because they have not experienced anything like Hitler. Yet Germany censors hate speech precisely because of that history.
These arguments aren't really sequential; maybe only one is true. Maybe for three different people, each argument is true for one of 'em.
So, I don't think the connections you made in my argument are really what I meant. The more I think about it, it's very possible that the kinds of freedoms that were restricted because of WWII and the Cold War normalized the idea of restricting freedoms in defense of a certain ideology. After all, what looks better in historical hindsight: the ACLU in Skokie or Japanese internment?
I have a feeling that pinpointing a singular cause is impossible, if there even is a singular cause. Still worth discussing, but good to have the discussion framed with that in mind.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree with most of this. Democracy is merely a form of government. People can be free and not democratically governed. Yes a functional society must have laws but say you have two societies with the same set of laws, one generated by dictatorial benevolent AI overlords and one generated by democracy. Are the people in the AI-governed society less free, even when subject to the same rules and restrictions? I thin…
> you have two societies with the same set of laws, one generated by dictatorial benevolent AI overlords and one generated by democracy. Are the people in the AI-governed society less free, even when subject to the same rules and restrictions? Yes. Because that's baked into your premise: > the same set of laws, one generated by dictatorial benevolent AI overlords and one generated by democracy. These are not the same…
> Those under the AI have no say in those laws or recourse to alter them.
Sorry, I did miss that part. I'll revise to say "the same laws, save for the means of changing them".
The only freedom that's really lost in my AI-dictated society is the freedom to determine the rules and on an individual level, I don't think that's meaningful. At an individual level, I already cannot realistically change the rules, so losing that technicality makes me no less free.
> A benevolent dictator is still a dictator. By definition that is not democratic, and I would say, less free.
> They could, but that would not mean their dictatorship is a democracy or free.
You keep bringing democracy in where I don't believe it belongs. I'm talking about freedom, not democracy.
> It is a profound hypocrisy for a dictator to say they value freedom.
I don't think so. A dictator who values freedom can ensure their subjects have it. A person living under the right dictator would have more freedom than one living under the wrong (but still valid) democracy, being freed from the burden of governance.
I think where we differ is you value the freedom to influence government, no matter how little above all whereas I value just about everything else more.