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Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive

latimes.com

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Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive

#121

Post by PopeDotNinja »

TuringTest wrote: post #104
AHappyCamper wrote: post #78

I understand that there are a lot of people who are hurting right now, and I empathize with their pain, but how can we share out most wonderful and beautiful ideas with each other or convey important information to the public if we believe there might be serious reprisals against us if we "say the wrong thing". For example, I personally helped work against slavery on the Black Market in the Middle East, and I wanted…

> how can we share out most wonderful and beautiful ideas with each other The trick is to create channels with limited audiences, where you can set an expectation of which ideas are acceptable and which are not.* It always has been, but the the arrival of new communication methods has disrupted the traditional channels, and now every idea is propagated to a much larger and looser audience, which aren't aware or don't…

How do you manage reading every code of conduct and honoring it?

The trouble I'm having with social changes, expectations, per person pronouns, and other things is that managing all of these interactions can be a crushing amount of cognitive load.

Now that I think about it, it's the same challenge I have with microservices. Formerly simple interactions are now hellza complicated. I'm not fighting the trend. I'm just fatigued.

Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive

#122

Post by yodelshady »

cheschire wrote: post #67
gentleman11 wrote: post #65

There are a lot of downvoted posts in this thread that make reasonable arguments and that are promoting discussion. I disagree with a lot of them, but it’s awkward for this to be a story where people are heavily downvoting people they disagree with

It's a question I've been struggling with lately. Downvotes reinforce groupthink, that much is subjectively clear. I've considered solutions, and I believe forcing people to reply before they are allowed to downvote would help. However, in opposition to my own idea, I consider that simply requiring a more effort wouldn't necessarily change the groupthink problem, but would just stifle low effort downvotes. Let's cons…

>but would just stifle low effort downvotes

With the exception of spam, that's a feature. If something offends you, you should consider why.

Upvotes are useful in reducing spam, as without them, I'd have to repeat a sentiment to show agreement. In my experience (anecdata warning!) that nicely leads to both the best post for an argument, and the best rebuttal, sharing visibility.

Neither combat the problem of "fake news", because frauds don't have to be well done if the local community agrees with the sentiment.

Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive

#123

Post by flukus »

uniqueid wrote: post #45
missosoup wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an excellent summary of what's going on. Firing, cancelling, and silencing anyone with a 'bad' opinion doesn't convert them to a 'good' one. Instead it makes them more hostile and causes them to double down. I'm pretty confused how America keeps going down this path even after an actual 50% of the entire population revolted against the 'good' ideologies and voted in Trump with religious fervour. Pretending th…

> Firing, cancelling, and silencing anyone with a > 'bad' opinion doesn't convert them to a 'good' one. However it can prevent people with "different views" from evangelizing effectively. Look at the anti-vaxers, "chem trails", or 5G conspiracy theorists: the majority of these paranoiacs didn't independently arrive at these theories.

> However it can prevent people with "different views" from evangelizing effectively.

I really don't think it does, it just drives them to spaces where you don't personally see them and these spaces typically reinforce and strengthen their beliefs because they go unchallenged there. It also makes it easier to suck in others because those beliefs aren't being discovered in an open forum where they can be challenged. There's also a lot of cross pollination, the 5g nutters for instance have been driven from (or never part of) mainstream circles, so now their discussing things in their own spaces with other craziness thrown in, it will get mixed in with other craziness like being a jewish conspiracy to take over the world or some rubbish.

The internet gave us a brief period where every groups craziness was open for everyone else to see, now we're reverting to make things were like before the internet.

Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive

#124

Post by raxxorrax »

kanox wrote: post #93
phkahler wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> There is no "right" way to convey the issue above without offending someone. You are not responsible for those people being offended. If people actually respond that way to your efforts they look stupid. Just carry on doing what is right. Most of them are not actually offended but are claiming you may be offensive to someone else.

> You are not responsible for those people being offended. This is objectively false, you can get fired for offending people both at your job or outside it.

You can be certain that companies who did that will be reprimanded for it by consumers.

Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive

#125

Post by ponker »

AHappyCamper wrote: post #112
cgb223 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW I would be very interested in hearing about your experiences doing that Sounds like something that had a huge impact on a terrible system in the world that most people aren’t aware of. If you feel comfortable, can you tell us a little bit about it here?

Of course, and thank you for asking. The group I was involved in was repatriating Eastern European women who had been duped. They responded to ads in the paper that were seeking farmhands to spend the summer picking fruit for excellent wages. When the women showed up to the "interview" at the farm, they were drugged and kidnapped. From there, they were transported to Egypt, where they were smuggled close to the borde…

fucking hell

Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive

#126

Post by SiempreViernes »

54351623 wrote: post #118
bosswipe wrote: post #29

There's a disconnect that keeps running through a lot of the arguments from the conservative side which I don't understand. The examples given in this piece are a) the right of street protesters to be heard without being attacked by government officers vs b) the right of people to not get fired for what they say by private organizations like the New York Times. This disconnect keeps coming up, and it's extra weird be…

You're exactly right and I think it's important to consider that the LA Times' position as a sort of authority figure when it comes to speech (being a major news source/ media entity) may be an underlying interest in how the arguments made in this article are put forward. I imagine a whole lot of editors of the last few newspapers that are independently owned had some very interesting thoughts when the workers at New…

> idea of free speech would protect leadership in the newsroom from subordinates

If protecting the management from the workers is your goal, typically you invoke the right of the owners to dictate how work is organised, I'm not sure how you make that into a "free speech" issue.

As the work of the editor is explicitly to direct and reshape the speech of the employees under them, why would "free speech" protect the ones doing the censoring?

Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive

#127

Post by jonnypotty »

Western society is moving past the ideals of tolerance and free speech. Philosophical ideas like this are now pretty easily dismissed as artifacts of a rasist, sexist system.

Losing your job for saying the wrong thing, makes some people us feel like we are "making progress" but it's the capitalist PR machine protecting its interests. We express ourselves through curated systems directly controlled by huge corporations and the change we see is basically only in these same systems.

Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive

#128

Post by johnsonjo »

kmlx wrote: post #101
kanox wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are not responsible for those people being offended. This is objectively false, you can get fired for offending people both at your job or outside it.

some of those companies don't really deserve to be trading. i remember how back in my youth if i said something offensive against the government i would lose my job and be sent to a forced labour camp. that was during communism. history keeps repeating itself.

I mean it’s like people forget the gulags were only like 70 years ago. When people were wrongfully imprisoned for no good reason just to meet police quotas from the soviets government super powers. I definitely don’t disbelieve what you are saying.

Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive

#129

Post by gentleman11 »

flukus wrote: post #114
cheschire wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a question I've been struggling with lately. Downvotes reinforce groupthink, that much is subjectively clear. I've considered solutions, and I believe forcing people to reply before they are allowed to downvote would help. However, in opposition to my own idea, I consider that simply requiring a more effort wouldn't necessarily change the groupthink problem, but would just stifle low effort downvotes. Let's cons…

>I've considered solutions, and I believe forcing people to reply before they are allowed to downvote would help I think old school sequential forums were actually much better, outside specific niches they're harder to find these days though. Having the things everyone strongly agrees with at the top where they're the first to be read just encourages flamewars straight out of the gate and a lot of stuff just got lost…

Sequential forums can be good for discussions. It was definitely nice to be able to bump a discussion that was older than 16 hours to unbury it.

I like ranked forums for Q and A content though, Eg, like stack overflow or even reddit when I’m trying to answer a technical question.

Mostly though, nothing can replace a good forum culture. I just meant to encourage that with my remark, the downvote button itself is only bad if people use it recklessly

Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive

#130

Post by YetAnotherNick »

raxxorrax wrote: post #124
kanox wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are not responsible for those people being offended. This is objectively false, you can get fired for offending people both at your job or outside it.

You can be certain that companies who did that will be reprimanded for it by consumers.

Google did it to James Damore. People celebrated it, as it opposes their beliefs even though many psychologist publicly said that the gender difference identified in the memo are science backed.
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