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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

#201

Post by jmchuster »

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…

You can definitely choose to go down a route of "these people get offended and it's completely irrational and unjustified, and they are wrong to do so, so to teach them a lesson i'm going to shut my mouth and complain to everyone about how they are bad people that are forcing me to self-restrict my freedom of speech and as a result they are actively helping the slave trade".

Or you might also consider the route of "these people get offended and i don't understand why so i'm going to work to listen to them and talk with them one by one until i do understand on a core level how they feel and where those feelings are derived from, and based on that i will do my best to share my thoughts in a way that is considerate of my deep connection and understanding of all the people around me, and because everyone has built a personal connection to me, they too will be able to accept my feelings and assume charity."

Just depends on which route you derive more self-satisfaction from. You can assume an air of superiority and righteousness in either direction, and that's something that all humans love to feel.

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

#202

Post by imhoguy »

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…

The usual problem is when a message from such private channel gets spread publicly usually without context and author's consent. We see it often with leaked tapes from politicians' private meetings.

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

#203

Post by Shivetya »

imgabe wrote: post #82
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…

Part of the issue is that some people consider any speech they disagree with as a threat of violence or "endangering my safety".

Because it works. Because instead of discussing an issue they have found they can hurt anyone who does not wholly agree with their position. Then they celebrate that damage and are encouraged to continue to do so with impunity never once imagining they will be on the other side.

The recent news stories about it happening in newsrooms and businesses should be no surprise when those stories were occurring with colleges for years prior. They learned they can take their heckler's veto to beyond silencing to the point of causing real damage.

People used to throw up the bogeyman of the religious right silencing the masses but instead we have the tyranny of the left to whom ideas are weapons and justification comes by laying claim that physical threat exists in mere thoughts and that justifies real punishment.

Be honest, I can guarantee many here are enjoying it to the point of glee but that is because you have been market researched manipulated by politicians into a certain pattern of thinking and reaction. Now that reaction is turning violent and it will eat both sides.

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

#204

Post by TheNorthman »

haberman wrote: post #146
danielheath wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every stable community already has things you can and cannot say (try arguing the merits of pederasty, war, or heroin and see how far you get!)

I agree that there are almost always some guardrails in place, and certain viewpoints that are considered beyond the pale. And so there is a balancing act between an Overton Window that is too wide and wastes people's time with nonsense, and one that is too narrow and prevents bad orthodoxies from being challenged.

How are implicit guardrails better than specified guardrails?

Surely explicit guardrails act as therapeutic discourse, in that it seeks to clarify systematic self-deception. By self-deception, I refer first-and-foremost to the myth of objectivity that often surrounds contemporary debate.

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

#205

Post by favokus »

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…

> 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.

I actually don't see any value in downvotes. It's usually used when people disagree, which obviously leads to silos of thought and suppressing ideas. If somebody is being particularly disruptive and unproductive, then they should be flagged, but otherwise I wish downvotes would be removed from HN. It has no place here.

Especially on HN, where I thought the idea was for people to have reasonable discussions about things, downvotes are frustratingly counter to that. If you disagree with something, it's too easy to just downvote and move on. And people pile on without saying anything. And in the end, nobody learns anything because nobody's actually talking about what's wrong with the comment.

Then again, I get the feeling nobody here actually wants to learn anything from fellow users if they happen to represent different ideas. I guess that's by design?

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

#206

Post by [deleted] »

legostormtroopr wrote: post #57
smt88 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying someone "didn't live a virtuous life" is not factual. In this case, it's an irrelevant and tasteless opinion about a victim. It implies Floyd somehow deserved to be shot in the back and killed.

> It implies Floyd somehow deserved to be shot in the back and killed. No it doesn't. This is wild hyperbole. No one deserves to be shot in the back. However, people are painting him out to be an angel - quite literally there are multiple artworks of George Floyd with a halo and wings [1]. The reality is he was human, and one with a complicated criminal past who was jailed 8 times [2] including for drug offenses. Is…

[deleted]

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

#207

Post by ngcazz »

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…

You do realise that that is your prerogative, right? To hold the dissemination of your work against slavery hostage because of a concern that "black market" might be offensive? I don't understand these priorities.

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

#208

Post by finder83 »

nonsince wrote: post #191
ngngngng wrote: post #177

I argued with a family member about this just the other day. She was trying to get a faculty member at a local university fired for saying something offensive on Twitter. I asked her what happens after we get him fired? Can he earn back the worthiness to again feed his family? Will he need to denounce his views or just stop spewing them publicly? Will he just need to collect unemployment for the rest of his life now…

People with racist or otherwise regressive views know that these views will (rightly) get them criticised by the majority, and so they won't couch them in those terms precisely, but it's often very clear when you take context into account. I can't speak for this exact case, because we don't know what his exact words were, but it's telling that even your defence of him describes him criticising protesters at a time wh…

I disagree and think that we need more nuance in our speech and understanding, not less. There are a lot of moral issues you just listed, from violent vs peaceful protesting, the limit of authority with police, black lives matter, free speech, and race. And you summed it all up with if someone disagrees with any of those that they are racist or regressive.

But there are a lot of complexities and nuances to each one of those moral issues. Each one really needs a discussion.

Even just separating out BLM, there is the core moral anti-racist belief behind the statement (which I think most people would agree with), but there is also the political association affiliated with the Democratic party that in their belief statement supports abortion, transgenderism, and many other issues that are still at contention in our country. Talking with many of my conservative friends, they have no issue with the race movement of BLM but will not align themselves with a political organization that supports abortion, particularly as they see it as a genocide targeted primarily at inner-city blacks.

Again, we need more nuance, not less. We're already polarized enough. One issue is that peoples' views are not being scrutinized, they're being thrown into a bucket of "racist" and cancelled. Any time a straw man is used to silence a group of people based on mass categorization, it's contributing to division and not unity. These issues, and politics in particular, are and should be complex.

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

#209

Post by notahacker »

gentleman11 wrote: post #83
DanBC wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Eg, people out protecting Churchill statues in the UK are labelled as racists in several stories You missed out the bit where some of them were doing Nazi salutes or carrying EDL / Britain First etc flags.

If you’re in a group with people you don’t know very well and some of them say or do something utterly stupid, you are not automatically one of them. Eg, some people were looting during the protests but it would be ridiculous to say the entire protest is just a bunch of thugs

If the protest which gets the media coverage for fighting police is an organised group of football hooligans run by prominent far-right activists, and there are widespread Nazi salutes, it's probably not incumbent on the media to 'some of them were good people' away the nature of the group you've joined up with.

Even the also in-attendance group of veterans which was very angry at media coverage for suggesting there might be racists descending on London acknowledged in their rush to disassociate themselves that the larger and longer lasting football hooligan protest which got into the actual fights was explicitly racist.

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

#210

Post by marliechiller »

newacct583 wrote: post #46
dx87 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first example says the school didn't make it mandatory for white people to stay home, it was just highly recommended. It doesn't look like he broke any rules, the school had just hoped everyone would fall in line and he was fired for not agreeing with them.

I had to go look that up again. It wasn't about this one incident. He wasn't even fired, he resigned after becoming the center of a huge protest movement on campus directed specifically at him (a self-described member of the conservative "Intellectual Dark Web"), then after suing the college for failing to protect him, and the resignation was part of the resulting settlement. Then he did the FOX tour and wrote an op-…

He, and most of the rest of the IDW would not consider themselves conservative at all. In fact, only JPeterson considers himself conservative out of the commonly touted members. Dont misrepresent people because they dont fit your narrative
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