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

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

#281

Post by dahfizz »

paulgb wrote: post #237
PopeDotNinja wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Are per-person pronouns really such a big deal to manage? I've known more people who have changed their name in marriage than changed their pronouns.

It's also not a big deal to accidentally get someone's last name wrong. There is way more social pressure around knowing and always using the correct pronoun for everyone you know.

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

#282

Post by technothrasher »

paulgb wrote: post #250
blueflow wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"changing your pronouns" has a link to "tying your identity to how you are being referenced" (i claim this from observation). Using the wrong pronoun is such much more likely to be seen as a personal attack than using your pre-marriage name.

Have you seen anyone personally take offense, or just high-profile cases? I've definitely seen a few of the latter (e.g. Jordan Peterson) but the common denominator there seems to be antagonistically refusing to use pronouns or doing so to make the point that you reject them, which is different from an honest mistake.

Have you seen anyone personally take offense

As a parent of a teenage child, I see it reasonably often between teens and "boomers". Teens absolutely use offense of misused pronouns as a weapon against older folks. But in fairness, older folks also refuse to use preferred pronouns as a weapon back.

But, of course, this is all typical generational strife, and the pronouns are mostly an irrelevant detail to the actual hostility.

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

#283

Post by [deleted] »

yadco wrote: post #274
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…

I somehow think that the people who get insulted and make a big deal about such terms aren't people who actually do something to help with these issues so you wouldn’t need to care about reaching them.

[deleted]

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

#284

Post by ratww »

lazyjones wrote: post #271
cousin_it wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could remove downvotes. They had three purposes: 1) Crowdsourced moderation. Well, everyone is using manual moderation anyway. 2) Silencing others. This is a misfeature. 3) Finding the best content. Upvotes are enough for that. That said, I'm not sure this will reduce groupthink. Twitter has no downvotes and plenty of groupthink.

In the forum I was working on, downvotes were limited per 24h, so people eventually saved them for really bad / offensive / spam comments instead of punishing people for their opinions (except a few who even wrote scripts to downvote certain people systematically...). The problem is in my opinion that once people begin to act like this, their victims behave like this also. If you get punished for arguing against some…

> In the forum I was working on, downvotes were limited per 24h

I believe this is also true for Hacker News.

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

#285

Post by dependenttypes »

nonsince wrote: post #179
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…

Genuine question - I hang around in some pretty seriously left-wing, often social-justice-obsessed circles and I've never heard anyone complain about the term black market, or want to pretend that slavery doesn't go on in the middle east. Have you got examples of this kind of thing being commonplace? I have heard people complain that people complain about these things, but never first-hand experienced people's compla…

> I've never heard anyone complain about the term black market

It is not the most used term in the world. Why not try gimp, git, white/blacklist, etc?

> or want to pretend that slavery doesn't go on in the middle east

To be frank I was unaware that slavery was a thing in the middle east until I stumbled upon the GP's post so I presume that such a thought is not that rare. Are you sure that you just did not talk about the topic with your friends?

> I think that the idea that free speech is under attack is entirely a fabrication

This is probably due to your personal beliefs. I presume that you consider it free speech as long as your own beliefs are not being censored. Just in another post in this thread you talked about how firing that professor would be an ok thing to do https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23638867

As for examples of free speech being attacked. Check out the whole Stallman case from last year, or the Assange case, or the Damore case, or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23635384 - there was even a case with a ruby github project not that long ago. I personally was accused of being a pedophile and there was a "petition" to ban me from a server that I dwelled on (by someone who was not even a member) because I dared to defend Stallman's right to speech.

> if anything leftist and social justice circles LOVE offensive content

As long as it is offensive against the people who they dislike, yes.

> there's a good reason ... see use of "retard" or "spastic", or the fact that "aspergers" is ...

It is not a fact of nature that there is a good reason to avoid these terms, rather, it is your personal opinion - accusing them of ignoring what you consider as a good reason when they do not consider it as such one is not logically inconsistent.

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

#286

Post by Thorentis »

pornel wrote: post #256

Like with the Paradox of Tolerance, the absolutist free speech position paradoxically leads to loss of free speech. Speech that is "truth to power" has to be defended. But defending the opposite kind—lies spread by the powerful—is helping them silence dissent. There are people/orgs/governments that are experts in twisting the idea of free speech to their advantage. They know very well what to say to change clear oppo…

Right now, the "powerful people" are shaping the narrative far more by what they censor, than what they say. Preventing particular sides from sharing their views shapes the debate far more than adding noise to another side.

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

#287

Post by dependenttypes »

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

Down-vote does not mean censor. It is just a community-oriented way to sort comments.

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

#288

Post by humanrebar »

worik wrote: post #197
high_derivative wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'should be incapable of joining the software profession based on their genetics' He absolutely did no such thing and this is an incredibly disingenuous representation. You can still argue he should be fired without this.

I have just reread the first few pages of his memo. I had forgotten, it has been a few years. It is naive, pompous, and offensive to people who have been fighting against the currents of prejudice and bigotry for generations. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586-Googles-Ideo... Perhaps he should not have been fired, but what a prick!

I don't know Damore personally, so this concern might not apply, but I wonder if neuro-atypical folks aren't the hardest hit folks in the current reenactment of The Crucible.

EDIT: And The Scarlet Letter seems relevant as well.

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

#290

Post by dependenttypes »

DanBC wrote: post #182
dependenttypes wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the same spirit, gentleman11's point is that if you attend a gathering with people you don't know, and that gathering turns out to be heavily represented by looters and rioters, you are going to be labelled with it. > You're furiously defending an argument that you've made More like trying to show to DanBC that their line of thinking is illogical. Regardless, I do not see anything furious about it.

There's nothing illogical about describing as racist a group of people who make Nazi salutes, who attack black people, who spray racist graffiti. I'm pointing out that this is a simplistic, dishonest, framing: > Eg, people out protecting Churchill statues in the UK are labelled as racists in several stories[1]. A more honest framing would be "people out protecting Churchill statutes, many of them making Nazi salutes…

Why are you repeating the same thing over and over while ignoring the argument given?

Oh well, here, let's repeat it. "There's nothing illogical about describing as looters and rioters a group of people who break windows, steal from shops, set buildings and cars on fire."

You can extend the same argument to have racist undertones by including all black people for example because there are some criminals among them. Racism is bad not because it is racism but rather because it is yet another instance of prejudice and generalization.

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