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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

#301

Post by hamilyon2 »

lkrubner wrote: post #268
ramblerman wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are describing a structured echo chamber. Or worse an internet of endless safe spaces to get just the view of the world that pleases you. I mean facebook is already doing this, on purpose or not (right now the blame is on the algorithms). Either way this is not the right way forward.

In what sense is this not the right way forward? This seems to be the trend that’s been with us for at least 20 years. People increasingly pick the news they want to hear.

Three out of three best ideas that improved me as a human being were very offensive to me when I first encountered them.

I mean, so offensive that I closed book and put it away. Stopped thinking, stopped listening, stopped learning. Hurt me a lot.

And yet, I am so happy they entered my mind and I returned to them when I got older.

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

#302

Post by JoeAltmaier »

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…

Couch it like that, not using throwaway ambiguous phrases but describing it more precisely?

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

#303

Post by luckylion »

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…

> But defending the opposite kind—lies spread by the powerful—is helping them silence dissent.

But that just moves the problem to the question of "who is powerful?", doesn't it? Everybody feels that their side isn't in power because their goals and ideals haven't been completely achieved, so obviously they are the powerless who are speaking truth to power, and therefore the other side are the powerful who are spreading lies to silence dissent.

That doesn't help. I think there's a good chance for anybody that they are wrong in their perception of who is in power, their perception of what "the powerful" want, their political convictions and theories of life, so any kind of distinction of what speech to suppress and what to allow is pretty much a coin flip with regards to this "allow & support speaking truth to power".

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

#304

Post by DanBC »

textgel wrote: post #212
DanBC wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> There's nothing illogical about describing as racist a group of people who make Nazi salutes, who attack black people, who spray racist graffiti. However that's not what you were doing; you were stating the point that being with a group doing x means you will labelled as x. > If you're in a large group, and many members of that group are by any definition racist, you're going to be called part of a racist group. No…

> However that's not what you were doing; you were stating the point that being with a group doing x means you will labelled as x.

I still say that. If you attend a demonstration organised by a far right group (FLA), heavily promoted by other far right groups (Britain First, EDL), and prominent members of the far right (Stephen Yaxley Lennon, Paul Golding) then you're going to be called racist.

You're desperately trying to say these crowds were people interested in statues and merely peacefully protesting to protect statues. That shows a complete lack of understanding of i) who organised the demonstration ii) the language used to organise the demonstration iii) the behaviours displayed during the demonstration and iv) the commentary across the political spectrum condemning this demonstration as racist thuggery.

> yet the difference in the media descriptions of the two is pretty glaring would you agree?

At some point you're going to have to come to terms with the fact that in the UK the far right pose a far greater risk of harm than the left.

The people you're desperately trying to defend were drunk, coked-up, racist, football hooligans on a rampage. That has been fairly and accurately described by UK news media, including those on the right.

Daily fucking Mail: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8404751/Police-fear...

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

#305

Post by Kye »

dahfizz wrote: post #281
paulgb wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Most of the people I know are LGBTQ with a large contingent of nonbinary people and trans people. The common theme when people bring this up from the other side is it's nice when people get it right on their own, but it hurts more when people assume wrong and then double down.

Using the wrong one can activate a low-level fear response for people trying to "pass" on the binary, but it's easily quelled by generally being kind. The fact that you're concerned about being wrong tells me you aren't the kind of person they worry about. Conventions wouldn't hand out pronoun stickers and pins if the widespread expectation was that people would just know.

Most of the social pressure you perceive comes from well-meaning cisgender allies trying to use their privilege to mold the world into something a little safer. Sometimes they go overboard. Have you ever seen a cisgender person try to argue with a nonbinary or binary trans person about their own identity not realizing they're talking to a person they're arguing about? It's surreal. They mean well.

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

#306

Post by TuringTest »

haberman wrote: post #133
TuringTest wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 trick is to create channels with limited audiences, where you can set an expectation of which ideas are acceptable and which are not. Do you mean that a community could allow argument X, but disallow counter-argument Y? That sounds like a recipe for an echo chamber. I definitely see the benefit in saying that certain topics are out of scope for a given community. But saying which ideas are acceptable and which…

> I definitely see the benefit in saying that certain topics are out of scope for a given community. But saying which ideas are acceptable and which are not sounds like codifying the dominance of an official viewpoint.

Yeah, exactly. But any anthropologist or sociologist will tell you that any social group works exactly that way, it's an inevitable reality of being social humans.

The trick to support freedom of expression isn't forcing all possible communication forums to accept all possible topics and ideas; it's to create cross-pollination groups where some ideas that are taboo in other forums can be discussed in an adequate context.

University used to be such a forum intended for cross-pollination and having a different set of taboos than the mainstream society, before it was hijacked by the dynamics of social networks.

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

#307

Post by indigochill »

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #121
TuringTest wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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

I don't think perfect adherence should be expected. If there's a code of conduct and someone runs afoul of it, just give them a gentle poke and point them to what they ran afoul of. If they're cool with the code of conduct, great. They fix their behavior and everyone's happy. If they don't like the code of conduct, then they're welcome to join a community with a code of conduct that better matches their outlook. If they continue to stick around anyway and violate the code of conduct after being informed what they're doing wrong, they get the boot.

Where this gets stickier is when you build monolithic communities like Stack Overflow where "the boot" is actually seriously punishing. I only ever moderated little game forums where the consequences of a ban were far less severe. Which is why I tend to think it's better to have small distributed self-managing communities rather than monolithic communities. Makes it easier for diverse outlooks to live-and-let-live without requiring minorities to conform to the majority.

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

#308

Post by koheripbal »

trabant00 wrote: post #263

Why are we beating around the bush even on anonymous platform like this one? What do "conversations", language policing, social media activism, etc actually do to improve the situation? Where are the actual actions and involvements like volunteering for actual work in a poor community? Why is the suggested action so often giving money? Buy this book about how to be a good white person, donate to local BLM chapter, su…

> If anybody really cares about black lives they should be deeply concerned with gang violence, human trafficking, drugging minors, etc. Where are the conversations about that?

There's no question that BLM is being hijacked by groups with entirely different agendas - most of whom couldn't care less about black lives.

...but this argument is a logically flawed whataboutism. It's entirely reasonable to protest a lesser problem. It doesn't mean you don't care or work to fix the larger problems.

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

#309

Post by dijit »

lkrubner wrote: post #268
ramblerman wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are describing a structured echo chamber. Or worse an internet of endless safe spaces to get just the view of the world that pleases you. I mean facebook is already doing this, on purpose or not (right now the blame is on the algorithms). Either way this is not the right way forward.

In what sense is this not the right way forward? This seems to be the trend that’s been with us for at least 20 years. People increasingly pick the news they want to hear.

People might pick the news they want to hear; but thinking this is "fine" is an appeal to ignorance.

Ignorance is not strength.

For whatever it's worth I was raised dirt poor, central Britain in a city that had been in rapid decline for many decades- Yet I believed, fiercely that Europe was less than Britain, that Muslims were coming for our benefits and our women and that Britains colonial past was something to be admired, we had brought civilisation to the world. I believed that I was born "rich" compared to the rest of the world and I had a birthright to be taken care of.

I don't have to tell you how much it hurt me to learn how ignorant, bigoted and wrong I was.

How much taking in things that were true conflicted so concretely with what I believed that I rejected it outright.

Obviously my opinions have changed, but allowing me to hide from the world would not have done that. Only stepping forward and being exposed to that which causes discomfort allows for it.

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

#310

Post by luckylion »

klmadfejno wrote: post #9
fennecfoxen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world, in general, is abandoning the past two centuries in which freedom has risen, to become illiberal, and enforce intellectual orthodoxies. It is more obvious and markedly so in in places like Turkey, but even here in the US we see those who would blacklist all political enemies and dissenters. These efforts will ultimately fail here, but not before grave harm is inflicted; history will judge us as harshly as…

I don't think equating racist power structures in police and government to red scare communists is a good analogy. The fear of communists was mostly made up in rhetoric. The protestors on race relations are pretty clear on why they're upset.

> The fear of communists was mostly made up in rhetoric.

Maybe ask the West-Berliners that the SU tried to starve to make them surrender and become part of the SU.

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