Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive • Hacker News Board

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

#391

Post by CraigJPerry » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 2:33 PM UTC

cglace wrote: post #199

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you just say “slave market” or “illegal market”? Of course, black in this context refers to the transactions being performed in the shadows, and has nothing to do with the colour of the skin of the participants in the market. It’s all a bit absurd, but it’s also a trivial change to adopt. And now I’ve offended adopties. I jest.

I don’t think it’s trivial if we are to the point where we are censoring completely benign words.

>> where we are censoring completely benign words

Are you saying in any context? That's not the proposal as i read it.

>> >> Could you just say

>> censoring

For censoring to be the case, it must be that you can't use particular words.

I read the case as

  1. the GP's post expressing a desire to show heightened care to a reader
  2. your parent posting a possible solution

Taking this to an extreme, if both behaviours above were to become a social norm then some words in some contexts would become extremely frowned upon to the point that you would personally choose not to use them.

They'd still not be censored though. Documents would continue to be written with the offensive terms by those who seek to offend. The words would be used in the socially unacceptable way in service of making a stronger point.

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

#392

Post by goatinaboat » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 2:36 PM UTC

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…

She was trying to get a faculty member at a local university fired for saying something offensive on Twitter.

The thing with situations like this is that it's not that the crowd is reporting that a crime has been committed. It doesn't even matter what was said, it's just that thousands of people are threatening that they will boycott their product. Companies and organisations just need to realise that those people were never their customers anyway and will have forgotten about it tomorrow. A Twitter campaign to get an employee fired should be treated as no more than a DDoS attack and mitigated the same way.

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

#393

Post by iso1631 » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 2:36 PM UTC

snikeris wrote: post #318

Retric wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Challenge accepted. Pederasty is so far from our cultural norms it’s current form is meaningless compared to a socially accepted version. In a society with active mentoring of youth by people across the gender and sexual orientation spectrum pederasty would reduce the stigma’s associated with homosexuals thus increasing social cohesion. War is a stress test for societies. By destroying less efficient social structure…

> War is a stress test for societies. By destroying less efficient social structures it promotes long term progress and reduces inefficient practices like slavery. War destroys progress and is incredibly inefficient. The mere threat of war creates an endless arms race resulting in half of discretionary spending going to defense. The reason for submitting to government authority is for protection of life and liberty.…

War certainly destroys somethings, but in other ways it spurs invention -- radar, cyrptography, jet engines, computing were all products of world war 2.

And sometimes destroying leads to improvements - the blitz destroyed a lot of slum housing in the London east end, which was rebuilt en mass in a way that wouldn't have been possible without the widespread destruction.

Massive losses felt across the population in the UK led to a national unity and a desire for improvement of everyones lives, leading to things like the welfare state and healthcare for all.

Looking further back in history, the US war of independence is deemed to have had desirable outcomes.

You can still think war is a failure but acknowledge that it can lead to benefits as well as drawbacks.

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

#394

Post by Aengeuad » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 2:37 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #190

Aengeuad wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all the talk of people doing Nazi salutes it seemed like you could open any news story about the counter-protests and you'd see clear evidence of Neo-Nazis but it was anything but, even when people point to videos [0] that are supposed to demonstrate the Nazi salute it's a struggle to even figure out who is supposed to be doing it. Another video [1] of that same scene is even less supportive of the claim of Nazi…

> this is literally the first time I'm hearing that the leader of Britain First showed up It's somewhat frustrating that people who do not know who attended the demonstration are telling me that I'm wrong when I say it was mostly comprised of recognised far right groups. The protests were organised by far right groups such as FLA / DLFA, with calls from people like Stephen Yaxley-Lennon and Paul Golding for people to…

>telling me that I'm wrong when I say it was mostly comprised of recognised far right groups

I'm not trying to tell you that you're wrong or that far right groups didn't attend and I'm sorry if it came across that way, I was hesitant to even make a reply for fear it would come across as a defence of groups I'm ideologically opposed to over protests I don't agree with. The only point I wanted to discuss really was the Nazi salutes since 'protestors defending Churchill statue perform Nazi salute' seems to be the sticking point of social commentary on the counter protests, but the supposed video where it happens is questionable. But I'm happy to be proven wrong on that, just like I was the involvement from Britain First which is why I edited the post, so again sorry if it seems like I'm trying to downplay their involvement.

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

#395

Post by raxxorrax » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 2:37 PM UTC

AHappyCamper wrote: post #313

marcus_holmes wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give me an example of an urgent, mission critical communication that could be offensive to people?

Of course - and thank you for asking. One of my friends is a paramedic who primarily works in ambulances in LA. One day, he arrives at a scene after a passer-by called 911. A homeless man is lying on the street on top of garbage and cardboard boxes. There is urine and feces everywhere - it's a bad situation - and there are used needles lying next to the man. The man is obviously in medical distress, and is unable to…

In Germany we have a similar phenomena too. Hard to translate, but unemployed people are now called employment-searching people for example. I get it, there are some people that think they are lazy, instead almost everyone wants to get a job. The terms are constructed to counter these prejudices, but unemployed people actually feel more discriminated against because of the blatant paternalism from academics that have no idea about being unemployed or actually working in a free economy.

Social sciences call that framing and I think it is really not constructive in many ways. Euphemisms don't help the people in question. Their last crusade is of course the gendered nature of our language, so every maskuline term has to be changed to be neutral. They could open their own mental asylum by now. To be fair, there are many social workers that really put in effort and have long since given up to fight against this insanity. But those are the one who actually have contact to patients.... CLIENTS! I am sorry, we don't call them patients anymore if their suffering is due to mental conditions....

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

#396

Post by scoutt » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 2:39 PM UTC

whiddershins wrote: post #228

nonsince wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You are trying to say you can infer racism, and you need to do that to identify the racists because they won’t speak their racism openly? Can you see how that is a recipe for attacking people and ruining their lives based on something that in the end might be imagined? Do you see how easily that becomes ... anyone who disagrees with any opinion I have is evil?

What amazes me most is the cascade of reasoning. It's the most obscene misuse of logic, that might be fine only if it comes from a toddler.

"criticising protesters" leads to "support militia", that leads to "support their murders", so he "do(es) not support the black lives matter", therefore wants "continuation of black people being murdered".

Imagine that for a guy that had his car turned upside down by protesters and was complaining about that.

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

#397

Post by Aengeuad » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 2:42 PM UTC

notahacker wrote: post #234

DanBC wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is literally the first time I'm hearing that the leader of Britain First showed up It's somewhat frustrating that people who do not know who attended the demonstration are telling me that I'm wrong when I say it was mostly comprised of recognised far right groups. The protests were organised by far right groups such as FLA / DLFA, with calls from people like Stephen Yaxley-Lennon and Paul Golding for people to…

It was extremely well publicised at the time too: Golding even gave the PA a quote in advance about why he was going, every mainstream media outlet mentioned him in their reports and Twitter throbbed with speculation about whether he was breaching his bail conditions.

Maybe in some circles it was well publicised but in many articles around the time it's nothing more than a single sentence mention, e.g., [0] which is near the bottom, [1] or [2] which are closer to the top but still not really the point of the articles. The Telegraph link from DanBC's post mentions them a few more times for comparison.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-53033550

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-53031072

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/14/met-police-con...

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

#398

Post by geodel » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 2:44 PM UTC

dcsilver wrote: post #381

gwd wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 that we've deemed him a heretic unworthy of work? As someone who's a devout Christian, it's quite interesting to me to see how the same anti-patterns which plague zealou…

So true. Far too many people today, many of whom I suspect have a recent inclination to harboring particular political views at all, are missing the entire point of politics - that it's a debate. It's the great debate, the one that we set up entire electoral systems to have, and built entire buildings in which it would be held. Today, a dangerous number of people are outright enraged by having their dogmatic politica…

I am not surprised by this at all. Somewhere I read that 'The more strict the scriptures, the more interpretation is magnanimous and compassionate' And 'the more liberal the written text, interpretation will be very strict'

Whenever I hear term 'climate denier' not even 'climate change denier' I know speaker is stewing in his own superiority and least bothered about actual improvement.

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

#399

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 2:45 PM UTC

koheripbal wrote: post #275

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.

I love it when people throw the term "objectively false" at anything they disagree with - in this case, the person is sharing their opinion on what should be reality. Someone's opinion on how things should be cannot be objectively false.

[deleted]

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

#400

Post by julianmarq » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 2:45 PM UTC

CraigJPerry wrote: post #378

AHappyCamper wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you start with this type of thinking, it never stops, and instead of focussing on how to save slaves from a life of misery, you're instead having meetings on which words are less offensive in your posts, messages, and internal communiques. The amount of energy that this takes up is ENORMOUS, especially when you're dealing with something as difficult and dangerous as the slave trade. And what do you do when the n…

>> Once you start with this type of thinking, it never stops ... you're instead having meetings Is this an example of the slippery slope fallacy? There was no meeting required, the idea and action were raised and taken in the same parent post. Parent poster started with that type of thinking and avoided the halting problem. >> The amount of energy that this takes up is ENORMOUS Is it possible that learning to use dif…

> Is this an example of the slippery slope fallacy?

Is it? It doesn't seem like it is because...

> There was no meeting required

... GGP's comment started a discussion on this very matter, still ongoing, instead of merely accepting that the term "black market" isn't offensive... Which it isn't.

> Is it possible that learning to use different words in many contexts is the same as the act of picking up a thesaurus? How commonly does it not take such a trivial amount of energy? How commonly do you need to expend an enourmous amount of energy to achieve this end?

You don't find this whole discussion exhausting? I do, it's entirely asinine.

> If it's anything short of a law that expressly forbids particular words, then the rest of your sentence's argument is nullified.

Because people haven't been fired and/or had their reputations ruined even though they said perfectly legal things? The argument is not nullified just because you try to will it so.