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

#541

Post by Retric » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 4:12 AM UTC

TheNorthman wrote: post #300

michaelt wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because moderators are trying to stop flamewars - not jump into the middle and fight both sides.

I suppose that's a matter of definition and, in any-case, falls victim to the is-ought problem. I fail to see why moderators should police tone over content and I'm not convinced this is even the case.

Tone drives people away faster than content. A civil discussion with someone you disagree with is very different than the all caps hate fest you see without any form of moderation.

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

#542

Post by robomartin » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 4:46 AM UTC

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…

When highly educated people allow themselves to be pinged into outrage, controversy and violence time and time again, yes, the best option is to remain quiet. Taking a different path could expose someone to the most severe personal and business consequences.

It saddens me to say this because it means we got to a place I never thought possible.

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

#543

Post by dependenttypes » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 4:57 AM UTC

joshuamorton wrote: post #455

dependenttypes wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Are you sure that you just did not talk about the topic with your friends? Note that GP mentions that they're involved in left wing/social justice circles. Many of those circles involve activism that extends beyond the US, so being aware of things like international sex trafficking, forms of slavery, etc. is probably more likely in those circles than in an average person. > Just in another post in this thread you t…

> Many of those circles involve activism that extends beyond the US

Most of these circles involve online circle-jerking, often intermixed with US and less commonly European politics. They tend to be slightly more informed than the lower-than-average layperson but not by much. An actual activist on the subject of slavery (such as AHappyCamper) should be much more informed on the subject than the average "social justice" activist.

> I don't think GP said what you claim they said.

"When you have such a significant power over someone's higher education and therefore their life earnings, I don't think it's unfair to scrutinise these people's views further than had they little structural power." is what they said as a reply to people petitioning for someone to be fired from their job for something that they said on twitter. Admittedly I might have misinterpreted what they meant but I do not think I did. If they want they can correct me.

> Stallman wasn't about speech

It certainly was about speech. Most people that were outraged made sure to mention about how bad of a person he was for what he posted in the email or what he said in his personal blog.

> and at worst someone who repeatedly abused his position to harass women

There were some (mostly ableist) hearsay claims that were getting repeated by some people (such as the door label thing [which someone else put up by the way https://medium.com/@whoisylvia/richard-stallman-has-been-vil...] or one where they though that he was ESR [https://daringfireball.net/2019/10/correction_regarding_an_e...) but they were disputed by subsequent publications.

> Are you going to argue that sexual harassment should be protected by the principle of speech?

No, unless if you are going to redefine sexual harassment to include statement like "would you like to have dinner together?" or "this is a nice shirt".

> I don't think those things should be protected acts

And I will have to disagree. All victimless crimes -including this one- should not be crimes at all.

> which I don't

Why is that?

> It's like trying to defend Snowden on free speech grounds

Which would be an absolutely valid defence. Whistleblowing is an instance of exercising one's freedom of speech.

> Assange doesn't have the defenses Snowden did (whistleblowing).

While he did not do the leaking to the public himself he did do the publishing, which is yet another instance of exercising one's freedom of speech.

> As for Damore, as someone who spoke with Damore on his "document", I can say that from my personal interactions, HN gives him way too much credit. I formed my opinions on his document from my interactions with it and with him, prior to any media attention

I have not spoken with him and I do not really care what his character or personal opinions are like nor do I think that this kind of personal attack against him is relevant to the topic.

> and the martyrdom he is given is undeserved

They explicitly asked for feedback. In addition if I remember correctly google said that they want a diversity of opinion (or did they say that they would not fire people for dissenting opinions? I can't remember sadly, I will try to find it) - I would say that he deserves at least a martyrdom status just for this.

> not for "reading the letter from a birmingham jail"

More like for "not reading a censored version of the letter rather than the original" - which is a more specific version of "reading the letter from a birmingham jail" - so it is correct.

> for refusing to self censor after multiple students requested that he do so

Yes, and they were calling for him to be fired for that. If this is not an attack on the freedom of speech then I do not know what is.

> and he can't be fired anyway

This is irrelevant (and he can certainly be fired)

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

#544

Post by luckylion » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 6:38 AM UTC

cgrealy wrote: post #491

luckylion wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not go down the "those aren't real communists" route. The communists in the West were by and large always very cozy with the SU. Hell, they loved Stalin so much and wanted to hear so little that Orwell sat down to write a fable to explain the issues to them.

I never said they weren't "real" communists, I said there's nothing wrong with that. There is a difference between communism and nazism. Communism is simply the belief that the workers should own the means of production. It's like being a "witch". You might think it's complete nonsense and doesn't work in the real world (I'd agree with you), but if people want to be witches (or wiccans or whatever), they should be al…

> Nazism, on the other hand, is an inherently evil ideology. Hopefully, I don't have to explain why.

The situation I was referring to has nothing to do with the Nazis: it was after WW2 when the East/West conflict ramped up and Berlin was divided in two sectors (Soviet/Western controlled), but surrounded by the Soviet controlled sector of Germany. The Soviet Union then decided to enact a blockade to stop transports to West Berlin and starve the population to force the Western Allies to give up Berlin. It's what lead to the massive air transport operation dubbed "Raisin Bombers" that sustained the West Berlin population.

> And once again, you've mistakenly conflated communism with totalitarianism (which is what 1984 is actually about).

Yeah, yeah, "this time, it will all be different, we won't have concentration camps, we won't have purges, we won't have mock trials". At some point you can accept that some mechanism in your system leads to the undesired outcome, and that, even if you have not yet discovered it, there is most likely a causal relationship.

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

#545

Post by nl » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 7:12 AM UTC

syshum wrote: post #360

nl wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't find it slightly ironic that you are defending her when she was "cancelled" for setting up a website with the express purpose of doxxing people who didn't want to be identified?[1] I think it was you who claimed this on the Scott Alexander story: > One of the biggest problems in modern society is the lack of respect for privacy and anonymous speech. anonymous speech has been a cornerstone of the advancement…

I dont believe I was defending her. i believe in facts and the statement was factually inaccurate, She moved more conservative and started her conservative persona after the left rejected or ejected her from their circle. Not sure how correcting the record with facts is "defending" some one but I guess in times of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act I absolutely am not a fan of her or her works…

You seem to think her rejection by the left was some kind of extreme act ("far more moderate than the Extreme Authoritarian left accepts") and yet she was actually rejected for setting up a doxxing site!

It's not an extreme act to reject someone for that, and nor is it a moderate act to set one up.

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

#546

Post by missosoup » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 7:34 AM UTC

krapp wrote: post #244

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…

>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. About 60% [0,1] of "the entire population" voted at all, and out of that population, votes for Trump and Clinton were split almost evenly, with Clinton still getting a slight majority of (a couple of million) votes, which isn't…

You're splitting hairs. Fine, it's not 50%. It's 48% or 45%, of the voting population. What does it matter? The point stands that a statistically significant number of people hold a set of ideologies and views that has been marginalised.

Before the 2016 election I would never believe that someone like Trump could win, because the media and prevailing signalling from America was that Trump-esque beliefs were a tiny minority. Clearly that turned out to not be the case. And that's the lesson from marginalising and suppressing 'undesirable' views. It doesn't make them go away. Here they are, dominating America. Deplatforming those people, depriving them of public voice, censoring their views, all that did was harden their resolve and create a massive blowback effect that shifted people on the moderate side of the spectrum towards radical.

You can argue about fine detail stats all you want, but America is currently being run by Trump and all the so-called undesirables have risen to mainstream status. Which is what my comment was all about. I'm sure you'll agree that if winning the presidency merely takes a 'slight' advantage in gaming the system, then the vote was already split on a knife's edge.

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

#547

Post by etherael » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 7:44 AM UTC

notahacker wrote: post #533

etherael wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So in a world in which the President of the United States openly expresses envy of how Kim Il Sung is treated The fact that a politician is narcissistic is as unsurprising as it is irrelevant to the discussion topic at hand. > calls the free press 'the enemy of the people' To be fair, the attacks on the modern "free press" pulling them up for their transparent lying on a great deal of issues are frequently perfectl…

I will leave it to anyone uninvolved unfortunate enough to still be reading this to judge whether your rush to insist that it's perfectly normal for presidents to enthuse about how North Korea does political discourse and that the increase in rhetorical, legislative and physical attacks on the 'enemy' in the media by the right in recent years is 'frequently perfectly justified' is the argument of someone sincerely wo…

Once again, that simply has nothing to do with free speech, politicians being narcissistic amoral psychopaths is basically in the job description, some of them more obviously than others, but basically all of them. I don't like or approve of any politicians, so your attempts to paint me as some kind of political follower of what you perceive as "the enemy" is frankly just funny.

But whatever you have to do to get yourself past the fact that you're desperately defending some of the most reprehensible conduct in the world today overturning a long standing commitment to what used to be a highly functional and useful set of norms for social communication I guess. If I were in your shoes trying to demonize anybody that disagreed with me would probability be the card I'd be reaching for also.

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

#548

Post by lozenge » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 8:47 AM UTC

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 just googled it and found the terms shadow economy or underground economy. You can just use those? Are you really afraid you'll be "cancelled" for using a term that is still extremely common, and if so isn't the answer to use a different term?

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

#549

Post by watwut » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 8:54 AM UTC

missosoup wrote: post #531

watwut wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's simple. Name one historical example where this strategy of systemic censorship of an ideology worked and didn't blow back. It worked majority of the time. It typically stopped to work only when power to be ceased to have power. Both nazism and communism were extremely successful in this. The monarchies did this successfully for very very long time. It ceased to work only when their lost power for unrelated rea…

> It worked majority of the time. It typically stopped to work only when power to be ceased to have power. Which is to say it has never worked. Because all power structures eventually collapse and yet the ideologies they tried to suppress remain and rise again. And sometimes, it's actually the resurgence of those suppressed ideologies that destroys the established power structures. As is the case in the USA right now…

By that measure, nothing works ever, because every system dies one day regardless of what they suspend. Such standard is completely useless. Also, "ceased to have power" typically means failure to suppress.

That being said, Nazi Germany did not lost because of internally suppressed people raising, they lost because foreign forces won on battle field. They were quite successful in keeping control.

> You can't be serious.

I am serious. There is nothing to suggest that contemporary German issues have anything to do with post WWII suppression of Nazism. They don't.

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

#550

Post by CM30 » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 9:07 AM UTC

lightgreen wrote: post #141

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.

There could be two kinds of downvotes: * "I disagree" downvote * "This comment has no value" downvote First downvote can be used for arguments like "let's increase taxes to the rich because, this way we can build more fair society, European countries have shown that high taxes..." Second downvote can be used for comments like "Let's tax these rich bastards". I want to also mention reddit voting system which I kinda l…

The ideal solution is definitely to split ratings, both for upvotes and downvotes. Slashdot did this, and quite a few forum scripts have plugins for it, where you can rate posts based on things like whether you agree/disagree with them, if they're funny or informative, if they're spam/low quality etc.

Having it work that way would significantly discourage using upvotes and downvotes as agree/disagree buttons, and make it much clearer what the community thinks of any particular post or piece of content.