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Cognitive ability is related to supporting freedom of speech (2020)

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Re: Cognitive ability is related to supporting freedom of speech (2020)

#461

Post by wpietri »

throwawayacc2 wrote: post #396
wpietri wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I still don't see the relevance. Unless your point is that to you I'm a fanatic and various books by academics and respected writers are the same thing as ancient religious. So either way I don't see much point in further discussion. Enjoy your day.

Yes. That was my point. There is no functional difference between you telling me “go read this and that” and a preacher saying “go read the scriptures”. The scriptures you told me to go read are irrelevant to my broader point. I am sure you believe them to be true and they very well might be. But that’s not the issue. The issue is, I believe people should be able to exist in society and take part in it regardless of…

One of us is certainly a fanatic. But I'm pretty sure it's the guy who believes that reading facts and/or other viewpoints is some sort of scriptural threat so dangerous that he rejects them out of hand.

Re: Cognitive ability is related to supporting freedom of speech (2020)

#463

Post by wyager »

timdev2 wrote: post #458
wyager wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Cathedral" is cf "The Cathedral and The Bazaar". > For instance, if a private entity asks the state for guidance This is not how it happens. There are many mechanisms for the cathedral to e.g. influence discourse on twitter. None of them involve Twitter overtly and formally asking the government for advice.

Sure. My point is that when you consider the range of such possible mechanisms, no matter where you draw the line between permissible and impermissible, we're still talking about what it's okay for the state (not private entities) to do. It's probably my fault, but I find myself unable to read between your lines and tease out your point.

The point is that your model of "freedom of speech" being usefully definable as a narrow legal constraint is about 50 years out of date with respect to the current censorship meta.

"Government can't throw you in jail for saying naughty stuff" is no longer useful - the tactics involved have moved past that.

Re: Cognitive ability is related to supporting freedom of speech (2020)

#464

Post by timdev2 »

phpisthebest wrote: post #216
ok_dad wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the alternative is to force someone else to host and reproduce your views who doesn’t want to, then I’d say that’s acceptable. I’d you want a large platform on which to spout your views, you should secure that yourself. Your 1st amendment right is to stand on a soapbox in the town square and yell as loud as you want, and that’s all.

That that is a very limited view of the concept / principle of free speech, While it may be technically correct in the context of US Constitutional law, people that make this claim expose their opposition to the wider concept of free expression and likely would be the first ones to support an amendment to weaken the 1st amendment

What is this concept/principle you're advocating? That all expression should be allowed everywhere always and nobody should ever censor anyone else?

Re: Cognitive ability is related to supporting freedom of speech (2020)

#465

Post by timdev2 »

wyager wrote: post #463
timdev2 wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. My point is that when you consider the range of such possible mechanisms, no matter where you draw the line between permissible and impermissible, we're still talking about what it's okay for the state (not private entities) to do. It's probably my fault, but I find myself unable to read between your lines and tease out your point.

The point is that your model of "freedom of speech" being usefully definable as a narrow legal constraint is about 50 years out of date with respect to the current censorship meta. "Government can't throw you in jail for saying naughty stuff" is no longer useful - the tactics involved have moved past that.

Just how expansive a concept are your advocating? If you're only saying that aside from not throwing you in jail, government shouldn't coerce (or even incentivize) private parties to censor in ways the government would be prohibited from censoring, then I think you're right. But it's still not clear to me what concept of "free speech" you're actually advocating for.

Re: Cognitive ability is related to supporting freedom of speech (2020)

#466

Post by eyelidlessness »

WalterBright wrote: post #449
eyelidlessness wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phew this went somewhere entirely different than I thought it would when I wrote the first paragraph. My original point was going to be that freedom of market wasn’t the ingredient that allowed standards of living to increase in anything like tandem. It was freedom of society. As our “rising tide” lifted all boats, our economic policies mostly resembled socialist countries’, and their effectiveness was mostly attribu…

The free market is orthogonal to other measures of freedom like democracy. Voting rights are not required for free market to deliver prosperity, as China has demonstrated. > there’s every reason to assume unfettered market freedom loves social constraint. I don't know where that came from. I don't see any such relationship. > where you don’t get dead or put in prison or similarly punished for advocating things you th…

> The free market is orthogonal to other measures of freedom like democracy.

To the extent it is, it’s a failure which erodes or prevents those freedoms from thriving.

> A free market, to be a free market, does not put people in prison for improving their lives.

I was going to invite you to learn more about labor history in the US, but…

> as China has demonstrated.

Never mind, you clearly already understand the point that a state which has mass forced labor camps is compatible with what’s called a free market. But you certainly can’t say no one’s imprisoned with a straight face.

Re: Cognitive ability is related to supporting freedom of speech (2020)

#467

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

bandyaboot wrote: post #391
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " Could someone explain to me why the mass downvoting of the above comment is not hypocritical? " If the poster is saying that "no one should tolerate any person who is intolerant", by definition, that includes themselves. The poster has waived their own right to tolerance from the POV of literally any group who views said poster as "intolerant" according to the very principle they are advocating. It is a practical…

> If the poster is saying that "no one should tolerate any person who is intolerant", by definition, that includes themselves. The poster has waived their own right to tolerance from the POV of literally any group who views said poster as "intolerant" according to the very principle they are advocating. Here’s an analogy. Group A says “violence is never ok”. Person B says “No, it’s ok to beat the shit out of someone…

> "Group A says “violence is never ok”."

Setting aside that using violence as the example of harm done is prejudicial, this flaw in this analogy is the "never ok", which is a hidden assumption of the mythical "free speech absolutism" that nearly no one subscribes to. As I have remarked elsewhere in this thread, believing that interfering with speech in some situations is wrong does not logically imply a belief that interfering with speech in all situations is wrong. So there is, at least in my opinion, still no hypocrisy.

Re: Cognitive ability is related to supporting freedom of speech (2020)

#468

Post by remarkEon »

slg wrote: post #453
remarkEon wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are not the same things, and you’re either deliberately missing the point or insisting that something in the law exists when it doesn’t. There isn’t even a punishment attached to this language. I genuinely don’t understand how a law as simple as “can’t talk to kids about sex until third grade” has a bonafide conspiracy theory attached to it here. Is your worry that lots of gay teachers are talking about their h…

> I genuinely don’t understand how a law as simple as “can’t talk to kids about sex until third grade” has a bonafide conspiracy theory attached to it here. Is your worry that lots of gay teachers are talking about their home lives with very young children and now this law makes that, in your view, potentially out of bounds? The passage I quoted isn’t about sex. It is about “sexual orientation or gender identity”. A…

The text you quoted, which is the same I originally referenced, is about classroom instruction. You are inventing an outcome that is not found in the actual text of the law, maybe because it fits a perception you have or a narrative about Florida. No one is contesting that it's normal for people to mention their private lives at work - though the context in which you do it is important, and proselytizing in any direction generally makes people uncomfortable - and the law does not forbid this.

Re: Cognitive ability is related to supporting freedom of speech (2020)

#469

Post by giardini »

benreesman wrote: post #317
pstuart wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about the policies bit. Sure, on the social front God, Guns, and Gays are powerful motivators to get those people to vote. But economic policies from the same side seem to be mainly about lowering the tax burden of the rich. What am I missing?

I’ve heard a number of plausible theories, but I’d point out that Blue Team’s politicians are damn near as committed as Red Team’s to preventing any of the “wrong people” from getting any money: epsilon politicians on either side are going to budge a nanometer on “the rich get richer” (Pelosi on privileged “insider” trading, Sinema on the carried interest loophole right off the top of my head). In fairness, Red Team’…

bennesman says>" but on the ground it’s all more or less boils down to “eat the poor”."

If only it were that easy! sigh

Re: Cognitive ability is related to supporting freedom of speech (2020)

#470

Post by gonehome »

wizofaus wrote: post #381
gonehome wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that when we abandon the general principle it immediately becomes a question of what speech is ok to ban and this can be weaponized by rivals. People always imagine themselves or people they agree with in the position of determining what gets banned, but they should imagine their political rival or enemy in that position. The free speech principle is about setting the bar such that everyone agrees on the…

>The people in positions of power to limit speech are often wrong. But they're always right about when to limit physical activity (violence etc.)? It's just as conceivable that we'd be better off as a society if certain forms of physical violence by private citizens weren't illegal vs certain actions of "verbal" activity (publishing child pornography, or classified military secrets) being permissible by law.

I'd argue this is more about defaults. Speech defaults to free and is well protected with extremely rare/narrow exceptions, violence defaults to controlled.

Some forms of violence of private citizens are not illegal (self-defense), but I think we're better off in a society where violence is default illegal.

Speech and violence are pretty different things.

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