Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society
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Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society
#2"To be sure, that doesn’t mean that deliberately offending people for its own sake is morally acceptable, or that people should be entitled to use speech to incite violence, harass, or threaten."
The difficulty is knowing what the intent was. Usually there are ways of "non-violent" communication. But it seems a lot of it is subjective.
By far it seems the most restrictive places are primary and secondary schools.
Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society
#3People who equate speech with violence have generally never known physical violence.
I've always held that position firmly. The trouble is, people are turning out to be a lot more programmable than I thought they (we) were. You could almost say that we're becoming more like machines at the same time that machines are becoming more like us. To the extent that's true, the part of the old saying that goes "... but words will never hurt me" can be seen as less valid.
Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society
#4Although violent speech may seem hard to swallow, the alternative of censorship has been shown throughout history to be far more detrimental. It seems that the younger generation has not fully understood this fact, but hopefully they will come to understand it through the lessons of others, rather than through their own experiences.
Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society
#5But having a without display:block and adding custom oversized dots that aren't aligned to the line - we can all agree that is violence, can't we?
Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society
#6People who equate speech with violence have generally never known physical violence. I've always held that position firmly. The trouble is, people are turning out to be a lot more programmable than I thought they (we) were. You could almost say that we're becoming more like machines at the same time that machines are becoming more like us. To the extent that's true, the part of the old saying that goes "... but words…
People who equate speech with violence are usually looking for a way to respond to speech with violence.
Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society
#7I don't think that most of the people who equate hate speech with violence are literally requesting assualt charges be brought. They are calling for boycotts and de-platforming, both of which fall well within the bounds of the "marketplace of ideas." While there is indeed no right to not be offended, there is also no right to be listened to, and no right to artificially amplify your speech on someone else's dime. We live in a world where the mechanisms of mass communication are held in private hands---there is no digital public square, regardless of what techno-libertarians might have you believe. So there are speech winners and there are speech losers, chosen generally by capital. If you want to change that and have a public platform, you'll have to consider the digital equivalent of communism. Until then, you'll have to live with mass suppression of speech just as you live with mass amplification of it. They are two sides of the same coin.
Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society
#8The kinds of censorship that really bothers me is when people like Ron deSantis use the power of the state to force people like university professors to say specific things and muzzle them from saying other things. That's actual government censorship.
Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society
#9Lawyer here, and this definitely strikes me as one of a surprising number topics in which, the law has for some time, already a very effective and useful way to get at this concept.
Sure, speech can be harmful and hurtful, to the point that someone should get punished for it. But the law has generally done very good job of reminding us that this tends to be a VERY NARROW possibility, i.e. the harm has to be very specific and directed and measurable.
Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society
#10People who equate speech with violence have generally never known physical violence. I've always held that position firmly. The trouble is, people are turning out to be a lot more programmable than I thought they (we) were. You could almost say that we're becoming more like machines at the same time that machines are becoming more like us. To the extent that's true, the part of the old saying that goes "... but words…
I don't know if this is true all the time. I think knowingly sending rape threats to rape victims is pretty violent behavior. I think knowingly trying to trigger someone into an eating disorder relapse or coercing someone into suicide are heinous things that fall into violence. I think there is a line where speech can be violent or said with the intent to harm someone the same as a punch is.