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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

#161

Post by banannaise »

As noted (and then, weirdly, disagreed with) in the article, you have to make a clear delineation between speech that is offensive and speech that is abusive. And that is not always an easy distinction to make!

Repeatedly using slurs is abusive, but what if the majority of people don't see it as a slur? If your answer is "then it's not a slur", then what do you think of the frequent use of the N-word in the first half of the 20th century?

Is it abusive to repeatedly and baselessly accuse an entire group of child abuse ("grooming")?

If you repeatedly attend community gatherings to repeat speech that is deliberately offensive to that community, does that rise to the level of abuse?

These are reasonable questions that we tend to just skip over when we talk about "cancel culture" and those who are characterized, fairly or unfairly, as victims of it.

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#162

Post by trieste92 »

breadbreadbread wrote: post #144

I think this article comes very close to saying "don't let words affect you", which is fundamentally impossible to ask anyone to do and taken to it's logical conclusion I should also not absorb anything in the article. I also think this article also ignores the fact that hateful people often use the language of free speech to justify their own behavior and to punish their critics. Everyday on the internet I see trans…

> Some speech suppresses the speech of others

Isn't this exactly what you're trying to do here?

> Free speech isn't just about saying anything you want, it's also about maximizing the number of voices at the table

Free speech is "about" whatever is in the first amendment

> it's also about maximizing the number of voices at the table

Ahh yes, because the people who try to redefine "free speech" like what you're doing are definitely well known for promoting this /s

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#163

Post by kneebonian »

jzb wrote: post #134

If we want a "liberal, intellectual society" we absolutely have to consider some speech "violence." To use one current example: The people pushing the idea of trans people as "groomers" is violence. It is not an intellectual debate, it's not necessary to entertain in order to preserve free thought, etc. The goal of that speech is to other trans people and it endangers them. Tolerance of that kind of speech ensures th…

Yes some people employ terms to other people based on religious belief or skin color, should it be acceptable to "other" people by calling them Christofacist? Or suggesting that we should #killallmen?

Why should prefixing a proposal with the phrase "trans" suddenly allow one to invalidate other people's rights?

And before you say that is extreme, hypothetical or doesn't count because it comes from a position of power my own ancestors were driven out of their homes in 4 states and had an extermination order issued against them by the state of Missouri based on people abusing free speech against them.

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#164

Post by giraffe_lady »

ReptileMan wrote: post #153
giraffe_lady wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The marketplace of ideas is a completely made up thing to justify a stance of political non-action against real harms. People who are for example planning a mass shooting against a demonized minority are not participating in such a market, to the extent it exists at all.

And the people planning shooting against a demonized majority?

They're probably not in that "market" either! Thanks for asking this totally sincere, clarifying and helpful question.

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#166

Post by stonogo »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #74
stonogo wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this strawman argument, are you asserting that lidocaine prevents the punch from causing physical damage?

If the author was implying damage, he did an incredibly poor job at conveying that. He said "hurt" not "damage."

You're going to have a frustrating time if you use that kind of pedantry to build a bad-faith interpretation of the proposed argument. "Joey got hurt in the boxing match" does not generally mean he was offended by the color of his opponent's shorts, and when someone talks about a punch in the face hurting someone they're using the broadest sense of the word 'hurt,' which is commonly accepted to encompass all of emotional pain, physical damage, and the deleterious effect of violence on any given community. Choosing the specific definition that makes the argument weakest isn't really productive unless you're just looking to get mad about something.

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#167

Post by fllsdf »

kneebonian wrote: post #69
somesortofthing wrote: post #47

I think this article makes a key mistake that I see almost all commentators make of visions of free speech less radical than, say, the first amendment: They consider only the direct effects of speech on those who hear it. If you accept this, it's very easy to(correctly) respond that it's not the state's job to police mere offense, no matter how grave it may be. Some people who try to make criticisms of a radical free…

> but at the same time, it's undeniable that a lot of money and attention is flowing to ever-bolder provocateurs whose only possible goal is to escalate existing tensions and iniquities to violence in service of their political aims. Then you should defeat them in the marketplace of ideas and be able to counter their facillous words. To suggest otherwise is to stand in a position where you claim that some people are…

It is effectively impossible to reason people out of positions they have not reasoned themselves into.

The market place of idea struggles in my close friend group where we have sort of a tradition to do these kind of debates, despite us being very close since almost a decade, and educated above our national average.

It's a nice enough idea, but i dont see how to make it work in a space where money amplifies speech, and some types of speeches have been a negative to specific groups of people throughout history.

The obvious long term solution is more education but that requires money, so the obvious short term solution is censorship

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#168

Post by gazpachotron »

jzb wrote: post #134

If we want a "liberal, intellectual society" we absolutely have to consider some speech "violence." To use one current example: The people pushing the idea of trans people as "groomers" is violence. It is not an intellectual debate, it's not necessary to entertain in order to preserve free thought, etc. The goal of that speech is to other trans people and it endangers them. Tolerance of that kind of speech ensures th…

[dead]

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#169

Post by throwawayacc6 »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #41

> In contrast, physical violence is an uncomplicated, universal offender. A punch to the face hurts everyone. What a completely deranged take. It's easy to conceive of a thought experiment that absolutely destroys this perspective. Imagine that I've applied lidocaine to my face and you punch me. Then someone points out that because I didn't feel pain, that "It's ok to punch other people in the face." The author's arg…

>Imagine that I've applied lidocaine to my face and you punch me. Then someone points out that because I didn't feel pain, that "It's ok to punch other people in the face."

Your entire strawman is invalidated because the author wrote "hurt", not "pained". Even if you didn't feel pain, a punch still hurts (injures) your body. QED.

Hurt: To cause physical damage or pain to (an individual or a body part); injure.[0]

>What a completely deranged take.

Reread your comment over again if you want a completely deranged take.

[0] https://www.wordnik.com/words/hurt

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#170

Post by rootusrootus »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #109
fallingfrog wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazing how quickly people will pivot to "actually, it's ok to censor campus professors" as soon as the censored ideas are ones they don't like.

It's amazing how quickly people will pivot to "censorship of professors" when they are talking about laws that control the curriculum of elementary schools. I don't dislike professors or teachers at state schools, but I understand that they work in an institution that effectively does not offer academic freedom. If you are a professor, you can work at any other institution in the country, other than the 50-100 or so…

> the 50-100 or so that are run by states

FWIW, I think you're off by an order of magnitude, more or less.

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