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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

#301

Post by Shared404 »

wonderwonder wrote: post #266
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…

No, its not. If someone punches you in the face, that's violence. If I say "hey, you're a groomer" that's not violence. You can tell the difference because one causes physical pain and the other doesn't. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

From a legal perspective, sure.

From an ethical perspective? You'd be hard pressed to argue that point.

Normalization of ridiculous rhetoric like calling LGBT folks groomers is leading towards more and more hate crimes towards those people, as well as helping push for regulations against adults being able to opt into their own health care and make decisions about their bodies[0].

[0] https://abcnews.go.com/US/new-bill-ban-gender-confirming-car...

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

#302

Post by Zetice »

rootusrootus wrote: post #192
Zetice wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How should a marketplace of ideas work, then?

You attack the idea, not the person. If you go after the person, you are not participating in any marketplace of ideas, you're now the one committing the violence.

Isn’t that what’s happening? “The idea is repulsive so expressing it has consequences.”

Seems to be about the idea to me.

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

#303

Post by wonderwonder »

Shared404 wrote: post #301
wonderwonder wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, its not. If someone punches you in the face, that's violence. If I say "hey, you're a groomer" that's not violence. You can tell the difference because one causes physical pain and the other doesn't. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

From a legal perspective, sure. From an ethical perspective? You'd be hard pressed to argue that point. Normalization of ridiculous rhetoric like calling LGBT folks groomers is leading towards more and more hate crimes towards those people, as well as helping push for regulations against adults being able to opt into their own health care and make decisions about their bodies[0]. [0] https://abcnews.go.com/US/new-bil…

Who gets the power to decide what is ethical and to then ban what they deem unethical? Elected officials? Academics? Who do we give that level of power too? You? Me? Biden? Trump? I understand that saying negative things about people is not a nice thing to do and can cause emotional pain, I just think that the consequences of removing free speech are far worse and leads to a place where suddenly people you voted against have unlimited power.

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

#304

Post by gallopingcomp »

wonderwonder wrote: post #252
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…

"Everyday on the internet I see trans people threatened, disrespected, or legislated out of existence" Legislation in the US has actually made trans people vanish or are we using large amounts of hyperbole? People have been saying mean things about other groups for millennia, as long as its just words, its fine. I'm a jew, I see the neo nazi groups with banners or Kanye ranting and just laugh. Who cares? Now if they…

This is a very shortsighted, historically-ignorant take that singles out M2F trans folks disingenuously - there have been plenty of calls from all over society, from cis women to trans women to trans men to gay folks to straight folks to any and all racial groups.

No, let’s just ignore all the times this has happened in history and all the times other groups had raised similar points (their possible merits aside), pretend this is a new problem, and blame MTF folks for it.

Beware isolated standards of rigor, folks.

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

#305

Post by comte7092 »

jrm4 wrote: post #9

Lawyer 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 spec…

As is oft repeated, the law you refer to only applies to state action. The notion we could easily apply this to private individuals quickly breaks down.

Employee X gets fired for publicly stating that their employers products are trash, said employee sues, nothing about what they said was illegal.

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

#306

Post by hpen »

henrikschroder wrote: post #28
giantg2 wrote: post #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.

> The difficulty is knowing what the intent was. It's not a coincidence that the postmodern thoughts that underpin a lot of this bullshit simply does away with intent, declaring it to be completely useless, and saying that the only thing that can be used to judge a message is how it affected the recipient. Combine that with "words are violence", and you can manufacture physical abuse out of thin air. It's really not…

More like postmodernism throws away objectivity. Which In practice often leads to baseless assumptions about intent.

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

#307

Post by [deleted] »

flangola7 wrote: post #260
rajin444 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument always comes up too and you end up with certain people trying to force others to bake cakes a certain way. The whole idea of “protected classes” spits in the face of free speech. I think free speech is a noble goal but can only really exist when we don’t live in a zero sum world. Until then: > "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean. Neither more or less." Alice responded to Humpty Du…

The cake thing isn't about speech but public accomodations.

[deleted]

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

#308

Post by flangola7 »

Zetice wrote: post #127

Sigh, every single time this comes up, people gloss over the part of freedom of speech that involves free association. I’m free to say, “i hate ”, and you’re free to refuse to associate with me as a result of that. It’s so simple. The government can’t, but you can. As long as we all agree with that, then yeah freedom of speech is great, you just don’t get to stop applying it when you feel satisfied.

People also forget that freedom of expression isn't a license to go spreading harmful material that hurts people or undermines the values of democracy itself.

>Guarantee of rights and freedoms – section 1

> >1. Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

>...

>The rights and freedoms in the Charter are not absolute. They can be limited to protect other rights or important national values. For example, freedom of expression may be limited by laws against hate propaganda or child pornography.

https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/how-righ...

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

#309

Post by hpen »

My solution for banning any speech is that the rules have to be nearly unanimously voted in, and voted in for multiple (maybe 3?) presidential administrations. Things like banning the shoutout of “fire” in a theater. Some laws need to be low pass filtered.

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

#310

Post by notahacker »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #111

On the other hand, you can't have your liberal, intellectual society if you allow people to go around making credible threats of violence, which are "just speech" if you subscribe to the speech-is-speech, violence-is-violence approach. If you have to wait until the threat is realized, then any group capable of having members take the punishment for individual acts of violence can grant credibility to making threats t…

> The question is simply where the line gets drawn.

And that's one which people who consider themselves ardent defenders of free speech frequently miss. I mean, the linked article concludes with a quote insisting that people's speech should "stop short of demanding that the offender be punished or required to make restitution"... earlier in the piece the same author is quoted criticising "campaigns of vilification" and people being "pressed to recant" as the sort of speech which violates principles of liberalism.

That's absolutely drawing a line and putting a whole lot of non-violent, First Amendment-protected speech the wrong side of it, in the style of Popper's paradox-of-tolerance but with the line for what liberalism shouldn't tolerate in a slightly different place. In general, I'm quite amenable to their argument that publicly vilifying certain people in certain ways for things they've said is harmful to the pursuit of science, but I can't see any qualitative difference between that and the argument that certain people ranting about certain minorities might be harmful to individuals (and by dint of its effects on those individuals, also to the pursuit of science). The latter argument has a better evidence base than the argument that non-violent picketing of Milo Yiannopoulos puts the benefits of science at risk, and I don't think the slippery slope between disinviting Milo from Berkeley and fatwas against people accused of blasphemy is any steeper than that between being intolerant of fatwas but also intolerant of bullying and racism.

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