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My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

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Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#111

Post by lmm »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #82
lmm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The “ideal” of free speech would uphold everyone being able to speak in whatever manner they choose. If you’re an economic loser as a result, that is not a failure of free speech, that is a failure of society to protect you from free speech. Not even the most repressive societies physically prevent people from speaking - they just impose distinctly unpleasant consequences on those who speak in undesirable things. T…

> The fact that we impose negative consequences for undesirable speech via different mechanisms than the direct actions of government agents does not make what we're doing fundamentally different. It absolutely does. There is a fundamental difference between "go to jail because of your speech" and "people don't want to do business with you because of your speech". The former is making speech illegal ; the latter is t…

> It absolutely does. There is a fundamental difference between "go to jail because of your speech" and "people don't want to do business with you because of your speech". The former is making speech illegal; the latter is the fundamental right of every person to decide who they associate with.

"Illegal" is just a word; if the village locks you in a cage, or hangs you, it doesn't make any real difference whether they signed some pretty documents first or not. And if rather than hanging you they "exercise their fundamental right to decide who they associate with" and refuse to sell you food, or allow you to forage on their land, well, you end up just as dead. Extreme example obviously, but that's the direction we're heading in. We already recognise that enough individuals choosing not to associate with someone adds up to a denial of that person's rights, otherwise we would never have antidiscrimination laws.

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#112

Post by lmm »

carlosjobim wrote: post #45
lmm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The “ideal” of free speech would uphold everyone being able to speak in whatever manner they choose. If you’re an economic loser as a result, that is not a failure of free speech, that is a failure of society to protect you from free speech. Not even the most repressive societies physically prevent people from speaking - they just impose distinctly unpleasant consequences on those who speak in undesirable things. T…

> Not even the most repressive societies physically prevent people from speaking - they just impose distinctly unpleasant consequences on those who speak in undesirable things. Help me understand what you mean by this. To me it sounds like saying somebody was not shot, he just didn't step out of the way of the bullet. Do you mean people are not prevented from speaking because their mouths aren't literally sewn shut?

> To me it sounds like saying somebody was not shot, he just didn't step out of the way of the bullet. Do you mean people are not prevented from speaking because their mouths aren't literally sewn shut?

Exactly. So "just because something bad happened to you after your speech doesn't mean you didn't have free speech" is thoroughly fallacious.

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#113

Post by vacuity »

rpmisms wrote: post #104
vacuity wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone has biases, and you're not exempt. If you know that your language might be grossly misinterpreted, consider changing it, if only for your own image. > If I say "Christian Communities hate gays", you'll probably think of one or two specific communities. That might be true for me, but I'm thinking of "Protestant Christian evangelicals and co." as one community, so...

> If you know that your language might be grossly misinterpreted, consider changing it, if only for your own image. No, if only to make a point. > That might be true for me, but I'm thinking of "Protestant Christian evangelicals and co." as one community, so... Yup. What I expected. I'm positively full of bias, and happy to admit it.

And my point is that "Muslim communities bombed Israel" is not an obviously reasonable statement. If Reuters or AP posted an article with that phrasing, I'd wonder if some party other than Hamas was fighting Israel now. At that point, why not just say "Muslims bombed Israel"? It's technically true but also wildly disingenuous. You'd have to qualify it with a bunch of details in order to make it an honest, good-faith statement.

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#114

Post by lmm »

eapressoandcats wrote: post #77
lmm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The “ideal” of free speech would uphold everyone being able to speak in whatever manner they choose. If you’re an economic loser as a result, that is not a failure of free speech, that is a failure of society to protect you from free speech. Not even the most repressive societies physically prevent people from speaking - they just impose distinctly unpleasant consequences on those who speak in undesirable things. T…

If you think people in oppressive regimes get due process in court then I have a bridge to sell you. I think trivializing harm is bad but at the end of the day I think you will concede that there is a speech line which can be crossed beyond which you will be fired. Otherwise people could just be cruel and mean to everyone around them and face no consequences. Once you believe that then really all we are doing is hagg…

> If you think people in oppressive regimes get due process in court then I have a bridge to sell you.

Plenty of respected countries with strong civil liberties don't have US-style free speech laws. Holocaust denial in Germany is a crime, but you'll absolutely get full due process first.

> I think you will concede that there is a speech line which can be crossed beyond which you will be fired. Otherwise people could just be cruel and mean to everyone around them and face no consequences.

Merely ten or twenty years ago it would've been very mainstream to say that people have every right to be as cruel or mean as they like as long as they don't cross from word to action, and that while private individuals might well shun someone who was known to be cruel and mean in their private capacity, it would be a bizarre overreach for an employer to fire them because they were cruel and mean off the clock, or a business to refuse to serve them because they were cruel and mean outside of their relations with that business.

> Even if we’re not talking about official action and are talking about group vigilantism, I think we’d agree that if someone had well documented nazi and racist activities outside of work that it would be ok for people to ostracize that person?

I think it's obviously ok for people to not want to be friends with a person like that, and to not allow them in their social clubs. Equally I think it would obviously not be ok to lock them up, confiscate their property, or deny them medical treatment - certainly not without full due process, and even then, political opinions (again, as long as they remain opinion and don't pass from speech to act) are something explicitly recognised as a human right in the UN charter. In a country with a strong social safety net, refusing to employ someone doesn't come close to any of that - but in a country where no job means no medical coverage and a real risk of losing access to food and shelter...

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#115

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

bad_username wrote: post #9
Pat_Murph wrote: post #7

" In my view, too many critics of “cancel culture” are recklessly promoting not the speech of the powerless, but the censorious resentment of the powerful." Yep, to often when i see these anti woke, cultur war, anti cancel culture critics. What they are actually doing is attacking people's free speech and defending the authoritarians that are actually trying to limit speech and other rights. They convinced themselves…

Let me divert from Musk specifically for a moment. The "anti woke cancel culture critics" are in fact concerned with the inorganic, overwhelming influence that a specific family of ideologies has today over the means of modern communication. Observe the similarity with the left themselves, who are concerned with the inorganic, overwhelming influence that a specific class of wealthy people have today over the means of…

People are sheepl, that's why they baa so awfully, large and loud in a brainwashed crowd.

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#116

Post by b112 »

mindslight wrote: post #99
b112 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people will wise up to the idea that sufficiently coercive corporations are indistinguishable from government and vice-versa I will 100% agree that large-corp is a threat to democracy, and specific freedoms. But indistinguishable? Come on. A government can prevent you from speaking your mind, via legislation and the judicial branch. In terms of raw power, they have the capability to throw you in jail, they can detain…

Ah, here we go with emphasizing the dichotomy. As I said, the important part for comparison is the amount of control being exerted . Jail is certainly a pretty strong deterrent. But it's actually not as strong as say not being able to eat. Which is contingent upon there being enough competition [0] between providers of food such they can't exercise coercive power. And the surveillance industry has been steadily destr…

I just think it's vital to not even mention the two in the same sentence. You seem to agree with me, in one respect, for you cite how you wish to focus on control. I'm all for that.

But each of these two controlling aspects of our lives, are different entities, with different ways to address, rebuke, curtail, and prevent that control. And the control they each exert is unique. This is why I replied, for even though you stated you didn't want to focus on the dichotomy, you brought it up, and waved it away, stating it was not relevant for this discussion.

But it is. It is, because each of these entities must be fought in unique ways.

I think we mostly agree here on the large points. It's just nuance we're debating.

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#117

Post by tstrimple »

whatshisface wrote: post #105
spdustin wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A DoS is a theft of computer resources. Since that's specifically a crime in most jurisdictions, it's not protected speech.

Is pestering someone a theft of attention?

It can certainly bridge into harassment.

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#118

Post by wredcoll »

somenameforme wrote: post #66
felixgallo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there is little more painful than ostracism? Tell that to the tens of millions of graves that Nazis and Fascists littered Europe with, within living memory. All this pearl clutching about cancel culture is just a naked attempt to permit the normalization of Fascism, gay bashing, Jew hating, and pushing down the Blacks again, in order to energize the last vestiges of the aging-out conservative right wing. 'there is li…

I'm not sure many understand the historical context of the rise of the Nazis. Germany had just ended up on the losing side of "the war to end all wars" or WW1. In the Treaty of Versailles, which Germany was not allowed to participate in the negotiation of, they were forced to accept all guilt for the war, give up vast tracts of land, and then pay an a unpayable amount on top, which many even at the time argued was ex…

> In the Treaty of Versailles, which Germany was not allowed to participate in the negotiation of, they were forced to accept all guilt for the war, give up vast tracts of land, and then pay an a unpayable amount on top, which many even at the time argued was excessively myopic.

This repeats several depressingly common myths. For starters, germany was "forced to accept all guilt" (several other countries were considered "guilty" by those treaties) because they were guilty. While not the sole participant, they actively encouraged the starting of the war and then immediately took advantage of it by invading france.

After spending 4 years of brutal fighting literally just to make the germans go home, the people defending themselves were more than a bit mad.

As to the famous war debt, for one thing its size wasn't much larger, relatively speaking, to the debt germany had just imposed on france a generation previously after france lost a war in which they invaded germany. This kind of war reparations was extremely common, and while obviously burdensome, hardly an excuse to launch another global war of conquest.

Much like france and its war debt, germany could have easily paid what it owed without collapsing. One of the thing the nazis and friends deliberately did was cause hyperinflation in order to both decrease the debt and to encourage anger among the populace to hopefully cause them to "rebel" against the existing leadership and support the extremists in thr nazi party.

Even after hitler took power (as you point out, at best semi-democratically) germany's economy was no worse off than any of the other major powers going through the depression, but instead of doing public works like america did, hitler deliberately allocated an unsustainable amount of money into war production, money that obviously had zero return to the german people. A large part of the reason hitler started invading when he did was because they had basically run out of money and their choice was use their expensive army or sell it off in order to buy food and oil.

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#120

Post by rpmisms »

vacuity wrote: post #113
rpmisms wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you know that your language might be grossly misinterpreted, consider changing it, if only for your own image. No, if only to make a point. > That might be true for me, but I'm thinking of "Protestant Christian evangelicals and co." as one community, so... Yup. What I expected. I'm positively full of bias, and happy to admit it.

And my point is that "Muslim communities bombed Israel" is not an obviously reasonable statement. If Reuters or AP posted an article with that phrasing, I'd wonder if some party other than Hamas was fighting Israel now. At that point, why not just say "Muslims bombed Israel"? It's technically true but also wildly disingenuous. You'd have to qualify it with a bunch of details in order to make it an honest, good-faith…

But it's the literal truth, and using a descriptor on a group of people acting does not attribute the action to all people who fit the descriptor. Not all mammals are dogs, and that shouldn't need to be said.
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