A university president makes a case against cowardice • Hacker News Board

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#861

Post by slg » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 4:56 PM UTC

mancerayder wrote: post #804

slg wrote: post #746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Are you arguing with me or the person I am replying to? The way some people use the internet truly puzzle me. A username is on each comment. I made a comment, you replied, and I replied back. I wasn't arguing with myself. You took the time to reiterate your philosophy in more depth without even bothering to first take the literal second to check the usernames to clear up your confusion or pausing for a moment to act…

Because it's not that great a question: How do you define protected speech when the same speech is used to punish someone else, and if it's an expression for example, that performs an action, how do we draw the line if it should be protected? That's what you asked. It's not a username issue. I didn't read it as a direct reply because I hadn't conceptualized that stopping speech is protected speech. Or is the Internet…

>You don't agree, but does that better address the problem you raised?

No, because you still aren't addressing the underlying point. Protesting is protected speech. Protesting in response to speech is therefore also protected speech despite it being a consequence. You are refusing to engage with this simple example that shows the inherent contradiction of your philosophy.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#862

Post by rendall » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 5:25 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #685

rendall wrote: post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I bet you're thinking you're really clever with that context switch. I was actually talking about nazis, because posts above were complaining about left-wing cancel culture getting people fired from their jobs which is the sort of consequence that happened to quite a few extremely online nazis over the last decade. Who taught you to argue like this? They didn't do you any favors.

Advocating for free speech does indeed mean defending the rights of people to say reprehensible things, including those who advocate for deeply offensive or dangerous ideas. But it's important to be clear-eyed about the historical record.

The Nazis did not rise because of an excess of free speech. During the Weimar Republic, there were hate speech laws and Nazi publications were censored or banned multiple times. Hitler himself was banned from public speaking in several German states in the 1920s. Despite that, the Nazi movement grew, driven not by open dialogue but by a mix of economic despair, nationalism, violent intimidation, and institutional weakness.

Far from championing free speech, the Nazis used paramilitary violence to silence opponents even before seizing power. Once in control, they moved quickly to eliminate all free expression, banning parties, censoring the press, imprisoning dissenters.

So if anything, the historical lesson is that censorship and suppression didn’t stop fascism, and that once authoritarians gain power, their first move is often to destroy free speech entirely.

Free speech is a super power. Strong free speech rights require defending the rights of terrible people to say terrible things. That doesn’t mean what they’re saying is good. It just means that it's easy to defend the rights of meaningless or popular speech, but your own right to truly speak your mind is only as strong as the rights of those you disagree with most. Someday, something you believe passionately might be seen as reprehensible by the majority.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#863

Post by mancerayder » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 5:31 PM UTC

slg wrote: post #861

mancerayder wrote: post #804

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's not that great a question: How do you define protected speech when the same speech is used to punish someone else, and if it's an expression for example, that performs an action, how do we draw the line if it should be protected? That's what you asked. It's not a username issue. I didn't read it as a direct reply because I hadn't conceptualized that stopping speech is protected speech. Or is the Internet…

>You don't agree, but does that better address the problem you raised? No, because you still aren't addressing the underlying point. Protesting is protected speech. Protesting in response to speech is therefore also protected speech despite it being a consequence. You are refusing to engage with this simple example that shows the inherent contradiction of your philosophy.

It's not 'protesting' to blackball someone from a job. It's that you defined speech in your own way, and are resisting taking a step back and thinking about freedom of speech as an abstract principle or tenet.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#864

Post by immibis » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 6:56 PM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #791

wat10000 wrote: post #781

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scenario being discussed is employers looking at employees’ public statements, or third parties telling employers about those public statements. I don’t think that’s anything close to harassment.

No actually. It is never just that. The question was about "to get a social media frenzy going". And this is never just an employer randomly looking at a tweet, for which they are almost never going to do anything about it. Most employers don't care. Instead, the much more likely scenario is mass points of harassment, stalking, and death threats targeted at people's friends and family, when such a "social media frenz…

The topic was someone telling your employer about something bad that you did.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#865

Post by immibis » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 6:57 PM UTC

thyristan wrote: post #832

megous wrote: post #783

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several counterexamples recently: https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/video-donald-trump-germany-cr... 22:20 ("social center raid for a progressive resistance flyer") 26:20 ("hate crimes") 30:25 (shutting down a congress) ...

Those are not counterexamples, you are agreeing with me. There is no such thing as free speech in Germany, only some weaker right. There are laws limiting speech, and actually (as that article seems to complain about) they are applied to citizens and non-citizens equally, meaning that even a Jewish citizen of Israel can be deported from Germany for uttering anti-semitic statemens. Everyone arrested should have known…

If Germany keeps finding that Jewish citizens of Israel are being antisemitic and wishing for their own deaths, perhaps it's actually Germany's antisemitism detector that is miscalibrated?

Not many people in Germany dare to bring this up, because suggesting that German's antisemitism detector could be miscalibrated, is, itself, something which Germany detects as antisemitism. Which, if you think for more than five milliseconds, is further evidence that it might be the case.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#866

Post by 47282847 » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 7:08 PM UTC

ath3nd wrote: post #842

jgalt212 wrote: post #839

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, I bet many have thanked their boss for the opportunity given to them. This statement of gratitude is a tacit acknowledgement of salary.

> But, I bet many have thanked their boss for the opportunity given to them. I literally don't know anybody who has any desire of expressing gratitude to their boss for the "opportunity" given to them. What kind of servile lapdogs do consider their work an "opportunity"? How about the bosses realize that without workers, their businesses will implode, and thank their workers for the "opportunity" to have a working bu…

I agree in general with your points, except that I believe both parties “should“ (can) be grateful for each other and in that acknowledge they both need each other. It’s nice for wellbeing to be grateful for everything good that happens, it doesn’t necessarily imply servitude.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#867

Post by mpweiher » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 7:19 PM UTC

immibis wrote: post #844

mpweiher wrote: post #833

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The police banned speaking any language other than German or English. Incorrect. That was a court order, because people were quite obviously subverting the prohibition of calling for genocide by using languages law enforcement does not understand. > I don't actually know any Jews (or Muslims), I know both Jews and Muslins: you are incredibly wrong.

"You are incredibly wrong." is such a great rebuttal. It applies in any situation and you don't even have to bring any evidence. My rebuttal to your rebuttal: You are incredibly wrong. (And who cares if it was the police or the courts? Both are branches of the government. And if the court order was as you described, then why did the police march someone off in handcuffs for speaking Arabic privately to another person…

It is sufficient when you admit that you actually have no data to back up your claims.

And if you can't tell, or don't care about, the difference between police overreach and the police enforcing the law of the land, we don't have anything further to discuss.

Have a good day.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#868

Post by saagarjha » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 8:30 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #809

saagarjha wrote: post #802

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do. Look up “Tokyo firebombing” on Wikipedia and I guarantee you there is a modern analysis of indiscriminate civilian casualties being analyzed as war crimes. Of course not everyone is willing to participate in that discussion but it does exist.

Nah. I don't know which "we" you're referring to but Wikipedia isn't a valid source for anything more controversial than Pokemon episode summaries. Many of the articles are highly biased depending on which clique of editors managed to gain control. Intelligent people don't take it seriously. That aside, I have seen a loony fringe of revisionist historians and lawyers level spurious claims of "war crimes" against Alli…

That’s…not how war crimes work. If you conduct an attack that indiscriminately kills civilians, or torture prisoners of war, or deploy chemical weapons, those are all war crimes even if you say you’ll stop the moment you win. By your definition nothing would ever be a war crime because when one side unconditionally surrenders the war is over. Doing these things outside of an active conflict is state-sponsored terrorism or genocide instead.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#869

Post by ath3nd » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 8:36 PM UTC

47282847 wrote: post #866

ath3nd wrote: post #842

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But, I bet many have thanked their boss for the opportunity given to them. I literally don't know anybody who has any desire of expressing gratitude to their boss for the "opportunity" given to them. What kind of servile lapdogs do consider their work an "opportunity"? How about the bosses realize that without workers, their businesses will implode, and thank their workers for the "opportunity" to have a working bu…

I agree in general with your points, except that I believe both parties “should“ (can) be grateful for each other and in that acknowledge they both need each other. It’s nice for wellbeing to be grateful for everything good that happens, it doesn’t necessarily imply servitude.

> except that I believe both parties “should“ (can) be grateful for each other and in that acknowledge they both need each other.

Hard disagree on both needing each other.

Employers can't exist or build their own riches without workers, while workers have existed for thousands of years, much before employers. If we are considering the relationship in adversarial terms, always remember that workers are the only ones actually producing anything of value.

Without workers, garbage won't be collected, water won't be delivered to households, buildings won't be built, and food won't be grown.

The people pushing the paternalistic narrative telling us that we should be "grateful" for the "opportunity" to merely work for a wage have forgotten the French Revolution, the Bolshevik revolution, and all the strikes and revolutions of workers that have advanced our rights to where we have them today. The 5 day work week and the 9-to-5, child labor protections, and workers' rights were not brought to you by the employers. In fact, employers often actively resisted those, and had to be put in their rightful place by their workers.

> It’s nice for wellbeing to be grateful for everything good that happens

Judging by what happened to the employers and the rich during the workers' revolutions, it's probably a good advice for the wellbeing of the work-givers to start practicing daily gratitude towards their own employees. You see, it's just the workers that find themselves more often in the possession of pitchforks and torches.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#870

Post by slg » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 9:55 PM UTC

mancerayder wrote: post #863

slg wrote: post #861

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You don't agree, but does that better address the problem you raised? No, because you still aren't addressing the underlying point. Protesting is protected speech. Protesting in response to speech is therefore also protected speech despite it being a consequence. You are refusing to engage with this simple example that shows the inherent contradiction of your philosophy.

It's not 'protesting' to blackball someone from a job. It's that you defined speech in your own way, and are resisting taking a step back and thinking about freedom of speech as an abstract principle or tenet.

>It's not 'protesting' to blackball someone from a job.

Can you be specific here? What part isn't protesting? Should it be illegal to stand outside a business with a protest sign? What about organizing a boycott? Or even a decentralized and completely grassroots boycott? Should it be illegal to make the personal decision to not buy a company's product due to something said by one of their employees? Or would it be the company listening to protesters and firing the employee that should be illegal? What if the boycotts gain traction and it becomes the prudent financial decision to fire the employee? Does the company have an obligation to keep that employee forever even if it eventually leads to them going out of business?

>are resisting taking a step back and thinking about freedom of speech as an abstract principle or tenet.

Yes, that is what I have been trying to communicate to you. This principle you have of consequence free speech can only exist as a principle. Once it interacts with the complexities of the real world it becomes impossible to actually define, legislate, and enforce fairly. Your refusal to actually engage with my specific questions and examples suggests that you know this at least subconsciously. You don't want to say that protesting should be illegal, so instead you relabel it as "to blackball someone from a job". That relabeling makes it acceptable to be against it.