131–140 of 152 posts
(Bias: I’m lucky to live in a country that has a relatively good government, so I find it “easy” to imagine that it could work.)
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> People can make judgment calls. Those are opinions. I'm not sure that's a helpful distinction. In some sense, everything we classify as a 'fact' is a judgement call: is the sun a giant ball of fusing hydrogen? I mean, probably , but maybe we're all living in some sort simulation and it doesn't really exist at all; Or maybe you are living in your own personal "Truman Show", being fed lies by everyone who shows you s…
An opinion can't be falsified. "The sun is a giant ball of fusing hydrogen" has the possibility of being proven false. This means it's either a true or false fact. If I said "NYC is the capital of the United States"* I'm either lying or mistaken What makes it a lie vs mistaken? Whether it's a genuine belief, that I have a reason to have the belief. For example if I made the assumption it's the capital because it's th…
And even for claims which are in the realm of "fact", which are false, but which are truly believed, we need to be careful about suppressing truth. There was a time when "the sun goes around the earth" was accepted "scientific fact". Lots of flat-earthers genuinely believe the falsehoods they're spreading. Where do we draw the line between "healthy skepticism" and "dangerous falsehood"?
I don't have a clear answer, but I do think there needs to be a line.
Several European governments have jailed people for social media posts. Many Europeans support this - they don't understand how government censorship can quickly get out of hand. As for falsehoods: some people will be mistaken, some people will lie, and sometimes sarcasm will be misunderstood. Why should anyone be liable? It is on each individual to inform themselves, and to decide what to believe and what to disrega…
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> But one should realize that thorny words are precisely what replaces physical violence. No this is bullshit. The Nazis didn't kill the jews because they couldn't say mean things about them. The Nazis didn't purposely target trans people and gay people and mentally challenged people and political opponents because they couldn't slag them publicly. Germany did not become Nazis because of any lack of free speech. Peop…
These are examples of minorities being oppressed through physical violence. Minorities are still oppressed in democratic societies today because a democratic society by definition prioritizes the majority's interests. The difference is oppression used to be physical and involved a lot of killing, now it is done through non-violent means through words. That's what I meant by words replacing violence.
Southern preachers insisted that being enslaved was the black man's rightful place, as god intended, because they were naturally less intelligent and "savage" and needed good guidance from the white man.
I'm tired, after hundreds of years, of people still insisting "no no no, just a little more information freedom and humans will magically fix all their natural biases and magically stop acting like humans and magically stop believing what is comfortable instead of what is provably correct"
It's absolutely good to be much closer to the "Freer" side of that spectrum than the "government enforced muzzle" side, but I'm so tired of people insisting that we can't possibly wiggle around a little bit on the spectrum to find maybe a better place.
Oppression does not come from what laws you have. Oppression comes from how power works. It doesn't matter what laws you have on the books if you put people in charge who do not give a shit about them. It doesn't matter if you have the first amendment if you elect enough people to just disregard it and even change it if you want.
Rules aren't real. Rules don't matter unless you can enforce them. If you allow oppressive people into power, it doesn't matter how many times you write "don't oppress people"
What oppression has free speech demonstrably stopped?
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> I’d say if you can be jailed for a particular opinion Can you give an example of someone in a modern democracy jailed for their "opinion"? To wit, are the examples you're thinking of "statement of opinion", "statement of fact", "pejorative insult", or "incitement"? Saying "I think is an idiot" is an opinion. "The earth is flat" or "The holocaust never happened" are not opinions; neither is, "Kick out all the ." And…
https://www.counterterrorism.police.uk/man-from-harlow-jaile... https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yl7p4l11po https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_R%C3%BCmeysa_%C3%... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Mahmoud_Khalil
This isn't an opinion, it's incitement to a crime.
> Detention of Rümeysa Öztürk / Mahmoud Khalil
These clearly are for opinion, and are widely criticized as being vindictive and unconstitutional.
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> not as an oppressive tool, but as a safety valve for the society. This strikes me as just incorrect. What example from history shows totalitarianism being successfully avoided because of controls on speech? The first item in the totalitarian playbook is controlling speech, and there are historical examples of that in every single totalitarian regime that I'm aware of.
Well I can tell you from day-to-day experience in Germany that the fact it’s illegal to say „Heil Hitler“ and similar nazi slogans draws a very clear line between ordinary citizens and right extremists. It’s a good thing nobody can walk around and loudly proclaim their veneration for the darkest period in our history, for doing so makes them an enemy of our democracy and everything it stands for. A society has to hav…
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These are examples of minorities being oppressed through physical violence. Minorities are still oppressed in democratic societies today because a democratic society by definition prioritizes the majority's interests. The difference is oppression used to be physical and involved a lot of killing, now it is done through non-violent means through words. That's what I meant by words replacing violence.
No, that oppression definitely involved plenty of words before. The natives were "savages" and "in the way" and "weren't using the land" we said. Southern preachers insisted that being enslaved was the black man's rightful place, as god intended, because they were naturally less intelligent and "savage" and needed good guidance from the white man. I'm tired, after hundreds of years, of people still insisting "no no n…
But we are fixing our natural biases over time to get to the technological civilization we have today. Our beliefs align better with reality today than 500 years ago. That's why we can build computers which we're using to talk right now, but couldn't 500 years ago. Everybody is better off compared to 500 years ago. Information sharing accelerates this process.
> What oppression has free speech demonstrably stopped?
Free speech doesn't stop oppression, it replaces violence. Oppression is in human nature, or rather, in nature in general. When two individuals that share a local region of reality have misaligned wishes, they interfere with eachother. But how they interfere matters. Free speech changes the method of interaction, but not the essence of competition.
Two perfectly rational people can agree on a shared model of reality yet not agree on what actions to take next. People, although more similar than different, have different preferences. A modern democratic society simply places the majority's wishes first and oppresses minorities non-violently. It allows open negotiation to balance these wishes without resorting to violence.
Attacking one of the essential pillars of this society doesn't stop oppression, it just risks bringing back a worse form of it.
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Voat turned into a gathering place for racists because reddit at first only kicked those out - and became more fundamentalist only after voat was the well-known 'bad place for bad people' where 'respectable, but misunderstood people' did not linger. The frog cooks slowly. > If there is, it's certainly not a profitable product. I think this is the main issue: that we walled up our discussion plazas to make them 'profi…
All I know for sure about this is that the only platforms I use consistently have very strong moderation. I'm tempted to believe that for most practical purposes you cannot build a functional community without active moderation to which the users either explicitly or implicitly consent, so from my point of view many small, strongly moderated, platforms are better than one big unmoderated one, even if I can control wh…
I remember the time when it was en vouge for subreddits to ban people for participating in subreddits they personally disagree with (automated, regardless of how that participation took place).
You cannot have a free exchange of ideas with a centralised thought police. You can only have truly free communication if you yourself decide what you read, and what you block out.
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All I know for sure about this is that the only platforms I use consistently have very strong moderation. I'm tempted to believe that for most practical purposes you cannot build a functional community without active moderation to which the users either explicitly or implicitly consent, so from my point of view many small, strongly moderated, platforms are better than one big unmoderated one, even if I can control wh…
Oh, usenet was as strongly or weakly moderated as you wanted it to be - the moderation was done by yourself. This is much preferable to some underpaid kid with questionable understanding on how the world works deciding what reaches your eyes for you. I remember the time when it was en vouge for subreddits to ban people for participating in subreddits they personally disagree with (automated, regardless of how that pa…
For bigger platforms which operate as a public forum I think the case is stronger for weak moderation, but even in those situations a bad faith actor (say perhaps a state or corporate actor with a lot of money to blow on bots) can completely undermine the purpose of those forums. I really can't imagine how a transparent moderation policy in such a situation isn't at least practically useful. In the end you cannot have a free exchange of ideas if some parties are intentionally manipulating, trolling, or flooding the zone of exchange.
Congress isn't just a free for all of people yelling at eachother. There are rules, not to moderate free speech, but to just make hundreds of people cooperating a possibility.