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Rowan Atkinson on free speech (2012) [video]

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Re: Rowan Atkinson on free speech (2012) [video]

#151

Post by redeeman »

diego_moita wrote: post #93
Towaway69 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do wonder how humans made it this far. 60000 years and speech seemed to work fine. Now it becomes a complex issue needing complicated laws that restrict instead of allowing more speech. One is constantly checking which terminology one is now allowed to use for minorities without offending. Humans have inbuilt biases that we won't be able to get rid off with more laws. Ironically if we look closely at AIs, they are…

Bullshit. For most of those 60000 years speech didn't work "fine" at all. The majority of people that lived in those times where ruled by empires that had nothing resembling free speech or the rule of the law. You wouldn't even think of bad things against the King or Church in Europe before the 19th century. Same goes to Middle Eastern Empires, Chinese dynasties, the Japanese emperors or Shoguns, etc. Even less than…

> And your "inbuilt biases" are just a justification for sexism, racism and other forms of discrimination created by specific historic circumstances. There is no "inbuilt" basis for discrimination.

bullshit, a 100% plain "non-tainted" human sees a sabretooth tiger, you can be pretty damn sure some big biases sets in.

see another human, and biases do too, the more they differ, the more the biases sets in, and this goes for more or less anything, not just sex, "race", but more or less anything.

Humans however, are pretty smart, and what people generally call racism today, has mostly nothing to do with builtin biases, like when someone is called a monkey for being black. In many cases, people who are labelled racists today arent even racist. I would recommend watching the southpark episode regarding the town flag for further education on this subject (yes, really, I dare you)

Re: Rowan Atkinson on free speech (2012) [video]

#152

Post by MrDrDr »

Towaway69 wrote: post #34
MrDrDr wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the sentiment of what you are saying. I agree with Mr Atkinson (and Obama apparently) that the solution to speech that causes offence is more speech. The problems as I see it are twofold. The first is that 'more speech' presumably means better speech, better rhetoric, better arguments, and I don't see many people in society these days with these skills. If anything universities have taken backwards step…

If everyone is identifiable all the time then you have a totalitarian state. Free speech is the first thing that flys out the window. And what about whistle blowers or rape victims - should they be identifiable to those they accuse? Edit: What about walking along the street, I bump into someone and say sorry. Should I be identifiable to the other person? If not, Where's the limit/cut-off for identifiable? If yes, wha…

I agree - but I also think the opposite does not make a good society - a society where everyone can act with anonymity. I was quite impressed with Matt Ridley's book 'The Origins of Virtue' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origins_of_Virtue) it makes the argument that we evolved the capacity for altruism from the evolutionary benefits of reciprocity. IMO there is a marked difference between city culture - where the chances of meeting a random person in the street again is virtually zero, and village/rural culture where if you don't know the person you bump into you are almost certainly going to be separated by a single degree. The former culture being less 'polite' that the latter.

My point is that, while we should have the freedom to speak, we should expect our speech to have some social consequences that should at least cause us to pause and consider those consequences. And I accept that there should be a balance here.

I would not want to live in a society that banned anonymous social media accounts, but I do think it would be an interesting experiment to have a civic social space where everyone was identifiable.

Re: Rowan Atkinson on free speech (2012) [video]

#153

Post by dmbche »

mellosouls wrote: post #26
dmbche wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What books were banned by "the left"?

I was commenting on "restrictions on speech", of which book banning is a historically symbolic example but less relevant in the modern age. In the West the left has dominated restricting speech.

What speech is restricted? I have nothing I can't say as long as it's not hateful/diffamatory, and if I do say it I can be sued for damages. What are we referring to?

Re: Rowan Atkinson on free speech (2012) [video]

#154

Post by dmbche »

nsajko wrote: post #57
indy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(At the risk of having my comment turn gray) The entire concept of "hate speech", the concept of "dead naming", anyone who thinks "words are violence" and therefore retaliation with physical violence is justified. These are all forms of attack upon free speech and there have been instances of these in universities for the past decade.

I agree that "dead naming" and other LGBT-related concepts are anti-intellectual, but it's not clear that any of your examples are at all related to free speech. A part of the problem is that "free speech" is mostly a buzzword, having no clear definition or meaning, except through case law.

How is that antiintellectual? I must misunderstand - do you mean we should dead name people? I'm confused.

Re: Rowan Atkinson on free speech (2012) [video]

#155

Post by dmbche »

satisfice wrote: post #128
djur wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is "deadnaming" an attack on free speech? It's always been considered discourteous to refer to people by a name they don't go by.

I’ve been alive a long time and I never went to a meeting where this was discussed or decided. I’ve never heard of such a meeting. And it doesn’t make sense. If you spend part of your life in a certain identity, and you interact with people under that identity, and they know you that way, banning people from talking about you in that identity is discourteous to THEM. You are laying a claim on other people’s minds tha…

Ha - it's a little funny that the biggest issue you can find with using the right name is a guy who was on cereal boxes. It sure seems like it's not that big a deal for you - sure seems like a big deal to them.

Re: Rowan Atkinson on free speech (2012) [video]

#156

Post by dmbche »

mellosouls wrote: post #29
dmbche wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any examples come to mind? I feel most people are pretty free to voice their thoughts

After years of people being genuinely damaged in their careers and reputation it is disappointing that these disingenuous questions ("sealioning") are still asked in threads like these. Here's a start for you: https://www.google.com/search?q=cancel+culture+examples

Under what circumstances do you believe someone is to be fired from their job? I'm sure you will be able to argue that some forms of speech can fit that bill in some circumstances.

Edit: I find it a little funny that all the examples at the top of this page ( godaddy, aunt jemima, urban outfitters and the like) are all still in operation, so I don't know how cancelled they got?

All these stories sure sound like customers deciding to bring their business elsewhere after public relations debacles. This is not free speech related - it's just the free market baby

Re: Rowan Atkinson on free speech (2012) [video]

#157

Post by mindslight »

jl6 wrote: post #129
mindslight wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, Reddit is used by plenty of children (regardless of COPPA). Many have tacit approval of their parents, who don't look too hard at what Reddit contains past the front page. And Reddit most certainly wants to be a place for children (age 13-17). So what children have access to is part of both issues. Second, does this "Florida issue" include provisions for parents of children that want their children to be able…

> Second, does this "Florida issue" include provisions for parents of children that want their children to be able to access those books, to opt out of the restrictions in question? Yes, it does: they are perfectly free to buy or borrow those books themselves. The law is about what’s available in a public school.

That's not an opt out, but rather routing around. And you can make the same argument about online forums - forum owners' decisions are about what is appropriate for their desired audience, and users are perfectly free to seek out their desired type of comments from other forums.

I'm not making an argument about what level of opinionated curation is appropriate or justified. Rather it's just disingenuous to say something is censorship when the other team nominally supports it, but then throw out specific reasons why your team's favored censorship shouldn't actually be considered censorship. There are always legitimate sounding reasons for centralized distributors to police the content of speech, and it's also always censorship.

Re: Rowan Atkinson on free speech (2012) [video]

#158

Post by dmbche »

indy wrote: post #33
dmbche wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any examples come to mind? I feel most people are pretty free to voice their thoughts

(At the risk of having my comment turn gray) The entire concept of "hate speech", the concept of "dead naming", anyone who thinks "words are violence" and therefore retaliation with physical violence is justified. These are all forms of attack upon free speech and there have been instances of these in universities for the past decade.

So you are angry that you can't freely talk about killing n** and Jews or call trans people things they ask you not to call them to by without getting sued for damages? Just to make sure what is the crux of your issue with free speech here.

Re: Rowan Atkinson on free speech (2012) [video]

#159

Post by nsajko »

dmbche wrote: post #154
nsajko wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that "dead naming" and other LGBT-related concepts are anti-intellectual, but it's not clear that any of your examples are at all related to free speech. A part of the problem is that "free speech" is mostly a buzzword, having no clear definition or meaning, except through case law.

How is that antiintellectual? I must misunderstand - do you mean we should dead name people? I'm confused.

I'm referring to the tendency to try to forbid any mention of a person's former name. I don't mind using someone's preferred name, I mind the historical revisionism each time someone comes out of the closet.

Similarly with forcing people to use preferred pronouns, I don't mind calling someone by their preferred name or pronoun in general, but courtesy has limits. Furthermore, imposing linguistic changes on other people is literally Orwellian.

Re: Rowan Atkinson on free speech (2012) [video]

#160

Post by satisfice »

kaba0 wrote: post #136
satisfice wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been alive a long time and I never went to a meeting where this was discussed or decided. I’ve never heard of such a meeting. And it doesn’t make sense. If you spend part of your life in a certain identity, and you interact with people under that identity, and they know you that way, banning people from talking about you in that identity is discourteous to THEM. You are laying a claim on other people’s minds tha…

So if you tell people that you prefer John to Johnny, and they continue calling you Johnny, they are not scumbags? That’s such a trivial, no effort courtesy on another human being’s part that I fail to see all this talk about it. Just.. fucking call people by the name they ask you to. Also, no sane person would get angry at the occasional fuck up in naming them if your intentions are good. Just be a decent person.

You are committing a worse version of that scumbaggery right now. I told you my argument and you reply as if I said something different.

I am not talking about the fact that my sister converted to Hinduism and now, instead of Kristelle, she likes to be called Gauri. We call her Gauri to her face. But her siblings, when discussing events with her in our past, still refer to her as Kristelle amongst each other. That was her identity then. Doing this is not being a jerk.

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