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The fight to publish Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’

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Re: The fight to publish Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’

#21

Post by alkibiades »

peteretep wrote: post #17
nullc wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the US standing almost alone among developed nations and even the ACLU backing away from its policy of defending impolitic or hurtful speech we can probably expect this recent anomaly of free expression to be relatively short lived. I'm glad I got to live now and not some other time.

Could you briefly outline how you think the USA has benefitted from this freedom, in a way that other rich Western countries haven’t? I guess I’m specifically thinking of Australia, New Zealand, UK, Canada, as all have broadly similar legal systems and robust judiciaries / policing, but not the singular focus on free speech.

are you really asking someone to justify how people benefit from freedom?

Re: The fight to publish Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’

#22

Post by brigandish »

peteretep wrote: post #20
exolymph wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about a lot fewer people being jailed or otherwise punished by authorities for expressing their opinions? The UK has gotten positively absurd. You can be forced to talk to cops about un-PC tweets. Example: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/01/24/man-investigated... I'm against transphobia, but not being able to vocally dissent on a certain politically loaded topic... that shit is bad.

> a lot fewer people being jailed or otherwise punished by authorities for expressing their opinions To be absolutely clear, "their opinions" here (in the example you gave, and presumably what you're referring to) is hate speech, which the US allows[0]. What advantages have accrued to the US through hate speech being protected, in your opinion? You say "a lot fewer people being jailed", but a quick scan of, say, UK c…

From The Times[1]:

> More than 3,300 people were detained and questioned last year over so-called trolling on social media and other online forums

13 forces declined to give the information which means it is very likely to be far higher. That was a couple of years ago and it appears to be increasing.

As to advantages of free speech, social freedoms are strongly correlated with economic freedom, and hence, economic success. Simply to look at an ordered list by GDP would correlate with free speech strongly. Even the anomolies would support it, like China, by using a historical chart.

Are hate speech laws making Europe safer? Maybe it would be better if you tried to show that with some statistics.

[1] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-arresting-nine-peo...

Re: The fight to publish Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’

#23

Post by peteretep »

brigandish wrote: post #22
peteretep wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a lot fewer people being jailed or otherwise punished by authorities for expressing their opinions To be absolutely clear, "their opinions" here (in the example you gave, and presumably what you're referring to) is hate speech, which the US allows[0]. What advantages have accrued to the US through hate speech being protected, in your opinion? You say "a lot fewer people being jailed", but a quick scan of, say, UK c…

From The Times[1]: > More than 3,300 people were detained and questioned last year over so-called trolling on social media and other online forums 13 forces declined to give the information which means it is very likely to be far higher. That was a couple of years ago and it appears to be increasing. As to advantages of free speech, social freedoms are strongly correlated with economic freedom, and hence, economic su…

> As to advantages of free speech, social freedoms are strongly correlated with economic freedom, and hence, economic success. Simply to look at an ordered list by GDP would correlate with free speech strongly.

I suspect you have not done your research

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...

But, the question I originally asked remains, although I'll restate it to make it even easier to answer. You are tasked with convincing a newly formed republic to add a constitutional right to free speech like the USA, rather than free-ish speech like Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK. What are your arguments, based on these countries? What has the US gained over these countries from that free speech, exactly?

Re: The fight to publish Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’

#24

Post by peteretep »

alkibiades wrote: post #21
peteretep wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you briefly outline how you think the USA has benefitted from this freedom, in a way that other rich Western countries haven’t? I guess I’m specifically thinking of Australia, New Zealand, UK, Canada, as all have broadly similar legal systems and robust judiciaries / policing, but not the singular focus on free speech.

are you really asking someone to justify how people benefit from freedom?

Yes. I think most people would strongly argue against "more freedom" when it came to their neighbors being "free" to store large quantities of explosives in their house, for example.

Re: The fight to publish Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’

#26

Post by richardhod »

dang wrote: post #15
mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's helpful, thanks for the reply! Are all sites deemed political down-weighted equally? Is this a manually curated list or also algorithmically determined somehow? Are there other categories / topics that sites might be placed in that affect their ranking? The problem of trying to apply weights to domains and/or specific submissions based on some idea of how well they fit the ethos of the site seems like an inter…

Yes, primarily-political sites are downweighted equally. And yes, there are other kinds of site that get penalized. For example, most major media sites produce more lightweight articles than substantive ones, so are marked that way in our system. I should mention, though, that there are plenty of ways for such penalties to be overridden, besides moderators turning them off manually. For example, they don't apply to s…

Thank you for this enlightening addition. I certainly was not complaining about the article's presence here, but rather instead warning against the rest of a particularlyedangerously truthy political site. Your context really helps us in general not worry too much, knowing that you have your human eye on submissions. Nonetheless, since people often look around a site after reading a first article, i think such a warning is warranted most times such a particularly egregious site posts a rarely decent article.

Re: The fight to publish Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’

#27

Post by richardhod »

yarrel wrote: post #5
richardhod wrote: post #4

I think many here learned to appreciate this poem from HN postings of this analysis of Howl: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ SSC is a great site, and if you haven't, please do have a look^. Do please, however, be aware that spiked-online is pretty alt-right and politically extreme, and although this is a decent historical piece, most articles there are of the ultra-neocon and angry cable…

Spiked Online is a successor to Living Marxism magazine. It's left contrarianism of the horseshoe theory kind.

Only partly true, I'm afraid. This source is hard right. I don't want to go down a non HN- rabbit hole bc we're here to talk mostly about tech and information related things, but in extreme cases it's worth noting. I had also once thought Soiked was left wing, its editorial bears no resemblance to the old Left whatsoever. You might call it alt-right-libertarian, and funded by the notorious Koch brothers. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Spiked

Re: The fight to publish Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’

#28

Post by Kalium »

peteretep wrote: post #17
nullc wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the US standing almost alone among developed nations and even the ACLU backing away from its policy of defending impolitic or hurtful speech we can probably expect this recent anomaly of free expression to be relatively short lived. I'm glad I got to live now and not some other time.

Could you briefly outline how you think the USA has benefitted from this freedom, in a way that other rich Western countries haven’t? I guess I’m specifically thinking of Australia, New Zealand, UK, Canada, as all have broadly similar legal systems and robust judiciaries / policing, but not the singular focus on free speech.

English defamation law makes it very easy to use libel to silence critics. In the US, by contrast, standards are much higher and silencing people much more difficult.

The UK has not profited in any way, shape, form, or manner by this. It clogs up courts to no productive use and serves mainly to intimidate people into silence in the face of money. A free society is better without this.

Re: The fight to publish Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’

#29

Post by [deleted] »

asveikau wrote: post #18
jmpman wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right to support and be a member of NAMBLA - not our greatest achievement. Just happens to be another of Allen Ginsburg’s achievements.

Ginsberg's association with NAMBLA is indeed odd and unfortunate, as it taints a lot of his more respectable work. Here is what wikipedia quotes a friend of his as saying: > But, in fact, he was a pedophile. He did not belong to [NAMBLA] out of some mad, abstract conviction that its voice had to be heard. He meant it. I take this from what Allen said directly to me, not from some inference I made. He was exceptionall…

[deleted]

Re: The fight to publish Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’

#30

Post by Simple_Guy »

peteretep wrote: post #20
exolymph wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about a lot fewer people being jailed or otherwise punished by authorities for expressing their opinions? The UK has gotten positively absurd. You can be forced to talk to cops about un-PC tweets. Example: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/01/24/man-investigated... I'm against transphobia, but not being able to vocally dissent on a certain politically loaded topic... that shit is bad.

> a lot fewer people being jailed or otherwise punished by authorities for expressing their opinions To be absolutely clear, "their opinions" here (in the example you gave, and presumably what you're referring to) is hate speech, which the US allows[0]. What advantages have accrued to the US through hate speech being protected, in your opinion? You say "a lot fewer people being jailed", but a quick scan of, say, UK c…

hate speech is a recent invention by the leftists to suppress opposing political viewpoints.
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