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Shut up and play nice: How the Western world is limiting free speech

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Shut up and play nice: How the Western world is limiting free speech

#211

Post by stfu »

nickpinkston wrote: post #197
bobsy wrote: post #107

What concerns me especially in Britain is the amount of times the police are getting involved in what appear to be free speech cases. In Britain 2 police officers were killed. The same day a guy wrote on his t-shirt something to the effect of "kill pigs for fun hahahaah." This is a stupid thing to do. I would have thought the police might confiscate his t-shirt. Nope, that wouldn't have been sufficient. He got 4 mont…

Actually - I've never understood your sentiments, or at least the need to say, "I don't support these people". I actually feel like I do support the people in your listed cases - dark humor has a welcome place in our society - if only to make light of the inevitability of our own impending death. If you make a good joke of a recent killing - I'll admit that I'll probably get a laugh out of it. I'm not ashamed at all…

I am certainly willing to admit that I enjoy dark humor. But then again I am also willing to out myself as a regular 4chan user.

In my opinion this form of dark humor/ridiculing is even necessary. It keeps society "sane", as it counter balances those sacred cows, and brings more relativism into the perspective.

Re: Shut up and play nice: How the Western world is limiting free speech

#212

Post by jakubp »

tokenadult wrote: post #194

Given the set of tradeoffs described in the article, I'm on record supporting free speech, period. As I wrote earlier here on HN, "The basic issue is whether people in free countries, like most readers of Hacker News, are going to be able to enjoy the right of free speech throughout their country, on any subject, or whether any American or Dutch or Danish person or other person accustomed to free speech who happens t…

I would add that having your true/correct beliefs offended should not be excuse for burning or destroying. I met quite some people who seem just as offended when what is known to others as true is questioned or criticized. It's curious that it's not really about the truthiness of the belief. It's about responses people choose. Anger, or worse, aggressions, are rarely if ever the right response.

Re: Shut up and play nice: How the Western world is limiting free speech

#213

Post by netfire »

tomjen3 wrote: post #205
netfire wrote: post #191

We should be careful to not limit other rights in protecting the right of free speech. I defend the right of people to express their opinions, views, thoughts, etc in society, but I also believe you must have balance and allow people to choose whether they want to listen to someone's opinion or thoughts. It is one thing to go listen to someone from the KKK speak about their thoughts or to read their opinions in a pam…

The problem with the second part of your argument is that you force me to pay, through my taxes, to a subway and then prevent me from posting things I want to say (but allow the other guy, because all he wants to do is sell soap). By obviously you should have the right to not listen to a particular radio or tv show or not to look at a particular billboard. And yes, Fox News shouldn't have to argue points they don't w…

I would prefer that the government not sell ad space at all. (The reason a subway should be built is to transport people from one place to another, that's what you are paying taxes for). The main point I was trying to make is that we should consider other rights when defending free speech (or other rights, including not being exposed to things you don't want yourselves, or your children to be exposed to). Defending almost any right to an absolute extreme produces consequences that are harmful to individuals and society (as your example illustrates).

Re: Shut up and play nice: How the Western world is limiting free speech

#214

Post by white_devil »

randomchars wrote: post #159
white_devil wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe certainly does have a problem with Muslim immigration. We've been tolerating and understanding the fuck out of them too, but that doesn't seem to have helped at all. They're massively over-represented in crime statistics. There are talented people everywhere, but you won't find all that many Western people who killed their own daughters for showing too much skin.

> They're massively over-represented in crime statistics. Can you show data?

Sure.

First, note that there are roughly three times as many Russians in Finland as there are Somalis:

http://www.stat.fi/til/vaerak/2011/vaerak_2011_2012-03-16_ku...

Then, look at this: http://www.stat.fi/til/polrik/2011/polrik_2011_2012-04-02_ta...

Unfortunately that's only in Finnish, but here are some key words:

  - "Suomen kansalaiset" = "Finnish citizens".
  - "Venäjä, entinen Neuvostoliitto" = "Russia, former Soviet  Union"
  - "Raiskausrikokset" = "Rape (-crimes)"
Then, take the year 2011 for example.

2011

  - Total number of rapes: 644
  - Total number of rapes committed by Finns: 474	
  - Total number of rapes committed by all foreigners: 170
  - Total number of rapes committed by Estonians: 15
  - Total number of rapes committed by *Russians*: 3
  - Total number of rapes committed by Swedes: 3
  - Total number of rapes committed by *Other Foreigners: 149*
Other than Estonians and Russians, there were 13 other language groups listed.

Let's be "generous" and assume they account for 3 rapes each, much like Russians and Swedes, even though they're much smaller minorities so the numbers are probably much lower.

That leaves us with 110 rapes committed by Somalis. Now I'm no statistician, and not very good at math either. But when Somalis outnumber a much larger minority in rape statistics 110 to 3, it seems that they're pretty fucking Rapey.

Re: Shut up and play nice: How the Western world is limiting free speech

#216

Post by illuminate »

aristidb wrote: post #208
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #166

99.99% of disgusting hateful speech is just that: disgusting hateful speech. The other .01% is the only hope we have as a species of honestly addressing our situation and problems and adapting and moving forward. The mob cannot tell the difference between these two groups. In fact, unless you are from the future looking back, nobody can. People who change society for the better through their speech are almost univers…

Publicly, that is. In a private forum like Hacker News, exclusion of disgusting hateful speech is legitimate and even necessary for the survival of the community - or people would leave because the "trolls" have taken over.

Right, there's a difference between tolerance and embedding it in your community's culture.

Re: Shut up and play nice: How the Western world is limiting free speech

#217

Post by danielweber »

aristidb wrote: post #208
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #166

99.99% of disgusting hateful speech is just that: disgusting hateful speech. The other .01% is the only hope we have as a species of honestly addressing our situation and problems and adapting and moving forward. The mob cannot tell the difference between these two groups. In fact, unless you are from the future looking back, nobody can. People who change society for the better through their speech are almost univers…

Publicly, that is. In a private forum like Hacker News, exclusion of disgusting hateful speech is legitimate and even necessary for the survival of the community - or people would leave because the "trolls" have taken over.

I agree that HN can operate how it wishes.

I'm not sure that barring disgusting speech is "necessary," if only because "necessary" can be such a loaded word.

reddit, for example, seems to have a principle of free speech, where there only a very specific things you are not allowed to say board-wide. So there is a fair amount of disgusting speech there. It seems to work for them -- although I have been slowly disengaging from it over the past year or two, and maybe that's part of the reason.

Re: Shut up and play nice: How the Western world is limiting free speech

#218

Post by illuminate »

cstross wrote: post #162
bobsy wrote: post #107

What concerns me especially in Britain is the amount of times the police are getting involved in what appear to be free speech cases. In Britain 2 police officers were killed. The same day a guy wrote on his t-shirt something to the effect of "kill pigs for fun hahahaah." This is a stupid thing to do. I would have thought the police might confiscate his t-shirt. Nope, that wouldn't have been sufficient. He got 4 mont…

The case of t-shirt guy (Barry Thew) is much worse than "4 months for wearing an offensive t-shirt". Turns out he has a history. a) He's a psychiatric patient, on anti-psychotic meds with a history of compulsory in-patient detention, b) His son died in police custody 3 years ago. He also has a series of criminal convictions, most recently for cultivating cannabis, but I'd like to note that there's a really strong ass…

"I'd like to note that there's a really strong association between schizophrenia and self-medication with cannabis. (I'm told -- this is purely anecdotal, but comes first hand from a dignosed schizophrenic -- that it makes the voices shut up for a while.)"

There's a strong correlation between self medication of ~all~ variety and schizophrenia. The reason being (or so I hear) is that the most effective psychiatric drugs to treat schizophrenia tend to have very unpleasant side effects. Cannabis is an interesting case because it's been observed in some cases to exacerbate schizophrenic conditions.

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/the-woman-in-606/Content?...

Re: Shut up and play nice: How the Western world is limiting free speech

#219

Post by mcantelon »

snambi wrote: post #202
mcantelon wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Muslim violence negate arab achievement in mathematics? If so, does the US killing of native Americans negate US scientific achievement?

btw, many of the arab mathematics "innovation" is simply copied from India. Since, Europe found those through arabs, they were named as "arab" innovation. If they were so advanced 1000s of years ago, how come there is no one coming out of it now?

Adopting your line of thinking: if India, as you claim, is the originator of all this knowledge why is it not the current global leader of science and tech?

Re: Shut up and play nice: How the Western world is limiting free speech

#220

Post by danielweber »

Point of order: Nakoula, the filmmaker, was arrested for parole violations. His previous crimes included using fraud and multiple identities to raise money over the Internet, so it's not unreasonable that he should be arrested when he's released a video on the Internet under an alias and asking for money to continue his work.
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