Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Rowan Atkinson on free speech (2012) [video]

youtube.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 165 posts

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

#41

Post by throw0101b »

dmbche wrote: post #20
mellosouls wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the overwhelming dominance in cancel culture over the last few years has been from the left. Sure, the right has also been up to its old tricks in tired corners (it dominated in previous times like the McCarthy era), but lets be realistic about who the modern problem is mainly with in the West or we won't solve it.

What books were banned by "the left"?

> What books were banned by "the left"?

Not banning but altering would be one form of censorship, e.g., "Roald Dahl books rewritten to remove language deemed offensive":

* https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/18/roald-dahl-boo...

"Why I Decided to Update the Language in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Children’s Books":

* https://lithub.com/why-i-decided-to-update-the-language-in-u...

"D&D: WotC’s New Batch Of Errata Removes Racial Alignments, Retcons Drow":

* https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2021/12/dd-wotc-removes-raci...

To quote George Orwell's 1984: "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." The past is being rewritten (as opposed to leaving the original language and simply putting a forward in explaining things).

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

#42

Post by diego_moita »

bufio wrote: post #17
diego_moita wrote: post #3

I believe that an intelligent person should be able to hold two conflicting perceptions at the same time. Therefore, I understand and accept that free speech is a foundation for a civilized life, that there should be no restraints on free speech. But, I also acknowledge that free speech isn't so free at all. For a long time and in many places in the world there are minorities without the right to speech. And the barr…

How are they constrained in their speech?

When they speak but no one listens.

Mr. Atkinson is a famous white and male comedian. How many famous comedians do you know belonging to minorities? Who would give these minorities a voice?

E.g.: google for "Vinicius Jr. Valencia". He is a Brazilian player that was continuously harassed and threatened in Spain, spoke a lot about it, filled complaints but nothing happened.

Then in a game where he was harassed his teammates escalated it and stopped the match, his coach made an interview denouncing the racism, the Brazilian government issued a formal protest and the Spanish prime-minister condemned the racism. Only then the Spanish league reacted.

There are thousands of black people living in Spain that don't have the power to escalate aggression that Vinicius had. These are people without free speech because no one listens their speaches.

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

#43

Post by karmakurtisaani »

rightbyte wrote: post #24
karmakurtisaani wrote: post #13

Defending free speech without going at all into the nuances of the matter is intellectually extremely lazy at best and virtue signalling to the alt right crowd at worst. And the real bummer is that it's basically never interesting.

Maybe it is a worrying symptom that you associate free speech advocacy with the 'alt right'?

I don't see how it would be worrying. The alt right are basically the only major suppressed group in the Western world at the moment, and I have no problem with that. Even they are not silenced by the government, so even their free speech is being protected. However, people generally don't like what they say, and want to silence or ignore them - without government involvement.

Of course free speech would be extremely important in countries like China or North Korea, but we don't really have access or impact to those countries.

Perhaps you have a different view?

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

#44

Post by karmakurtisaani »

hulitu wrote: post #18
karmakurtisaani wrote: post #13

Defending free speech without going at all into the nuances of the matter is intellectually extremely lazy at best and virtue signalling to the alt right crowd at worst. And the real bummer is that it's basically never interesting.

Don't worry. The time will come when you won't be able to defend free speech. It already started.

Please do elaborate.

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

#45

Post by tshaddox »

throw0101b wrote: post #41
dmbche wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What books were banned by "the left"?

> What books were banned by "the left"? Not banning but altering would be one form of censorship, e.g., "Roald Dahl books rewritten to remove language deemed offensive": * https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/18/roald-dahl-boo... "Why I Decided to Update the Language in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Children’s Books": * https://lithub.com/why-i-decided-to-update-the-language-in-u... "D&D: WotC’s New Batch Of Errata Remov…

Weren’t all of those changes done willingly by the publishers/copyright holders of those works?

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

#46

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

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.

[flagged]

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

#47

Post by Towaway69 »

diego_moita wrote: post #27
redeeman wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When an European soccer fan shouts "monkey" to a dark skinned African or Latin American player of an adversary team there is a lot more than free speech at play are you saying the african soccer player is lower in rank than some idiot fan? im also sure barack obama was much in a bad power dynamic to people that call him monkey president? those guys have all the institutional power, ey?

What I am saying is "this is a complex issue that should be deeply understood before rushing to easy ideological solutions". The problem is that, like my children doing math, no one wants to understand problems. Ideological solutions that fit in memes are much easier.

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 amplifying those biases - remember Facebooks face recognition software that incorrectly identified some minorities as primates? It wasn't AI at fault, it was the bias in the training set.

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

#48

Post by karmakurtisaani »

hortense wrote: post #38
karmakurtisaani wrote: post #13

Defending free speech without going at all into the nuances of the matter is intellectually extremely lazy at best and virtue signalling to the alt right crowd at worst. And the real bummer is that it's basically never interesting.

It's possible that the problem is that speech is not the right abstraction. Perhaps we should be advocating for something along the lines of "free expression of reasoning".

How would that differ from freedom of speech, and is there an indication that there is a problem with that in the Western world?

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

#49

Post by throw0101b »

_a_a_a_ wrote: post #36
mellosouls wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Like the famously left-wing Nazi's bookburning?

> Like the famously left-wing Nazi's bookburning?

Like the famously left-wing CCP book burning:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_censorship_in_China#Mao_Z...

Authoritarians exists on the left as well:

* https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/psychologi...

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

#50

Post by awesome_dude »

vonzepp wrote: post #4

Sometimes missing in these debates is that right to free speech isn't the right to be listened to.

There's also the shutting down of protests that are loud because they are against one thing being heard. It is hard to determine whose free speech prevail there.
Post reply on HN