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Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

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Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#51

Post by __derek__ »

henrikschroder wrote: post #28
giantg2 wrote: post #2

"To be sure, that doesn’t mean that deliberately offending people for its own sake is morally acceptable, or that people should be entitled to use speech to incite violence, harass, or threaten." The difficulty is knowing what the intent was. Usually there are ways of "non-violent" communication. But it seems a lot of it is subjective. By far it seems the most restrictive places are primary and secondary schools.

> The difficulty is knowing what the intent was. It's not a coincidence that the postmodern thoughts that underpin a lot of this bullshit simply does away with intent, declaring it to be completely useless, and saying that the only thing that can be used to judge a message is how it affected the recipient. Combine that with "words are violence", and you can manufacture physical abuse out of thin air. It's really not…

I never associated Hilary Putnam with postmodernism, but I suppose he could have been affected by something in the air while writing The Meaning of 'Meaning'.[1]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Putnam#Semantic_externa...

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#52

Post by tomlockwood »

"In nations where millions of people hold diverse beliefs, who gets to decide exactly when speech becomes “harmful” and which people should be protected from offensive or critical speech?"

I don't know, maybe we could all get together and collectively decide with some kind of voting mechanism??? Or, if voting every time is too onerous, we could elect a "representative" to stand in for our views? Just a thought!

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#53

Post by gizmo »

This article is too long and says too little.

The real debate about free speech is about finding the right balance between harms caused by speech and harms caused by censorship.

It's about the distinction between highly protected forms of speech like journalism, ideas, and protests/strikes, and undesirable speech such as incitements to hatred, slander/harassment, spam, and predatory speech.

As a society you have to figure out which kinds of speech is deserving of broad platforms (talks at universities, interviews on national TV), which kind of speech should be downranked but not banned, and which kind should result in outright de-platforming or even prosecution.

The "speech is violence" rhetoric just means that speech has actual consequences and that we should look at these consequences instead of unthinkingly taking an absolutist free speech position. Free speech is never an absolute, and as anybody who has spent a lot of time online knows, there cannot be free speech without moderation (i.e. censorship).

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#54

Post by jtr1 »

autokad wrote: post #24
vannevar wrote: post #7

I don't think that most of the people who equate hate speech with violence are literally requesting assualt charges be brought. They are calling for boycotts and de-platforming, both of which fall well within the bounds of the "marketplace of ideas." While there is indeed no right to not be offended, there is also no right to be listened to, and no right to artificially amplify your speech on someone else's dime. We…

> I don't think that most of the people who equate hate speech with violence are literally requesting assualt charges be brought First off, they are. but if you are saying: loose your job and ability to make a living, losing your ability to speak in public, fuck me give me those charges then! you are backing tyrannical ideas while trying to pretend you are just being reasonable.

Someone reporting something you said to your employer: freedom of speech

Your employer declining to continue your employment: freedom of association

Advocating for a university to not host your talk: freedom of speech

A university not hosting your talk: freedom of association

and so on.

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#55

Post by CamperBob2 »

PuppyTailWags wrote: post #31
CamperBob2 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think knowingly sending rape threats to rape victims is pretty violent behavior Compared to the actual act of rape? No. That kind of thinking just devalues the victim. That said, specific threats aren't normally examples of protected speech. Extreme cases make bad law.

I also agree extreme cases make bad law. That's why I'm disagreeing with the extreme that there are no exceptions to the notion of speech not being violent.

I think we have to be careful not to put words in each others' mouths here. To be clear, I am not saying that specific, credible threats of violence should be treated as "speech" in the First Amendment sense.

In my view, the status quo, where most speech is fair game until it rises to the level of coercive threats, is about right.

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#56

Post by halkony »

luckylion wrote: post #5

But having a without display:block and adding custom oversized dots that aren't aligned to the line - we can all agree that is violence, can't we?

At first I thought it was noscript causing a formatting issue but when I turned it off it was still messed up lol.

Agreed

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#57

Post by dqpb »

password11 wrote: post #49
jrm4 wrote: post #9

Lawyer here, and this definitely strikes me as one of a surprising number topics in which, the law has for some time, already a very effective and useful way to get at this concept. Sure, speech can be harmful and hurtful, to the point that someone should get punished for it. But the law has generally done very good job of reminding us that this tends to be a VERY NARROW possibility, i.e. the harm has to be very spec…

[flagged]

Please don't break the lawyer

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#58

Post by stonogo »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #41

> In contrast, physical violence is an uncomplicated, universal offender. A punch to the face hurts everyone. What a completely deranged take. It's easy to conceive of a thought experiment that absolutely destroys this perspective. Imagine that I've applied lidocaine to my face and you punch me. Then someone points out that because I didn't feel pain, that "It's ok to punch other people in the face." The author's arg…

In this strawman argument, are you asserting that lidocaine prevents the punch from causing physical damage?

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#59

Post by rmah »

PuppyTailWags wrote: post #10
CamperBob2 wrote: post #3

People who equate speech with violence have generally never known physical violence. I've always held that position firmly. The trouble is, people are turning out to be a lot more programmable than I thought they (we) were. You could almost say that we're becoming more like machines at the same time that machines are becoming more like us. To the extent that's true, the part of the old saying that goes "... but words…

I don't know if this is true all the time. I think knowingly sending rape threats to rape victims is pretty violent behavior. I think knowingly trying to trigger someone into an eating disorder relapse or coercing someone into suicide are heinous things that fall into violence. I think there is a line where speech can be violent or said with the intent to harm someone the same as a punch is.

Reprehensible? Disgusting? Vile? Yes, definitely. Violent? No, not at all.

Is hitting someone who is trying to hurt a loved to try to get them to stop violent? Yes, 100%. Is it morally justified, even good? Again yes (IMO).

I don't understand this need to try to redefine words. While language certainly evolves, this sort of redefinition just feels different to me somehow.

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#60

Post by akomtu »

hbn wrote: post #13

Person A: "Speech causes violence!" Person B: "How so?" Person A: proceeds to beat Person B until he stops talking

If A could beat B, he wouldn't resort to such rhetoric. Person A has a repressed desire to bully that manifests as this passive-aggressive fake politeness.
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