"Marketplace of Ideas"?

[Cavemonster]

Robert Heinlein on Free Speech..and he says it better then I ever could:

It's from his novel "If This Goes On" (aka "Revolt In 2100")



Underline "no matter how holy the motives". They always have wonderful reasons for wanting to take freedom away from you.

I enjoy all the poetic words people are posting here, but no matter how stirring they may be, they're declarations, not arguments.

One part of my position is that we're so enamored of the poetry in the ideal of freedom and liberty, we don't evaluate the risks on both sides accurately. We're too distracted by the song of LIBERTY!

 

[Checkmite]

When any government , or any church for that matter,

N/A

 

[Darat]

Yes but I'm sure you understand that what someone says and what someone does are two different, if related, things. Saying "well you can't do X" is one thing, but saying "well, you can't say X" is quite a bit more slippery.



Indeed. What's your exact point or question?

An answer to what you asked.

 

[Darat]

Which they would be doing anyway.

Ridicule is the answer. The Blues Brothers had it right. No wannabe white supremacist wants to be publicly ridiculed

Quite sincerely and seriously, what evidence do you have that that works?

 

[carlitos]

Just chiming in to restate that they should be allowed to have their platform. Let them be seen and heard. Makes them easier to identify.

If they are restricted to clandestine sites, their exposure to each other becomes a closed echo chamber, and reinforces their beliefs. Let them see themselves and their ideological comrades ridiculed openly. Let every new potential recruit see how society what large thinks of them. The hard core haters won't be moved one way or the other, and will still go on sociopathic sprees; they will with or without facebook. But the less cuckoo may be persuaded that the views are fundamentally sick when sunlight shines on them.

The way the algorithms at facebook and youtube work, they are already in a closed echo chamber of their own beliefs.

 

[Skeptic Tank]

I think if white nationalist ideas didn’t have inherent merit, logic, resonance with human nature and a lot of appeal to a large portion of white people (especially as they shrink in population share) then these notions of “sunlight is the best disinfectant” and “ridicule will kill it” would work just fine.

Maybe sunlight is the best disinfectant, knowledge is power, and ridicule does dispel awful ideas but maybe some of you are just off the mark about which are the infectious, harmful, unnatural and awful ideas.

Maybe that’s why Plan B is gaining popularity: silence them.

 

[William Parcher]

infectious, harmful, unnatural and awful ideas.

I was told that the black man's penis is not actually larger.

 

[Skeptic Tank]

I was told that the black man's penis is not actually larger.

I suspect that on average it probably is, compared to white men and almost definitely compared to East Asian men. Not my area of expertise, though.

What got your mind onto the topic of penises?

 

[William Parcher]

What got your mind onto the topic of penises?

It was your mention of...

harmful, unnatural and awful ideas.

 

[Giz]

I enjoy all the poetic words people are posting here, but no matter how stirring they may be, they're declarations, not arguments.

One part of my position is that we're so enamored of the poetry in the ideal of freedom and liberty, we don't evaluate the risks on both sides accurately. We're too distracted by the song of LIBERTY!

I'm sure Torquemada said similar things about heretics. They all loved the idea of freedom of speech and belief... but didn't evaluate the risks correctly. Luckily he was there to restrain them, otherwise the societal consensus might have been challenged by demagogues!

 

[Cavemonster]

I'm sure Torquemada said similar things about heretics. They all loved the idea of freedom of speech and belief... but didn't evaluate the risks correctly. Luckily he was there to restrain them, otherwise the societal consensus might have been challenged by demagogues!

Again, you're appealing to emotion.

Make an argument.

 

[Giz]

Again, you're appealing to emotion.

Make an argument.

I think you have it precisely backwards.

I am saying that open debate and inquiry is good for society. As evidence, I can point to our past and many other current societies and we see that open, free speech societies are more progressive, have more rights, more innovation than closed, censored, societies.

You are appealing to emotion (oh noes, the irresistible siren call of trumpian rhetoric in electronic form!??!!!) and saying we must ban it, or bad BAD! things will happen. (Evidence that society cant handle it, or that the benefits of censorship outweighs the costs, is not to be seen)

 

[Cavemonster]

You are appealing to emotion (oh noes, the irresistible siren call of trumpian rhetoric in electronic form!??!!!) and saying we must ban it, or bad BAD! things will happen. (Evidence that society cant handle it, or that the benefits of censorship outweighs the costs, is not to be seen)

I feel as though you've stumbled into the wrong thread. I haven't said a word about Trumpian logic.

My position is more targeted to naked White Supremacy and Neo nazi advocacy and the like. I don't have to appeal to emotion or what-ifs to say these ideas can be dangerous. The US already fought a couple wars around this sort of thing. US intelligence agencies will tell you about the danger of these groups. That's not speculation it's reality.

Now as for whether the benefits outweigh the costs, it's not easy to predict, but we can look to countries that have more strict speech restrictions than the US and see if they have experienced negatives that we can't bear. There's room for different opinions on that, but what we don't see in those countries is anything resembling the direst warnings or any reason to believe they're on the brink of such things.

EDIT: I just did a search through the thread to make sure I'm accurately describing the arguments I've made. I did mention Trump supporters once earlier on this page, but not in the context of wanting to ban their speech or argue that it posed a particular threat. It was in the context of the point that ridicule is an ineffective tool to dissuade people from a closely held belief.

 

[sackett]

Here we #*&☆¤¿ go another time!

Once again, we have a thread debating the value of limiting freedom of speech. The topic comes up from time to time -- and once more, I feel disgust at the people who advocate the establishment of thought crime.

Tell me: Are you non-free speech fans really and truly conceding that, well, yes, there are men somewhere in the world who are entitled to tell you to be silent? That you are not good enough to publish anything you choose? That you are genuinely unequal to your silencers and censors?

Show me the man who has the right to tell me what I can say. He may have authority bestowed on him by an unjust (and foolish) law, and may use coercion to try to silence me, but that is just the same old flexing of tyrrany, nothing more.

Show me a man who acquiesces in such a law, and I'll show you a slave.

 

[Checkmite]

Once again, we have a thread debating the value of limiting freedom of speech. The topic comes up from time to time -- and once more, I feel disgust at the people who advocate the establishment of thought crime.

And once more I feel exasperation at the people who insist on drawing a false equivalence between the ignoring and deplatforming of odious points of view by private individuals and companies, and actual criminalization by the authorities.

We get the same damn tired line every time some group of liberals decide to boycott a business, even though that's precisely the way the free market is allegedly supposed to work.

 

[Cavemonster]

And once more I feel exasperation at the people who insist on drawing a false equivalence between the ignoring and deplatforming of odious points of view by private individuals and companies, and actual criminalization by the authorities.

We get the same damn tired line every time some group of liberals decide to boycott a business, even though that's precisely the way the free market is allegedly supposed to work.

In his defense, I've said a few times in this thread that I'm conceptually open to government censorship. I think the bar to allow it should be incredibly high and the use would have to be very specific, but I don't see it as an uncrossable line.

I'm not fully committed, but I think one thing I'm mostly on board with is publicly funded universities having the freedom to reject a speaker who wants to call their students of color subhuman. I'm happy to argue the merits of that intervention and I'm happy to consider I may be wrong.

Many countries have more restrictions on speech than the US allows. And while we can argue whether they are better or worse off than us because of it, the feared authoritarian dystopia generally fails to materialize.

Many countries have laws regarding Hate speech:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech#United_States


I'm very open to arguments of "It wouldn't be worth it" but since we have actual examples in the world, we should look to them to make our pro-con lists instead of speculation which looks a little alarmist given most of the world has managed to deal with some levels of restriction without becoming 1984.

 

[Stout]

Most of the English speaking western world you mean.

When you look back The Iron Curtain and Cultural Revolution were't too far back in history.

 

[Cavemonster]

Most of the English speaking western world you mean.

When you look back The Iron Curtain and Cultural Revolution were't too far back in history.

Not sure I parse what you're saying. Could you rephrase?

 

[Stout]

Oh sorry, screwed up the quote. That was in response to your last sentence about becoming 1984. Sure here and now the idea of a 1984 type of dystopia seems far fetched, paranoid even but if we look not too far back in history we can come up with examples of societies who. gone down that road.

Remember it wasn't too long ago that we were all laughing at those people with their microchip conspiracy theories. Ha Ha we said, that paranoid....then along comes smartphones, the next best thing.

 

[Cavemonster]

Oh sorry, screwed up the quote. That was in response to your last sentence about becoming 1984. Sure here and now the idea of a 1984 type of dystopia seems far fetched, paranoid even but if we look not too far back in history we can come up with examples of societies who. gone down that road.

Remember it wasn't too long ago that we were all laughing at those people with their microchip conspiracy theories. Ha Ha we said, that paranoid....then along comes smartphones, the next best thing.

I don't think anyone is wrong to be wary of oppressive government power.

Where I disagree is the argument that policies in line with most of the developed world put us meaningfully closer to that. The USSR and the cultural revolution didn't sneak up like a frog in boiling water by increments. Those were violent revolutions. While terrible things can come step by step. I don't think Canada is meaningfully closer to being 1984 than we are just because they have hate speech laws.