Every single time someone's uttered those words they were eventually proven wrong

Not that I think we should be banning speech, mind you. Just figured a reminder on that tiny bit was warranted. Assuming people aren't morons is the doom of many endeavours

I know silver bullets don't exist, but educating just doesn't seem to get the societal positive attention it so thoroughly needs and deserves.

Where the silver bullet fails is the "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it realise its thirsty" analogy.

School and education have been conflated in a detrimental way, and the reputation of schooling needs urgent repair. During Covid it seemed as if teaching was on the brink of earning more respect, but it was very quickly forgotten and probably only got the attention for reasons of childcare as opposed to education.

All implications of the above are a sad indictment of where society has found itself.

Additionally, if we follow the path of assuming everyone is a moron, we very quickly reach The Nanny State. This is the current pendulum swing.

Because of such crystallization, in America, critical thinking has become fairly close to heresy, and any tid bit of questioning of your own group's inflexible logic must be couched in "please don't hate me, I'm on your side" first. Those of us that enjoy being contrarian to our friends are getting less and less boost in social media, and most political messaging now contains a bite of "the other side, your fellow Americans, are corrupt/evil/incompetent." I just don't know how we can shake this situation but I think free speech isn't the problem at all, it's the incentives around our speech.

cough Vocational education and training centers cough [0]

My definition is along the lines of independent thought, critical thinking, alternative perspectives, the scientific method, (stretching here: mathematics as a language of observed behaviour). Teaching them to fish rather than giving them a fish. Anything other than blind acceptance, or at least providing a sense of judgement to know when blind acceptance may be justified.

And none of this is easy because 1) once a child is of school age they've already got a firm base of blind acceptances that, basically, work against their own education, and 2) independent thought and critical thinking means a lot of asking "why?" and lots of asking of "why?" takes up precious[1] curriculum teaching time.

[0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_internment_camps

[1]:Precious to school and education board/department management KPIs that have no provable basis in positive real-world outcomes for either society or the individual

Something like 25% of the population has an IQ <90. Education cannot take such people very far. I support almost absolute free speech nonetheless.

The caveat, somewhat, is that good teachers (true scotsmen) can be closer to a parental and positive influence on a child than a stupid or abusive parent almost exclusively because the (good) teacher is not stupid and abusive.

There's a glaring "no true scotsman" fallacy in my logic above, but my point is that stupid and abusive creates its own opportunity for improvement. My vicarious and anecdotal experience seems to bear this out (but having said that, my vicarious and anecdotal experience comes through teachers who are dedicated, experienced, and committed to the outcomes of the children, which is rarer than it should be).

There's no escaping the trauma of bad parents, but the ability to present the opportunity for a brighter future can help immeasurably. Hope. It can be better than it is.

If anything, peers have been shown to be more influential on beliefs than parents.

And it's a pretty terrible bureaucracy no matter what your perspective may be. It's rife with failure in the noteworthy aspects where it is overly-rigid, and equally so in the areas where no rules or regulations exist. Large parts of it are given to Goodhart's Law, so the results aren't actually as one would hope for them to be, erstwhile it alienates many children in various ways, pressing them into a perpetual ennui, anxieties fit only for consenting adults, social isolation, undesired social exposure, and at the end of it all it's quite probable due to many factors, they will walk away just as vacuous as they would have been if they were pressed through some much more comfortable alternative.

The glum reality of it all is, is that it is little more than the facade, and mostly it serves the purpose of childcare these days.

But more importantly your insipid comment that, God forbid, someone actually give the child some basis for moral structure is itself precisely what I mean to communicate when I speak of the deference - throughout my attainment I was never once given any meaningful education on ethics, or civics, on value or right and wrong. It was rule and law, but never the Rule of Law. And that does not make an upright person. And science does little to inform morality, and droll literature did little to inform us of the myriad moral conundrums inexorably a part of real life. Just because you disagree with it does not make it wrong, that is arrogance.

I would say that I was fortunate to have an upstanding parental figure who fought against all odds to raise me singlehandedly and did so with the most couth methods imaginable - hard and ceaseless labor - but unfortunately I'm in an arena where civility we're so won't to brag about exists only as shibboleth, and I and my like have to dance with backbiting vipers who are more than willing to use uncouth methods to gate or otherwise swallow whole anyone who has some sense of dignity, fairness, accountability, or empathy. And they do so from the bastions of these monolithic bureaucracies hidden behind gilded titles and moats of texts and rules and laws - fictions. But by God maybe if we had teachers willing to step out of the relativistic framework, institutions that respected thousand-year old proven frameworks, even just a human ecology class - by God maybe there wouldn't be so many snakes in the system. And it's not some isolated incident, I can point to highly visible instances like the GFC or the recent congressional insider trading debacle or the countless instances of corporate misbehavior... Because nobody "indoctrinated" the shitheels at the helm of these catastrophic fuckups.

What if everyone actually was a moron? In that hypothetical, would we just pretend it's not the case to not get the nanny state?

I would also bet that those who are the most interested in imposing their preferences on others probably are way less likely to listen to or attempt to understand different perspectives, leading to not even understand the views and practices they seek to ban.

It's not what I said at all.

It's inevitable that the levers of power are held by some. We've been lucky in the west, all things considered. So going forward, who's it going to be? The crazies? Hope not!

I'm not sure if it's really inevitable, but if it is, I think tolerance should be their most important virtue. I think that's also what sets western rulers apart as generally higher quality. They are usually more tolerant of dissent and individual differences, compared to their counterparts in other parts of the world.

Certainly. Hard to put in practice too.

It's worse than that when you're trying to make decisions on behalf of everyone. It's perfectly possible for the decision that's right for you to be wrong for well more than half of the population for diverse individual reasons that they each understand and you don't.

Which is why in cases like that you defer to the individual to make their own decision, and if you think your choice is better, convince them rather than force them.

Individual choices always have some blast radius. Some small (what movie I'll watch), some large (what chemical to kill my weeds with), some of unknown magnitude (whether to lock up my gun in a safe or not).

That's where the trap comes in. Somebody needs to meddle at some point. Who's going to define what that point is? Who's going to define the course of action that's both virtuous for the community and for the individual. I certainly hope it's not going to be the crazies.

No, it's true in the real world. That's the issue. Nobody is smarter than everybody. The consequence is that you should never prohibit someone from making a choice "for their own good" because the chances are better that they understand and act in their own best interest than you do.

Where you need some kind of government action is for externalities. Dumping industrial waste in the river might be rational from the perspective of the factory, because they don't live down river, so you need a law to protect the people who do from the factory acting in their own self-interest. You can't convince them to stop doing it with argument because safely handling the waste is more expensive for them in actual fact. You have to change the math by prohibiting the bad act.

That's still subject to the same problem. You can enact highly inefficient and ineffective environmental regulations by being lazy or uninformed or corrupt. But for that we don't have any alternative than to do the best we can.

For getting people to make better choices or hold better ideas, we do. We try to convince them. If we fail, it's more likely to be because we're wrong than they are. Forcing them should not even be attempted.

Say that to all the OSHA regulations that were written in blood with a straight face

If you can lose your job and thus your ability to provide food and shelter for yourself and your family for daring to speak up against the prevailing group think, is that much different from being sent to jail for saying the same?

Political correctnes people and "minority" interest groups have turned into the biggest bullies, it's so darned scary - I for one fear this slippery slope to a very totalitarian society.

But if you publicly said "my name is Joe and XYZ racist thing", people have the right to cancel you.

Historically this public/private distinction has been violated lots of times in the U.S., e.g., WWI, McCarthy. I don't think it's totalitarian; it's usually relatively limited. Most of the time, for most topics, the government leaves you alone and you can say what you damn well please.

Use your imagination.

It really is about whether people can tolerate hearing things - or even knowing they speak about them - that they don't agree with, without turning into (in the worst cases) a savage frenzy of bullies. The ability to discern nuance seems to be getting lost.

At the end of the day, autonomy to be dumb morons, and the autonomy to not be, is what people deserve.

[citation needed]

The thing being prohibited there isn't the speech. Prohibiting threats is really prohibiting coercion. The words of the threat are the evidence of the coercion, not the crime itself.

That's why the threat has to be credible. It's not a crime to say threatening things as an actor in a play because you're not actually threatening anyone even though the communicative aspect is the same.

I would not ban that either. However, if you decide to make a serious threat, which takes a significant amount of energy, like doxxing and calling me on my phone to tell me you will kill me, you will have to live with the consequences of the legal system.

If you just tell me in HN comments that you will kill me and my family, I would certainly not give a damn because that's low effort.

Doesn't that mean that type of speech is forbidden?

I also don't like the idea of receiving multi-part prose shouted at me from the sidewalk on what someone is going to do with my entrails if they have no intention of actually trying to follow through.

I can't imagine a perfect rule regime, personally. Humans are slippery when it comes to being jerks.

Speech is cheap. The scenario I am imagining is someone calling you and telling you they are going to kill you and your family.

Thanks for the "verbal warning".

Given almost everyone who replied, including the OP WanderPanda, assumed you meant the textbook definition of absolutism (given the discussion about harmful speech that either causes people immediate harm or spreads misinformation about things like vaccines), I don't see how this could be considered the colloquial definition of 'free speech absolutism'. Until it is, it might be more useful to explicitly state "except for speech that harms people" whenever you refer to yourself as such.

Like, if I want to kill you, surely it’s better that I tell you, than if I just do it without warning? The expected value of the former is strictly better.

We should stop and punish actions, but the state should not punish the speech. My 2c.

But we should not ban speech when there has not been any crime.

For the mob boss, he is committing an actual crime of extortion. If a shopkeeper goes to police, the mob defense would not be "we were in our rights to threaten", but "we never said this; no idea what the shopkeeper is saying". A prosecutor would have to prove that it was indeed an extortion, but if he proves this to a jury the specific words said would be irrelevant and a first amendment claim would fail.

The same way if an insider is telling a friend about a stock merger during a quiet period, it is an actual crime. The specific words and methods do not matter.

It is tempting to restrict the speech in an attempt to minimize the evil. But giving state this power sooner or later vests it in some political clique that will use it for political suppression; original noble goals be damned. And this is almost impossible to undo.

He could just go ‘i really don’t like this guy’ and that would be understood at ‘kill him’ without him saying. Would that be ok or you still would want to prosecute him?

The problem with free speech absolutism is its childish view of causality. It only views the end cause of a sequence of causes as bearing any responsibility. Reality doesn't work that way.

The decision to absolve person A of criminal (and often moral) culpability leads to obviously pathological outcomes in certain situations. For example, what if person A is a master manipulator, and person B has an IQ of 60. Who really has the culpability in this scenario? The free speech absolutist would still lay the blame at the feet of person B, but most reasonable people that aren't possessed by ideology would clearly identify person A as bearing a significant chunk if not most of the responsibility for the murder, even though all they did was use their speech.

But almost any action is compelled by speech. I think allowing the state to control the speech to guide actions always leads to misuse. My 2c.

Even the US has histories of this happening, plenty of hated minorities were silenced, threatened and punished if they spoke up.

You're basically thinking like a "crunchy mom" anti-vaxxer who thinks that measles are harmless because she doesn't know anyone who's died from it.

Imagine for a moment that you're a black person living in 1920s Mississippi. You personally know people who were hanged by lynch mobs. You've read about Mary Turner who was burned alive while 8 months pregnant for daring to speak out against the lynching of her husband. And now white people tell you they'll kill you if you register to vote.

You seriously argue that banning those threats would be a worse infraction on people's freedom than allowing them?

If you don't see a way of defining hate speech in a way that won't be misused any worse that free speech is, it just means you haven't thought very hard about it, and suffer from status quo bias.

From this perspective, the worst kind of speech is not hate speech or calls for violence. It's the speech that deepens political divisions and lowers trust in the society. When people see how free speech is making the society worse – when they start seeing their political opponents as their enemies – they want to police speech to make the society better. Especially the speech their enemies.

If you engage in speech like that, or if you support people who do it, you are undermining freedom of speech. You may believe you support freedom of speech, but in practice you may be opposing it.

This isn’t a new problem, it’s been illegal to pretend to be a doctor for decades. The difference is simply the reach we are giving charlatans.

PS: I can’t wait until a flat earthers start defunding GPS because it’s spreading lies…

UFOs, MKUltra, involvement in various coups, PRISM, etc. used to be "objectively false information"... until it wasn't.

> This isn’t a new problem, it’s been illegal to pretend to be a doctor for decades. The difference is simply the reach we are giving charlatans.

Thalidomide is the famous counterexample. Just to be clear, I don't like people who give bad medical advice. But I am much more tempered when it comes to the rights of ordinary citizens to hold and discuss their personal views about industrialized medicine.

I am not saying people need to be silenced, rather that which amplifies misinformation is problematic.

Thalidomide scandal is a counterexample, not an example, to your point for the following reason. You said

> Convincing people to take alternative medicine for serious diseases is just as harmful as yelling fire in a theater or hate speech the victims... I can’t wait until a flat earthers start defunding GPS because it’s spreading lies.

But here, the medical/pharma industry was wrong and the pregnant women whose children were born with birth defects would have been better off using alternative medicine (read "placebo") or no medicine at all. There are plenty of other examples of drugs where the prescribing/usage trend has changed because of newly discovered risks: barbiturates, ipecac syrup, opioids.

> rather that which amplifies misinformation is problematic

It's problematic only if the "misinformation" indeed turns out to be false. Which can never be known at the time. And -- given the historical context -- healthy skepticism of the medical/pharma industry is somewhat warranted.

So I disagree that online platforms should discriminate via the currently accepted status of the content being "info" or "misinfo". Online platforms should amplify in an impartial and evidence-based way and -- in particular -- stay out of arbitrating medical industry vs. the individual's right to be skeptical.

That’s a common misconception, some of those women would have died without it. Inflammation of the brain is as severe as it gets, unfortunately it was sold over the counter so people where taking it for less severe issues.

It took 4 years for the drug to be pulled from the market in Europe, but today it’s on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines and regularly prescribed in Europe.

Thus the reality and perception of this drug are different. Of course it shouldn’t have been sold over the counter, that was a mistake, but 10,000 birth defects is hardly the only thing it did. And in fact most pregnant women who took it didn’t have such side effects.

Which, to bring the discussion back to speech and your original comment, is why I'm arguing that platforms should be impartial with regard to what they amplify and let the legal system define and handle illegal speech.

So, I have trouble seeing the benefits of a “neutral” stance being worth it. Shutting down all social media is probably an over reaction, but even that seems like a better option.

"But they couldnt have known back then, the facts only came out later".... This sounds good in theory, unfortunately people lie, and one mans objectively false information is another mans truth. If there was a magic 8ball that could say "true/false" to any such information, i'd agree, but there isnt.

Many things aren’t known and plenty of things might be true, but a great deal of what gets passed around on social media isn’t ambiguous it’s just wrong.

This is the key thing people miss in the free speech debates. The reach is because it is profitable to give people that reach and host them, even if they are spreading misinformation and lies. Ban them from social media/youtube/whereever and they still have freedom of speech.

In the past, their audience would always be limited to a local network, only people they could interact with in person. It didn't make money to spread their nonsense, but now it does, and tech companies have no incentive to ban or remove profitable users.

Whereas if you debate them and they lose in front of everyone, their ideas become discredited and the viewers become inoculated because they've now heard an effective counterargument instead of encountering bad ideas for the first time in a place controlled entirely by their proponents.

So when Fauci lies on television, I can't speak out because it would deepend political divisions and lower trust in the society? That's a terrible standard. And completely subjective. This is the very definition of the absense of free speech. Free speech is the freedom to disagree, to challenge. Not to only say what is consensual.

If it's change you're after, sometimes your best course of action is to remain silent and to leave politics to those with personalities better suited for it.

I've known enough politicians to understand that they are often better people than I am. Not everyone but many, perhaps even the majority. They can disagree in public, work together despite their differences, and go grab a beer together after work.

It isn’t obvious to me that there is an absolute direction. It seems like an interplay of the speech interests of various entities which may push against each other.

Well, you're not entirely wrong, but I feel perhaps like you're missing some nuance. I'm not a First Amendment attorney, but I don't think hosting is necessarily speech; and if Facebook ever claimed that their hosted content was a matter of their own speech, that could undermine their claim of immunity under Section 230. There's also the concept of private property becoming a public forum, which is well-supported by case law, but whose application is unclear in the virtual world.

Anyway, apart from all that, free speech as a value is much broader than the legal requirements of the First Amendment. I'm reminded of Alan Berg, hosting and debating bigots on his radio show, because limiting expression always ends up hurting minorities, and because suppression of such thoughts just drives it underground; sunlight is the best disinfectant.

>> It isn’t obvious to me that there is an absolute direction. It seems like an interplay of the speech interests of various entities which may push against each other.

> Well, you're not entirely wrong, but I feel perhaps like you're missing some nuance.

I don’t think I was missing some nuance, I was describing a point where free speech absolutism misses some nuance.

> Anyway, apart from all that, free speech as a value is much broader than the legal requirements of the First Amendment. I'm reminded of Alan Berg, hosting and debating bigots on his radio show, because limiting expression always ends up hurting minorities, and because suppression of such thoughts just drives it underground; sunlight is the best disinfectant.

I do think there’s a value to open and thoughtful debate.

Free speech as a general value is good, but sort of abstract. I think open, thoughtful, good-faith debate is a closely related but slightly better value. Sometimes it is fine to not host a discussion if one of the parties is just there to spew propaganda for example.

Edit: removed a bit about Alan Berg, wasn’t familiar with his story. I don’t have anything to say other than, that’s just tragic.

If this is true, then they should also face liability for that speech. As it is "platforms" are given the rights of free speech with none of the responsibility.

Personally, I don't think that platforms are people and thus don't have the same rights to speech which is why we allow them to escape some of the responsibility. There are big benefits to allowing platforms to do some level of moderation without accepting full liability for all speech on their platform. However, in exchange these platforms lose the right to arbitrarily ban and censor people.

It is not true, we don’t live in a free speech absolutist world. I’m pointing out that free speech absolutism doesn’t obviously point in the direction of maximum free speech for the individual. In a free speech absolutist world, there’s no liability to worry about in the first place.

> Personally, I don't think that platforms are people and thus don't have the same rights to speech which is why we allow them to escape some of the responsibility.

Platforms aren’t people, but they are owned and operated by people, who have the same free speech rights as everybody else. It seems like this ought to include the owner’s right to selectively publish content they’ve been sent.

I’m not a free speech absolutist, and so I resolve this issue by saying, yeah, free speech absolutism is dumb, it is fine if we protect some types of speech, and selectively acknowledge the right of platform-owners to not broadcast some types of speech. There are competing interests and navigating them requires getting into the weeds. Unfortunately, this doesn’t have quite the moral certainty of “free speech absolutism.”

Says who? While it is an admittedly poor label, there are few, if any "free speech absolutists" who advocate removing all limits on speech. Usually they would accept some level of law restricting fraud or perjury.

> I’m not a free speech absolutist

Neither am I, I think it is a stupid label.

> It is fine if we protect some types of speech, and selectively acknowledge the right of platform-owners to not broadcast some types of speech.

There is a very large difference between allowing (or requiring) companies to censor specific types of speech in an open and content neutral fashion, and giving companies carte blanche to not broadcast anything they want without any legal responsibility because of those companies "free speech rights". There are of course, also numerous shades of grey between these extremes.

The "you have to let companies censor whoever they want because that is their right" argument is logically inconsistent.

Speech has real consequences, otherwise why would you consider it important to defend? Hate speech is a real problem. It is poisonous to society and results in real people getting killed for real. And no, the "marketplace of ideas" where you offer your own opinion to disprove lies is a hopelessly naive concept. That's not how the world works. In reality, people prefer to stay in echo chambers. And fascists laugh about how you're working towards making it easier for them to abolish all freedoms.

> When our enemies say: well, we gave you the freedom of opinion back then- yeah, you gave it to us, that's in no way evidence that we should return the favor! Your stupidity shall not be contagious! That you granted it to us is evidence of how dumb you are!

-- Joseph Goebbels, 1935

And no, there is no slippery slope here. Many European countries have well-designed, robust hate speech bans that have worked well for decades to protect freedom against those who would destroy it.

A lot of religious texts, beliefs, and/or sermons would probably be considered hate speech to a not insignificant number of people.

Yes, real life is hard and complicated and there's no easy way to decide it. We collectively do the best we can and keep trying to improve. That's just reality. That's why free speech absolutism is naïve- it appeals to our desire for one, simple, always enforceable rule but it's not the way the world works that one simple rule is always the best outcome.

What kind of argument is that ? How do you think they trial people for hate speech ?

Murder is illegal you can still talk about it just don't plot an assassination. Being a nazi is illegal in germany, you can still talk about nazis and nazism

It's not a banned list fo words that immediately put you in jail for uttering them

The best you can do is disenfranchising anything less than the majority's opinion.

I think the current US model works well. Free speech, unless it's going to lead to immediate harm and such.

Anything more than that is a step into authoritarianism, and where I fear we're headed. The private sector has already tried to be said arbiters, so it's interesting to see where this ends up.

Looking at your example for the point of view of the German criminal code, section 130 (https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_st...):

* believing that God is real, and the Bible is real, and homosexuals are sinners is completely outside the scope of the law, since it only concerns speech, not beliefs.

* saying "God is real, and the Bible is real, and homosexuals are sinners" is also not affected (this is dogma of the Roman Catholic Church, frequently stated in public) because no matter whether you believe it to be true or not, it does not imply anyone should do anything in particular, and thus does not affect the public peace.

* saying "God hates homosexuals and they will burn in hell", still the same, what God does in hell is outside the scope of the law.

* saying "Every god-fearing man should do god's will and kill homosexuals on sight" in public in front of a crowd - BEEEP, BEEP, BEEP, we got ourselves a statement suited to causing a disturbance of the public peace, go to jail for between three months and five years.

* saying "People should not let homosexuals into their homes" - not affected, whom people let into your private homes is not a matter of public peace.

* saying "Companies should not employ homosexuals" - again not affected for the same reason, although companies who actually refuse to employ homosexuals would be in violation of an entirely different (anti-discrimination) law.

So you see: it's not actually that difficult.

> I think the current US model works well. Free speech, unless it's going to lead to immediate harm and such. Anything more than that is a step into authoritarianism

This is a lovely example of status quo bias.

Parliaments and courts.

See the battle-tested European hate speech laws I mentioned, e.g. section 130 of the criminal code of Germany:

"Whoever, in a manner suited to causing a disturbance of the public peace,

1. incites hatred against a national, racial, religious group or a group defined by their ethnic origin, against sections of the population or individuals on account of their belonging to one of the aforementioned groups or sections of the population, or calls for violent or arbitrary measures against them or

2. violates the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously maligning or defaming one of the aforementioned groups, sections of the population or individuals on account of their belonging to one of the aforementioned groups or sections of the population"

Note especially how the first sentence is a pretty tight restriction. Private speech cannot be affected. Academic texts are pretty safe. Anything arguing for moderation and careful consideration of facts is easily defensible.

And how can the parliaments, and the people who elected them, openly discuss what speech to ban, if the speech in question is illegal? Censorship is inherently anti-democratic.

As for the Daily Mail, you should be cautious in your commitment to its veracity and its applicability to an American audience. For example, the word “arrest” does not mean what you think it does in UK English. I think you are confusing it with the word used in the scenario you expected: “charged”. An arrest simply means that the police have started asking questions, and are notifying the subject that their questions and any answers can be admissible in court.

British police reality is not the same as in a US TV series.

The police questioned someone over singing “Kung Foo Fighting” as part of their set, and threatened them with prosecution.

I’m not confused as to what that means.

…says the guy who fails to recognize that the musician was never taken into custody or charged with a crime. Some folks made an accusation (over a decade ago, by the way). The police followed up on the call by asking the guy questions about the incident. Literally just talked to him.

And then…? Nothing. No charges filed. No detention. No indictment. Nothing. The matter was dropped.

Anyone can accuse anyone of anything, both in the US and the UK. That doesn't mean when the police follow up, the accused go straight to jail and stand before a judge.

Now, once more, UK laws have NOTHING to do with German laws, especially after the UK withdrew from the EU. So unless you've got an example from Germany or at least France that demonstrates a legitimate chilling effect on free speech due to hate speech laws present in those countries, you're indeed confused as to what it means.

Fun fact: Europe is not a monolith, and the UK has no prohibition against Nazi iconography and rhetoric, unlike for example France and Germany.

I sincerely doubt you’d call this “nothing” if, for example, it was a white woman calling the police on a black man.

The police questioning someone is never “nothing”.

In a country with proper protection for speech, this should have never happened.

> So unless you've got an example from Germany or at least France …

I’m sorry, is the UK not in Europe now?

Fine: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Enforcement_Act

> I'm sorry, is the UK not in Europe now?

For the purposes of examining hate speech regulations, no, it's not. Different currency. Separate economic zone. Limited to no hate speech regulation especially as it regards Nazi/fascism.

The US and Mexico are on the same continent as well. Closer in fact due to the huge shared border and no large salt water channel between. Should we lump the laws of Mexico and the US together haphazardly as well? No? Then why would you automatically lump the UK and Germany together like that when they are in fact quite distinct entities?

See how dumb that sounds ?

No, it is really not at all a slippery slope.

Even if you just look at the term, it's pretty damn obvious that it has nothing yo do with "Speech that you don’t like? That offends you?"

In general, just looking at terms might give you a very flawed understanding of such things as the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The country where I live only banned hate speech in 2017, and I think the world was fine before it. The issue is not that we need more laws to ban any kind of speech, but we need to actually enforce the existing laws instead. Before 2017 we only had a law for “instigation of the people”, which worked fine and did not ban "hate speech" per se.

On the contrary, Twitter is full of people claiming this or that speech is getting people killed, with absolutely no evidence.

There are a growing number of people who truly and deeply believe exposure to opinions they disagree with, or even empirical data, is "violence" against them or even "genocide".

Making these claims is a great strategy for forcibly silencing anyone who disagrees with you.

There is in fact a fuckton of evidence: https://news.yahoo.com/all-25-us-extremism-related-murders-l...

I still believe that claims of harm and violence are commonly made against speech that is not promoting harm or violence, in an attempt to censor that speech. The proportion of each I don't know, just that I firmly believe both exist.

by this line of reasoning, what would happen if a group of hardcore communists decided that merely talking about how free markets for AI research is a good thing is something that they cannot tolerate, and begin killing people. Do we now forbid this speech too, as CLEARLY it is getting people killed?

So be like the Nazis (because that worked so well for them).

"We enter the Reichstag to arm ourselves with democracy’s weapons. If democracy is foolish enough to give us free railway passes and salaries, that is its problem. [...] We are coming neither as friends or neutrals. We come as enemies! As the wolf attacks the sheep, so come we. You are not among your friends any longer. You will not enjoy having us among you."

The problem is not that the Nazis were allowed to speak (in fact, hate speech against Jews was often punishable under German law and Goebbels was imprisoned twice for it), but that they were allowed to be violent with no real consequences. Hitler only served eight months for his violent coup attempt in 1923.

Free speech absolutism - are you going to force people to listen? Who has the right to decide what content is available, and where? Are media platforms then compelled to not de-platform? I am literally censoring the TV when I turn it off. You think that's wrong?

Don't understand what you mean by free speech absolutism, concept doesn't make too much sense to me.

Alice doesn't have to listen to Bob, but if Carol interferes with Alice listening to Bob, that's censorship.

You act like everyone is super strong and can deal with hate speech. As if a gay or trans teen can always handle being told again & again that they're a disgusting monster, that they don't belong in this world and that people like them should die. Not everyone is strong enough to refute these opinions with their own. And then they kill themselves.

The genocides of recent history debunk the idea that people are "smart" enough to dismiss hate propagandists. Also, it doesn't have anything to do with being smart, because lots of "smart" people also join hate-motivated movements. They do it because hate serves their inner needs, the same reason that so-called "not-smart" people do it.

Believing in people's better angels is great and all, but outside of contexts where they feel safe, humans don't instinctively love or even tolerate their fellow humans, especially when their fears and insecurities are targeted.

Fear, intolerance, and hate are unfortunately much simpler and more default than nuance and tolerance. That is why hate speech is inordinately effective compared to tolerance-speech.

It also allows for the most amount of noise, and there are tons of people who don't want to spend their lives filtering through a bunch of noise produced by bad actors and would rather trust someone reputable to do it for them.

http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

It's push vs. pull. Ads pull you by creating a want (either lust-driven or fear-driven) and conveniently pointing to something that can fulfill it. The followers of oppressive and hateful ideologies instead push you to do something or adopt some belief, under threat of being labeled the enemy should you not comply.

Put another way, the difference between this threat-based persuasion and fear-based advertising is that the ads are just bullshitting you into believing you're in some danger, so you'll buy the advertiser's "solution", while threat-based approach is that the other party will put you in danger unless you comply with them.

It's just sad that those self-proclaimed anti-oppression activists don't see they're using the very same methods for their supposed goals.

Since you cannot shine truth on a small lie without exposing bigger lies, the lies snowball into unmanageable levels, inhibiting all creativity, science and business. This happens in any corrupt people, even without any violence or even threat of violence. But the violence is inevitable in the end.

You've grossly overestimated the willingness (not the capacity) of people to reason and gravely underestimated the power of propoganda.

Everything in history from religion to politics, from sports to war, yes even the history of science, points to the capacity of humans to willfully ignore knowledge.

Take, for example, privacy. In a free speech absolutist world, nobody can ever have privacy, for anything one says in confidence can be repeated for all to hear. Or I could completely doxx you, and you'd have no recourse.

Free speech absolutism is complete garbage

Thinking it "might convince stupid people of wrongs" is something we might think of as a trope, but if you think about it it's an elitist fallacy.

It stems purely from the idea that I, smart and educated as I am, must preserve the common idiot from making mistakes.

The reason it's a debatable topic is much more banal und real: It's doing harm and impacting the lifes of the minorities targeted by such hate speech. No need for gullible fools to mistake it for a rallying call and do physical or otherwise subsequent harm. Hate speech is very well suited to hurt, oppress, silence and alienate all by itself.

So yes, free speech must prevail any counterargument! But so does the moral principles not to hurt others, and the logical necessity that my freedom ends when it would diminish the freedom of others.

And freedom of speech does not mean right to threaten others indemnity. If it would, that would do nothing but enable this very freedom of expressions downfall.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Yet it literally never existed

I used this think this, but then I figured out that I live in a world where I'm not always welcome by the "majority" and have seen first hand how these things can go sideways. Now I view this attitude as a privilege and that it typically comes from someone whose rights aren't all that impacted by the tyranny of the majority.

and if they cannot say what they think, they will simply welcome you more?

TLDR - free speech absolutism sounds simple until you think about who is actually free to speak/which voices are heard on platforms that have no rules

Yep, that’s pretty dangerous, and people could get hurt. That shouldn’t be protected by the First Amendment.

Oh yeah, and protesting the draft. That’s pretty dangerous too. Government military recruitment is a necessity when we’re at war, and advocating against it is tantamount to sedition and espionage. It’s basically the same situation as shouting “fire” in a crowded room, and should not be protected by the First Amendment.

Now, I don’t actually believe this—I’m merely sharing how the US Supreme Court used exactly the same analogy you did, in 1919. Schenck v. United States is the most important use of the “‘fire’ in a crowded theater” analogy in history, because it shows how, in practice, such common‐sense ideas actually get used by the powerful.

Don't forget the evils of "harmful lyrics" that Tipper Gore saved us from. That was teaching children forbidden concepts like inner city music and dangerous metal music.

Misinformation harms indirectly; therefore it is and should remain legal.

I mean, if you're a white guy, what do you give a fuck about someone turning America into a white ethnostate? Sure, theoretically, it's morally bad, but you're not really going to be directly affected.

If you're not trans, being characterized as a groomer pedophile has no effect at all to you.

I think it's easy to take a stand in favor of free speech when speech is only speech, but that's a remarkably naive and gullible viewpoint to have. Do you think white supremacists that lynch black people don't use hate speech beforehand and talk about exterminating non-whites beforehand?

"But that's violence. That's diferent.", you might say. How do you think these people meet each other and collaborate with each other and normalize this kind of behavior? Through 'free speech'.

So as someone who is Asian, who thought that claiming the lab leak theory to be racist against Asians to be incredibly stupid, and as someone who has been on the receiving end of multiple insults related to COVID and possibly one violent interaction, I am still a Free Speech Absolutist.

My family knows what its like to live in a world where speech is censored, not by the government, but by everyone you know for saying something out of line with the official narrative. I despise the fact that the current left seems to be all ok with living in a authoritative world where everyone is expected to socially push the current narrative and suppress dissent. The worst part is that since its not directly coming from the Govt, its used as an excuse to continue to push these anti-liberal agendas.

I don't care if I'm on the receiving end of threats or actual violence because of free speech. Giving up your rights due to being scared is cowardice and allows actual authoritarians to take over your mind.

And assuming that people of color should be the victims of violence because you, personally, aren't concerned with violence is selfish and narcissistic.

You make the mistake of assuming that those in power will only be preventing speech you agree with rather than muzzling you.

What's really interesting about that is I couldn't find one bit of audio that came anywhere near what you're characterizing. Even in the one episode of Underground Dialogue Podcast where they're talking about black secession.

I typed in 'white supremacist podcast'. It took a while to actually get a link because I'm pretty sure Google is censoring the results. (Go, Google!) But here's what I listened to:

https://therightstuff.biz/2023/02/26/ftn-535-some-garbage-po...

I'm obviously just skimming through it but already just from the show notes we have anti-semitsm ('Jewish sex-trafficking money').

Hitting in random points. 22 mins in, nothing. 64 mins "KAnye was right about the jews. tell all black people" 1:51 nothing 3:12 a brief mention of a podcast that I looked up that talks about 'anti-White brainwashing' 4:19 'Columbus Jewish news'

Let's compare that with Hotep because Hoteps in general, should be theoretically the most anti-white podcast out of all the ones you mentioned.

Hotep Episode https://soundcloud.com/handymayhem/hoteps-been-told-you-236-...

First hit: nothing 58 mins: nothing 1h39: mysogyny but within the context of a 'nigga with a pussy' 2h17m - talking about Andrew Tate and Greta Thurnberg; possibly a mysogony subtext 2h43m - anti-Police

What's naïve is thinking that they would stop the lynching if someone told them they weren't allowed to talk about it. It would make zero difference.

> "But that's violence. That's diferent.", you might say. How do you think these people meet each other and collaborate with each other and normalize this kind of behavior? Through 'free speech'.

Conspiracy to commit crimes is illegal for a number of reasons and covers this problem adequately without needing to infringe on speech per se. But you should also remember that it is not words that kill people, it is the actual violence that follows that kills people, and that kind of violence is already illegal.

Plus, racist speech is how we find out who the racists are. David Duke basically outed himself as a Klan member by making racist political speeches in public, for example.

Unless you can prove with certainty that free speech causes an increase in violence and death, then it's better to default to openness.

The KKK and white supremacists marched in their clown parades regularly for decades and we laughed at them. Is it a coincidence that their movements grew significantly with the amplification of messages against them and social media censorship against them. Various right wing figures used this as leverage to increase their virulence.

At some point, people decided that we should fear the KKK and white supremacists, and that gave the racists an enormous amount of power even though their numbers are dwindling. I think the world was better when we mocked them and belittled them.

But now the strategy is to call anyone a racist, which is self-defeating and something I vehemently disagree with.

[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/JLPtalk/status/162961454611683328...

There's this black guy. They did this documentary on him a while back. He went and befriended KKK members and skinheads. Through his individual action, he was able to get people away from white nationalism. White liberals absolutely love him. They point at him as an example of what all people of color should aspire to. Turning hate to friendship through personal interaction.

(Speaking generally, not to you specifically.) The thing is, as a person of color, the onus isn't on me to convert your racist grandparent or uncle from being a racist piece of shit. Fuck them. That puts me in the subordinate position of having to placate a white supremacist and that, in of itself, is fucking white supremacy. Fuck. That.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZTmbDNLUkk&t=0s

I think the story of Daryl Davis is exactly the point of free speech. If it were up to the fascist liberals, those KKK people would be cancelled into oblivion. But Daryl Davis reached out and talked to them, and through the power of his love, changed hundreds of people. He didn't build up more divisions, he broke them down. This is what Free Speech is all about.

Or did we just have a black president and a political party that leaned into white supremacy dog whistles?

Consider what kind of books are being banned from American libraries. It's books portraying trans and gender-nonconforming people in a positive or neutral light, not books calling them "groomer pedophiles". It's books telling American history from the perspective of America's exploited minorities, not books calling for ethnic genocide or pretending the US actually upheld the principles of freedom and equality it was allegedly founded on.

To support censorship, especially state censorship, is to support the powerful in imposing their version of the truth on everyone else.

It's frankly incomprehensible to me how anyone who doesn't support totalitarianism can look at history (or present day) and dare to normalize any amount of state control over speech.

And that's fine. This argument keeps being brought up over and over again, but if this happened, nothing would please more because it would remove the ambiguity from the situation.

> It's frankly incomprehensible to me how anyone who doesn't support totalitarianism can look at history (or present day) and dare to normalize any amount of state control over speech.

I mean, the fact that you can look at The Holocaust or Jim Crow and think that any amount of tolerance should be shown to Nazi'ism or white supremacy is beyond incomprehensible to me. But that's the issue.

For a certain type of person, any legislation curtailing 'free speech', even if that is done to stamp out white supremacy is an existential threat to freedom in America.

But to people of color, allowing white supremacists to spout intolerance publicly with no repercussions (other than maybe getting 'cancelled') is an existential threat to THEIR freedom in America.

Dan Carlin had a great example of this when there was lots of strife between MAGA and antifa groups. Lots of antifa people were calling for censorship of nazi speech while carrying communist flags. Carlin pointed out that if you give the government the power to eliminate that far-right speech, your far-left speech is next to the chopping block.

You mean like criminalizing it like the way it is in Germany? That magic?

Governments that want to abuse laws can use nearly any law. Don’t like what a media outlet is saying about you? Investigate them for tax evasion.

If you’re worried about government abuses you can argue against having any laws at all.

Yeah I’m worried about government abuses. That’s a pretty fundamental part of democracy

Surely you cannot think restricting speech helps you in any way? Do you think it helps turn those that dislike you on your side?

I think it removes the ambiguity. If you find laws that prohibit someone from being a literal Nazi disagreeable and would choose not to live in a state because of it because of 'free speech', that's fine. Just as I'd be fine for not living in Florida or Mississippi for the inverse of that reason.

also, in what way does trying to make someone not be able to talk freely stop people from holding morally reprehensible views?