semipotentwalrus
Ye Olde King of OT
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Post by semipotentwalrus on Jul 8, 2020 20:39:41 GMT -5
Wow, that title really comes across as more pretentious than I'd like. Anyone got a better one?
Anyhow, I've been mulling the concept of free speech a bit lately, so I thought I'd make a thread for discussing it. More precisely, I've been getting increasingly annoyed by people, both in Sweden and the United States, that seem to understand Free Speech (TM) as some sort of absolute, sacrosanct right that cannot and should not be restricted under any circumstance. You've got the Hitler-saluting dog case in the UK for example. Anecdotally, I came across a bunch of people arguing against the sentencing of the dog's owner by appealing to free speech as a concept as if it were completely impossible to morally limit speech.
Despite this, every nation on Earth limits free speech. You can't yell "fire!" in a crowded theatre in the US, you can't run around calling for the extermination of certain ethnicities in Sweden, lying in court will get you jailed in Burkina Faso, and selling Russian state secrets to France will get you un-personed pretty fast. What I do not understand is how this is so goddamn difficult to understand. There's plenty of people who were against the dog's owner being sentenced not because of the sacrosanct Free Speech, but because they did not feel comfortable with government banning speech in this particular case, or because they did not consider the benefits of official censure outweighed the drawbacks. I disagree with those people, but they are logically coherent arguments.
This poses the question, however: how do societies decide where the line is to be drawn? I feel that this question is criminally underdiscussed because there is a veritable swamp of people who do not even recognize that the line is already being drawn in the first place.
Am I just ranting, or is there something to this? Is the current public understanding of what free speech is and what it is for preventing us as a society from having a decent debate about free speech (and yes, I realize that this question potentially is elitist as fuck)? In my mind free speech is not an end, but a tool to bring about an end: human welfare. How, then, do we identify situations, such as perjury, where the gain of limiting speech is greater than the harm? Can we? Should we?
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Post by bobtheinquisitor on Jul 9, 2020 0:06:25 GMT -5
What's this about a dog?
Anyway, we have seen Free Speech weaponized and used to commit real harm in our own country. If we win, we'll have to draw some harder limits on disinformation, hate speech, etc.. If we lose, we'll find some even harsher limits placed on us.
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Post by Disciple of Fate on Jul 9, 2020 5:32:32 GMT -5
I think the line should be drawn at speech that actually causes harm. Such as hate speech or say, trying to peddle garbage 'medicine' to 'cure' things like cancer or other diseases. While that last one is illegal for companies, nothing stops individuals.
If you have a massive platform and push that kind of BS, you should be able to be held to account. I think it might be difficult to determine where the line of harm lies, but some parts of that are quantifiable, such as quality of life and life expectancy.
As this seems to neatly hooks into the current 'cancel culture' debate, let me get this straight right out of the gate. Remember when cancel culture wasn't a thing? Because as far as I know, it always has been even in the US. Maybe it was for being the wrong kind of Christian (the icky Catholics!), doing or saying something bad on TV or when conservatives/evangelicals actually still cared about (family) values and politicians who cheated or such had a snowball's chance in hell to get re-elected. Just because conservatives no longer have standards, doesn't mean that cancel culture is anything recent. Saying cancel culture is bad means that there would be no standards or accountability, that isn't free speech, that's carte blanche to be a dickbag.
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Post by Least censored on the planet! on Jul 9, 2020 6:12:25 GMT -5
Show me a free speech absolutist, and I'll show you an hypocrite, lol.
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semipotentwalrus
Ye Olde King of OT
A somewhat powerful marine mammal.
Posts: 980
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Post by semipotentwalrus on Jul 9, 2020 6:20:15 GMT -5
What's this about a dog? Anyway, we have seen Free Speech weaponized and used to commit real harm in our own country. If we win, we'll have to draw some harder limits on disinformation, hate speech, etc.. If we lose, we'll find some even harsher limits placed on us. There was a dude the other year in the UK who trained his girlfriend's dog to do Hitler salutes who was sentenced for it. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Meechan
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Post by Hordini on Jul 12, 2020 0:06:39 GMT -5
Show me a free speech absolutist, and I'll show you an hypocrite, lol. Why do you say that? What do you think a free speech absolutist would be hypocritical about?
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semipotentwalrus
Ye Olde King of OT
A somewhat powerful marine mammal.
Posts: 980
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Post by semipotentwalrus on Jul 12, 2020 8:11:23 GMT -5
Show me a free speech absolutist, and I'll show you an hypocrite, lol. Why do you say that? What do you think a free speech absolutist would be hypocritical about?
Presumably because next to no one actually believes in unlimited free speech. Society stops working if you're allowed to lie in court without consequence or just make up stuff in contracts, for example.
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Post by hatoflords on Jul 12, 2020 12:09:47 GMT -5
Why do you say that? What do you think a free speech absolutist would be hypocritical about?
Presumably because next to no one actually believes in unlimited free speech. Society stops working if you're allowed to lie in court without consequence or just make up stuff in contracts, for example.
Or more directly, people who complain about free speech not being respected as an absolute are generally just whiny assholes who want to say whatever they want while everyone else shuts up and says nothing.
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Post by Least censored on the planet! on Jul 13, 2020 5:36:15 GMT -5
Show me a free speech absolutist, and I'll show you an hypocrite, lol. Why do you say that? What do you think a free speech absolutist would be hypocritical about? Because let me talk with them for a while and I'll find the speech they don't want to be free. Because noone actually wants all speech to be free.
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carlo87
Ye Olde King of OT
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Post by carlo87 on Jul 21, 2020 11:41:43 GMT -5
Outside of speech that is going to cause unwarranted and unreasonable harm, harassment, and illegal stuff involving kids I'm fairly close to an absolutist when the speech is public. Want to have a NAMBLA pride parade and advocate for abolishing the age of consent? Well you'd be gross, but knock yourself out.
FYI, You actually CAN yell "fire" in a crowded theater legally, depending on the circumstances.
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semipotentwalrus
Ye Olde King of OT
A somewhat powerful marine mammal.
Posts: 980
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Post by semipotentwalrus on Jul 21, 2020 17:24:03 GMT -5
Of course you can, I'm pretty sure anyone who has even an inkling about what the term is about knows that it's shorthand for "yelling fire in a crowded theatre when there isn't actually a fire there, causing a risk of harm to people from a panicking crowd" or similar.
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carlo87
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Post by carlo87 on Jul 21, 2020 18:00:27 GMT -5
Of course you can, I'm pretty sure anyone who has even an inkling about what the term is about knows that it's shorthand for "yelling fire in a crowded theatre when there isn't actually a fire there, causing a risk of harm to people from a panicking crowd" or similar. Kind-of a sidebar here. The saying itself was wrapped in racism. The Supreme Court Justice that is accredited with that saying used it as a way to punish a man for peacefully protesting the draft, an opinion the Justice himself later changed his mind on, and an opinion that was later overturned by the Supreme Court.
Legally speaking (using the theater analogy) it's only illegal if the statement is both false and dangerous and sometimes not even then. For example, lets say there was an imminent catastrophe other than a fire (let's say a malfunctioning boiler about to blow). You can legally falsely yell "fire" to clear the area as the actual explanation is too complex for the time constraint, especially if the general public don't understand that a malfunctioning boiler can be deadly.
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semipotentwalrus
Ye Olde King of OT
A somewhat powerful marine mammal.
Posts: 980
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Post by semipotentwalrus on Jul 22, 2020 7:28:06 GMT -5
The point is that speech is already restricted in certain circumstances.
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carlo87
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Post by carlo87 on Jul 22, 2020 16:16:10 GMT -5
The point is that speech is already restricted in certain circumstances. Of course a lot of speech is restricted. I think it's a major line to cross from "let's ban stuff that is likely to cause imminent and unnecessary harm" to "I just don't like that, so no one gets to say it". That's basically where I draw the line.
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CommieCanUCK
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Post by CommieCanUCK on Jul 22, 2020 17:02:35 GMT -5
The point is that speech is already restricted in certain circumstances. Of course a lot of speech is restricted. I think it's a major line to cross from "let's ban stuff that is likely to cause imminent and unnecessary harm" to "I just don't like that, so no one gets to say it". That's basically where I draw the line. Sounds like everyone is in agreement, then. I don't know of anyone serious who is advocating the government rule any harmless speech unlawful just because they don't like it.
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