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The fact that holocaust denial is banned (in EU, even as an idea!) only sends the signal that the government fears it might be true. I mean, they don't even ba

by tomp 11y ago

The fact that holocaust denial is banned (in EU, even as an idea!) only sends the signal that the government fears it might be true. I mean, they don't even ban creationism!

Mithaldu 11y ago
Very very weird reasoning. Holocaust denial is banned because it amounts to hate speech. Creationism is dumb, but not hate speech. Also, there is no thoughtcrime.
- tomp 11y ago
  Now you're just making stuff up. How is saying "Hitler didn't specifically target Jews" hate speech? I used to think it was just dumb, but now I'm not so sure any more. Obviously it's not thoughtcrime, but it's illegal to even discuss it, not only to publish books about it.
  - Mithaldu 11y ago
    > How is saying "Hitler didn't specifically target Jews" hate speech? Simply put, because it is functionally identical to saying "the victims were liars on a humongous scale", with all effects that will have on an audience. > it's illegal to even discuss it Paragraph?
    - tomp 11y ago
      Which is exactly exvivalent as saying "those who believe in creationism are liars on a massive scale". Again, how is that hate speech?
      - Mithaldu 11y ago
        It is not equivalent. Holocaust victims have described things that actually happened to them or their families, they are claiming things as historic fact. It is absolutely possible, and very cruel, to call them liars. Scientists advocating the theory of evolution are 100% aware that it is a theory. The word itself includes an understanding and acknowledgement of it not being fact, but a theory. Unless you try to claim them believing in their theory is a lie, you cannot call them liars, since they are not proposing facts. Further, you ignore the part about the effects it has on the audience. Making other people believe that jews and other holocaust victims have successfully perpetrated a lie about "their race" across decades, makes them more likely to be radicalized and thus more likely to lash out against "others". Do note how in Germany even today fire-bombings against residences of foreigners and particularly refugees occur particularly in the german regions with higher-than-average occurences of neo nazis. Oh, lest i forget: > it's illegal to even discuss it Paragraph?
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
        tomp 11y ago
        > Holocaust victims have described things that actually happened to them or their families, they are claiming things as historic fact. It is absolutely possible, and very cruel, to call them liars. Ok, let's use a different example then. It's not illegal to say that Stalin was a good man than never harmed anyone, even though it's incredibly wrong (Stalin killed possibly even more people than Hitler), and equally disrespectful (assuming that at least some of the Stalin's victims or their relatives survived). Why the difference? > Scientists advocating the theory of evolution are 100% aware that it is a theory Wow. I wouldn't think that as someone who objects denying the holocaust would use exactly the most stupid argument used by those who deny evolution. It's called a theory not because scientists don't think evolution is a fact, but because it's an explanation of how things happen. Evolution is a fact, to the same extent that gravity is a fact (i.e. the prediction than an apple will fall down if your release it) - it might be wrong e.g. if we live in the Matrix, but then all of the reality is "wrong". Even with gravity, you have gravity (things fall) and the theory of gravity (a longer explanation why things fall). Edit: I'm not sure what you're asking with "Paragraph?"... Do you mean "Source?"?
        Mithaldu 11y ago
        > Why the difference? Because even if there are "Stalin deniers", their numbers are not remotely large enough to have an appreciable effect. > Evolution I disagree, but am happy to agree to disagree. Regardless of whom of us is correct on that count, there remains the fact that denial of the theory of evolution is unlikely to successfully radicalize an appreciable amount of people. > Edit: I'm not sure what you're asking with "Paragraph?"... Do you mean "Source?"? Yes, which paragraph of law forbids discussion of denial of holocaust?
        tomp 11y ago
        > I disagree, but am happy to agree to disagree. Just to be clear, you disagree with a fact that follows from very simple assumptions just by applying a few very simple steps of logical reasoning, yet you accept as dogmatic (i.e. authorative) truth a historical (i.e. unrepeatable and illogical) fact that you never witnessed yourself and that many people claim is false? Interesting. Edit: Or, maybe you don't disagree that evolution is happening, just that it happened (i.e. that the current species were created by evolution)? I guess that's the other option, which would be less inconsistent with logic. > Regardless of whom of us is correct on that count, there remains the fact that denial of the theory of evolution is unlikely to successfully radicalize an appreciable amount of people. Well, given that holocaust denial is legal in the US, I think it's pretty safe to say that it's a fact that it's unlikely to successfully radicalize an appreciable amount of people. > Yes, which paragraph of law forbids discussion of denial of holocaust? I don't know, but why don't you check Wikipedia (a more raliable source) instead of relying on me (a completely unreliable, potentially lying, source)?
- Asbostos 11y ago
  How is it hate speech? Are there people who would start killing Jews if they discovered it didn't really happen? Serious question, maybe Germany has people who are ready to commit violence but are held back by the thought that the holocaust probably happened? I can't think of the chain of causation from saying "It didn't happen" to someone killing someone else. The closest I can find on Wikipedia's definition of hate speech is "...disparages ... a protected individual or group." Who is that group? Is it "people who believe the holocaust happened"? Surely belief in an arbitrary claim doesn't count for defining a "protected individual or group". Is the group Jews? How does it harm Jews?
  - Mithaldu 11y ago
    See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10770153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10770153
  - fsloth 11y ago
    Genocide denial is extremely insulting to the victims and the survivors. Jews have been murdered in europe for centuries as a vent for fear and political impotence. We've had enough. The fact that the germany that produced so much culture and science was the culprit of the last genocide in western europe is an absolute horror on so many scales. Yes, the horrors went on elsewhere but the only way for us as a species to move ahead of our bloodspattered history is to take a stand against fear and brutalism. whitewashing history is a dangerous thing because it gives the signal that political leadership could have a way to escape history's judgement. In essence, it's a matter of accountability that we must uphold vigorously.
    - venomsnake 11y ago
      >Genocide denial is extremely insulting to the victims and the survivors. And? Nobody here denies that. But that is no reason to punish denialists. Just ostracize them from society.
      - dragonwriter 11y ago
        Damaging untruths are widely punished, either as civil offenses, criminal offenses, or both, in the US and elsewhere; countries differ in details of where the burden of proof lies in truth/untruth of harmful statements, what the standard of proof required is, what degree and kind of harms are covered, and whether and how those kind of rules vary for different categories of harmful statements. In general, these punishments reflect the common belief that infliction of harm without consent of the harmed is improper, and warrants either punishment or compensation or both. And, anyway, ostracism is a punishment (historically viewed as a fairly severe one.)
- littletimmy 11y ago
  How does it necessarily amount to hate speech? One could deny the holocaust, for example, because one is a solipsist and believes that no humans apart from one exist. Since every other human, and by corollary the jews, are solely a figment of one's imagination, no one was ever killed, which means as a corollary there was no holocaust. What, you're going to ban solipsism now?
  - Mithaldu 11y ago
    Please read the conversation below.
    - littletimmy 11y ago
      I don't see how it connects to what I've said.
      - Mithaldu 11y ago
        You asked "How does it necessarily amount to hate speech?" In it i attempt to answer that question. The rest of your post really does not bear much more addressing other than that "holocaust denial" has a range of forms, and what you described does not fall under it.
        littletimmy 11y ago
        Despite the fact that I present a straightforward way to deny the holocaust without having any hate speech in it? You seem to be assuming your conclusions.
        Mithaldu 11y ago
        I'm saying that the scenario you proposed does not fall under the laws (particularly of my own country) that govern restrictions regarding holocaust denial. Feel free to peruse them to see if you agree with me on that: http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_stgb.html#p1241 http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_stg... http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_stgb.html#p1703 http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_stg... http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_stgb.html#p1712 http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_stg...
Asbostos 11y ago
I think it's worse than that - it distorts our record of history. In another couple of hundred years, if people want to find out what happened, they'll see how it was banned and realize that most information that we did publish must have been biased. They could reasonably assume that it's largely false since no serious well funded attempts to refute it were allowed. So they could conclude that they have no idea what really happened. They might conclude as you did, that it might not have happened, otherwise information about it wouldn't have been subject to so much suppression. We should probably make the same conclusion today. Since when have legally enforced official versions of history been trusted over free and open research?
- tomp 11y ago
  I don't know why you're downvoted, I think you're making a valid and well-reasoned point.
- felipeerias 11y ago
  So we should be allowing holocaust denial here and now, because otherwise people in the future might turn out holocaust deniers? Holocaust denial has been refuted again and again. The reason why it keeps surfacing is not because of academics are still arguing about the facts. The facts don't matter: holocaust denial is one of the ways in which a very dangerous ideology searches for an entry point into the mainstream.
  - tomp 11y ago
    > Holocaust denial has been refuted again and again So has been the "flat Earth" theory. Yet we don't ban it. I think the reason it keeps resurfacing is precisely the fact it is banned - unbanning it would make it much less interesting. Also, although you and other commenters keep repeating how "dangerous" it is, noone has been able to actually articulate as to why it's dangerous.
    - felipeerias 11y ago
      Holocaust denial is a form of Nazi apologism. It keeps resurfacing because there are still many neo-fascist groups trying to bring their message to the mainstream. Lifting the ban would only help them reach a wider audience. (Do you really need an explanation as to why Nazism is incompatible with democracy?)
felipeerias 11y ago
The point is not just that it is false, but that it leads to a political discourse that is incompatible with the established democratic system.
- zo1 11y ago
  Incompatible in what way?
  - felipeerias 11y ago
    Are you seriously asking that?
    - magicalist 11y ago
      Considering that there's a very large segment of the HN population that lives in a country (the US) that (ostensibly) believes that not to be the case, I would give good odds they were seriously asking that. The First Amendment is a hill I would personally die on, but I think it's very useful to discuss with people from other countries' their beliefs and laws of freedom of expression, if only for Americans to learn that intelligent people can hold informed opinions on the rights to expression that are in some ways fundamentally incompatible with our own. I personally find it fascinating given how almost axiomatic I think of it...that's ideology for you, I guess :)
    - zo1 11y ago
      Yes, I am... From my point of you, I have no idea how to interpret what you said. I asked, because if you elaborated, i might be better able to understand your points/argument on the matter. And then, subsequently, able to respond/engage with you on the topic or what you're saying.
- tomp 11y ago
  Does it? Is that a hypothesis or a fact? I.e. did it, when it was still legal, lead to "incompatible political discourse"? Btw, I don't think that any political discourse is necessarily incompatible with democracy, as long as it's just discourse (and not e.g. violence).
rmc 11y ago
> The fact that holocaust denial is banned (in EU, even as an idea!) Holocaust denial is legal in many EU countries (e.g. UK). The EU is not one harmonious criminal/legal system.
- tomp 11y ago
  Yes, I noticed that when I read the Wiki page. I was quite happy! Although UK isn't really a bastion of free speech, so I have other complaints...
  - rmc 11y ago
    It was illegal in the UK to broadcast the voice of republicans in Northern Ireland. In practice it was worked around by having 'voice doubles' who would read the words. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988%E2%80%9394_British_broadcasting_voice_restrictions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988%E2%80%9394_British_broadc...
dang 11y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10769986 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10769986 and marked it off-topic.
- tomp 11y ago
  Seriously? Again? Why exactly is it off-topic? Or rather, by "subthread off-topic", do you mean my comment to which you replied to, or the discussion that developed below? It appears to me you're unfairly penalizing me, just because the opinions and arguments I express are different from the mainstream (and hence less socially acceptable). Am I wrong about that? Other reasons I can think of: (1) I'm commenting to much. (2) I don't "let the issues go" (i.e. I reply to too many comments); I do that because I think most arguments people respond with are not very sensible. The only real argument is something like "(i) holocaust denial is insulting to holocaust survivors, their relatives and other Jews; (ii) it's more insulting that most other insulting things, because they have PTSD or were brought up/know people who had PTSD; (iii) some violent groups want to use holocaust denial in their propaganda", which is a whole lot of twists and turns just to make sure only holocaust (and no other kind of) denial falls under "criminal". Still, it took a long time to arrive at this argument, and many people's other arguments were rather irrelevant. (3) There are too many up-&down-votes. (4) These kinds of arguments look bad for HN/YC. (5) It's hard for people to read the main thread if there's such a long subthread. But wouldn't this be solved better by having a maximum level of nesting on the main page, with separate pages for loading comments (e.g. Reddit has that). (6) These kinds of discussions are irrelevant and boring, because we've had them before. Then I would hope someone would link to a reasonable, and more importantly complete, argument, so we wouldn't need 50 comments to arrive to something like the argument in (2). (7) It's actually off-topic. But as I recall, my comment was just a reply to the parent comment. I can't be sure any more, because I don't know any more what the parent comment was. I tried to write this response in the nicest tone possible; but because of the nature and context of discussion, I'm worried it will still be perceived as argumentative, or even aggressive. I'm only trying to avoid situations like these in the future; I come here to learn, and I think one of the best ways to learn is by exchanging arguments, and refining them so that you reach the core of the disagreement (i.e. so that you eliminate all the bullshit arguments that follow from logical fallacies or that people use as excuses). But it's hard to do that without what seems like a heated discussion. Maybe I should first try Steelmanning (DH7 in [1]) the arguments in the future, and in general learn to argue better [2]. [1] http://lesswrong.com/lw/85h/better_disagreement/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/85h/better_disagreement/ [2] http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweapons/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweapo...

by tomp 11y ago

The fact that holocaust denial is banned (in EU, even as an idea!) only sends the signal that the government fears it might be true. I mean, they don't even ban creationism!

Mithaldu 11y ago

Very very weird reasoning. Holocaust denial is banned because it amounts to hate speech. Creationism is dumb, but not hate speech. Also, there is no thoughtcrime.

tomp 11y ago
Now you're just making stuff up. How is saying "Hitler didn't specifically target Jews" hate speech? I used to think it was just dumb, but now I'm not so sure any more. Obviously it's not thoughtcrime, but it's illegal to even discuss it, not only to publish books about it.
- Mithaldu 11y ago
  > How is saying "Hitler didn't specifically target Jews" hate speech? Simply put, because it is functionally identical to saying "the victims were liars on a humongous scale", with all effects that will have on an audience. > it's illegal to even discuss it Paragraph?
  - tomp 11y ago
    Which is exactly exvivalent as saying "those who believe in creationism are liars on a massive scale". Again, how is that hate speech?
    - Mithaldu 11y ago
      It is not equivalent. Holocaust victims have described things that actually happened to them or their families, they are claiming things as historic fact. It is absolutely possible, and very cruel, to call them liars. Scientists advocating the theory of evolution are 100% aware that it is a theory. The word itself includes an understanding and acknowledgement of it not being fact, but a theory. Unless you try to claim them believing in their theory is a lie, you cannot call them liars, since they are not proposing facts. Further, you ignore the part about the effects it has on the audience. Making other people believe that jews and other holocaust victims have successfully perpetrated a lie about "their race" across decades, makes them more likely to be radicalized and thus more likely to lash out against "others". Do note how in Germany even today fire-bombings against residences of foreigners and particularly refugees occur particularly in the german regions with higher-than-average occurences of neo nazis. Oh, lest i forget: > it's illegal to even discuss it Paragraph?
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
      - tomp 11y ago
        > Holocaust victims have described things that actually happened to them or their families, they are claiming things as historic fact. It is absolutely possible, and very cruel, to call them liars. Ok, let's use a different example then. It's not illegal to say that Stalin was a good man than never harmed anyone, even though it's incredibly wrong (Stalin killed possibly even more people than Hitler), and equally disrespectful (assuming that at least some of the Stalin's victims or their relatives survived). Why the difference? > Scientists advocating the theory of evolution are 100% aware that it is a theory Wow. I wouldn't think that as someone who objects denying the holocaust would use exactly the most stupid argument used by those who deny evolution. It's called a theory not because scientists don't think evolution is a fact, but because it's an explanation of how things happen. Evolution is a fact, to the same extent that gravity is a fact (i.e. the prediction than an apple will fall down if your release it) - it might be wrong e.g. if we live in the Matrix, but then all of the reality is "wrong". Even with gravity, you have gravity (things fall) and the theory of gravity (a longer explanation why things fall). Edit: I'm not sure what you're asking with "Paragraph?"... Do you mean "Source?"?
        Mithaldu 11y ago
        > Why the difference? Because even if there are "Stalin deniers", their numbers are not remotely large enough to have an appreciable effect. > Evolution I disagree, but am happy to agree to disagree. Regardless of whom of us is correct on that count, there remains the fact that denial of the theory of evolution is unlikely to successfully radicalize an appreciable amount of people. > Edit: I'm not sure what you're asking with "Paragraph?"... Do you mean "Source?"? Yes, which paragraph of law forbids discussion of denial of holocaust?
        tomp 11y ago
        > I disagree, but am happy to agree to disagree. Just to be clear, you disagree with a fact that follows from very simple assumptions just by applying a few very simple steps of logical reasoning, yet you accept as dogmatic (i.e. authorative) truth a historical (i.e. unrepeatable and illogical) fact that you never witnessed yourself and that many people claim is false? Interesting. Edit: Or, maybe you don't disagree that evolution is happening, just that it happened (i.e. that the current species were created by evolution)? I guess that's the other option, which would be less inconsistent with logic. > Regardless of whom of us is correct on that count, there remains the fact that denial of the theory of evolution is unlikely to successfully radicalize an appreciable amount of people. Well, given that holocaust denial is legal in the US, I think it's pretty safe to say that it's a fact that it's unlikely to successfully radicalize an appreciable amount of people. > Yes, which paragraph of law forbids discussion of denial of holocaust? I don't know, but why don't you check Wikipedia (a more raliable source) instead of relying on me (a completely unreliable, potentially lying, source)?
Asbostos 11y ago
How is it hate speech? Are there people who would start killing Jews if they discovered it didn't really happen? Serious question, maybe Germany has people who are ready to commit violence but are held back by the thought that the holocaust probably happened? I can't think of the chain of causation from saying "It didn't happen" to someone killing someone else. The closest I can find on Wikipedia's definition of hate speech is "...disparages ... a protected individual or group." Who is that group? Is it "people who believe the holocaust happened"? Surely belief in an arbitrary claim doesn't count for defining a "protected individual or group". Is the group Jews? How does it harm Jews?
- Mithaldu 11y ago
  See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10770153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10770153
- fsloth 11y ago
  Genocide denial is extremely insulting to the victims and the survivors. Jews have been murdered in europe for centuries as a vent for fear and political impotence. We've had enough. The fact that the germany that produced so much culture and science was the culprit of the last genocide in western europe is an absolute horror on so many scales. Yes, the horrors went on elsewhere but the only way for us as a species to move ahead of our bloodspattered history is to take a stand against fear and brutalism. whitewashing history is a dangerous thing because it gives the signal that political leadership could have a way to escape history's judgement. In essence, it's a matter of accountability that we must uphold vigorously.
  - venomsnake 11y ago
    >Genocide denial is extremely insulting to the victims and the survivors. And? Nobody here denies that. But that is no reason to punish denialists. Just ostracize them from society.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      Damaging untruths are widely punished, either as civil offenses, criminal offenses, or both, in the US and elsewhere; countries differ in details of where the burden of proof lies in truth/untruth of harmful statements, what the standard of proof required is, what degree and kind of harms are covered, and whether and how those kind of rules vary for different categories of harmful statements. In general, these punishments reflect the common belief that infliction of harm without consent of the harmed is improper, and warrants either punishment or compensation or both. And, anyway, ostracism is a punishment (historically viewed as a fairly severe one.)
littletimmy 11y ago
How does it necessarily amount to hate speech? One could deny the holocaust, for example, because one is a solipsist and believes that no humans apart from one exist. Since every other human, and by corollary the jews, are solely a figment of one's imagination, no one was ever killed, which means as a corollary there was no holocaust. What, you're going to ban solipsism now?
- Mithaldu 11y ago
  Please read the conversation below.
  - littletimmy 11y ago
    I don't see how it connects to what I've said.
    - Mithaldu 11y ago
      You asked "How does it necessarily amount to hate speech?" In it i attempt to answer that question. The rest of your post really does not bear much more addressing other than that "holocaust denial" has a range of forms, and what you described does not fall under it.
      - littletimmy 11y ago
        Despite the fact that I present a straightforward way to deny the holocaust without having any hate speech in it? You seem to be assuming your conclusions.
        Mithaldu 11y ago
        I'm saying that the scenario you proposed does not fall under the laws (particularly of my own country) that govern restrictions regarding holocaust denial. Feel free to peruse them to see if you agree with me on that: http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_stgb.html#p1241 http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_stg... http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_stgb.html#p1703 http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_stg... http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_stgb.html#p1712 http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_stg...

Asbostos 11y ago

I think it's worse than that - it distorts our record of history. In another couple of hundred years, if people want to find out what happened, they'll see how it was banned and realize that most information that we did publish must have been biased. They could reasonably assume that it's largely false since no serious well funded attempts to refute it were allowed. So they could conclude that they have no idea what really happened. They might conclude as you did, that it might not have happened, otherwise information about it wouldn't have been subject to so much suppression. We should probably make the same conclusion today. Since when have legally enforced official versions of history been trusted over free and open research?

tomp 11y ago
I don't know why you're downvoted, I think you're making a valid and well-reasoned point.
felipeerias 11y ago
So we should be allowing holocaust denial here and now, because otherwise people in the future might turn out holocaust deniers? Holocaust denial has been refuted again and again. The reason why it keeps surfacing is not because of academics are still arguing about the facts. The facts don't matter: holocaust denial is one of the ways in which a very dangerous ideology searches for an entry point into the mainstream.
- tomp 11y ago
  > Holocaust denial has been refuted again and again So has been the "flat Earth" theory. Yet we don't ban it. I think the reason it keeps resurfacing is precisely the fact it is banned - unbanning it would make it much less interesting. Also, although you and other commenters keep repeating how "dangerous" it is, noone has been able to actually articulate as to why it's dangerous.
  - felipeerias 11y ago
    Holocaust denial is a form of Nazi apologism. It keeps resurfacing because there are still many neo-fascist groups trying to bring their message to the mainstream. Lifting the ban would only help them reach a wider audience. (Do you really need an explanation as to why Nazism is incompatible with democracy?)

felipeerias 11y ago

The point is not just that it is false, but that it leads to a political discourse that is incompatible with the established democratic system.

zo1 11y ago
Incompatible in what way?
- felipeerias 11y ago
  Are you seriously asking that?
  - magicalist 11y ago
    Considering that there's a very large segment of the HN population that lives in a country (the US) that (ostensibly) believes that not to be the case, I would give good odds they were seriously asking that. The First Amendment is a hill I would personally die on, but I think it's very useful to discuss with people from other countries' their beliefs and laws of freedom of expression, if only for Americans to learn that intelligent people can hold informed opinions on the rights to expression that are in some ways fundamentally incompatible with our own. I personally find it fascinating given how almost axiomatic I think of it...that's ideology for you, I guess :)
  - zo1 11y ago
    Yes, I am... From my point of you, I have no idea how to interpret what you said. I asked, because if you elaborated, i might be better able to understand your points/argument on the matter. And then, subsequently, able to respond/engage with you on the topic or what you're saying.
tomp 11y ago
Does it? Is that a hypothesis or a fact? I.e. did it, when it was still legal, lead to "incompatible political discourse"? Btw, I don't think that any political discourse is necessarily incompatible with democracy, as long as it's just discourse (and not e.g. violence).

rmc 11y ago

> The fact that holocaust denial is banned (in EU, even as an idea!) Holocaust denial is legal in many EU countries (e.g. UK). The EU is not one harmonious criminal/legal system.

tomp 11y ago
Yes, I noticed that when I read the Wiki page. I was quite happy! Although UK isn't really a bastion of free speech, so I have other complaints...
- rmc 11y ago
  It was illegal in the UK to broadcast the voice of republicans in Northern Ireland. In practice it was worked around by having 'voice doubles' who would read the words. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988%E2%80%9394_British_broadcasting_voice_restrictions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988%E2%80%9394_British_broadc...

dang 11y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10769986 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10769986 and marked it off-topic.

tomp 11y ago
Seriously? Again? Why exactly is it off-topic? Or rather, by "subthread off-topic", do you mean my comment to which you replied to, or the discussion that developed below? It appears to me you're unfairly penalizing me, just because the opinions and arguments I express are different from the mainstream (and hence less socially acceptable). Am I wrong about that? Other reasons I can think of: (1) I'm commenting to much. (2) I don't "let the issues go" (i.e. I reply to too many comments); I do that because I think most arguments people respond with are not very sensible. The only real argument is something like "(i) holocaust denial is insulting to holocaust survivors, their relatives and other Jews; (ii) it's more insulting that most other insulting things, because they have PTSD or were brought up/know people who had PTSD; (iii) some violent groups want to use holocaust denial in their propaganda", which is a whole lot of twists and turns just to make sure only holocaust (and no other kind of) denial falls under "criminal". Still, it took a long time to arrive at this argument, and many people's other arguments were rather irrelevant. (3) There are too many up-&down-votes. (4) These kinds of arguments look bad for HN/YC. (5) It's hard for people to read the main thread if there's such a long subthread. But wouldn't this be solved better by having a maximum level of nesting on the main page, with separate pages for loading comments (e.g. Reddit has that). (6) These kinds of discussions are irrelevant and boring, because we've had them before. Then I would hope someone would link to a reasonable, and more importantly complete, argument, so we wouldn't need 50 comments to arrive to something like the argument in (2). (7) It's actually off-topic. But as I recall, my comment was just a reply to the parent comment. I can't be sure any more, because I don't know any more what the parent comment was. I tried to write this response in the nicest tone possible; but because of the nature and context of discussion, I'm worried it will still be perceived as argumentative, or even aggressive. I'm only trying to avoid situations like these in the future; I come here to learn, and I think one of the best ways to learn is by exchanging arguments, and refining them so that you reach the core of the disagreement (i.e. so that you eliminate all the bullshit arguments that follow from logical fallacies or that people use as excuses). But it's hard to do that without what seems like a heated discussion. Maybe I should first try Steelmanning (DH7 in [1]) the arguments in the future, and in general learn to argue better [2]. [1] http://lesswrong.com/lw/85h/better_disagreement/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/85h/better_disagreement/ [2] http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweapons/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweapo...