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I think there is a disconnect between your values and many on HN when it comes to the right of free speech. You see "harm from bad speech" as a major problem in

I think there is a disconnect between your values and many on HN when it comes to the right of free speech. You see "harm from bad speech" as a major problem in society so you naturally seek to correct it with the strongest tools you can muster. You're already using social pressure to create norms for "good speech" and now you want to move to actual legislative pressure to enforce your growing list of speech norms. I think your heart is in the right place but legislating speech is a very dangerous business. If you normalize the ability to control speech then you open the door for anyone else in power to make those decisions for you. So either you think the current "harm" is so great that its worth risking the entire future of free society or you think the risk of creating that "1984 dystopian world" is zero. I personally think the risk is non-zero(Trump, Brexit, Black Swan events ect.) so you can understand why most people would disagree with that trade off, right?

projectant 9y ago
You're right I do think there is great harm from wrongspeech. A lot of people think this as well, and there is already alot of social pressure ( good term ) used to police speech on Twitter, blogs, IRL, etc. And there is already some legislative allowance to police narratives that cause harm, specifically, I think regarding hate/terrorist speech ( I'm thinking UK ). I don't think the risk is zero, the risk of getting any of this wrong is catastrophic. But I do think the risk is manageable. The reason it's manageable is because we can keep revising our notions through keeping the conversation going, as is currently happening. And we can keep mitigating effects through checks and balances. So I think all this is very good, but it's not enough. Why? To become truly effective, we need to spread from minority-awareness to majority-awareness of these issues. We need to start debating and discussing these ideas en masse. We already have "people in power" ( social power ) deciding the best way to speak, and now that these notions have moved out of the fringe and academia and into the mainstream, and are being applied to ordinary discourse IRL, we need to have everybody getting in on the conversation and debate. Otherwise how can these concepts truly become effective? These norms have to apply to and reflect and get buy-in from everybody, not just people who are working to change society. And the law is how you apply a norm universally. Second to this, I think it's good optics. It shows we ( in the West / in America ) have the courage of our convictions, and crucially, I think, it sets a good example for the rest of the world, showing that America still has moral authority, by crystallising some of the paramount achievements of its social justice and security movements in delineating forms of speech that cause harm. It could be helpful if these people are rewarded and supported by the institutions which have for so long disenfranchised them, by having their hard work encoded in legislation. Some progress is already being made in places like Canada and Sweden, and especially in the UK. So I think your view that we are still in the "social pressure only" period is a little naive. It's already happened. It just isn't complete yet. All I'm really advocating for, I think, is that we use the already shifting tide toward legislative remedy to increase debate converation and engagement on these issues across society. So in a sense, the controversy and discussion we are having about these, even in this thread on HN, is exactly what's needed. I agree there is a disconnect with many on HN, or in SV, or in USA on the specifics of these issues, even tho these demographics are predominantly liberal ( I think ). We still have campus sexual assault, workplace sexual misconduct, and then there's always the not so harmful stubborn libertarians in tech. But I think there is alignment on the heart of these issues. So I'm trying to address the resistance to that. I mean, maybe the majority still doesn't see the value in policing of wrongspeech even after years of social justice activism and engagement, but that's why more work needs to be done. I think that it's still a hotbutton issue, and there is still social inertia to discuss it openly because of how uncomfortable it can be, so I think that people who support these issues are staying silent on this thread. Also this discussion is quite meta so people may not be sure how to come into it, even if they are normally active in social justice or social safety. And if HN really disagreed with these notions outright, I'd except dozens of downvotes and it to be flagged into invisibility. There have actually been upvotes and downvotes, and the down has won narrowly. Maybe that means majority HN disagrees, or maybe we're still just uncomfortable to talk, or it could just be a small sample? But even if HN is against this in the majority, the trend outside HN is clear. Social pressure is widespread, legislation is already happening, now is the time for mass social engagement, discussion, and debate. People need to feel involved in the conversation in order to buy-in and for these notions to become effective and applied universally. Look, at the end of the day, maybe I'm absolutely and totally wrong. And maybe Orwell foresaw our future with all its nuanced and intersectional issues and complications. And maybe everyone on this side who are already tirelessly policing wrongspeech online and IRL are wrong, too. Maybe we'll all look back and cringe, or laugh, or whatever, at this time. But that's why we need to expand the conversation. Wrong and right will be decided by the collective. Maybe we can't say how this will play out. I get the innate resistance to policing wrongspeech, but there's also a lot of existing buy-in to these ideas we can work with already regarding this demographic ( geek feminist code of conduct for OS projects, for example ) and I think for this demographic there's actually more to like about it than it seems at first. I put a lot of the gut rejection of this trend to the easy association with 1984, and how that prematurely suffocates thinking and debate, "Oh my god, it's like 1984 Orwellian dystopian nightmare, run!" But if we don't create a more fair and safe society by policing the speech that supports violence, hatred and harm, don't we end up with our own kind of nightmare? Maybe no genius lit dude has written that dystopia famously, but it might be just as scary and as horrible a place to be. At least I think so. I just want to apologise for the length. Sometimes I find it takes too much effort to condense and maintain meaning. I'm really sorry.

projectant 9y ago

You're right I do think there is great harm from wrongspeech. A lot of people think this as well, and there is already alot of social pressure ( good term ) used to police speech on Twitter, blogs, IRL, etc. And there is already some legislative allowance to police narratives that cause harm, specifically, I think regarding hate/terrorist speech ( I'm thinking UK ). I don't think the risk is zero, the risk of getting any of this wrong is catastrophic. But I do think the risk is manageable. The reason it's manageable is because we can keep revising our notions through keeping the conversation going, as is currently happening. And we can keep mitigating effects through checks and balances. So I think all this is very good, but it's not enough. Why? To become truly effective, we need to spread from minority-awareness to majority-awareness of these issues. We need to start debating and discussing these ideas en masse. We already have "people in power" ( social power ) deciding the best way to speak, and now that these notions have moved out of the fringe and academia and into the mainstream, and are being applied to ordinary discourse IRL, we need to have everybody getting in on the conversation and debate. Otherwise how can these concepts truly become effective? These norms have to apply to and reflect and get buy-in from everybody, not just people who are working to change society. And the law is how you apply a norm universally. Second to this, I think it's good optics. It shows we ( in the West / in America ) have the courage of our convictions, and crucially, I think, it sets a good example for the rest of the world, showing that America still has moral authority, by crystallising some of the paramount achievements of its social justice and security movements in delineating forms of speech that cause harm. It could be helpful if these people are rewarded and supported by the institutions which have for so long disenfranchised them, by having their hard work encoded in legislation. Some progress is already being made in places like Canada and Sweden, and especially in the UK. So I think your view that we are still in the "social pressure only" period is a little naive. It's already happened. It just isn't complete yet. All I'm really advocating for, I think, is that we use the already shifting tide toward legislative remedy to increase debate converation and engagement on these issues across society. So in a sense, the controversy and discussion we are having about these, even in this thread on HN, is exactly what's needed. I agree there is a disconnect with many on HN, or in SV, or in USA on the specifics of these issues, even tho these demographics are predominantly liberal ( I think ). We still have campus sexual assault, workplace sexual misconduct, and then there's always the not so harmful stubborn libertarians in tech. But I think there is alignment on the heart of these issues. So I'm trying to address the resistance to that. I mean, maybe the majority still doesn't see the value in policing of wrongspeech even after years of social justice activism and engagement, but that's why more work needs to be done. I think that it's still a hotbutton issue, and there is still social inertia to discuss it openly because of how uncomfortable it can be, so I think that people who support these issues are staying silent on this thread. Also this discussion is quite meta so people may not be sure how to come into it, even if they are normally active in social justice or social safety. And if HN really disagreed with these notions outright, I'd except dozens of downvotes and it to be flagged into invisibility. There have actually been upvotes and downvotes, and the down has won narrowly. Maybe that means majority HN disagrees, or maybe we're still just uncomfortable to talk, or it could just be a small sample? But even if HN is against this in the majority, the trend outside HN is clear. Social pressure is widespread, legislation is already happening, now is the time for mass social engagement, discussion, and debate. People need to feel involved in the conversation in order to buy-in and for these notions to become effective and applied universally. Look, at the end of the day, maybe I'm absolutely and totally wrong. And maybe Orwell foresaw our future with all its nuanced and intersectional issues and complications. And maybe everyone on this side who are already tirelessly policing wrongspeech online and IRL are wrong, too. Maybe we'll all look back and cringe, or laugh, or whatever, at this time. But that's why we need to expand the conversation. Wrong and right will be decided by the collective. Maybe we can't say how this will play out. I get the innate resistance to policing wrongspeech, but there's also a lot of existing buy-in to these ideas we can work with already regarding this demographic ( geek feminist code of conduct for OS projects, for example ) and I think for this demographic there's actually more to like about it than it seems at first. I put a lot of the gut rejection of this trend to the easy association with 1984, and how that prematurely suffocates thinking and debate, "Oh my god, it's like 1984 Orwellian dystopian nightmare, run!" But if we don't create a more fair and safe society by policing the speech that supports violence, hatred and harm, don't we end up with our own kind of nightmare? Maybe no genius lit dude has written that dystopia famously, but it might be just as scary and as horrible a place to be. At least I think so. I just want to apologise for the length. Sometimes I find it takes too much effort to condense and maintain meaning. I'm really sorry.