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> Speech is the one thing that can equalize rich and poor, and has the ability to evaporate decades of work and reputation. Unconsidered speech from the rich a

> Speech is the one thing that can equalize rich and poor, and has the ability to evaporate decades of work and reputation. Unconsidered speech from the rich and influential can disproportionately hurt the poor and disadvantaged. For example, the US President is not a shining example of "using influence for good." His behavior and speech has lowered the bar across the board for how we expect our politicians to behave, has given confidence to racists and those who would commit hate crimes, and has claimed all criticism to be invalid with faulty reasoning. A major fault in @sama's essay is a false dichotomy: that we must choose between some sad world of uncontested ideas (even if they have major faults e.g hurting marginalized groups in society a la "gay people are evil" -- his example not mine) and one where innovation can happen. It paints political correctness (which is a movement couched in concern for peoples' well-being) as being antithetical to being able to make technological / societal progress. This is just not true. In fact you NEED a world where people give a shit about each other so that people who would otherwise be excluded by jerks and awful behavior can be productive, moving us forward. And he uses Galileo, who was silenced by religious elements, as a comparison point vs a small group of startup ideas perhaps lambasted by media for being out of touch. It's not an accurate comparison. "When we move from strenuous debate about ideas to casting the people behind the ideas as heretics, we gradually stop debate on all controversial ideas." I'm curious to hear just which cases comprise his experience of valid ideas being cast as heretical. Is it unscientific for me to not "strenuously debate" with someone who is a flat earther out of judgement for how well my time is spent? And does it hurt progress for society to brand flat earthers as unscientific (which influences our "worth my time" metric)? I don't think it is. There's a lack of nuance in Sam's argument.

aestetix 9y ago
"A major fault in @sama's essay is a false dichotomy: that we must choose between some sad world of uncontested ideas (even if they have major faults e.g hurting marginalized groups in society a la "gay people are evil" -- his example not mine) and one where innovation can happen. It paints political correctness (which is a movement couched in concern for peoples' well-being) as being antithetical to being able to make technological / societal progress." But that is precisely what is happening. The aim of political correctness seems to be to make things "safer" for other people. I would argue that safety and freedom are inversely related: a free society is inherently unsafe. But in the same way that we learn and get stronger by making mistakes, I think that erring on the side of freedom helps to strengthen individuals in the long term. The other issue that comes up with these topics is arbitration. If you're going to cast a safety net across speech, you have to figure out who decides what the standards are, and how they are enforced. And if you disagree with those standards, what recourse do you have?
- kajecounterhack 9y ago
  When you talk about a "free" society you fail to acknowledge that some groups in a rule-less landscape are conferred natural advantages over others. For example, without societal shifts and rules protecting people who are LGBTQ, an entire group of people would be harassed and discriminated against, and be strictly less "free" than others in the society. The idea that "safety and freedom are inversely related" is not true. You're saying we move along a curve. Why not push the curve instead? Here's a way: freedom strictly increases when you give it more equally to all people. Security doesn't decrease from that in actuality; people who were taking unfair advantage of their relative privilege are the only ones who feel "unsafe." For example: in the current state of things women face disproportionate amounts of mental load when interacting at work. "Am I coming across as sexually interested via the way I dress or talk?" << This is something that actually has to cross womens' minds from forever ago to now. Given today's societal landscape, many men claim "I feel unsafe" because now that same thought has to cross their mind -- society is shifting toward less tolerant toward bad male behavior so you have to be careful not to make mistakes. But when men consider/improve how they communicate and how their words may make others feel, they really increase freedom and safety for all women. And in net we are all both more free and more safe. If you argue that the man is now less safe than he was before, you have to ask yourself, is it fair that he was more safe than a corresponding woman to begin with? And is he really being deprived of anything at all, other than a gross privilege he had (to not be accountable for his actions toward others)? It's all well and good to talk about maximizing freedom, but if that freedom is not equally distributed it becomes significantly less noble.
  - aestetix 9y ago
    I disagree with pretty much everything in this post. I think what is reasonable to say is that while we are all created equal in the sense that we are human, that's far as as natural equality extends. Some of us are taller, shorter, we have different interests, etc. So this begs the question, what is the role of government. Should government treat us all equally, in the sense that we are humans and thus rational beings? Or should government (a set of formalized rules and people who enforce them) attempt to equalize the playing field, and thus treat us all unequally? In your own example, by ensuring in your model safety for women, we must treat men differently from women, and therefore ensure that for women to be safer, men must be less free. IMHO government should treat us equal in the human sense, and no other. On the obvious response that government and society are different, I would reply that government is at least in theory a set of formalized rules intended to reflect what the informal rules of society are. Therefore, while the match might not be 1:1, it's still quite relevant. Here's a link to a discussion with FA Hayek, who describes this far more eloquently that I can: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnMd40dqBlQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnMd40dqBlQ

aestetix 9y ago

"A major fault in @sama's essay is a false dichotomy: that we must choose between some sad world of uncontested ideas (even if they have major faults e.g hurting marginalized groups in society a la "gay people are evil" -- his example not mine) and one where innovation can happen. It paints political correctness (which is a movement couched in concern for peoples' well-being) as being antithetical to being able to make technological / societal progress." But that is precisely what is happening. The aim of political correctness seems to be to make things "safer" for other people. I would argue that safety and freedom are inversely related: a free society is inherently unsafe. But in the same way that we learn and get stronger by making mistakes, I think that erring on the side of freedom helps to strengthen individuals in the long term. The other issue that comes up with these topics is arbitration. If you're going to cast a safety net across speech, you have to figure out who decides what the standards are, and how they are enforced. And if you disagree with those standards, what recourse do you have?

kajecounterhack 9y ago
When you talk about a "free" society you fail to acknowledge that some groups in a rule-less landscape are conferred natural advantages over others. For example, without societal shifts and rules protecting people who are LGBTQ, an entire group of people would be harassed and discriminated against, and be strictly less "free" than others in the society. The idea that "safety and freedom are inversely related" is not true. You're saying we move along a curve. Why not push the curve instead? Here's a way: freedom strictly increases when you give it more equally to all people. Security doesn't decrease from that in actuality; people who were taking unfair advantage of their relative privilege are the only ones who feel "unsafe." For example: in the current state of things women face disproportionate amounts of mental load when interacting at work. "Am I coming across as sexually interested via the way I dress or talk?" << This is something that actually has to cross womens' minds from forever ago to now. Given today's societal landscape, many men claim "I feel unsafe" because now that same thought has to cross their mind -- society is shifting toward less tolerant toward bad male behavior so you have to be careful not to make mistakes. But when men consider/improve how they communicate and how their words may make others feel, they really increase freedom and safety for all women. And in net we are all both more free and more safe. If you argue that the man is now less safe than he was before, you have to ask yourself, is it fair that he was more safe than a corresponding woman to begin with? And is he really being deprived of anything at all, other than a gross privilege he had (to not be accountable for his actions toward others)? It's all well and good to talk about maximizing freedom, but if that freedom is not equally distributed it becomes significantly less noble.
- aestetix 9y ago
  I disagree with pretty much everything in this post. I think what is reasonable to say is that while we are all created equal in the sense that we are human, that's far as as natural equality extends. Some of us are taller, shorter, we have different interests, etc. So this begs the question, what is the role of government. Should government treat us all equally, in the sense that we are humans and thus rational beings? Or should government (a set of formalized rules and people who enforce them) attempt to equalize the playing field, and thus treat us all unequally? In your own example, by ensuring in your model safety for women, we must treat men differently from women, and therefore ensure that for women to be safer, men must be less free. IMHO government should treat us equal in the human sense, and no other. On the obvious response that government and society are different, I would reply that government is at least in theory a set of formalized rules intended to reflect what the informal rules of society are. Therefore, while the match might not be 1:1, it's still quite relevant. Here's a link to a discussion with FA Hayek, who describes this far more eloquently that I can: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnMd40dqBlQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnMd40dqBlQ