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> conflates free speech as social and legislative ideals What's to conflate? Free speech as a legislative goal is primarily useful in so far as it furthers a s

> conflates free speech as social and legislative ideals What's to conflate? Free speech as a legislative goal is primarily useful in so far as it furthers a social goal. I'm just going to quote Scott for this from now on: >If you’re a very stupid libertarian strawman, you might ask whether that town had any anti-gay laws on the book – and, upon hearing they didn’t, say that town was “pro-gay”. If you’re not a very stupid libertarian strawman, you hopefully realize that being pro-gay isn’t about boasting how progressive your law code looks, it’s about having a society where it’s possible to be gay. Not having laws against locking up gay people is a necessary precondition, but it’s useless on its own. You only get good results if good laws are matched by good social norms. >Likewise, the goal of being pro-free-speech isn’t to make a really liberal-sounding law code. It’s to create a society where it’s actually possible to hold dissenting opinions, where ideas really do get judged by merit rather than by who’s powerful enough to shut down whom. Having free speech laws on the books is a necessary precondition, but it’s useless in the absence of social norms that support it. If you win a million First Amendment victories in the Supreme Court, but actively work to undermine the social norms that let people say what they think in real life, you’re anti-free-speech. http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/07/29/against-signal-boosting-as-doxxing/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/07/29/against-signal-boosting...

jakelazaroff 9y ago
I mean, any legislative goal is only useful in furthering social goals. "Let people say what they think," though, is so vague a goal that it's totally useless. The article starts with an anecdote about a man making a sexist joke and a group of women signal-boosting it to try to make him unemployable. What if he'd instead made it to a group of women at his place of employment? Would the author say it's morally wrong for him to be fired or otherwise punished for it? It's certainly possible to take that position. I don't agree with it at all, but it's at least consistent. "But that's a localized consequence," you might say, "shaming mobs want to ruin his whole life." Sure, but now we're moving the goalposts from "let people say what they think" to "let people say what they think in specific circumstances". Actually, it's even murkier than that, because in this example the punishment varies not based on the words, but the context in which they're used! (Let's not forget that the signal-boosting feminists are also "saying what they think".) You might also say that the term "free speech" has always included exemptions, in which case sure, I support free speech." So in that sense, we all agree: you, the author and I all think that we as a society should generally be cool with speech, unless it's Very Bad. Maybe our definitions of Very Bad vary a bit, but we agree in principle. But what I take umbrage with is people taking the term "free speech" — knowing it's emotionally loaded — and making the bad-faith argument that whatever behavior they like is Freedom of Speech, and behavior they don't (or, commonly, shaming the behavior they like) is Oppressive. No. They're trying to shift the norms of acceptable speech to benefit them. Which is fine, but cop to it.

jakelazaroff 9y ago

I mean, any legislative goal is only useful in furthering social goals. "Let people say what they think," though, is so vague a goal that it's totally useless. The article starts with an anecdote about a man making a sexist joke and a group of women signal-boosting it to try to make him unemployable. What if he'd instead made it to a group of women at his place of employment? Would the author say it's morally wrong for him to be fired or otherwise punished for it? It's certainly possible to take that position. I don't agree with it at all, but it's at least consistent. "But that's a localized consequence," you might say, "shaming mobs want to ruin his whole life." Sure, but now we're moving the goalposts from "let people say what they think" to "let people say what they think in specific circumstances". Actually, it's even murkier than that, because in this example the punishment varies not based on the words, but the context in which they're used! (Let's not forget that the signal-boosting feminists are also "saying what they think".) You might also say that the term "free speech" has always included exemptions, in which case sure, I support free speech." So in that sense, we all agree: you, the author and I all think that we as a society should generally be cool with speech, unless it's Very Bad. Maybe our definitions of Very Bad vary a bit, but we agree in principle. But what I take umbrage with is people taking the term "free speech" — knowing it's emotionally loaded — and making the bad-faith argument that whatever behavior they like is Freedom of Speech, and behavior they don't (or, commonly, shaming the behavior they like) is Oppressive. No. They're trying to shift the norms of acceptable speech to benefit them. Which is fine, but cop to it.