7 ms·

The dangers of illiberal liberalism

25 points by farseer 8y ago

jeromebaek 8y ago
Same old tired argument. Free speech is sacred, we are regressing to the middle ages, bu-but the Enlightenment!, etc. Read some Wittgenstein for a change: https://daily.jstor.org/wittgenstein-whether-speech-violence/ https://daily.jstor.org/wittgenstein-whether-speech-violence... "Why do we describe hurtful words as a punch to the gut or a slap to the face? For so long, the free speech debate has been built upon an incoherent premise: that speech is powerful enough to solve social ills, but can’t inflict as much damage as a fist."
- mpweiher 8y ago
  > "Why do we describe hurtful words as a punch to the gut or a slap to the face?" Because metaphor and analogy. "You see, menudo is our chicken soup for the body and soul, our metaphor for bread-and-butter issues." That does not mean that menudo is actually soup, just like describing the effects of speech in that way does not mean that it is actual violence.
  - jeromebaek 8y ago
    Any reasonable definition of "actual violence" should concern harm done to the body. Countless studies show that abusive speech, in fact, harms the body in profound and sometimes irrevocable ways. The fallacy you are committing is assuming that language and speech float in the ether. In fact language can best be described as a sort of pointer to a muscle movement, a reference to some bodily feeling. The ideal of "objective" meaning floating in air is nothing but an illusion.
    - jfnixon 8y ago
      Disagreeing with me produces stress hormones which cause actual harm to my body. Ergo, you commit violence against me when you dispute positions I hold. Stop the violence, confess you are wrong, and agree with me before I have you arrested for assault and battery.
      - jeromebaek 8y ago
        Don't be silly. The actual harm must be systematic, unescapable, and perpetuated over a power imbalance over a long period of time. Are any of those conditions satisfied in this case? No.
        mpweiher 8y ago
        > Don't be silly "When something is "silly", this is an important sensation you should grasp at, not dismiss, because silliness is nothing but a reveal of your innermost biases." Hmm...
      - modells 8y ago
        Is this sarcasm? (prays despite being atheist) If not, your own stress hormones are your own problem, no one else’s. Nuance, rather than black&white extremist thinking, is in order... assault is getting up in someone’s face. Battery is an act of physical violence. When we start conflating speech, assault and battery, the world is headed into the shitter.
        mpweiher 8y ago
        Yes, I clearly saw it as sarcasm, though Poe's law...
    - gt_ 8y ago
      Neither speech, language, or even a punch to the gut hurts as bad as widespread intergenerational economic injustice. This free speech nonsense misses the point. It’s only en vogue because the Dem Party is so desperate to avoid and distract from how discrimination and injustice actually happen. Yeah sure words can hurt, but you’ll manage. Time to get with the program.
    - mpweiher 8y ago
      > fallacy .. and speech float in the ether. No, speech is transmitted by the movement of air molecules. And the movement of these air molecules typically does no damage, unless amplified to absurd pressure levels. > harms the body Nope. A "cutting" comment produces no incisions in the body. I think you are also confusing "harms the body" with "feels like pain". There are studies that show that, for example, social exclusion produces a pain sensation in the brain that is hard to distinguish from physically caused pain. However, that's not the same, just because there is a pain sensation as if you were physically harmed does not mean you were physically harmed. And no, the pain sensation is not the same as the actual physical harm. And yes, long-term cortisol exposure will cause negative effects on the body, but again not everything that causes harm is violence. If I give you wrong directions, I am causing you harm, but that doesn't mean my directions are violence. If I drop a banana peel and you slip on it, that causes you harm, but it is not violence. The sun causes you harm, but the sun is not violence.
      - jeromebaek 8y ago
        > speech is transmitted by the movement of air molecules Under this definition of "speech" English, which I understand, and Chinese, which I don't, would have the same effect on me. But of course they don't. When somebody speaks in English or another language I understand, I have no choice but to hear it, not as noise, but as meaning, as sensations and memories activated in my brain and body. Since you're German you probably like Kant. Korsgaard is a Kantian philosopher at Harvard: "If I say to you, “Picture a yellow spot!” you will. What exactly is happening? Are you simply cooperating with me? No, because at least without a certain active resistance you will not be able to help it. Is it a causal connection then? No, or at least not merely that, for if you picture a pink spot you will be mistaken, wrong. Causal connections cannot be wrong. What kind of necessity is this, both normative and compulsive? It is obligation. " https://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_documents/a-to-z/k/korsgaard94.pdf https://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_documents/a-to-z/k/korsgaar... p.78
        mpweiher 8y ago
        > would have the same effect on me What on earth leads you to make such a fallacious statement? > no choice but to hear it Sort of. You can wear ear-protection, turn on the music of your headphones, but overall it is arguably a bug of our physiology that we cannot close our ears the same way we can close our eyes. > If I say to you, “Picture a yellow spot!” you will. No, not necessarily. Also, this is not because speech is a command, but because we interpret speech automatically. So if I tell you "Whatever you do, do not picture a pink elephant", you will nevertheless think of a pink elephant, counter to the command I gave you. And of course, if I say "Jump off the bridge", you will probably not do so, because, again, it's not that speech is a command, but that we interpret speech more or less automatically. Anyway, no idea what any of this has to do with the question of whether speech is violence. > Since you're German you probably like Kant. Stereotype much?
    - modells 8y ago
      Oh my. Please tell me you’re joking or using extreme sarcasm as humor. If not, that would be a dangerously weak and nonsensical philosophy tantamount to thoughtcrime. Assault is getting up in your face with intimidation and imminent violence. Calling speech “abusive” is often a dog-whistle for academic totalitarianism that bans people outright without any process and eliminates debate because there’s “accepted” ideas and then there’s outlaws whom aren’t allowed to participate in the discourse. That’s not rigorous academics or openness to ideas, but touchy childishness, often attempting to control and subjugate other people with facist-modalities of draconian control.. to the point boys and others have to walk on eggshells, lest they offend hypersensitive, power-hungry control-freaks. Worse, only exchanging “approved” ideas leads to Dark Ages stagnation and materially-weak academics that could well be superseded by superior ideas, technologies and academic institutions that are more open and rigorous elsewhere. The problem originates thin-skinned toddler with their safe-spaces, microaggressions and crybully reactionary-outrage, brow-beating BS, which mostly grew out of the hierarchy of victimhood anti-white-straight-male ideologues, ... compounded by faculty, staff and parents whom fail to correct them, set sensible boundaries and lead-by-example.
      - jeromebaek 8y ago
        > dangerously weak and nonsensical philosophy Yes, clearly Wittgenstein is less of a philosopher than the author of this article. Look, I get what you're worrying about. Yes, there is a dark history where totalitarian regimes suppressed people from free speech. Nobody wants to go back there. What I'm pointing out is that "free speech" as implemented in the current society is not without its glaring defects, and that to get to the next stage of progress we need a subtler idea of free speech, rather than this clearly incoherent "speech is powerful enough to cure social ills, but cannot inflict as much damage as a fist." Just to spell it out for you again, under any reasonable metric, the desirability hierarchy is: totalitarian suppression of free speech < "free speech" in the liberal world as we know it < a more nuanced understanding of "free speech", with bug fixes
        mpweiher 8y ago
        > clearly incoherent "speech is powerful enough to cure social ills, but cannot inflict as much damage as a fist." There is nothing incoherent about this, except your mischaracterization. The fist inflicts. Speech does not inflict, it informs, entices and incites. And when it incites it can already be regulated. Yes, there are involuntary aspects of speech processing, but these are not generally and certainly not immediately harmful. For speech to be powerful it requires the consent/cooperation of the spoken-to. The fist does not. So you are constructing a straw man out of logical incoherence and then having a big old fight with it. Have fun!
- Tade0 8y ago
  Speech itself is nothing without actions, power and trust - talk is cheap. The same insults and threats hurled at you by a person in a position of power have a very different meaning when coming from someone powerless. Likewise promises from somebody trustworthy are much more powerful than from a stranger. My point being: it's not the speech that's powerful, it's the person behind it.
  - mlevental 8y ago
    you seem very certain soft (volume) speech can't harm. okay then you should be fine with this experiment (and confident about its result): let me put you into a room and have people come in for 8 hours a day and call you stupid, ugly, worthless, a disappointment, etc. in perfectly mild tones for exactly one month. we'll perform a mood/outlook/mental health assessment before and after. do you think there will be a difference in the two assessments?
    - changchuming 8y ago
      Huh? What you're saying does not relate to what he's saying at all. He's talking about people in positions of power, you're talking about volume?
- neonate 8y ago
  That's not Wittgenstein.
mschuster91 8y ago
> These key tropes—“we will not tolerate” and “this is not a debate”—are now frequently deployed to curtail discussion of issues deemed to be taboo, invariably to “protect” people deemed vulnerable from speech deemed hateful. The point is that denying trans people (for example, as they're targeted the worst by both rightwingers, "centrists" and some lefties aka trans-exclusionary radical feminists) the right to choosing freedom over their bodies is a direct attack on their basic human right to exist. Either one supports letting trans people live in peace or one does not - and the latter position is directly and actively intolerable in a society that calls itself "civilized" and "respecting human rights". There is no valid position in any society that denies a group of people the right to exist. We had that already with the Nazi regime and with Stalin's Soviet Union, no need to repeat history again.
- mpweiher 8y ago
  Pure hyperbole. Nobody is denying their right to exist.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - mschuster91 8y ago
    A couple days ago "concerned parents" literally declared "hunting season" on a 12-year old child: http://www.towleroad.com/2018/08/hunting-season/ http://www.towleroad.com/2018/08/hunting-season/ This is reality, there's a reason why suicide and self harm ratios are enormous among LGBT, especially youth.
    - mpweiher 8y ago
      While I find the actions of these parents despicable, they do not constitute "denying the right to exist".
      - jeromebaek 8y ago
        What else denies the right of someone to exist, other than threats to physically mutilate and kill? Do you think the child has a soul separate from the body that the parents won't be able to touch? Do you think the child has a clean innocent soul that's immune to harm?
extralego 8y ago
The author is confused. He says he is a liberal “in the enlightenment sense.” He cites John Locke and John Stuart Mill. But then he makes a “contrast”: >In contrast, today’s so-called progressive liberals are often intolerant, calling for official censure against anyone perceived as uttering non-progressive views. What the author fails to reconcile is that this “progressive liberal” target of his is all but the product of John Stuart Mill’s brand of liberalism that includes many wonderful things but has a certain clause that makes all the difference. Mill’s liberalism defended democratic ideals predominantly in cultural terms. That is, democracy to the extent that it does not interfere with free market capitalism. Fast forward 150+ years through 2 world wars, the Great Depression, the federal reserve Vietnam, globalization, corporate takeover, etc., etc. and old Mill’s ideas are not looking so spiffy. The instability is anything but defensible, so what can the ole’ liberals do now but hunker down on the culturalism? There you have it. There is nothing new or complicated about this. Mill and Marx defined the terms way back when. The youngsters in the US are having trouble working through it because their parents skipped the conversation entirely, but they’ll figure it out. Fool them once. So, this is not about free speech. The only problem here is this author’s insistence that it’s a contention between old and new. It’s not, of course. It’s a contention between capitalism, it’s glories, and messes it makes.
bediger4000 8y ago
This might be a fair argument, except for the "affirmative action" that conservative/fascist ideas get. Sure, individual reporters probably are liberals. But owners are not: see Sinclair's mandatory statements. Owners near monarchism is going to select for editors that keep their personal beliefs out of it, and give conservative ideas a big boost, way beyond their merit, because they'll catch grief from owners/CEOs if they don't. This is some of the same, The Economist's writers sucking up to owners/plutocrats.
- bediger4000 8y ago
  Which coward chose to "censor" me by downvoting instead of just answering with logic, reason and good, conservative common sense? By downvoting without a reply, you've played into my argument. Thanks for confirming that conservatives just want affirmative action for their opinions.
  - dang 8y ago
    Please don't let downvotes trigger you into breaking the site guidelines, which ask you specifically not to post like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. As for the parent comment, possibly it was downvoted because it used ideological tropes. HN is not a place for ideological battle (regardless of what you're battling for/against), because ideological battle tends to burn up everything else. Edit: looks like you did it again here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17794513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17794513. Please don't post like that to HN.

25 points by farseer 8y ago

Same old tired argument. Free speech is sacred, we are regressing to the middle ages, bu-but the Enlightenment!, etc. Read some Wittgenstein for a change: https://daily.jstor.org/wittgenstein-whether-speech-violence/ https://daily.jstor.org/wittgenstein-whether-speech-violence... "Why do we describe hurtful words as a punch to the gut or a slap to the face? For so long, the free speech debate has been built upon an incoherent premise: that speech is powerful enough to solve social ills, but can’t inflict as much damage as a fist."

mpweiher 8y ago
> "Why do we describe hurtful words as a punch to the gut or a slap to the face?" Because metaphor and analogy. "You see, menudo is our chicken soup for the body and soul, our metaphor for bread-and-butter issues." That does not mean that menudo is actually soup, just like describing the effects of speech in that way does not mean that it is actual violence.
- jeromebaek 8y ago
  Any reasonable definition of "actual violence" should concern harm done to the body. Countless studies show that abusive speech, in fact, harms the body in profound and sometimes irrevocable ways. The fallacy you are committing is assuming that language and speech float in the ether. In fact language can best be described as a sort of pointer to a muscle movement, a reference to some bodily feeling. The ideal of "objective" meaning floating in air is nothing but an illusion.
  - jfnixon 8y ago
    Disagreeing with me produces stress hormones which cause actual harm to my body. Ergo, you commit violence against me when you dispute positions I hold. Stop the violence, confess you are wrong, and agree with me before I have you arrested for assault and battery.
    - jeromebaek 8y ago
      Don't be silly. The actual harm must be systematic, unescapable, and perpetuated over a power imbalance over a long period of time. Are any of those conditions satisfied in this case? No.
      - mpweiher 8y ago
        > Don't be silly "When something is "silly", this is an important sensation you should grasp at, not dismiss, because silliness is nothing but a reveal of your innermost biases." Hmm...
    - modells 8y ago
      Is this sarcasm? (prays despite being atheist) If not, your own stress hormones are your own problem, no one else’s. Nuance, rather than black&white extremist thinking, is in order... assault is getting up in someone’s face. Battery is an act of physical violence. When we start conflating speech, assault and battery, the world is headed into the shitter.
      - mpweiher 8y ago
        Yes, I clearly saw it as sarcasm, though Poe's law...
  - gt_ 8y ago
    Neither speech, language, or even a punch to the gut hurts as bad as widespread intergenerational economic injustice. This free speech nonsense misses the point. It’s only en vogue because the Dem Party is so desperate to avoid and distract from how discrimination and injustice actually happen. Yeah sure words can hurt, but you’ll manage. Time to get with the program.
  - mpweiher 8y ago
    > fallacy .. and speech float in the ether. No, speech is transmitted by the movement of air molecules. And the movement of these air molecules typically does no damage, unless amplified to absurd pressure levels. > harms the body Nope. A "cutting" comment produces no incisions in the body. I think you are also confusing "harms the body" with "feels like pain". There are studies that show that, for example, social exclusion produces a pain sensation in the brain that is hard to distinguish from physically caused pain. However, that's not the same, just because there is a pain sensation as if you were physically harmed does not mean you were physically harmed. And no, the pain sensation is not the same as the actual physical harm. And yes, long-term cortisol exposure will cause negative effects on the body, but again not everything that causes harm is violence. If I give you wrong directions, I am causing you harm, but that doesn't mean my directions are violence. If I drop a banana peel and you slip on it, that causes you harm, but it is not violence. The sun causes you harm, but the sun is not violence.
    - jeromebaek 8y ago
      > speech is transmitted by the movement of air molecules Under this definition of "speech" English, which I understand, and Chinese, which I don't, would have the same effect on me. But of course they don't. When somebody speaks in English or another language I understand, I have no choice but to hear it, not as noise, but as meaning, as sensations and memories activated in my brain and body. Since you're German you probably like Kant. Korsgaard is a Kantian philosopher at Harvard: "If I say to you, “Picture a yellow spot!” you will. What exactly is happening? Are you simply cooperating with me? No, because at least without a certain active resistance you will not be able to help it. Is it a causal connection then? No, or at least not merely that, for if you picture a pink spot you will be mistaken, wrong. Causal connections cannot be wrong. What kind of necessity is this, both normative and compulsive? It is obligation. " https://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_documents/a-to-z/k/korsgaard94.pdf https://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_documents/a-to-z/k/korsgaar... p.78
      - mpweiher 8y ago
        > would have the same effect on me What on earth leads you to make such a fallacious statement? > no choice but to hear it Sort of. You can wear ear-protection, turn on the music of your headphones, but overall it is arguably a bug of our physiology that we cannot close our ears the same way we can close our eyes. > If I say to you, “Picture a yellow spot!” you will. No, not necessarily. Also, this is not because speech is a command, but because we interpret speech automatically. So if I tell you "Whatever you do, do not picture a pink elephant", you will nevertheless think of a pink elephant, counter to the command I gave you. And of course, if I say "Jump off the bridge", you will probably not do so, because, again, it's not that speech is a command, but that we interpret speech more or less automatically. Anyway, no idea what any of this has to do with the question of whether speech is violence. > Since you're German you probably like Kant. Stereotype much?
  - modells 8y ago
    Oh my. Please tell me you’re joking or using extreme sarcasm as humor. If not, that would be a dangerously weak and nonsensical philosophy tantamount to thoughtcrime. Assault is getting up in your face with intimidation and imminent violence. Calling speech “abusive” is often a dog-whistle for academic totalitarianism that bans people outright without any process and eliminates debate because there’s “accepted” ideas and then there’s outlaws whom aren’t allowed to participate in the discourse. That’s not rigorous academics or openness to ideas, but touchy childishness, often attempting to control and subjugate other people with facist-modalities of draconian control.. to the point boys and others have to walk on eggshells, lest they offend hypersensitive, power-hungry control-freaks. Worse, only exchanging “approved” ideas leads to Dark Ages stagnation and materially-weak academics that could well be superseded by superior ideas, technologies and academic institutions that are more open and rigorous elsewhere. The problem originates thin-skinned toddler with their safe-spaces, microaggressions and crybully reactionary-outrage, brow-beating BS, which mostly grew out of the hierarchy of victimhood anti-white-straight-male ideologues, ... compounded by faculty, staff and parents whom fail to correct them, set sensible boundaries and lead-by-example.
    - jeromebaek 8y ago
      > dangerously weak and nonsensical philosophy Yes, clearly Wittgenstein is less of a philosopher than the author of this article. Look, I get what you're worrying about. Yes, there is a dark history where totalitarian regimes suppressed people from free speech. Nobody wants to go back there. What I'm pointing out is that "free speech" as implemented in the current society is not without its glaring defects, and that to get to the next stage of progress we need a subtler idea of free speech, rather than this clearly incoherent "speech is powerful enough to cure social ills, but cannot inflict as much damage as a fist." Just to spell it out for you again, under any reasonable metric, the desirability hierarchy is: totalitarian suppression of free speech < "free speech" in the liberal world as we know it < a more nuanced understanding of "free speech", with bug fixes
      - mpweiher 8y ago
        > clearly incoherent "speech is powerful enough to cure social ills, but cannot inflict as much damage as a fist." There is nothing incoherent about this, except your mischaracterization. The fist inflicts. Speech does not inflict, it informs, entices and incites. And when it incites it can already be regulated. Yes, there are involuntary aspects of speech processing, but these are not generally and certainly not immediately harmful. For speech to be powerful it requires the consent/cooperation of the spoken-to. The fist does not. So you are constructing a straw man out of logical incoherence and then having a big old fight with it. Have fun!
Tade0 8y ago
Speech itself is nothing without actions, power and trust - talk is cheap. The same insults and threats hurled at you by a person in a position of power have a very different meaning when coming from someone powerless. Likewise promises from somebody trustworthy are much more powerful than from a stranger. My point being: it's not the speech that's powerful, it's the person behind it.
- mlevental 8y ago
  you seem very certain soft (volume) speech can't harm. okay then you should be fine with this experiment (and confident about its result): let me put you into a room and have people come in for 8 hours a day and call you stupid, ugly, worthless, a disappointment, etc. in perfectly mild tones for exactly one month. we'll perform a mood/outlook/mental health assessment before and after. do you think there will be a difference in the two assessments?
  - changchuming 8y ago
    Huh? What you're saying does not relate to what he's saying at all. He's talking about people in positions of power, you're talking about volume?
neonate 8y ago
That's not Wittgenstein.

mschuster91 8y ago

> These key tropes—“we will not tolerate” and “this is not a debate”—are now frequently deployed to curtail discussion of issues deemed to be taboo, invariably to “protect” people deemed vulnerable from speech deemed hateful. The point is that denying trans people (for example, as they're targeted the worst by both rightwingers, "centrists" and some lefties aka trans-exclusionary radical feminists) the right to choosing freedom over their bodies is a direct attack on their basic human right to exist. Either one supports letting trans people live in peace or one does not - and the latter position is directly and actively intolerable in a society that calls itself "civilized" and "respecting human rights". There is no valid position in any society that denies a group of people the right to exist. We had that already with the Nazi regime and with Stalin's Soviet Union, no need to repeat history again.

mpweiher 8y ago
Pure hyperbole. Nobody is denying their right to exist.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- mschuster91 8y ago
  A couple days ago "concerned parents" literally declared "hunting season" on a 12-year old child: http://www.towleroad.com/2018/08/hunting-season/ http://www.towleroad.com/2018/08/hunting-season/ This is reality, there's a reason why suicide and self harm ratios are enormous among LGBT, especially youth.
  - mpweiher 8y ago
    While I find the actions of these parents despicable, they do not constitute "denying the right to exist".
    - jeromebaek 8y ago
      What else denies the right of someone to exist, other than threats to physically mutilate and kill? Do you think the child has a soul separate from the body that the parents won't be able to touch? Do you think the child has a clean innocent soul that's immune to harm?

extralego 8y ago

The author is confused. He says he is a liberal “in the enlightenment sense.” He cites John Locke and John Stuart Mill. But then he makes a “contrast”: >In contrast, today’s so-called progressive liberals are often intolerant, calling for official censure against anyone perceived as uttering non-progressive views. What the author fails to reconcile is that this “progressive liberal” target of his is all but the product of John Stuart Mill’s brand of liberalism that includes many wonderful things but has a certain clause that makes all the difference. Mill’s liberalism defended democratic ideals predominantly in cultural terms. That is, democracy to the extent that it does not interfere with free market capitalism. Fast forward 150+ years through 2 world wars, the Great Depression, the federal reserve Vietnam, globalization, corporate takeover, etc., etc. and old Mill’s ideas are not looking so spiffy. The instability is anything but defensible, so what can the ole’ liberals do now but hunker down on the culturalism? There you have it. There is nothing new or complicated about this. Mill and Marx defined the terms way back when. The youngsters in the US are having trouble working through it because their parents skipped the conversation entirely, but they’ll figure it out. Fool them once. So, this is not about free speech. The only problem here is this author’s insistence that it’s a contention between old and new. It’s not, of course. It’s a contention between capitalism, it’s glories, and messes it makes.

bediger4000 8y ago

This might be a fair argument, except for the "affirmative action" that conservative/fascist ideas get. Sure, individual reporters probably are liberals. But owners are not: see Sinclair's mandatory statements. Owners near monarchism is going to select for editors that keep their personal beliefs out of it, and give conservative ideas a big boost, way beyond their merit, because they'll catch grief from owners/CEOs if they don't. This is some of the same, The Economist's writers sucking up to owners/plutocrats.

bediger4000 8y ago
Which coward chose to "censor" me by downvoting instead of just answering with logic, reason and good, conservative common sense? By downvoting without a reply, you've played into my argument. Thanks for confirming that conservatives just want affirmative action for their opinions.
- dang 8y ago
  Please don't let downvotes trigger you into breaking the site guidelines, which ask you specifically not to post like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. As for the parent comment, possibly it was downvoted because it used ideological tropes. HN is not a place for ideological battle (regardless of what you're battling for/against), because ideological battle tends to burn up everything else. Edit: looks like you did it again here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17794513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17794513. Please don't post like that to HN.