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> 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 worr

> 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!
- jeromebaek 8y ago
  > For speech to be powerful it requires the consent/cooperation of the spoken-to This is where you are wrong. You already admitted that there are involuntary aspects of speech processing, and this is a step in the right direction. Your mistake is dismissing how powerful these involuntary aspects are, and this mistake probably stems from your irrational faith in human agency despite all odds.
  - mpweiher 8y ago
    It's not an "irrational faith", but a simple fact that without a human acting on those words, they have little to no effect.

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!

jeromebaek 8y ago
> For speech to be powerful it requires the consent/cooperation of the spoken-to This is where you are wrong. You already admitted that there are involuntary aspects of speech processing, and this is a step in the right direction. Your mistake is dismissing how powerful these involuntary aspects are, and this mistake probably stems from your irrational faith in human agency despite all odds.
- mpweiher 8y ago
  It's not an "irrational faith", but a simple fact that without a human acting on those words, they have little to no effect.