4 ms·

In my opinion this is one of the saddest and most dangerous trends of modern times, the desire to give up any and all freedoms in exchange for perceived safety.

In my opinion this is one of the saddest and most dangerous trends of modern times, the desire to give up any and all freedoms in exchange for perceived safety. We've welcomed 1984 with open arms.

panarky 8y ago
> the desire to give up any and all freedoms That's not what I said. I said "there might be something to learn". Maybe my belief in unlimited free expression at any cost isn't the best way. Must we must allow terrorist recruiting and incitement to violence and state-sponsored disinformation campaigns and targeted intimidation? It's a slippery slope fallacy to assume that any restriction inevitably leads to relinquishing "all freedoms".
- int_19h 8y ago
  The problem is that slippery slope is not a hypothetical argument in this case. You can be jailed in France, today, for wearing a pro-BDS t-shirt, because it's "hate speech". At the same time, for all the political censorship that Europe has compared to US, it doesn't seem to be doing anything to stem the rising popularity of their extremist parties. (https://theintercept.com/2017/08/29/in-europe-hate-speech-laws-are-often-used-to-suppress-and-punish-left-wing-viewpoints/ https://theintercept.com/2017/08/29/in-europe-hate-speech-la...) The problem, as usual, is that there's no "we" in "must we allow". You're not actually the person who's going to be doing the allowing - best case, if you live in a non-corrupt democracy, you'll be voluntarily giving that authority to somebody else; and not even to a specific person, but a role. If the bounds of that authority are too specific, it becomes useless in practice because it's easy to avoid its scope. If they are too vague, and the precise bounds are left to the discretion of the enforcers, it just gives them another channel to manifest their biases.

4 ms·

In my opinion this is one of the saddest and most dangerous trends of modern times, the desire to give up any and all freedoms in exchange for perceived safety.

by PlasticTank 8y ago

In my opinion this is one of the saddest and most dangerous trends of modern times, the desire to give up any and all freedoms in exchange for perceived safety. We've welcomed 1984 with open arms.

panarky 8y ago
> the desire to give up any and all freedoms That's not what I said. I said "there might be something to learn". Maybe my belief in unlimited free expression at any cost isn't the best way. Must we must allow terrorist recruiting and incitement to violence and state-sponsored disinformation campaigns and targeted intimidation? It's a slippery slope fallacy to assume that any restriction inevitably leads to relinquishing "all freedoms".
- int_19h 8y ago
  The problem is that slippery slope is not a hypothetical argument in this case. You can be jailed in France, today, for wearing a pro-BDS t-shirt, because it's "hate speech". At the same time, for all the political censorship that Europe has compared to US, it doesn't seem to be doing anything to stem the rising popularity of their extremist parties. (https://theintercept.com/2017/08/29/in-europe-hate-speech-laws-are-often-used-to-suppress-and-punish-left-wing-viewpoints/ https://theintercept.com/2017/08/29/in-europe-hate-speech-la...) The problem, as usual, is that there's no "we" in "must we allow". You're not actually the person who's going to be doing the allowing - best case, if you live in a non-corrupt democracy, you'll be voluntarily giving that authority to somebody else; and not even to a specific person, but a role. If the bounds of that authority are too specific, it becomes useless in practice because it's easy to avoid its scope. If they are too vague, and the precise bounds are left to the discretion of the enforcers, it just gives them another channel to manifest their biases.