4 ms·
because the line of reasoning you are using has been repeated over and over and over.... but it's not exactly working out well. Words have a lot of power, and
by keithnz 7y ago
because the line of reasoning you are using has been repeated over and over and over.... but it's not exactly working out well. Words have a lot of power, and we already limit what people can say through libel laws. Much of the hate speech going on is really just libel to a group of people. No one really wants to police speech, but we already know untruths targeted at individuals can be devstating and we have created laws in most countries around that. It hasn't resulted in mass censorship of "YOUR ideas, and YOUR opinions" unless they are untrue ideas about other people that you think you can put out into the public space. America has this as their corporate slogan "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness". Liberty cannot outweigh Life and pursuit of happiness. You need to balance all 3 of those, in fact, without rules everyones liberties are reduced.
We don't allow people to drive anyway they like on the roads, we have basic set of rules that allow everyone a lot more freedom to go where they want, violation of those rules tends to cause harm, and if it was total "freedom" then it would be chaos. If we cannot work out what those are for speech( and we already have some )so that everyone gets more effective freedoms, then more harm will keep happening.
- DATACOMMANDER 7y agoUnder your interpretation, would I be allowed to say that it’s evident that there are (nontrivial, sometimes cognitive) innate group differences between the sexes, or between racial groups? If you’re convinced that such a statement would simply be “libelous”, I can’t get on board with your idea. As far as I can tell, the current state of affairs is this: the science suggests rather strongly that there are indeed innate differences both between the sexes and among various racial groups; despite this, any statement to that effect is loudly denounced as “pseudoscience”. In other words, I believe that the current popular consensus regarding innate group differences is factually incorrect, but also believed in very strongly. So if that’s your angle, I think that your idea has reached its “dystopia scenario”—truthful speech being prohibited because it is falsely deemed libelous—right out of the gate.
- keithnz 7y agono, I don't think want to ban the truth as we know it via evidence. I'm not precisely defining what the law is, in NZ we have hate speech laws. Everyone still goes around with their own unique ideas, sometimes shitty ideas..... like when they mistakenly conflate genetic sex and gender identity, or talk about race as a scientific concept when really that's quite an ambiguous term ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization) ). Its not even about the "truth" so much, I'm an atheist, but I believe in religious freedom and peoples right to believe in things I believe to be completely false. It's about making sure groups of people, especially minorities are free to live their lives according to their beliefs (not necessarily without criticism ). NZ Law society did a pretty good summary recently https://www.lawsociety.org.nz/practice-resources/practice-areas/human-rights/freedom-of-speech-vs-hate-speech https://www.lawsociety.org.nz/practice-resources/practice-ar...
- SlowRobotAhead 7y ago>I'm not precisely defining what the law is, in NZ we have hate speech laws. Which is another way to say you do not have free speech.