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Free speech is a cultural value. It sometimes manifests itself in the form of codified laws like the first amendment to the US Constitution. However, free speec
by simula67 7y ago
Free speech is a cultural value. It sometimes manifests itself in the form of codified laws like the first amendment to the US Constitution. However, free speech is not limited to the USA.
The idea behind free speech is that people are allowed to put forward new ideas ( especially ideas about how to organize society, what is good and moral etc ) so that people can consider and accept or reject them. The idea is that no entity has a monopoly on truth and if you want to propagate your ideas, make your arguments persuasive and refute your opponents' arguments.
Free speech is ultimately a bet on human capacity for reason and goodness. The idea is that good ideas should win adherents and bubble to the top while bad ideas sink to the bottom as they lose followers.
Sometimes, governments are the most powerful enemy of free speech while sometimes other entities can be.
I am not saying free speech is a good thing, but there is no "exclusive to government" limiting principle to free speech.
- xxxpupugo 7y agoOne thing I learned by watching US culture warfare in recent years, is any value have a limit to it. If it has been codified or been treated as absolute and untouchable, then it becomes its own weakness. So does free speech. Certain speech that are known to cause violent result/response from its audience should be dealt with carefully. In which case, if 8chan has popularized itself as the platform to announce when and where to kill innocent people, and broadcast such message to its susceptible audience to follow, then to me it feels like indifference or dysfunction of a community to have it slip through under the umbrella of 'free speech'. When you know you are ill, just take medication, not just set in vain to wait for your immune system to ultimately cure yourself.
- jquery 7y ago>Certain speech that are known to cause violent result/response from its audience should be dealt with carefully. Which speech is that, exactly? Do you have a list of all the problem topics we need to ban?
- sytelus 7y agoFree speech is also a technological (or lack thereof) outcome. In 1700s, if you had a misguided evil thought, your chance of realizing full effect was still low because your thought must travel through multiple hops, each hop evaluating your idea and possibly terminating the propagation with some probability. So in societies without technological advancements, bad ideas and their damaging effects can stay contained in small groups. But what if technology can directly inject any bad ideas to entire population all at once instantly? Is free speech still viable or do we need new philosophical principals on human communication? The often left unsaid basis of free speech is that each member of the audience is capable of rationality evaluating the argument, willing to invest in fact checking and is educated on background material. When these conditions are not satisfied, there will be members of audience who will make suboptimal choices based on misinformation with some probability. When scale of audience becomes large, even small probability can uproot sane society. All these are very interesting questions and honestly I don't think anyone has answers.
- joncrane 7y agoGood ideas were also suppressed under those conditions. Look at Galileo, Giordano Bruno, and Socrates. Allowing all ideas a fertile ground to grow and gain followers is important. Allowing individuals with a small social reach (e.g. live in a small, conservative, remote town) to access a wide range of ideas is important.
- citruscomputing 7y agoJust wanting to clarify -- are you likening the shooter's manifesto to the works of Socrates?
- joncrane 7y agoI'm not on the side of the shooters. Violence is extremely rarely the right option and I'm not aware of any mass shooting cases that were even close to "justified."
- sytelus 7y ago
- root_axis 7y agoFree speech also includes the freedom not to support speech you disagree with.
- simula67 7y agoNeutrality is not support
- root_axis 7y agoRebroadcasting the message across the internet is supporting it.
- simula67 7y agoIf a message and its opposing message has equal access to the platform for rebroadcast, the platform is not supporting any particular message.
- kelnos 7y agoRebroadcasting a message, regardless of whether or not the opposite message has equal access, is still tacit support for that message, or at least a lack of desire to get involved. Cloudflare has decided that, for the most part, they won't get involved, but that there are some things that do actually cross the line (a line they are perfectly free to define for themselves), and they refuse to rebroadcast. If you don't like that, don't support CF with your business. Otherwise, I'm not sure what horse you have in this race.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- simula67 7y agoI am arguing that if you believe in free speech, it must be admitted that that it is deeply immoral for them to get involved. It is up to their users to define what does and does not cross the line and respond with counter-arguments.
- AlphaGeekZulu 7y ago"[...]The idea is that good ideas should win adherents and bubble to the top while bad ideas sink to the bottom as they lose followers.[...]" OK, but what if the good ideas sink to the bottom and the bad ideas bubble to the top, and people die? Because someone found the psychological triggers and the technical means to turn around the expected functionality of the good idea? We all get the nice, philosophical, humanistic idea of free speech. But in the moment, it doesn't work so well. When something doesn't work so well, we have to fix it. So, what is the fix, in your opinion?