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Free 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
by sytelus 7y ago
Free 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 agoYes, there would be false positives and false negatives. The problem is that false positive can kill people while false negatives often causes just short term inconvenience.