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That's the rub with a free society. It's the same terrible people. If we foster hate speech, many people will eventually die. By allowing hate speech, you ar

That's the rub with a free society. It's the same terrible people. If we foster hate speech, many people will eventually die. By allowing hate speech, you are allowing that outcome. Perhaps reprehensible is too strong of a word, but morally responsible certainly fits. A small limitation on an 'unassailable' right (where is that status derived from?) is actually the solution that maximizes liberalism by limiting genocide.

rcoveson 7y ago
> If we foster hate speech, many people will eventually die. True, if we collectively foster it. Let's definitely not do that. > where is that status derived from? It's just agreed upon, or not. The extent to which free speech is unassailable is the extent to which free speech is unassailable. Every society has restricted it in some way or other; many (even western) societies have restricted it much too far, in my opinion. We can go as far as we choose. Personally, I wish we wouldn't choose speech policing in the US at this point in time. The implications are far reaching. Policing something doesn't just affect the people who break the law, it affects anybody who could theoretically break it. Mechanisms to monitor and silence speech get another great justification. And the people doing the policing will of course err on the side of caution at times. Look at the recent stack overflow kerfuffle. Since intent is so difficult to judge, there is no way that the only thing hate speech laws are applied to will be speech with hateful intent. Some arguments in support of Israel are considered by some to be hate speech, as supporting the Hong Kong protests is by others. Both of those platforms are deeply offensive to a particular demographic. And the argument that these are just "bad applications" of the law is insufficient, because laws at their very best are applied badly sometimes, and at their worst applied badly _most_ of the time. Saying that a limitation on this particular right for this particular reason "is actually the solution that maximizes liberalism by limiting genocide," is not a good argument. Genocide has some probability of occurring in a country with the policies in place today, and some other probability of occurring with different policies in place. If we just applied any policy that reduced the probability, there would be no freedoms at all. And even hundreds of examples in history don't work very well as evidence unless you can demonstrate an inverse correlation in history between the degree to which countries restricted hate speech and the extend to which they engaged in genocide, and I wouldn't be surprised if you found exactly the opposite.

rcoveson 7y ago

> If we foster hate speech, many people will eventually die. True, if we collectively foster it. Let's definitely not do that. > where is that status derived from? It's just agreed upon, or not. The extent to which free speech is unassailable is the extent to which free speech is unassailable. Every society has restricted it in some way or other; many (even western) societies have restricted it much too far, in my opinion. We can go as far as we choose. Personally, I wish we wouldn't choose speech policing in the US at this point in time. The implications are far reaching. Policing something doesn't just affect the people who break the law, it affects anybody who could theoretically break it. Mechanisms to monitor and silence speech get another great justification. And the people doing the policing will of course err on the side of caution at times. Look at the recent stack overflow kerfuffle. Since intent is so difficult to judge, there is no way that the only thing hate speech laws are applied to will be speech with hateful intent. Some arguments in support of Israel are considered by some to be hate speech, as supporting the Hong Kong protests is by others. Both of those platforms are deeply offensive to a particular demographic. And the argument that these are just "bad applications" of the law is insufficient, because laws at their very best are applied badly sometimes, and at their worst applied badly _most_ of the time. Saying that a limitation on this particular right for this particular reason "is actually the solution that maximizes liberalism by limiting genocide," is not a good argument. Genocide has some probability of occurring in a country with the policies in place today, and some other probability of occurring with different policies in place. If we just applied any policy that reduced the probability, there would be no freedoms at all. And even hundreds of examples in history don't work very well as evidence unless you can demonstrate an inverse correlation in history between the degree to which countries restricted hate speech and the extend to which they engaged in genocide, and I wouldn't be surprised if you found exactly the opposite.