4 ms·
It's disappointing that so many of the immediate root comments in this discussion continue to so thoroughly engage in straw man binary thinking and misunderstan
by xoa 7y ago
It's disappointing that so many of the immediate root comments in this discussion continue to so thoroughly engage in straw man binary thinking and misunderstand what Free Speech is and entails.
To the first, the goal here is harm reduction in the form of the slowing the spread of infection, not a black and white magical changing of everyone's mind. No one has any illusions that existing anti-vaxxers will in any way be cured by steps like this, but the point is to reduce and slow the numbers of new people who will be infected by anti-vax thinking. Anti-vax thinking is like a disease itself, multiplying and spreading through regular human channels and exploiting our existing frameworks and thinking. Just as quarantines or vaccines themselves do not cure somebody who is already infected with a real world disease, quarantines and "vaccination" won't themselves cure somebody with corrupted thinking. But that doesn't mean they aren't useful tools, because real lives are on the line, and the system does have a certain amount of give and take in terms of what the critical level is for herd immunity (fortunately, since there will always be a small fraction of people with genuine medical issues like compromised immune systems). It's not necessary to keep everyone in the population vaccinating, with many it's only around 90-95%. It's understood that anti-vaxxers will mutate in response to new efforts to resist them, and in turn containment steps must also adapt. Nothing odd about that. It is and will always be a process as with many things in life.
Just as in the real world concentrated groupings of people, faster travel, and faster shipping systems can accelerate the spread of existing and new strains, social media which brings together many people and accelerates their exchanges could also be a vector. Success for any given effort comes from how much is slows things down for a time, that's all.
To the second, for various reasons many people have gotten the odd notion in their minds that "Free Speech" is about ideas being equal, or about it being free. It isn't, and never was. Quite the contrary, free speech is important precisely because ideas are not equal, and in fact most of them are trash. The goal is to try to make a process that, over long periods of time, will tend to eventually sift out better ideas and adapt to changing conditions that make older discarded ideas worthy of consideration again. Further, centralized power inevitably faces pressure to crystalize and serve smaller interests. So if the coercive centralized physical power of government (or equivalent entities) is used to control actual thoughts and expressions, the result long term has tended to be poor.
However, that very much does not apply to social pressure, or to whether individual private people/entities choose to associate with given ideas and/or lend them their own private economic support. Not doing so is a critical part of Free Speech as well. If somebody thinks ideas are truly awful, they can and should deny any support, lobby others to deny support, ostracize those with such ideas, etc. Fighting such pressure and bearing the consequences is itself part of the gauntlet that ideas must face, and always have faced. None of this is new. People have the right to go create their own services, groups, and put their own soap boxes out, but others have the equal right to have nothing to do with them. The arguments back and forth are at the heart of the process, and the process is never, ever done.
- ThrowawayR2 7y ago> "To the first, the goal here is harm reduction in the form of the slowing the spread of infection, not a black and white magical changing of everyone's mind." Of course, that argument can be used to justify "quarantining" (i.e. silencing) literally any group based on what definition of "harm" is being used, and therefore is null and void. Better hope society never changes so that your beliefs are unpopular. Moreover, as the article demonstrates, "quarantining" doesn't even work. A lot of rights we enjoy today came about because the backers of the status quo were unable to suppress the popular movements that back them despite keeping them out of the press and broadcast media as much as they could.
- xoa 7y ago>Of course, that argument can be used to justify "quarantining" (i.e. silencing) literally any group based on what definition of "harm" is being used, and therefore is null and void. Indeed it can, welcome to Free Speech. The whole point though is that those that believe in the idea are also free to keep arguing for it, and to keep the flame alive, and if it has merit they will ultimately be able to convince society to change its mind. That might well take years or even decades >Better hope society never changes so that your beliefs are unpopular. This is the sort of lazy, passive thinking that is the source of much of the problem people have understanding this. There is no "hope" in free speech, only effort, forever, with no guarantees of success. Because there is no trustable guiding oracle, that's the whole issue and always has been. It's turtles all the way down. >Moreover, as the article demonstrates, "quarantining" doesn't even work. The article demonstrates no such thing. In fact, you yourself are being self-contradictory right here! If you actually thought it didn't work, why would you even care at all? You can't BOTH claim that private entities exercising their freedom of association and refusing to support ideas they believe wrong is a threat, which you do, AND claim that it doesn't do anything. It's one or the other. >A lot of rights we enjoy today came about because the backers of the status quo were unable to suppress the popular movements that back them despite keeping them out of the press and broadcast media as much as they could. A lot of the rights we enjoy today came about because those against the status quo very much struggled against the sensibilities of the mainstream through enormous, sustained effort. Not because they were handed over control of whatever media they wanted. Being banned from social media or not being offered your own column in a newspaper or whatever else doesn't stop you from working to get your message out in other ways. People like you love to CLAIM you want freedom of speech and association, but inevitably you only want it for yourselves.