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> Citing your ignorance of events is not a compelling argument. If you're going to make a case that there are harms from imposition on speech, then you need to
by wwweston 7y ago
> Citing your ignorance of events is not a compelling argument.
If you're going to make a case that there are harms from imposition on speech, then you need to be able to point to harms. An absence of demonstrable harms does not necessarily constitute ignorance on my part (though demonstrable harms might, although the good news for me is that can be easily remedied).
> Now I would not exactly consider this an "important idea". But arresting and convicting someone for that is egregious and, dare I say, offensive.
Your objection here is apparently to either the fact that the law was enforced, or to the specific punishment. I assume it's not the former, or laws protecting speech don't matter either. There's legitimate room for discussion of the later, but all conversations about what constitutes a reasonable consequence for violating the law are distinct from whether it's reasonable to have a law regarding any specific activity in the first place. And it's worth pointing out that there are other forms of speech such as fraud and perjury that can result in prison time.
> I could not possibly care less which ideas _you_ consider important or not. Or anyone for that matter. That's the whole point of free speech.
Actually the whole point of free speech is that ideas matter. Broad allowances aren't the primary value; the search for value in discourse is. Where broad allowances exist they flow from that central point.
When you understand that, it's easier to see why even societies which hold free speech as a high value do not consider every form of expression equally valuable, and why exceptions to allowances exist both by informal social construction and in legal formalisms. Including those that distinguish even crude expressions like "The Prime Minister is an Asshole" from slurs, or the idea that freedom is for teaching animals to pass on Nazi signifiers.
- forrestthewoods 7y ago> then you need to be able to point to harms Right. That’s why I included articles on people being arrested. Being arrested is very much a harm. Here’s a woman who was arrested for tweeting rap lyrics. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-43816921 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-43816921 Do some research on how the law is being used for. On what people are being arrested for. I look forward to your report. > Your objection here is apparently to either the fact that the law was enforced, or to the specific punishment. My objection is to the existence of the law. Not only should there have been no punishment but there shouldn’t have been an arrest or even an investigation.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- wwweston 7y ago> Right. That’s why I included articles on people being arrested. Being arrested is very much a harm. The mere existence of an arrest or the general fact of any legal consequence does not demonstrate that a law is harmful. Presumably you don't believe that being arrested for theft is a demonstration about how property law harms people. Presumably you don't believe that punishments for perjury would demonstrates how some legal obligations to speak truthfully constitute harm. This is a conversation about the value of free speech and the contention that hate speech laws have eroded that value. If there's a case for that, it has to be demonstrated with examples of meaningful discourse that has been barred or otherwise suffered.
- Mirioron 7y agoHow do you propose somebody demonstrate that something did not happen because of hate speech restrictions? It is very difficult to prove a negative. What we can do is reason over the situations that have cropped up. Do you think it's a net benefit to society that a teenager was arrested and had to wear an ankle bracelet for posting lyrics of a song on Instagram in remembrance of someone that was killed? Because I don't think that's good for society. I think that she's now much less likely to speak her mind on the future, because she has essentially already been punished for doing that in the past. >Presumably you don't believe that being arrested for theft is a demonstration about how property law harms people. Theft is demonstrably bad for society and it is generally easy to separate theft from non-theft. Therefore punishing theft is a net good for society, because we want to discourage theft. I've not seen someone demonstrate that hate speech is bad for society. Furthermore, hate speech is not easy to separate from regular speech. This means that if you discourage hate speech you'll likely discourage some regular speech as well.
- gitrog 7y agoYou haven't demonstrated why theft is bad for society though? If Robin Hood steals from the rich to give to the poor, is that bad for society simply by virtue of theft being seen as generally wrong? You really can't see how hate speech is bad for society? You don't think calling minorities racial slurs affects society negatively? The difficulty of separating it from "regular speech" or satire really isn't important for there to be laws against it, that is why there are courts and judges and juries to settle cases and set precedents. I also think you're highly overestimating how easy it is to separate theft from non-theft. Again, not that the complexity in separating a crime from a non-crime should in any way be a deciding factor in whether a law against said crime exists.
- stOneskull 7y agoIt's about the individual, not society. The individual comes first