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I didn’t strawman you at all. Your stated rationalization is that such laws are fine because they do not impact whatever it is you perceive to be “reasonable di

I didn’t strawman you at all. Your stated rationalization is that such laws are fine because they do not impact whatever it is you perceive to be “reasonable discourse”. I’ve stated the very immediate dangers of criminalizing unreasonable discourse above. Unreasonable discourse has been instrumental in much of our progress as a society, I can’t imagine why anybody would have so much contempt for it.

wwweston 7y ago
> Your stated rationalization You misspelled "rationale." > is that such laws are fine because they do not impact whatever it is you perceive to be “reasonable discourse” And your apparent supposition here is that lines regarding reasonable discourse should be scare quoted, or are mere matters of entirely subjective speculation. > I’ve stated the very immediate dangers of criminalizing unreasonable discourse above. You don't even have any particular model of what you mean by reasonable or unreasonable discourse, let alone an idea of what I do, in spite of available clues. If you want to fix your thinking on the topic (much less challenge mine), start there. The invitation to provide concrete examples of valuable discourse that's criminalized by hate speech is only one of several avenues available for this.
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  I most certainly meant ‘rationalization’, believing that freedom of expression, the most fundamental building block of a free society, should be restricted to your own idea of reasonable is absolutely something that you need to internally rationalize. > your apparent supposition here is that lines regarding reasonable discourse should be scare quoted, or are mere matters of entirely subjective speculation. Reasonable is an entirely subjective quality, there is no objective framework for divining reasonableness. > If you want to fix your thinking on the topic The fact that you believe you have some position of authority to dictate to others how they should “fix their thinking”, so that their thoughts are somehow more correct, really says a lot about you. > The invitation to provide concrete examples of valuable discourse that's criminalized by hate speech Here you go, legitimate religious speech resulting in a conviction: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Hammond https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Hammond Here’s another person receiving a wrongful arrest payout for exactly the same crime, to highlight exactly how absurd these laws are, even to the people enforcing them: https://www.nwemail.co.uk/news/18098283.preacher-wins-payout-police-wrongful-arrest/ https://www.nwemail.co.uk/news/18098283.preacher-wins-payout... Of course, please feel free to explain to me why none of that speech was reasonable in the first place. Perhaps you could enlighten me with some correct thinking.
  - kelnos 7y ago
    I don't consider Hammond's sign to be legitimate religious speech. It's harmful hate speech with no redeeming qualities. Regarding your second example, the article you linked didn't provide enough details for me to form an opinion.
    - zo1 7y ago
      It's words...on a sign outside in public. People assaulted him with water and soil but didn't get arrested. What was on his sign was irrelevant. The justification by the judge that convicted him essentially said he was responsible for peoples' reaction because they got offended by his sign. That is a complete reversal of logic, and means that you can wrap the definition of "hate speech" over anything that sufficiently large group of people find offensive/insulting.
    - AmericanChopper 7y ago
      > I don't consider Hammond's sign to be legitimate religious speech. Agree with it or not, his sign contained a message that is part of the religious doctrine of well over half the worlds population. This comment just reinforces the fact that for for all of us who don’t live in a country with such draconian speech laws, we are lucky we don’t have to check with you first to find out whether our ideas are correct before we express them.
      - kelnos 7y ago
        > Agree with it or not, his sign contained a message that is part of the religious doctrine of well over half the worlds population. So just because half the world believes something hateful, that should make it ok? Regardless, "Stop Homosexuality, Stop Lesbianism" is not actually a part of the religious doctrine of all of Christianity. Many denominations have come out as pro-LGBT. > we are lucky we don’t have to check with you first to find out whether our ideas are correct before we express them That's just unnecessary and disingenuous.
  - wwweston 7y ago
    > Reasonable is an entirely subjective quality Is it? Consider these two responses someone might make to this sentence: (1) In discussion where clear examination and exchange of relevant ideas matters most, we make distinctions all the time between reasonable discourse and unreasonable discourse. Students of rhetoric distinguish between ethos, pathos, and logos. Practitioners of logic distinguish between sound and fallacious reasoning. And as I'm pointing out yet again here, the legal field already makes any number of distinctions regarding how speech functions that are related to the degree to which it is protected or not protected. (2) Your clear failings in this discussion mark you as an irredeemable utter piece of shit, an overconfident idiot who is fit for nothing better than to be dragged out of your house, beaten on livestream to people laughing at you while those watching send in messages of proper encouragement those beating you, until finally someone finally extracts the only worthwhile thing that can come out of the pathetic gray matter inside your skull: marry it to the pavement like Jackson Pollock did with paint and canvas. And the world will be a better place in every way. In fact, the sooner we get rid of people like you, the better. Which is more reasonable discourse? #1 or #2? I think it's pretty clear that it's #1. I certainly wouldn't consider #2 a contribution to reasonable discourse as anything other than a hyperbolic counterexample. HN guidelines would make that kind of distinction as well (and in fact, even though it should be clear that #2 is a hyperbolic counterexample, it may carry enough baggage that I may have run afoul of the guidelines anyway... but of course, as an ardent defender of absolute speech rights, presumably you're not one to appeal to such guidelines?). Do you really think that's an entirely subjective distinction? I think consensus is broad enough that it could be said to be objective on a human scale. Some forms of speech aren't discursive exchanges of ideas. > The fact that you believe you have some position of authority to dictate to others how they should “fix their thinking”, so that their thoughts are somehow more correct You know it's possible to be wrong about something, right? You can need your thinking fixed about whether you understand force vector diagrams sufficiently well to use them as tools to get accurate insights into relevant physics, or as most on this forum should know, you can need your mental model of a program corrected by a compiler (or a second pair of eyes). And one might even need their understanding of the values and dynamics involved in free speech issues corrected. So while we're talking about character in this discussion, let's observe that you're the first person to invoke it with a general ad hominem, on top of this weird idea that your thinking can't be broken. The idea that thinking can be broken is directly tied up with the main reason why free speech matters. If any idea is just as good as any other idea, if any attempt to bring them into a value framework is purely subjective, then no robust exchange of ideas matters. > Of course, please feel free to explain to me why none of that speech was reasonable in the first place. Perhaps you could enlighten me with some correct thinking. If you're looking for enlightenment regarding Hammond, you could start by reading the court case and/or proceedings behind relevant law. Believe it or not, reasoned examination of social philosophy and law is something that can happen in the courts and legislative bodies. If you don't believe that happened here, you could try engaging with the court's reasoning. But we don't have to involve that much work to start addressing issues in play. If you're particularly dismayed by the prospect of some fundamental human activity like speech being policed or outright curtailed by the law (or even by the suggestion that that it should be) then it should be easy for you to see why Hammond's sign was immediately problematic. It enters a similar assertion regarding sexuality. Now, you can say "well, the antidote if any for that is more speech" and maybe that's true in many cases. But context matters in at least two ways here: first, the history of legal restrictions and informal violence related to homosexual activity. "Stop homosexuality" takes on a particular character when we're still in living memory of cases like Alan Turing's. And the other contextual point has to do with the question I entered this discussion with: what's been lost? What can you literally not talk about? Are there no venues in which one can elaborate on desirable vs undesirable dynamics related to homosexuality specifically or sexuality in general? Or even in which it can't be proposed that it might be legally restricted? I'm going to bet the answer is no. Situational curtailing of some forms discourse in some forums is distinct from an attack on diversity of thought. But let's say it was. Does a society that can't talk about elimination of homosexuality lose anything in particular? Anything that isn't comparable to the loss of a social capacity to talk about the question of whether practice of Judaism (or Christianity, or Islam) should be "stopped" (since, presumably, you're concerned about the exercise of religious liberty)? > Here’s another person receiving a wrongful arrest payout for exactly the same crime The article doesn't seem to give enough information to determine whether or not the exact same crime was committed. Do you have other information?
- Mirioron 7y ago
  >The invitation to provide concrete examples of valuable discourse that's criminalized by hate speech is only one of several avenues available for this. The parent poster brought up a pretty important example: >Unreasonable discourse has been instrumental in much of our progress as a society, I can’t imagine why anybody would have so much contempt for it. If you need even more concrete, then how's this: the civil rights movement could've easily been classified as "hate speech" and legally squashed because it was unpopular when it started. Talk about gay marriage could've been legally squashed, because is was unpopular when the discussion started. Do you really believe that we have the world so well figured out that there will never be anything controversial in the future that will be unpopular at first? Because if you don't, then hate speech laws are going to be used against those ideas.
  - kelnos 7y ago
    That's not an example; that's a vague hand-wave that something might have possibly happened, without providing an actual specific example.
    - Mirioron 7y ago
      Because giving a specific example is demanding to prove a negative. Such a request itself is borderline trolling.
      - kelnos 7y ago
        How is it trolling to ask for evidence after being presented with a vague, unsupported claim?
  - JamisonM 7y ago
    If you need even more concrete, then how's this: the civil rights movement could've easily been classified as "hate speech" and legally squashed because it was unpopular when it started. That is not a concrete example it is a hypothetical, furthermore civil rights activist were literally beaten in the streets for their speech and subject to extrajudicial punishment on many occassions - far worse than the current "hate speech" laws that are afforded due process. Just give a concrete example, do it!
close04 7y ago
> whatever it is you perceive to be “reasonable discourse” Is there anything that you personally would consider to be a step too far? Anything that would make you say "this should really, really not be allowed"? Alternatively do you have an example of (subjectively) reasonable speech that was criminalized? > Unreasonable discourse has been instrumental in much of our progress as a society In the sense that society evolved with this as the example of "don't".
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  “Hate speech” laws are simply enforcing an orthodox morality. In my life I’ve seen many different groups attempt it. When I was a kid it was conservative Christians lobbying Congress to get Twisted Sister off MTV, and god forbid (literally) you wanted to promote some sort of alternative sexuality... Luckily for us, society rejected the enforced morality then, just as its doing now with all the backlash against this sort of toxic politics.
  - close04 7y ago
    I think it's important to be on the same page about what free speech and hate speech mean, the definitions, the limitations, otherwise we'll go nowhere. Hate speech is "public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation". The example you gave (with the details provided) doesn't sound like hate speech on either side. And I don't think people were imprisoned for speech promoting or rejecting "alternative sexuality" over the past decades in any free country unless they were also promoting the hate and violence to go with their opinion. Being pro or against something is free speech. Promoting violence against someone is hate speech. Can you help with an example of what you'd say is a step too far or is any speech free (never hate) speech? If a significant group of people would advocate violence against you and you felt your life is in peril every day would you want that (hate) speech to be limited in any way?
    - AmericanChopper 7y ago
      > Hate speech is "public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation". Do you believe that this is somehow an objective definition? It’s not. It’s also not the definition that is actually applied by the law. To know whether somebody is expressing hate, you must know the contents of their mind. This is obviously impossible, so the law that is actually applied is based on whether anybody perceived hate. As anybody is free to interpret speech in anyway they please, this simply ends up criminalizing ideas. Probably the most controversial way the law has been applied (actually been applied, in practice, with convictions) is people expressing their own moral objections to homosexuality. Now you could speak the phrase “I morally object to homosexuality”, and you could be expressing any number of non-hateful things. You could be expressing “I have a different view”, “I am promoting a different view”, “I disapprove of a different view”... But you could also read that statement and perceive it to be hateful. The criminality is not determined by the act, but by the audience, and the subjective views of law enforcement. There is no such thing as objective hate speech, outside of the incredibly rare (in terms of enforcement) situations where somebody is explicitly expressing hate. The primary impact of such laws is to enforce a political orthodoxy, and to suppress speech that may challenge it. That not even to mention the fact that suppressing the expression of hateful ideas does nothing to suppress the ideas. It simply emboldens the people who hold those ideas, generates more support for them, and ensures they can’t be challenged by actual dialogue.

wwweston 7y ago

> Your stated rationalization You misspelled "rationale." > is that such laws are fine because they do not impact whatever it is you perceive to be “reasonable discourse” And your apparent supposition here is that lines regarding reasonable discourse should be scare quoted, or are mere matters of entirely subjective speculation. > I’ve stated the very immediate dangers of criminalizing unreasonable discourse above. You don't even have any particular model of what you mean by reasonable or unreasonable discourse, let alone an idea of what I do, in spite of available clues. If you want to fix your thinking on the topic (much less challenge mine), start there. The invitation to provide concrete examples of valuable discourse that's criminalized by hate speech is only one of several avenues available for this.

AmericanChopper 7y ago
I most certainly meant ‘rationalization’, believing that freedom of expression, the most fundamental building block of a free society, should be restricted to your own idea of reasonable is absolutely something that you need to internally rationalize. > your apparent supposition here is that lines regarding reasonable discourse should be scare quoted, or are mere matters of entirely subjective speculation. Reasonable is an entirely subjective quality, there is no objective framework for divining reasonableness. > If you want to fix your thinking on the topic The fact that you believe you have some position of authority to dictate to others how they should “fix their thinking”, so that their thoughts are somehow more correct, really says a lot about you. > The invitation to provide concrete examples of valuable discourse that's criminalized by hate speech Here you go, legitimate religious speech resulting in a conviction: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Hammond https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Hammond Here’s another person receiving a wrongful arrest payout for exactly the same crime, to highlight exactly how absurd these laws are, even to the people enforcing them: https://www.nwemail.co.uk/news/18098283.preacher-wins-payout-police-wrongful-arrest/ https://www.nwemail.co.uk/news/18098283.preacher-wins-payout... Of course, please feel free to explain to me why none of that speech was reasonable in the first place. Perhaps you could enlighten me with some correct thinking.
- kelnos 7y ago
  I don't consider Hammond's sign to be legitimate religious speech. It's harmful hate speech with no redeeming qualities. Regarding your second example, the article you linked didn't provide enough details for me to form an opinion.
  - zo1 7y ago
    It's words...on a sign outside in public. People assaulted him with water and soil but didn't get arrested. What was on his sign was irrelevant. The justification by the judge that convicted him essentially said he was responsible for peoples' reaction because they got offended by his sign. That is a complete reversal of logic, and means that you can wrap the definition of "hate speech" over anything that sufficiently large group of people find offensive/insulting.
  - AmericanChopper 7y ago
    > I don't consider Hammond's sign to be legitimate religious speech. Agree with it or not, his sign contained a message that is part of the religious doctrine of well over half the worlds population. This comment just reinforces the fact that for for all of us who don’t live in a country with such draconian speech laws, we are lucky we don’t have to check with you first to find out whether our ideas are correct before we express them.
    - kelnos 7y ago
      > Agree with it or not, his sign contained a message that is part of the religious doctrine of well over half the worlds population. So just because half the world believes something hateful, that should make it ok? Regardless, "Stop Homosexuality, Stop Lesbianism" is not actually a part of the religious doctrine of all of Christianity. Many denominations have come out as pro-LGBT. > we are lucky we don’t have to check with you first to find out whether our ideas are correct before we express them That's just unnecessary and disingenuous.
- wwweston 7y ago
  > Reasonable is an entirely subjective quality Is it? Consider these two responses someone might make to this sentence: (1) In discussion where clear examination and exchange of relevant ideas matters most, we make distinctions all the time between reasonable discourse and unreasonable discourse. Students of rhetoric distinguish between ethos, pathos, and logos. Practitioners of logic distinguish between sound and fallacious reasoning. And as I'm pointing out yet again here, the legal field already makes any number of distinctions regarding how speech functions that are related to the degree to which it is protected or not protected. (2) Your clear failings in this discussion mark you as an irredeemable utter piece of shit, an overconfident idiot who is fit for nothing better than to be dragged out of your house, beaten on livestream to people laughing at you while those watching send in messages of proper encouragement those beating you, until finally someone finally extracts the only worthwhile thing that can come out of the pathetic gray matter inside your skull: marry it to the pavement like Jackson Pollock did with paint and canvas. And the world will be a better place in every way. In fact, the sooner we get rid of people like you, the better. Which is more reasonable discourse? #1 or #2? I think it's pretty clear that it's #1. I certainly wouldn't consider #2 a contribution to reasonable discourse as anything other than a hyperbolic counterexample. HN guidelines would make that kind of distinction as well (and in fact, even though it should be clear that #2 is a hyperbolic counterexample, it may carry enough baggage that I may have run afoul of the guidelines anyway... but of course, as an ardent defender of absolute speech rights, presumably you're not one to appeal to such guidelines?). Do you really think that's an entirely subjective distinction? I think consensus is broad enough that it could be said to be objective on a human scale. Some forms of speech aren't discursive exchanges of ideas. > The fact that you believe you have some position of authority to dictate to others how they should “fix their thinking”, so that their thoughts are somehow more correct You know it's possible to be wrong about something, right? You can need your thinking fixed about whether you understand force vector diagrams sufficiently well to use them as tools to get accurate insights into relevant physics, or as most on this forum should know, you can need your mental model of a program corrected by a compiler (or a second pair of eyes). And one might even need their understanding of the values and dynamics involved in free speech issues corrected. So while we're talking about character in this discussion, let's observe that you're the first person to invoke it with a general ad hominem, on top of this weird idea that your thinking can't be broken. The idea that thinking can be broken is directly tied up with the main reason why free speech matters. If any idea is just as good as any other idea, if any attempt to bring them into a value framework is purely subjective, then no robust exchange of ideas matters. > Of course, please feel free to explain to me why none of that speech was reasonable in the first place. Perhaps you could enlighten me with some correct thinking. If you're looking for enlightenment regarding Hammond, you could start by reading the court case and/or proceedings behind relevant law. Believe it or not, reasoned examination of social philosophy and law is something that can happen in the courts and legislative bodies. If you don't believe that happened here, you could try engaging with the court's reasoning. But we don't have to involve that much work to start addressing issues in play. If you're particularly dismayed by the prospect of some fundamental human activity like speech being policed or outright curtailed by the law (or even by the suggestion that that it should be) then it should be easy for you to see why Hammond's sign was immediately problematic. It enters a similar assertion regarding sexuality. Now, you can say "well, the antidote if any for that is more speech" and maybe that's true in many cases. But context matters in at least two ways here: first, the history of legal restrictions and informal violence related to homosexual activity. "Stop homosexuality" takes on a particular character when we're still in living memory of cases like Alan Turing's. And the other contextual point has to do with the question I entered this discussion with: what's been lost? What can you literally not talk about? Are there no venues in which one can elaborate on desirable vs undesirable dynamics related to homosexuality specifically or sexuality in general? Or even in which it can't be proposed that it might be legally restricted? I'm going to bet the answer is no. Situational curtailing of some forms discourse in some forums is distinct from an attack on diversity of thought. But let's say it was. Does a society that can't talk about elimination of homosexuality lose anything in particular? Anything that isn't comparable to the loss of a social capacity to talk about the question of whether practice of Judaism (or Christianity, or Islam) should be "stopped" (since, presumably, you're concerned about the exercise of religious liberty)? > Here’s another person receiving a wrongful arrest payout for exactly the same crime The article doesn't seem to give enough information to determine whether or not the exact same crime was committed. Do you have other information?
Mirioron 7y ago
>The invitation to provide concrete examples of valuable discourse that's criminalized by hate speech is only one of several avenues available for this. The parent poster brought up a pretty important example: >Unreasonable discourse has been instrumental in much of our progress as a society, I can’t imagine why anybody would have so much contempt for it. If you need even more concrete, then how's this: the civil rights movement could've easily been classified as "hate speech" and legally squashed because it was unpopular when it started. Talk about gay marriage could've been legally squashed, because is was unpopular when the discussion started. Do you really believe that we have the world so well figured out that there will never be anything controversial in the future that will be unpopular at first? Because if you don't, then hate speech laws are going to be used against those ideas.
- kelnos 7y ago
  That's not an example; that's a vague hand-wave that something might have possibly happened, without providing an actual specific example.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    Because giving a specific example is demanding to prove a negative. Such a request itself is borderline trolling.
    - kelnos 7y ago
      How is it trolling to ask for evidence after being presented with a vague, unsupported claim?
- JamisonM 7y ago
  If you need even more concrete, then how's this: the civil rights movement could've easily been classified as "hate speech" and legally squashed because it was unpopular when it started. That is not a concrete example it is a hypothetical, furthermore civil rights activist were literally beaten in the streets for their speech and subject to extrajudicial punishment on many occassions - far worse than the current "hate speech" laws that are afforded due process. Just give a concrete example, do it!

close04 7y ago

> whatever it is you perceive to be “reasonable discourse” Is there anything that you personally would consider to be a step too far? Anything that would make you say "this should really, really not be allowed"? Alternatively do you have an example of (subjectively) reasonable speech that was criminalized? > Unreasonable discourse has been instrumental in much of our progress as a society In the sense that society evolved with this as the example of "don't".

AmericanChopper 7y ago
“Hate speech” laws are simply enforcing an orthodox morality. In my life I’ve seen many different groups attempt it. When I was a kid it was conservative Christians lobbying Congress to get Twisted Sister off MTV, and god forbid (literally) you wanted to promote some sort of alternative sexuality... Luckily for us, society rejected the enforced morality then, just as its doing now with all the backlash against this sort of toxic politics.
- close04 7y ago
  I think it's important to be on the same page about what free speech and hate speech mean, the definitions, the limitations, otherwise we'll go nowhere. Hate speech is "public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation". The example you gave (with the details provided) doesn't sound like hate speech on either side. And I don't think people were imprisoned for speech promoting or rejecting "alternative sexuality" over the past decades in any free country unless they were also promoting the hate and violence to go with their opinion. Being pro or against something is free speech. Promoting violence against someone is hate speech. Can you help with an example of what you'd say is a step too far or is any speech free (never hate) speech? If a significant group of people would advocate violence against you and you felt your life is in peril every day would you want that (hate) speech to be limited in any way?
  - AmericanChopper 7y ago
    > Hate speech is "public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation". Do you believe that this is somehow an objective definition? It’s not. It’s also not the definition that is actually applied by the law. To know whether somebody is expressing hate, you must know the contents of their mind. This is obviously impossible, so the law that is actually applied is based on whether anybody perceived hate. As anybody is free to interpret speech in anyway they please, this simply ends up criminalizing ideas. Probably the most controversial way the law has been applied (actually been applied, in practice, with convictions) is people expressing their own moral objections to homosexuality. Now you could speak the phrase “I morally object to homosexuality”, and you could be expressing any number of non-hateful things. You could be expressing “I have a different view”, “I am promoting a different view”, “I disapprove of a different view”... But you could also read that statement and perceive it to be hateful. The criminality is not determined by the act, but by the audience, and the subjective views of law enforcement. There is no such thing as objective hate speech, outside of the incredibly rare (in terms of enforcement) situations where somebody is explicitly expressing hate. The primary impact of such laws is to enforce a political orthodoxy, and to suppress speech that may challenge it. That not even to mention the fact that suppressing the expression of hateful ideas does nothing to suppress the ideas. It simply emboldens the people who hold those ideas, generates more support for them, and ensures they can’t be challenged by actual dialogue.