18 ms·

Pretty much. I've started seeing a lot of people saying "innocent until proven guilty only applies to courts" as an excuse for mob justice. It's mostly the sam

by dx87 6y ago

Pretty much. I've started seeing a lot of people saying "innocent until proven guilty only applies to courts" as an excuse for mob justice. It's mostly the same people who say "freedom of speech only applies to government censorship".

monocasa 6y ago
So what, people don't get freedom of association unless they file for a court order?
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  People should absolutely be free to stop associating with others for bad reasons. That doesn't mean we can't encourage people not to, or talk about the badness of the reasons.
  - monocasa 6y ago
    But there's tons of reasons why someone might find their behavior abhorrent that don't and shouldn't pass the bar for illegality, and want to inform their employer that the employee's behavior reflects negatively enough on the employer that they would stop doing business with them. There's all sorts of acts that are never going to be proven guilty, because they're not illegal in the first place. Generally because making it illegal would conflict with the first amendment.
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      I disagree. I think there are very few actions so abhorrent that you should be fired for doing them in your personal life, and the vast majority of Twitter firings I've seen aren't over the line. Society isn't going to work under a standard where people who do bad things can't have jobs anymore.
      - monocasa 6y ago
        > I disagree. I think there are very few actions so abhorrent that you should be fired for doing them in your personal life, and the vast majority of Twitter firings I've seen aren't over the line. That's cool for you, but others obviously disagree with you. > Society isn't going to work under a standard where people who do bad things can't have jobs anymore. Or people will change their actions since they want to keep being members of society.
        SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        I don't understand why you keep returning to people disagreeing with me as though it's a counterpoint. I know people disagree! That's why I'm posting; I hope to convince them that they're wrong. Society is double not going to work under a standard where we don't consider bad people members of society anymore.
        monocasa 6y ago
        > I don't understand why you keep returning to people disagreeing with me as though it's a counterpoint. I know people disagree! Because you're trying to enforce your standard of conduct. That's cool that only technically illegal actions are the standard for you, but it's totally valid for that not to be other's standards. > Society is double not going to work under a standard where we don't consider bad people members of society anymore. That's an argument against freedom of association. Why do people get to be free from consequences of not to the point of being illegal actions? Like that's the nonviolent method of enacting change. If you don't allow it you end up with far worse.
        SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        I'm not sure where I'm failing to communicate here. I'm not trying to enforce anything! As I mentioned earlier, I agree people have every right to shun others for any reason. I just hope to convince people that they shouldn't.
    - 9HZZRfNlpR 6y ago
      That would only apply to America and other countries with weak workers rights where firing people is cheap PR.
  - bitwize 6y ago
    It used to be that people were taught: there is the law, and there is the moral principle underlying the law. So while freedom of speech is a thing protected by the Constitution, it exists outside the Constitution as a principle that instructs us that it is not legitimate to attempt to silence people for expressing an opinion you dislike, with whatever means you have at your disposal (shunning, character assassination, etc.), simply because you dislike it. You are still free to shun people with opinions you dislike, it just may not be the right thing to do. Today, people are taught that laws are arbitrary and are made and used by the oppressor class to oppress the oppressed classes, and it is the moral mission of the oppressed classes to rise up and seize power so that the laws won't oppress then anymore. Which means that the moral principles are lost, and any weapon that finds its way in the hands of the immiserated proletariat can be legitimately used in the struggle to determine which class writes the laws.
ntsplnkv2 6y ago
You'll notice that this is people on both sides - only when it benefits them. > It's mostly the same people who say "freedom of speech only applies to government censorship". This is a different issue and is a lot trickier logically. But it essentially is true.
- tengbretson 6y ago
  If you look up the word "constitution" in the dictionary you will find that it is taken to mean "that which we are made of." So if we as a society do not value freedom of speech, then by definition it is not in our constitution, regardless of what a piece of paper says.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
unethical_ban 6y ago
I mean, those are both really important to remember - while society needs to find its balance and have respectful, intelligent conversation about tough issues, there is no obligation to give clearly bad people the benefit of the doubt within the community, nor is there an obligation to give objectively horrible people a social media platform with which to spread hate.
- mistermann 6y ago
  Who shall decide who are bad/horrible people? Such things seem far from clear to me, in no small part due to the massive number of variables involved, coupled with the unfortunate reality that people's perception of reality tends to be so fundamentally error-prone, and no error correcting mechanism seems to exist.
- froasty 6y ago
  It never ceases to flabbergast me that American civics has failed so utterly, for decades, to produce nominally functional adults that can somehow think that "clearly bad" and "objectively horrible" are Real Things That Exist and then say in the next breath, without a shred of self-awareness, things like True Objectivity Doesn't Exist or All Things Are Political. Is everyone in America so ignorant that they don't know what happens when informal social standards become justifications for political suppression based on who the "public" and not the law deems to be "clearly bad" and "objectively horrible" people? You get lynchings and pogroms. You get informal show trials and massacres. You carve the stick that the next batch of self-righteous authoritarians stick up their ass to justify being inhuman, indecent, monsters. I can already hear the response forming: "But we know that these people exist, are evil, and are harming people now! We have evidence!" Yeah. That's what they always say. I could list every group targeted throughout by self-righteous authoritarians through just Western history--Christians, Jews, Manicheans, heretics, lepers, Catholics, Protestants, witches, blacks, anarchists, communists, thugs, Muslims--and always find a justification that began with some variant of "But we have evidence that they were Clearly Bad People!" All those other Devils were ridiculous, made-up nonsense. But not yours. Your Devil is real.
  - 6y ago

by dx87 6y ago

monocasa 6y ago

So what, people don't get freedom of association unless they file for a court order?

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
People should absolutely be free to stop associating with others for bad reasons. That doesn't mean we can't encourage people not to, or talk about the badness of the reasons.
- monocasa 6y ago
  But there's tons of reasons why someone might find their behavior abhorrent that don't and shouldn't pass the bar for illegality, and want to inform their employer that the employee's behavior reflects negatively enough on the employer that they would stop doing business with them. There's all sorts of acts that are never going to be proven guilty, because they're not illegal in the first place. Generally because making it illegal would conflict with the first amendment.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    I disagree. I think there are very few actions so abhorrent that you should be fired for doing them in your personal life, and the vast majority of Twitter firings I've seen aren't over the line. Society isn't going to work under a standard where people who do bad things can't have jobs anymore.
    - monocasa 6y ago
      > I disagree. I think there are very few actions so abhorrent that you should be fired for doing them in your personal life, and the vast majority of Twitter firings I've seen aren't over the line. That's cool for you, but others obviously disagree with you. > Society isn't going to work under a standard where people who do bad things can't have jobs anymore. Or people will change their actions since they want to keep being members of society.
      - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        I don't understand why you keep returning to people disagreeing with me as though it's a counterpoint. I know people disagree! That's why I'm posting; I hope to convince them that they're wrong. Society is double not going to work under a standard where we don't consider bad people members of society anymore.
        monocasa 6y ago
        > I don't understand why you keep returning to people disagreeing with me as though it's a counterpoint. I know people disagree! Because you're trying to enforce your standard of conduct. That's cool that only technically illegal actions are the standard for you, but it's totally valid for that not to be other's standards. > Society is double not going to work under a standard where we don't consider bad people members of society anymore. That's an argument against freedom of association. Why do people get to be free from consequences of not to the point of being illegal actions? Like that's the nonviolent method of enacting change. If you don't allow it you end up with far worse.
        SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        I'm not sure where I'm failing to communicate here. I'm not trying to enforce anything! As I mentioned earlier, I agree people have every right to shun others for any reason. I just hope to convince people that they shouldn't.
  - 9HZZRfNlpR 6y ago
    That would only apply to America and other countries with weak workers rights where firing people is cheap PR.
- bitwize 6y ago
  It used to be that people were taught: there is the law, and there is the moral principle underlying the law. So while freedom of speech is a thing protected by the Constitution, it exists outside the Constitution as a principle that instructs us that it is not legitimate to attempt to silence people for expressing an opinion you dislike, with whatever means you have at your disposal (shunning, character assassination, etc.), simply because you dislike it. You are still free to shun people with opinions you dislike, it just may not be the right thing to do. Today, people are taught that laws are arbitrary and are made and used by the oppressor class to oppress the oppressed classes, and it is the moral mission of the oppressed classes to rise up and seize power so that the laws won't oppress then anymore. Which means that the moral principles are lost, and any weapon that finds its way in the hands of the immiserated proletariat can be legitimately used in the struggle to determine which class writes the laws.

ntsplnkv2 6y ago

You'll notice that this is people on both sides - only when it benefits them. > It's mostly the same people who say "freedom of speech only applies to government censorship". This is a different issue and is a lot trickier logically. But it essentially is true.

tengbretson 6y ago
If you look up the word "constitution" in the dictionary you will find that it is taken to mean "that which we are made of." So if we as a society do not value freedom of speech, then by definition it is not in our constitution, regardless of what a piece of paper says.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

unethical_ban 6y ago

I mean, those are both really important to remember - while society needs to find its balance and have respectful, intelligent conversation about tough issues, there is no obligation to give clearly bad people the benefit of the doubt within the community, nor is there an obligation to give objectively horrible people a social media platform with which to spread hate.

mistermann 6y ago
Who shall decide who are bad/horrible people? Such things seem far from clear to me, in no small part due to the massive number of variables involved, coupled with the unfortunate reality that people's perception of reality tends to be so fundamentally error-prone, and no error correcting mechanism seems to exist.
froasty 6y ago
It never ceases to flabbergast me that American civics has failed so utterly, for decades, to produce nominally functional adults that can somehow think that "clearly bad" and "objectively horrible" are Real Things That Exist and then say in the next breath, without a shred of self-awareness, things like True Objectivity Doesn't Exist or All Things Are Political. Is everyone in America so ignorant that they don't know what happens when informal social standards become justifications for political suppression based on who the "public" and not the law deems to be "clearly bad" and "objectively horrible" people? You get lynchings and pogroms. You get informal show trials and massacres. You carve the stick that the next batch of self-righteous authoritarians stick up their ass to justify being inhuman, indecent, monsters. I can already hear the response forming: "But we know that these people exist, are evil, and are harming people now! We have evidence!" Yeah. That's what they always say. I could list every group targeted throughout by self-righteous authoritarians through just Western history--Christians, Jews, Manicheans, heretics, lepers, Catholics, Protestants, witches, blacks, anarchists, communists, thugs, Muslims--and always find a justification that began with some variant of "But we have evidence that they were Clearly Bad People!" All those other Devils were ridiculous, made-up nonsense. But not yours. Your Devil is real.
- 6y ago