> [Free speech is] a fundamentally optimistic vision: Good ideas win. I disagree with this statement. Free speech has no say on who "wins". Free speech is base

> [Free speech is] a fundamentally optimistic vision: Good ideas win. I disagree with this statement. Free speech has no say on who "wins". Free speech is based on the principle that everyone has a right to be vocal about what they believe, even if you disagree with it. The alternative is giving up the power to others to decide who can speak and for what reason, whether you agree with it or not. Many people don't want to hear this, but if hypothetically the majority of a population believes in and talks nonsense, then that's what the population wants and that population should live with those consequences. What we have here is not a political problem, but a human problem, and involving politics as a bandaid has shown time and time again that those doing the censoring don't do it for the "common good". Corruption and self-interest is attractive to people in those positions, again, because they are humans and what we have is a human problem, not a political problem. The difference between the former and latter manifestation of human problems is that in one a small group of imperfect humans make the rules for the rest, whereas in the other no one decides who can say what and people get the consequences they bequeath upon themselves.