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I completely agree that citing authority is not an argument. I only contend here that the GP made an inaccurate summary in dismissing Mill's argument; and that
by abecedarius 6y ago
I completely agree that citing authority is not an argument. I only contend here that the GP made an inaccurate summary in dismissing Mill's argument; and that argument is only one chapter, not the whole book as you might think from the way it's cited. You might find it pretty on point: he wrote in Victorian times which were also a local maximum of social pressure to profess the correct thoughts. Also a time with unprecedented new media (though I don't recall that topic coming up in this chapter).
- jacquesm 6y agoI find it hilarious that my comment got flagged by - supposedly - the proponents of free speech.
- abecedarius 6y agoSigh, humans are gonna human. One of the problems with suppressing criticism of even things that are completely true and right, as Mill points out, is that people come to believe the true thing in only a hollow way. I've been thinking that may have happened to the doctrine of free speech itself in the U.S. -- becoming just a slogan kids learn to parrot in school. Hollow it enough and it's easily lost. (Added: I found I could unflag your comment. I think the snark was undeserved but it wasn't nearly enough for flagging.)
- jacquesm 6y agoI think you're well past that stage already. Plenty of people parrot the founders as though they had some kind of divine insight into what makes a good state, rather than to see political systems as subsequent attempts to learn from mistakes made in the past. It is very well possible that 'free speech' should be sacrosanct, but the US is doing a piss-poor job of showing that that is the case. Political systems come and they go, so far the 'free speech' countries are not doing remarkably better than the countries with some limitations on free speech and it would be good to recognize this and to see what can be learned from each other rather than to put dogma first.
- abecedarius 6y agoVariation in laws and norms is a valuable teacher, and there's a lot of shallow faith in the civic religion, agreed on that much. I'm kind of too lazy to argue with you here about the rest. The affordances of social media could be much better designed for preserving the memetic edge the more true ought to have over the more false; OTOH the way Twitter and Facebook are going about this attempt at reform is heavy-handed folly that's already backfiring. (http://www.islandone.org/Foresight/WebEnhance/HPEK1.html http://www.islandone.org/Foresight/WebEnhance/HPEK1.html from the 1980s shows by example that it is possible to think ahead about societal consequences of the design of communications media. That particular paper focused on more scholarly publishing, but it's not like that's unimportant either.)
- jacquesm 6y agoI think the problem is advertising. Advertising causes media to focus on the controversy because it is what drives engagement. Business-as-usual would not drive engagement nearly as much as outrage does.
- amanaplanacanal 6y agoHow do you know why you got flagged or by whom?
- jacquesm 6y agoIt typically shows 'flagged' in the line above the comment.
- amanaplanacanal 6y agoBut you said you were flagged by the proponents of free speech. How would you know that?
- abecedarius 6y agoFWIW this proponent didn't even downvote it, though I was kind of irritated by the 'dogmatic', etc.
- jacquesm 6y agoIs that improper use of the word? I thought it came close enough to the intended meaning.