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> There is no "buts" regarding freedom. This is clearly not true. You are an intelligent person and can probably think of half a dozen counters to this without

> There is no "buts" regarding freedom. This is clearly not true. You are an intelligent person and can probably think of half a dozen counters to this without trying too hard. You may wish this were the case, but it just isn't. Not under any conceivable society that we could structure.

__blockcipher__ 6y ago
Most people take your view, but I would be very careful to claim that it's actually impossible to not have limits on freedoms. There are some who believe that the state should not exist at all; those types would not concede the ground that there exist any reasonable restrictions on fundamental natural rights. Whereas a statist (i.e. someone who is not an anarchist) would basically always concede that there are limits on rights. To use US jurisprudence as an example, even the very pro-2A supreme court justices have ruled that the state has a compelling interest in reducing gun violence and thus is allowed to take guns away from violent felons, etc. Personally, I take the former position; I think it's better to have a society where property rights (which includes the right of self-ownership i.e. owning your own body) and other natural rights (speech, self defense [technically these are just derived from property rights but I digress]) cannot be infringed upon for any reason. I am very heavily in the minority with that position, and I'm aware of that fact. --- Anyway, switching back to the original topic of censorship of supposed "disinfo", if you don't buy a natural rights argument at all, then from a utilitarian perspective I think it's still a bad idea. In places like Saudi Arabia or Iran, the idea that women should be able to choose what clothing to wear or not wear would be considered harmful to society and worthy of censorship. In Turkey the idea that the Armenian genocide occurred could be considered worthy of censorship. In America the notion that we should not have warrantless wiretapping of all communications between private citizens could be considered dangerous to society, etc etc. It always starts with a "good" reason. It never ends with one.
- timmytokyo 6y ago
  >I think it's better to have a society where property rights and other natural rights cannot be infringed upon for any reason. So hypothetically, it should be your right to own nuclear weapons? (I realize this is not a practical concern today, but I'm trying to find out if anyone truly believes there are no lines to be drawn on property rights.)
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
    Nuclear weapons present a threat to other people and a threat of violating their property rights, and threats are illegal.
    - aaron-santos 6y ago
      By what measure do you put nuclear weapons on one side and other weapons on the other?
      - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
        The scope of the effects. Firearms can be pointed, explosives have a damage/kill radius. It is not permissible to arrange so that a person is brought within the range of effects of a weapon without their consent. In the case of explosives, that means you need enough property to contain the effects. In the case of nuclear weapons, it basically requires an entire planet.
  - waterhouse 6y ago
    That is a difficult issue. One potential resolution I see is to say that if you see someone making his own nuclear weapons without telling anyone about it, this is strong enough evidence that he's going to try to do something terrible (i.e. it looks like a crime in progress) that you would be justified in using force to stop him. How does this generalize and fit into the framework of property rights in general? What makes, say, manufacturing guns not strong enough evidence of trying to do something terrible? Is it mere history, or is it the defensive uses of guns, or does the magnitude of the terribleness matter, or something else? (In practice, I think purifying U-235 takes huge facilities and no one can do it in their backyard—it's probably a few orders of magnitude more expensive and complex.) Also, if it's 100% established that this one guy making the nukes is a trustworthy pacifist who won't use them, but the problem is he won't keep them in a particularly secure location, can one defensibly call his actions illegal? ("Planning to be neglectful"? How about someone who will guard them as heavily as he can, but that's just not heavily enough?) There would be a lot to explore there, but I think it may be possible to resolve the issue of nuclear weapons while keeping a pure system of property rights.
- nvusuvu 6y ago
  We may have the freedom of speech, but that doesn't mean that Youtube has to give you a megaphone?
  - disgrunt 6y ago
    Why should YouTube have a megaphone to give in the first place? Last I checked, there are still laws on the books to handle companies with >90% market shares. [0] [0]: https://www.statista.com/topics/2019/youtube/ https://www.statista.com/topics/2019/youtube/
    - uoaei 6y ago
      Good, so we agree that this is not an anti-censorship issue but an anti-trust issue. Private entities can't censor anything, anyhow. Independently and freely choosing which sentiments to platform on a private service is not censorship, no matter how far anyone tries to stretch the definition of the term.
      - HarryHirsch 6y ago
        Yes, but back then we had the party organ of the American Nazi Party and the party organ of the International Workers of the World, and a couple more in between. You could buy them, and you know what you would get. Now you just have Youtube. That is a problem.
      - throwaway201103 6y ago
        I just checked a couple of definitions in case my memory was failing me, but I don't see any definition of censorship that limits it to governmental action. YouTube can and does censor content on their platform, I don't understand why so many people seem have trouble with that word. All it means is (quoting Webster) "to examine in order to suppress ... or delete anything considered objectionable"
        uoaei 6y ago
        The way it's being used in public discourse is not necessarily the dictionary definition of the term. You have to meet people where they are when it comes to rhetoric, not try to force them to follow your version of what means what.
- mkolodny 6y ago
  > I think it's better to have a society where property rights (which includes the right of self-ownership i.e. owning your own body) and other natural rights (speech, self defense [technically these are just derived from property rights but I digress]) cannot be infringed upon for any reason In this YouTube situation, property rights and freedom of speech are mutually exclusive. Either the owners of YouTube have the right to censor whatever they want on their platform/property, or people have freedom of speech and YouTube can't remove speech from their platform/property. In this situation, you can't protect both property rights and freedom of speech - you can only protect one.
  - lopmotr 6y ago
    The bigger conversation isn't really about YouTube, it's that some people want these ideas suppressed from everywhere and some people don't. Youtube just happens to be more flexible than the government, but don't think for a second they're all going to draw the line if the government passes a law prohibiting saying those things. Legally enforced censorship is what many of them ultimately want. On the other side of the coin, the anti-censorship people also want the government to prohit Youtube/FB/etc. from censoring their ideas. That's just as anti-freedom.
    - AgentME 6y ago
      Why would YouTube want legally-enforced censorship? The existence of that would make more work for them and would open them up to liability. YouTube is specifically pushing back at propaganda coming from the government here, so I don't know how it makes any sense to assert that it's evidence they really want to allow government propaganda.
  - tux1968 6y ago
    If enough people demanded it though, we could make it socially unacceptable for Youtube to use their property rights in the pursuit of censorship. The problem really isn't the law, it's public opinion. We've lost sight of how important freedom of speech is, and we are by and large cheering on censorship where it hurts those we disagree with. It's short sighted and will ultimately cost us a lot more than it gains us... but it feels good for now.
- kyralis 6y ago
  Property rights inherently derive from the state. Unless you subscribe to "might makes right", the idea of property rights is inherently a social construct which the state is a formalization of. Limitations on rights is precisely the foundation of any society. To claim otherwise is just the semantic game of "oh, I don't mean those rights".
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
    > Property rights inherently derive from the state. This is not true, property rights are the human incarnation of territoriality which is exhibited by many species. > Unless you subscribe to "might makes right", the idea of property rights is inherently a social construct which the state is a formalization of. The state is a formalization of a particular social construct that is not identical to property rights. > Limitations on rights is precisely the foundation of any society. Do you have any support for this statement? It seems to contradict your earlier assertions and despite that I'm not sure how it would be true on its own. > To claim otherwise is just the semantic game of "oh, I don't mean those rights". Well, I don't think its a meaningless semantic argument for people to discuss what specifically is referred to by "rights." If you think people have a right to steal food out of other people's homes then I can see why you would think the government was a necessary limitation on that "right." But I think its a reasonable response to say "there is no right to steal food from other people" and then we can discuss what is and is not a right, which is much closer to a necessary conversation than a game (when conducted by sincere interlocutors).
    - Volundr 6y ago
      > This is not true, property rights are the human incarnation of territoriality which is exhibited by many species. And those species lose their territory as soon as a bigger, meaner creature wants it. Their "right" to their territory is only as strong as their personal ability to protect it. No one else will help them. Unless that's what your advocating for when you talk about property rights, then rights absolutely do come from the state. Most of us think property rights mean what's mine is mine no matter who wants it, not that I lose it as soon as someone takes it from me or hires someone to do so.
- aaroninsf 6y ago
  Anarcho-Libertarianism does not as far as I know have an answer to a basic real-world problem: Humans are social and always form affinity groups. Groups have more power (by any definition) than individuals. Absent enforcement, groups will invariably infringe at will on the rights of individuals or minorities. QED a defining purpose of any "state" is to defend individuals' liberties, on their behalf, against such actors. There are many mechanisms and descriptions of this activity, but, the bottom line is always the same. This is as true for the "free market" as it is for the "free market of ideas" or the contemporary ordering of law and punishment. The state has to be the ultimate authority, to prevent smaller aggregations from stripping minorities and individuals of their own liberty. No proposed alternative system has so far demonstrated stable viability. That the examples we live within are terrible does not mean they are not also the least bad viable alternatives. Personally I may think this is a shame, but, oh well. Heinlein loved to portray rationalist societies in which ad hoc aggregations formed just long enough to enforce a purported majority-recognized rational moral order, without need for formal constitutional law or persistent institutions with formal institutional memory. When I was 15 I thought this was how things should be. At 50 I am certain that it shall never be so, not with the limitations of our actual evolved embodiment.
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
    > QED a defining purpose of any "state" is to defend individuals' liberties, on their behalf, against such actors. Not actually demonstrated. you should say "QED a state is a group organized to infringe at will on the rights of individuals and minorities."
- munchbunny 6y ago
  Most people take your view, but I would be very careful to claim that it's actually impossible to not have limits on freedoms. There are some who believe that the state should not exist at all; those types would not concede the ground that there exist any reasonable restrictions on fundamental natural rights. How are you defining "freedoms" and "fundamental natural rights"? This sounds good in theory, but once you start enumerating what they are for the purposes of encoding them in law, or if not a law, then some form of social contract other than "might makes right", the counterexamples immediately flood in, and for good reason.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
cambalache 6y ago
No, I am dumb, since clearly you are not like me I would love to know what are the 6 solid reasons to permanently deprive the whole population of basic freedoms.Because this is not the case of "I killed a burglar who pulled out a gun on me so he forfeited his right to freedom". Even if you strongly disagree with a position, if that position is censored, you are impoverished because of that, society is impoverished. Grievance must be vented openly, otherwise you push the fringe(and not so fringe) groups underground.
- drchopchop 6y ago
  Should child pornography be legal? Falsely yelling "fire" in a crowded theater? Doxing of private information? Those are all "positions", in your view.
  - cambalache 6y ago
    I cannot believe you consider sexually abusing children a freedom you need to give up. Same for creating panic in a crowded room. Jesus, at least come up with better examples, like playing your instrument full volume at midnight, running naked in the street or taking a bath in a public fountain (well that is permitted in some places)
    - chickenpotpie 6y ago
      If you don’t understand the point someone is making please ask follow up questions instead of choosing to interpret it in a way that you can accuse them of being a pedophile
      - cambalache 6y ago
        Apply that advise to yourself then, I didnt accuse him of being a pedophile. I specifically wrote that he was saying (as he was) that the prohibition of child pornography curtails freedom. It does not. So I would suggest you to read better before playing a virtual cyber cop.
  - deleted 6y ago
donkeyd 6y ago
Thanks for this. We could post stuff about previous commenter, based on literally nothing, doing bad stuff to little kiddies and they would be deleted by HN. That commenter would probably be alright with that because those types of comments are not ok. For some reason, however, these people are never ok with censorship by anyone if it impacts their beliefs. I find this highly hypocritical. The Reddit hunt for the Boston bomber is a perfect example of how this type of unbridled free for all posting can lead to very bad stuff happening.
- crpatino 6y ago
  That's what we do nowadays, is it? Somebody walks and say something against our preferred political ideology and we throw vague threats of ruining that person's life with false accusations?
  - donkeyd 6y ago
    Like that guy who ran for president with vague threats of not accepting the outcome if he would lose. And then when they lost not accepting the outcome and making up a bunch of stories about wide-spread fraud? If you were implying that I'd actually accuse anyone of doing stuff to kids, you throughly misunderstood the content of my comment.
- lopmotr 6y ago
  I used to live in China in the pre-Trump days when most westerners believed in free speech. Sometimes I would hear about "draconian" Chinese censorship. It seemed obviously bad by western standards. For example, they would prohibit industrial action in case it threatens some vital industry or prohibit protests in case it threatens the power of the government which could lead to unrest and violence. Or they prosecuted someone for spreading a rumor after Fukushima happened that iodized salt protects against cancer which led to supermarkets getting sold out of it. Or they would suppress anti-government talk like what Falun Gong and the Uyghurs were doing. In the case of the Uyghur, they did actually commit some terrorists acts because of the anti-government things they were telling each other. All that seemed like bad totalitarian censorship. But now American leftist believe similar censorship is OK for essentially the same reasons. "social harmony" was never seen as a valid reason for censorship by westerners before, but since Trump, they changed their mind. You example of accusations of child abuse as a way to insult somebody is actually fine as long as the society can recognize unfounded accusations from actual reality. This is still acceptable for many other insults, like "you're stupid", but somehow, people seem to have elevated sexual abuse accusations to the status of truth. I'd say the antidote to that is to allow more open unfounded accusations so we're all immunized against their effects. We do have the justice system to address real allegations.
dontblink 6y ago
E.g. you cannot yell "Fire!" in a theater and expect "Freedom of Speech" to protect you from any repurcussions.
- coldtea 6y ago
  You should be able to. And people should not be idiots to be panicking from someone yelling "fire" when they can't see one in the theater...
  - manuelabeledo 6y ago
    This is a terrible argument. There are definitely places in a theater, out of the view of spectators, but likely fire hazards, e.g. the projection room. Most building fires cannot be seen until it is too late. Smoke is an early indicator of a fire, but it cannot be seen in a pitch dark room. And even in perfect conditions to determine if there is a fire or not, the audience may not be capable to judge if there is one or not, e.g. children.
  - oblio 6y ago
    "Should" is not a principle of law or of reality, for that matter. I should be immortal, all knowing and beautiful but I'll have to make do with what nature gave me.
    - coldtea 6y ago
      >"Should" is not a principle of law or of reality, for that matter. It can very well be a principle of law. In certain legal codes, it actually is. As for reality, that's a pretty low bar. We have many "shoulds" (e.g. you should not cross a red light lest you get a ticket / prison) that are not some inherent property of reality or physical law, but things we've decided upon. In fact, those are the only things that makes sense to consider as "shoulds". The constraints of reality are not negotiable, so should there is superfluous.
- vladTheInhaler 6y ago
  Please don't cite that example. Ken White, an attorney who focuses on first amendment issues, wrote a compelling argument for why: https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-hackneyed-apologia-for-censorship-are-enough/ https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...
crpatino 6y ago
In theory, you are right. No freedom can be absolute because sooner or later it will undermine somebody else's freedom. In practice, the particular "but" the GP was referring to was concerning. We are not talking about freedom in the abstract, but the freedom of a Youtube user to express political beliefs opposed to those of Youtube's executives and stockholders. I do not presume to be able to disentangle the ethical and legal implications of that case, but it is a debate worth having in this time and age.

__blockcipher__ 6y ago

Most people take your view, but I would be very careful to claim that it's actually impossible to not have limits on freedoms. There are some who believe that the state should not exist at all; those types would not concede the ground that there exist any reasonable restrictions on fundamental natural rights. Whereas a statist (i.e. someone who is not an anarchist) would basically always concede that there are limits on rights. To use US jurisprudence as an example, even the very pro-2A supreme court justices have ruled that the state has a compelling interest in reducing gun violence and thus is allowed to take guns away from violent felons, etc. Personally, I take the former position; I think it's better to have a society where property rights (which includes the right of self-ownership i.e. owning your own body) and other natural rights (speech, self defense [technically these are just derived from property rights but I digress]) cannot be infringed upon for any reason. I am very heavily in the minority with that position, and I'm aware of that fact. --- Anyway, switching back to the original topic of censorship of supposed "disinfo", if you don't buy a natural rights argument at all, then from a utilitarian perspective I think it's still a bad idea. In places like Saudi Arabia or Iran, the idea that women should be able to choose what clothing to wear or not wear would be considered harmful to society and worthy of censorship. In Turkey the idea that the Armenian genocide occurred could be considered worthy of censorship. In America the notion that we should not have warrantless wiretapping of all communications between private citizens could be considered dangerous to society, etc etc. It always starts with a "good" reason. It never ends with one.

timmytokyo 6y ago
>I think it's better to have a society where property rights and other natural rights cannot be infringed upon for any reason. So hypothetically, it should be your right to own nuclear weapons? (I realize this is not a practical concern today, but I'm trying to find out if anyone truly believes there are no lines to be drawn on property rights.)
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  Nuclear weapons present a threat to other people and a threat of violating their property rights, and threats are illegal.
  - aaron-santos 6y ago
    By what measure do you put nuclear weapons on one side and other weapons on the other?
    - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
      The scope of the effects. Firearms can be pointed, explosives have a damage/kill radius. It is not permissible to arrange so that a person is brought within the range of effects of a weapon without their consent. In the case of explosives, that means you need enough property to contain the effects. In the case of nuclear weapons, it basically requires an entire planet.
- waterhouse 6y ago
  That is a difficult issue. One potential resolution I see is to say that if you see someone making his own nuclear weapons without telling anyone about it, this is strong enough evidence that he's going to try to do something terrible (i.e. it looks like a crime in progress) that you would be justified in using force to stop him. How does this generalize and fit into the framework of property rights in general? What makes, say, manufacturing guns not strong enough evidence of trying to do something terrible? Is it mere history, or is it the defensive uses of guns, or does the magnitude of the terribleness matter, or something else? (In practice, I think purifying U-235 takes huge facilities and no one can do it in their backyard—it's probably a few orders of magnitude more expensive and complex.) Also, if it's 100% established that this one guy making the nukes is a trustworthy pacifist who won't use them, but the problem is he won't keep them in a particularly secure location, can one defensibly call his actions illegal? ("Planning to be neglectful"? How about someone who will guard them as heavily as he can, but that's just not heavily enough?) There would be a lot to explore there, but I think it may be possible to resolve the issue of nuclear weapons while keeping a pure system of property rights.
nvusuvu 6y ago
We may have the freedom of speech, but that doesn't mean that Youtube has to give you a megaphone?
- disgrunt 6y ago
  Why should YouTube have a megaphone to give in the first place? Last I checked, there are still laws on the books to handle companies with >90% market shares. [0] [0]: https://www.statista.com/topics/2019/youtube/ https://www.statista.com/topics/2019/youtube/
  - uoaei 6y ago
    Good, so we agree that this is not an anti-censorship issue but an anti-trust issue. Private entities can't censor anything, anyhow. Independently and freely choosing which sentiments to platform on a private service is not censorship, no matter how far anyone tries to stretch the definition of the term.
    - HarryHirsch 6y ago
      Yes, but back then we had the party organ of the American Nazi Party and the party organ of the International Workers of the World, and a couple more in between. You could buy them, and you know what you would get. Now you just have Youtube. That is a problem.
    - throwaway201103 6y ago
      I just checked a couple of definitions in case my memory was failing me, but I don't see any definition of censorship that limits it to governmental action. YouTube can and does censor content on their platform, I don't understand why so many people seem have trouble with that word. All it means is (quoting Webster) "to examine in order to suppress ... or delete anything considered objectionable"
      - uoaei 6y ago
        The way it's being used in public discourse is not necessarily the dictionary definition of the term. You have to meet people where they are when it comes to rhetoric, not try to force them to follow your version of what means what.
mkolodny 6y ago
> I think it's better to have a society where property rights (which includes the right of self-ownership i.e. owning your own body) and other natural rights (speech, self defense [technically these are just derived from property rights but I digress]) cannot be infringed upon for any reason In this YouTube situation, property rights and freedom of speech are mutually exclusive. Either the owners of YouTube have the right to censor whatever they want on their platform/property, or people have freedom of speech and YouTube can't remove speech from their platform/property. In this situation, you can't protect both property rights and freedom of speech - you can only protect one.
- lopmotr 6y ago
  The bigger conversation isn't really about YouTube, it's that some people want these ideas suppressed from everywhere and some people don't. Youtube just happens to be more flexible than the government, but don't think for a second they're all going to draw the line if the government passes a law prohibiting saying those things. Legally enforced censorship is what many of them ultimately want. On the other side of the coin, the anti-censorship people also want the government to prohit Youtube/FB/etc. from censoring their ideas. That's just as anti-freedom.
  - AgentME 6y ago
    Why would YouTube want legally-enforced censorship? The existence of that would make more work for them and would open them up to liability. YouTube is specifically pushing back at propaganda coming from the government here, so I don't know how it makes any sense to assert that it's evidence they really want to allow government propaganda.
- tux1968 6y ago
  If enough people demanded it though, we could make it socially unacceptable for Youtube to use their property rights in the pursuit of censorship. The problem really isn't the law, it's public opinion. We've lost sight of how important freedom of speech is, and we are by and large cheering on censorship where it hurts those we disagree with. It's short sighted and will ultimately cost us a lot more than it gains us... but it feels good for now.
kyralis 6y ago
Property rights inherently derive from the state. Unless you subscribe to "might makes right", the idea of property rights is inherently a social construct which the state is a formalization of. Limitations on rights is precisely the foundation of any society. To claim otherwise is just the semantic game of "oh, I don't mean those rights".
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  > Property rights inherently derive from the state. This is not true, property rights are the human incarnation of territoriality which is exhibited by many species. > Unless you subscribe to "might makes right", the idea of property rights is inherently a social construct which the state is a formalization of. The state is a formalization of a particular social construct that is not identical to property rights. > Limitations on rights is precisely the foundation of any society. Do you have any support for this statement? It seems to contradict your earlier assertions and despite that I'm not sure how it would be true on its own. > To claim otherwise is just the semantic game of "oh, I don't mean those rights". Well, I don't think its a meaningless semantic argument for people to discuss what specifically is referred to by "rights." If you think people have a right to steal food out of other people's homes then I can see why you would think the government was a necessary limitation on that "right." But I think its a reasonable response to say "there is no right to steal food from other people" and then we can discuss what is and is not a right, which is much closer to a necessary conversation than a game (when conducted by sincere interlocutors).
  - Volundr 6y ago
    > This is not true, property rights are the human incarnation of territoriality which is exhibited by many species. And those species lose their territory as soon as a bigger, meaner creature wants it. Their "right" to their territory is only as strong as their personal ability to protect it. No one else will help them. Unless that's what your advocating for when you talk about property rights, then rights absolutely do come from the state. Most of us think property rights mean what's mine is mine no matter who wants it, not that I lose it as soon as someone takes it from me or hires someone to do so.
aaroninsf 6y ago
Anarcho-Libertarianism does not as far as I know have an answer to a basic real-world problem: Humans are social and always form affinity groups. Groups have more power (by any definition) than individuals. Absent enforcement, groups will invariably infringe at will on the rights of individuals or minorities. QED a defining purpose of any "state" is to defend individuals' liberties, on their behalf, against such actors. There are many mechanisms and descriptions of this activity, but, the bottom line is always the same. This is as true for the "free market" as it is for the "free market of ideas" or the contemporary ordering of law and punishment. The state has to be the ultimate authority, to prevent smaller aggregations from stripping minorities and individuals of their own liberty. No proposed alternative system has so far demonstrated stable viability. That the examples we live within are terrible does not mean they are not also the least bad viable alternatives. Personally I may think this is a shame, but, oh well. Heinlein loved to portray rationalist societies in which ad hoc aggregations formed just long enough to enforce a purported majority-recognized rational moral order, without need for formal constitutional law or persistent institutions with formal institutional memory. When I was 15 I thought this was how things should be. At 50 I am certain that it shall never be so, not with the limitations of our actual evolved embodiment.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  > QED a defining purpose of any "state" is to defend individuals' liberties, on their behalf, against such actors. Not actually demonstrated. you should say "QED a state is a group organized to infringe at will on the rights of individuals and minorities."
munchbunny 6y ago
Most people take your view, but I would be very careful to claim that it's actually impossible to not have limits on freedoms. There are some who believe that the state should not exist at all; those types would not concede the ground that there exist any reasonable restrictions on fundamental natural rights. How are you defining "freedoms" and "fundamental natural rights"? This sounds good in theory, but once you start enumerating what they are for the purposes of encoding them in law, or if not a law, then some form of social contract other than "might makes right", the counterexamples immediately flood in, and for good reason.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

cambalache 6y ago

No, I am dumb, since clearly you are not like me I would love to know what are the 6 solid reasons to permanently deprive the whole population of basic freedoms.Because this is not the case of "I killed a burglar who pulled out a gun on me so he forfeited his right to freedom". Even if you strongly disagree with a position, if that position is censored, you are impoverished because of that, society is impoverished. Grievance must be vented openly, otherwise you push the fringe(and not so fringe) groups underground.

drchopchop 6y ago
Should child pornography be legal? Falsely yelling "fire" in a crowded theater? Doxing of private information? Those are all "positions", in your view.
- cambalache 6y ago
  I cannot believe you consider sexually abusing children a freedom you need to give up. Same for creating panic in a crowded room. Jesus, at least come up with better examples, like playing your instrument full volume at midnight, running naked in the street or taking a bath in a public fountain (well that is permitted in some places)
  - chickenpotpie 6y ago
    If you don’t understand the point someone is making please ask follow up questions instead of choosing to interpret it in a way that you can accuse them of being a pedophile
    - cambalache 6y ago
      Apply that advise to yourself then, I didnt accuse him of being a pedophile. I specifically wrote that he was saying (as he was) that the prohibition of child pornography curtails freedom. It does not. So I would suggest you to read better before playing a virtual cyber cop.
- deleted 6y ago

donkeyd 6y ago

Thanks for this. We could post stuff about previous commenter, based on literally nothing, doing bad stuff to little kiddies and they would be deleted by HN. That commenter would probably be alright with that because those types of comments are not ok. For some reason, however, these people are never ok with censorship by anyone if it impacts their beliefs. I find this highly hypocritical. The Reddit hunt for the Boston bomber is a perfect example of how this type of unbridled free for all posting can lead to very bad stuff happening.

crpatino 6y ago
That's what we do nowadays, is it? Somebody walks and say something against our preferred political ideology and we throw vague threats of ruining that person's life with false accusations?
- donkeyd 6y ago
  Like that guy who ran for president with vague threats of not accepting the outcome if he would lose. And then when they lost not accepting the outcome and making up a bunch of stories about wide-spread fraud? If you were implying that I'd actually accuse anyone of doing stuff to kids, you throughly misunderstood the content of my comment.
lopmotr 6y ago
I used to live in China in the pre-Trump days when most westerners believed in free speech. Sometimes I would hear about "draconian" Chinese censorship. It seemed obviously bad by western standards. For example, they would prohibit industrial action in case it threatens some vital industry or prohibit protests in case it threatens the power of the government which could lead to unrest and violence. Or they prosecuted someone for spreading a rumor after Fukushima happened that iodized salt protects against cancer which led to supermarkets getting sold out of it. Or they would suppress anti-government talk like what Falun Gong and the Uyghurs were doing. In the case of the Uyghur, they did actually commit some terrorists acts because of the anti-government things they were telling each other. All that seemed like bad totalitarian censorship. But now American leftist believe similar censorship is OK for essentially the same reasons. "social harmony" was never seen as a valid reason for censorship by westerners before, but since Trump, they changed their mind. You example of accusations of child abuse as a way to insult somebody is actually fine as long as the society can recognize unfounded accusations from actual reality. This is still acceptable for many other insults, like "you're stupid", but somehow, people seem to have elevated sexual abuse accusations to the status of truth. I'd say the antidote to that is to allow more open unfounded accusations so we're all immunized against their effects. We do have the justice system to address real allegations.

dontblink 6y ago

E.g. you cannot yell "Fire!" in a theater and expect "Freedom of Speech" to protect you from any repurcussions.

coldtea 6y ago
You should be able to. And people should not be idiots to be panicking from someone yelling "fire" when they can't see one in the theater...
- manuelabeledo 6y ago
  This is a terrible argument. There are definitely places in a theater, out of the view of spectators, but likely fire hazards, e.g. the projection room. Most building fires cannot be seen until it is too late. Smoke is an early indicator of a fire, but it cannot be seen in a pitch dark room. And even in perfect conditions to determine if there is a fire or not, the audience may not be capable to judge if there is one or not, e.g. children.
- oblio 6y ago
  "Should" is not a principle of law or of reality, for that matter. I should be immortal, all knowing and beautiful but I'll have to make do with what nature gave me.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    >"Should" is not a principle of law or of reality, for that matter. It can very well be a principle of law. In certain legal codes, it actually is. As for reality, that's a pretty low bar. We have many "shoulds" (e.g. you should not cross a red light lest you get a ticket / prison) that are not some inherent property of reality or physical law, but things we've decided upon. In fact, those are the only things that makes sense to consider as "shoulds". The constraints of reality are not negotiable, so should there is superfluous.
vladTheInhaler 6y ago
Please don't cite that example. Ken White, an attorney who focuses on first amendment issues, wrote a compelling argument for why: https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-hackneyed-apologia-for-censorship-are-enough/ https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...

crpatino 6y ago

In theory, you are right. No freedom can be absolute because sooner or later it will undermine somebody else's freedom. In practice, the particular "but" the GP was referring to was concerning. We are not talking about freedom in the abstract, but the freedom of a Youtube user to express political beliefs opposed to those of Youtube's executives and stockholders. I do not presume to be able to disentangle the ethical and legal implications of that case, but it is a debate worth having in this time and age.