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Yes, it is a misunderstanding of Mill. He wasn't arguing that all things spoken freely are true and therefor valuable. He was arguing that censoring speech wi
by technothrasher 6y ago
Yes, it is a misunderstanding of Mill. He wasn't arguing that all things spoken freely are true and therefor valuable. He was arguing that censoring speech will stop the propagation of both true and false ideas, and that better to allow the ideas to fight it out in the open than to squash any hope of discovering many truths.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- claudiawerner 6y ago>and that better to allow the ideas to fight it out in the open than to squash any hope of discovering many truths. This assumes two things: firstly, that truth is itself an ultimate goal, and this pursuit overrides all other conflicts of rights; secondly, that ideas really do "fight it out in the open" and the long-run result of this process is desirable. It says nothing of what happens along the way (the "means"), it only cares about the ends. Why is there a dichotomy between "[any and all ideas] fighting in the open" and "squashing hope of discovering many truths"? I also see no reason why this argument on the basis of truth would not justify restrictions on things which do not even foster dialogue on truth. The truth-value of 'hate speech' (if there is any truth value) is likely negligible compared to the same ideas expressed otherwise.
- Viliam1234 6y agoThe same algorithm that would ban anti-vaxers today would also have banned Ignaz Semmelweis two centuries ago. (On a more sensitive topic, the same algorithm that would ban "covid is just a flu" today would have also banned "face masks protect against covid" a year ago.) It's not the opinions of anti-vaxers that are valuable, but potential other opinions which may look similar to the censor.