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> But this is also the beauty of free expression - it prevents anyone from using it to enact total control. This is the really tricky part, though... absolute
by cortesoft 6y ago
> But this is also the beauty of free expression - it prevents anyone from using it to enact total control.
This is the really tricky part, though... absolute free expression only prevents people from enacting total control if it persists; however, free speech is not something that can’t be undone.
This is a form of the paradox of tolerance. If people use their absolute free speech to push lies and propaganda that allows them to gain enough control to then suppress future free speech and maintain their own power, we are no longer protected by free speech.
Even if you believe truth always eventually wins out if free speech is allowed, that doesn’t mean that we won’t hit a point along that path where free speech is restricted, and our meandering path towards truth suddenly stops.
Now, I don’t think restricting free speech is the answer, but we can’t pretend that it is impossible for people to use their power of free speech to prevent free speech in the future.
- anonymousDan 6y agoRight, lies and propaganda only have to win once.
- heimatau 6y ago> only have to win once. I disagree. If you notice with American politics both sides believe in strong dogmas. There is no middle ground. They both have made their beds and they will lay in it. Corporate Dems (control the Democratic Party) and the MAGA (control the GOP) have their own ecochambers. MSNBC, CNN, etc indoctrinate the Dems. Talk radio for the GOP. The two cults will continue to clash. I wonder if the people will wake up.
- nitrogen 6y agoI wonder if the people will wake up. The "wake up" approach doesn't seem to be working, but we do need some way of reforming our society around the idea of the mighty middle that is not represented by the extremes.
- marvin 6y agoOr maybe a middle that's not dominated by dogma or ideologies. There's many pieces of truth located pretty far from the center of various political ideologies, but the ideologies taken as a whole also contain a stunning amount of falsehood and simplification.
- kelnos 6y agoI would hope we could have both. Honestly, I'm not a fan of the policy platforms of any politicians who have claimed to be in the middle. Being left or right doesn't mean that you necessarily have to throw reason and critical thinking out the window. Being an extremist, sure; devotion to dogma is often a feature of extremism, but that's not the same thing.
- DataWorker 6y agoOr we need to stop using words like fascism, tyranny, racist just because someone disagrees with us. That shift to cooler more informative language is just as difficult for educated people. Even on HN, so many threads devolve into Godwin’s law. I will say that one exception is education about human cognition. Trying to reason without a strong grasp of our own psychology and good ways of framing epistemological problems is like writing software without regard to hardware. Useful to some extent but prone to unforseen gotchas.
- maximente 6y agohaving two strong parties seems like an inevitable artifact of first past the post voting (lesser of two evils thinking, "wasted" votes, etc.), and unless "the people" can constitutionally get something like ranked choice voting done federally, i'm not sure what the way forward is. any thoughts?
- heimatau 6y ago> any thoughts? I'm an independent. I like some of the ideas of the Right that they believe that States are governments to experiment with. I'd suggest FPTP and other solutions to just attempt to do this locally and in a State or two. It will get traction, if it's worth it to the governed population. That's my suggestion, start small.
- kelnos 6y ago> I like some of the ideas of the Right that they believe that States are governments to experiment with That's mostly feels like just all talk, though. A concrete example: California would love to do some health care experiments, including going single-payer. However, the state can't do so without permission from the federal government to use Medicare funding in different ways (obviously there is no way a state could fund something like that itself without state-level tax increases that would never get past the electorate). GOP-controlled Congress would never go for that, in part because they don't want to be seen by their base as "supporting socialism", and also in part (I'm conjecturing here) that they're afraid that it'll work and they'll be proven wrong. From the GOP's perspective it more seems like "states should experiment... as long as they're experiments we agree with".
- babesh 6y agoNope. As long as there is potential for other powers to grow or counteract it, you have a chance to course correct. Isn’t that what a vote is good for?
- giantg2 6y agoI think it ends up being the pendulum swinging farther to the other side than really correcting whenever we see a switch.
- compiler-guy 6y agoA vote isn’t good for anything if violent extremists can overturn an election.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cortesoft 6y agoSure, but being able to vote is not guaranteed, either. If the propaganda wins out, they can stop allowing votes.
- babesh 6y agoThat is why you need an educated populace. By educated, we mean one that can think critically and independently rather than a college credential.
- rayiner 6y agoWe’ve got one of the most educated populations in the world. Europe is only recently catching up to is in e.g. the percentage of people with college degrees.
- sjwright 6y agoCollege degrees are not a relevant metric. What percentage of the population are being taught fundamental critical thinking skills? How many are taught how to evaluate the quality of data and the quality of sources? How many people have a good grounding of statistics? Or civics? Or logical fallacies? How many people can describe the scientific method? I don't have many vivid memories of my primary school education but one of them was being taught how to be suspicious of claims made in advertisements. That one class stuck with me for a long time. (This was in Melbourne, Australia sometime around 1988.)
- JamesBarney 6y agoVery few people are being taught this anywhere. Even M.D.s (some of the most intelligent and educated among us) have so little statistical knowledge they can barely reason about novel type 1 versus type 2 errors.
- kelnos 6y agoI wouldn't put MDs on such a high pedestal. They're people who specialize, just like people in many other professions, and having little knowledge of statistics beyond an (oft-forgotten) undergraduate-level course wouldn't surprise me. It's a different story for doctors who go the research route rather than practicing medicine, of course.
- Aerroon 6y agoThis is why the value of free speech needs to be protected. If enough people holds this value then it becomes difficult for anyone to change it.