6 ms·

>Now imagine the opposite, someone with some slightly bad opinion suddenly finds themselves shut out of the main platforms because of hate speech rules. They no

>Now imagine the opposite, someone with some slightly bad opinion suddenly finds themselves shut out of the main platforms because of hate speech rules. They now become more radicalized. This is a bad argument; it is a fact, for example, that child pornography by being censored creates a taboo around it. It's also true that some people will seek it out because of its taboo nature - something it would not be (or only to a lesser extent) if it weren't illegal. The fact that people will download and masturbate to child porn because it is illegal is not a good argument against child porn laws. We (justifiably, I think) do not allow speech for the purposes of terrorist recruitment. The fact that someone is mistakenly banned for terrorist recruitment and later becomes radicalized is not a good argument to allow terrorist recruitment. The argument is fundamentally self-defeating; it presupposes that free speech is so good and basic that it overrides all other rights. However, it also supposes that people in general lack sufficient ability to introspect after being censored - people are thought of here not as rational beings to use their rights of speech to engage in democratic deliberation, but as animals who when poked by a stick become enraged. >He did it by talking to them, engaging them in speech. Why should it be society's burden to deradicalize people? Does this work at scale? What of all the people who heard Davis or his ideas but were not persuaded? Is the number of people he failed to convince known? Finally, what of the people who, according to your theory, only become more 'radicalized' when they encounter the position that their views are wrong or harmful? There's just as good of a chance that one hundred Daryl Davis' trying to deradicalize people will actually cause radicals to dig in their heels. Maybe these hypothetical Davis' don't have a welcoming tone. Maybe the radical doesn't want to listen to a hypothetical Davis because of his race. Maybe the radical actually publicises the exchange and uses it as a megaphone to gish-gallop with 'radical' ideas. Maybe the radical convinces a hypothetical Davis that actually the radical and hateful ideas are correct. Doesn't honest and open dialogue, after all, permit both sending and receiving? I feel as though the Daryl Davis approach has a lot more risk and a lot less going for it empirically than you suppose.

airhead969 6y ago
> Why should it be society's burden to deradicalize people? Because your neighbor's problem eventually becomes your problem. Cases in point: Saudi Arabia helps 9/11 terrorists; US meddling in South American politics promoting fascists, death squads, and the War on Drugs fueling powerful gangs and cartels; Western-caused climate change refugees fleeing Africa, the Middle East, and South America; Dec 8, 1947. > Does this work at scale? No. It doesn't matter if something is difficult or not if it is a moral duty to counter. "I do not fight fascists because I will win. I fight fascists because they are fascists." ― Chris Hedges." It is a moral imperative for anyone and everyone in a potential capacity of mentorship to dispel and debunk faulty ideas that neighborhood youth get involved with. No one can be an island onto themselves and local community is essential (although all-but-dissolved in most modern city life). (Boston Marathon Bombers) "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" - The Friends of Voltaire by Beatrice Hall When you start editorializing an individual's speech rather than debating them, it's a slippery-slope down the road to censorship and fascism. There are some costs to having an open society, like the risks of being open. You might hear some idea you might not like, or find absolutely repugnant. Having venues that can debate and debunk bad ideas with better better ones is preferable to preaching to the choir. Someone can't influence or the change minds of people they refuse to talk or listen to. Society will eventually come to a head if there become separate, hermetically-sealed ideological camps persist for much longer; this is a very dangerous phenomenon for social stability.
- claudiawerner 6y ago
  >Because your neighbor's problem eventually becomes your problem. This is an argument for doing something, not necessarily for putting a burden on individuals to counter extremist and murderous ideology - especially those who are most likely to be targeted by it. It may be a moral imperative, but moral imperatives really are sensetive to a variety of individual circumstances to exercise, because they only work by way of moral obligations and moral responsibilities - both of which are only parts of rational decision making. Someone who has had a strong past of experiencing racism may balk at the idea of starting a dialogue with an extremist whose entire ideology is founded on the view that he is not even worthy of consideration as a civilized person. I firmly believe that most people lack the capacity of mentorship, or if they have it, then they are not terribly experienced with it. The fact that professional mentors take so much time and effort to nurture someone who they know is already receptive and still fail should be a testament to a significantly worse ability in the common person to do that, especially when, as I mentioned, communication is a two way street. What makes you think the mentors will be any less susceptible to radicalization than the people they are mentoring? The biggest problem is that most people do not have the requisite knowledge to be such mentors. They may know racism is wrong, but maybe they can't explain it sufficiently well. They may appeal to humanity, but it may not get far to do so with someone whose ideology for the past two decades has been the fundamental inhumanity of the person they're talking to. Needless to say, all this completely leaves out the fact that I really don't think most extremists are keeping an open mind in the first place. >When you start editorializing an individual's speech rather than debating them, it's a slippery-slope down the road to censorship and fascism. Slippery slopes need to be justified, not merely supposed. The mechanism needs to be explained and the risk made clear. For example, the mechanism that one form of speech (like hate speech, defined stringently) can be banned. It is not at all obvious that this leads to other ideas being banned; the legislature, for instance, need not and generally does not work on the basis of precedent. Superior courts can override precedent. Similarly, the fact that a hate speech law can be abused is not a good argument; plenty of laws can be abused, including, say, anti-terrorism laws. This does not mean that anti-terrorism laws should be done away with. >Having venues that can debate and debunk bad ideas with better better ones is preferable to preaching to the choir. This assumes the debating and debunking works and wins out over rhetoric. We're not dealing with pure ideas, we're dealing with two forms of expression of those ideas: firstly, hate speech which is a generally non-argumentative and derogatory expression of the idea designed to be hurtful; secondly, speeches, texts, videos, music, etc. which combines rhetoric and argumentation. Debate does nothing for the first category. It may do something for the latter category, but it's unclear if it does so at the scale or effectiveness to satisfy the moral obligation you pointed out. >Someone can't influence or the change minds of people they refuse to talk or listen to. The point of the laws discussed is not to change peoples' minds, it's to hobble the spread of their ideas.
Veen 6y ago
> child pornography by being censored creates a taboo around it Surely it's the other way around. It is censored because there is a taboo around it. The taboo comes first.
Lammy 6y ago
> it presupposes that free speech is so good and basic that it overrides all other rights. Yes. Speech is not action :)
- claudiawerner 6y ago
  The fact that speech can be distinguished from action does not in itself provide a reason to prioritize speech over action. Further, speech and action share a number of commonalities that there are good arguments made (by Susan Brison and Frederick Schauer, for instance) that the categorical difference between them rests on a philosophical error.
  - Lammy 6y ago
    When one censors 'speech' they are really censoring thought. We just call it speech because that's the highest-bandwidth and lowest-latency mechanism us humans have to exchange our ideas. Eumemics and eugenics are two sides of the same coin, and I am very suspicious of people practicing either of them.
    - claudiawerner 6y ago
      >When one censors 'speech' they are really censoring thought. This is incorrect; we would surely say that a hypothetical person who cannot communicate at all, only absorb information, has thoughts, even if he has no speech. Further, thoughts are abstract, quite literally figments of the imagination. Speech is concrete as something we do with thought. Just because someone is prohibited from, say, shouting that Jews should be rounded up and shot in a Jewish neighborhood it does not mean he cannot think it or even express the idea in other contexts. Speech is expressive in that it takes an abstract idea and makes it concrete through the action of speaking. Only certain forms of the expression of that idea, in certain contexts, would be prohibited. A baseball player will get in trouble for swinging his bat on a busy street. He may still swing it at the stadium without any trouble. The act of swinging the bat hasn't been prohibited, only its specific 'expression', provided by its context as determined by time and place and who is around him. The player has freedom of bat-swinging. We have freedom of thought. The idea that speech is not action is a relic of the doctrine of mind-body dualism, in which the effect of words on a listener is so substantially different that they are deemed lesser harms, because they affect the mind, not the body. Advances in neuroscience and philosophy have put dualism in hot water[0]. The law in several non-speech related areas has for a long time realized dualism is false, such as with the issue of the insanity defence and voluntary manslaughter. [0] https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1513&context=wmjowl https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1... [1] http://www.susanbrison.com/files/B.16.-speech_harm_and_the_mindbody_problem_in_first_amendment_jurisprudence.pdf http://www.susanbrison.com/files/B.16.-speech_harm_and_the_m...
throwaway212135 6y ago
You Canadians are really warped. Here is an idea. Quit meddling in American politics and culture. You have enough to worry about in your own country.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

airhead969 6y ago

> Why should it be society's burden to deradicalize people? Because your neighbor's problem eventually becomes your problem. Cases in point: Saudi Arabia helps 9/11 terrorists; US meddling in South American politics promoting fascists, death squads, and the War on Drugs fueling powerful gangs and cartels; Western-caused climate change refugees fleeing Africa, the Middle East, and South America; Dec 8, 1947. > Does this work at scale? No. It doesn't matter if something is difficult or not if it is a moral duty to counter. "I do not fight fascists because I will win. I fight fascists because they are fascists." ― Chris Hedges." It is a moral imperative for anyone and everyone in a potential capacity of mentorship to dispel and debunk faulty ideas that neighborhood youth get involved with. No one can be an island onto themselves and local community is essential (although all-but-dissolved in most modern city life). (Boston Marathon Bombers) "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" - The Friends of Voltaire by Beatrice Hall When you start editorializing an individual's speech rather than debating them, it's a slippery-slope down the road to censorship and fascism. There are some costs to having an open society, like the risks of being open. You might hear some idea you might not like, or find absolutely repugnant. Having venues that can debate and debunk bad ideas with better better ones is preferable to preaching to the choir. Someone can't influence or the change minds of people they refuse to talk or listen to. Society will eventually come to a head if there become separate, hermetically-sealed ideological camps persist for much longer; this is a very dangerous phenomenon for social stability.

claudiawerner 6y ago
>Because your neighbor's problem eventually becomes your problem. This is an argument for doing something, not necessarily for putting a burden on individuals to counter extremist and murderous ideology - especially those who are most likely to be targeted by it. It may be a moral imperative, but moral imperatives really are sensetive to a variety of individual circumstances to exercise, because they only work by way of moral obligations and moral responsibilities - both of which are only parts of rational decision making. Someone who has had a strong past of experiencing racism may balk at the idea of starting a dialogue with an extremist whose entire ideology is founded on the view that he is not even worthy of consideration as a civilized person. I firmly believe that most people lack the capacity of mentorship, or if they have it, then they are not terribly experienced with it. The fact that professional mentors take so much time and effort to nurture someone who they know is already receptive and still fail should be a testament to a significantly worse ability in the common person to do that, especially when, as I mentioned, communication is a two way street. What makes you think the mentors will be any less susceptible to radicalization than the people they are mentoring? The biggest problem is that most people do not have the requisite knowledge to be such mentors. They may know racism is wrong, but maybe they can't explain it sufficiently well. They may appeal to humanity, but it may not get far to do so with someone whose ideology for the past two decades has been the fundamental inhumanity of the person they're talking to. Needless to say, all this completely leaves out the fact that I really don't think most extremists are keeping an open mind in the first place. >When you start editorializing an individual's speech rather than debating them, it's a slippery-slope down the road to censorship and fascism. Slippery slopes need to be justified, not merely supposed. The mechanism needs to be explained and the risk made clear. For example, the mechanism that one form of speech (like hate speech, defined stringently) can be banned. It is not at all obvious that this leads to other ideas being banned; the legislature, for instance, need not and generally does not work on the basis of precedent. Superior courts can override precedent. Similarly, the fact that a hate speech law can be abused is not a good argument; plenty of laws can be abused, including, say, anti-terrorism laws. This does not mean that anti-terrorism laws should be done away with. >Having venues that can debate and debunk bad ideas with better better ones is preferable to preaching to the choir. This assumes the debating and debunking works and wins out over rhetoric. We're not dealing with pure ideas, we're dealing with two forms of expression of those ideas: firstly, hate speech which is a generally non-argumentative and derogatory expression of the idea designed to be hurtful; secondly, speeches, texts, videos, music, etc. which combines rhetoric and argumentation. Debate does nothing for the first category. It may do something for the latter category, but it's unclear if it does so at the scale or effectiveness to satisfy the moral obligation you pointed out. >Someone can't influence or the change minds of people they refuse to talk or listen to. The point of the laws discussed is not to change peoples' minds, it's to hobble the spread of their ideas.

Veen 6y ago

> child pornography by being censored creates a taboo around it Surely it's the other way around. It is censored because there is a taboo around it. The taboo comes first.

Lammy 6y ago

> it presupposes that free speech is so good and basic that it overrides all other rights. Yes. Speech is not action :)

claudiawerner 6y ago
The fact that speech can be distinguished from action does not in itself provide a reason to prioritize speech over action. Further, speech and action share a number of commonalities that there are good arguments made (by Susan Brison and Frederick Schauer, for instance) that the categorical difference between them rests on a philosophical error.
- Lammy 6y ago
  When one censors 'speech' they are really censoring thought. We just call it speech because that's the highest-bandwidth and lowest-latency mechanism us humans have to exchange our ideas. Eumemics and eugenics are two sides of the same coin, and I am very suspicious of people practicing either of them.
  - claudiawerner 6y ago
    >When one censors 'speech' they are really censoring thought. This is incorrect; we would surely say that a hypothetical person who cannot communicate at all, only absorb information, has thoughts, even if he has no speech. Further, thoughts are abstract, quite literally figments of the imagination. Speech is concrete as something we do with thought. Just because someone is prohibited from, say, shouting that Jews should be rounded up and shot in a Jewish neighborhood it does not mean he cannot think it or even express the idea in other contexts. Speech is expressive in that it takes an abstract idea and makes it concrete through the action of speaking. Only certain forms of the expression of that idea, in certain contexts, would be prohibited. A baseball player will get in trouble for swinging his bat on a busy street. He may still swing it at the stadium without any trouble. The act of swinging the bat hasn't been prohibited, only its specific 'expression', provided by its context as determined by time and place and who is around him. The player has freedom of bat-swinging. We have freedom of thought. The idea that speech is not action is a relic of the doctrine of mind-body dualism, in which the effect of words on a listener is so substantially different that they are deemed lesser harms, because they affect the mind, not the body. Advances in neuroscience and philosophy have put dualism in hot water[0]. The law in several non-speech related areas has for a long time realized dualism is false, such as with the issue of the insanity defence and voluntary manslaughter. [0] https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1513&context=wmjowl https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1... [1] http://www.susanbrison.com/files/B.16.-speech_harm_and_the_mindbody_problem_in_first_amendment_jurisprudence.pdf http://www.susanbrison.com/files/B.16.-speech_harm_and_the_m...

throwaway212135 6y ago

You Canadians are really warped. Here is an idea. Quit meddling in American politics and culture. You have enough to worry about in your own country.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]