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You draw the line at where it has an actual, measurable impact on other people. “Joe Schmoe has an opinion you don’t like” doesn’t impoverish anyone, it doesn’t

• throwaway9980 5y ago
  If enough Joe Schmoes have bad opinions it does in fact impoverish people and prevent them accessing necessary goods like food and housing. Many ideas are in fact wrong and if widespread terribly dangerous.
  • 9980throwaway 5y ago
    There are two issues being discussed here: the ability to speak/censor opinions, and the ability to control unspoken opinions. First, every individual has what should be a rather obvious and fundamental right to think whatever thoughts and have whatever opinions they like. Nobody gets to decide what opinions an individual holds, except for that individual. Now, as for the spreading of those ideas: Power to censor is frequently used to silence good ideas and allow bad ones to flourish - see modern-day censorship in China, Russia, North Korea, India, and Australia, or older censorship around the Vietnam War and slave liberation (back when owning slaves was in fashion). The fact that someone is silencing an opinion has very little to do with whether or not that opinion is actively harmful - and, at the very least, those in power have a strong tendency to use their power (including censorship, if available) to gain more power, and those in the public realm will use their own speech and censorship (including via "canceling" aka mob justice) to benefit their own group, regardless of whether their cause is just or their tactics are fair. So, it's all well and good for you to say "this opinion is harmful", but that's not really well correlated to whether that opinion is actually harmful. Even when the majority of the country agrees that an opinion is harmful, that doesn't actually mean that it is - but, as a democracy, we choose an imperfect system that works most of the time. That system, however, involves passing laws that declare some speech harmful, based on representatives elected by majority vote of their constituents. Twitter-based outrage from a tiny fraction of the population defining "bad opinions" is so antithetical to the idea of democracy that it shouldn't even be considered in the first place. tl;dr we have an existing mechanism for controlling "harmful speech" and it's the government, not social media mobs.
• AutumnCurtain 5y ago
  The early US had many people of the opinion that black people were inferior, more akin to animals than humans. Do you think that led to anyone not getting food or housing, or to anyone living in poverty?
  • imgabe 5y ago
    Indeed, and in that time people having the opinion that black people should be free would have been considered to have “wrong” and “dangerous” opinions that would cause great damage to society. Would we be better off today if those in power then had been able to silence unpopular opinions?
    • AutumnCurtain 5y ago
      We are best off when we acknowledge that "opinions" can and do deal deadly harm every day, and not avoiding that point when it is explicitly made.
      • imgabe 5y ago
        Yes, the opinion that we need to demand the firing of people we disagree with does indeed impoverish them.
      • dkarp 5y ago
        Today's valid opinion is tomorrow's invalid opinion and vice versa
        • mike00632 5y ago
          It is pretty clear which opinions that are accepted by many people today well be unacceptable tomorrow. So why not examine that further? It feels like you're denying your conscience.
    • krageon 5y ago
      > had been able to silence unpopular opinions? They definitely could, it just didn't matter because people spoke up anyway.
• jollybean 5y ago
  I think context, rather than impact is the most important thing. Private dialogue among friends is just that. Unless they are actively plotting violence or some kind of action, or making unambiguous bad statements such as 'I hate people of this group' or an admission of a crime, then otherwise, it just shouldn't be news.