4 ms·

Your comment is easy to misread. If free speech only consists of demeaning and bullying statements, why is it worthwhile to defend? In this specific case, what

by tremon 5y ago

Your comment is easy to misread. If free speech only consists of demeaning and bullying statements, why is it worthwhile to defend? In this specific case, what about the tweet in question is worth defending? Is it worth defending only because it happens to be speech, or is there some actual merit to said speech? [edit: sure, downvote me instead of engaging the argument. Prove your first amendment worthless]

collegeburner 5y ago
I remember reading about how the British tried to limit "offensive" and "bullying" speech when we called King George all kinds of mean things. It's got a legitimate political use and is still worth defending. Most statements will offend at least 1 person, so is that enough to ban?
- lupire 5y ago
  Wait until you learn about the Alien and Sedition Act....
rubyist5eva 5y ago
It's worthwile to defend offensive speech, like the one in the tweet, because one day there will be a culture/balance shift and what is deemed "offensive" will change. We have to defend what people consider awful now, because they are the low hanging fruit that normalizes the behavior and makes it more palatable to go after less offensive speech later. For the record, I did not downvote you.
dotnet00 5y ago
It's worth defending because it's criticism. Being offensive has zero relevance to whether or not it deserves to be defended. The merit of any speech is only obvious in hindsight and since we can't know when the merit will become obvious, all speech deserves to be defended regardless of how offensive it is. For instance, the merit of this tweet has now become more significant due to the awareness it has ended up spreading about offensive speech laws in Scotland. Similarly, individual tweets about a leader or country may be seen as offensive and meritless in our time, but perhaps in another 50 years historians look at them as a sign of changing opinions on some matter, giving them merit. Even if we drop that kind of grand view of things and just focus on smaller matters, companies pay a lot of attention to offensive speech because tracing down the cause will help them improve their product. Thus, clearly offensive speech has merit. If we determined that offensive speech was meritless, people saying offensive things wouldn't start saying things politely, they'd just say the offensive things privately, depriving society of a valuable feedback method.

by tremon 5y ago

collegeburner 5y ago

I remember reading about how the British tried to limit "offensive" and "bullying" speech when we called King George all kinds of mean things. It's got a legitimate political use and is still worth defending. Most statements will offend at least 1 person, so is that enough to ban?

lupire 5y ago
Wait until you learn about the Alien and Sedition Act....

rubyist5eva 5y ago

It's worthwile to defend offensive speech, like the one in the tweet, because one day there will be a culture/balance shift and what is deemed "offensive" will change. We have to defend what people consider awful now, because they are the low hanging fruit that normalizes the behavior and makes it more palatable to go after less offensive speech later. For the record, I did not downvote you.

dotnet00 5y ago

It's worth defending because it's criticism. Being offensive has zero relevance to whether or not it deserves to be defended. The merit of any speech is only obvious in hindsight and since we can't know when the merit will become obvious, all speech deserves to be defended regardless of how offensive it is. For instance, the merit of this tweet has now become more significant due to the awareness it has ended up spreading about offensive speech laws in Scotland. Similarly, individual tweets about a leader or country may be seen as offensive and meritless in our time, but perhaps in another 50 years historians look at them as a sign of changing opinions on some matter, giving them merit. Even if we drop that kind of grand view of things and just focus on smaller matters, companies pay a lot of attention to offensive speech because tracing down the cause will help them improve their product. Thus, clearly offensive speech has merit. If we determined that offensive speech was meritless, people saying offensive things wouldn't start saying things politely, they'd just say the offensive things privately, depriving society of a valuable feedback method.