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You have invented a “harm principle” to be used when evaluating truth, and the fact that you think this is a cogent argument is scarier than anything Paul Graha

You have invented a “harm principle” to be used when evaluating truth, and the fact that you think this is a cogent argument is scarier than anything Paul Graham might have said. One’s right to say something isn’t curtailed just because their saying it might intrude on your dogma more strongly than if it was said by someone with less social power.

Osmose 5y ago
If I'm following you correctly, you're implying that in order to debate with others to determine what truth is, you must have the freedom to say things without being bound by how the act of saying them would affect other people, right? And I'm disagreeing and saying that, unless you have some sort of prior agreement with the people involved (which social media/the internet/readers of your blog don't have), you don't get to avoid consequences for the potential harm saying something might cause. Ultimately you are always talking to be heard by someone else, and all human interaction involves the risk of harming/angering someone else, but every day we control for that risk in how we say things and who we say them to.
- the8472 5y ago
  Truth is harmful and people need to be shielded from it? If we hold the speakers responsible, rather the people who take up their words and turn them into actions? Then isn't that incompatible with democracy which relies on informed citizens that aren't easily captured?
- convolvatron 5y ago
  wow. I guess we should just stop speaking altogether
- wrren 5y ago
  Your conflating harming people with causing them anger is very much part of the problem. 'Harm' used to mean something much more severe; now it basically means anything at or above pissing someone off. The same concept creep has occurred when it comes to the word 'violence' too. As a society, we long ago drew red lines at behaviours that are violent or harm people, but thanks to these deliberate redefinitions, extreme responses are somehow justified to utterly non-consequential speech, because people accept that speech can cause 'harm' or is 'violent'. It's such a cheap rhetorical trick that does nothing but chill public discourse while doing nothing to positively impact the lives of the people it's ostensibly supposed to protect.
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    Even the absence of speech has also been described in those same terms. This category of rhetorical double bind is counterproductive to progress.
- photochemsyn 5y ago
  I'd just note here that 'truth through debate' is an ancient concept (Socrates - Aristotle - Plato etc.) that has been replaced with 'truth through experiment and observation' (Galileo - Newton - Maxwell - Einstein etc.). Of course many have attempted to use science to justify their behavior or to justify some arbitray human social organizations (i.e. Francis Galton and Social Darwinism, or Lysenko in the USSR and Phenotypic Modification, or more simply, nature vs. nurture). However, science isn't the final arbiter for marking out the optimal societal norms, whatever those may be, although this seems to be the meaning of 'truth' as you use it in this context. An authoriarian state with zero personal freedom might be just as capable of feeding its human population as a libertarian state with a minimal set of legal restrictions, for example.
  - bloaf 5y ago
    The courts, to this day, still believe in 'truth through debate.' Science does too, although the debaters are generally expected to be working towards developing empirical ways of settling their disagreements. I believe it was Gell-Mann who famously tells a story of holding on to his theory because of its beauty despite several experiments indicating it was wrong, and eventually being vindicated.
- twofornone 5y ago
  This is carte blanche to silence any opinion you (or your mob) doesn't like and its absurd that people think its valid. Completely flies in the face of the spirit of freedom of expression. There are arguments that need to be expressed even though ideologues may think that they are harmful. That's the point of open discussion. There are questions that need to be asked even if others believe they may have inconvenient answers. That's the point of objective science. Because of sentiment like yours, we increasingly have neither, and we are all worse off for it.
- pfortuny 5y ago
  Pain is not harm. Suffering is not necessarily bad. One can live a full life in the midst of hurting. The fact that Santa does not exist angers a lot of people each year…
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Pain is not harm Yes, pain = experienced disutility = harm. > Suffering is not necessarily bad. Suffering is itself bad, but may be an acceptable cost for some greater good, sure. > One can live a full life in the midst of hurting. Sure, it's possible to do one despite the other, but that doesn't negate that the latter is bad compared to it's absence, all other things being equal.
    - prepend 5y ago
      > Yes, pain = experienced disutility = harm. Exercising is painful, yet it is not harm. There is “good pain” (ie, muscles being stretched out and hurting after a good workout) and “bad pain” (ie, popping a joint out of socket causing an injury). Not all pain is harmful. Emotionally, grief is painful, but it’s sometimes necessary and helpful to grieve over a loss.
- bloaf 5y ago
  > And I'm disagreeing and saying that, unless you have some sort of prior agreement with the people involved (which social media/the internet/readers of your blog don't have), you don't get to avoid consequences for the potential harm saying something might cause. Ultimately you are always talking to be heard by someone else, and all human interaction involves the risk of harming/angering someone else, but every day we control for that risk in how we say I think this is the crux of the issue. The internet (including social media/the internet/blogosphere) originated in academia and was first populated by academics. People like PG (and myself) who grew up in that environment still feel like the internet is-and-ought-to-be a free marketplace of ideas, where academically-minded people can dispassionately debate on any topic. In our view, the Internet's virtues are the age-old virtues of the liberal arts, and that it would be a liberalizing and liberating force as it spread to the public. But the internet has grown organically. It has been September for almost three decades now. The internet is more representative of the population at large, and we are being reminded why academia is described as an ivory tower and concepts like tenure exist. Fundamentally, not everyone can be an academic, nor can they tolerate the existence of academics. The "towers" and "tenure" exist as a two way shield: it both mitigates self-censorship among academics by protecting them from mob backlash, and it prevents the "think with our gut" mob from getting indigestion and hurting themselves. So I think both that you're right, and that it is a shame. The internet has not changed the public's unworthiness to engage in academic conversation despite the oceans of information it has made available. The public will misunderstand and misconstrue and mistrust and misuse academic ideas in ways that harm people, and that harm will be the fault of the academics for not knowing better than to keep their ideas to themselves. Just like it is the witches fault for admitting that they thought differently than their community.
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    Academia has never been dispassionate. The very idea of an academic conference started because academics hated each other so much that they needed a mechanism for them to see each other as people. Further, a marketplace of ideas is a marketplace. Marketplaces are not emotionless voids where consumers dispassionately select the product that will provide them with precisely the best utility-to-cost ratio. They are emotional places where concepts like marketing and signaling are extremely important. Similarly, we'd expect a "marketplace of ideas" to be an emotional place and for human emotion to be a consideration when adopting ideas.
solatic 5y ago
You're equivocating between rational and emotional truths. Rationally, only one thing can be true. This is what's most useful when applying the scientific method. Scientifically, there isn't such a thing as heresy - only rejecting the null hypothesis, or failing to reject it. But people are not rational beings. The same message, delivered in the same way, can upset some people and not others. People do not react rationally. Trying to deny this (and claim that people are rational beings), in and of itself, denies a scientific truth.
- convolvatron 5y ago
  no one should dispute that people might react emotionally to statements. that doesn't necessarily imply that all speakers should accept the burden to be so inoffensive that _no_ listener would react negatively.
  - solatic 5y ago
    > that doesn't necessarily imply that all speakers should accept the burden to be so inoffensive that _no_ listener would react negatively. No, it doesn't imply that. But let's unpack the presumption behind your statement. We all know that there are people in the world with whom we have deep and fundamental disagreement. Religious people are aware that there are atheists; classical liberals are aware that there are autocrats and theocrats, etc. Does that, in and of itself, upset us so deeply that we take offense at it? I daresay no. What causes one to take offense is the uttering of "heresy" by someone nearby, where such utterance affects them personally. Which means that it is incumbent upon us to know who is listening to us. There is a wide emotional gulf between a preacher who preaches to his congregation and a preacher who proselytizes and seeks converts. Same message, different audience. In the first case, the preacher is among fellows. In the second, the preacher is among those who may not be so open to what he has to say. The preacher who decides to proselytize fundamentally accepts an additional burden, if the preacher has any hope at succeeding. And a preacher who does not accept that burden, does not even recognize that such a burden exists, who tries to communicate the same message in the same way regardless of who is in the audience, well, that preacher should only see his failure as foreseeable and expected. "Preacher", above, if it wasn't clear, is not a religious term. It refers to anybody who has any kind of message that actually tries to persuade others, rather than merely seeking the empathy of like-minded friends and family.
UncleMeat 5y ago
Not when evaluating truth. When evaluating speech. Humans don't communicate by simply listing context-free facts at one another. Connotation, implication, and context all play a major role. The idea isn't that the words themselves become evil when said in a different context, but that we recognize that they do different things in different contexts. Let's consider a totally different scenario: the justice system. In criminal cases, the standard of evidence is way higher than in civil cases. This is a recognition of the fact that the state is capable of causing far greater harm and it should hold itself to a higher standard. Nothing has changed about the truth of say, OJ Simpson's actions, that meant that he was found not guilty in a criminal trial but was able to be punished in a civil trial. Similarly, we might recognize that somebody with a powerful voice and a large following has a greater responsibility to careful communication than the person working the counter at the local Starbucks.
Animats 5y ago
That's what Graham did say: "They know they're not supposed to ban ideas per se, so they have to recast the ideas as causing "harm," which sounds like something that can be banned."

Osmose 5y ago

If I'm following you correctly, you're implying that in order to debate with others to determine what truth is, you must have the freedom to say things without being bound by how the act of saying them would affect other people, right? And I'm disagreeing and saying that, unless you have some sort of prior agreement with the people involved (which social media/the internet/readers of your blog don't have), you don't get to avoid consequences for the potential harm saying something might cause. Ultimately you are always talking to be heard by someone else, and all human interaction involves the risk of harming/angering someone else, but every day we control for that risk in how we say things and who we say them to.

the8472 5y ago
Truth is harmful and people need to be shielded from it? If we hold the speakers responsible, rather the people who take up their words and turn them into actions? Then isn't that incompatible with democracy which relies on informed citizens that aren't easily captured?
convolvatron 5y ago
wow. I guess we should just stop speaking altogether
wrren 5y ago
Your conflating harming people with causing them anger is very much part of the problem. 'Harm' used to mean something much more severe; now it basically means anything at or above pissing someone off. The same concept creep has occurred when it comes to the word 'violence' too. As a society, we long ago drew red lines at behaviours that are violent or harm people, but thanks to these deliberate redefinitions, extreme responses are somehow justified to utterly non-consequential speech, because people accept that speech can cause 'harm' or is 'violent'. It's such a cheap rhetorical trick that does nothing but chill public discourse while doing nothing to positively impact the lives of the people it's ostensibly supposed to protect.
- nitrogen 5y ago
  Even the absence of speech has also been described in those same terms. This category of rhetorical double bind is counterproductive to progress.
photochemsyn 5y ago
I'd just note here that 'truth through debate' is an ancient concept (Socrates - Aristotle - Plato etc.) that has been replaced with 'truth through experiment and observation' (Galileo - Newton - Maxwell - Einstein etc.). Of course many have attempted to use science to justify their behavior or to justify some arbitray human social organizations (i.e. Francis Galton and Social Darwinism, or Lysenko in the USSR and Phenotypic Modification, or more simply, nature vs. nurture). However, science isn't the final arbiter for marking out the optimal societal norms, whatever those may be, although this seems to be the meaning of 'truth' as you use it in this context. An authoriarian state with zero personal freedom might be just as capable of feeding its human population as a libertarian state with a minimal set of legal restrictions, for example.
- bloaf 5y ago
  The courts, to this day, still believe in 'truth through debate.' Science does too, although the debaters are generally expected to be working towards developing empirical ways of settling their disagreements. I believe it was Gell-Mann who famously tells a story of holding on to his theory because of its beauty despite several experiments indicating it was wrong, and eventually being vindicated.
twofornone 5y ago
This is carte blanche to silence any opinion you (or your mob) doesn't like and its absurd that people think its valid. Completely flies in the face of the spirit of freedom of expression. There are arguments that need to be expressed even though ideologues may think that they are harmful. That's the point of open discussion. There are questions that need to be asked even if others believe they may have inconvenient answers. That's the point of objective science. Because of sentiment like yours, we increasingly have neither, and we are all worse off for it.
pfortuny 5y ago
Pain is not harm. Suffering is not necessarily bad. One can live a full life in the midst of hurting. The fact that Santa does not exist angers a lot of people each year…
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Pain is not harm Yes, pain = experienced disutility = harm. > Suffering is not necessarily bad. Suffering is itself bad, but may be an acceptable cost for some greater good, sure. > One can live a full life in the midst of hurting. Sure, it's possible to do one despite the other, but that doesn't negate that the latter is bad compared to it's absence, all other things being equal.
  - prepend 5y ago
    > Yes, pain = experienced disutility = harm. Exercising is painful, yet it is not harm. There is “good pain” (ie, muscles being stretched out and hurting after a good workout) and “bad pain” (ie, popping a joint out of socket causing an injury). Not all pain is harmful. Emotionally, grief is painful, but it’s sometimes necessary and helpful to grieve over a loss.
bloaf 5y ago
> And I'm disagreeing and saying that, unless you have some sort of prior agreement with the people involved (which social media/the internet/readers of your blog don't have), you don't get to avoid consequences for the potential harm saying something might cause. Ultimately you are always talking to be heard by someone else, and all human interaction involves the risk of harming/angering someone else, but every day we control for that risk in how we say I think this is the crux of the issue. The internet (including social media/the internet/blogosphere) originated in academia and was first populated by academics. People like PG (and myself) who grew up in that environment still feel like the internet is-and-ought-to-be a free marketplace of ideas, where academically-minded people can dispassionately debate on any topic. In our view, the Internet's virtues are the age-old virtues of the liberal arts, and that it would be a liberalizing and liberating force as it spread to the public. But the internet has grown organically. It has been September for almost three decades now. The internet is more representative of the population at large, and we are being reminded why academia is described as an ivory tower and concepts like tenure exist. Fundamentally, not everyone can be an academic, nor can they tolerate the existence of academics. The "towers" and "tenure" exist as a two way shield: it both mitigates self-censorship among academics by protecting them from mob backlash, and it prevents the "think with our gut" mob from getting indigestion and hurting themselves. So I think both that you're right, and that it is a shame. The internet has not changed the public's unworthiness to engage in academic conversation despite the oceans of information it has made available. The public will misunderstand and misconstrue and mistrust and misuse academic ideas in ways that harm people, and that harm will be the fault of the academics for not knowing better than to keep their ideas to themselves. Just like it is the witches fault for admitting that they thought differently than their community.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  Academia has never been dispassionate. The very idea of an academic conference started because academics hated each other so much that they needed a mechanism for them to see each other as people. Further, a marketplace of ideas is a marketplace. Marketplaces are not emotionless voids where consumers dispassionately select the product that will provide them with precisely the best utility-to-cost ratio. They are emotional places where concepts like marketing and signaling are extremely important. Similarly, we'd expect a "marketplace of ideas" to be an emotional place and for human emotion to be a consideration when adopting ideas.

solatic 5y ago

You're equivocating between rational and emotional truths. Rationally, only one thing can be true. This is what's most useful when applying the scientific method. Scientifically, there isn't such a thing as heresy - only rejecting the null hypothesis, or failing to reject it. But people are not rational beings. The same message, delivered in the same way, can upset some people and not others. People do not react rationally. Trying to deny this (and claim that people are rational beings), in and of itself, denies a scientific truth.

convolvatron 5y ago
no one should dispute that people might react emotionally to statements. that doesn't necessarily imply that all speakers should accept the burden to be so inoffensive that _no_ listener would react negatively.
- solatic 5y ago
  > that doesn't necessarily imply that all speakers should accept the burden to be so inoffensive that _no_ listener would react negatively. No, it doesn't imply that. But let's unpack the presumption behind your statement. We all know that there are people in the world with whom we have deep and fundamental disagreement. Religious people are aware that there are atheists; classical liberals are aware that there are autocrats and theocrats, etc. Does that, in and of itself, upset us so deeply that we take offense at it? I daresay no. What causes one to take offense is the uttering of "heresy" by someone nearby, where such utterance affects them personally. Which means that it is incumbent upon us to know who is listening to us. There is a wide emotional gulf between a preacher who preaches to his congregation and a preacher who proselytizes and seeks converts. Same message, different audience. In the first case, the preacher is among fellows. In the second, the preacher is among those who may not be so open to what he has to say. The preacher who decides to proselytize fundamentally accepts an additional burden, if the preacher has any hope at succeeding. And a preacher who does not accept that burden, does not even recognize that such a burden exists, who tries to communicate the same message in the same way regardless of who is in the audience, well, that preacher should only see his failure as foreseeable and expected. "Preacher", above, if it wasn't clear, is not a religious term. It refers to anybody who has any kind of message that actually tries to persuade others, rather than merely seeking the empathy of like-minded friends and family.

UncleMeat 5y ago

Not when evaluating truth. When evaluating speech. Humans don't communicate by simply listing context-free facts at one another. Connotation, implication, and context all play a major role. The idea isn't that the words themselves become evil when said in a different context, but that we recognize that they do different things in different contexts. Let's consider a totally different scenario: the justice system. In criminal cases, the standard of evidence is way higher than in civil cases. This is a recognition of the fact that the state is capable of causing far greater harm and it should hold itself to a higher standard. Nothing has changed about the truth of say, OJ Simpson's actions, that meant that he was found not guilty in a criminal trial but was able to be punished in a civil trial. Similarly, we might recognize that somebody with a powerful voice and a large following has a greater responsibility to careful communication than the person working the counter at the local Starbucks.

Animats 5y ago

That's what Graham did say: "They know they're not supposed to ban ideas per se, so they have to recast the ideas as causing "harm," which sounds like something that can be banned."