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I’d be curious how they handle two things: 1. Repercussions for harmful or bigoted speech, as well as escalation of responses. For example what if a person or

• stale2002 4y ago
  > For example what if a person or group is being bullied but it’s claimed under free expression? What recourse is allowed within the realms of their free expression? What happens when things escalate between parties beyond just words but physical harm? Easy. Deal with it in exactly the same way the government does. All of these edge cases, and situations, and "where is the line?" Are all questions that have been discussed for centuries, in well published court cases that have gone to the supreme court. I think the supreme court has done a good job, over the decades, of deciding what the line is for acceptable speech or not. As such, other groups/platforms/large organizations should aspire to limit themselves to the same limits and actions that the government does, even though they are not the government. > absolute freedom of speech has never really been a thing It's not, but the best guideline we have, are what the courts have decided, IMO. If the speech is legal, then allow it. If it's not, then disallow it. Or if some currently legal speech is so horrible that you think it should be disallowed, then go through the normal legal process, of making a law, and subject it to the appeals process, constitutional review, and all the checks and balances that go along with making speech illegal.
• 78124781 4y ago
  1. There are already pretty good definitions out there for speech that rises to the level of "harassment" if it is severe, pervasive, and/or repeated. There are also ways to restrict speech in a content-neutral way (i.e. no bullhorns at 11 PM for anyone). Those can definitely still be used. And, of course, physical harm is not the same as words and should never be confused with that. 2. You balance it by allowing free speech and encouraging robust debate rather than demanding loyalty tests or speech codes. Restricting speech or telling people that they "can't say that" is an excellent way to result in groupthink; encouraging free speech and especially a culture of free speech that respects differences is the best way to prevent one-sided groupthink. Such one-sidedness has many negative consequences, including (but not limited to) ineffective actions, alienating wider groups of people, supporting bad science, and limiting the scope of discovery and study.
  • dagmx 4y ago
    I don’t think either of your responses actually answer my questions. The first doesn’t really have good frameworks outside of hate speech or discrimination against protected classes. Everything else is generally company or code of conduct based, which at least to my reading, don’t fit within their definition of freedom of expression. The second doesn’t actually address the balance at all. Different courses have significant demographic biases, most noticeably gender and ethnicity. that means that the majority group has a naturally amplified freedom of expression when it comes to any topic of debate. Do the minority demographics get equal time to voice their views if there are fewer of them? How do you avoid being drowned out? This isn’t exclusive to gender but also just general opinions like abortion. Freedom of expression has to come with stricter requirements for courtesy imho and more rigour for factual analysis. But those would then impede on freedom of expression. I still feel that freedom of speech and expression are paradoxes as long as unbalanced power dynamics can exist.
    • 78124781 4y ago
      Many codes of conduct and various other speech codes do, in fact, violate freedom of speech and have often been struck down as violations of freedom of expression. Appeals to "courtesy" and "civility" tend to be used selectively. I agree that it would be ideal if people debated courteously, but "civility" is far too often only desired in one direction (and employed as such in practice). There are plenty of ways for an outnumbered group to still have its voice heard, from speaking at public meetings to writing opinion columns to being active on social media. Or in academia, they can start their own journals, organize their own conferences, etc. Dissenting opinions in court rulings are excellent examples of including the minority opinion as well. If anything, supporting freedom of speech and expression protects those who are in the minority more than adding more restrictions on speech (since, as other comments have pointed out, who gets to decide what speech to censor? it's those with the power on campus).
• bruce511 4y ago
  >> . Similarly how do they stop majority dominance and snowballing into group think? E.g if there are way more men or women in a program and they use their larger numbers to amplify their freedom of expression in a way that affects the others. Is that not the very definition of democracy? Majority rule easily and frequently overrides and marginalizes minorities. Its kinda the point. Of course specific minorities have gained mind-share over the years with the majority, and thus become "in the majority". Usually this takes the form of a growing acceptance that others, although different, are still people. Women have had the vote for barely 100 years. Civil rights. Gay rights. Marriage rights, and so on. It seems like every era brings a new fight, a new minority to hate, fear, ignore, accept and embrace. The old-guard has a moral panic, wails about their "way of life", but alas they are the minority, so eventually get shouted down.
  • dsign 4y ago
    This is a good comment that is being suppressed :-) >> Is that not the very definition of democracy? Majority rule easily and frequently overrides and marginalizes minorities. Its kinda the point. Yes, so much this. And it's not even a bad thing. We need norms to be able to coexist, even if those norms are somewhat arbitrary and have space for improvement. Finding those norms through consensus and a majority is not the worst way to go.
    • mirko22 4y ago
      Just cos majority shares an opinion it doesn’t mean that opinion is somehow “good”. Further more, some advanced ideas will stay in minority since the majority will not be able to comprehend them. Basically the rule of majority will generally breed mediocrity in my opinion.
      • bruce511 4y ago
        >> Just cos majority shares an opinion it doesn’t mean that opinion is somehow “good”. Exactly. For a couple hundred years _after_ US independence, the majority considered women to be second-class people. (quite a few still do.) >> Basically the rule of majority will generally breed mediocrity in my opinion. Mediocrity is the _goal_ - its not a bug its a feature. Spare us the rule of a person who considers them self to be exceptional. Alas these days, democracy would do well to get mediocrity. Judging by some of the candidates in the last election, mediocre would have been a step up. (fortunately the voting public seemed to agree with me.)
• darawk 4y ago
  1. You sort of joined two separate things here, so i'll split them: > Repercussions for harmful or bigoted speech, as well as escalation of responses. For example what if a person or group is being bullied but it’s claimed under free expression? People are mostly capable of distinguishing bullying from legitimate expression. There are a few edge cases (e.g. misgendering), but they are not imo sufficiently important to throw out the basic principle of free expression. > What happens when things escalate between parties beyond just words but physical harm? I don't really understand why this is even a question? Physical assault is not only contrary to MIT's rules, it is a crime. This statement and principle is totally orthogonal to the principle of free expression. EDIT: I suppose you could mean something more like incitement/inducement to physical harm. But, of course, that is also a crime. > 2. Similarly how do they stop majority dominance and snowballing into group think? E.g if there are way more men or women in a program and they use their larger numbers to amplify their freedom of expression in a way that affects the others. That then risks reducing the number of the minority demographic as they slowly get pushed out, leading to largely heterogeneous programs. This is a strange view to me. Is the underlying premise here that there are things that the majority believes, but that would be harmful to say? If so, how did we come to this conclusion and what strange things could be believed by the majority of students/faculty but are too dangerous to speak? Certainly we could point to historical examples of things people in say, the 1950s, believed that we might consider dangerous or harmful to say today. But people from the 1950s would never have chosen to ban those ideas. In other words, nearly by definition, it is never the preferred expressions of the majority that are getting regulated. If it were a majority view, it wouldn't be considered harmful by the regulators. The viewpoints having their speech regulated are always going to be in the minority and unpopular. If it's not a majority that believes these things, then there should be no reason to be concerned about majority dominance. The power to regulate expression is just that - power. If you are truly concerned about concentration of power and the protection of minority interests, there is no greater threat to that than the regulation of expression. Tautologically, it will always be those in power that write the speech codes.
• primitivesuave 4y ago
  1. Physical harm is a crime and separate issue altogether - there is popular contention with labeling free expression as violence against certain groups, but I certainly agree there are ways that one can escalate into another (ripe for debate) 2. 75% of teachers are women, 97% of coal miners are men - certain professional aspirations attract certain people. When people talk about equality of outcome, does it have to be 50-50 male-female, equally split amongst all demographics and income levels, and if so, what possible realistic path is there to achieve it? On the other hand, I am sure most people in the modern world (especially the young ones) support equal opportunity, so it seems like this is becoming less of an issue. I see what you're saying though - for example, is Kanye responsible for people committing anti-Semitic hate crimes while yelling "Kanye 2024"? There are also obviously many current event and historical examples of speech escalating to violence, but in a place of learning there should be freedom to consider all ideas and freedom to distinguish good from bad ones.
  • dagmx 4y ago
    I recognize physical harm is separate but that’s why I used the word escalation. I also didn’t imply a direction for the physical harm. Escalation from speech to physical harm can come in many forms. Like you said, Kanye 2024+antisemitism is a form of stochastic terror, using one persons speech to convince others to cause physical harm. But it can also be emotional abuse that is often not seen by many people that can lead to self harm. Or most simply, it can just be escalation of emotions that leads to mutual physical aggression. With regards to equality, I don’t think it means that demographics should be evenly split. For one, that’s impossible given the large number of demographics and population variances. But I also think it’s more than equal opportunity. Equal opportunity only tracks the opportunity to get a job at a superficial level. There’s also the pushing out of non-majority demographics through compounded aggressions. This is quite trackable in many companies and colleges as you can see big differences in percentage shares between career milestones (each year in university, or promotions in companies), but very few companies post it. Netflix and Apple have fairly good reports here So to that end I’d posit: even if we’ve become better about equality, and agree we should have equal opportunity, are we actually setting up our systems to measure whether we’re being honest about it? Also to your percentages. I think that is heavily at risk of inverting cause and consequence