4 ms·

My argument is simple. Humans can typically only hear one person speak at a time. In order to have a proper societal discussion, there needs to be some rules of

by cudgy 4y ago

My argument is simple. Humans can typically only hear one person speak at a time. In order to have a proper societal discussion, there needs to be some rules of engagement to ensure that listeners can get something out of what is being said. Yelling over people constantly with the express intent of preventing that person’s audience from hearing what they are saying is harassment, not free speech.

slg 4y ago
People have a right to speech. They don't have a right to be heard. You are suggesting that we stop some people from speaking to allow other people to be heard. You are making an argument against free speech and not for it.
- cudgy 4y ago
  No. You are creating a red herring. What is speech if no one can hear it or read it? If I intercepted the post you just made and scrambled it with random characters so noone else would understand it, are you still calling that free speech? How is that effectively different than some people purposefully yelling over your conversations and scrambling the sound waves entering the intended listener’s ear?
  - slg 4y ago
    >What is speech if no one can hear it or read it? Take your thought process here a step further. If we establish that speech needs to be heard in order to satisfy the principle of free speech, how many people need to hear something before it qualifies? >If I intercepted the post you just made and scrambled it with random characters so noone else would understand it, are you still calling that free speech? Are you arguing that downvoting a comment until the text is gray and difficult to read is HN infringing on a user's free speech?
    - LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
      No, speech needs to be hearable by those who would choose. You're free to shout your own counter-message, but from far enough away that you're adding signal not noise. Similarly, trying to form a barricade and keep people from reaching the speaker and hearing them is an attempt to silence their speech.
    - stale2002 4y ago
      > how many people need to hear something before it qualifies? Thats an easy question to answer. The answer would be whoever voluntarily chooses to listen to that speech, of their own free will, without other people coming in to make significant disruptions (especially illegal disruptions, or acts of illegal physical violence) of that voluntary interaction between speaker and hearer. > Are you arguing that downvoting a comment..... is HN infringing on a user's free speech? A better example would be a 3rd party going to the server room where Hacker News is stored, destroying the servers with a hammer, and then saying "Your speech isn't infringed on! You were allowed to say whatever you wanted! You just don't have the right to be heard, because I the uninvolved 3rd party broke into the server room and destroyed the server hardware!" Yes, if this is what happened, this is starting to get close to censorship. Especially if it is not a one time thing, and is instead continual or illegal. Also, if you want a better explanation, just go look up how free speech works in the US. All these crazy hypotheticals, that you think are somehow gotchas, have mostly been settled by the US court system. And the US court system has side strongly in favor of protecting free speech, while also being able to deal with these very limited and rare exceptions, to prevent extremely damaging content, like direct and immediate calls or violence, or the like. This has all been covered before, mostly, in a good way, by the US legal system and court precedent.
- stale2002 4y ago
  > People have a right to speech. They don't have a right to be heard. Time and place restrictions are perfectly legal. A school, government fund or otherwise, or even the government itself, is absolutely free to prevent a mob of students, from shouting down speakers. And they can use the force of their position as the university, or the force of law to do so. Time and place restrictions absolutely can help promote speech, and are legal.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  The hearer’s right is well established as part of the First Amendment: https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1549/right-to-receive-information-and-ideas https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1549/right-to-r...
  - slg 4y ago
    That is not a right of the speaker. The right to hear is not the same thing as the right to be heard. Either way, it doesn't refute my original point. People are asking for certain people's free speech rights to be curtailed in order to protect the free speech rights of others. That is effectively the same argument that the students are often making in these situations. Speech should be restricted when it infringes on other people's rights. The pro-free speech side just likes to play no true Scotsman games and redefine stuff they don't like as not really speech. But if the audience members heckling the speaker can be speech unworthy of protecting because it infringes on other people's rights, then we also need to evaluate what the speaker on the stage is saying and whether their words infringe on the rights of anyone else.
    - gnicholas 4y ago
      You should read Dean Martinez's letter, which describes the longstanding legal perspective on this. Although one can always raise philosophical questions and claim that free speech advocates are just trying to silence people that don't agree with them, this isn't really an accurate representation of their position. Actual free speech advocates (e.g., FIRE) want their opponents to be free to host talks without disruptive heckling from people with whom they (the free speech advocates) would agree.
- shitlord 4y ago
  The article links to a memo written by the law school's dean. It's worth a read because it addresses this very topic with legal citations.
- Georgelemental 4y ago
  If I went to right in front of your house, and blared a horn as loud as possible 24/7, making it impossible for anyone to hear each other—you would call the police and have me arrested, and rightly so. You would not welcome my actions as "free speech."
  - slg 4y ago
    I don't think you realized it, but that is exactly my point. I was highlighting the inconsistencies that come from the pro-free speech side of these arguments. No one actually wants unconditional free speech, but some people like to pretend they do. I'm not one of those people. I understand some restrictions on speech are necessary, such as the example you just gave.
    - Georgelemental 4y ago
      I believe in "unconditional free speech" in that I think you have the right to express any opinion*. The manner in which you communicate that opinion can be restricted; otherwise, all laws would be nullified ("but your honor, I murdered Frank to express my disapproval of the Fed's monetary policy! It was free speech!"). However, these restrictions must be agnostic to the content of the speech. * with defamation (edit: and false advertising, perjury, etc) exception, for things you know are lies when you say them.
      - slg 4y ago
        >The manner in which you communicate that opinion can be restricted; This is a direct contradiction of "unconditional free speech". Once you allow the manner of speech to be restricted, free speech is no longer unconditional. You just want to believe in "unconditional free speech" because freedom is great and being pro-freedom makes us all feel warm and fuzzy inside. That ideal can't stand up to the complexities of the real world when the rights of multiple people come into direct conflict with each other. There need to be restrictions in both the manner and the content. The only content restriction you listed was defamation, but I have a feeling you would be against at least some of the following: fraud, perjury, false advertising, copyright infringement, threats, incitement to violence, coercion, blackmail, revenge porn, child porn, and the list goes on and on. Suddenly there are a lot of conditions on that "unconditional" and it becomes less clear why some further restriction such as outlawing hate speech would be a monumental infringement on freedom of speech.
- goatlover 4y ago
  That's ridiculous! Hecklers trying to prevent someone from speaking aren't themselves trying to speak, they're trying to prevent other people from hearing that speech.

by cudgy 4y ago

slg 4y ago

People have a right to speech. They don't have a right to be heard. You are suggesting that we stop some people from speaking to allow other people to be heard. You are making an argument against free speech and not for it.

cudgy 4y ago
No. You are creating a red herring. What is speech if no one can hear it or read it? If I intercepted the post you just made and scrambled it with random characters so noone else would understand it, are you still calling that free speech? How is that effectively different than some people purposefully yelling over your conversations and scrambling the sound waves entering the intended listener’s ear?
- slg 4y ago
  >What is speech if no one can hear it or read it? Take your thought process here a step further. If we establish that speech needs to be heard in order to satisfy the principle of free speech, how many people need to hear something before it qualifies? >If I intercepted the post you just made and scrambled it with random characters so noone else would understand it, are you still calling that free speech? Are you arguing that downvoting a comment until the text is gray and difficult to read is HN infringing on a user's free speech?
  - LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
    No, speech needs to be hearable by those who would choose. You're free to shout your own counter-message, but from far enough away that you're adding signal not noise. Similarly, trying to form a barricade and keep people from reaching the speaker and hearing them is an attempt to silence their speech.
  - stale2002 4y ago
    > how many people need to hear something before it qualifies? Thats an easy question to answer. The answer would be whoever voluntarily chooses to listen to that speech, of their own free will, without other people coming in to make significant disruptions (especially illegal disruptions, or acts of illegal physical violence) of that voluntary interaction between speaker and hearer. > Are you arguing that downvoting a comment..... is HN infringing on a user's free speech? A better example would be a 3rd party going to the server room where Hacker News is stored, destroying the servers with a hammer, and then saying "Your speech isn't infringed on! You were allowed to say whatever you wanted! You just don't have the right to be heard, because I the uninvolved 3rd party broke into the server room and destroyed the server hardware!" Yes, if this is what happened, this is starting to get close to censorship. Especially if it is not a one time thing, and is instead continual or illegal. Also, if you want a better explanation, just go look up how free speech works in the US. All these crazy hypotheticals, that you think are somehow gotchas, have mostly been settled by the US court system. And the US court system has side strongly in favor of protecting free speech, while also being able to deal with these very limited and rare exceptions, to prevent extremely damaging content, like direct and immediate calls or violence, or the like. This has all been covered before, mostly, in a good way, by the US legal system and court precedent.
stale2002 4y ago
> People have a right to speech. They don't have a right to be heard. Time and place restrictions are perfectly legal. A school, government fund or otherwise, or even the government itself, is absolutely free to prevent a mob of students, from shouting down speakers. And they can use the force of their position as the university, or the force of law to do so. Time and place restrictions absolutely can help promote speech, and are legal.
gnicholas 4y ago
The hearer’s right is well established as part of the First Amendment: https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1549/right-to-receive-information-and-ideas https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1549/right-to-r...
- slg 4y ago
  That is not a right of the speaker. The right to hear is not the same thing as the right to be heard. Either way, it doesn't refute my original point. People are asking for certain people's free speech rights to be curtailed in order to protect the free speech rights of others. That is effectively the same argument that the students are often making in these situations. Speech should be restricted when it infringes on other people's rights. The pro-free speech side just likes to play no true Scotsman games and redefine stuff they don't like as not really speech. But if the audience members heckling the speaker can be speech unworthy of protecting because it infringes on other people's rights, then we also need to evaluate what the speaker on the stage is saying and whether their words infringe on the rights of anyone else.
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    You should read Dean Martinez's letter, which describes the longstanding legal perspective on this. Although one can always raise philosophical questions and claim that free speech advocates are just trying to silence people that don't agree with them, this isn't really an accurate representation of their position. Actual free speech advocates (e.g., FIRE) want their opponents to be free to host talks without disruptive heckling from people with whom they (the free speech advocates) would agree.
shitlord 4y ago
The article links to a memo written by the law school's dean. It's worth a read because it addresses this very topic with legal citations.
Georgelemental 4y ago
If I went to right in front of your house, and blared a horn as loud as possible 24/7, making it impossible for anyone to hear each other—you would call the police and have me arrested, and rightly so. You would not welcome my actions as "free speech."
- slg 4y ago
  I don't think you realized it, but that is exactly my point. I was highlighting the inconsistencies that come from the pro-free speech side of these arguments. No one actually wants unconditional free speech, but some people like to pretend they do. I'm not one of those people. I understand some restrictions on speech are necessary, such as the example you just gave.
  - Georgelemental 4y ago
    I believe in "unconditional free speech" in that I think you have the right to express any opinion*. The manner in which you communicate that opinion can be restricted; otherwise, all laws would be nullified ("but your honor, I murdered Frank to express my disapproval of the Fed's monetary policy! It was free speech!"). However, these restrictions must be agnostic to the content of the speech. * with defamation (edit: and false advertising, perjury, etc) exception, for things you know are lies when you say them.
    - slg 4y ago
      >The manner in which you communicate that opinion can be restricted; This is a direct contradiction of "unconditional free speech". Once you allow the manner of speech to be restricted, free speech is no longer unconditional. You just want to believe in "unconditional free speech" because freedom is great and being pro-freedom makes us all feel warm and fuzzy inside. That ideal can't stand up to the complexities of the real world when the rights of multiple people come into direct conflict with each other. There need to be restrictions in both the manner and the content. The only content restriction you listed was defamation, but I have a feeling you would be against at least some of the following: fraud, perjury, false advertising, copyright infringement, threats, incitement to violence, coercion, blackmail, revenge porn, child porn, and the list goes on and on. Suddenly there are a lot of conditions on that "unconditional" and it becomes less clear why some further restriction such as outlawing hate speech would be a monumental infringement on freedom of speech.
goatlover 4y ago
That's ridiculous! Hecklers trying to prevent someone from speaking aren't themselves trying to speak, they're trying to prevent other people from hearing that speech.