4 ms·

Everyone wants free speech for open society but nobody wants X, 4chan, bots, bullies or pundits! You have to hold your nose people. The price to pay is rabid di

by ipnon 3y ago

Everyone wants free speech for open society but nobody wants X, 4chan, bots, bullies or pundits! You have to hold your nose people. The price to pay is rabid disagreement, dangerous ideas, motivated influence, psychological warfare, public relations, the list goes on. But the alternative is far worse: A civilization where all good ideas go to waste, resentment is momentous, and every problem is intractable without explosive consequences.

krapp 3y ago
By setting one as an alternative to the other, you seem to be implying that rabid disagreement, dangerous ideas, motivated influence and psychological warfare don't lead to momentous resentment, intractable problems or explosive consequences. Rather the purpose of the former is very often the execution of the latter, unless you believe that extremists only ever engage in abstract debate for the sake of pure intellectual exercise. The failure to accept one as an inevitable consequence of the other is intellectually dishonest. You're ignoring second and third order consequences, and you're insisting people simply tolerate harassment, bigotry and threats of violence against themselves simply because you don't want the even the most excremental of ideals to "go to waste," or more likely because you simply find the chaos entertaining. If you want the entire world to be run by the standards of 4chan, great. Go somewhere else, find a dark corner of the internet and piss in your own punchbowl. Adults are trying to have a civilization here.
- drewcoo 3y ago
  > You're ignoring second and third order consequences, and you're insisting people simply tolerate harassment, bigotry and threats of violence against themselves simply because [ad hominems] First, nobody is ignoring second and third order consequences as evidenced by the discussion of consequences in the GP comment. Second, nobody suggested "simply tolerating" because free speech absolutists see speech as a thing they can engage in, not just something that happens to them. There is room for a more rational discussion of this, but please understand that I think you have every right to your style of discourse, too.

by ipnon 3y ago

krapp 3y ago

By setting one as an alternative to the other, you seem to be implying that rabid disagreement, dangerous ideas, motivated influence and psychological warfare don't lead to momentous resentment, intractable problems or explosive consequences. Rather the purpose of the former is very often the execution of the latter, unless you believe that extremists only ever engage in abstract debate for the sake of pure intellectual exercise. The failure to accept one as an inevitable consequence of the other is intellectually dishonest. You're ignoring second and third order consequences, and you're insisting people simply tolerate harassment, bigotry and threats of violence against themselves simply because you don't want the even the most excremental of ideals to "go to waste," or more likely because you simply find the chaos entertaining. If you want the entire world to be run by the standards of 4chan, great. Go somewhere else, find a dark corner of the internet and piss in your own punchbowl. Adults are trying to have a civilization here.

drewcoo 3y ago
> You're ignoring second and third order consequences, and you're insisting people simply tolerate harassment, bigotry and threats of violence against themselves simply because [ad hominems] First, nobody is ignoring second and third order consequences as evidenced by the discussion of consequences in the GP comment. Second, nobody suggested "simply tolerating" because free speech absolutists see speech as a thing they can engage in, not just something that happens to them. There is room for a more rational discussion of this, but please understand that I think you have every right to your style of discourse, too.