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> Speech is violence. No it isn't. Speech can be refuted by other speech. If you offend me, I can decide how to internalize it. If you do real physical violenc
by ashton314 3y ago
> Speech is violence.
No it isn't. Speech can be refuted by other speech. If you offend me, I can decide how to internalize it. If you do real physical violence to me, I don't have a choice.
Yes, there are dangerous ideas, but I don't want to trust anyone to tell me (or worse, the public at large) what I can and cannot say or think. I want good ideas to win out by persuading me and others, not by being handed down from on high as dogma.
- mrguyorama 3y ago>If you offend me, I can decide how to internalize it. No you can't. Millions of emotional abusers have caused harm strictly through speech. You can't "control" how a hunk of fat doing a bunch of chemistry reacts to sound waves because that hunk of fat explicitly evolved to react to sound waves in physiological ways! Trauma is a real thing. People can be harmed in medically discernible ways through nothing more than words. Those words represent a thought in the head of whoever spoke them, and your brain knows that. Your brain knows words are more than "just words" and reacts accordingly.
- vacuity 3y agoIt's at times like these that I wish we could somehow evolve past our fragile psychology soon. There's only so much theory that can overcome human limitations. I do think everyone should have a platform online, but there would be robust filtering capabilities so people can hear just from who they like. In person, restraining orders and the like seems reasonable. Implementation is a different matter, but I think that's a reasonable balance between free speech and abuse prevention.