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Like any freedom in an interconnected society, freedom of speech and expression is not absolute, but limited when it infringes on other rights: right not to be

Like any freedom in an interconnected society, freedom of speech and expression is not absolute, but limited when it infringes on other rights: right not to be insulted or discriminated against. It's really a rather simple concept entirely void of cencorship. In case of more interest, Kant is a good source for educating oneself: > Kant holds in contrast that there is no innate right to unlimited freedom but only an innate right to freedom “insofar as it can coexist with the freedom of every other in accordance with universal law” (6:237). https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-social-political/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-social-political/

dimensi0nal 2y ago
"you can call people mentally ill but only if they're targets of the regime" isn't exactly in line with the principles of free speech in the first place.
Diggsey 2y ago
The "right to not be insulted" is literally censorship.
- thenaturalist 2y ago
  If you look up the definition of censorship, you'll find that it is not. Censorship is suppression. Insulting someone or discriminating against them is not supression, it's unlawful. If that's not your cup of tea, I'd challenge you to forego any and all (!) ameneties of modern civilized society to enjoy your anarcho-freedom. Don't pretend to be a tough one by sitting in a comfy chair and picking the raisins out of the dough.
  - kcb 2y ago
    Well once you bring law into it then you have to be accurate. Insulting someone is almost never unlawful in the US. And discrimination laws apply to specific matters for specific special classes.
  - seneca 2y ago
    > Insulting someone or discriminating against them is not supression, it's unlawful. It is not, at all, unlawful to insult someone. Your argument is absurd.
  - Diggsey 2y ago
    You seem to be very confused. Even in countries like the UK with weaker freedom-of-speech laws, there are specific exceptions to slander law for insults.
- lesuorac 2y ago
  I do think this is the wrong way to look at this. Prohibiting slurs is like prohibiting nudity in public parks. You're prohibiting an action so that people don't self-prohibit themselves from visiting.
  - rad_gruchalski 2y ago
    It starts with words. Then come books, movies, comedy. ”right not to be insulted”… feeling insulted is an emotion. Learn to deal with your emotions. Yeah, I know… everybody is a winner and what not.
    - lesuorac 2y ago
      Slippery slope applies to everything. First they banned murder, then it was punching, next it was looking. The problem with slippery slope arguments is that you need a slope. --- The thing you're missing is that it's really a "you" problem. Most people don't go on the internet to read slurs just like they don't go to public parks to look at penises. You want to post slurs and so you want to remove the rules against it. The result is just going to be people not visiting 4chan.
      - rad_gruchalski 2y ago
        Your slippery slope looks more like a slippery uphill.
llm_trw 2y ago
So when are we locking up everyone that's insulted Trump?
- thenaturalist 2y ago
  You know full well that Trump is a public figure. Where I live, different protections of personal rights exist for private people, such as typically engaged on social media and public figures. Neither is or ever was charging anyone who writes an insult online a proposed or practiced option but simply deleting derogatory comments.
  - blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
    Your notion of “private people” is entirety arbitrary and is an obvious loophole for abusing the system by depriving some of their rights.
    - mandevil 2y ago
      And yet, it carries legal meaning in the US, thanks to NY Times v. Sullivan and Gertz v. Robert Welch Inc. This is not GP's "notion" this is an actual thing under US law that the US Supreme Court created back in the 1960's. As with all rights, it depends on the country, but in the US Public Figure Doctrine (and the concept of a Limited Purpose Public Figure) are both real things, with a court deciding if Public Figure Doctrine applies to a given case or not.
      - llm_trw 2y ago
        Kant must have been a hell of a philosopher that he could not only predict the laws of the US two centuries after his death, but also use them as a basis for his philosophy.
bdangubic 2y ago
(un)fortunately Kant is not one of the Founding Fathers :)
- thenaturalist 2y ago
  Way to display your pride of your own ignorance, bud.
  - bdangubic 2y ago
    heavy coming from someone who wrote freedom of speech and expression is not absolute, but limited when it infringes on other rights: right not to be insulted or discriminated against with the straight face. your words have insulted me so imma hit up HN to have it be deleted and maybe file a lawsuit as well :)
    - thenaturalist 2y ago
      Ridicule my words all you want, we both know full well that there are legal definitions of slander and that I did not mean censoring anything but legally valid infringements. That's what a (functioning) court system is there for. What's heavy is blowing up a nothingburger in so many words. :D Good luck with your lawsuit!
      - blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
        Ok so if a court system is what matters why do you support abusive censorship from private platforms that go well beyond what the law typically requires.
        cryptonym 2y ago
        Their platform. As long as they are transparent on what they are doing, they should be free to do this. You are also free to not use it. Being deceptive is more questionable than doing your own censorship on your own platform. Removing things you don't like without justification while claiming your platform is freedom-land would be much more problematic. Same with shady algorithm favouring specific content without transparency.
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
[flagged]
- CuriousCosmic 2y ago
  > there is no way you would be censored (banned) for calling a woman a woman or a man a man. Now, speaking biological and factual truths can get you censored You can claim this and reach to the transphobic dog whistle but these "biological truths" aren't actually true and the only world in which they are is a grossly oversimplified version of reality that ignores all of the messy complexity of how biology actually works. This isn't a matter of "truths being insulting or discriminating". It's a matter of stopping people from using their complete misunderstanding of biology as an excuse to try and harass, other, or discriminate against groups out of prejudice.
  - dani__german 2y ago
    to bring up the extremely rare occurrences of intersex people as some sort of justification for saying "male and female, and thus men and women are hopelessly useless/simplistic concepts in our world" is not a compelling argument. Biological reality exists, it defines us. No amount of socialization or education will convince a banana to write a symphony. In much the same vein, men and women exist. We can fool ourselves into thinking a person can completely cross the divide between them, but it simply is something we tell ourselves/friends, an idea its not currently polite to deny. It is not objective reality itself.
    - CuriousCosmic 2y ago
      The prevalence of being intersex/having a disorder of sex development is just as high as the prevalence of being trans. Both of them sit at around 1-2% of the population. That number may be surprising but in the majority of cases these people "pass" without the average person being able to identity them on the street. And my point isn't to try and claim that just because intersex people exist that the terms are useless. My point is that the definitions people try to ascribe to those terms are statistically more likely to exclude other groups of people (who the definitions are not intended to exclude) than they are to exclude trans people. Definitions that don't work: - Defined by "passing"/looking like what society expects a given sex to look iike: Refuted extremely commonly by queer people of all kinds. Also just wildly subjective and impractical. - Defined by chromosomes/karyotype: Rule broken by prevalence of intersex people. Additionally from a biological perspective so much more goes into sex determination during gestation and afterwards than just the karyotype. - Defined by presence of breasts: Indistinguishable at birth and defined by hormone levels. Rule broken by numerous medical conditions. A woman is not less of a woman for getting a masectomy or double masectomy. A man is not less of a man because medication or hormone levels cause them to grow breasts. - Defined by the presence of primary sex organs (testes/ovaries): Rule broken by numerous medical conditions. A woman is not less of a woman for getting an oophorectomy and a man is not less of a man for getting an orchirectomy. Likewise a woman who has lived her entire life as a woman who finds out that her ovaries differentiated as testes is not any less of a woman nor the reverse for a man. And both of the aforementioned surgeries are very common. - Defined by presence of secondary sex organs: Rule broken by numerous medical conditions. Bottom surgeries for trans people arguably make up less of the share of genitoplasties performed than the numerous other reasons (recovery from trauma or disfigurement, recovery from cancer, etc). And surgeries like hysterectomies occur in up to 20% of women depending on the region. Having or not having one or more secondary sex organs isn't a reliable differentiating factor and unless you are storing photographs of genitalia from birth and sharing them with every person or organisation that want's to know your sex then this isn't a reliable method either. It's unnecessarily complex and/or it's unnecessary exclusive. - Defined by hormone levels: Rule broken commonly by intersex people. Commonly broken by people with various medical conditions and/or medical interventions. A woman with low estrogen levels isn't less of a woman. A woman with high testosterone (such as due to PCOS which occurs in as high as 20% of women) doesn't make a woman any less of a woman. The reverse goes for men (such as men taking testosterone suppressors or blockers for diseases like prostate cancer which occurs in around 12% of men). ---- At the end of the day you only really have one appraoch and that's to just be more precise, use better terminology, and use the necessary information where it's needed. - Government and social documents (drivers licenses, passports, ID cards, etc) should just use gender. There's no reason to use anything else and it doesn't actually benefit anyone otherwise. - Medical records should indicate known presence/absence of organs and hormone levels. Awareness of which organs are or aren't present is only important due to care relevant to those organs and their interaction with the rest of the body. And hormone levels should be documented because the majority of medical distinctions for healthcare purposes (risks, dosage changes, interactions, effects on the body, etc) are tied to hormone levels. If someone is manually controlling or augmenting/manipulating their hormone levels that's relevant for care and it serves the patient better to be explicit about these types of things than to attempt to tie them to a single binary differentiator and make assumptions. - Access to bathrooms, changing rooms, etc: Just let people use the bathrooms they feel most comfortable with? It's not hard, it's not complicated. If a lady or a lad is being a creep then someone can do something about it but that has nothing to do with any indicators other than "they are being a creep". - Sports, etc: Either just divide it by gender or drop gender/sex based division entirely and divide it by skill. This is such an exceptionally small non-issue and protections against this perceived incursion have only contributed to discrimination. There is no reason why women's sports restricts competitors on their natural and/or nominal testosterone levels but men's sports do not. In competitive women's sports abnormally high natural testosterone is disqualifying but in men's sports it's a permitted competitive advantage. Additionally with regards to sports records, gendered performance differences have been rapidly closing in on a pace where they may disappear entirely within a century or less. And in particular, with non-professional sports there is absolutely zero reason for exclusionary restrictions. In those environments this is a complete and total non-issue.
dani__german 2y ago
"The right to not be insulted" is not a right at all. if you don't like what the other person is saying, your recourse is to leave, not to imprison the other person, or some derivative thereof.
DiggyJohnson 2y ago
What is this “right to not be insulted”?
CrimsonRain 2y ago
I insult you. What now?

dimensi0nal 2y ago

"you can call people mentally ill but only if they're targets of the regime" isn't exactly in line with the principles of free speech in the first place.

Diggsey 2y ago

The "right to not be insulted" is literally censorship.

thenaturalist 2y ago
If you look up the definition of censorship, you'll find that it is not. Censorship is suppression. Insulting someone or discriminating against them is not supression, it's unlawful. If that's not your cup of tea, I'd challenge you to forego any and all (!) ameneties of modern civilized society to enjoy your anarcho-freedom. Don't pretend to be a tough one by sitting in a comfy chair and picking the raisins out of the dough.
- kcb 2y ago
  Well once you bring law into it then you have to be accurate. Insulting someone is almost never unlawful in the US. And discrimination laws apply to specific matters for specific special classes.
- seneca 2y ago
  > Insulting someone or discriminating against them is not supression, it's unlawful. It is not, at all, unlawful to insult someone. Your argument is absurd.
- Diggsey 2y ago
  You seem to be very confused. Even in countries like the UK with weaker freedom-of-speech laws, there are specific exceptions to slander law for insults.
lesuorac 2y ago
I do think this is the wrong way to look at this. Prohibiting slurs is like prohibiting nudity in public parks. You're prohibiting an action so that people don't self-prohibit themselves from visiting.
- rad_gruchalski 2y ago
  It starts with words. Then come books, movies, comedy. ”right not to be insulted”… feeling insulted is an emotion. Learn to deal with your emotions. Yeah, I know… everybody is a winner and what not.
  - lesuorac 2y ago
    Slippery slope applies to everything. First they banned murder, then it was punching, next it was looking. The problem with slippery slope arguments is that you need a slope. --- The thing you're missing is that it's really a "you" problem. Most people don't go on the internet to read slurs just like they don't go to public parks to look at penises. You want to post slurs and so you want to remove the rules against it. The result is just going to be people not visiting 4chan.
    - rad_gruchalski 2y ago
      Your slippery slope looks more like a slippery uphill.

llm_trw 2y ago

So when are we locking up everyone that's insulted Trump?

thenaturalist 2y ago
You know full well that Trump is a public figure. Where I live, different protections of personal rights exist for private people, such as typically engaged on social media and public figures. Neither is or ever was charging anyone who writes an insult online a proposed or practiced option but simply deleting derogatory comments.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  Your notion of “private people” is entirety arbitrary and is an obvious loophole for abusing the system by depriving some of their rights.
  - mandevil 2y ago
    And yet, it carries legal meaning in the US, thanks to NY Times v. Sullivan and Gertz v. Robert Welch Inc. This is not GP's "notion" this is an actual thing under US law that the US Supreme Court created back in the 1960's. As with all rights, it depends on the country, but in the US Public Figure Doctrine (and the concept of a Limited Purpose Public Figure) are both real things, with a court deciding if Public Figure Doctrine applies to a given case or not.
    - llm_trw 2y ago
      Kant must have been a hell of a philosopher that he could not only predict the laws of the US two centuries after his death, but also use them as a basis for his philosophy.

bdangubic 2y ago

(un)fortunately Kant is not one of the Founding Fathers :)

thenaturalist 2y ago
Way to display your pride of your own ignorance, bud.
- bdangubic 2y ago
  heavy coming from someone who wrote freedom of speech and expression is not absolute, but limited when it infringes on other rights: right not to be insulted or discriminated against with the straight face. your words have insulted me so imma hit up HN to have it be deleted and maybe file a lawsuit as well :)
  - thenaturalist 2y ago
    Ridicule my words all you want, we both know full well that there are legal definitions of slander and that I did not mean censoring anything but legally valid infringements. That's what a (functioning) court system is there for. What's heavy is blowing up a nothingburger in so many words. :D Good luck with your lawsuit!
    - blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
      Ok so if a court system is what matters why do you support abusive censorship from private platforms that go well beyond what the law typically requires.
      - cryptonym 2y ago
        Their platform. As long as they are transparent on what they are doing, they should be free to do this. You are also free to not use it. Being deceptive is more questionable than doing your own censorship on your own platform. Removing things you don't like without justification while claiming your platform is freedom-land would be much more problematic. Same with shady algorithm favouring specific content without transparency.

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago

[flagged]

CuriousCosmic 2y ago
> there is no way you would be censored (banned) for calling a woman a woman or a man a man. Now, speaking biological and factual truths can get you censored You can claim this and reach to the transphobic dog whistle but these "biological truths" aren't actually true and the only world in which they are is a grossly oversimplified version of reality that ignores all of the messy complexity of how biology actually works. This isn't a matter of "truths being insulting or discriminating". It's a matter of stopping people from using their complete misunderstanding of biology as an excuse to try and harass, other, or discriminate against groups out of prejudice.
- dani__german 2y ago
  to bring up the extremely rare occurrences of intersex people as some sort of justification for saying "male and female, and thus men and women are hopelessly useless/simplistic concepts in our world" is not a compelling argument. Biological reality exists, it defines us. No amount of socialization or education will convince a banana to write a symphony. In much the same vein, men and women exist. We can fool ourselves into thinking a person can completely cross the divide between them, but it simply is something we tell ourselves/friends, an idea its not currently polite to deny. It is not objective reality itself.
  - CuriousCosmic 2y ago
    The prevalence of being intersex/having a disorder of sex development is just as high as the prevalence of being trans. Both of them sit at around 1-2% of the population. That number may be surprising but in the majority of cases these people "pass" without the average person being able to identity them on the street. And my point isn't to try and claim that just because intersex people exist that the terms are useless. My point is that the definitions people try to ascribe to those terms are statistically more likely to exclude other groups of people (who the definitions are not intended to exclude) than they are to exclude trans people. Definitions that don't work: - Defined by "passing"/looking like what society expects a given sex to look iike: Refuted extremely commonly by queer people of all kinds. Also just wildly subjective and impractical. - Defined by chromosomes/karyotype: Rule broken by prevalence of intersex people. Additionally from a biological perspective so much more goes into sex determination during gestation and afterwards than just the karyotype. - Defined by presence of breasts: Indistinguishable at birth and defined by hormone levels. Rule broken by numerous medical conditions. A woman is not less of a woman for getting a masectomy or double masectomy. A man is not less of a man because medication or hormone levels cause them to grow breasts. - Defined by the presence of primary sex organs (testes/ovaries): Rule broken by numerous medical conditions. A woman is not less of a woman for getting an oophorectomy and a man is not less of a man for getting an orchirectomy. Likewise a woman who has lived her entire life as a woman who finds out that her ovaries differentiated as testes is not any less of a woman nor the reverse for a man. And both of the aforementioned surgeries are very common. - Defined by presence of secondary sex organs: Rule broken by numerous medical conditions. Bottom surgeries for trans people arguably make up less of the share of genitoplasties performed than the numerous other reasons (recovery from trauma or disfigurement, recovery from cancer, etc). And surgeries like hysterectomies occur in up to 20% of women depending on the region. Having or not having one or more secondary sex organs isn't a reliable differentiating factor and unless you are storing photographs of genitalia from birth and sharing them with every person or organisation that want's to know your sex then this isn't a reliable method either. It's unnecessarily complex and/or it's unnecessary exclusive. - Defined by hormone levels: Rule broken commonly by intersex people. Commonly broken by people with various medical conditions and/or medical interventions. A woman with low estrogen levels isn't less of a woman. A woman with high testosterone (such as due to PCOS which occurs in as high as 20% of women) doesn't make a woman any less of a woman. The reverse goes for men (such as men taking testosterone suppressors or blockers for diseases like prostate cancer which occurs in around 12% of men). ---- At the end of the day you only really have one appraoch and that's to just be more precise, use better terminology, and use the necessary information where it's needed. - Government and social documents (drivers licenses, passports, ID cards, etc) should just use gender. There's no reason to use anything else and it doesn't actually benefit anyone otherwise. - Medical records should indicate known presence/absence of organs and hormone levels. Awareness of which organs are or aren't present is only important due to care relevant to those organs and their interaction with the rest of the body. And hormone levels should be documented because the majority of medical distinctions for healthcare purposes (risks, dosage changes, interactions, effects on the body, etc) are tied to hormone levels. If someone is manually controlling or augmenting/manipulating their hormone levels that's relevant for care and it serves the patient better to be explicit about these types of things than to attempt to tie them to a single binary differentiator and make assumptions. - Access to bathrooms, changing rooms, etc: Just let people use the bathrooms they feel most comfortable with? It's not hard, it's not complicated. If a lady or a lad is being a creep then someone can do something about it but that has nothing to do with any indicators other than "they are being a creep". - Sports, etc: Either just divide it by gender or drop gender/sex based division entirely and divide it by skill. This is such an exceptionally small non-issue and protections against this perceived incursion have only contributed to discrimination. There is no reason why women's sports restricts competitors on their natural and/or nominal testosterone levels but men's sports do not. In competitive women's sports abnormally high natural testosterone is disqualifying but in men's sports it's a permitted competitive advantage. Additionally with regards to sports records, gendered performance differences have been rapidly closing in on a pace where they may disappear entirely within a century or less. And in particular, with non-professional sports there is absolutely zero reason for exclusionary restrictions. In those environments this is a complete and total non-issue.

dani__german 2y ago

"The right to not be insulted" is not a right at all. if you don't like what the other person is saying, your recourse is to leave, not to imprison the other person, or some derivative thereof.

DiggyJohnson 2y ago

What is this “right to not be insulted”?

CrimsonRain 2y ago

I insult you. What now?