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> to where now the "feelings" of individuals are enough to silence speech This is a straw man. People protest against hate speech not because of feelings, but

by gizmo 11y ago

> to where now the "feelings" of individuals are enough to silence speech This is a straw man. People protest against hate speech not because of feelings, but because hate speech is believed to cause harm. Either it is the case that hate speech is harmful (e.g. contributes to hateful actions, contributes to subconscious prejudice, etc) or hate speech is harmless (only feelings are hurt, but there are no other negative consequences). So we're dealing with an empirical claim about the world. Social science departments can -- and do -- research this. Dismissing an entire field of research as "feelings" is unhelpful.

kstrauser 11y ago
> This is a straw man. People protest against hate speech not because of feelings, but because hate speech is believed to cause harm. I think the point was that my hate speech is often your rational, logical opinion (and vice versa). There's a lot of stuff that almost everyone can agree is horrible - when you get into extremes like burning crosses, not many people will argue for it - but the concept of hate speech is often diluted to the point of absurdity in common speech. I've personally all too frequently heard and read people define "hate speech" as "speech disapproving of my behavior or political views". I mean, I've heard sincere rants that supporting gay marriage is anti-religious hate speech. No one but the ranter was likely to agree with him, but there you have it.
- gizmo 11y ago
  It's true that many things are considered hate speech today, that weren't considered hate speech 20 years ago. Gay slurs, misogynistic slurs, ableist slurs, and so on. I absolutely don't consider this dilution to the point of absurdity, though. Yes, the gay marriage example is silly. It's just a classic swicheroo: "They say WE practice hate speech, therefore we'll argue THEY practice hate speech. We're so clever!". It's asinine, because you can apply this kind of inversion to anything. It's not like society is in any way suffering because people are becoming less tolerant of hate speech. The government doesn't jail people for saying politically incorrect things (that would be terrible). It's just that politically incorrect speech gets stigmatized. That's progress.
deciplex 11y ago
What constitutes "hate speech"? I understand and agree with your point regarding speech that is literally advocating violent action against an individual or group, but what about speech that e.g. claims that there is no sexism in tech, or that the evidence a university student committed a rape is not so good, or that such-and-such culture does not promote personal achievement, and so on? You may disagree with these claims, but do they qualify as "hate speech"? In other words: > contributes to hateful actions, contributes to subconscious prejudice, etc How much does the speech have to contribute to these, before it's declared out of bounds? Does even the first paragraph of this post qualify? Is any amount intolerable (ignoring for a moment that "contributes to subconscious prejudice" seems to apply to literally any statement with a truth value at all)? What if the amount it contributes is so small, the speech so nearly benign, that any harm it might do is almost certainly outdone by the harm done by censoring it in the first place? It seems very difficult to get precise, actionable answers to these questions out of anybody. And precise, actionable answers are what's needed, because while nebulous reasoning is probably sufficient for an individual to decide "this person is an asshole and I don't like him and don't want to interact with him", it's generally a bad idea for large groups (conference organizers, university administrations, legislatures) to do the same, because there is a big difference between having an opinion about a person and making rules for people. We probably don't want to find ourselves in a situation where nobody wants to give their personal opinion about anything controversial at all.
- gizmo 11y ago
  Where the boundaries are drawn is a matter of linguistics. That's not all that interesting to me. I think the important question is the extent to which marginalized groups are marginalized, and the extent to which the public discourse contributes to that marginalization. I think the evidence is fairly one-sided, so I treat claims about certain cultures not promoting personal achievement with as much disdain as phrenology. Issues like sexism in tech, campus rape, etc are covered extensively in social science departments everywhere. Stricter enforcement of political correctness should not impede these discussions. And it doesn't, mostly. Of course, internet discussions often turn into shouting matches, and then political correctness can be used as a club. That's not good, but unproductive internet debates aren't a new thing.

by gizmo 11y ago

kstrauser 11y ago

> This is a straw man. People protest against hate speech not because of feelings, but because hate speech is believed to cause harm. I think the point was that my hate speech is often your rational, logical opinion (and vice versa). There's a lot of stuff that almost everyone can agree is horrible - when you get into extremes like burning crosses, not many people will argue for it - but the concept of hate speech is often diluted to the point of absurdity in common speech. I've personally all too frequently heard and read people define "hate speech" as "speech disapproving of my behavior or political views". I mean, I've heard sincere rants that supporting gay marriage is anti-religious hate speech. No one but the ranter was likely to agree with him, but there you have it.

gizmo 11y ago
It's true that many things are considered hate speech today, that weren't considered hate speech 20 years ago. Gay slurs, misogynistic slurs, ableist slurs, and so on. I absolutely don't consider this dilution to the point of absurdity, though. Yes, the gay marriage example is silly. It's just a classic swicheroo: "They say WE practice hate speech, therefore we'll argue THEY practice hate speech. We're so clever!". It's asinine, because you can apply this kind of inversion to anything. It's not like society is in any way suffering because people are becoming less tolerant of hate speech. The government doesn't jail people for saying politically incorrect things (that would be terrible). It's just that politically incorrect speech gets stigmatized. That's progress.

deciplex 11y ago

What constitutes "hate speech"? I understand and agree with your point regarding speech that is literally advocating violent action against an individual or group, but what about speech that e.g. claims that there is no sexism in tech, or that the evidence a university student committed a rape is not so good, or that such-and-such culture does not promote personal achievement, and so on? You may disagree with these claims, but do they qualify as "hate speech"? In other words: > contributes to hateful actions, contributes to subconscious prejudice, etc How much does the speech have to contribute to these, before it's declared out of bounds? Does even the first paragraph of this post qualify? Is any amount intolerable (ignoring for a moment that "contributes to subconscious prejudice" seems to apply to literally any statement with a truth value at all)? What if the amount it contributes is so small, the speech so nearly benign, that any harm it might do is almost certainly outdone by the harm done by censoring it in the first place? It seems very difficult to get precise, actionable answers to these questions out of anybody. And precise, actionable answers are what's needed, because while nebulous reasoning is probably sufficient for an individual to decide "this person is an asshole and I don't like him and don't want to interact with him", it's generally a bad idea for large groups (conference organizers, university administrations, legislatures) to do the same, because there is a big difference between having an opinion about a person and making rules for people. We probably don't want to find ourselves in a situation where nobody wants to give their personal opinion about anything controversial at all.

gizmo 11y ago
Where the boundaries are drawn is a matter of linguistics. That's not all that interesting to me. I think the important question is the extent to which marginalized groups are marginalized, and the extent to which the public discourse contributes to that marginalization. I think the evidence is fairly one-sided, so I treat claims about certain cultures not promoting personal achievement with as much disdain as phrenology. Issues like sexism in tech, campus rape, etc are covered extensively in social science departments everywhere. Stricter enforcement of political correctness should not impede these discussions. And it doesn't, mostly. Of course, internet discussions often turn into shouting matches, and then political correctness can be used as a club. That's not good, but unproductive internet debates aren't a new thing.