It's not about ousting a President for not being principled; it's about ousting a President for committing a crime. Perjury, and particularly obstruction, are serious charges. — Michael

I agree, but some purgers are worse than others. Give and inch of rope to the white house and they'll instantly stretch it into a mile though. Obstruction charges are more serious in general (purgery IS a kind of obstruction i suppose), but here too some obstructions are worse than others. The main grievance I would have is that the leader of America should be the first person held to the high standards of the law, not the exception. It was founded on the rejection of unequal justice, and it's not hard to see that setting the precedent that the president can lie under oath (or obstruct justice) in some situations is dangerous to say the least.

Article I charged that Clinton lied to the grand jury concerning:

the nature and details of his relationship with Lewinsky
prior false statements he made in the Jones deposition
prior false statements he allowed his lawyer to make characterizing Lewinsky's affidavit
his attempts to tamper with witnesses


Article III charged Clinton with attempting to obstruct justice in the Jones case by:

encouraging Lewinsky to file a false affidavit
encouraging Lewinsky to give false testimony if and when she was called to testify
concealing gifts he had given to Lewinsky that had been subpoenaed
attempting to secure a job for Lewinsky to influence her testimony
permitting his lawyer to make false statements characterizing Lewinsky's affidavit
attempting to tamper with the possible testimony of his secretary Betty Curie
making false and misleading statements to potential grand jury witnesses — Michael

Well it's not like he's lied under oath... Yet... If Mueller actually subpoenas Trump it wouldn't be surprising to see him talk his way into trouble. I'm not sure on what basis this alleged subpoena would get stamped though (the scope of Mueller's investigation seems very broad). The firing of Comey amidst the Russian investigations or the somehow related Stormy storm? Time will tell...

I think the chief prosecutor had it right: "A failure to convict will make the statement that lying under oath, while unpleasant and to be avoided, is not all that serious...We have reduced lying under oath to a breach of etiquette, but only if you are the President...And now let us all take our place in history on the side of honor, and, oh, yes, let right be done."

There shouldn't be different rules for the President. — Michael

I can see the argument for making an exception. Ousting a president because he's not principled enough to obey the oath when only his reputation is at stake. At the same time, setting any precedent that lying under oath, especially the president, is sometimes O.K seems to grease an obvious slope. The president lying under oath seems to controvert the American constitutional principal of self-governance and transparent democracy

Leave it to the old-school upper-house to protect a man's right to lie about sex :D

"why I NEVER!".

I think they are... If it happened to Old Bill who was quite popular, it can surely happen to the scandal sluice box that is President Trump (though I think Trump will proclaim glorious resignation).

What actually happened to Clinton again? (quasi-impeachment?)

In any case, I've been saying it all along: a circus can only go on for so long before it becomes nauseating and dark... One of these hooks will catch...

Seriously? Fantasy is better than the real thing? We're talking about sex, right? Nothing is better than the real thing. — T Clark

Our fantasies generally depict idealized forms and features. In the personal amphitheater of our own minds and imagination we magnify and focus on whatever we fancy.

The real McCoy is quite good but often it fails to exceed expectations, anticipations.

We chase the fleshy dragon in reality, but we can only ever catch it again in our dreams.

Here's an analogy that might help:

Ever hear of 'learning machines'? Long story short, they're very complicated algorithms that are in fact too complicated for us to fully understand once they really get going (example: a computers are better at Ches sand 'Go' than any living human.

So let's say we watch a learning computer trounce a chess master in a series of matches. What did we just see?

Two machines, one silicon, one biological, who "followed their internal programming" which largely consists of learned experiences, and the silicon machine proved the better decision maker. We can easily imagine how the computer is determined and lacks what we can call "hard free-will", and if we learn enough physics, biology, neuroscience, etc, we also begin to see the human machine as likewise lacking hard free-will.

Nothing has hard free will, as far as determinism and causation are concerned.

But...

Let's say in the middle of the computer Vs human chess match, you kept shining a laser pointer into the eyes of the human player, or you put drugs in his beverage: you would be coercing him and interfering with the set of decisions he would have made were he not coerced by some external force which is not a part of "him". If you stuck a powerful magnet up against the processor of the computer player, it would likewise screw with and coerce the set of decisions which it would have made had it not been interfered with.

This idea of not being interfered with doesn't define "hard free-will" (which may be undefinable once you really get into it), instead it defines a compatibilist notion of free will. We do make choices, and even though the choices we make are inevitable, the decision making entity that is "me" can be approximately blamed and credited for its decisions when it makes them from a reasonably uncoerced state.

Imagine two bank robbers; one robs because the thrill of violence is a central part of what they enjoy and who they are, while the other robs a bank because his child has been kidnapped and he has been extorted into doing so. Neither of them has hard free-will, but it's plain to see, in the pragmatic sense, which type of robber we need to sentence with prison time. Likewise, if a learning machine or a chess grand-master loses because of magnets or drugs, we won't feel that it says something about their chess skill.

We have decisions to make but the outcome of our decisions might be wholly pre-determined. But, the more decisions we have available to us, and the less our decisions are coerced by impermanent and irregular environmental forces, the more we must be pragmatically or in practice held responsible for our actions.

One sensical way to think of compatibilist free-will is in terms of degrees of freedom in decision making available to a deciding entity; the more visible options, the more free we can hold them to be. There are of course many opportunities and decisions available to us of which we are simply not aware (possible technologies, routes, strategies. solutions, etc...). And the more we learn about the biological realities of human behavior, the more we realize that we are subconsciously coerced even in our thought processes concerning the options which are known to us (fallacies, biases, emotions, etc).

Someone once employed the now fabled "Twinky defense" in a murder trial, where the lawyer and expert witness successfully argued that the defendant's extraordinary Twinky consumption habits caused a sugar fluctuations so wild in his body that it dis-regulated neuro-chemicals in his brain, causing him to essentially become temporarily insane, and thus we held him less accountable for the murder.

In the legal sphere they call these "mitigating factors" which Wiki defines as :a mitigating factor is any information or evidence presented to the court regarding the defendant or the circumstances of the crime that might result in reduced charges or a lesser sentence.

If we don't have free will, we still have the illusion of free will, and so basically everything works out the same in the end.

Jack may not have had free will in his actions, but since we don't want to live in a world where we're agents leak documents for no good reason, it's in our interest to take action against jack to protect ourselves.

No free will does absolve us of absolute moral guilt, but we are still held responsible for our actions on a practical basis. When clear outside coercion causes people to do misdeeds we don't hold them as responsible as we would if their actions were a normal result of their desires and behavior (a serial rapist for instance: they may not have free will, and so we probably shouldn't treat them inhumanely when we capture them, but capture them we should).

The compatibilist sense of no free will can be summed by by "an absence of external coercion", the legal definition of free will. There's always some coercion from our environments so the lines can become quite blurred, but essentially the less coerced you are the more we must pragmatically hold you accountable for your actions.

The fantasy that is created in the mind by words read, can rarely be matched by a partner in bed. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

It's very true that the fantasies we construct amidst mystery are generally more appealing than the reality behind the drapes (they grow and change along with our personal and changing desires, perceptions of perfection, etc..).

These social games we play with one-another are cerebral pleasures in the same kind of way. The anticipation/anxiety, the second-guessing, the mind-games: they're personalized and idealized emotional thrill rides.

I don't have the studies on hand, and this at least holds true for rats (the best known analogue for humans), but the more well and healthily stimulated by environmental and social interaction we are (the more we drink the psychoactive cocktail of human emotion), the less prone to depression and substance abuse we will be, on average. It's in our nature to seek stimulation.

Not all games (or players) are created equal, that's for certain, but what some see as diverse and natural others see as aberrant and dangerous or broken (progressivism Vs. puritanism). At times it seems so silly and arbitrary, so absurd. Perhaps it's down to the inability of most individuals to really appreciate the scope and scale of difference and diversity that exists between us all.

Can't a man write satirical erotica for a woman without everyone trying to make it about sex?

It's 2018 people...

Why all the hand wringing, rationalizing. TL has made it pretty clear she doesn't find it welcome. Does anyone interpret her response differently than that? What more is there to say? — T Clark

Homoerotic ritualized constipated war my friend. Within it all is fair.

I've been quite careful not to cross any tangible lines though, and satire is one of the ways I enjoy expressing my ideas which in this thread have been nothing but relevant and justified.

I think TimeLine can speak for herself about whether or not "it" is welcome, but perhaps you misunderstand. "It" is an earnestly expressed defense of my ideas, which are relevant to the thread, and which have been specifically shat upon by TimeLine in this thread well before my entrance here.

I'm hand-wringing because I enjoy cheeky dialogue, and rationalizing because evidently I'm of imprecise wit.

What more is there to say? Given that the straightforward and serious bulks of my posts have been ignored, I don't know. It's all nonsense so far, which might help explain the disparate or desperate facets of my approach.

I did put effort into the however brief satirical scene on page 13 and wanted to know if anyone else was entertained by it. Did it actually make anyone uncomfortable?

You are not a peacock. If you were a peacock, I would be mesmerised, your feathers would attract me to a dizzying point of hypnosis and I would be compelled to give you all that you desire without even knowing why. Right now, all that I desire is to eat a hazelnut sundae in a massive bowl with chocolate sauce and wafer and crushed whatever sweet thing I can find in the cupboard before crying myself to sleep. — TimeLine

I am not a peacock, no, just a humble illustrator, but the man you recalled from the gym was, and while you were not taken with his strut and plume, you recalled him so vividly and described a classical situation of sexual rejection as if to reminisce about a previous victory. Appraising the man as you did, also reminiscing about it, is a part of the same game I described in fiction. No I'm not talking about a game between you and me, but the games you play with yourself and everyone else. You can't not play. How you perceive yourself is a game, how you present yourself is a game. Human interaction is lousy with unavoidable games. Not playing - stoicism really - is just another way to play.

So I implore you to give them a chance. Make them fun, interesting, and challenging. Get your hands and ego dirty.

You're more like a shaved bird sitting awkwardly in the corner chirping. — TimeLine

(1) lame because the first part attempted to sincerely paint a romantic and sexually tense moment, yet it didn't. — Hanover

Tense, yes, romantic, no. I was going for more of a lust portrayal. Lame is something I associate with all erotica so I've hit my mark here. Though, if it did appear sincere I really didn't do so bad. Satire is better if it feels authentic.

creepy because it felt like you were truly trying to woo someone with your comments but they were (1) lame — Hanover

:chin:

Hmm...

Perhaps if improperly read this can be seen as a genuine attempt at literary seduction, but the tone was supposed to be light and comedic ("flexing his calves like some super-star bus-driver", "inexplicably accentuated bulges and impossibly coiffed garnishes"). Her description of the man in the gym seemed... Descriptive... I decided to imagine what could happen if the man was more insistent that she return his serve. I tried to keep it appropriately silly without destroying the narrative (until the end), perhaps in failure.

I had hoped that the implicit barriers of time, space, and anonymity would have prevented anyone from questioning my motives so it could be read in it's proper context. Rest assured the aforementioned relief this was meant to provide was of a comedic nature... TimeLine does like a man who can make her laugh after-all!

If by "comments" you mean anything I've said outside of the gym scene, that would indeed creep me out as well. Lest I protest too much, please point them out :yikes:

The punch line (the fart) was (3) not absurd, but simply a faux pas that could actually happen. — Hanover

In terms of (3), absurd isn't a fart, it's a penguin flying into someone's vagina and pecking through their cervix to extract their 12 year old son who's annoyed because you disrupted his poetry reading. — Hanover

I think penguin-play is a third chapter theme at the earliest.

The whole point of my attempted discussion with TimeLine was to criticize her ironic game-like rejection of 'the games we play' as if she has ascended to inhumanity. See seems to dislike how un-serious it all is; petty sexual games are highly superficial and over-played. They're silly in her view; absurd. A narrative in which she is compelled to play is therefore funny to me.

And absurd can go two ways, generally, tragic or comedic. Penguins mixed with cervices isn't so funny, so it must be sad. Succumbing to a universally silly human biological function in the middle of quasi serious moment is, however, relatable and funny, and it illustrates my point that we are the games we play; the games are unavoidable bodily functions. The more one buys into the scene until then the more absurd the ending becomes. By trying to force TimeLine to at least pretend-to-imagine herself in such a situation I had hoped that she could begin to see the games we play as fun and funny instead of sad and pathetic (a view which she is somewhat less than reluctant to dip her brush in). I was trying to make light.

I do appreciate the criticism, but I think your expectations for a 50 word satirical imagined excerpt constructed from an out of context fragment and contrived to be a comedic anti-thesis to the described behavior of TimeLine, are a bit too high. I often find myself trying to write less rather than more, but I think you would agree laying the groundwork to create a genuine feeling of romance would not be prudent for a discussion. If it genuinely seemed creepy, either it's not silly enough or it's too long. I did attempt to mimic the style of erotica, so there's some unavoidably innate creepiness there, but I don't think your second objection helps me at all, as I am not the male peacock in this narrative (the actual man in the gym referenced by TimeLine is), a point which I'm now left to wonder might be lost on my muse herself.

I've taken your advice on board though: scratch cheap romance, go straight for lust; Keep it silly rather than creepy (penguins for instance); and acquire actual literary skills!

Alas, my love, you do me wrong,
To cast me off discourteously.
For I have loved you well and long,
Delighting in your company.

Alas, my love, that you should own
A heart of wanton vanity,
So must I meditate alone
Upon your insincerity.

If you intend thus to disdain,
It does the more enrapture me,
And even so, I still remain
A lover in captivity.

Thou couldst desire no earthly thing,
But still thou hadst it readily.
Thy music still to play and sing;
And yet thou wouldst not love me.

I bought thee kerchiefs for thy head,
That were wrought fine and gallantly;
I kept thee at both board and bed,
Which cost my purse well-favoredly.

They set thee up, they took thee down,
They served thee with humility;
Thy foot might not once touch the ground,
And yet thou wouldst not love me.

What exactly did you expect to get from me? The post that I wrote against you was about this very thing where you and Agu where writing page after page of nonsense. Sorry to break your heart, but dude. :mask: — TimeLine

Page after page? Guilty.. But nonsense? Nonsense?! Nonsense!...

Post-length is the mark of true passion; I appeal to it openly! I do in fact put effort into the things I write. If you are truly interested in serious discussion, there are very serious elements in my post(s). I try to make them Barnum style: something for everyone. You may find many of the games I play tedious or repugnant, but I don't, just as I may find the games you play ironic and challenged, while you find them honest and straightforward. Do you not want to play honestly and openly?

In fact I think I have been far more honest and straight-forward than you give me credit, and I've done nothing but reciprocate your advances. Yes: I'm crass; I beat around the glorious bush; I'm necromancing the "tome-format"; I use semicolons with reckless abandon, but I'm honest.

What I hoped to show you is that you think you're refusing to play, but it's inevitable in any engagement. Casually stepping on others in anecdotes to beget further interaction is the kind of game each of us intuitively plays without even realizing it. When it comes to sex (the content of my and Aug's intellectually bankrupt massive essays) the games are obvious and unavoidable. Mocking the peacock is easy but it takes balls to strut, and mockery is an essential part of the game. It can even conceal flattery (ex: "he thrusts his crotch about before getting up and walking away in slow motion, his arms protracted out like he is carrying two sheep in between them.").

We don't like petty superficial games, we share that, but there's no avoiding emotional games of some kind. Try to avoid them all and you'll only wind up losing. Instead, imbue them with meaning and purpose; make them fun. Games are supposed to be fun after-all. And so to avoid the risk of making this particular game even more un-enjoyable for you, I'll end it here.

Ah, TimeLine, now farewell, adieu,
To God I pray to prosper thee,
For I am still thy lover true,
Come once again and love me.

...but then reality crashed thru the fantasy. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Indeed! But in the genre of erotic tragic comedy, the fantasy-crashing contrast reality provides is like a happy-sad-sobering bucket of water in the face. We're jolted awake from a sweet dream and left with the hilarious and bitter pill of our own human peculiarities and the taboo mystery of what might have been. A spoon-full of sexy sugar helps the ironic absurdism go down!

P.S. Do you really think it's well written? I've never been roused to write anything like this before, but its obvious satiric element aside, I do hope it struck a pleasing note. I'm anxious to hear back from my muse :D

I had a feeling you were a member of the itty bitty titty committee. — TimeLine

Snap! Crack! Zing!

'I like small titties... (Big'uns too...).

But it depends on how she's sellin em'.

In all living memory, summary mammary mummery is sexual gunnery; summarily skull-duggery; flim-flammery for jiggery-pokery :D

Women are not picky — TimeLine

Women are individuals, and some of them are picky as hell! (same goes for men while we're at it)

But there's also valid evolutionary cause that may be responsible for an evident trend of 'pickiness' among females, on average, when compared to males.

Reproductively, evolutionary, pregnancy necessitates massive investment on the part of the female whereas in some situations the only cost to the male is the energy spent on a single orgasm. Pregnancy is a very big deal for women, and hence there's a selective force which chooses "pickiness" because the mothers with the foresight to choose the right partner and at the right have tended to be more successful. The same logic also applies to men, but there is an additional option which is not open to women: men can go around and impregnate many women without directly contributing to the rearing and therein achieve reproductive success through sheer strength of numbers.

Sexual dimorphism in humans is actually quite varied, but there are definitive differences between men and women that result from our biological history. We can find examples of women who are more masculine than the average man, and vice versa, but on average there are measurable differences of many kinds. Without getting straight into "intelligence" it's quite easy to see why when it comes to reproduction women have incentive to be much more selective than men.

I can accept that you aren't picky, TimeLine, (though experience seems to contradict this :)) but it's an undeniable fact that men, on average, will basically take any opportunity for sexual gratification while women employ a much more rigorous checklist.

We are confused... — TimeLine

We're all confused; life is complicated, but I would even say that on average men are more confused than females. Women have a more rigidly defined biological role than men, or at least, the reproductive function women perform is a limiting factor for success of the species as a whole. Evolutionarily speaking, this has caused women to converge toward forms more ideal for child birth and rearing, while men have been diverged in many other directions (fighting other males, doing physical labor, hunting, etc...). To speak metaphorically, evolution knows that women need hips of a certain ratio and a reduced penchant for violence if they are to be good child rearers, but it doesn't always know what the best strategy for males is, and so, it rolls more dice with the male form, sometimes producing 'pair-bonding' homologous mates who can both raise children well, or, heterologous 'sexually dimorphic' mates where the male is suited to an environmental niche of some kind (or many) and the female more closely to the reproductive niche.

A real world result of this is that the bell curve distributions of traits for women are generally tighter grouped around the human average, whereas men exist in greater populations at both extremes of the curve. This is why there are more genius males than there are genius females, and also why there are more mentally incompetent males than there are mentally incompetent females; sometimes communities need geniuses and sometimes they need ditch-diggers, but they always need functioning wombs and mothers; fatherhood is secondary beyond sperm donation.

Men are more confused because we're more varied in general (unless 'confusion' is a paradoxically ideal for motherhood). We're less picky on average, but more universal plugs are attracted to more sockets which makes us thralls to our sexuality more easily than women.

Tabula rasa was misguided; environment isn't everything. Your biology does play significant role in determining who you are, who you will become, what makes you happy, what kind of games you like to play, but there's some good news: you aren't defined by the average genetic makeup of your gender or ethnicity because you have your own individual genetic makeup. Women can be successful geniuses and unsuccessful criminals too! But if we ignore the biological reality of the way many people just are - the strutting peacock, the shrinking violet, the red-assed baboon - then we might have a hard time trying to understand why they are unhappy or unfulfilled.

Diversity and divergence is a natural evolution-endowed feature of humans, and while many of us do not conform to the emotional and cognitive average of our species (we look on in our clean white lab-coats, amused, bemused, fascinated and disgusted) the conclusion that the bulk of what appear to be absurd and sometimes homoerotic rituals shared between developmentally constipated monkeys are in fact among the highest expressions of their nature. To interrupt these rituals is sacrilegious, as it is into and for these rituals which people inexplicably pour and sacrifice the contents of their finite life and existence, usually in some real or fictitious pursuit of happiness.

I do feel I am roundly misunderstood by many, and I accept my share of the blame, so by way of apology to you, please accept my continuation of what appears to be comic-tragic-erotica. It's experimental of course (isn't everything?) but hopefully it can offer you relief of some kind!

"...mostly wondering why all of a sudden that guy at the gym is flexing his chest muscles as he stands in front of us to try and get our attention, doing some random groin stretch where he thrusts his crotch about before getting up and walking away in slow motion, his arms protracted out like he is carrying two sheep in between them.

Call me peculiar, but I like a guy who makes me laugh. As in with them, and not at them." — TimeLine

whispered TimeLine, in her familiar hushed, mousey tone. Suddenly, he turned.

"If you want to laugh just have a look at those abs of yours." he said, with a condescending smile.

"What is going on?" she thought. "What the hell does this gu-"

"If you want me to get you into it..." he said while approaching her and flexing his calves like some super-star bus-driver, "I can show you some things.".

" Uh....". The gap between them narrowed; a bed's length; an arm's length; ten inches. He stopped, and through the musk of confusion that then engulfed her the only other discernible scent was the odor of absolute confidence, peppered with inexplicably accentuated bulges and impossibly coiffed garnishes. "Wha...".

A haze descended.

At a glance, the fully dilated and blank expression on her friends face alerted and informed that back part of her mind that was still aware of what was happening, but the well-tapped mix of conflicting emotions which had usually kept her sharp in these situations was being washed away by this new flood of feeling.

"Well?" he said, offering his hand.

Her face was smiling and her hand reaching for his before she could gather the courage to reply "Alright.". The instant their hands touched, a she felt another wave of sensation rush through her body; her hair stood up; goosebumps. Her eyes and smile widened... Her chest, stomach and thighs tightened... She farted..."

It happened on here too between Agu and someone else, I think it was Vagabond and they both looked just as stupid as the other, writing massive essays without contributing intellectually at all. When I said that they should stop and actually talk about the problem in the OP, I got 'no, we have to do this.' Women back away because we know we get brushed aside during this weird Alpha display. There is no problem in condescension as you may genuinely disagree with the content of the response you receive, but it should be as a critique and with adequate solutions the problem.

Constipatedly homoerotic ritual? :lol: :lol: — TimeLine

Oh my!

You realize, of course, this means constipated and ritualized homoerotic war!

Perhaps it is a uniquely male theme; we measure ourselves against one another to appropriately divide reproductive access to the females...

This might seem counter-intuitive, but this selection isn't entirely a one way street in humans, which is why human males have - and are - the biggest dicks of any primate species.

Men are fighty, women are picky, and I'm risen here to combat your peculiar sexual conservatism that would mock these ancient and sacred games we play...

"Did you hear that!?", Vagabond ejaculated. "Irony's afoot; I sense it all around us...".

Their advocates are especially passionate probably because they know they are a passing story. :) — apokrisis

Tut tut, my lad! :D

Father Determinism may be on his death-bed, but grand-father Free-Will has been long since mourned!

Unfortunately, (or fortunately (depending on one's existential footing)), the collapsing wave of quantum probability we find evident in fundamental particles refuses to grant us free wishes. If indeed the wave function plays a meaningful role in the goings-on of neurons, it would only wind up exporting its own 'randomness' into our mental constructs and processes. We would have hard random-will, and our thoughts could possibly move in pseudo-random "a-causal" directions; like Brownian motion.



Even if you can free your mind from the grip of determinism (unlikely), what then fills the causal vacuum becomes your new dictator: mere dice.

Strictly speaking, quantum spookyness is still a mystery that needs more deciphering, and who knows, maybe Horton's soul is surfing an electron somewhere, but according to observation it's beyond unlikely. We think fundamental particles are the smallest possible units of matter, and if this is true it's good reason to assume that they're not individually animated by some intelligent force beyond themselves but instead by basic and seemingly universally applicable laws of physics which govern all things. Like when we roll a pair of dice, we presume that the basic and fundamental facts of the system govern the outcome of the dice roll, not the will of the roller; it would be nonsensical unless the dice were weighted, or unless you could roll with such precision so as to predict and achieve the desired outcome.

I cannot tell you free-will isn't out-there somewhere, perhaps in a hitherto un-penetrated dimension, and maybe the collapsing wave function of quantum particle "spin" has something to do with how it mechanistically endows us with itself. I can tell you there's no evidence for it, there's evidence against it (not proof as of yet), and our willingness to see free will in the ripples is mostly our own wishful thinking.

We found quantum dice that we cannot fully predict; an empirical black box. It may be a (de)-limitation of matter, or it might be a limitation of empirical science (local or global), and these dice rolls are happening everywhere, not just inside you. Electrons in nature entangle and collapse as a natural result of proximity, real world double slits cause interference in the position of quantum particles without us knowing or caring; the entire universe is oscillating at the fundamental - quantum - level with such frequency (perhaps) that we cannot measure it. And yet, out of the chaos comes an average stability; quantum particles tend to behave coherently, we find them more often in the position we left them in, and we can even guess the probability of finding a previously measured particle in a given new position; and we never find quantum particles doing the exact opposite of what they're told (if you orient an electron in a specific way, there's a 0% chance that when you remeasure its orientation (you orient it via measurement in the first place) that it will be in the diametrically opposite position).

We may only ever find plausibly a-causal behavior in quantum particles, but it is evident that as particles begin to form larger structures, the noise of their quantum uncertainty is somehow muted. Atoms decay with some degree of uncertainty (AFAIK) but the average is very reliably measured. Molecules gain more stability and coherence still, and extended and extensive molecular and atomic structures make up most of the solid matter that exists at the human scale, and within which science has been magnificently successful at caging fundamental uncertainty.

A final analogy: when an ant is following a pheromone trail and reaches a fork in the nose, it needs to make a decision about which trail to follow. It sniffs for other pheromones - signals - and it sniffs to determine which pheromone trail is thicker or fresher. It takes this information, performs a quick calculus, and carries on. Not all ants make the same decision in the same situation; some ants smell better, some ants are just rebels, but each ant makes decisions based on physical cause and there is widespread cohesion across ant-decision frameworks (there's an average that produces stability). If ants made completely random decisions they would also be making a lot of dumb decisions, and it would be foolish to think that every ant has a free-ant-soul that is looking out-and-ahead, and somehow informing thought and action. Verily, that the ant obeys its material and evolution-endowed structures, and that those structures are stable, is what allows ants to continue existing. Evolution can be cruel and certainly does roll dice, just not at the quantum level...

My reply is above. Feel free to take your time (or not) in responding, and don't worry about style and format (i'm fine with a brief reply, indepth replies to chunked quotations, or a lengthy response without quotations such as my last reply.

Sorry for the relatively late response. I have actually written several very large tome-like responses, but invariably I kept repeating myself, so I took some time to consider the major points of our disagreement and have tried to simplify.

The major point of contention between us is posissibly to do with the intended versus the practical reality of "democracy".

Democracy, as I understand and define it, is any form of government which directly or indirectly represents the "will of the people" as a moral foundation and praxis of social organization and cohesion that entails a system of political participation. The "will of the people" as I understand and define it can be a bit ambiguous if scrutinized, but in general it is the uncoerced (in the compatibilist sense) political choices, leanings, and desires of individuals and the various degrees of consensus which emerge from the overall interactions of individual minds. Our various systems of voting, be they representative or direct, a republic of free states or inherently collectivist, are all "democratic" by definition because they allow for the voices of many individuals who seek to represent their own interests through some kind of vote, with the end goal of producing equitable and utility-laden directions for our society to take in short and long terms.

I don't expect you to take umbrage with how I have defined democracy, but I do expect you to maintain that this vision of democracy fails in practice, and is not how our own societies operate. As far as I can tell your ostensible objection to free speech in the cases we have outlined relies on whether not the voices of average people play a significant role in guiding politics, and therefore do not need to be well informed. I'm not sure if you might take the position that it is of net utility to ban controversial speakers in order to prevent the very rise of their ideology (which on it's own is a logical ouroboros given the lack of real influence that the beliefs of average people have), but you do take the position that it is of net utility to ban some controversial speakers and speech ("banning" in which degree you may clarify) to prevent the negative utility of emotional offense taking and the additional negative utility that emotional offense taking can lead to.

My understanding of your position: Charismatic leaders are in-fact the main locus through which democratic decision making actually flows. It is not the ideas held by individuals of a group that determines which ideas rise in political popularity, it is instead the persuasiveness of whichever speaker is the most charismatic that is the best predictor of political trends. Contrary to the beliefs of laymen and most contemporary political philosophers alike, the average individual is not capable of forming reasonable opinions concerning complex political ideas and must therefore be guided by the technocratic elite who happen to actually understand the world and are in a position to know what's best and what should be forbidden. Ideas such as Nazism and other such controversies cause some individuals emotional turmoil, and since no possible utility can come from discussing these ideas, there's net utility to be gained by disallowing the communication of some controversial political ideas in some contexts.

I'm fairly certain that this is an accurate portrayal of your position, but before offering specific rebukes I'd like you to offer corrections to the above portrayal.

There is an additional discussion that we might have concerning utilitarianism and it's theoretical and real role in justifying contemporary politics, and I'm not sure if it should precede or follow the conversation on democracy yet at hand.

I will say that while it's true a utilitarian approach has had broad influence on the moral directions of, and which found, our societies, ultimately it's functional role is a kind of last-resort heuristic when our other moral systems cannot solve a given dilemma. The foremost moral idea in the foundation and practice of ethics and law in modern society is the notion of "individual rights". Per this notion, utilitarian analysis becomes objectionable when utility for the many comes at the cost of utility for the few (in a way which violates the equitable minimum requirements of safety and freedom that society must offer to every individual for it to be desirable to participate in and maintain). This idea perhaps began with the Magna Carta, which chartered the rights (of some) to not be unfairly taxed, persecuted (religiously and otherwise; habeus corpus), and disinherited by a central governing force, who in all these cases deemed it "for the greater good" that individuals be disabused of these liberties.

The enlightenment utterly cemented this basic thrust, (a constitution of inalienable rights) and added the idea that leaving things to one perhaps charismatic leader (a monarch) is actually unreliable and unacceptable. When we first took the main political reigns away from royalty did we instantly hand them over to charismatic rabble-rousers?

Well the French certainly did if Napoleon lives up to his name, but America didn't. A Congress was genuinely formed with the intention of having democratically elected officials represent the interests of their constituents, and indeed those officials do seem genuinely beholden to the political preferences of their constituents (or at worst, campaign donors).

You suggest that there is net utility in banning some charismatic speakers from some private platforms while allowing some other charismatic speakers (on the basis of the utility of the ideas themselves vs the negative utility of causing emotional harm via controversy). The sheeple-esque portrait of the average individual as enthralled to the nearest charismatic speaker aside, do we not need access to as much information as possible, even information in the form of bad ideas, in order to develop critical thinking skills and robust ideas, which are the very requirements of resisting charismatic leaders in the first place? In other words, aren't you conjuring a self-fulfilling prophecy by assuming average people are too stupid to engage in rational political participation and then suggesting that we therefore restrict access to certain ideas (in whatever form) for their own benefit? A analogy comes to mind: clipping the wings of a caged bird seems moral if you assume it's nature is to be caged.

Whether or not the enlightenment ideals of democracy (and it's founding notion of inalienable rights) is actually the modus operendai of society, it is in still the modus operendai to which we are currently striving to adhere. To suggest undercutting one of the very freedoms required to try and engage politically as we should per the values of democracy is no small request. You will need to undo the whole moral and ideological basis for our current society and supplant it with what essentially sounds like central ideological planning.

I realize there is a laundry list of other issues we still need to discuss, but it doesn't make sense to hash out disagreements in specific cases before clarifying our ideological differences.
The laundry list:

- Would censorship have stopped Hitler
- Did censorship incite the Arab spring?
- Should the public expression of Nazi ideas be tolerated?
- Does the harm of not using preferred pronouns outweigh the harm of making it a criminal offense?
- How do existing speech laws and proposed and allegedly "anti-free speech" laws differ?


I'll end it here rather than perhaps laying out my own moral platform (you seem to have arbitrarily chosen utilitarianism as the most suitable medium for out moral disagreement), as for the purposes of this thread I can more or less adhere to the position of enlightenment ideals which I have already laid out. Rhetorically speaking, the reduction in free speech you are proposing makes me revoke my signature from the social contract, because I deem the risk of the worst case scenario that it might bring about (which entails harm to myself) too great a risk to be accepted. As your position is presently framed you might say that the chance of the worst case scenario happening is very low and so statistically choosing to restrict free speech in some cases will net greater utility, but strategically I am of the mind to avoid the worst possible end results rather than risk it all in favor of a good chance at more utility.

Can you convince me that avoiding the worst possible case scenario in life is a worse strategy than accepting higher risks for a chance at a better best case scenario?

Regardless of whether people think the remaining pay gap is entirely attributable to discrimination, or they do something stupid like say the entire thing is attributable to discrimination, I think it's very likely that promoting joint, paid, parental leave and paid paternity leave would reduce the worst excesses of this effect. At the very least it would remove some cases where people's careers will be stymied for the sin of wanting to start and take care of a family. — fdrake

We can try to encourage men to take time off when their wives get pregnant, but there will always be some men who refuse. Exact equality of outcome seems unreachable unless we were to actually start arbitrarily paying some men less and start paying some women more (generally, for the same work) or more directly start meddling in the career choices of free individuals.

I just don't see how someone can choose to start/care for a family and not have their careers somehow stymied. Or likewise how we can force women and men into career paths that they tend not to choose of their own free will (example: we're desperately encouraging women to enter STEM fields or men to enter nursing positions, but the gender disparity is still quite massive despite concerted effort).

If we really expected parity of outcomes, we might also be complaining that men are 10 times more likely to die on the job than women, or that less than one percent of garbage collectors and sewer/septic technicians are women.

Despite gender differences in career choices and entailed obstacles (i.e: pregnancy) the actual pay gap is quite low (nearly marginal in my opinion), and I'm not sure that any broad or systematic approach to eliminating the impact of these differences can be done without trampling on the freedom of individuals and the market itself.

Point out a specific instance of unfair discrimination though (of any kind) and I will wholeheartedly support legal recourse.

Keep in mind that the factors they've isolated can account for all but the remaining percentage of wage disparity. Of that remaining percent, there are other factors they chose not to analyze due to inadequate data:

"Statistical analysis that includes those variables has produced results that collectively account for between 65.1 and 76.4 percent of a raw gender wage gap of 20.4 percent, and thereby leave an adjusted gender wage gap that is between 4.8 and 7.1 percent.

Additional portions of the raw gender wage gap are attributable to other explanatory factors that have been identified in the existing economic literature, but cannot be analyzed satisfactorily using only data from the 2007 CPS. Those factors include, for example, health insurance, other fringe benefits, and detailed features of overtime work, which are sources of wage adjustments that compensate specific groups of workers for benefits or duties that disproportionately affect them. Analysis of such compensating wage adjustments generally requires data from several independent and, often, specialized sources".

We should not always leap to the conclusion that disparities are all caused by discrimination. At best it's presumptuous and potentially misleading, at worst it's a political tool to intellectually defraud individuals using deeply flawed statistical analysis. It's a favored tool for any political speaker focusing on identity to make an argument because statistical misinterpretation of raw data pertaining to arbitrary demographics is so easy to do while correctly processing it is complicated, tedious, and boring.

As far as I understand it though, wage disparity tends to be higher in elite positions rather than jobs of average (and largely standardized) incomes, which is why I'm not shedding too many tears over it. Granted, point out the discrimination and I'll happily help you stamp it out.

https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/public-policy/hr-public-policy-issues/Documents/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20Final%20Report.pdf

I hate to be possibly pedantic, but that's a study on the earnings gap, not the pay gap "The gender pay gap is the difference between the average earnings of men and women, expressed relative to men’s earnings. For example, ‘women earn 15% less than men per hour’.".

This doesn't actually mean that on average, considering experience, tenure, position, and performance, women are paid 15% less than men per hour on average, it just means that if you look at raw totals you find women are earning this much less per hour overall than men.

The earnings gap is real but isn't exactly a problem. The pay gap is almost non-existent, and only affects people in elite positions who already make too much money anyway, so I don't care...

So why, when people propose laws, or social trends, towards restricting the use of certain language and the platforming of certain ideas do you consistently create this straw man of a world gone mad with every slight offence being policed and virtually all debate shut down? What on earth makes you think we wouldn't be just as capable of applying exactly the same sense of proportion to claims of offence, exactly the same ability to weigh each case on its merits when people claim to be offended? — Pseudonym

Because restricting the use of certain language limit's individual's ability to express themselves, and because using laws to systematically "de-platform" certain ideas from being spoken is tantamount to thought-policing. If a coalition of students/citizens want to rent a private theatre, invite a guest who has controversial views, and hear them speak, and you want the state to intervene and censor/ban them, then you actually are fucking with the freedfom of thought of some individuals in order to preserve the emotions of some other individuals.

There's no proportion to outright censorship, and there's no objectivity to emotional offense taking.

No, we're not, no-one is talking about that. Despite the clandestine beginning, the topics that have been mentioned are; the repeated use of a personal pronoun opposite to the one a transgender person prefers, the banning of certain speakers with known racist or politically unsavoury views from university speaking institutions, and the offence taken at unwanted sexual advances within the MeToo movement. Absolutely no-one has suggested that a single indirect exposure to an offensive idea requires intervention. These are all repeated uses by society (or particular sections of it), of language that many people (virtually half the population in one case), find offensive in the expression of ideas which have been talked about since civilisation began. No-one is suggesting that the expression of ideas be banned off the cuff because one person is offended by them. — Pseudonym

I'm referring to the discussion that you and I are having: I get rather confused then when you keep asking, in principle, at what point an individual's right to not be offended becomes more important than another individual's right to free speech. The only example you gave is that causing emotional offense can lead to suicide. If these are your chosen hills though, so be it.

Referring to someone by the pronouns of their choosing is the respectful course of action, but there's no law that says I have to be respectful. I will in fact happily use he, she, or they when asked, but I will not use quay/xey/zey or any other made up pronoun. I won't use made up pronouns because I refuse to accept an obligation to learn and remember an ever growing list of made-up words that are required to secure the emotions of people who have been trained to have an emotional breakdown when they don't get their way (if being referred to as quay is required for your happiness, I actually think you may need to be committed to a mental institution). If an individual calls a transsexual by the gender they do not identify with, intentionally, a single time, should they have just committed a crime?

If I intentionally refer to a woman as a man, it's possible she may be very offended and insulted. She may cry, question her body image/identity, but she probably will not call the cops on me just for calling her a man. If I follow that woman down the street calling her a man, and it's clearly causing her mental and emotional anguish to boot, then what I'm doing is textbook harassment. The mere fact that someone gets emotionally offended is not sufficient criteria to make any normative claims whatsoever about the action which caused the emotional reaction, otherwise anytime emotional offense is taken, an investigation would be required to determine "if the emotional harm in question is greater than the potential value resulting from allowing free speech". Really what I think you're asking is why I take free speech so seriously while I don't take the emotions of others very seriously at all (I care about truth, and emotions don't help me get there, free speech does). But the main reason is that the upward limit on possible emotional harm caused by allowing certain ideas to exist is far more insignificant than the amount of physical and all other forms of harm which history has demonstrated can easily be inflicted upon a population, by it's own government, when free speech is forbidden.

You're trying to create the best possible case scenario where we all tip-toe around one another's emotions out of respect and society works and everyone is happy, and I'm trying to avoid the worst case scenario where democracy is slowly eroded by the slow banning of ideas in the name of safeguarding the emotions of the sensitive.

Surely pronouns have nothing to do with democracy, but what about banning "racist" speakers who were invited by private groups of "racist" students who paid money to rent privately own theaters? The famous Milo/Shapiro protests have all been done under the banner of anti-racism and anti-fascism; In a world where being racist gets you summarily banned from making public appearances, the most powerful political rhetoric becomes "you're a racist" whether it's true or not. But again, even if they are racist, banning them is only going to give them publicity and allure. There's a genuinely racist alt-right faction growing right now (one that ive been trying to engage/combat) and their formation has quite a bit to do with the fact that "the regressive left" has utterly succumbed to the "as a white man, I cannot possibly deny the lived experiences of women of color who state I am their oppressor" syndrome. Remember when some BLM activists stormed a Bernie Sanders stage and threatened to shut it down if they did not get the microphone? That's how powerful the accusation of racism has become, and so, a new wave of social media whores (mostly men, to be clear) have decided to fully and openly adopt anti-political-correctness and in some cases outright racist ideals (such as wanting a white ethno-state) and will happily preemptively offend you, causing you to call them racist and ban-worthy, which then allows them to say "See everyone? They have no argument because we have the truth". At which point they've already peaked the interest of the audience, and the individuals who had the emotional breakdown look like over-sensitive idiots who are unable to buck up and have a debate.

If you're interested in using this as a case study for our disagreement, the following video is a quite recent "You-Tube" clash between two social media whores who happen to have massive degrees of influence over a fairly spread out cross-section of 15-40 males (specifically, conservative liberals vs genuinely racist ethno-nationalists). For you and me both, watching this video is like listening to nails on a chalk board (the stupidity contained therein), but for them and their followers it might mean the difference between gaining/maintaining semi-sane political positions or succumbing to the absolute intellectual retardation that is on offer. It's definitely "offensive" and wide spread calls to have the video taken down because it platforms racists have been made.



Even if you do not watch the video (I don't actually expect anyone to have the time), can you tell me whether you think the video should be taken down on the grounds that it's offensive racism and no political gain can possibly come from it? If so, do you recognize how banning Spencer in this way only makes people more curious about his ideas? And when they have to go looking for them in the darkened corners of the media, they don't then get exposed to informed objections.

I remain firm that even the most offensive ideas and speech needs to see the light of day even if only so that it can be ridiculed and destroyed.

P.S: regarding the #MeToo movement, I really don't think it's a good idea to conflate the morality of sexual advances/harassment/rape as they pertain to authority/subordinate relationships with the right to express honest political opinions...

For a start, this goes down exactly the same straw man as you've used before, no-one is suggesting banning ideas. But to take the point itself, it is not automatically true that a free ability to speak raises the amount of information in the debate. People who get up and propagate lies, for example, are not adding information to the debate, they are removing it, making it actually harder for people to see what the real issues are. Denying such people a platform assists proper rational decision making, not hinders it. — Pseudonym

Denying someone the right to a private platform is up to whoever owns the platform, that said, what I'm arguing against is A) the legally mandated deplatforming of individuals who espouse certain unsavory ideas (which you seem to constantly suggest is O.K in principle) because it is utterly un-pragmatic and potentially dangerous to do so, and B) that there is no such thing as, nor should there be, "the right to not be offended" because offense taking is subjective in nature.

Some people clearly think they do not, that's why I was asking you for your reason why you think they do. People are claiming that the lives of, for example, transgender people, are being harmed significantly by the repeated use of the opposite personal pronoun to the one they prefer. Where this activity is carried out by society as a whole, it is not covered by anti-harassment laws, yet (the argument goes) it is causing significant psychological harm for very little public benefit. — Pseudonym

Transgenders who do not "pass" as the gender they're conforming to experience this, and it can indeed be very hard for them. If a person is repeatedly subjected to use of their undesired pronoun by an individual who is knowingly causing them anguish in doing so, then we can construct a harassment case. If however, you expect everyone in society to always know before hand and to use the correct gender someone prefers (when perhaps they may appear ambiguous), then you're asking for an impossible task.

If you essentially want to make using the incorrect pronoun into a kind of illegal slur, then obviously that would lead to problematic litigation.

Not relevant to the debate, but actually historical evidence has shown that small-group egalitarianism is the the least worst system, creating stable societies for several hundred thousand years before agriculture. But I'm not sure what this has got to do with the debate, is it another straw man for you to valiantly knock down, are we suggesting that the evil transgenders and anti-racists are calling for the dismantling of democracy now? — Pseudonym

You accused me of fallaciously equivocating free speech (that we have the legal right to it) with what is moral. The fact that democracy works best, historically, is why morally I support democracy, and the fact that free speech is a fundamental requisite for a functional democracy, is why morally I support free speech.

Regarding small group-"egalitarianism", we have evidence of stable hunter gatherer societies who frequently warred, raped, enslaved, and dominated one-another while individuals died around the age of 32 on average. But since there's 7 billion of us now, small group egalitarianism isn't even on the table anyway...

Are you really that naive to believe that people adopt ideas on the basis of a rational assessment, what world have you been living on for the last 200 years? — Pseudonym

Ummmmm..... The enlightened one?

If it's your position that the voting public cannot be trusted to form their own rational assessment based on the evidence then what would you have once we tear down democracy?

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People adopt ideas because they are part of the Zeitgeist, they're the "talked-about" idea of the moment, they're the idea their parents had and they're too lazy to think of anything else, it's the idea shared by someone they fancy and they want to get laid. Pretty much everything but actually thinking about it rationally. If you honestly think that ideas get accepted and rejected on their merit, then explain why ideas have consistently gone in waves of fashion. Have people's brains changed over time? Have people changed the way they reason? Or is it more likely that people have just got swept along by the latest craze - free-love, communism, anti-communism, the American dream, fascism... They're all just trends people follow for social reasons. — Pseudonym

Individuals adopt ideas for their own individual reasons; they truly do. Since we generally share similar environments, we generally share "reasons". Why do politics change you ask? It's simple: changing circumstances; changing environment. When the situation you're in changes, rationally the best strategy for making your situation better would also change, right?

There's also this science thingamabob that's really been helping us get toward better ideas in addition to the slow progress made by various democratic states themselves.

If we want to have any influence of direction such trends go, then making a clear statement about how we tolerate them is an extremely effective way. — Pseudonym

So then tell me your prognosis. In what ways should we not tolerate which political speakers, where should we not tolerate them, and how do we identify them?

Again, no-one has mentioned banning an idea, the public debate has been entirely about denying platforms to speak at the very extreme, but mainly about restricting language use. — Pseudonym

You're talking about smashing private soap-boxes because of the beliefs and ideas expressed by the speaker, are you not? (a privately rented theater, privately owned by a university is a "private soap-box").

What? I thought your suggestion that people were denying the right to express ideas was crazy enough, who the hell said anything about banning thoughts? — Pseudonym

Oh I see, in your view, denying people the right to gather and speak in public wherever possible isn't bad as long as it's not the total and outright banning of the ideas...

This is the non-sequitur at the heart of this problem. Stating that no-one can predict the harm or the benefit from the expression of an idea is a cop out. Someone has to nonetheless, we still have to decide whether to give someone a platform (if it is ours to give), we can't just equivocate and say we don't know. A decision has to be made. — Pseudonym

We also can't equivocate and just say "risk of using the wrong pronouns is like the risk of driving drunk, and so speech should require a license".
I think it's a much more reasonable position to say that freedom from emotional offense is not in and of itself a sound basis for a right, while the need to express one's belief actually is in a democratic system.

You're talking as if language was the only means of communication, that some-one's right to express how they feel in speech is somehow the only defence against extremism. We have many ways of displaying and teaching our children how to be moral citizens, not least of which is by our behavior, the moral decisions we actually make about who we want to talk too, whose ideas we find worth discussing, who we consider to have reached the level of politeness we expect of anyone wishing to take part in public discourse. — Pseudonym

There's already a large swath of self-styled intellectual rebels who will be intentionally impolite and offensive for the sole purpose of making you look silly when you then react and disregard them out of hand (the ethno-state supporting alt-right). The more you suggest that we should disregard ideas because of the politeness of the person or the flavor of the idea, the more you appear to fit their description that "they're afraid of the truth".

They need to actually be invited into the open so they can be thoroughly trounced by better ideas. That's kind of what the enlightenment was all about...

Right, so you've still not provided an argument for this. All you've done is move the objective. Now you need to provide an argument to show how "guarantee[ing] that we're able to even talk about other rights," and is a more important necessity then ensuring people are protected from the harm theoretically caused by views they find offensive. — Pseudonym

I haven't moved the goal post, I'm clarifying where it actually rests. To be additionally clear, we're talking about "protecting people from the harm caused by mere exposure to communications containing views they find offensive", we're not talking about, for instance, the permittance of an ideology which itself advocates harm, but very specifically, the permittance of ideologies that causes one or more individuals emotional trauma with mere exposure to it.

If you think we should actually forbid certain ideas because those ideas lead to harmful actions (rather than just emotional offense) then that's a slightly different discussion, but I'm willing to have it.

And no I do not have to show why free speech is necessarily a more important right in every possible scenario. I have already explained, as you have admitted, why it is fundamentally an important right, and so I posit that we should be cautious about how we choose to restrict it. The constitution is not ordered by importance, changing needs make and changing trends make people appreciate and benefit from some rights more than others. Maybe one day we won't need political participation, and being emotionally offended by the ideas of others might be our biggest problem as a society... Until then I think the burden is actually on you to show how the fragile ego of a single individual should mean the censorship of potentially everyone else when political participation and the freedom to express political ideas is the founding mechanic of our system of governance?

I would be interested if you could give any good evidence that people are up and killing themselves after being exposed to ideas they find offensive though... If you're talking about bullying, you're still not recognizing my actual position: we have anti-bullying laws and it's for the courts to decide case by case what constitutes bullying...

Do you have some evidence that the well-being of society will be more harmed by having some political speech restricted than by having it freely expressed, but potentially causing widespread offence? This is what I'm saying about the polemics, one side seems to be saying only that freedom of speech is really important, the other that insults can be harmful. Both of these are pretty well established facts, what's needed in this debate is some measure of the extent to which one outweighs the other. — Pseudonym

Sometimes people deserve to be insulted. That may sound uncivilized, but I assure you it's actually one of the cornerstones of civilization. If I'm not allowed to use words to settle disagreements, what else do you think mankind might be want to use?

As I've said before, when mere insults turn to harassment or bullying, we actually have many sophisticated laws and previous cases we use to sort out whether or not such behavior is justifiable, case by case, butwe're talking about situations where a singular indirect exposure to an offensive idea and the emotional harm that renders, not instances of legitimate harassment.

Sometimes insults themselves can be a part of political speech (heh heh, ain't no denying that!). The idea of Trump's indescribable vulgarity might spring quickly to mind, and you're right, but it's a sword that cuts both ways; the rest of the sane world is making more regular use of direct insults against a single individual than anything that has ever came before in human history, and we should not lightly risk removing their right to utter those insults. Using insults is a rhetorical dagger that cuts both ways; those who use them are themselves fair game for insults (so use them wisely) and anyone who actually relies on them are inherently sullied to the more mature and logically discerning among us.

There's no objective answer to which right is more important across all possible scenarios, and if you really want to weigh the likelihood of harm such as suicide resulting from oversensitive reactions to political opinions or insults vs outright political censorship, I would be happy to compare numbers.

Ironically, if you'd like to shift the discussion and suggest that certain ideas are themselves harmful or might lead to harm (like Nazi rhetoric for instance), in order to explain how they might lead to harm, you will necessarily have to describe them, which would beto utter speech that others may find emotionally offensive. The irony is that in order to demonstrate why an idea is bad, we need to actually confront and expose ourselves to said idea. If we ban certain ideas outright, we will only make rebellious youth curious and sympathetic towards it, and because it will exist in the rhetorical shadows we can then never disabuse them of their bad ideas with dialogue and reason.

This is exactly the point of the discussion. We do recognise that driving is dangerous but necessary, but we do not respond to this state of affairs by simply saying that people should be free to drive wherever they want in whatever manner they want to. Restrictions are placed on people's ability to drive freely, because of the severity of the potential consequences. This is an exact mimic of the argument being had here. Everyone seems to agree that restrictions on freedom of speech need to be in place (the harassment laws as you point out), so the argument is whether the existing restrictions are sufficient. We have had the same debate about driving and the result has been that the restrictions on driving freely were not sever enough and we have subsequently reduced the speed limit further in urban areas. We're having exactly the same debate now, and the same two questions are relevant - What are the actual harms caused, and how much do we value avoiding them relative to the freedom we're considering restricting? — Pseudonym

You keep asking me to lay out how harmful "being exposed to an idea that one finds emotionally offensive" might be, and I've already given an answer: not very. We value freedom of speech because in order to predict the future accurately enough (and to then apply functional policies), the democratic public at large requires access to as much information as possible, and the freedom to debate (NOT the freedom to specifically and credibly call for violence, NOT the freedom to harass and bully, NOT the freedom to yell "Fire!" in a crowded police standoff). If we start banning ideas or the right to express them then we're not going to have all the information. You might consider yourself to be so well informed that you no longer need to ever consider certain ideas, but young people (tomorrow's you) aren't born with pre-existing knowledge, and telling them "some ideas are forbidden for your own good" doesn't seem like it would be helpful in making them into well informed voters.

I didn't say I get to decide 'for everyone else', just that we must each accept our moral duty to decide what is right and act on it if necessary, not to equivocate and expect someone else to decide for us (the existing law, the judiciary, the bible... whatever). If you think the law is adequate, then state why you think that, just saying it must be moral because the law says it is is absolving your own moral responsibility. — Pseudonym

I haven't equivocated morality with the law, I was actually giving clear reasons as to why I think the current laws are adequate for dealing with the moral dilemma you're hung on. Anti-harassment laws clearly cover the example situations you brought up (i.e: being emotionally badgered to the point of suicide). Democracy is the system that I want to live in because it's the least worst system we've yet come up with according to the historical evidence, and democracy requires I have freedom of thought and be well informed. Banning an idea forever because we all agree it's a bad idea only works for about half a generation because young people are never made aware of why the ideas are actually bad.

Yes, but you've still failed to demonstrate an advantage to that process which outweighs the harms it might cause — Pseudonym

And you've failed to demonstrate to any reasonable degree that a measurable rise in suicide rates caused by exposure to emotionally disagreeable ideas is even existent, nor have you addressed the problems concerning the practical difficulty of ensuring that nobody ever gets emotionally offended (the subjective nature of offense means that we would need to ban just about everything).
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"Is there evidence that we actually, as a society, come to decisions this way which increase our well-being sufficiently to outweigh the offence that having such open discussions may cause?" — Pseudonym

Some people are offended when talk of marijuana legalization occurs, and yet many American states had the open discussion and came to a democratic decisions which were economically and medically beneficial to many individuals, and harmful only in the sense that a few people with old school prejudices got emotionally sour about it.

Yes we make decisions this way (democracy) and yes many of the decisions we make outweigh the emotional harm talking about these decisions incurs.

Are we really going to gain anything by inviting the far-right speaker to the table to air his racism? — Pseudonym

How about disabusing them of their racism? How about showing them and audiences just how weak racist ideas and ideals really are when reason is applied to them. There are people out there who aren't yet "alt-right", and they're looking at your desire to censor "the alt-right" like you're terrified of their ideas, and that makes them more attractive. By not allowing racists to express their opinions and be debated in broad daylight (especially if a bunch of students invites them to speak on a stage rented from a university), people won't then get exposed to the ideals which naturally immunize them against those particular brands of ignorance. That actually makes them more vulnerable to those ideas in the long run.

I'm generally in agreement that we should not legislate against offending people, what I dislike are the sloppy arguments used to defend this principle, they risk undermining an important position. — Pseudonym

The important position of banning racist thoughts and statements to emotionally coddle everyone at all times?

The freedom to express one's opinions (political or otherwise) has to be restricted because at some point in time, the benefits to society from having those opinions aired simply outweighs the harms from the offence. — Pseudonym

When do we reach that point (politically)?

How harmful is the offence taken? And; how much benefit is likely to accrue from the ideas being expressed? — Pseudonym

Nobody can know for certain what the impact of ideas will be, both in terms of emotional harm and real world benefit accrued. You cannot decide before hand what the impact of an idea is and how useful it will be; you're not all knowing-god. Which is why we need the right to free speech, to as you say, decide for ourselves what is right and wrong.

You've given me a reason why freedom of speech is an incredibly important right, I asked for a reason why it might be considered more important than any other. Such an argument would require not just the presentation of the bad things that can happen when the right is removed, but a demonstration that they are somehow worse than what happens when any competing rights are removed. That's what I mean by adding some objectivity to this debate, at the moment it's too reliant on polemics. — Pseudonym

Firstly, I did give a reason as to why freedom of speech (and of thought) might be more important than other rights: because it's required to guarantee that we're able to even talk about other rights, let alone fight for them in a democratic system.

Secondly, we're not talking about freedom of speech trumping any other right, we're talking about it trumping "the right to not be offended".

thirdly, I should be clear that I'm not a free speech absolutist, and I'm defending political speech, not all possible speech.

Moving forward let's try to be very clear about what we're actually debating: I'm explaining why free speech is at the top of the list, not why it's more important than any other right across all possible scenarios. Which right is most important depends on a changing spectrum of needs that society at large has. There's no objectively most important right, but since ignorance does seem widespread of late I think free speech happens to be quite important.

If you read my argument carefully, I'm using this form of cause and consequence to indicate that actual harm can result from insult. It's a philosophical point, establishing the parameters of what it is reasonable to argue. This is something which is essential in any professional discussion on ethics, but for doing which I'm constantly being misrepresented on this site. I don't suppose many people here have actually sat on ethics committees, but establishing the parameters is pretty much the first job. I'm merely stating that it is a reasonable proposition that insults can lead to direct physical harm and so a utilitarian approach could reasonably argue that these harms need to be accounted for. I'm not giving psychological advice on how to approach suicide victims. — Pseudonym

Is it reasonable to expect that someone will kill themselves because they got offended? Granted, it's possible, but just about anything can play roles in cause and consequences which are harmful. Driving a car comes with the risk of accidentally killing pedestrians or one's self, and we could sit around debating whether we should even be given the freedom to drive cars or walk on sidewalks, but it's not pragmatically feasible: we need to drive cars even though it kills people every single day, and we need to express our political opinions even though doing so may indirectly kill people every single day.

The only kind of "offense" that I can imagine driving someone to suicide is extreme harassment...

I'm not giving psychological advice on how to approach suicide victims. — Pseudonym

No but you're giving legislative advice on how to treat them based on a psychologically causative description, so I really don't see the difference...

Again this is a misleading line of argument in ethics. What we have laws for and what is ethically right/wrong are two entirely different, and often unrelated, things. The argument ethically is whether we have a right to restrict freedom of speech in order to avoid offending people, not whether we have already done so and enshrined such a restriction in law. The law might be wrong, it might not go far enough, or go too far, such discussions are how laws are made/altered in the first place. The question for this debate is whether you agree that anti-harassment laws are morally acceptable. If you do then you have agreed that there are circumstances where someone's right to speak as they see fit is outweighed by the harm it is evidently doing a person. As I said explicitly above, the matter then is a practical one of establishing the harm caused, as we have already agreed on the principle that some harms justify a restriction on free-speech. — Pseudonym

That wasn't a normative argument, just stating the fact that we currently have anti-harassment laws which handle the harmful forms of non-political speech that you state are immoral, so from a simple practical point of view, I don't see why we need additional "anti-offense" laws, especially when an individual's notion of "offensive" can be entirely irrational and subjective.

Courts presently determine on a case by case what constitutes harassment, that's where we draw our legislative and moral lines as a society, and I really don't see why we should lower the standard to "so and so was offended".

Yes, and yes. That's the duty of any moral agent, we cannot simply absolve responsibility because the question is hard, we have to decide, and it is each person's duty to do so and to do what they can to persuade others of their position (if they think some harm might come from the position others currently hold). I fail to see how our duty to avoid allowing others to suffer could possibly be outweighed by our duty to be humble in the face of our uncertainty on any complicated moral decision. — Pseudonym

So you will get to decide for everyone else what beliefs they are allowed to hold and express, for everyone's own good, because you know best... What happens when someone disagrees?

Perhaps we should all be free to think for ourselves and communicate what we think is right in order to ensure that we can come to un-coerced decisions? That's free speech.

this is an objectively verifiable fact, by some metric, they are either right or wrong about this. — Pseudonym

O.k, and when I say they're objectively wrong about this, some of them might say "Aha! You are proving our point by denying our lived experiences; you're oppressing me; I'm offended; etc.."

In this particular example, should I be allowed to state my truth? You did accept the position of arbiter of decency after-all...

this is surely their prerogative as much as it is yours to state your views, you haven't specified any extent to which they're using force to restrict your freedom of speech here. — Pseudonym

You're proposing moral imperatives upon which legislation can be derived. I'm suggesting that to use force to restrict my freedom of speech in this manner on the basis of "right to not be offended/harm caused by being offended" would be unjust. Furthermore, when they say things like "all white people are racist" I'm genuinely offended, and if I subscribed to the idea that my emotional reaction to their beliefs is more important than their right to express their beliefs then I could morally rebuke them (or one day call for legislation against them) in the first place.

The key here is that you think there is a 'higher chance' of harm from not saying anything. You have made an assessment of the net value of your speech and acted accordingly. That's not the same as saying the people should be allowed to speak as they wish regardless of any such assessment. — Pseudonym

Almost nobody is a free-speech absolutist, so please try to address the strong version of the position against "the right to not be offended".

My position is that merely being offended is not in and of itself harm worth considering when compared to more pressing harms, but furthermore that due to the subjective nature of offense taking, and the pragmatic impossibility of not ever offending anyone, it would be utterly futile to try and aim to never offend anyone. The only entities doing that are politicians and tv commercials. I also do think that being forbidden from expressing an honest belief is itself harmful at least to the same degree as being offended (people who're censored are well and truly offended; many of them have committed suicide).

This is a reasonable sentiment, but you've failed to demonstrate either that it is the case, or that 'coddling' as you put is is responsible for the lack of a 'thick skin'. We can approach both issues with psychological experiment and insight, but we cannot simply presume either is the case based on personal experience alone. It is an equally reasonable argument to say that if we lived in a society where people restricted their public expression to show respect for the feelings of others the resultant 'safe' environment would lead to more fruitful, less polemic debates. — Pseudonym

We've already seen the high water mark. Not oppressing/offending anybody turned into a political game of "who is the most offended/oppressed". We confuse being offended with being oppressed (like the idea that we should never offend someone for fear that they commit suicide) and it's beyond unreasonable.

Sometimes I just cannot participate in discussions where truth is a concern and also not offend people.

It is not inviolable and I don't see any reason why freedom of speech should be the top of our list of freedoms. — Pseudonym

Because if you don't have freedom of speech then you might not be able to acquire new or guarantee pre-existing rights. Russia or Uganda will send you to prison for publishing anything construable as pro-gay-propaganda because it suits the feelings of the people (people too stupid to afford democracy the respect it requires), and this is likely setting back acceptance of gays markedly.

If Democracy is the tyranny of the majority, then Democracy with no free speech is tyranny where you're not even allowed to whine about it.

Hurt feelings can lead to actual harm by psychological trauma or suicide, so there's no question about the possibility. — Pseudonym

I see people using this argument very lightly, and they (you) really shouldn't. If you suspect someone might be a suicide risk, (for example, if them getting their feelings hurt could be their last straw), then serious intervention/assistance should be offered to that person. A part of being free means being responsible for one's self, and merely being offended because of a political opinion that someone else expressed falls well within the "deal with it" category. Democracy requires we tolerate the political opinions of others.

When it comes to outright harassment, we actually have anti-harassment laws which are more than adequate to deal with anyone who consistently emotionally badgers a particular individual.

But even if we do try to determine which political opinions we should outright disallow, do you have any bright ideas? Would you be the one to accept the position of deciding what is o.k and not o.k to express politically?

I'll give you a great contemporary example that actually somewhat applies to me: The black lives matter movement takes the position that violence done to black men by cops is the worst problem facing the black community, and that it is white privilege and racism which create this reality. For me to contradict their position is literally and emotionally interpreted by them as racism. I could choose to say nothing for fear of hurting too many feelings, but if I don't then I think there's a higher chance laws will be passed which are not only counter-productive to the general impoverished black community, but will be outright detrimental to everyone (including them).

Interestingly this kind of ultra-sensitive "to deny the white patriarchy IS white patriarchy" style identity politics can only thrive in an environment where everyone's feelings are coddled to begin with; it makes them emotionally weak; lacking thick skin. If everyone had thicker skin we could have emotional discussions about controversial topics without everyone flying off the objective handle...

What's worse, hurt feelings or political censorship?

Babbling about the enteric brain and quantum particles makes for uninteresting philosophy though, just as uninteresting as capitalizing words you revere and telling people to get educated about them.

I'm really stubborn, admittedly, so you're probably doing me a favor (not that you could have chosen any differently of course, so I don't hold it against you!) Toodles!

If you wish to guess that your mind has residence anywhere but in your brain, that's your supernatural prerogative.

Determinists seemed determined to wring everything meaningful out of life, most especially the ability to manifest spontaneous creativity. As it happens, pretty much no one really believes it. — Rich

You insist that determinism makes things meaningless as if some magical free-will force is necessary for meaning in the first place.

I say spontaneous creativity comes from the complexity of neural networks and their environment, and you say spontaneous creativity either comes from quantum randomness or some magical and indescribable event that makes it even better than the unfathomable complexity we actually can observe in the real world.

This is why I accuse anti-determinists of lacking imagination. They're so concerned with their own fantastical interpretations of the world that they can no longer stand to look at things as they are. The observable universe is already larger than we can ever explore, and beyond the observable, who knows? (probably more of the same though).

Maybe god and free-will exist, but why sit around making assumptions about things for which we have no evidence or indication? There's no hard evidence for god, souls, or free will, but there is evidence that human behavior can be predicted; there's evidence that human behavior is tied into cause and effect.

If you think presuming free will is a better starting assumption (for exploring reality) than presuming determinism, so be it, but behavioral sciences (and science in general) which presume the pervasiveness of cause and effect in some cases can predict your own supposedly free behavior better than you can.

See: https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.2112

I read through your comments in this thread while trying to discern what you actually believe, but I'm still not sure if you think you were "morally wrong" for air-boxing (different than suggesting air-boxing should be illegal) because it caused someone to have a panic attack, or if you think the person who had the panic attack was "morally wrong" (still different than legally wrong) for defaming you as pedophile and a pervert.

So hypothetically, do you think we should never air-box when strangers might see us and possibly have panic attacks?

Do you think the victim of your "airboxing" ought to express herself by labeling you as a pedophile/pervert?

Reread. That only tells you how the court behaves when there are multiple incidence of a libel in a single cause. — Akanthinos

It adds a caveat that a justification defense shall not fail if the defendant stated additional untrue things which did not happen to defame the plaintiff. Are you suggesting that a justification defense can work in cases of multiple "charges" but not in cases of singular "charges"?

So if I accused you of something defamatory that was true, and additionally accused you of something that was untrue but not defamatory, you could not overcome my justification defense based on my misapprehension of the non-defamatory facts.

Listen folks, If I happen to hold a political opinion that other people find offensive on an emotional level, does that mean that my right to hold and express beliefs and opinions (necessary for democracy) is trumped by the emotional whims of any random citizen?

The idea that causing emotional offense is somehow a worse reality than censoring political speech is so juvenile that it disgusts me. (you might say I'm offended, which would mean that everyone suggesting that the right to not be offended trumps free speech needs to be censored.

Why are children to interested in communism these days anyway? I was a communist when I was a teenager too, but did nobody remember to tell these twenty-somethings that the un-feasibility of large scale communism is what necessitated the gulags?

For those of you who don't know, the gulag's were a set of prisons (generally in Stalin's Siberian Russia) where they sent anyone and everyone who held political views which did not whole-heartedly support the party. Under Stalin approximately 2-3 million people were tortured, worked to death, and executed primarily because the state wanted their offensive and subversive opinions censored.

If you publish a misapprehension of the facts, that means you've published something that was not true, so the justification defense obviously would not work under such circumstances.

Here's from the document you've quoted (toward the bottom)

Justification

22 In an action for libel or slander for words containing two or more distinct charges against the plaintiff, a defence of justification shall not fail by reason only that the truth of every charge is not proved if the words not proved to be true do not materially injure the plaintiff’s reputation having regard to the truth of the remaining charges. R.S.O. 1990, c. L.12, s. 22.

Fair comment

23 In an action for libel or slander for words consisting partly of allegations of fact and partly of expression of opinion, a defence of fair comment shall not fail by reason only that the truth of every allegation of fact is not proved if the expression of opinion is fair comment having regard to such of the facts alleged or referred to in the words complained of as are proved. R.S.O. 1990, c. L.12, s. 23.

Not in Canada. Libel and slander covers anything which is stated as factually true, even if it is broadly believed, and the truth or falsity of the claim is not to be evaluated by the judge. Otherwise you encourage "scorched-earth" defences, where when you would want to libel about one thing, you libel about the whole life of the person you attack, and then force the court to go through every embarassing details of the life of the accuser. Even if you end up found guilty, you've done more damaged by way of the judicial process than by the infraction itself. — Akanthinos

Actually in Canada you can indeed demonstrate that the offending speech is true as a defense against a defamation lawsuit.

From the Canadian Bar Association:

"A statement may hurt your reputation, but if it is true, anyone who says it has a valid defense if you sue them for defamation. They just have to prove, on the balance of probability, that their statement is true."

https://www.cbabc.org/For-the-Public/Dial-A-Law/Scripts/Your-Rights/240

When professors openly subscribe to and promote post-modern ideas, and then some students tell one another about it, it's not the student's fault; it's the fault of the professor.

Did you know that one of the 7 viable legal defenses for libel is that the libel in question is actually true?

Here is the exact origin of the modern movement toward "the right to not be offended"...

It starts with the prevailing patriarchy/white supremacy presumption which has been the ideological Zeitgeist of post-modern feminism for the last 50 years.

It also requires the addition of "intersectional feminist theory" which states unequivocally that if you just happen to belong to a demographic that is not the majority or is somehow statistically worse off then another demographic, then you are necessarily oppressed (or necessarily an oppressor) and that the more "oppressed" demographic categories you fall into, the more "oppressed" you actually are.

This is the ground floor of the standard racism = power (read: whiteness/maleness) + privilege (read: also whiteness/maleness) shtick, and it sets up the hardcore "identity politics" rhetoric that dominates the "SJW" movement.

Enter: A gay black trans paraplegic woman. She steps forward towards the microphone and the crowd falls deathly silent.

Here is someone who must be leading one of the most painful and oppressed lives imaginable, and it's clearly all the fault of non-gay-black-trans-paraplegic-women (because statistically they're better off). Not only do we need to listen to every single word that this person has to say (because their "lived experiences" will likely contain more truth than anything anyone else has to say), but to offend this person who has already endured lifelong racism, sexism, prejudice, sexual abuse, and general oppression (statistically) is therefore the most monstrous possible thing that you could do to her, and in fact constitutes the very patriarchal white-supremacist attitudes and forms of oppression which intersectional feminism as a whole is seeking to dismantle and destroy.

By offending someone who is oppressed because of their demographic, you are actually committing that oppression. (in other words, their feelings being hurt by you is why they have problems). Nobody worries about offending white males because it's impossible to be racist or sexist towards one, or to oppress one (because we have all the power and privilege!)... ... ...

There's simply no scientific merit to oodles of the made up pseudo-intellectual bull shit that some of these humanities professors have been festering in for too long, and some of the kids who ignorantly wander into their swamp can never leave. Emotion is the rhetorical vehicle of choice because it's the only way they can reach their previously assumed conclusions...

It turns out that if you try to explain everything in terms of oppression theory, you end up describing everything as oppressive, including having one's feelings hurt.

It's what is peering out of your eyes and asking questions. — Rich

Can you be more specific? A network of neurons doesn't seem exempt from causation.

Can you define "Mind" please? And how it's creative, explorative, and evolutionary aspects relate to quantum indeterminacy or actually bring meaning to life?