The only way I'd ever ban any speech would be if speech could literally force something like violent actions. — Terrapin Station

But that's laughable. :lol:

That's like saying the only way I'd ever ban asbestos is if it literally forced cancer on immediate contact.

That's just not reasonable. It can cause cancer, it has caused cancer, no, not in every single encounter with the substance, but there's a risk, the costs outweigh the benefits, and that's enough.

Yeah, but I made it explicit in many different ways that I'd only be concerned with force. — Terrapin Station

Yeah, and people aren't going to remember that you go by an unusual interpretation which no one else goes by. They'll just revert to ordinary language by default.

Influence is different than force. I only have moral issues with force.

I thought I explained all of that numerous times, in a bunch of different ways. — Terrapin Station

Again, funnily enough, if you deviate from the norm in terms of how you interpret key terms in use, then you will keep encountering this problem. Just use "force" only.

Okay . . . I get really tired about talking about the same stuff all the time, though. So I try to focus on angles that aren't something we've beaten into the ground already. — Terrapin Station

That's understandable, but I don't think that that was helpful.

I'm going by what businesses believe advertising can do, which I've seen many times from many different angles, including that my wife constantly deals with it as part of her work--she's a business consultant. — Terrapin Station

Okay, but again, I don't really care about that. Why would I? I don't think that the main thrust of his opening post had anything to do with a triviality like that. Based on other comments of his, his position is more extreme than that. And I think that unenlightened was probably meaning to get at his more extreme views than to merely deny that some businesspeople overestimate the effectiveness of advertising.

NOS4A2 stated that the power of speech is overestimated.

unenlightened said that it's not in the case of advertising.

But it is. — Terrapin Station

Okay, so we're all just talking past eachother. Maybe it is overestimated. Maybe not. It's hard to judge because where do you even begin? You could look at it a number of different ways and reach different conclusions. But unenlightened is definitely right in that it's not overestimated to the extent that it's a benefit to many businesses all over the world. It's a key part of selling any product. Good luck selling a product with no advertising whatsoever.

But the point that I was making was that the effectiveness of advertising is overestimated. — Terrapin Station

And the point that I was making was that that point misses the point, meaning that whether true or false, it has no logical bearing on what he said. It's irrelevant.

It's effective enough to support his point, irrespective of whether it's also overestimated.

What's the point it misses? — Terrapin Station

That speech, by way of advertisement, generally speaking, is effective, or powerful, or however you want to word it so long as you don't completely get the wrong end of the stick, which is not at all to suggest that it's totally effective or that it's guaranteed to result in substantial success for a business. His point is so obvious it's hard to see how anyone could miss it or disagree with it, but I think that some people here are too entrenched in their positions to see what's right in front of them.

Give the guy some credit, S. — god must be atheist

No can do. I'm too full of malice, you see.

I think there's some truth in that, but there is also a lot of malice out there, and sometimes in here. — Coben

And a lot of stupidity. For example, I once encountered someone who suggested that it would be true that the shape of our planet is hexagonal, so long as the theory was useful enough in terms of predictive power and so on.

Perhaps I could have framed it better, but remember Im not for censorship, even of hate speech. — DingoJones

Then you're for acts of terrorism, like those committed by acolytes of Anjem Choudary, the infamous preacher of hate speech who influenced their later actions and was sentenced to years in prison as a result. You're suggesting that that's a cost which you're willing to accept.

The overestimation is that advertising is going to be effective, because of a belief that it strongly influences consumer decisions. — Terrapin Station

But that just misses the point. Perhaps your replies miss the point because you misunderstand the point.

If we're going to call actions that preceded actions that were performed because someone decided to perform them "causal" as well as calling actions that preceded actions that were performed because they were forced "causal," how are we going to protect against conflation, for one? — Terrapin Station

Well, it seems obvious to me that you could just use the word "force" when that's what you mean. Clearly I don't mean to suggest anything like that anyone reading a book on Marx is then forced to become a Marxist as a result.

What do you mean by “power”, that makes it sound like a compulsion of some kind, is that what you mean? — DingoJones

Funnily enough, that was his choice of words. I don't mean anything above and beyond what I've previously said, so influence, cause, motivation, effect...

I can’t tell whether your false analogies are child-like or if you actually believe them to be analogous. I’m saying that words have zero power over human beings and in fact it is the other way about. If this is the case, why would we ban the words? — NOS4A2

You were talking about words having agency and acting on people. That's a straw man deliberately using inappropriate language suggesting a category error, so I gave you a taste of your own childishness with an analogy which does the same thing. You frequently do this, like with your talk of sourcery. Do you realise that it's a fallacy to do that?

I don't care about you saying that words have zero power over human beings when that flies in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. You've been given a million examples evidencing this, and any response from you which just misinterprets that claim as I understand it is just missing the point. If you want to argue with yourself, go and argue with yourself. If you want to argue with me, you'll have to actually listen to what I'm saying and interpret it appropriately.

Insatiable and unfulfilled desires are painful by their very nature. That we are lacking something at almost all times, and the fact that fulfilling some of these lacks is only temporarily satisfying is a negative in and of itself. — schopenhauer1

That doesn't outweigh the overall value of the lives of many people. Given that the nonsense ideal of living without that is not a possible alternative, the only other alternative is lifelessness, which is not better than the lives that the people themselves value. They would not opt to never have lived if given the option, and it is immoral to dismiss their own conclusion as you are doing.

And illustrates the overestimation very well. If that weren't the case, no one would ever go out of business. They'd merely need to advertise and they'd make tons of money. — Terrapin Station

That doesn't work as an attempted refutation. That some businesses overestimate the effect that advertising will have to the detriment of their business doesn't do anything at all against his point.

What would be patently absurd is to say that their words are what altered the world. Non-speech actions alter the world, and we need to look at the causes of those non-speech actions. Words can have an influence, but they don't cause the actions in question. (And we're back in the middle of the thread we already beat to death.) — Terrapin Station

No, it's not patently absurd to say that their words altered the world, so long as that's not interpreted in a silly way. Words do have an influence, as you say, and that entails that they're causal, because again, I don't interpret influence in a silly way.

So there's only a problem here because you've decided to go against the grain with a silly interpretation. So much for nonconformity.

So why censor words and punish those who speak them if the words they speak are unable to act upon other human beings? — NOS4A2

It's hard to tell whether you're being silly with your choice of words and the way that you're interpreting them, or whether you're saying something agreeable. I don't condone driving over the speed limit, but not on the basis that the car itself will somehow gain agency and drive itself into people of it's own accord.

The UK law on freedom of speech includes article 19, sure, but contradicts it in the very next clause by limiting freedom of speech with a wide array of regulations. — NOS4A2

It doesn't contradict it.

Then why do you advocate for censorship? If the words have no agency, what is there to fear? — NOS4A2

Agency is not the issue. It's a category error with regard to words, and a category error that no one has made. I'm not sure you understand what that word means. I advocate for censorship in a very limited sense in accordance with the United Kingdom laws on freedom of speech, which includes the United Nations Declaration on freedom of speech, because of the effect which they can have on people. Because of the potential consequences, and because of past cases which set the precedent. It's a risk assessment, a cost-benefit analysis, as you already know.

I believe humans have agency, not the words. — NOS4A2

No one here believes that words have agency, so you don't need to keep negating that words have agency. It's as senseless as me saying to you that humans aren't fish.

You say this yet your words remain completely ineffectual. Perhaps moving them around in a different order or combination will illicit the effect you desire. — NOS4A2

Have you taken leave of your senses? My words just influenced you to reply with the above. In fact, you could not have done so if I hadn't said what I did just now. So they can't have been completely ineffectual.

And don't bother attacking the ridiculous straw man that words must always have the exact imagined or desired result every single time without fail. You'll just be wasting time.

The problem is we treat the words as agents and the humans as the objects they act upon. Words motivate us, incite us, inspire us, encourage us. It’s a habit of language, but likely a folk psychology. But It’s the other way about. We act upon the words: we read them, hear them, understand them. — NOS4A2

There's no problem here besides the peculiar one that you've invented. There's no contradiction there: words have an effect on us like you just described, and we act on them. Words aren't treated as agents: you made that part up.

No they weren’t sorcerers, because they cannot change matter with their words. — NOS4A2

Well, there's a silly way to interpret the statement that they changed the world with their words, and there's a sensible way to interpret that statement.

You're obviously going with the former.

Had no one read or heard their mystical words, nothing would have been changed. — NOS4A2

They weren't mystical, but otherwise yes, and that's the point. They did read or hear the words, and the world was changed as a result. If they had not have, then it wouldn't have. The works of Shakespeare, for example, are taught in schools, so obviously his writings had an effect on the world through their influence on people.

You can try this with your own words. The societal changes, the altered matter, begin with the listeners not the speakers. — NOS4A2

So? If the words didn't motivate them, then the societal changes they action wouldn't have occurred. It's easy to refute your claims and suggestions through a reduction to the absurd.

For goodness sake, why can't you answer direct questions? You're actually taking the piss.

There are arguments in favour and arguments against. It's about getting the right balance. I'm more on Russell's side in that case. But one thing's for sure, a few favourable cases here and there against censorship does not by any means justify throwing the baby out with the bathwater as absolutists suggest.

The censor’s assumption that words and expression can alter the world around us is closer to sorcery than anything else. — NOS4A2

And that is not only false, but patently absurd, as the counterexamples I've previously raised in response to this ludicrous claim of yours demonstrate. Karl Marx, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill, Socrates, William Shakespeare, Martin Luther, the Four Evangelists... none of the aforementioned were sorcerers. They were just world-renowned wordsmiths.

So all of this is wrong about Schopenhauer's view. Schopenhauer's ideal would probably be something like Nirvana- a complete lack of lack. I've said this before about Schop- his world would be one with absolutely nothing or absolutely everything. There would be no deprived states. All being or all nothing. There is no becoming or flux. Thus, a world "worth living" in a Nietzschean "suffering makes things worth it" isn't even in the radar of this kind of holistic metaphysics. That's intra-worldly affairs, and Schop's metaphysics is the "world" itself. — schopenhauer1

That's just as insane if not more so. That's not an ideal, that's an inconceivable nothing. A nonsense. No one in their right mind would trade their life for that, unless perhaps they were one of the few exceptions where life is really, really, really bad.

And that matches my description anyway. That would be a life without everything that Schopenhauer would call suffering, and it wouldn't be worth living. It is true that in reality, life with suffering is worth living in the majority of cases. You might not want that to be true, but it is.

"What has philosophy taught you?"

That people believe a lot of weird shit, but it's entertaining at that. — Terrapin Station

You mean, out of those people who are attracted to philosophy forums, many of those people believe a lot of weird shit? Don't - perhaps inadvertently - sully the reputation of all of those people out there (and a few of them here) with enough common sense not to believe all of that weird shit. The weird shit detracts from the value of philosophy, except, like you say, for entertainment value.

The one big exception would be religion. I can't believe how many people outside of the whacky little world of philosophy fall for that one.

One thing weird about the "systematic" view schopenhauer is endorsing is that it implies that the preferred state would be to just sit like a lump and not want to do anything--as if that's some ideal for some reason. — Terrapin Station

Oh yeah, that's also pretty insane. Nietzsche was right on this point and Schopenhauer was wrong. Ironically, a life without everything that Schopenhauer would call suffering wouldn't be worth living. But in reality, life with suffering is worth living in the majority of cases.

And then it would just turn into me trying to figure out why he'd be insisting that everyone feels a way that they clearly do not on my view (and in my personal experience, including my own). — Terrapin Station

Yeah, that's pretty insane.

It's actually extremely immoral to dismiss what people actually think about the value of life, about how much of an impact things like hunger has on it, and so on. It is people, as a group of living creatures on this planet, that this issue would effect, after all. It's of the utmost importance that the views of people are taken into consideration over the question of whether or not there should still be people living on this planet ten years from now, fifty years from now, a hundred years from now, two hundred years from now, and so on.

Even if one were to concede that something like hunger is bad, that's a long, long way off from justifying his conclusion. It's by no means bad enough in my life to be a justification for my parents to have never conceived me. If possible, would I choose to have never been born just because there is hunger in my life? No, absolutely not, that's bloody ridiculous. And there are literally millions and millions of cases just like mine. So he doesn't have a leg to stand on with this line of argument, even if concessions are made

I am not misleading anyone. — schopenhauer1

Fortunately you're not, because we're more intelligent than that. But your descriptions and claims are nevertheless misleading, and you're in denial about the fact that that's so. You're mis-selling a product.

How many examples is it going to take?

Do you agree that the Disneyland example is an example of a misleading proposition? Why is it misleading? Obviously because the part about dragging children along the ground by horse for miles and miles is deliberately not mentioned, right?

So then, why don't you agree that your antinatalism proposition is misleading because you deliberately don't mention all of the other things that it would prevent which matter so much to people?

It's a clear-cut case. You are mis-selling a product. It's wrong. And you should stop. If this were retail, you would be fined.

And you should be honest enough to admit that this is what you're doing.

So then why did you make that comment to me in the first place? I'm not having an agenda for another person by making the valid point that you try to hide the full picture by never mentioning all of the other hugely important things that, by implication, you're in favour of preventing. This raises a serious question of motivation: do you want to mislead or not? Because I've raised this problem with you numerous times and yet you continue to do it. So what does that suggest?

It's just as misleading as the other examples that I've given which you're ignoring just because you find them insulting. Hey kids, do want to go to Disneyland? You like Disneyland, don't you? That's effectively what you're doing, and we both know that that's wrong. You're guilty of mis-selling a product.

Fair enough. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Especially since he started the attack.

"Possibly playing" a card and saying that "it is being played" are very different. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

So you at least entertain the possibility, then. Good. I just so happen to think that he does so. I could be wrong, but then so could you. I don't think that I should be silenced from expressing a relevant criticism based on my honest opinion.

God knows what I've got, if anything. But I've made a conscious decision not to seek any diagnosis, precisely for that kind of reason. I've seen how it can change how people behave, and not all of it is for the better. No thanks, I don't want any crutches. I'll walk on my own two feet.

I'm better than being so naive as to think that no one ever plays cards, or that this couldn't possibly be an instance of that.

Oh you're so clever :roll:. — schopenhauer1

Thank you.

Wait, is that an insult?

I just see your "problem" as almost nonsensical, so unresolved would not even apply. It doesn't matter that the parent has an agenda per se, it is the fact that someone else will be LIVING OUT the parent's (society's?) agenda(s). — schopenhauer1

Another red herring.

Yeah, his comments in that post are what set the ball rolling in that direction. He likes to play innocent, but that post clearly wasn't just a "why was my discussion deleted?" or a "what's your policy on autism?" (see guideline 23C, subsection 4a).