I don’t think it can be shown that free speech leads to authoritarian regimes, — NOS4A2

I didn't address his post yet, but I don't think that, either.

At any rate, I don't have a problem with authoritarian regimes in principle. I don't have a preference for one form of government over another. What I care about are the laws in place.

Why would I care if laws I disagree with have been decided by a lone individual, a small group of people, or a large majority?

For example, I'm against banning hate speech. If a large majority of people in a democracy are in favor of banning hate speech, and that's why it's banned, that doesn't make me feel any better about it than if a dictator had banned it.

And I'd rather live under a dictator who doesn't ban hate speech than live in a democracy that does.

I don't care about how many people are deciding laws. I care about the laws they're making. Maybe if my views were very mainstream, so that I usually felt the way about things that most people feel, then I'd have a preference for democracies, but this is not the case.

Essentially, for the purposes of arguing, I consider your argument and a "cost-benefit analysis" to fall into the same category. — Echarmion

To which I already said, "This is the game where we wonder if we can interpret everything in some particular way, regardless of how anyone else is thinking about it." (And the answer to that wondering is almost always "Yes.")

it's an argument from consequences rather than from principles. — Echarmion

I'm not actually sold on the deontology vs. consequentialism distinction holding water.

So I draw this symbol:



And I tell you that in the "bar" on the left-hand side, there's 5 billion dollars credited to your bank account.

Do you feel rich, or do you think it's just some nonsense I'm making up?

Regarding what you just replied to Coben, do you think offering people money for committing crimes on your behalf should be legal? — Echarmion

No.

I asked for a relevant difference. So I don't think the answers you did give amounted to more than semantics. — Echarmion

(1) How am I supposed to know what you consider relevant or not, since you're really asking for that--a difference that you would consider relevant (and why would I go fishing for this anyway)?, and (2) How is describing a difference not going to be semantic? We'd be talking about what terms are referring to.

Hate speech must be included in free speech, lest we find ourselves mediating what defines hate speech. A sense of fluid morality that changes with the whim of the next offended person. If we limit what people can say, will tomorrow we limit what they can think? — Beliefofmine

Yeah, that's a can of worms we didn't get into--just what counts as hate speech?

In some posts in the thread, people have already even endorsed considering some satire hate speech.

Would this be a general heuristic in law for you? If an action cannot be shown to force people to do something, then it should be legal? — Coben

Yes. In general, my disposition is that of a minarchist libertarian. (It's just that I don't agree with other U.S. party-styled Libertarians (minarchists or not) that it's okay if some people simply can't manage via a free market to have a home, food, health care, education, employment, etc. when they want it, so I'd structure the economy very differently. I don't care about capitalism. I'd have an "official" socialist economy, though it wouldn't disallow people to do whatever they like consensually.)

In general, I want a minimum of punitive laws, and I'd prefer to err on the side of fewer laws rather than more. I also don't agree with the way we've set up the criminal justice system, prisons, etc.

At any rate, I'd basically just focus punitive laws on the typical libertarian triumvirate -- (1) nonconsensual violence/physical force, which I'd require (a) have physical evidence, (b) be causally demonstrable, and (c) be of at least a minimum severity (so that we're not prosecuting people who accidentally stepped on your foot, poked you in the arm to get your attention, etc.) (2) property crimes -- requiring evidence, etc., and again, of at least a minimum severity, and (3) contractual fraud -- requiring documentation, and again, of at least a minimum severity.

A more colloquial way of understanding my view on this is that it's basically a "hippie" idea (since I'm basically a hippie in many ways): Let your freak flag fly, chill out/be mellow(--don't overreact)/let other people do their thing, and help each other out on the commune.

I am interested in your arguments and whether they hold up. — Echarmion

My arguments are what I think. Whether you talk about them to me or with others or just think about them to yourself, you have to know what I'd say to know whether it holds up. But a little over a half hour ago you asked me something that you should have known the answer for, with respect to my arguments, since I already said it, in response to a question you had asked me, just 90 minutes prior to that.

It's kind of hard to examine someone's arguments and whether they hold up when you're so uninterested in them that you can't even recall what they are 90 minutes later. (Of course, assuming one knows and understands them in the first place.)

Sure, so I have no interest in a conversation the way you're going about it. I guess you're not that interested in what I think, in which case don't bother pretending to be in the first place.

None of your previous answers indicated any relevant difference to me. — Echarmion

You're asking me what I think the difference is. I gave info for this already. What did I say?

What's the difference, other than you giving it a different name? — Echarmion

What did I say the difference was?

So my argument for "will," would basically be Dennett's position. We have a range of options that appear to be able to be subjected to conscious deliberation on our part, and the range is determined by cause and effect, and it seems to be the case, that we can choose between these options. So epistemologically, it is not possible to know if we are actually deliberating or if it just appears that we are, for all intents and purposes, it seems to us as if we are making choices. Therefore, it might be safe to say that we have a "will." — rlclauer

The whole issue with the "free" part is whether you really have different options or not. Whether you can really make a choice, including seemingly arbitrary choices.

Which wouldn't be problems then. One can't really complain about people who try to limit free speech if one thinks speech cannot have negative effects on people, even other people. — Coben

It's not that speech can't have an effect on others. It's that it can't be shown to force them to perform particular actions.

You were criticizing Baden for simply "assuming" a cost-benefit analysis is the correct approach. While using something very similar as your own approach. — Echarmion

But I'm not using a cost/benefit analysis approach.

Again, you can't read any preference as a cost/benefit approach.

Any moral stance (as well as stances about what sorts of legislation we should have, etc.) is just a matter of individual preferences. I don't agree that that implies that we can't discuss them, but there aren't correct answers.

Right. So you're saying that you only thought of benefits, — Echarmion

Not necessarily as benefits, but it's too much quibbling to argue about that. So yes.

There's no "cost" to consider.

But other people still need to justify why they are doing a cost-benefit analysis with regards to speech? — Echarmion

I didn't say anything like that. I was pointing out that there's nothing factual about whether anything is a cost or benefit.

I think Zizek has written a paper on that recently. — Isaac

The problem is that he got mucous all over it while reading it out loud, and now it's illegible.

You expressed more than just your preference for a given world though. You gave that preference as the reason why you don't want any speech acts to be illegal. If an act leads to something you prefer, then that's a benefit. And if you're basing your argument on the benefits of not legislating speech, you're doing a cost-benefit analysis, albeit a one- sided one. — Echarmion

A cost-benefit analysis requires that someone thinks of something in terms of comparative costs versus benefits.

Otherwise this is the game where we wonder if we can interpret everything in some particular way, regardless of how anyone else is thinking about it.

This implies you judge the benefits of that state of affairs to be more significant than the costs. — Echarmion

Nope. Not thinking about it in that way at all. Again, I said nothing about "costs," and having a preference (which is what feeling that x is more desirable than y is) doesn't at all imply thinking about anything in terms of a cost/benefit analysis.

If you don't consider a justification necessary, you cannot ask others to provide one. — Echarmion

That would be a completely arbitrary credo, but I'm not asking anyone to give a justification of their stance on whether hate speech should be allowed or not at any rate. What I asked for was support for claims being made about factual matters.

If I remember correctly, your initial argument on why all speech should be legal was about teaching people to make their own decisions and ignore the influence that the speech of others has on them.

How is that not a cost-benefit analysis on your part? What is your argument for approaching the issue the way you approach it? — Echarmion

Moral stances are ways that we (individually) feel about interpersonal behavior that we (again individually) consider to be more significant than etiquette.

I didn't say anything about "teaching people to make their own decisions." People do make their own decisions--even if that decision is to go along with someone else's suggestion.

Re the other part what I said was "The world we need is one in where people don't believe anything just because someone said it, don't automatically follow anyone's orders just because someone gave them, etc. "

How would that be a "cost/benefit" analysis? What am I saying about the "cost" of anything?

I'm awaiting the benefits side of the cost-benefits analysis that would . . . — Baden

Not only are you ignoring that cost-benefits analyses are just something we're making up, where there's no correct answer, because there are no factual benefits or costs in terms of detriments, but you're simply assuming that cost-benefits analyses are how these issues should be approached.

You can not possibly be that much of a moron. Seriously. — Terrapin Station


This coming from the guy who said the following:

Should the state prosecute people who order killings or have a stance or an ideology which promotes violence?
— Wittgenstein

No, not in my view. A number of times I've brought up the extreme case that people like to bring up (and I now see you did in the following post): to my knowledge, Hitler never killed anyone. I don't know what, if any crimes (that I'd consider a crime) he committed, but certainly no speech, nothing he ever ordered, etc. should be considered a crime. — Terrapin Station


...among other gems.

Every time you say this:

I'm a free speech absolutist. — Terrapin Station


...you're basically saying, "I'm a massive moron". — S

What makes you a moron here is that you think that particular ethical stances have anything to do with intelligence.

Clearly not the same thing. In English, "I found a body in the canal" cannot be accurately translated as "I found a biology in the canal". — S

You can not possibly be that much of a moron. Seriously.

Isaac, S, and others here are just too much of a moron for me to bother with.

lol

Yes, — Isaac

lol now 'yes"

I'm just going back to laughing at you. Try being honest/not crazy and maybe I'll give you more than that.

You have no logical reason to be asking about that specific phrase, rather than antisemitic phrases generally. — S

Isaac claimed there was a correlation between saying that phrase and violence, and worse, he did it in the context of someone saying that phrase satirically, which is what we had been talking about.

Yes, have you a better plan with subjective harms and benefits? — Isaac

All it amounts to is, "I like this enough that I'm not going to bother trying to ban/regulate it, but I don't like this, so I will try to ban/regulate it."

Quote me claiming that then. — Isaac

I've already quoted it a couple times. In this post: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/320905 you wrote, "There's a correlation between hate speech and violence which just about every psychologist in the world thinks is causal (as in one of a number of causes, all of which are necessary)."

I'm starting to think that you're an alternate personality of khaled. Seriously, you're either extremely dishonest, extremely moronic, or there's something seriously wrong with you re a mental illness.

Because we live in a fucking democracy, for God's sake. — Isaac

So if a lot of people agree to how it's being made up, then it's good to go?

I have, however, linked several papers in which the language makes it abundantly clear that this is the case. — Isaac

Give an example. Quote something that you think amounts to it.

Try a textbook. — Isaac

If it's in a textbook, there would be an instance of a psychologist saying it.

I'm not asking you, by the way, for a comment in the vein of "the social environment has a causal influence on beahavior." I'm asking you for a comment that's specifically about hate speech That's what we're discussing here.

It's curious that "just about every psychologist" agrees that hate speech is causal to violent behavior, yet we can't find a single one saying anything amounting to this.

Which you should read as, "You lie amusingly."

I was asking about that specific phrase. So if there's nothing about that specific phrase, how about picking any specific utterances that there's a correlation study for? Or are you claiming that there are no correlation studies for any specific utterances, and we're supposed to just assume a correlation between hate speech not-defined-very-well and violence?

Hate speech fails the cost-benefit analysis, — S

How is the "cost-benefit" analysis not simply something that you're making up?

You're not claiming that there are objective benefits, are you?

Whether that is the case generally or not is not subjective. — Isaac

I'm not asking you anything about "generally the case"--again, you're either being stupid or dishonest here.

I'm asking you to just show me one instance in the paper at hand of something akin to "hate speech causes violence."

If it's not in that paper, find me one instance of any psychologist saying anything akin to that.

How long do you think it would take me to find a subjective account of hate speech leading to violence? — Isaac

All I asked you was where in that paper anyone was claiming that hate speech causes violence.

I don't care what the background of it is. Can you find any psychologist writing anything more or less equivalent to "hate speech causes violence"? Let's see if we can find even one.

That's a subjective account. — Isaac

Jesus Christ are you stupid. Whether someone likes something is necessarily subjective.

Yes, but absolutely no-one is suggesting we ban all speech, so why the hell would you be arguing against it? — Isaac

What kind of friggin moron do you need to be to believe that he's thinking that anyone is suggesting to ban all speech? lol

At any rate, coming across like a dishonest idiot is definitely going to be persuasive. Do continue.

By the way, why are you linking to papers such as "Attitudes in the Social Context: The Impact of Social Network Composition on Individual-Level Attitude Strength"?

You're trying to pass that off as making a claim about hate speech causing violence? Or pass it off like it's going to talk about a correlation between the phrase "Gas the Jews" and violence?

There are books on that sort of thing, you know. I own one. Part 1 of 3 is about the rise of antisemitism in Germany as a background to events leading up to the holocaust. — S

So he was referring to Germany 80-90 years ago? Seriously? It wasn't a reference to Mark Meechan or anything more recent? With Meechan, by the way, it was a humorous context.

Do any of those books actually have anyone uttering the phrase "Gas the Jews" (in German or translated) even?

See my now total of eleven linked psychology papers. — Isaac

Which paper talked about the phrase "Gas the Jews"?