There's not always the exchange of money, it might only be the promise of money, and surely a promise is just a speech-act? But there might not even be a promise; there might simply be a request of one friend to another. If I beg John to kill my wife, and he does, ought I be punished?

No, I do not think you ought to be punished in this instance because you made no obligation to John and did not help him with the planning or execution of the act.

You question the physics of my words inciting you to commit a crime but don't question the physics of some nebulous "dynamic" between me and you inciting you to commit a crime? That doesn't seem very consistent.

Surely if your fear of being punished by me "compels" you to commit a crime then that's entirely the responsibility of you and your psychology.

In my defense it’s difficult to explain. By “dynamic” I mean hierarchical relationship with expectations.

Absolutely if my fear of being punished compels me to commit the crime, then that is my responsibility—I could have done otherwise— but you are guilty of something like abusing your position. The point is, other reasons besides the speech and act of speaking convinces one to commit the crime.

I think they’re guilty of doing what you described, but for different reasons. Speaking or instructing is not the criminal act and the reasons those acts are evil.

The officer’s who carry out arrests due to a superior’s orders have to obey or face repercussion. It’s that dynamic, not the words, that convinces him to follow those orders. The superior ought not to abuse that power and the officer ought not to follow those orders. If I were to try to persuade or convince or encourage the officers to arrest my political opponents using the exact same instructions, but without the power to threaten his employment, the officer wouldn’t listen to me and would probably laugh in my face. Exact same words and instructions, but two different results. Why? Because It’s not the words or the fact of speaking that convinces an officer to follow such orders.

Hiring someone to kill your wife in exchange for cash has a similar component. If you made the exact same request but didn’t exchange any cash, the contract killer wouldn’t kill. The exact same request, but one does not convince. Why? The exchange of money, not the request, is the reason a contract killer would kill your wife.

Then you're simply ignoring the other half, given your objection below this is entirely hollow.

What other half would that be?

That is, roughly, the point. We do this with mentally incapacitated people. What's the difference in your eyes?

One is mentally incapacitated, the other is not.

All stimuli do. Words are stimuli. This is obvious biological fact.

All soundwaves are stimuli. Soundwaves stimulate the ear drum, and that’s about where their work ends. It is the listener who tranduces that stimuli into other forms of energy for the purposes of listening, understanding, etc.

Then I guess you can just choose to never be angry, upset, pining or any other uncomfortable emotion then. Nice.

I’m human. But human emotion begins and ends in the human being, with his biology—genetics, brain chemistry, hormones, blood pressure etc.—being the direct cause.

I understand I’m stubborn on this issue, so thanks for putting up with it and giving me a fair shake.

Ukraine and US sign minerals deal. It’s crazy how quickly things are happening in the last few months where the entire world, with all its effete moral posturing, faltered for the last few years. Let’s hope this is a step towards ending this war and not towards beginning a new one.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5ypw7pn9q3o.amp

Can you make it explicitly clear why you think this does not obtain?

I’m not speaking about law. Law is often wrong. It’s punishable by death to practice sorcery in Saudi Arabia, for example. There are entire literatures on it.

I’m speaking about physics and biology. At least your link makes a decent attempt to square the circle. He says correctly that the incitee’s mental state causes him to commit the action. In other words, he causes himself to commit the action.

But for some reason he adds in another step, more magical thinking and figurative language: the inciter causes beliefs and emotions to arise in the incitee, completely removing the autonomy of the listener. The inciter causes that mental state. How? What’s the causal chain? Do the words swirl around in the head and push a bunch of buttons in the brain?

Sorry. Not good enough. The only cause and source of beliefs and emotions is the one who holds them.

No argument just synonyms. People can be spurred to action by another's words. If you want to deny that you are either stupid or dishonest.

There you go using another synonym. You’re incapable of showing cause and effect, hiding behind figurative language.

Spur, a spiked metal implement worn on the heel to goad a horse. No one is spurring another to do anything unless someone is using spurs on another.

Presenting etymologies and alternative words is not an argument.

The argument, which you dodged, is below the etymologies and alternative words. Avoiding the issue is not a counter argument; it’s a fallacy.

Some people are incited by other people. It happens often enough. You seem to be confusing incitement with forcing.

The term “incite” comes from Latin, “incitare”, meaning “to put into rapid motion”. It’s a member of a class of words that has a literal beginning, explainable by physics, but gains a figurative sense over the course of its life they are used unscientifically and in superstitious cultures to explain how words can physically move people.

Another example would be to “stir”, which meant literally “to move”, as in stirring food with one’s hand.

Another one would be to “rouse”, which began as a technical hunting term for hawking, literally “to shake the feathers of the body”.

There is nothing wrong with speaking figuratively. But when figurative language is taken literally and is used to make literal acts illegal, that’s a problem. The fact remains: one cannot put into rapid motion, move, or shake the feathers of another’s body with words.

Pretty funny.

Man arrested in theft of DHS chief Kristi Noem's purse is in the U.S. illegally, official says

The suspect who was arrested Saturday in the theft of Secretary Kristi Noem’s purse is in the country illegally, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia said in an interview with NBC News.

Ed Martin said a second suspect who also is in the country illegally is being sought by law enforcement.

It is not believed the suspect targeted Noem because she was the Department of Homeland Security secretary, Martin said.

“There is no indication it was because of that. It was frankly, it was a nice looking purse,” Martin said, in a recorded telephone interview.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/man-believed-stolen-dhs-chief-kristi-noems-purse-custody-rcna203176

Given that Biden’s immigration surge was the largest in US history, and 60% of all that was illegal immigration, Americans are enduring the effects of an odd phenomenon we find common among Trump’s opponents, virtue signalling into disaster.

It’s a form of virtue signalling, but the effects of that act of virtue signalling are often catastrophic, or even deadly. It’s like cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. In this case, it was that Biden and his 2020 campaign team were so offended by Trump’s immigration policies during his first term, that they swung the door wide open, ruining the lives not only of Americans, but the illegals that made the journey holding firm to Biden’s promises, which of course he finally reneged in order to win the election of 2024. Now everyone must deal with the conditions he created.

Very true. It’s enough to know what another thinks, and then one can at least make an informed decision about whether to deal with them or not.

Yeah, but I think it’s a fine line between censorship and self-defense. To me, I don’t think it’s censorship qua censorship to fight back against a censorial mob who only wish to stop you from speaking. I think that counts as opposing violence rather than censoring them. They wish to deny you of some fundamental freedoms, and at the same time deny freedoms to those who wish to hear you.

I’m not sure if Popper is libertarian or anarchist enough to believe in the principle of equal freedom, but to me, once that principle is violated, all bets are off. I think the paradox of tolerance presupposes such a principle.

But then again he was also writing around the time of world war 2.

And let's see if we get the drone war against the Mexican Cartels or US strikes on Iran. All what you wanted so much when voting for Trump.

“Israel had planned to strike Iranian nuclear sites as soon as next month but was waved off by President Trump in recent weeks in favor of negotiating a deal with Tehran to limit its nuclear program, according to administration officials and others briefed on the discussions.

Mr. Trump made his decision after months of internal debate over whether to pursue diplomacy or support Israel in seeking to set back Iran’s ability to build a bomb, at a time when Iran has been weakened militarily and economically.

The debate highlighted fault lines between historically hawkish American cabinet officials and other aides more skeptical that a military assault on Iran could destroy the country’s nuclear ambitions and avoid a larger war. It resulted in a rough consensus, for now, against military action, with Iran signaling a willingness to negotiate.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/us/politics/trump-israel-iran-nuclear.html

Believe it or not, the Weimar Republic had very advanced hate speech laws, and the Nazis were routinely suppressed and banned, many of them jailed.

In free speech literature, the notion that if only there were hate speech laws to counter the Nazis, the holocaust might not have happened, is a fallacy.It’s known as the Weimar Fallacy.

https://www.thefire.org/news/blogs/eternally-radical-idea/would-censorship-have-stopped-rise-nazis-part-16-answers

Chomsky makes a similar argument. He says that the reason there is no real threat of fascism in America is that there is free speech. While in Europe fascism and holocaust denial is taken seriously, and routinely banned, in America holocaust deniers are allowed to distribute their literature with little to no censorship, and as a result their ideas just aren’t taken seriously.

Fair point and good objection. I think Popper was largely talking about reactionary violence, where they “answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols”. Suppressing their intolerant philosophies would be “most unwise”, but one ought to fight back if violence occurs.

I assumed, perhaps wrongly, that “cancel culture” fell into that camp. I say this because speakers are often shouted down, or there are bomb threats, swatting, vandalism, even violence etc. though I may be mixing up my terms. I’m not even sure “cancel culture” is an actual phenomenon, to be honest.

Well said. Yes, there’s value to knowing what people really think even when it’s wrong, ugly, ill-mannered or offensive. I would even argue it would be better to encourage such speech and the tolerance of it, at least to know what people believe and to keep them public, rather than send them into hiding as you say.

I am against taxes for the same reason I’m against theft, exploitation, and slavery. Taxes is on par with slavery because the tax man is taking the fruits of another’s labor. In other words, not only is a worker toiling for the tax man for free, but at a loss. It’s theft or extortion because one is punished if one doesn’t pay. It’s exploitation because the tax man benefits himself and his beneficiaries from the work of others. So the values of your State appear to be slavery, theft, and exploitation.

Advertising works. I don’t think advertising is a waste of money. How else can someone know what you’re trying to sell, or that you exist if you don’t tell them that you do?

It’s not magic, though. When people keep treating words and symbols as magic spells, as if they can animate someone to do this or that, I object to that, and I don’t know why it is so controversial.

It has nothing to do with my unbreakable will. It’s simple physics and biology. You cannot control another’s motor cortex with words. You cannot cause someone to buy a thing any more than you cause them to forget the advertisement of the thing altogether. I cannot cause you to agree with me and vice versa.

You’re placing nothing in my head. My desires, fears, beliefs, thoughts, concepts—they all find their genesis in me and me alone. All of your examples about pets and Subway all fall prey to post hoc ergo proctor hoc, after this therefor because of this. None of them show any causal factors between one or the other.

I own a house on land in Massachusetts. It was originally included in a grant from the King of England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The colony then portioned out smaller grants to people who wanted to start communities. The leaders of those communities then granted properties to people who wanted to move into that town. Over the years, those granted properties were subdivided, sold, and developed until the real estate system we have today resulted. I don't see any "natural right" in this process. Governments took the property by fiat and created the property rights out of the air. Ownership was legitimized and documented by the government, which also enforces the laws that protect property rights.

That’s not quite the case. Many puritans purchased land off the natives, in spite of the government fiat. Even Joh Winthrop said the natives had natural rights. Natural rights influenced much of the founding of the country, at least nominally.

Like it or not, God didn't give us our properties, the government did. It's a service it provides. I think protection of property rights is very important - the quality of my life depends on it - but it's a legal and not a moral responsibility.

Another New England example would be Rhode Island, purchased from the natives by Roger Williams. All the services of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, like religious persecution, compelled Williams to flee from that colony to found one of his own. The natives were not a part of any government, had no law and especially no government rights, but the just transfer of property between one holder and another occurred anyways.

All you’d have to do is compare the amount of advertisements you see to the amount of those products you buy. I don’t know about your case, but in mine the result is near nil, and I see advertisements almost on a daily basis.

It is likely that my case is similar to many; but perhaps there are people who buy the products of every advertisement they see. In any case, the sheer amount of advertisements one sees in comparison to the amount of those products one buys ought to provide a sufficient data-set of whether it is the case, or is logically falsified.

What about inciting people to murder then? Or even inciting them to persecute others? To anticipate a likely objection: you might argue that people make up their own minds what to do, in which case you would be hopelessly naive.

If you wouldn’t mind demonstrating your ability to incite someone to do something else, it would be appreciated. I will be your willing subject if you wish.

I was hoping this would not be necessary: It is hard for me to see how you're not trolling.

The question is obviously and clearly about speech. So, can you have another go and see what kind of speech I might be talking about?

I’ve already argued that speech cannot cause harm. So maybe you can tell me what harms you’re speaking about.

I don’t represent anyone. No illusions here.

How am I incorrect? It’s quite easy to prove me wrong: make me feel fear with your words. Incite me to violence. You won’t because you know you cannot do any such thing, despite claiming the opposite.

So, you're simply unable to imagine any sort of reality or situation where all of a sudden you're not in the position you have become accustomed to? Not even a little bit? No empathy or ability to sympathize with other people who aren't like yourself? Mate... that's not just illogical. It's inhuman.

Where do you get that from what I wrote? Odd.



You don’t want to test your magical theory?

I don’t believe government makes property rights—or any rights—because I believe in something like natural rights. State rights are merely the concessions of our collective servitude, in my view.

But I’m still not a complete anarchist yet. If the government protected our natural rights and made justice costly and accessible, then went no further, I would voluntarily pay for such a service. It would be a government as illustrated in the Declaration of Independence, and I’d be one of its biggest cheerleaders.

I find it hilarious that you think that the best way to combat slander and defamation is to call someone a liar and let them carry on the rest of their lives... living with themselves. What if you wronged me and I didn't care? I could make up so much terrible stuff about you and completely ruin your life and wouldn't miss a second of sleep about it, if I disliked you that much it may even help me sleep at night knowing that I ruined your life... You simply cannot allow someone to do that with no repercussions.

I’m sure you could come up with some terrible stuff and wouldn’t miss a wink of sleep. But it’s your word against mine, and I don’t think you’d be that convincing.

Can I ask what you think about NDA's? Surely you don't think a piece of paper can stop you from speaking as well. What about Classified information? should there be repercussions for breaching these?

I don’t think so, no.

I find that Free speech absolutists ignore the damage you can do with words.

Technically speaking you are correct, words cannot cause harm and the harm comes through reactionary actions.

This is a similar justification with gun violence, "Guns don't kill people, people do". I feel like both are absolving the blame on one factor and piling it all on another factor simply because it fits their narrative. Speech can be used as a tool to: Incite violence, Abuse people, Cause fear, Slander, defamation and much more... Can I ask why you think that you are within your right to do these things and why your rights supersede the victims rights to not have these things happen to them?

If I was passing by a school on the street and I started screaming really threatening stuff to the children on the other side of the gate, should I be arrested?

I understand I am peppering you with questions, I am just seeing how far your absolutism goes.

It’s magical thinking. You can’t cause me harm or make me do things with your words. To believe that is to believe in sorcery.

We can run a simple test. You can try it on me. I will be your willing participant. Make me commit violence with your words, or make me fearful. Abuse me, or whatever. According to you your words should be able to cause me to do things, maybe feel pain. Let’s try it and see if that is true.

“Go forth, my disciples, and murder those who would oppose”. Is murder not the “out-going harm” you were speaking of, then? Then what, exactly, is the out-going harm?

I never said anything about allowing murder.

Not if you're successful - you will harm and that'll be that. Still happens these days.
That's the point. Causing actual damage is something which needs to be addressed. You cannot rely on social life for justice. It is almost never going to happen. I'm very sympathetic to an actual 'absolute' freedom of speech, but the harms visited by speech on concert with intent to harm is something I am not comfortable with.

Kinetically speaking, causing damage with words is impossible. There isn’t enough energy in a word to inflict a wound on even the slightest of biologies. Perhaps yelling a word may harm an eardrum, but you could do the same with any sound.

The harms begin only in the reaction to words, and how people use them to justify their actions towards others.

So should I be able to publicly slander and defame you for being a pedophile and lie, resulting in you losing your job and every social factor that would come along with that and be able to continue to carry on with my day with no repercussions?

I don’t think you’d get the responses you’re looking for. The repercussion is you’ll be known as a liar, slanderer, and a defamer. You’d also have to live with yourself.

A small quibble. Slander and defamation are usually civil wrongs, not criminal, but I don’t think they should be treated as such. In any case, the fact that something is a civil wrong or a crime doesn’t mean it ought to be. People still claim yelling fire in a crowded theater is illegal, for instance, but they are merely repeating the fatuous ruling of Oliver Wendell Holmes, which has long since been overruled by later precedent.

Do you believe that there should be consequence to certain speech? Realistically we can all say whatever we want at any point, but do you believe people should be able to say WHATEVER they want at any point with no consequence ever?

No, I do not believe there should be consequences for speech, and yes, I do believe people should be able to say whatever they want at any point with no consequence ever.

Yep, the FBI’s collapse is immanent. Any day now.

Let speech be free absolutely.

There is no point in censorship and it is a double violation of rights. It denies the speaker his fundamental right to open his mouth and speak, and it denies the rest of us our right to listen to it. I can’t think of one person, alive or dead, who ought to have the power to tell us what we can or cannot say.

Thanks for the discussion.

Years back I did a very unscientific analysis, gathered as much as I could regarding the convictions of politicians for crimes in the United States, and separated their crimes by political party. To my surprise the Democrats had more corruption convictions, while republicans excelled in sex-related crimes. Their respective leads were negligible, at best, so the analysis was fruitless, but the moral development seemed to be lacking in both just about the same.

I object to the left/right paradigm in general because left and right are so nearly identical in their underlying philosophies. They both hold to the republican belief in the sovereign power of political machinery, that so long as their people are allowed to tinker with it long enough and send it off running in the direction of their choosing, everyone will get The Good Life. Once their power is threatened they act as a praetorian guard. Sprinkle on top of this activity some surface-level rhetorical content and one might be able to convince others there is a distinguishing mark between these two factions, but on the whole it is all similar. Perhaps, the only differences are the incidence of the beneficiaries. At any rate, this specious divide is what we get for modelling a political spectrum after the seating plan of the National Assembly.

I also object to the social categorization at use here and for the same reasons I would do so for all sorts of identity politics. There are as many political beliefs as there are people, and the term “Left” and “Right” are by now slurs meant to impugn another, or otherwise to signal one’s political purity, and not much else. A whole host of fallacy results.

Let's stop the obfuscation - what is your answer to my question? Do you as a libertarian/liberal have a responsibility not to benefit from the exploitation of others.

Absolutely.

Suppose there are two methods by which man’s economic needs and desires can be satisfied, through production and exchange, or through the appropriation of the production and exchanges of others. One is diligence, the other exploitation. Government employs the second method.

Do you believe you have the same responsibility?

When given the opportunity, powerful people will enslave others. Will use violence to prevent organizing. Will pay less than livable wages to people with limited choices. Will allow their employees to work in life-threatening conditions. Same as it ever was. To the extent that it isn't, it's because of government and labor unions.

I hope it is merely irony to advocate for the regulation of everyone’s lives just in case powerful people were to enslave us. Maybe if the government appropriates enough from the fruits of my own labor it will help stop the powerful from taking my things.

I’m curious, though, that if given the opportunity, would you enslave others? If not, why do you assume others will?

Your moral purity is maintained based on the lives and misery of millions of people.

One thing is for certain, my morality is maintained based on my actions towards others, not on my political beliefs and voting patterns. It’s clear to me, at least, that one is unable to judge another’s moral character from what he says about government regulation or what box he marks on a ballot.

Clearly there are many good people out there advocating and voting for higher wages for workers, for more protections and better conditions, and so on, but how many of those good people are out there providing them? Providing those things to workers can be moral, no doubt, but voting to force people to provide those things cannot be moral.

In my experience, libertarians don't really have much interest in "our obligations to our fellow man and to our communities." Take environmental protection - a typical libertarian recommendation of what to do when Dupont dumps tetraethyldeath in the river where I get my drinking water is to take them to court. If you don't see how laughable that is, there's not much more I can say.

Most libertarians are not interested in the welfare of their fellow citizens. Many of them see themselves as rugged individualists who deserve all the credit for what they have accomplished. They don't recognize what has been given to them just by living in our society.

Libertarianism is just another name for anarchy. I'm not using that as an insult. I mean it as a description. This from the web - Anarchy - the organization of society on the basis of voluntary cooperation, without political institutions or hierarchical government. And it won't work, can't work, for any large modern society. It's pie in the sky.

There is plenty anarchist and libertarian literature showing that the opposite is the case. I’ll accept your experience in good faith but I’m going to defer to my own experience.

They just have a little more faith in human nature and their fellow man, that if the government disappears tomorrow not everyone will go to war with one another. They believe people will largely cooperate, as they do already.

But most of all they are taking a moral stance. They refuse to rely on an instrument of exploitation and coercion to achieve cooperation with others. To do so, to me, is a sign of moral poverty. At any rate, it’s a sign that one doesn’t have much else to offer but his fealty to some class of politicians.

Speaking of pie in the sky, the vain hope that we can elect a bunch of angels to run the government is an absurd one. But, I guess we’ll keep trying anyways.

I agree with everything you've written, but what's the alternative? I would be more sympathetic to the libertarian view if there were any acknowledgement of a societal obligation to create a society where people can live decent, secure lives. Fact is, I don't think it ever crossed most of their minds. They don't really care. Do you?

The alternative is to do it ourselves. Even the most limited, night-watchman state, does not preclude our obligations to our fellow man and to our communities.

I would argue that delegating those duties and responsibilities to a bureaucracy or voting for a political party is the very least one could do in that regard, so much so that’s it’s tantamount to doing nothing, save that it allows us to signal our bonafides and allegiances. I don’t think that any of this crosses the statist mind.