Note, the connection cannot be made. He fails his own test.

So you, as a cop, are fully justified to exercise extra caution when you see a Christian when compared to a Muslim.

It appears to me that one ought to be equally cautious because the religious denomination has yet to prove itself to be any sort of mitigating factor in the criminality. It’s too arbitrary of a distinction.

Yeah, it’s a complete mystery that we have more school shootings than any country on earth. Nothing to do with policies. Maybe it’s ectoplasm.

Go back to sleep.

It should be easy to name one neoliberal policy that contributed to just one school schooling.

Ask the families whose kids died in one of the many school shootings we have.

Deregulation is a policy and a choice. It’s the choice to let industry do whatever they like, with obvious outcomes.

No neoliberal policy or lack thereof put a gun in anyone’s hand, I’m afraid. The Swiss government, on the other hand, does offer guns to every conscript and subsidizes ammo at shooting ranges, with no “obvious outcomes”.

In the running for one of the stupidest statements made on this forum.

So stupid is it that false analogies are your only recourse. How does a government impact your life without a policy?

And the absence of food does not cause starvation.

I suppose if one depends on the state as a child does on the nipple, the disappearance of one precludes the suffering of the other. Perhaps a process of weaning is in order.

The “real self” is already apparent. You are witness to it, conversing with it, and interacting with it. You need not traverse anything to find it. It does small talk and speaks of superficial things, as you, your real self, does in return.

There is a common notion that the content of one’s thoughts, his desires, urges, and instincts represents the “true self”, as if a man with suicidal tendencies is not being honest or authentic unless he has a self-inflicted gunshot wound. No; the true self is also the one that suppresses or sublimates such desires and instincts.

That’s a good point. A policy can only have impact if it forces someone to do something or act in a particular way. The repealing or absence of such a policy does not because nothing bears on no one. The absence of a gun control law, for instance, does not make people go out and shoot another any more than it makes them go out and not shoot another. So these kind of connections invariably try to connect an effect to a false cause, a common fallacy.

Note that no connection between “neoliberalism” and a single feeling of despair has been made, much less to any number of them—nor could it. So far, it appears the only instances of despair is found among its critics.

I guess it’s easy to attribute suicide, alcoholism, and drug addiction to economic conditions because one can avoid empirical analysis, which would take account of the expressed reasons for taking drugs, drinking alcohol, and committing suicide according to those who actually do it. An empirical analysis of “despair” might be useful here, too. Until then, the direct result thesis can be dismissed.

The idea of indirect culpability for these behaviours is just as specious. In order to push someone to addiction, alcoholism, or suicide, it’s safe to say one would have to actively interfere in his personal life, like a spouse, a bully, or tax man, which seems to me anathema to any species of liberalism. No doubt some self-proclaimed liberals do resort to such meddling and interventions. In recent years the government approach of actively interfering in the lives of people during a pandemic has proven itself culpable for indirectly pushing people to fear and despair, resulting in a compounding of the issue, but that wasn’t the policy of any one economic ideology, but of statism in general, where we sacrifice the freedoms of individuals to some notion of a common interest.

Wherever the right to life, speech, to hear, is violated to serve some distant end, the censor is engaging in morally wrong behavior. That’s why I added, and you removed, “ because violating his rights just in case is morally wrong”. If we’re going to quote out of context, can we at least leave in the entire sentence?

As for military secrets, I’m not sure violating one’s obligations to one’s employer, stealing their information, and giving it to their enemies constitutes an act of speech. We need to be careful to distinguish between conduct and speech.

You did phrase it as a utilitarian argument. Maybe you made a whoopsie. But I take the logic of your position as deontological not utilitarian, i.e. "It is wrong in principle, regardless of circumstances, to ever compromise on free speech." Another way of saying free speech is the greatest good. No need to dress it up.

We can quibble about one sentence quoted out of context but I think it remains pretty clear if the rest is considered.

By saying it? I might not know it to be true, but something being true doesn’t depend on me knowing it.

I don’t know that aliens exist, but I can say that they do and I might be right.

I’m wondering how the censor can know and be confident that his act of censorship was the right thing to do.

So? If you follow this up with “therefore it was wrong” then you’re a utilitarian. If you don’t follow it up with “therefore it was wrong” then it isn’t an argument in favour of free speech absolutism.

It was morally wrong to murder Socrates and morally right to leave him alive because murdering someone just in case is morally wrong, because violating his rights just in case is morally wrong, not because leaving him alive produces a greater good for a greater number.

This seems like an appeal to ignorance. I would say that something can be morally good even if we do not, or cannot, know that it is morally good.

You cannot say whether the act saved us or not from what you promised it would. Without this knowledge how can you say it was morally good?

Then why, in a defence of free speech, did you say “one can be confident that the loss of Socrates and his art is greater than whatever trappings had been gained by his silencing.” That seems a quite obvious utilitarian defence.

I said it because I’m confident that the loss of Socrates and his art is greater than whatever had been gained by his silencing. We have the act itself, the murder of Socrates, and thus the loss of his creativity and production, so no chance of him conversing about virtue any longer. What we don’t have is any proof that his silencing led to the better world that the censor promised us. The censor was the utilitarian.

I’m not a utilitarian.

The argument was epistemological and ethical. We can never know if an act of censorship protected us from the ill effects we were told would befall us should no act of censorship occur. In the case of Socrates, we can never know if his censorship saved the youth from corruption after all. So we are unable to judge whether the act of censorship was morally good. What we do know is the act of censorship itself, in this case killing a man and violating his most basic rights, so we can judge that it was morally bad.

The interplay between euphemism and dysphemism is an interesting subject in rhetoric, worthy of analysis. To avoid either, one might try to substitute it with a neutral phrase, but then again such neutrality might disguise the feelings and intents of the author, which may or may not be of some interest as well.

I have no idea what this means. Truth is only useful as a concept if all misrepresentations count as the opposite of it. We do not possess a version of events beyond attempts to recount them. Reporting a false narrative is often done for the purpose of suppressing another.

The distortion of the truth, ie. lying, is different than the suppression of truth, ie. censorship. One can be straightened out while the other simply vanishes.

Irony, satire, myth, caricature, sarcasm, metaphor, hyperbole—deception is a function of language just like any other articulated sound from the mouth.

There is neither truth nor honesty without falsity and lies. You cannot find any of the former without reference to the latter. Should either be eradicated what would we hold the other against? What happens to trial and error? What happens to hypothesis? Art? All that’s left is dogma.

It sounds like you’re more of a social harmony absolutist, and I’d wager you would proffer lies so long as the group as a whole coordinated to your standards. So it is with collectivism.

Presupposing that man is fallible leads me to conclude that he should not have the power to determine and enforce what only the infallible ever could.

Both free speech and suppression will be abused, but it’s a question about what abuse is preferable. The distortion of truth is not the same as its suppression, and though free speech leaves room for the former it expressly denies the latter, whereas censorship has and will be put to the service of both.

My point is that it is unjust and illogical to deny the right to to receive and impart information to all people at all times when only some people at some times are prone to accept it. If some people at some times are prone to to accept it it is unjust and illogical to give some people at some times the power to deny such rights for everyone.

Nor does it follow that because a kind of information is unacceptable we must give someone the power to determine what is and isn’t acceptable, and to punish any deviation from it. Those who we task to protect us from disinformation and punish deviation from State Truth, Church Truth, Corporate Truth, are often the greatest progenitors of it.

Truth is really the only counter to falsity in every case. For this we need more information, more data, more debate, more education, more transparency, not less of it. The more and more people rely on a group of people to tell them what is true or false, like a government or corporation or church, the less and less they become able to figure it out for themselves, only compounding the problem to begin with.

When the NYT released the Pentagon papers the government argued that to release them was a threat to national security. It turns out this was hot air, as are most claims that violence and death will befall us should someone release top secret information. In most cases it leads to the embarrassment of those who sought to keep it hidden. So I’m not too worried.

You’re right on that. Fīat jūstitia ruat cælum is a precious principle to me.

It doesn’t follow that because someone reads something he invariably accepts it. It doesn’t follow that because a kind of information is unacceptable that we must give someone the power to determine what is and isn’t acceptable, and to punish any deviation from it. And those you task to protect you from disinformation and punish deviation from State Truth are often the greatest progenitors of it.

There are countless other solutions to misinformation that don’t involve the willy-nilly violation of rights as your solutions have, but censorship is still the go-to method. It makes no sense, in my opinion.

Do you accept everything you read? It doesn’t follow that because one reads something he invariably accepts it. It doesn’t follow that because a kind of information is unacceptable that we must give someone the power to determine what is and isn’t acceptable, and to and punish any deviation from it. That leads to State Truth.

Disinformation is now being criminalized and leads directly to the jailing of journalists and dissidents and regular internet users, for instance in Greece, Egypt, Singapore, Malaysia. So the question, I guess, is already settled by the authorities. But we’re adults; each of us already has the ability to accept information or not, and we don’t need to censor anything in order to do so.

So if me arguing that everyone should have the same right as Article 19 of the UNDHR is a blind, question begging ideology, maybe someone can give me an argument why a government or some other group of people should have the right to determine what others can say and hear.

The utility of censorship and the benefit to those who practice it is without question. The government and its supporters no doubt benefit from the censorship of the press. The church and its acolytes no doubt benefit from the censorship of heretics and blasphemers. Pharmaceutical companies and their shareholders no doubt benefit from the censorship of criticism.

But I’m no utilitarian. In fact I am against it, at least wherever an individual is subject to unbridled calculations for the sake of another’s utility. I’d rather a minority does not suffer so that some arbitrary greater number might enjoy some vague and incalculable benefit at some point in the near or distant future.

So what? That's the question you keep dodging. Why do expect anyone to give a fuck about whether you miss out on a few non-pc jokes you might not have found offensive but others do?

I'm not arguing that anyone knows what you'll find offensive. I'm not arguing that the censor we choose will get it right all the time. I'm asking you why it matters.

Because we're neither children nor slaves. Such behavior is unjust and stupid.

I have given no such right because I do not know an answer to the question of who knows better than I do what I can or cannot read and write. Maybe you do, but one glance at popular opinion or any other authority shows to me that "virtually anyone" isn't a sufficient answer; it's an obsequious one.

What you find offensive says nothing about what I would find offensive. Your sentiments pertain to you and you only. "Most people" and other appeals to the populace are utterly unconvincing especially on the matter of who gets to decide what I can or cannot say and read. I find many things offensive but I do not violate everyone's basic human rights every time I secrete a little cortisol and start furrowing my brow.

I get it, though, if human rights are not a concern there are certainly more pressing issues.

The “spread of misinformation”…so fearful are we of such a spread that we will give the power to censor misinformation to those who are historically and empirically the greatest progenitors of it.

There is nothing empirical about counterfactual thinking, I’m afraid. But for the sake of argument, your intuition that the world would have been better had such-and-such speech been censored still involves the violation of countless rights, whereas education, counter-information, the truth etc. might have sufficed to make the world a better place instead. There are other means to achieve the same desired ends without resorting to tyranny, no matter how enlightened it pretends to be. So if justice and human rights is of any concern at all one might need to put in a little more effort.

“Measurable harms”? Like what?

I always face the insoluble problem of who I would give the right to decide what I can or cannot say and read, as if I was a child or student. I cannot come up with anyone or any group of people, dead or alive, who are fit for the task. So the Better Censorship would invariably be none at all.

Censorship always boils down to this: I don’t want you to say this-or-that and I don’t want others to hear it. It is the concern of an unwelcome and meddlesome third party who has neither the character nor knowledge to know what others can or cannot say, or what they can and cannot hear. All they possess is their own sentiment, and that counts for little in these matters.

Looks like the FBI found more classified documents, even after we are told Biden and his team have been forthcoming and returned everything willingly and voluntarily. Some of them were from his time as Senator, which began back in the mid-70’s. I guess it’s a good thing law enforcement got involved because apparently Biden’s team did a piss-poor job.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/22/justice-department-finds-more-classified-documents-at-joe-bidens-home

Take a look at the Index Librorum Prohibitorum to get a sense of the vandal’s project. Voltaire, Montesquieu, John Locke, Hume, Balzac—more than a few gems were subject to ban. Look at the works thrown into Nazi fires or destroyed by Commie censors. Luckily these days publishers can stay ahead of it and with smuggling some works can reach others. I imagine that wasn’t the case before the printing press. I can never know what Galileo or Bruno might have written if they were able to express themselves freely, but I guess we can be content enough with what was able to reach us.

The problem is in most cases we can never know what might have exised in that gaping hole. No matter what it is I’d prefer to know and decide on my own accord rather than remain ignorant about it and let someone else decide for me.

I would prefer 1 to 2. Then again I’m not sure what kind of security I risk losing. The hypothetical seems to me to make no sense because the two are not mutually exclusive and one doesn’t necessarily rise and fall in inverse proportion to the other.

Thanks for writing that.

Not unlike your own experiences, Justice Holmes used the “fire in a crowded theater” theory to justify jailing dissidents who were protesting the draft. This goes to my point that censors will use the promise of future damage to justify present censorship. In his words, if speech represents a “clear and present danger”, it isn’t protected, even if there is nothing clear nor present about what might happen. When will this danger occur? How will it manifest? This is basically why Holme’s dictum was overturned years later.

I’m still doubtful that speech causes the activity that people claim they do, or that upon hearing certain guttural sounds in certain combinations it will animate their body into performing this or that act. For example, when Mill suggests that speech and placards shown to an excited mob ought to be silenced because they lead to the harm of the corn dealer, violating the Harm Principle, I fail to see how the one necessarily leads to the other. It seems to me that the causes of any harms are the excited mob.

But then again maybe there is some sort of biological mechanism in some people that allows speech to push them around in some way, like sorcery. Who knows?

I think you’re right. The overlap of rights causes a sort of schism. My belief in property rights, for example, suggests that people can restrict another’s free speech rights wherever speech occurs in their domain. In a way, it’s their free speech right to censor whomever they wish.

But no, I would prefer 100% free speech to 100% security. In my mind censorship threatens my security more so than another’s speech, and I have a hard time seeing how words can threaten security.

Joe Biden may have inadvertently funded his son’s procurement of Russian prostitutes, who may or may not have been involved in human trafficking.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/hunter-biden-russian-escorts-joe-payments

Biden was given no subpoena. He voluntarily disclosed them, but after taking them and possessing them and doing god-knows-what with them for a number of years. And this was long after the national archives dismissed as false and misleading the complaint that the Obama administration was in possession of such documents. At least Trump’s were locked up and the chain of custody is accounted for.

Last year there was a case not unlike Biden’s, and she was sentenced to 3 months and fined. Biden’s snafu more comparable to this case and not Trump’s.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-hi/pr/honolulu-woman-receives-three-months-prison-removal-and-retention-classified-material

Since the Biden Center where the documents were found wasn’t built until 2018, it means these documents were taken and moved more than once, and potentially handled by movers and staff, all of whom do not have security clearance. Also, Biden used private counsel and not the FBI or security officers to search for and handle more documents, so now we can only trust their word, which no doubt serves to protect Biden’s interests instead of the public’s.

Of course Biden’s personal counsel will argue it was “inadvertent negligence”, because they are paid to protect Biden. And we’ll probably never know if the documents were opened, viewed, mishandled, because Biden’s counsel was tasked with searching and handling said documents, away from the prying eyes of the government and the public they are meant to serve.

I wonder if he’ll pardon himself.

I was speaking of politics, collectivism as the principle of giving the group priority over the individual, and individualism as the principle of giving the individual priority over the group. It’s where we give political primacy or rights or freedoms or protections to one or the other opposing political unit, the individual or the group.

One approach has to, by necessity, consider the wills of each individual involved. As far as abstractions go “the individual” is universal. The other isn’t. It considers at best some general will, at worst the will of a faction or of one man while excluding the rest.

But your point that there are different collectivisms and individualisms is true; these are protean terms and I will not argue that there can only be one definition or application. If by individualism we’re considering only the will of one man, then you are right, he’s being exclusive. I appreciate the objections.

Feel better?

Well, you’re not getting any swings in, that’s for sure. You’re not fighting anything. You’re staring at a screen reading words. Is this really the extent of your moral behavior, your deep caring?

Sorry; this isn’t fighting, and frothing on the internet is no display of moral behavior. What we can do is talk about these ideas.