Comment by renewiltord

5 years ago

Well, let's get to the bottom of it, shall we?

I will describe a sequence of events. You tell me which acts of speech you want to proscribe and which ones you want to permit.

1. Person A says "I don't like people whose name starts with R. They are disgusting and ugly"

2. Person B says "That's bigoted"

3. Person B tells Person C "A is bigoted because he hates people whose name starts with R"

4. Person C says "That's horrible. We should boycott any business that A is employed at"

5. Person B says "You are right. I will tell everyone"

6. Person A says "This is not fair. I have a right to being employed despite these opinions of mine"

7. Person B says "That's right. And I have a right to not use your employer's services unless you are fired"

8. Person D, overhearing this, finds a big soap box "Everyone! A is bigoted! He hates people whose name starts with R! Join me in boycotting his employer until they fire him"

9. Person E says "If he is fired, I will stop using the product. I'm going to tell everyone about this boycott campaign"

10. Person F says "If he is fired, I will hire him. My company has a lot of R-haters and we get along fine"

Tell me which of these things you will proscribe and which of these things you will permit. I, because I believe in the freedom of speech and association, would permit all of these. In SV, all of these are permissible.

So let's hear what you will do. Name the numbers. That will do.

And if you want to offer more examples to narrow the scope of my belief, please do.

It's easy because you picked an "easy" starting point that B et al are reasonably justified in wanting to "punish". Replace "hates people whose name starts with R" with "thinks illegal immigrants are breaking the law and need to be deported" as an example.

Now you get into a can of worms because it's a reasonable and rationally-defendable point of view that we're dealing with that probably has a 50-50 split in terms of public support. It's an opinion that needs to be discussed rationally without the conversation and people's lives devolving into ugliness.

Right now, people are censoring themselves for fear of repercussions that are very real because we've allowed a very vocal minority (on both sides?) to dominate and force consequences without a demonstrable majority in public-support. As long as there is an "aura" of majority-agreement on a touchy topic, dissent becomes dangerous. And it's self-reinforcing because you don't see any dissenting opinions on it so everyone thinks there is majority-support and dissents even less, causing a landslide.

  • My position does not change when we make the change you recommend. I still think every one of those things is permissible and must be permissible. I weigh liberty very highly indeed.

    If it helps, let's even say Person A says "I like gay people and minorities. They should be treated just as well as heterosexual people and majorities." and then retain the rest mutatis mutandis. My position does not change.

You seem to be advocating mob justice - letting the larger and more aggressive mob win.

Would you still support this model of justice if your mob was the smaller one and you got "cancelled" for expressing your "progressive" ideas? Or would you start calling for things like "proportional response", "due process", "free speech that leads to unemployment is not free" and such?

  • Ah no, I advocate the rights of any group of free people to speak - not for any group of free people to rule. Ten thousand of you can speak that you hate me. You have the right. But not one of you may lay a finger on a hair on my head. You do not have that right.

    Read my post history. I am consistent on this matter.

    * On the matter of W.H.Auden refusing to publish with a publisher who refused to publish Ezra Pound. Here I believed this was perfect reactions on every side. The publisher did not like Ezra Pound because Pound is a fascist sympathizer. Auden felt that this deplatforming and so told the publisher he would no longer be publishing with them. The publisher changed his mind because he wanted Auden to publish with him. All civil, all consistent with free association.

    * The NYT insisted on publishing Scott Alexander's real name. He didn't like this and pulled Slate Star Codex. My reaction was that this is bad on the NYT's part and I would prefer not to subscribe to them. Not that they should be legally censured. Simply that we as free people should exercise this and free ourselves from them.

    * When David Shor was fired from Civis, I thought that was a mistake. So 'cancel culture' ate itself there. But that's fine. I will simply choose not to associate myself with Civis.

    • I think we both agree that physical violence is off the table. "Due process" is important not because of physical violence per se, but because the impact of the violence is significant. And so is cancelling someone out - depending on a person's position losing their job could be a disaster. Well-off software engineers may not feel it, but most people do. The mob justice does not follow any sort of due process - accusations fly and Emmanuel Cafferty gets fired. The cancel culture did not eat itself, it ate an utility worker.

      My point is that mob justice is not justice. Taking (in)action yourself is well and good, but the farther you want to spread it around the more rigorous your processes and standards should be.

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    • What do we do when hundreds or thousands of those voices are actually bots controlled by one or two people, but they pose as real people online.

      One could argue this is one or two people expressing their freedom of speech, and using technology to do so, but another might argue that since it's not a genuine sentiment of real people in each instance, it might not be called free speech.

      I think introducing the fact that online, you can't punch someone in the face and face the consequences is meaningful. I don't advocate violence, but I mean there is no way to know you are engaging with genuine people who are willing to participate in the speech.

      I don't have as solution either, a bunch of ideas, and no reason to execute them, and it's also a nightmarish hellscape that I don't really want to wade into :)

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This is a good example, and indeed a problem. I don't have a great plan to solve, except to use free speech to educate and convince people that this sequence of events is illogical and immoral. Combats these ideas with better ideas. Maybe what our schools read need are logic and ethics classes.

> Tell me which of these things you will proscribe and which of these things you will permit

It depends on definition of "permit".

From legal point of view, all of these things should be legal (except maybe A).

But some items from that list I consider immoral. Like gathering a mob to attack someone with the opposite point of view, is immoral.

By the way, there's a big difference between

> I don't like people whose name starts with R. They are disgusting and ugly

and

> I will vote for Trump.

Barely anyone in SV says they consider some group of people ugly. You have invented this unrealistic example.

And, I always will support those who are bullied regardless of their beliefs. Like when mob attacks a nazi, I'll try to protect that nazi. Of course when mob attacks radical lefts like antifa, my support goes to antifa.

Mob is always wrong regardless of its declared intentions.

  • I made up an example, and I requested that you make up examples that make the point clearer. If you feel that the example is unrealistic, you can simply provide another one.

    In this case, if you have, in my example, Person A change his view to be "I will vote for Trump" and retain the rest mutatis mutandis then I'll gladly retain my view that I want all of that to be allowed.

    In fact, I think we might be on precisely opposite sides in the fight for liberty if you want to stop people from having opinions just because they are not the only people to have that opinion. One person is free to state an opinion. Any n people are free to associate. Any n people are free to state the opinion together.

    And you're going to have to clarify what a 'mob' is and what an 'attack' is. If five thousand people say "I won't buy this product unless you fire that guy", I think that's an okay 'mob' and an okay 'attack' because those five thousand people have the freedom to associate with each other and the freedom to choose not to associate with 'that guy'. It is morally wrong (repugnant, even) to force them to buy the product when they don't want to. If a single person hurts you for saying anything then that's a non-okay 'mob' and a non-okay 'attack'.

    • > One person is free to state an opinion. Any n people are free to associate. Any n people are free to state the opinion together.

      It's right to n people to gather together and march in their support for Biden for example.

      It is not OK (morally) to n people to gather togeher and ask a company to fire an employer for Biden support.

      I think the different is in positive vs negative, constructive vs destructive.

      "Buy from NNN because they support gay marriage" is positive and constructive.

      "Ruin a career of John Smith because of his political views" is negative and destructive.

      Of course it is not black and white. Like if you know for sure that company MMM knowingly uses slave labor, it would be right to boycott the company. And I don't know where to draw the line.

      > what an 'attack' is

      Something which leads to big loss for those who is attacked (ruined career, ruined personal life, loss of money, loss of business).

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